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Title: The party battles of the Jackson period
Author: Claude G. Bowers
Release date: December 3, 2023 [eBook #72299]
Language: English
Original publication: NYC: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARTY BATTLES OF THE JACKSON PERIOD ***
[Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON.
_Engraved by H. B. Hall from a painting by Earl_]
THE PARTY BATTLES
OF THE
JACKSON PERIOD
BY
CLAUDE G. BOWERS
_Anniversary Edition_
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY CLAUDE G. BOWERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
PREFACE TO THE ANNIVERSARY EDITION
This is the hundredth anniversary of the memorable campaign which marked
the rising of the people and the election of Andrew Jackson to the
Presidency, and it has been thought appropriate to issue an Anniversary
edition of “Party Battles of the Jackson Period” uniform with “Jefferson
and Hamilton.”
It has not been thought necessary to change the text of the first
edition materially. The passing of the century has brought a fairer
appraisement of Jackson’s character and career, but he remains, and ever
must, a subject of controversy, because he was a crusader for certain
fundamentals of government on which men divide honestly. His civic
integrity, his flaming patriotism, and his robust Americanism are beyond
all controversy, and men of all political persuasions do homage to his
memory.
With a world-wide movement against democracy to-day, and with striking
manifestations of its existence here, it is well for Americans to ponder
the lessons of the struggle for its preservation by Jackson and the
masses whom he led with such superb courage and consummate ability.
There is little being urged against it now that was not heard during the
period of his leadership. It had never been in more deadly danger than
when he met its enemies in bitter battle. And now, after a hundred
years, there are indications that the battle he fought successfully must
be fought again, if the elemental ideas he stood for are to survive in
governmental practice.
In some of the reviews of the first edition it was suggested that I had
been “hard on John Quincy Adams.” A careful reading convinces me that
the conclusion is not justified. Such was not my intention or desire.
Though often petty in small things, he was always heroic in big things,
and these determine the character of a public man. In the chapters on
the French quarrel I have sought to show him at his best, sinking his
partisanship in his Americanism, and subordinating his personal
prejudices to his patriotism.
CLAUDE G. BOWERS
_March 16, 1928_
PREFACE
It is the purpose of the author to deal, more minutely than is possible
in a general history or biography, with the brilliant, dramatic, and
epochal party battles and the fascinating personalities of the eight
years of Andrew Jackson’s Administrations. From the foundation of the
Republic to the last two years of the Wilson Administration, the Nation
has never known such party acrimony; nor has there been a period when
the contending party organizations have been led by such extraordinary
politicians and orators. It was, in a large sense, the beginning of
party government as we have come to understand it. It was not until the
Jacksonian epoch that we became a democracy in fact. The selection of
Presidents then passed from the caucus of the politicians in the capital
to the plain people of the factories, fields, and marts. The
enfranchisement of thousands of the poor, previously excluded from the
franchise, and the advent of the practical organization politicians,
wrought the change. Our government, as never before, became one of
parties, with well-defined, antagonistic principles and policies. Party
discipline and continuous propaganda became recognized essentials to
party success.
This period witnessed the origin of modern party methods. The spoils
system, instead of being a mere manifestation of some viciousness in
Jackson, grew out of the assumed necessity for rewarding party service.
The recognition of party government brought the national convention. The
new power of the masses necessitated compact and drilled party
organizations down to the precincts of the most remote sections, and
even the card-index system known to-day was part of the plan of the
incomparable politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet. The transfer of
authority from the small coterie of politicians to the people in the
corn rows imposed upon the leaders the obligation to furnish the rank
and file of their followers with political ammunition for the skirmishes
at the country stores as well as for the heavy engagements at the polls,
and out of this sprang the intense development of the party press, the
delivery of congressional speeches for “home consumption,” the party
platform, and the keynote speech.
The triumph of the Jacksonians over the Clays, the Websters, and the
Calhouns was due, in large measure, to their development of the first
great practical politicians--that much-depreciated company sneeringly
referred to as the Kitchen Cabinet, to whom all politicians since have
paid the tribute of imitation.
With the appearance of Democracy in action came some evils that have
persisted through the succeeding years--the penalties of the rule of the
people. Demagogy then reared its head and licked its tongue. Class
consciousness and hatreds were awakened. And, on the part of the great
corporations, intimidation, coercion, and the corrupt use of money to
control elections were contributed. These evils are a heritage of the
bitter party battles of the Jacksonian period--battles as brilliant as
they were bitter.
The purpose of this volume is to describe these mad party struggles, and
to picture, as they really were, the great historical figures, “warts
and all.” If Henry Clay is here shown as an unscrupulous, selfish,
scheming politician, rather than as the mythical figure who “would
rather be right than President”; if John C. Calhoun is here described as
petty in his personal hates and spites and in his resentment over the
failure of personal ambitions; if Daniel Webster, the most admirable of
the three during these eight vivid years, is set forth, not only as the
great Nationalist who replied to Hayne and sustained Jackson’s
Nullification Proclamation, but as the defender of the Bank from which,
at the beginning of the fight, he bluntly solicited a “refreshment” of
his retainer, it is not through any desire to befoul their fame, but to
set down the truth as irrefutably disclosed in the records, and to
depict them as they were--intensely human in their moral limitations.
The necessities of history happily call for the featuring of some
figures, potent in their generation, attractive in their genius, and
necessarily passed over by historians covering much longer periods. No
close-up picture of the time can be painted that ignores Edward
Livingston, patriot and philosopher; Roger B. Taney, the militant party
leader; John Forsyth, the “greatest debater of his time”; John M.
Clayton, the real master of both Calhoun and Clay in the Compromise of
1833; George McDuffie, the tempestuous Danton of the Opposition; Hugh
Lawson White, the “Cato of the Senate” and the Nemesis of Jacksonian
Democracy; William Cabell Preston and Horace Binney, the polished
orators, now almost forgotten; Major Lewis, the master of political
details; Frank Blair, the slashing journalistic champion of the
Administration; and Amos Kendall, the genius of the Kitchen Cabinet.
An analysis of motives and methods has led to some unconventional
conclusions. Not only do Clay, Webster, and Calhoun dwindle in moral
grandeur, but others, traditionally considered small, loom large. Thus
the John Tyler of these eight years stands out in intellectual honesty,
courage, and consistency far beyond others to whom history has been more
generous.
No apology need be offered for featuring the personalities of the time.
They throw light on motives and explain events. The episode of Mrs.
Eaton changed the current of political history. The gossip concerning
Mrs. White indicates the putridity of political factionalism. The
scurrilous biography of Van Buren written by Davie Crockett on the
suggestion of Senator White is illuminative of the popular prejudices
of the times; and the solemn investigation of the charge that Senator
Poindexter had instigated the attempt upon the life of the President at
the Capitol discloses the morbidity of the partisan madness. Through the
gossip of the drawing-rooms, the jottings of the diaries, the editorial
comments of the contemporary press, the social and political intrigues
of women, the attempt is made to re-create something of the atmosphere
by which the remarkable statesmen and politicians of the Jackson
Administrations were affected.
Generations have been taught to respect or reverence the memories of the
extraordinary men of the Thirties who rode on the whirlwind to direct
the storms; and, their human weaknesses forgotten, their sinister,
selfish purposes ignored, their moral or intellectual limitations
overlooked, they seem, in the perspective of the years, stern, austere,
always sincere, and singularly free from the vices of politicians, as we
have come to know them in the leaders of a later day. And yet it would
be difficult to find creatures more thoroughly human than these who are
usually presented to us as steel engravings, hung high on the wall in a
dim light. They move across the page of history scarcely touching or
suffering the contamination of the ground. They seem to play their parts
upon a stage impressive and imposing, suspended between earth and
heaven. That they lived in houses, danced, gambled and drank, flattered
and flirted, gossiped and lied, in a Washington of unpaved streets and
sticky black mud, made their way to night conferences through dark,
treacherous thoroughfares, and played their brilliant parts in a
bedraggled, village-like capital, is not apt to occur to one. Thus, in
tracing the political drama of this portentous period, an attempt is
made to facilitate the realization that they were flesh and blood, and
mere men to their contemporaries, not always heroic or even admirable,
through the visualization of the daily life they lived in a capital
peculiarly crude and filled with grotesque incongruities.
No period in American political history is so susceptible to
dramatization. There is grim tragedy in the baffled ambitions of Calhoun
and Clay; romance in the rise of Kendall and the fall of Mrs. Eaton;
rich comedy, when viewed behind the scenes, in the lugubrious procession
of “distress petitioners” trained to tears by the art of Clay and the
money of Biddle; and rollicking farce in the early morning flight of a
dismissed Cabinet minister, to escape the apprehended chastisement of an
erstwhile colleague whose wife’s good name had been assailed.
The drama of party politics, with its motives of love, hate, and
vaulting ambition--such is the unidealized story of the epochal period
when the iron will of the physically feeble Jackson dominated the life
of the Nation, and colored the politics of the Republic for a century.
The Drama--its motives--its actors--such the theme of this history.
CLAUDE G. BOWERS
CONTENTS
I. THE WASHINGTON OF THE THIRTIES 1
The journey from Philadelphia--The first railroad--Communication with
the West--First impressions of visitors--Hotels--Looking for
lions--Trials of calling--Unpaved streets--Uncouth appearance of
town--Impressions of contemporaries--Surroundings of
Capitol--Neighboring quagmires--Cows in the streets--Unlighted
thoroughfares--Advantages of Georgetown--Drives and
walks--Arlington--The Tayloe mansion--The Van Ness
mansion--Sight-seeing--The Capitol’s popularity--Society in Senate--In
House--In Supreme Court--Manner of living--House rent--Servant
hire--Slaves and Southern masters--Boarding-houses--Congressional
messes--The Woodbury mess--The law of the mess--Popularity of--Adams a
diner-out--Hospitality of the town--Miss Martineau’s triumph--Ignorance
of her books--Thomas Hamilton’s experiences--Literary celebrities--First
society letters--First Washington correspondents--Crude performances in
Washington theater--Booth’s appearances--Fanny Kemble’s--Rules and
prices in theater--Weather postpones performances--Traveling
circuses--The race-course--Cockfighting--Gambling--Heavy drinking--Moral
laxity--A Washington season as a lark--Affectations of fashion--Parisian
gowns and hats--Leading shops--Daily routine of a lady of fashion--Party
lines in society--Mrs. Livingston’s leadership--Mrs. Stevenson--Mrs.
Woodbury--Mrs. Forsyth--Mrs. Tayloe--Men’s
styles--Conversationals--Formality--Pictures of Clay, Webster, and
Calhoun in society--Day of gossip--Of
gallantry--Entertainments--Introduction of ice-cream--The dances--Dense
crowds--Incongruous dresses--Diplomats set fast pace--Events at
Carusi’s--The quiet Sundays--Unhealthiness--Death-rate--The cholera
scourge.
II. THE RISING OF THE MASSES 31
The scurrility of 1828--Slander of Jackson and Adams--Democracy
triumphs--Gloom of Whig aristocracy--The faithful march on the
capital--The throne room at Gadsby’s--Jackson receives
office-seekers--Politics in Cabinet appointments--Calhoun confers on
patronage--Jackson ignores Adams--King Mob at the inauguration--The
reaction on the Cabinet--Attempts to conciliate the disappointed--The
morbid bitterness of Clay--Miniatures of the Cabinet.
III. THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE 64
Party organization and the spoils system--Demands on Jackson for
place--The provocation--Jackson’s attitude--Van Buren’s doubts, and
Lewis’s--Kendall’s pain--The harassed Cabinet--Ingham and Van Buren
angrily rebuke Hoyt--Terror of the clerks--The exaggerated impression of
the dismissals--The “martyrs” who were also criminals--The Senate
launches the White Terror--Rejection of the nominations of Jackson’s
newspaper friends--John Tyler’s part in it--His personal and political
character--Type of anti-Jackson Democrat--The prejudice against
“printers”--The cases of Lee, of Noah, of Kendall, and of Hill--Effect
on Jackson--Hill sent to Senate that rejected him--Unprecedented party
bitterness foreshadowed.
IV. JACKSON BREAKS WITH CALHOUN 88
Political significance of the Jackson-Calhoun quarrel--Calhoun turns the
corner--His previous political character--Effect upon it of the
quarrel--Relations of Hayne-Webster debate to quarrel--Latter’s party
character--Jackson’s attitude--Livingston speaks for
Administration--Nullifiers miscalculate Jackson--The Jefferson
dinner--Its purpose--Jackson accepts the challenge--His toast--Effect on
Calhoun--Jackson’s dinner to Monroe--Learns of Calhoun’s hostility in
Monroe’s Cabinet--Crawford’s statement to Forsyth--Letter of Forsyth is
shown Lewis--Jackson hears of it and demands it--Jackson calls on
Calhoun for explanation--Latter’s reply--Jackson breaks--Crawford’s
character and career--Calhoun’s desperate efforts to extricate
himself--Appeals to Adams--Latter’s notations--Calhoun’s
pamphlet--Newspaper battle--Calhoun’s ambitions wrecked.
V. MRS. EATON DEMOLISHES THE CABINET 116
“Peggy” O’Neal--Marriage to Eaton--Society outraged--Mrs. Eaton cut by
Cabinet ladies--Jackson’s indignation and efforts--Van Buren’s advantage
in the game--He features “Peggy” at dinners--Cabinet unable to
confer--Van Buren proposes resignation--Jackson plans complete
reorganization of Cabinet--Mrs. Eaton’s attitude--Jackson’s interview
with Branch--How new Cabinet was formed--Branch and Berrien place blame
on “Peggy”--Mrs. Ingham tarred by same brush--Eaton’s pursuit of
Ingham--Latter’s early morning flight--Portraits of Livingston, Taney,
and Cass--A Van Buren Cabinet.
VI. KITCHEN CABINET PORTRAITS 144
Dominance of Kitchen Cabinet--Portrait of Amos Kendall--Harriet
Martineau’s impressions--Portrait of Major Lewis--Of Isaac Hill--Secret
of partisan bitterness--The Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet--The
establishment of the “Washington Globe”--Portrait of Frank
Blair--Relations of the “Globe” to the President--To the National
Democracy--Considered the Court Journal by diplomats--Buchanan’s
experience with Nesselrode in Russia--The specialties of the Kitchen
Cabinet members.
VII. CLAY LEADS THE PARTY ONSLAUGHT 171
Whigs clamor for Senate leadership--Clay responds--Portrait of Clay the
politician--Is nominated for President--Doubts success--Hopes to carry
Pennsylvania or New York--His battery of genius in the Senate--Whig
advantage in ability in the House--The rejection of Van Buren’s
nomination as Minister to Great Britain--Its motive--Its
stupidity--Flimsy nature of charges--“Kill a Minister to make a
Vice-President”--Character of John M. Clayton--He opens attack on
Post-Office Department--His open appeal to Calhoun to join
Opposition--Clay’s tariff plans--Calls conference at Everett’s--His
dogmatic manner--Adams unimpressed--Clay’s great tariff speech--Tyler’s
reply--Impressions of public--Failure to involve Jackson as planned--The
House battle--The dual reference--Character study of Adams--Of George
McDuffie--Adams coöperates with Secretary McLane--Jackson attempts a
reconciliation--Cause of failure--McDuffie’s bill and report--His
slashing attack on protection--Adams reports bill based on Treasury
report--Adams’s bill passes House--Amended out of recognition by Clay
protectionists in Senate--Surrender of Senate conferees--The politics in
it--Clay’s fury--He fails to make political capital--Tariff eliminated
from campaign--Jacksonians take offensive--Embarrass Clay on land
question--Political effect in new States--Kitchen Cabinet makes headway.
VIII. CLAY FINDS HIS ISSUE 201
The son of Alexander Hamilton--His intimacy with Jackson--Phrases first
attack on National Bank--The inspiration of Jackson’s hostility--The
Mason incident--Biddle’s flippant reply to Ingham--Kendall’s editorial
in “New York Courier and Enquirer”--Biddle’s alarm--His attempts to
conciliate--His contradictory advice and information--The strange
attitude of Major Lewis--Clay plans to drag Bank into politics for
selfish purposes--Treachery of Livingston and McLane--Clay urges
immediate application for recharter--His inconsistency--Jackson prefers
to postpone Bank issue--Reasons--McLane’s embarrassing report--Clay
presses the Bank to act--Biddle sends agent to Washington to
investigate--Cadwalader’s conferences--Sees selfish political aims of
Clay and Webster--His conversion to Whig plan--An historical
conference--Biddle blackmailed into action by threats of Clay and
Webster--Application presented--The House investigates the
Bank--Results--Political effects--Biddle takes charge of fight in
Congress--Recharter Bill passes--Biddle and Clay expect veto--Plan to
make Bank the campaign issue--Effect on Jackson--Authorship of Veto
Message--Van Buren’s midnight conference at White House--The Veto as a
campaign document--Opinion of Biddle--Of Clay’s organ--Of the
“Globe”--Both parties pleased--Senate debate on the Veto--Webster’s
speech--Arrays Bank against Jackson in appeal to the people--Hugh Lawson
White accepts the issue--Clay’s unworthy performance--Benton’s
reply--Clay and Benton exchange the “lie”--The issue goes to the people.
IX. THE DRAMATIC BATTLE OF 1832 227
New campaign methods of 1832--Class consciousness aroused by both
parties--The intensive use of the press--Biddle subsidizes newspapers
and bribes editors--Kendall’s campaign textbook--Clay’s
intrigues--Negotiates with the Nullifiers--Calhoun’s strange plan
considered--Coalition of Bank, Whigs, and Nullifiers--Blair makes the
most of it--Ties the Whigs to Nullification movement--Jackson defies the
Nullifiers--Clay intrigues with Anti-Masons--His letters--Nomination of
Wirt--Latter’s political relations with Clay--The trick planned for New
York--Seward’s testimony--Jacksonians ignore the Anti-Masons--The Bank
the issue--Clay’s campaign plans--Bank’s corruption of the press--Bank
resorts to intimidation and coercion--Attempts to frighten the
timid--Circulation of stories as to Jackson’s health--Blair meets
them--Stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness revived--The anti-Jackson
cartoons--Kitchen Cabinet arouses and organizes the masses--Use of the
press--Intensive organization--Monster meetings of Democrats--A Jackson
parade in New York--Hickory poles--Glee clubs--Songs--Demonstration for
Jackson at Lexington--Personalities--Cholera plays a part--The
presidential candidates--Jackson’s confidence--Jacksonians “on the
turf”--Notable Jackson victory--Ominous action of South Carolina.
X. THE POLITICS OF NULLIFICATION 252
The Nullifiers win in South Carolina--Jackson’s fury--Hastens to the
capital--South Carolina’s changed views--Calhoun’s exposition--Cavalier
vs. Cavalier--Calhoun’s letter to Hamilton--Joel Poinsett’s
part--Jackson energetically prepares for defense--Steps taken--His
reliance on public opinion--His caution--His Proclamation--Drama of its
preparation--Effect on public--Hayne’s reply--Clay’s criticism--He plays
to Nullifiers--Effect on State-Rights Democrats--Ritchie’s straddle in
Virginia--Tyler’s despair--Jackson has Cass prepare appeal to
Virginia--Purpose to isolate South Carolina--Van Buren’s
embarrassment--Also straddles on Proclamation--Calhoun disappointed with
Proclamation--His “death march” to Washington--Drawing-room sympathy for
him--Takes the oath as Senator--Jackson-Poinsett correspondence--Jackson
asks Congress for additional powers--Calhoun’s agitation--The Force
Bill--Tyler’s attack--Appeal to Clay--Clay’s interest in Tyler’s
reëlection--Whig’s ungracious support of Force Bill--Clayton’s
speech--Bitterness of debate--Poindexter and Grundy--Jackson clears
decks for action--Webster asked to lead debate for
Administration--Livingston’s call upon him--Calhoun’s speech--Webster’s
reply--His relations with White House--Jackson’s delight--Jacksonian
cultivation of Webster--Calhoun concerned--Whig, Bank, and Nullification
combination--Dangers to the tariff--Clayton’s proposal to Clay--The
politics in Compromise Tariff of 1833--Calhoun hears from
Jackson--Clay’s Tariff Bill--Tyler’s delight--Jackson’s disgust over the
unholy alliance--Clay’s frankness--Force Bill passes--Clayton whips
Calhoun--Effect of Cass’s letter to Virginia--Nullification Ordinance
rescinded--Political effects of fight--The drama of the last night of
the session.
XI. JACKSON VS. BIDDLE 287
Cabinet reorganization--Duane becomes Secretary of Treasury--His
reputation and party standing--Jackson’s New England tour--Plans removal
of deposits--Consults Hamilton in New York--Conversion of Van Buren--The
Bank’s cockiness over accession of Nullifiers--Blair makes the most of
the coalition--Kendall’s reasons for immediate action--Conservatives of
Cabinet alarmed--Kendall attempts to convince McLane--Van Buren rebuked
by Kendall--Jackson polls the Cabinet--Kitchen Cabinet’s continuous
sessions--Debate on the time for removal--Kitchen Cabinet favors recess
action--Conservatives would postpone until Congress meets--Duane’s
strange reticence--Jackson presses him for decision--Kendall’s
mission--His experiences with politicians en route--Newspapers open
fight--Jackson perfects his plans at Rip Raps--Van Buren hard
pressed--Taney moves to Jackson’s side--Jackson’s Paper to the
Cabinet--McLane and Cass threaten to resign--Benton’s delight--Duane’s
many letters of protest--Is dismissed--Taney assumes command--Webster
advises a “disciplining” of the people--The Bank plans a panic--Its
methods and results--Clay advises distress meetings and
petitions--Political purpose--Jackson and distress committees--Reaction
against Bank--New leaders--Benton--Preston--Leigh.
XII. THE BATTLE OF THE GODS 322
Bitter battle in Congress--Clay leads onslaught--Calls for Paper read to
Cabinet--Forsyth kills the effect--Senate rejects Government directors
on Biddle’s demand--Webster reminds Biddle of his retainer--Attempt to
exclude Lewis from Senate--Webster appeals to Story for
opinion--Latter’s reply--Clay appeals to Tazewell--Is rebuked--Intense
interest in congressional battle--Distress oratory--Forsyth’s
cynicism--Jacksonians counter with memorials--Whig mob-baiters sent to
country to continue the excitement--Clay’s censure resolution--His
bitter speech--Speeches of Preston, Benton, Calhoun, Forsyth, and
Webster--Clay’s motive--Webster’s disgust over Clay’s plan--Proposes
compromise recharter plan--His speech--Calhoun presents another--Bank
champions divided--Clay’s fury over Webster’s independent action--Forces
Webster to kill his own bill--Forsyth makes the record clear--Clay’s
attempt to involve Van Buren--His histrionic appeal--Van Buren makes it
ridiculous--Censure passed--Jackson’s spirited Protest--Effect on
masses--Reception in Senate--Forsyth’s clever move to pass the issue to
the people--Protest rejected--Battle in the House--Adams’s
activities--Horace Binney--The debate--Blair’s attack on Judge
Hopkinson--Bank investigation ordered--Farcical nature--Clay’s
resolution orders restoration of deposits--Debate--Senate rejects
nominations of Stevenson and Taney.
XIII. POLITICAL HYDROPHOBIA 354
Whigs determine to win in New York City election--Lewis’s advice to
Hamilton--Mayoralty nominees make Bank the issue--Mixed result--Whig
celebration at Castle Garden--Democrats celebrate inauguration of
anti-Bank mayor--The fall elections--The Whigs take their
name--Forsyth’s sharp comment--The hotch-potch combination--Jackson
visits the Hermitage--His confidence--Cabinet changes--Whigs impatient
of Bank issue--Biddle’s indignation--Jackson’s triumph in New
Jersey--Whigs redouble efforts in New York--Liberty poles--Mobs in
Philadelphia--The Virginia campaign--Leigh reëlected through a
betrayal--Effect--Poindexter defeated in Mississippi--Whigs accept
result as defeat--Weed dumps the Bank--Webster abandons it--Clay tired
of its troubles--Effect on politics of Bank fight--Bitter congressional
session of December, 1834--Attacks on Post-Office
Department--Instructions from legislatures to expunge censure--Effect on
Whigs--Post-Office scandal--Kendall made Postmaster-General--What he
found, and did--Mrs. Eaton tries a bribe--Attempt to assassinate
Jackson--Poindexter accused--His character and career--His quarrel with
Jackson--Demands an investigation--Is exonerated--Calhoun’s fight on
Federal patronage--Its political purpose--Debate--Democrats celebrate
wiping out of national debt--Whig Senators refuse to buy paintings for
President’s house.
XIV. WHIG DISLOYALTY IN THE FRENCH CRISIS 386
The French indemnity treaty--French indifference to the
obligation--Jackson determines to enforce treaty--Portrait of John
Forsyth--Livingston sent to Paris--Real cause of difficulty
there--Chamber again fails to appropriate--King sends regrets and
assurances--Chamber again fails--Livingston advises show of spirit in
Presidential Message--Jackson’s Message--Whig embarrassment, and
criticism--Message reaches Paris--Livingston presents copy to de
Rigny--King recalls French Minister--Livingston’s tact--Whigs plan to
isolate Jackson--Whig papers apologize to France--Foreign Relations
Committee of Senate packed against Jackson--Blair’s protest--Clay’s
report--Circulated as political document to isolate the President--Clay
suggests France may ask apology from Jackson--Buchanan explains the
Paris state of mind--Defends Message--Senate passes Clay’s
resolution--“Intelligencer” calls it to attention of
France--Livingston’s spirited reply to de Rigny--Approved by Jackson,
Van Buren, and Forsyth--Serurier refused audience by Forsyth--War clouds
lower--Strange happenings in French Legation--House considers
crisis--Adams’s attitude--Pays tribute to Jackson’s spirit--The amazing
debate--Adams protests against tributes to France--Amendment to
Fortifications Bill--Whig filibuster against it--The Nation naked to its
foe--The Whig jubilation--French Chamber authorizes payment conditional
on an apology from Jackson--Livingston leaves Paris--Mrs. Barton and
Madame Pageot--Livingston’s tumultuous ovations in New York--Forsyth’s
instructions to Barton--Diplomatic relations broken--“Oil or
water?”--Livingston advises moderate tone for Message--The
Message--Public indignation over failure of Fortifications Bill--Blair
fans the flame--Approach of French squadron--Webster defends Senate and
attacks House--Adams and Webster--Adams’s spectacular reply--Democrats
follow Adams’s lead--English offer of mediation--Terms of
acceptance--France recedes--Jackson’s triumph--Effect on America’s
prestige in world.
XV. THE BATTLE OF THE SUCCESSION 423
Van Buren the heir apparent--Senator White’s disaffection--Whig plan to
use him--Clay’s plan of campaign--Whig sneers at Mrs. White--Blair’s
rebuke--The schism of Tennessee Democrats--Polk leads for Van
Buren--White wins--Portrait of White--Kitchen Cabinet’s attack on
him--Also determines to retire Bell from Speakership--“Globe’s” attacks
on latter--Baltimore Convention--New York and Virginia combination
broken--Van Buren’s reconciliation visit to Castle Hill--Whig
confusion--Clay sulks--His complaint--Slavery question in
campaign--Attempts to turn slave States against Van Buren--Davy
Crockett’s biography of Van Buren--Holland’s--Adams’s comment--Van
Buren’s serenity--Congress convenes--Bell defeated--Van Buren’s
toothache--Whig fight on Taney--Whig Senators harassed by instructions
from home--The embarrassment of Virginia Whigs--Ritchie’s
mirth--Calhoun’s fight against abolition literature in mail--Purpose to
embarrass Van Buren--Latter’s friends “play politics”--Calhoun’s extreme
bill--Its partisan motive--Tie votes--Van Buren does not
dodge--Calhoun’s bitter reference to Jackson--White’s bitter
attack--Calhoun’s insult to Van Buren--Congress adjourns--Issues of
1836--Adams’s contempt for all the candidates--Enthusiasm for Jackson
continues--Whig depression--Newspaper battles--Clay’s sulking--His one
speech--Jackson’s electioneering--White’s campaign speech--Results of
election--Their significance.
XVI. TWILIGHT TRIUMPHS 457
Jackson’s illness--Whigs attack him while down--He fights back--House
Whigs’ last effort against Whitney--Jacksonians turn the tables--Threats
of murder--Peyton and Wise--Benton plans to expunge--His speech--Bitter
replies--The conference at Boulanger’s--Refreshments in Benton’s
committee room--Clay’s theatrical speech--Scenes in Senate
Chamber--Webster’s protest--Benton wins--Dramatic situation--The mob in
the gallery--Benton’s friends arm--Mrs. Benton’s alarm--The Clay-Benton
altercation--Jackson dines his friends--Last days in White House--His
Farewell Address--Its real significance--His last reception--Jackson the
Man--White House memories and women--The inauguration of Van
Buren--Jackson the central figure--Homage of the multitude--Last night
in the White House--The last conference at Blair’s--The end of the
“Reign.”
BOOKS, PAPERS, AND MANUSCRIPTS CITED AND CONSULTED 481
INDEX 489
ILLUSTRATIONS
ANDREW JACKSON _Steel engraving frontispiece_
From a painting by Ralph Earle.
MARTIN VAN BUREN 54
From a photograph by Brady in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill
Meserve.
THOMAS HART BENTON 54
From a photograph by Brady in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill
Meserve.
MRS. JOHN H. EATON (PEGGY O’NEAL) 118
From a photograph by Brady.
EDWARD LIVINGSTON 134
From the bust by Ball Hughes.
AMOS KENDALL 144
From an engraving in the _Democratic Review_, 1838.
FRANCIS P. BLAIR 162
From an engraving by Sartain in the _Democratic Review_, 1845, after a
painting by T. Sully.
ROGER B. TANEY 162
From a photograph in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve.
WILLIAM B. LEWIS 162
From a photograph reproduced in S. G. Heiskell’s _Andrew Jackson and
Early Tennessee History_.
JOHN C. CALHOUN 172
From an engraving in the _Democratic Review_, 1843, after a miniature by
Blanchard.
HENRY CLAY 172
From the portrait by Marchant in the State Department, Washington.
DANIEL WEBSTER 172
From the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve.
NICHOLAS BIDDLE 212
From a painting by Thomas Sully.
JOHN FORSYTH 386
From a lithograph, by courtesy of Mr. Waddy B. Wood, of Washington,
D.C.
THE PARTY BATTLES
OF THE
JACKSON PERIOD
CHAPTER I
THE WASHINGTON OF THE THIRTIES
The tourist traveling from Philadelphia to Washington in the Thirties
anticipated few pleasures and no comforts from the trip that had to be
made by coach from Baltimore, over roads intolerably wretched under the
best conditions, and all but impassable and not without dangers in
inclement weather. The journey from Philadelphia to Baltimore was
usually made by boat through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and the
entire trip, in winter one of exposure, required the greater part of two
days.[1] The fare from Baltimore to Washington was four dollars.
Sometimes the ruts in the winter roads would overturn the coach,
throwing the passengers into the mire, and occasionally resulting in
sprains and broken bones.[2] Later in Jackson’s time, the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad was built, with a branch into Washington, and when the
first cars, drawn by horses, reached the country-town capital, the
enthusiastic statesmen felt that the problem of transportation had been
solved. Urging Butler to accept the attorney-generalship, and stressing
the fact that acceptance would not preclude his appearance in personal
cases in New York and Albany, Van Buren made much of the fact that “to
the former place you will next season be able to go in fifteen hours,
and to the latter in a day and a night.”[3] Blair, of the “Globe,”
boasted after the election of 1832 that “in eight days and nights after
the closing of the polls in Ohio, the result was known in the city of
Washington from all the organized counties except three.” This, he
declared, “is an instance of rapid communication from the West
unparalleled in this country.”[4]
The foreigner, expecting a national capital more or less pretentious and
compact, was invariably shocked on entering the environs over miserable
mud roads, to find only an occasional drab hut or cottage at wide
intervals. Usually, until the Capitol attracted his attention, he was
wholly unconscious of his arrival at his destination. One of these, who
has left a record of his visit, relates that he was “looking from the
window of his coach in a sort of brown study, at fields covered with
snow,” when a fellow passenger startled him with the inquiry as to how
he liked Washington.
“I will tell you when I see it,” he replied.
“Why, you have been in Washington the last quarter of an hour,” was the
rejoinder.[5]
Another famous visitor “was taken by surprise” on finding herself within
the shadow of the hall of the lawmakers, “so sordid are the enclosures
and houses on its very verge.”[6]
But as the coach wound round the Capitol, and swung with a merry clatter
into Pennsylvania Avenue, the houses at more frequent intervals and
connected shops disclosed the town. With a characteristic “clatter and
clamp,”[7] with a gay cracking of whips, the coach would splash and
rumble up to one of the leading hotels, and the cramped and weary
tourist would joyously take leave of the conveyance and seek lodgment
within.
If well advised, he would instruct the coachman to drop him at Gadsby’s,
then the most popular and comfortable hostelry in town, on the Avenue, a
short distance from the Capitol.[8] There he would find, not only a
clean bed, but excellent service and a lordly hospitality from the host.
Gadsby, for his generation, was a genius at his trade. He moved his
small army of negro servants with military precision. “Who that ever
knew the hospitalities of this gentlemanly and most liberal Boniface,”
wrote one who enjoyed them, “can ever forget his urbane manner, his
careful attention to his guests, his well-ordered house, his fine old
wines, and the princely manner in which he could send his bottle of
choice Madeira to some old friend or favored guest at the table?”[9] It
was not always, however, that accommodations could be found at Gadsby’s,
and then the tourist would seek the Indian Queen at the sign of the
luridly painted picture of Pocahontas, where he would be met at the curb
by Jesse Brown, the landlord.[10] Here, for a dollar and a quarter a
day, he could not only find a pleasant room, but a table loaded with
decanters of brandy, rum, gin, at short intervals from the head to the
foot. If the host of the Indian Queen lacked the lordly elegance of
Gadsby, he made up for it in the homely virtues of hospitality. Wearing
a large white apron, he met his guests at the door of the dining-room,
and then hastened to the head of the table where he personally carved
and helped to serve the principal dish.[11] If this, too, was crowded,
the tourist would try Fuller’s near the White House,[12] where a room
would be found for him either in the hotel proper, or in one of the two
or three houses adjoining, which had been converted into an annex.[13]
Having rested from his journey and removed the stains of travel, if he
were a person of some importance, and especially a foreigner, he would
be speedily deluged with the cards of callers anxious to make his
sojourn pleasant. Day by day the hotel registers were eagerly scanned
for the names of visiting celebrities, for the Washington of the
Thirties loved its lions and lionesses. No possible person was ever
neglected, and real personages were fêted, wined, and dined. But not
until he set forth to return the calls would he appreciate the
Portuguese Minister’s description of the capital as “a city of
magnificent distances.” Inquiring at the hotel how to reach the
residences of his callers, he would be not a little puzzled at the
nonchalant reply that the coachmen “knew where all the prominent people
live.” Engaging a coach, he would set forth gayly, in the confident
expectation of leaving his card at from thirty to forty houses in the
course of the day. A short drive would take him to the end of the
macadamized pavement of the Avenue, and thereafter for hours, pitching
and plunging, over the ruts and the mud-holes, through miry lanes, and
across vacant lots, shaken in body, and sore in spirit, he would find by
evening that he had reached six or seven of the forty houses, and was
charged by the coachman at a rate “which would keep a chariot and two
posters for twice the time in London.”[14] In the course of a week he
would find that he had spent as much as thirty dollars for coach
hire--by odds, the most expensive feature of his Washington sojourn. An
English visitor, startled at the cost of travel, contracted with a
coachman for services from five o’clock to daylight for twenty dollars,
but after having attended five parties on the first evening, the morose
driver repudiated his contract, and it was necessary to add five dollars
to retain his services.[15] “I should imagine [Washington] to be the
very paradise of hackney coachmen,” wrote one disgusted visitor. “If
these men do not get rich it must be owing to some culpable
extravagance, for their vehicles are in continual demand from the hour
of dinner[16] till five in the morning, and long distances and heavy
charges are all in their favor.”[17]
As the visitor drove about the town he found nothing in the physical
aspects of the country-town capital to indicate that L’Enfant ever had a
vision or produced a plan for a city beautiful. Because real estate
dealers had quarreled over the location of public buildings, the
selection of the hill for the Capitol had led to the location of the
White House a mile or more to the west, and for three decades the
problem of building a compact city between the two had failed. The
streets were all unpaved when Jackson was first inaugurated, and only
Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the President’s Mansion had
been rescued from the mire when he left office. Hub-deep in mud in
inclement weather, these country roads sent forth great clouds of dust
on dry and sunny days. With the exception of the Avenue, not a single
street approached compactness, the houses on all other streets being
occasionally grouped, but generally widely separated, and in some
instances so much so as to suggest country houses with their shade trees
and vegetable gardens.[18] “It looks as if it had rained naked buildings
upon an open plain, and every man had made a street in reference to his
own door,” wrote Nathaniel P. Willis, who knew his Washington.[19]
Another writer of the day who was impressed with “the houses scattered
in straggling groups, three in one quarter, and half a dozen in
another,” was moved to compassion for “some disconsolate dwelling, the
first or last born of a square or crescent, yet in nebulous suffering
like an ancient maiden in the mournful solitude of single
blessedness.”[20] Still another contemporary word painter tells us that
even on the Avenue “the buildings were standing with wide spaces
between, like the teeth of some superannuated crone.”[21]
At the foot of the Capitol, itself beautiful even then, were desolate
waste lands being reserved for some ultimate Botanical Gardens, and a
few miserable shack-like boarding-houses.[22] “Everybody knows that
Washington has a capitol,” wrote a satirical English observer, “but the
misfortune is that the capitol wants a city. There it stands, reminding
you of a general without an army, only surrounded and followed by a
parcel of ragged little dirty boys; for such is the appearance of the
dirty, straggling, ill-built houses which lie at the foot of it.”[23]
Where the Smithsonian Institution has long stood were innumerable
quagmires reeking with miasma.[24] About the President’s Mansion, a few
pretentious houses, several still handsome homes after almost a century,
had been built, and in this section, and in Georgetown, lived the people
of fashion and the diplomats. “The Co’t end,” it was called. At the four
corners of the Mansion of the Presidents stood the plain brick buildings
occupied by the State, Treasury, War, and Navy Departments. On Capitol
Hill a few good houses had been erected, especially on North A and New
Jersey Avenue, South. Other than these, and those west of the White
House, there was little but pastures and enclosed fields in the eastern,
southeastern, and northeastern sections of the town.[25] East of
Fourteenth Street, on the north side, but few houses had been built
beyond F Street, and the “country home” of William H. Crawford, at the
northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Massachusetts Avenue, was
still considered as remote from town as on that winter day after his
defeat for the Presidency when no callers were expected because of the
heavy snow.[26]
Looking down upon the little town from the skylight of the Capitol,
Harriet Martineau could plainly discern the “seven theoretical avenues,”
but with the exception of Pennsylvania, all were “bare and forlorn,”
and the city which has become one of the most beautiful and impressive
in the world could then present to the naked eye only “a few mean houses
dotted about, the sheds of the navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and
three or four villas on the other.”[27] With the streets full of ruts,
the sidewalks dotted with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown
with grass, with cows pasturing on many of the streets now lined with
elegant homes, and challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or
Jackson, it is not surprising that foreigners, even as late as the
Thirties, were moved to imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. The
difficulties of locomotion kept the pedestrian’s eyes upon the ground,
and the inconveniences, in making calls, of crossing ditches and stiles,
and walking alternately upon grass and pavement, and striking across
fields to reach a street, were more noticeable than the noble trees that
lined the avenues.[28] Wretched enough in the daytime, the poorly
lighted streets at night were utterly impossible. “As for lights,” wrote
a contemporary, “if the pedestrian did not provide and carry his own, he
was in danger of discovering every mud-hole and sounding its
depths.”[29] More nearly possible to the fastidious were the narrower
streets of Georgetown, with its more imposing and interesting houses,
and more select society, where many of the statesmen lived, and not a
few of the Government clerks, who rode horseback to the departments in
the morning.
Even in the Thirties there were many beautiful drives and walks in the
vicinity of Washington, and a few houses that were impressive to even
the most critical English visitor. Visible for many miles, and easily
seen from the town, loomed the pillared white mansion of Arlington, then
the home of George Washington Custis, to which many of the aristocrats
of the capital frequently found their way. There, during the Jacksonian
period, Robert E. Lee, standing in the room, whence, across the river,
he could see the Capitol building, was united in marriage to the
daughter of the house.[30] Within the city the most imposing mansions
were those of John Tayloe, at Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue,
designed by Thornton, and even then rich in political and social
memories,[31] and the handsome residence of John Van Ness, the work of
Latrobe, built at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to make a fit setting
for the charm and beauty of Marcia Burns, at the foot of Seventeenth
Street, on the banks of the Potomac. From the doorstep the master and
his guests could watch the ships from across the sea mooring to the
docks of Alexandria, and the merchantmen, bound for the port of
Georgetown, laden with the riches of the West Indies.
The tourist in the Washington of the Thirties did not have the
opportunity for sight-seeing that means so much to the capital visitor
of to-day. Aside from the Capitol and the White House, there were no
public buildings of architectural distinction. The churches had “nothing
about them to attract attention,” and while St. John’s on Lafayette
Square was then summoning to worship, it did not at that time have the
virtue of quaintness or the mellowness of historical memories. A visit
to the Patent Office was customarily made, and most tourists found
something to interest them in the museum of the State Department, with
its portraits of the Indian chiefs who had visited Washington.[32]
Occasionally the venturesome would ascend to the skylight of the Capitol
to survey the straggling and dreary town from the height.[33] But always
there was the dignified and stately white building of the lawmakers and
of the Supreme Court, and thither tourists and citizens, men and women,
daily found their way for the entertainment that never failed.
Surrounded by its terraces, its well-kept lawns, its profusion of
shrubbery, the visitor reached the entrance over its “beautifully
gravelled walks,”[34] and entered the rotunda with its four Trumbull
paintings of Revolutionary scenes, to be more impressed with the vacant
spaces for four more, and the explanation that “Congress cannot decide
on what artist to confer the honor.”[35] He would not fail to be
delighted with the classic little Senate Chamber, redolent of the genius
of Latrobe, and with the ease with which he might ignore the tiny
gallery to find a hearty welcome on the floor. If a foreigner, he would
be surprised to find a constant stream of fashionable ladies entering
the chamber, crowding the Senators, accepting their seats, and
attracting attention with their “waving plumes glittering with all the
colors of the rainbow, and causing no little bustle.”[36] There he would
see Van Buren or Calhoun in the chair, and on the floor he would want to
have Webster, Clay, Benton, Forsyth, Preston, and Ewing pointed out. And
perhaps, like Miss Martineau, he would leave with the impression that he
had “seen no assembly of chosen men and no company of the high born,
invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so
imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled,
full-grown, original men brought together on the ground of their
supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse
constituencies.”[37]
Having seen the Senate, he would seek the House of Representatives.
Inquiring his way to the Strangers’ Gallery from the rotunda, he would
be directed to a narrow stairs, and, on ascending, would find himself in
a large room of many columns, the work of the architect of the Senate,
looking down upon the seats of members arranged in concentric rows.
Thence he would look down upon the bald head of the venerable Adams, the
anæmic figure of Polk, the handsome form of Binney, and the ludicrous
conglomeration of garbs representing the diverse tastes of the tailors
of New York and the wilderness. If acquainted with one of the members,
the visitor might be invited to the corridor behind the Speaker’s desk,
fitted with seats and sofas drawn about the fireplace at either end,
where members and their guests were wont to lounge and smoke.[38] Having
satisfied himself with the chambers of the lawmakers, the visitor would
want to see the tribunal of interpretation, said by some to have more
power in determining the law of the land than the members of Congress,
and to observe the famous Marshall on the Supreme Bench. Descending to
the basement of the Capitol, immediately under the Senate, he would be
shown into a small plain room with low ceiling, and “a certain
cellar-like aspect which is not pleasant,”[39] and would probably be a
little shocked at the figure of Justice, “a wooden figure with the eyes
unfilleted, and grasping the scales like a groceress.”[40] On cushioned
sofas, on either side of the room, he might, if a favorite orator were
making an argument, see gayly dressed ladies--for, like the Senate
Chamber, the court was one of the fashionable resorts of the Thirties.
But there, he would find dignity and quiet and decorum, in striking
contrast with most of the American courts of that generation.[41] If
fortunate, he might listen to the reading of a decision by Marshall, and
observe Butler, the Attorney-General, “his fingers playing among his
papers, his thick black eyes and thin, tremulous lips for once fixed,
his small face pale with thought,” contrasting with the more composed
countenances of Clay and Webster.[42]
In the days of Jackson, comparatively few families had a permanent
residence in Washington, and to an English visitor the town had the
appearance of a watering-place.[43] Many Senators and Representatives
considered it so impossible that they left their families at home.[44]
Attorney-General Butler at first refused to consider a position in the
Cabinet because “Mrs. Butler did not like the idea of bringing her
daughters up here.”[45] When the wives and daughters did accompany the
statesmen to the capital, it was the custom, with such as could afford
to maintain an establishment, to take a house. These usually purchased,
albeit many of the more desirable residences that could be leased were
not for sale. An establishment could be maintained at a surprisingly low
cost. Houses “suitable for the purposes of genteel people” could be had
for from $50 to $300 a year, and even the large mansions, many of them
standing and still occupied by fashionable families after almost a
century, could be had for from $500 to $800 a year.[46] The servant
problem did not exist, for domestics could be employed in abundance for
$4 a month.[47] The Southerners, bringing their slaves with them, or
buying them in the slave market at Alexandria, were able to entertain
with a lavish display which set the pace socially, and made the Southern
dominance easy. Foreigners were impressed, after hearing a senatorial
orator rhapsodize in the Senate over the blessings of American liberty,
to see him driven from the Capitol after his oration by one of his
family slaves.[48] Others, not wishing to be burdened with a house,
lived in the hotels, where other people’s slaves waited upon them. In
these, too, the cost of living was low, the leading hostelries taking
guests at $1.75 a day, $10 a week, or $35 a month. Transients sat down
to tables fairly groaning with food, and with decanters of brandy and
whiskey at their elbows, free at these prices. The guest, in his room,
could order real Madeira for $3 a bottle, sherry, brandy, and gin for
$1.50, and Jamaica rum for $1. The statesman, leaving his hotel quarters
for the Senate or the House, could, if he wished, pause at the bar of
the hostelry for a toddy of unadulterated liquor and lump sugar for
twelve and a half cents.[49] But the greater part of the public men
lived in boarding-houses, and the “Intelligencer,” the “Globe,” and the
“Telegraph” filled columns, at the beginning of congressional sessions,
with the enticing advertisements of the landladies. Some few of these
houses, such as Dawson’s, associated with celebrities, live in history,
but the majority were small, shabby, and uncomfortable. In these,
however, romances sometimes blossomed, and the barmaid of one presided
for a time over the establishment of a Cabinet member, and the landlady
of another over the household of a Senator who aspired to the
Presidency.[50]
Out of this life in hotels and boarding-houses, during the Jacksonian
period, came the custom of statesmen forming themselves and families
into “messes,” each “mess” having a table to itself and contracting with
the landlady or landlord for a caterer. In this way the lawgivers were
socially grouped according to their intellectual and financial standing,
and some of these “messes” were famous in their day. Friendships were
formed that survived all the vicissitudes of time and political change.
One of these, known as the “Woodbury mess,” consisted of such a notable
coterie of brilliancy and genius as Calhoun, John Randolph, Tazewell,
Burges, and Verplanck. About the table many celebrated measures were
conceived and the strategy of many a fight was planned.[51] According to
the law of the “mess” a member might invite a guest only with the
consent of all the others, and it was understood that a failure to get
unanimous consent should not be resented. Occasionally the guests were
permitted to contribute something to the usual outlay. Daniel Webster
was glad enough to pay his way on such occasions. The venerable Adams,
who had a comfortable home on F Street[52] and was not considered a
notably social animal, delighted to join his most interesting colleagues
at the boarding-house or hotel table. “I dined with John C. Calhoun at
Dawson’s,” he recorded. “Mr. Preston, the other Senator from South
Carolina, and his wife were there, and Mangum, Southard, Sprague of
Maine. Company sat late at table and the conversation was chiefly upon
politics. The company was, at this time, adversaries of the present
Administration--most of them were adversaries to the last.”[53] Three
days later: “Dined with Benj. Gorham and Edward Everett. Calhoun,
Preston, Clay, and others were there.”[54] The next evening: “Dined with
Colonel Robert B. Campbell of S.C. at his lodgings at Gadsby’s”; thirty
people, including Calhoun and Preston, in attendance.[55]
It was inevitable that in a little city of twenty thousand, consisting
in part of the cleverest men and women in the Republic, and devoted
wholly to politics and society, celebrated sojourners should be fêted
and lionized. Foreigners visiting America in the Thirties, and recording
their impressions, have all paid tribute to the hospitality and
brilliance of the capital, as compared with other and larger cities. The
most famous of the visitors was Harriet Martineau, who arrived in the
summer of 1834, in her thirty-second year, and in the full flush of her
literary fame. Introduced to the President and the Senate leaders by the
British Minister, it was the rumor at the time that six hundred people
called upon her the day after her arrival.[56] “The drollest part of the
whole,” wrote a lady of fashion, “is that these crowds, at least in
Washington, go to see the lion and nothing else. I have not met with an
individual, except Mrs. Seaton and her mother,[57] who have read any of
her works, or know for what she is celebrated. Our most fashionable
exclusive,[58] Mrs. Tayloe, said she intended to call, and asked what
were the novels she had written, and if they were pretty. The gentlemen
laugh at a woman’s writing on political economy. Not one of them has the
least idea of her work.”[59] But the fluency of the lioness captivated
the men. Among her constant visitors were Webster, Clay, Calhoun,
Preston, and Justice Story. When she entered the Senate Chamber or the
Supreme Court room, the leading men of the Nation left their seats to
pay her homage. Calhoun’s “mess” gave her a dinner. Clay insisted that
at Lexington she should occupy his house at Ashland, and that she should
be the guest of his daughter in New Orleans. Calhoun assured her triumph
in Charleston through letters to his friends. “No stranger except
Lafayette ever received such universal and marked testimonies of
regard,” wrote a sympathetic observer of her reception.[60] When Thomas
Hamilton, the English writer, author of “Men and Manners in America,”
reached Washington, a member of Congress escorted him, uninvited, to a
ball on the evening of his arrival, with the assurance that the
“intrusion would be welcome.” After passing “through a formidable array
of introductions to distinguished persons, and after four hours of
almost unbroken conversation, much of which could not be carried on
without considerable expenditure of thought,” the weary tourist, at
three o’clock in the morning, rejoiced to find himself “stretched in a
comfortable bed at Gadsby’s.”[61] The experiences of Hamilton and Miss
Martineau were not exceptional.
Nor were American literary celebrities left in doubt as to the
cordiality of their welcome in the best social circles of the capital.
The winter of 1833 found Washington Irving in Washington, where he was
not unfamiliar with the leading houses, living “in the neighborhood of
the McLanes” and making “use of a quiet corner and a little interval of
leisure to exercise a long neglected pen.”[62] Despite the flood of
invitations, he found time to report to Van Buren the attitude of
McLane, and the hostilities, in select circles, to Kendall. “Washington
Irving is here now,” wrote John Tyler to his daughter. “He stands at the
head of our literati. His productions are numerous and well spoken of in
Europe.”[63] Nor did society in those days lack their chronicler, for
the first society letters from Washington were those of Nathaniel P.
Willis written for the “New York Mirror.” At that time he was “a
foppish, slender young man, with a profusion of curly light hair, and
was always dressed in the height of fashion.”[64] The doors of the most
exclusive homes were thrown open to this elegant youth, who, having
traveled in Europe, affected a contempt for the masses. He became the
faithful Pepys of the period, describing society people and events with
liveliness and fancy, and imparting a strange interest to the most
insignificant occurrences through the art of the telling. It was during
this period, too, that the political letters of Washington
correspondents were introduced into American journalism. Matthew L.
Davis, famous as the “Genevese Traveller” of the London “Times,” and as
the capital correspondent of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” was
for years the confidant and companion of Senators, Justices, and
Presidents. And James Gordon Bennett, young and clever, appeared upon
the scene to give a new and spicy touch to reporting with his Walpolean
letters of wit, sarcasm, and personalities, for the New York paper of
James Watson Webb. Along with the democratization of politics in the
Thirties went a popularization of the methods of the press.
The amusements of the Washington of this time were, for the most part,
crude. The theater featured players scarcely celebrated in their own
day, and most of the plays presented have happily been long since
forgotten. Even these were interspersed with songs and farce acts. In
1820 the Washington Theater had been built, and hither, at long
intervals, came celebrated artists, but they came “like angels, few and
far between.” From his rustic retreat in Maryland the elder Booth, half
mad, all genius, occasionally emerged to curdle the blood of the
statesmen and their families with his intense interpretations of the
Shakesperian tragedies. From a Booth night Jackson was seldom absent.
But of all the artists who played in the capital none created such a
furor as Fanny Kemble. The elder statesmen were captivated by her art
and charm. John Marshall and Justice Story were regular attendants, and
the Chief Justice was lustily cheered as he entered the box. When she
played Mrs. Haller in “The Stranger,” and the audience was moved to
tears, “the Chief Justice shed them in common with the younger
eyes.”[65] Inspiring audiences--those of the Thirties, with Marshall,
Jackson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in the boxes or the pit. Great, not
only in genius, but in their fresh capacity to enjoy, and when one of
the most learned Justices of the Supreme Court could be moved to poesy
in paying tribute to an actress’s art.[66]
But even with a Kemble playing, the haughty little country capital
refused to abandon its parties, and we have the record of a New Yorker
finding “Fanny Kemble in the Washington Theater like a canary bird in a
mouse trap,” leaving the theater in the midst of a performance to attend
“a delightful party at Mrs. Tayloe’s,” where he “met many distinguished
people and all the Washington belles.”[67] In those days the
theater-goer purchased his tickets between ten and one o’clock, and the
doors were thrown open at six, with the curtain rising promptly at
seven. For the usual performances the boxes were seventy-five cents, the
pit twenty-five. When the rain converted the streets into ribbons of
sticky black mud, or the bitter cold made an invitation to the people
from the “magnificent distances” unprofitable, the papers would announce
a postponement, with an explanation.[68] The pleasure-seekers were not
restricted, however, to the players of the Washington Theater, and
occasionally a show would appear advertising “the Great Anaconda of
Java,” and the “Boa Constrictor of Ceylon,” both “so docile that the
most timid lady or child may view them with safety and pleasure.”[69]
Such were the amusements offered for the entertainment of Jackson,
Webster, Marshall, Calhoun, and Clay.
But for the men there were other forms of amusement, popular in their
day. The racing on the National Course near the city made it difficult
to maintain a quorum in Congress, and the statesmen mounted their horses
to ride to the track to cheer their favorites and to bet their money.
Even the President entered his horses and lost heavily on his wagers.
There Jackson and a goodly portion of the Cabinet, and a formidable
sprinkling of the leaders of the Opposition from Clay to Letcher, might
be seen backing their judgment as to horseflesh with their purses. And
when it was not horse-racing, it was cockfighting, with the President
entering his own birds from the Hermitage, and riding with his friends
to Bladensburg to witness the humiliation of his entries. It was a day
of gambling, when statesmen, whose names children are now taught to
reverence, played for heavy stakes for days and nights at a time, with
Clay and Poindexter losing fortunes, and an occasional victim of the
lure blowing out his brains. While most of the celebrities played in
private houses, they could, if they preferred, find the notorious
gambling-houses along the Avenue. Along with racing, cockfighting, and
gambling went heavy drinking. “Since I have been here,” wrote Horace
Binney, after two years in Congress, “one man, an habitual drunkard,
blew out his brains; two have died notorious drunkards, and one of them
shamefully immoral. The honors are given to all, with equal eulogy and
ceremonial.”[70] The statesman of the Thirties who did not drink heavily
was a rarity. Just as whiskey, brandy, gin, and wine were served in
great decanters on the tables at hotels, “at the boarding-houses every
guest had his bottle or interest in a bottle.”[71] On the way to the
Capitol, the statesman could quench his thirst at numerous bars--and
often did. And in the basement of the Capitol building whiskey could be
had. Never in American history have so many promising careers been
wrecked by drunkenness as during the third decade. Frequently national
celebrities would appear upon the floor of the House or Senate in a
state of intoxication, and on at least one occasion the greater part of
the house was hilariously drunk.[72] Thus, despite the miry streets, the
drabness and rusticity, the Washington of the Jacksonian period was
easily the gayest, the most brilliant and dissipated community in the
country. A penetrating observer found, in its recklessness and
extravagance, a striking similarity to the spirit of the eighteenth
century in England, as portrayed in Thackeray’s “Humorists,” with
“laxity of morals and the coolest disregard possible.”[73] Its superior
social charm was due to the fact that it was “the only place in the
Union where people consider it necessary to be agreeable--where
pleasing, as in the Old World, becomes a sort of business, and the
enjoyments of social intercourse enter into the habitual calculations of
every one.”[74] A goodly portion of the women of good society, and other
sojourners, were apt to contemplate a Washington season as “a sort of
annual lark,” which offered the most promising solution of the problem
of a weary winter in the country. Willis explained the attractions of
the country capital on the ground that “the great deficiency in all our
cities, the company of highly cultivated and superior men, is here
supplied.”[75] Even the supercilious and scolding Captain Marryat of
England found it “an agreeable city, full of pleasant, clever people,
who come here to amuse and be amused,” and he observed “much more _usage
du monde_ and Continental ease than in any other parts of the
States.”[76]
After spending several crowded weeks in the social and political heart
of the town, Harriet Martineau concluded that, while life there would be
“dreary” to women who loved domesticity, “persons who love dissipation,
who love to watch the game of politics, and those who make a study of
strong minds under strong excitement, like a season in Washington.”[77]
Ludicrous as it was in its incongruities, the little city bravely
assumed the pose of a real capital, plumed itself on the superiority of
its society, and made much of the fashions. At the crowded receptions
the wondering visitor might very easily be jostled against Webster or
Sam Houston, dandies like Willis or frontiersmen in boots and soiled
linen, flirtatious belles and matrons, beauties and beasts. But there
were many leaders of fashion who imitated the frivolities of European
capitals, ordered their dresses from Paris or London, and regularly
summoned coiffeurs to their homes to dress their hair for balls and
receptions.[78] When Congress was in session fashionable women from
every section flocked to the seat of government bringing their daughters
for a Washington season. One of the resident society leaders, commenting
on their coming, dolefully complained that they were “coming in such ton
and expensive fashions, that the poor citizens cannot pretend to vie
with them and absolutely shrink into insignificance.”[79] The shops made
much of their Paris finery. Mrs. Coursault announced “to the ladies of
the metropolis that she has just returned from Paris with a most
splendid assortment of millinery and goods, to be seen at the store of
Mrs. Lamplier on the Avenue.”[80] Mr. Palmieri advertised that he had
“just received from Paris an elegant assortment of caps and pelerines
direct from Mademoiselle Minette’s, the first Milliner of Paris, and a
beautiful assortment of satin shoes.”[81] Another announced “French
dresses for balls,” and still another, “the arrival from Paris of an
elegant assortment of French jewelry.”
The daily life of the fashionable ladies of the time began with
breakfast at nine, when they amused themselves by comparing the
conflicting descriptions of scenes they had witnessed the day before in
the “Intelligencer” and the “Globe.” By eleven they were apt to be on
their way to the Capitol to enliven the solemnity of the Senate Chamber
or the Supreme Court, unless a neglected call, an appointment with an
artist, or an excursion interfered. Dinner was served from four to six,
and soon afterwards milady retired to her boudoir to dress for some
ball, rout, levee, or masquerade. Long drives through the mud--late
hours with the breaking dawn greeting her return--and the weary lady
would relax and warm awhile at the drawing-room fire before retiring for
the night.[82] Contrary to the popular belief, there was much social
brilliance during the Jackson Administrations. Nor is the prevailing
impression that all the elegance, cleverness, and charm was confined to
the drawing-rooms of the Whig aristocracy borne out by the facts. In
truth, among the women of the Jacksonian circle there were two or three
who were easily superior to the best the Whigs could offer, in
intellect, culture, and beauty. Such was the bigotry of the times that
there was a tendency for society to segregate into camps, but it was
impossible to draw the party line on a number of the fascinating and
brilliant women who presided over the households of Jacksonian Senators
and Cabinet Ministers. While the Whigs generally remained severely aloof
from the house of the President, they were unable to resist the
invitations of the President’s friends.
Among all the women of the period none approached Mrs. Edward Livingston
in brilliance, charm, and elegance, nor did any of the ladies of the
Whig circle, not even Mrs. Tayloe, who wondered if Miss Martineau’s
novels were “pretty,” approach her in the lavishness and taste of her
dinners and parties. “Mrs. Livingston takes the lead in the fashionable
world,” wrote Mrs. Smith, who found it hard to concede the virtues of
the Jacksonians.[83] “I know that Mr. Livingston gives elegant dinners
and his wines are the best in the city,” recorded a press correspondent
of the time.[84] “We dined by invitation with Mr. Secretary Livingston,”
wrote Justice Story, an enemy of the Jacksonians. “The dinner was superb
and unequalled by anything I have seen in Washington except at some of
the foreign ministers’, and was served exclusively in the French
style.”[85] This captivating woman, of French descent, had known a
childhood of romance in a marble palace by the sea in St. Domingo, had
miraculously escaped the servile insurrection, and reached New Orleans
to become the wife of Livingston. Wonderfully vivacious, eloquent in
conversation, intelligently interested in politics, steeped in the
literature of the ages, witty and spirited, her home in Lafayette Square
more nearly resembled a salon than anything the capital has ever known.
Even the most bigoted Whigs of the day were glad to lay aside their
partisanship at her threshold, and leaders, still flushed with a verbal
duel in the Senate, smiled amicably upon each other in her drawing-room.
Here one might meet John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Bushrod Washington
of the Supreme Court, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Wirt, or Randolph. About
her, too, she gathered a coterie of cultured women, and Mrs. John Quincy
Adams and Mrs. Andrew Stevenson came and went in the house on the Square
with as little ceremony as members of the household. The charm of the
house was enhanced by the exquisite Cora, the daughter, who reigned as
the belle and toast of the town until her marriage, captivating, among
others, the impressionable young Josiah Quincy, who thought her
“undoubtedly the greatest belle in the U.S.,” and, if not
“transcendently handsome,” possessed of a “fine figure, a pretty face.”
Finding it “the height of the ton to be her admirer,” the young
Bostonian followed the fashion with all his heart.[86]
Intimately identified with Mrs. Livingston was Mrs. Stevenson, to whom
the years had been kind since the days when, as Sally Coles, she was a
protégée of Dolly Madison.[87] At this time she was the wife of the
Jacksonian Speaker of the House, soon to become the hostess of the
American Legation in London, and to witness, in that rôle, the
coronation of Victoria. Strikingly handsome, tall and commanding, she
resembled her friend in an ineffable graciousness of manner and an
extraordinary conversational ability. Among the most famous hostesses of
the Jacksonian circle were Mrs. Louis McLane, “a gay, frank,
communicative woman” whose “self-complacence is united with so much good
humor in others that it is not offensive,” who gave popular weekly
dinners and parties;[88] Mrs. Levi Woodbury, beautiful of form and
feature, who resembled Dolly Madison in her suavity, ease of manner, and
infinite tact, and presided over her many dinners and dances with
dignity and grace, and made a practice of featuring the most dashing
belles of Baltimore, Alexandria, and Georgetown;[89] and Mrs. John
Forsyth, more conventional and retiring than the others, but yielding to
none in culture and elegance, and having a certain advantage in her
“group of graces.”[90] Among the hostesses of the Opposition, Mrs.
Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, a woman of grace and beauty, but lacking in the
intellectual sparkle of Mrs. Livingston, maintained the most elegant
establishment.
But these were only the most brilliant leaders, for the Jacksonian
period was one of hectic social activity, with foreign ministers and
Cabinet members entertaining constantly and lavishly, and the official
underlings desperately bent on a ruinous and riotous imitation. It was a
day of much pretense and pose, of ceremonious intercourse, and it was
not easy to determine from the swallow-tails and the buff waistcoats
whether the wearer were a Senator or a clerk.[91] It was a
conversational period, and seldom has the American capital contained at
one time so many excellent talkers. Nor was the talk mere chat and
gossip. Even the women, especially from the South, were clever
conversationalists, able keenly to discuss the politics of the day and
the measures of the hour.[92] Even the busiest and greatest party
leaders had the time and inclination for calls on bright women when they
could enjoy the Johnsonian luxury of having their talk out. We have a
picture of Clay “sitting upright on the sofa, with a snuff box ever in
his hand,” discoursing “for many hours in his even, soft, deliberative
tone”; of Webster, “leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking
jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly
discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one’s
constitution”; of Calhoun, the “cast iron man,” who “looked as if he had
never been born,” no longer capable of mental relaxation, meeting men
and haranguing them by the fireside as in the Senate; of Justice Story,
talking gushingly for hours, “his face all the while, notwithstanding
his gray hair, showing all the nobility and ingenuousness of a
child’s.”[93] The talk about the firesides and at the receptions, that
were given over entirely to conversation, was by no means confined to
art, eloquence, and poetry, for the Mother Grundys of gossip were
numerous among the women seeking to amuse and be amused. There were
personalities as well as personages in the years that Jackson directed a
triumphant party and Clay led a brilliant and militant opposition.[94]
The little town of twenty thousand was not so large that the ladies
could not know, from observation or deduction, when Adams dined with
Calhoun, when Webster called on Mrs. Livingston, and what Mrs. Tayloe
served her guests at her last reception.
“Did you have candied oranges at Mrs. Woodbury’s?” asked a lady who had
dined with Mrs. Cass, of a friend who had dined with the wife of the
Secretary of the Navy.
“No.”
“Then they had candied oranges at the Attorney-General’s,” was the
deduction.
“How do you know?”
“Oh, as we were on the way, I saw a dish carried; and as we had none at
Cass’s, I knew they were either for the Woodburys or the
Attorney-General’s.”[95]
It was the golden age of gallantry as well as gossip, some flirtatious,
some courtly. If the admirer of John Forsyth’s daughter proposed in a
Valentine Day verse[96] throbbing with adolescent passion, the more
staid and sober-minded Francis Scott Key wrote, in a fine hand,
religious hymns for the pleasure of her mother.[97]
The evening parties were the most popular form of entertainment, and the
hostesses of the Cabinet circle set the pace. The invitations were sent
out nine days in advance. Because of the exigencies of politics, and
the exactions of an awakened “Democracy,” these could be neither small
nor exclusive in character, and from seven to nine hundred invitations
were usually extended. Between nine and ten o’clock all the apartments
would be thrown open. The muddy streets in front would be congested with
carriages. The host and hostess, standing in the drawing-room, would
receive their guests, and then the more serious would withdraw to quiet
corners for conversation, the gay and frivolous would swing into the
dance, and the devotees of chance would seek and find a remote corner
for cards. Servants would gingerly thread their way through the throng
with light refreshments until eleven o’clock when an elaborate supper
would be served. By three o’clock the company would begin to retire, and
usually, at daybreak, the lights would be extinguished.[98]
It was a day of social novelties. Ice-cream as a refreshment first made
its appearance in the country capital at the home of the widow of
Alexander Hamilton. Introduced at the White House immediately afterwards
by Jackson, it took society by storm,[99] and Kinchy, the confectioner
on the Avenue, who had a monopoly on ice-cream and ices, became as
indispensable socially as the chef and the fiddler.[100] Of the dances,
the most popular was the waltz, introduced two years before Jackson’s
inauguration, and, considered at first of questionable modesty, it soon
won its way, and the matrons found it as alluring as the débutantes.
Even then there were censorious people to see in the dreamy glide an
example of the moral degeneracy of the age.[101] To accentuate their
pessimism, the crowds were invariably so dense that the dancers could
scarcely move, reminding an amused Kentuckian “of a Kentucky fight when
the crowd draws the circle so close that the combatants have no room to
use their limbs.” But despite the crowded quarters, the twenty-four
fiddlers in a row bravely sought “by dint of loud music to put the
amateurs in motion,” until they jumped “up and down in a hole, and
nobody sees more of them than their heads.”[102] Queer, conglomerate
crowds packed the balls and receptions of men in public life, forced to
accept official society as they found it, and if members of Congress
appeared at the dance in their morning habiliments and in unpolished
boots, in worsted stockings and in garments fashioned by a backwoods
tailor, they were not conspicuous.[103] All, or most, entered with zest
into the social activities of the time. On the night of a big ball “the
rolling of carriages sounded like continual peals of thunder, or roaring
of the wind.” In the dark, dismal streets, the lamps on the vehicles
alone were visible, and these, moving rapidly in the blackness,
“appeared like brilliant meteors in the air.”[104] Sometimes, in the
case of the more pretentious entertainers, like the foreign ministers,
the streets in front of the houses were light as day from the line of
flaming torches along the pavement. Fox, the British Minister, a
relative of the great orator; Baron von Roenne, the Prussian, a
brilliant jurist and publicist; and Baron Bodisco, the Russian, made
great displays of equipages and appointments, and were noted for their
wines and exotic entertainments. At the legations of Fox and Bodisco,
great sums passed over the card table, the most famous statesmen of the
time among the players, and the British Minister so seldom saw the sun
that on the occasion of a funeral, while seated beside the wife of the
Spanish Minister, he turned a puzzled look upon her with the comment,
“How strange we all look by daylight!” Both ministers contributed not a
little to the gayety of gossip, Bodisco, by his squat ugliness and
courtliness, and Fox, by his whimsical refusal at dinners to go to the
table until the dishes had cooled.[105] During the period the most
celebrated functions were given at Carusi’s Assembly rooms which could
accommodate great numbers. Leaders of fashion and the socially ambitious
of Baltimore and Alexandria, wishing to make an impression in
introducing a débutante or to repay social obligations, found these
rooms suited to their purpose. It was in these rooms that Washington
society had its first presentation of the “Barber of Seville,” and “John
of Paris” in the winter of 1833.[106] The same year a Washington
birthday party was given there, both rooms thrown open, “decorated and
illuminated and with a band in each,” and diplomats admitted without an
entrance fee.[107] Hither all the ladies of the capital, unfamiliar with
the dances, or wishing to learn new ones, found their way to learn from
the popular Louis, only the inclemency of the weather and the impossible
mire of the streets interfering with his profits.[108] Thus the
fashionables of the Thirties managed to create the illusion of living in
the great world, chattering in the Senate, bustling into the Supreme
Court chamber, dining, dancing, flirting, gossiping, attending the
theater to see a Booth or a Kemble, going to the circus to see the
animals fed at eight o’clock, “in the presence of the audience,”[109] or
riding to the National Course near town to witness the races, or
attending an exhibit of the paintings of John G. Chapman on the
Avenue.[110] Only on Sundays did the capital become quiet and sedate,
for, after a pious morning pilgrimage to church, the ladies carrying a
hymn or a prayer book and leaning on the arms of their escorts, they
retired to the seclusion of their homes and the streets were deserted or
given over to the promenades of the colored folks.[111]
In this Washington, where men were feverishly fighting for place and
prestige, and women were engaged in a hectic struggle for social
leadership, Death lurked always, for a less healthful spot could not
easily have been found. Built originally in a swamp reeking with
malaria, surrounded with morasses, and with not a few of these in the
heart of the town, with sanitation poor and water wretched, the
residents were constantly menaced by disease. With the gradual
disappearance of the forests immediately surrounding it, the conditions
became worse. The death-rate was as high as one in fifty-three, with
August claiming the heaviest toll from fevers.[112] Between the fevers
of the summers and the influenza of the winters, the residents had to be
constantly on guard. Whiskey and quinine were taken with the regularity
of bread and meat, and tourists were wont to sit late at their quarters
“sipping gently a medicine which the doctors of the capital thought
destructive of the influenza germs which were lying in wait for the
unwary.”[113] Fevers, pneumonia, influenza, and the cholera made the
swampy capital of the Thirties as profitable to the doctors as to the
coachmen.
Such, in brief, was the scene of the most dramatic and significant
political battles that were staged in America between the foundation of
the Republic and the Administration of Woodrow Wilson. Such was the
day-by-day life of the men, now steel engravings, who played the
leading rôles. And by bearing in mind the sordidness and pettiness of
the environment, and of the men and women with whom they daily and
nightly gossiped and dined and danced, it may be less of a shock to
discover, in the unfolding of the story of these eight crowded years,
that even the greatest were men of moral weaknesses and limitations.
CHAPTER II
THE RISING OF THE MASSES
I
With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to
this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies
had been a matter of manipulation among the congressional politicians.
The possessors of property and the aristocrats of intellect had been the
only classes with whom the politicians had concerned themselves. The
Virginia Dynasty and the Secretarial Succession died on the day that the
rising of the masses raised to the Presidency a man who had never served
in the Cabinet, distinguished himself in the Congress, or appealed to
the “aristocracy of intellect and culture.” To the politicians,
office-holders, and society leaders in Washington, the election of
Andrew Jackson was something more than a shock--it was an affront. In
the campaign he had been opposed by two thirds of the newspapers, four
fifths of the preachers, practically all the manufacturers, and seven
eighths of the banking capital. Respectability sternly set itself
against the presumptuous ambitions of what it conceived to be a rough,
illiterate representative of the “mob.”
Four years before, the stage had been set for a bitter battle. The
election of Adams, through the support of Clay, followed by the
appointment of the latter to the first place in the Cabinet, had carried
the suspicion of a bargain, and this suspicion had crystallized into a
firm conviction with a large portion of the people. Throughout the Adams
Administration, its enemies--and they were legion--harped constantly
upon the “bargain,” angering the crabbed Adams, and stinging Clay to
furious denunciation, and this but served to intensify the bitterness of
their foes.
The result was the most scurrilous campaign of vilification the country
had known. A new school of politicians, forerunners of the astute and
none too scrupulous managers of later days, sprang up to direct the
fight for the grim old warrior of the Hermitage, and the fact that Clay
took personal charge of the campaign for Adams was turned with telling
force against his chief. Early in the campaign we find the satirical and
caustic Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” of whom we shall
hear much, writing that “Clay is managing Adams’s campaign, not like a
statesman of the Cabinet, but like a shyster, pettifogging in a bastard
suit before a country squire.” And lest the motive for Clay’s interest
escape his readers, we find Hill writing again: “This is Mr. Clay’s
fight. The country has him on trial for bribery, and having no defense,
he accuses the prosecutor.”
This reference to the accusation of the prosecutor was inspired by the
outrageous calumny that was heaped upon the head of Jackson. He was
pictured as a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cockfighter, a
brawler, a drunkard, and a murderer. The good name of Mrs. Jackson, one
of the purest of women, was wantonly maligned; and in the drawing-rooms
of the intellectually elect she was not spared by the ladies who were
shocked at the “vulgarity” of her husband. The Adams organs stooped to
the attack, and while the “National Intelligencer,” under the editorship
of Joseph Gales, refused thus to pollute its columns, the “National
Journal,” under the editorial management of Peter Force, and specially
favored by the Adams Administration, specialized on the slander of an
excellent woman. A little later an attempt was made to justify the
infamy of this proceeding by charging that Mrs. Adams had been assailed,
but the extent of the assault was the charge that she was an English
woman with little sympathy for American institutions.
While history has accepted Adams’s indignant denial of the charge that
he had personally sanctioned the attack on Mrs. Jackson, the National
Central Committee, in charge of his campaign, was busily engaged in the
dissemination of the putrid literature. This has been thoroughly
established by the testimony of Thurlow Weed, editor of the “Albany
Journal,” who refused to degrade himself by its circulation. When, early
in August, before the election in November, he received “two large
drygoods boxes” of the pamphlets, with a letter from the National
Committee advising him that they contained “valuable campaign
documents,” with the request that he attend to their circulation
“throughout the western counties of the State,” he promptly “secured the
boxes with additional nails and placed them under lock and key.” And
when the National Committee learned that they were not being
distributed, and sent a representative to protest against his
inactivity, he frankly informed the emissary that “not a copy had been
seen or would be seen by an elector until the polls had closed.” For
this he was denounced in New York and Boston as “a traitor to the
Administration,” but the sagacious politician of Albany stoutly
maintained that he “would not permit a lady whose life had been
blameless to be dragged forth into the arena of politics.”[114]
The charge of murder lodged against Jackson, by editor, hack-writer, and
cartoonist, had reference to his execution of Arbuthnot, two Indian
chiefs, and seven of his soldiers, and to his duel with Dickinson.
Pictures of the coffins of the soldiers were printed on circulars and
distributed from farmhouse to farmhouse in New England.[115] This gave
Hill an opportunity to tickle Jackson with a rejoinder which was copied
from the “New Hampshire Patriot” into all the Jackson papers of the
country: “Pshaw! Why don’t you tell the whole truth? On the 8th of
January, 1815, he murdered in the coldest kind of cold blood 1500
British soldiers for merely trying to get into New Orleans in search of
Booty and Beauty.”
But all the scurrility of the campaign cannot be justly charged to the
enemies of Jackson. His friends were almost as offensive. Adams had
bribed Clay. He had bought the Presidency. While abroad he had pandered
to the sensuality of the Russian Court. He was stingy, undemocratic, an
enemy of American institutions, bent on the destruction of the people’s
liberties. He was an aristocrat, and had squandered the people’s money
in lavishly furnishing the East Room of the White House after the
fashion of the homes of kings. He had even purchased a billiard table
for the home of the President!
And so it went on for weeks and months--the ordinary slanders of a
present-day municipal campaign. A foreigner traveling through the
country during the summer and autumn of 1828 would have thought the
election of Adams certain. In the marts, the counting-rooms, and the
drawing-rooms, he would have found but one opinion; but the astute Adams
sensed the coming disaster and recorded his misgivings in his diary. The
temperamental Clay was depressed one day, to be exultant the next. But
the new school of political leadership, managing the fight for Jackson,
and devoting itself assiduously to the newly enfranchised “mob” in the
highways and the byways, had no notion of defeat. The “hurrah for
Jackson” which shocked the sedate, unaccustomed to such noisy acclaim of
a presidential aspirant, and disgusted the “best people,” was music to
the ears of these modern politicians, who had carefully calculated upon
the strength of the “mob.” Their confidence was not misplaced. The
result was an upheaval. Adams, Clay, Federalism, the Virginia Dynasty,
the Secretarial Succession, were brushed aside by the rush of the
cheering masses bearing their hero to the White House. History has
decided that in this campaign “the people first assumed control of the
governmental machinery which had been held in trust for them since
1789”; and that “the party and Administration which then came into power
was the first in our history which represented the people without
restriction, and with all the faults of the people.”[116]
II
The Administration circle in Washington was deeply depressed by the
result, and society looked forward to the reign of the barbarians with
mingled feelings of mirth and abhorrence. Although not unprepared for
the defeat, the bitter Adams, meditating on his political blunders,
recorded that “some think I have suffered for not turning my enemies out
of office, particularly the Postmaster-General.”[117] That John McLean,
the official referred to, had been disloyal to his chief was common
knowledge. The first reaction to defeat from the followers of the Adams
Administration was toward laughter, levity, extravagant manifestation of
cynical gayety, with an all too noticeable thawing of the frigidity of
White House ceremonies. The dying régime put on its best bib and tucker
in a hectic and hysterical demonstration of social hilarity. But this
first reaction was short-lived. Very soon thereafter callers at Clay’s
home were “shocked at the alteration of his looks,” and found him “much
thinner, very pale, his eyes sunk in his head and his countenance sad
and melancholy.”[118] Mr. Rush (Secretary of the Treasury) was soon
“alarmingly ill”--the “first symptoms of disease was altogether in the
head.” Mr. Southard (Secretary of the Navy) was confined to his room for
three weeks. William Wirt (Attorney-General) suffered two attacks of
vertigo, “followed by a loss of the sense of motion.” General Porter
(Secretary of War) “was almost blind from inflammation of the eyes and
went to his office with two blisters, one behind each ear.” Even the
cold-blooded Adams, who appeared “in fine spirits,” was soon “so feeble
as to be obliged to relinquish his long walks and to substitute rides on
horseback.”[119] A social intimate of the leaders swept from power by
the rising of the masses mournfully recorded that they would retire to
private life “with blasted hopes, injured health, impaired or ruined
fortunes, imbittered tempers, and probably a total inability to enjoy
the remnant of their lives.”[120]
On none did the blow fall with such crushing force as on the
proud-spirited Clay. As the repudiated régime was approaching the end,
the presiding genius of one of the favorite Administration drawing-rooms
met him at a reception.
“What ails your heart?” he asked.
“Can it be otherwise than sad when I think what a good friend I am about
to lose?”
For a moment he held her hand without speaking, his eyes “filled with
tears.”
“We must not think of this or talk of such things now,” he said. And
with that he relinquished her hand, “drew out his handkerchief, turned
away his head and wiped his eyes, then pushed into the crowd and talked
and smiled as if his heart were light and easy.”[121]
On February 25th this lady made another poignant note: “Mr. Clay’s
furniture is to be sold this week.”
Thus the old régime died hard, and in bitterness.
III
But “The King is dead--long live the King”--was the mood of the strange
crowds in the streets of the capital--unusual creatures from the
out-of-the-way places to whom the city was not accustomed. Never before
had the inaugural ceremonies attracted the people of the farms and the
villages, from every nook and corner. Long before the 4th of March the
city swarmed with all sorts and conditions, the rustic, the rural
politician, the adventurer, along with politicians of influence and
repute. They overflowed the city, filled all the hotels and
rooming-houses, spread out to Georgetown, descended on Alexandria.[122]
Webster, writing to his brother toward the close of February, said: “I
have never seen such a crowd before. Persons have come five hundred
miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the
country has been rescued from some dreadful danger.”[123] What they
really thought was that they had come into their own. They hastened to
“their capital,” to witness the inauguration of “their President,” and,
in many instances, in the hope of entering into their reward.
Out of the maze of incomprehensible contradictions, we may gather that
Jackson disappointed many of the faithful, who had planned a spectacular
entrance to the capital, by entering quietly and unannounced in the
early morning. Elaborate preparations had been made, a pompous reception
committee of the socially elect and politically pure had been organized,
headed by John P. Van Ness, the dean of society and husband of the
exquisite Marcia Burns, and plans had been perfected for leading a great
throng into the country to meet and escort him to the accompaniment of
gun fire into the city. Reaching the capital four hours before he was
expected,[124] he went directly to Gadsby’s where he took lodging.[125]
But the committee was not to be wholly deprived of its prerogatives. The
moment the news reached it and the crowds, the celebration began. “I
hear cannon firing, drums beating, and hurrahing. I really cannot write,
so adieu for the present,” wrote Mrs. Smith. The mob surged down the
Avenue to the hostelry famous for its whiskey, brandy, game, and the
imposing ceremony of the host, packed the streets and fought for the
privilege of entering and shaking the hand of the man of the hour. From
the moment of his arrival until he took the oath of office he was
accessible to the most humble and obscure. Importuned and petitioned by
ambitious politicians, the old man courteously heard them all, to the
last man, and, according to all contemporaries, kept his own counsel as
to prospective appointments. Even as late as March 2d, the observant
Webster wrote his brother that the President-to-be was close-mouthed,
and predicted that there would be few removals.[126] The crafty Isaac
Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” had arrived early upon the scene,
and we are indebted to him for a side-light on Jackson’s methods and
mood, and the scenes about the hotel. Almost daily this persistent
aspirant for place wormed his way into the presence of the source of all
patronage. Jackson was cordial, remembered, quoted, laughed about
witticisms in Hill’s paper during the campaign, but said “little about
the future except in a general way.” There was cruel hilarity in that
crowded room at Gadsby’s over the maneuvers of the office-holders to
retain their places. A “funny story” was told of Wirt writing to Monroe
“soliciting his influence with the General to keep him on the pay
roll.”[127] An old translator of twenty years’ experience in the State
Department had, in conversation, expressed a curiosity to know where a
Democrat could be found to translate diplomatic French, and this was
jokingly related to Jackson. “Oh, just tell him,” said the General,
“that if necessary I can bring Planche’s whole Creole Battalion up here.
Those French fellows, you know, who helped to defend New Orleans against
the Red Coats that had just made all the translators here take to the
woods for their lives.” This flare of spirit gratified and encouraged
the spoilsmen. “Good, wasn’t it?” Hill wrote to his assistant in
Concord. “Besides his courage and truth, Old Hickory has a fund of humor
in his make-up, but most of his sallies, like the above, are likely to
be a little bit cruel.”
About the time that Hill was writing to his assistant editor, he was
meeting daily, at the home of Obadiah B. Brown, a preacher-politician,
where Amos Kendall, a Kentucky editor, then obscure, but destined to
become the master mind of the Administration, was holding forth, and
organizing a number of fellow journalists who had been useful in the
campaign, to compel recognition. There, in the home of the jovial
preacher, Kendall and Hill were making common cause with the smiling
Major M. M. Noah of New York, Nathaniel Green of Massachusetts, and the
quiet but sagacious Gideon Welles of Connecticut. More political history
was being made in the humble abode of Brown than in the crowded,
smoke-laden room at Gadsby’s.[128] The Kentucky editor does not seem to
have encountered the same reticence in Jackson that Hill had found.
After his first call at Gadsby’s, we find him writing his wife: “He
expressed his regards for me and his disposition to serve me, in strong
terms.” And a few days later, after his second call, he writes: “The
other day I had a long conversation with General Jackson. At the close
of it, after saying many flattering things of my capacity, character,
etc., he observed, ‘I told one of my friends that you were fit for the
head of a department, and I shall put you as near the head as
possible.’”[129]
It is significant of the change of the times that, while the practical
politicians of the new school were encouraged and jubilant, the seasoned
veterans of political battle-fields were discouraged and not a little
disgruntled. Amusing tales of the discomfiture of these were gayly
carried to the politicians of the Opposition in the salon of Mrs.
Smith, who recorded, toward the close of February, that “every one
thinks there is great confusion and difficulty, mortification and
disappointment at the Wigwam, as they call the General’s lodgings. Mr.
Woodbury[130] looks glum, as well as several other disappointed
expectants.”[131]
The battle royal occurred in the selection of the Cabinet. The one
principle on which Jackson was determined was the exclusion from his
Cabinet table of any aspirant for the succession. He had been profoundly
impressed by the demoralizing effect of the intrigues of the
presidential candidates in the Cabinet of Monroe.[132] This, however,
did not deter the two powerful men of the party, Calhoun and Van Buren,
from exerting themselves to pack the Cabinet with men favorable to their
respective aspirations for the chief magistracy. Of the latter’s plans
the President-elect knew nothing. He had probably decided to ask the
clever New York politician to accept the portfolio of State before
leaving the Hermitage. He had been intimate with Van Buren in the
Senate; had been impressed with his tact, diplomacy, and ability, and
especially with his genius in the creation, consolidation, and drilling
of a party, and in formulating its policies. He was not unmindful of the
part the “Red Fox”[133] had played in his nomination and election. In
view of all the conditions the selection of Van Buren was logical and
inevitable.[134] It was just as inevitable that Calhoun, the
Vice-President, should be hostile to the choice. Primarily, we may be
sure, the South Carolinian recognized in the suave and subtle New Yorker
a dangerous rival for the succession. Whether he was even that early
interested in strengthening the South at the expense of the North is not
so certain. However that may be, he appeared in the throng of
wire-pulling politicians at Gadsby’s, earnestly urging that Senator
Tazewell of Virginia should be placed at the head of the Cabinet. This
able statesman but a little time before had maintained close political
relations with Van Buren,[135] but he was an extreme State-Rights
advocate, entirely satisfactory to Calhoun. During the half-concealed
struggle over the Cabinet, Van Buren, who had been elected Governor of
New York and was staying in Albany, was well served in Washington by
James A. Hamilton, whose mission was to keep in intimate touch with
events and inform the New Yorker of all developments. Thus it happened
that Hamilton was with Jackson when, at ten o’clock one morning, Calhoun
called for a conference with the President-elect. “I know what it is
about,” said Jackson to Van Buren’s agent. “He cannot succeed. I wish
you to remain until he leaves.” It was during this conference, the last
he ever had with the President on patronage matters, that Calhoun made
his final stand for Tazewell, or against Van Buren. With great solemnity
he urged the appointment of the Virginian, largely because of “his great
knowledge and wisdom,” but partly on the ground that it would assure the
support of Virginia for the Administration. It is doubtful whether, up
to this time, Calhoun had appreciated the political sagacity of the man
with whom he dealt. Jackson listened to his importunity with courteous
attention, but did not commit himself. One suggestion he made, however,
which must have warned the great Carolinian that his motives were
divined. When Calhoun stressed the importance of cultivating Virginia,
Jackson blandly inquired whether it would not be useful to have the
support of New York. Calhoun’s reply disclosed his animus against the
“Little Magician.” The appointment of Clinton, had he lived, might have
guaranteed the support of the Empire State, but the selection of no
other citizen of that State would. He left, no doubt with the feeling
that he had failed in his mission, and never again approached Jackson on
the subject of appointments. And the moment he left, a detailed story of
the conference was given to Hamilton, who promptly sent it to his chief
in Albany.[136]
When Jackson reached the capital he had made no decision as to the
Treasury, and there he was to be buffeted about by many cross-currents.
