e implied in
his advice to Mr. Monroe in the selection of his Cabinet. However, some
allowance should be made as Jackson had a seeming rebellion on hand, and
one hardly could blame him for desiring men on whom he knew he could
depend in the promised hours of peril.

The tariff laws were especially obnoxious to South Carolina, of the
Southern States. Now Jackson was opposed to the tariff laws himself, but
as long as the laws remained he proposed that they should be enforced
and when South Carolina met at Columbia and passed resolutions to resist
the existing laws and declaring in favor of State rights, he promptly
sent forces to quell the promised rebellion. Seeing what kind of a man
they had to deal with the nullifiers were glad to seize the excuse for
not proceeding, which Clay's Compromise Bill afforded. This bill reduced
the duties gradually until at the end of ten years they would reach the
standard desired by the South. His re-election was even more conclusive
than the former, inasmuch as it was found that he had carried every
State save seven. His principal opponent was Henry Clay, who represented
the party in favor of renewing the charter of the United States bank.
Jackson was bitterly opposed to this institution, vetoed the bill to
re-charter the bank, and an effort to pass the bill over his head
failing to receive a two-thirds vote, the bank ceased to exist.

He conceived the idea of distributing the surplus left by the bank,
about ten millions, among certain banks named for that purpose. He had
no acknowledged authority for this but he believed himself right and
acted independently, as was characteristic in such cases. A panic
ensued, and the Whigs claimed that this measure of Jackson's was the
cause, while the Democrats were equally confident that the financial
troubles were brought about by the bank itself, which was described as
an institution too powerful and despotic to exist in a free country.

A powerful opposition was formed in the Senate against him, headed by
such men as Calhoun, Clay and Webster, and finally a resolution
condemning his course was adopted by a vote of 26 to 20, but was
afterward expunged through the influence of his intimate friend, Colonel
Benton. The House sustained the President throughout, or he must have
been overthrown. The foreign relations of our Government at the close of
Jackson's administration was very satisfactory indeed. The national debt
was extinguished, and new Sta