![]() The simplest explanation is to look at Franklinsville as a little outpost of New England in the countryside of North Carolina. The treasury is bankrupt to all intents and purposes.” A London newspaper reports, “The condition of the country is most appalling. ![]() But Tyler, sympathetic to southern cotton interests, vetoes it. Just before the deadline, Congress passes a bill to temporarily preserve the tariffs, and provide aid to the West. But with incomes reduced by five years of depression, tariffs now account for 85 per cent of federal revenue, and any reduction in the tariffs would require big cuts to the federal budget. The date for reduction had been fixed by the law: June 30, 1842. Those tariffs had been designed to protect the infant industries of the Northern states, but rankled the agricultural South who wanted free access to the huge British demand for cotton. A decade earlier Congress had promised to reduce federal tariffs on foreign imports and exports. Even worse, state governments had borrowed heavily from foreign banks to finance construction of new canals, turnpikes and railroads, and without those tolls and fees they found themselves unable to pay their overseas creditors.Īnd apparently financial conditions were going to get worse. Private speculators who bought land trying to capitalize on the railroad boom lost everything when the bubble burst businesses failed and unemployment was widespread. Van Buren had been Andrew Jackson’s hand-picked successor, but he had the bad luck to take office in March 1837 just as the “Panic of 1837” sabotaged the economy. In the contentious “log cabin and hard cider” campaign of 1840 General Harrison beat the highly unpopular incumbent Martin van Buren. He was the first President to die in office. General Harrison, a hero of the Indian Wars and the oldest man ever elected President, caught pneumonia during his inauguration and died barely a month later. ![]() Vice President just 15 months ago, he succeeded President William Henry Harrison in April 1841. Tyler, a Virginian, is not held in high regard by the Whig party rank and file. John Tyler is President of the United States, the 10th man to serve in that office. It is now possible to buy a ticket in Raleigh and take the train, with numerous stops and changes, all the way to New York City. The Seaboard & Roanoke (east to Portsmouth, VA) and the Petersburg & Roanoke (north to Petersburg, VA) soon followed. A month later the Raleigh and Gaston line was completed running northeast from Raleigh, making Weldon a railroad hub. When completed in March 1840, it was at 161.5 miles long, the longest railroad in the world. ![]() The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad was built due north from Wilmington to Weldon on the Roanoke River near the state line. North Carolina, in fact, was in 1842 the home of one of the largest railroad networks in the world. Whig party members are progressive proponents of government taking an active role in economic development or, in the terminology of the times, “internal improvements.” They lobby for the creation of corporations to spin and weave cotton and wool, develop iron, copper and gold mines, and to build plank roads, canals and railroads. Their hero is Henry Clay, congressman of Tennessee. Morehead is a member of the Whig party, and the Whigs are firmly in control of the politics of Randolph County, and of North Carolina. ![]()
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