Van Buren, who was socially and politically intimate with Louis McLane
of Delaware, was anxious that he should be named for the post, and the
gentleman himself was on the ground ready to respond to the summons that
failed to come. The political tacticians at Gadsby’s reached the
decision early that the place should be awarded to Pennsylvania, and
Samuel D. Ingham, who had rushed to Washington as a representative of
one of the factions, with an application for a subordinate position in
the Treasury, became an active candidate for the more important honor.
This was displeasing to Jackson, who favored Henry Baldwin, but in this
preference he was unable to secure any important support among his
advisers.[137] Strangely enough, powerful influences almost immediately
rushed to the support of the man who would have been delighted with a
comparatively obscure position. The Pennsylvania congressional
delegation, on which he had served for years, unanimously endorsed him.
Stranger still, Calhoun, with whom Jackson at this juncture had no
desire to break, became an ardent supporter of his candidacy. He had
served in the House of Representatives many years before with the
mediocre Pennsylvanian, and had found in him one of his most faithful
idolaters. That his influence, and the desire to recognize him in the
making of the Cabinet, was the determining factor, was the consensus of
opinion at the time.
But here again appeared cross-currents difficult to understand. South
Carolina, usually so subservient to the wishes of her great statesman,
but now cool toward him, was uncompromisingly hostile to his favorite
for the Treasury. The other leading members of the South Carolina
delegation, known to be opposed to Ingham and to prefer McLane to him,
had hesitated from motives of delicacy to make their views known to
Jackson; and Van Buren’s favorite for the position authorized Hamilton,
Van Buren’s emissary, to notify the General of their willingness to call
if their opinion was wanted.[138] On February 17th, the Carolinians,
including Senator Hayne, McDuffie, Hamilton, Archer, and Drayton, filed
into the throne room at Gadsby’s, and Hamilton, who acted as spokesman,
began by tactfully commending the selection of Van Buren, and then
turned to the Treasury. Before he could announce his candidate, Jackson
interrupted with the announcement that Ingham had been chosen. Nothing
daunted, Hamilton suggested as a better choice the brilliant Langdon
Cheves of South Carolina. “Impossible,” snapped the grim old man. Then
why not McLane? That, too, was instantly dismissed, and the Carolinians
left Gadsby’s in a rage. “I assure you I am cool--damn cool--never half
so cool in my life,” Hamilton exclaimed immediately afterwards.[139]
For the War Department there was no such competition, and after an
unsuccessful attempt had been made to conciliate Tazewell with the post,
Jackson, who was anxious to have among his advisers one of his old
friends and managers, satisfied himself with the selection of Senator
John H. Eaton of Tennessee.
The processes of reasoning leading to the appointment of Senator John
Branch of North Carolina as Secretary of the Navy have been lost to
history and there is no clue. We know that Van Buren and his friends
strongly urged the selection of Woodbury of New Hampshire; and McLane
expressed the contemporary state of mind in a letter to his friend: “By
what interest that miserable old woman, Branch, was ever dreamed of, no
one can tell.” This much we know--that Branch himself did not have the
most remote idea of entering the Cabinet when the invitation reached him
from Gadsby’s, and he withheld his acceptance until he could consult
with a number of his friends.[140] Two reasons have been advanced as
probable. The one, popular at the time, was that Jackson’s advisers
thought that something should be done to promote the social prestige of
the Administration; and the other, generally accepted by historians,
that the appointment was made as another concession to Calhoun. While
the Carolinian made no request for his inclusion in the Cabinet, Branch
was one of his most loyal followers.
There is no real justification for astonishment over the decision of the
conferees at the Wigwam to ask Senator John McPherson Berrien of Georgia
to accept the position of Attorney-General. Not only was he a brilliant
member of the Senate, noted as an orator, but his professional
reputation in his section was almost as great as that of Webster in New
England. His votes in the Senate on the party measures of the Adams
Administration had been pleasing to Jackson, and, whether he was named
as another gesture of good-will toward Calhoun, as generally assumed, or
not, his appointment could not have been displeasing to the
Vice-President.
While the Postmaster-General had not hitherto been a member of the
Cabinet, the Jackson board of strategy, wishing to manifest its
appreciation of John McLean, who had held the post under Adams while
exerting himself on behalf of Jackson, determined to raise the position
to the Cabinet and retain him.[141]
Thus the Cabinet was completed, and after a fashion indicative of no
desire on the part of Jackson to quarrel with his Vice-President. Van
Buren, who did not enter into the President’s calculations as to the
succession, had been given the most desirable post, but his friends,
McLane and Woodbury, had been set aside for Ingham and Branch, both
devoted to the political fortunes of Calhoun. The latter was represented
by half the Cabinet, Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, and no stretch of the
imagination could make the other two members, Eaton and McLean, other
than absolutely independent of the wily politician of Kinderhook. The
processes through which all this was speedily changed enter into one of
the most fascinating dramas of political intrigue in the history of the
Republic.
IV
While the President-elect was holding his conferences, with the
mysterious Major Lewis going in and out at Gadsby’s and playing with the
destinies of men, and the streets were seething with an incongruous
crowd shouting their “Hurrah for Jackson,” Jackson was remaining coldly
aloof from the occupant of the White House. He had carried to Washington
a bitter resentment against Adams and his personal lieutenants, because
of the dastardly attacks upon the woman then buried at the Hermitage. He
made no call of courtesy, and Adams was stung to the quick. Especially
painful to the old Puritan was the thought that he had been considered
capable of a vulgar assault upon the good name of a woman. After much
struggling with his pride, he made the first advance by sending a
messenger to Jackson to inform him that the White House would be ready
for his occupancy on the 4th of March. “He brought me the answer,”
Adams records, “that the General cordially thanked him, and hoped that I
would put myself to no inconvenience to quit the house, but to remain in
it as long as I pleased, even for a month.”[142] A few days later, Adams
sent his messenger to say that his packing might require two or three
days beyond the 3d, and Jackson replied that he did not wish to put him
to the slightest inconvenience, “but that Mr. Calhoun had suggested that
there might be danger of the excessive crowds breaking down the rooms at
Gadsby’s, and the General had concluded, if it would be perfectly
convenient to us, to receive his company at the President’s house after
the inauguration on Wednesday next.” Whereupon Adams “concluded at all
events to leave the house on Tuesday.”[143] Thus the closing days of his
Administration must have been bitter, indeed, to the proud old Puritan
of the White House. Deliberately ignored by his successor, tortured by
the thought of the treachery of McLean and others, the co-workers of his
régime, depressed, embittered, or in hiding, he appears to have been
utterly forgotten by the society of the capital as well as by the
general public. Justice Story observing his isolation was moved to write
in bitterness to a friend that he had never “felt so forcibly the
emptiness of public honors and public favor.” Certainly no generous
sympathy was felt for him by his triumphant foes. When, on the last
Sunday before the inauguration, the pastor of the President’s church
unhappily selected for his text, “What will ye do on the solemn day?”
one of Jackson’s courtiers, who had attended the services, hurried back
to Gadsby’s, and the company assembled there went into gales of
laughter, and agreed that it would be, for some, a “solemn day.”
That day was heralded by the thunder of cannon--a day of warmth and
sunshine. All roads led to the Capitol, and from an early hour the
thoroughfares were thronged with the eager, enthusiastic, motley crowd,
rejoicing audibly in the event. Down the Avenue the good-natured mob
fought its way, the splendid Barronet and the stately coaches splashed
by the wagons and the carts, women and children in exquisite finery
crowded by women and children in home-spun and rags, statesmen jostled
by uncouth frontiersmen, the laborer brushing inconsiderately, and
perhaps a little arrogantly, against the banker--for it was the People’s
Day. When, at eleven o’clock, the aristocratic Mrs. Smith set forth with
her company, she found the Avenue one living mass, flowing sluggishly
eastward, with every terrace and portico and balcony packed, and with
all the windows of the Capitol crowded, some to observe the approach on
the west, and others to witness the ceremony on the east. When the mob
caught sight of Jackson and his party walking from Gadsby’s in
democratic fashion, it pressed in upon him, impeding his approach, but
seeming in nowise to challenge his displeasure, for he alone of his
party walked with bared head. The spectators on the south terrace
thrilled to the scene--an American king going to his coronation,
acclaimed and accompanied by the plain people. The ceremonies over, he
fought his way to his waiting horse--and down the Avenue he rode,
followed by the most picturesque cortège that ever trailed a
conqueror--gentlemen of society and backwoodsmen, scholars and the
illiterate, white and black, the old hobbling on crutches and canes and
children clinging to their mothers’ gowns, walking and riding in
carriages and wagons and carts--following to the People’s House.
There the unwieldy mob, in carnival mood, hundreds only accustomed to
the rough life of the frontier, stormed the mansion, fighting,
scrambling, elbowing, scratching. Waiters appearing with refreshments
were rushed by the uncouth guests, resulting in the crash of glass and
china. Men in heavy boots, covered with the mud of the unpaved streets,
sprang upon the chairs and sofas to get a better view of the hero of
the hour.[144] Women fainted, some were seen with bloody noses, and
Jackson was saved from being crushed only by the action of some
gentlemen in making a barrier of their bodies. After this the old
soldier beat a hasty retreat through the back way to the south, and
sought relief at Gadsby’s.[145] “I never saw such a mixture,” wrote
Justice Story. “The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” And Mrs. Smith
writing of her experience said: “The noisy and disorderly rabble ...
brought to my mind descriptions I have read of the mobs in the Tuileries
and at Versailles.”
And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the
popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the
inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the
outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but
drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the
dethroned President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered
his horse, and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the
city “through F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until
he reached a road leading to the Porters’--reminded of the passing of
his power by the neglect of the people.[146]
Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the
day--tormented by bitter regrets.
V
Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and
his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were
to cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his
Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the
White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the
capital gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who
had betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale
dismissals of postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings
against those officials who had participated in politics he would be
forced to include in the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well
as those who had been faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment
nonplussed, sat puffing at his pipe, then arose, and, after walking up
and down the room several times, stopped abruptly before his
obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr. McLean, will you accept a
seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”--and that McLean instantly
accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent, who says that on
the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a reception at the
home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was intimate, had just
described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr. McLean has
been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential
aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many
postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he
secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably
saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly
Jacksonian way.
It is reasonable to assume that during the brief moments he walked the
floor puffing his pipe, he determined upon McLean’s successor. One week
before his inauguration, he had given James A. Hamilton a list of
applicants for office with the request for an opinion and report, and
among these was the application of William T. Barry of Kentucky for a
place on the Supreme Bench. The applications had been returned to him
with the recommendation that the Kentuckian be appointed. He was known
to Jackson as an “organization man.” It was probably the matter of a
moment, for one of the President’s quick decision, to make the
exchange--McLean for the Bench, Barry for the Cabinet.[149] His efforts
to soothe the injured feelings of Senator Tazewell, whose heart had been
set on the portfolio of State, were not so successful. After the
disappointed statesman had refused the War Department, some of the
Jackson tacticians conceived the idea of offering him the mission to
London, and for a few days the Virginian seemed tempted. But one week
after the inauguration, he wrote the President that domestic reasons
precluded an acceptance. Keenly disappointed and concerned, Jackson,
after a consultation with one of his advisers,[150] wrote a personal
note to Tazewell requesting him to call at the White House. It is not
incomprehensible that in his angry mood the proud Southerner should have
resented the earnest importunity of the direct Jackson, and he left the
President with the statement to McLean that he had not liked the
General’s manner in looking him through and through and telling him he
must go. He had looked upon it as a military order, and considered the
matter at rest. This opened the way, however, for the recognition of Van
Buren’s friend, Louis McLane, whose ruffled feelings were smoothed by
the appointment to the English Court. But within a week two of Jackson’s
party friends and supporters, McLean and Tazewell, had been alienated
and were ripe for the seduction of the Opposition.
Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he
began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn
opposition to the Administration. As early as the first of January it
was evident that “the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in
the Senate and thereby to control the President.”[151] During the first
few weeks of the new Administration the iron sank deep into the souls
of the dispossessed office-holders and their friends. It was manifest
that there was something more than a new master in the White House--that
a régime had passed, a dynasty had fallen. Previous Presidents had
entered office with the good wishes of most of their political
opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that the dispossessed had
steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning to find fault on
general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to wreck the
Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the Whig
drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.” All the
members of the new official family were ridiculed with the exception of
Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound politician,” was
“not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic and
vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on the
pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together
with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had
rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the
conduct of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for
place, and to reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153]
While Adams indulged in these unfriendly reflections merely to feed his
personal vanity, and to record his superiority, Clay, equally bitter,
was not content to shut his reflection up between the covers of a book.
To him defeat had been especially bitter. He hated Jackson with
vindictive malice because the latter really credited the “bargain”
story, and had sanctioned its circulation. His overpowering passion was
to reach the Presidency. He had entered the official household of Adams
as the head of the Cabinet when the “Secretarial Succession” seemed
definitely established, and had looked forward to succeeding his chief
at the end of his second Administration. The fact that there had been
no second Administration had been due, in part, to the prevalent opinion
that Clay had entered into a bargain for power, and he faced retirement
from public life feeling that his great opportunity had failed him and
that his reputation had been stained. He was the type of man whose
bitterness must find relief in action. From the moment he recovered from
the shock of the election, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of
Jackson.
In judging of the sincerity of his unrelenting opposition during the
next eight years, it is well to bear in mind that before Jackson had
perfected a policy, or proclaimed a principle, Mr. Clay attended a
banquet given in his honor within a stone’s throw of the White House, at
which he assailed the President with an intemperance of denunciation
never exceeded in later years. This was evidently personal. One week
after the inauguration he said to Mrs. Bayard Smith: “There is not in
Cairo or in Constantinople a greater moral despotism than is at this
moment exercised over public opinion here. Why, a man dare not avow what
he thinks or feels, or shake hands with a personal friend, if he happens
to differ from the powers that be.”[154] On the very day this remarkable
statement was recorded by the chronicler of the Whig drawing-rooms,
Adams wrote in his diary: “Mr. Clay told me some time since that he had
received invitations at several places on his way to Lexington to public
dinners, and should attend them, and that he intended freely to express
his opinions.”[155] A little later Adams notes that while riding he
passed Mr. Clay in a carriage driving toward Baltimore on his way to
Kentucky--pale, stern, and sour. On that journey, and without having at
that time any particular actions of the new Administration on which to
base an attack, he spoke wherever the opportunity was afforded, and
always with a vehement denunciation of President Jackson.
The inauguration was over; the people from afar, having seen “their”
President and visited “their” White House, had returned to their homes;
and Henry Clay, the most consummate of politicians, one of the most
eloquent of men, was already meditating upon the organized assault that
was to be made upon the new régime. Now let us acquaint ourselves with
the advisers with whom the President had surrounded himself officially.
VI
By common consent the Whig aristocracy conceded that Martin Van Buren
was the strong man of the Cabinet because of an uncanny cleverness as a
politician, while denying him the qualities of statesmanship or
intellectual leadership. Even as a politician tradition would have him
of the superficial, manipulating, intriguing sort. History had generally
accepted this tradition until Mr. Shepard’s masterful biography[156]
focused attention upon his career, and the publication of his
fascinating “Autobiography” disclosed his intellectuality. He stood out
among the politicians of his time, to whom history has been kinder,
because of his refusal to indulge in the popular personal attacks or to
stoop to disreputable intrigues. A man of even temper, blessed with a
sense of humor, he found it not only possible but profitable and
pleasurable to maintain social relations with political opponents, and
all that the embittered Adams could see in this was that “he thought it
might one day be to his interest to seek friendship.” In senatorial
debates he had discussed principles and policies calmly, instead of
indulging in flamboyant discourses flaming with personalities--and this
was accepted in his day as evidence that he held his principles lightly.
Adams wrote that “his principles are always subordinate to his
ambition.”[157]
This “superficial politician” was the greatest lawyer elected to the
Presidency before the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of the
second Harrison, the greatest lawyer-President we have had. Living in a
community overwhelmingly Federalistic, this “trimmer without principles”
became a bitter opponent of Federalism. With all the rich and powerful
of the locality allied with Federalism, this “courtier” entered the
other camp. When Burr was a candidate for Governor, with the support of
Van Buren’s preceptor in the law, this young man, who “was under the
influence of his evil genius,” ardently supported the Clinton-Livingston
candidate, who was elected. When he entered politics, he found the
spoils system thoroughly established in New York, and political
proscription practiced by both parties, but that was not to prevent his
enemies from charging him with its initiation. He did not quarrel with
the system. He used, but never abused it. And in the days of his
limitation to State politics, he displayed qualities of statesmanship,
patriotism, and courage. New York Federalism did not dismiss him as a
mere schemer and intriguer when he led his party in the State Senate. He
met the Federalist attack upon the War of 1812 upon the floor of the
Senate, and not in party caucus. When Federalism fought every needful
measure, he became as much the spokesman of the war party in Albany as
Clay, Calhoun, and Grundy in Washington. In reaching an estimate of Van
Buren, it is important to bear in mind that this alleged man of
indecision, without initiative or constructive capacity, was the author
of “the most energetic war measure” adopted in the country.[158] As a
member of the Constitutional Convention of New York, dealing with the
extension of suffrage, when Chancellor Kent, giving free rein to his
aristocratic tendencies, was opposing the extension, and mere demagogues
were advocating the immediate letting down of the bars to all, it is
significant, both of his Americanism and
[Illustration: MARTIN VAN BUREN]
[Illustration: THOMAS HART BENTON]
his wisdom, that Van Buren scorned both the rôle of reactionary and
demagogue, and proposed the plan for the gradual extension of suffrage
in a speech couched in the language of seasoned statesmanship. Thus, at
the time he entered National life, there was nothing in his career to
justify the conventional estimate of his public character.
With the inauguration of Adams, soon after he had entered the United
States Senate, Van Buren became the recognized leader of the Opposition,
and he set himself the task of organizing and militantizing a party to
fight the Federalistic trend of the President. There were various
elements on which he could draw. With his genius for organization and
direction, he made it his work to seek a common ground upon which all
could stand together in harmony. He fought the principles and policies
of the Administration in dignified fashion, without recourse to
scurrility; but he capitalized every mistake and gave it fullest
publicity through the circulation of carefully prepared speeches, after
the fashion of the present day. Careful to discriminate, even in his
attacks, between personal and political wrongdoing, he treated Adams
with the utmost courtesy. With a party formed, he drilled it as
carefully as was ever done by the Albany Regency. He instilled into it
the party spirit. He mobilized an army. With this he fought the
Administration on the floor.
But he was one of the first, if not the first, to take the people
outside the halls of Congress into consideration. To create a party
without as well as within the Congress, he arranged for the circulation
of carefully prepared senatorial speeches for the moulding of public
opinion in the highways and the byways. Thus he was probably responsible
for the delivery of the first congressional speeches intended solely for
campaign use.
In person he was slight, erect, and scarcely of middle height. His
intellectuality was indicated by his high, broad forehead, and his
bright, quick eye. His smile, which was habitual, was genial and seemed
sincere. His features, generally, were pleasing. His manner was always
courtly, and he made a study of deportment. No professional diplomat of
the Old World, living in the atmosphere of courts, could have been more
polished. Contemporaries have described him as “extraordinarily bright
and attractive, but without anything supercilious.”[159] In social life
he was a favorite. Few men of his period were better fitted for the
drawing-room. An entertaining talker, he could converse intelligently
upon a multitude of subjects and could pass from a political conference
with the Kitchen Cabinet to a social call on Adams, or a chat with Clay,
without effort or embarrassment. Fond of feminine society, he could be
as charming to a débutante as to a grande dame, and we find him
delighting the brilliant Mrs. Livingston with his intellectual charm,
while captivating her daughter, Cora, with his juvenile levity.
Fastidious to a degree, he could enjoy the unconventional moments of
Jackson in his shirt-sleeves and with his pipe, and make the pleasure
mutual. This premier of an Administration that contemporaries of the
Opposition loved to describe as plebeian and vulgar “was perhaps as
polished and captivating a person as the social circles of the Republic
have ever known.”[160] As we shall see, nothing ruffled him. He never
forgot his dignity nor lost his temper. He was all suavity. He was all
art.
He lives in history as a politician and President and is never thought
of as an orator. He belonged rather to the type of parliamentary speaker
which followed the scintillating period when Pitt declaimed in stately
sentences and Fox thundered with emotional eloquence--the conversational
type which is still prevalent at Westminster. He made no pretense to an
artful literary style, but his speeches were in good taste. We have the
tradition that he not only prepared his speeches with infinite care,
which is probable, but that he rehearsed them before a mirror, which is
debatable. It is said that on his retirement from the Senate, and at the
sale of his household goods at auction, “it was noticed that the carpet
before the large looking-glass was worn threadbare,” and that “it was
there that he rehearsed his speeches.”[161] That he was something of an
artist and an actor we shall see in the course of the recital of the
events of the Jackson Administration.
Secretary of the Treasury Ingham was a Pennsylvania paper manufacturer
who possessed little learning and stood in no awe of genius. His career
had been that of a petty but persistent plodder who knew the ways of
cunning. His mind was prosily practical, and he thought solely in terms
of money. His fourteen years in Congress had been barren of achievement,
but his business training had given him a certain advantage over more
brilliant men in the work of the committees. He was the forerunner of
the machine politician of a later day, skillful in intrigue,
unscrupulous in methods, and resourceful in the work of organization.
His general character is not easily deduced from the conflicting
opinions of his contemporaries. One of these, unfriendly to the Jackson
régime, wrote that he “is a good man of unimpeachable and unbending
integrity”;[162] while Adams, after relating an incident tending to an
opposite conclusion, tells us that “there is a portrait of Ingham in
Caracci’s picture of the Lord’s Supper”--which is the nearest approach
to a description of his appearance that can be found. There is a general
agreement, however, as to the inferiority of his talents, and in our
political history he is scarcely the shadow of a silhouette.
Quite a different character was Secretary of War Eaton, a gentleman of
education, polish, amiability, capacity, and wealth. The possession of a
fortune deprived him of an incentive to the full exertion of his
talents, and he frankly preferred leisure to labor, discouraged the
approach of clients, and liked nothing better than a quiet corner of his
library at his country home near Nashville. There was nothing in his
appearance, his manner, or conversation remotely to suggest the
frontiersman, and, on the contrary, observers were impressed by his
dignity and poise, his courtliness and courtesy. Even in the bitter days
when society was in league against his wife, we find one of her harshest
critics writing that “every one that knows esteems, and many love him
for his benevolence and amiability.”[163] He possessed many advantages
for a political career. Having the time and money to devote to politics,
he early developed a genius for organization, and an uncanny capacity
for intrigue. The campaign of 1828 found him entrusted with much of the
important work--the delicate missions. Wherever Jackson lacked or needed
an organization, or one in existence required stiffening, there went
Eaton, doing his work furtively, and on the surface nothing but its
achievement indicated that it had been undertaken.[164] It was his fine
Italian hand which wrought such havoc with Clay’s forces in Kentucky.
When that State began to waver as to Clay, Jackson determined to force
the fighting in a territory at first thought hopelessly lost to the
Democracy. Even Benton found his way to the “dark and bloody ground,”
but tradition has it that it was the suave and furtive Eaton, who
appeared in different parts of Kentucky, making no speeches, and half
concealing himself in a mantle of mystery, who divorced from Clay so
many of his supporters. There is a sinister aspect to the general
description of his activities; and his enemies, and Jackson’s, always
insisted that he had parceled out jobs with a lavish hand. A man of
culture, a soldier of acknowledged gallantry, a lawyer of ability, he
was destined to an unhappy notoriety, but he deserved a better fate.
The patrician of the Administration was Secretary of the Navy Branch,
who, like Eaton, had inherited an ample fortune, and had divided his
time between politics, the practice of the law, and the management of a
large plantation. At the time he entered the Cabinet, he had
distinguished himself in the politics of North Carolina, had served
three terms as Governor, and was a member of the United States
Senate--scarcely the record of an obscure man. As chief executive of his
State, his record had been far from that of a colorless time-serving
politician without constructive qualities or vision. If his messages
were couched in the lofty, pompous phrases of the period, they were not
without substance. He was a pioneer in the field of popular education,
the leader of a crusade against capital punishment for many crimes, an
advocate of the substitution of imprisonment for the death penalty, and
he urged the establishment of a penitentiary based on the idea of
reformation. A man of great wealth, and an aristocrat by temperament, he
led a fight against imprisonment for debt.[165] His, too, is the
distinction of having in that early day proposed the strict regulation
of the medical profession as a protection of the public against
impostors. A planter, and the owner of many slaves, he insisted, while
Governor, on the protection of the legal rights of the blacks; and the
petition of the entire population of Raleigh, the importunities of a
hundred and twenty young women, the plea of State officials, were not
sufficient to persuade him to save from the gallows a young white man
who had murdered a slave.[166] In the Senate, while not distinguished as
an orator, he was considered a strong debater and was respected as a man
of courage and deep convictions.
The portrait of Branch, which hangs in the Navy Department in
Washington, suggests, in the slender profile and luminous eyes, the
poet, rather than the politician. He is described by one who saw him
often in his Washington days as “tall, well-proportioned, graceful in
gestures, and affable and kindly in manner.”[167] He had the
graciousness of the Southern aristocrat of the old school, and was
devoted to the social standards and customs of his section. Strongly
attached to his home and family, having the poet’s love of the artistic,
he surrounded himself with beauty, and his home at Enfield was a
comfortable and stately mansion surrounded by a smooth lawn, in the
midst of gardens, orchards, and shade trees. His political career and
the course of the Jackson Administration were to be greatly influenced
by his devotion to his wife and daughters, and to his social ideals.
In John McPherson Berrien, the Attorney-General, we have a character
with whom history has played strange pranks. When he entered the
Cabinet, he was conceded to be one of the most polished orators of his
time and one of the famous lawyers of the South. His Washington début in
the Supreme Court, in a case involving the seizure of an African slave
ship, had been a spectacular triumph.[168] All contemporaries agree as
to his extraordinary gifts of eloquence. Perley Poore describes him as
“a polished and effective orator.”[169] Another contemporary found him
“a model for chaste, free, beautiful elocution.”[170] Still another has
it that “he spoke the court language of the Augustan age.”[171] Even the
blasé John Marshall, who listened to Webster and Choate, was so
impressed that he dubbed him “the honey-tongued Georgian youth.”[172] He
had been in the Senate three years when a speech upon the tariff
impelled the press of the period to describe him as “the American
Cicero”--a designation that clung to him through life. The greatest
speech made by any of the leaders of the Opposition on the Panama
Mission was the constitutional argument of Berrien.[173] As a man he was
cold and reserved, an aristocrat in manner, as in feeling. He made a
virtue of not cultivating the multitude, scorned all compromise with his
convictions, firmly believed in himself, and was not at all impressed
with opposition. Utterly without tact or diplomacy, caustic and
sarcastic, he incurred bitter enmities, but his admirers, who liked to
compare him with Cicero, took pride in this weakness.[174] As a
political leader, he was dictatorial and demanded obedience without
question. The slightest hesitation on the part of his tried and truest
friends was usually followed by coldness on his part. Selfish to a
degree, he was always keen for his personal advancement.[175] Few more
brilliant men have ever been Attorney-General of the United States.
If Postmaster-General Barry was unknown to Washington, it was a matter
of indifference to him. In politics he was an exotic. Entering Congress
as a young man, he could have remained indefinitely, but congressional
life did not allure him. For twenty years he had been an influential
State politician, serving in the legislature until sent to the United
States Senate to fill an unexpired term. It is an interesting commentary
on his preference for State office that he resigned from the Senate,
where he might have remained, to become Chief Justice of the State
Supreme Court. Living in Lexington as a neighbor of Henry Clay, he had
been for many years one of the great leader’s most ardent supporters,
and it is significant of the character of the man that, while he
supported Clay against Jackson in 1824, the “bargain” story transformed
him into a bitter foe.
In view of their relations to the Jackson Administration years later,
the estimate of Barry reached by Amos Kendall in 1814, and recorded in
his “Autobiography,” is interesting, and serves to account for the
feeling, scarcely concealed, with which the journalist-politician
afterwards undertook the unraveling of the difficulties into which Barry
had plunged the Post-Office Department. It was when Kendall was on his
way to Kentucky that he first met the Lexington politician and went down
the Ohio River with him and Mrs. Barry with “servants, horses, and
carriages,” in a boat thirty feet long, with three apartments. At the
end of the journey Kendall wrote: “He appears to be a very good man but
not a great man. For our passage he charged nothing, and in every way
treated me like a gentleman. His lady seems to be a woman of good
disposition, but uneducated.” In contradiction to this estimate, we have
another in which he is described as possessing extraordinary abilities,
active business habits, an exact knowledge of men and things, and as
being “a great orator.”[176] And this same authority describes Mrs.
Barry as “frank, lady-like, free from affectations, possessing a fine
person and agreeable manners.” Parton tells us that he was “agreeable
and amiable, but not a business man”--which is the final verdict of
history. In person he was above the medium height, but slender and thin
in face. He was modest in demeanor, and energetic--even though he did
not always properly direct his energy--and fond of society. He became
Postmaster-General because, according to the Jackson standard, he had
richly earned the reward.
Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There
have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men
possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social
distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not
possess at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what
he said he proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant.
It is strange that the one man who developed into a candidate almost
immediately was the one to whom he became most ardently attached.
We shall now note the first troubles of the official family.
CHAPTER III
THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE
I
Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the
Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost
nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural
prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of
his political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The
“spoils system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political
parties, thus frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the
intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most
bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him
public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some
of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that
the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently
wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of
conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of
the exigencies of a new political era.
For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and
indefinite; and if the politics of the young Republic had not been
drifting toward personal government, it had been partaking of the nature
of government by cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy
Adams had made the definite division of the people into political
parties inevitable--these parties standing for well-defined,
antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught the drift and had
cleverly organized a party standing for principles and policies, rather
than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one of the
outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration, who
had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his
indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in
1828 something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in
support of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the
organization of a party pledged to internal improvements and a
protective tariff.
The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as
we have known them for almost a century.
It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that
they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the
aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the
intellectuals, alone, determined the governmental personnel. Men went
into training for the Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a
matter of course, from the Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to
the chief magistracy. An office-holding class, feeling itself secure in
a life tenure, had grown up.
As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the
masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played
influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs.
Thus they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration,
rejoicing in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too
many pressing claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering
upon their reward. Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior,
awaiting the opportunity, at Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had
been fairly mobbed by ardent partisans of his cause, demanding the
expulsion of the enemy and the appointment of his supporters to office.
The Jackson press had been particularly insistent upon this point. Duff
Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had early announced that he
naturally assumed that the office-holders who had actively campaigned
for Adams would make way for the victors. This same feeling had spread
into every community in the country. Isaac Hill, writing in the “New
Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the election, had sounded the
onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177] And soon after reaching
Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at Gadsby’s, the New England
editor had written joyously to a friend: “You may say to all our anxious
Adamsites that THE BARNACLES WILL BE SCRAPED CLEAN OFF THE SHIP OF
STATE. Most of them have grown so large and stick so tight that the
scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”
Before Jackson’s entry into the White House, the scenes in and about
Gadsby’s were scarcely less than scandalous. A great perspiring mob
swarmed in the streets in front, crowded the tap-room, jostled its way
in the halls, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Major Lewis, it
demanded and secured admission to the President’s private apartment. All
admitted themselves responsible for Jackson’s election. Amos Kendall,
encountering a pompous stranger on the Avenue, was invited to look upon
the man who had “delivered Pennsylvania.”[178] James A. Hamilton, who
was close to Jackson in the early days of the Administration, was
importuned by an Indianian, who had taken the electoral vote of the
State to the Capitol, to intercede on his behalf for the Register’s
office at Crawfordsville, or the Marshalship. This typical office-seeker
had “calculated to remain a few weeks ... hoping that some of these
violent Adams men may receive their walking papers.” He carried letters
of recommendation from all the Democratic members of the State
Legislature “for any office I can ask.” But, in view of the brisk
competition, would not Hamilton kindly recall that he had received
letters from the Hoosier bearing on the campaign, and personally testify
to the important part he had played?[179] Others depended upon the
length of their petitions, and two applicants from Pennsylvania, for the
same office, had signers so numerous that the number had to be estimated
by the length of the sheets.[180]
Meanwhile there is no question but that Jackson was eager to serve his
friends, if not to punish his enemies. From the moment of his election,
he had entertained no illusions as to the character of the opposition
his Administration would encounter. It was an open secret that his
enemies, long before the inauguration, had begun to organize for the
discrediting of his Administration. He was familiar with the bitterness
of Clay. And, with the determination to make his Administration a
success, from his point of view, he turned his attention to preparations
for the fight. His military training told him that it was fatal to enter
a campaign with traitors in the camp. The disloyalty from which Adams
had suffered had not been lost upon him.[181] And he had fixed
convictions as to political organization. “To give effect to any
principles,” he said, “you must avail yourself of the physical force of
an organized body of men. This is true alike in war, politics, or
religion. You cannot organize men in effective bodies without giving
them a reason for it. And when the organization is once made, you cannot
keep it together unless you hold constantly before its members why they
are organized.”[182] Thus party politics, in the modern sense, began
with Jackson, and the spoils system grew out of the exigencies of party
politics. Vicious though it may be, it is significant of its appeal to
the rank and file of party workers, upon whom party success depends,
that politicians of all parties, including Lincoln, have adopted it
without shame.
It does not appear that Jackson was greatly influenced in his course by
his advisers, of either his constitutional or Kitchen Cabinet. Van
Buren, who has been wrongfully accused of so many things, and among
others, of having been the dominating influence as to the spoils system,
heard of the plan for sweeping changes with grave misgivings. “If the
General makes one removal at this time,” he said in a letter to Hamilton
written from Albany, “he must go on. So far as depends on me, my course
would be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out
by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal
character have since arisen to make the appointment in any case
improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would
pause.” This, from the head of his official family.
And the most intimate of his advisers, of the Kitchen Cabinet, Major
Lewis, is reported to have written to the President: “In relation to the
principle of rotation in office, I embrace this occasion to enter my
solemn protest against it; not on account of my office, but because I
hold it to be fraught with the greatest mischief to the country. If ever
it should be carried out _in extenso_, the days of this Republic will,
in my opinion, be numbered; for whenever the impression shall become
general that the Government is only valuable on account of its offices,
the great and paramount interests of the country will be lost sight of,
and the Government itself ultimately destroyed.” With the possible
exception of Eaton, who was a practical politician in the modern sense,
and Van Buren, to the extent just indicated, none of the members of the
Cabinet were spoilsmen at heart; and Amos Kendall, the genius of the
Kitchen Cabinet, would unquestionably have preferred to be spared the
pain of turning men out of office. To be sure, the jovial but vindictive
Duff Green, who spent much time at the elbow of Jackson in the early
months of the Administration, was insistent upon the punishment of
enemies, but the responsibility for the adoption of the policy rests
upon the President himself.
And the result was that the spring and summer months of 1829 were filled
with the clamor of importunate pleas, not unmixed with threats and
curses, from the office-seekers. In many instances the wives and
daughters of the applicants fluttered down upon Washington to reënforce
the husband and the father.[183] One of the General’s most ardent
supporters left the capital two days after the inauguration bitterly
denouncing him for his failure to appoint the irate one to a position
not then vacant.[184] Cabinet officers were harassed, bombarded,
followed from their offices to their homes and back again, until several
of them confessed that life had become a burden, and they were forced to
close their doors to applicants until a late hour in the afternoon to
find time for the transaction of public business.[185] Such aspirants as
were not upon the ground in person were either represented by friends
who were, or they peppered the members of the Cabinet with letters. One
peculiarly offensive candidate for the collectorship of customs in New
York wrote to an equally disreputable friend: “No damn rascal who made
use of an office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in
and General Jackson out of power is entitled to the least leniency save
that of hanging. Whether or not I shall get anything in the general
scramble for plunder remains to be seen, but I rather guess I shall. I
know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend that you push like the
devil if you expect anything from that quarter.”[186] And in the letter
from Ingham to the seeker of “plunder” we have abundant evidence that
the advice was accepted: “These [his duties] cannot be postponed; and I
do assure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of
recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four with all diligence. The appointments can be
postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors
of the late Administration that they suffered many important public
interests to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure or
buy up partisans. This we must not do.”[187] The same man, having
written an insolent letter to Van Buren, was sharply rebuked by him.
“Here I am,” wrote the Secretary of State, “engaged in the most
intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the
successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of
the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning
until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me
under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility
can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon
which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible.”[188]
Nor was this clamor for office confined to the more important
positions--it reached down to the most menial places, to those of the
gardener, the janitor, and messenger. Worse still--men in position to
serve were even appealed to for place by members of their immediate
families. Thus we find Amos Kendall writing to his wife: “I had thought
before of trying to get some place for your father, but I cannot do
anything until I am myself appointed. I hope in a year or two, and
perhaps sooner, to find some situation that will enable him to live near
us, and comfortably.”[189]
Meanwhile the clerks in Washington lived in a state of terror. Men who
had long worked in harmony, and on terms of intimacy, were afraid to
talk to one another. Every one suddenly assumed the aspect of a spy and
an informer. “All the subordinate officers of the Government, and even
the clerks are full of tremblings and anxiety,” wrote one woman to a
correspondent. “To add to this general gloom, we have horrible weather,
snowstorm after snowstorm, the river frozen up and the poor
suffering.”[190] The majority of the subordinates and clerks, many the
ne’er-do-wells of distinguished families, assuming that they were
assured of a life position, had lived up to, and beyond, their meager
incomes, and suddenly found themselves unfit for other employment and
confronted with dismissal.[191] And slowly, but surely, the dismissals
came, leaving many in desperate straits, without sufficient funds to
reach their homes, and unfit to earn a livelihood if they did. Some were
driven to desperation. One dismissed employee of the Custom House in
Boston went “in a transport of grief” to Ingham with a plea to be
informed of the cause of his dismissal, only to be told that offices
were not hereditary.[192] One clerk in the War Department cut his throat
from ear to ear; another in the State Department went stark mad. But all
appeals for sympathy were met by the proscriptionists with the stern
reminder: “The exclusive party who were never known to tolerate any
political opponent raise and reiterate the cry of persecution and
proscription at every removal that takes place. They have provoked
retaliation by the most profligate and abandoned course of
electioneering; the most unheard-of calumny and abuse was heaped upon
the candidate of the people; he was called by every epithet that could
designate crime, and the amiable partner of his bosom was dragged before
the people as worse than a convicted felon. What sympathy do men of such
a party deserve when complaining that the places which they have abused
are given to others?”[193]
A dark picture--and yet only darker than similar pictures in years to
follow because, in 1829, the policy was new and caught the
office-holders unprepared. So gloomy has the picture been painted that
the student of the times is prepared to learn of a general massacre of
the placemen. There was no such massacre--no such massacre as followed
the election of Lincoln. One is prepared to hear that all the enemies of
Jackson were driven from office, but, as a matter of fact, the majority
of the Federal office-holders during his régime were unmolested. This
could not be said of Roosevelt’s Administration, nor of Cleveland’s. The
exact number of removals during the first year of Jackson’s
Administration cannot be determined with precision. Schouler,[194] while
making no attempt definitely to fix the number, says that “some have
placed the number as high as two thousand.” In view of the evidence of
contemporaries available, it does seem that a fairly accurate idea
should be obtained. It is interesting to observe in this connection that
while Jackson’s enemies were dealing in sweeping generalities, his
defenders were furnishing figures.
And among the defenders none is more reliable than Thomas H. Benton,
whose veracity or personal honesty has never been impeached or
questioned, and he tells us[195] that there were whole classes of
office-holders that were not molested; that those whose functions were
of a judicial nature were not disturbed, and that in the departments at
Washington a majority remained opposed to Jackson through his two
Administrations. More important still--he tells us that Jackson not only
left a majority of his enemies in office, but that in some instances he
actually reappointed personal and political enemies where they were
“especially efficient officers.” And he lays stress upon the point that
where men, who had bitterly fought Jackson in the election, were not
reappointed, a hue and cry was raised that they had been denied a
right. Corroborating this, we have the evidence of Amos Kendall,[196]
who wrote, after the Administration had been in power a year and a half:
“He [Jackson] is charged with having turned out of office all who were
opposed to him, when a majority of the office-holders in Washington are
known to be in favor of his rivals. In that city the removals have been
but one seventh of those in office, and most of them for bad conduct and
character. In the Post-Office Department, toward which have been
directed the heaviest complaints, the removals have been only about one
sixteenth; in the whole Government, one eleventh.” And to the evidence
of both Benton and Kendall, either one of whom would have been incapable
of deliberate falsehood, we may add the less reliable, because more
prejudiced, evidence of Isaac Hill, given in a public speech at Concord
in the late summer of 1829. “It is worthy of observation,” he said,
“that at least two thirds of the offices of profit at the seat of the
National Government, after the removals thus far made, are still held by
persons who were opposed to the election of General Jackson.”[197] A
more detailed study of the removals actually made show that, while there
were 8600 post-offices in 1829, less than 800 postmasters were removed,
and these, largely, in the more important centers, leaving 7800
undisturbed.
One of the most serious charges against Jackson in connection with these
removals is that he practiced duplicity, reassuring a trembling
office-holder one day only to remove him, without warning, on the next;
and this story is based upon what the officer in charge of Indian
affairs under Adams declares to have been his personal experience.
According to his story, Eaton, his superior officer, suggested that he
should see the President to meet some charges that had been made against
him; that on visiting Jackson he had made a solemn denial, satisfied the
President, and been presented by him to the members of his household;
that on the next day a gentleman entered the Indian Office, and, after
looking around, explained that the place had been offered him by the
President that morning, but that he did not intend to accept; that the
position was afterwards offered to others, and that the dismissal
finally reached him in Philadelphia while there on official business.
This places Jackson in a sinister light; but our commissioner adds, that
one close to the Administration said: “Why, sir, everybody knows your
qualifications for the place, but General Jackson has been long
satisfied that you are not in harmony with his views in regard to the
Indians.”[198] This raises the question whether a President chosen by
the people is entitled to his own governmental policies or should be
forced to accept such as may be handed to him by subordinates who
received their appointments by preference, and not from the hands of the
people. That this removal was the President’s own idea may be gathered
from the fact that Eaton, Secretary of War, under whom Indian affairs
came, was not in favor of the dismissal.
It is worth recording that Van Buren kept his department comparatively
free from the spoils idea. But even the most intense partisan of Jackson
will be hard pressed to find any proper reason for the spiteful recall
of William Henry Harrison from Bogota, where he had just presented his
credentials as United States Minister to Colombia. This recall was
opposed very earnestly by Postmaster-General Barry, who frankly said to
the President:
“If you had seen him as I did on the Thames, you would, I think, let him
alone.”
“You may be right, Barry,” Jackson replied. “I reckon you are. But thank
God I didn’t see him there.”[199]
Dark though the picture is from the viewpoint of the civil service
reformer, there is another possible point of view. All the officials
dismissed from places were not high-minded, conscientious public
servants, for among them were numerous criminals. The dismissal of
Tobias Watkins, an Adams appointee and a personal friend of the former
President, to make place for Amos Kendall, was the occasion for a great
outburst of indignation from the Opposition. Within a month the product
of the spoils system had discovered frauds on the part of the “martyr”
to the amount of more than $7000, and an arrest followed. He was
convicted and served his time in prison. Nor was that of Watkins an
isolated case. Thus the collector at Buffalo[200] had procured false
receipts for money never paid and was given credit at the Treasury; the
collector at Key West[201] had permitted an unlawful trade between Cuba
and Florida; the collector at Bath, Maine,[202] was dismissed for
personally using $56,315 of the public funds; the collector at
Portsmouth[203] was shown to have engaged in smuggling; the collector at
St. Marks[204] was shown to have been plundering live-oak from the
public lands; the collector at Petersburg[205] had used $24,857 of the
public money; the collector at Perth Amboy[206] had made false returns,
appropriated to his own use $88,000 of the public money, and fled to
Canada; the collector at Elizabeth City, North Carolina,[207] had
converted $32,791 to his personal use and joined the other “martyr” to
the spoils system on Canadian soil.[208] In brief, the introduction of
the spoils system had resulted, in eighteen months, in the uncovering of
peculations in the Treasury Department alone of more than $280,000 by
men whose dismissal from office had called forth the unmeasured
denunciation of Jackson’s enemies, and it is manifestly unfair to
withhold these facts while placing emphasis upon the “dismissal of
collector to make way for Jackson’s henchmen.”
Thus, throughout the spring and summer of 1829, the President and his
Cabinet were bored, harassed, and tortured with importunities for place,
denounced as ingrates because they left any of the enemies in office,
and damned by the enemy for every dismissal that was made.
II
The spring and summer was the time of the Red Terror.
The White Terror of retaliation began with the meeting of the hostile
Senate in December.
The enemies of Jackson sought the earliest possible opportunity to
denounce the wholesale dismissals, and the brilliant orators of the
Opposition in the House made intemperate attacks, while in the Senate
Webster spoke against the policy of proscription, without, however,
adopting the absurd position that the President did not possess the
constitutional power.[209] The early part of the session was given over
to denunciations of the removals, and to a frankly hostile scrutiny, on
the part of the Senate, of all nominations requiring confirmation. It
foreshadowed the bitter party battles of the next eight years by
rejecting the nominations of some of Jackson’s most ardent supporters in
the campaign, and by taking the ridiculous position that journalists
should be excluded from appointive office. This proscription, or
massacre of the editors, was aimed at men, comparatively new to public
life, who were speedily to develop into the most brilliant and sagacious
of the Jacksonian leaders. Long and acrimonious executive sessions
became the rule of the Senate. In some instances, action upon
nominations was postponed for months under provocative circumstances
that were not lost upon the fighting figure at the other end of the
Avenue. The charge was made that a number of the President’s nominees
were “vicious characters.” It was in the early days of this session that
a comparatively new Senator, elected upon the supposition that he would
support the President and his policies, and destined to be the only
member of the Senate to realize personally upon that body’s venomous
hostility to the Administration, stepped forth to organize and direct
the fight against the confirmation of nominees in whom the President was
deeply interested. John Tyler led the first onslaught on the
Administration.
It is important to pause to contemplate Tyler’s character and career,
because he typifies those Democrats who were so soon to enter into
coöperation with the Whigs in opposition, and because history has been
unjust in underestimating both his capacity and courage. We shall find
him pursuing Jackson throughout the greater part of his Presidency, and
paying the penalty to the people with a manliness which found little
emulation among men to whom history has been more gracious.
John Tyler was the scion of a family distinguished in law and in
politics. His father was a fine Revolutionary figure, and one of the
first lawyers in Virginia. He inherited his father’s ability,
predilections, and prejudices. Within three months after his admission
to the bar, he was employed in every important case in the county, and
when, at the age of twenty-seven, he abandoned his practice to enter
Congress, his income was $2000 a year, which was $1300 more than
Webster’s at the same age.[210] On reaching Washington, he was cordially
welcomed by the Madisons into the White House circle. He was fond of the
society of the President’s house, disliked the French cooking, but found
consolation in the excellent champagne of which he was very fond.[211]
He found Clay, with whom he was to be associated in the fights against
Jackson, in the Speaker’s chair, and fell under the spell of his
fascination. It was then, too, that he formed his intense admiration for
Calhoun.
His hostility to Jackson and Jacksonian methods was first manifested in
his support of the resolutions censuring the General for his course in
Florida. There is no doubt that at this time he had formed a deep-seated
prejudice against the military hero. “We are engaged with Jackson and
the President,” he wrote home at the time. “I do not hesitate to say
that the constitutional powers of the House of Representatives have been
violated in the capture and detention of Pensacola and the Barancas;
that Jackson overstepped his orders; and that the President has
improperly approved his proceedings, and that the whole are
culpable.”[212] But there was a more powerful and less personal reason
for his enmity to the Jackson Administration, which developed during
this period. He had already become a sectionalist. Like Calhoun in later
life, and Webster in 1820, he began to sense a struggle between the
sections over the balance of power. Thus early he commenced to question
the permanency of the Union. In the Missouri fight, in a strong speech
against the restriction of slavery, he alone, among all participating on
his side, advanced the proposition that the Congress possessed no
constitutional power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the
Territories.[213] We find him writing[214] that “men talk of the
dissolution of the Union with perfect nonchalance and indifference.”
When, in his thirty-first year, he voluntarily retired to private life
to retrieve his fortunes, he had made an impression so profound that it
was predicted that he would rise to high station.[215]
When in 1827 he became a candidate for the Senate against the brilliant
and vitriolic John Randolph of Roanoke, we find the elements working
that were to ripen him for the break with the Jackson Administration,
and for association with Clay’s party of incongruities and nondescripts.
After the inauguration of Adams, he had written Clay commending his
action in throwing his support to the Puritan, assuring him of his
contempt for the “bargain” story, and unnecessarily adding a fling at
Jackson: “I do not believe that the sober and reflecting people of
Virginia would have been so far dazzled by military renown as to have
conferred their suffrage upon a mere soldier--one acknowledged on every
hand to be of little value as a civilian.”[216] When Randolph so
viciously attacked Adams and Clay on the “bargain” story, Tyler became
his most uncompromising foe. In some manner his letter to Clay found its
way into the newspapers, resulting in much feeling, letter-writing,
charges and counter-charges and journalizing, and the supporters of
Tyler interpreted the use of the letter as an attempt to coerce him into
support of Jackson in 1828. If such was the purpose, it failed. He was
elected without having pledged himself, and at a complimentary dinner
after his election, he referred to Jackson in a sneering fashion.
And now we begin to understand the underlying causes that took Tyler and
other Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Whig ranks during
the Jackson period. On reaching Washington in December, 1827, we find
him writing to a correspondent: “My hopes are increased from the
following fact ... that in the nature of things, General Jackson must
surround himself by a Cabinet composed of men advocating, to a great
extent, the doctrines so dear to us. Pass them in review before
you--Clinton, Van Buren, Tazewell, Cheves, Macon, P. P. Barbour, men
who, in the main, concur with us in sentiment. Furthermore, General
Jackson will have to encounter a strong opposition. He will require an
active support at our hands. Should he abuse Virginia by setting at
nought her political sentiments, he will find her at the head of the
opposition, and he will probably experience the fate of J. Q. A.”[217]
The Cabinet, when announced, does not seem to have satisfied him,
albeit Van Buren, of whose views on slavery extension he appears to have
been misinformed, was a member. The presence of Berrien and Branch
ought, perhaps, to have reassured him, but they were a minority, and
they did not satisfy Calhoun, of whom they were devoted disciples.
Thus, from the very beginning of the Jackson régime, Tyler was
suspicious, and ripe for the Opposition. In the spoils system he found a
pretext for dissatisfaction, and he proceeded to develop this into a
rather petty persecution. It would be a mistake to underrate the effect
of his opposition. He was highly respected by his colleagues. His
dignity, courtliness, urbanity, and ease gave him a certain social
prestige. He was an interesting and likable companion, and his polished
conversation had impelled an English novelist[218] to describe it as
superior to that of any one he had met in America. His appearance was
not against him. Tall and slender, of patrician mould, his Roman nose,
firm mouth, broad and lofty brow, and honest blue eyes combined to give
him a distinction that marked him in an assembly. He was not a mere
professional politician of a type to be developed later in the Republic.
His letters to his daughter[219] concerning her studies, on poetry,
fiction, and history, denote a discriminating student and lover of
literature. It was this occasional detachment from the political world
which made it possible for him, during the famous debate on the Foot
Resolution, to entertain himself in the Senate Chamber in the reading of
Moore’s “Life of Byron.” We shall now observe him launch the White
Terror against the Red.
III
Among the nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to
the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220] Strangely
enough, this seems to have rather affronted the somewhat ponderous
dignity of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it
has made an ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even
Schouler[221] is distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the
list. Whether the fact that they were mere editors was enough to make
them “infamous characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the
strange antipathy to a class long conceded to be among the most
influential of any nation is probably to be found in the fact that until
this time the lawyers were conceded a monopoly in public station. There
was a reason for Jackson’s change of policy, and it grew out of the
organization of party and the democratization of government. Unlike his
predecessors, he had not depended for support, nor did he expect to look
exclusively for support to the professional politicians and the wealthy.
As a candidate his appeal had been--for the first time in American
history--to the people. As a President he proposed to look to the same
quarter. With the people actually established as the ultimate power in
the State, according to the theory of American institutions, he was not
unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people with his case. He was
the first President fully to appreciate the power of the press. He could
see no reason why men capable of presenting and popularizing a policy or
principle should be excluded from the privilege of helping put it in
operation.
In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of
the press, but he had found champions--men of capacity and talent, who
had fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The
assumption that all these men were bribed by the promise of place would
be a violent one indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent
to the Senate were men who had long been attached to the cause that
Jackson personified. Some had more recently allied themselves with the
cause, but in every instance there was a sound reason for the change of
front, and in these cases it does not appear that they had met the
President in the campaign or had any expectations.
And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts
or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of
their capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had
speedily uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor
who was not a “press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the
penitentiary. The Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to
the State worthy of reward. While there can be no doubt that the
partisan enemies of Jackson were delighted at the opportunity personally
to affront him, and while it is certain that Clay’s friends were anxious
to punish one, and Adams’s friends to humiliate another, the actual
conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the editors originated with
John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator Tazewell of Virginia--who
was still smarting under his defeat in the contest with Van Buren for
the secretaryship of State.
The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate
were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M. Noah,
Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.
Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been
appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E.
Lee and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with
Jackson at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest
campaign papers ever penned in this country.”[222] One who saw him there
at the time has recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his
half-brother, Robert E. Lee, but rather ugly in face--a mouth without a
line of the bow of Diana about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic,
but rather meaty, and, if we may use the word, ‘blood meaty’; but he
was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever listened
to.”[223] He had served in the Virginia House of Delegates with Tyler,
and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes Tyler, “I regarded him
as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and of a high order of
talent.”[224] But this did not operate in his favor. He had assisted in
the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have been
mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were
not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of
his rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards
protested that he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation,
and had expressed his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more
aggravated additions to the charge under which he labored.”
Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on
the ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In
addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever
Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and
his offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was
described as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American
institutions. The hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that
several Senators who had been shocked at this offense had regaled
drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs. Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s
being a proper “lady in waiting” for the President’s wife since “birds
of a feather flock together.”[225] The real reason for his rejection was
that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition by his telling
paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his rejection, two
Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the news, and
the old man made the comment in his diary that night that Hill “was the
editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous
newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me,
in the country.”
Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City,
appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to
have tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his
distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One
important and memorable service to the Nation should have made him
immune from the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as
consul to Tunis with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an
annual tribute to Algiers for the privilege of navigating the
Mediterranean, and Noah, the journalist, had denounced the practice and
declared that the money could be better spent in the building of
warships. He succeeded on his Algerian mission in ransoming American
prisoners who were being held in slavery, but such was the bigotry of
the time that, after his work was done, he was recalled on the flimsy
pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in Tunis. At the time
he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished by his public
service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had written his
“Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He deserves
his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But he
had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the
bigoted members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.
The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of
the nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the
time, served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury,
rooting out old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his
predecessor, but he had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for
Jackson, and that was quite enough. Adams himself was deeply interested
in his humiliation. In the midst of the campaign he had been consulted
by Clay touching upon “testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate
of Kentucky intended to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt
bargaining with me”; and, on Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes
the editor as “one of those authors to let, whose profligacy is the
child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall was a tie, and Calhoun
cast the deciding vote in his favor.
Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in
hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice
President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last
Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was
saved. Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through,
and that with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the
scale.”[226] Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the
friends of Calhoun were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors
that their humiliation had been brought about through the secret
influence of Van Buren. Even then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was
called, was considered the greatest obstacle in the way of the South
Carolinian’s progress toward the White House, and it was the evident
purpose to send the editors, miserable “press writers” though they were,
back to their papers to fight the aspirations of Van Buren. Before the
vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by Duff Green, of the
“National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that the Van Buren
influence was responsible for the fight against him. This aroused the
curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such
influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus,
when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian
could return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in
Washington in that event.
The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face.
It aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors
who had so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their
reward. It was the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly
accepted. It was clear that nothing could be done for Lee, where the
vote was unanimous, but Jackson decided to renominate Noah, and we find
Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The President this morning renominated Noah.
This is a prelude to Hill’s renomination. Your presence, I apprehend,
would be immaterial, as the result of any vote upon these subjects would
not be varied. Monday is fixed for the consideration of Noah’s
case.”[227] On the second attempt, Noah was confirmed, like Kendall,
with the casting vote of Calhoun.
But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose
sharp retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign.
Webb, the editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in
his paper the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a
printer and was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always
the friend of his country and its republican institutions, and when that
country, during the late war, was about to be sold by traitors to the
enemy; when the war was declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the
Hartford Convention meditated the formation of a separate treaty with
England, his voice was heard in the Granite State and in the mountains
of Vermont, animating the people and arousing them to a just sense of
their danger, and the blessings of freedom. He was a thorn in the side
of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of the Opposition, he
pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and successfully.” Writing
from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth entered his protest,
a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire Patriot’ did
more than any one man known to me to put down the ‘peace societies’
during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him
following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.
It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and
that the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the
managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that
the most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy
of New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill
and looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it
up to the legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and
true man, by the unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire
Democrats understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the
aisle of the Senate that had humiliated and rejected him to take the
oath as a Senator of the United States.
Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible
moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it
was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to
affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.
CHAPTER IV
JACKSON BREAKS WITH CALHOUN
I
The definite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most
dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar
quarrel in American history. It furnished Clay with new material for the
building of his party. It decisively committed the party of Jackson to
the defense of the Union. It eliminated Calhoun from the list of
presidential possibilities, dropped the curtain on the South Carolinian
that the Nation had known for two decades, and raised it on another with
whom the world is well acquainted. It divided his life into two distinct
parts. It made Martin Van Buren President.
The Calhoun who was to become one of Clay’s most vituperative and
intemperate lieutenants in the fight against the Administration differs
as radically from the ambitious politician who had intrigued for the
election of Jackson as the Webster of the Great Debate differed from the
Webster of the Rockingham Resolutions.
The greatest biographer of the Carolinian[228] fixes the time that he
became the personification of the slavery cause as 1830--the date of the
quarrel--and says that “up to that time he is, in spite of his
uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and
nobler order, having many peers and even a considerable number of
superiors.” Of the three great figures, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, he
was admittedly the strongest intellectually, and the one most
unmistakably touched with genius. Nature made him a statesman. Swept
into Congress on the wave of patriotic enthusiasm following the attack
on the Chesapeake, his audacity, independent thinking, militancy, and
genius combined to place him in the very lead of the party of Young
America that clamored for the War of 1812. He sounded the first clear
official war note in his report on that part of Madison’s Message
dealing with our relations with England; and after the delivery of his
first war speech one of the leading editors of the day hailed “this
young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon
the age in which they live.”[229] In his haughty assumption of equality
with the oldest and most experienced members of the Congress, he
suggests the younger Pitt. His war speeches were classics of
argumentation, sober, and yet pulsating with patriotic passion. If any
sectional thought crossed his mind then, it never touched his tongue. He
was a superb Nationalist--one of the most splendid figures of his time.
Summoned into Monroe’s Cabinet as Secretary of War, he disclosed a high
order of executive as well as legislative ability. Finding the
department in confusion, he brought order out of chaos, and established
system. A former officer of the great Napoleon was impressed with the
resemblance between Calhoun’s plan of army organization and that of the
Corsican.[230] Even his friends were agreeably astonished at his
aptitude for organzation and general executive duties. And this
furthered his presidential plans, and a strong party in the Congress
perfected plans to advance him to the White House on the expiration of
Monroe’s term.
It is not now fashionable to think of him as a designing and ambitious
politician, but one of his biographers has commented on his tendency to
stoop “to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which
is lurking in the corner of his heart, and on the other side to break
off all social intercourse with old and highly respected associates,
merely because others whose services he wished to secure might not like
these connections.”[231] And yet, despite his efforts, his candidacy
appears to have made no impression upon the country. Among the
publicists he was strong; but the people were not impressed. He was the
original “young man’s candidate,” but this weakened him among the older
and more important leaders. “His age, or rather his youth,” wrote
one,[232] “at the present moment is a formidable objection to his
elevation to the chair.” Nevertheless, placing his reliance on the
younger element, he pushed on. Even in Massachusetts he was charged with
having “newspapers set up” to support him.[233] Certain it is that
Webster favored his election as long as it seemed possible of
achievement, and when failure there seemed certain, the greatest of his
future rivals earnestly urged his election to the Vice-Presidency.[234]
To the latter position he was elected through a combination of the
friends of Adams and Jackson.
And now we find the presidential fever consuming him. He becomes the
practical, scheming, not overly scrupulous politician--a rôle he is not
popularly supposed to have ever filled. From the very beginning he set
to work to undermine the Administration of his chief. His apologists
explain that when the “bargain” story was advanced, he was forced to
choose between the two factions that had combined to elect him, and
preferred to go with the Jackson forces.[235] Whatever his motive, he
entered into no half-hearted opposition. This notable activity against
Adams and in favor of Jackson has been ascribed to a presumptive
premonition that the latter was certain to reach the Presidency, and, in
view of Jackson’s assurance that he would be satisfied with one term,
Calhoun calculated that the defeat of Adams would shorten his period of
waiting by four years.[236] So ardently was he panting for the
Presidency at this time that he summoned his friends to assist in the
establishment of a paper, impatiently brushed aside the objections as to
cost, and calling Duff Green to the editorship of the “National
Telegraph,” created the most powerful party organ that had existed in
this country up to that time.[237] Less than a year after Adams’s
inauguration, Calhoun was actively organizing for his defeat. We find
him inviting a Philadelphian to his chamber in the Capitol to urge him
to coöperate with the Opposition party on the ground that “because of
the manner in which it came into power it must be defeated at all
hazards, regardless of its measures.”[238] This insistence on the defeat
of the Administration, “regardless of its measures,” was the reasoning
of an ambitious politician, none too scrupulous, in a pinch, in his
methods. The rest is known--how Calhoun threw his influence to Jackson
in 1828, and was reflected to the Vice-Presidency with the hero of the
Hermitage. Close students of the period are now convinced that
preliminary to this alliance an agreement had been made that Calhoun was
to succeed to the Presidency after four years.
At this time he was in the full maturity of his wonderful power, and the
future must have seemed secure. Quincy, who saw him about this time,
found him “a striking looking man, with thick black hair brushed back
defiantly,” and he comments on Calhoun’s policy of cultivating and
fascinating all young men visiting the National capital.[239] The world
is too familiar with the tragic features of the great Carolinian to
require a description. The rugged carving, the low broad brow, the spare
frame almost amounting to attenuation, the penetrating gaze of the
“glorious pair of yellow-brown shining eyes,” the bushy brows and the
sunken sockets--Calhoun looked unlike any other man in history.[240] He
was a commanding figure at the time of the quarrel which was to change
the entire course of his life, and to alter his political character.
II
We have seen that Calhoun was annoyed with Jackson over matters of
patronage, but the development of the quarrel to the breaking point is
to be traced in the story of a debate and two dinners.
While it has not been customary to attach any party significance to the
Webster-Hayne debate, it was conducted along party lines and was a party
battle. To such a seasoned observer of parliamentary fights as Thomas H.
Benton, it was little more than a party skirmish.[241] Even Webster, at
the time, evidently looked upon Hayne’s assault upon him as political in
its character. Some time before he had sent Senator White of Florida to
Calhoun to warn him that by permitting his friends to attack New
England, he was playing into the hands of Van Buren, who would capture
New England States that would otherwise go to the South Carolinian. And
Calhoun, no less alive to the political significance of the promised
fight, had, according to White’s story to Adams, been impressed. “He
said Calhoun seemed to be considerably at a loss what to do,” wrote
Adams at the time; “that he did not know what things were coming to;
that he had no feeling of unfriendliness to me, and would by now have
visited me but for fear of being misrepresented; that if I had consulted
him four years ago, and not have appointed Clay Secretary of State, I
should now have been President of the United States.”[242] This
purported warning of Webster to Calhoun is given color by the former’s
action during his great speech, in turning his fine black eyes upon the
latter, in the chair, while quoting:
“A barren sceptre in their gripe
Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,
No son of their’s succeeding”
--a prophecy said to have caused Calhoun to “change expression and show
some agitation.”[243]
Whether the attack on Webster and New England was conceived for the
purpose of serving a party or sectional end, the records show that the
Administration leaders who participated in the debate, Grundy, White,
and Livingston, followed the Webster-Hayne exchange with elaborate
indictments of New England Federalism, and John Forsyth, the real floor
leader of the Administration, while contributing little to the
discussion, was notably busy upon the floor. That the party phase was
uppermost in the minds of the politicians and the press immediately
following the verbal duel of the giants may be deduced from the nature
of the press comments. One paper, having a correspondent at the capital,
summed up the result: “The opposition party generally contend that Mr.
Webster overthrew Mr. Hayne; while, on the other hand, the result is
triumphantly hailed by the friends of the Administration as a decisive
victory over the eastern giant.”[244] And in keeping with the theory
that the mass attack on New England Federalism was to capture that
section for the Administration,[245] we find the speech of Hayne being
extensively circulated over the New England States. There can be no
doubt that Webster literally dragged in the really great issue of the
Union, that Hayne was forced to accept that diversion, and by so doing
gave to the debate its immortal character. Jackson was delighted with
Hayne’s first speech, and interested in the second, but on a more
mature consideration Webster’s glowing defense of the Union went home to
the old patriot at the White House. It is because of the effect of the
debate upon Jackson’s Administration, and not merely because it occurred
during his Presidency, that we cannot dismiss it as remote from the
party politics of the time.
It should be borne in mind that the Daniel Webster who emerged from the
debate was not the same public character who had entered it. By that
epochal utterance he obliterated the one vulnerable point in his
career--for the Daniel Webster of 1829 was vulnerable. He entered
politics in New Hampshire as a Federalist--“liberal Federalist,” to use
the phrase of his biographer.[246] Notwithstanding this “liberality,” he
was to become considerably smirched by party loyalty during the war with
England. This war was the occasion for his first public utterance, when,
on July 4, 1812, he bitterly denounced the war with true Federalistic
fervor at Portsmouth. This speech, printed and circulated for propaganda
purposes against the war, ran into two editions, and led to his
selection as a delegate to the notorious Rockingham County mass meeting.
Here it fell to him to prepare the address known to history as the
“Rockingham Memorial” to which the advocates of the sinister doctrine of
Nullification pointed approvingly up to the Civil War. The notoriety of
this document resulted in his election to Congress, where his record was
everything it should not have been.
His first move was to heckle the President by calling upon him for
information as to the time and manner of the repeal of the French
decrees--which was in line with his previous denunciation of France. The
enemies of the War of 1812 were bitter against the French, just as the
enemies of the World War, over a century later, were bitter against the
English. And while his country was at war with a powerful foe, he voted
against taxes necessary for the waging of it; fought the compulsory
draft of men for the miserable little army on the ground that the States
alone had the right to resort to conscription; and even threatened the
dissolution of the Union with the suggestion that “it would be the
solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their authority over
their own State militia, and to interpose between their citizens and
arbitrary power.” He stubbornly resisted the attempt to extend martial
law to all citizens suspected of treason; actually declaimed against the
bill to encourage enlistments; opposed the war policy of the war
Administration and urged a defensive warfare. And, of course, he
intemperately denounced the embargo.
This course made him by long odds the most conspicuous Federalist in the
House, and while he opposed the Hartford Convention, he does not appear
to have looked upon it as seditious or treasonable, and as late as 1820,
in his Boston speech, utterly ignored by his biographers, he practically
proclaimed the right of secession. In brief, throughout the second war
against England he was found just on the safe side of the line of
sedition. His position at the time was notorious, and Isaac Hill, in the
“New Hampshire Patriot,” was openly accusing him of trying to dissolve
the Union and to array the North against the South.
Thus, the Webster that Hayne assailed had skeletons in his closet. His
reputation as an orator was greater than that of any living American.
Behind him was his Plymouth Oration which had rivaled Washington Irving
as a best seller;[247] his Dartmouth College plea, which had moved John
Marshall to tears; his Bunker Hill Address, which had been read with
avidity in England and translated into French; and his plea for Greek
independence, which had been read all over the world. Such was the
Daniel Webster who was challenged by Hayne--or the Democrats--or the
Administration.
Robert Y. Hayne was a knight of Southern chivalry, who in youth, like
the ancient Greeks and Romans, had studied oratory as an art, from his
first boyhood triumph moving with dash and audacity to his destiny, and
at thirty-two entered the Senate of the United States.[248] His
reputation as an orator previous to the great debate promised that the
contest would not be one-sided. His character as man and publicist
commanded universal respect and even the affection of political friend
and foe alike.[249] And he entered the contest with one distinct
advantage over his adversary: there were skeletons in Webster’s closet;
there were none in Hayne’s.
III
There is no doubt but that on the day Hayne opened his attack, he was in
fine fettle. Never had the Senate Chamber presented a more inspiring
scene. Before him, with folded arms, sat the most coveted prey in the
covey of the Opposition. From the Vice-President’s chair, Calhoun, the
god of his idolatry, encouraged him with the compliment of a happy
expression. About him were grouped the prominent “Jackson Senators”
ready to encourage him with their approving smiles.[250] There was a
gallant and confident air in the orator as he “dashed into the debate
like a Mameluke cavalry upon a charge.”[251] In a moment he was in the
full swing of his eloquence, and, as he poured forth his sarcasm, and
marshaled his facts against the Federalism of New England, and threw
wide the door revealing the Webster skeletons in the closet, the
realization was borne to all that they were listening to one of the most
effective speeches ever heard in the Senate. The Democrats were
jubilant--the enemy concerned--Webster was a mask, as unresponsive as
the sphinx. The blows at Federalism--at New England--at Webster, fell
like the hammer on an anvil. The speaker’s deadly parallel on Webster
and his tariff record was a superb piece of clever oratory. His analysis
of New England Federalism in the War of 1812 was a stinging
indictment--it was a conviction and a sentence.
The Democrats and Jackson Senators were naturally delighted. This was a
political speech that Hayne was making, and he was crucifying Federalism
and parading the closet skeletons of its greatest living champion, and
shaming the section that refused to be converted to the new faith. And
when the orator fell into the trap cleverly prepared for him by Webster,
and, ostentatiously encouraged by Calhoun with numerous notes of
suggestions sent by the pages from the chair, entered upon his
exposition of the theory of Nullification, it is improbable that the
delighted Jackson Senators caught the full significance of the
departure. Duff Green, in the “National Telegraph,” the Calhoun organ,
then supporting the Administration, was in a frenzy of delight. Andrew
Jackson, who had kept in close touch with the debate, sending Major
Lewis daily to the Senate Chamber, and was immensely pleased with the
political or party features of the speech, wrote the orator a cordial
letter of congratulation.
The depression of the Federalists, the New Englanders, and the
Opposition generally, was correspondingly great. A professional
observer,[252] writing of the event in later years, tells us that “the
immediate impression from the speech was most assuredly disheartening to
the cause Mr. Webster upheld.” And Henry Cabot Lodge accepts the
statement that “men of the North and of New England could be known in
Washington in those days by their indignant and dejected looks and
downcast eyes.”[253]
The day Webster began his reply was the coldest of the winter, a biting
wind filling the streets with clouds of dust, and Margaret Bayard Smith,
sitting before a blazing fire, and free from the interruption of callers
because “almost every one is thronging to the Capitol to hear Mr.
Webster reply to Colonel Hayne’s attack on him and his party,” wrote
regretfully of the growing tendency of women to monopolize the seats
both in the gallery and upon the floor.[254] The reader is too familiar
with that splendid oration to justify, for our purposes, any analysis or
extended reference to the substance. His replies to Hayne’s attacks on
the war policy of the Federalists, and upon his own inconsistencies,
while clever, were not, in truth, convincing answers, and it was upon
these points that the Jackson Senators were centering their attention.
Thus it is not remarkable that the full import of his speech was
momentarily lost upon the heated partisans. Even Benton, refusing to
believe that the Union was in danger, or in any way involved in the
debate, did not care for Webster’s peroration, finding the sentiment
nobly and oratorically expressed, “but too elaborately and too
artistically composed for real grief in the presence of a great
calamity--of which calamity I saw no sign.”[255] To Benton, the debate
was a party combat and nothing more. Nor is there anything in the notes
recorded by Adams to indicate that he was impressed with the Webster
speech except as a defense of Federalism.[256] The party issue had, for
the moment, obscured all else. If in Charleston, the home of Hayne,
Webster became the idol of the old Federalists, and of the Democratic
mechanics, Hayne won the affectionate admiration of the merchants of
Boston, who had his speech printed on satin for presentation to
him.[257] The Democratic members of the Legislature of Maine, thinking
only of the denunciation of Federalism, ordered two thousand copies
published and distributed as “a fearless unanswerable defense of the
Democracy of New England”--showing that the Nullification feature was
overlooked in the party contest involved. Some contemporaries thought
the battle a draw.
And Jackson? Parton tells us that Major Lewis, who had been stationed in
the Senate during the debate, on returning from the Capitol after
hearing Webster, found Jackson up and eager for news. On being told that
the New England orator had made a powerful speech and demolished “our
friend Hayne,” the old man replied that he “expected it.”[258] A few
days later the full import of Hayne’s speech must have dawned upon
Jackson and his political intimates, and there is significance in the
powerful speech delivered a little later in the debate by Edward
Livingston, Senator from Louisiana, intimate friend of the President,
who was destined to enter the Cabinet and to frame Jackson’s immortal
challenge to Nullification. After the speeches of Webster and Hayne,
that of Livingston stands out as the greatest made during the prolonged
discussion. He attempted again to center the fire on Federalism, and in
so doing brilliantly defended the Union against Nullification, and
vigorously defended the Jacksonian policies against the attacks to which
they had been subjected during the remarkable debate. If the personal
views of Jackson and the Administration are to be sought in any of the
senatorial speeches, they will be found, not in the speech of Hayne, but
in that of Livingston, which, for that reason, is entitled to more
consideration from historians than it has received. We shall now see
that within two months Jackson was to find a way to say the last word in
the Great Debate of 1830.
IV
For some reason the Nullifiers miscalculated the stern old patriot of
the While House. Perhaps it was his opposition to the tariff; possibly
his South Carolina nativity--whatever the cause, the extreme State
Rights party claimed him as its own. It is scarcely probable that,
previous to the Webster-Hayne debate, Jackson had ever given any serious
consideration to the danger of disunion, and most probable that the
views advanced by Hayne in the Nullification part of his speech first
impressed him with the fact that a sinister doctrine, brilliantly
advanced and powerfully supported, was preparing to challenge the
authority of the Nation. But he had kept his own counsels. He may have
discussed the danger with Livingston or Van Buren, but no public
announcement of his position had escaped him up to the time of the
Jefferson dinner in the April following the Great Debate. This dinner,
if is now reasonable to conclude, had been arranged with a definite
object in view--to create the impression that, in a contest, the
President would be friendly to the doctrine of Calhoun and Hayne. The
significance of the selection of Jefferson’s birthday as the occasion
was not lost upon the President or his Secretary of State. It was the
first formal observance of the great Virginian’s natal day, and among
the leaders in the preparations were some “with whom the Virginia
principles of ’98 had, until quite recently, been in very bad
odor.”[259] It was clear to the Red Fox that the intent was “to use the
Virginia model as a mask or stalking horse, rather than as an armor of
defense.” The plan, as it developed, was to undertake, through various
toasts and their responses, to associate this doctrine with Jeffersonian
Democracy. Of the twenty-four toasts, practically every one bore upon
this subject. The President, Vice-President Calhoun, the Cabinet were to
be guests.
It was a subscription dinner, and outside the conspirators in charge the
purchasers of tickets had no other thought than that it was intended
solely as a tribute to the memory of the sage of Monticello.
Talking it over with Van Buren, Jackson soon convinced himself as to the
motive of the conspirators. By prearrangement, Van Buren met Jackson at
the White House, in the presence only of Major Donelson, the President’s
secretary, to determine upon the attitude to be taken and the toasts to
be proposed. While the Nullifiers were jubilating over the promised
participation of the President, he was locked in with his Secretary of
State deliberating on the wisdom of showing by his toast his familiarity
with the purpose of the conspirators, and his determination to preserve
the Union at all hazards. The conferees decided upon that aggressive
course, and the toasts were framed accordingly.
“Thus armed,” wrote Van Buren years later, “we repaired to the dinner
with feelings on the part of the Chief akin to those which would have
animated his breast if the scene of this preliminary skirmish in defense
of the Union had been the field of battle instead of the festive
board.”[260] When Benton arrived that night, he found a full assemblage,
with the guests scattered about in groups excitedly examining the list
of toasts, and discussing their significance. The congressional
delegation from Pennsylvania, on scenting the conspiracy, left the hall
before the dinner began. Many others, not caring to associate themselves
with such a movement, retired, thus depriving themselves of a triumph.
But many remained, among them four members of the Cabinet, Van Buren,
Eaton, Branch, and Barry. During the toasts, which were so numerous and
lengthy that they required eleven columns in the “National Telegraph,”
Jackson sat stern and impassive, betraying nothing of his intention. At
length, the regular toasts given, the volunteer toasts were called for,
and Jackson rose. As he did so, Van Buren, who was short in stature,
stood on his chair to observe the effect better.[261] Straightening
himself to his full height, and fixing Calhoun with his penetrating eye,
he paused a moment, and then, following the hush, proposed the most
dramatic and historical toast in American history:
“Our Federal Union: It must and shall be preserved.”[262]
There was no possible misunderstanding of the meaning. From the time of
the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been
discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was
afloat in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to
place himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State
Rights men. The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner
conspiracy. And Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife.
It was something more than a toast--it was a presidential proclamation.
Without a word more, Jackson lifted his glass as a sign that the toast
was to be drunk standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. “His glass
trembled in his hand and a little of the amber fluid trickled down the
side.”[263] There was no response. Jackson stood there, silent and
impassive--clearly the master of the situation. All hilarity had gone.
Jackson left his place, and, going to the far end of the room, engaged
Benton in conversation, but not upon the subject of the dinner.
When all were seated, Calhoun, who had remained standing, slowly and
hesitatingly proposed:
“The Union: next to our liberty, the most dear.”
Then, after a pause of half a minute, he proceeded in such a fashion as
to leave doubt as to whether the concluding sentence was a part of the
toast, or a brief speech:
“May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the
rights of the States, and by distributing equally the benefits and
burdens of the Union.”
Within five minutes after Calhoun had resumed his seat, the company of
more than a hundred had dwindled to thirty--men fled from the room as
from the scene of a battle.
The story of that Jacksonian toast spread over the country, justifying,
as Benton admits he then realized, the peroration of Webster’s speech,
and proclaiming to the people the existence of a conspiracy against the
Union, and the determination of Jackson to preserve it at all cost. That
toast made history. It marked the definite beginning of the
history-making quarrel of Jackson and Calhoun, and the beginning of the
exodus from the Democratic or Jacksonian party of the Nullifiers and
Disunionists, who were to be warmly welcomed by Clay into the party he
was about to create to wage war on the Jackson Administration.
V
Another dinner was to complete the break of Calhoun and Jackson.
In the spring of 1830, President Jackson gave a dinner at the White
House in honor of former President Monroe. During the evening, while the
President and his predecessor were engaged in animated conversation
concerning the days when the latter was in the White House and the
former in the field in Florida, Tench Ringgold, marshal of the District,
turned to Major Lewis with the observation that Calhoun had been an
enemy of the President in relation to his Florida campaign. It was not,
however, a revelation to Lewis at the time.
During Jackson’s first successful fight for the Presidency, the
anniversary of the battle of New Orleans was celebrated, with Jackson as
the guest of honor. James A. Hamilton had participated in the
celebration as the representative of the Tammany Society of New York;
and, joining the Jackson party at the Hermitage, had accompanied it to
New Orleans. During the conversation _en route_, there was some
discussion of the charges that had been made against Jackson in the
presidential contest of four years before relative to his conduct in the
Seminole War, and the assertion had been made that Crawford, a member of
Monroe’s Cabinet, had urged his arrest. It was expected that a similar
attack would be made in the campaign then beginning. Learning that
Hamilton expected to return by way of Georgia, Major Lewis requested him
to visit Crawford, then living in retirement there, and ascertain just
what had occurred in the Cabinet meeting. The motive of Lewis was to arm
himself, if possible, to repel the attack, and to effect a
reconciliation between Jackson and the Georgian. Finding on his arrival
in Georgia that to reach the home of Crawford he would be forced to go
seventy miles out of his way, Hamilton requested John Forsyth to
ascertain from Crawford “whether the propriety or necessity for
arresting or trying General Jackson was ever presented as a question for
the deliberation of Mr. Monroe’s Cabinet.”[264] Passing through
Washington on his way home, Hamilton spent two days in the same house
with Calhoun, and frankly made inquiry of him also. The latter answered
with an emphatic negative. The impression Hamilton received from the
conversation was that Calhoun had been favorable to Jackson and Crawford
hostile. On reaching New York he wrote Major Lewis of his inability to
see Crawford and of his conversation with Calhoun. The reply of the
Major shows conclusively that, up to this time, there was not the
slightest suspicion that Calhoun had been unfriendly to Jackson, and the
sole impression made upon Lewis by Hamilton’s letter was that, since the
subject of arresting or reprimanding Jackson had not been broached in
the Cabinet, a grave injustice had been done the Georgian which ought to
be righted. Soon afterwards, Hamilton heard from Forsyth to the effect
that Crawford informed him that in a meeting of the Cabinet Calhoun had
urged the propriety of arresting and trying Jackson.[265] Very soon
after the receipt of Forsyth’s amazing letter, Hamilton received a note
from Calhoun, suggesting the impropriety of disclosures as to Cabinet
proceedings and asking that no use be made of his name. Realizing now
the serious possibilities of a complete airing of the old controversy,
Hamilton filed Forsyth’s letter away and mentioned it to no one. For
eighteen months this letter was undisturbed. Then, in the autumn of
1829, when Major Lewis was his guest in his New York home, some evil
spirit impelled Hamilton to show the letter to Jackson’s intimate who
dwelt with him in the White House. Lewis made no disclosure until after
the Monroe dinner. In the meanwhile, as we have seen, the relations
between Jackson and Calhoun had become strained, and the Major convinced
himself that, since the fight was inevitable, his idol should be
furnished with all available ammunition. In telling him of Ringgold’s
statement at the dinner, Lewis added that it was supported by the
revelations of the Forsyth letter, and Jackson demanded the fatal note.
On learning of Jackson’s demand, Forsyth took the precaution first to
send a copy of his letter to Hamilton to Crawford for verification in
writing, or for such corrections as the facts might necessitate. The
reply, with a minor correction, together with the Forsyth letter to
Hamilton, were thereupon turned over to Jackson.
The effect on the President was to infuriate him. Setting his jaws, he
wrote a sharp note to Calhoun demanding an explanation. This was the
beginning of one of the most acrimonious controversies in American
politics.
VI
With Crawford as the witness against Calhoun, it is essential to turn
for a moment to the career of this remarkable and singularly unfortunate
statesman. No student of the period, not poisoned by the prejudices and
jealousies of Adams, who filled the pages of his diary with grotesque
caricatures of his rivals, can escape the conclusion that William H.
Crawford was one of the purest and ablest statesmen of his day. At the
time he entered the Senate, in his thirty-fifth year, he was a splendid
figure--handsome, virile, magnetic, independent in thought, and
audacious in action. He was the great war leader in the Senate, as was
Calhoun in the House. He had made the most profound impression on the
business men of the Nation of any publicist since Hamilton by his fight
for strict governmental economy, for the scrutinizing of all
expenditures, and by his championship of the National Bank in a
brilliant and exhaustive speech in reply to Clay. After two years as
Minister to France, Madison called him into his Cabinet to unravel the
hopeless tangle in the War Department. He served as adviser to Madison
during the remainder of his Administration, continued as the official
adviser of Monroe through the eight years of his Presidency, and was
urged by Adams to continue in a similar capacity under him. He was soon
transferred from the War Department to the Treasury, where he served for
nine years to the complete satisfaction of the business men of the
Republic.
Even as early as the close of the Madison Administration, a powerful
element, opposed to the precedent which pointed to Monroe for the
succession, centered on Crawford. Numerous newspapers strongly urged his
election, offers of support poured in upon him, and had he at that time
entered actively into the plans of his friends, there is every reason to
believe he would have been chosen. When the Congress convened, the
majority favored his candidacy. The caucus was postponed. The
Administration put forth its utmost, exertions for Monroe. Crawford
remained inactive. And when he definitely put his claims aside, a number
of his friends refused to participate in the caucus, in which,
notwithstanding his own lack of interest and the prestige of the
Administration, Monroe was barely nominated by a vote of 65 to 54 for
Crawford.
The Cabinet of Monroe was so constituted as to make it a house divided
three ways against itself. Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford were all
members, all were presidential candidates, and none had a clearer right
to aspire to the succession than the one who had lacked only twelve
votes of the nomination in 1816. The three-cornered fight began in
earnest as early as 1821. With Adams, Crawford’s relations were far from
friendly, as we may judge from the numerous vindictive comments in the
former’s diary. Between Crawford and Jackson no love was lost, and we
find the Georgian writing to a correspondent of Jackson’s “depravity and
vindictiveness.”[266] But Calhoun was to prove the most unscrupulous and
hostile of his foes.
It was not unknown to Crawford that Calhoun had earnestly sought the
alienation of his supporters at the time of Monroe’s election. And, as
the election of 1824 approached, Calhoun’s personal organ at the capital
became intemperate in its attacks upon him. But the climax, involving
Calhoun, was reached in the spring of 1824, when the “A. B.” papers
appeared in Calhoun journals, followed by a formal charge in the House
of Representatives, filed by Ninian Edwards of Illinois, alleging
irregularities and misconduct in office against the Secretary of the
Treasury. Here we have the issue direct between Calhoun, seldom accused
of being an unscrupulous intriguer, and Crawford, against whom history
has lodged the charge. The connection between Calhoun and the attack
appears clear enough. Edwards was Calhoun’s friend. The paper that
published the “A. B.” papers was Calhoun’s paper and was edited by a
clerk in Calhoun’s office.
Immediately after making the charges, Edwards was appointed Minister to
Mexico--on the recommendation of Adams, Secretary of State. During the
two weeks previous to Edwards’s departure for his post, Calhoun made
almost daily visits to his room in a lodging-house, spending from one to
two hours with him on each occasion.[267] Nor does Adams, judger of men
and motives, appear entirely free from complicity in view of his efforts
to dissuade Monroe from summoning Edwards back to Washington to testify
in the investigation ordered by the House on the demand of Crawford. The
investigation disclosed that Edwards was a liar, and the committee,
including Webster, Livingston, and Randolph, unanimously reported that
“nothing has been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary of
the Treasury or to bring into doubt the general correctness and ability
of his administration of the public finances.”
There is ample justification for the conclusion that Calhoun was
directly implicated in an unscrupulous attempt to blacken the reputation
of a rival, and that Adams shared with him in the earnest desire that
the investigation should be postponed until after the presidential
election.
In the early stages of the contest everything indicated Crawford’s
triumph. Then Tragedy intervened. As a result of the administering of
lobelia by an unskilled physician, Crawford suffered a stroke. For a
time he lost both sight and the power of speech. His nervous system was
shattered. He lost the use of his lower limbs. But such is the pull of
an overshadowing ambition that even in this plight he refused to
withdraw from the race. The Opposition press was not above exaggerating
his condition. And at such a time the caucus was held. The galleries
were packed, but the attendance on the floor was slight. Out of the 261
members, only 68 were present, the friends of Calhoun, Adams, Clay, and
Jackson having reached an agreement not to enter the caucus. Thus the
contest was thrown into the House, where Clay went over to Adams and
elected him.
There are few more poignant pictures associated with the failure of
lofty political ambitions than that in the country home of the Georgian
where he sat with his family about the blazing fire, awaiting the news
from the Capitol.[268] His reputation had been dishonestly assailed, his
health was broken, his fortune was gone, and, after having almost
touched the Presidency, he calmly awaited the final word of failure. The
daughters, who adored him, in their efforts to soften the expected blow,
told him of their joyous dreams of a return to “Woodlawn,” the Georgia
country home, where all could be much happier. When the expected
messenger arrived and announced the election of Adams, the defeated
statesman, without a change of tone or countenance, merely remarked that
he thought it would be Jackson. The next day a letter from the new
President urged him to continue in the Cabinet, Jackson called, “frank,
courteous, and almost cordial,” and a little later Thomas Jefferson
wrote his frank regrets.[269] And thus, having declined the Adams
invitation, after a remarkable career in the service of his country,
William H. Crawford, poorer than the day he entered public life, and
physically a wreck, returned to “Woodlawn” in its magnificent oak
forest, with its charming, winding driveways, with its peach and apple
blossoms, and its gardens and its shrubbery. And here under an ancient
oak he was to sit for many evenings with his children and his friends.
That he sometimes thought over the lost hope, we may be sure; that he
often associated it with Calhoun, there can be no doubt.
VII
The first act of Jackson’s, on being told of Calhoun’s hostility in the
Monroe Cabinet, was to call for a copy of Crawford’s letter to Forsyth,
and to enclose it in a letter to the Vice-President, expressing his
surprise and asking for his version. The next development in the
controversy came in the form of a long letter from Calhoun, practically
admitting the charge, and elaborately condemning and damning Crawford
for the betrayal of a Cabinet secret. This reply was delivered to
Jackson on a Sunday on his way to church, and he wrote a brief and
significant answer on his return to the White House on the same day. The
closing words sealed the doom of Calhoun as far as the Presidency was
concerned. “In your and Mr. Crawford’s dispute I have no interest
whatever,” he wrote. “But it may become necessary for me hereafter, when
I shall have more leisure and the documents at hand, to notice the
historical facts and references in your communication--which will give a
very different view to the subject. Understanding you now, no further
communication with you on this subject is necessary.”
