ackson, while he was ready and willing
to suppress any such rebellion by force, was not sorry to see his
adherents in Congress make use of it to overthrow protection; and a
"compromise tariff," to which the protectionists agreed, was passed in
1833. It reduced the duties by an annual percentage for ten years. The
nullifiers claimed this as a triumph, and formally repealed the
ordinance of nullification, as if it had accomplished its object. But,
in its real intent, it had failed wretchedly. It had asserted State
sovereignty through the State's proper voice of a convention. When the
time fixed for the execution of the ordinance arrived, Jackson's
intention of taking the State's sovereignty by the throat had become so
evident that an unofficial meeting of nullifiers suspended the ordinance
until the passage of the compromise tariff had made it unnecessary. For
the first time, the force of a State and the national force had
approached threateningly near collision, and no State ever tried it
again. When the tariff of 1842 reintroduced the principle of protection,
no one thought of taking the broken weapon of nullification from its
resting-place; and secession was finally attempted only as a sectional
movement, not as the expression of the will of a State, but as a
concerted revolution by a number of States. It seems certain that
nationality had attained force enough, even in 1833, to have put State
sovereignty forever under its feet; and that but for the cohesive
sectional force of slavery and its interests, the development of
nationality would have been undisputed for the future.

New conditions were increasing the growth of the North and West, and
their separation from the South in national life, even when
nullification was in its death struggle. The acquisition of Louisiana in
1803 had been followed in 1807 by Fulton's invention of the steamboat,
the most important factor in carrying immigration into the new
territories and opening them up to settlement. But the steamboat could
not quite bridge over the gap between the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi. Internal improvements, canals, and improved roads were not
quite the instrument that was needed. It was found at last in the
introduction of the railway into the United States in 1830-32. This
proved to be an agent which could solve every difficulty except its own.
It could bridge over every gap; it could make profit of its own, and
make profitable that which had before bee