In the successful tactics then employed by Cameron may be found the secret of his remarkable career as a party manager in the field in which, for a full half-century, he was an active and indefatigable worker.
The Whig victory of 1848 was not sufficiently decisive to warrant any attempt, even had there been desire, to change the tariff.
General Taylor had been elected without subscribing to a platform or pledging himself to a specific measure, and he was therefore in a position to resist and reject appeals of the ordinary partisan character.

Moreover the tariff of 1846 was yielding abundant revenue, and the business of the country was in a flourishing condition at the time his administration was organized.

Money became very abundant after the year 1849; large enterprises were undertaken, speculation was prevalent, and for a considerable period the prosperity of the country was general and apparently genuine.
After 1852 the Democrats had almost undisputed control of the government, and had gradually become a free-trade party.

The principles embodied in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not only among the people but among the protective economists, and even among the manufacturers to a large extent.

So general was this acquiescence that in 1856 a protective tariff was not suggested or even hinted by any one of the three parties which presented Presidential candidates.
THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1857.
It was not surprising therefore that with a plethoric condition of the National Treasury for two or three consecutive years, the Democratic Congress, in the closing session of Pierce's administration, enacted what has since been known as the tariff of 1857.