About this time he sent Calhoun’s letter to Van Buren, who refused to
read it, explaining that he would be accused of fomenting the trouble
and preferred to know nothing about it. When the messenger returned to
Jackson with the comment of his Secretary of State, he replied, “I
reckon Van is right. I dare say they will try to throw the blame on
him.”[270] And of course Van Buren was right. After many conferences on
the subject with Calhoun, Adams recorded in his diary that “Calhoun is
under the firm persuasion that the author of this combustion is Martin
Van Buren, who has used the agency of James A. Hamilton in producing it,
and that Hamilton, as well as Forsyth, had been a go-between to and from
Nashville.”[271] The denial of Van Buren at the time was discounted by
the anxiety of Hamilton, after talking with Forsyth in Georgia, to have
Crawford’s statement in writing. Nothing, however, could have been more
effective in eliminating Calhoun from the presidential race.
That he appreciated his predicament and fought desperately to extricate
himself is shown in various ways. Wirt declared, at the time, that “he
has blasted his prospects of future advancement,” and Adams described
him as a “drowning man.” But the most conclusive evidence of Calhoun’s
desperate efforts is to be found in the numerous notations in Adams’s
journal. The first entry is to the effect that he had “received a letter
from John C. Calhoun ... relating to his personal controversy with
President Jackson and William H. Crawford. He questions me concerning
the letter of Gen. Jackson to Mr. Monroe which Crawford alleges to have
been produced at the Cabinet meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for
copies, if I think proper to give them, of Crawford’s letter to me,
which I received last summer, and of my answer.” It is characteristic
that the only comment of Adams is an impartial damnation of the trio,
Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, and especially of the Carolinian for his
“icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with
me, solely from terror of Jackson.” But the day following, we find Adams
delving into his diary of 1818. “I thought it advisable,” he writes, “to
have extracts from it made of all those parts relating to the Seminole
War and the Cabinet meetings concerning it. As the copy must be made by
an entirely confidential hand, my wife undertakes the task.”[272] A
little later[273] we find a Mr. Crowninshield applying to him on behalf
of Mr. Crawford for a written verification of the Cabinet incident. And
four days after that we have Calhoun writing again “requesting
statements of the conduct of Mr. Crawford in the deliberations of the
Cabinet upon the Seminole War.”[274] The same day Wirt[275] informs
Adams that he has received a similar note from the Georgian, and asks
for a conference.
That night Adams went to Wirt’s lodgings on Capitol Hill and found him
in bed and asleep. He was awakened, however, by a fellow lodger, and a
four-hour conference followed, with Adams reading the former
Attorney-General the letter from Crawford and the answer sent, and also
from the Adams diary of May to August, 1818.
It seems that Adams was not prompt in complying with Calhoun’s request,
and a third letter reached him pressing him for a statement of
Crawford’s conduct and opinions expressed at the Cabinet consultation on
the Seminole War, causing the former President to comment sourly in his
diary that he would give no letter until he had seen all the
correspondence, and knew precisely the points in dispute.[276] There
appears to have been little disposition on the part of Calhoun to meet
this requirement, for Adams notes that he had received from Calhoun “an
extract” from Crawford’s letter to Forsyth, but not all the
correspondence.[277] On the next day, the Carolinian, who was evidently
devoting himself feverishly and exclusively to the hopeless attempt to
save himself, sent “a further extract from the Crawford letter.”[278]
The unpleasant old Puritan, thoroughly enjoying the torture of the
fighting politicians, calmly awaited all the correspondence, and thus a
week later we learn from the diary that “Mr. Martin took me aside and
delivered to me a letter from Vice-President Calhoun with a bundle of
papers, being the correspondence ...,” and that the messenger “said that
Mr. Calhoun wished to have the papers returned to him to-morrow
morning.”[279]
On the following day Wirt, having moved to Gadsby’s, was there informed
by Adams that he had received the correspondence, but “that Mr. Calhoun
had withheld two important papers; one, the letter from General Jackson
to Mr. Monroe of Jan. 6, 1818, and the other, Crawford’s last letter to
Calhoun, which, he sent me word, he had returned to Crawford.”[280] A
few days later a Dr. Hunt called upon Adams, “more full of politics and
personalities than of physic,” with the announcement that “Mr. Calhoun’s
pamphlet is to be published to-morrow morning.”[281]
To Adams the issue was clear--a battle between Calhoun and Van Buren for
the Presidency. The next day this pamphlet, bearing the elaborate title,
“Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun,
President and Vice-President of the United States, on the Subject of the
Course of the latter in the deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe
on the Occurrences in the Seminole War,” was published at midnight by
Duff Green in the “National Telegraph.” “In my walk about the Capitol
Square,” writes Adams, “I met E. Everett, R. G. Amory, E. Wyer, and
Matthew L. Davis, all of whom, with the exception of Wyer, spoke of the
pamphlet. I received a copy of it under cover from Mr. Calhoun
himself.”[282]
Then the war opened in earnest. The “Telegraph” favorably commented upon
the pamphlet, and the “Globe” unfavorably. Adams found that “the effect
of Mr. Calhoun’s pamphlet is yet scarcely perceptible in Congress, still
less upon public opinion,” and that, while the Administration was at war
with itself, “the stream of popularity runs almost as strongly in its
favor as ever.”[283] Not content with the pamphlet alone, the “National
Telegraph” followed it with Crawford’s letter to Calhoun, and another of
Forsyth’s, and Adams observed with interest that “in all this
correspondence Van Buren is not seen; but James A. Hamilton, intimately
connected with him, is a busy intermeddler throughout.”[284] This
notation was in line with the gossip of the capital at the time of the
controversy.
A little more than a week after the appearance of the pamphlet, Calhoun
published his correspondence with Hamilton in the “Telegraph,” and Duff
Green, in the same issue, editorially charged Van Buren with
responsibility for the rumpus. And this was met on the following day by
the latter in a letter to the paper positively denying any interest in
the controversy, or any knowledge of Hamilton’s correspondence with
Forsyth or Calhoun. Green responded by writing Van Buren down as a
liar.[285] Thus the controversy raged, drawing politicians, one after
another, into the fight. But in this fearsome medley of charges and
counter-charges one fact stood out--that Calhoun had misrepresented his
conduct in the Monroe Cabinet to Jackson, and, on being betrayed by
Crawford, had incurred the deadly enmity of the President. As far as
Jackson was concerned in the public controversy, the matter rested with
Calhoun’s initial letter of admission that he had opposed Jackson’s
course in the war. He prepared an elaborate statement of the facts for
the purposes of history, turned it over to the editor of the “Globe,”
who became his literary executor, and he, in turn, permitted Kendall to
study it when he was planning a biography of the President.[286] But of
all this the public knew nothing.
The inevitable storm had broken. Van Buren, suavely in the background,
was clearly the beneficiary, Calhoun just as clearly the victim. After
this the great Carolinian lost interest in the Presidency, all concern
with party, and henceforth, with occasional attacks on Jackson,
concentrated on sectionalism and slavery. His disaffection was to carry
with it that of his more ardent supporters, and thus in scarcely more
than a year Calhoun, Tyler, Tazewell, and the men who looked to them for
guidance, passed from the Administration camp to join the Opposition.
And the incident had one immediate effect--inseparable from it--the
disruption of the Cabinet with the eradication of the last vestige of
Calhoun influence from all the executive branches of the Government.
CHAPTER V
MRS. EATON DEMOLISHES THE CABINET
I
At the time the politicians were discussing the open rupture with
Calhoun, two horsemen might have been seen riding slowly through
Georgetown, and out on the Tenallytown road, engaged in earnest
conversation. It was not a novelty, however, to the people of the
ancient river town, for this had long been a favorite route of Jackson
and Van Buren on their daily rides. On this occasion Jackson had been
discussing the painful lack of harmony in his Cabinet and had expressed
the hope that his troubles were about over.
“No, General,” said Van Buren, a little nervously, “there is but one
thing that will give you peace.”
“What is that, sir?” snapped the grim one.
“My resignation.”
“Never, sir; even you know little of Andrew Jackson if you suppose him
capable of consenting to such a humiliation of his friends by his
enemies.”
To understand the conditions leading to such a suggestion from Van
Buren, it is necessary to refer to the serious petticoat entanglement in
which Jackson found himself within a few weeks after his inauguration,
because of the presence of Senator Eaton in his Cabinet. It is an
amusing fact that the first real democratic administration in American
history should have been all but wrecked on a social issue. Aside from
the agreeable work of “turning the rascals out,” little had occurred to
disturb the serenity of the new Administration between the inauguration
and the meeting of the Congress in the following December but this
social war. The call to battle had been sounded even before Jackson had
taken the oath of office; the battle raged with unprecedented fury for
many months, finally wrecking the Cabinet and advancing Van Buren to
within sight of the White House. It has not been uncommon for women to
change the course of political and dynastic history in other countries,
but to this day the case of the captivating Margaret O’Neal is unique in
the United States.
The pretty daughter of a popular tavern-keeper, whose old-fashioned
house was a favorite with statesmen and their wives, she had developed
into womanhood under the eyes of men famous in the State. Here Jackson
lived during his senatorial service, and grew fond of the vivacious
child he often held on his knee. With the education a doting father
lavished upon her, and with her intimate contact with men of ability and
women of refinement, she found herself, on the threshold of life, the
intellectual peer of the best of her sex. It is not unnatural that this
clever and beautiful girl should have incurred the jealous displeasure
of the less attractive spouses of the elder statesmen. Her rare beauty
alone would have done that had she been as virtuous as Cæsar’s wife
should have been. Perley Poore[287] describes her as of medium height,
straight and delicate and of perfect proportions; with a skin of
delicate white, tinged with red, and with an abundance of dark hair
clustered above her broad, expressive forehead; with a nose of perfect
Greek proportions, a finely curved mouth, a firm, round chin--the
Aspasia of Washington. When, in addition to her physical and
intellectual charms, it must be recorded that she occasionally played
the rôle of barmaid, permitting such liberties as men in the early
stages of their cups would take, it is easy to understand why the more
sedate matrons of the little capital were prone to look upon her as
beyond the pale. She had married a purser in the navy, and even her
enemies at the time conceded that the match was a _mésalliance_ because
of her intellectual superiority. In time the husband sailed across the
sea, leaving his comely young wife in the rather free-and-easy
atmosphere of her father’s tavern. The moral conditions of the capital
were not such as to spare the most virtuous, thus situated, from the
tongue of gossip. A contemporary has said that the Washington of those
days “resembled in recklessness and extravagance the spirit of the
England of the Seventeenth Century, so graphically portrayed in
Thackeray’s Humorists.’ ... Laxity of morals and the coolest disregard
possible, characterized that period of our existence.”[288]
Living at the O’Neal tavern at the time was the wealthy Senator Eaton,
who had manifested more than a passing interest in “Peggy,” as she was
called, before her marriage. Gossip had it that he became more than ever
attentive when the sailor went to sea. When, after a drunken debauch,
which the gossips, without the slightest justification, ascribed to the
worthless seaman’s knowledge of his wife’s friendship for the Senator,
the husband shot himself, and Eaton was found in her company with
increasing frequency, the case was complete as far as the drawing-rooms
were concerned. All that evidence could not furnish, the imagination
did, and pretty Peggy stood pilloried in the community.
It was at this juncture that Eaton asked the advice of Jackson as to a
marriage. With characteristic impulsiveness the old warrior replied that
if he loved her he should marry her and save her good name by the act.
Thus, on January 1, 1829, the future Secretary of War was married to the
tavern-keeper’s daughter, and instantly the drawing-rooms began to buzz.
One of the patrician ladies of the time of the wedding poured forth the
chatter of the social set. Here we find that Mrs. Eaton “had never been
admitted into good society”; that while “very handsome” she was “not of
an inspiring character” and had a “violent temper”; that notwithstanding
this she was “irresistible” and “carries
[Illustration: _Margaret Patton_]
whatever point she sets her mind on.” The enemies of Jackson were
laughing in the drawing-rooms and diverting themselves “with the idea of
what a suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will make for Mrs. Jackson,”
and were repeating “the old adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock
together.’”[289] In arriving at an understanding of Jackson’s vigorous
defense of the lady of his Cabinet, it is well to bear in mind that the
same scandal-mongers were rolling the name of Mrs. Jackson on their
tongues. The same letter relates how one of Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen
callers “laughed and joked about Mrs. Jackson and her pipe.”
The marriage might have remained merely one of the innumerable morsels
with which ladies sometimes regale the drawing-rooms but for the
announcement that Eaton had been invited into the Cabinet--and that
spread the controversy to the politicians. Among these Senator John
Branch had the courage or the insolence personally to press the point
upon Jackson that, because of social complications, the appointment of
Eaton would be “unpopular and unfortunate.”[290] Jackson heard his
future Secretary of the Navy in stern silence, and appointed Eaton
Secretary of War. The inauguration was scarcely over when the petticoat
battle began. The most fashionable minister at the capital at the time,
at whose church Mrs. Smith, the Branches, the Berriens, and the Inghams
worshiped,[291] importuned, no doubt, by the society women of the city,
and quite probably encouraged by the Cabinet ladies of his congregation,
persuaded a Philadelphia minister to write the President of the alleged
irregularities of Mrs. Eaton. Some of these ministerial charges are
unfit for print. Jackson sent a stinging reply, and at the same time
employed detectives to investigate the charges. The search of the
sleuths was unavailing, and the situation became so embarrassing to the
Philadelphia clergyman that he demanded that the Washington minister
should reveal himself.
Thus, on the evening of September 1, 1829, a unique conference was held
at the White House, when Jackson confronted the two clergymen, in the
presence of witnesses, and forced them to admit that they had no
evidence. One of the worst charges had been that a certain physician,
conveniently dead, had said that Mrs. Eaton had undergone a premature
_accouchement_ when her husband had been more than a year at sea--the
date fixed as 1821. When confronted by the fact that the first husband
had not gone to sea until 1824, the clergyman lightly changed the date
to conform. This disgusted and enraged Jackson. Because he
cross-examined the gentlemen of the cloth regarding a matter affecting
the reputation of a woman, some historians have been resentful of his
severity.[292] The purpose was to convince the members of the Cabinet,
who were present, that their ladies were working a grave injustice upon
the wife of a colleague in refusing her social intercourse. But far from
satisfying the women, the discomfiture of the minister and the utter
collapse of the case only embittered them the more against her. The
minister was placed in a painful position, dubbed by the irrepressible
“Ike” Hill as “the chaplain of the conspiracy,” and described by Mrs.
Smith[293] as having been “rendered incapable of attending to his
ministerial duties to such a degree as to produce great dissatisfaction
in his congregation.”
Meanwhile months had gone by and Mrs. Eaton was still snubbed. Mrs.
Calhoun, a thorough aristocrat, had positively refused to call. Mrs.
Ingham, whose own reputation was not unquestioned, took her cue from
Mrs. Calhoun. Branch tells us that when, in May, his wife and daughters
joined him in Washington, they found Mrs. Eaton “excluded from society,”
and that he “did not deem it their duty to endeavor to control or
counteract the decision of the ladies of Washington.”[294] Miss Berrien
had accepted the verdict of the women, and her father was openly
expressing his admiration for “the heroic virtues of John Branch for
hazarding his place rather than permit his wife and daughters to
associate with the wife of John H. Eaton.”[295] Parties were given and
Mrs. Eaton was not invited; at public receptions she was snubbed.
This was all meat and drink to Adams, who recorded in his diary, after
some scandal gossip with Mrs. Rush: “I told Mrs. Rush that this struggle
was likely to terminate in a party division of Caps and Hats.” It is
this suggestion as to party divisions which imposes upon the historian
the necessity of dwelling upon this strange petticoat squabble. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that, when Martin Van Buren appeared at
social functions with the pretty Peggy on his arm, he made himself
President of the United States.
When the Red Fox arrived in Washington and noted the passionate
determination of the iron man at the White House to force a social
recognition of Mrs. Eaton, he could not have been unmindful of his
advantage. He was a widower. No wife or daughters were with him to be
compromised. His biographer[296] makes the point that he called upon the
accused woman in response to common instincts of decency, and that his
failure to have done so would have amounted to a striking public
condemnation. But he did something more than merely call upon her--he
became an active and aggressive partisan of her cause, and by so doing
endeared himself to Jackson. Common decency did not demand that he
feature her at his dinners and receptions, or enter into an agreement
with two unmarried members of the diplomatic corps to do likewise.[297]
It is impossible to account for this extraordinary partisanship on any
other grounds than his desire to curry special favor with the
President. His conduct and activities became the subject of jests and
quips. “It is asserted that if Mr. Van Buren persists in visiting her
[Mrs. Eaton], our ladies will not go to his house,” wrote one of the
stubborn dames.[298] With the ladies of the Cabinet giving large
parties, the wife of Eaton was omitted from the invitation lists, and
Van Buren countered with dinners and dances at the British and Russian
Legations at which Mrs. Eaton was treated with marked distinction. But
even here “cotillion after cotillion dissolved into its original
elements when she was placed at its head.”[299] At the Russian Legation,
Madame Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, on finding that her seat was
beside Mrs. Eaton at the table, haughtily took her husband’s arm and
stalked impressively from the room. Because of this affront, Jackson was
prone to make it an international incident by demanding the recall of
the Minister, but Van Buren’s sense of humor intervened. In sheer
delight Adams wrote: “Mr. Vaughan ... gave a ball last night which was
opened by Mr. Bankhead, the Secretary of the British Legation, and Mrs.
Eaton; and Mr. Van Buren has issued cards also for a ball which is to be
given in honor of the same lady. I confine myself to the Russian and
Turkish war.”[300] In the late summer of 1829 the effect of the struggle
upon both Jackson and Van Buren was apparent. The President, disgusted,
worn, and sick at heart, was confiding to his correspondents his
partiality for the calm of the Hermitage. And Adams, riding about the
environs, and encountering Van Buren, similarly taking the air,
spitefully wrote: “His pale and haggard looks show it is already a
reward of mortification. If it should prove, as there is every
probability that it will, a reward of treachery, it will be but his
desert.”[301]
When the winter came and the social season opened, the contest naturally
intensified. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien gave large parties from which
Mrs. Eaton was excluded, while “on the other hand the President made her
doubly conspicuous by an over display of notice.”[302] At one of the
President’s drawing-rooms she was surrounded by a crowd eager to please
the host, but Mrs. Donelson, mistress of the White House, held aloof.
This rebellion under his own roof caused the aged President the deepest
pain. Adams records a melodramatic appeal by Van Buren to Mrs. Donelson,
which was highly colored by the ardent Pepys, but such an appeal was
made.[303] The effect of the fight was disastrous to the Administration.
The members of the Cabinet were speedily involved by their wives, and
for a time Eaton and Branch did not speak. It was at this juncture that
Jackson determined to intervene, and “to bring them to speaking
terms.”[304] His intermediary for the purpose, Colonel Richard M.
Johnson,[305] was not a Talleyrand, and his lack of tact in his talks
with Branch, Berrien, and Ingham made matters all the worse. When the
relations of the Cabinet members became threatening, Jackson demanded
that they meet and reach a basis for official intercourse at least. The
meeting was held at the home of Berrien, attended by Branch, Eaton, and
Barry. The negotiations were conducted with dignity and decorum, Branch
satisfactorily explained invitations to the ministers who had accused
Eaton’s wife, and the two shook hands as a token of reconciliation.[306]
Meanwhile Congress was in session. All attempts to hold Cabinet meetings
had long been abandoned. The lines were drawn tightly. The slights and
indignities to Mrs. Eaton had become all but intolerable. And much was
being heard of the alleged frailty and indiscretions of Mrs.
Ingham--stories that seem to have been well known at the time, but to
have been given renewed currency by Eaton.[307]
It was at this juncture that Van Buren, riding with Jackson, proposed
the acceptance of his resignation. Meditating the step for some time he
had been unable to muster the courage to broach the subject. For four
days the President and his Secretary of State rode the Tenallytown road
earnestly debating the propriety of the plan, and on the fourth day,
just as they reached their turning-point at the Tenallytown Gate,
Jackson gave a reluctant consent and suggested the British Mission. But
the grim old warrior was loath to part with his one strong friend in the
Cabinet, and early the next morning he summoned Van Buren to the White
House, and in great agitation, and with significance, explained anew
that it was his custom to release from association with him any man who
felt that he ought to go. Thoroughly alarmed, Van Buren, with emotion,
withdrew all he had said, and announced a willingness to retain his post
until dismissed. Deeply touched, Jackson proposed another discussion on
their afternoon ride. It was that afternoon that it was agreed to call
others into the conference; and the next night Van Buren had as dinner
guests Jackson, Barry, Eaton, and Major Lewis. Finally Eaton agreed to
follow with his resignation. Would Peggy consent, asked the tactful Fox.
Her husband thought she would. The next night the five met at dinner
again, with Eaton reporting his wife’s acquiescence in the plans. But
when, a few days later, Jackson and Van Buren, out for a stroll, stopped
at the Eaton house, their reception from the mistress was so cold and
formal that the Secretary commented upon it, and Jackson shrugged his
shoulders in silence. But the die was cast. The plan was made. Van Buren
and Eaton would resign, thus paving the way for the resignation of the
Calhoun followers, and a reorganization of the Cabinet--with the
Calhoun influence entirely eliminated.[308]
II
THE decision made, the old President must have felt a sense of ineffable
relief. His Cabinet had been a failure and he realized it. His
dissatisfaction with a majority of its members was not due entirely to
their hostility to Mrs. Eaton. The fight against the National Bank was
in its incipiency and he looked upon Ingham as a tool of the Bank; the
Nullification doctrine was being promulgated and he considered Berrien a
Nullifier--and in both surmises he was right. He thought Branch pompous,
incompetent, and subservient to petticoat rule. And we may be sure that
whether or not the Cabinet was to be reorganized in the interest of Van
Buren, the relations of all three toward the Carolinian entered into his
decision to rid himself of them. There is evidence that he quite early
determined to displace Berrien, but nothing of record to indicate the
cause. In the man selected for his place, however, we have ample
justification for the suspicion that the Red Fox had poisoned his mind
against his Attorney-General. It was on the suggestion of Van Buren,
very soon after the formation of the Cabinet in 1829, that the
Attorney-Generalship was offered to Louis McLane, who, in disgust, had
retired to Wilmington for the practice of his profession, with the
inducement that he would later be transferred to the Supreme Bench on
the death of the rapidly failing Justice Duval. Before breakfast one
morning, after a hard ride over the wretched mud roads, Hamilton, the
lieutenant of Van Buren, arrived at the McLane home with the proposal,
which was accepted. Nothing, however, was done--another mystery that
died with Jackson and his Secretary of State.[309]
But the coast was now clear. A strong workable Cabinet after Jackson’s
own heart could be created. The manner in which he went about ridding
himself of the undesirable members of the old Cabinet is graphically
illustrated in the account left by Branch.[310] It is easy to visualize
the scene in the President’s room, whither he has summoned Branch to
inform him of the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton. There is a
“solemn pause.” The Secretary, sensing the intent, smiles, and suggests
that the grim one is not “acting in a character nature intended him
for”; that he is not a diplomatist, and should speak frankly. Whereupon
Jackson, “with great apparent kindness,” explains his purpose, points to
a commission as Governor of Florida upon the table, and announces that
it will be a pleasure to fill in the name of the visitor. Branch
haughtily declares that he had “not supported him for the sake of
office,” and soon retires. Returning to his office, Branch prepares and
sends in his resignation courteously, but not omitting to mention that
the action was taken in response to the President’s wish. Whereupon
Jackson, splitting hairs, writes a protest against the statement that
his correspondent’s resignation had been asked. “I did not,” he writes,
“as to yourself, express a wish that you would retire.” But since the
Cabinet had come in “harmoniously and as a unit,” and two were
voluntarily retiring, it had become “indispensable” to reorganize
completely the official household “to guard against misrepresentation.”
More correspondence follows, ending with a gracious acceptance of the
resignation, coupled with an expression of appreciation of the
“integrity and zeal” with which the Secretary of the Navy had discharged
his duties.[311]
Ingham made the President’s task easy with a brief note of resignation,
and passed permanently from public life.[312] But Berrien was loath to
go. In discussing the situation with friends, he made no secret of his
desire to retain his post, but on learning that Jackson had no such
notion, he withdrew in a friendly and dignified letter.[313]
The period between the announcement of Van Buren’s resignation and the
appointment of the new Cabinet was rich in food for the gossips. What
would become of the Red Fox? Would Mrs. Eaton have her triumph in the
elevation of her husband to some other post of distinction? And what
would be the factional complexion of the new Cabinet? John Tyler,
sending his budget of gossip home, rather questioned the rumor that Van
Buren would be groomed for Vice-President and thought he would prefer to
go abroad. It had also reached Tyler that Hugh L. White might become
Secretary of War, and that “Livingston is to rule the roost,” and he
lamented that in the latter event “the Constitution may be construed to
mean anything and everything.” He had likewise heard that McLane would
be Secretary of the Treasury, “but how,” he asked, “can he ever be
acceptable to the South with his notions on the tariff and internal
improvement?”[314] Meanwhile there appears to have been a rather
definite plan on the part of Jackson and Van Buren for the building of
the new Cabinet.
III
Either the President or Van Buren could very plausibly have been
responsible for the decision as to Livingston and the State portfolio,
but the fact remains that the proffer of the post was made through the
latter. The Louisiana statesman was spending his summer vacation at his
country place on the Hudson when a mysterious letter reached him from
the New York politician, summoning him instantly to Washington, and
warning him, on leaving, to conceal his destination. Observing both the
summons and the injunction, he proceeded at once to the capital, and
with some misgivings accepted the post of Secretary of State.[315] That
this was Van Buren’s appointment seems more than probable.
For the Treasury, Louis McLane, Minister to England, a subordinate, as
such, to Van Buren, with whom he had worked in perfect accord
politically, and whose wife was ambitious for Cabinet honors,[316] was
summoned home from London. As Van Buren had, at this time, selected the
London post for himself, this appointment was unquestionably his own.
The one embarrassing hitch came in the selection of a Secretary of War.
It was the plan to have Senator Hugh L. White of Tennessee relinquish
his seat for the War Office, thus opening the way for the election of
Eaton to his old position in the Senate. But White was cold to the
proposition. The mutual friends of the President and the Tennessee
Senator importuned him to no effect. James K. Polk strongly urged him.
Felix Grundy added his appeal. Another wrote him: “The old man says that
all his plans will be defeated unless you agree to come.”[317] Jackson
himself did not hesitate to go with White’s brother-in-law to Virginia
to request Senator Tazewell, an intimate of White’s, to exert his
influence--but to no avail. The reason for this refusal, furnished by a
kinswoman, throws light on the general understanding as to the purpose
of the Cabinet reorganization--he did not intend to “thereby aid in the
elevation of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency.”[318] Thus did Jackson’s
earnest wish to serve his friends, the Eatons, fail at a critical
juncture. After the place was also refused by Representative Drayton of
South Carolina, an enemy of Nullification, Jackson turned to his old
co-worker in the War of 1812, and Lewis Cass, then Governor of Michigan,
entered the new Cabinet. This was probably Jackson’s personal
appointment, albeit years before, while acting as judge advocate in the
court-martial of General Hull, Van Buren had learned to his discomfiture
that Cass was no ordinary man.[319] More successful in caring for his
friend Isaac Hill than for the Eatons, a proffer of the Navy portfolio
to Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire created a senatorial vacancy
that fell to the fighting journalist. Incidentally the relations between
Van Buren and Woodbury were close.
In finding a successor for Berrien the President was handicapped by the
general opinion of his friends, including Van Buren, that his retention
would serve a good purpose. During the period of uncertainty numerous
names were canvassed, the favorite of the politicians being James
Buchanan.[320] The first suggestion of Roger Taney was made to Jackson
by a Washington physician who had ventured to say that he knew “a man
who will suit for Attorney-General.” The disinterestedness and high
character of this truly great and much-maligned man shines forth in his
conduct during this period of negotiations. He not only did not press
his claims, but urged the retention of Berrien, and, under his
instructions, his brother-in-law (Key) did likewise. Thus we find Key
calling upon Livingston, Barry, and Woodbury, urging the keeping of
Berrien on the ground that “it would have a good effect upon the affairs
of the party, both as to its bearing on the Indian and the Eaton
questions.”[321] All three agreed, but confessed a delicacy about
broaching the subject unless consulted. In the midst of these
negotiations, Key was summoned to the White House and informed of the
intention to invite Taney into the Cabinet. Again Key urged the wisdom
of retaining Berrien; the President firmly rejected the idea, and thus,
on his personal judgment, Jackson secured the services of one of the
strongest figures to be associated with him in his most bitter battle.
Livingston, McLane, Cass, Woodbury, and Taney--this at any rate was not
the “millennial of the minnows.” But the new Cabinet was not to be
received with universal acclaim. The Calhoun followers grumbled that it
was a Van Buren Cabinet; and Tyler, thinking in terms of State Rights,
complained bitterly that State-Rights men had been left “entirely out in
the cold.”[322]
Nor did the Eaton trouble dissipate instantly on the passing of the
first Cabinet. The retired members stoutly insisted on every occasion
that they had been forced out because of their refusal to coerce their
wives to associate with naughty Peggy. After his return to his North
Carolina home, Branch, in a voluminous letter, charged all the
responsibility for the disruption of the Cabinet to the social issue.
Berrien, albeit not only willing but anxious to remain, on his return to
Georgia eulogized Jackson at a complimentary dinner in his honor, but
added that when he attempted to prescribe rules for the association of
the families of his Ministers he scorned the dictation.[323] And Duff
Green was so active and persistent in ascribing the upheaval to the
Eaton affair that Key was convinced “that that matter had not occasioned
the change in the Cabinet.”[324] The gossips of the drawing-rooms,
distressed at being deprived of a choice morsel, set their teeth into it
with a grim determination to hold on. Mrs. Bayard Smith, as though
personally affronted, wrote to a friend: “The papers do not exaggerate,
nay do not retail one half his [Jackson’s] imbecilities. He is
completely under the domination of Mrs. Eaton, one of the most
ambitious, violent, malignant, yet silly women you ever heard of.” And a
few days later she returns to the attack: “Mrs. Eaton cannot be forced
or persuaded to leave Washington.... She ... believes that next winter
the present Cabinet Ministers will open their doors to her. Mrs. McLane
has already committed herself on that point. Previous to her going to
England, while on a visit here, in direct violation of her most violent
asseverations previously made, she visited this lady, and instantly
became a great favorite with the President.”[325]
However, if Mrs. Eaton lingered, others departed with undignified
celerity. As soon as the robes of office fell from his shoulders, Eaton
began a search for Ingham to administer a personal chastisement. The
latter, who had been peculiarly offensive, and whose own wife was a
victim of the gossips, would not fight a duel. He did not care to fight
at all. Thus began an amusing chase. Eaton lay in wait for him in the
streets, while the dignified ex-Minister of Finance carefully picked his
way home through the muddy alleys and back yards into the back door of
his house. At length the chase became uncomfortable. A stage-coach was
chartered. The Inghams’ baggage was packed. Two hours before daybreak,
the coach driver might have been seen lashing his horses through the mud
and water of the capital, bearing on their way to Philadelphia the
erstwhile Cabinet Minister and his family.
The first Cabinet, which almost immediately put on a drawing-room
comedy, went out with a rip-roaring farce, with seconds bearing ominous
messages, and with Cabinet officers lying in wait in the shadows,
creeping through alleys, brandishing pistols, and in the darkest hours
before the dawn lumbering in stage-coaches out of the capital city to
escape a shot.
The thoroughly frightened Ingham openly charged that Eaton intended to
murder him, and the letters of the former secretaries concerning the
“murder conspiracy” added mightily to the amusement of the enemies of
the Administration and to the chagrin and disgust of its friends.
“Before you receive this,” wrote a Washingtonian to Senator John
Forsyth, “you will have seen the disgraceful publications of Eaton and
Ingham, which, of course, are the sole topics of conversation here. The
rumor was that the President was engaged the day before yesterday in
investigating the matter, and I know that he had a magistrate with him
taking depositions.”[326] The hilarity of Jackson’s enemies was vividly
expressed in a cartoon, entitled “The Rats Leaving a Falling House,”
published in Philadelphia, and, with childish delight, Adams records in
his diary that “two thousand copies of this print have been sold in
Philadelphia this day,” and that the ten thousand copies struck of “will
be disposed of within a fortnight.”[327]
Van Buren was sent to the English Court. Eaton was made Governor of
Florida and later Minister to Spain, where Mrs. Eaton, in the most
dignified Court in Europe, became a brilliant success. Ingham passed
from public life. Branch affiliated with the Whigs in 1832 and in 1836,
and was made Governor of Florida by Tyler. Berrien became one of the
orators and leaders of the Whigs, and one of the founders of the
Know-Nothing Party. Thus, after two years of disorganization and
domestic turmoil, the Jackson Administration, with a powerful Cabinet,
and, for the first time, a definite policy, began to strike its stride.
At least two of the new Ministers were to play leading and spectacular
parts in the great party battles that were to follow.
It must have been with a sense of ineffable relief that Jackson, seated
at the head of the Cabinet table, surveyed the new men with whom he had
surrounded himself--a feeling in which the public shared. But as his
glance moved about the table it no doubt lingered with greatest
confidence and satisfaction upon the three whose very appearance bespoke
character, intellectuality, and power. At his right hand the tall
figure, with the student’s stoop, the meditative manner, the benevolent
expression, which had stood beside him in the stirring days of New
Orleans--the scholarly Livingston. Nearby he recognized in the imposing
figure with the robust, well-knit frame, the huge head, the bushy brows,
the penetrating, fighting blue eyes of Cass, a man of the solidity and
strength that he admired and trusted. The one strange figure about the
table, destined to prove more nearly a man after his own heart than any
other who was to serve him in the Cabinet, was Taney--thin and delicate
like Jackson himself, with the student’s stoop of Livingston, but
without his calm. Between these three and the others, there was a
decided descent, although they were men of ability and reputation.
IV
Edward Livingston was one of the strongest characters of his time, a
Nationalist as intense as Webster, who was to pen a document as virile
and militant as Webster’s speech for the Union--one of the most
brilliant, talented, and polished publicists the Republic has known.
This premier of the greatest of democrats, was a thorough aristocrat,
tracing his lineage back to the English peerage. Compared with him, the
Opposition leaders and even their ladies of the drawing-rooms lamenting
the social crudities of the Jacksonians were of mongrel breed. And yet
this highest type of aristocrat was, by preference, one of the most
ardent of democrats. When, in his thirtieth year, he entered the
National House of Representatives from his native city of New York, he
had behind him every advantage and before him every opportunity.
Distinguishing himself by brilliancy in debate, vigor in attack, when he
left Congress his militant leadership of the Jeffersonian party had
convinced Hamilton that he had to be destroyed.[328] Jefferson made him
district attorney; the people elected him to the mayoralty of New York,
and the attempt to serve in both capacities wrought his financial ruin.
While personally directing the fight against the yellow fever plague, he
was himself stricken, and he recovered only to find that his assistant
in the district attorney’s office had squandered $100,000 of the public
money on wine and women. Without a moment’s hesitation he conveyed all
his property to a trustee for sale, beggared himself completely, and
resigned both his offices. The public protested against his abandonment
of the mayoralty, and for two months the Governor refused to accept his
resignation, but he knew that the path of duty led to the replenishment
of his purse. Thus, at thirty-nine, leaving behind him the prestige of
his family connections and his own career, he turned toward Louisiana,
then the Promised Land, and set forth for New Orleans. There he
immediately took high rank in his profession, established a lucrative
practice, and soon acquired valuable real estate abutting the river
which promised a fortune. The story of how he was deprived of this
through the incomprehensible spite of President Jefferson constitutes
one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of American
litigation.[329] But Livingston was sustained by infinite patience, a
happy philosophy, and natural buoyancy of temperament, and he soon found
other matters to enlist his interest. When Jackson reached New Orleans
to defend the town, it was Livingston who aroused the militant spirit of
the people with his martial eloquence, and served as the soldier’s aid,
translator, and adviser. It was in these days amidst the barking of the
English guns that Jackson discovered
[Illustration: _Edw Livingston_]
in Livingston the man he could trust as a patriot and fighter in two of
the bitterest battles of his Presidency.[330] It was soon after this
that Livingston began the greatest undertaking of his life--one so
far-reaching in its effect on humanity as to carry his name to the
thinkers, philosophers, and philanthropists of every land. The
“Livingston Code” alone entitles him to a place high on the scroll of
humanitarians who have served mankind. Victor Hugo declared that he
would be “numbered among the men of this age who have deserved most and
best of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham was tremendously impressed. Dr. H. S.
Maine, author of the “Ancient Laws,” pronounced him “the first legal
genius of modern times.” Villemain, of the Paris Sorbonne, described his
work as “a work without example from the hand of any one man.” From the
Emperor of Russia and the King of Sweden came autograph letters, from
the King of the Netherlands a gold medal and a eulogy, and statesmen and
philosophers of Europe vied with kings and emperors in paying homage.
The Government of Guatemala, not content with translating his “Code on
Reform and Prison Discipline,” and adopting it without the change of a
word, bestowed upon a new city and district the name of Livingston.
Jefferson wrote: “It will certainly array your name with the sages of
antiquity”; Kent and Story, Madison and Marshall joined in the common
praise, and he was elected a member of the Institute of France. Such was
the prestige he took to Washington, when, in his fifty-ninth year, he
again entered the House as a Representative from New Orleans.
He was now an old man, but of unusual vigor, and able to wear out
younger men with his long pedestrian jaunts. He loved society and
mingled with it freely, unable to escape it if he would because of the
social and intellectual brilliance of his wife and the charm and beauty
of his daughter. His fame was seemingly secure. His reputation was
world-wide. His conversational gifts were of an uncommon order. His
friends and social intimates were confined to no party, and embraced the
best of both. After a brief period in the House he had entered the
Senate where he stood among the foremost. Such was the man Jackson
called to the head of his Cabinet--one whose character and career suffer
nothing by comparison with those of his most distinguished predecessors,
Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.
V
We are not concerned with the Roger B. Taney who wrote the Dred Scott
decision, but with that portion of his career, little known and
appreciated, which convinced Jackson that he was worthy of wearing the
mantle of John Marshall. And that is by far the most dramatic phase of
his life--his battling years. Born and reared on a Maryland plantation,
among horses and slaves, he grew up to be an independent, self-reliant
youth. At Dickinson College he refused to take down a portion of a
lecture which assailed our republican governmental system. As
valedictorian of his class he suffered torments from a morbid fear of
public speaking. Thus even as a student he was independent in thought,
courageously devoted to his convictions, brave in battle, but miserably
self-conscious on parade.
On graduating, he returned to the woods and fields of the plantation,
abandoned his books, and gave himself up to the joys of fox-hunting,
leading the life of the old-fashioned English country gentleman. When he
took up the study of law in Annapolis, however, he abandoned this
outdoor life in turn, and, declining all social invitations, devoted
himself to his studies, and to fighting his native timidity, in a
debating society. Here also he studied the methods of two of the
Nation’s greatest advocates, Luther Martin and William Pinkney.
And, strangely enough, this great lawyer in the making, began the
practice of the law as a side issue to politics. In the quiet rural
community of his nativity, where there was little litigation and no
opportunity for professional distinction, he settled, for the sole
purpose of entering the House of Delegates. This, however, in compliance
with the wishes of his aggressively Federalistic father. Thus, at the
age of twenty-two, we find young Taney responding to the roll-call as a
pronounced Federalist of the school of Hamilton. It is noteworthy that
he was defeated in the next election because of the Jeffersonian
revolution of 1800.
This setback changed the course of his career. An uncompromising
Federalist with Federalism apparently dead, politics no longer promised
a future, and he turned now to the serious consideration of the law, and
located at Frederick where the Democrats were overwhelmingly
predominant. In this community, rich, intellectual, cultured, and
hospitable, he instantly took his place among the leaders of the bar and
entered upon a lucrative practice. A Federalist from principle, he did
not hesitate, when called to lead the forlorn hope. As a Federalist, he
opposed the War of 1812. Up to this point his political career was
similar to that of Webster.
And it is in the divergence of the two careers at this point that the
future of Taney turned. He fought the war until the die was cast, and
then threw himself with intense fervor into the support of his country
against the foreign foe. Contemptuous of the disloyalists of his
political family, he summoned the Federalists to the unqualified support
of the American arms, and such was his prestige that a large portion of
the party in Maryland followed his lead.[331] By subordinating party to
country, he all but obliterated party lines, and when he was nominated
for Congress as a war Federalist he all but wiped out the normal
Democratic majority. Had he gone to Washington at that time as a lone
Federalist supporting the war, to face Webster, fighting the
organization of the army and the appropriations, his national reputation
would have come eighteen years before it did. For his was no
half-hearted hate of the disloyalty of his party co-workers. This is the
first decisive action upon which an interpretation of his political
character may be predicated.
Meanwhile, restricting himself more and more to his profession,
frequently associated with Luther Martin in the most important
litigation, his reputation spread throughout the State, and the
politician was merged with the lawyer. It was in connection with one of
his most sensational cases that he took a position on slavery and the
right of abolitionists to be heard that throws a high light on his
character and courage.
An abolitionist minister from Pennsylvania had gone to Maryland and made
a ferocious attack on slavery in a public meeting attended by some
slaves. The excitement and feeling against him were intense. To the
sensitive slave-owners the speech seemed a deliberate incitation of the
slaves to insurrection. The minister’s life was in danger. It required
supreme courage for a Maryland lawyer in that slave-holding community to
stand between the abolitionist and the popular clamor against him, and
Taney stepped from the professional ranks to plead his cause, not
perfunctorily, but with a passionate defiance worthy of the highest
traditions of his profession. He made his defense on no less grounds
than “the rights of conscience and the freedom of speech.” And he spoke
on slavery even as Garrison or Lincoln might have spoken. In a courtroom
crowded with slave-owners who were his neighbors, he touched boldly on
the pathos and the tragedy of the institution. After this daring defense
before a slave-holding jury, the hated abolitionist was acquitted--and
the records of the American courts record no nobler triumph.
The death of Pinkney and the disqualification of Martin soon advanced
Taney to the head of the Maryland bar. It was one year after he had
established himself in Baltimore that he first allied himself with the
supporters of Andrew Jackson. During the campaign of 1824 was published
a letter written by Jackson to Madison seven years before, urging the
recognition of those Federalists who had broken with their party to
support the War of 1812, and suggesting the name of Colonel Drayton of
South Carolina.[332] Discriminating between the anti-war Federalists and
the pro-war Federalists, Jackson here declared that had he been
commander of the military department in which the Hartford Convention
was held, he would have court-martialed the three leaders of the
Convention. This announcement of his views had attracted to his standard
many pro-war Federalists of Maryland, and the most notable acquisition
was Roger B. Taney. He was impelled to his course with no thought of
political reward. His whole mind and heart were in his profession.
Jackson knew nothing of Taney’s partiality at the time, and only learned
of it about the time he was seeking a successor for Berrien. At no time
in his life had the Maryland lawyer been so thoroughly satisfied with
his lot. He had been made Attorney-General of the State on the unanimous
recommendation of the bar, and this was the only office to which he ever
aspired. It was in line with his work and left him at home with his
family and his books. Such was his situation, when, through a
non-political suggestion, he was offered the position in the Cabinet of
Jackson.
At this time he was in his fifty-fourth year, with no taste for the
trickery and intrigues of politics, and he asked nothing better for his
leisure hours than meditative tramps through the woods, a canter on his
horse, a volume of poetry or history, or the delights of his home,
presided over by the sister of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
An ardent Catholic, he was strict in the observance of his religious
duties. Always vehement in his views, and uncompromising in his
convictions, he was almost unpleasantly decisive in the expression of
his political opinions. Such was his lofty conception of official
propriety that while in office he was to refuse to accept the slightest
token of appreciation from people with whom he had official
relations.[333] He had all the courtesy and courtliness of his culture,
all the caution of the painstaking lawyer, and all the circumspection of
the man jealous of his honor. He was to become the most virile assistant
of Jackson in the bitterest fight of his Presidency, the most trusted of
his Cabinet, because the most like Jackson in the vigor of his blows.
VI
To describe Lewis Cass as an American politician would be damning with
faint praise, for he was something infinitely more and greater--he was
an empire-builder of the company of Clive and Rhodes, one of the most
robust figures in American history. His first remembered view of the
world was that of being held in his mother’s arms, and looking out the
windows of his New Hampshire home upon the bonfires blazing in
celebration of the ratification of the Constitution. Crossing the
Alleghanies on foot, with a knap-sack on his back, sleeping beneath the
stars, his Americanism had expanded in the contemplation of the
magnitude of the Republic. Riding the circuit, as Western lawyers did in
those days, he was a witness of the stubborn battles against the
wilderness, and he had enough imagination to see, in the rough men
wielding axes, Homeric figures. And it was while pursuing his lonely way
through the virgin forests of Ohio that he found time for the
assimilation of his reading and learned to be the independent and
courageous thinker he became.
He had established a sound reputation at the bar, when the War of 1812
added that of a gallant and brilliant soldier. To him especially are we
indebted for the shameful story of Hull’s cowardly surrender of
Detroit--an act so maddening that Cass broke his sword in protest. But
his reputation as lawyer and soldier pales by comparison with the
reputation he was to make as an empire-builder.
Never was a ruler confronted by more disheartening difficulties than
Cass, when, in 1813, he became the civil Governor of Michigan. For two
years he was forced to battle against anarchy and famine. Organized
society was demoralized. The country was disorganized. The savages had
driven away the cattle of the settlers, and the French especially were
in desperate straits. The war-whoops of the red men had so terrorized
the people that they were afraid to settle down to the cultivation of
the land. The morale of the Territory was pathetically low. And Cass,
with the empire-builder’s decision and genius, instantly formed his plan
to combat the threatened disintegration. The people had to be fed--he
fed them from the public stores, drew upon the Government for further
assistance, personally directed the battle against famine--and won. The
confidence of the people had to be restored as a preliminary to
progress--he determined to restore it by demonstrating his mastery of
the savages. Organizing the young men, he personally led them against
the Indians in a bloody skirmish--and won. He repeated it--and won.
Again--and won. And thus the terror of the people passed, and they
returned to their homes.
He then turned to the organization of civil government. Courts were
created, civil officers selected, territorial divisions established, new
counties were carved, and he began an elaborate policy of road-building
and internal improvements. One of his first acts was to establish a
school system, and to encourage the building of churches with the
assurance of religious liberty.
This accomplished, he turned with his usual zeal to the Americanizing of
the people, many of whom were French, and to encouraging the migration
of colonists. Knowing the industry and energy of his native New England,
he planned to draw immigrants from that section hoping that the French
would learn by their success to emulate their example. But here he had
another battle to overcome the general notion of the Eastern States that
the land of Michigan was valueless. In time he succeeded.
And then he found time to challenge the right of the British across the
border to interfere in the affairs of the Territory. In those days
Michigan was only a Territory on the outskirts, and it was easier for
the National Government to ignore insults than to challenge a mighty
empire by protesting against them. As late as 1816 vessels were stopped
on their way to Detroit and searched by British agents. Cass, with
lawyer-like care, collected his evidence, transmitted it to Washington,
vigorously protested to the British authorities--and won.[334]
Nowhere, perhaps, does his vision as an empire-builder, shine more
luminously than in his letter to Calhoun, Secretary of War, proposing a
scientific expedition in 1819, under the sanction and with the
coöperation of the Federal Government.[335] This was the programme of a
statesman. And he asked for experts for the expedition--engineers,
zoölogists, botanists, mineralogists. Determining to accompany the
expedition, it is interesting to note the sagacity of the reason he
assigns: “I think it very important to carry the flag of the United
States into those remote sections where it has never been borne by any
one in public station.” This was the most important expedition ever
undertaken by the American Government up to that time, and was so
regarded by the press of the period.
If we add to this, his successful negotiations of treaties with the
Indians under dramatic circumstances, we have the work and record of
“The Father of the West”--empire-builder from 1813 until he entered the
Cabinet of Jackson in 1831.
And this man of action, fighting life-and-death battles on the fringe of
civilization, found time for the gratification of literary tastes. Here
he suggests the Roosevelt of a much later day. When starting forth on an
expedition into the wilderness, it was his custom to supply himself with
a small library for his entertainment while floating in canoes on the
rivers or the lakes. His articles in later years disclose the
scholar.[336] Just before entering the Cabinet he had delivered a
scholarly address at Hamilton College which has been preserved in a
number of the popular collections of orations.[337]
Livingston the Nationalist.
Cass, the Empire-Builder.
Taney, the Crusader.
Out of the career of any one of these might be woven a romance. All were
of heroic mould, veritable Plutarchian figures. And we shall see that
the time had arrived when Jackson would need the wisest and most
courageous of counselors--for Henry Clay was returning in shining armor
to lead the bitterest of partisan battles against the Administration.
CHAPTER VI
KITCHEN CABINET PORTRAITS
I
From the beginning the virile, militant, driving factors behind
Jackson’s policies were found outside his official family. The “Kitchen
Cabinet,” so called in derision, was more influential in the moulding of
events than the old-fashioned, conventional statesmen who advised their
chief in the seclusion of the Cabinet room. Had Jackson depended wholly
on his Cabinet for the support of his policies, he would have been
constantly confused by divided counsels. On scarcely any of the vital
issues of his Presidency did he have the hearty coöperation of his
constitutional advisers. But never before, nor since, has any President
been served by such tireless organizers of the people, such masters of
mass psychology, such geniuses in the art of publicity and propaganda.
These men, the small but loyal and sleepless group of the Kitchen
Cabinet, were the first of America’s great practical politicians.
Of this group the master mind was Amos Kendall, born in a New England
farmhouse in the latter days of the eighteenth century. In youth, he
preferred study to play, and because of a premature solemnity he was
familiarly known as “The Deacon.” His timidity was as painful as that
which tortured Charlotte Brontë. The stupid act of a teacher in
ridiculing his reading of an oration came near putting a period to his
education, and at Dartmouth he was almost moved to tears by professorial
praise of one of his essays. His college days were so serious and
laborious that his health suffered, and his constitution was impaired.
He played no pranks and had no dissipations. Taking his politics
seriously, the overwhelming preponderance of Federalists did not
restrain him from
[Illustration: AMOS KENDALL
From an engraving in the _Democratic Review_, March, 1838, after a
drawing by Charles Fenderick]
belligerently espousing the cause of the minority. It is significant of
his instinctive bent that when he turned to politics he shed his
timidity and stood forth a passionate militant. Graduating from the
college that Webster loved, he declined his diploma, partly because of
indifference, but largely because of his personal dislike of the
president. Thus early he entertained no illusions, and had the courage
of both his convictions and his prejudices.
Meanwhile the second war with England was on, and he was beginning to
detest the New England Federalists for their disloyalty and
illiberality. The pulpits rang with bitter denunciations of Madison, and
ministers proclaimed from the pulpits that Democrats were “irreligious
profligates.”[338] In Boston, Kendall heard the eloquent Harrison Gray
Otis ferociously denounce the war, and he hastened home to enlist, to be
rejected for physical disabilities.
In his twenty-fifth year he set forth from his bleak New Hampshire home
to seek his fortune, and we are able to sense the spirit and temper of
the youth from the jottings of his journal. At Boston he heard Edward
Everett whom he thought a “youth of great promise.” At Washington he
attended a White House levee, finding Dolly Madison “a noble and
dignified person,” the President’s “personal appearance very inferior,”
and meeting Felix Grundy and Lewis Cass. Thence he passed down the Ohio,
a guest of Major Barry, and became a citizen of Kentucky.
At Lexington he entered the home of Henry Clay, engaged by Mrs. Clay as
a tutor for the children. In later years, when he was the mysterious
power in the Jackson Administration, and Clay the leader of the
Opposition, the drawing-rooms of Washington buzzed with a fantastic
tale, intended to prove his depravity and ingratitude. Harriet
Martineau,[339] while in the capital, heard it and incorporated it in
her book. According to this story “tidings reached Mr. and Mrs. Clay
one evening that a young man, solitary and poor, lay ill of a fever in a
noisy hotel in the town. Mrs. Clay went down in the carriage without
delay, and brought the sufferer home to her house, where she nursed him
with her own hands till he recovered. Mr. Clay was struck with the
talents of the young man and retained him as a tutor of his sons,
heaping benefits upon him with characteristic bounty.” Unhappily for the
tale, Kendall was not ill, Mr. Clay was at Geneva at the time of his
employment and during the entire period of his stay in Ashland, and the
“benefits heaped upon him” consisted of $300 a year with board and
lodging, and the privilege of using Mr. Clay’s library. Soon after
leaving the service of the Clays, we find him recording in his diary:
“Rode to Lexington and visited H. Clay. I found him a very agreeable
man, and was familiarly acquainted with him in half an hour.”
However, his sojourn at Ashland was pleasurable and profitable. Mrs.
Clay, deeply interested in him, chaffed him on his timidity, criticized
the stiffness of his bows, and drove him to his room to practice before
the mirror, admitted him to her social gatherings, called upon him to
read his poetry to her friends, and rallied him about his love affairs.
Thus the “mediocre” and vulgar “writer for pay” of the Jackson régime
was once considered fit for the social circle in the home of Henry Clay.
Scarcely had he been admitted to the bar when he was enticed by Colonel
Richard M. Johnson into the editorship of the “Georgetown Patriot”; and
it is illuminative of his character to find him, when the slayer of
Tecumseh, a little later, upbraided him for refusing personally to abuse
the Opposition, writing in his diary: “I shall give Richard my vote, but
I shall not be his tool.”[340] His editorials constructive, his
specialty banking and currency, he soon found himself in the editorial
chair of the “Frankfort Argus,” where he was instantly engaged in
bitter political controversies. Whether in argument, where he excelled,
in invective, or in wit, he invariably scored heavily on the Opposition.
For his generation and community, his editorial code was lofty. He
promised himself never knowingly to misrepresent; if, through mistake,
he did, to rectify the mistake without being asked; never to retract a
statement he thought true; to resent an insult in kind; to defend
himself, if assaulted, by any means necessary, even to killing, and
never to run. So great was his professional self-respect that on one
occasion, when vulgarly assailed in an Opposition paper, he had his
answer printed in bill form and circulated by hand, rather than befoul
his own journal with a suitable reply.
In seeming contradiction, however, we have his merciless bombardment of
the unfortunate Shadrach Penn, editor of a Louisville paper, who had a
genius for attracting the ridicule of his intellectual superiors; for
while Kendall was peppering him from Frankfort, George D. Prentice was
bombarding him from Louisville, and between the two, he was driven
whimpering from the State.[341]
The physical courage of Kendall may be read in his encounters with irate
victims. In one controversy he was spared the necessity of killing an
assailant with a dirk by the timely interference of friends. In another
he put an opponent to flight by cracking a whip and displaying the
sparkling silver handle in the sun. He never ran.
Under his editorship the “Argus” became a powerful political factor in
Kentucky. He inaugurated the plan of printing legislative speeches,
specialized on political news, intelligently discussed international
affairs, launched a campaign in favor of public schools, reviewed
contemporary books, dipped into religious subjects with his “Sunday
Reflections,” and significantly began a fight against the National Bank
in a series of articles combating the Supreme Court decision as to its
constitutionality. If, thirteen years later, he was not to flinch under
the lashings of the Bank press, it may have been because he had become
seasoned to the punishment more than a decade before when he was
described as a “political incendiary.”
His friendly relations with Clay were maintained at least until the
autumn of 1827, when, on a trip to New Hampshire, he wrote his wife of
dining with the orator in Washington. But the campaign of 1828 found
Kendall and the “Argus” valiant in the cause of Jackson, with Clay and
his friends “casting aspersions upon his motives and character.”[342] In
revenge for these attacks he sought the privilege of taking the
electoral vote of Kentucky to Washington. Meanwhile, after the election,
and before his departure, he had been informed by an emissary from the
Hermitage that Jackson intended to offer him an appointment.
The Kendall lingering at the capital awaiting an appointment presents an
interesting study. It is disappointing to note a certain humility and
manner usually associated with the lower order of place-hunters. He was
evidently ardent in his pursuit of a position. His inexperience is
disclosed in his disgust on finding so many obscure politicians
pretending to the distinction of having elected Jackson. And yet, so
anxious was he for place, that he was willing to accept one paying an
inadequate salary, and he wrote his wife that in that event he might
persuade Duff Green to pay him $1000 a year for writing for the
“Telegraph.”[343] During the weeks of waiting before the inauguration,
he was not a little embarrassed for funds, and yet, under these drab
conditions, he did not lack for invitations of a social nature. Meeting
General Macomb and finding him “a Jackson man,” he expressed the hope
that he might “find him a valuable acquaintance.”[344] Meanwhile he was
investigating houses and rents, and concluded to economize by taking a
house in Georgetown. “The house I contemplate taking,” he wrote, “is in
a charming neighborhood on First Street, near Cox’s Row.”
Receiving his appointment as Fourth Auditor, he dropped from public
view. Dinners and parties saw him no more. He immediately assumed the
rôle of a recluse. Taking his duties seriously, he uncovered the crimes
of his predecessor and sent him to jail. His rules for the conduct of
subordinates were such as to merit the approval of business men--rules
that the office-holder of those days scarcely understood. After a week
in office he wrote his wife: “The labor is very light, and when I am
master of the laws under which I act, will consist of little more than
looking at accounts and signing my name.” Thus we find him systematizing
his work to dedicate the greater portion of his time to the political
work of the Administration. “Hamilton,” said Martin Van Buren, a month
later, “Kendall is to be an influential man. I wish the President would
invite him to dinner, and if you have no objection, as you are so
intimate with the General, I wish you would propose to him to invite
Kendall to meet us at dinner to-morrow.”[345] The invitation was
extended and accepted, and the Red Fox, who had a genius for picking
men, was notably attentive to the timid subordinate.
During the five years he held his inferior post, Kendall became more
powerful than any Cabinet Minister in the determination of Jacksonian
policies. A little later, a contemporary observer of men at the capital
described him as “secretive, yet audacious in his political methods, a
powerful and ready writer, and the author of many of Jackson’s ablest
State papers.”[346] There in his office we may picture him, alone, with
pad and pencil, preparing elaborate political war maps, and literature
for propaganda, or in earnest conversation with Lewis and other members
of the Kitchen Cabinet, forging thunderbolts with which to smite the
foe. And it was very soon after he had left this subordinate post that
Harriet Martineau was impressed with the uncanny mystery of the
“invincible Amos Kendall.”
“I was fortunate enough,” she wrote, “to catch a glimpse of the
invincible Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He
is supposed to be the moving spring of the Administration; the thinker,
the planner, the doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued,
the excellence of which prevents them from being attributed to the
persons that take the responsibility for them; a correspondence is kept
up all over the country, for which no one seems answerable; work is done
of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which makes men look about them
with superstitious wonder; and the invincible Amos Kendall has the
credit for it all. President Jackson’s letters to his Cabinet are said
to be Kendall’s; the report on Sunday mails is attributed to Kendall;
the letters sent from Washington to remote country newspapers, whence
they are collected and published in the ‘Globe’ as demonstrations of
public opinion, are pronounced to be written by Kendall; and it is some
relief that he now, having the office of Postmaster-General, affords
opportunity for open attack upon this twilight personage. He is
undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with all his ‘great talents for
silence’ a splendid audacity.
“It is clear he could not do the work he does if he went into society
like other men. He did, however, one evening.... The moment I went in,
intimations reached me from all quarters, amid nods and winks, ‘Kendall
is here,’ ‘There he is.’ I saw at once that his plea for seclusion (bad
health) is no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, the
hair of such perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a man of middle age,
testified to his disease.[347] His countenance does not help the
superstitious to throw off their dread of him. He probably does not
desire this superstition to melt away, for there is no calculating how
much influence is given the Jackson Administration by the universal
belief that there is a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of
Government, by which everything could be foreseen, and the hardest deeds
done. A member of Congress told me this night that he had watched
through five sessions for a sight of Kendall, and had never obtained one
until now. Kendall was leaning on a chair, his head bent down, and eyes
glancing up at a member of Congress with whom he was in earnest
conversation, and in a moment he was gone.”[348]
Such was the cleverest, most audacious, and powerful member of the
Kitchen Cabinet--a man who made history that historians have written and
ascribed to others who merely uttered the words or registered the will
of this indomitable journalist and politician.
II
When Jackson left the Hermitage, he was accompanied by Major William B.
Lewis, who had been intimately identified with his campaign for the
Presidency. This unobtrusive man found lodgment with his chief at
Gadsby’s, where he interested himself in analyzing the characters of
office-seekers for the guidance of his friend. After walking with
Jackson from the hotel to the Capitol, and seeing him inducted into
office, he announced his plan to return to the quiet life of Tennessee.
“Why, Major,” exclaimed the astonished Jackson, “you are not going to
leave me here alone, after doing more than any other man to bring me
here!”
Moved by the sincerity of the appeal, Lewis remained on in Washington
through the eight years of the reign, living at the White House, and
enjoying a greater personal intimacy with the President than any other
politician of the time. Accepting an insignificant auditorship at the
Treasury as an excuse for staying on, he interpreted his real function
as that of a political bodyguard. He came and went in the President’s
private apartments at will. No formalities were interposed between these
two strangely different men. No secrets formed a veil. In the midst of
the bitter fights against his idol, Lewis moved quietly and uncannily
about, gauging sentiment, determining the drift, analyzing men and
motives, guarding Jackson against the surprise attack. When the
ferocious onslaughts were at their worst in the Senate, Lewis could be
found somewhere in the shadows of the chamber watching every movement of
the enemy, and critically, if not always wisely, passing judgment upon
the strategy of the Administration forces; and when the fight was over,
he hastened to the White House, sure to find Jackson sitting up in his
room with the picture of Rachel and her Bible on the table before him,
awaiting the report.
There was this difference between Lewis and the other members of the
Kitchen Cabinet--they all loved Jackson; but where the others thought of
him as the personification of a party, Lewis could only think of him as
the friend of the Hermitage. He had fought and wrought for his election,
not to score a party victory, but to vindicate the man. Of Jackson’s
comfort, happiness, and prestige he was supremely jealous, but there
were times when he rebelled against the audacious proposals of others,
more given to thinking of party, to stake the General’s reputation and
success upon a party issue.
He has been called the “great father of wire-pullers,”[349] a closet
man’s definition of a great manipulator of men. At the time the public
began to speculate on the presidential possibilities of Jackson, the
Major was his neighbor. He was not a penniless adventurer or soldier of
fortune. There was nothing in politics for himself for which he cared a
bauble. He was living comfortably on his large productive plantation,
with slaves in the fields, and books in the library. Jackson had learned
to love and trust him years before when he was chief quartermaster on
the General’s staff in the campaign of 1812-15, and in the final
settlement the Government was found to be indebted to him to the amount
of three cents--which was never paid. When the Jackson movement became
serious, the Major, knowing the General’s strength and weaknesses, took
charge of all confidential matters. To just what extent he contributed
to Jackson’s election no one ever knew--but all knew that he had played
an important part. He conducted all the correspondence, and carefully
scrutinized, and often revised, the General’s letters; and another of
his functions was to serve as a sort of valet for all State occasions
when Jackson should be carefully groomed.
He possessed the qualities that Jackson lacked. Where Jackson was
impulsive, he was deliberative; where Jackson was prejudiced, he was
tolerant; where Jackson was rash, he was prudent, if not timid; where
Jackson was a man of action, he was a man of thought; and while Jackson
had ideas, he furnished the vehicle to bear them in parade. During the
many months preceding the election of 1828, this practical, polished
politician was studying the political war map, and quietly planning
successful battles in this State and that. He knew the politics of each
State, the personalities and prejudices entering in, the dominating
motives of all politicians, even to those never known outside their own
little communities, and he knew how to play one force against the other
without appearing in the game. Knowing as he did all the cross-currents
of local politics, nothing ever arose that he could not deal with
intelligently.
During the eight years in the White House, Lewis was a whole regiment of
Swiss guards--always on duty and alert. “Keep William B. Lewis to ferret
out and make known to you all the plots and intrigues hatching against
your Administration, and you are safe,” was Jackson’s advice to Polk
when the latter was entering the White House. We shall find him
implicated in some of the most important events of his time, making
history, and yet escaping the historian. His great advantage was his
perfect understanding of Jackson’s character. He often became a buffer,
protecting the President against unpleasant revelations. If he thought a
disclosure necessary as a protection to the grim old warrior, he told
his secret; if he thought it would merely arouse to useless wrath, he
buried it; and sometimes, as in the case of the Crawford letter, he
bided his time for months before revealing it. All the politicians of
his day passed in review before him, Democrats and Whigs, Nullifiers and
Nationalists, friends and enemies, and he silently catalogued them
through a Bertillon system of his own. His advice to Jackson was that of
a friend to a friend, seated about the blazing White House hearth,
discussing politics and men in the midst of the tobacco smoke, as they
might have done in the private life of the Hermitage.
He did not possess Kendall’s genius for programmes, nor Blair’s for
propaganda, but he was invaluable in the field of personalities. He
alone of the three sometimes doubted and drew back in fear. When Jackson
vetoed the Maysville Bill, Van Buren found Lewis’s countenance “to the
last degree despondent.”[350] He dreaded and doubted the effect of the
veto of the measure rechartering the Bank, and later, the withdrawal of
the deposits. Having been Federalistic himself, in other days, he had a
fellow feeling for Louis McLane when that politician found himself in
trouble. But doubting and trembling though he sometimes was, Van Buren
has testified that “no considerations or temptations, through many of
which he was obliged to pass, could weaken his fidelity to the General
or his desire for the success of his Administration.”[351] In the early
stages of the Bank controversy, he alone of the members of the Kitchen
Cabinet maintained friendly relations with Biddle.[352]
Concerning his status among the Jacksonian leaders, biographers and
historians have radically disagreed. Even among the later writers this
disagreement persists, and where one dismisses the theory that he was a
politician, far-sighted and astute, as without sufficient evidence,[353]
another concludes that “in a day of astute politicians, Major Lewis was
one of the cleverest.”[354] The truth appears to be that while he was
not a moulder of policies and creator of programmes, he was one of the
most clever manipulators of men and masters of personal intrigue who
ever served a President. In the Kitchen Cabinet he was the personal
manager--the political secretary.
III
The most militant of the Kitchen Cabinet was Isaac Hill, whose name was
anathema to the Federalists of New England. A poor boy educated in a
printshop, slight and lame, hurling picturesque phrases and bitter
reproaches at the powerful enemy, excoriating it with his satire and
sarcasm, and slashing it with the keen blade of his wit, it is not
surprising that the impression handed down by the Intellectuals of the
Opposition is unfavorable. Where they have not dismissed him with a
shrug, they have damned him as a dunce--and largely because he gave
virility to a minority and made it militant, and, despite overwhelming
odds, established in the hotbed of proscriptive Federalism a vigorous
Democratic paper which was quoted from New Orleans to Detroit, and from
Boston to St. Louis. If he lacked the depth and the constructive faculty
of Kendall, and the literary finish of Blair, he possessed a genius as a
phrase-monger which spread his fame and served his party, and in the
heat of a campaign, one of his stinging paragraphs was as effective as
one of Kendall’s leaders. There was no finesse in his fighting--he
fought out in the open, in full range of his foe, and with any weapon on
which he could lay his hands. If the intensity of his partisanship
amounted to unfairness, it had been made so by the intolerance and
bigotry of the Opposition of his section. Since no member of the Kitchen
Cabinet more insistently demanded of Jackson the adoption of the spoils
system, it is not unprofitable to inquire into the origin of his state
of mind.
His life was a tragedy. Born in abject poverty, a cripple from
childhood, he had seen his father and grandfather become mental wrecks.
Under this cloud, in this state of penury, he looked out upon the world.
Shut off by his infirmity from physical labor, he had no money for an
education, and he lived on an unpromising New Hampshire farm, where
there were no schools, libraries, or books, and few papers. But before
he was eight he had read the Bible through. Two years before he had read
the story of the Revolution from books borrowed, and had supplemented
his reading by having a relative, who had fought with Washington,
describe the burning of Charlestown and the Concord fight. There was
infinite pathos in his passion for the printed page. But college was out
of the question, the printing-office the only possible substitute, and
thus, after a long apprenticeship, he took over a wobbling paper at
Concord and became an editor.
Throwing discretion to the winds and with a sublime audacity, he took up
the challenge of the powerful majority; and it required courage to
pursue that course in the New Hampshire of 1809. To be a Democrat
(Republican) there in those days was to offend God; boldly to preach
hostility to Federalism was to proclaim blasphemy and invite
destruction. The Federalistic press opened their batteries of abuse upon
the obscure youth. One paper solemnly announced the discovery that he
was a direct descendant of the witches who had suffered at Salem. Hill
returned a spirited fire, and rejoiced in the combat. “I have hit them,
for they flutter,” he said.[355] In the campaign of 1810 he fairly
galvanized the prostrate friends of the National Administration into
life and incurred an unbelievable hatred of the Opposition. When this
crippled boy was brutally assaulted on the streets of Concord, the
Federalist press of New Hampshire gloated over the attack. Nor was it
above sneering at his infirmity.
Throughout the War of 1812 he was a pillar of strength to the Republic
in New Hampshire. During the darkest days it was said that he was worth
a thousand soldiers in heartening the patriots.[356] With the approach
of the campaign of 1828, Hill’s paper, the “Patriot,” began to bombard
the Adams Administration, and Clay, who was to shudder later at the
wickedness of the spoils system, promptly deprived him of the public
printing.
Thus the campaign of 1828 began. The stinging paragraphs of Hill made
the rounds of the Democratic press of the country, and in his own State
he was shamelessly assailed. Not satisfied with maligning his personal
character, his enemies stooped to references to the insanity of his
father in disseminating the story that he was crazy.[357] In view of
this cruel personal persecution, it was but human that, on the election
of Jackson, his voice should have been for war on all the Federalist
office-holders. Thus his psychology is easily understood. Because of
his political convictions, he had been proscribed. A cripple, he had
been personally attacked in the streets. In suffering he had been
ridiculed. The insanity of his father had been made the subject of
vulgar jests. His personal character had been assailed. And in the hour
of victory, all the pent-up hatred of the years was let loose upon the
vanquished foe.
Hill was the Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet, the fanatic, calling for
heads--more heads--and unseemly in his mirth as they fell.
In appearance he was not prepossessing. Below the medium height, he was
spare as well as crippled. In his high forehead and the expression of
his eyes his intellect was indicated, and he carried himself with that
haughty air of superiority which men, forced to fight for their
existence, are apt to assume. This was described by his enemies as
“demoniacal.” He always dressed plainly as a workingman. Without
imagination or dreams, severely practical and to the point, conscious of
his limitations, and passionately devoted to both his convictions and
prejudices, there was nothing about him to appeal to the fashionable or
the intellectually elect. In no sense dazzling in his gifts, hesitating
instead of eloquent, shocking the Senate of his time by reading his
speeches, and proud of his profession, he was not pointed out to
travelers who wrote books, nor lionized in the drawing-rooms, nor
dignified by the complimentary notices of the women letter-writers or
diarists of his day. He has come down largely as his enemies have
painted him, and their very hate of him discloses his effectiveness as a
politician.
He was one of the Republic’s first uncompromising partisans--“My party,
right or wrong.”
IV
An Administration and party paper had been considered important in the
political circles of the Republic from the beginning, but it was left
to the editors of the Kitchen Cabinet to develop it to the highest
degree of efficiency. The “National Journal,” Court paper of the Adams
Administration, had awakened the Opposition to an appreciation of the
practical value of a powerful party paper. Duff Green and the
“Telegraph,” in a sense, met the requirements, but even then there were
Democrats of influence and aspirations who found something lacking. To
Van Buren, the editor, devoted to Calhoun, was unsatisfactory. It is
inconceivable that he felt the need for a more aggressive pen for the
Opposition. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1826, while planning a more
vigorous attack on the Adams Administration, he had an “animated
conversation” concerning the need of a strictly party paper with
Calhoun, at the latter’s house in Georgetown. The Carolinian urged the
adoption of the “Telegraph” as the party organ, with Van Buren pressing
the advantage of prevailing upon Thomas Ritchie of the “Richmond
Enquirer” to accept the editorship of a new party paper at the
capital.[358] Failing to persuade Calhoun, the Red Fox cleverly
approached Senator Tazewell of Virginia, an ardent friend of the
Carolinian, and persuaded him to join in an invitation to the Richmond
journalist.[359] Ritchie declined, however, on the ground of his
attachment to Virginia and his reluctance to leave old friends and
associates.[360] Thus, at the beginning of the Administration, it seemed
that Duff Green and the “Telegraph” were destined to become the pen and
organ of the Jacksonian Democracy.
At a White House levee in the winter of 1830-31, under the very nose of
Jackson, and under his roof, the intriguing Green drew the proprietor of
a Washington printing-house aside to tell him confidentially of the
hastening rupture of Jackson and Calhoun, and of the plans in incubation
for the advancement of the presidential aspirations of the latter.
Calhoun organs were to be acquired or established in all the strategic
political points in the country, and when the rupture came these were to
follow the lead of the “Telegraph” in a nationwide denunciation of
Jackson. The printer was offered the editorship of one of these papers,
and a liberal amount for his Washington plant. Thoroughly devoted to the
political fortunes of the President, and not relishing the idea of being
the depositary of a secret which threatened the President’s position,
the printer consulted freely with his friends, and, on their advice,
carried the story to the White House.
Benton tells us that the story did not surprise Jackson, who was
“preparing for it.”[361] Thus we are told that in the summer of 1830 he
had been impressed with a powerful editorial attack on Nullification in
the “Frankfort Argus,” had made inquiries as to the identity of the
author, and had authorized the extension of an invitation to assume the
editorship of an Administration paper in the capital. The version of
Benton differs in material points from the version of Amos Kendall,[362]
who was far more intimately identified with the launching of the new
paper than either Benton or Van Buren. Here we have it that the idea was
not Jackson’s, and that when plans for a Jacksonian organ were presented
to him “he entirely disapproved.” At that time Jackson was unable to
bring himself to believe in the treachery of Green. When ultimately,
however, he saw the drift, he gave his “tacit consent.”
Here Kendall’s story clashes with the theory, put forth by Green, that
Van Buren was the directing genius behind the whole project. When the
President finally gave his “tacit consent,” the practical politicians of
the Kitchen Cabinet took charge. The various governmental offices were
visited for an understanding as to what portion of the Government
printing could be expected. When Van Buren, then at the head of the
State Department, was approached, he announced that he would not give a
dollar of the printing of his department, on the ground that “were such
a paper established its origin would be attributed to him, and he was
resolved to be able to say that he had nothing to do with it.” This is
typical of Van Buren, and is no doubt true. But the responses from all
the other departments were satisfactory and the plans were pushed.
Having positively settled upon the paper, the next step was to find a
managerial genius. In a conference between Kendall and Barry, the
Postmaster-General, the latter suggested the availability of Frank P.
Blair, then writing occasionally for the “Frankfort Argus,” though not
attached to the paper in a regular capacity. The correspondence with
Blair was conducted by Kendall. The Kentuckian, surprised, momentarily
hesitated, and it was not until Kendall had agreed to bear an equal part
of the responsibility that he consented.
While Blair was getting his affairs in order in Kentucky, Kendall
proceeded with the arrangements in Washington, and when the editor
reached the capital nothing remained unsettled but the name and a motto.
The two agreed to call the paper the “Globe,” and the motto, suggested
by Blair, “The World is Governed Too Much.”
Thus there appears no reason to doubt that Kendall’s version is the
correct one, that Jackson was no more a leader in the movement than Van
Buren, and that the idea was conceived by the little group of new and
practical politicians, then coming to the fore, and who, while friends
of Jackson, were interested in “measures more than men.”
V
The arrival of Frank Blair in Washington was an historical event, not
appreciated at the time, and scarcely properly appraised to this day.
But the ugly, illy dressed stranger, who presented himself at the White
House immediately after reaching the capital, gave little promise, in
his appearance, of the power within him. Instead of a large, raw-boned,
husky Kentuckian expected, Major Lewis, who met him, was confronted by a
short, slender man, poorly garbed, and rather timid and retiring than
otherwise. The Major was frankly disappointed and probably disgusted.
But when the editor was presented to Jackson, that genius took note
neither of his dress nor appearance. Although expecting foreign
diplomats and distinguished statesmen to dinner, he could see no reason
why the unimposing little man, with the ill-fitting clothes and the ugly
visage, should not remain as his guest. Assuming that he would be alone,
Blair accepted, and, to his horror, he found himself in the presence of
ministers in all the splendor of their official regalia. Unaccustomed to
such show, and feeling the conspicuousness of his garb, he fled to a
corner, hoping to escape notice. But Jackson, who never judged men by
their appearance, least of all by their clothes, sought him out with the
kindest intentions, and placed him beside him at the table. This act of
courtesy, painful to Blair at the time, was understood and appreciated,
and not only won his ardent support, but his deepest affection.
Although unknown to Jackson, who would have been uninterested if he had
known, Frank Blair was qualified by blood to sit at the table of the
first gentleman of the land. His grandfather had been acting president
of Princeton when Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration, was summoned
to New Jersey to accept the presidency. Born forty years before becoming
editor of the “Globe,” he had displayed, in college, the remarkable
intellectual qualities that were to make him the adviser of Presidents,
and one of the most influential moulders of public opinion of his time.
He distinguished himself as the best rhetorician and linguist of his
class.[363] The
[Illustration: FRANCIS P. BLAIR
ROGER B. TANEY
WILLIAM B. LEWIS]
weakness of his voice discouraged his ambition for forensic distinction.
In the Governor’s Mansion at Frankfort he was married, early in life, to
a charming woman noted for “her extraordinary mental force and her
sagacity.”[364]
Like Kendall and Barry, Blair had begun his political career as an
ardent supporter of Clay, and like them, had broken with him on the
“bargain” story. According to Blair’s contention through life, Clay had
confided to him in advance that, if such a contingency as did develop
should arise in the congressional caucus, he would throw his support to
Adams, and that he had protested against the plan. Whether true or not,
that event marked the end of Blair’s interest in the political ambitions
of the man from Ashland. From 1823 to 1827 he played a conspicuous part
as one of the principals in the famous fight between the New and the Old
Courts which all but reduced the State to a condition bordering on
anarchy. This part of his career is difficult to understand. The New
Court Party, with which he was affiliated, was a revolutionary
organization mustering its strength from the indebtedness and poverty of
the people. It proposed to relieve the condition of the poor through
methods frankly revolutionary and worse. During the period of the court
fight, and while acting as the clerk of the revolutionary court, two
events completely changed the course of his career. He broke with Clay
and allied himself with the Democratic Party; and he became a regular
contributor to the columns of the “Frankfort Argus,” and a journalist by
profession. On abandoning the court clerkship he immediately identified
himself with Kendall in the publication of the paper, and the combined
genius of these two extraordinary men converted the little Western
journal into one of the most powerful and popular of the Jacksonian
organs. All the credit appears to have gone to Kendall and none to his
associate, for after the election it was Kendall and not Blair who was
assured of recognition from the incoming Administration. After Kendall
went to Washington, Blair, without the slightest notion of ever
following, remained in Frankfort, writing special articles in support of
Jacksonian policies for the “Argus.” Thus he plied his trenchant pen
against the Bank, excoriated Nullification, attacked Clay, and damned
Calhoun. He had suffered financial reverses, been forced to sacrifice
much property, and was in distressed circumstances. Later, when he was
assailed by Senator Poindexter as having gone to Washington as a
“beggar,” he was indignantly to repel the charge. “The editor of the
‘Globe’ resigned, on leaving Frankfort to take charge of the press
here,” he wrote, “the clerkship of the circuit court, the fees of which
alone averaged $2000 annually, and the presidency of the Bank of the
Commonwealth, and other employments which made his annual income upward
of $3000--a sum twice as great as the salaries of the judges of the
Supreme Court, and a third greater than that of the Governor of the
State.”[365] Nevertheless, it was the state of his finances which had
necessitated the temporary suppression of the fact that he had accepted
the editorship of the “Globe.”
Once in the editorial chair, he assumed a militant attitude, and frankly
announced that the paper would be devoted “to the discussion and
maintenance of the principles which brought General Jackson into
office”; and as early as April, 1831, four months after the first
appearance of the paper, he began vigorously to advocate the reëlection
of his idol in the White House.
The first issue appeared on December 7, 1830, published twice a week. In
its initial days the inevitable quarrel between Blair and Green
simmered, and while the “Globe” and the “Telegraph” were nervously
toying with their pistols, the actual fight did not commence until Green
published the Calhoun letters. Thereafter the contest was acrimonious
and continuous. The immediate result of this battle was to impress
Blair with the necessity of a daily publication, requiring a much larger
outlay in money than either Blair or Kendall or both were able to
advance. This, however, did not discourage the plucky little Kentuckian
in the least. He called upon the friends and supporters of Jackson in
the capital and throughout the country to subscribe for six hundred
copies and pay for them in advance at the rate of ten dollars per annum.
This money was easily collected, and thus, without the advance, by
Blair, of a dollar of capital, the “Globe” was placed upon a firm and
sure foundation.[366]
The journalistic genius of the little editor almost immediately gave the
paper first rank in importance among all the papers then published in
the country. Some of his admirers have said that “he became the master
of a style of composition that compared favorably with that of
Junius.”[367] However that may be, he unquestionably was forceful,
entertaining, and at times, eloquent. He could be dignified and
argumentative without being dull. He knew how to appeal at once to the
lover of pure English and the uneducated artisan of the city or the
frontiersman in the wilderness. He was a pioneer among the journalists
who have known how to produce a paper that would be as welcome on the
library table of the student as in the hut of the farmer on the
outskirts of civilization. The secret of his strength was his direct
method. There was nothing of equivocation or compromise in his
character. He did not qualify away all force for the sake of
conservatism. He liked to cross the Rubicon, burn the bridges, and
devastate the country. Any one could understand precisely what he meant.
He was intense in his convictions, and he had the audacity, inseparable
from political genius, to move in a straight line, prepared to meet the
enemy even on ground of the latter’s choosing. His gift of satire and
sarcasm was a joy to his fellow partisans who delighted in him. At first
intended as their spokesman, he became their leader. Politicians soon
learned that it was not necessary to carry suggestions to the editor of
the “Globe”--they went to his sanctum to get them. Capable of a skillful
use of the rapier, he preferred the meat-axe. Nothing pleased him so
much as the crushing of the skulls of the enemies of Jackson, and if
these should happen to be Democrats, all the greater was the joy of the
operation.
This slashing, brilliant style delighted Jackson, who, strangely enough,
had a profound admiration for the fluent writer. The old warrior took
him to his bosom. That the editor of the “Court journal” should be
mistaken was unthinkable to the President; and when any one asked him
for information on any subject with which he was unfamiliar, he would
invariably reply: “Go to Frank Blair--he knows everything.” And Jackson
believed it. Firmly convinced that the people were entitled to all
public information, when any such came to his attention he would
instantly say, “Give it to Blair.”[368] He consulted the little ugly
Kentuckian constantly on all matters of domestic policy, on party
matters and patronage, and even on delicate points concerned with
international programmes. The intimacy of this relationship soon
trickled down from the capital to the party workers in the most remote
sections, and, in time, the paper took its place with the Bible in all
well-regulated Democratic households. Jackson himself is said to have
read nothing during his Presidency but the Bible, his correspondence,
and the “Globe.”[369] The Democratic press throughout the country got
its cue from Blair’s editorials, and he, astute politician and
advertiser, took pains to cultivate intimate relations with all papers
supporting the Administration. Many articles, written by Kendall in the
office of the “Globe,” and sent to country papers for publication as
their own, were afterwards collected and reproduced in the
Administration organ to indicate the trend of public opinion.
Naturally the enemies of the Administration in Congress looked upon
Blair and his paper with venomous hatred, and not without cause. No head
was too distinguished for his bludgeon, and it descended with resounding
whacks upon the craniums of the greatest as well as the least of these,
leading to many furious protests and denunciations on the floor of the
House and Senate. The “Congressional Globe” is thickly sprinkled with
references to the paper. There was nothing of novelty in a statesman
rising to a question of personal privilege to explain that the editor
had done him an injustice in describing him as a liar, an anarchist, or
a traitor. Occasionally Clay, or some lesser light, would rise to
protest against the action of the President in conveying information, to
which the Congress was entitled, through the columns of his organ. Henry
A. Wise would complain that “the Secretary of the Treasury has already
informed Congress and the country, through the columns of the ‘Globe’ of
Saturday last,” that a certain policy would be pursued.[370] Or perhaps
he would merely desire to explain that a certain editorial was a “total
perversion of the facts.”[371] Or maybe it was John Quincy Adams who
took the floor to describe the editor of the “Globe” as “the ambassador
of the Executive,” an ambassador being “a distinguished person sent
abroad to lie for the benefit of his country.”[372] One member would
secure recognition to “indignantly repel the charge made against him by
the ‘Globe’ of being an anarchist and a revolutionist.”[373] Even
Webster was not impervious to the darts of the journalist, and did not
think it beneath his dignity formally to protest against an editorial
paragraph, “flagitiously false,” which had reflected upon him as
chairman of the Finance Committee.[374]
With the politicians, the country press, and the party leaders in the
Congress treating the “Globe” as the editorial reflection of the
President, it is not surprising that the diplomatic corps should have
accepted the general assumption, and that the foreign offices of Europe
should have attached no little significance to any of its observations
on international affairs. Of the truth of this we have one very striking
illustration.
While Livingston was Secretary of State, James Buchanan was the American
Minister at St. Petersburg, charged with the negotiation of a highly
important commercial treaty. All went well until the terms of the treaty
had been practically agreed upon, when he had an interview with the
brilliant Count Nesselrode, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who protested
against what he termed the unfriendly attitude of the American press
toward the Emperor and Russia, apropos of Poland. Not only, he
complained, had the “Globe,” which he characterized as “the Government
paper,” failed to correct the false impressions of the press generally,
but it “had itself been distinguished by falsehoods.” He hoped,
therefore, that the President “would adopt measures to remove this cause
of complaint in the future, at least against the official paper in
Washington.”[375] Recovering as quickly as possible from his
astonishment, Buchanan explained that the press in the United States was
not subject to governmental supervision, but the practical-minded
Nesselrode was not at all impressed. He baldly charged that the “Globe”
“formed an exception to the rule and was a paper over which the
Government exercised a direct control.” Such being the Russian
understanding, the Count was disappointed at the failure of Livingston,
when he had met the Russian Minister to the United States in New York
City, to offer assurances that no more offensive articles would appear
in that journal, and even more chagrined to learn, after that interview,
that the “Globe” had been “more violent than before.” Buchanan was
forced to concede that the “Globe” was commonly called the “official
paper,” but earnestly protested that it was free from governmental
control. He was “persuaded that even the influence of Mr. Livingston
over the editor” was not much greater than his own, and he had no
influence at all. Here Buchanan was on safe ground, but Nesselrode was
not so easily convinced. With a disconcerting smile of incredulity, he
suggested that “General Jackson himself must certainly have some
influence over the editor.” Finding himself in a blind alley, Buchanan
was lamely admitting that the President might have such influence, when
Nesselrode, taking instant advantage of the admission, and without
waiting for the conclusion of the sentence, requested him to ask Jackson
to “exercise it for the purpose of inducing the ‘Globe’ to pursue a more
cautious course hereafter.” Buchanan, glad of the opportunity to drop
the subject, hastened to assure the Count that it would afford him great
pleasure “to make his wishes known to the President.”[376]
Thus, such was the genius of Blair and Kendall in impressing themselves
upon the affairs of the Nation that, within three years after the
establishment of the “Globe,” they had become political powers in the
Republic, and so much international figures that their editorials were
carefully read in the foreign offices of Europe.
Of the members of the Kitchen Cabinet, Lewis’s influence in determining
the political fate of men, and Hill’s in establishing the system of
spoils, were of no small importance, but the publicity work of Blair and
Kendall, more than any other one thing, contributed to the solidarity of
the party, and the general popularity of Jackson and his measures.
Benton, Van Buren, Forsyth, were masterful managers of Jackson’s
congressional battles, where he frequently lost to Clay, but the
practical politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet, through the free use of
patronage and the press, aroused and organized the masses with the
ballots for the succession of successful battles at the polls.
CHAPTER VII
CLAY LEADS THE PARTY ONSLAUGHT
I
Henry Clay sat in the little library at Ashland reading a letter from
Webster. “You must be aware of the strong desire manifested in many
parts of the country that you should come into the Senate,” the letter
ran. “The wish is entertained here as earnestly as elsewhere. We are to
have an interesting and arduous session. Everything is to be attacked.
An array is preparing much more formidable than has ever yet assaulted
what we think the leading and important public interests. Not only the
tariff, but the Constitution itself, in its elemental and fundamental
provisions, will be assailed with talent, vigor, and union. Everything
is to be debated as if nothing had ever been settled. It would be an
infinite gratification to me to have your aid, or rather, your lead. I
know nothing so likely to be useful. Everything valuable in the
government is to be fought for and we need your arm in the fight.”
