They were
compelled either to sacrifice their standards to the conditions of
popular efficiency or the chance of success to the integrity of their
standards. In point of fact they pursued precisely the worst course of
all. They abandoned their standards, and yet they failed to achieve
success. Down to the Civil War the fruits of victory and the prestige of
popularity were appropriated by the Democrats.
The Whigs, like their predecessors, the Federalists, were ostensibly the
party of national ideas. Their association began with a group of
Jeffersonian Republicans who, after the second English war, sought to
resume the interrupted work of national consolidation. The results of
that war had clearly exposed certain grave deficiencies in the American
national organization; and these deficiencies a group of progressive
young men, under the lead of Calhoun and Clay, proposed to remedy. One
of the greatest handicaps from which the military conduct of the war had
suffered was the lack of any sufficient means of internal communication;
and the construction of a system of national roads and waterways became
an important plank in their platform.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151