Edward Stanwood
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 110
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... called, the Republican party, which drew most largely from the ranks of the old Whigs, but which also numbered a great many members who had always been Democrats. In many of the States the Know-Nothings and the antiNebraska forces made common cause, not by what is known at present as fusion, but because they held similar opinions both as to the slavery question and as to the dominance of a foreign element in the Democratic party. The whole political situation was one of confusion. The Senate was Democratic by nearly two to one. The House of Representatives contained, according to the classification in Greeley's Tribune Almanac for 1857, 108 Republicans, 83 Buchanan Democrats, and 43 Fillmore Americans. The extraordinary revulsion of sentiment in the North caused by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is indicated by the fact that whereas in the Thirty-third Congress there were 93 Democrats from Northern States there were only 23 in the Thirty-fourth. Although the Republicans did not have a majority in the House, they elected Mr. Banks Speaker, by a plurality. The slavery question was in full possession of the popular interest, and Congress could hardly turn from it to transact the routine business. It obtruded itself into every debate. Nevertheless, this perturbed period was productive of another tariff measure, peculiar in itself and in the circumstances under which it was passed. Mr. Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, reported a tariff measure at the first session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, but it was not taken up for action until the second session, that of 1856-57. The woollen manufacturers had no hope of obtaining an increase of duties on the goods which competed with their own. The...