The meaning was perfectly clear to Clay. The man in the White House,
contrary to Whig expectations, was disclosing masterful qualities of
leadership. The veto of the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Bills had
left no room for doubt as to his attitude toward internal improvements.
No Executive had ever before so freely exercised the power of
presidential rejection.[377] On the tariff he was known to favor such
reasonable reductions as would conciliate the Southern States, and his
brief reference to the National Bank in his first Message, disconcerting
in itself, had been followed by ominously hostile action on the part of
several State Legislatures.[378] Meanwhile Jackson’s candidacy for
reëlection was practically announced. Major Lewis, in his subterranean
manner, had been busy and with the usual results. The “New York Courier
and Enquirer,” organ of Van Buren, was advocating his reëlection, and
the President’s followers, quietly encouraged by Kendall and Lewis, had
placed him in nomination in the legislatures of five States.
Under these conditions the old party of Adams grew restive and impatient
for a strong leader, and instinctively turned to the magnetic figure of
Ashland. Already his nomination for the Presidency in 1832 was a
foregone conclusion. The enthusiastic acclaim which had greeted him on
his political tours during his retirement had impressed his sanguine
temperament as a sure omen of success. He would have preferred to have
remained in retirement pending the election, but the party demand for
his leadership in Washington was insistent. The Opposition needed a
figure around which it could rally, and as a party leader Webster was a
failure. With much reluctance Clay decided to respond to the call. The
election in Kentucky had been a keen disappointment, and the enemies of
the Administration had a bare majority in the legislature, but it was
enough, and he was elected.
Early in November he reached the capital, “borne up by the undying
spirit of ambition,” looking “well and animated,” to be received with
“the most marked deference and respect.”[379] From this time on,
throughout Jackson’s Presidency, he was to remain the brilliant,
resourceful, bitter, and unscrupulous leader of the Opposition--as
brilliant and remarkable an Opposition as has ever confronted a
Government in this or any other country.
And such a politician! There have been few remotely like him, none his
superior in personal popularity. His
[Illustration: JOHN C. CALHOUN
HENRY CLAY
DANIEL WEBSTER]
unprecedented sway over a party was due, in large measure, to his
remarkably fascinating personality, his audacity and dash, his amazing
powers of ingratiation, and his superb eloquence which acted upon the
spirit of the party workers like the sound of a bugle to a battle
charger. No American orator, perhaps, has ever approached his effect
upon a partisan audience. Fluent, and at times capable of passages of
inspired eloquence, a consummate master of the implements of sarcasm and
ridicule, his was the oratory that moves men to action. He could lash
his followers to fury or move them to tears. His speeches often lacked
literary finish, and, at times, in their colloquialisms descended
beneath the dignity of the man’s position, but even these occasional
descents to buffoonery contributed to his popularity. He often spoke the
language of the people--Webster and Calhoun, never. The contribution of
new ideas to a discussion was not his forte. But he could gather up the
material at hand, and weave it into a speech of fervent declamation
which created the momentary impression that he was breaking virgin soil.
His oratory was in his personality and his delivery. His voice was an
exquisite musical instrument, with a clarion note that carried his words
to the outskirts of the greatest throng. When he spoke, his expressive
countenance glowed with his genius, his eyes flashed or caressed, his
commanding figure seemed to grow, and in his combined dignity and grace
he looked the part of the splendid commander of men, and the inspiring
crusader of a cause. No man of his time, among all the great orators of
that golden age, could so hold an audience literally spell-bound,
Prentiss alone approaching him.
In personal intercourse, no politician ever possessed more of the
seductive graces. There his magnetism was compelling. When he cared to
put forth all his powers of attraction, no one could withstand his
charm. Webster was godlike and compelled admiration; Clay was human and
commanded love. Calhoun once said of him: “I don’t like Clay. He is a
bad man, an impostor, a creature of wicked schemes. I won’t speak to
him, but, by God, I love him!” His effect on both men and women has been
ascribed to the fact that, masculine and virile though he was, he
possessed feminine qualities that led to a sentimental feeling toward
him. Men would follow him, knowing him to be wrong; stake their
political fortunes on him, though they knew it would mean their own
undoing; and women wept over his defeats and idolized him as a god.
As a political leader he was an opportunist. He often changed his tack
to meet the passing breeze, but with the exception of his Bank reversal
nothing could force him to admit it. As we proceed with the story of the
party battles of the Jackson Administrations, we shall be impressed at
times with his capability for trickery, demagogy, misrepresentation,
deliberate misinterpretation, and dogmatic arrogance with his own
friends and supporters. He brooked no equals. He accepted no rebuke and
few suggestions, and led his party with a high-handedness that would
have wrecked a lesser man.
His personal habits were not the best, and yet they were not of a nature
that greatly shocked his generation. Adams thought him “only half
educated” and was disgusted by the looseness of his public and his
private morals.[380] But Adams was not in harmony with his times. Clay
was an inveterate gambler--but so were a large portion of the public men
in the Washington of the Thirties. And while a heavy drinker, he does
not appear to have often been noticeably under the influence, as was
Webster. But these vices never interfered with his work or diverted him
for a moment from the pursuit of his ambition.
It was a militant figure that strode down the Avenue to the Capitol to
lead the fight, with the stride of an Indian, his well-shaped feet
encased in shoes instead of the boots generally worn at the time, and
fastidiously attired as was his wont--a Henry Clay, in shining armor,
his sword shimmering.
II
Five days after Congress convened, the Baltimore Convention nominated
Clay for the high office he long had sought. It had been inevitable from
the hour he rode out of Washington after the inauguration on his way to
Baltimore. During his retirement, his letters of 1829 and 1830 furnish
proof of his candidacy, albeit he carefully conveyed the impression that
he was a little indifferent to the nomination, and more than doubtful of
the result of the election.[381] In a letter to a political follower he
early predicted that if Jackson could unite New York, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania upon his candidacy, opposition would be futile.[382] Two
months later, Webster assured him of the support of Massachusetts, but
feared that a first nomination from that State would “only raise the cry
of coalition revived.”[383] And three days after his nomination at
Baltimore, Clay had written of his skepticism of success, with the
encouraging comment: “Something, however, may turn up (and that must be
our encouraging hope) to give a brighter aspect to our affairs.”[384]
Thus, when he entered the Senate we may be sure that it was with the
fixed determination that something should “turn up.” It was his belief,
as we have seen, that Jackson’s election depended upon his ability to
carry Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. At the time he entertained
no hope of diverting Virginia from Jackson, but he hoped to carry
Pennsylvania or New York, or both. Upon the former he pinned his
faith--and there the tariff was strong, and the National Bank had its
headquarters there, with its ramifications into every section of the
country. His platform had been carefully thought out and thoroughly
discussed in the correspondence of 1829 and 1830. It embraced internal
improvements, a protective tariff, and the rechartering of the Bank.
Thus, when Congress met, the Opposition candidate and his platform were
before the people, and the congressional battles of the session were but
heavy skirmishes preliminary to the battle for the Presidency.
As he looked over the personnel of Congress, Clay must have rejoiced
over his advantage. There, by his side, sat Webster, with all the
prestige of his great name and in all the splendor of his genius.
Presiding still over the deliberations of the Senate was the
stern-visaged political philosopher and sage who had definitely broken
with Jackson-Calhoun. It could not have taken him long to discover, in
the young Hercules with the harshly carven features, the brilliant
possibilities of John M. Clayton. And there, harboring a secret grudge,
and suffering acutely from the wounds inflicted on his mentor in the
chair, sat the eloquent Hayne, meditating revenge. In Thomas Ewing of
Ohio, a robust partisan and able debater, he found a fighter after his
own heart. And while they were of the State Rights persuasion, and
hostile to the tariff and internal improvements, he could scarcely have
failed to catch in the eyes of the erudite Tazewell and Tyler of
Virginia something of a promise that was to be fulfilled.
And against him, he saw John Forsyth and Benton, men of character and
power, supported by Felix Grundy and Hugh White, “Ike” Hill and Mahlon
Dickerson of New Jersey.
His was manifestly the advantage in the Senate.
But in the House his advantage was much greater, for among the members
of the Opposition was the most brilliant array of great orators ever
assembled in a single Congress. John Quincy Adams had reëntered public
life as a Representative from Quincy--as full of fire and pepper as ever
in his youth; Edward Everett, the most scholarly and polished orator of
his generation; Rufus Choate, the greatest forensic orator the Republic
has produced; Richard Henry Wilde, who combined the qualities of a
graceful poet, a vigorous debater and eloquent orator, and a sound
scholar; Tom Corwin, the wit and the slashing master of polemics; and
greater perhaps than all, as a congressional orator, the fiery and
indomitable George McDuffie of South Carolina.
And against this combination the best the Administration could do was to
put forth the commonplace plodder James K. Polk, assisted by Churchill
C. Cambreleng of New York.
If Jackson had the advantage of position, Clay had all the prestige of
genius on his side. Thus the two parties faced each other for the
battle.
III
A less provocative Message than that with which Jackson opened the
Congress could hardly have been penned. It was conciliatory and in good
taste. But Clay’s voice was for war. It was his determination that
something should “turn up,” if he had to turn it up, for the purposes of
the election, and he had instilled his spirit into his followers.
Instantly the gage of battle was thrown down in the consideration of the
nomination of Van Buren as Minister to England. A pettier piece of party
politics is scarcely found in the history of the Senate. Among all the
Opposition Senators, there were probably none who doubted his capacity
or questioned his integrity. With the Calhoun faction it was personal
spite; with Clay, Webster, and Clayton it was partisan spleen. Six
months before, Van Buren had ridden out of Washington with Jackson by
his side, and had sailed for England. In London he was at once received
into the most brilliant society. He became an intimate of the Duke of
Wellington, and Talleyrand, Ambassador from France, cultivated him,
while Rogers, the poet, entertained him frequently at his famous
breakfasts. He had been charged with an important mission--nothing less
than the negotiation of an agreement that would prevent the recurrence
of the causes of estrangement between the two peoples growing out of the
occurrences incidental to England’s participation in European wars.[385]
Welcomed to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, cultivated by the most
powerful of English statesmen, with the prestige in London of having
adjusted, while in the State Department, the long-standing differences
relative to the West Indian trade, he was in position to achieve
triumphs for his country when his nomination was sent to the Senate.
And there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun eagerly awaited its coming. They
had been busily engaged for weeks in preparing the attack. Each drew all
his particular friends into the conspiracy, many of them entering
reluctantly rather than incur their displeasure. The charges against Van
Buren were transparently political. The Calhoun faction were prepared to
contend that he had engineered the quarrel of the President and the
Vice-President and had disrupted the Cabinet. Clay’s special point was
to be that he had introduced the policy of proscription, destined to
destroy American institutions, and he was to join with Webster in
viciously assailing him for his instructions to our Minister to England
in the negotiations on the West Indian trade.
The latter reason for refusing to confirm the nomination of Van Buren
was the only one that rose to the dignity of a pretense. For some time
the United States had been negotiating with London for the opening of
trade in American vessels between this country and the British
possessions, but without success. During the preceding Administration,
while Clay was Secretary of State, extravagant claims were advanced by
the American Government, and, by angering England, had only served to
make a settlement more remote. When Van Buren became Secretary of State,
and McLane was sent to London, he was charged with the duty of
reopening negotiations, and was given certain instructions for his
guidance. Among these was the abandonment of the untenable claims of
Clay, and the concession of the British point of view upon them. This
was denounced as a weakness and a surrender, and as an intentional
reflection upon the previous Administration for party purposes. As a
matter of record, the instructions furnished McLane by Van Buren were
predicated upon the report submitted to Clay, after the failure of the
preceding negotiations, by Albert Gallatin, the Minister to England
under Adams.[386] It consequently follows that when Clay, thoroughly
familiar with his own Minister’s report to him, and with the fact that
Van Buren had merely followed it in his preparation of the instructions,
vehemently denounced the latter for deliberately and maliciously
reflecting upon the previous Administration, he was tricking the Senate
and the country. He, at least, knew better. And the mere fact that
McLane was further instructed to stress the fact that the preceding
Administration had been repudiated by the people at the polls, and the
new régime should not be held accountable for the mistakes of the old,
while in doubtful taste, was scarcely an offense so heinous as to
justify the proposed humiliation of Van Buren.[387] The other charges
had less substance. It has never been convincingly shown that Van Buren
had any part in engineering the quarrel between Jackson and Calhoun, and
years after retiring from the Presidency, Jackson solemnly exonerated
him from any complicity.[388] Equally unproved, and unprovable, was the
claim that he had precipitated the Cabinet crisis, and the charge that
he had introduced the policy of proscription might well have emanated
from some one other than Clay.
The clear intent of the conspiracy was to destroy Van Buren and his
prospects for the Presidency.
When the nomination reached the Senate, nothing was done for five weeks.
Meanwhile the leaders of the conspiracy were carefully preparing their
speeches for publication and wide distribution. On the submission of the
report, the venom behind the remarkable procrastination was revealed in
a resolution, entrusted to one of the lesser lights,[389] to recommit
the nomination with instructions to investigate the disruption of the
Cabinet and whether Van Buren had “participated in any practices
disreputable to the national character.” This, offered as a weak
contribution to the attempt to blacken Van Buren’s reputation, having
served its purpose, was withdrawn without action. Then the orators
began. One after another, with a cheap simulation of sorrowful regret
over the necessity of injuring an amiable man, poured forth his protest
against the nomination. Clay, of course, made a slashing onslaught.
Webster confined himself to attacking the victim because of his
instructions to McLane. Clayton and Ewing, Hayne and seven others
recited their elaborately prepared partisan harangues under the
approving eye of Calhoun in the chair.
The principal reply, and only four were made, was that of Senator
John Forsyth, the accomplished floor leader of the Administration,
and one of the most eloquent and resourceful of men. He vigorously
protested against a partisan crucifixion, and sarcastically commended
the fine public spirit of Senators who could voluntarily bring such
distress upon themselves to serve the public good. This fling went
home to many. Hayne, in later years, admitted that he had spoken and
voted against his judgment at the behest of party,[390] and John
Tyler, who was incapable of a pose, voted for the confirmation,
“not that I liked the man overmuch,” but because he could find no
principle to justify his rejection, and did not care to join “the
notoriously factious opposition ... who oppose everything favored by
the Administration.”[391] Indeed, the cooler and wiser heads among the
enemies of the Administration considered the attack a serious political
blunder. Adams, on learning of the plan, warned that “to reject the
nomination would bring him [Van Buren] back with increased power to
do mischief here.”[392] And Thurlow Weed, of the “Albany Journal,”
uncannily wise and prophetic, sounded a solemn warning through his
editorial columns that such persecution of Van Buren “would change the
complexion of his prospects from despair to hope.” The plan persisted
in, and “he would return home as a persecuted man, and throw himself
upon the sympathy of the party, be nominated for Vice-President, and
huzzahed into office at the heels of General Jackson.”[393]
This was the view of Kendall and Blair, and of Benton, who refused to
participate in the Senate debate. The latter felt that, though
“rejection was a bitter medicine, there was health at the bottom of the
draught.” He alone among the senatorial friends of the rejected Minister
appears to have had the prescience to appreciate the ultimate advantage.
To one Senator, rejoicing over the rejection, he turned with triumphant
mien: “You have broken a Minister and made a Vice-President.” But the
enemies of the Administration and of the victim were jubilant. “It will
kill him, sir, kill him dead; he will never kick, sir, never kick,”
exclaimed Calhoun in the presence of “Old Bullion.”[394] And there was
an immediate reaction. Instead of killing, it made Van Buren. He
instantly became a party martyr, and idol.
On the evening of the day the news of his rejection reached London, Van
Buren appeared at a party at Talleyrand’s, smiling, suave, undisturbed,
as though he had scored a triumph. It was probably on that day that he
heard from Benton, urging that he hold himself free for the
Vice-Presidency.
The speeches of Clay, Webster, Hayne, and Clayton were published, the
veil of secrecy having been lifted from the executive session for this
party purpose, and the effect was wholly different from that expected.
It had been the part of Kendall and Blair to see to that. While the
Senators were talking, they had been busy with their pens, and when the
action was taken the Democratic press furiously denounced the rejection,
the rank and file of the party rose _en masse_ to proclaim the victim a
martyr, mass meetings were called in New York, Philadelphia, and Albany
to arraign the Senate, and the Democratic members of the New York
Legislature sent the President a letter of condolence. The Legislature
of New Jersey declared that after its favorite son, Senator Dickerson,
its choice for Vice-President would be the martyr. And Isaac Hill took
the stump in New Hampshire to denounce Webster as disloyal to friendship
and as a sniveling hypocrite.[395]
But the success of the conspiracy acted upon Clay like the taste of
blood on a tiger, and with an insinuative reference to Livingston’s
indebtedness to the Government, which he knew had been discharged to the
penny, he would have applied the political proscription of the Whigs to
the philosopher in the State Department but for the indignant protest of
Dallas. Thus the character of the fight to be waged against the
Administration was clearly revealed within a month after Clay’s return
to public life.
IV
The first month, too, witnessed an assault on the most vulnerable point
of the Administration lines, and an open invitation to Calhoun and the
Nullifiers to join their political fortunes with the party of Clay.
Both the attack and the invitation came from John M. Clayton, who was
almost to rival Clay in the leadership of the Whigs, and to surpass him
in some of the qualities of leadership. When he entered the Senate
practically unknown, he was the youngest member of that body, but there
was enough in his physical appearance and bearing to set him out in any
group as one destined to command. Over six feet in height, his figure
well filled out; of clear complexion, with large gray eyes of
intellectual power, and an enormous, superbly shaped head, he looked
both the physical and mental giant. It only required the personal
contact to attract men to him as steel shavings are attracted to the
magnet. His manner was easy and graceful, his disposition kindly and
benevolent, his wit keen, his conversational powers far beyond the
average. With a remarkable memory and an unusual gift for analysis, he
entered the Senate well equipped in a thorough knowledge of literature
and history. He had great talents and just fell short of genius. As an
orator, he was logical, forceful, at times dramatic and eloquent. Hating
the Jacksonians, he surveyed the field for an opportunity to attack, and
he found it in the Post-Office Department.
One of Jackson’s most unfortunate appointments had been that of Barry as
Postmaster-General. A genial and likable politician, a loyal friend, an
ardent champion of the President, and, personally, a man of undoubted
integrity, he was pitifully lacking in business ability, in a capacity
for organization, and was all too credulous of his subordinates. Within
two years after Jackson’s inauguration, the politicians knew that his
department offered a rich field for investigation. Knowing this, Clayton
introduced his celebrated resolution inquiring into its abuses. That the
Administration circles were not at all satisfied that nothing could be
uncovered is evident in the excitement the resolution caused, and every
effort was made by Administration Senators to block it. In his initial
speech in support of his resolution, Clayton sounded the keynote of the
Whig campaign against the prescriptive policies of Jackson, but more
significant still was his appeal, the first openly made, to Calhoun, to
join with the followers of Clay in a concerted assault upon the
Administration.
While the young Senator from Delaware was speaking, Calhoun sat in the
chair of the presiding officer. Turning in his direction, Clayton made
the first bold bid for his support of the party Opposition.
“But it will be seen,” he said, “whether there be not one man in this
nation to breast its [Administration’s] terrors whenever the President
hurls his thunders. There are hawks abroad, sir. Rumor alleges that that
plundering falcon has recently swooped upon a full-fledged eagle that
never yet flinched from a contest, and, as might be naturally expected,
all await the result with intense interest. It is given out that the
intended victim of proscription now is one distinguished far above all
in office for the vigor and splendor of his intellect.... But if that
integrity and fairness which have heretofore characterized him through
life do not desert him in this hour of greatest peril, we may yet live
to see one, who has been marked out as a victim, escape unscathed even
by that power which has thus far prostrated alike the barriers of public
law and the sanctity of private reputation.”
The appeal was entirely unnecessary, if not intended merely as a public
tribute to a newly acquired ally, for Calhoun and his friends were
already hostile to the Administration. It is historically interesting
only in that it shows the cleverness of the National Republicans, soon
to adopt the name of Whigs, in undertaking to coalesce with all elements
of the Opposition, no matter how divergent, or even inconsistent, the
causes leading to the disaffection.
Thus, within a few weeks after the assumption of the leadership by Clay,
we find Jackson’s favorite humiliated by the rejection of his
nomination; another wantonly insulted by the questioning of his personal
integrity; a movement launched to blacken the Administration through an
investigation of its most vulnerable department; and a plan conceived
for the consummation of an unholy alliance of incongruous elements.
V
Meanwhile Clay, devoted to the protective tariff policy, anxious to save
it from crucifixion by consent, and with a political eye on the
political effect of his championship in Pennsylvania, without which he
thought Jackson’s reëlection impossible, had been busy formulating a new
tariff which was to create more party clashes.
Within a month after Congress met, he called a meeting of the friends of
the protective tariff to determine plans for party action. The then
existing “tariff of abominations”[396] was doomed by public opinion. Two
months before he wrote a friend acknowledging a revision inevitable, and
announcing plans for one not compromising to the protective
principle.[397] The conference called by Clay met at the home of Edward
Everett, Representative from Boston, with the presidential nominee
himself presiding. He summoned his friends, not to consult, but to take
orders. He disclosed his plan--a repeal of all duties on tea, coffee,
spices, indigo, and similar articles, and thereby reduce the revenue as
much as seven millions that year without interfering with the prevailing
duties that had been imposed for protective purposes. Jackson intended
to destroy the protective system through the accumulation of revenue. It
was the duty of its friends to save it through the reductions proposed.
If we may accept Adams as a faithful reporter, Clay’s manner was
“exceedingly peremptory and dogmatical.” Various questions, indicative
of doubt, were asked. Everett, mindful of the ominous protest of the
South, thought the plan might be interpreted as “setting the South at
defiance.” Adams, who had a mind of his own, reported that the Committee
on Manufactures in the House, of which he was chairman, was “already
committed upon the principle that the reduction of the duties should be
prospective, and not to commence until after the extinguishment of the
public debt”; and he suggested that the Clay plan would be, not only “a
defiance of the South, but of the President and the Administration.” The
spirit of Clay is well disclosed in his none too gracious reply that “to
preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American System, he would defy
the South, the President, and the Devil; that if the Committee on
Manufactures had committed themselves ... they had given a very foolish
and improvident pledge; and that there was no necessity for the payment
of the debt by the 4th of March, 1833.”
This led to some debate between the former President and his premier,
with Adams insisting that Jackson’s desire to extinguish the debt should
be “indulged and not opposed,” and that the President’s idea “would take
greatly with the people.” This view piqued and mortified Clay, who had
found all the party leaders in the conference becomingly obsequious with
the exception of Adams. That Adams was equally disgusted we may gather
from his description of Clay’s manner as “super-presidential,” and from
the following entry in his journal: “Clay’s motives are obvious. He
sees, that next November, at the choice of presidential electors, the
great and irresistible electioneering cry will be the extinguishment of
the public debt. By instant repeal of the duties he wants to withdraw
seven or eight millions from the Treasury and make it impossible to
extinguish it by the 3rd of March, 1833. It is an electioneering
movement, and this was the secret of these movements, as well as of the
desperate efforts to take the whole business of the reduction of the
tariff into his own hands.”[398] The Democratic opinion that Clay was
partly actuated by a petty partisan desire to deprive the Administration
of the credit for wiping out the national debt, corroborated as it is by
Adams, is plausible enough. At the same time, it was manifestly Clay’s
purpose to rally the protected industries to his standard in the
presidential campaign.
Meanwhile the lobbyists of the protected interests, flocking to the
capital, crowded the rotunda every morning, mixing with the statesmen.
Here, at the time, was the Republic in miniature--lobbyists, statesmen,
correspondents, and plebeians mingling in a common arena, with the
visiting tourists ranged about to view the celebrities in their moments
of conversational unbending.[399] Clay made the presentation of his plan
the opportunity for his first political speech of his campaign. The
Senate was crowded to hear him. It was not enough that he should
acknowledge the approach of the extinguishment of the public debt, and
base his argument for the reduction of duties upon that fact. The
possibility of the passing of the debt during the Administration of
Jackson was clearly annoying, and he attempted, laboriously, and at
considerable length, to deprive it of any credit. The plan of the
Administration to reduce no duties on unprotected articles previous to
March, 1833, and to make a gradual and prospective reduction on
protected articles, he denounced as a scheme to “destroy the protecting
system by a slow but certain poison.” There was nothing remarkable in
his first speech except its affectation of modesty, and his reference to
old age and declining power.
But he was soon to find the incentive for his greatest speech upon the
tariff. Hayne attacked the protective system with all the vigor and
venom of a Nullificationist in the making; and Clay replied in the
brilliant fighting protectionist speech which ranks as one of the
masterful efforts of his life, and was to be used as a textbook for the
advocates of the system for fifty years. Read even to-day, after the
lapse of almost a century, it has a familiar sound, and transmits its
pulsations from the printed page as though the reader felt the heartbeat
of the orator.
Among the Southerners in the Senate, this speech created the greatest
excitement and the gravest forebodings, with John Tyler assailing both
the principle of protection and the method of framing bills under the
principle. But the most significant note struck by Tyler was the warning
that the continuance of the protective policy would inevitably lead to
the disruption of the Union. The speeches of both Clay and Tyler were
sent broadcast over the country. That of the former delighted
protectionists and impressed all. Harrison Gray Otis wrote
enthusiastically from Boston, but both James Madison and James Barbour
gently questioned the taste of the partisan attack on Albert Gallatin as
a “foreigner.”[400] Highly complimentary letters were received by Tyler
from John Marshall and James Madison, both of whom favored the reduction
of the tariff.[401]
And throughout it all, Clay found himself unable to maneuver Jackson or
his friends into a position of opposition to the system. Amos Kendall
and Blair had their hopes tied to another issue. They had no thought of
sacrificing the electoral vote of the Keystone State. The leaders of the
Senate opposition to the tariff were Hayne and Tyler, neither of whom
was longer considered as in the confidence of the President. Clay’s
speech, widely distributed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, proved
him a champion of the system, but nothing occurred in the Senate to
prove Jackson an enemy. This was the situation when the real battle was
transferred to the House of Representatives.
VI
Through some trickery or blunder, that portion of the Presidential
Message relating to “relieving the people from unnecessary taxation
after the extinguishment of the public debt,” was referred to the
Committee on Ways and Means a majority of whose members were hostile to
the protective system; and to the Committee on Manufactures was referred
that part concerning “manufactures and the modification of the
tariff”--a dual reference of the same subject to rival committees. At
the head of the Committee on Manufactures was John Quincy
Adams--certainly not a spokesman of the Administration; and the chairman
of the Committee on Ways and Means was George McDuffie of South
Carolina, a protégé of Calhoun, and now an implacable foe of Jackson.
In feverish haste McDuffie, representing the extreme free-trade school,
began the preparation of his report and the formulation of his bill to
get in before the more deliberate Adams. He proceeded independently of
the forthcoming report and tentative Administration measure from
Secretary McLane, such was his precipitation. Adams, more considerate,
awaited the report, in the meanwhile making many morning calls upon the
Secretary.[402] Strangely enough, the former President had favorably
impressed many Southerners by his admission that existing rates were
unfair to the South. His position, as on a more notable occasion later,
was unique. Even Jackson was actively making overtures to him. The
ever-convenient Colonel Johnson of Tecumseh fame, approaching the old
Puritan with a suggestion of a reconciliation, tactfully hinted that he
thought the President should make the first move. The cautious Adams,
not at all averse, reminded the emissary that Jackson had broken, not
he; to which Johnson replied that the General had been poisoned by
“scoundrel office-seekers” when he first reached the capital. Would
Adams dine at the White House, if invited? The wily old man parried with
the reminder that such would only be the courtesy customarily accorded
all members. But would Adams dine at the White House with a small and
select company? He would not--and on similar grounds. At the end of his
rope, the anxious Johnson asked Adams for a suggestion, only to receive
the reply that it was a matter for Jackson to decide.[403] The next day
Adams received a note from Johnson to the effect that Jackson had
“expressed great satisfaction” over the conversation and sent his
“personal regards and friendship,” together with the assurance that he
was “anxious to have social and friendly intercourse restored.” Thinking
it over, the suspicious Adams could not but meditate upon the attacks
from Clay’s friends if he should cross the threshold of the White
House--and there the matter appears to have rested finally.[404]
There has never been another character in American history quite like
Adams. His real portrait, self-painted, peers at the world from between
the covers of his monumental diary, in which he communed with himself
unreservedly, and expressed his opinion of men and their motives with
brutal frankness. He was a professional statesman of a high order.
Entering upon diplomatic duties in his youth, he knew the cross-currents
of world politics at an age when most Americans are laboriously
projecting themselves into the politics of their immediate neighborhood.
From his earliest years he had been in contact with great minds, and
with men of power and broad vision. A thorough scholar, he was, at the
same time, a man of the world. Conscious of his ability and his
advantages, cold and reserved, and dignified to the point of frigidity,
it is not difficult to understand his supercilious attitude toward men
less favored, and yet placed in lofty station. Inspired by the highest
ideals of public service, holding himself under such rigid discipline as
to have made himself immune to the small vices, placing duty above
friendship, scarcely ever yielding his dignity to mirth, and on those
rare occasions smiling sardonically, he stood upon an isolated peak--of
humanity, and yet separated from it.[405] No one living the monastic
life could have lived more by rule, or have scourged himself more
faithfully to his tasks.
Of friendships, he knew little from experience. Naturally of a
suspicious disposition, he suspected treachery where it was not. Holding
to no ordinary standard of perfection, he could not forgive the
imperfections of his fellows. Even the transcendent genius of Clay could
not hide from him the great man’s lack of education. One searches the
pages of his diary in eager quest of some complimentary
references--there are scarcely any. That he bitterly realized his
isolation is clearly disclosed. “I am a man of reserve,” he wrote,
“cold, austere and forbidding manners. My political adversaries say a
gloomy misanthrope; my personal enemies, an unsocial savage. With a
knowledge of the actual defects of my character, I have not had the
pliability to reform it.” That such a man, entertaining such an opinion
of his own merits and the failings of his contemporaries, should have
consented to serve in the lower House of Congress, after having served
in the Presidency, can only mean that he loved his country and sought
the opportunity for service. That it was not to punish his enemies, we
shall find on more than one occasion when he took his stand with the
Administration of the man who displaced him. Not least among the merits
of Adams was his capacity to work in serious coöperation with McLane in
the moulding of the tariff of 1832.
Quite a different type, and in some respects a greater genius, was
George McDuffie. His career was a mingling of romance and tragedy. A
child of poverty, the protégé of a Calhoun,[406] he had while yet in
college been regarded “as a young man of extraordinary talents,” albeit
at that time “he had not that passionate and eloquent declamation which
he was afterwards to display in Congress.”[407] After hearing his great
speech on the tariff in 1827, Josiah Quincy, who heard him, described
him as “the most sensational orator of the time.”[408] In the fight
against the Panama Mission, Sargent thought him “decidedly the most
violent and aggressive speaker arrayed against the Administration.”[409]
His passionate and impulsive nature frequently led to personal
encounters; and in reaching an understanding of his irritable and sour
disposition, it is profitable to know that just before entering Congress
he had been wounded in the spine in a duel, and never afterwards knew a
day free from personal discomfort. This wound, which ultimately killed
him, changed a good-tempered and jovial man into the irritable, morose,
and nervous creature known to history.[410] The indifference of the
protectionists to the interests of the South, and the intemperate
attacks of the abolitionists upon the Southern people, acted upon the
diseased genius as an irritant and drove him to extremes. Even so, he
rejected Nullification as a remedy, and insisted that the sole recourse
of the Southerners was revolution.[411] Intellectually honest, morally
clean, physically ailing, he put such of himself as he cared for the
world to see into his public acts. He withdrew into himself--taciturn,
lonely. “A spare, grim looking man, who was an admirer of Milton, and
who was never known to smile or jest,” as Perley Poore describes
him.[412] His health gone, his life uncertain, an idolized wife taken
from him within a year, his leader’s aspirations wrecked, his section
threatened, it is not strange that he poured forth on Andrew Jackson
such torrents of eloquent vituperation.
VII
Standing not on ceremony, McDuffie hastened to report a bill,
accompanied by an elaborate report in the nature of an indictment of the
protective system, which “ought to be abandoned with all convenient and
practical despatch, upon every principle of justice, patriotism and
sound policy.” The bill provided an immediate reduction of duties on all
articles except iron, steel, salt, cotton-bagging, hemp and flax, and on
everything made of cotton, wool, and iron, to a basis of twenty-five per
cent ad valorem. On the excepted articles the reduction was to be
gradual, tumbling to twenty-five per cent at once, to eighteen and three
quarters per cent on June 30, 1833, and to twelve and a half per cent
one year later.
With Adams still laboring on his bill, McDuffie called his up with a
slashing speech. This prodigiously long philippic was historical in that
it tended to force the issue of Nullification a little earlier than its
sponsors had planned.
In the meanwhile the Administration measure, with McLane’s report, had
been submitted, providing for the repeal of the existing tariff after
March 3, 1833, and the reduction of the revenue to the financial
requirements of the Government. This contemplated the reduction of the
revenue to $12,000,000 a year, and the arrangement of the rates so as
sufficiently to protect the great interests involved.
Using the Administration measure as a basis, Adams thereupon prepared
his bill and report. In his statement the patriotic statesman,
indifferent to the clamor of party, or class, or section, shines forth
luminously. It may have been unnecessary to expose the protectionist’s
fallacy that raising the duties lowers the price of the domestic
product; equally unnecessary to warn the Southerners that a persistence
in their course would lead to appalling consequences, but he made these
points. In presenting his bill, Adams frankly explained that it was
based on the Administration measure, with some changes as to details.
With the Adams bill before it, the House made short shrift of the
McDuffie measure. The protectionists were in despair. The Legislatures
of Pennsylvania and Connecticut passed condemnatory resolutions, and
mass meetings were held protesting against reductions. An unsuccessful
attempt was made to substitute the Clay Senate plan. And yet Clay
himself was fairly well satisfied, and on its passage in the House wrote
that “with some alterations it will be a very good measure of
protection.”[413] At the time he wrote, however, he was convinced that
the alterations would be made in the Senate and accepted by the House,
and upon the failure of these plans to materialize hangs another story
of politics.
The Senate lost no time making amendments, and as it was now July, with
all anxious to adjourn, no time was wasted on unnecessary speeches, and
the amendments, which were numerous, were hurried through. In a few
instances, not many, the protectionists lost, but on the whole theirs
was the victory when the bill went back to the House. There a few of the
Senate amendments were accepted, but the majority were rejected and the
bill was thrown into conference.
And here enters one of the comedy-tragedies of politics. Calhoun was
absent, Tazewell in the chair, when the measure was returned to the
Senate. The motion for a conference carried. And then it was, in the
naming of the Senate conferees, that Tazewell either made a blunder or
turned a trick. Hayne, named as the minority member, was expected to act
badly, but the protectionists pinned implicit faith in Wilkins of
Pennsylvania and Dickerson of New Jersey, the former a business man,
manufacturer, banker from a protectionist State, the latter with a
powerful protectionist constituency. Unhappily the friends of the Senate
bill did not attach sufficient importance to the candidacy of both men
for the Vice-Presidential nomination with Jackson--to the pull of
personal ambition. Whatever their special motives in surrendering to the
conferees of the House, they gave only a perfunctory support to the
Senate amendments and capitulated.
The amazement and indignation of Clay and his followers were unbounded.
Clay sharply cross-examined Wilkins and Dickerson upon the proceedings
in the conference, and then had to content himself by joining Webster in
a warm denunciation of the surrender. There was nothing to be done,
however, but for the Senate to recede, and the bill was passed and
promptly signed by Jackson.
Thus the tariff battle on which Clay relied to strengthen him in the
pre-presidential contest was practically barren of party significance.
By no sophistry or reasoning could the protectionist States of
Pennsylvania and New York be turned against Jackson, who had promptly
signed the bill that Adams had sponsored, and which had been supported
by such Administration Democrats as Isaac Hill, Dickerson, Marcy,
Wilkins, Grundy, White, and Benton.
The tariff issue was dead before the campaign was fairly begun.
VIII
If Clay had failed to embarrass the Administration on the tariff, the
keen Jacksonian politicians were to be more successful in embarrassing
Clay on the land question. This was a peculiarly delicate subject for
Clay to touch in the midst of the campaign. In the Southern and Western
States more than 1,090,000,000 acres remained the property of the
National Government--a vast empire. The proceeds from the sale of these
lands had been originally dedicated to the payment of the national debt;
and now with the extinguishment of the debt in sight, all manner of
schemes were advanced as to the future disposition of the lands and the
proceeds. For a number of years Benton, with characteristic tenacity,
had been urging his plan of graduated prices, with free grants to actual
settlers, and he had won Jackson over to his theory with Edmund Burke’s
proposition, advanced in his speech on the disposition of the crown
lands in England, that the principal revenue to be had from uncultivated
tracts “springs from the improvement of the population of the kingdom.”
The sturdy Missourian looked with repugnance upon the idea of
considering these uncultivated acres as sources of revenue, rather than
as an opportunity for settlers, and he gradually converted the
Democratic Party to his point of view.
To make matters all the more embarrassing to Clay, his party had been
placed in the position of deliberately withholding this vast domain from
the axe of the pioneer and the spade of the cultivator, in the interest
of the manufacturers of the East. This had resulted from the unfortunate
wording of an official report of Richard Rush, a colleague of Clay’s in
the Cabinet of Adams, in which he had lamented the preference of the
American people for agricultural over manufacturing pursuits. The report
had been referred to Clay whose practiced political eye instantly saw
the possibilities in the perversion or exaggeration of the meaning of
these paragraphs, and he had fruitlessly urged their elimination. The
Democrats were quick to grasp their opportunity. The protectionists,
Clay and his friends, planned that the National Government should, by
holding on to the lands, retard their settlement by maintaining prices
prohibitive to the settler; they proposed to maintain a large labor
market in the industrial labor centers of the East where competition
would be keen enough to keep down wages. For the sake of the protected
interests, they were ready to sacrifice the opportunities of the poor of
the Eastern cities and make them the galley slaves of the factories;
retard the development of the West, and immolate the national interest
on the altar of greed. And there was just enough truth in these charges,
rather luridly put forth, to make them exceedingly dangerous in a
presidential year.
The issue had been accentuated by the suggestion of McLane, Secretary of
the Treasury, that the public lands should be sold to the States in
which they were located, and the proceeds apportioned among all the
States in the Union. This, naturally enough, made an instant appeal to
the States most intimately concerned, and six of the new Commonwealths
hastened to petition Congress for the cession. This brought the subject
before the Senate, and in the spring of 1832 two motions were submitted,
one to inquire into the wisdom of reducing the price of the public
lands, the other into the expediency of the McLane proposition.
And it was at this juncture that the Jacksonians turned the trick on
Clay and forced him into the open as an aggressive enemy of the wishes
of the new States. With a regular Senate Committee on Public Lands,
composed of men intimately acquainted with the subject, the amazing
motion was made and carried that the matter be referred to the Committee
on Manufactures of which Clay was chairman. The friends of the candidate
bitterly protested against the reference; and Clay himself “protested,”
“entreated,” and “implored” that the reference be changed to the
Committee on Public Lands. “I felt,” he said later, “that the design was
to place in my hands a many-edged instrument which I could not touch
without being wounded.”[414]
Unable to extricate himself from the embarrassment, Clay set to work,
and in a short time submitted a report, accompanied by a bill, providing
against the reduction of the price of the land, but for granting to
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi twelve and a
half per cent of the proceeds from the sale of lands within their
borders, to be applied to the purposes of education and internal
improvements. This, of course, was a frank attempt to prevent the
resentment of the people of these States from asserting itself at the
polls. The remainder of the proceeds was then to be apportioned to the
remaining States, according to their population, to be used for the
schools, internal improvements, and negro colonization. The act was to
remain in force for five years, provided no war intervened, in which
event all the proceeds were to be used in defraying the expenses of the
conflict. In this way Clay attempted to maintain the existing economic
conditions while satisfying the new States whose electoral votes he
sought.
If the political intent of the reference to Clay’s committee had been in
the least open to doubt, all such was removed by the action of the
Senate in thereupon ordering the matter referred to the Committee on
Public Lands. Again Clay vehemently protested. He had not wanted to
report upon the subject. He had protested against the reference. But the
reference having been made, and the report submitted, he protested anew
against the reflection upon his committee implied by the new reference.
At the head of the Committee on Public Lands was Senator King of
Alabama, but Clay was right in ascribing the authorship of the report,
soon to be submitted, to Thomas H. Benton.[415] This report vigorously
assailed the reasoning and conclusions of Clay; attacked the disposition
to look upon the public lands as useful primarily for revenue and
secondarily for settlement, and reversed the order; and deprecated the
suggestion of the use of the money to be distributed among the States
for the colonization of the negroes as calculated to “light up the fires
of the extinguished conflagration which lately blazed on the Missouri
question.” It favored the reduction of the price of land to one dollar
per acre during the next five years; then to fifty cents, with fifteen
per cent of the proceeds to be apportioned among the States. Whatever
may have been the objections to the Democratic plan, it gave promise of
an earlier redemption of the wilderness by the cultivation of man, and
the more speedy enhancement of the land of the pioneers already in
possession.
Keenly appreciative of the purpose of his enemies, Clay delivered a long
and powerful speech, his second campaign speech in the Senate, plausibly
defending his position, explaining Rush’s meaning, and attempting to
divert the greed of the new States into a different channel. That he
made a profound impression may be properly assumed from the fact that
the bill passed the Senate, although it was checked by a hostile House.
Thus his friends flattered themselves that he had scored a triumph and
outwitted his foes. The old school politicians still gauged public
opinion by the roll-calls of the Congress. The new school, which came in
with Jackson, were least of all concerned with the views of the
politicians at the capital. They were interesting themselves with the
plain voters, and were devising means for reaching these in the campaign
to follow. They had sensed the feelings and the prejudices and
suspicions of the pioneers of the new States. They were an agricultural
people and easily inflamed by the suggestion that their interests were
to be subordinated or sacrificed to the interests of the Eastern
industrial centers. They wanted the speedy felling of the forests, the
cultivation of the fields, the building of homes and schools and
churches, and the Benton plan of reduced prices and preemption for
actual settlers appealed to them as in harmony with their desires.
And thus, while the friends of Clay were rejoicing in what they
conceived to be the unanswerable logic of the Clay report, the
politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet, Kendall and Blair, were rejoicing in
having, in documentary form, the proof that Clay and the protectionists
were hostile to the wishes of the new States. Amos Kendall knew that
“free trade and free lands” was a shibboleth that these pioneers could
understand. And while Clay, Webster, and Clayton were rejoicing over the
passage of the bill in the Senate, Kendall and Blair were joyously
arranging to spread the story of that triumph to the voters of the new
States. After all, they had succeeded in their purpose. They had a Clay
and a Jackson report to hold side by side, and the event disclosed that
the politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet were wiser than the politicians
of the Senate house.
CHAPTER VIII
CLAY FINDS HIS ISSUE
I
During the early days of the Jackson régime, a remarkable and little
remembered figure passed furtively in and out of the closet of the
President, playing a quiet, but none the less effective, part in the
moulding of policies. This was none other than James A. Hamilton, son of
the creator of the National Bank. Then a trusted brave of the tribe of
Tammany, the reflector of Van Buren, the supporter of Jackson, he had
fought the Federalist machine of New York, been made acting Secretary of
State by the President pending the arrival of Van Buren, and later been
appointed District Attorney of New York. For several years on the eve of
portentous events he glided into the capital. That the son of Alexander
Hamilton should have had such intimate relations with the President who
denounced what he thought to be the persecution of Aaron Burr, is one of
the mysteries of history.
When the first Jackson Message was under consideration, Hamilton, in
response to the requests of Van Buren, Lewis, and others, reached
Washington to confer with Jackson. He hastened to Van Buren, who was no
doubt prolific of suggestions; thence to the White House to be cordially
received. The following morning he breakfasted with the President, who
urged him to remain at the White House while revising the Message. In
going over the draft, which he found the “work of different hands,” he
was surprised to find that “the Bank of the United States was attacked
at great length in a loose, newspaper slashing style.” He found much to
do. It was four o’clock in the morning when Jackson, hearing some one
tinkering with the fire in the grate, entered Hamilton’s room in his
nightgown.
“My dear Colonel, why are you up so late?” he asked.
“I am at my work which I intend to finish before I sleep,” Hamilton
replied.
At which the mulatto who slept on a rug in Jackson’s room was sent in to
keep Hamilton’s fire going. At eight in the morning the latter appeared
in the President’s room to report the completion of his task.
“What did you say about the Bank?” Jackson asked instantly.
“Very little.”
And the son of Alexander Hamilton read the brief paragraph challenging
the constitutionality and the expediency of the Bank his father had
created, and declaring that it had “failed in the great end of
establishing a uniform and sound currency.”
“Do you think that is all I ought to say?” asked Jackson.
“I think you ought to say nothing about the Bank at present,” was the
response.
“Oh, but, my friend, I am pledged against the Bank, but if you think
that is enough, so let it be.”[416]
Some students of the period are prone to ascribe Jackson’s hostility to
the Bank to a personal grievance of Isaac Hill. The flimsy assumption
that the President’s Bank policy was born of the quarrel of the Concord
editor with Biddle, because of the retention in the presidency of the
Portsmouth branch of Jeremiah Mason, is unimpressive. Equally absurd to
deny that the Mason incident played no part. According to some, Hill, in
his attempt to force the removal of Mason, was wholly actuated by a
desire to get political control of the institution; to others, to the
inability of the editor-politician to get a loan. The truth is that the
hostility to Mason was not confined to politicians, but was shared by
many of the merchants of New Hampshire. This hostility was due to
Mason’s austere action, on discovering that some bad loans had been made
on speculative ventures, in exacting hard terms of the local merchants.
The petition sent to Biddle by Hill contained the names of sixty members
of the legislature, and most of the business men of Portsmouth, of both
parties.[417] The president of the Portsmouth branch was a great lawyer,
a statesman of reputation, an orator of power, and a partisan as bitter
and intolerant as ever breathed the proscriptive air of New Hampshire.
In the correspondence which followed between Secretary Ingham, who is
said to have had a personal grievance,[418] and Nicholas Biddle, the
president of the Bank, who has been variously described according to the
bias of the writer, was unquestionably flippant and intolerant of
suggestions from the Administration. While his position in the Mason
incident can be justified, he was unnecessarily arrogant and tactless;
but quickly realizing his mistake, he thereafter changed his tone, and
throughout the summer and autumn of 1829 made every effort to conciliate
the President. His letters of this period to the heads of the various
branches insisting that the Bank be kept out of politics smack of
sincerity.[419] But the harm had been done, and there is every reason to
conclude that Amos Kendall was deeply concerned in the President’s
decision to attack the Bank in his first Message. Certain it is that a
letter from Kendall to Noah in November led the “New York Courier and
Enquirer” to launch its editorial campaign against the institution. This
letter, announcing the presidential decision to attack in his first
Message, and presenting an argument in support of the position he was to
assume, was sent by Noah to the newspaper, and “a portion of Amos
Kendall’s letter, with a head and tail put to it ... was published as an
editorial the next morning”; and this “was the first savage attack on
the United States Bank” in the columns of that paper.[420] And almost
immediately afterwards James Gordon Bennett, writing for the “Courier
and Enquirer,” began a series of powerful articles in support of the
policy of that journal.[421]
Indeed, if an explanation for Jackson’s position must be sought in the
Kitchen Cabinet, it would be more profitable to seek it in the
principles of Amos Kendall, who had written against the Bank long before
he had met the President, and while still on friendly terms with Clay.
Others of Jackson’s intimates were equally hostile. The views of Benton
had been urged for years; and Hugh L. White, Senator from Tennessee, one
of his confidential advisers in the early days of his Administration,
had long distrusted the institution as tending to extravagant
speculation, and as threatening the liberties of the people through its
increasing influence in elections.[422] But Jackson himself needed no
propagandists at his elbow. He had been prejudiced against the Bank for
twenty years by Clay’s slashing speech against it when the first Bank
applied for a recharter.[423]
In his Message of December, 1830, Jackson dismissed the Bank in a
paragraph, clearly indicative of unfriendliness; and in December, 1831,
he scarcely mentioned it at all, except to call attention to his
previous statements. But from the moment the first Message was read,
Biddle’s complacency was disturbed. His correspondence during the next
two years shows him active and alert in attempts to conciliate his foe
in the White House. Less than a week after one son of Alexander Hamilton
had penned the first warning of war, Biddle was reading a letter from
Alexander Hamilton, Jr., a brother, assuring him that the die was cast,
the war inevitable, and warning him against the presidential
aspirations of Van Buren, to whose political fortunes his brother was
then attached.[424] Biddle replied that the Bank views of the Message
were Jackson’s, honestly held, and that for the time the Bank’s policy
would be one of “abstinence and self-defense.”[425] “The expressions of
the Message were the President’s own,” he wrote the head of the
Washington branch immediately afterward, “ ... and inserted in
opposition to the wishes, if not the advice of all his habitual
counsellors. It is not, therefore, a cabinet measure, nor a party
measure, but a personal measure.”[426] And had he not ample
encouragement in the letters of Major Lewis, a household guest of
Jackson’s, recommending the appointment of certain men to the
directorship of the branch in Nashville?[427] Nevertheless, he was not
at all positive that the recharter might not be made a party measure.
Especially concerned with Van Buren’s attitude, he was being constantly
warned against him, but his advices were contradictory. Within a month
he was reassured by one correspondent[428] and alarmed by Clay, who
wrote him from Ashland that, while in Richmond, Van Buren had entered
into a conspiracy with politicians to destroy the Bank.[429] And to add
to the mystic maze of contradictions, Major Lewis wrote, in a
“confidential” note, that the report that Jackson would veto a bill
rechartering the Bank “must be some mistake because the report was at
variance with what I had heard him say upon the subject.”[430] Still
another correspondent[431] informed him that Van Buren had told him that
“he disapproved of that part of the message and was not hostile to the
Bank.”
About this time Jackson journeyed to the Hermitage, and Biddle asked a
leading citizen of Nashville to “feel him out.” The banker’s
correspondent entertained the President at his home, and after a
confidential chat felt justified in advising Biddle that he was “well
convinced that he will not interfere with Congress on the subject of the
renewing of the charter.”[432] By this time, however, Biddle had
convinced himself that political expediency would determine the
President’s attitude, and in a letter to one of Jackson’s personal
friends he pointed out the disastrous political results to the
Administration if the impression gained ground that it was “unfriendly
to sound currency.” He even graciously indicated the line the next
Message might take to save the Administration from that
embarrassment.[433] But before that suggestion reached its destination,
Clay solemnly wrote him that only a devoted friend of the Bank in the
Presidency would make a recharter possible, and warned him against Van
Buren. He was convinced that the Jacksonian politicians had determined
to make the Bank question the issue in the next campaign. “I have seen
many evidences of it,” he wrote. “The editors of certain papers have
received their orders to that effect, and embrace every occasion to act
in conformity with them.”[434] But when Congress met in December, and
Jackson reiterated his views on the Bank, Biddle was earnestly urged
from Washington to meet the issue at once by applying for a new charter.
This advice was finally rejected. Congress, he wrote, was favorable,
“and moreover the President would not reject the bill,” but many members
favorable to the recharter would prefer not to vote that session. Then,
too, time was working the removal of prejudices.[435]
At the beginning of the session, December, 1831, with the charter five
years to run, we are confronted with the mystery of the injection of
the issue at that time. We know, however, that the strain of uncertainty
had been telling on Biddle’s temper. The vultures that play on the
political necessities of corporations were beginning to swoop down upon
him. Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had applied for a $20,000
loan.[436] And mindful of the importance of propaganda, he had already
decided to cultivate the press by paying it well for the publication of
Bank literature.[437] But just before the opening of the congressional
session, his negotiations with McLane and Livingston of the Cabinet,
both friendly to the Bank, had again diverted him from his disposition
to fight. In October the Secretary of the Treasury had sat in the
marble-front building in Philadelphia and told him of confidential
communications with the President. Anxious to keep the Bank question out
of the campaign, Jackson had reluctantly consented, on the importunities
of Livingston and McLane, to omit all references to the Bank in his
Message. Biddle feared it would be a mistake. Would it not be better
merely to remind Congress of his previous comments, and leave the
decision “with the representatives of the people?” The fact that this
course was followed is one of the ironies of history.[438] Hardly had
this decision been reached when Clay wrote from Ashland urging an
immediate application for a new charter. This was a sensational reversal
of views. Not only had he previously advised Biddle differently, but in
August, 1830, he had taken strong grounds against such application so
long before the expiration of the existing charter. “I am not prepared,”
he said then, “to say whether the charter ought, or ought not to be
renewed on the expiration of its present term. The question is
premature. I may not be alive to form any opinion on it. It belongs to
posterity. It ought to be indefinitely postponed.”[439] This speech was
to be used with deadly effect by Blair in the “Globe” a little
later.[440] Even then, before reaching Washington, Clay had determined
to “turn up” the Bank charter as an issue.
II
When Congress met, Jackson had concluded to postpone his fight on the
Bank. Three reasons entered into the decision--the friendliness of his
Secretary of the Treasury to the institution, the realization that a
majority in Congress favored the recharter, and the fear that a contest
during the session would throw the tremendous weight of the Bank’s
influence against him in the election. Most of his advisers, including
Benton, were anxious to postpone the contest. Just as Biddle had thought
that time would operate to the advantage of the institution, Benton was
confident that it would work to its detriment, and he wished to
strengthen the anti-Bank lines in the Senate and to have Van Buren in
the chair when the contest came. McLane’s pronouncedly pro-Bank report
had deeply embarrassed the President’s supporters. Creating indignation
in some quarters, consternation in others, Jackson hastened to explain
it away in a letter to Hamilton; but just how he persuaded himself that
the views of the report did “not express any opposition to those
entertained by myself,” is not clear.[441]
The Bank supporters had eagerly seized upon the McLane report, and Webb,
of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” now deserting the Administration
on the Bank question, commented glowingly upon its author and his views.
That this was gall and wormwood to Jackson and his intimates is evident
in the correspondence which passed between them. “The article ... was
calculated if Blair had replied, to do McLane irreparable injury in a
political point of view, because it might have brought him and the
President into seeming collision,” wrote Major Lewis to Hamilton.[442]
And all this time, McLane, who was one of Hamilton’s correspondents, was
frankly admitting to the latter that he had “most earnestly urged Mr.
Clay not to attempt to pass a Bank bill at this session, insisting that,
if deferred to the next session, he was satisfied that he could, by that
time, induce Jackson to approve it”; but that Clay had “persisted in the
hope, that if the President approved the bill, he would lose the support
of those of his party who had approved his opposition to the Bank, and a
vast many others who approved of the State Bank system.” Or, on the
other hand, “if the President vetoed the bill, he would lose
Pennsylvania and his election.”[443] Thus it is clear enough, that if
Jackson could have determined, the Bank would not have been an issue in
1832.
But Clay was pressing Biddle, and the latter devoted the whole of
December to feeling his way. “I think they [the Jackson leaders] are
desirous to have the Bank question settled by a renewal before the next
presidential canvass, with any modifications to free the President from
the charge of an entire abandonment of his original opposition,” wrote
one who had “seen a letter from the Private Secretary of the President
to a gentleman” in Louisville.[444] “Last night I had a long
conversation with McLane,” wrote the president of the Washington branch,
“and I am authorized by him to say that it is his deliberate opinion and
advice that a renewal of the charter ought not to be pressed during the
present session, in which I concur most sincerely. The message is as
much as you could expect. It shows that the Chief is wavering. If
pressed into a corner immediately, neither McLane nor myself will answer
for the consequences.”[445] From another correspondent Biddle learned
that Barry, Woodbury, and Taney were hostile, being “under the influence
of Blair, Lewis, Kendall & Co. who rule our Chief Magistrate”; that
Blair had written a slashing attack upon the McLane report, which was
only moderated after the Secretary of the Treasury had threatened to
resign if the original were published. “I fear you will yet have trouble
with our wise governors,” he added.[446] A Virginia Congressman urged
reasons for an immediate application. Jackson’s popularity was on the
wane, especially in Congress, and his reëlection notwithstanding being
certain, he would have more prestige in the next Congress. Calhoun,
still Vice-President, would be serviceable among the Bank’s enemies in
the South, and McDuffie, a follower of Calhoun, would be chairman of the
House Committee to pass upon the application.[447]
“My own belief,” wrote the wily Clay, “is that, if now called upon, he
[Jackson] would not negative the bill, but that if he should be
reëlected, the event might and probably would be different.” At any
rate, all the friends of the Bank with whom Clay had conversed “expect
the application to be made.”[448] In corroboration of Clay’s views,
Webster wrote that, as a result of conversations, he had been strongly
confirmed in his opinion “that it is expedient for the Bank to apply for
a renewal of the Charter without delay.”[449]
Confused by such a medley of counsel, Biddle decided to have the
situation studied on the ground. Thomas Cadwalader, a trusted Bank
agent, could be depended upon to leave party considerations out of his
survey, and on Tuesday, the 20th of December, this servitor took up his
quarters at Barnard’s Hotel.[450] The next day found him closeted, first
with McLane, who warned him of a certain veto, and advised him to
canvass Congress to ascertain whether the Bank could muster the two
thirds necessary to override it. A preliminary survey that day was
discouraging, and the evening found the agent again with McLane, who
reiterated his plea for a postponement until after the election. On
Thursday the agent met McDuffie, who urged an immediate application
until “staggered” by what Cadwalader had learned of the probable vote to
override the veto. He then advised the Bank to feel its way cautiously.
Friday found him dining with Senator Smith, a Democrat, who opposed the
agitation of the question that session, since it would mean a Jackson
and anti-Jackson vote, and lose the Bank ten votes it could depend upon
the next year.[451] It did not take the sagacious agent long to sense
the selfish political motives of the Clay leaders. “It is evident,” he
wrote Biddle, “that W.’s [Webster’s] opinions are guided, in some
degree, by party feelings--as seems to be the case with most of the Clay
men.” In John Quincy Adams he found a cooler head, and one in whose
judgment he had more confidence. Where Webster had urged that the
application be made if “a bare majority in Congress could be mustered,”
Adams favored postponement “unless a strong vote can be ascertained.”
But, thinking the situation over on Christmas Day, and after another and
more favorable canvass of the available votes, he began to lean toward
the Clay opinion. In the case of a postponement some of the Bank’s
friends would be “luke-warm,” Webster would be “cold or perhaps
hostile,” if the Bank bent to the Government influence. After another
conference with McLane, he thought he would advise the Bank to start the
memorial. In this disposition he was confirmed by a visit on Christmas
night from the brother of the Secretary of State, a Whig and a follower
of Clay, who brought the solemn assurance that Livingston, McLane, and
Cass would prevent the veto. The outcome of it all was that Cadwalader
was won over to the Whig plan.[452] The moment the agent returned to
Philadelphia, McLane, assuming the chilly dignity of resentment, wrote
Biddle, restating his position and curtly declaring that he could not,
“as one of the constitutional advisers of the President,” object to the
exercise of his veto power.[453] But three days later, Webster, in a
reassuring note, wrote that the decision to present the memorial was
“exactly right.”[454]
The Whig politicians were determined that the Bank should be dragged
into politics, and they had their way. The desire of Biddle to accept
compromises proposed by McLane were ruthlessly brushed aside by his
political friends. The story of the meeting at which Clay forced the
issue is significant and dramatic. McLane had summoned Biddle to
Washington and submitted a proposition for a recharter which, he
contended, would meet with the approval of the President. After
returning to Philadelphia and consulting with his directors, an
agreement was reached to accept the compromise. Hurrying back to the
capital, Biddle conceived the unhappy notion of first consulting with
the political friends of the institution in the Congress, before calling
upon McLane. Fatal error!
An historical political conference was called. There, of course, was
Nicholas Biddle, financial American autocrat of his time, elegant,
suave, polished to scintillation, a lover of literature, a brilliant
conversationalist, with a graceful epistolary style, which was as
dangerous to him as loquacity to a diplomat. He had been schooled in
tact while serving as the Secretary of the American Legation at Paris
under Monroe. Clever, unscrupulous, practicing diplomacy where
[Illustration: _N. Biddle_]
straightforward methods would have served better, he had assiduously
cultivated public men until he had created a bipartisan Bank party in
both branches of the Congress. In his Philadelphia home the great men of
his day partook of his hospitality. Before Jackson reached the
Presidency, the president of the Bank of the United States was in better
position to foresee the proceedings of Congress than the responsible
Chief Executive of the people. Instead of concealing his power, he loved
to flaunt it in the face of authority. “Emperor Nicholas” smiled and
bowed blandly to his title.
And there, of course, was Clay, leader of his party, the greatest genius
in the Senate, seemingly destined to the presidential dignity, and for
years one of Biddle’s most trusted friends and advisers. He had been on
the pay-roll of the Bank as its counsel in Kentucky and Ohio.
There, too, was John Sergeant, there by right as chief counsel of the
Bank, but there, too, by right, as Clay’s running mate in the election,
for he had been nominated for Vice-President.
And there sat Webster, upon whose eloquence and wisdom the Bank had
learned to lean. But he sat there that day, less as the champion of the
Bank than as a partisan supporter of Clay and Sergeant.
The compromise proposition was submitted by Biddle, and, after some
pretense at discussion, it was vetoed by Clay and Webster, on the ground
that “the question of a recharter had progressed too far to render any
compromise or change of front expedient.”[455]
A little nonplussed, Biddle and Sergeant retired for further
consideration, and returned to the conference with the politicians in
the evening still convinced that the McLane compromise should be
accepted. And it was then that Clay and Webster, by assuming an injured
air, literally blackmailed their Philadelphia friends into the
acceptance of their plan, asserting their ability at the time to carry
the charter through in the face of a veto, but significantly adding that
they would no longer be responsible for anything that might occur “if in
the heat of the contest the Bank, abandoning its reliable friends,
should strike hands with its foe.”[456] Thus it was neither Jackson nor
Biddle that forced the Bank into the campaign of 1832, but Henry Clay,
thinking solely in terms of politics and self-interest, as he saw them.
III
The winter roads between Philadelphia and Washington were ribbons of
mud, cut across by frozen streams. A stagecoach, bumping and splattering
through the mire, struck an obstruction, turned over, and General
Cadwalader, with the Bank’s memorial in his pocket, arose from the wreck
with an injured shoulder that was to delay its presentation to the
Congress. But three weeks after the conference in Washington it was
delivered into the hands of its friends.
In the Senate it was presented by a Democrat, George M. Dallas of
Pennsylvania, acting under strict instructions from the Legislature of
his State, but very much against his personal judgment. In the House it
was entrusted to one who could act with greater spirit, because of
venomous hostility to Jackson--the vehement and picturesque McDuffie.
On the motion of Dallas, a select committee was chosen in the Senate to
consider the memorial, composed of four friends of the Bank and one
enemy. In the House, the fighting began at once. Instead of requesting a
select committee, McDuffie asked a reference to his own Committee on
Ways and Means--packed with friends of the Bank. This was good tactics.
Andrew Stevenson, Speaker of the House, and a Jacksonian Democrat, could
clearly not be entrusted with the selection of a special committee. An
animated debate followed, and the McDuffie motion prevailed by a narrow
margin of ten votes. But that was not to be the end of the matter--not
so long as there was a Jackson in the White House, a Benton in the
Senate, and a Kendall on the side lines. The plan of parliamentary
warfare was devised by the master parliamentarian from Missouri. It
contemplated numerous amendments and elaborate discussion in the Senate;
and in the House, an investigation into the condition and methods of the
Bank. Benton immediately furnished a new member of the House, Clayton,
with an indictment in many counts, some justifiable, and others having
nothing more substantial than gossip behind them. But even these served.
The debate was brisk. James K. Polk led for the Administration in the
strongest speech of his congressional career; and McDuffie, sincerely
believing in the purity of the Bank, and fearing the effect of
opposition to an investigation, making only a perfunctory objection. At
the time it was presented, Biddle was relying for information on Charles
Jared Ingersoll, who had been sent to Washington in an attempt to
conciliate Jackson, and was in constant communication with Livingston
and McLane. It is significant of Jackson’s methods that his Secretary of
State authorized Ingersoll to inform Biddle that the President had
nothing to do with the resolution, wished to end the matter that
session, and would sign a rechartering measure if satisfactorily
framed.[457] But the easy capitulation of McDuffie in permitting the
passage of the resolution caused poignant distress in Bank circles.
Ingersoll concluded that the Carolinian preferred to have the tariff
debate precede that on the Bank.[458]
Thus the investigation was ordered. The apologists for the Bank among
historians persist in the fallacy that its enemies had no expectation of
finding anything wrong. This is a remarkable conclusion. Benton
thoroughly expected it. The son of Alexander Hamilton had no doubt of
it.[459] Jackson was serious about it. “The affairs of the Bank I
anticipated to be precisely such as you have intimated,” he wrote to
Hamilton. “When fully disclosed, and the branches looked into it will be
seen that its corrupting influence has been extended everywhere that
could add to its strength and secure its recharter. I wish it may not
have extended its influence over too many members of Congress.”[460]
The committee of investigation submitted three reports. The majority
report charged usury, the issuance of branch bank notes as currency, the
selling of coin, loans to editors, brokers, and members of Congress,
donations to roads and canals, the construction of houses to rent and
sell, and the sale of stock obtained from the Government through special
acts of Congress. The minority report, and that of Adams, who reported
separately, were laudatory of the institution. Nothing was proved.
Campaign material was furnished, and nothing more.
In the midst of the fighting, on May 30th, Nicholas Biddle moved upon
the capital and took personal charge of his forces. He entertained at
dinners at Barnard’s. He daily repaired to the Capitol to meet
emergencies. He conferred freely with Livingston and McLane, hoping
through them to conciliate the President. So positive was he that the
investigation, by proving nothing, had disarmed hostility, that he wrote
expansively, on his arrival, of his willingness to consider with Jackson
such modifications as would satisfy the President.[461] In less than a
week he was disillusioned of the idea of an easy triumph. “It has been a
week of hard work, anxiety and alternating hopes and fears,” he wrote
Cadwalader, “but I think that we may now rely with confidence in a
favorable result.”[462] All through June the battle raged in the Senate,
and it was not until July 3d that the “Emperor Nicholas” was able to
write of the passage of the bill by that body, and to “congratulate our
friends most cordially upon their most satisfactory results.” The
victory was achieved by a vote of 28 to 20, with Dallas, Wilkins, and
Poindexter, among the Democrats, voting for the bill. In the House, the
Bank won by a vote of 106 to 84.
“Now for the President,” wrote Biddle. “My belief is that the President
will veto the bill, though that is not generally known or
believed.”[463] And Clay at the same time wrote: “The Bank bill will, I
believe, pass the House, and if Jackson is to be believed, he will veto
it.”[464] Thus, at this stage, it is evident that Biddle had reconciled
himself to Clay’s plan of making the fate of the Bank the issue in the
campaign. Among Jackson’s friends there was no doubt as to his
intentions. Both McLane and Livingston had warned the banker. Three
months before, Hamilton had written a friend that, in the event of its
passage, Jackson would promptly veto the measure. “He is open and
determined upon this point. I conferred with him yesterday upon the
subject. I told him what the Opposition avowed as their motive for
pushing the bill at this session. He replied: ‘I will prove to them that
I never flinch; that they were mistaken when they expected to act upon
me with such considerations.’”[465]
IV
When the bill reached Jackson, he knew that he could not count on the
unanimous support of his Cabinet on the veto. Livingston, McLane, and
Cass were frankly antagonistic to his purpose, Woodbury was uncertain,
while Barry, always acquiescing in his chief’s policies, scarcely
counted. Among all the men who sat about the table in the Cabinet room,
the only one who heartily sympathized with his intent was Roger Taney.
In February, Ingersoll had found him against the Bank, but Livingston
then “hoped to convert him”; and while the Bank representative had
“found him just now closeted with Kendall,” this was so far from
discouraging him that he had not even despaired of Kendall and Lewis,
and felt that he had established “a good understanding” with Blair of
the “Globe.”[466] On the day the bill reached the White House, Taney was
absent from Washington, but he had gone over the ground thoroughly with
the President, and had written him a letter setting forth reasons why,
in the event of the bill’s passage, it should be vetoed.
On the day of its passage, Martin Van Buren landed in New York, and the
following morning he started for the capital. It was midnight when he
reached Washington, but, in compliance with a letter from Jackson, which
awaited him on landing, he proceeded through the dark streets to the
White House where he was instantly ushered into the President’s room.
The grim old fighter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, his
wretched health clearly denoted in his countenance.[467] But there was
the passion of battle in his blood, and it flashed in his eye as he
eagerly grasped the hand of his favorite, and, retaining it, poured
forth the story of the Bank Bill, and expressed his satisfaction on the
arrival of a faithful friend at such a critical juncture. When Van Buren
expressed the hope that he would not hesitate to veto the bill,
Jackson’s face beamed. “It is the only way,” said the Red Fox, “you can
discharge the great duty you owe to the country and yourself.”[468] By
Van Buren, the old man’s gratification was easily understood, for he
knew of the desertion of the greater part of the Cabinet.
There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the
authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called
in, albeit sympathizing heartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to
one of his biographers[469] the ideas were contributed by Livingston,
Benton, Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair,
and Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may
safely accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was
inevitable that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that
Taney was summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During
the entire time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the
capital, with the document open to his inspection, did not have any
“direct agency in its construction.”[470] His enemies at the time,
however, insisted that he was a party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren
arrived at the President’s on Sunday,” a correspondent in Washington
wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent to the Senate his veto on
the Bank Bill.”[471] That Major Lewis and Blair were called in to assist
in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be set down as
positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the Senate
was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall.
That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly
strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of
the Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as
demagogic because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against
the conversion by the rich of governmental agencies to their personal
ends, and because of its objections to the foreign stockholders in the
Bank of the United States. It was, of course, a campaign
document--intended as such. Jackson understood perfectly that the
presentation of the memorial for a recharter four years before the
expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the presidential
election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew that Clay was
appealing to wealth and power--he appealed to the people. And his
appeal was to the people of the United States.
In this stirring appeal to the prejudices of the people, as well as to
their interests, as the Jacksonians saw it, there was but one real
blunder, and that in phrasing. In discussing the constitutionality of
the Bank, Jackson said: “Each officer who takes an oath to support the
Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and
not as it is understood by others.” Upon this was to be predicated the
assertion that Jackson had announced a philosophy of chaos, with each
petty officer passing upon the constitutionality of laws, and
irrespective and in contempt of the Supreme Court. The more conservative
friends of the President interpreted the words employed as meaning “that
in giving or withholding his assent to the bill for the recharter of the
Bank, it was his right and duty to decide the question of its
constitutionality for himself, uninfluenced by any opinion or judgment
which the Supreme Court had pronounced upon that point, farther than his
judgment was satisfied by the reasons it had given for its
decision.”[472] But there were other expressions in the Message that
must have appeared as little short of appeals to anarchy to the more
conservative element. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful
too often bend the acts of Government to their selfish purposes.” “Every
man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws
undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial
distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to
make the rich richer and the powerful more potent, the humble members of
society--the farmers, mechanics and laborers--who have neither the time
nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to
complain of the injustice of their government.” “There are no necessary
evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.” “Many of our
rich have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits,
but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.”
Here was a Message striking an entirely new note in American politics,
and not without justification. So completely had the country been under
the domination of the powerful, politically, financially, and socially,
previous to the Jackson régime, that the Message was actually hailed
with delight by the followers of Clay.
“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has
all the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It
is really a manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might
have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that
it will contribute to relieve the country from the domination of these
miserable people.”[473] The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington
Observer,” commented thus: “It is a mixture of the Demagogue and the
Despot, of depravity, desperation and feelings of malice and vengeance
partially smothered. It is the type of the detested hypocrite, who,
cornered at all points, still cannot abandon entirely his habitual
artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked, in a tone of
defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will I.’”[474]
So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology of
the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the
Message at its own expense!
But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were
delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe”
found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of
the moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person
of Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the
battle-field are eclipsed--it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal
fame.”[475] And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man
of property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would
give to Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the
greatest of his victories in the field.
Both parties were satisfied with the Message.
V
Never in the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more
dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White,
a calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he
could escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he
wrote. “Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to
slumber. Ill blood is produced by almost every event; and a great
disposition is manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle....
No man can tell when or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all
that a prudent man ought to do to avoid difficulties, but should it be
my lot to have them forced upon me, my reliance is that Providence will
guide me through them safely.”[476]
The debate in the Senate following the Veto Message was significant. The
great Field Marshals of the Bank, who had maintained silence until now,
appeared upon the scene with impassioned speeches of denunciation and
solemn warning. The import of the speeches of Clay and Webster could not
have been clearer. They were designed to intimidate the electorate into
voting against Jackson by the most gloomy predictions of panic and
distress. Webster, who spoke first and made by long odds the most
powerful presentation against the Veto, dwelt with funereal melancholy
upon the President’s determination to overturn American institutions,
basing this absurd theory on the unhappy sentence referred to above.
But the one note he struck in the beginning and pounded to the end was
that of intimidation. The country was prosperous and yet there was “an
unaccountable disposition to destroy the most useful and most approved
institutions of the Government.” Unless Jackson should be defeated at
the polls the Bank would fall, and in its fall pull down the pillars of
prosperity and involve all in a common ruin. The Bank would have to call
in its debts at once. The distress would be especially acute in the
States on the Mississippi and its waters--where votes were needed for
Clay. There thirty millions of the Bank’s money was out on loans and
discounts, and how could this be immediately collected without untold
suffering and misery? The great orator, however, evidently afraid that
his hints at the election had been too subtle, soon threw off the mask
boldly.
“An important election is at hand,” he said, “and the renewal of the
Bank Charter is a pending object of great interest, and some excitement.
Should not the opinions of men high in office and candidates for
reëlection be known on this as on other important questions?” And thence
he argued that the life of the Republic, the preservation of the
Constitution, the salvation of society from anarchy, and the prosperity
of the people, were all inseparably interwoven with the National Bank
and the candidacy of Clay. “No old school Federalist,” says Van Buren,
“who had grown to man’s estate with views and opinions in regard to the
character of the people which that faith seldom failed to inspire, could
doubt the efficacy of such an exposition in turning the minds of all
classes of the community in the desired direction.”[477]
If the Veto was satisfactory to the Whigs--to the surprise of the
Democrats--Webster’s avowed purpose to make it the issue in the campaign
was satisfactory to the Democrats--to the equal astonishment of the
Whigs. When the great New England orator sat down, Hugh Lawson White of
Tennessee, a banker, fluent, logical, and forceful, lost no time in
accepting Webster’s “issue.”
“I thank the Senator,” he said, “for the candid avowal, that unless the
President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they
intend to interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With
the same candor I state, that after this declaration, this charter shall
never be renewed with my consent.... Sir, if under these circumstances
the charter is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and the
liberties and prosperity of the people are delivered over to this
moneyed institution, to be disposed of at their discretion. Against this
I enter my solemn protest.”
Even the most ardent supporters of Clay will hardly point to his speech
on the Veto as evidence of his power. Compared with Webster’s or
White’s, it was mere froth, lacking in both substance and style, and
only notable in its insistence that the failure of the recharter would
be fatal to the West, as the continuance of Jackson in office would be
subversive of all government.
The reply of Benton was characteristic in its slashing style, its
exhaustive appeal to facts and figures, and chiefly important as a
campaign argument in its elaborate discussion of the relations of the
Bank with the Western States. Not to be outdone in dire predictions, he
insisted that the triumph of the Bank would mean the end of free
institutions; that “no individual could stand in the States against the
power of the Bank, and the Bank flushed with the victory over the
conqueror of the conquerors of Bonaparte”; that “an oligarchy would be
immediately established, and that oligarchy, in a few generations, would
ripen into a monarchy.” He realized that all nations must ultimately
perish. “Rome had her Pharsalia and Greece her Chæronea, and this
Republic, more illustrious in her birth, was entitled to a death as
glorious as theirs.” He would not have her “die by poison” or “perish
in corruption,” but “a field of arms and glory should be her end.”
And he, too, eagerly accepted the challenge of Webster: “Why debate the
Bank question now, and not before?” he asked. “With what object do they
speak? Sir, this _post facto_ debate is not for the Senate, nor the
President, nor to alter the fate of the Bank Bill. It is to arouse the
officers of the Bank--to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their
designs upon the people--to bring out its streams of corrupting
influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the
polls to vote against Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this;
but we have not been left without an avowal. The Senator from
Massachusetts commenced his speech by showing that Jackson must be put
down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the Bank and a new
charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at
the presidential election. The object of this debate is then known,
confessed, declared, avowed; the Bank is in the field; enlisted for the
war; a battering ram--the catapulta, not of the Romans but of the
National Republicans [Whigs]; not to beat down the walls of hostile
cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down
the rights of the people; to destroy a patriot and a hero; to command
the elections and to elect a Bank President.”
Thus the politicians sounded the keynotes of the two parties in the
approaching campaign in the country.
The debate was not to end without its serio-comedy. Benton had
criticized Clay for lack of decent courtesy to the President, and when
he resumed his seat, Clay arose to question the Missourian’s
qualification to pass on decent courtesy, and to revive the story that
Benton had once said that should Jackson ever reach the Presidency,
Senators “would have to legislate with pistols and dirks.” Benton
excitedly denied it. The lie was passed. The angry statesmen were called
to order and forced to apologize to the Senate, and thus the Whig
nominee for the Presidency closed the debate in a none too dignified
fashion.
The necessary two thirds to override the veto could not be mustered, and
Clay left Washington on the adjournment of Congress, July 16th, happy in
the knowledge that “something had turned up” that would force the Bank
and all its resources and influence to battle with a personal motive for
his election.
And Jackson and his friends were jubilant.
Thus ended one of the longest and most bitter sessions the American
Congress had ever known, “fierce in the beginning, and becoming more
furious to the end.”[478]
CHAPTER IX
THE DRAMATIC BATTLE OF 1832
I
The campaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have come
to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the
politicians were under the compulsion of cultivating and conciliating,
not factions and groups, but the masses of the people. The day of
Democracy had dawned, with all that means of good and evil. And in this
struggle for the suffrage of the masses, Clay had unwittingly intrigued
the Jacksonians into the advantage. Accustomed for years to relying
solely on the wealthy and the influential, the great Whig leaders
signally failed to appreciate that the very elements they had rallied to
their support would tend to alienate the mechanics of the cities, the
farmers of the plains, the pioneers struggling with poverty on the
fringe of the forest. Thurlow Weed, who was one of the few practical
Whig politicians, saw it, but he was then comparatively obscure. The
clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet instantly sensed the
opportunity and grasped it. A great moneyed institution, never popular
with the masses, was seeking the humiliation of the most popular of
Presidents. The most fortunate of that day were responding to the call
of the Bank. The first battle at the polls between the “soul-less
corporation” and the “sons of toil” was on. For the first time in a
presidential election the demagogue appeared with his appeals to class
prejudice and class hate, and all the demagogy was not on the part of
the Jacksonians. If these sought to arouse the masses against the
prosperous, the prosperous, with gibes about the “mob,” were quite as
busy in prejudicing the classes against the masses.
And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important
part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political
possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an
organization throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of
the “Globe.” If the political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to
grasp the potentiality of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was
more alert, and, through his agency, the powerful “New York Courier and
Enquirer,” edited by James Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to
espouse the cause of Clay and “the monster.” That money played a part in
the conversion was soon established in a congressional investigation;
and when the “National Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed
the convert, Blair was able sarcastically to comment on its being
“charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty and independence in complying with
his bargain with the Bank--and the bold, frank and honorable way in
which he unsays all that he has said in favor of the President for the
price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479] Thus the editors in 1832 fought with
a ferocity never before approached.
From the beginning Amos Kendall realized that the appeal would have to
be made to the masses. He therefore conceived the idea of inaugurating
the campaign with a more solemn and dignified appeal to the more
intellectual element. The result was a carefully prepared campaign
document reviewing the work of the first three years of Jackson’s
Administration. With a master hand he marshaled the triumphs of the
Administration, and marched them--an imposing procession--before the
reader. He anticipated and met all attacks. If parasites on the public
service had been displaced by friends of Jackson, the new blood had
injected new energy into the public offices. Business, long in arrears,
had been brought up. Public accounts were more promptly rendered and
settled. Scamps had been detected and scourged from office, and
peculations to the amount of $280,000 had been uncovered. Economy and
increased efficiency had resulted in the saving of hundreds of
thousands.
In our foreign relations Kendall found nothing to be desired. Jackson
had found Colombian cruisers depredating upon our commerce, and
Colombian ports subjecting American cargoes to oppressive duties; he
secured indemnities and the reduction of duties and the admission of
American vessels to Colombian waters on the same footing as those of
Colombia. He found no treaty with Turkey and the waters of the Bosphorus
closed to us; he negotiated a treaty and our flag waved in the
Bosphorus. He found no treaty with Austria--one was negotiated; a
suspended treaty with Mexico--it was put in operation; the indemnity
claims against Denmark for spoliation unpressed--he collected $750,000;
the British West Indian controversy entangled by unskilled diplomacy--he
untangled it with skillful diplomacy, and won a victory for American
commerce; the French spoliation claims held in abeyance--and he
triumphed there.
This brilliant foreign policy, he continued, had breathed new life into
our domestic and foreign commerce, until “a commercial activity scarcely
equaled in our history” was enjoyed. The hammers were heard in the
shipyards, laborers were employed at high wages, prosperity pervaded
every class and section. At Boston alone fifteen vessels were fitting
out for trade in the Black Sea.
Despite these achievements Kendall complained that the President’s
political foes had devoted their energy and ingenuity to obstruction
alone. Congress had refused or delayed the necessary appropriations,
denied him the means to maintain a mission to France, refused to confirm
the appointment of his Minister to England, trumped up charges of fraud
against his friends, resorted to childish investigations, charged the
President with sending bullies to attack members of Congress and to spy
upon them, and capped the climax of insufferable impudence with
resolutions to inquire into the private conversations of the hero of New
Orleans.
This campaign document, the first of its kind, was sent broadcast over
the country to awaken the indignation of the faithful and to revive and
intensify the cry, “Hurrah for Jackson.”[480] And it had the effect
intended. The Jacksonians became all the more militant, ready to pounce
upon and rend their enemies. Even the courageous Tyler, unfriendly to
Jackson, cautioned his daughter in a letter home--“Speak of me always as
a Jackson man whenever you are questioned.”[481] With this document in
the hands of the intellectual, the Kitchen Cabinet turned with their
appeal to the masses on the Bank issue. This speedily became paramount.
But Clay and the Whigs were busy with intrigues with groups, and, to
understand the remarkable campaign in its ramifications, it is necessary
to pause for a peep behind the scenes where Clay may be seen in a light
other than that of a man who “would rather be right than President.” We
shall find him as willing, in Virginia, to unite with the champions of
the Nullification he abhorred, as, in New York, with the party of the
Anti-Masons he despised.
II
After the fashion of the old school politician of his day, Clay relied
upon intrigue, upon the cultivation of groups with special interests and
grievances. During the winter in Congress he had devoted himself to the
consolidation of business and the ultra-conservative elements behind his
candidacy. The bitterness of the contest was foreshadowed in the spring
when Blair announced the publication of an extra weekly issue of the
“Globe”; and in August, Duff Green made a similar announcement as to the
“Telegraph.” While Clay planned to win on the Bank issue, he very early
began a furious flirtation with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons,
thus injecting side issues that the Jacksonians were quick to accept. In
April, Clay was writing a Virginia friend[482] of a possible coalition
with the Nullification forces in three or four Southern States where
extreme State-Rights views were prevalent. Governor Floyd of Virginia,
destined to receive the electoral vote of the South Carolina Nullifiers,
and for a time alienated from Clay, was making overtures for a
conciliation. Duff Green, a messenger in Calhoun’s livery, had made a
remarkable proposition. The purport of this proposition was that
Calhoun’s friends would present his name for the Presidency if assured
of three or four of the Southern States; that about August he would be
announced as a candidate; that if arrangements could be made with Clay
to place no electoral ticket in the field in Virginia, and to throw the
support of his friends to Calhoun, the latter could carry the Old
Dominion; that carrying Virginia, he would have a fair chance of
carrying North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, with a fighting
chance in Alabama and Mississippi; and, accomplishing that, he could
defeat the reëlection of Jackson, and force the determination of the
issue upon the House of Representatives where Clay would no doubt be
elected to the satisfaction of Calhoun. The wily editor made it clear to
Clay that he was to have no ticket in the States mentioned, and should
actively coöperate with Calhoun in Virginia.
And Clay was not shocked! But he had not “assumed that Calhoun had much
political capital anywhere outside South Carolina,” and doubted the
practicability of abandoning a ticket in Virginia because of the
imputations that would follow. And yet, if Calhoun could, by any chance,
carry three or four of the Southern States, it was a consummation
devoutly to be wished. “Let me hear from you, my dear friend, upon this
matter,” he wrote, “and particularly your views as to the strength of
the party of Mr. Calhoun in Virginia. Has it not relapsed into
Jacksonism? Can it be brought forth again in its original force to the
support of Mr. Calhoun? Suppose Mr. Calhoun is not put forth as a
candidate, what course, generally, will his friends in Virginia pursue?
Could our friends be prevailed upon to unite upon a ticket favorable to
Mr. Calhoun? Or, in the event of no ticket being put up, would they not
divide between Jackson and Calhoun, the larger part probably going to
Jackson?”[483] The pet plan of the Calhoun conspirators failed, and in
August, Duff Green set forth on a tour of investigation into New York
and Pennsylvania, returning to Washington encouraged in the conviction
that the defeat of Jackson could be accomplished through the unification
of all the hostile elements against him. In announcing the campaign
extras of the “Telegraph”--could he by chance have visited the marble
bank building in Philadelphia?--he declared that “we believe that our
duty requires us to demonstrate that General Jackson ought not to be
reëlected.” There was no mistaking the meaning of this move, and the
Jacksonians were instantly on their toes. Under the caption,
“Consummation of the Coalition,” Blair vigorously denounced it in the
“Globe.” “If Mr. Clay were elected,” he wrote, “Mr. Calhoun is well
aware that it would instantly establish the Southern League, which is
looked to by him as his only hope of ever attaining political power.
This is the basis of the coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. It
is like that of Octavius and Anthony which severed the Roman
empire.”[484]
That Blair had not misinterpreted was immediately evident in the
response of the Whig press. The influential Pleasants, of the “Richmond
Whig,” warmly commended Green’s action and promised, “on the part of the
‘Telegraph,’ a luminous exposé of the misrule of Jacksonism.” “Ah,”
wrote Blair, “the ‘Richmond Whig’ upon the appearance of Duff Green’s
proposals for a joint opposition leaps into its embrace.”[485] And from
that moment the “Globe” kept before its readers constantly the Calhoun
heresy and the coalition with the Whigs. Early in September he began to
discuss pointedly the Nullification meetings in South Carolina addressed
by “Mr. Calhoun’s leading partisans,” warning that the sinister doctrine
was “subversive of the Union,” and that “by forcing a clash between the
Government and South Carolina, Calhoun hopes to arouse the sympathy of
the entire South.” And he continued with a prescience that is now
startling: “The Vice-President, as his prospect closes upon the elevated
honors of the Federal Government, is exerting all his influence to place
South Carolina in a position which shall compel the other Southern
States to unite in a new system, or confederacy, which may open new
views to his ambition.”[486]
Thus, burning all bridges as far as the Nullifiers were concerned, the
Jacksonian leaders, in the interest of the President, concentrated on
capitalizing their connection with the Whigs and the Bank. When Whig
and Bank papers warmly recommended the “Telegraph” to the patronage
of the Clay supporters, Blair gave the recommendation publicity,
with the suggestion that “that paper is the open advocate of Calhoun
and Nullification.” Thus he forced the coalition into the open. “Are
not the Bank party turning to the Nullifiers?” he asked. “If not,
why do they circulate the extra of Duff Green which is devoted to
Nullification?”[487] Thus, by boldly repudiating and defying the
Nullification element and Calhoun, the Jackson leaders more than
neutralized any benefit that Clay and the Whigs might receive from
their sympathy and support.
III
But more important to Clay than the attitude of the Nullifiers was that
of the Anti-Masons. Strangely enough, he had, at first, looked upon the
growing movement, not only with complacency, but with approval. After
the failure of the new party in New York in 1830, he had written to a
friend: “If they had been successful they would probably have brought
out an Anti-Masonic candidate for President. Still, if I had been in New
York, I should have given my suffrage to Granger.[488] I will not
trouble you with the reasons.”[489] In the same letter, however, he
expresses the opinion that such strength as the proscriptive party might
muster would ultimately go to the Whigs, in general, and himself in
particular, because “it is in conformity with the general nature of
minorities,” when they have no candidate of their own, to support the
strongest opposition party. Then, too, they were protectionists, had
been abused by Van Buren’s organization in New York, “and General
Jackson has, as they think, persecuted them.” At any rate, wrote the
intriguing politician, “there is no occasion for our friends to attack
them.”
