HARRISON, TYLER 



vote, as then taken, stood : Yeas, thirty-two ; Nay, one, 

 to wit, John Tyler. 



It was thus on the question of the right of the fed- 

 eral government to use force in suppressing nullifica- 

 tion that the Southern strict constructionists discovered 

 that there was no room for them within the Democratic 

 party as then constituted under the lead of Jackson, 

 Van Buren, Benton, and Blair. In this conclusion 

 the peculiar features of Jackson's attack upon the 

 United States Bank only confirmed them. When it 

 came to the removal of the deposits, Mr. Tyler's break 

 with the administration was thorough and final. As 

 we have seen, he was no friend to the bank ; he had 

 fought against it on every fitting occasion, since the 

 beginning of his public career. And now, in 1834, he 

 declared emphatically, " I believe the bank to be the 

 original sin against the Constitution, which, in the 

 progress of our history, has called into existence a 

 numerous progeny of usurpations. Shall I permit 

 this serpent, however bright its scales or erect its 

 mien, to exist by and through my vote ? " Neverthe- 

 less, strongly as he disapproved of the bank, Mr. Tyler 

 disapproved still more strongly of the methods by 

 which President Jackson assailed it. There seemed 

 at that time to be growing up in the United States a 

 spirit of extreme unbridled democracy quite foreign 

 to the spirit in which our constitutional government, 

 with its carefully arranged checks and limitations, was 

 founded. It was a spirit that prompted mere majori- 

 ties to insist upon having their way, even at the cost 

 of overriding all constitutional checks and limits. 

 This wild spirit possessed many members of Jack- 

 son's party, and it found expression in what Mr. Ben- 



