in Congress, Judge of the Supreme
Court of Tennessee, and Governor of Florida, great civil experience. Mr.
Calhoun was, however, in the political struggle that took place in 1824,
elected to the second office of the republic, while in the strife,
confusion, and break up of parties no one of the competing candidates
for President received a majority of the electoral votes. He and his
supporters submitted to, it may be said acquiesced in, the result then
and also in 1828, when General Jackson was elected President and Mr.
Calhoun was reelected to the office of Vice-President. This
acquiescence, however, was reluctant; but with an expectation that he
would in 1833, at the close of General Jackson's term, be the successor
of the distinguished military chieftain.

But the arrangements of calculating politicians often end in
disappointments. Such was the misfortune of Mr. Calhoun. His ambitious
and apparently well contrived plans had most of them an abortive and
hapless termination. Observation and experience convinced him, after
leaving Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, that the educated and reflective Statists
or State rights men of the country, and especially of the South, would
never sanction or be reconciled to the exercise of power by the Federal
Government to protect the manufacturing interests of New England, or to
construct roads and canals in the West, at the expense of the National
Treasury. These were, however, favorite measures of a class of
politicians of the period who had special interests to subserve, and who
carried with them the consolidationists, or advocates of a strong and
magnificent central government. The tariff, internal improvements, and
kindred subjects became classified and known in the party politics of
that day as the "American system"--a system of high taxes and large
expenditures by the Federal Government--without specific constitutional
authority for either. Parties were arrayed on opposite sides of this
system, which, besides the political principles involved, soon partook
of a sectional character. High and oppressive duties on importations, it
was claimed, were imposed to foster certain industries in the North to
the injury of the South.

Henry Clay, a politician and statesman of wonderful magnetic power, was
the eloquent champion of the "American system," and enlisted in his
favor the large manufacturing interest in the North and the friends of
internal improvement in the West. These measures were ma