But a new light broke for Clay when, in the spring of 1831, the
Anti-Masons called a national convention, to meet two months before the
Whigs’. His close friends became apprehensive. The sounding of the
Anti-Masons disclosed no Clay sentiment. Quite the contrary. Much
distressed at this revelation, one of the leaders of the movement urged
him to exert his well-known powers of conciliation.[490] By the latter
part of June he had concluded that the new party might not prove so
advantageous after all. Writing to his bosom friend, Francis Brooke, he
found that “Anti-Masonry seems to be the only difficulty now in the way
of success, both in Pennsylvania and New York.”[491] By the middle of
July he was convinced that “it would be politic to leave the Jackson
party exclusively to abuse the Antis.”[492] A few days later he had
concluded that “the policy of the Antis is to force us to their
support,” and that “ours should be to win them to ours.”[493]
As the time for the convention approached, the Antis were split on Clay,
a small portion wishing the nomination of one who would later withdraw
in his favor, but the majority hoping for the nomination of one who
would be acceptable to the Whigs in their convention two months later.
The problem was finally solved by the nomination of William Wirt.
That this brilliant man would have scorned the honor on any other theory
than that his nomination would be acceptable to both the Whigs and Clay,
with whom he had served in the Cabinet, and for whom he entertained an
affection, is shown in his correspondence.[494] But, while resting at
Ashland and still ignorant of the convention’s action, Clay was writing
to Brooke that “if the alternative is between Andrew Jackson and an
Anti-Masonic candidate with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I
should be embarrassed in the choice.”[495]
In the interval between the two conventions, the Anti-Masons clung
desperately to the hope that Clay would do violence to his dominating,
domineering disposition by sacrificing himself. He was an intimate
friend of Wirt’s. Their views on fundamentals were alike. With Wirt
elected, Clay would be the power behind the throne. With a divided
opposition, Jackson’s election would be inevitable, and Clay hated him
with a consuming hate. For identical reasons the Whigs hoped that, on
the nomination of Clay, Wirt would retire in his favor. As the Whig
convention approached, Wirt abandoned all hope of his own nomination.
“There seems to be no doubt of Mr. Clay’s nomination in the convention
next week,” he wrote to Judge Carr. “So be it. In a personal point of
view I shall feel that I have made a lucky escape.”[496] After the
nomination of Clay, it was the ardent wish of Wirt to withdraw. His
intimations to his party’s leaders only brought the assurance that were
the party dissolved there “were not enough Clay men among them to touch
New York or Pennsylvania, nor consequently to elect Mr. Clay,” and he
was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that “there [was] no more
chance for Mr. Clay with the Anti-Masons than for the Pope of
Rome.”[497] But the absurdity of his situation annoyed him, and he was
soon wishing for “a little villa in Florida, or somewhere else, to
retire to, and beguile the painful hours, as Cicero did, in writing
essays.”
If he remained in the field, it was because Henry Clay preferred it. The
relations of the ostensible rivals were close and confidential
throughout the campaign. Clay feared that Wirt’s withdrawal would be
ascribed to his influence, and would intensify the Anti-Masonic feeling
against him. Then, again, the Whig board of strategy planned to deprive
Jackson of the electoral vote of New York and Pennsylvania through an
ingenious combination of the two opposition parties in those States. In
New York the proscriptive party, meeting first, endorsed its national
nominees, and nominated leaders of their own for Governor and
Lieutenant-Governor. With great cunning they selected an electoral
ticket, including Chancellor Kent, an idolater of Clay. The Whigs
followed, and accepted the Anti-Masonic ticket, and thus the Opposition
was consolidated in the Empire State. There was no mystery as to the
intent in regard to the State ticket--it was to have the united support
of both parties. The weakness, with the public, was the absence of any
indication as to the intended disposal of the electoral vote. The plan
of the conspirators was to throw the electoral votes to Wirt provided
there was a possibility of his election, or no possibility of the
election of either Wirt or Clay; and for Clay in the event Wirt could
not win and the Whig nominee could with the electoral vote of New
York.[498] The plan met with the hearty approval of Clay, who
entertained high hopes of its success in depriving Jackson of the
electoral vote upon which his election depended.[499] Thus, before the
campaign had fairly started, the politicians of these two parties were
working in close coöperation with a complete understanding, while the
rank and file of both parties were left entirely in the dark. Wirt, with
no faith in the coalition, was doing nothing to advance his
candidacy.[500] Thus the nominee of one party was secretly planning to
deliver the prize to the man his own party had repudiated. Not only did
he write no letters to advance his party’s cause, but he “refused to
answer whenever such answers could be interpreted as canvassing for
office.”[501]
Meanwhile the Jacksonians were merely amused at these intrigues of the
old school politicians. The secret of their strength, here as always,
was in their daring. Not only did they ignore the Anti-Masons and refuse
to conciliate them, but they cast them off as completely as they had the
Nullifiers. The highest member of the Masonic order in America was at
the head of Jackson’s Cabinet, and John Quincy Adams gave the utmost
publicity to the fact by addressing his attacks on Masonry to Edward
Livingston. Jackson himself sought and found an opportunity to go on
record against the prescriptive hysteria. In this manner the Jacksonian
managers rallied the Masons to their banner, and they held in their
hands the ammunition with which to blow to atoms the plan of the
coalition leaders to deliver the rank and file of the enemies of Masonry
to Clay.
Early in October Blair published in the “Globe,” without comment,
Clay’s manly letter to some Anti-Masons in Indiana refusing to be drawn
into sectarian quarrels. “If a President of the United States ... were
to employ his official power to sustain, or to abolish, or to advance
the interest of Masonry or Anti-Masonry,” he had written, “it would be
an act of usurpation and tyranny.”[502] That was enough. The Democratic
press of the country, taking the cue from the “Globe,” reproduced the
letter, and thus the rank and file of the party everywhere was
strengthened in its determination not to support its author.
While Clay was intriguing with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, the
Democrats were audaciously denouncing both, and were gaining rather than
losing by their temerity.
IV
There was but one issue--and that the Bank. Clay had made it the issue
with the officers of the institution and their allied business
interests; the clever leaders of the Jackson forces made it an issue
with the masses of the people, who had always looked with suspicion and
dislike upon the powerful financial institution.[503] And then, perhaps,
the “Emperor Nicholas” bitterly regretted having yielded to the
blandishments of Clay. If he had not considered the cost in money to the
institution when he yielded, Clay understood it as well as Webster. They
knew that a fight against the “weak old man,” as they foolishly called
Jackson, would be “no holiday affair.” Satisfied of the support of the
business element, they had calculated the cost of reaching the people
generally--and they had the work of Biddle cut out for him.[504] And
almost immediately, Biddle was as deeply involved as Clay himself.
The campaign plans of the two parties differed, since their special
appeals were to different elements. The Clay men relied on the
distribution, with Bank money, of the printed speeches of Clay, Webster,
and Calhoun, of tracts and pamphlets. These, falling into the hands of
the masses, were thrown aside. They were sympathetically perused by the
bankers, merchants, manufacturers, preachers, professors, and lawyers
who were in no need of conversion.[505] The Bank made desperate efforts
to win to its support the press of the larger cities and towns. It was
notoriously willing to prove its appreciation of such support with the
coin of the realm.[506] That Webb’s paper had been won over with Bank
money was common knowledge after the congressional investigation, and
Amos Kendall, in the “Globe,” charged that the “Evening Post” had been
“approached,” and that the “Standard” of Philadelphia had been offered
five hundred dollars and a new set of type, and the inducement had been
increased by five hundred dollars two days later.
Thoroughly frightened, Biddle spent lavishly for the printing and
distribution of speeches and articles. Mailing the president of the
Kentucky Bank[507] Webster’s speech on the Veto, and an article
reviewing the Message, he instructed that these, “as well as Mr. Clay’s
& Mr. Ewing’s speeches on the same subject,” be “printed and
dispersed.”[508] More than $80,000--an enormous sum for those days--was
spent by the Bank under the head of “stationery and printing” during the
period of the campaign. Thousands of friendly newspapers were bought in
bulk and scattered broadcast, and Blair announced the discovery that
“about four bushels of the ‘Extra Telegraph’ is sent to New York to a
single individual for distribution.”[509] An analysis of Benton’s speech
and a reply was printed in pamphlet form, and thousands flooded the
country and burdened the mails.
But more sinister still was the appearance, for the first time in
American politics, of the weapons of intimidation and coercion. In New
Orleans a bank commenced discounting four months’ paper at eight per
centum--“because of the veto.” An advertisement appeared in a Cincinnati
paper offering $2.50 per hundred for pork if Clay should be elected,
$1.50 if Jackson won--a bribe of one dollar a head on each hundred
pounds of pork. From Brownsville, Pennsylvania, went forth the
disturbing report that “a large manufacturer has discharged all his
hands, and others have given notice to do so,” and that “not a single
steam boat will be built this season at Wheeling, Pittsburg or
Louisville.” From Baltimore: “A great many mechanics are thrown out of
employment by the stoppage of building. The prospect ahead is that we
shall have a very distressing winter.” And so the work went on, with the
Bank and its political champions holding the sword of Damocles over the
heads of the masses who dared to vote for Jackson.[510] Jackson was held
before the conservative and timid as rash, dangerous, destructive.
Webster’s State convention speech at Worcester, expanding on the
unfortunate sentence from the Veto Message as to the finality of Supreme
Court decisions, was given general circulation. Even the brilliant
Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” lived in constant terror of some
rash act of Jackson’s that would wreck the country.[511]
For the benefit of the ardent Jacksonians who disliked and distrusted
Van Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, the Whig and Bank press
gravely quoted some mysterious “Philadelphian” to whom Jackson had said,
“with his own lips,” that a reëlection would satisfy him as a
vindication, and that he would resign and go home, leaving Van Buren in
the Presidency. Even the “National Intelligencer” referred to the rumor
as “the disclosure of an important fact ... going to confirm our own
impressions.” And Blair had been forced to notice and denounce the story
with the comment that “we had always thought Simpson the most depraved
of all the miscreants purchased by the Bank, but certainly now
Gales[512] deserves to be put below him.”[513] Earlier in the campaign
the Whigs had attempted to serve the same purpose by circulating
alarming reports regarding Jackson’s health. And Blair, in denouncing
this canard, announced that the President “receives from 50 to 100
persons daily, is incessantly engaged in the despatch of the duties of
his office, and joins regularly at table his large dinner parties of
from 40 to 50 persons twice a week.”[514]
For the benefit of the preachers, teachers, and moral forces, the old
stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness were revived, apropos of the
attack by Sam Houston on a member of Congress. At first the President
had merely instigated the assault--and then the imaginative Whig scribes
worked out a bloodcurdling, circumstantial story. After the brutal
attack, the swaggering Houston had met Postmaster-General Barry at the
theater, and the two had talked it over at the theater bar, and, after
being congratulated by the Cabinet member, he had called on Jackson and
been heartily commended for his act.
Thus the Whigs used every weapon that came into their hands--money,
subsidized and bought papers, the hostility to Masonry, the hate of the
Nullifiers, the fear of Van Buren, intimidation, coercion, and slander.
And something comparatively new to politics--the cartoon--soon became a
feature of the fight. Here the Democrats were at a disadvantage, and the
pictorial editorials that have come down to us are largely anti-Jackson.
Here we find the President pictured as a raving maniac, as Don Quixote
tilting at the pillars of the splendid marble bank building in
Philadelphia, as a burglar attempting to force the bank doors with a
battering ram, while the most popular cartoon among the friends of Clay
pictured Jackson receiving a crown from Van Buren and a scepter from the
Devil.[515]
V
But all the while the consummate politicians of the Jackson party were
reaching and arousing the masses. Long before the opening of the
campaign, Amos Kendall, Lewis, Hill, and Blair were cunningly appealing
to the interests, the prejudices, and the hero worship of the voters of
the cornfield and the village. These forerunners of the modern
politician were keenly appreciative of the fact that between 1824 and
1832 a great body of voters, previously proscribed because of their
poverty and lack of property, had been newly enfranchised. With the
Whigs these were non-existent. The journalistic training of Kendall,
Hill, and Blair pointed to the press as the surest way to reach the
masses with their propaganda. The old-fashioned politician still
affected a contempt for the press, and particularly for the little
struggling papers of the country. The genius of Kendall immediately
seized upon these, and, long before the campaign began, the sallow,
prematurely gray young man of mystery, shut up in his petty office in
the Treasury, was busy night and day, and especially at night, preparing
articles and editorials laudatory of the Jackson policies, denunciatory
of the Opposition, and these, sent to editors all over the country, were
printed as their own. Thus the followers of Jackson in every nook and
corner of the country were constantly supplied with ammunition in the
shape of arguments they could comprehend and assimilate.
The center and soul of the Democratic organization was the office of the
“Globe.” Among the papers of national reputation, but two others were
supporting Jackson, the “New Hampshire Patriot” of “Ike” Hill, and Van
Buren’s organ, the “Albany Argus.” But the “Globe” was equal to the
demand upon it. Doubling the number of issues, the ferociously partisan
Blair sat in the office writing feverishly, with Kendall gliding in and
out with copy. Both possessed a genius for controversy. Both had
mastered a style combining literary qualities, attractive to the
educated, with the “pep” and “punch” that impressed, interested,
delighted, the multitude. Blair dipped his pen in vitriol. In satire and
sarcasm he had few equals. He was no parlor warrior, and he struck
resounding blows like a boiler-maker. And he wrote in a flowing style
that, at times, approached real eloquence. Having the average man in
mind, his editorials, filling the greater part of the paper, were
concise and brief. When language seemed weak, he resorted to italics.
The longer and more sustained argumentative articles were written by the
more brilliant Kendall. Through July, August, September, and October he
wrote a series of articles on “The Bank and the Veto,” beginning in an
argumentative vein, and gradually growing personal until he was devoting
one issue to the financial connections between the Bank and Duff Green,
another to similar connections of Webb, of the “Courier and Enquirer,”
and another to Gales, of the “Intelligencer.”
Infuriated by the gibes, taunts, and attacks, the Whigs charged that the
“Globe” was being distributed gratuitously--the business manager replied
with an affidavit as to the legitimacy of its circulation.[516] News of
the deepest import was crowded out by the exigencies of the campaign,
and with the cholera scourge taking a heavy toll of lives in Washington,
the only mention of it in the “Globe” was in the official reports of the
Board of Health. But there was room for columns of quotations from
Democratic papers on the Veto, all striking the exultant key--“The
Monster is Destroyed.”
Only the persistent hammering of the Whigs on the unfortunate sentence
of the Veto Message caused acute distress in Democratic circles.
Webster’s Worcester speech was annoying. Here a sneer, there a gibe in
the “Globe,” but sneers and gibes did not quite satisfy the editor, who
finally made a laborious effort to explain,[517] and, finding the effort
tame, Blair countercharged with the publication of Clay’s bitter
anti-Bank speech of 1811 with appropriate comments upon it from the
Jacksonian papers of the country.
As the campaign approached the end, Blair stressed the theory that the
real fight was between Jackson and the Bank, with Clay a mere pawn in
the game. “We see,” he wrote, “the most profligate apostasies invited
and applauded--the grossest misrepresentations circulated--the worst
forgeries committed--open briberies practiced, and all for what? Not
avowedly to elect Henry Clay or William Wirt, but any ‘available
candidate’[518]--in other words, any candidate with whom, in the end,
the Bank directors can make the best bargain.”[519] And a week later,
under the caption, “The Gold,” Blair announces that through private
advices “we learn that certain heavy trunks, securely hooped with iron,
have arrived at Lexington[520] from the East.”[521] Such was the
character of the publicity with which the Jacksonians appealed to the
masses of the people.
But the practical minds of the leaders of the Kitchen Cabinet were not
content with creating public opinion--they systematically organized and
directed it. In every community, no matter how obscure, some Jackson
leader, with a genius for organization work, was busy welding the
Jackson forces into a solid mass. Here Major Lewis took charge. He
anticipated the card-index system of the modern politicians. There was
scarcely a county in the country in which he did not know the precise
man or men upon whom absolute reliance could be placed. And “Ike” Hill,
now a United States Senator, made an extensive organizing tour through
Ohio and Pennsylvania in early August.
In both publicity and organization, the greater part of the ability and
all the genius was with Jackson.
VI
The Jacksonians depended also to a greater extent than the Opposition on
appeals to the people, face to face. A creature of another world,
looking down from the skies upon the United States in the late summer
and autumn of 1832, would have concluded that its people moved about in
enormous processions on horseback, with waving flags, branches and
banners. Great meetings were held in groves, addressed by fiery orators,
furiously denouncing “The Monster” and the “Corporation” and calling
upon the people to “stand by the Hero.” Men left their homes, bade
farewell to their families as though enlisting for a war, and rode from
one meeting to another for weeks at a time.[522] Nor was this hysterical
enthusiasm confined to the more primitive sections of the country. A
French traveler sojourning in New York City was profoundly impressed by
a Jackson parade there. “It was nearly a mile long,” he wrote. “The
Democrats marched in good order to the glare of torches; the banners
were more numerous than I have ever seen in any religious festival; all
were in transparency on account of the darkness. On some were inscribed
the names of Democratic societies, or sections; others bore imprecations
against the Bank of the United States. Nick Biddle and Old Nick here
figured largely.... From farther than the eye could reach came marching
on the Democrats. The procession stopped before the houses of the
Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted at the door of the
leaders of the opposition to give three, six or nine groans. These
scenes belong to history and partake of the grand; they are the
episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to
posterity.”[523]
And into these amazing demonstrations the campaign glee club, also new
to American politics, entered, to play a conspicuous part, with pretty
girls, and children gayly dressed, singing round the hickory poles that
were raised wherever there were idolaters of Jackson. And so they sang:
“Here’s a health to the heroes who fought
And conquered in Liberty’s cause;
Here’s health to Old Andy who could not be bought
To favor aristocrat laws.
Hurrah for the Roman-like Chief--
He never missed fire at all;
But ever when called to his country’s relief
Had a ready picked flint and a ball.
“Hurrah for the Hickory tree
From the mountain tops down to the sea.
It shall wave o’er the grave of the Tory and knave,
And shelter the honest and free.”[524]
Even where the Whigs were strongest, the militant Democrats poured forth
in defiant demonstrations. When Jackson, returning to Washington from
the Hermitage in the closing days of the campaign, approached Lexington,
the home of his rival, a multitude streamed down the road five miles to
meet him, with over a thousand on horseback and in carriages, and before
he reached his lodging the throng extended back two miles along the road
“with green hickory bushes waving like bright banners in a breeze.”[525]
It was inevitable that in such a campaign personalities should intrude.
In the winter of 1831-32, while Congress was in session, Jackson took
advantage of the presence of Dr. Harris, an eminent Philadelphia
surgeon, to have the bullet from Benton’s pistol, long lodged in his
shoulder, removed. When the surgeon appeared at the White House, he was
engaged with company, but excused himself with the explanation that he
would have to submit to an operation; and a few hours later he
reappeared among his friends with his arm in a sling. “Precisely,” wrote
Blair, “as he had appeared with it in battle among the enemies of his
country.”[526] This gave the Whigs their cue, and their press teemed
with references to the “disgusting affair” in which the shot had been
fired. And Blair himself was able to retaliate in kind with the story of
a wound received by Clay in a personal conflict. “He was taken to a kind
friend’s house,” he wrote, “he was treated with the utmost tenderness
and courtesy by that friend’s wife and family, and while enjoying their
hospitality, he amused himself ... by winning the money of his kind host
at Brag.”
If Jackson was a brawler, it was given out thus that Clay was not only a
brawler, but a gambler and an ingrate. Both stories made their way
through the country.[527]
If the cholera was not of sufficient importance for the news columns of
the party press, it was rich in suggestion to the politicians. The Dutch
Synod requested Jackson to set a day aside for prayer. He replied that
he had faith in the efficacy of prayer, but that the special day to be
set aside should be designated by the State authorities. Whereupon Clay
arose to offer a resolution in the Senate setting a day aside and fixing
the day. Aha, cried Blair, he wants a veto on a religious subject. “It
is not the cholera that makes them so pious; it is the hope to steal a
march on the old Hero.... What whited sepulchers some of these partisan
leaders are!” he wrote.[528]
And when, a little later, the “Pittsburgh Statesman,” a Clay paper,
suggested that “the only effectual cure, under existing circumstances,
for genuine Jacksonism is the equally genuine Asiatic Spasmodic
Cholera,” the “Troy Budget,” supporting Jackson, was not surprised at
“such political depravity,” coming from the “editorial slanderers and
ruthless murderers of Mrs. Jackson.” And “Ike” Hill, in the “New
Hampshire Patriot,” was reminded that Clay himself had prayed “for war,
pestilence and famine” in preference to the reëlection of Jackson. When
the President left the capital for the Hermitage, the “Troy Sentinel,”
Whig, with its eye on the church vote, announced with emphasis that he
had left Washington “at eight o’clock on Sunday morning.” Blair,
denouncing the story as “a lie,” declared that “he did not leave the
city until Monday morning and spent the Sabbath in religious duties as
usual.” When “Ike” Hill, speaking at a complimentary dinner at the Eagle
Coffee House, in Concord, assailed Clay and Senator John Holmes, and
referred to some Senators as “low and blackguard,” the “National
Intelligencer” protested, and Blair replied with a description of Holmes
as a “besotted Senator who had indulged in indecent and ribald slang
throughout the session,” and as one given to “low buffoonery”--the “mere
Thersites of the Senate.”[529] Charges of impropriety touching on the
personal integrity of political leaders were commonplace. The “Globe,”
centering its fire upon the activities of the Bank, charged it with
subsidizing and seducing the press by paying for the publication of
political speeches at advertising rates.[530] “Every press in
Philadelphia,” it said, “is closed by its influence, against the
admission of anything unfavorable to its pretensions. The ‘Mechanics’
Free Press’ broke ground against it in conformity with the principles of
its party, when lo! a shower of gold, amounting to $1700 for publishing
Mr. McDuffie’s report, silenced it, and for good reasons, doubtless, it
has ever since held its peace about the Bank.” And the Whig press was
equally shocked to find that officers high in the Government were
sending the “Globe” all over the country under their official frank. “A
lie!” screamed Blair. And so the battle of personalities went on. From
Hill’s “New Hampshire Patriot” came the resurrection of the
long-discredited “bargain” story against Clay.
Meanwhile, what had become of the candidates and what were their
feelings as to the prospects? While scarcely due to the strain of the
campaign, all three, Jackson, Clay, and Wirt, were threatened with
serious illness. As we have seen, Clay was threatened with paralysis
about the time of his retirement from the Cabinet. During the summer and
autumn of 1832 the old trouble returned. His friend, Brooke, who became
concerned over his health, urged him to caution, and Clay, much moved by
his friend’s solicitude, promised to be more careful of his diet, to
abstain from wine, and to reduce his consumption of tobacco to “one
form.”[531] At times, during the summer session, he had been forced to
leave Washington for a brief period of rest at his friend’s home at St.
Julien, Virginia; and as soon as Congress adjourned, he hastened to
White Sulphur Springs for two weeks in hope of relief from the waters.
Skeptical at first of his election, his confidence increased until he
and Webster were exchanging letters of congratulation on its certainty.
Wirt, who had a serious attack, and was in a weakened condition, was
forced by his physician to leave Baltimore, rather than take a chance
with the cholera. After a brief sojourn at Bedford Springs, he went with
his family to Berkley Springs where he remained through September. Here,
with no thought of his own election, but with ardent hopes for Clay, he
ignored the clamor of the campaign. Riding and lounging about the
grounds during the day, regaling company with ghost stories in the
evening, he bore no resemblance to a presidential candidate.[532]
Soon after Congress adjourned, the scourge reached Washington, taking
heavy toll of the Irish and Swedish laborers engaged in the first
macadamizing of Pennsylvania Avenue, and spreading rapidly from the
poorer parts to the White House section. Because of Jackson’s weakened
condition, his physicians insisted that he spend three months at the
Hermitage, and near the middle of August, accompanied part of the way by
Amos Kendall, Frank Blair, “Ike” Hill, Major Lewis, Lewis Cass, and
Benton, he left the sweltering and infected capital and went down the
Ohio. He was in high glee. Never for a moment had he doubted the result
of the election. During the congressional fight over the recharter bill
he had not punished those who had withheld their support by denying them
patronage, except in the case of his most bitter foes. Just before the
vote in the House, an Ohio Representative solicited an appointment for a
constituent, and, upon being granted the favor, he explained that he
thought it due Jackson for him to know that the favor was being granted
a member who would vote for the Bank.
“I can’t help that, sir, but I already knew it. See here--I can take a
roll of the House and check off every Democrat who will vote for the
Bank. In fact I have one here.”
Turning briskly, he produced it, and the Representative, running over
the list, indicated one name as that of a man who would vote with
Jackson.
“How do you know?” demanded Jackson.
When told that this Congressman had been so unmercifully berated by his
constituents that he had felt compelled to change his tack, the old
warrior smiled grimly.
“He is a lucky fellow,” he said, “to get the views of his constituents
beforehand. There are several other Democrats in the House who will not
get similar notice until next fall, sir.”[533]
Nothing occurred after that incident to alter his opinion of the
sentiment of the people. As Hill left the boat bearing the presidential
party down the Ohio, at Wheeling, Jackson said, as he clasped his hand:
“Isaac, it’ll be a walk. If our fellows didn’t raise a finger from now
on the thing would be just as well as done. In fact, Isaac, it’s done
now.”
That his friends shared his confidence we have ample evidence. Hill,
writing to a friend, advised him to bet all he could on Pennsylvania and
Ohio for Jackson--“not on stated majorities, but hang on to the general
result.” And he added frankly, “I am on the turf myself. Benton and his
friends out West are picking up all they can get.” John Van Buren, the
son of Martin, and popularly known as “Prince John,” made a small
fortune with his ventures on the election, and Hone, commenting on the
manner and appearance of Martin Van Buren, the nominee for
Vice-President, thought it indicated a feeling of absolute security.
The result was a notable victory for Jackson and his policies--an
unmistakable rebuke to Clay. In electoral votes Jackson received 219,
Clay 49, and Wirt 7, and the popular vote gave Jackson 124,392 over the
combined strength of Clay and Wirt, thus proving the absurdity of
Thurlow Weed’s theory that if Clay had acquiesced in the wishes of the
Anti-Masons he could have been elected. The only State carried by Wirt
was Vermont--as he had predicted. Clay carried Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Kentucky, and five out of the eight
electoral votes of Maryland. All the other States went to Jackson but
one--South Carolina, with childish petulance, threw its vote away at the
behest of Calhoun.
Nothing could have been more ominous than this action. Going entirely
outside the regularly nominated candidates, and acting in conformity
with the views of the Nullifying party, which insisted on placing the
State outside the Union, she gave her vote to Governor Floyd of
Virginia. And Jackson, getting the returns, instantly caught the
significance of the act, and girded his loins for a life-and-death
struggle with Calhoun and Nullification.
CHAPTER X
THE POLITICS OF NULLIFICATION
I
Callers at the Hermitage about the first of October were surprised to
find Jackson’s thoughts remote from the election. Instead of a jubilant
politician, they found an old man frothing with fury over the news from
South Carolina that the Nullifiers had won a majority of seats in the
Legislature and were arranging for an early summoning of a Nullification
Convention. His indignation was so intense that his friends were shocked
at the ferocity of his mood. The crisis had not crept upon him unaware.
With keen, far-seeing eyes he had watched its advance, hoping that
something would intervene to divert his native State from its mad
course, but determined, if the issue came, to crush it with an iron
hand. His hatred of Calhoun had, by this time, become an obsession, and
when he threatened to “hang every leader ... of that infatuated people,
sir, by martial law, irrespective of his name, or political or social
position,” there was no doubt as to whom he referred.[534] Taking no
further interest in the election, he put the campaign behind him and
hastened to the capital. Blair, the politician always, hurried to the
White House with some papers relating to the election. After a hasty and
perfunctory glance, Jackson returned them to the editor, with a “Thank
you, sir,” and launched into a denunciation of the Nullifiers. The date
set for the Nullification Convention had just reached him. Even Blair,
accustomed to his fits of temper, was startled. He was in the presence
of a Jackson he had never seen or known before. “The lines in his face
were hard drawn, his tones were full of wrath and resentment.... Any
one would have thought he was planning another great battle.”[535] Even
the announcement of victory at the polls scarcely interested him. Blair
and Kendall called with a table showing the electoral vote. Glancing at
it indifferently for a moment, his face brightened. “The best thing
about this, gentlemen, is that it strengthens my hands in this trouble.”
Such was the spirit with which Andrew Jackson faced the gravest crisis
the Nation had yet known.
Beginning with an intensely nationalistic spirit,[536] South Carolina
commenced to veer about with the tariff of 1816, and every succeeding
tariff measure had been a provocation. Two years before Jackson’s
inauguration, the “Brutus” articles on the “Usurpations of the Federal
Government,” eloquent, fiery, defiant of the “Monster of the North,” had
created a profound impression, commanding the adherence of McDuffie, the
Mirabeau of the disaffected, Hamilton, Preston, and Chancellor William
Harper, described by Houston as “scarcely inferior to Calhoun as an
exponent of meta-physical doctrines.”[537] The principles of “Brutus”
only awaited the authoritative sanction of Calhoun to place upon them
the stamp of the State’s approval.
The tariff of 1828 was the last straw, and sedition was openly talked by
the greater part of the South Carolina congressional delegation at the
home of Senator Hayne. One week later, Calhoun, at his home at Fort
Hill, finished his “Exposition,” enunciating the principles of
Nullification, which the committee of seven of the State Legislature
presented as its own. During the summer, politicians made numerous
pilgrimages to Fort Hill for conferences, but not the scratch of a pen
remains to indicate the character of the discussions. Calhoun was still
“under cover.” He was about to enter upon his second term in the
Vice-Presidency, and his friends were looking forward to the Presidency
in 1832. The world was to wait awhile for the openly avowed views of the
Master.
With the publication of the “Exposition,” the battle royal began,
Cavalier against Cavalier, the Union cause brilliantly led by the
elegant Joel R. Poinsett. In the early stages of the fight the
Nullifiers did not scruple to represent Jackson as friendly to their
cause. “I had supposed,” wrote Jackson, in reply to a letter from
Poinsett, “that every one acquainted with me knew that I was opposed to
the Nullifying doctrine, and my toast at the Jefferson dinner was
sufficient evidence of that fact.”[538] Having no reason, after that, to
doubt Jackson’s position, the Unionists invited Jackson to attend one of
their public dinners, and he sent a letter settling beyond all
possibility of dispute his position on Nullification. The Nullifiers,
dining at a rival banquet, and learning of the reading of the Jackson
letter, reminded the writer that “old Waxhaw still stands where Jackson
left it, and the old stock of ’76 has not run out.” After that the drama
hurried to a climax. The tariff of 1832 was but oil on the flames. The
fight was carried to the polls and Nullification won by a majority of
6000 out of 40,000 votes cast.
The most portentous feature of the campaign was the appearance in August
of Calhoun’s famous letter to Hamilton, decisively accepting as his own,
and urging upon his people, the doctrine of Nullification. It was
intended and timed to serve the purposes of the campaign. Unhappily
Calhoun must ever remain more or less a steel engraving. His private
life was carefully screened. Jefferson prowling among the brickmasons at
the University, Jackson with his clay pipe on the veranda of the
Hermitage, Webster among his cattle at Marshfield, Clay meditating
speeches under the trees at Ashland, are possible of contact by future
generations, but Calhoun at Fort Hill seems hopelessly remote and cannot
be visualized. He stalks upon the stage, a dramatic and impressive
figure, and plays his public part, but no one is admitted to the
dressing-room. Thus all we know of the occasion of the preparation of
the famous letter, which became the Magna Carta of the Nullifiers, is
told in the letter itself.[539] The events of that summer and early
autumn were intimately known to Jackson as he walked the grounds of the
Hermitage, and lingered mournfully about the tomb of his beloved Rachel.
In the spring of 1830 the brilliant Poinsett, fresh from his mission to
Mexico, had been shocked, on his return to the drawing-rooms of
Charleston, to find sedition poured with the tea, and had hurried to
Washington to be closeted with Jackson at the White House. Before he
emerged, he had been designated by the President as his personal
ambassador in South Carolina,[540] and after calling upon Adams, in
retirement, to tell him of his hopes and fears,[541] he made all haste
home to combat, inch by inch, the growing madness, and prepared, if need
be, to die with a musket in his hands. During the intervening three
years his confidential reports had kept Jackson in close touch with all
the movements of the enemy, and the grim old warrior, reëntering the
White House on his return from Tennessee, entertained no illusions as to
what he faced.
Three days after Jackson reached Washington, the South Carolina
Legislature fixed November 3d as the date for the Nullification
Convention. Silently, but sternly, soldier-wise, the President was
clearing the decks for action. The day he left the Hermitage the
Collector of Customs in Charleston received instructions as to his
course; on reaching the capital, the commander in charge of troops there
was warned of possible attempts to seize the forts; to his apprehensive
friends he was sending reassuring messages. “I am well advised as to
the views and proceedings of the leading Nullifiers,” he wrote Hamilton
on November 2d. “We are wide awake here. THE UNION WILL BE PRESERVED;
REST ASSURED OF THAT.”[542] Five days later, Cass was ordering
additional troops to Fort Moultrie, and Jackson was dispatching a secret
emissary to Charleston, with instructions to communicate with Poinsett,
and to report upon the conditions of the forts and the lengths to which
the Nullifiers might go.[543] The day preceding the meeting of the
Nullification Convention, Cass ordered General Scott to Charleston, with
minute instructions.[544] With Scott hurrying to South Carolina, the
convention met, the Nullification Ordinance was passed, and February 1st
was set as the day for it to go into operation. Three days after the
convention adjourned, the Legislature met and passed laws to put the
ordinance into effect. The Unionist Convention immediately met,
denounced Nullification, and began to organize their forces for a
possible armed conflict.
Meanwhile Scott had performed his mission with a discretion and sound
judgment which called forth the commendation of Jackson.[545] Five days
before Congress met, five thousand stand of muskets with equipment had
been ordered to Castle Pinckney, and a sloop of war with smaller vessels
were on their way to Charleston Harbor.[546] “The Union must be
preserved, and its laws duly executed, but BY PROPER MEANS,” wrote the
President to Poinsett.
Thus, in this real crisis, the “law,” the “Constitution,” and “public
opinion” were uppermost in the mind of the man generally described as
reckless in the use of power. Long after the event, but while the
contest was still on, he wrote to Poinsett of his regret at the failure
of the Unionist Convention to memorialize Congress “to extend to you the
guarantees of the Constitution, of a republican form of government,
stating the actual despotism which now controls the State.” This, he
explained, “would have placed your situation before the whole nation,
and filled the heart of every true lover of his country and its
liberties with indignation.”[547] While at work on his Proclamation, he
wrote Hamilton in New York, urging that public opinion assert itself in
an unmistakable manner. “The crisis must be, and AS FAR AS MY
CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL POWERS AUTHORIZE, will be, met with energy and
firmness. HENCE THE PROPRIETY OF THE PUBLIC VOICE BEING HEARD;--AND IT
OUGHT NOW TO BE SPOKEN IN A VOICE OF THUNDER.”[548] Thus, when the gavel
fell on the opening of the Congress, Jackson had the situation well in
hand, had perfected his plans for vigorous action within the limits of
the Constitution and the laws, but still hoped, through the pressure of
public opinion and the returning good sense of the Carolinians, it would
be unnecessary to resort to force.
II
On the opening day of the Congress the great Carolinian was not in his
Senate seat, to which he had been immediately elected on his resignation
from the Vice-Presidency, but public interest centered in it,
nevertheless. The Jackson Message was awaited with keen anxiety. In its
recommendation of a reduction of the tariff was easily recognized a
conciliatory gesture toward the South Carolinians. Even his discussion
of the crisis was temperate and unprovocative. No one listening to the
Message could have had the slightest notion of what was taking place at
that very hour in Jackson’s workroom in the White House.
Even before the Congress met, Edward Livingston was at work preparing
the Proclamation which was to thrill the country like a bugle blast,
perpetuate the memory of Jackson, and reflect glory on himself. It was
no mere accident which led to the selection of the Secretary of State
for this task. His views on the integrity and perpetuity of the Union
were intimately known to his chief; and it was a duty upon which
Livingston could enter with all his heart. But the first draft of the
Proclamation was written by Jackson in a frenzy of composition, so
hurriedly that he scattered the pages over the table to let them dry.
The general tenor of the document was therefore his. If the wording was
Livingston’s, the document breathed the soul of Andrew Jackson. During
the period of its preparation, Jackson was in constant touch. He was
thinking of nothing else. Thus, on the day his Message was read to
Congress, the iron man was meditating his appeal to public opinion. It
was almost midnight. In his room in the southeast corner of the mansion,
he sat before the fireplace smoking his pipe--thinking. Bitter as he was
against Calhoun and the leaders whom he felt had seduced the people of
his native State, he felt an affection for the confused masses who had
been deluded; and, while prepared, if need be, to strike with the
military arm of the Government, he passionately hoped that this would
not become necessary. Going over to the table on which always stood the
picture of his Rachel, and the Bible to which she had been devoted, he
wrote a conclusion to the Proclamation in the nature of a touching
appeal to the patriotic memories of the South Carolinians. Then he wrote
to Livingston: “I submit the above as the conclusion of the Proclamation
for your amendment and revision. Let it receive your best flight of
eloquence, to strike to the heart, and speak to the feelings of my
deluded countrymen of South Carolina.”
Three days later, the night again found Jackson obsessed with the
preparation of the Proclamation. Livingston, in his writing, was sending
it as he proceeded to the White House, where Major Donelson, the private
secretary, was engaged in copying it for the printer. At four o’clock in
the afternoon the Secretary of State had sent a number of sheets, and
Donelson had finished copying and was waiting for more. Jackson was
impatient of the delay. The Message having gone forth, he thought it
important that it should be followed immediately by the Proclamation for
the effect on South Carolina. Again he wrote to Livingston explaining
the reason for his anxiety. The Secretary would therefore please send
over at once, “sealed, by the bearer,” such sheets as were completed,
and the harassed Livingston complied. Under these conditions of pressure
the immortal document was written.[549]
On the day Jackson gave this Proclamation to the Nation he made his last
appeal. A letter written to Poinsett that day discloses a determination
to move sternly and unhesitatingly to what he conceived to be his solemn
duty. This letter breathed the spirit of the battle-field. The act of
the Nullifiers was sheer treason. He had been assured that he would be
sustained by Congress. “I will meet it [treason] at the threshold, and
have the leaders arrested and arraigned for treason,” he wrote. He was
only waiting for the Acts of the Legislature “to make a communication to
Congress, ask the means necessary to carry my Proclamation into complete
effect, and by an exemplary punishment of those leaders for treason so
unprovoked, put down this rebellion, and strengthen our Government both
at home and abroad.” The Unionists of South Carolina need not fear. In
forty days he could have 50,000 men in the State, in forty more another
50,000. “How impotent,” he wrote, “the threats of resistance with only a
population of 250,000 whites, and nearly double that in blacks, with our
ships in the port to aid in the execution of the laws!”[550]
Thus hoping that necessity would not compel him to send armed forces,
determined to meet the issue, however, as it might present itself,
careful to observe all the constitutional and legal limitations of his
power, enraged to fury against the leaders and eager to lay his hands on
Calhoun, he gave the country the Proclamation which instantly wiped out
party lines with most, and rallied the patriotic forces of the Union to
his support.
III
At the time of the writing of the Proclamation, Andrew Jackson was
sixty-six, and Edward Livingston sixty-nine years old, but it breathes
the fire, the passion, the enthusiasm, and the eloquence of impetuous
youth. As an oration, it was to be treasured as a masterpiece; as a
public document, it has taken its place alongside the Emancipation
Proclamation as one of the greatest pronouncements of American history.
Its publication appealed to the Unionists of the country like a charge
on the battle-field. To no one did it give keener pleasure than to
Webster, who read it in New Jersey on his way to the capital. In
Philadelphia he met Clay, and a friend of the latter explained Clay’s
plan of concessions to the Nullifiers through a new tariff of gradual
reductions. The martial call of Jackson aroused the fighting blood
within Webster, and Clay’s game of politics repelled him. He hastened to
Washington determined to give his best blows for Jackson and the
Administration.[551]
John Marshall, in gloomy mood, found in the Proclamation the elixir for
his pessimism.[552] Justice Story, despite his deep-seated prejudice,
could not withhold his commendation, coupled with an expression of
strange surprise. “The President’s Proclamation is excellent,” he wrote,
“and contains the true principles of the Constitution; but will he stand
to it? Will he not surrender all to the guidance of Virginia?”[553]
Adams described it as a “blister plaster.”[554] Among all his long-time
political opponents, Clay alone withheld enthusiastic commendation, with
the comment that, “although there are some good things in it, there are
some entirely too ultra for me.” In truth, the man who would “rather be
right than President” seized eagerly upon the President’s patriotic
position to curry favor with the extreme State-Rights men of the South.
Thus we soon enter upon the party phase of the fight. The effect upon
some of Jackson’s State-Rights supporters was one of painful
embarrassment. While the average Virginian had no sympathy with
Nullification, he subscribed to the State-Rights doctrine and to the
right of secession. The very point on which Clay cunningly and
unscrupulously pounced was therefore the one which caused the greatest
consternation among the Administration Democrats of the Old Dominion. It
was to them that Clay was making his appeal. The Virginia Assembly,
which had just unanimously elected W. C. Rives, a Jacksonian, to the
Senate, instantly reversed itself by electing John Tyler, an enemy, to
that body, to succeed Tazewell, who had resigned. W. S. Archer, writing
to Cambreleng in New York, declared that it would be ridiculous to
expect Virginia to endorse the Proclamation,[555] and Governor Floyd,
who had received South Carolina’s vote in the recent election, rejoiced
to find “the poor unworthy dogs, Ritchie, Van Buren & Co.
deserted.”[556] To the momentarily embarrassed Ritchie, his cleverness
pointed a way out. Penning a mild objection to some of the doctrinal
points, he accepted it as primarily a denunciation of Nullification,
and, as such, gave it the support of his great prestige and pen.[557]
Such was the position of many others among the Southern leaders of the
Jackson party, but Ritchie found himself in a minority. John Tyler,
never friendly to Jackson, now seized upon the Proclamation as a
pretext for pushing to the head of the Opposition. Writing heatedly to
Tazewell of the “servility” to party of many Southern statesmen
supporting the President, he drew a gloomy picture of the future. The
Proclamation, he thought, had “swept away all the barriers of the
Constitution,” had established “a consolidated military despotism.” He
“trembled” for South Carolina. “The war cry is up--rely upon it,” he
wrote. “The boast is that the President by stamping like another Pompey
on the earth can raise a hundred thousand men.”[558]
It is significant of Whig hopes, that, when Tyler wrote and Ritchie was
supporting the President, John Hampden Pleasants, the editor of the
“Richmond Whig,” and an intimate of Clay’s, was denouncing the
principles enunciated by Jackson and Livingston.[559] Resolutions were
adopted by the Legislature denouncing both Nullification and the
Proclamation.
Nor was Jackson indifferent to the attitude Virginia might assume. He
planned to isolate South Carolina, and he feared an alliance with
Virginia more than with any other State. Wishing to reach the Virginians
as speedily as possible, he called upon Lewis Cass to prepare a letter
in the form of an appeal to be published in Ritchie’s “Richmond
Enquirer.” Within a few days after the appearance of the Proclamation,
Virginians were reading a letter described by Ritchie as from “one of
the ablest men in the country.” Making no defense of the tariff, but
pointing out the impossibility of the radical changes demanded being
made within the limited time allowed by the Carolina politicians, he
suggested that “Virginia might interpose most efficaciously, and add
another leaf to the wreath which adorns her civic chaplet,” if her
Legislature would appoint a committee to proceed to South Carolina and
“entreat her convention ... to recall its late steps, and at all events
to delay her final action till another trial is made to reduce the
tariff.”[560] This was to lead, a little later, to the adoption of a
similar plan.
Strange as it may now seem, the position of Virginia prevented New York
from endorsing the Proclamation unqualifiedly, through her
Legislature--and thereon hangs a tale of the political cunning of Martin
Van Buren. In the Empire State the Proclamation had been received with
enthusiasm. Even so bitter a partisan as Philip Hone poured forth his
admiration and commendation on the pages of his diary. “As a
composition, it is splendid,” he wrote, “and will take its place in the
archives of our country, and dwell in the memory of our citizens
alongside of the Farewell Address.... I think Jackson’s election may
save the Union. If he is sincere in his Proclamation, he will put down
this rebellion. Mr. Clay, pursuing the same measures, would not have
been equally successful.”[561] We have seen, in Jackson’s letter to
Hamilton, his desire that every agency of publicity should be employed
to focus the sentiment against Nullification. The New York Legislature
being then in session, Hamilton wrote leading men in Albany urging the
passage of a commendatory resolution. In the absence of definite
encouragement, he then wrote Van Buren, his political and personal
friend, suggesting that he bring pressure to bear upon his friends in
the Assembly. The letter was returned, opened, but unanswered, and
Hamilton lost no time in writing of the incident to Jackson, with the
comment that “this unfriendly, nay offensive course, resulted from Van
Buren’s fear of offending the dominant political party in
Virginia.”[562]
That Van Buren was deeply embarrassed by the doctrinal features of the
Proclamation, if not by the possible effect upon his candidacy for the
Presidency and his popularity among the Virginia politicians, has been
admitted and explained by himself.[563] The document was delivered to
him at the home of a friend in Albany as the party was in the act of
going in to dinner. Instantly his practiced eye caught the phrasing that
would arouse the ire of the State-Rights element. The Whigs in Albany
were just as keen, and proceeded, with celerity, to take advantage.
William H. Seward immediately offered a resolution in the State Senate
to the effect that “the President of the United States ... had advanced
the true principles upon which only the Constitution can be maintained
and defended.” With Van Buren on the ground, and with the Democrats in
the majority, the Whigs hoped, not without reason, either to force the
Jacksonians to accept the conclusions of the resolution, or to a
rejection of the endorsement, which would be interpreted as a rupture of
the relations of the President and Vice-President. The Democrats did
neither--they postponed action. It was probably at this juncture that
Van Buren received the letter from Hamilton and returned it unanswered.
Realizing, however, the fatality of non-action, Van Buren prepared a
resolution, together with an elaborate and laborious report, taking
issue with “the history given by the President of the formation of our
Government,” and calculated to satisfy the State-Rights men of Virginia.
These were adopted, and sent to the White House with an explanation.
Just what Jackson thought of it will never be known, for he filed the
letter without a word of comment to his secretary, in whose presence it
was read.[564] Nor was the subject ever mentioned in future
conversations between the two leaders.[565] That a copy was also sent to
Rives and Ritchie in Virginia we may be sure.
Such were the cross-currents of party politics at the time, with Jackson
playing a bold and straight game, thinking solely of the Union, and Clay
and Van Buren, rival candidates for the Presidency, pussyfooting and
conciliating on a vital issue.
Meanwhile what was the effect in South Carolina? Senator Hayne, now
Governor, met the challenge of the President in an able document, bitter
in its defiance, which fired the fighting blood of the Nullifiers.
Preston described it as “a document whose elegance of diction, elaborate
and conclusive argument, just and clear constitutional exposition,
confuted all the show of argument of the President’s Proclamation.”[566]
Outside of Nullification circles, the bitterness of this counterblast
made a deep impression. Adams found it “full of bitter words,” and,
after reading it, sent it to James K. Polk, the Jackson leader in the
House.[567] The Hayne defiance was echoed by the Nullifiers. The
eloquent Preston, addressing a mass meeting in Charleston, declared that
“there are 16,000 back countrymen with arms in their hands and cockades
in their hats, ready to march to our city at a moment’s warning to
defend us.... I will pour down a torrent of volunteers that will sweep
the myrmidons of the tyrant from the soil of Carolina.”[568] But Calhoun
was disappointed with the Proclamation. He had hoped for an intemperate,
ranting denunciation of the Carolinians that would heat their blood and
put them on the march. The sober dignity of the document and its
impressive appeal to the better natures of the people interfered with
his plans.
In the House of Representatives, the Carolinians were seething with
wrath. The impassioned McDuffie, according to Adams, “could not contain
himself,” and declared that “if Congress should approve the principles
of that proclamation, the liberties of the country were gone forever.”
Whereupon Archer rose to suggest that a communication “would very
shortly be received upon which the gentleman would have an opportunity
to express his opinion without restraint.”[569]
IV
The excitement over the Proclamation found Calhoun remote from the
turmoil and in the midst of his family at Fort Hill. There he lingered
to enjoy the Christmas festivities, and the day following he started to
Washington to take his place in the Senate. There was much drama in this
winter journey to the capital. One of his biographers has compared it to
“that of Luther to attend the diet of Worms.”[570] The public was
convinced of the temper of Jackson and realized the possibilities when
the lion in him was aroused. To some Calhoun’s journey suggested a death
march. Looked upon as the prime mover, the instigator, the leader of the
seditious movement, many thought that he would be arrested on the charge
of treason before he crossed the Virginia border. Interest in his
progress was intense, and even among those who abhorred the new doctrine
there was no little sympathy for the grim, impeccably pure statesman who
had the courage to beard the lion in his den. New Year’s Day found him
at Raleigh, where he rested. Here crowds gathered to welcome, or merely
to observe him, and a public dinner was offered him by his admirers.
This he politely declined. There was something of grandeur in the
dignity of his demeanor. As he proceeded from town to town, his approach
was announced and elaborate preparations were made for his reception,
for both North Carolina and Virginia were devoted to State Rights, and
not a few of their citizens sympathized with the Carolina doctrine, and
looked upon secession as an inevitable result of the crisis. Unlike the
case of Burr, nothing personally sinister clung to him. His worst
enemies conceded his honesty, and this was in his favor. Mrs. Bayard
Smith, echoing the sentiment of the Washington drawing-rooms, found
herself wondering, on Christmas Day, if all the “high soarings” of “one
of the noblest and most generous spirits” were to end “in
disappointment or humiliation or in blood.”[571] That this friendly
atmosphere, through which he moved, was reassuring to Calhoun, we may
assume from his letter to his son on reaching the capital. Here he found
“things better than anticipated” and that it was beginning to be “felt
that we must succeed.”
On the day he took the oath and his seat in the Senate, the little
semi-circular chamber was crowded with friends and foes, drawn by the
dramatic features of the situation. Tall, erect, his face sternly set,
his iron-gray hair brushed back, he walked into the chamber over which
he had presided, slowly and with a deliberation which seemed as studied
as that of an actor upon the stage. When he took his seat, some Senators
hastened to clasp his hand, but it was noticed that others, who had
formerly been friendly, held back, deterred perhaps by the frown of the
White House. At length the great scene--the taking of the oath. This he
did in a reverential manner, and his voice was serious and solemn when
he swore to support the Constitution which Jackson contended he had
flagrantly violated.[572] The leader of Nullification was in his seat.
V
The day after Calhoun started on his journey to the capital, the
Verplanck Tariff Bill, sanctioned by the Administration, was introduced
in the House. This measure, it was thought, might go a long way toward
preventing any accession to the ranks of the Nullifiers in that it went
far toward meeting the objections to the revenue laws. It was a rather
radical measure, providing for the immediate reduction of numerous
duties, with further reductions a year later. The protection forces
rallied at once for its defeat. Through all the parliamentary devices of
delay, Jackson, keenly watching developments through the reports of
Lewis and Donelson, was convinced that the Nullifiers were as much
interested in its defeat as the protectionists. An “insulting and
irritating speech” of Wilde of Georgia he thought “instigated by the
Nullies, who wish no accommodation of the tariff.”[573] Long before it
could be brought to a vote, it had been hammered beyond recognition by
amendments and Jackson had lost interest in the reduction of the tariff,
rather preferring first to whip Nullification without any preliminary
concessions.
Meanwhile Jackson was awaiting developments before submitting his
Message to Congress asking additional powers to put down the heresy.
Through the latter part of December and the early part of January, Hayne
was making open preparations for an armed resistance. Poinsett,
reporting constantly, had abandoned hope of “putting down Nullification
by moral force,” and hoped that the “vain blustering of these mad-men”
would not influence Congress on the tariff, as “such a concession would
confirm the power and popularity of the Nullifiers.”[574] He was anxious
for the contest. “Is not raising, embodying, and marching men to oppose
the laws of the United States an overt act of treason?” he wrote the
Unionist Congressman from Charleston, who still hoped that the crisis
could be passed without recourse to the Federal army.[575] Thus, early
in January, Poinsett was anxious to have Federal troops sent into the
State, while other Unionists still held back. In this controversy
Jackson agreed with the conservatives that the Unionists of the State
should first have an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to handle
the situation.
On January 16th, Archer’s promise to McDuffie was fulfilled, when
Jackson laid all the facts relative to the crisis before Congress with a
request for authority to abolish or alter certain ports of entry, and to
use the army to protect the officers in the discharge of their duties.
He also asked for the revival of the sixth section of the Act of March
3, 1815, and for a provision for the removal to the United States
Circuit Court, without copy of the record, of any suit brought in the
State courts against any individual for an act performed under the laws
of the United States. A grim touch was added in the request for
authorization for marshals to make provision for keeping prisoners.
Very late on the night of the day the Message was submitted, Jackson,
worn out and wretched from a bad cold, sat in his room writing to
Poinsett. The Message had been read. Calhoun, “agitated and confused,”
had “let off a little of his ire” against the President, and John
Forsyth had replied “with great dignity and firmness.” That night it
seemed to Jackson that Calhoun had been placed “between Scylla and
Charybdis,” and was “reckless.” The uncertainty of negotiations had
passed, and the hour for action--the happy hour for Jackson--had struck.
The conferences with Drayton were over. Poinsett, at the front, was now
the man of the hour. The moment the Nullifiers were “in hostile array,”
this fact was to be certified to Jackson by the attorney for the
district, or the judge, and he would “forthwith order the leaders
arrested and prosecuted.” And he added in his note to Poinsett: “We will
strike at the head and demolish the monster Nullification and secession
at the threshold by the power of the law.”[576]
Thus, that night, the fingers of Andrew Jackson were itching for the
throat of John C. Calhoun.
Five days later, Senator Wilkins, of the Judiciary Committee, presented
the famous “Force Bill,” and one of the most violent debates in history
began. On the following day, Calhoun submitted a set of resolutions
setting forth his views of the constitutional question involved, in the
hope of thereby directing the debate into that channel. But the Senate
was in no temper for such a discussion and pushed forward to the debate
on the main and pressing question. The Calhoun resolutions were speedily
tabled. Wilkins led off in the debate, and others followed, one on the
heels of the other, until at length John Tyler took the floor to deliver
the speech which, after that of Calhoun, was the most forceful attack to
be made upon the measure. Reading his speech to-day one wonders how the
Republic outlived the Jackson Administrations. Dire calamity was
predicted as a result of his every action. He saw Carolinians again
driven “into the morasses where Marion and Sumter found refuge,” with
their cities and towns leveled to the dust, and their daughters clothed
in mourning, with “helpless orphans” made of their “rising sons.” But,
he continued, “I will not despair. Rome had her Curtius, Sparta her
Leonidas, and Athens her band of devoted patriots; and shall it be said
that the American Senate contains not one man who will step forward to
rescue his country in this, her moment of peril? Although that man may
never wear an earthly crown or sway an earthly scepter, eternal fame
shall weave an evergreen around his brow, and his name shall rank with
the proudest patriots of the proudest climes.”
With the closing sentence, Tyler turned significantly to Henry Clay, who
sat an interested spectator. Throughout this memorable debate he was to
remain mute. The great orator and party leader was making sympathetic
gestures to the extreme State-Rights men of the South. Even at this
time, and knowing Tyler’s views, he was writing to his friend, Francis
Brooke: “Will he [Tyler] be reëlected? We feel here some solicitude on
that point, being convinced that under all circumstances, he would be
far preferable to any person that could be sent.”[577] And such was his
partisan hate of Jackson that the second leader of the party Opposition,
John M. Clayton, in speaking in support of the Force Bill, could not
refrain from an exhibition of boorishness and bigotry in coupling his
advocacy of the Jackson measure with a sneer at Jackson.
“My support of the measure,” he said, “is predicated on no servile
submission to any Executive mandate, on no implicit and unlimited faith
in any man.... I will not be deterred from the adoption of this measure
by any consideration of the source from which it has emanated.”
Thus did Clayton contribute to the pleasure of the Nullifiers by the
denunciation of the man who stood in their way, and in sneering at those
Southern Democrats who stood squarely behind Jackson despite the gibes
of the Calhoun followers that they were yielding a servile submission.
Meanwhile Jackson’s supporters were giving the measure their undivided
support, and none of them more heartily, and none so ably, as Senators
from the South. Senator Felix Grundy of Tennessee, able lawyer, seasoned
statesman, resourceful parliamentarian, took charge of the fight on the
floor. Rives of Virginia, learned constitutional lawyer, scholarly,
polished, heroically sacrificed a seat in the Senate to stand by the
Union. And Forsyth of Georgia, “the greatest debater of his time,”
affected to look upon the Nullification doctrine as “the double
distilled essence of nonsense.”
As the fight developed and the certainty of defeat grew upon the
Nullifiers, efforts were made to gain time, with the Administration
forces pressing for action. Senator Willie Mangum of North Carolina,
brilliant, and sacrificing a great career to drink, on securing the
floor asked for an adjournment on the ground of indisposition.
Ordinarily the request would have been granted. But Forsyth, Grundy, and
Wilkins were instantly on their feet with objections. Calhoun, pointing
out that Mangum was the only member of the Judiciary Committee opposed
to the bill, begged that he be given an opportunity to explain his
position, only to be told, none too graciously, by Wilkins, that he had
no doubt of Mangum’s capacity to speak then. When Calhoun reminded him
of Mangum’s plea of indisposition, he was ignored. At this juncture,
Webster, who had been silent, suggested that Mangum could easily speak
on another day and the debate proceed. Whereupon Senator King of Alabama
made a transparent effort to draw Webster’s speech at once. The New
England orator significantly replied that “the gentleman from
Massachusetts fully understands the gentleman from Alabama; but he has
no disposition to address the Senate at present, nor, under existing
circumstances, at any other time, on the subject of this bill.” This was
taken as indicating Webster’s conviction that up to that time the
advocates of the bill needed no reënforcements, and that he would
reserve himself for Calhoun.
It was during these proceedings that an exchange occurred between
Poindexter and Grundy which illustrates the hair-trigger conditions in
Carolina. A rumor had just spread through the chamber that Jackson had
ordered a portion of the fleet to occupy Charleston Harbor, and had sent
instructions to the military commander in Charleston, and Poindexter
immediately offered a resolution calling upon the President for
information as to his actions and intentions. Grundy calmly, if
provokingly, suggested that perhaps some very respectable gentlemen of
Charleston had furnished the President with information on which the
secret orders had been issued, and that Poindexter would surely not ask
the names of the gentlemen and all the circumstances of the disclosure.
“All--all--the whole of them!” cried Poindexter.
“But would not such disclosures lead to the immediate shedding of
blood?” Grundy inquired.
“I care not if it does!” shouted the excited Mississippian. “Let us have
the information no matter what the circumstances!”
Grundy smilingly took his seat.
Thus the debate dragged on--the two greatest figures still silent.
VI
Meanwhile, as the debate proceeded, Jackson was watching South Carolina
and making all his preparations. On January 24th, he wrote Poinsett that
the Force Bill debate was about to begin, that he had done his duty, and
if Congress failed to act, and he should be informed of the assemblage
of an armed force, he stood ready for drastic measures.[578] There is
something of the heroic mingled with pathos in the picture this letter
presents of Jackson at this time. It was late at night. The House sat
late. He had not heard since seven o’clock. “My eyes grow dim.”
Two hours later he ordered General Scott to Charleston to repel by force
any attempt to seize the forts.[579] Holding his rage in check,
measuring every step by his constitutional and legal powers, determined
to do nothing rashly to precipitate bloodshed, Jackson held himself in
readiness, as the debate on the Force Bill proceeded, to meet any
eventuality that might arise.[580] But Jackson and the Administration
were not at all satisfied with the progress of the debate. None of the
trio of genius, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, had yet participated. It
would be too much to expect that Clay would speak on behalf of any
Jackson measure, and it was certain that Calhoun would deliver one of
his characteristically powerful arguments against the bill. There was
just one man strong enough to meet the impact of that argument, and that
was Webster. It was a reasonable hope that he would prominently support
the measure involving the principles he had made his own. Among his
intimates, such as Story, it was expected that he would enter at the
psychological moment, but the great orator kept his own counsels, and
during the early part of the debate was absent from the Senate Chamber
on other engagements. As Calhoun prepared his heavy artillery for
action, the apprehension of Jackson and his supporters increased, and
every effort was made, at first through Webster’s friends, to learn his
intentions.[581] Then, one day, a carriage halted before the lodgings of
Webster, and the tall figure of Livingston emerged and entered the
house. It was not a half-hearted welcome to the Administration camp that
the Secretary of State offered. On the contrary, Webster was earnestly
importuned to take the lead on the floor, and to frame any amendments he
thought necessary.[582] If such importunity was unnecessary, it was none
the less pleasing to the vanity of the orator, and Livingston was able
to carry back to the White House the assurance that when Calhoun spoke
he would be answered by Webster. On the 11th of February, Webster was
ready and waiting.[583] Four days later, abandoning the hope that
Webster might speak first, Calhoun began one of the most powerful
speeches of his career. The Senate Chamber and the galleries were
packed.
As the tall, gaunt figure, with slightly stooped shoulders, rose, the
solemnity of his mien and manner, the fire in the wonderful eyes that
“watched everything and revealed nothing,” suggested, to some, the
conspirator with his back against the wall, to others the austere
patriot battling for the liberties of his country.[584] We need not
concern ourselves with the general tenor of his remarkable argument--a
reiteration and reënforcement of his constitutional views. But the
general spirit of resentment, the passionate hate of Jackson, the
defiance, constitute dramatic features that assist in the sensing of the
atmosphere in which the mighty battle was waged. Almost in the
beginning, in defending his support of the tariff of 1816, and
explaining that he had spoken at the instance of Ingham, the late
Secretary of the Treasury, this spirit flared in an amazing tribute to
that mediocre and unscrupulous politician, and an indirect attack upon
Jackson for dismissing him. As he proceeded, he startled the Senate now
and then by the injection of personalities. Here a contemptuous fling at
Van Buren, there a hint at Mrs. Eaton, and everywhere references to
contemplated “war” and “massacres” and “savages.” “I proclaim it,” he
solemnly declared, “that should this bill pass, and attempt be made to
enforce it, it will be resisted at every hazard--even that of death
itself.” It was two o’clock on the second day of the speech that Calhoun
concluded, with a warning to Southern Senators that should the bill be
enacted all of them would be excluded from the emoluments of the
Government, “which will be reserved for those only who have qualified
themselves, by political prostitution, for admission into the Magdalen
Asylum.”
The moment he sank into his seat, Daniel Webster rose.
The relations between Webster and the Administration leaders after the
visit of Livingston had been intimate and confidential, and the orator
had availed himself of the invitation to make desirable amendments. One
stormy day during this period, the great opponent of the Democratic
Party might have been seen rolling up to the Capitol in the White House
carriage. On the floor, when he rose, were many of the Administration
leaders, including Lewis, ready to hasten the news of the speech and its
reception to the White House, where Jackson was anxiously, but
confidently, waiting. It was late in the evening when the orator
concluded his masterful argument on the proposition that “the
Constitution is not a compact between sovereign States.” Brushing aside
the personalities, scarcely referring to any speech made during the
debate, he took the resolutions Calhoun had submitted as embodying his
views, and based his argument upon these. Speaking with his accustomed
gravity, with more than his usual earnestness, without passion or
personal feeling, he took up the sophistries of the Nullification school
and crushed them, one by one. Nullification was revolution, and success
meant the destruction of the Republic, chaos, the end of American
liberty. To prevent these evils was the duty of the National authority;
and the Force Bill was necessary for their prevention.
Long before he closed, the lights had been lit in the little Senate
Chamber where the crowd was densely packed. With his conclusion the
galleries rose and cheered, and Poindexter, outraged at the exhibition
of feeling, indignantly demanded an immediate adjournment. The great
word had been spoken in the Senate--the Proclamation reiterated on the
floor. No one was more delighted with Webster’s triumph than Jackson.
“Mr. Webster replied to Mr. Calhoun yesterday,” he wrote Poinsett, “and,
it is said, demolished him. It is believed by more than one that Mr.
Calhoun is in a state of dementation--his speech was a perfect failure;
and Mr. Webster handled him as a child.”[585]
Thus Webster entered upon more intimate relations with the White House,
with Jackson personally thanking him for a great public service, and
Livingston reiterating expressions of appreciation. The Jackson
Senators, Isaac Hill excepted, joined in the assiduous cultivation of
the orator, and he was invited to strike from a list of applicants for
office the names of all displeasing to himself. Such was the enthusiasm
of the President that overtures were unquestionably made to Webster, as
set forth by Benton,[586] to gain his adherence to the Administration.
It was a crisis in his life and in the politics of the Nation. He was
then closer to Jackson’s views on vital matters than to those of either
Clay or Calhoun. His antipathy to the latter’s doctrines was as
pronounced as that of Jackson; and he had no respect for Clay’s play to
the seditious with his compromise tariff. His ideas were not remote
from those of Livingston. Had he then broken with his old co-workers,
and allied himself with the dominant party, he would have been advanced
immeasurably toward the Presidency. Senator Lodge admits[587] that there
was much truth in Benton’s theory, but reasonably holds that the
coalition would have been wrecked by the inevitable clashing of the
conflicting temperaments.
VII
Meanwhile, with the debate dwindling to an anti-climax, Calhoun and his
friends were not nearly so indifferent to war as they pretended. It was
generally understood that Jackson was ready and eager to strike the
moment an overt act was committed. With Hayne urging caution, some
irresponsible hothead might at any moment hasten the crisis. Then, all
knew, Jackson would place South Carolina under martial law, arrest
Calhoun for treason, and turn him over to the courts for trial. Some of
the latter’s friends began to interest themselves in a compromise tariff
that would open a door of escape. The Whig protectionists, the
Nullifiers, and the Bank were rapidly rushing together to make common
cause against Jackson. Under Clay’s leadership at the beginning of the
session these elements united in electing Duff Green, of the
“Telegraph,” printer to the Senate, and Gales, of the “Intelligencer,”
to the House. Thus, through Clay, the Nullification organ secured a new
lease of life, and flooded the South with circularized appeals for
support. “If the people of the South deserve to be free they will not
permit this press to go down,” Green wrote--and this was known to Clay.
The Bank party looked on approvingly, with John Sargeant writing
enthusiastically to Biddle of the new political alignments. “The new
state of parties,” he wrote, “will be founded upon a combination of the
South, and the leaders of it are friends of the Bank upon principle,
and will be more so from opposition to Jackson.”[588] With this
alignment in mind, John M. Clayton cynically observed to Clay that
“these South Carolinians are acting very badly, but they are good
fellows, and it would be a pity to let Jackson hang them.”[589] When
Representative Letcher of Kentucky, a boisterous partisan of Clay’s,
suggested the compromise plan to his chief, he “received it at first
coolly and doubtfully.”[590] Afterwards Clay reconsidered and broached
the subject to Webster, who, holding the Jackson view, replied that “it
would be yielding great principles to faction; that the time had come to
test the strength of the Constitution and the Government.”[591]
Thereafter Webster was not included in the consultations.
Perhaps the true story of the compromise tariff of 1833 will never be
known. One version credits the initiative to Clayton in calling a
meeting of men primarily interested in the tariff, and only incidentally
in the Nullification crisis, consisting of but half the New England
Senators, and the two from Delaware, with Clay, Webster, and Calhoun all
absent.[592] Many years later John Tyler accepted the responsibility.
According to his version he “waited on Mr. Clay.” They “conversed about
the times.” Clay “saw the danger.” Tyler “appealed to his patriotism,”
and “no man appealed so in vain.” The Virginian referred Clay “to
another man as the only one necessary to consult, and that man was John
C. Calhoun.” It would not only be necessary for Clay to “satisfy his own
party,” but to “reconcile an opposite party by large concessions.” Thus
Clay and Calhoun “met, consulted and agreed.”[593] This differs in some
particulars from the Benton version.[594] Here we have it that Clay
prepared his measure and sent it to Calhoun by Letcher, as the two
negotiators were not, at the time, on speaking terms. Finding some
objectionable features which he thought a personal interview would
persuade the author to eliminate, Calhoun asked Letcher to arrange a
conference, which was held in Clay’s room. The meeting was “cold and
distant.” Clay rose, bowed, and asked Calhoun to be seated, and, to
relieve the embarrassment, Letcher took his departure. Clay refused to
yield.
The story here enters into the melodramatic although there is nothing
impossible about it. Letcher, in another conference, this time with
Jackson, found the grim old warrior hard set against any sort of a
compromise, unwilling to discuss one, and determined to enforce the
laws. The Kentuckian related the conversation to McDuffie; he to
Calhoun. A little later Letcher was awakened from a sound sleep by
Senator Johnston of Louisiana, an intimate friend of Clay, with the
startling story that he had heard authoritatively that Jackson would
admit of no further delay, and was preparing to arrest Calhoun for
treason. It was agreed that the Carolinian should be immediately
notified, and in the darkness of the night Letcher hastened to Calhoun’s
lodgings. As the gaunt statesman sat up in bed, the Johnston story was
told him and “he was evidently disturbed.”[595] That some such incident
occurred is corroborated by Perley Poore,[596] who was an observer of
events in the Washington of that day. Here we have some embellishments.
Calhoun had heard some threats and had sent Letcher to Jackson to
ascertain his intentions. The old man’s eyes had been “lighted by an
unwonted fire,” and he had told the emissary that with the first overt
act, he would try Calhoun for treason and “hang him high as Haman.”
Thereupon Letcher made all haste to Calhoun, who received him sitting up
in bed, with a cloak thrown around him. “There sat Calhoun,” wrote
Perley Poore, “drinking in eagerly every word, and, as Letcher
proceeded, he turned pale as death, and great as he was in intellect,
trembled like an aspen leaf, not from fear or cowardice, but from
consciousness of guilt.”[597] Here we detect the professional journalist
drawing perhaps on his imagination to dramatize the picture.
However, Calhoun, convinced of Jackson’s grim determination, was ready
to welcome a way out short of conflict or utter humiliation, and at the
same time Clay and Clayton were not happy over the situation. The
protective system had brought the country to the very verge of
disintegration. With Nullification crushed by force, conservative public
opinion might demand a complete reversal of the revenue policy and
destroy the “American System.” That Clay at this time was thinking
primarily of the preservation of his protective system, and secondarily
of currying favor with the extreme State-Rights party, including the
Nullifiers, is plainly disclosed in the record. Thus the proposed
combination of the Nullifiers and the protectionists to stay the arm of
Jackson. In this combination no one was more prominent than John M.
Clayton, the brilliant and bibulous, who frankly cared less about saving
the Union than of saving the tariff, and who would “pause long before he
surrendered it [the tariff] even to save the Union.”[598] He was to
prove himself as good as his word a little later.
Thus, in the midst of the discussion of the Force Bill, Clay, Calhoun,
Clayton, Letcher, and Tyler were in constant communication on the
compromise tariff. Webster was utterly ignored, as was Jackson, these
two refusing to “compromise a principle” in any such fashion.[599] The
fact that Clay and Calhoun had reached a general agreement was soon
known, and it was accepted as an offensive and defensive alliance
against Jackson. “They are partners in a contra dance,” wrote Blair in
the “Globe.” “For some time they turned their backs on each other. They
will make a match of it. In plain English, we have a new
coalition.”[600]
In due time the bill was introduced by Clay, much to the delight of
Tyler. “I recall the enthusiasm I felt that day,” said Tyler, almost
thirty years afterwards. “We advanced to meet each other, and grasped
each other’s hands, midway of the chamber.”[601] This measure, differing
from Clay’s original plan, provided that for all articles paying more
than twenty per cent duty, the surplus above that rate should be
gradually reduced, until in 1842 all should disappear. The manufacturers
as usual had been summoned and consulted. At first dismayed and
outraged, they soon realized that it was to their interest to fall into
line. Certain features had been voted down in committee, but here
Clayton asserted himself. He announced that these would be introduced as
amendments on the floor, and that unless every Nullifier voted for them
all, he would kill the bill himself by making the motion to table it.
The most objectionable of these, to Calhoun, was that on home valuation.
Such was the situation when Clay presented the bill on February 12th,
three days before Calhoun rose to speak on the Force Bill. Webster and
Adams, thoroughly disgusted, at once announced their opposition, and
Jackson could not restrain his contempt for the unholy alliance, which
was almost immediately to become a triple alliance with the Bank as the
third party. “I have no doubt,” the President wrote Hamilton, “the
people will duly appreciate the motive which led to it.”[602]
In presenting the measure, Clay made no secret of his purpose. “I
believe the American System to be in the greatest danger,” he said, “and
I believe that it can be placed on a better and a safer foundation at
this session than next.” Webster, however, was not impressed. “This may
be so, sir,” he replied. “This may be so. But, if it be so, it is
because the American people will not sanction the tariff; and if they
will not, then, sir, it cannot be sustained at all.” Calhoun heartily
approved the object of the bill. “He who loves the Union,” he said,
“must desire to see this agitating question brought to a termination.”
John Forsyth, representing the Administration, objected to the
introduction of the bill fourteen days before the expiration of the
Congress. Would it not be better to await the action of the House on the
bill before it--the Verplanck Bill? And he objected, properly, on the
ground that all revenue measures had to originate in the House. This
constitutional objection, raised by Forsyth, was met on February 25th
just as the House was about to adjourn for dinner, when the ever handy
Letcher arose and moved the substitution of the Clay bill for the one
then pending. The motion was carried and the bill passed the lower
branch of Congress.[603]
Thus the two measures, the Force Bill and the compromise tariff, were
pending in the Senate at the same time, with Clay making every effort,
but without avail, to pass his measure first.
On February 24th the Force Bill was called up for final action. With the
beginning of the calling of the roll, all the enemies of the measure,
with the single exception of John Tyler, arose and filed from the Senate
Chamber. Taken by surprise at such conduct, Tyler immediately moved an
adjournment. Wilkins called attention to the fact that Calhoun and his
followers had just that moment withdrawn, and the motion was defeated.
The roll-call proceeded--and only the name of John Tyler appears on the
list of the negatives. Such was always the courage of this
much-belittled man--a courage which we shall meet again.[604] Five days
later the tariff bill was called up, and Clayton offered his amendments
which were so offensive to Calhoun and his followers, repeating his
threat to kill the bill if Calhoun and all the Nullifiers did not vote
for every amendment. Clay and Calhoun consulted, and Clayton was
importuned to yield, but the stubborn protectionist was adamant. Thus
confronted, Clay and Calhoun accepted the amendments, and, as Clayton
presented them, voted for them, one by one, until the last and most
distasteful, on home valuation, was reached.
Here the friends of Calhoun balked, and Clayton, never given to idle
bluster, immediately made his motion to table the bill. Clay implored,
and Clayton set his jaws and shook his head. The measure seemed doomed.
Meanwhile, the Nullifiers, greatly alarmed, withdrew to the space behind
the Vice-President’s chair for consultation. Finally Clayton was
requested to withdraw his motion to give Calhoun and his friends time
for consideration. With the understanding that, unless the votes were
forthcoming, the motion would be renewed, the request was granted, and
the Senate adjourned for the night.
The morning found Clayton confronted with a plan devised during the
night to spare Calhoun the humiliation of voting for the hated
amendment, provided enough votes were assured to carry it through
without his vote. The immovable Clayton sternly shook his head. Calhoun
must vote for every amendment and for the bill. When the Senate
convened, it was still uncertain what the Carolinian would do. At
length, after all of his friends had first stated their objections, and
yet reluctantly yielded, Calhoun arose, repeated the performance, and,
having voted for the amendment at the dictation of Clayton, voted for
the bill.[605] The unhappy plight of Calhoun was not lost upon his
enemies, and Blair found in it an inspiration for his sarcasm. “A single
night,” he wrote, “was sufficient to change the settled opinion of the
profound reader of the Constitution. We exceedingly doubt whether in the
private interview in which Mr. Clay disposed of Mr. Calhoun’s
constitutional scruples, a word was uttered in relation to the
Constitution.”[606] Thus passed into law, under circumstances deserving
of Benton’s reprehension, the measure concocted by a combination of
erstwhile foes.[607] The Nullifiers died hard, and Duff Green, the pen
of Nullification, made printer to the Senate by this incongruous
combination, in performing the hateful official duty of publishing the
Force Bill in the “Telegraph,” had the impudence to dress his paper in
mourning. “This is the way,” observed a Jacksonian paper, “this
ungrateful wretch shows his gratitude to the Senate for his recent
appointment.”[608]
VIII
Meanwhile, what of South Carolina?
The letter of Cass, published in the “Richmond Enquirer,” had borne
fruit, and Virginia had sent Benjamin Watkins Leigh, a lawyer of
distinction and an orator of no mean ability, to Charleston to ask a
suspension of the Nullification Ordinance until Congress had adjourned.
An ardent devotee of State Rights, now a bitter enemy of Jackson, and
soon to enter the Senate to make his opposition felt, he had much in his
principles and personality to command a respectful hearing from South
Carolina. The call of the Nullification Convention was consequently
postponed until after the adjournment of Congress, and March 11th was
fixed as the day for reassembling. By that time it was all over--the
Force Bill in effect. The convention met at Columbia, with Hayne in the
chair. Leigh was invited within the bar. The dominating figure of the
scene, however, was Calhoun, who had gone post-haste to Carolina to urge
the acceptance of the compromise. The tall, thin figure of the great
Senator, seated among the delegates on the floor, was the star of the
assembly. A committee was named to consider the general course of
action; and one week later the Ordinance of Nullification was rescinded,
and by a vote of 153 to 4 the convention agreed that the threatened
danger was over.
The political effect of the fight was to be felt throughout the period
of the generation then living. The Secessionists and Nullifiers paraded,
with much flapping of banners, out of the Democratic Party, to be
joyously and effusively welcomed by Henry Clay into the Opposition.
During the remainder of Jackson’s Administration, the most bitter and
persistent of his foes were to be men, once Democrats, who had left the
party because Jackson was prepared to preserve the Union with the sword.
Calhoun and Preston, McDuffie and Poindexter, Leigh and Tyler--these
were to crowd Clay for the leadership of the party that now prepared to
enter the lists against Jackson and his Administration, flying the flag,
and posing as the real friends of the Republic and the Constitution. If
they had been free with their characterizations of Jackson during the
Nullification fight as “tyrant,” “despot,” “autocrat,” they were to use
the epithets more frequently in opposing him upon the Bank. If during
this latter struggle they were to speak with almost convincing eloquence
of the destruction of free institutions, they had learned the language
when calling upon the people to defend their liberties against the
author of the Nullification Proclamation. Out of this alliance, for
which Clay had so cunningly planned, was to come a party to oppose the
Democratic Party with indifferent success for twenty-two years; and,
strangely enough, the only one of its leaders to become a beneficiary of
the unholy alliance was John Tyler, who was to reach the White House.
Poinsett, after the Nullification fight, retired to his rice plantation,
where he lived with his books and enjoying the society of cultivated men
and women, until called by Van Buren to enter his Cabinet. Serving
throughout the Administration, he returned, at the expiration of his
term, to his plantation, where he died ten years before the attack on
Sumter.
The passage of the two important measures was not, however, to end the
drama of the session--one of the most dramatic in American history. It
was on the last night that Jackson, finding many of his friends had left
the Capitol, “pocketed” Clay’s Land Bill and his own veto. Naturally
enough the session ended in bitter partisan wrangles and with much bad
blood on both sides. Uproarious shouts of derision greeted the customary
resolution of thanks to the Speaker. Many members were in a state of
hopeless drunkenness. It was five o’clock in the morning when Adams
invited Edward Everett to ride home with him. The drowsy driver touched
the horses, and over the frozen ruts of the Avenue, the carriage jolted
homeward. Almost immediately the driver was asleep, and the carriage,
striking a rut in front of Gadsby’s, the sleepy statesmen narrowly
escaped a plunge into the snow. Soon, however, they reached the
“macadamized part of the Avenue,” without more mishaps; and having left
Everett at his lodgings, Adams alighted and walked to his own home, with
the thermometer registering six below zero. Thus the last figure of that
historic and bitter session of whom we catch a glimpse is that of the
short, blear-eyed ex-President, trudging homeward through the dark,
ill-paved Washington streets at five o’clock on a frigid morning.[609]
CHAPTER XI
JACKSON VS. BIDDLE
I
Congress adjourned two days before the second inauguration of Jackson,
which lacked the spectacular features of the first. His brief inaugural
address revealed absolute confidence in the approval of the people.
There was nothing on the surface to warn of his purpose to continue an
aggressive war upon the Bank. The transfer of Livingston from the State
Department to the Legation in Paris necessitated a reorganization of the
Cabinet. Louis McLane, unsympathetic toward the President’s Bank policy,
was moved from the Treasury to the State Department. This left the
secretaryship of the Treasury vacant, and it was of the highest
importance that it be filled by one in complete harmony with the
Executive plans.
The choice finally fell on William J. Duane of Philadelphia, variously
described as “a distinguished lawyer” and as “the bottom of the
Philadelphia bar.” His selection had been recommended by Van Buren[610]
and urged by McLane, who was Van Buren’s intimate at the time.[611] He
was at least known to Jackson as the son of the fighting editor of the
“Aurora,” which had led the fight against the Alien and Sedition
Laws.[612] Assuming in the son the militant qualities of the father, and
actuated partly, perhaps, by the thought that the appointment would
strengthen the Administration in its fight upon the Bank, Duane was
pressed to enter the Cabinet, and consented. The personality and
character of Duane are dim on the page of history. The Democratic press
was apparently hard put to explain the appointment. The “Harrisburg
Chronicle” described him as possessing “a well disciplined mind, severe
habits of business, which, combined with sound Democratic principles and
unbending integrity, are the highest recommendations for office in a
free popular government.” Thomas Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,”
who made a more studied effort, feared that the appointment would
“scarcely be hailed with the feeling of approbation which it so richly
deserves.” But Duane understood “the character of the Bank of the United
States--its designs and dangers,” and “on that cardinal subject we have
no doubt he will deserve and command the confidence of the friends of
the Constitution.” The “Pennsylvanian” informed the National Democracy
that “Stephen Gerard saw and appreciated his talents,” and that he was
“one of the most sagacious men of the age.”[613] It was only after his
break with Jackson that the champions of the Bank discovered his many
virtues, and Administration circles his utter insignificance. One of
Jackson’s enemies, in berating him, referred to Duane as “that other
darling whom you fished up from the desk of a dead miser, and the bottom
of the Philadelphia bar.”[614] At first, however, Jackson was much
impressed with his discovery, and frequently referred to him as “a chip
of the old block, sir.”
Having reorganized his Cabinet, Jackson now concentrated on his plans
for the invasion of “the enemy’s country”--his New England tour. His
remarkable popularity in that quarter, previously so hostile, grew out
of his vigorous defense of the Union and his new relations with Webster.
In the spring of 1833 these relations were most cordial, and never were
to become personally bitter. At that time he was not on speaking terms
with either Clay or Calhoun, and when he met Adams on the street, by
chance, he bowed stiffly, without a word. But whenever, in his
meanderings about the dingy capital, he encountered Webster, the iron
man would pause for a hearty greeting. And while Webster never ceased to
consider Jackson temperamentally unfit for the Presidency, he never
doubted his integrity or whole-hearted patriotism. “His patriotism,” he
was wont to say, “is no more to be questioned than that of
Washington.”[615]
It was early in June that Jackson set forth in company with Van Buren,
Cass, Woodbury, Donelson, Hill, and the artist, Earle, who lived at the
White House. From the moment the party reached Baltimore it was one
continuous ovation. Received like a conquering hero in Philadelphia,
with an enthusiasm bordering on idolatry in New York City,[616] the
ovations he received in Massachusetts eclipsed them all. Harvard
conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, Everett delivered an
address of welcome at the foot of Bunker Hill, and while the multitude
went wild at sight of him in the streets and on the Common, the gentry
of Beacon Street refused him the homage of appearing at the
windows,[617] and the crabbed Adams, hiding at his Quincy home, a few
miles away, poured forth his spleen upon his journal and mourned the
degradation of his Alma Mater.[618] Under the load of adulation, the old
man’s strength finally failed, and during the last part of his progress
he dragged himself from his bed to the parade, and from the physician
with his barbarous lancet to the master of ceremonies.[619] Throughout
the tour his thoughts were centered on the Bank and his plans for the
removal of the deposits, and but few suspected that the courtly old
man, whose eyes moistened and beamed at the applause of the crowds, was
meditating the step.
When Hamilton called upon him at his hotel in New York, he found him
obsessed with the subject. When the son of the father of the first
National Bank joined him in the presidential suite to accompany him to
the banquet, Jackson placed in his hands papers by several people urging
the removal of the deposits, with the request that he examine them
carefully and give him an opinion. Promising a careful perusal, Hamilton
ventured the suggestion that the proposed step was “a very questionable
one” that would “lead to great disturbances in commercial affairs.”[620]
Meanwhile, when alone with Van Buren, the President was discussing the
project with him to his keen distress.[621] Throughout the tour, sick or
well, Jackson found time to work on the Vice-President and favorite, and
when, at Concord, he finally won him over to the plan, the frail old man
abandoned the tour and hastened back to Washington to begin a new
battle.[622] And Adams, learning of the curtailment of the trip, wrote
that “President Jackson has been obliged by the feeble state of his
health to give up the remainder of his tour.”[623] Just how feeble
Jackson was we shall soon see.
II
It is impossible definitely to determine the time Jackson decided on the
removal of the deposits. The activity of the Bank in the presidential
campaign had not been lost upon him, and he probably had it under
consideration at that time. The historian of the Bank is convinced that
such was the case.[624] Immediately after the election these rumors
multiplied, and Biddle was deluged with warnings, but without disturbing
the sublime serenity of his conceit. The autocrat of the Bank was
satisfied that the Calhoun following would thereafter be arrayed in
favor of the recharter. About this time Dr. Thomas Cooper, then
president of the College of South Carolina and one of the intellectual
leaders of Nullification, wrote him of his allegiance to the cause.[625]
Blair had already charged, in the “Globe,” that there was a coalition
between the forces of Clay, Calhoun, and Biddle, and made much of the
fact that more Bank stock was owned in South Carolina than in all the
other States of the Union south of the Potomac and west of the Alleghany
Mountains.[626] The Democratic disaffection, together with the temporary
alliance between Jackson and Webster, was quite enough to restore
confidence to the ever sanguine Biddle,[627] who took no pains to
conceal his satisfaction. This was water on the wheel of Blair, who,
Iago-like, and always at Jackson’s elbow, kept impressing him with the
idea that the Bank planned and expected an ultimate triumph. In this
work he was ably seconded by Amos Kendall and James A. Hamilton, who
wrote from New York that “a gentleman whose knowledge of the views of
the U.S. Bank is only second to that of its President” had informed him
that it expected to get a new charter.[628] It was firmly believed by
Amos Kendall that the Bank’s purpose in adding $28,000,000 to its
discounts, and multiplying its debtors and dependents, was to serve a
political end in the campaign of 1836, and with characteristic
persistency he urged the removal of the deposits to prevent their use
for political purposes.[629] Jackson himself feared the effect of loans
and legal retainers to members of the Congress. In all these suspicions
there was ample justification.[630] It did not require much, knowing as
he did the character of the banker, to persuade Jackson that his duty
was plain, and during the winter and spring of 1833 he was in frequent
consultation with Roger Taney, Amos Kendall, and Frank Blair, the three
men responsible for the step he took.
During these days of mysterious conferences, the conservative members of
the Cabinet, and Van Buren with the traditional timidity of the
candidate, were gravely concerned. To none was the prospect more
appalling than to Louis McLane, then Secretary of the Treasury, a
conservative, a former Federalist, and a prospective candidate for the
Presidency. In his anxiety he sent for Kendall, avowed his doubts, and
asked for information. In the end he frankly confessed that he was not
satisfied as to the wisdom of the step, but that he would execute the
plan if called upon to do so by the President. The interview was
friendly, and Kendall returned to his office and prepared, for McLane’s
edification, an elaborate argument in favor of the removal. It is
characteristic of Kendall that, while the paper lightly touched upon the
alleged insecurity of the deposits, the greater part of the paper was a
discussion of the political effect. The hostility of the Bank to the
Administration, he thought, could not be intensified. If the deposits
were placed with the State banks, they would become partisans of the
Administration. The people of the Southern and Western States would be
pleased, and the New York banks, always jealous of the financial
preëminence of Philadelphia, would at least secretly rejoice. The New
England States were not concerned, one way or the other, and could be
safely ignored. And in the end, Kendall insisted that a failure to
remove the deposits would make a recharter certain. That this letter,
written March 16, 1833, was promptly placed in the hands of Van Buren,
who was McLane’s sponsor in the Administration, there can be no doubt.
The aftermath of the letter came a few days later, when Van Buren,
meeting Kendall at a White House dinner, warmly protested against the
plans of the Kitchen Cabinet. The genius of that famous group rose from
the table in his excitement, declared that failure to remove the
deposits made a Whig victory certain in 1836, and that he was prepared
to lay down his pen. “I can live under a corrupt despotism,” he
exclaimed, “as well as any other man by keeping out of its way, which I
shall certainly do.”[631] It was the Vice-President and not the auditor
of the Treasury who afterwards apologized.
It was under these conditions that Jackson propounded a series of
questions to his Cabinet, with a preliminary statement that he favored
the removal. The first count of noses in the official household showed
Livingston and Cass for the Bank, Barry and Taney against it, with
Woodbury hedging. McLane, having greater responsibility as the head of
the Treasury, took two months in the preparation of an exhaustive reply
opposing the removal, and his argument was afterwards to be used against
the Administration.
