stility. Benton, the
foremost of expansionists before Tyler became President, was also ready
to compromise the dispute. This meant that Calhoun, Webster, and Benton
would unite their influence to defeat the foreign policy of the
President if it were not modified to suit their views.

But the new leadership embraced a group of able and bold men: John A.
Dix, of New York; Caleb Cushing, a Whig recruit from Massachusetts;
James M. Mason, of Virginia; Robert Barnwell Rhett, William L. Yancey,
and Jefferson Davis, of the lower South; and David Atchison, Stephen A.
Douglas, Lewis Cass, and William Allen, of the Northwest,--all ardent
expansionists and "big Americans" who would not readily suffer the
defeat of the party program. During the summer and autumn of 1845 their
policy had been worked out in detail and discussed among the men who
were to be responsible for its execution. In domestic affairs their
scheme embraced the settlement of the long-disputed financial policy in
a new Independent or Sub-Treasury Bill which Secretary Walker was
preparing. The Tariff of 1842, which had offended the Democratic South,
was also to be reformed, and Walker had written the new schedules which
Congress was to enact in due time. In order to secure the necessary
Western support for these Southern purposes, the old internal
improvements program was revived in an enlarged rivers and harbors bill.
This was a big plan and the Democratic majorities in House and Senate
were very narrow. The outlook was anything but encouraging, with
Webster, Calhoun, and Benton likely to be in opposition on every point.

But Congress passed the Sub-Treasury Bill, by which most of the
financial measures of the preceding administrations since 1833, resting
on the mere orders of President or Secretary of the Treasury, were
legalized. It was in the main the same law which Van Buren had labored
so long to secure, but which the Whigs had repealed in 1841. The money
of the Government was henceforth to be kept in certain designated
sub-treasuries in leading cities like New York, Baltimore, and New
Orleans, and drawn upon by the Secretaries of the Treasury when needed.
There was thus to be no national bank; and the state banks were to
continue issuing their paper, which was to be the money of the people.
Gold and silver, coined by the government mint at Philadelphia, were
seldom demanded in ordinary business transactions, though coin or
bullion still remained the redempt