{ 162} [Sidenote: The character of the bill as reflected in the analysis of the vote upon it.]
The vote in the House of Representatives reflects quite perfectly the character of the bill. The members from the wool- and hemp-growing sections supported the bill; those from the manufacturing section were indifferent; those from the shipping and commercial sections opposed it; and those from the planting section opposed it unanimously.
In the Senate, amendments were made to the bill which altered it in the direction of a slightly increased protection to the manufacturers. Still, Mr. Webster, who had become a champion of protection since his section had become a manufacturing section, claimed that the bill was of little worth to the manufacturers, while the increased duty on hemp would bear heavily on the shipping interests of New England. He voted for the bill, however, while his colleague, Mr. Silsbee, voted against it. The vote in the Senate differed only slightly, as regards sectional distribution, from that in the House. It was finally passed by both Houses as amended by the Senate, and was signed by the President on the nineteenth day of May, 1828; and opposition to it thereafter must take on the form of petition for its repeal, or that of resistance to its execution. Before it could come to the latter, however, three things must be accomplished. The first was the invention of the morale of such resistance. The second was the creation of the party of resistance. And the last was the capture of some existing governmental organization by that party.
[Sidenote: The Tariff of 1828 not a complete party measure.]
While thus it cannot be said that the "Jackson men" voted against this bill and the Administration men for it, still there was something which looked like an approach toward this relation. Certainly the Southern wing of the Jacksonians, or of the Democratic party, as the Jacksonians now called { 163} themselves in distinction from the National Republicans, opposed the measure with something like unanimity. Many of Jackson's Northern supporters, however, voted for the bill, and it may be said that the Democratic party of the North was then in favor of moderate protection to all the interests of the country.