A month after Congress had adjourned there was a relaxation of tension
in Bank circles and among the conservatives of the Administration party,
who assumed that nothing would be done during the congressional recess.
The hostility of a majority of the Cabinet had not abated, and Biddle
thought that the deposits were safe.
But if the official Cabinet was to hear no more, for months, of the
proposed removal, the Kitchen Cabinet went into almost continuous
session for the consideration of this one subject. The disposal of the
deposits, and the time for making the removal, were the principal
subjects discussed during those spring days in the White House, and it
required but little discussion to determine upon the time. Hugh Lawson
White strongly urged the postponement of action until Congress
convened, but this was instantly overruled by Taney and Kendall, who
urged a recess removal for different reasons. The Attorney-General
favored such action “because it is desirable that the members should be
among their constituents when the measure is announced, and should bring
with them when they come here, the feelings and sentiments of the
people.”[632] Kendall suggested another reason, also political. The
conservatives had made some impression on Jackson’s mind with the
warning that, if he removed the deposits, Congress would order them
restored, and he appealed to Kendall for his opinion. “If I were
certain,” said Kendall, “that Congress would direct them to be restored,
still they ought to be removed, and any order by Congress for their
restoration disregarded; for it is the only means by which this
embodiment of power which aims to govern Congress and the country can be
destroyed.” And, to this militant advice, he added his reasons for
favoring the removal during the congressional recess. “Let the removal
take place so early as to give us several months to defend the measure
in the ‘Globe,’ and we will bring up the people to sustain you with a
power which Congress dare not resist.”[633]
Meanwhile Duane had reached Washington and assumed his duties. Soon
after his arrival, Kendall was surprised to find him loath to discuss
the removal, and when the story of this reticence was carried to
Jackson, he explained to his Secretary of the Treasury what was wanted.
When Duane demurred, he was told to take his time and report on the
President’s return from New England. By this time Amos Kendall had
assumed the leadership, and he was instructed to interview the head of
the Treasury during Jackson’s absence.
At this time Van Buren, waiting in New York to join his chief on his
tour, was blissfully ignorant of the embarrassments that awaited him
until he received a letter written on the day Jackson set forth on his
journey. “The Bank and change of deposits have engrossed my mind much,”
he wrote; “it is a perplexing subject, and I wish your opinion before I
finally act.” Three days later, while Jackson was receiving the plaudits
of the multitude, Kendall made the situation clear, in a letter to Van
Buren, announcing that the removal had been determined upon and
outlining the tentative plans. Nothing could have been more painful to
the Vice-President, who had strongly urged that, with the veto of the
recharter bill, the Bank be permitted quietly to go its way to the
termination of its charter.
III
While Jackson between illnesses and ovations was bringing the power of
his compelling personality to bear upon his protégé’s timidity, Kendall
was following instructions in Washington in attempting to ascertain the
intentions of Duane. In this he was wholly unsuccessful. Time and again
the subject was broached only to be brushed aside, and Jackson,
constantly informed, had some savage moments while smiling urbanely upon
the crowds.
Reaching the capital on July 4th, he immediately summoned Duane to a
conference. The Secretary, who had been ill, rose from a sick-bed and
presented himself at the White House looking pale and feeble. At the
sight of his wan adviser, the impulsive Jackson penitently grasped both
his hands, reproved him for venturing forth in such a condition, and
kindly postponed the interview until he had recovered.[634] After an
absence of eight days Duane appeared at the White House again, with a
lengthy letter setting forth his reasons for objecting to the removal
until after Congress had been informed. Three days later, or on July
15th, another conference between Jackson and his rebellious Secretary
was held with Duane stubbornly holding his ground, and Jackson kindness
itself. In truth, it appears that, with the aid of McLane, Duane had
succeeded in arousing some misgivings in Jackson’s mind as to the
possibility of persuading the State banks to accept the deposits.
“Send me to ask them, and I will settle that question,” said Kendall.
“You shall go,” Jackson replied.
Summoning the unhappy Duane, the President announced a postponement of
discussions until the attitude of the State banks could be ascertained.
Kendall was to be the agent of the Treasury on a tour of investigation,
and Duane was to prepare the necessary instructions.
When these instructions were delivered to Kendall, he was amazed. They
merely asked the opinions of the banks on the general question, and, in
view of their well-established hostility, it was clear enough what the
answer would be. Wrathfully hastening to the White House, Kendall
bluntly refused to carry instructions so framed, declaring the sole
purpose of the investigation should be to learn whether State banks
would accept the deposits. He was told to prepare his own instructions,
and thus the head of the Kitchen Cabinet sallied forth on his own terms.
About the same time, Jackson, in need of a rest and release from the
sultry atmosphere of Washington, went to Rip Raps in Hampton Roads,
where he was accustomed to relax in the summer, accompanied by Frank
Blair. Thus, with one member of the Kitchen Cabinet making a tour of the
banks on his own instructions, another was at Jackson’s elbow in the
unconventional environment of Rip Raps.[635] All these various moves
were promptly reported to Biddle by some member of the Administration,
and on the day Kendall was expected in Philadelphia, the financial
autocrat was writing to Dr. Cooper, his new ally, in laudation of the
firmness of Duane and the viciousness of the Kitchen Cabinet.[636]
Meanwhile, in his visits to the banks of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New
York, and Boston, Kendall was pulled and hauled and mauled by both the
servitors of the Bank and the conservatives of the Administration
circle. At Philadelphia it was hinted that a fortune was within his
grasp if he would but avail himself of the opportunity.[637] There, too,
he fell foul of James Gordon Bennett, then editor of the
“Pennsylvanian,” whose mask of cordiality was dropped in the publication
of Kendall’s private letters showing hostility to the Bank--as though
private letters were necessary to the proof.[638]
But more significant, and politically more important, was Kendall’s
interview with Van Buren and McLane in New York City. The three met by
chance in the breakfast room of an hotel, and in an interview, then
arranged, it was proposed by the hedging politicians that the removal of
the deposits be postponed until January when Congress would be in
session. This plan originated with McLane, and Kendall, who suspected it
was proposed with the hope and expectation that Congress would
interpose, replied that he would be satisfied provided McLane, Duane,
and the other Bank Democrats would agree to use their personal influence
with members of Congress to have the deposits removed.[639] It was
agreed that all three should write Jackson at Rip Raps, and, in
complying, Kendall said that the proposal was against his judgment, and
Jackson instantly rejected it.[640]
Throughout July the Opposition and Bank papers were warning the public
of the movement on foot, and the “Intelligencer” was especially
alarmed, dwelling at length on the rumor that Kendall was in
Philadelphia before he had even left Washington. Blair was moved to
mirth. He admitted that Kendall had been seen taking a stage, carrying
with him “a large black trunk,” and that, while he “looked charitable,
his intent may be wicked.” Worse still, “the Editor of the ‘Globe’ left
for the South two days before with baggage enough to last a man a
lifetime.” A mysterious, uncanny combination of events, he conceded,
that “bodes to owners of U.S. Bank stock, who purchased at 50 per cent,
no good.”[641]
This facetiousness enraged and alarmed the Opposition, and its press
began to threaten to impeach Duane if he removed the deposits. Kendall
was scourged with excoriations, and State banks were warned against
taking the deposits on pain of the displeasure of the Biddle
institution. Papers under the influence of the Bank, but still posing as
Jacksonian, were sure that Jackson “and his able Secretary of the
Treasury” would “not be hurried or retarded in his important measure by
the violent and indiscreet denunciations and threats of any set of men,”
and would “act on the deposits at the proper time and in the proper
way.”[642] And Blair, catching the subtle suggestion of Bennett,
hastened to assail him as having been “smuggled into the confidence of
an unsuspecting Democracy as a friend of the cause” and as a
“treacherous instrument of Webb and Biddle,” who had “the impudence to
propose by praise to flatter the President and his Cabinet to adopt the
views of the Bank.”[643] From his sanctum in the office of the “Albany
Journal,” Thurlow Weed, wisest of the Whig journalists, sent forth the
threat of panic. “We are impatient for the removal,” he wrote. “Nothing
short of a general ruin will cure the people of their delusions, and the
sooner it comes, the better.”[644]
IV
Meanwhile Jackson at Rip Raps was in daily conference with Frank Blair
on the problems of the removal. All this time Blair was creating the
impression in the “Globe” that the President’s sole thought was the
recovery of his health. The sea air was “proving advantageous,” his
appetite better, his strength returning. Nothing was more remote from
the thoughts of Jackson. The situation was delicate and politically
mixed. The Cabinet was, for the most part, hostile. Conservative
Democrats were terrified at the thought of such radical action, and
feared the complete disruption of the party and its defeat in 1836.
Kendall does not misstate the conditions when he says that “the
ambitious politicians who still surrounded General Jackson, trembled in
their knees, and were ready to fly,” and that “almost the only fearless
and determined supporters he had around him were Mr. Taney, the editor
of the ‘Globe,’ and its few contributors.”[645] The brilliant, but
ultra-conservative Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” feared that the
party would “rue the precipitate step in sackcloth and ashes,” and that
it would “present nothing but a splendid ruin.”[646]
Painful as the situation was to all conservatives, it was maddening to
Van Buren, who thought he saw the Presidency slipping from his grasp. In
his desire to get as far away as possible, he was planning a month’s
outing with Washington Irving among the Dutch settlements of Long Island
and the North River, when a letter reached him from Jackson calling upon
him to take a stand. His reply, under date of August 19th, would have
pleased Talleyrand. Having great confidence in Silas Wright, Senator
from New York, he wrote that he would confer with him and then formulate
his views. A little later he wrote that he and Wright favored the
McLane plan. The tone of sharp surprise in Jackson’s response alarmed
the hard-pressed heir apparent, and he hastily wrote that he would yield
to the wisdom of Jackson. But his troubles were not over. Another letter
from Jackson, more alarming still, pursued him to poison his vacation,
summoning him to Washington for a consultation. The cunning politician
never faced a more painful problem. He could not afford to break with
the all-powerful party dictator in the White House--that would be to
abandon the Presidency. Nor was he at all certain that he could afford
to become intimately identified with the desperate enterprise upon which
the chief was determined to embark. The one would deprive him of the
nomination of his party; the other might make that nomination worthless.
The campaign of 1836 was already in full swing, and the Opposition was
insinuating a directing influence between the most unpopular measures of
the Administration and Van Buren. Timid and cautious by temperament, his
peculiar situation accentuated these traits in the candidate, and the
summons to the seat of war sounded to him like the crack of doom.
But he was equal to the crisis. Writing at once of his willingness to
respond if Jackson thought best, he feared his presence in Washington at
the time of the withdrawal would dim the prestige of the act by giving
it the appearance of having been inspired by the moneyed interests of
New York.[647] Having painted this thought, he added some lines for the
protection of Louis McLane, his friend. He was fearful that, on the
resignation of Duane, McLane might feel that he should also tender his,
and that would be a pity. Would it not be a good idea, in the event the
resignation were offered, to reply that “you confide in him &c.,
notwithstanding the difference between you on this point, and that if he
could consistently remain in the Administration, you would be
gratified?” That the suspicious Jackson was deceived is highly
improbable, albeit where his affections were involved, as in the case of
Van Buren, his vision was apt to be occasionally defective.
But Van Buren and his advice were not needed, for a stronger man, with
courage and an iron will equal to his own, was moving to the side of
Jackson. Throughout the months of conferences and discussions the one
member of his official Cabinet who was in whole-hearted sympathy with
the wishes of the Kitchen Cabinet was Roger Taney, the Attorney-General.
Before leaving for Rip Raps, Jackson had discussed with him the steps to
be taken in the event of a definite refusal from Duane to order the
removal, and had intimated that he would transfer Taney to the office of
the Secretary of the Treasury. Just about the time Jackson was puzzling
over the peculiar hedging of Van Buren, he received a letter from Taney
that delighted him. The latter reiterated his conviction that the
deposits should be removed, and during the congressional recess. He was
sure “the powerful and corrupting monopoly” would “be fatal to the
liberties of the people” unless destroyed, and Jackson alone could
encompass its destruction. The President had “already done more than any
other man has done, or could do, to preserve the simplicity and purity
of our institutions, and to guard the country from this dangerous and
powerful instrument of corruption.” He had “doubted” whether Jackson’s
friends and the country had the right to ask him “to bear the brunt of
such a conflict as the removal of the deposits under present conditions
is likely to produce.” He had no desire for the secretaryship of the
Treasury, but he “would not shrink from the responsibility” if, in the
President’s judgment, “the public exigency would require” him to
undertake it.[648] Here was a man quite as persuasive in his flattery as
Van Buren, and prepared, as Van Buren was not, to stake his future upon
an aggressive support of the removal.
For the time being, then, exit Van Buren.
Enter Roger B. Taney.
By this time Jackson’s mind was thoroughly made up. The tour of Kendall
had not been a complete success. The banks were timid and fearful of the
power of “The Monster.” Catterall credits the report that Kendall
himself had concluded the plan unwise, and had admitted to Jackson that
“the project of removing the deposits must be given up.”[649] This
advice, if given,[650] came too late. The old military leader was in the
saddle, war was declared, retreat was defeat. Thus, a few days after
receiving Taney’s letter, Jackson wrote him that he had considered the
probability that Congress would attempt to overawe him, and had
determined that, when Duane withdrew, Taney should step into the place
and conduct the affairs of the Treasury until toward the close of the
next session of Congress, when the battle would have been won or lost,
and the refusal of the Senate to confirm Taney’s nomination would not
interfere. He was only awaiting proof of the expenditure of $40,000 of
Bank money in the campaign. With this proof, of which he had no doubt,
he would feel justified in removing the deposits. The Bank might “rebel
against our power, and even refuse to pay to the order of the Government
the public money in its vaults, and lay claim to all the money that
remains uncalled for on the books of the loan office.” Everywhere he
found the “assumed power of this monster.” This pretension must be
challenged and tested, and he had no doubt of being “sustained by the
people.”[651]
Thus the die was definitely cast at Rip Raps early in September, and
Jackson returned to Washington determined to force the fighting.
V
As soon as he reached the capital, he began to press Duane more
insistently, with the Secretary stubbornly refusing to budge. Some time
before he had voluntarily given the assurance that if the President
should determine upon the course outlined, and he should be unable to
comply, he would promptly tender his resignation. The President’s
intentions were now thoroughly understood, but Duane gave no indication
of a disposition to relinquish his post, and the pro-Bank papers were
decorating him with laurels. The first covert attack upon him from
Administration circles appeared in the “Globe” of September 12th, when
Blair, taking cognizance of an article in the “Baltimore Chronicle,”
denounced it as a “slanderer of Mr. Duane.” “Would the ‘Chronicle’
convert the Secretary of the Treasury into a Bank officer, and have him
communicating to the corporation what belongs only to his relations with
the President?” Even Duane could not have mistaken the implication. Five
days after this article appeared, the Cabinet was convened, and Jackson
took the opinion of his advisers. McLane, Duane, and Cass were against
the step, with Taney, Barry, and Woodbury (who had previously hedged),
favoring it.
On the following day the Cabinet was again convened to hear the
President’s reasons for his determination, set forth in the famous
“Paper Read to the Cabinet.” This document, as read, had been revised
and rewritten from the notes sent by Jackson from his retreat at Hampton
Roads to Taney, and was to become the storm center of congressional
controversy, although it did not concern the Congress in the least.
Beginning with a confession of a fixed hostility to the Bank on the
conviction of its unconstitutionality and danger to the liberties of the
people, he elaborately reviewed the charter controversy. The people had
passed upon his conduct at the polls and he had been overwhelmingly
vindicated. The Nation, therefore, having definitely decided on the
abandonment of the Bank as a place of deposit, some method should be
devised for the future deposit of the public funds before the expiration
of the charter. Under the law, the Secretary of the Treasury could
withdraw the deposits whenever he saw fit, provided he informed Congress
of his act at the earliest opportunity. To leave the deposits with the
Bank until the day of the expiration of the charter with the expectation
of making the transfer to some other depository at once would mean
“serious inconvenience to the Government and people.” Such work, he
thought, “ought not to be the work of months only, but of years,” for
otherwise “much suffering and distress would be brought upon the
people.” These considerations alone, he thought sufficient to justify
the step he proposed.
But in the conduct of the Bank additional and more pressing reasons
could be found. Knowing of the Government’s decision to appropriate the
greater part of its deposits during 1832 to the payment of the public
debt, the Bank, in the sixteen months preceding May, 1832, had extended
its loans more than $28,000,000, and the maximum of the extension had
been made in May. And two months before that, the Bank had so perfectly
understood its inability to pay over the public deposits when called
upon, that it had secretly negotiated with foreign holders of the three
per cent stock a year’s postponement of a demand for payment after
notice should be given by the Government. “This effort to thwart the
Government in the payment of the public debt,” he said, “that it might
retain the public money to be used for their private interests,
palliated by pretenses notoriously unfounded and insincere, would have
justified the instant withdrawal of the public deposits.”
Since the congressional report in favor of the Bank, other things had
occurred that would surely alter the opinion of the lawmakers. “The fact
that the Bank controls, and in some cases substantially owns, and by
its money supports, some of the leading presses of the country, is now
more clearly established.” Extravagant sums had been loaned to editors
on unusual time and nominal security in 1831 and 1832. And the
proceedings and management of the Bank had been unusual and
indefensible. The terms of the charter had been violated; and when
Government directors undertook to restore methods in conformity with the
terms of the charter, they had been disregarded. Worse still: the most
important transactions involving the credit of the Bank had been turned
over to Biddle, and the committees left in utter ignorance of what he
was doing. He had been given unlimited authority in the use of the
Bank’s money for propaganda purposes. Thousands of dollars had been
squandered in the printing of speeches and pamphlets, not only defending
the Bank, but attacking the chosen representatives of the people. If, as
claimed, the Bank could bring distress and chaos in retaliation, all the
more reason for breaking the power of the tyrannical institution. And he
closed by fixing October 1st as the day for action.
As the members of the Cabinet sat in the White House that day under
conflicting emotions, all appreciating the seriousness of the step, and
some contemplating the closing of a career, there could have been none
unmindful of the fact that the Paper was intended less for them than for
the public. It was characteristic of Jackson in preparing his ground for
a fight to speak over the heads of both Cabinet and Congress to the
people. That Kendall and Blair were in large part responsible for the
original draft which reached Taney for revision, there can be no doubt.
Knowing the real purpose of the Paper, Duane requested a postponement of
publication until he could definitely decide. While the Paper was being
put in type at the “Globe” office, McLane and Cass threatened to resign
rather than accept any responsibility for the act, and Lewis suggested
that they be publicly relieved of responsibility. When Blair hastened
to Jackson with Lewis’s suggestion, the grim man of iron added the
concluding paragraph assuming full personal responsibility--much to the
chagrin and disgust of Taney.[652]
The crisis had now been reached, and the action of Duane was awaited by
the Kitchen Cabinet with the keenest interest, not unmixed with fear
lest Taney decline to take the vacant place and face the bitter fight.
Taking counsel of his fears, Kendall rushed to the Attorney-General and
was reassured. Confessing his fear that his acceptance would mean the
end of his lifelong hopes for a place on the Supreme Bench, Taney
declared himself in the fight to the end.[653]
On September 21st, the “Globe” authoritatively announced that “the
deposits would be changed to State banks” as soon as the necessary
arrangements could be made; and in anticipation of the nature of the war
the Bank would wage, Blair stressed the fact that the deposits would not
be immediately withdrawn, and that the process would be gradual. “It is
believed,” he wrote, “that by this means the change need not produce any
inconvenience to the commercial community.”
Four days later the “Paper Read to the Cabinet” appeared in full in the
“Globe.”
VI
Two days after this publication, Major Lewis wrote Hamilton that “if Mr.
Duane cannot or will not make the order,” he would be superseded by
Taney, “who has been decidedly with the President in relation to this
matter from the beginning to the end,” and discrediting rumors of other
Cabinet resignations.[654] Whatever may have been the feelings of
Hamilton, who looked upon the plan as fraught with possibilities of
disaster, the effect of the “Globe’s” announcement on Thomas H. Benton,
sojourning with relatives in Virginia, was that of a bugle blast to a
war charger. He felt “an emotion of the moral sublime at beholding such
an instance of civic heroism,” and that “a great blow had been struck,
and that a great contest must come on, which could only be crowned with
success by acting up to the spirit with which it was commenced.” He
“repaired to Washington at the approach of the session with a full
determination to stand by the President.”[655]
The day after the reading of the Paper, Jackson called upon Duane for a
decision, and the Secretary begged for time to confer with his venerable
father, then _en route_ to Washington. The same day Major Donelson, the
President’s secretary, informed him of the decision to publish the Paper
in the “Globe” on the morrow, and the hard-pressed Minister protested
against such precipitancy. This protest was followed with a letter to
Donelson reiterating his plea for time, with the assertion that if he
were President he would “consult at least reasonably the feelings of a
man who has already anxiety enough.”[656] Jackson had, in fact,
exercised a most unnatural restraint of his temper, and had been
remarkably considerate of his Minister’s feelings. Even before the
reading of the Paper, and before Duane had made his choice for
martyrdom, Jackson had opened a graceful avenue of escape to the
Legation at St. Petersburg, but the offer had been declined.
On the 21st, Duane appeared at the White House and left his written
decision with Jackson personally. It is a letter of many words,
evidently prepared for publication. After asserting that the Secretary
of the Treasury is, by the terms of the charter, the sole custodian of
the public funds, he finally reached his reasons for refusing to “carry
your directions into effect.” It would be a “breach of public faith,”
would appear as “vindictive and arbitrary,” and “if the Bank has abused
or perverted its powers, the judiciary are able and willing to punish.”
The House of Representatives had declared the funds safe, and, if
anything had happened since its report, “the representatives of the
people, chosen since your appeal to them in your veto message, will in a
few weeks assemble.” Again, “a change to local and irresponsible banks
will tend to shake public confidence,” and “it is not sound policy to
foster local banks.” And so on with other reasons, including the charge
that “persons and presses known to be in the confidence and pay of the
Administration” had tried to intimidate him. There could be no
misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter. It was written in a
spirit bitterly hostile to the Administration, and in the hope of
serving the moneyed institution and having the service rewarded.[657]
Having thus insulted the President, he withdrew his promise of July to
resign if unable to meet his chief’s views, and carefully pointed out
that Jackson had the power of dismissal. Here was a martyr zealously
seeking the cross.
Jackson immediately wrote a brief, dignified reply to the effect that he
could not receive such a communication, nor “enter into further
discussion of the question.” Rather sharply, the grim old man reminded
his subordinate that the imputation in the latter’s letter had no place
in a correspondence between a President and a member of his Cabinet,
that the letter of July offering to resign was before him, and brusquely
demanding a final answer. Early in the afternoon Duane again took his
pen in hand. The result was another tiresome letter concluding with a
distinct refusal to issue the order or to resign, and impudently
protesting against the interference of the Executive in the affairs of a
member of the Cabinet. This second letter could hardly have reached the
White House when Duane, seized with a perfect passion for
self-expression, wrote a third “to present another view.” The burden of
this epistle was that he had been treated unkindly by the “Globe.”
Having started this upon its way by messenger, the superheated Secretary
grasped his pen for another effort, consisting of painful reiterations.
All these letters, thousands of words, and pages of paper, were written
on the 21st, but with the exception of the reply to the first, Jackson
ignored them. Then, two days later, Jackson wrote a short note,
returning the last two letters as containing inaccuracies and being
inadmissible, and closing with a curt dismissal. Thus Duane laid down
his pen, packed his belongings, and passed out of public life.[658]
The day following Duane’s dismissal, written by Taney, Cass and McLane
consulted Jackson as to the desirability of their resignations. This was
almost too much for the old warrior’s patience, and he irritably
reminded them that they had been released from responsibility, and could
remain unless they preferred to join the Opposition. The fire of battle
was now in his blood, and he had no intention of parleying with the
timid in his official household. Three days later, Taney issued his
famous order, McLane and Cass tendered their resignations, and Jackson,
in replying, followed Van Buren’s suggestion, and they remained.
On the publication of the Paper in the “Globe,” the Bank summoned a
meeting of the directors and a committee was appointed to take action.
Writing from Boston to Biddle, Webster made the suggestion, which was
adopted, of a memorial to Congress.[659] This memorial, which referred
to the President of the United States as “Andrew Jackson,” indicated a
disposition to consider the approaching struggle as between “Andrew
Jackson” and Nicholas Biddle, between the Bank and the Administration,
and the ill-advised arrogance of the paper showed all too clearly that
the financiers felt that in such a contest the power and the victory
would be on the side of the Bank. And such was the prestige of that
powerful corporation that not a few Democrats, including friends and
supporters of Jackson, shared in the feeling. When Van Buren was
authorized by Jackson to offer the attorney-generalship to Daniel of
Virginia, that timid lawyer admitted that his fears of Jackson’s
rashness and situation dissuaded him.[660] It was not until early in
November that Benjamin F. Butler, yielding to the personal persuasion of
Van Buren, accepted the post. And to obtain his consent it was necessary
to appeal to personal friendship, private interest, pecuniary benefit,
and the allurements of fame.[661]
And almost immediately the storm broke.
VII
“The times will be hard, and the struggle a great one,” wrote Van Buren
to Hamilton, “but the patriotism and fortitude of the people will
triumph.”[662] And Nicholas Biddle did not propose that the
inconvenience should be slight. He was delighted with the order for the
removal. He was convinced that out of the distress in business circles
would come an irresistible demand, not only for the restoration of the
deposits, but for the rechartering of the Bank. This last act of
Jackson’s was the golden opportunity. The advantage would be followed.
The public, which had sustained Jackson at the polls, was to be
punished, or “disciplined,” as Webster mildly described the process.
“This discipline,” wrote the orator to Biddle, who was his client as
well as his party colleague, “it appears to me, must have very great
effects on the general question of the rechartering of the Bank.”
The “disciplining” of the people began with the Bank’s first
curtailments on August 13, 1833, and practically ended on July 11, 1834,
although it continued to some extent until September. The first move--a
proper one--was to issue an order that the amount of money loaned on
discounts was not to be increased, and that bills of exchange should be
drawn only at short dates and on the Eastern offices. These orders meant
inevitable contraction, but of the sort that could be justified. But
immediately after Taney had issued his order, the Bank adopted
additional measures--the reduction of discounts, the application of the
order of restriction on the drawing of bills to all the offices of the
Bank, the collection of the balances against the State banks, and the
restriction of the receipt of State bank notes. The historian of the
Bank truly says that “on the whole, nothing but peril to the Bank could
excuse such measures.”[663] But even this second step seemed all too
mild to the officers and directors in the marble front building on
Chestnut Street, and three weeks later a third step was taken. The
branch banks in the West were ordered to persevere in “the course of
measures already prescribed,” and instructed that an extraordinary
effort should be made to keep down circulation, and to avoid drafts on
the northern Atlantic offices.[664] One month later, Philip Hone, the
New York banker and business man, was recording in his diary that the
“ill-advised and arbitrary step of the President” was “producing an
awful scarcity of money, with immediate distress and melancholy
forebodings to the merchants and others who require credit to sustain
them”; and that “stocks of every description have fallen--Delaware and
Hudson from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fourteen,
Boston and Providence from one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and
three,” and that “money cannot be had on bond and mortgage at 7 per
cent, and I am told that good notes will hardly be discounted at 9 per
cent.”[665]
Just about the time Hone was recording these conditions, Biddle was
offering the notorious Samuel Swartwout, the Jacksonian Collector in New
York, whose irregularities in office were to be unmercifully exploited
by the Whigs, a directorship in the Bank, and the latter, declining
because of the onerous duties of his office, advised that since “the
Bank’s power has been shown” in the distress, it might be well now to
manifest mercy.[666] Where Niles had found money scarce in September and
October without being able to conceive a reason, he wrote in November of
“a most severe pressure for money” and the prospect of a “collapse of
business.” That month State bank notes began to depreciate and loans
were at eighteen per cent per annum. With the convening of Congress and
the President’s uncompromising Message in December, Biddle increased the
pressure for the purposes of “discipline.” Business men were unable to
get credit. Factories were shutting down because of the inability of
manufacturers to get loans, and laborers were thrown out into the
street. The Christmas season found New York “gloomy” with “times bad,”
stocks still falling, and a panic prevailing “which will result in
bankruptcies and ruin in many quarters where, a few short weeks ago, the
sun of prosperity shone with unusual brightness.”[667] And three days
later the Lord Holland of the American Whigs, in his misery and
apprehension, was beginning to suspect that politics and the Bank, as
well as Jackson’s “ill-advised and arbitrary step,” might be playing a
part, and concluding that “between them both the community groans under
the distress which these misunderstandings have created.” “A plague on
both your houses,” he wrote, his impartial castigation springing,
perhaps, from the fact that he had lost $20,000.[668]
In January the crash came. Business houses began to fail in New York,
Philadelphia, and Washington, and by the end of the month loans could
not be had in New York and Baltimore at less than one and a half per
cent discount per month. Wages decreased, along with prices, with
laborers out of employment and the real estate values on the slump. And
at this time, with the Opposition in Congress working in hearty
coöperation with the Bank to create the fear that fed the panic, Jackson
sat in the White House one Sunday morning writing to Hamilton: “There is
no real distress. It is only with those who live by borrowing, trade on
loans, and gamblers in stocks. It would be a godsend to society if all
such were put down.... I must stop. The church bells are ringing and I
must attend.”[669] This theory that it would be a “godsend” to rid the
country of the men who live on borrowing was to be used with
considerable effect against Jackson by his congressional enemies.
And at the same time, Biddle was writing to the president of his Boston
branch[670] that “the ties of party allegiance can only be broken by the
actual conviction of existing distress,” and that “nothing but the
evidence of suffering abroad will produce any effect in Congress”; and
to Major Jack Downing in New York that “if the bank were to suffer
itself to be misled into the measure of making money plentiful, it will
only give to its enemies the triumph of having robbed it with
impunity.”[671] Thus the evidence is abundant that the Bank exerted its
power to the utmost to bring the country to the verge of ruin, and so
compel it to consent to a recharter. The fact that the majority of its
victims were among its most zealous supporters did not interest Mr.
Biddle.[672] Two days after writing the letter to Downing, Biddle
determined upon a further contraction in discounts to the amount of
$3,320,000, with orders that this should be made within thirty or sixty
days, and the largest reductions were to be made in the Western and
Southwestern banks. Not content with this, he made another increase in
the rates of exchange, and here again discriminated frankly against the
West. Thus, in eight months the Bank planned a reduction in discounts to
the amount of $13,300,000, which Catterall describes truly as “a
preposterously large sum.”[673] When to this is added the further
restrictions of as much as $5,000,000 through the breaking up of the
exchange dealings of the Bank, the contraction in eight months amounted
to at least $18,300,000.
Had the Bank acted honorably, there would have been an inevitable
depression for the time because of the removal order, but the panic was
the Bank’s panic, deliberately conceived, and cruelly produced, with the
frankly avowed purpose of blackmailing the American people into granting
another charter. In his letter to the president of the Boston branch,
Biddle had bluntly confessed his purpose. “I have no doubt,” he wrote,
“that such a course will ultimately lead to a restoration of the
currency, and the recharter of the Bank.”[674]
During this time there were certain unscrupulous speculators, the
buzzards of the panic, whispering commendation into Biddle’s ear while
feathering their own nests through the distress of the people.[675] But
Webster, alarmed at the havoc, had urged Biddle, through Horace Binney,
“that the Bank ought to reduce as slowly and moderately as they can--and
occasionally to ease off--where it is requisite to prevent extreme
suffering.”[676] This advice aroused the banker’s ire and resulted in no
good. It was Biddle’s idea that the Bank’s senatorial champions,
instead of suggesting a policy of moderation, should be using the
distress as an argument for a new charter. “The relief,” he wrote Joseph
Hopkinson, the distinguished lawyer and jurist, “to be useful or
permanent, must come from Congress, and from Congress alone. If that
body will do its duty, relief will come--if not, the Bank feels no
vocation to redress the wrongs of these miserable people. Rely upon
that. This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians
and imprisoned Judges, he is to have his way with the Bank. He is
mistaken.”[677]
VIII
Meanwhile the Bank was encouraging, inspiring, arranging indignation
meetings of the people, where Jackson was arraigned for bringing ruin
upon the community, and petitions were drawn asking for the restoration
of the deposits. Clay, eager to lash the people into fury, had suggested
the plan. “It would be well,” he wrote, “to have a general meeting of
the people to memorialize Congress in favor of a restoration of the
deposits. Such an example [in Philadelphia] might be followed elsewhere;
and it would be more influential as it might be more general.”[678] The
artificial nature of many of the petitions was well understood by the
Jackson leaders, and the usually elegant John Forsyth had referred to
them in the Senate as “these pot-house memorials,” much to the
astonishment of Adams.[679] These petitions, according to the plan,
were, in many instances, taken to Washington by committees that waited
upon the President before presenting them to Congress. Here they were
presented in lugubrious speeches calculatingly designed further to fan
the fears of the people and keep the panic going. When the New York
merchants adopted a memorial and secured the signatures of three
thousand people, Tammany Hall ordered meetings in every ward in the city
to approve of Jackson’s actions.[680] A few days later, between twelve
and fifteen thousand friends of “sound currency by means of a national
bank” met at noon in the park. When Hone, selected to preside, reached
the park, he found an “immense crowd” composed in large part “of the
most respectable mechanics and others of the city--men of character,
respectability, and personal worth, with a few miscreants who went,
perhaps, of their own accord, but were probably sent there to excite
disturbances.” In truth, “the rabble had gotten possession of the
chair,” and it required “some hard thumps” from the men of character,
respectability, and personal worth to clear the way sufficiently for the
presiding genius of the Whig dinner table to reach the platform. When he
attempted to speak, the “yells of the mob” rendered all the chairman’s
efforts “unavailing”; so he “put the question upon the resolutions which
were carried by an immense majority,” and the meeting adjourned.
Unhappily the “mob” did not disperse for some time afterwards.[681]
When these committees, composed of bitter enemies of the President,
began to pour into the capital and knock at the White House door, they
were received, at first, with urbanity and heard with patience. The
committeemen, however, carried back “grossly colored” stories of the
interviews, and Jackson thereafter decided to hear and dismiss them
without discussion.[682] In these stories Jackson is pictured as raving
and ranting, spluttering and spouting imprecations and profanity.
McMaster, however, accepts as true that he received these committees
“with that stately courtesy for which he was so justly distinguished,”
and concludes from the evidence that he “soon began to lecture
them.”[683] In these lectures Jackson is reported to have told the
committees to “go to the Bank” or to “go to Biddle” for relief. No less
an authority than Catterall has concluded that he was not far wrong. On
one occasion he did use extreme language to a committee which implied
the threat of rebellion. “If that be your game,” he exclaimed, “come
with your armed Bank mercenaries, and, by the Eternal, I will hang you
around the Capitol on gallows higher than Haman.”[684] There is no doubt
that he did harangue the committees with bitter denunciations of “The
Monster” and properly ascribed a large part of the distress to the
deliberate purpose of the Bank to “discipline” the Nation. Some
historians have suggested that these outbursts were staged, and it is
recorded as a fact by Henry A. Wise, the brilliant Virginia Whig. “When
a Bank committee would come ...” he writes, “he would lay down his pipe,
rise to the full height of his stature and voice, and seem to foam at
the mouth whilst declaiming vehemently against the dangers of money
monopoly. The committee would retire in disgust, thinking they were
leaving a mad man, and as soon as they were gone, he would resume his
pipe, and, chuckling, say, ‘They thought I was mad,’ and coolly comment
on the policy of never never compromising a vital issue.”[685] This
interpretation of Jackson’s tempests and whirlwinds of passion, coming
from a severe critic of his Bank policy, is the most dependable of all
the opinions that have been expressed by friend or foe.
IX
And while the committees may have hooted the idea that the Bank was
responsible for the severity and continuance of the panic, it very
slowly began to dawn upon the New York merchants that possibly the
“Emperor Nicholas” might be able to alleviate conditions without in the
least compromising the safety of the Bank. Some of his champions were
slow to realize or loath to concede this declining popularity. In
February the bankers and merchants of New York appointed a committee to
wait upon him and urge a suspension of the contraction, and Albert
Gallatin, former Secretary of the Treasury, pointedly warned him that
the committee was satisfied of his ability to grant relief, and would so
report to the New York merchants. Thus cornered and threatened with the
desertion of its friends, the Bank finally agreed that up to May 1st
there should be no further contraction. This was a fatal concession in
that it was a confession that relief had been previously deliberately
denied.[686] Even such champions of the Bank as James Watson Webb found
real cause for melancholy complaint in heavy losses in Bank stock, and
we find him whining that he had lost all except his paper, and that
other speculators, including Alexander Hamilton, Jr., had been among the
victims.
Thus the drift against the Bank, which began when Governor Wolf of
Pennsylvania denounced its actions in his Message to the Legislature,
increased alarmingly. The fact that the Governor had been a firm
supporter gave tremendous weight to his act. The friends of the
institution were stunned, and, as we shall see a little later, the
Governor was bitterly denounced and warmly defended in the Senate. Thus
the advice of Jackson to “see Biddle,” so mirthfully related by the
committees at the time, and so much ridiculed by some historians since,
was demonstrating its wisdom. One month after Wolf acted, Governor Marcy
of New York imitated his example with the recommendation of a State plan
of relief. His proposal to issue $6,000,000 of five per cent State stock
to be loaned to State banks was adopted.
The Bank, in its game of “disciplining” the people, had vastly
overplayed its hand, and, by its cruel, implacable policy of ruining
friends as well as foes, had begun to lose ground in the late winter and
early spring. Even among the ultra-conservatives of business, the
feeling was germinating that Jackson was not far wrong in the
conclusion that a moneyed institution possessing the power to
precipitate panics to influence governmental action, was dangerous to
the peace, prosperity, and liberty of the people.
X
But the politicians in the Congress were the last to see the drift. Long
after the bankers and merchants had lost interest in the fate of
Biddle’s Bank, they continued their fight in its behalf throughout the
most bitter congressional session the Republic had ever known. The
actions of the Bank, the tumult of the market-places, the proceedings of
the merchants, are all intimately interwoven with the activities of the
Bank’s champions in House and Senate. There the last stand was taken,
there the battle was definitely lost. And there the most dramatic
feature of the fight was staged. It was at this juncture that three
important figures, not hitherto intimately identified with or against
the Administration, moved to the firing line. Thomas H. Benton assumed
the leadership of the Jacksonian forces, and Clay’s fighters were
brilliantly augmented by the advent of two Senators, William Campbell
Preston of South Carolina, and Benjamin Watkins Leigh of Virginia.
The complete harmony between Benton’s views and Jackson’s actions in the
Bank controversy has given an overshadowing prominence to his
leadership. For thirty years he was a constructive force in legislation,
associating his name with more important measures written into law than
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun combined. In the Senate his faults of
mannerism, his arrogance, and stupendous conceit, together with the
interminable length of his speeches and his diffusive tendencies, served
to overshadow his very substantial contributions to the discussions. The
fact that the Chamber emptied and the galleries cleared when he arose
did not disturb him in the least. He spoke from the Chamber to the
country, and his carefully prepared speeches, especially during the Bank
fight, were treatises intended for the education of the people. His
personal life was above reproach. His austerity, his imposing dignity,
discouraged attempts at intimacy in a day when men loved conviviality
and were a trifle lax in their morals. He was one of the colossal
figures of American politics and he never loomed larger than in his
fight for Jackson.
William C. Preston, fresh from oratorical triumphs in the Nullification
contest, entered the Senate at the age of thirty-eight. Few have made a
more favorable début in that body. His fame as an orator had preceded
him, and Clay’s plans had dedicated the panic session to perfervid
oratory. It is impossible to understand, from his speeches in the
“Congressional Globe,” the extravagant enthusiasm of so stern a critic
as Adams. But we cannot discount the common verdict of his
contemporaries who considered him one of the most consummate of orators,
and “one of the greatest rhetoricians and declaimers of his
generation.”[687] From another we learn that “many thought him the most
finished orator the South had produced,” and that he “could arouse his
audiences to enthusiasm, and then move them to tears.”[688] Not least
among the truimphs of his art was his power to sway a mob in the street
as well as move the case-hardened critics of the Senate house. Poet and
painter, as he was, it is not surprising that in the heat of advocacy
his feelings often predominated over his judgment, and his superheated
imagination sometimes led him beyond the realms of reality, but these
very weaknesses were to delight the enemies of the Jackson
Administration, led to the daily assault by Clay. Thus, in his first
year in the Senate, he took his place, far in advance of most of his
colleagues, and side by side with Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and Clayton.
In addition to Preston, the Opposition was to be further strengthened
by the arrival with the panic session of Leigh. Intellectually, he was
one of the strongest men in a State of strong men, and at the bar he was
recognized as a great constitutional and civil lawyer. As an orator, he
was fluent, fiery, intense, impressive. Wise, who was himself no mean
master of English, has described him as “a purist in his Anglo-Saxon,”
and as having a style “equal to that of the Elizabethan age of English
literature.”[689] Like Prentiss, he was a small man who loomed large
when speaking, and, like him, too, he had one short leg and wore a cork
on the sole of his shoe. Unlike Prentiss, he capitalized his infirmity
oratorically. Wise found that, while his mannerisms were not graceful,
they “always excited sympathy for his infirmity.” His voice, which was
no small part of his oratorical equipment, has been described as “clear,
soft, flute-like, not loud, but like murmuring music.”[690] His manner,
his speaking method, his very appearance, fitted in well with Clay’s
programme of dramatic, lugubrious oratory, and he at once moved to his
place beside the panic orators, and played a conspicuous and theatrical
part.
Thus, with the panic at its flood, with Benton moving to the front of
the Administration forces, and with Clay’s oratorical battery
strengthened, it is time to look in upon the Senate.
CHAPTER XII
THE BATTLE OF THE GODS
I
From the moment Congress convened, it was evident that the session was
to witness the most bitter party battle ever waged. This was inevitable
because of the realignments of the previous session, and the spirit of
the Bank. The coalition between Clay and Calhoun gave the Opposition a
clear majority in the Senate. It was common gossip four days after
Congress was called to order that “the understanding between Mr. Clay
and Mr. Calhoun” gave the Opposition all the numerical advantage.[691]
This was thoroughly understood by Jackson, Taney, Kendall, and Blair,
and all public papers regarding the removal of the deposits were
accordingly framed as appeals to the people, rather than to the bodies
to which they were addressed. The Presidential Message, in touching upon
this topic, was a campaign document and a challenge. Taney’s forceful
report submitting reasons for the removal was a defiance, and a clarion
call to the people in the corn rows, the villages, and the factories.
Thus Jackson and his friends forced the fighting from the beginning.
Clay led the onslaught with a resolution calling upon Taney for a report
on the new depositories. “I want to inquire where the Treasury of the
United States is,” he explained ironically. The bristling Benton
instantly moved a reference to committee. The Secretary of the Treasury
had “charged the Bank distinctly with interfering with the purity of
elections, with corrupting and subsidizing the press, with dishonoring
its own paper and that of its branches,” and these “charges of great
criminality” should be investigated. Affecting to ignore Benton, Clay
followed with another resolution calling upon the President to say
whether the Paper, “alleged” to have been read to the Cabinet, was
genuine, and if so, to lay a copy before the Senate. This was a stupid
tactical blunder, and John Forsyth, with his suave courtesy, which was
not always as innocent as it seemed, inquired the purpose of the
“unusual” call. Clay’s reply was a quibble. The Paper had been published
as having been read by the President, and even promulgated through the
press, and he, for one, refused to assume that it was genuine.
“If I understand the gentleman from Kentucky,” pressed the courtly
Forsyth, “he admits that with the intercourse between the President and
his Cabinet we have nothing to do.”
“I make no admission,” snapped Clay.
It was then that Forsyth revealed the theory on which the Administration
forces were to proceed. Why could not Clay indicate the purpose which
impelled him? he asked. Was it for the purpose of impeachment? Then the
call should have originated in the House, not the Senate. “When the
President should be brought to our bar, and put on trial for his
violation of the Constitution, that paper would be produced in support
of the charge,” he continued. But why should the Senate call for it? It
was accessible for all purposes of argument. He could understand the
resolution only “as a desire to prompt the other House to proceedings by
impeachment, and to condemn the President in advance.” But after Clay
had reiterated the absurd explanation that he merely sought authentic
verification of the genuineness of the Paper, the resolution was
adopted.[692] The response of Jackson was immediately made in a
dignified and unanswerable note of refusal. “As well might I be required
to detail to the Senate the free and private conversations I have held
with those officers on any subject relating to their duties,” he
said.[693] It was a sharp rebuke, richly merited, and left Clay in an
unenviable position.
The next brush came in the prompt rejection by the Senate of the
nominations of the Government directors who had furnished the report on
which Jackson had based his charge of wrongdoing. The moment their names
were sent to the Senate, Biddle began to deluge his senatorial friends
with demands for their rejection. “They are unfit to be there [on the
board],” he wrote Webster; “unfit to associate with the other
members.”[694] In the Bank circles they were denounced as “spies,” and
thus, in response to the demand of Biddle, they were rejected. Such was
the intimacy of the relation between the party of the Opposition and the
Bank of the United States. The sinister nature of this relationship is
painfully illustrated in the case of Daniel Webster, who, two weeks
after the opening of the session, had written Biddle of his rejection of
a professional employment against the Bank, with the bald suggestion
that “I believe my retainer has not been renewed or refreshed as usual,”
and that “if it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be
continued, it may be well to send me the usual retainers.”[695]
Thus the first days of the session were passed in maneuvering for
position, with frequent incidents of a petty nature indicative of the
rancorous party spirit of the times. Having observed the unobtrusive
figure of Major Lewis, that most consummate of politicians and
presidential reporters, moving about the floor of the House, Richard
Henry Wilde, poet and politician, Nullifier and Whig, framed a
resolution to exclude him, but it was defeated.[696] Meanwhile Clay was
busy mapping his campaign, preparing the resolutions on which he
proposed to make the issue. The Opposition leaders were clearly
embarrassed in determining their course of action. Webster appealed to
Justice Story, the scholarly associate of John Marshall, for an opinion
on the legal phases; and writing from Cambridge that great jurist would
not advise that the deposits could not be legally withdrawn unless
danger to their security was involved, but he advanced the theory on
which the Bank champions acted--that the Secretary of the Treasury did
not become custodian of the funds by virtue of his position in the
Cabinet, but held them as a “personal trust, and as much so as if
confided to the Chief Justice of the United States.” Thus he furnished
the Opposition with the opinion it required. The President had no right
to interfere; more--if he did interfere, and the Secretary submitted
against his own judgment, he violated his trust; and the State banks had
no proper authority to take over the deposits.[697] Unhappily, the
learned jurist failed to take the next necessary step, and conclude that
the President had no power to remove a Secretary of the Treasury.
And it was just this queer opinion that Clay was zealously seeking.
About the time Webster was appealing to Story for the elucidation of
legal points, Clay was writing to former Senator Tazewell at Norfolk, a
great constitutional lawyer, inquiring as to whether or not Jackson had
transcended his power in dismissing Duane. It must have been with some
embarrassment that he read the Virginian’s reply, that to him it was
“manifestly absurd to regard the President as responsible for the acts
of subordinate agents, and yet to deny him the uncontrolled power of
supervising them, and removing them from office whenever they had lost
his confidence.”[698] This opinion, however, did not deter some
statesmen from advancing the idea that Tazewell had contemptuously
rejected.
But the position of Story was accepted, and Clay submitted his
resolutions censuring the President, and holding the reasons given by
Taney for the removal “unsatisfactory and insufficient.” Thus the decks
were cleared for action. The real fight began in the debate that day
upon these resolutions, and upon these, and others growing out of them,
the verbal battle, which at times threatened to be other than bloodless,
raged with intemperate fury for seven months.
II
Never up to that time, nor again for more than a generation, did
Congress so completely hold the interest of the country. The great
orators of the Opposition never shone with greater luster, and by their
impassioned eloquence, and not a little of consummate histrionics, they
persuaded their followers, if not themselves, that they were actually
fighting the battle of liberty against despotism. The Democrats
contended, on the defensive, that Jackson had the right to dismiss
Duane, and that Taney had the legal right to order the removal.
It is not surprising that the little city of Washington, with all its
interests revolving about the performances at the Capitol, should have
poured forth its people daily to pack the galleries and crowd the
lobbies. The Senate Chamber became the peacock alley of fashion--they
who met at the dinner or the dance the night before mingled there in the
day-time. The debate drew many from other sections, and the belles of
country places and remote towns helped to crowd the Chamber to
suffocation.[699] In the fashionable character of the gallery audiences
we catch the hostility of the aristocracy to the President and his
party. The distress committees with their petitions were wont to pack
the galleries “applauding the speakers against the President--saluting
with noise and confusion those who spoke on his side.”[700] Confirmation
of such scenes are to be found in the official report of the
proceedings.[701] It has been the fashion to refer to the Jacksonians as
the “rabble” and the “mob,” and as partaking of the nature of the
Jacobins, but throughout the Bank fight the “mob” in the galleries,
resorting to the Jacobin methods of hissing and cheering the proceedings
on the floor, were largely confined to the enemies of the President.
The debate on the Clay resolutions had scarcely begun when the daily
arrival of distress petitions furnished a diversion in the Senate. The
memorials were lugubrious recitals of wreck and ruin, and pathetic
appeals for the restoration of the deposits. Frequently presented by
committees, the bearers repaired to the gallery to give sympathetic ear
to the mournful speeches of the Senators to whom their petitions had
been entrusted. There was a marked similarity in the petitions, and an
even more striking resemblance in the speeches. The burden of both was
that the happiness of a prosperous community had been struck down by a
tyrant, and that nothing but the restoration of the deposits could end
the agony. That the action of such men as Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, in
picturing in lurid and exaggerated colors the distress of the moment,
and predicting even greater calamities, was calculated to frighten the
timid and create panic must have been understood by them. At any rate,
these petitions were part of the leaders’ plan.[702] This phase of the
fight developed with the presentation of Clay’s resolution to “inquire
into the expediency of affording temporary relief to the community from
the present pecuniary embarrassments by prolonging the payment of
revenue bonds as they fall due.” This resolution opened the way for
Clay’s first “distress speech.” And Forsyth, who was something of a
cynic in his way, saw no objection to the resolution, provided it were
amended by instructing the committee “to inquire into the extent and
causes of the alleged distress of the community, and into the propriety
of legislative interference to relieve them.” The proposal of the
amendment gave Forsyth the opportunity to present the Administration’s
opinion of the panic. He had no doubt that there was distress, but it
had been greatly exaggerated. “Whence does it arise?” he asked. “From
the conflict--the war that the Bank is waging to get the deposits back.
The deposits have been removed. The Bank stands still to see what will
follow, and it stands still, too, that its power may be felt in every
nerve and fiber of the community--and every man shall feel the necessity
of the institution.”[703]
Thus the panic speeches began. “There sits Mr. Biddle,” rather stupidly
exclaimed one Senator, presenting a petition, “in the presidency of the
Bank, as calm as a summer’s morning, with his directors around him,
receiving his salary, with everything moving on harmoniously; and has
this strike reached him? No, sir. The blow has fallen on the friends of
the President and the country.”[704] Thus did one Opposition leader
rejoice in the serenity of the Bank and its president in the midst of
the distress of his country.
Very early the friends of the Administration took their cue from its
enemies, and began to flood the Senate with memorials against the Bank.
Thus day by day the proceedings were opened by the reading of petitions,
followed by speeches on the “distress,” and replies belittling the
panic. Mr. Clay’s heart was wrung by news of the distress in Savannah
and Augusta; whereupon Mr. Forsyth rose to deny that there was distress
in those cities. “I know the individuals,” he said. “They are highly
respectable men--merchants and members of the Bar. They are friends of
the Bank of the United States.”[705] A New Jersey Senator, opposed to
the Administration, presented conflicting petitions from his State, with
the Jackson petitions numerically the stronger. Ah, laughed Forsyth,
“from the State of New Jersey we have three cheers for one groan.”[706]
When an Opposition Senator presented a petition from Portsmouth with a
doleful tale, Senator Isaac Hill killed the effect by explaining the
dubious manner in which the signatures had been obtained. And when, a
little later, Hill undertook to present a petition of the New Hampshire
Legislature against the Bank, Webster moved to lay it on the table. In
truth the actions of legislatures were beginning to annoy the
panic-breeders. Maine, New York, New Hampshire, and other States had
spoken in support of Jackson’s policy. It became necessary to devote
more attention to that end of the petition business. “What is doing in
your legislature about the deposits?” Clay wrote to his friend, Judge
Brooke of Virginia. “We want all aid here on that subject which can be
given us from Richmond.”[707] And when the Legislature acted, John Tyler
lost all patience with the Governor for not sending the petition on at
once. “The resolutions of the legislature have not yet reached me,” he
wrote impatiently to Mrs. Tyler, “nor can I conceive what Floyd is after
that he does not forward them.”[708] They arrived in time, and Webster
did not move to lay them on the table.
Then, with the effect of a bomb exploding among the Bank champions, came
the message of Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania, denouncing the Bank for
responsibility for the depression. Clay lost no time in denouncing him
as a man worshiper, albeit the Governor had previously favored the Bank.
Another Bank Senator rushed forward with a resolution “disapproving the
vacillating or time-serving policy of the Governor of Pennsylvania,”
while Forsyth and others criticized the taste of the proceedings.[709]
Thus the battle of the petitions went merrily on, some spontaneous, most
inspired by the Bank agents, while the conflicting memorials were
conceived to offset the intended effect. As the weeks extended into
months, and the depression began to lift, extraordinary efforts were
made to reawaken the country against the “tyrant in the White House.”
Webster harangued a crowd in New York City; but the major part of the
platform propaganda work was assigned to McDuffie, who better than most
men knew how to “ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm”; to
Preston, who could arouse men to frenzy or move them to tears; and to
Poindexter, who was a veritable fire-eater. These three consummate
mob-baiters set forth on a journey that took them to Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York. The orators reached Baltimore on Sunday. But
no matter; as a minister of the Gospel piously said, “in revolutionary
times there were no Sabbaths,” and the meeting was held. It was on this
occasion that McDuffie, with the true spirit of the demagogue, solemnly
discussed the “rumor” that Jackson, the tyrant, might attempt to dismiss
Congress at the point of the bayonet, and promised that “ten days after
the entrance of the soldiers into the Senate Chamber, to send the
Senators home, 200,000 volunteers would be in Washington.”[710]
Meanwhile the Kitchen Cabinet was capitalizing all the intemperate
attacks upon Jackson, and Blair was publishing letters in the “Globe”
threatening the life of the President if he did not restore the
deposits. One of these recited that three young men in New York had been
selected to “proceed in the course of the present month to the capital,
there to put in execution the design entrusted to their hands.”[711]
III
Such, however, were the side issues of the session. The real fight was
waged on Clay’s resolutions to censure, and later on the President’s
Protest. Clay opened the debate on the censure resolutions in a
three-days speech bristling with extravagant invective--a tremendous
philippic, not only against Jackson’s Bank policy, but against his
entire presidential career. Intended to serve outside the Senate Chamber
in alarming the people, his appeal was to the passions and the fears of
the multitude. The central idea of it all was that all power was being
concentrated in one man. The constitutional rights of the Senate had
been outraged. The public domain was threatened with sacrifice. The
Indian tribes had been miserably wronged. Even the tariff was in danger.
An “elective monarchy” was all but established. On every hand was
depression, suffering, gloom. The power over the purse had been lodged
with that over the sword--a combination fatal to free government. The
President’s conduct had been lawless. Such, in brief, was the tone and
temper of one of the greatest philippics that ever poured from the lips
of Clay.[712] As he sank into his seat, Benton instantly began his
three-days reply, meeting the attack with a counter-offensive. “Who are
these Goths?” he demanded--referring to Clay’s call upon the people to
drive the Goths from the Capitol. “They are President Jackson and the
Democratic Party--he just elected President over the Senator himself,
and the party just been made a majority in the House--all by the votes
of the people. It is their act which has placed these Goths in
possession of the Capitol to the discomfiture of the Senator and his
friends.”
Calhoun followed in a speech of an hour and a half in support of the
resolutions, proclaiming the coalition. “The Senator from Kentucky
anticipates with confidence,” he said, “that the small party who were
denounced at the last session as traitors and disunionists will be found
on this trying occasion in the front rank, and manfully resisting the
advance of despotic power.” But Calhoun’s intellectual self-respect
deterred him from contending that the removal of Duane was an act of
Executive usurpation.
Then followed Rives in a manly defense of the Administration which he
well knew would force his retirement from the Senate under the
instructions of the Virginia Legislature. And then the new orator of the
Opposition, William Campbell Preston, entered the lists, attacking
Government directors for furnishing the President with a report of the
Bank’s activities. The President had no right to ask information, and
the directors no right to comply. The galleries were moved to applause,
and the Carolinian took his place among the popular orators of the
day.[713] Forsyth followed Preston, to be succeeded by Grundy, who was
trailed by Frelinghuysen for the resolutions.
Meanwhile Webster was impressively silent. Unwilling longer to make the
Bank the football of party politics, he looked disapprovingly upon the
war of personalities. He knew that no constructive measure had been
proposed, and that Biddle’s frenzied pressure on the people was driving
supporters from the institution. He had no heart at this time for an
attack on Jackson--recalling the “reciprocal kindnesses” of the last few
months.[714] He realized that a senatorial censure and exterior pressure
would never drive Jackson to such a recharter measure as had been
proposed. And yet, in January, Calhoun was positive that the
Administration had been mortally wounded.[715] Preston was exuberantly
proclaiming that the removal of the deposits would force a recharter on
the Bank’s terms.[716] In February, when the Bank was losing ground with
the people and making no congressional converts, Clay was writing to
Brooke that “we are gaining, both in public opinion and in number in the
House of Representatives.”[717] That Clay was supremely selfish in his
relations with the Bank is generally conceded by historians now,[718]
and was keenly felt even by Biddle, who preferred a joint resolution
ordering the restoration to wasting months in wrangling over a vote of
censure. This plan he urged upon Webster, through Horace Binney of the
House. But Clay scoffed at the idea. He was more interested in making
Jackson obnoxious for party reasons than in serving his friends in
Philadelphia, and he actually felt that he was succeeding in his
purpose.
At length Webster determined to strike out for himself.
IV
Early in March he came forward with his compromise recharter measure
providing a renewal for six years only; for an abandonment of the
monopoly features to the end that Congress might, in the meantime, if it
saw fit, grant a charter to another company; for the restoration of the
deposits only after July 1st; and for the issuance of no note under the
$20 denomination. This compromise had been discussed with friends of the
Administration, who were ready to support it provided the friends of the
Bank would unite upon it. Three days later Webster addressed the Senate
on the virtues and purposes of the measure, carefully refraining from
personalities or denunciation of the President. The most militant of
Jackson’s friends could have found no fault with the orator’s treatment
of their idol. Nor did he imitate his party colleagues in an intemperate
discussion of the removal. He traced the origin of the distress to
Taney’s order; showed the relation between commerce and credit, and
between credit and banking, and effectively disposed of Jackson’s
fallacy that men who operate on credit are undeserving of consideration.
It was only in his affectation of indignation over the charge that the
Bank was deliberately contributing to the distress that he departed from
the high ground of statesmanship, and played the hypocritical
politician. But the Senators listening eagerly to his words did not know
of the letter he had written to Biddle predicting that the
“disciplining” of the people would result in a renewal of the charter,
or that he had urged upon Biddle, through Binney, that he ought to
“occasionally ease off, where it is requisite to prevent extreme
distress.” No one knew better than he that the Bank not only possessed,
but exerted, the power charged by the Administration. This aside,
Webster’s was the most dignified, impersonal, and statesmanlike speech
of the session.
But the moment he resumed his seat, the schism among the leaders of the
Opposition was emphasized when Leigh arose to announce that the Virginia
view of the unconstitutionality of the Bank would make it impossible for
him to support the bill. Three days later Calhoun criticized the measure
as only a temporary expedient, and proposed, instead, a bill of his own
providing a recharter for twelve years. The only extensive attack on the
Webster compromise, however, was that of the “Cato of the Senate,” Hugh
Lawson White, who had not up to that time wholly broken with his old
friend in the White House. Respected as a financier, he was always heard
with profound respect. He vigorously defended the removal of the
deposits on the grounds set forth in Jackson’s Message. His speech was
all the more impressive because he had advised against the removal and
his letter had been read to the Cabinet. The day before taking the
floor, he wrote of his embarrassment, but later developments having
changed his opinion, he felt it would be censurable to remain
silent.[719]
But in the end it was not the opposition of Democratic Senators that
suddenly terminated the consideration of the Webster compromise. It was
soon found that the friends of the Bank were hopelessly divided on any
constructive programme. Even in the inner Bank circles there were
clashing views. Biddle favored the Webster plan; Sergeant, the chief
counsel, and Binney, leading spokesman in the House, preferred the
Calhoun measure. Even these differences might have been reconciled but
for the selfishness of Clay, who persisted in his determination to use
the Bank for party purposes. “If Mr. C [Clay] and Mr. C [Calhoun] would
go along with us,” Webster wrote Biddle, “we could carry the compromise
bill through the Senate by a strong two thirds majority. Can you write
through anybody to talk with Mr. Calhoun?”[720] In the meanwhile Calhoun
was attempting the conversion of such Administration Senators as Benton
and Silas Wright, without success.
While these negotiations were in progress, the fury of Clay over the
independence of Webster increased in intensity, culminating in the
threat that, if the New Englander failed to move to lay his own motion
on the table, he would make the motion himself. Thus, one week after the
delivery of his speech, Webster killed his own measure. When, with the
explanation that he had been disappointed in his hopes, he made the
motion to table, John Forsyth demanded the yeas and nays to show that
Webster’s bill had not been killed by the Administration Senators, but
by his own party friends. The roll-call showed practically all the Bank
Senators voting to table, with Benton, Forsyth, White, Hill, Wright, and
Grundy voting against the motion. Thus the only practical and
constructive attempt made by the friends of the Bank to save the
institution was slaughtered in the house of its friends.[721]
V
With the accumulating evidence of impatience in the country, Clay at
length determined to bring to a vote the resolutions, submitted merely
to irritate and provoke a debate that would give the panic time to act.
So firmly was Clay convinced that the “disciplining” of the people was
working the destruction of Jackson’s popularity, that he sought to
transfer a portion of his fancied resentment to Van Buren, who was all
but certain to be the Democratic nominee in 1836.[722] There has
probably never been a more transparent bit of histrionics perpetrated
upon a deliberative body than that of Clay in his pathetic appeal to Van
Buren, seated in the chair, and with a padlock on his lips, to hasten to
Jackson with a plea for the suffering people.
“To you, sir, in no unfriendly spirit, but with feelings softened and
subdued by the deep distress which pervades every class of our
countrymen, I make this appeal,” he exclaimed, his eyes moist with
tears. “...Depict to him, if you can find language to portray, the
heartrending wretchedness of thousands of the working classes cast out
of employment. Tell him of the tears of helpless widows, no longer able
to earn their bread, and of unclad and unfed orphans, who have been
driven by this policy, out of the busy pursuits, in which, but
yesterday, they were gaining an honest livelihood.... Tell him that he
has been abused, deceived, betrayed by the wicked counsels of
unprincipled men around him. Inform him that all efforts in Congress to
alleviate or terminate the public distress are paralyzed and likely to
prove totally unavailing, from his influence upon a large portion of its
members who are unwilling to withdraw their support, or to take a course
repugnant to his wishes and feelings. Tell him that in his bosom alone,
under actual circumstances, does the power reside to relieve the
country; and that unless he opens it to conviction, and corrects the
errors of his Administration, no human imagination can conceive, and no
human tongue can express the awful consequences which may follow.”
With this piece of play-acting, Clay, looking as much distressed as one
of his petitioners, sank exhausted in his seat. Throughout the ludicrous
scene, Van Buren “maintained the utmost decorum of countenance, looking
respectfully and even innocently at the speaker all the while as if
treasuring up every word he said to be repeated to the President.”[723]
But all the while the more astute Red Fox was thinking that the speech
“would tend to strengthen greatly the attachment of his friends; would
warm up their sympathies in his behalf and concentrate their
regard.”[724] With the eyes of all upon him--and the Senate had been
really affected by Clay’s voice and manner--Van Buren called a Senator
to the chair, placidly descended to the floor as though he were not the
object of interest, deliberately walked to Clay’s seat, and, in his most
courtly manner, and with his most courtly bow, asked for a pinch of his
snuff. The startled orator gave him his snuffbox. Van Buren took a
pinch, applied it to his nostrils, returned the box, bowed again, and
resumed the chair as though nothing had happened. And the Senate smiled.
Clay’s appeal had hovered dangerously near the ridiculous, and Van Buren
pushed it over. No single incident so well illustrates the political
purpose of Clay’s activities on the removal of the deposits.
But even panics and politics cannot go on forever, and the discussion on
the Clay resolutions had covered “the longest period which had been
occupied in a single debate in either House of Congress since the
organization of the Government.”[725] Thus, on March 27th the Senate, by
a vote of 26 to 20, placed the stigma of a censure upon the action of
the President.
Jackson was now to have his inning.
VI
With mass meetings being organized against him in all sections, with the
capital crowded with hostile delegations, and with the Senators
thundering their extravagant philippics at the tyrant responsible for
the widows’ and the orphans’ woes, Jackson remained serene and
unafraid.[726] But with the adoption of the resolutions of censure, he
determined to strike back in such a way as effectively to reach the
people. There were men in those days who thought that a senatorial
censure would wreck any reputation. They had not yet sensed the spirit
of the times. Three weeks after the Senate acted, Major Donelson
appeared in the Chamber with the famous Protest. Nothing could have been
more merciless than the cold logic with which the iron man pounded the
resolutions of condemnation; nothing more biting than his reference to
those Senators supporting them, who had thus “deliberately disregarded
the recorded opinion of their States.” He solemnly protested “against
the proceedings ... as unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary to the
spirit and to several of its express provisions, subversive of that
distribution of powers of government which it has ordained and
established, destructive of the checks and safeguards by which those
powers were intended on the one hand to be controlled and on the other
to be protected, and calculated, by their immediate and collateral
effects, by their character and tendency, to concentrate in the hands of
a body, not directly amenable to the people, a degree of influence and
power dangerous to their liberties and fatal to the Constitution of
their choice.”
Not only had his public character been assailed, but imputations had
been cast upon his private character. “In vain do I bear upon my
person,” he continued in a passage of no little eloquence, “enduring
memorials of that contest in which American liberty was purchased; in
vain have I since periled property, fame, and life in defense of the
rights and privileges so dearly bought; in vain am I now, without a
personal aspiration or the hope of individual advantage, encountering
responsibilities and dangers from which by mere inactivity in relation
to a single point I might have been exempt, if any serious doubts can be
entertained as to the purity of my purpose and motives. If I had been
ambitious, I should have sought an alliance with that powerful
institution which even now aspires to no divided empire. If I had been
venal, I should have sold myself to its designs. Had I preferred
personal comfort and official ease to the performance of my arduous
duty, I should have ceased to molest it. In the history of conquerors
and usurpers, never in the fire of youth nor in the vigor of manhood
could I find an attraction to lure me from the path of duty, and now I
shall scarcely find an inducement to commence the career of ambition
when gray hairs and a decaying frame, instead of inviting to toil and
battle, call me to the contemplation of other worlds where conquerors
cease to be honored and usurpers expiate their crimes.” And he closed
with the request that the Protest be entered upon the journals of the
Senate.[727]
Whatever else may be said of this remarkable document, its effect upon
the masses of the people, idolizing Jackson as they never had another
American, was certain to be tremendous. The ideas were largely
Jackson’s. Attorney-General Butler, a brilliant lawyer, worked out the
legal end, while Amos Kendall devoted his genius to those portions
intended for political effect. The Protest appeared immediately in
Blair’s “Globe,” and was soon published in all the Administration papers
of the country.
VII
The effect on the Senate may be better imagined than described.
Poindexter, whose private grudge was the inspiration of his renegadism,
could not “express the feeling of indignation” the paper had excited in
his bosom, and he would “spurn it from the Senate”--“that body which
stands as a barrier between the people and the encroachments of
executive power.” It was not a Message--merely “a paper, signed ‘Andrew
Jackson,’” and “nothing else.”[728] Sprague of Maine, who had been
pilloried, spoke “more in grief than in anger,” and while the President
had referred to “his Secretary” and felt that this was “his Government,”
he, the Senator, “never bowed the knee to Baal.” And while the tyrant
was appealing to the people, look about. “Behold your green fields
withered; listen to the cries of distress of the widows and orphans,
rising almost in execration of the exercise of that power which has
blasted their hopes and reduced them to despair.”[729] Frelinghuysen of
New Jersey, another pilloried statesman, next arose to discuss “this
most extraordinary proceeding--one which would form an era in American
history.” What a spectacle! “When the busy hum of industry was silenced,
when the laborer was in want of employment, when banks were breaking in
every direction, and the cries for relief from the unrelenting hand of
power were heard everywhere around us,” the Senate had listened to a
lecture of an hour and a half. And why refer to the New Jersey
Legislature? He had “dared to meet the frowns of his constituents”
because of his zeal for his country.[730] Southard of New Jersey, also
pilloried by Jackson, hoped that he might “school himself into that
degree of moderation necessary for the occasion.” He could find no
excuse for Jackson’s indignation. And yet “we have received, not from
Charles I, Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, but from a man combining the
characters of the whole of them, a warning to cease our further
proceedings.”[731] And Leigh closed the day’s events by declaring
“before God that upon the fate of these resolutions, and the disposition
of this question, depends the permanency of the Constitution, handed
down to us by our fathers.”[732]
To get the right perspective upon these speeches, it should be borne in
mind that at the time of their delivery the business men were openly
charging Biddle with responsibility for the panic. Niles’s “Register”
had admitted that the Bank’s power was too great, and the “St. Louis
Republican,” a stanch supporter of the Bank, had turned upon it with a
bitter denunciation of its course.[733] Thus, however, the debate began,
and in this spirit was it continued for a month--a month of fierce
invective. On the second day, following the philippic of Leigh, the
crowds in the packed galleries clashed with cheers and hisses.
Especially pleased were the galleries when, apropos of Jackson’s
reference to his gray hairs, the fiery cripple compared him to Mount
Ætna, “whose summit was capped with eternal snow, but which was always
vomiting forth its liquid fire.”[734] The discussion finally revolved
around the Poindexter resolutions not to receive. A few days later
Calhoun attacked the Protest with great bitterness, and amendments were
offered by both Calhoun and Forsyth. That of the Carolinian declared the
President had no right to send, and the Senate no right to receive, such
a document. Then the Administration disclosed its hand in the Forsyth
resolution providing that “an authenticated copy of the original
resolution [Clay’s] with a list of the ayes and nays, of the President’s
Message and the pending resolution be prepared ... and transmitted to
the Governor of each State of the Union to be laid before their
legislature at the next session, as the only authority authorized to
decide upon the opinions and conduct of the Senators.”[735] Here was a
declaration, by indirection, from the leader of the Administration that
the President was not authorized to pass upon the opinions and conduct
of Senators. Had the resolution stopped there, it would not have
differed materially from those of Poindexter or the resolution of
Calhoun. But it declared that there was an authority to pass upon the
conduct of Senators--the people who elected them to the Senate; and
that, with the facts before them, they should pass upon the conduct of
the public servants. This was an impressive proclamation that the
Jacksonian Senators were convinced that the people sustained them; and
the fact that the Forsyth resolution was defeated by a party vote was an
admission from the Opposition that it lacked such faith.
When in early May the Poindexter resolutions were called up for final
consideration, the debate was closed by Webster in a constitutional
argument pitched upon a higher plane than that of personalities, and
interspersed with passages of eloquence seldom equaled even by him.[736]
Nothing reveals the inability of the senatorial oligarchy to understand
the altered spirit of the people so well as his contention that the
Senate was expected to stand between the people and the tyranny of
Executive power. The fact that the peaceful revolution of 1828 was a
rising of the people against the aristocracy of the old congressional
clique does not appear to have occurred to Webster or his party friends
at any time during the Jacksonian period.
When Webster concluded, the last word for the Administration was spoken
by its most eloquent spokesman, who, better than any other, was
temperamentally fitted to meet the New England orator upon the high
plane he had chosen, John Forsyth. Webster rejoined, briefly, the vote
was taken, and the resolutions passed with a margin of eleven votes.
VIII
Meanwhile the battle over the deposits was being fought in the House,
albeit with less vituperation and abuse. John Quincy Adams, one of the
Bank’s leaders, looked upon the proceedings in both Houses with cynical
amusement as being the mere ebullitions of party politics with no
terminal facilities. Though a talkative member, his name appearing
ninety-three times during the session, he made none of the principal
speeches on the leading questions; but whenever his vote was required,
it was cast for the Bank, and whenever his advice was solicited, it was
given. The more active leadership of the tempestuous McDuffie, whose
partiality for the Bank had displaced him in the chairmanship of the
Ways and Means Committee, was more in evidence. But more impressive than
either in the front rank of the Bank champions was a new member whose
extraordinary ability placed him immediately with the foremost of
congressional orators. When Horace Binney entered the House, he was in
his fifty-third year, at the height of his forensic fame, and at the
head of the Philadelphia Bar. He was, perhaps, the sole figure among the
Bank leaders in House or Senate who was not moved in the slightest
degree by political considerations. He had overcome his distaste for
political controversy and entered the House with the sole purpose of
protecting, as best he could, the interest of the institution of which
he had, but the year before, become a director. He was as much the
attorney and special pleader of the Bank in the House as he could have
been in the courts. His physical appearance alone would have
distinguished him in any assembly. Tall, large, and perfectly
proportioned, he has been described by one who observed him during the
Bank fight as “an Apollo in manly beauty.”[737] As an orator he was of
the Websterian mould. He spoke with great deliberation, and with perfect
enunciation and modulation with a voice that was full and musical.
Unlike McDuffie, he was incapable of tearing a passion to tatters. Never
noisy, even in moments of great excitement, he was always graceful and
easy in his manner. He spoke the language that Addison and Swift wrote.
He addressed the House with the same scrupulous care and the same lofty
dignity with which he would have addressed John Marshall on the Supreme
Bench, or conversed with Mrs. Livingston in her drawing-room. In social
relationships, his innate refinement could not be marred by the
free-and-easy manners of the cloak-room; his suavity could not be
disturbed by the ferocity of attack; his dignity could withstand any
circumstance. Such was the Bank’s most perfect champion in its greatest
crisis. He left his profession to serve its cause, and that cause
defeated, he gladly bade farewell to public life and returned to his
profession and his habitual peace of mind.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the burden of the battle
for the Administration fell on James K. Polk. History has settled on the
verdict that he was a man of mediocre ability, with nothing to commend
him to the admiration, and little to the respect, of posterity. But he
managed the fight for the Administration with consummate parliamentary
skill. Beset on all sides by tremendous onslaughts, he remained cool,
courteous, and fair throughout, and won the open commendation of
McDuffie for the manliness of his methods. It is impossible to turn the
yellowing pages of the “Congressional Globe,” recording the day-by-day
story of the fight, without a growing feeling of admiration for Polk. He
was never diverted from the question, never excited by attacks, patient,
and yet always pressing courteously for action. In the midst of the
frenzied partisans, he looms large.
The fight began over the reference of the Taney report and Polk’s motion
that it be referred to his committee. In explaining his reasons the
latter avowed a purpose to investigate the Bank, and the forces rushed
into action. “Why investigate,” cried McDuffie, “when admissions would
be made without an investigation?” Had Bank money been used in the
campaign? Admitted! “State your sum,” he shouted, “fifty, sixty, or a
hundred thousand.” The Congress had named a depository for the public
money; it had been removed; it must be restored--that was the subject
for debate.[738] Binney immediately arose to supplement McDuffie’s
suggestion. “What is the object of the inquiry asked for?” he demanded.
“Is it to suggest reasons for the Secretary’s act ...? If you bring in
other facts, other judgments, other reasons, you annul the judgment of
the Secretary, agree that it was wrong, and assume to exercise an
original instead of a derivative power.” If Taney had acted on
sufficient reasons, “it was for the House, on behalf of the people, to
pronounce their judgment; and if they were sufficient, then there was an
end to the question.” More: “What knowledge have we of the condition of
the banks selected by the Government?”
The State banks not safe? Polk retorted. Very well, “this constitutes
one of the chief objects of the investigation proposed.” A “question of
public faith?” as Binney had hinted. “Is it not proper, then,” asked
Polk, “for a committee ... to inquire by which party the contract was
violated?” And only to inquire into the sufficiency of Taney’s reasons?
Why, “some of the reasons given may involve the charter of the
Bank.”[739]
After a week of wrangling, the Administration won on the reference, but
the moment the vote was announced, McDuffie moved instructions to the
committee to report a joint resolution providing for the depositing of
all revenues thereafter collected in the Bank of the United States--and
this was the peg on which the main discussion hung.
The impetuous McDuffie was the first to rush into the arena. His was a
bitter, brilliant excoriation of Jackson, a fulsome glorification of the
Bank, and he thundered on for two days,[740] impassioned, in a state of
constant volcanic eruption, but little more than “a fierce attack upon
the President.”[741] One week later Polk consumed two days in a reply
which, in its moderation of tone and language and its argumentative
character, was in striking contrast to that of the vituperative
Carolinian. Defending in detail the position of Jackson, discussing the
legal and constitutional phases, citing precedents and authorities, he
built up a case for the Administration which could not have been other
than impressive in view of the attempt of most of the Bank’s champions
to answer him.[742] Another week elapsed before Horace Binney rose to
reply, in a masterpiece of parliamentary oratory. In musically flowing
sentences he described the prosperity preceding the attack upon the
Bank, the nature of the currency and credit, the effect of the shaking
of confidence, the necessity for the Bank’s curtailments, and argued
that “the control of the public deposits is inherent in the Congress.”
But had the Bank been charged with exercising political power?
“Granted--granted--the charge is granted, but the Bank has not succeeded
in this exercise of political power.... The late election proves that it
did not succeed. The force of array, legislative and executive, is
against the Bank; and it did not succeed. The act of removal was not,
therefore, an imperative and retributive act; but an act of malignant
dye--an act vindictive.” In all his historical researches he knew of
only one instance where a charter had been destroyed “on the alleged
ground of the assumption of political power.” That was in the reign of
Charles II, when, on that ground, he obtained possession of the charter
of London. “But it was restored when constitutional liberty dawned.”
Thus he approached his conclusion--a demand for the immediate
restoration of the deposits, and, speaking with a rapidity that the
reporter could not follow, launched upon his peroration, with the plea
that the question be not considered in the spirit of party, but “rather
as one affecting the general interest of the community; as one involving
the integrity of the Constitution, the stability of contracts, and the
permanence of free government; as a question involving public faith,
national existence, and the honor and integrity of the country, at home
and abroad.”[743]
Thus, refraining from personalities, and frowning upon the party aspect
of the controversy, the most clever of the Bank’s champions, speaking
with the cunning of the proverbial “Philadelphia lawyer,” attempted, too
late, to undo the work Clay had done to serve a selfish end. The night
after the conclusion of the speech found him at the White House, one of
numerous guests, and Jackson sought him, devoted himself to him with an
embarrassing assiduity, and thanked him for advocating his cause without
indulgence in personal abuse.
But it was not every Philadelphia lawyer that was to be looked upon so
kindly in Jacksonian circles. In the midst of the struggle in the House
a series of Bank articles began to appear in the “National Gazette” over
the signature of “Vindex.” It was just at the time Joseph Hopkinson, the
Federal Judge for eastern Pennsylvania, began to haunt the floor and
lobby of the House--a privilege he enjoyed by virtue of previous
membership in that body. His activity among the members became so open
as to create comment, and the “National Gazette” made a laborious
attempt to explain his presence. It was a purely social visit. He had
come on the invitation of the Judges of the Supreme Court. It was
natural that he should delight in renewing old friendships. This
explanation gave Blair his opportunity, in a column editorial, to assail
the Philadelphia jurist as a lobbyist, to insist that he had
disqualified himself to sit on any Bank case, and to challenge the
“National Gazette” to deny that he was the author of the “Vindex”
articles.
“But further we would inquire,” wrote Blair, “whether the judge is not a
debtor of the Bank as well as its anonymous vindicator? We believe he
is--and it is difficult to say whether the judge’s extreme solicitude
and activity in behalf of the Bank arises from its pecuniary favors, the
bonds of family affection which bind him to Mr. Biddle, his son having
married Mr. Biddle’s sister, or the old Federal feeling which always
distinguished him, and which inclined him against his country during the
last war, and prompted his speech after its close, declaring the Nation
was disgraced by the peace.”[744] Such was the bitterness and such were
the blunt weapons in evidence in the contest even in the House.
Early in March, Polk submitted his report justifying every step of the
Administration, and including the sensational resolution providing for
an investigation of the Bank at Philadelphia. Binney submitted a
minority report favoring the restoration of the deposits, and the debate
took a fresh start. The outstanding speech of this phase of the debate
was that of Rufus Choate, described by Adams, on the evening of its
delivery, as “the most eloquent speech of the session, and, in a course
of reasoning, altogether impressive and original.”[745] Still young, and
his public career but brief, his great intellectual labors had already
undermined his health, and even thus early in life he presented to the
House when he arose the “cadaverous look” which confronts us to-day in
the portraits of his later life.[746] With all the consummate skill
which so distinguished his advocacy in the courts, he sought to divert
the discussion from the channels it had followed. “As to the Bank
itself,” he said, “I shall go throughout on the supposition that it will
not be rechartered. I call on gentlemen to look upon the proposition to
restore the deposits merely as a temporary measure of relief.” The
crying need of the immediate hour was the use of the public money, and
this could be had in a beneficial way at the time only through the Bank
of the United States. Like Binney, he won the respect of Administration
forces, and the succeeding speaker, hostile to the restoration, found
the views expressed “new and interesting, and delivered in a tone and
spirit becoming the representatives of a free people.”[747] But the
debate dragged on without any high lights until in early April, when
McDuffie returned to the attack, still in a superheated condition, and
seeing swords and daggers gleaming in the air. Never in all history, he
thought, had “the progress of the usurpation of the Executive been more
rapid, more bold, or more successful than in the United States in the
last fifteen months.” As he sat down, the previous question was moved,
and with the appointment of tellers there fell a deep silence with the
contending forces “glowering upon each other.”[748] The roll was
called--and victory fell to the Jacksonians with an overwhelming
majority.
In pursuance of the resolutions providing for an investigation, a
committee was appointed, and with no thought of meeting opposition, it
repaired to Philadelphia, sent Biddle a copy of the resolutions,
informed him of the committee’s presence and its readiness to visit the
Bank on the following day at any hour that he would indicate. Then
followed days of struggle, with the committee obstructed at every turn
by the technical barricades thrown up by John Sergeant. It was not for
nothing, in the old days, that men characterized the cunning as “smart
as a Philadelphia lawyer.” Having exhausted their resources, the
committeemen returned to Washington and prepared reports to the House.
The minority report, submitted by Edward Everett, excused the Bank. The
majority charged contempt of the House, and asked that warrants be
issued for the arrest of Biddle and the directors. A few days later
Adams offered his resolution to discharge the committee from further
duty, setting forth that there had been no contempt, and characterizing
the proposed arrest of Biddle and his directors as “unconstitutional,
arbitrary, and an oppressive abuse of power.” If this resolution was
novel, under the circumstances, the speech in which it was supported was
even more remarkable. “The House has sent a committee to investigate the
affairs of the Bank,” Adams said. “Have they not done it? Not one word
on that subject is to be found in the report. It contains no information
on the affairs of the Bank.”[749] And how could the House enforce its
decrees? he asked. “We have not a soldier to enforce our orders.” And
Adams was more laudatory in his references to the bankers,
“distinguished for their talents,” than he ever was to political friend
or foe.
Thus nothing came of the resolutions. Perhaps nothing was expected. If
the Bank’s curt treatment of the committee amused the business element
and the Whig politicians, it delighted Kendall and Blair, for they knew
how effectively the incident could be used with the masses.
IX
After the adoption of the Poindexter resolutions no further steps were
taken in the Senate until Clay, three weeks later, presented his
resolution ordering the restoration of the deposits. This was in the
midst of the difficulties of the House committee with the Bank. Why,
demanded Benton, had it not been presented in the early part of the
session? Why now with no possibility of concurrence in the House? And
why now in the midst of a controversy between the House and the Bank,
with contempt proceedings pending against the Bank, and the House
awaiting the report of its investigation? What right had the Senate to
interfere in behalf of the Bank? He hoped the Senate would postpone the
consideration of the resolution for a week to permit the House to decide
the question of contempt.[750] Nevertheless, the Senate, by a party
vote, passed the futile resolution.
But the senatorial champions of the Bank were to encounter
embarrassments other than those growing out of the action of the House.
In May, Mr. Clay had called upon Taney for a report upon the finances.
At the time this was done, the Senate was being deluged with distress
petitions, mass meetings were being held, and the doleful senatorial
descriptions of wreck and ruin were falling mournfully upon the Senate
Chamber, day by day. It was the middle of June when Taney’s report
reached the Senate. The facts as set forth were in such startling
contrast with conditions as they had been depicted by Clay and his
followers that the Administration leaders, always clever, and always
thinking more of the voters in the country than of the politicians in
the Senate house, determined that it should have the greatest possible
publicity. The day before, Taney had summoned Benton to the Treasury,
and had gone over the report with him, furnishing him with all the data,
and preparing him for a speech that could be sent to the country. As
anticipated, the reading in the Senate had not proceeded far when
Webster arose to move that further reading be dispensed with, and the
report sent to the Finance Committee. Benton objected. The report was
read. Then Benton, in his most flamboyant mood, arose to comment upon
it.
“Well, the answer comes,” he exclaimed with the Bentonian flourish. “It
is a report to make the patriot heart rejoice, replete with rich
information, pregnant with evidences of national prosperity. How is it
received--how received by those who called for it? With downcast looks
and wordless tongues. A motion is made to stop the reading.” But he did
not propose that such a report should be disposed of “in this
unceremonious and compendious style.” No, “a pit was dug for Mr. Taney;
the diggers of the pit have fallen into it: the fault is not his; and
the sooner they clamber out, the better for themselves.” And, regardless
of the embarrassment of the conspirators, he proposed that the country
should know that “never since America had a place among nations was the
prosperity of the country equal to what it is this day.”[751]
In this exordium he did not exaggerate the story of the figures of the
report; and the report did not misrepresent the condition of the
country. The Bank panic had run out. Only its friends were now
suffering, and even Philip Hone in New York was secretly cursing the
name of Biddle.
But the enemies of the Administration in the Senate were to have their
revenge. Andrew Stevenson, for almost seven years Speaker of the House,
one of the most courtly and talented men in public life, had been
nominated for the English Mission. He resigned from the Speakership and
from Congress, and his name was sent to the Senate for confirmation. And
the political combination that, in a spirit of proscription, had refused
to confirm Van Buren, declined to confirm the man selected as his
successor. This act was too flagrant even for John Tyler, who voted to
confirm.[752] As a result of this petty policy, America was
unrepresented in England from 1832, when Van Buren was humiliated, until
1836, when a Democratic Senate confirmed Stevenson.
As the end of the session approached, Jackson sent to the Senate the
nominations of Taney and Butler, as Secretary of the Treasury and
Attorney-General. The latter was confirmed; the former rejected. But the
rejection of Taney had been considered more than probable by Jackson,
who had refrained from sending the nomination to the Senate until the
last minute. This was the first time, however, in the history of the
Government that a Cabinet officer had failed of confirmation. It was in
no sense, however, a reflection upon the man; it merely reflected the
insane bitterness of the time. On his return to Maryland, Taney was
greeted with a series of ovations. At Baltimore he was met by a
multitude and conveyed in a barouche drawn by four white horses,
escorted by a cavalcade of several hundred horsemen, and given a dinner.
Another dinner awaited him at Frederick, and another at Elkton, and each
was made the occasion for a powerful speech which made an impression on
the country.
Thus the prolonged session of Congress, lasting almost seven months,
had accomplished nothing for the Bank. The anti-Jackson Senate had
censured the President and ordered the restoration of the deposits. The
Jacksonian House had declared against the restoration of the deposits,
against the renewal of the charter, and had summoned Nicholas Biddle to
its bar for contempt. The politicians had fought the battle in Congress
to a deadlock, and the next and final fight was to be waged at the
polls.
We shall now note the effect of the sham battles of the Congress on the
people.
CHAPTER XIII
POLITICAL HYDROPHOBIA
I
Philip Hone, seated in the little Senate Chamber, and still entranced
with Clay’s theatrical appeal to Van Buren, was awakened from his
reverie by observing Webster beckoning him out of the room. The
entertainer of the Whig celebrities followed the god of his idolatry to
one of the committee rooms, where, for more than an hour, the orator
“unburdened his mind fully on the state of affairs and future
prospects.” The burden of it all was the importance of carrying the
spring elections. When Hone called on Clay, he found him of the same
opinion. “He says that the only hope is the election in our State and in
Pennsylvania.” Meeting John Quincy Adams, “that sagacious man,” he found
that the former President shared the belief that “our only hope lies in
the elections in New York and Pennsylvania, particularly our charter
election.”[753] That the Administration forces and the Kitchen Cabinet
were equally impressed with the strategic value of victories in New York
City is disclosed in a letter from Major Lewis to James A. Hamilton,
“Have you any doubt of succeeding at your election?” he wrote. “I hope
not; yet I confess I have my fears. The strongest ground to take with
the people is the fact, that under the existing arrangements with the
State banks, the whole revenue collected through your customs house is
left to be dispensed in your own city, instead of being transferred to a
neighboring rival city. Our friends should ring the changes upon this
view in every quarter of the city.”[754] It is thus evident that the
contending forces were concentrating for the election of aldermen and a
mayor in a city then numbering few more than 200,000 people.
