Beschreibung:

TYLER, JOHN, President . Autograph letter signed ("John Tyler") to Hon. H.A. [Weber?], Gloucester Place, 23 January 1837. 2 1/2 pages, 4to, 253 x 202 mm. (10 x 8 in.). A FUTURE PRESIDENT ATTACKS NORTHERN "MANUFACTURING INTERESTS" FOR HAVING "BROUGHT US NEAR TO CIVIL WAR, OVER THE TARIFF QUESTION", AND ASSERTS THAT "NO UNION CAN BE FORMED BETWEEN US AND THE LATITUDINARIANS OF THE NORTH" A very fine political letter, with prophetic references to the sectional divisions heightened by the current controversy over tariffs (which had provoked the Nullification Crisis during Jackson's Presidency), and commenting revealingly on the Presidential election of 1836. "I have watched with no small interest the proceedings of 'the party,' on the subject of the Tariff and I have felt the deepest anxiety that the Southerners should fall in to Cambreling's move and loudly demand the reduction of the duties." The Compromise Tariff Act of 1833, which attempted to smooth over the regional quarrel, had specified a seven-year gradual reduction in duties, Tyler had voted for it "in the best faith. I was firmly convinced that the reduction was rapid enough, for although the manufacturing interest had greatly violated the rights of the South, and had brought us near to civil war, yet I felt as an American [rather than a sectionalist?], and was therefore well disposed to let down the system by slow degrees. Seven years were asked for and with others I readily granted it. I well remember the opposition...It came precisely from the quarter which now proposes a most rapid stride. Look, I pray you to Wright's speech in the Senate....See the flounderings of the party on the subject of [duties on] coarse woolens....The truth is the party went for force and for the tariff...Now this is the party which moves for reduction, instant, rapid reduction. They represent Pennsylvania, N. York, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rh. Island, a majority of the Manufacturing States, and I would put this sincerity to the test. The South should make loud calls upon them to press forward. Let us test their sincerity. If they are sincere we advance our interests by an instantaneous repeal. If they are not we expose them in all their nakedness of depravity. Cambreling's bill should be considered as the first measure of the session. But mark! it is a mere feint. They mean if possible to confirm the sales of public lands to actual settlers and the revenue from imposts will be found not more than sufficient to meet these...expenditures, and then the tariff must stand. I want the pea-viners exposed if indeed they are pea-vining ." At the end, Tyler cannot forbear commenting on the Whig's party's defeat in the recent lost election: "One word about the past. The double shotted [split] ticket kill'd us added to the fact that our leading papers play'd altogether for the Northern States. They substantially dropp'd Judge [Hugh Lawson] White and took up Harrison. This caused the thin turn out in Tide water Virginia and lost us the vote of N. Carolina. I remonstrated, but the course could not be altered. You were right and I wrong. If our mountaineers could have been taught wisdom by defeat we should have carried the entire South. It is too late now, however, according to an old adage, to lock the stall door. We must look to the future and there our vision is limited by darkness. I fear that no union can be formed between us and the latitudinarians of the North, but nous verrons [we will see]...." The newly formed Whig Party had been unable to marshall behind a single candidate, so three rival conventions had nominated regional candidates: William Henry Harrison was the Whig candidate of the West, Daniel Webster the Whig candidate of the Northeast and Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee the Whig candidate of the south. The party's two candidates for Vice-President were Tyler and Francis Granger of New York. The strategy proved fatal against the well-organized Democrats. In electoral votes