Early in March the Opposition deliberately made the Bank the issue by
nominating Gulian C. Verplanck, driven from Congress by the Democrats
because of his fidelity to the Bank, and planning for a popular
vindication of that institution. Two days later the Democrats nominated
Cornelius W. Lawrence, who had been exceedingly bitter against the Bank
while in Congress. Accepting Hone’s opinion that “the personal
characters of both the gentlemen is above reproach,”[755] the election
would definitely determine the drift of public opinion on the contest
then in its most bitter stage. The election returns were confusing. The
mayoralty candidate, who had been ousted from his seat in Congress
because of his support of Biddle, was defeated by the man whose
bitterness against the Bank while in Congress had been notable. The
Democrats won here, and the Opposition lost. The fact that the latter
elected a majority of the aldermen was loudly hailed as a vote against
Jackson on the Bank question, although, in the more spirited contest for
the more important office, the Bank champion was overwhelmed by the
Democrat. The Opposition was jubilant, or pretended to jubilation. A
great celebration was held at Castle Garden, and the faithful poured
forth by the tens of thousands to sit about the tables “spread in a row”
and to do full justice to the “three pipes of wine and forty barrels of
beer placed in the center under an awning.” Full of fire and froth, the
exuberant partisans, learning that Webster was the guest of a lady at
her home, moved thence _en masse_, where the orator, who had declined to
appear among the beer kegs in the Garden, presented himself at the
window and delivered “an address full of fire” which “was received with
rapturous shouts.”[756] All over the Eastern country the Whigs insisted
on accepting the defeat of the Bank candidate for mayor as a victory
for the Bank, and the Philadelphians had “a grand celebration at
Powelton on the Schuylkill”; the Whigs of Albany “fired one hundred
guns”; the Whigs of Buffalo “made a great affair of it with guns and
illuminations”; those of Portsmouth “received the news with one hundred
guns” and “had a town meeting and made speeches.”[757] Meanwhile the
Democrats were proclaiming the election of Lawrence a Jacksonian
triumph. After the various salutes from Portsmouth to the Battery of a
hundred guns, and the celebration in the Garden among the beer kegs, the
Democrats arranged their celebration for the day that Lawrence was to
make his triumphant entry. A steamboat went down to Amboy to receive the
mayor-elect, and “with colors flying and loud huzzas,” the Jacksonians
sat down to a dinner on board, “where Jackson toasts were drunk and
Jackson speeches were made.” Landing at Castle Garden, the new mayor was
conducted in a “barouche drawn by four white horses, and paraded through
the streets.”[758]
But the desperate Opposition, hard pressed, and requiring encouragement
for its followers, succeeded, through exaggerations and red fire, in
convincing the rank and file that an anti-Jackson wave had swept the
Nation. Rhode Island, never a Jackson State, went against the Democrats,
and this was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as though a stronghold
of the enemy had been taken. The triumph of the Whigs in the
Philadelphia ward elections was exploited as a signal triumph. Virginia,
anti-Bank as well as anti-Jackson, was lost to the Democrats, and the
Opposition interpreted it as a pro-Bank as well as an anti-Jackson
verdict. In Louisiana the Whigs won on the tariff, but the impression
was given that the result reflected a popular resentment of the
mistreatment of Nicholas Biddle. As a matter of fact, no intelligent
politician could have attached any particular significance to the
results of the spring elections, and the leaders immediately began
their preparations for the congressional elections in the fall.
II
In these elections the Opposition to Jacksonian Democracy was to fight
for the first time under its new party name. In February, 1834, James
Watson Webb, the unscrupulous speculator in Bank stock, and editor of
the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York City, had proposed that the
combination against the policies of Jackson should be known as the Whig
Party. “It is a glorious name,” said John Forsyth, “and I have no doubt
they will disgrace it.” Within six months the National Republicans and
the Anti-Masons disappeared--united under the Whig banner. In September,
1834, Niles records, in his “Register,” that, “as if by universal
consent, all parties opposed to the present Administration call
themselves Whigs.” And all who called themselves Whigs denounced the
Jacksonians as Tories. It was a pretty conceit. The Whigs of England had
fought the battles of the people against the usurpations of the throne,
and the Whigs of America were fighting the usurpations of Jackson. The
Constitution against anarchy, the people against the Power--such was the
fight of Nicholas Biddle, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun against
Jackson.
A more incongruous combination of contradictions and a more sinister and
unholy alliance than that of the Whigs of the Jacksonian period has
never appeared in the political life of the Republic. These men held
common opinions on none of the fundamental principles of government. A
few years, and few of the leaders and founders could agree as to the
character of the combination.[759] The only plank in the platform of
this ragged array on which all could stand was a hatred of Andrew
Jackson. That was the open sesame to the temple. Beyond that no
questions were asked. Born with the seed of inevitable disintegration,
it was to stagger along through twenty years, to end without a mourner,
and to leave no record worthy of an epitaph. And about the time of its
birth, and after its insignificant successes in the spring elections,
that astute journalist and politician, Thomas Ritchie, of the “Richmond
Enquirer,” foresaw its future with the clear light of a prophet. “When
it comes to act upon any policy or principle,” he wrote, “not connected
with a hatred of Jackson, it must fall to pieces and commence a war
_inter se_. It contains all the elements of dissolution, and is destined
to share the fate of other monstrous alliances.”[760]
But its creators were not concerned in 1834 with anything further than
the overthrow of Jackson and his followers. Not daring to advance a
constructive programme, for the very effort would have wrecked the
party, they confined themselves to extravagant and absurd denunciations
of Jackson as a tyrant usurping power and clambering to a throne. The
congressional campaign opened with a rush. All over the land the Whigs
were raising liberty poles--because they were fighting the battle of
liberty against the despot. And Nicholas Biddle and his Bank, as usual,
wore the liberty cap. When Congress adjourned in June, the moneyed
institution was in a dying condition, and the money market was again
about normal. Only a signal Whig triumph could now save the institution
on Chestnut Street.
III
With the adjournment of Congress, Jackson, with his customary
complacency and confidence in the support of the people, set forth for
the Hermitage for a much-needed rest. He had just again reorganized his
Cabinet because of the failure of the Senate to confirm Taney and the
resignation of Louis McLane. The motive for the latter’s retirement is
only conjectural. That he had never felt at home in the Cabinet circle,
we may well believe. While in the Cabinet, he was not of it. But for the
constant friendship and support of Van Buren, his position would have
been delicate indeed. He was out of sympathy with Jackson at every stage
of the Bank fight. He would have renewed the old charter without a
change; would have renewed it with concessions from the Bank; but he
would have renewed it. With the removal of the deposits he was entirely
out of sympathy. He would not have removed them at all; but, if removed,
he would not have removed them until Congress had convened. His social
affiliations were largely with the old official aristocracy. That he
entertained presidential aspirations was generally understood, and it is
quite possible that he considered a complete separation from the
Administration advantageous to his interests. His associations were such
that he could not have heard much that was not venomously hostile to
Jackson and the Jacksonians. But, a gentleman of dignity, he withdrew
gracefully, plunging into no undignified recriminations.[761]
In appointing his successor, Jackson turned to John Forsyth, whose
services as Administration floor leader in the Senate had been of
immense value, and whose urbanity, wisdom, conservatism, diplomatic
experience, fitted him for the post better than any of his Jacksonian
predecessors. To the place left vacant by Taney, he transferred Mr.
Woodbury, and to the navy he appointed Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, a
gentleman of extensive public experience as a Senator for sixteen years.
Just previous to his appointment, he had declined the Russian Mission.
This was the only Cabinet upheaval of Jackson’s time which had not been
accompanied with much bitterness, with charges and countercharges.
Thus, with affairs in Washington in capable hands, with victory in the
Bank fight on his side, with the delights of the Hermitage just beyond,
the iron man set forth in high spirits and with no regrets or fears. The
Biddle threat of more “discipline” for the people during the summer and
autumn, because of the failure of Congress to recharter the Bank, had
not disturbed him so much as it had alarmed the Whigs. Those in Boston
met the threat with a counter-threat of denunciation, and those in New
York warned Biddle that more distress would certainly prove disastrous
to the Whigs in the fall elections. Biddle deeply resented the criticism
of the Whigs, who, under the leadership of Clay, had practically
blackmailed him into using the Bank’s power against the Democrats. When
those of Boston warned that more discipline of the people might “even
create a necessity for the Whigs, in self-defense, to separate
themselves entirely” from his institution, he wrote in defiant mood to
the president of his Boston branch that “if ... any political party or
association desires to separate itself from the Bank--be it so.” He had
not read the letter to the board of directors lest the members favorable
to the Democrats might use it to the disadvantage of the Whigs.[762] But
he was to find that his frown had lost its force. Another Whig from New
York wrote of much dissatisfaction in that city and State among the
Bank’s friends and “those of influence in the Whig Party--and sure I am
that it is increasing every day.” The feeling was prevalent, encouraged
by the views of Albert Gallatin, that the Bank could have relieved the
distress had it so desired. And Alexander Hamilton, the brother of
Jackson’s friend, and son of the father of the National Bank, wrote a
little later to a correspondent that “it has been found expedient to
abandon the Bank in our political pilgrimage.” He found that “the people
are now familiarly acquainted with the immense power of a national bank
and apprehend all kinds of terrible consequences from its
exercise.”[763] Thus, instead of more “discipline,” the Bank found it
possible to take steps, which, according to Catterall, justified
Jackson, the following December, in saying in his Message that “the Bank
... announced its ability and readiness to abandon the system of
unparalleled curtailment ... and to extend its accommodations to the
community.”
Just, as in 1832, when floating down the Ohio on his last visit to the
Hermitage during the presidential campaign, Andrew Jackson was at peace
with himself and the world. But his friends had given orders to take
nothing for granted and to open the fighting along the whole line. They
had a twofold purpose--to hold the line in Congress, and to defeat,
wherever possible, any senatorial enemies who were candidates for
reëlection. Blair, of the “Globe,” began to issue special editions and
to send them broadcast all over the country.
The fight, as it was waged in New York, Virginia, and Mississippi, will
suffice to illustrate the general character and method of the campaign.
In all three States the Bank was the issue. Even the most hopeful of the
Whigs entertained no illusions as to Pennsylvania, where the most
powerful financial and commercial interests were arrayed with the Bank.
The two parties in the Empire State were mobilized, organized on a
military footing, and ready and eager for the fray.[764] The elections
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were held in October, a month before
those in New York, and the first shock to the Whigs came in the returns
from these two States. That Pennsylvania, the home of Biddle, Sergeant,
and Duane, should have gone against the Bank and for Jackson, was not
disappointing, for little had been expected there. But much was expected
in New Jersey. There the issue was distinct. The two Senators from that
State had voted with the Bank on the deposits question. The Legislature
had adopted resolutions commendatory of Jackson’s actions, and in his
Protest the fighting President had not scrupled to quote these
resolutions to prove that the Senators had deliberately misrepresented
their people. Senator Frelinghuysen, in commenting upon these
instructions, had boasted that he and his colleague had “dared to meet
the frowns of their constituents,” and would not “bow the knee to these
instructions.”[765] Now he was before the people for reëlection, and the
issue was plain. The people’s verdict was unmistakable. The little State
swept into the Jackson column with a substantial majority, and
Frelinghuysen was retired.
Goaded by the sting of the New Jersey defeat, the New York Whigs
redoubled their efforts. “The Whigs are raising liberty poles in all the
wards,” wrote Hone. “I went to one of these ceremonies yesterday at the
corner of the Bowery and Hester Street. The pole, a hundred feet high,
with a splendid cap and gilt vane with suitable devices, was escorted by
a procession of good men and true.”[766] Thus, if the “mob” could make
the welkin ring at Democratic meetings, the more aristocratic Whigs
could sally forth from their counting-rooms and libraries to rub
shoulders with the common herd at Hester Street and the Bowery and shout
approval of the raising of a pole. But all was in vain. By nine o’clock
on the evening of the first day, Hone and his fellow Whigs realized that
“enough was known to satisfy us to our hearts’ content that we are
beaten--badly beaten; worse than the least sanguine of us
expected.”[767] The jubilant Democrats, however, were determined that
the Whig leaders should not feel utterly deserted, and a crowd of them
surged before Hone’s house with hisses and catcalls which kept him awake
all night. The Lord Holland of the American Whigs, who was sick at the
time, was inclined to resent it, but the next evening he found
consolation in dining with Webster who “was in a vein to be exceedingly
pleasant.”[768]
Such was the intensity of feeling and the bitterness of the struggle
that enthusiastic partisans partook of the nature of mobs in the larger
centers. Nowhere were the Democrats so intense as in Philadelphia,
where, on election day, the warring partisans exchanged shots, the
headquarters of the Whigs was sacked and burned by a mob which drove
back the firemen that attempted to quench the flames. A number of houses
were completely reduced to ashes. Such was the panic of Nicholas Biddle
that the day before the election he sent his wife and children into the
country, filled his house with armed men, and prepared for a siege. The
Bank building bristled with the bayonets and muskets of guards. But when
the gray dawn came, the one-time financial dictator found that none of
his property had been molested. It was blow enough to him to learn that
the Whigs, the country over, had gone down before the popular uprising.
But the bitterest fight was waged in Virginia, where the situation was
mixed to the point of chaos. The State was anti-Bank, but it was
anti-Jackson. Opposed to the Bank, it had been equally opposed to the
removal of the deposits. The feeling in Richmond was so inflamed that
only personal respect for Ritchie saved the “Enquirer” from mob
violence, for the courageous editor stuck to his guns and tried to
divert attention to the Bank itself. Administration papers were
established throughout the State with instructions to follow the lead of
his pen. The Virginia plan was twofold: to make the most of the
unpopularity of Leigh, who was again a candidate for the Senate, and to
divide and distract the Whigs by playing Clay against Calhoun. Nowhere
did the Democrats appreciate, as they did in Virginia, the impossible
nature of the Whig combination, and they dwelt upon its inconsistencies
from the beginning. Clay announced that he was not a candidate for the
presidential nomination in 1836. “But Mr. Clay knows not himself,” wrote
Ritchie. “But ambition does not burn so intensely in his bosom as it
does in the heart of another leader of the Senate (Mr. Calhoun). If
recent signs do not deceive us, this extraordinary man (extraordinary
every way for the vigor of his mind, the variety of his principles, and
the intensity of his ambition) will soon take the field, with feeble
hopes of winning the votes of the South, as well as the support of the
Bank. Then we shall see under which king the various members of the
opposition will range themselves.”[769] This irrepressible conflict of
Whig ambitions and interests was played upon by the Democratic press of
Virginia all through the summer and autumn of 1834.
But the immediate purpose of the Virginia Democrats was to humiliate
Leigh, who was unpopular with the masses because of his bitter fight in
the Constitutional Convention against the extension of the suffrage. And
he was as strongly with the Bank as Virginia was against it. A
house-to-house canvass was made, and in districts where a majority were
found against him it was proposed to evoke the right of instructions to
Assemblymen. The plan succeeded to the extent of disclosing a majority
hostile to the reëlection of Leigh, but the Whigs, who carried the
State, succeeded after a bitter struggle in returning him through a
flagrant disregard of the expressed will of the constituencies. The
battle was thus but half lost. The Democrats were supplied with
ammunition they were to use with deadly effect, and within little more
than a year they were to drive the two anti-Jackson Senators of Virginia
into private life. Ritchie began the next year’s battle without delay.
The “Enquirer” was flooded with resolutions and letters protesting the
election of Leigh over the instructions of the majority of the
people.[770]
In Mississippi the Jacksonians determined to prevent the reëlection of
Senator Poindexter, long the idol of the Mississippi Democracy, who had
turned upon Jackson with a virulence scarcely equaled by any old-line
Federalist, and cast his lot with Clay. With the adjournment of
Congress, the Mississippi Senator hastened home, where the enemies of
the Administration had planned a series of banquets at which he was to
denounce the President and vindicate himself. The Whigs were with him.
The Democrats, delighted with a slashing and brilliant assault on
Poindexter by Robert J. Walker, put that able publicist in the field,
and within a week he was engaged in one of the most spectacular
canvasses Mississippi had ever known, firing enormous open-air meetings
of frenzied Jacksonians. The outcome was the election of Walker--a
victory sweet to Jackson, for it was the vanquished who had sponsored
the resolution attacking his Protest.[771] And the triumph was all the
sweeter from the fact that, while Poindexter had supported the
Nullifiers, Walker had taken the lead against them in Mississippi, on
the platform, and through the press.
Thus the elections of 1834 were more than pleasing to Jackson and his
party. Two of his strongest senatorial opponents had lost their seats as
a result of their opposition, and Leigh had been saved only by a
disreputable betrayal of the people. In the Senate the Administration
was strengthened; and in the House the Democratic majority was reduced
but eight votes, leaving it a clear majority of 46 out of 242 members.
Strangely enough, so reliable an historian as McMaster has described
these elections as a triumph of the Whigs. Such was not the
interpretation of the Whigs themselves. Hone thought that they were
“badly beaten--worse than the least sanguine of us expected.”[772]
Webster accepted the verdict as final, and, much to the distress and
indignation of Biddle, announced that he was through. But the most
conclusive evidence of the contemporary opinion of the Whigs comes from
Thurlow Weed, the sagacious Whig journalist of the “Albany Journal.”
More prescient than most of the Whig leaders of the time, he had
foreseen the inevitable result of an attempt to win upon the Bank issue.
Quite early, when Webster’s keynote speech on the Bank, delivered at a
mass meeting in Boston, was sent for publication to all the party
papers, the copy that reached Weed never found its way into the “Albany
Journal.”[773] And immediately after the election in 1834, he
editorially expressed the feeling which appears to have taken possession
of the party generally. “There is one cause,” he wrote, “for
congratulations, connected with the recent election, in which even we
participate. It has terminated the United States Bank war.... We have
from the beginning deprecated the successive conflicts in defense of the
Bank.... But we have gone with our friends through these three
campaigns, under a strong and settled conviction that in every issue to
be tried by the people to which the Bank was a party, we must be beaten.
After struggling along from year to year with a doomed Bank upon our
shoulders, both the Bank and our party are finally overwhelmed.[774]”
Nor is it surprising that Clay, whose selfishness had forced Biddle into
making the recharter a campaign issue, was glad to dump the doomed Bank
from his shoulders. It is impossible to follow his course, pointing as
every act does to a purely party purpose, without arriving at the
conviction that he really cared little about the institution on Chestnut
Street. As the fight became more hopeless, he found the importunities of
Biddle more irksome. Viewed purely as a political or party contest, the
clever politicians who dominated the Jacksonian camp had shown far more
prescience and sagacity than the wisest of the Whigs. Amos Kendall had
a better understanding of the psychology of the masses than Clay or
Webster. Among the Whigs, Weed alone saw the end from the beginning. The
attempt to arouse the people in behalf of a great moneyed institution
against the attacks of a popular hero was in itself a grotesque and
ghastly absurdity. But after the decision had been made to undertake it,
the methods of Biddle and his political allies made defeat a certainty.
Frank Blair, of the “Globe,” was evidently sincere in his assertion that
had he been permitted to dictate the policy of the Whigs, he could not
have hit upon a plan more satisfactory to the Democrats.
That Jackson knew little of banking and advanced some strange theories
in the course of the fight; that he resorted to methods of violence in
some instances; and that he fought to kill, rather than to reform, may
be admitted. But the very nature of the fight he waged compelled the
Bank to disclose its tremendous power over the prosperity of the people.
No matter what they may have thought in the beginning, no one could have
doubted toward the end that the Bank did have the power to precipitate
panics, to punish the people for legislation it resented, to dominate,
in the end, the legislation of the future by the threat of reprisal upon
the business of the Nation. No one, in 1834, doubted that the National
Bank, in the hands of a man like Biddle domineering over pliant
directors, and assuming dictatorial authority over the members of
Congress, possessed powers incompatible with the preservation of the
rights and liberties of the people. From that day on, the Bank has had
its apologists among historians, and Jackson has been excoriated as an
ignorant usurper, but there has never been a time since when the
American people would have tolerated a return to the system that was
destroyed. Through several years the country was to be disturbed by the
sometimes stumbling processes of transition from the old to the new
system, but the Bank fight ended with the verdict of the polls in 1834.
Only the censure of the Senate remained to poison the mind of the iron
man in the White House. The Bank lingered on, a little while, under the
laws of Pennsylvania, and then crashed to the earth, ruining many of its
supporters.[775] And on the banker’s death, Hone copied into his diary
the comment of William Cullen Bryant in the “New York Evening Post,”
that Biddle “died at his country seat where he passed the last of his
days in elegant retirement, which, if justice had taken place, would
have been spent in the penitentiary.”[776]
The prolonged battle has left a lasting impression upon the political
life and methods of the Republic. It aroused, as never before, that
class consciousness, to which politicians have ever since appealed; it
gave dignity to demagogy, and made it pay. It marked the beginning of
the active participation of powerful corporations, as such, in the
politics of the country, witnessed the adoption of the methods of
intimidation and coercion, of systematic propaganda, of the
subsidization of disreputable newspapers. From that day on, the powerful
corporation has been anathema to the masses, monopoly has been a red
rag, and the contest between capital and labor has been a reality. If
this has been unfortunate, the fault has been no less with Clay, who
sought and made the issue, and with Biddle and his arrogant reliance on
the power of money, than with Jackson and the Kitchen Cabinet who
challenged the political pretensions of the Bank.
IV
The Whig leaders entered upon the congressional session of December in a
bitter mood. Calhoun was especially vicious and in a chronic rage
against the President and the Administration. The fury of the Whigs was
not moderated by the fact that State Legislatures were beginning to
demand the expunging from the records of the resolution of censure.
Benton, in the previous session, had served notice of his intention to
move to expunge, and the Kitchen Cabinet in the meanwhile had been busy
in building backfires against the offending Senators among their
constituents. The first State to act was Alabama. The day before Senator
King presented the Alabama resolutions, during a running discussion of
the revelations of mismanagement and crookedness in the Post-Office
Department, Senator Preston suggested that the Senate should censure
some one. Just whom he would censure was not made clear, but he did
refer to the previous declaration of Jackson that he was responsible for
the Executive departments. “Does any one doubt the turpitude of the
Post-Office?” asked Preston. “When hardly the age of man, it is found
steeped in corruption the most foul, the most melancholy. If the
President is responsible, and the officers acted improperly, is this the
house to present the subject? And shall we stand by without saying or
doing anything in regard to the present state of things in that
department?”
Calhoun was instantly on his feet. He had listened to the report on the
Post-Office “with sorrow and deep mortification.” After twenty-two years
of connection with the Government he was able to say that “in all that
time the charges of corruption against all the departments of the
Government that he had ever heard of were not equal to the disclosures
here made.” In truth he thought that “the exhibition would disgrace the
rottenest age of the Roman Republic.” He hoped some resolution would be
presented.
This implied threat was not lost on the ever alert Benton, and on the
following day he took the floor, reminded the Senate of his promise,
declared that nothing less than the expurgation of the offensive censure
would suffice, and served notice of his intention to present the
resolution. This opened the first debate on expurgation. Clay, with a
personal fling at Benton, saltily expressed the hope that before acting
the Missourian would carefully examine the Constitution, and concluded
that he would “oppose such a resolution at the very threshold.” Preston
conceded that his party had been “beaten down,” and demanded to know
whether “everything that we have done shall be expunged.” Calhoun would
“like to see a resolution which proposed to repeal the journal--to
repeal a fact.” If the thing could be done, “the Senate itself could be
expunged,” and the Government itself was at an end. He was “anxious to
see who would attempt to carry out the doctrines of the Protest of last
year--doctrines as despotic as those which were held by the autocrat of
all the Russias.”
To this, King took vigorous exception. The resolution of censure was not
“a fact.” “The Democracy of this land has spoken and pronounced its
condemnation of the proceeding.” He had hoped, when Calhoun declared on
a previous occasion that he would act for the country, he would have
little more to do with party, but he had since manifested a very
different feeling. Stung by the taunt, Calhoun made no half-hearted
denial of partisan bias. “I have no purpose to serve,” he said. “I have
no desire to be here.” And then, with evident insincerity, he added,
“Sir, I would not turn upon my heel to be entrusted with the management
of the Government.”[777]
When, a few weeks later, the day before the expiration of the session,
the discussion was renewed, Hugh Lawson White, now rapidly cooling to
frigidity toward Jackson, moved to amend Benton’s resolution by striking
out the word “expunge” and substituting “rescind, reverse, and to make
null and void.” This incident has been given an historical importance
beyond its due by many who have attributed to the motion the final break
between Jackson and White. The action of the Tennessee Senator
unquestionably outraged the Jacksonians, who ascribed it to hostility,
but such was not the dominating motive. He took the position that he
could not vote to “obliterate and deface the journal of the Senate.”
Benton protested that the word “expunge” was strictly parliamentary. To
his astonishment and chagrin, he discovered that White was not the only
Democrat who objected to his phrasing of the resolution, as others
crowded about him to urge the acceptance of the amendment. Finding
himself almost deserted, he afterwards said that he “yielded a
mortifying and reluctant consent.”[778] All this the proud Missourian
could stand. But when Webster immediately arose, and, after sounding the
pæan of triumph, moved that the resolution be laid upon the table; and
after Clay and Calhoun had spoken with bitterness and contempt, the
spirit of compromise died out in his heart, and he then and there
promised himself to continue the battle. The debate was acrimonious in
spirit, and in the midst of “great excitement.”[779] This was the
preliminary battle which was to have a spectacular ending in a
Jacksonian triumph a short time before the expiration of the iron man’s
Presidency.
V
To the Jacksonians, the most distressing feature of the short session
was the disclosure of the utter incompetency, blackened by positive
crookedness, in the rapidly growing Post-Office Department, which called
for the management of a man of more than ordinary organizing and
business ability. Major Barry possessed neither qualification. An honest
man himself, without the slightest business sense, easily imposed upon,
surrounded by subordinates who were scamps, and forced to deal with mail
contractors who were criminals, he lost control early in his
administration. When the Clayton investigation was completed, the
department was found honeycombed with fraud, plastered with forgeries,
and in a hopeless financial condition. And yet no one seriously
suspected Barry of complicity. Clay, who had lost the support of Harry,
his neighbor in Lexington, on the “bargain” story, did not hesitate to
exonerate him from culpability. But there was no defense for the
conditions, and Jackson, in his Message, had recommended a complete
reorganization of the department better to safeguard the public
interest. The two parties stood together on the Reorganization Bill, and
no member of either party attempted any justification of the conditions.
But the Democrats were on their toes throughout the-session to prevent
any personal condemnation of either Barry or Jackson. The Whigs lost no
opportunity to capitalize the scandal. The public money had been
squandered. Crooked contractors had been permitted to loot the Treasury.
They did not know the extent of the corruption, nor the responsibility
of the head of the department, but they did know that the putridity of
the thing had never been approached in American history. The majority
report of the investigating committee found a deficit of $800.000; the
minority placed the amount at $300,000; but both agreed that it was due
in part at least to maladministration.[780] Felix Grundy, who had charge
for the Administration, rejoiced in the fact, “to the honor of his
countrymen,” that no one “had been found to accuse the
Postmaster-General of corruption”;[781] and Senator Bibb of Kentucky, a
supporter of Clay, paid tribute to the personal qualities of Barry and
ascribed the failure to “the good disposition and kindness” of the head
of the department, which had been imposed upon by “interested and
selfish persons to further their own private interests.” Thus, in the
Senate, the debate on the Reorganization Bill was conducted with decorum
and without exciting personalities. An utter lack of system, a director
deficient in business sense and over-credulous, and all preyed upon by
dishonest subordinates and criminally inclined speculators--such was the
sense of the Senate.
But in the House, Barry’s personal integrity was not to go unchallenged.
In the lower branch he was unfortunate in friends who loved, not wisely,
but too well, who thought to prevent assault by challenging it. Some of
these had avowed a disposition to consider such an assault a personal
offense. During a night session, William C. Johnson of Maryland, a
promising and eloquent young Whig of imposing personal appearance,
sought an opportunity to affront Representative Hawes of Kentucky, a
member of the special dueling club. An insignificant incident during the
discussion of a post-route bill sufficed. On obtaining the floor,
Johnson looked significantly at Hawes, and with sinister deliberation
began: “It has been broadly hinted by some gentlemen ... that he who
shall have the temerity to criticize the acts of the Postmaster-General
must answer therefor elsewhere than in this hall.... Sir, I come from a
portion of the country where the law of personal responsibility is
recognized among gentlemen. I hold myself amenable to that law ...; and
now, in the face of those menaces which have been thrown out on this
floor, and intending to be responsible for what I am about to say, I
declare that the Post-Office Department is corrupt from head to foot,
through and through, and I believe that the head of the department,
William T. Barry, is as culpable as any officer under his control.”
The House was instantly in an uproar as Hawes rose to ask if Johnson
meant that the department was corrupt from Barry down. The young blade
from Maryland jauntily replied in the affirmative. Hawes said that Barry
was “as honest and honorable as any man who has a seat on this floor,”
and asked Johnson for the grounds for his charge. In the spirit of
swashbuckler he had set out to be, the latter merely reiterated what he
had said. There was no misunderstanding the meaning of the situation--it
meant a duel unless Johnson would agree to a qualification of his
statement. To all such appeals he was adamant. When, as a result, he was
challenged by Barry’s son, he began to hedge with the demand that the
duel take place “immediately.” He would not even consent to a day’s
delay, and young Barry withdrew the challenge. The incident proved
nothing except that in the Thirties young men carried chips on their
shoulders, and bandied words lightly.
The contemporaries of Barry exonerated him, and history has acquiesced
in their verdict.[782] But it was apparent that his usefulness in the
Cabinet was over. He had never been qualified. While the debate on the
Reorganization Bill was still in progress, Jackson summoned Amos Kendall
to the task of assuming charge and placing the department on a business
basis. At that time, the wizard of the Kitchen Cabinet, in ill health,
and without private means, was planning to retire from the public
service to serve his family more satisfactorily in a financial way. He
demurred--Jackson insisted--and in the end, like the good soldier that
he was, he yielded.
Barry, gracefully let out with the mission to Spain, sailed away, to die
in London on the way, and Kendall took charge. It is amazing that the
party prejudices of ninety years ago should still persist and refuse
justice to the genius of this exceptional man. Professor MacDonald does
not overstate when he describes him “as a man of remarkable
administrative power.”[783] Nor is it probable that so seasoned an
observer of public men as Senator Foote was unduly impressed when he
described him as “discoursing upon the gravest and most important
questions with a profundity and power which left a lasting
impress.”[784] Brilliant with the pen, sagacious beyond almost any man
of his time as a politician, wise in counsel, and yet capable of
managing the dry-as-dust details of the most practical of departments,
Amos Kendall is probably one of the greatest all-around publicists the
Republic has produced.
His first step on taking charge was thoroughly to familiarize himself
with the minute details of his office, with the special functions of
each subordinate, and the character of the man. He soon discovered the
secret of the good-natured Barry’s undoing, when a clerk, suspected of
having relations with a contractor as agent, approached him
ingratiatingly with the announcement that he “had control of funds and
would be happy to accommodate him with loans.” He was promptly
discharged.[785] After a thorough survey, Kendall concluded that “a few
powerful mail contractors, through favors to the officers and more
influential clerks, had really controlled the department, and for their
own selfish ends, and been the cause of all its embarrassments.”[786] He
adopted stringent rules for the guidance of employees. The acceptance of
a gift was to mean dismissal. So, too, with free rides on stage-coaches,
steamboats, or railroad cars carrying mail. Applying the rules as
rigidly to himself as to others, he promptly returned all presents and
free tickets, and thenceforward the Postmaster-General paid his way. But
the task confronting him was tremendous. The department was deeply in
debt and was sinking deeper. Not satisfied with the showing of
corruption by the congressional committee, he went over the ground and
uncovered crookedness it had overlooked. The postmaster of New York was
caught in the net and instantly dismissed. Some powerful and influential
contractors who had carried the mail between Washington and Philadelphia
were suspected, and Kendall made a searching investigation. Major Barry,
still in Washington at this time, became seriously disturbed, and
conceived the notion that his successor was bent on embarrassing him,
and Kendall, who had no suspicion of his predecessor, sent for him and
personally reassured him. But there were other embarrassments within the
Administration household. Mrs. Eaton, then in Washington, and intimate
with the family of one of the contractors who was pressing a claim that
Kendall was examining, called one day on Mrs. Kendall with the bald
proposition that if the claim were allowed, the contractor would present
the wife of the Postmaster-General with “a carriage and a pair of
horses.” The incident was promptly reported to Kendall, who recorded the
story many years later.[787] Applying himself and his administrative
genius diligently to his task, driving out the incompetent and corrupt,
practicing economy while extending the scope of the department’s
services, he soon put it on a paying basis, and before the expiration of
Jackson’s Administration, less than two years later, wiped out the
deficit. This is the man some historians have described as a vulgar
politician and a “printer.”
VI
No incident of this session so well illustrates the partisan bitterness
and the venomous nature of the hates engendered by the struggles of the
preceding years as the attempt on the life of Jackson at the Capitol on
January 30, 1835.[788] Under normal conditions and in ordinary times the
incident would have been dismissed, and, properly, ascribed to the
insanity of the assailant. But it was the first time an attempt had been
made upon the life of a President--and it was a President who had been
intemperately denounced as a tyrant, despot, and wrecker of American
institutions and liberties. Just as John Tyler had instantly thought of
“political effect,”[789] the ardent friends of Jackson caught the same
idea from the opposite angle. And two days later, Frank Blair in the
“Globe” threw out the suggestion of a conspiracy. “Whether Lawrence [the
assailant] has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has
prevailed the last two sessions of the Senate,” he wrote, “whether he
has become infatuated with the chimeras which have troubled the brains
of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the
President as a Cæsar who ought to have a Brutus; as a Cromwell, a Nero,
a Tiberius, we know not. If no secret conspiracy has prompted the
perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some
delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and
that hearing despotism and every horrible mischief threatened to the
Republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the
necessary consequence of the President’s measures, it may be that the
infatuated man fancied that he had reason to become his country’s
avenger. If he had heard and believed Mr. Calhoun’s speech of day before
yesterday, he would have found in it ample justification for his attempt
on one who was represented as the cause of the most dreadful calamities
of the Nation; as one who made perfect rottenness and corruption to
pervade the vitals of the Government, insomuch that it was scarcely
worth preserving, if it were possible.”[790]
The intimation here thrown out was bitterly resented by the Opposition
leaders, and particularly by Calhoun, who was mentioned. The very fact
that the intemperate and insincere denunciations of high officials as
responsible for the distress of the people, acting upon the diseased
brain, can very easily persuade the madman to constitute himself the
executioner, served to infuriate the orators who had given themselves
full play. Stung to the quick, Calhoun denounced the “Globe” as “base
and prostitute,” and described it as “the authentic and established
organ” of Jackson, “sustained by his power and pampered by his
hands.” “To what are we coming?” he exclaimed. “We are told that
to denounce the abuse of the Administration even in general terms,
without personal reference, is to instigate the assassination of the
Chief Executive.... I have made up my mind as to my duty. I am no
candidate for any office--I neither seek nor desire place--nothing
shall intimidate--nothing shall prevent me from doing what I believe is
due to my conscience and my country.”[791] Mr. Calhoun sat down--and
Mr. Leigh immediately rose to present a report from the Committee on
Revolutionary Claims.
But Mr. Calhoun’s attack on the “Globe” was not unnoticed by Blair, who
replied by quoting from the most venomous portions of Calhoun’s and
Preston’s tirades on the Post-Office report. A week later the
Administration organ was still harping on conspiracy. “Every hour,”
wrote Blair, “brings new proof to show that Lawrence has been operated
on to seek the President’s life, precisely as we had supposed from the
moment we learned that he had been an attendant on the debates in
Congress.”[792]
Very soon the capital was startled with the connection of Senator
Poindexter’s name with that of the assailant. The obsession took
possession of Jackson that his Mississippi enemy had instigated the
attempt at assassination. The examination of Lawrence had clearly
established his insanity; just as clearly shown that he had taken to
heart the charges of Jackson’s enemies that he was responsible for the
distress of the people. Finding himself hard pressed by fate, and
ascribing his unhappiness to the tyranny of Jackson, he had determined
to kill him. That explanation was convincing and sufficient. But the
suggestion that Poindexter had planned the deed fell on receptive soil.
Affidavits had been placed in Jackson’s hands to the effect that “a
gentleman who boarded in the same house informed him that Mr.
Poindexter had interviews with Lawrence but a few days before the
attempt on the President’s life.” Some time before the attack, “a
captain in high standing in the navy” had said that Poindexter, on a
voyage to New Orleans, had threatened to demand personal satisfaction of
Jackson, and if he refused “he would shoot him wherever he saw him.”
This had caused such anxiety to Jackson’s friends that the Reverend Mr.
Hatch, chaplain of the Senate, had personally informed Jackson of the
threat. All this, followed, after the assault, with an affidavit that
Lawrence had been seen to “go repeatedly to Poindexter’s residence,”
thoroughly convinced Jackson, who appears to have been in a morbid
condition like his enemies.[793] He excitedly charged it in conversation
with callers at the White House. Miss Martineau, who was friendly with
the Poindexters, and apparently fond of the Senator, was literally
forced to leave the White House by the abusive denunciation of the
Mississippian. She became his ardent partisan, and took pains to record
in her book that, on visiting the Poindexters on the night of the
assault, she had “greatly admired the moderation with which Mr.
Poindexter spoke of his foe.”[794]
Hearing from many quarters of Jackson’s charges, Poindexter wrote him
that he would discredit the reports unless confirmed by the President,
but that a failure to reply would be accepted as a confirmation. Jackson
displayed Poindexter’s letter to visitors, but made no response. Thus a
perfectly foolish notion of Jackson’s was forced to an issue. To
understand the feeling behind it all, and to appreciate the bitter
hostility of Poindexter, to which frequent reference has been made, it
is necessary to know more of the character and career of this really
remarkable but tragic figure.
George Poindexter was something of a genius, and, until his break with
Jackson, an idol of Mississippi. From the beginning he had been
accorded the leadership of the Democratic or Jeffersonian Party in that
Territory. His early congressional career was a justification of his
leadership. One who knew him in those days tells us that “his mind was
logical and strong; his conception was quick and acute; his powers of
combination and application were astonishing; his wit was pointed and
caustic, and his sarcasm overwhelming.”[795] These qualities made him a
tremendous power upon the stump with the then primitive people of his
State. In the gubernatorial office he rendered invaluable service which
strengthened his hold upon the masses. On the bench, he was noted for
his ability and justice, and, among the lawyers, he was conceded to have
few equals before a jury. During the War of 1812 he had further endeared
himself to the Mississippians by his patriotic appeal for preparation,
and, after he had aroused the Territory to fever heat, and Jackson had
appeared upon the scene, he became a volunteer aid upon the staff of the
future President. It was to Poindexter that the negro or soldier carried
the infamous British countersign, “Booty and Beauty,” and it was
Poindexter who conveyed it to Jackson. Later his enemies charged that he
had forged it to win the favor of the General. That such a man should
have made enemies was inevitable. So bitter were his denunciations of
his political enemies, so unscrupulous his use of terms, that at one
time a conspiracy was formed to force him into a duel and kill him. The
opportunity came after a peculiarly vitriolic attack upon a wealthy
merchant who affiliated with the Federalists. The merchant challenged
and was killed. Then Poindexter’s enemies charged that he had fired
before the word was given.
Nowhere in the campaign of 1828 did Jackson receive more ardent support
than in Mississippi where his old friend Poindexter directed his forces,
and one year after his inauguration, the lieutenant entered the Senate,
and almost immediately the feud between the erstwhile friends began.
The sordid feature of the story is the fact that it grew out of a
patronage controversy. Jackson had determined on the appointment of a
Tennesseean, a neighbor of the Hermitage, to the land office of
Mississippi. Poindexter protested that this patronage belonged to his
State and to him. Jackson refused to yield. Poindexter prevented the
confirmation of the Tennesseean. Jackson made a recess appointment, and
thenceforward the two comrades of 1812 were at swords’ points. Thus far
Jackson was manifestly in the wrong. His loyalty to friendship cannot
explain his disloyalty to Poindexter--who was also a friend, and a
friend in need. But such was the Mississippian’s prejudice and hate that
he abandoned, not only the President and purely Administration measures,
but the principles he had espoused and advocated for a generation. He
crossed the Rubicon, burned the bridges, and became a special favorite
of Clay’s. In every great fight of the Jackson period, Poindexter was
found arrayed with the Opposition. He stood with the Bank, favored the
censure, and offered the resolutions denunciatory of the Protest. In the
Nullification contest, he had essayed to lead the Nullifiers, and became
more offensive than Calhoun.
Unfortunately for Poindexter, in the fighting that followed he was far
from invulnerable on the personal side. Having been unfortunate in his
domestic relations, he had divorced his wife, denied the paternity of
his children, and plunged into the most reckless dissipation.[796] His
indecent reflections upon the purity of his wife drove her family,
extensive and influential, to his enemies; his intemperate tirades
against Jackson alienated the dominant Democratic sentiment of the
State; and while he fought boldly and bitterly to sustain himself, he
failed, and, at the time of the attack on Jackson by the madman at the
Capitol, was so discredited in Mississippi that he was planning to leave
the State, with his second wife, on the expiration of his term. A man
of genius whose morals failed to sustain his mentality--such the epitaph
of George Poindexter.[797]
Three weeks after Lawrence had fired and failed, Poindexter called the
Senate’s attention to an anonymous letter stating that affidavits were
in the hands of the President charging that interviews had taken place
between the assailant and himself a few days before the attempt on
Jackson’s life, and asking the appointment of a special committee of
investigation. Henry Clay, avowing that the rumors “inspired him with
nothing but the deepest mortification and regret,” and that it was
“impossible to credit the statement that affidavits should have been
procured at the instance of the Chief Executive for the purpose of
implicating a Senator of the United States in so foul a transaction,”
reluctantly consented to an investigation. Without further discussion, a
committee, consisting of John Tyler, chairman, Smith, Mangum, King, and
Silas Wright, was appointed, with permission to sit during the sessions
of the Senate; and three days later it unanimously exonerated Poindexter
from suspicion. Webster asked for the yeas and nays on its acceptance;
every Senator voted yea, and thus ended the most unfortunate incident in
the career of Andrew Jackson. The “Washington Globe,” which had
published the affidavits, wholly discredited them about the same
time.[798]
VII
The Calhoun inquiry “into the extent of federal patronage, the
circumstances which have contributed to its great increase of late, the
expediency and practicability of reducing the same, and the means of
such reduction,” served further to fan the flames of partisan madness
during this session. Persisting in the fallacy that he was not moved by
partisan or political considerations, he suggested that the committee be
composed of two members of each party. The Senate, however, was not
deceived as to his purpose, and selected four enemies of the
Administration, Calhoun, Webster, Southard, and Bibb, and two Democrats,
Benton, and King of Georgia. In due time an elaborate report was
submitted. It set forth that 60,294 persons were in the employ of the
Government; that together with the pensioners this meant more than
100,000 dependent on the Treasury. Implying that these constituted a
federal machine, Calhoun added all engaged in business who wished to
furnish supplies as part of the organization, influenced by patronage.
Worse--there were thousands who wished to get upon the pay-roll who
would willingly play the part of pliant tools to curry favor with
Executive power. And how was this to be remedied? Since one of the
causes contributing to the enlargement of the President’s patronage was
the increase in governmental expenditure, the statesmanlike thing to do
would be to reduce the revenue. A great amount of public land had been
thrown upon the market, calling for an army of receivers, registers, and
surveyors--all of whom were tools of Jackson. The Jacksonian policy of
removing men from office to make way for henchmen had reduced the
efficiency of the public service by making reappointments dependent on
something other than faithful service. This, by making the officials
dependent upon the President, tended to make them all subservient to his
will, and little better than his slaves. More: the power assumed by the
President to select the banks for the public deposits made them a part
of the presidential machine. If the public revenue could be reduced, and
the Government thus starved, many would be forced from the public crib,
but unhappily this could not be done. He proposed, therefore, a
constitutional amendment permitting the annual distribution of the
surplus till 1843 by a division of it into as many shares as there were
Senators and Representatives, with ten shares for each Territory and the
District of Columbia. And in addition to all this, he would enact a law
to regulate the deposits of public money, and another to repeal that
part of the Act of 1820 which limited the terms of customs officers.
When the report was submitted to the Senate, Poindexter made it the
occasion for mournful and indignant reflections upon the growing tyranny
of Jackson. He was profoundly moved by the revelations. Surely as many
as thirty thousand extra copies of the report should be published for
distribution. “The question now submitted to the Nation,” he said, “is
whether power is to be perpetuated in the hands of him who now wields
it, and the one he may select as his successor.” It was most unfortunate
that the people would not awaken to the sinister attacks upon their
liberties and institutions. The thoughtful, however, could not but see
the trend.
But why print thirty thousand copies, asked King of Georgia, if not to
serve a party purpose at the expense of the taxpayers? “What a spectacle
we do present from day to day!” he exclaimed. “The Senate has been a
week making war on the extras of the Post-Office Department. We are now
warring against the extravagance of the Executive; and whilst
brandishing the sword in one hand in defense of the public Treasury
against the ravages of the Executive, we are, with the other, slipping
it into our own pockets, or scattering it in profuse and wasteful
extravagance.”
The Senate compromised on ten thousand copies, and a rather dull debate,
in which the Bank question was revived, resulted. The bills proposed by
the Whig committee passed the Whig Senate to be promptly rejected in the
Democratic House. These measures merely served as pegs on which to hang
further denunciations of Jackson and his policies.
And the Democrats countered with an enthusiastic banquet in celebration
of the wiping-out of the national debt for the first time in history.
This had been one of Jackson’s ambitions--a consummation Clay had
determined should not come before the presidential election of 1832. But
it could not be prevented; and while the Whigs were expanding on
extravagance and the crowded public crib, the Jacksonians were pointing
to the extinguishment of the public debt as an answer to the attacks.
Benton, who presided as toastmaster at the banquet, was in flamboyant
mood.
“The national debt is paid,” he said. “This month of January, 1835, in
the fifty-eighth year of the Republic, Andrew Jackson being President,
the national debt is paid, and the apparition, so long unseen on
earth--a great nation without a national debt--stands revealed to the
astonished vision of a wondering world. Gentlemen, my heart is in this
double celebration, and I offer you a sentiment, which, coming directly
from my own bosom, will find its response in yours: President Jackson:
may the evening of his days be as tranquil and as happy for himself as
their meridian has been resplendent, glorious, and beneficent for his
country.”
Such was the partisan madness of this short session that a resolution,
offered and urged by Preston, the Whig, for the purchase of some
pictures for “the President’s house,” was promptly voted down, and
Preston’s efforts to have the vote reconsidered were unavailing. It was
into this madhouse of partisan rancor that the French crisis,
threatening war, involving the world prestige of the Republic, had been
thrown by Jackson; and we shall now note how nearly partisanship came to
compromising and weakening the Nation in the face of a foreign
antagonist.
CHAPTER XIV
WHIG DISLOYALTY IN FRENCH CRISIS
I
The most important battle of the short session of 1834-35 was waged over
Jackson’s determination to compel France to observe her obligations
under the treaty signed in Paris and Washington in July, 1831. After
futile efforts by the four preceding Administrations to bring France to
the payment of an indemnity for losses to American vessels during the
Napoleonic wars, Jackson succeeded in negotiating a treaty in which
France stipulated to pay the United States five millions in six annual
installments, and we agreed to the reduction of duties on French wines.
We immediately conformed to our agreement, but the French manifested no
such respect for their obligations. Several sessions of the French
Chamber failed to make appropriations for the payments, notwithstanding
the earnest remonstrances of Washington. Thoroughly vexed at the
contemptuous indifference of Paris, Jackson withdrew Livingston from the
State Department, and sent him to the French Court to insist upon the
discharge of the treaty obligations. Before the crisis came, he had
summoned to his side as Secretary of State the courtly and able John
Forsyth, concerning whom the American people know all too little. In
view of the tendency to picture the Jackson of the French crisis as a
bull in a china shop, it is worth while to consider the characters of
the men who were, at this time, his advisers in foreign affairs. The
character of Livingston has been described.
In the Washington of the Thirties no public man was more generally
respected and admired for ability and elegance of manner than the new
Secretary of State. This courtliness
[Illustration: JOHN FORSYTH]
of demeanor was an inheritance from his French ancestors.[799] In person
he was notably handsome, well built, with classical features; and his
manners were those of the drawing-room and the Court. One who knew him
has written that “in the times of Louis XIV he would have rivaled the
most celebrated courtier; and under the dynasty of Napoleon he would
have won the baton of France.”[800] Another has described him as “Lord
Chesterfield, minus his powdered wig and knee buckles,” and as “all duke
and all democrat.”[801] Even-tempered, seldom giving way to passion,
rich in a sense of humor, he was one of the few statesmen of his time
who could find an equal welcome in the drawing-rooms of Whigs or
Democrats. He was intensely social, and prone to fritter away valuable
time in polite conversation with the pretty women of the capital, albeit
a perfect husband, ardently devoted to the accomplished daughter of Dr.
Josiah Meigs, whom he had married.[802] Cultivated, polished, graceful,
he was the perfect gentleman and conversationalist.
As an orator, he was one of the most consummate of his time, singularly
free from the then prevailing vice of tearing a passion to tatters. With
a glance of the eye, a movement of the finger, a mild gesture of the
hand, he could convey subtle meaning, and in his expressions of contempt
he required nothing more than a twitch of the Roman nose or a scornful
curl of the lip.[803] His voice, rich and musical, was as carefully
trained as that of a prima donna. One writer compared it to a trumpet,
“clear and piercing in its tones, and yet as soft as an organ.”[804]
Another, referring to “the constant stream of pure vocalization,”
described it as “clear and resonant, always pleasant to the ear, and
perfectly modulated.”[805] A contemporary writer for the “Boston Post”
recorded that “the rhythmic accents of his voice suggested the musical
notes of the Æolian harp.”[806]
By the common verdict of all contemporaries he was the most powerful
debater of his day, and as the floor leader in the Senate, he was a
tower of strength to the Administration before entering the Cabinet. A
competent critic wrote that “as an impromptu debater to bring on an
action or to cover a retreat, he never had a superior”; was “acute, full
of resources, and ever prompt--impetuous as Murat in charge, adroit as
Soult when flanked and outnumbered,” “haughty in the presence of
enemies, and affable and winning among friends.”[807] Another thought
him as adroit a debater as ever lived--“the Ajax Telamon of his
party.”[808] When the fight was made against the confirmation of Van
Buren, the Administration rested its case against the attacks of Clay
and Webster on his presentation. In the campaign of 1832, it summoned
him to make the one speech upon the tariff, and then dismissed the topic
definitely. When, at a critical moment in the Nullification movement,
Georgia was about to be swept into the fallacy under the leadership of
Berrien, in a convention called specifically for that purpose, it was
Forsyth who was dispatched to take charge of the Administration forces,
and, under his brilliant management, the Nullifiers were defeated in the
presence of Chancellor Harper, who had been summoned from South Carolina
to witness the triumph of the sinister doctrine.[809] During the panic
session, it was upon his sarcasm that the Jacksonians largely relied to
minimize the effect of the exaggerated speeches and the lugubrious
petitions and memorials.
And yet, ardent though he was in his partisanship, he commanded the
affectionate esteem of his opponents by his manliness and fairness. When
the “bargain” charge was made against Clay, it was Forsyth who demanded
an investigation in the interest of justice, thereby incurring the
displeasure of many of his associates. Even Adams found him fair.
In many respects he fails to fit in with the Jacksonian picture. He was
temperamentally an aristocrat, like Livingston, rather cynical toward
the masses, and not at all enamoured of the Kitchen Cabinet. The letter
from his son-in-law during the first Cabinet dissensions, expressing the
hope that Jackson would “send off Lewis and Kendall,” was doubtless
written in the confidence that the sentiment would meet with the
approval of the recipient.[810] But Forsyth was too much the man of the
world to quarrel over details or personalities, and in the company of
Van Buren and Livingston, he was able to forget the Kendalls and the
Blairs.
When he entered the Cabinet, he assumed tasks that were to his taste. He
prided himself particularly upon his diplomacy, and his experience as
Minister to Madrid to negotiate the purchase of Florida justified his
confidence. This position called for great address, finesse, a knowledge
of human nature, and infinite patience, persuasiveness, and tact. The
cunning Ferdinand, who needed the money, but was loath to part with his
possession, was inclined to haggle, and, while history has given credit
for the success of the negotiations to the instructions of Adams, it was
the ingratiating qualities of Forsyth that finally overcame the scruples
of the King.
That a President so impetuous as Jackson should have been served in
foreign affairs by men of the conservatism and caution of Van Buren,
Livingston, and Forsyth seems providential. One day, after dinner,
Jackson sat before the fire in the White House smoking his pipe and
outlining plans for radical action on the Oregon boundary dispute that
would have made war inevitable. Forsyth, to whom he was speaking,
observing his dangerous mood, simulated sympathy with his indignation.
Then he began with quiet suggestions. Perhaps Jackson’s plan would seem
to be a plan to force a fight. It might put the country in the wrong
light. Then, too, he recalled that the offensive action proposed in
Parliament had been dropped on the request of the British Minister for
Foreign Affairs. Possibly the London Government did not sympathize with
the faction seeking trouble. Again, a year’s notice would have to be
given, preliminary to any action by the United States, and Jackson’s
Administration would then be drawing to a close. Possibly it might be
best to do nothing. The President sat a few moments looking into the
fire, and then, slowly refilling and lighting his pipe, he concluded--“I
reckon you’re right, Forsyth; at least you’re right now.”
Such was the man who, with the assistance of Edward Livingston, was to
grapple with the French crisis.
II
On presenting his credentials, Livingston was warmly received by Louis
Philippe, and assured that the necessary laws for the immediate
execution of the treaty would be passed at the next meeting of the
Chamber.[811] The French Government then understood the certain effect
on American public opinion of a contemptuous treatment of its
obligations. The peculiar action of the Chamber had been the subject of
a conversation between the Duc de Broglie and James Buchanan, then in
Paris, _en route_ from his mission to St. Petersburg and this had been
stressed.[812] Thanks to the clever Count Pozzo di Borgo, Russian
Minister to France, Buchanan had been able to convey to Jackson an
accurate idea of the difficulties--the weakness of the King’s
Government and the hostility and cupidity of Dupin, the President of the
Chamber.[813] Nor did it take Livingston long to discover the secret of
the apathy of the King and his Ministers. Louis’s throne was a keg of
dynamite, and he ruled in constant fear of the Deputies. He hoped to
postpone an unpleasant duty until an auspicious moment. The treaty was
described by the enemies of the dynasty as a bad bargain; the supporters
of the old régime hated America because of the Revolution, and the
Republicans hated the King because he was King. With Jackson manifesting
more and more irritation, Livingston importuned the King, remonstrated
with the Ministers, and labored with the members of the Chamber, and in
all this he had the active coöperation of Lafayette. But after six
months of conferences, the Chamber took adverse action.
The Government was seriously concerned. The King expressed his deep
regret, and a French war vessel was sent to America with instructions to
Serurier the French Minister, to assure Jackson that, as soon after the
elections as the charter would permit, the Chamber would be summoned,
the appropriation would be pressed, and the President informed of the
result in time for him to communicate the facts to the Congress at the
beginning of the session of December, 1834. This held Jackson’s
impatience in check. But the elections passed, the Chamber convened,
nothing was done, and the next session would not convene until three
weeks after the Congress would meet.
As the congressional session approached, Livingston informed Forsyth
that only a manifestation of strong national feeling in America would
force action in Paris. “This is not a mere conjecture,” he wrote. “I
know the fact.” And he reiterated that the moderate tone of the
President’s Messages had convinced the French politicians that he would
not be supported in vigorous measures, and closed with the significant
comment that “from all this you may imagine the anxiety I shall feel for
the arrival of the President’s Message.”[814]
The indignation of Jackson over this trifling, intensified by the
conviction that France would not have dared thus in the case of a
European Power, can be imagined. Many of his friends who lived in
constant terror of his temper were beside themselves at the
prospect.[815] But he had put his hand to the plough, and it was unlike
him to turn back. In the preparation of his Message a futile effort had
been made to persuade him to the employment of less emphatic language,
but the Cabinet members thought to change slightly the phrasing without
his knowledge. Forsyth, who was a master in diplomatic wording, made
slight changes in a paragraph, and the Message was sent to the “Globe”
to be put in type. When the proof reached the White House, John C.
Rives[816] was with Jackson, and Donelson, a party to the plan to
moderate, began to read as Jackson, with his pipe in his mouth, paced
the floor. All went well until the altered paragraph was reached, and
Donelson tried so to slur his reading that the change would not be
noticed. Vain hope! Jackson stopped short.
“Read that again, sir.”
This time the secretary read distinctly, and Jackson, the lion in him
thoroughly aroused, thundered:
“That, sir, is not my language; it has been changed, and I will have no
other expression of my own meaning than my own words.”
And then and there he rewrote the paragraph, making it stronger than
originally. Then, placing it in the hands of Rives, he forbade him to
print anything else “at his peril.”[817]
Reading the Message to-day it seems moderate enough in tone, without a
trace of bluster, and, compared with Cleveland’s Venezuela Message,
positively mild. The greater part is a calm, accurate, dispassionate
recital of the facts, but it closed with the request for authority for
making reprisals on French property should the next session of the
Chamber fail to make the required appropriation. “Such a measure,” he
said, “ought not to be considered by France as a menace. Her pride and
power are too well known to expect anything from her fears, and preclude
the necessity of a declaration that nothing partaking of the character
of intimidation is intended by us.”
The tone of the Message, appealing to the pride and self-respect of the
people, was embarrassing to the Whigs, who for a time hesitated as to
their course. To support Jackson might only tend to enhance his
popularity, already too great to suit; to attack his course would
certainly be disadvantageous to the country in an international
controversy.[818] Hone, the Whig diarist, however, was quite sure that
the Message “will weaken our cause with the lookers on in other
nations.”[819] A month later he was still depressed because of Jackson’s
“unnecessary threats,” but, being a praying Whig, he had hopes that
Congress would still save the country.[820] Justice Joseph Story was
quite as mournful. “The President,” he wrote, “is exceedingly warm for
war with France if he could get Congress to back him. The Senate, in
these days our sole security, it is well known, would steadily resist
him.”[821]
Meanwhile, with the Whigs of the Senate laying their plans to repudiate
the President’s position in the face of a foreign adversary, events were
moving in France. The Chamber met in the midst of excitement, the
Ministry successfully putting their popularity to the test of a vote of
confidence. Livingston was encouraged.[822] But a very little later his
optimism vanished, and he awaited hopefully the arrival of the
Presidential Message.[823] Thus concerned over the tone of the Message,
he arranged for couriers to hurry it to him on its arrival at Havre. It
reached Paris in an American newspaper at two o’clock in the morning.
The excitement was intense. Even Livingston was momentarily stunned.
“The feeling,” he wrote Forsyth, “is fostered by the language of our
Opposition papers, particularly by the ‘Intelligencer’ and the ‘New York
Courier,’ extracts from which have been sent on by Americans, declaring
them to be the sentiments of the majority of the people. These, as you
will see, are translated and republished here, with such comments as
they might have been expected and undoubtedly were intended to produce,
and if hostilities should take place between the two nations those
persons may flatter themselves with having the credit of a large share
in producing them.” He felt, however, that “the energetic language of
the Message” would “have a good effect.” And contrary to the fear of
Hone that it would degrade us in the eyes of the onlookers, he found
that “it has certainly raised us in the estimation of other Powers if we
may judge by the demeanor of their representatives here.” He was sure
that “as soon as the excitement subsides it will operate favorably on
the counsels of France.” Already “some of the papers have begun to
change their tone.” As soon as the Message was known, “the funds
experienced a considerable fall, and insurance rose.”[824]
In compliance with the request of Comte de Rigny, the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Livingston personally delivered to him a copy of the
Message, and stressed the point that, under our governmental form, the
Message was a consultation between departments of our Government, and
was not directed to France. Then shifting to the offensive he added
that it was most unfortunate, in view of Serurier’s promise, that there
had not been an earlier call of the Chamber. De Rigny seemed to attach
the most serious importance to the intimation of bad faith, but the
interview was friendly. That evening, at the Austrian Minister’s,
Livingston found him all suavity; and the next night a curt note from
him announced the withdrawal of Serurier from Washington, and a
readiness to give the American diplomat his passports on
application![825] He made much of Jackson’s comments on the failure to
convene the Chamber when, as a matter of fact, the Chamber was then
actually assembled in virtue of a royal ordinance. This, while true,
could not have been known to Jackson in those days of slow
communication. He only knew the original purpose. But it pleased de
Rigny to assume an unexplainable offense, and to announce that “His
Majesty has considered it due his own dignity no longer to leave his
Minister exposed to hear language so offensive to France.”[826]
Resisting an impulse to demand his passports, lest such action seem
unnecessarily provocative, Livingston replied in a dignified note that
unless de Rigny’s letter was intended as a dismissal, he would await
instructions from his own Government.
III
Meanwhile the Whigs were planning to make political capital out of the
crisis. The “Intelligencer,” the organ of the Senate Whigs, had assumed
an attitude which, as we have seen, had given much comfort to the French
enemies of the treaty. “We trust,” it said, “that it will be universally
understood, not only at home, but everywhere abroad, that the
recommendation of the President is his own act only, and is not likely
... to receive the approbation of the Congress or the people of the
United States.” And Blair, in the “Globe,” hotly replied that “if she
[France] shall shed American blood in this controversy, and push her
injustice to actual war, the responsibility for all the destruction of
human lives ... will justly rest upon the heads of the editors of the
‘National Intelligencer.’”[827] The “National Gazette,” another
Opposition paper, compromised with the thought that Jackson “did well to
present the subject to Congress ... though we would earnestly dissuade
Congress from giving him a discretion so important as that of
reprisals.” Which, interpreted by Blair, meant that the mercantile class
and bankers were interested in French claims, and it would be well to
enforce them, “but if the national rights and honor, implicated in a
refusal to execute the treaty, should be vindicated by President
Jackson, it would add renown to the man whom it was the editors’
business to traduce.”[828]
The first act of the Whigs was to pack the Foreign Relations Committee
of the Senate with the President’s enemies, three of the five, Clay,
Mangum, and Sprague, being virulent foes. “There are certainly not three
men in the French Chamber,” wrote Blair, “more anxiously bent on
thwarting the measures of General Jackson’s Administration.”[829] Into
the hands of these was delivered that portion of the Message dealing
with the French affair, and a month later Clay offered his resolution
that “it is inexpedient at this time” to grant authority to the
President to make reprisals. In presenting his report, Clay made the
startling statement that if France was prudent “she will wait to see
whether the Message should be seconded by the Congress.” Thus, in the
face of a prospective foreign foe, patently in the wrong, the leader of
the Whigs attempted to create the impression that Jackson stood alone.
This was the cue to the politicians. The Clay report was extravagantly
praised. Poindexter, in ecstatic mood, moved that twenty thousand copies
be printed for circulation--as propaganda to isolate the President.
Calhoun favored “the largest number.” The report had delighted him.
“War was at all times to be avoided.”[830] Only two Whigs objected to
twenty thousand copies, and these on the ground that the printing of so
many would require four months.[831] Hill demanded the yeas and nays,
and by a party vote the “largest number” of Clay’s campaign document was
ordered. Thus, from the beginning, the divisions in the Senate on an
international crisis were along party lines.
On the day Livingston received the curt note from de Rigny, Clay, in
opening the discussion of his resolution, threw out the suggestion twice
that France might make the appropriation conditional on an “explanation”
from the President of the United States. He felt sure that France would
understand that Congress did not share the President’s views. The
Democratic members of the committee, in a minority report, differed from
the majority in explaining the reason for finding it “inexpedient” to
grant authority--the fact that the Chamber had been called a month
earlier than anticipated. The only vigorous attack on the majority
report, and the sole unapologetic American speech, was that of Buchanan,
who, better than any other member of the Senate, understood the
conditions in Paris. He called for an unqualified assertion of our
determination to demand the observance of the treaty. “I hope I may be
mistaken,” he concluded, “but I believe it never will be paid
before.”[832] The brief debate, heard by the fashion of the capital
packed in the galleries, was conducted with decorum, but quite
discernible beneath the surface one may read the party feeling which
even an international crisis could not obliterate. The Clay resolution
was adopted. The “National Intelligencer,” now finding its way regularly
to Paris, expressed the hope that “with this unquestionable proof of the
pacific temper of the Senate ... it will now be understood at home and
abroad that there is no morbid appetite for war among the grave and
considerate portion of the American people.”
Several weeks were to intervene before the House took action. Meanwhile
in Paris, Livingston, in seclusion, prepared his masterful and spirited
formal reply to the impudent note of the French Minister. He loftily
rebuked him for referring to the President as “General Jackson” in
official language, firmly reiterated and proved the charge of broken
faith in the matter of the Serurier pledge, and pitilessly exposed the
hypocrisy of the complaint that Jackson had misrepresented, purposely,
regarding the time of the calling of the Chamber. Had not de Rigny
himself informed him that it was constitutionally impossible to call the
session earlier when protest had been made as to the date? And yet it
had been called. When a copy of this note reached Forsyth, he summoned
Van Buren and the two repaired to the White House, where it was read and
warmly approved.[833] By this time Jackson was in no mood to compromise
or conciliate. Forsyth instructed Livingston that, if the French Chamber
again rejected the appropriation bill, a frigate was to be immediately
sent to convey him home. Ten days after these instructions were written,
Serurier was recalled, and Forsyth, in refusing an audience, coolly
informed him that he was “ready to receive in writing any communication
the Minister of France desires to have made to the Government of the
United States.”[834]
Meanwhile the French papers reaching the United States were noisily
militant. War-clouds lowered. James A. Hamilton tendered his services to
Jackson for duty “civil or military, at home or abroad.”[835] Major
Lewis, gravely concerned because of his daughter’s marriage to M. Pageot
of the French Legation, hastened to reassure Hamilton with extracts from
personal letters from governmental officials in Paris--and thus threw an
interesting side-light on the romance and tragedy of international
marriages, for these letters had been translated, for the benefit of
Jackson, in the French Legation by Madame Pageot, the wife of the First
Secretary![836]
IV
Under these ominous conditions, with offers of military service pouring
into the White House, with the French Minister on the ocean _en route_
to Paris, and with additional letters in the diplomatic duel before it,
the House of Representatives began its discussion of the crisis. With
the majority report and resolutions declaring against further
negotiations and in favor of contingent preparations, the House was
immediately engaged in an animated and acrimonious discussion indicative
of the excitement of the times. Edward Everett, the pacifist of the
session, offered a substitute coupling a declaration of adherence to the
treaty with a request for the renewal of negotiations. Adams, in ugly
temper, threw out the hint that it appeared that “the supporters of the
Administration were the only ones to be heard upon the subject.” With
some feeling, Cambreleng, in charge for the Administration, assured the
former President that he was ready to enter upon a free accommodation of
differences that a united front might be presented to the Nation’s
adversary. This little storm cleared the atmosphere, and on the next day
when the debate began in earnest it was wholesomely free from purely
partisan rancor. Then it was that Adams explained his dissent from the
phrasing. He objected to the assertion that negotiations should be
discontinued. “The only alternative compatible with the honor of nations
is war,” he said. If a continuance of the negotiations failed, he was
ready for the “hazard of war.” He realized that “the interest and honor
of the Nation” were at stake. The pledge of France had been given, and
the sole question was “whether we shall suffer the nation that made
this treaty to violate it.” We could not afford to compromise to the
extent of a penny.
“What will be the consequences,” demanded the fiery old man eloquent,
“if you give it up? Why, every nation will consider itself at liberty to
sport with all treaties that are made with us.”
And then Adams startled the Democrats, and broke with the Whigs, in his
reference to Jackson. “Whatever may be said of the imprudence of that
recommendation,” he exclaimed, “the opinion of mankind will ever be that
it was high-spirited and lofty, and such as became the individual from
whom it emanated. I say it now, and I repeat, that it is the attitude
which the Chief Magistrate will bear before the world, and before
mankind, and before posterity.”[837]
Quite different the feeling of William S. Archer, a Virginia Whig, who
looked with fear and trembling to a contest with France. Think, he
cried, of the commercial loss! Why sacrifice this with so little
involved? “It would be quixotic, and even romance scarcely presented a
precedent, unless that of Sir Lucius O’Trigger.” And even if right, why
take the chance? He had been surprised that Adams had said nothing about
fear.
“No,” shouted Adams, “the gentleman’s whole argument is fear!”
The Virginian closed by offering a resolution “that in the just
expectation that the Government of France will have made provision ...
this House will forbear at the present time to adopt any measure in
relation to that subject.”[838]
With flaming indignation, James W. Bouldin, a Virginia Democrat, replied
to Archer’s timorous speech. “The gentleman asks if we would really go
to war for five million dollars,” he said. “Will a man fight if you spit
in his face?” Already the French Chamber was boasting that we had taken
the like from others, and declaring that we were “a money-making,
money-loving people, and would never spend a hundred million to obtain
five.” And, continued Bouldin, “I have heard as much praise of foreign
nations as I want to hear.... All I want to hear at this time is whether
we intend to hold upon the treaty or give it up entirely.”[839]
Cambreleng, aroused by the sordid character of the Archer appeal,
sharply warned that “the honor and welfare of the Nation is involved,
and the measure will no longer be sacrificed to gratify the spirit of
party.”[840] To which Tristam Burges, a Rhode Island Whig, responded
with the amazing assertion that “France would be cowardly indeed if she
should pay the money under such circumstances.”[841]
Edward Everett followed with a typical pacifist appeal for peace, but it
was reserved for the eloquent Horace Binney to present the most novel
reasons for America’s consent to her humiliation. In the President’s
Message he had found “the President’s design ... impossible to
fathom.”[842] The action of the French Chamber was none of our business.
In the meantime we should not close the door on negotiations. The French
Republicans were using the treaty as a club upon the monarchy, and
should this country “strengthen the hands of a constitutional
monarchy?”[843]
Then Adams, in no conciliatory temper, rose again. “Whence come these
compliments to France?” he asked. “Are they elicited by her virtues? Is
it because she has refused the payment ... due us? Is it because she has
violated her plighted faith? Is it from the style of the dignified
debates ... where we are characterized as a nation of mercenaries--where
the basest and meanest of motives are attributed to the American
people--those of sordid avarice, speculation, and gain?... Is it on this
that the gentleman from Virginia bases his ‘just expectations’?” And,
turning to Everett: “We have heard much of war and its horrors. No man
can entertain a greater abhorrence of war than I. I would do anything
but sacrifice honor and independence to avoid it. But when I hear it
advanced that there is no such thing as national honor, that it is
merely ideal, I must take leave to say that I do not subscribe to such a
doctrine.”[844]
But the next speaker, Benjamin Hardin, though hailing from the fighting
State of Kentucky, was not impressed. Randolph had compared his wit to
“a coarse kitchen butcher knife whetted upon a brickbat,”[845] but he
now purred gently to the harsh strokes of the French Chamber. “What
would we go to war for?” he demanded. “The paltry sum of five million
dollars!” In one year war would “sweep from the ocean at least fifty
millions of our commerce.” And where would the expense fall? “Upon the
hard-working and industrious farmer.”[846]
The outcome was the adoption of a resolution which was a compromise
between that of the committee and the ideas of Adams, insisting on the
maintenance of the treaty and in favor of preparations. This was adopted
at a night session on the 2d of March, and the session was then thought
to expire at midnight on March 3d.
V
An occurrence on the last day of the session, due to partisan madness,
left the Republic all but naked to its prospective foe. Early in the
evening, during the consideration of the Fortifications Bill, an
amendment was offered in the House, appropriating three millions to be
used at the discretion of the President for emergency work in the event
France should strike during the congressional recess. It met with no
opposition in the House, but the moment it reached the Senate it was
pounced upon by the Whig leaders as another proof of Jackson’s itch for
power. Webster, assuming the leadership in the sorry business, proposed
instantly to dispose of the amendment with a motion to “adhere” to the
Senate measure. This harsh, unusual course was intended as a notice that
the Senate would not even meet the House in conference upon the subject.
Then followed a most amazing spectacle, with the Whigs assailing Jackson
and his alleged contempt for the Constitution and determination to
declare war without an Act of Congress. Senator Buchanan, protesting
against the Webster motion, pointed out the necessity for the
appropriation--the possibility of a blow from France during the recess,
the frankly expressed apprehension of Livingston. “In that event,” he
continued, “what will be our condition? Our seacoast from Georgia to
Maine will be exposed to the incursions of the enemy; our cities may be
plundered and burnt; the national character may be disgraced; and all
this whilst we have an overflowing Treasury.”[847]
King of Alabama earnestly pleaded with Webster to withdraw the harsh
motion. “In what way,” he asked, “does it violate the Constitution? Does
it give the President the power to declare war? This power belongs to
Congress alone, nor does the bill in the slightest degree impair it.
Does it authorize the raising of armies? No, not one man may be enlisted
beyond the number required to fill up the ranks of your little army.”
But Webster was deaf to the appeal. The “autocrat” and “tyrant” was
again making an onslaught on the Constitution, and he would have none of
it. And by a strict party vote, for White of Tennessee had by now
definitely joined the Opposition, the motion to adhere was adopted.
When this surprising action reached the House, it swallowed its pride
and asked for a conference. The conferees met and remained in deadlock
until midnight. Forsyth and Van Buren were at the Capitol trying without
avail to get action. Meanwhile in the Senate something very like a
filibuster was begun. Benton was impressed by the number of the
speakers, their vehemence, perseverance, provocative attacks on Jackson,
and indirectly on the House.[848]
All this time, Jackson was patiently waiting in his room at the Capitol
to sign the bill when passed. At midnight he put on his hat and returned
to the White House. The conference and debate continued, with many, who
considered the session dead at midnight,[849] leaving the Capitol, until
repeated calls of the House failed to secure a quorum. At a late hour
some of the Whig members of the House were insisting that the amendment
be abandoned, with the Democrats refusing to yield and placing the
responsibility upon the Senate. Partisan bitterness became more
pronounced as the end approached. “There are men who would willingly see
the banner of France waving over your Capitol, rather than lose an
opportunity to make a thrust at the Administration,” bitterly exclaimed
Jesse Bynum of North Carolina. “This is not a miserable Administration
or anti-Administration question,” protested Henry A. Wise, the Whig who
favored the amendment. The danger of war was real and if it came “every
fortification on your coast is liable to fall into the hands of a strong
maritime power,” he warned.[850] At intervals, motions to recede were
offered and overwhelmingly defeated.
It was two o’clock in the morning when Cambreleng returned to the House
with a compromise--$300,000 for arming the fortifications, $500,000 for
repairs and the equipping of war vessels, “an amount wholly inadequate
if it should be required, and more than necessary if it should not.” As
he entered the House, he found no quorum, and no possibility of getting
one. On a motion to adjourn, only 111 members were present and voting; a
few moments later but 75; and at three o’clock, Speaker Bell rose,
delivered a brief valedictory, and the House stood adjourned without
day. The Nation was naked to the foe, and in the midst of negotiations.
Far from weakening Jackson’s determination to maintain the dignity and
rights of the Nation, the failure of the Fortifications Bill but
strengthened his will, and two days after Congress adjourned, Forsyth
instructed Livingston to demand an explanation or qualification of an
insinuation in Serurier’s note of withdrawal that the President had
knowingly misrepresented in his Message to Congress.[851]
Meanwhile, in France, the Whigs’ campaign to picture Jackson as isolated
in his position from both Congress and the people was having its effect,
and there were Whigs in America who rejoiced in the fact. Scanning the
French newspapers, Philip Hone was delighted to find that Clay’s report
and the Senate resolution had had the effect he anticipated. He rejoiced
to find that they convinced the French that the proposal of reprisals
“are only the acts of the President” and “would not be sanctioned by the
legislature of the Nation.”[852]
And Hone was not mistaken as to the effect of Jackson’s firmness and the
Senate’s action. The money was appropriated by the Chamber with the
payment contingent on an apology or explanation from Jackson. In the
discussion of the appropriation measure, Jackson was roundly denounced,
and ridiculed as one repudiated by his own people. Boasts were made of
the ease with which France could crush the United States. “The insult
from President Jackson comes from himself alone,” said M. Henri de
Chabaulon. “This is more evident from the refusal of the American
Congress to concur with him in it.... Suppose the United States had
taken part with General Jackson, we should have had to demand
satisfaction, not from him, but from the United States; ... and we
should have had to ... entrust to our heroes of Navarino and Algiers the
task of teaching the Americans that France knows the way to Washington
as well as England.” And this insulting speech was received with
applause. “When the Americans see this long sword,” exclaimed M. Ranee,
“believe me, gentlemen, they would sooner touch your money than dare to
touch your sword.”[853] Left to his own resources by the absence of
instructions on the proviso of the measure of the Chamber, Livingston
informed the Due de Broglie that an attempt to enforce the proviso would
be repelled “by the undivided energy of the Nation.”[854] And four days
later he left Paris, with Barton, his son-in-law, at the American
Legation as Chargé d’Affaires.
From this time on to the crisis, the American Legation in Paris and the
French in Washington were under Chargés d’Affaires, and strangely enough
the wives of both were prime favorites of Jackson and intimates of the
White House circle. The beautiful and exquisite Cora Livingston,
daughter of the Minister, was long the reigning belle of the American
capital. Josiah Quincy had been infatuated with her, and the story has
come down of Van Buren trying to get her under the mistletoe. In the
White House she had come and gone with the informality of a member of
the household, and many an evening she had spent with Mrs. Donelson in
one of the private rooms of the President’s house, with Jackson sitting
at one side smoking his pipe. She had married Barton a short time before
Livingston’s departure for Paris, and it had pleased the man of iron,
with so much of tender sentiment where women were concerned, to appoint
the bridegroom Secretary of the Legation that Cora might be in Paris
with her mother. Enclosing his commission in a letter to “My Dear
Cora,” he had asked her to “present it to him with your own hand.”
Quite as closely connected with the White House circle was Madame
Pageot, known to Jackson as little Delia Lewis, daughter of one of the
members of the Kitchen Cabinet. He had known her as a child in Tennessee
where her father dwelt close to the Hermitage, and she had known and
loved the sainted Rachel. When her engagement to Pageot was announced,
Jackson had insisted that the marriage should take place in the White
House, and when her first child was born and called “Andrew Jackson,”
the christening had been in the President’s house. It was on this
occasion when the Minister, following the form, asked the infant,
“Andrew Jackson, do you renounce the Devil and all his works?” that the
President with great fervor responded, “I do most indubitably,” to the
delight of all.
Thus there was a touch to the closing days of the crisis that probably
has no parallel in the history of diplomacy.
VI
Had the French politicians been able to witness the popular ovation
accorded Livingston on his arrival in New York, they might have changed
their opinion concerning Jackson’s isolation from the people. An immense
crowd greeted him at the wharf, followed him to his lodgings, clamored
for a speech, and thronged the City Hall at the public reception. Philip
Hone, one of the Whigs who rejoiced in the demand of a foreign nation
for an apology from the American President, was gravely concerned
because he had returned in “a bad humor,” and might “infuse some of it
into the mind of the obstinate and weak old man at the head of the
Government, and so prevent an amicable arrangement.”[855] But the Whig
diarist’s greatest disgust came with Livingston’s ovation at the dinner
of the Corporation on July 4th, when at the conclusion of his brief
speech the room rang with cries of “No explanations!” “No
apology!”--dividing, as Hone records, “the echoes of the spacious dome
with equally inspiring shouts of ‘Hurrah for Jackson!’”[856] At
Philadelphia, _en route_ to Washington, Livingston was the guest of
honor at an equally enthusiastic dinner, and, thus acclaimed by his
countrymen, he reached Washington and went into conference with Jackson,
Forsyth, and Van Buren.
Calm and determined, Jackson waited patiently until in September when he
proposed to press the issue to a decision. Forsyth sent instructions to
Barton. If nothing indicative of a purpose to pay the indemnity had been
done, the Chargé was to call upon the Due de Broglie and ask for a
definite answer with the view to the regulation of his conduct. If the
Minister should fix a day for the payment, Barton was to remain in
Paris; otherwise he was to demand his passports because of the
non-execution of the treaty. And this step was to be taken in time to
permit the result to be communicated to Jackson before he prepared his
Message for the opening of Congress. In the latter part of October,
Barton had his audience with de Broglie, and handled himself with
consummate tact and caution. With studied impudence the French Minister
announced that the money would be forthcoming when an explanation or
apology had been received, and a few days later, Barton sailed for the
United States.
Meanwhile the Congress convened, and Jackson in his Message reported
progress, soberly reviewing the course of the negotiations up to the
passage of the indemnity bill by the French Chamber with its offensive
proviso, and bluntly concluding that the French Government has “received
all the explanation which honor and principle permitted.” He informed
Congress of his final instructions to Barton and of his purpose to
communicate the result when ascertained.
It was while awaiting the report of the American Chargé d’Affaires that
M. Pageot received notice of his recall, and by the time he was able to
sail the two nations were on the verge of war. Hone, noting the
departure of the Poland bearing M. Pageot and “the odds and ends of the
French Legation,” could not restrain his mirth over the prospective
discomfiture of the French Chargé in bearing back to the French Court a
young heir, bearing “the august name of Andrew Jackson.”[857]
When Barton reached New York, he hastened with all speed to Washington,
where Livingston awaited him. It was with no little anxiety that Van
Buren, Forsyth, and Livingston accompanied him to the White House. The
three older men, all devoted to Jackson, and all at some time at the
head of his Department of Foreign Affairs, were greatly concerned over
the possible effect of the report on the thoroughly aroused President.
Observing their solemnity, Barton turned upon them:
“Well, gentlemen, shall it be oil or water?”
“Oh, water, by all means,” they answered in a chorus.
To none of these, not even to Livingston, had Barton indicated the
nature of the report he had to make. Pressing the former Minister’s hand
as a token of appreciation of his confidence, Barton led the way into
the iron man’s presence.
The moment the conference was over, Jackson began the preparation of his
Message to Congress, and, on its completion, submitted it to Livingston.
In view of Hone’s fear, it is interesting to note that it was the former
Minister of State who persuaded Jackson to a moderation of its tone.
Drawing a substitute, he sent it to the White House with an ingratiating
letter.
“The characteristics of the present communication,” he wrote, “ought, in
my opinion, to be moderation and firmness. Our cause is so good that we
need not be violent. Moderation in language, firmness in purpose, will
unite all hearts at home, all opinion abroad, in our favor. Warmth and
recrimination will give arguments to false friends and real enemies,
which they may use with effect against us. On these principles I have
framed a hasty draft which I enclose. You will, with your usual
discernment, determine whether it suits the present emergency. At any
rate, I know you will do justice to the motive that has induced me to
offer it.”[858]
Jackson took the advice in good part, destroyed his declaration of war,
and prepared, with the assistance of Forsyth, another, which was
submitted to Congress on January 15th. It was an excited body of men
that listened that winter day to the reading of the Message that might
mean war. But three days before, an acrimonious debate had been
precipitated by Benton, charging the partisanship of the Senate with
responsibility for the failure of the Fortifications Bill; and only the
day before, Webster, in a spirited reply, had attempted to shift
responsibility to the Democratic House. John Quincy Adams, enraged at
Webster’s reflections upon the House, was meditating his sensational
reply. In this atmosphere the Message was read.
After reviewing the controversy up to the hour of the Message, with the
declaration that “the spirit of the American people, the dignity of the
Legislature, and the firm resolve of their Executive Government forbid”
an apology or explanation, he called upon Congress to “sustain Executive
exertion in such measures as the case requires.” This included,
according to his idea, reprisals, the exclusion of French products and
French vessels from American ports. But there was more to be done. Naval
preparations of the French intended for our seas had been announced. He
knew not the purpose. But, “come what may, the explanation which France
demands can never be accorded, and no armament, however powerful and
imposing, at a distance or on our coast, will, I trust, deter us from
discharging the high duties we owe to our constituents, our national
character, and to the world”; and he called upon the Congress “to
vindicate the faith of treaties and to promote the general interest of
peace, civilization, and improvement.”[859]
VII
Notwithstanding the seriousness of the crisis the memory of the failure
of the Fortifications Bill in the last session would not down.
Throughout the spring, summer, and autumn of 1835, the press and
politicians were engaged in bitter criminations and recriminations as to
the responsibility. It was manifestly the fault of the Senate Whigs, but
their harassed leaders bitterly retaliated on the Democratic House, and
drew upon their imagination in an effort to place responsibility upon
the Jacksonian leaders. A fantastical article, once attributed to Daniel
Webster, appeared in the “National Gazette,” charging that Van Buren and
John Forsyth had expressed the wish to Cambreleng, the Democratic leader
in the House, that the bill should fail, that the calamity might be
ascribed to the Whigs of the Senate. The people had been thoroughly
outraged at the base prostitution of the Nation’s interest to the
pettiness of party politics. During the summer, Blair called attention
in the “Globe” to Serurier’s action in sending to Paris with Jackson’s
Message the criticism of the “National Intelligencer,” with the comment
that the French Minister for Foreign Affairs would do well to read the
two together! Paris was assured by Serurier that the Whig paper had
“pretty considerable influence,” had “under the presidencies of Madison
and Monroe been the official paper,” and “has spoken energetically
against the measure” the President had proposed. The President’s sharp
reference to the unfortunate situation created by the failure of the
bill, in his Message of December, 1835, had shown a determination, on
the part of that consummate politician, to turn the popular indignation
upon the Opposition. However, with the passion of the parties
smouldering beneath the surface, there was no open fight until, on
January 12th, the pugnacious Benton, speaking on the national defense,
reviewed the failure of the Fortifications Bill, and laid the
responsibility at the Senate’s door. He closed his biting comments with
an effective reference to the approach of the French squadron, sent on
the supposition of our helplessness, and the suggestion that the Senate
should then act “under the guns of France and under the eyes of
Europe.”[860]
That was the call to battle. The irate Webster sprang to his feet to
announce that a little later he would be able to exonerate the Senate,
and the fiery Leigh of Virginia protested that “the objection to the
appropriation was not because of any distrust of the President,” but
because of the unconstitutionality of the amendment: this in delicious
disregard of the plain record of the debate. But Preston, who followed,
exposed the cloven hoof of the partisan animus. If the French fleet was
coming, why had the President kept Congress in the dark? Why had he
withdrawn our representatives from Paris? Why had we no representative
at the Court of England?--an audacious question in view of the refusal
by the Whig Senate to confirm either of two excellent appointments to
that post. Why assume that the French fleet came with hostile motives?
“It may be that this fleet is coming to protect the commerce of France,”
he thought. From this it was an easy step to the reiteration of the Whig
apologies for and defense of the action of the French Government.[861]
But the last word in defense of the Senate was reserved for Webster, who
rose twenty-four hours before the Special Message reached the Senate and
while it was being prepared. It was a laboriously wrought attempt. The
amendment to the Fortifications Bill had been offered at the eleventh
hour. The President had not requested the additional appropriation in a
Message. No department had recommended it. Nothing of which Congress was
cognizant had occurred to justify it. The Senate had passed a resolution
“reminding” the House of the bill in the closing hours. The conference
report had not been passed upon by the House. And “the bill therefore
was lost. It was lost in the House of Representatives. It died there,
and there its remains are to be found.” Had not the President announced
at one o’clock that he would receive no further communications from the
Congress? What right had he to interfere with the time Congress should
fix for adjournment?[862] And what constitutional right had Congress to
make an appropriation when there was no specification of the precise use
to be made of the money? And with true Websterian eloquence he closed
with mournful meditations on the encroachments of Jackson upon the
Constitution, and the prediction that, unless checked, men, then living,
would “write the history of this government, from its commencement to
its close.”[863]
That the Jacksonians were not impressed with the danger was shown in the
brief reply of Cuthbert of Georgia, that the great danger to Rome was
not in the kingly name they feared, but “in the patrician class, a
moneyed aristocracy, a combination of their political leaders, seeking
to establish an aristocratical government, regardless of the welfare of
the people.” But the answer to Webster was not to come from a Democrat,
but from a Whig--and that, too, a Whig from Massachusetts, who had been
defeated for reëlection to the Presidency by Andrew Jackson!
VIII
There had long been an undercurrent of hostility between Daniel Webster
and John Quincy Adams. Webster had gladly left the House during the
Adams Administration to escape the necessity of defending the President;
and the comments on the great orator, running through the famous “Diary”
of Adams, are often sarcastic, usually unfriendly, and seldom fulsome.
That this spirit of animus alone should have impelled Adams to make his
notable reply--a reply which has been strangely ignored by
historians--cannot be reconciled with his character as a public man. The
fact that Webster had assailed the House of which Adams was a leading
member, and the amendment with which Adams had had something to do, may
explain the bitterness of his retort. But no one can read the speeches
of Adams on the French controversy without being impressed with the
robust Americanism of the man, and his utter impatience with a partisan
thought in the presence of a foreign adversary.
The opportunity for Adams’s reply came one week after the Webster
speech, six days after the President’s Special Message, and when the
international crisis seemed most menacing. The “National Intelligencer”
had made an attack upon the House of Representatives, along the line of
the Webster speech, and Cambreleng, who had been personally assailed, in
resenting the article had said that “more than one member of the House,
not only on this side, but on both sides, will vindicate the proceedings
of the House in relation to the bill.” Immediately afterwards Adams
presented his resolution for an investigation, and launched into one of
the most bitter, dramatic, and sensational speeches ever heard in the
American Congress. He rose in fighting armor. Scarcely had he begun his
attack upon the Senate when he was called to order for mentioning that
body; whereupon he jauntily observed that he would “transfer the
location of the place where these things had happened from the Senate
to the office of the ‘National Intelligencer’”--and thus proceeded to
the castigation of that journal. In explaining the reasons for the
three-million-dollar amendment, he recounted the story of the resolution
adopted in the House.
“In all the debates in the ‘National Intelligencer,’” he said, “there is
no more trace of such a resolution having passed the House than if it
had never existed; no more trace than can be found on the journal of the
Senate of what they would do for the defense of the country, or to
insist on the execution of the treaty of July. But in the debate in the
‘National Intelligencer,’ I find a prodigious display of eloquence
against the constitutionality of the section appropriating $3,000,000
for the defense of the country, because it had not been recommended by
the Executive.”
The House was instantly in an uproar, and Adams was again called to
order for his reference to the Senate. The old man stood listening
calmly to the excited observations of some of his colleagues, and was
finally permitted to proceed.
“Observe, sir,” he continued, “the terms, the object, and the conditions
of that appropriation. It was to be expended, in whole or in part, under
the direction of the President of the United States--the executive head
of the Nation, sworn to the faithful execution of the laws; sworn
especially, and entrusted with the superintendence of all the defenses
of the country against the ravages of a foreign invader; it was to be
expended for the military and naval service, including fortifications
and ordnance and increase of the navy. These, sir, the natural and
appropriate instruments of defense against a foreign foe, were the sole
and exclusive objects of the appropriation. Not one dollar of it could
have been applied by him to any other purposes without making himself
liable to impeachment; not by that House of Representatives, but by us,
their successors, fresh from the constituent body, the people; yet
before the same Senate for his judges, a majority of whom were surely
not of his friends; not one dollar of it could have been expended
without giving a public account of it to the representatives of the
people and to the Nation. Nor was this all. Thus confined to specific
objects, it was to be expended, not unconditionally, but only in the
event that it should be rendered necessary for the defense of the
country prior to the then next session of Congress--an interval of nine
months--during which no other provision could have been made to defend
your soil from sudden invasion, or to protect your commerce floating
upon every sea from a sweep of a royal ordinance of France.
“And this is the appropriation, following close upon that unanimous vote
of 217 members of the House, that the execution of the Treaty of 1831
should be maintained and insisted upon. This is the appropriation so
tainted with man-worship, so corrupt, so unconstitutional, that the
indignant and patriotic eloquence of the ‘National Intelligencer’ would
sooner see a foreign foe battering down the walls of the Capitol than
agree to it.”
If this reference to the declaration of Webster caused the members of
the House to catch their breath, the next sentence brought the Democrats
to their feet with prolonged cheers and shouts.
“Sir,” Adams continued, “for a man uttering such sentiments there would
be but one step more, a natural and an easy one to take, and that would
be, with the enemy at the walls of the Capitol, to join him in battering
them down.”
With the Whigs dazed, and the Democrats shouting their approval, James
K. Polk, in the chair, was forced to hammer vigorously with his gavel
before he could restore any semblance of order--and the old man lunged
again at Webster’s argument.
“Are we to be told,” he asked, “that this and the other House must not
appropriate money unless by recommendation from the Executive? Why, sir,
the Executive has told us now that that appropriation was perfectly in
accord with his wishes. Yet here the charge is inverted, and
unconstitutional conspiracy and man-worship are imputed to this House on
account of that appropriation because it was approved and desired by the
Executive. Where was the possibility of a recommendation from the
Executive; of statements from the departments; of messages between this
and the other House, when the resolution of the House had been passed
but the day before?...”
And man-worship? Here Adams refused to follow his fellow Whigs in
withholding commendation from the patriotism of the President.
“I will appeal to the House to say whether I am a worshiper of
the Executive.... Neither the measure of issuing letters of
marque and reprisal, nor the measures of commercial interdict or
restriction--neither had that House approved; but the House, and, thank
God, the people of the country, have done homage to the spirit which
had urged to the recommendation, even of those measures which they
did not approve. Why must the House be charged with man-worship and
unconstitutional conspiracy, because they passed an appropriation of
three millions for the defense of the country, at a time when imminent
danger of war was urged, as resulting from that very resolution, which,
but the night before, passed by a unanimous vote? Because, forsooth,
that appropriation had not been asked for by the Executive; and yet
because it was approved by the Executive.”
In reviewing the action of both Senate and House on the President’s
recommendation, Adams scornfully and contemptuously dismissed the Clay
resolution in a few words: “A resolution not only declining to do that
which the President had recommended to vindicate the rights and honor of
the Nation, but positively determining to do nothing--not even to
express a sense of the wrongs which the country was enduring from
France.”
“And now, sir,” he continued, “where is all this scaffolding of
indignation and horror at the appropriation for specific purposes, for
the defense of the country, because, forsooth, it had not been
recommended by the Special Message of the Executive? Gone, sir, gone!
You shall look for it and you shall not find it. You shall find no more
trace of it than, in the tales of the ‘National Intelligencer,’ you
shall find of that vote of 217 yeas--which was the real voucher for the
purity and patriotism of that appropriation of $3,000,000--denounced to
the world by the eloquent orators of the senatorial press as so
profligate and corrupt, that an enemy at the gates of this Capitol could
not have justified a vote in its favor to arrest his arm, and stay his
hand in battering down these walls. You shall find no more trace of it
upon the journals of the Senate than you shall find of sensibility to
the wrongs which our country was enduring from France.”
The old man eloquent thence passed to the complaint that the Senate was
ignorant of the reasons impelling the House to the adoption of the
amendment, and tore it to shreds; and then on to the responsibility for
the failure of the bill. This, he contended, was due to the very spirit
of the Senate--its temper an insult to the President and the House. The
Webster motion to adhere, he said, was always considered a “challenge,”
and had never before been made at such an early stage of a difference
between the Houses. “It was a special disposition,” he said, “to cast
odium on the House, a special bravado that induced the Senate thus to
draw the sword, and throw away the scabbard--and they adhered.”
Turning then to the willingness of the Senate, when it was too late, to
accept an amendment for $800,000 instead of $3,000,000, he continued:
“Thus, sir, this horrible conspiracy against the Constitution melted
down to a mere question of dollars and cents.” And when this agreement
was reached by the Senate, the House was dead--the hour of midnight
having passed. He did not himself believe that a Congress died at
midnight, but others did, and they were conscientious. And the Senate,
knowing of that situation, had the insolence to adopt its resolution of
reminder and send it to the House. “But to complete the true character
of that message we must inquire at what time it was sent. It was sent at
two o’clock in the morning; it was sent at a time when it was known,
both in the House and the Senate, that no quorum was to be found. When
that message was delivered, I must confess, if ever a feeling of shame
and indignation had filled my bosom, it was at that moment. I felt it
was an insult to the immediate representatives of the people; and if it
had been sent at a moment when the House existed, with the power to
resent unprovoked insult, I verily believe, that, imitating the example
of our Congress in a somewhat similar case during the Revolutionary War,
I should have moved that a message be sent by two members of the House
to cast the Senate message on their floor, and tell them it was not the
custom of the House to receive insolent messages.”[864]
Thus did Adams the Whig stand forth as the special champion of the
President and the Democratic House, and tear the Webster sophistry to
tatters; thus did he serve notice that, outside the more selfish
politicians of the Whig Opposition, the Nation applauded the spirit of
Jackson and was prepared to follow him against any foreign foe. The
speech was the sensation of the day, and Adams was never forgiven. Henry
A. Wise, the brilliant Virginia Whig, followed in a remarkable medley of
gossipy charges against his colleagues, but his effort was so novel in
its irregularities that it destroyed itself--and the fight over the loss
of the Fortifications Bill is told in the speeches of Webster and Adams.
The Whigs pursued the latter with their resentment to the polls in the
autumn of that year, and he was able to record, after the election,
that he was “reëlected to the next Congress without formal opposition,
but almost without Whig votes.” And looking back at the end of the year,
and recording his impressions, he referred to his reply to Webster with
evident relish. “It demolished the speech of Webster,” he wrote, “drove
him from the field, and whipped him and his party into the rank and file
of the Nation in the quarrel with the French King.”[865] It did
something more; it disclosed the fact that the Whig leaders, in their
hate of Jackson, approached perilously near disloyalty to their country.
If Jackson won his fight, it was after battling against, not only the
Government of France, but against the party Opposition at home. And
fighting this double battle, he won.
IX
Adams spoke on January 21, 1836, while Congress was considering the
recommendations of the Special Message. Alphonse Pageot, and his wife
and son, Andrew Jackson, were in New York awaiting passage back to
France; and two days after the French Chargé left New York, Charles
Bankhead, the British Chargé d’Affaires at Washington, acting on
instructions from his Government, offered the mediation of England in
the settlement of the Franco-American dispute, in a letter to Forsyth.
Jackson and his Secretary of State took six days to deliberate on the
proposal before giving a formal answer. The note, signed, and no doubt
prepared by Forsyth, is a strong and polished review of the controversy,
a reiteration of Livingston’s contention that no nation has the right to
attempt an interference with the “consultation” of the departments of
the American Government, and an explicit reservation that the American
Government would not make the explanation or apology prescribed by the
Government of France. There is no single sign of weakening, absolutely
nothing new in the way of a concession, and only a repetition of the
Livingston notes to the Duc de Broglie.
Twelve days later, Bankhead informed Forsyth of the success of the
mediation. “The French Government,” he wrote, “has stated ... that the
frank and honorable manner in which the President has, in his recent
Message, expressed himself in regard to the points of difference between
the Governments of France and the United States, has removed those
difficulties, upon the score of national honor, which have hitherto
stood in the way of the prompt execution by France of the treaty.”[866]
This was a complete reversal. The President had “expressed himself on
the points of difference” through Livingston, in conversation, and
through notes to both de Rigny and de Broglie, and he had expressed
himself to them precisely as in “his recent Message.” And it was after
he had thus expressed himself that France had insisted that an
explanation or apology prescribed by her should be made as a condition
to the execution of the treaty. Jackson added nothing; France accepted
what she had scornfully refused before, and the triumph of Jackson was
complete. On May 10th Jackson was able to inform Congress that France
had paid the four installments due. Thus, after the failures of the
Administrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams to get a
settlement with France, Jackson had negotiated a treaty within two years
of his first inauguration, and had enforced the observance of the treaty
almost a year before the expiration of his last term.
The theory of some historians that Jackson, in his dealings with foreign
nations, was lacking in finesse and success, is manifestly colored by
blind prejudice. The prestige of the Nation abroad was never so high as
after his stern insistence that a treaty with the United States could no
more be disregarded than one with any of the European Powers. John Fiske
touched the real significance of the result of the controversy when he
wrote that “the days when foreign powers could safely insult us were
evidently gone by.”[867] And the same historian discloses the necessity
for the position assumed by Jackson. “In foreign affairs,” he writes,
“Jackson’s Administration won great credit through its enforcement of
the French spoliation claims. European nations which had claims for
damages against France on account of spoliations committed by French
cruisers during the Napoleonic wars, had no difficulty after the Peace
of 1815 in obtaining payment; but the claims of the United States had
been superciliously neglected.”[868] And so pronounced a partisan as
John W. Foster, Secretary of State under the second Harrison, has
recorded the deliberate judgment that “in its foreign relations his
Administration maintained a dignified and creditable attitude.”[869]
The Whig leaders in the Senate and the press, the Clays and Websters and
the Gales, had permitted their bitterness against Jackson to lead them
to the verge of disloyalty to country, and the indignant protest of
Adams was a true reflection of the popular opinion. The clever
politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet were not slow to see the opportunity
again to picture Jackson as the patriotic hero, for the second time
leading his people in a fight against a foreign adversary.
CHAPTER XV
THE BATTLE OF THE SUCCESSION
I
From the adjournment of Congress in March, 1835, until it convened in
December, the political leaders concerned themselves with presidential
politics, and the struggle for position was desperate and unscrupulous.
From the hour in the first year of his first Administration, when
Jackson, fearful of an early death, wrote his celebrated letter to Judge
Overton expressing a preference for Van Buren, the latter had been
looked upon as the crown prince. From that hour the master political
manipulators surrounding Jackson made no move not intended to advance
the “magician” toward the goal of his ambition. In the summer of 1833
Major Lewis was disturbed over the prospective candidacy of Justice
McLean,[870] but it failed to materialize, and, within a year after the
Major’s trepidation, the White House circle realized that the most
serious challenge to the plans for the succession would come from Hugh
Lawson White of Tennessee, considered a renegade from the Jackson camp.
The close attachment of the President and the Senator from his State had
perceptibly cooled in less than a year after the inauguration. The
latter was of a proud and sensitive temperament, and the growing
intimacy of his old friend with the new school of practical politicians
was enough to estrange him. Had he hoped in the beginning to become the
legatee of Jackson, we should have a plausible explanation of his bitter
resentment of the President’s failure to observe his one-term pledge. We
only know that he drifted, first into the position of an independent
supporter of the Administration, and later into one of frank hostility.
His imagination began early to play pranks with his judgment. He began
to seek evidence of slights. In all the new school of Jacksonian leaders
he saw enemies. He carefully scrutinized the “Globe” for discriminations
against him. That there was no conscious effort on the part of the paper
to ignore him is shown in the action of Blair, on learning that the
Senator was offended. In a cordial letter he assured the suspicious
Senator that he felt “the most perfect consciousness” that he had “done
nothing to offend--certainly not intentionally,” and begged him to
“frankly state the offense that it may be righted.” The curt, ungracious
reply of White was overlooked and an appeal made for a personal
interview, but the response was so repellent that further attempts at a
reconciliation were abandoned. There is some justification for the
conclusion that White had early determined upon a quarrel with the view
to placing himself at the head of the opposition wing of the Democratic
Party. In 1833 the Opposition began to claim him as its own when he
supported Calhoun’s bill on Executive patronage in a powerful speech,
and joined Clay in opposing the Administration plan in the Nullification
fight.
It is not surprising that under these conditions the small faction of
the Democratic Party should have turned to him as the logical man to pit
against the pretensions of Van Buren. The former was a Southerner, the
latter a Northerner, and the slavery controversy had become acute. The
fact that White was a Tennesseean was expected to embarrass and handicap
Jackson in his support of the New Yorker. To the Whigs he not only
presented the best prospect for a schism in the party in power, but for
a time the leaders actually considered the wisdom of making him their
own candidate. Clay was fearful that his candidacy would fail to infuse
among the Whigs “the spirit and zeal necessary to insure success,” but
thought he might, as an independent candidate, “obtain the undivided
support of the South and South-West,” and thus throw the contest into
the House and defeat Van Buren.[871] Thus all the elements were present
to make his disaffection probable. Hurt by what he conceived to be
Jackson’s ingratitude, jealous of the new friends that haunted the White
House, importuned by the anti-Administration Democrats, and cleverly
encouraged by the Whigs, he was gradually pushed into the attitude of a
candidate. To all of these, the gossips of the day, malignant as always,
added a new reason, which they insisted was the predominant one--the
ambition of his wife.[872]
Just before he decided upon the plunge, the Whigs had been assiduous in
their cultivation of him, and ardent in their expressions of sympathy
because of the harsh treatment accorded him by his old friend in the
White House. One of the most persistent of the tempters was Clay’s
intimate and reflector, R. P. Letcher, Representative from Kentucky, who
had maintained the most constant social relations with the Whites during
the preceding winter, ingratiating himself into the old man’s
confidence, and frequently enjoying the hospitality of his home. The
hollow mockery of Letcher’s attachment appeared in a letter to a friend,
written a little later, in which he galloped over the gossip of the
capital, and announced that “Judge White is on the track running gaily,
and won’t come off; and if he would, his wife wouldn’t let him.”[873] A
more suspicious man than the Tennessee Senator might have found, in
this, evidence of treachery and duplicity. The slur on Mrs. White was
resented by Blair, in a stinging editorial in the “Globe,” but his
excoriation of Letcher does not appear to have given White a more
favorable impression of the editor.[874] The intimation regarding Mrs.
White was basely false, the slur wholly unjustified.
By the spring of 1834, White had announced his candidacy and the gage
of battle was thus thrown down to Jackson in Tennessee, which became the
battle-ground. In the autumn of that year, while on a visit to the
Hermitage, Jackson, on learning of the partiality of many for the
Senator, had entered into a warm defense of his favorite, ridiculed the
prospects of White outside his own State, and, in more conciliatory
mood, proposed the nomination of the Tennesseean for Vice-President with
a view to the succession on the expiration of Van Buren’s term. Learning
of these interviews, White wrote to James K. Polk, knowing his intimacy
with the President, inquiring as to his information on the presidential
position, but the only satisfaction he received was a warning to give no
credence to any such gossip unless from an unquestionable source.[875]
But if Polk was not then familiar with Jackson’s uncompromising
hostility to White’s aspirations, he was not to remain long in doubt. It
was the plan of the Jackson organization in Tennessee, led by Polk and
Felix Grundy, to simulate sympathy with the Senator’s ambition, and
persuasively lead him into the shambles of the Baltimore Convention. But
when he refused to go passively to the slaughter, and a meeting of the
Tennessee congressional delegation was called in the interest of his
candidacy, Polk and Grundy refused to attend, threw off the mask, and
declared open war. Thus the fight was extended into the congressional
elections in Tennessee in the summer of 1835, with Polk assuming the
leadership of the Administration forces, taking the stump in opposition
to White’s candidacy, and throwing the weight of his Nashville paper
into the scale. Henceforth Polk’s attitude was courageous. He would be
glad to see a son of Tennessee elevated to the Presidency if it could be
done in regulation manner by the Democratic Party, but he would not
countenance any attempt to divide the party in the interest of the
Whigs. The National Democracy favored Van Buren, and it was the duty of
Tennessee not to separate from the party in the Nation.
The elections resulted in the triumph of White’s followers, with
casualties among Jackson’s congressional followers, but Polk was
triumphantly reëlected, and he redoubled his efforts. At a series of
banquets he denounced the attempt of Democrats to create a schism in the
face of the common enemy. But immediately afterwards the Legislature,
through the adoption of resolutions, formally nominated White for the
Presidency.
II
Although the fame of Hugh Lawson White has been obscured by the years,
he was familiarly known to his generation as “the Cato of the Senate.”
Without sparkle or magnetism, the purity of his character, the soundness
of his common sense, his fidelity to duty, and assiduous application
commanded respect if not admiration. His senatorial speeches were
noteworthy because of their temperate tone--rare in his generation.
Clarity and strength characterized his every utterance. If his speeches
lacked eloquence, they smacked of statesmanship and substance. No member
of the Senate more impressively looked the part. Tall, slender, and
well-proportioned, with a broad forehead and deep-set, serious,
penetrating blue eyes, he was the embodiment of senatorial dignity. With
long gray hair, brushed back from his forehead, and curling at some
length on his shoulders, he appeared the patriarch. In repose, he was
sad and stern. Because of the rarity and thoroughness of his speeches,
he commanded the respect and confidence of his colleagues. He looked
upon his duties with the solemnity of the Roman Senator of the noblest
period of the Roman Republic. Always heard with attention, he was
attentive to others, and he was frequently the one listener to an
uninteresting speech. Even in familiar conversation, he rarely jested
outside the domestic circle, and, while an interesting and instructive
conversationalist about his own fireside, he was apt to be taciturn and
retiring in company. Had fate ordained that he should have reached the
Presidency, he would have made a safe, conventional Executive, and he
would be remembered as a pure, patriotic public servant. Such was the
man who was to give Jackson, in the election of his successor, his only
uneasy hours.
III
The concern of the Jackson organization over White’s candidacy may be
read in the persistency of Blair’s vigorous denunciations in the
“Washington Globe.” Beginning in the early spring and continuing
throughout the summer, the Administration organ teemed with attacks on
the Tennessee Senator and his most ardent champion, John Bell, Speaker
of the House of Representatives. The ill-advised announcement of White’s
followers that his candidacy was intended to destroy the landmarks of
party gave the editor his cue. “This artifice,” wrote Blair, “has been
so frequently attempted, and in vain, by those seeking to divide and
destroy the Republican [Democratic] Party in this country, that we would
have supposed the design would not have been confessed on the part of
those supporting the interests of a man, who, up to the age of sixty, at
least has made it his boast to support his party firmly, as the only
means of maintaining his principles. But he now seeks office at the
hands of the Opposition, and like all new solicitors for the favor of
Federalism, becomes a no-party man.”[876] The fact that White had voted
with the Whigs on the Fortifications Bill was made the text of many
discourses on the questionable character of his patriotism; his
connection with Calhoun offered the opportunity to picture him as a
half-disguised friend of Nullification. The encouragement given his
candidacy by the Whig leaders was interpreted as a desertion of the
house of his friends to do the work of the enemy. Tying him up tightly
with the Whigs and the Nullifiers, attacking the no-party idea as a
wooden horse of Troy in which discredited Federalism planned to reënter
the Capitol, Blair smote the Tennesseean hip and thigh throughout the
summer.
But scarcely less offensive to the “Globe” than White was John Bell, and
the determination of the organization to prevent his reëlection to the
Speakership was evident in the systematic attacks upon his record.
Beginning in May, and continuing through the summer, there was scarcely
an issue of the “Globe” that did not deal with some phase of Bell’s
alleged perfidy, in a special article.[877] The virulent hostility to
Bell, of the Kitchen Cabinet, was not due in whole to his relations with
the candidacy of White. Following his election over Polk to the
Speakership, Duff Green, in the “Telegraph,” ascribed Polk’s defeat to
his support by the Kitchen Cabinet, and described “Kendall, Blair, and
Lewis parading the lobby” in attempts to drum up votes for their
favorite. This had been bluntly denied by Blair, who insisted that he
had spoken to no one on the Speakership, and that Lewis was “known to
have been inclined to Mr. Bell’s election.”[878] But the charge in the
“Telegraph” had been accepted by many and the pride of the Jackson
leaders had been aroused. The White candidacy, Bell’s espousal of it,
and Polk’s determined stand against it, made it imperative that Bell
should be retired in the interest of Polk.
Meanwhile the Baltimore Convention assembled on May 20, 1835--an
assembly that no more deserves the popular reproach of being a
convention of office-holders than the average convention of the dominant
party ever since. The absence of delegates from South Carolina and
Illinois was tolerable to the Jacksonians, but the failure of Tennessee
to appear, notwithstanding the personal importunities of the President,
was painfully embarrassing. That had to be corrected. A comparatively
unknown Tennesseean, E. Rucker, was found in the city, and literally
pushed into the convention to cast the unauthorized vote of
Tennessee--and thus the word “Ruckerize” was added to the vocabulary of
practical politicians. The polished Andrew Stevenson, who had resigned
the Speakership to accept the diplomatic post in London, only to share
the fate of Van Buren, was called upon to deliver the “keynote” address
in the capacity of chairman. But this honor, bestowed upon the
Virginians, was more than neutralized by New York’s desertion of her
Virginia allies in the nomination of the vice-presidential candidate.
Never had the Old Dominion been dominated by a more powerful machine
than that led by Judge Spencer Roane, a man of great intellectual force,
who had been favored by Jefferson for the Chief Justiceship. He had a
powerful colleague in his cousin, Thomas Ritchie, the forceful editor of
the “Richmond Enquirer.” Stevenson was an important member of the
clique, and no one was closer to its leader than the scholarly Senator
William C. Rives, who had, as Jackson’s first Minister to France,
negotiated the indemnity settlement. The Virginians had early pledged
themselves to the political fortunes of Van Buren. The alliance of the
two States, Virginia and New York, was one of the significant facts in
the politics of the day. Never doubting the loyalty of their ally, Roane
and his organization determined to dictate the nomination of Rives for
the Vice-Presidency with a view to the succession. It was not until the
eve of the convention that the Virginians learned, to their dismay, that
the New Yorkers had other plans. Almost incredulous, chagrined,
disturbed, Ritchie hastened to write Rives of the new developments. He
had heard that “some of our strongest friends in Washington” were
looking with favor on Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. Van Buren’s
preference was a mystery. However, Ritchie had been pressing Rives’s
claims and had written letters, not only to delegates, but to “a
gentleman in Washington, who can, if he thinks fit, exercise a sort of
potential voice.” But unhappily for the Virginians, Lewis, Kendall,
Blair, Silas Wright, and Hill were opportunists, with their eyes upon
the West, in view of the candidacy of both Harrison and White. It was
clear to them that expediency demanded the nomination of a Westerner for
the Vice-Presidency. The stubborn, and now thoroughly outraged,
Virginians refused to acquiesce in the reasoning of the Kitchen Cabinet,
and Rives went down before the first of the “steam rollers” that have
become so commonplace in national conventions.[879] Thoroughly disgusted
by what they conceived to be a betrayal, the Virginia organization
declared open war on Johnson, and Van Buren was much perturbed. But that
wily diplomat, assisted by Silas Wright, immediately took personal
charge of the work of conciliation, writing numerous letters to Rives
and Ritchie, and the storm was stilled for the time when Van Buren made
a journey to Castle Hill, the country home of the defeated candidate,
where the fatted calf was killed and the leaders of the Roane
organization were invited to participate in the feast and to accept the
apologies and pledges of the presidential nominee.
IV
Meanwhile the Whigs were in a quandary as to what to do, with their
greatest popular leader, noting a tendency to set him aside, spending
the summer at Ashland in bitterness of soul. In a letter written in July
he had unbosomed himself to a friend, with the confession that he had
thought it probable that his party would again turn to him, but had
noted a tendency to “discourage the use of my name.” In Ohio, where he
was popular, the Legislature had discredited his possible candidacy by
its endorsement of Justice McLean. In the spirit of an Achilles sulking
in his tent, he discussed the various names canvassed, pointing out
their weaknesses. White would be intolerable as a Whig candidate because
“he has been throughout a supporter of the Jackson Administration and
holds no principle, except in the matter of patronage, as to public
measures, in common with the Whigs.” While he thought Webster’s
attainments greatly superior to those of any other candidate, “it is to
be regretted that a general persuasion seems to exist that he stands no
chance.” Harrison was damned with the faint praise that he “could easier
obtain the vote of Kentucky than any other candidate named.” The only
rift in the clouds that he could see was in the nomination of three
candidates, with White as one of the three, to draw off the Democratic
strength in the South and portions of the West, and the defeat of Van
Buren by thus throwing the contest into the House.[880] That this plan
was uppermost in the minds of the Whigs is shown in a letter to Clay
from James Barbour of Virginia, in August. Because of the slavery
question, he thought White the strongest candidate to be pressed against
Van Buren in Virginia. Webster was out of the question. McLean, not even
considered. Harrison, after White, would make the strongest appeal. “It
seems to me,” he continued, “that we have no prospect of excluding Van
Buren but by the plan you suggest, of selecting two candidates who will
be the strongest in their respective sections. White, I apprehend, for
the South, Webster for the East, North and West, or whomsoever
Pennsylvania prefers.”[881] Thus, in the correspondence of the Whig
leaders, we have the proof that White was intrigued into the race by the
Whigs with the view to furthering their own interest, and not his.
By September, Clay, having met Harrison in Cincinnati, and finding him
“respectful and cordial,” was more cordial toward his candidacy,
although he preferred any choice Pennsylvania might announce. The Rhode
Island and Connecticut elections had shown that “it is in vain to look
even to New England for the support of Mr. Webster.”[882] Out of this
confusion of counsels, Harrison ultimately emerged with the general
support of the Whigs, but, like the Democrats, the Whigs were to be
embarrassed by a double tail to their ticket. With the popular sentiment
favoring Tyler, the politicians, with their eyes on the Anti-Masons,
nominated Granger. It was the contention of contemporaries that Clay,
who had engineered the move against Tyler, feared that the concentration
of the Whigs on some strong candidate for the Vice-Presidency might
result in his election with Van Buren, because of the dissatisfaction of
the Virginia Whigs with Johnson; and that a Whig Vice-President, under a
Democratic President, would become a formidable rival for the
presidential nomination in 1840.[883] Both Tyler and Granger, however,
remained in the field, thus dividing the vote in the election.
The Massachusetts Whigs, nothing daunted by the turn of affairs,
remained faithful to Webster, who was placed in the field; and in South
Carolina, where Calhoun’s followers made a point of separating
themselves from all parties and all other States, Senator Willie P.
Mangum was nominated. Thus, in the campaign of 1836 there were five
candidates, with the Democrats united behind Van Buren, and the
Opposition dividing its strength between Harrison, White, Webster, and
Mangum. Nothing could have been more to the liking of the Democracy. It
entered the campaign in solid ranks except in Tennessee, where even the
magic name of Jackson was unable to prevent a schism which was to result
in the humiliation of the venerable chief.
V
During the summer of 1835 the militant methods of the Abolitionists
forced the slavery question to the front to the embarrassment of the
politicians and the candidates. The Nation was still on edge because of
the anti-slavery and anti-abolition riots of the year before, when
George Thompson, the Abolition firebrand from England, arrived in
America with exhortations to the Northerners to end slavery at once. The
South was outraged, the North, shocked. Coincident with Thompson’s mad
crusade, the American Anti-Slavery Society, having collected a large sum
of money for the purpose, began to circularize the country, and
especially the South, with literature calculated to arouse the slaves to
insurrection.[884] The defense of the abolitionists was that the
literature was sent to the whites alone; but much of it fell into the
hands of the blacks, and excitement reached fever heat. In Philadelphia
a pouch of these tracts was confiscated by a mob, and sunk in the
Delaware River. In Charleston the mail was searched for them, and three
thousand citizens assembled at night to witness their destruction in a
bonfire. Mass meetings were held in all the larger Northern cities to
denounce the desperate enterprise of the abolitionists, and in Boston
the citizens packed Faneuil Hall to hear Harrison Gray Otis denounce
them in a spirited address. When Thompson, in one of his inflammatory
speeches, proposed that the slaves should arise and cut their masters’
throats, the bitterness in the North was as pronounced as in the South,
and after Garrison had narrowly escaped the rope through the
intercession of the Mayor of Boston, whom he had scathingly attacked in
his paper, the English orator went into hiding until he could be
spirited out of the country. The most important effect of this miserable
blunder of the abolitionists was to force the slavery question into
politics, and from that hour on, the slave-owners of the South became
dominant in the politics of the Republic.
It is certain that Jackson, like all other responsible leaders, abhorred
these appeals to the slaves to rise and cut their masters’ throats. The
burden of dealing with an important phase of the problem, the
transmission of such matter through the mail, fell upon the
Administration, and in the absence of any law to prevent it. But when
the postmasters of New York and Charleston wrote Postmaster-General
Kendall for instructions, that astute politician replied that the United
States should not carry such matter in the mail; and, acting upon the
hint, the postmasters threw all such matter out with the tacit consent
of the Government.
The Opposition, however, planned to turn the hatred of the abolitionists
against Van Buren, who was hostile to the extension of slavery. Writing
to Clay in the late summer of 1835, Senator Barbour rejoiced in the
injection of the slavery question as certain to injure the Democratic
nominee.[885] The close political associates of Van Buren were keenly
alive to the danger, and John Forsyth wrote him that unless something
should be done in New York he “should not be at all surprised at a
decisive movement to establish a Southern Confederacy,” and suggested
that “a portion of the Magician’s skill is required in this matter ...
and the sooner you set the imps to work the better.”[886] Whether the
wily politician “set the imps to work” we do not know, but within a
month of the writing of the letter the New York postmaster publicly
announced that he would refuse to forward the objectionable literature.
This was given the widest publicity; so, too, the letter of Amos Kendall
accepting and endorsing the action of the New York official. And about
the same time, whether due to the Van Buren “imps” or not, one of the
greatest meetings ever held in New York was held in the park to denounce
the methods of the abolitionists. Nothing was done by Van Buren
personally, in a public way, to divorce himself from all sympathy with
the abolition movement.
The Whig nominee, determined publicly to repudiate the abolition
methods, found an opportunity at a dinner in his honor at Vincennes,
Indiana, in a speech intended as a friendly gesture to the slave-holding
States, and for the cultivation of such of those in Virginia as were
prone to associate Van Buren with the abolition sentiment in portions of
New York.[887] The position of White was as clearly fixed on slavery as
that of Calhoun, and we shall observe a little later how the latter
sought to place Van Buren in a position hostile to Southern interests.
VI
Meanwhile Van Buren serenely went his way, undisturbed by the storm, and
in the best of humor. Soon after the Baltimore Convention, the most
unconventional campaign biography ever published in America was issued
by a Philadelphia publishing house and given an extensive circulation.
The present generation scarcely realizes that there were two Davy
Crocketts--the man of the woods and the fight, and the less admirable
creature who made a rather sorry figure in the Congress. It was the
latter who was persuaded to write a part, and to father all, of this
scurrilous biography of Van Buren, although it is generally accepted
that Hugh Lawson White, the man of ponderous dignity and lofty ideals,
was the man behind this questionable literary venture.[888] The personal
references to Van Buren are crudely and coarsely offensive throughout.
“He is about fifty years old,” he wrote, “and notwithstanding his
baldness, which reaches all around and half down his head, like a white
pitch plaster, leaving a few white floating locks, he is only three
years older than I am. His face is a good deal shriveled, and he looks
sorry, not for anything he has gained, but what he may lose.”[889] In
describing his subject’s mental operations, he found that “his mind
beats round, like a tame bear tied to a stake, in a little circle,
hardly bigger than the circumference of the head in which it is placed,
seeking no other object than to convert the Government into an
instrument to serve himself or his office-holding friends.”[890]
In explaining Van Buren’s rise, the hero of young Texas proceeded: “He
has become a great man without any reason for it, and so have I. He has
been nominated for President without the least pretensions; and so have
I. But here the similarity stops. From his cradle he was on the
non-committal tribe. I never was. He had always two ways to do a thing;
I never had but one. He was generally half bent; I tried to be as
straight as a gun barrel. He could not bear his rise; I never minded
mine. He forgot all his old associates because they were poor folks; I
stuck to the people that made me.”[891]
And in a superb bit of demagogy, Crockett described Van Buren as
traveling through the country in an English coach with “English servants
dressed in uniform--I think they call it livery”; refusing to mix “with
the sons of the little tavern-keepers,” forgetting “his old companions
and friends in the humbler walks of life”; eating “in a room by
himself,” and carrying himself “so stiff in his gait and prim in his
dress, that he was what the English call a Dandy.” The reader was
assured that “when he enters the Senate Chamber in the morning, he
struts and swaggers like a crow in a gutter,” that he “is laced up in
corsets such as women in town wear, and if possible tighter than the
best of them.” Indeed, Crockett found it “difficult to tell from his
personal appearance whether he was a man or a woman.”[892] The Eaton
scandal was salaciously served anew, the fight between Jackson and
Benton was described in detail, and, unfortunately for his candidate for
President, a chapter was devoted to a hot defense of White on the Bank
and on the Fortifications Bill.
The book, now happily forgotten, is only interesting and historically
important in indicating the tone of the political contests of the time,
and the scurrility of the attacks on Van Buren in the campaign. If the
Little Magician enjoyed the queer concoction, it was not without the
realization of its possibility for doing harm. At any rate, a little
later, another and a friendly biography by Holland was published,
seriously reviewing Van Buren’s public career. While not written in bad
taste, it aroused the ire of John Quincy Adams who took the time to read
it. “A mere partisan electioneering work,” he wrote in his diary. “Van
Buren’s personal character bears, however, a stronger resemblance to
that of Mr. Madison than to that of Mr. Jefferson. These are both
remarkable for their extreme caution in avoiding and averting personal
collisions. Van Buren, like the Sosie of Molière’s ‘Amphitryon,’ is
‘l’ami de tout le monde.’ This is perhaps the secret of his great
success in public life, and especially against the competitors with whom
he is now struggling for the last step on the ladder of his
ambition--Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. They, indeed, are left upon
the field for dead; and men of straw, Hugh L. White, William Henry
Harrison, and Daniel Webster, are thrust forward in their places.
Neither of these has a principle to lean upon.”[893]
If these intrigues and attacks disturbed Van Buren in the least, he gave
no sign. During a ten-day sojourn in New York in October, Philip Hone,
who vainly sought an open date to entertain him at dinner, found “his
outward appearance like the unruffled surface of the majestic river
which covers rocks and whirlpools, but shows no marks of the agitation
beneath.”[894] In this same good temper, he faced the ordeal of
presiding over the Senate, dominated by his political foes, in the long
session preceding the election. We shall here find him threading his way
among pitfalls provided by his enemies with such skill as to conceal all
effort.
VII
The halls of Congress in the session of December, 1835, were used as the
hustings, and there, largely, the presidential battle was fought. The
first blow was struck by the Jacksonians in the election of Polk to the
Speakership, over Bell. The latter was a man of much capacity,
considered by Van Buren as the intellectual superior of White, and he
had been elected to the Speakership, on the resignation of Stevenson,
through a combination of the Whigs and anti-Administration Democrats. In
seeking a reconciliation with the Jacksonians, he had hinted at a desire
for a confidential conference with Van Buren, and the two were finally
invited to dine with a mutual friend. Unhappily for Bell, a severe
toothache, real or diplomatic, forced the candidate of the Jacksonian
Democracy to retire the moment the ladies left the table. When a few
days later the two found themselves together on the speakers’ rostrum on
the occasion of the delivery of Adams’s oration on Lafayette, Bell had
attempted to discuss the differences of the factions, but the canny Red
Fox “put a civil end to the conversation with a few general remarks in
regard to the duty the friends of Judge White owed” to the party, and
soon afterward the Tennessee Senator had entered the field, and Bell was
forced to espouse his cause.[895] Thus the course of history may have
been changed by the toothache of a politician. At any rate, it was
enough, to the Jacksonian leaders, to know that Polk had risked his
popularity and future by taking the offensive in favor of Van Buren, and
he was rewarded with the Speakership.
The Whigs instantly accepted the challenge by bitterly opposing the
confirmation of Roger B. Taney as Chief Justice of the United States. No
one questioned his professional ability or his eminent fitness for a
high judicial position. Bitterly hostile as he was to Jackson’s Bank
policy, John Marshall had recognized Taney’s qualifications for the
bench when the President had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to
elevate his former Secretary of the Treasury to that tribunal. At that
time the venerable Chief Justice had quietly interested himself in his
successor’s behalf, and among the papers of Senator Leigh, still in
possession of the family, is the brief but significant note from
Marshall: “If you have not made up your mind on the nomination of Mr.
Taney, I have received some information in his favor which I would wish
to communicate.”[896] But after Marshall’s death and Taney’s
appointment, the Whig and pro-Bank politicians attempted to array all
the late jurist’s friends and admirers against the confirmation by
picturing Jackson as not only hostile to the trend of his decisions, but
to the perpetuation of his memory. The “Richmond Whig” announced that
“he [Jackson] thinks undue honors have been rendered to the memory of
General Marshall, and predicts that the attempt to build a monument to
his memory in Washington will fail.” This was a willful perversion of a
comment actually made to the editor of the “Southern Literary Messenger”
at Rip Raps, that, in view of Jackson’s inability to interest Congress
in an appropriation for a monument to Washington, he was afraid that it
would be impossible to build one to Marshall.[897] But the idea of the
fighting Secretary of the Treasury in the seat of Marshall was maddening
to the Whig leaders, and the nomination was attacked with intemperance
and even scurrility by both Webster and Clay, and it was not until in
March, three months after the nomination was sent to the Senate, that it
was confirmed.
But the appearance of resolutions from legislatures, instructing Whig
and pro-Bank Senators to vote to expunge the resolution of censure
against Jackson, was the most bitter pill of all. Not only did it
further embitter the Whigs against the Administration, but it put them
at loggerheads with each other. This was especially true of the Whig
Senators from Virginia, Tyler and Leigh, who took opposite views as to
the inviolability of instructions. Throughout his entire career, Tyler
had stoutly insisted upon the right of the people, speaking through
their legislatures, to instruct their representatives in the Senate.
This position had been adopted by the Virginia Whigs, and accepted by
the people of the State. Because of this, Leigh now sat in the Senate,
in the seat from which Rives had been instructed. But when a resolution
was introduced in the Virginia Assembly, instructing the Senators from
that State to vote to expunge, the Whigs began to divide on the question
of compliance in the event of its adoption. There was never any question
as to the attitude of John Tyler. Pilloried in history as a second-rate
politician and a weakling, it is impossible to study his career without
being impressed with his consistency, which was all too rare in his
generation, and the unfaltering courage with which he lived up to his
principles, regardless of the effect upon his personal fortunes. But
Leigh, who owed his seat in the Senate to the principle of instructions,
was made of less heroic clay. With the encouragement of Virginians,
including Judge Brooke, who always reflected the views of Henry Clay, he
began to hedge. Senator Barbour, another of Clay’s intimates, urged upon
Tyler sophisticated reasons for ignoring the instructions.[898] When the
resolutions were adopted in the lower branch of the legislature, the
pressure of the Whigs to ignore them met with a gracious yielding on the
part of Leigh, and the unscrupulous partisans were able to concentrate
their efforts on Tyler. Such was the logic of party bigotry in 1836 that
the Maryland Legislature, which had nominated Tyler for the
Vice-Presidency, threatened to rescind the nomination if he complied
with the instructions, and the future President, the truckling, tricky
politician of historical caricature, expressed his disgust in a letter
to his son: “These incidents look almost like a political romance in
these days when everything is surrendered for office.... Give me the
assurance that history will do me justice ... and I will go to my grave
in peace.”[899] When the resolution was passed by both branches, and
certified to the two Senators, Tyler, without a moment’s hesitation,
resigned in a dignified letter to Van Buren, and retired to private
life. Leigh ignored the instructions and retained his seat, but resigned
in July. This contradiction sadly crippled the Whigs in Virginia; and
when, during the spring, a dinner was given the two Senators by their
fellow partisans, and Tyler was lauded for his act, the spicy Thomas
Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” insisted that two of the toasts
were:
“John Tyler: Honor to him, because he could not, with honor, retain his
seat.”
“Senator Leigh: Honor to him, because he could not, with honor,
relinquish his seat.”
Thus Tyler passed from the ranks of the Opposition in the Senate, and
William C. Rives, the friend of Jackson and Van Buren, vindicated by
events, returned to strengthen the forces of the Administration.
The attitude of Ewing of Ohio toward similar resolutions by the
legislature of his State was that of Leigh.[900]
All these manifestations of popular approval of the Administration, and
dissatisfaction with the Whigs and their allies in the Senate, tended to
infuriate the Opposition which found itself helpless before the tide. In
Tennessee, however, the Administration was unable to secure instructions
aimed at White, and the attempt merely furnished the opportunity for
laudatory speeches on the Tennessee Senator, and bitter denunciations of
the proposal to expunge. This defeat in Tennessee was the only hopeful
sign that reached the Whigs in Washington.[901]
The greater part of the congressional session was devoted to some phase
of the abolition agitation, and Calhoun bent all his efforts toward
arraying the North and South against each other. He seemed determined to
have it that the Northern people were in sympathy with the methods and
purposes of the radical followers of Garrison. The mobs that had all but
lynched Garrison, and forced the friends of Thompson to spirit him away,
were Northern mobs. If the obnoxious literature had been burned by the
people of Charleston, it had been thrown into the river by the people of
Philadelphia and denounced by the people of Boston. No Northern
statesman or politician had raised a voice in defense of the
abolitionists, and most of them vied with Calhoun in their denunciation
of them. But when, on January 7th, an abolition petition was presented,
and Calhoun moved that it be not received and supported his motion in an
intemperate speech, some of the most pronounced pro-slavery Senators
took alarm. The great Nullifier declared that an irrepressible fight had
been forced and should be met. “We must meet the enemy on the
frontier--on the question of receiving,” he said. “We must secure that
important pass--it is our Thermopylæ. The power of resistance, by the
universal law, is on the exterior. Break through the shell, penetrate
the crust, and there is no resistance within.” When, four days later,
Buchanan presented a petition for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia and moved that it be received and rejected, Calhoun
demanded that the question be put first on receiving, and a debate was
precipitated which dragged along for weary weeks, ending in the defeat
of Calhoun’s plan.
During the period of these intermittent discussions, the “Telegraph,”
reflector of Calhoun, teemed with articles bitterly attacking, not so
much the abolitionists as the North. This determination to treat the
Northerners as enemies of Southern institutions was so apparent that a
number of pro-slavery Southern Senators were moved to protest and to
criticism of the Southern leader. Whether he was actuated, that early,
by a desire to lay the foundation for a Southern Confederacy, or merely
used this method to create feeling in the Southern States against the
candidacy of Van Buren, can never be determined. But the Democrats
supporting Van Buren had no doubt that the latter was the dominating
motive. The sharp-tongued Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, in a fierce
assault on Calhoun’s position, directly charged that the “Telegraph” had
been exerting itself from the time of the Nullification movement to
drive a wedge between the sections, and warned Calhoun that the
agitation he was forcing on Congress played directly into the hands of
the abolitionists. But the latter had determined upon his course, and
appeared not only willing, but anxious, actually to break with the
friends of the South among the Northerners in Congress.
If he expected, however, in his fight against receiving the petitions,
to prove Van Buren hostile to the interest of the South, he failed. The
ten votes he mustered were recruited from both parties. Five were
Whigs,[902] three were Democrats supporting the Administration,[903] and
two were against the Administration and hostile to Van Buren.[904]
Thus, with the exception of three Senators, all the supporters of Van
Buren and the Administration voted to receive the petitions. The vote of
White was unquestionably political, intended to strengthen his candidacy
among the pro-slavery radicals of the Southern States.
But Calhoun was not discouraged. His political motive was more apparent
in the battle over his bill to regulate the transmission of the mails,
and exclude therefrom all abolition literature intended for the
slave-holding States. We have noted the excitement of the preceding
summer, and the attitude of Kendall. In his Message at the opening of
Congress, Jackson had recommended the enactment of such a law “as will
prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern
States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to
instigate the slaves to insurrection.” Calhoun had eagerly seized upon
this recommendation to move its reference to a special committee,
instead of to the regularly organized Committee on Post-Offices.
Buchanan opposed the suggestion on the ground that the unusual course
would tend to increase the excitement of the people.[905] Grundy of
Tennessee held that the very fact that the majority of the Committee on
Post-Offices came from a section not directly interested would give more
weight to its recommendations.[906] King of Alabama took advantage of
Calhoun’s queer disclaimer of a political motive to insinuate its
existence, and favored the regular course for the reasons advanced by
Buchanan.[907] Leigh supported Calhoun’s plan on the fantastic ground
that since the obnoxious mail could not be excluded by the existing
post-office regulations, the Committee on Post-Offices was clearly not
the proper body.[908] But it was left to Preston of South Carolina to
explain bluntly the motive of Calhoun. Since the South was especially
interested, the committee should be composed of Senators from the
slave-holding States. The Senate good-naturedly consented to Calhoun’s
plan, and a special committee was named with Calhoun as chairman.
A little later, an extreme bill, professing to meet the views of the
President, was submitted, accompanied by an inflammatory report,
reiterative of the compact theory of the Constitution, and calculated
further to fan the excitement on the subject of abolition. Both the
Administration and Whig leaders were hostile to the measure, but it best
served the purpose of Calhoun to ignore the Whigs and to harp
incessantly upon the opposition from Senators close to the Jackson-Van
Buren organization. The report, according to the interpretation of
Calhoun, set forth three propositions: that the National Government had
no right to prohibit papers, no right to say what papers should be
transmitted, and that these rights belonged to the States.[909] The bill
provided that it should be a crime for a postmaster knowingly to receive
and put into the mail any written, printed, or pictorial matter
concerning slavery, directed to any post-office in a State which
prohibited the circulation of such matter; that such literature, if not
withdrawn from the mails within a given time, should be burned; and it
made the Postmaster-General and all his subordinates responsible for the
enforcement of the law.
Early in the debate the political motive appeared when King of Alabama
again charged Calhoun with being moved by hostility to Jackson. What,
exclaimed the bristling Carolinian, “I have too little respect for
General Jackson’s judgment, and if he were not President of the United
States, I would say for his character, to place myself in such a
position.”[910] On the following day we find him striking the same note:
“I cannot but be surprised at the course of the friends of the
Executive,” he said. “I have heard Senators denounce this measure,
recommended by the Executive, as unconstitutional, as tyrannical, as an
abuse of power, who never before dared whisper a word against the
Administration. Is it because the present Executive is going out of
power that his influence is declining?”[911] This constant harping on
the attitude of the Administration Senators, whether so intended or not,
was looked upon by them as an attempt to make political capital against
Van Buren in the slave States. “I wish the gentleman would restrain the
frequent repetition of such expressions,” said Cuthbert of Georgia, “as
they necessarily bring on him a suspicion of his sincerity. Why should
this be a party question? It would show a wickedness, a recklessness of
the welfare of our common country for any man to endeavor to make it
so.”[912]
But Calhoun persisted in his attempt to maneuver the friends of Van
Buren into an attitude offensive to the Southern States. Benton notes,
significantly, that it was rather remarkable that three tie votes
occurred in succession, two on amendments, and one on the engrossment of
the bill. His clear implication is that this was done to force Van Buren
to cast a deciding vote, never doubting that it would be hostile to the
measure. When the bill came up for engrossment, Calhoun demanded an aye
and nay vote. When three men appeared to make a majority, three on the
other side instantly appeared. At the time the vote was being taken, Van
Buren had left the chair and was pacing up and down, concealed by the
colonnade, behind the rostrum. Benton says that “his eyes were wide open
to see what would happen.”[913] He observed the keen eyes of the excited
Calhoun searching the chamber for his anticipated prey. He heard him ask
“eagerly and loudly” where the Vice-President had gone, and demand that
the sergeant-at-arms look for him. But Van Buren had heard and seen all,
and, when the time came, he calmly took the chair, and with his
characteristic serenity cast the deciding vote in favor of engrossment.
Benton was positive that had he voted otherwise the Calhoun faction,
with the aid of the “Telegraph,” would have inflamed the South against
him. This would have been all the easier because Hugh Lawson White, who
was playing openly for the extreme State-Rights and pro-slavery support,
voted for the bill. But Van Buren and his friends were not blind to the
conspiracy, and the two Democratic Senators from New York, intimate
political friends of the presidential nominee, ascertaining first that
their votes were not needed to defeat the measure, cast expediency votes
in its favor, and thus robbed Calhoun and White of the opportunity to
make political capital out of the bill. It was defeated by a vote of 25
to 19.[914]
Thus the session dragged on into June, with none of the parties gaining
any material advantage for the purposes of the campaign. As the session
was drawing to a close, Senator White, who took his candidacy more to
heart than any of the other candidates, made a discussion of the
resolution to expunge the occasion for an acidulous attack upon Jackson
in the presence of Van Buren, who serenely presided. He charged that
Jackson had “made up his mind who should be his successor,” and had used
all the power of patronage to destroy him (White). With great
particularity, he went over the part the President was taking in the
canvass then on, the letters he had written, the copies of the
“Washington Globe” he had personally franked, the material he had
furnished White’s enemies upon the stump in Tennessee.[915] The personal
tone of the attack appears to have made a painful impression even upon
White’s friends, and certainly did not disturb the smiling complacency
of Van Buren, who listened with courteous attention. The “Congressional
Globe” of the session is filled with such assaults on Jackson and his
Administration, but the Big-Wigs of both parties, with the exception of
Calhoun and White, maintained an unusual reserve. But Calhoun did his
part in full measure. Not only did he abuse Jackson with indecent
invective, but, in the presence of Van Buren, sneered at the latter’s
character and ability. Jackson had “courage and firmness; is warlike,
bold, audacious; but he is not true to his word and violates the most
solemn pledges without scruple.” He had “done the State some service,
too, which is remembered greatly to his advantage.” But Van Buren “has
none of these recommendations.” No, as Senator Mangum[916] had said, he
“has none of the lion or tiger breed about him; he belongs more to the
fox and the weasel.”[917]
With nothing better to offer than this, the tired statesmen adjourned on
July 4th, and hastened to their homes, some to sulk in their tents in
disgust, others to take the field to wage the fight.
VIII
In 1836 the issues of the campaign were not so clearly defined by
conditions as in 1832, nor by platform declarations, as in more recent
years. The party declarations of principle had no meaning. That of the
Democrats could have summed up all in the endorsement of the Jackson
Administration and a pledge to continue the Jacksonian policies; that of
the Whigs in a denunciation of the principles and policies of Jacksonian
Democracy.
The platform of Senator White is found in his letter in reply to that of
a committee informing him of his nomination--a personal protest. “When
an attempt is made,” he wrote, “to create a party not founded upon
settled political principles, composed of men belonging to every
political sect, having no common bond of unity save that of a wish to
place one of themselves in the highest office known to the Constitution,
for the purpose of having all the honors, offices, and emoluments of the
Government distributed by them among their followers, I consider such an
association, whether composed of many or a few, a mere faction, which
ought to be resisted by every man who loves his country, and wishes to
perpetuate its liberties.”[918]
The most influential leaders of the Whigs were not enthusiastic over any
of the Opposition candidates, with the exception of Webster, who
manifestly had no chance. “White and Webster are now the golden calves
of the people,” wrote the caustic Adams, “and their dull sayings are
repeated for wit, and their grave inanity is passed off for wisdom. This
bolstering up of mediocrity would seem not suited to sustain much
enthusiasm.” Such as there was, the cynical Puritan ascribed to the fact
that “a practice of betting has crept in,” and “that adds a spur of
private, personal, and pecuniary interest to the impulse of
patriotism.”[919] Naturally, Adams was not enamoured of Van Buren, who
impressed him as a “demagogue of the same school [as “Ike” Hill] with a
tincture of aristocracy--an amalgamated metal of lead and copper.”[920]
There was no hero worshiping of the candidates in 1836, but the worship
of Jackson continued, and the Whigs contemplated the phenomenon with
melancholy misgivings. Philip Hone, that faithful chronicler of Whig
sentiment, found the political aspect of the country “worse than ever.”
Indeed, “General Jackson’s star is still in the ascendant and shines
brighter than ever.” A month before the nomination of Van Buren, the
Whig diarist had been forced to admit that business conditions had
vastly improved.[921] In truth the Whigs were without an issue they
dared advance, and could hope for success only through the amalgamation
of all the disgruntled with the Whigs--the Anti-Masons, Nullifiers,
State-Rights extremists, and disappointed office-seekers--and this was
manifestly impossible.
The campaign was not so exciting as that of 1832, and lacked the
hysteria of the stump which characterized that of 1840. The newspapers
were relied upon largely for propaganda, and the “Globe” was summoned to
herculean efforts. To meet the work of Blair, a campaign paper, called
the “Appeal,” was established in Washington to advocate the claims of
White. The “Telegraph,” edited by the frenzied Duff Green, viciously
attacked both Jackson and Van Buren. And the work of these papers
colored that of all the minor papers of the country. But the people
remained calm and indifferent. The attacks upon the candidates, many
bald slanders, stirred no one but the politicians. The custom of
interrogating candidates had now become fixed, and the three aspirants
were bombarded with questions covering a multitude of subjects.
The followers of Calhoun feverishly continued their efforts to embarrass
Van Buren on the abolition movement. From North Carolina came a demand
for his position on the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia. His answer was not as definite as the questioner
had hoped. There was no question as to the right of Congress to act in
the District, but the wily candidate had no intention to give a curt
reply. His answer was that Congress had no right to interfere with
slavery in the States--a question not put; and that he was opposed to
the abolishment of slavery in the District by congressional
action--which was not a reply at all.
Then followed the questions of the Equal Righters, or Locofocos, as they
were dubbed in New York by the “Courier and Enquirer,” as to Van Buren’s
position on their “declaration of rights.” The reply of the Red Fox,
that his long public career furnished a sufficient illumination of his
position on the general principles of the new party, was considered by
the Locos as an “evasion,” and denounced as unsatisfactory “to any true
Democrat.”
Meanwhile Clay was exercising an unnatural restraint on his partisan
zeal, remaining in strict retirement at Ashland, tending his cattle,
looking over his fields, writing an occasional letter, and meditating a
retirement from the Senate before the next session. During the preceding
winter, the death of a favorite daughter had crushed him to the earth.
He keenly felt the apparent neglect of his party. In the canvass he took
no part. It was not until the campaign was nearing its close, in
October, that he appeared upon the platform to discuss the candidates,
and then with evident reluctance. A barbecue had been arranged at
Lexington, within sight of Clay’s home, and a declination to participate
would have given deadly offense. He spoke, however, with unusual
temperance, urging a unification of the opposition against Van Buren.
This was to have been expected. Paying tribute to the civic worth of
White, he announced his intention to vote for Harrison, not because he
was his first choice--for he pretended to prefer Webster--but because he
thought that Harrison “combined the greatest prospects of defeating Mr.
Van Buren.”[922]
If Clay was indifferent, his old rival, Andrew Jackson, was not.
Assuming the certainty of his favorite’s election, his personal pride
was touched by White’s challenge of his own leadership in Tennessee, and
as soon as Congress adjourned, he started on the long and tiresome
journey to the Hermitage. Passing through eastern Tennessee, he
appeared frankly in the rôle of a canvasser for votes. With old-time
fire, he denounced his erstwhile friend, the Senator, as a Federalist--a
discovery he had but recently made; and with all the fervor of
Jacksonian friendship he held Van Buren up as the purest and most
uncompromising of Democrats. The domineering quality of his leadership
flared in his declaration that no friend of White’s could be other than
his own enemy. At Blountville, Jonesboro, Greenville, Newport, Lebanon,
and Nashville--every point he touched--he delivered political harangues
in conversations with the friends and admirers who flocked to greet
him.[923] Thus he employed every method known to electioneering, short
of actually taking the stump.
This effort of the President was met by White with a powerful speech at
Knoxville, where a banquet in his honor was arranged for the purpose.
“It is not I who am to be put down and disgraced in this controversy, if
Tennessee is either coaxed or coerced to surrender her choice,” he said.
“The Saviour of the World, when upon earth, found among the small number
of His disciples, one Judas, who not only sold but betrayed him for his
thirty pieces of silver. It were vain for one of my humble attainments,
who has nothing to offer but his best efforts to promote the public
welfare, to hope that all who professed to be his friends must continue
to act up to that character. Already have I found more than one Judas,
who, by parting with their interest in me, have received, or expect to
receive, more than twice their thirty pieces.”[924] Thus, however tame
the campaign elsewhere, it was a hand-to-hand struggle in the
President’s own State--and here Jackson was to meet the greatest
humiliation of his career.
IX
The elections in 1836 were not held on the same day in all the States,
and from November 4th, when Pennsylvania and Ohio voted, until November
23d, when the election was held in Rhode Island, the politicians were
kept in suspense, and it was not until the first week in December that
the Democrats were able to rejoice in the certainty of their victory.
Massachusetts, which then idolized her Webster, gave him her electoral
vote, and stood alone. South Carolina, which had encouraged White to
enter the contest, again sulked, and, going outside the list of avowed
candidates, gave hers to Senator Willie Mangum, of North Carolina. White
greatly disappointed the Whigs, who had expected him to get enough votes
in the Southern and Western States to throw the contest into the House
of Representatives, by carrying only Tennessee and Georgia. Harrison
received the electoral votes of Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland,
New Jersey, Ohio, and Vermont--a total of 73; while Van Buren won
Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island in New England;
Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and
Virginia in the South; Illinois and Michigan in the West; and both the
most important States in the Union, Pennsylvania and New York. With only
124 electoral votes divided among his four opponents, Van Buren had 170,
a majority of 46.
However, in the results the more prescient of the Democratic leaders
could find ample justification for concern as to the future. The votes
of Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee, which had gone to
Jackson four years before, had been lost by Van Buren, and he had gained
only Connecticut. But the electoral vote does not indicate the full
extent of the Democratic slump. The popular vote in some of the States
he had carried had fallen off woefully from the previous election. The
Democratic majority in Virginia had decreased from 22,158 to 6893; in
Illinois from 8718 to 3114; in North Carolina from 20,299 to 3284. As
compared with Jackson’s popular majority of 157,293 in 1832, Van Buren
won only on a popular majority of 24,893 out of a total of 1,498,205
votes cast. In his own State of New York, however, he increased
Jackson’s popular majority of 13,601 in 1832 to 32,272.
In White House circles there were some painfully humiliating features in
the results, and to none more than to Jackson. The people of Tennessee
gave White a majority of 10,000, and even in the President’s own
precinct, White received 43 votes to 18 for Van Buren. In Georgia, the
home of the President’s Secretary of State, John Forsyth, the people
turned from the candidate of the Georgian, who was so intimately
identified with Van Buren’s political fortunes that he was to be
retained at the head of the Cabinet through the new Administration, to
give their vote to White. In Tennessee, the result was not unnatural.
The President overestimated his strength in assuming that he could
persuade the people to reject their neighbor and fellow citizen, who had
served them well, for a New York politician. In Georgia the turnover was
political, due to the ascendancy of the radical State-Rights party, and
the strength of the Nullifying element which Forsyth had courageously
fought.
The result of the congressional elections even more impressively
indicated the drift away from the Jacksonian policies. The Democratic
majority in the House during the Twenty-Fourth Congress, of 46, was
reduced in the next Congress to a plurality of 2 over the Whigs, with 10
independent members holding the balance of power. Whether this was due
to a reaction against the Democratic Party, or merely measured the loss
of the personal prestige of Jackson as the candidate, was the problem
that gave concern to the Democracy. If Van Buren looked forward with any
misgivings to his Administration, however, he gave no sign; and
Jackson, if chagrined over his loss of Tennessee, was masterful in
dissimulation. There was as much jubilation in the Democratic camp as
though the victory had been as decisive as that of four years before.
When the electoral votes were being counted, Clay turned to Van Buren
with the observation: “It is a cloudy day, sir.” “The sun will shine,”
replied the smiling Red Fox, “on the 4th of March, sir.”[925]
CHAPTER XVI
TWILIGHT TRIUMPHS
I
Jackson returned to the White House after the election in a serious
physical condition. The exertions of the hot summer, the long and
wearisome journey, the keen disappointment over the loss of Tennessee,
and his humiliation over his defeat in the Hermitage precinct, had
greatly weakened the old lion. The return journey to the capital had
increased his debility, and soon after reaching the White House he was
driven to his bed by a hemorrhage of the lungs. Ill almost to death, no
word of sympathy reached him from his foes, and from his bed he grimly
directed and encouraged the counter-attacks with the spirit of the
Jackson of New Orleans. In his final Message to Congress, he paid
tribute to the fidelity and integrity of his subordinates, and in
ordinary times this would have been permitted to pass unchallenged in
view of his early relinquishment of power. But the times were not
ordinary. The last short session was to be one of extraordinary
bitterness, with personal altercations commonplace, and with statesmen
of prominence toying all too lightly with their pistols.
Thus the tribute to the subordinates of the Executive departments was
eagerly seized upon by Henry A. Wise, the brilliant and impassioned
young Whig of Virginia, as a pretext for a bitter personal attack--one
of the most severe, satiric, sarcastic philippics to be found in the
records of Congress from the first session to the present hour. The way
was paved for it through the presentation of a resolution providing for
the appointment of a special committee to deal with that portion of the
Message to which Wise took exception. He summoned to his purpose all the
accumulated charges of eight years of rancorous party warfare, marched
them with a militant swing before the House, and demanded an
investigation to determine, on the eve of the stricken President’s
departure from public life, whether he had been falsely accused. Had
Jackson actually made such claims for his subordinates? he asked. No, he
had not even written the Message because physically unfit. “It comes to
us and the country reeking with the fumes of the Kitchen Cabinet.”
The excited Representatives gathered about the young orator were not
kept long in doubt as to the particular object of his attack. Describing
Jackson’s electioneering activities in Tennessee, Wise dropped the veil:
“I am told,” he said, “that they carried him around like a lion for
show, and made him roar like a lion. They had catechisms prepared for
him, and the negotiations of the mission were conducted by pre-concerted
questions and answers. A crowd would collect on the highway, or in the
bar-rooms, and some village politician of the party would inquire, ‘What
think you, General, of such a man?’ In a loud tone, much too stentorian
for those lungs which are now lacerated, the answer rang, ‘He is a
traitor, sir.’ ‘There, there,’ repeated the demagogues in the crowd,
‘did you not hear that?’ ‘What think you of another, General?’ ‘He is a
liar, sir.’ ‘What of another?’ ‘He made a speech for which he paid a
stenographer five dollars.’ And another was ‘on the fence sir, on the
fence.’ ‘But, General, what think you of Mr. [the first time that Reuben
was ever called ‘Mister’] Reuben M. Whitney?’ ‘There is no just cause of
complaint against Mr. Whitney, sir; he is as true a patriot as ever was;
they are all liars who accuse him of aught of wrong.’”[926] Thus it was
evident from the speech of Wise that the attack was aimed at Whitney,
erroneously described by some historians as a member of the Kitchen
Cabinet,[927] but nevertheless entrusted with the public money. Little
can be said in defense of Jackson’s confidence in this man, who had been
ferociously assailed in the House in the preceding spring by Wise and
Balie Peyton, a hot-headed Whig from Tennessee. With the clever support
of the Democrats, the resolution was adopted and Wise was made chairman
of the investigating committee. This investigation, probably intended
merely as a peg on which to hang partisan harangues against the stricken
President, to whose physical condition Wise had made sneering reference,
accomplished nothing.
Before the committee had got fairly started, it struck a snag in a
personal altercation in the committee room between Peyton and Wise on
one side, and Whitney on the other, resulting in the refusal of the
latter to appear again unless assured that members of the committee
would attend unarmed! The balking witness was thereupon cited for
contempt and dragged to the bar of the House; and the clever
Administration leaders quickly grasped the opportunity to divert
attention from the main question to the arrogant, violent methods of the
hot-headed young Whigs in charge. Thus Whitney set himself to the task
of proving that he could not appear before the committee without serious
danger of assassination. Witnesses to the altercation, on which he based
his conclusion, were summoned, and a week was consumed in the hearing of
evidence and the cross-examination of witnesses.
The incident on which Whitney based his fears is graphically described
in the testimony of John Fairfield, a Representative from Maine.[928]
The picture painted of the committee room scene is not inspiring.
Whitney had declined to answer a question because of reflections on his
integrity by Peyton, and it seems that he had gone so far as to scowl at
the Tennessee Hotspur in explaining his refusal. It was a day when honor
was a sensitive plant, and Peyton sprang to his feet with a promise to
“take his life upon the spot.” The equally fiery Wise, ever ready for a
combat, rose to the occasion, and took his position beside his irate
colleague with the comment that “this damned insolence is intolerable.”
Encouraged by the open sympathy of Wise, the Tennesseean began to
meditate aloud, as on the stage, on the enormity of the insult, and to
mutter that he would not be insulted “by a damned thief and robber.” His
passion, feeding on his hot meditations, and his excitement growing
greater, he wheeled upon Whitney, who, alarmed, sprang to his feet and
claimed the protection of the committee. “Damn you--damn you!” shouted
the white-faced Peyton, “you shan’t say a word while in this room--if
you do I will put you to death.” With these words he put his hand to his
bosom and moved toward the object of his fury, and Wise and other
members of the committee tried to calm the infuriated statesman. “Don’t,
Peyton,” cried Wise, “damn him, he is not worth your notice.” Somewhat
mollified by this assurance, the insulted Representative sank into his
chair--but his blood still boiled. “Damn him, his eyes are upon me!” he
cried as in a melodrama. “Damn him, he is looking at me--he shan’t do
it!” By this time it was thought possible to calm the nerves of the
jumpy Peyton if the witness, whose eyes were so offensive, could be
removed from the room; and as he passed out, Wise requested the
committee to remain seated to prevent an encounter in the corridor.[929]
Thus far the impulsive Virginian appeared in the favorable light of a
peace-maker, but, finding pleasure in the narration of the manner in
which the hated minion of the Administration had been frightened out of
his wits, he began to boast that his purpose in getting close to Whitney
had been to shoot him at the slightest provocation, and he was thus
drawn into the controversy along with Peyton.
Nothing could have been more pleasing to the political managers of the
Administration. Before the galleries, packed to hear the eye-witnesses,
the two Whigs began to appear more and more as quarrelsome,
pistol-toting bullies taking advantage of their position to browbeat and
intimidate an unprotected witness. The Democratic press, under the
inspiration of Blair and Kendall, devoted columns to the evidence, and
sentiment was turned against the Whig leaders until they began to
complain that they, and not Whitney, were apparently at the bar. “Sir,”
Wise declared, “it is I who am on trial and not Reuben M. Whitney. I
have no doubt of the contrivance to make this issue before the
country.... I wish to know, sir, if there are not other officers of the
Government who have issued the order that the power of this House, and
the Executive power of the country, are both to be brought to bear upon
two humble and inexperienced members of the House. Sir, I have felt it.”
The affair had now worked around to the distinct advantage of the
Administration, and Wise and Peyton, and not Jackson, were in distress.
The psychological hour had struck to end the farce. The motion to
dismiss Whitney was made and carried, and when the name of Wise was
called, he solemnly rose:
“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I shall not vote until I ascertain whether I am
discharged from prosecution or not.”
As the smiling House offered no information, his name is not recorded
among those voting. Thus the one offensive against Jackson, launched by
his enemies on the eve of his relinquishment of power, ended in a
riproaring farce.
II
In the Senate the offensive was taken by Jackson’s supporters when
Benton served notice that he would demand a vote on his motion to
expunge the vote of censure from the records. Much water had passed over
the dam since the persistent Missourian had first offered his
resolution. With the aid of the Kitchen Cabinet, he had made it a
national issue. The fight had been carried into the States of the
Senators who had voted for the censure, and, in numerous instances, the
offending member had either been defeated for reëlection, or the
legislature had been prevailed upon to instruct him to vote to expunge.
One of the opponents of the Benton resolution had died and been
succeeded by a Jackson sympathizer. Through defeat, or resignations
forced by instructions from legislatures, enemies had given place to
friends from Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, Illinois,
Mississippi, and Virginia. New Senators, friends of Jackson, had entered
from the new States of Arkansas and Michigan. A private poll convinced
Benton that the triumph was at hand, all the sweeter because coming on
the eve of Jackson’s retirement. The day after Christmas he reintroduced
his original resolution, and on January 12th supported it in a speech
laudatory of Jackson--a pæan of anticipated triumph. The old man, always
a trifle pompous and stilted in his style, was never more so, but in his
most extravagant praise he unquestionably spoke the language of his
heart. Beginning by recalling the discouraging circumstances under which
he first offered his resolution, he gloatingly declared that the
Opposition had become “more and more odious to the public mind and
musters now but a slender phalanx of friends.” The people had been
passing on the censure; had passed upon it in the triumph of Van Buren,
who had publicly proclaimed his adherence to the plans of Benton. He
would not rehash the constitutional arguments. The debate had ended and
the verdict had been rendered, but the occasion called for some
reference to the achievements and triumphs of the Administration. Then
he hastily sketched its battles, claiming in the aftermath of each the
vindication of events--the destruction of the Bank, the removal of the
deposits, the triumphant termination of the controversy with the
French.
“And now, sir,” he concluded, as we may imagine with his chest thrown
out, “I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed upon myself.
Solitary and alone, and amidst the taunts and jeers of my opponents, I
put this ball in motion. The people have taken it up and rolled it
forward, and I am no longer anything but a unit in the vast mass which
now propels it. In the name of that mass, I speak. I demand the
execution of the edict of the people; I demand the expurgation of that
sentence which the voice of a few Senators and the power of their
confederate, the Bank of the United States, has caused to be placed upon
the journal of the Senate, and which the voice of millions of freemen
has ordered to be expunged from it.”
Thus spoke the champion of Jackson in the tones and manner of a
conqueror. As he resumed his seat, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky rose
to protest against the “party desecration” of the record, and after a
few words from Senator Dana, who favored the expunging record, the
Senate adjourned. On the following day some of the great orators of the
Opposition were put forward to oppose the resolution.
We are told by an eye-witness that the eloquent Preston “spoke in a
strain of eloquence inspired by his feelings of great aversion.”[930] If
Benton was theatrical, as has been justly charged by historians, the
Whigs were even more so, as we shall see. Beginning with great
solemnity, and describing his shock and sorrow, Preston proceeded:
“Execution is demanded--aye, sir, the executioners are here with ready
hands. Exercise your function, gentlemen.... The axe is in your
hand--perform that which is so loudly called for. Execution, sir, of
what, of whom? Is the axe aimed at men who voted for the resolution you
are about to expunge? Is it us you strike at? If so, ... in God’s name
let the blow come, and as the fatal edge fell upon my neck, I would
declare with honest sincerity that I would rather be the criminal of
1834 than the executioner of 1837.” More: the names of the Senators
refusing to expunge would in the future “be familiar as household words”
and be “taught to children as the names of Washington and Adams and
Hancock and Lee and Lafayette are now taught to our children.”
A moment later the orator’s pensive melancholy had turned to rage.
“Why not expunge those who made the record?” he thundered, forgetting
how many had been “expunged.” “If the proceedings had a guilt so
monstrous as to render necessary this novel and extraordinary course,
the men themselves who perpetrated the deed--it is they who should be
expunged. Men who entered so foul a page upon the journal cannot be
worthy of a seat here. Remove us! Turn us out! Expel us from the Senate!
Would to God you could! Call in the pretorian guard! Take us--apprehend
us--march us off!”[931]
After Rives and Niles had spoken in support of the resolution, Calhoun
mournfully rose, and with funereal sadness, not unmixed with scorn,
pointed out the resemblance of the proceedings to the degenerate days of
Rome. “But why do I waste my breath?” he asked, in conclusion. “I know
it is all utterly vain. The day is gone; night approaches, and night is
suitable to the dark deed we meditate. There is a sort of destiny in
this thing. The act must be performed; and it is an act that will tell
on the political history of this country forever.... It is a melancholy
evidence of a broken spirit, ready to bow at the feet of power. The
former act[932] was such a one as might have been perpetrated in the
days of Pompey and Cæsar; but an act like this could never have been
consummated by a Roman Senate until the times of Caligula and Nero.”
After Calhoun concluded, unsuccessful efforts to adjourn were made,
until Clay announced his intention to speak at length, and his request
for delay was granted. Had his supporters realized how far from absolute
certainty of success Benton felt, they would have favored, instead of
fought, an adjournment. The following day was Saturday, and a careful
poll disclosed the disconcerting diversity of opinion as to details
which threatened the success of the project, and Benton gladly agreed to
a postponement of the discussion until Monday. That night the then
famous restaurant of Boulanger found all the Jacksonian Senators seated
about the banquet board. The clever host had loaded the table with his
choicest offerings, and as soon as the statesmen had reached the mellow,
accommodating mood, they settled down to the real purpose of the feast.
Realizing that he lacked the deftness and finesse required for ironing
out all differences as to details, Benton had assigned the work of
conciliation to Silas Wright, Allen of Ohio, and Linn of Missouri. Even
so, it “required all the moderation, tact, and skill of the prime movers
to obtain and maintain the union upon details, on the success of which
the measure depended.”[933] But when, at midnight, the Senators
dispersed, all conflicting views had been reconciled, and for the first
time an actual majority was pledged to a single programme. It was
decided to call the resolution up on Monday, and to keep it constantly
before the Senate, without adjournment, until the “deed” was done.
To prevent any of his flock from wandering afield in search of
refreshments, Benton had made ample preparations, and a tourist,
wandering into Benton’s committee room at four o’clock on Monday
afternoon, would have assumed, in view of the vast quantities of cold
ham, turkey, rounds of beef, pickles, wines, and coffee, that he had
stumbled into a senatorial café. That day, Clay appeared in the Senate
ostentatiously garbed in black as though in mourning for the murdered
Constitution. So ugly was his mood that he even refused snuff offered
by a Democratic Senator he knew was going to vote to expunge. The
galleries were packed to witness the drama, or melodrama, and
impatiently sat through the preliminary work of the Senate. At length
the hour came for the consideration of the resolution, and all eyes
turned to Clay, who thoroughly enjoyed his rôle in the play. As his tall
form slowly rose, there was a rustling in the galleries as the
spectators shifted their position to get a better view of the great
enemy of Jackson. On his feet, he stood a moment in silence, as though
weighed down by the importance of his task, if not by its hopelessness.
Then he began in subdued tones, albeit his silvery voice was heard
distinctly over the chamber. Such a hardened observer of historical
incidents as Sargent describes the scene as “grand, impressive, and
imposing,” and “even solemn,” as though “some terrible rite was to be
performed, some bloody sacrifice to be made upon the altar of
Moloch.”[934]
“What object?” he demanded. Was it necessary because of the President?
“In one hand,” he continued, “he holds the purse, and in the other he
brandishes the sword of the country. Myriads of dependents and
partisans, scattered all over the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas
to him, and to laud to the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the
Government during the last eight years like a tropical tornado. Every
department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm.... What object
of his ambition is unsatisfied? When, disabled from age any longer to
hold the scepter of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it
to his favorite, what more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and
mutilate the records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of
expressing any opinion contrary to his own?
“What object?” demanded Clay. “Do you intend to thrust your hands into
our hearts and pluck out the deeply rooted convictions which are there?
Or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? Standing securely upon
our conscious rectitude, and bearing aloft the Constitution of our
country, your puny efforts are impotent; and we defy all your power.
“What object?” reiterated the orator. “To please the President? He would
reject, with scorn and contempt as unworthy of his fame, your black
scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black
lines. Black lines.... And hereafter, when we shall lose the forms of
our free institutions, all that now remain to us, some future American
monarch, in gratitude to those by whose means he has been enabled, upon
the ruins of civil liberty, to erect a throne, and to commemorate
especially this expunging resolution, may institute a new order of
knighthood, and confer on it the appropriate name of the ‘Knights of the
Black Lines.’”
But why continue, he inquired, as he closed his fierce philippic.
“Proceed then with your noble work.... And when you have perpetrated it,
go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors you have
achieved for our common country. Tell them that you have extinguished
one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burned on the altar of
civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest
batteries that ever thundered in defense of the Constitution, and
bravely spiked the cannon. Tell them that henceforth, no matter what
daring or outrageous act any President may perform, you have forever
hermetically sealed the mouth of the Senate. Tell them that he may
fearlessly assume what powers he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody
the public purse, and command a military detachment to enter the halls
of the Capitol, overawe Congress, trample down the Constitution, and
raze every bulwark of freedom; but that the Senate must stand mute, in
silent submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice.”
Such the theatrical strain of a speech which the schoolboys of
well-regulated Whig families were to declaim for the delight of their
elders for a generation, and to call forth a fulsome note from the
sober-minded Kent.
As Clay sat down, James Buchanan rose to reply, admitting that it was
the part of prudence to remain silent after the Whig orator had
“enchanted the attention of his audience.” Fluent, logical, if not
eloquent, he followed Clay’s speech point by point, rehashing with him
the Bank controversy--leading up to the removal of the deposits and the
vote of censure--defending Jackson at every step. If Jackson’s act was
one of tyranny, unconstitutional, aimed at civil liberty, why, he
demanded, “had the Whigs merely censured him without giving him the
opportunity to reply? Why had they not done their duty and instituted
impeachment proceedings? True, they insisted that they had not imputed
any criminal motive to the President--”
Clay was instantly on his feet, hotly insisting that “personally he had
never acquitted the President of improper intentions.” To which the
courtly Buchanan replied with a compliment to the Kentuckian’s “frank
and manly nature,” and passed on.
The Whigs now attempted to adjourn, but Benton’s drilled forces were on
hand to vote down Bayard’s motion, and the debate proceeded. Other
speakers followed, men of lesser light, while the Senators themselves,
satiated with the arguments, began to pass out in twos and threes to
regale and refresh themselves in Benton’s room. Such of the Whigs as
were not too bitter were cordially invited to partake of the feast, and
some accepted. Clay sent some of his friends to the committee room to
ascertain the nature of the attraction, and the emissaries lingered too
long over the meat, and especially the drink, and he became furious.
With the coming of night the curious packed the corridors and lobbies,
and the great chandelier which lighted the little chamber shed its glow
on the gay dresses of the ladies of fashion, many of whom had been
admitted to the floor.
As the hour grew late, and there was a pause in the debate, the eyes of
all were fixed on Webster, who sat gloomily in his seat. He glanced
around to see if others proposed to speak, then rose to make the final
protest. An eye-witness tells us that “his dark visage assumed a darker
hue”; that “his deep-toned voice seemed almost sepulchral.”[935] As was
his custom, he spoke with more moderation than Clay, Calhoun, or
Preston, and was all the more impressive on that account. He refrained
from hysterical denunciations, and from comparisons with the degenerate
days of Rome. “But,” he said, “we make up our minds to behold the
spectacle which is to ensue. We collect ourselves to look on in silence
while a scene is exhibited which, if we do not regard it as a ruthless
violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to us to be but little
elevated above the character of a contemptible farce. This scene we
shall behold, and hundreds of American citizens--as many as may crowd
into these lobbies and galleries--will behold it also--with what
feelings I do not undertake to say.”
Reiterating, then, his protest, he concluded: “Having made this protest,
our duty is performed. We rescue our own names, characters, and honor
from all participation in this matter; and whatever the wayward
character of the times, the headlong and plunging spirit of party
devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have been able to bring
about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that we have not, as yet,
overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true republican principles,
and a sacred regard for the Constitution, in that State whose soil was
drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of the Revolution.”
While Webster was speaking, two Whig Senators, realizing that the
contest had degenerated into a trial of nerves and muscle, went to
Benton with the suggestion that nothing could be gained by delaying the
vote.[936] When no one rose to continue the argument at the conclusion,
there was a moment of silence and then the cry of “Question” rose. The
roll was called, with forty-three Senators in their seats, five absent,
and the resolution was passed by a vote of 24 to 19.
Benton instantly demanded the execution of the order of the Senate.
While the clerk was out to get the original journal, Benton, in perfect
ecstasy, ostentatiously congratulated persons in the lower gallery,
until the glowering countenance of Balie Peyton warned him of a possible
explosion.[937] But the Tennessee firebrand was not the only person in
the gallery, or, for that matter, on the floor, with a deadly hate of
Benton in the heart. The galleries remained true to the Bank and Biddle,
and some of the Senators, having freely indulged themselves, were in a
quarrelsome mood. Fear was entertained for Benton’s life by some of his
friends, including his wife. Just previous to the vote, Senator Linn had
brought in pistols for the defense, if required, and Mrs. Benton,
seriously alarmed, took her place by her husband’s side on the floor. As
the clerk returned with the record, the defeated statesmen, pretending
to a patriotism that could not look upon the “deed,” filed out of the
chamber--all but Hugh Lawson White who never deserted his post. As the
President _pro tem_ announced that the “deed” was done, the hitherto
sullen and silent gallery broke into groans, hisses, imprecations.
Enraged and excited, Benton sprang to his feet with the demand that the
“ruffians” that caused the disturbance be apprehended and brought to the
bar. “I hope the sergeant-at-arms will be directed to enter the gallery,
and seize the ruffians.... Let him seize the Bank ruffians. I hope they
will not be suffered to insult the Senate as they did when it was under
the power of the Bank of the United States when ruffians, with arms upon
them, insulted us with impunity.... Here is one just above me that may
easily be identified--the Bank ruffians!”
Thus the ringleader was dragged to the bar. But here was a diversion
that had not entered into the agreement as to details at Boulanger’s on
Saturday night, and the wrangle that followed ended in the discharge of
the culprit from custody. As the vote to discharge was announced, the
person in custody demanded to be heard. “Begone!” cried King, in the
chair--and the incident was closed. But Benton’s blood was hot, and on
leaving the Capitol he encountered Clay, whom he suspected of having
instigated the gallery disturbance, and a bitter altercation resulted.
But after the two men, personally not unfriendly and related by
marriage, had exercised their vituperative vocabulary, Benton insisted
on seeing Clay home, and did not leave until three in the morning when
Clay had sought his couch. Thus ended a dramatic episode--so dramatic
and historic that on the following morning Webster requested Henry A.
Wise to prepare a description which was afterwards given in an address
at Norfolk.[938]
The triumph, we may be sure, was sweet to the stricken veteran in the
White House. Within a week he invited all his senatorial friends and
their wives to an elaborate dinner. Hovering on the verge of the grave,
he dragged himself from his bed to greet his guests, accompanied them to
the dining-room, seated Benton in his place at the head of the table,
and retired to his couch, while the celebration below continued until a
late hour.
III
The last days of Jackson in the White House could not have been other
than days of joyous thanksgiving. Entering the White House the most
popular of all Americans, eight years of the most bitter controversies
in the Nation’s history had only tended to strengthen the affections of
the people. Through the greater part of his Presidency he had been
constantly harassed by a hostile Senate, and his enemies had been
defeated or otherwise retired, until now both branches of the Congress
were devoted to his policies. His most powerful enemies had been
humiliated. The prize of the Presidency dangling before Calhoun in the
beginning was now forever beyond his reach. Clay had been defeated in
his ambition and shamefully set aside by his ungrateful party. The man
of his own choice had been elected to succeed him, and the hated censure
of the Senate had been expunged by the order of the people. Few
Presidents have ever departed from the scene of their power with more
for which to be grateful and less to regret.
But the old man had run his race and been surfeited with the sweets of
personal triumphs, and was eager to return to the calm of his beloved
Hermitage, among his old and cherished friends and faithful slaves, and
near to the tomb of his idolized Rachel. By sheer will power he had
fought back the specter which had hovered by his sick-bed, to this end.
Confined to his room most of the time, debilitated by age and disease,
the old man’s mind was not free from anxieties for the future of his
country. He knew too well the temper of public men, and comprehended too
keenly the delicate problems pressing for solution, not to know that
there were dangers ahead. It was his desire to give some parting advice
to the people in his final Message, but he was persuaded to convey his
last word in the form of a “Farewell,” like Washington. To the
preparation of this paper he devoted much time and thought during the
last two months, and, while he had the assistance of Roger B. Taney in
the phrasing of his thoughts, all the ideas, and much of the language,
originated with him. Strangely enough, the “Farewell” of Jackson is
scarcely known, and some historians are prone to smile upon it as an
unworthy imitation of the Washington paper. It was nothing of the sort.
It smacks, in large part, of prophecy. The man who wrote it saw, in
fancy, the swaying columns of the blue and gray, and he strove to avert
the clash. The old hero of the Nullification fight, feeble and sick,
bending over his desk in the White House of 1837, was writing and
pleading in the spirit of the Lincoln of 1861 as he wrote his touching
inaugural appeal for peace.[939] Having finished his “Farewell,” to be
given out on the day of leaving office, the old man impatiently awaited
his release. His friends, he knew, would not suffer by the change. The
Jackson Cabinet was to be continued, with the exception of Cass, who was
to be sent to France, thus making way for Joel Poinsett, who had been
Jackson’s right hand in the Nullification struggle.
On Washington’s birthday he received the public in a farewell reception,
famous because of the mammoth cheese donated by admirers, greater in
circumference than a hogs-head. Two men with knives made from saw blades
cut into the enormous mass, giving each guest a piece weighing from two
to three pounds. Some, who had provided themselves with paper, wrapped
their portion and bore it away as a souvenir; others, not so thoughtful,
carried theirs in their hands. Much of it crumbled in the hands of the
bearers and was trampled on the floor. It was Jackson’s farewell, and
thousands pushed their way into the White House, and, after getting
their portion of the cheese, pressed on into the Blue Room, where the
President, much too feeble to stand, received and greeted his visitors
from his chair. Beside him stood the cordial Mrs. Donelson, while just
behind him Martin Van Buren greeted all with a smile and a courtly
bow.[940]
IV
The Jackson of the White House would have commanded attention in any
assembly, even to the last. More than six feet in height and slender to
attenuation, his limbs long and straight, and his shoulders slightly
stooped, he carried himself proudly, and not without grace. His white
hair stood erect, giving a full view of a forehead that indicated
intellectual power. His eyes, deep-set, clear but small, were blue in
color and noticeably penetrating, and the great spectacles he wore
accentuated their boring quality. These eyes, flashing with the
fierceness of the fight, could easily melt, in tenderness, to tears. His
strong cheek-bones and lantern jaws denoted the warrior. His strongly
chiseled chin and firm mouth told of his inflexibility. His chest was
flat, and indicated his most pronounced physical weakness. Seen upon his
walks about Washington, wearing his high white beaver hat, with his
widower’s weed, and carrying a stout cane adorned with a silken tassel,
he looked the part of the patriarch who could either bestow a
benediction or a blow. Throughout his two terms his health was wretched,
and time and again, stricken with disease, his death had seemed only a
matter of days, but the iron will prevailed over the failing flesh. His
hair grew whiter. The lines in his face deepened. His step lost some of
its spring. He was forced to abandon his long walks and the pleasures of
the saddle, and remain more and more in the White House. But the eye
retained its fire, his voice its fervor, and his spirit never flagged.
In moments of relaxation, toward the close, there was a softened
expression, but in his fighting moments he differed little from the grim
old man who entered the mansion of the Presidents as Adams took his
departure.
The libels of his enemies of the Whig aristocracy notwithstanding, he
had not been unworthy, socially, of the stately traditions of his
environment, and had impressed all visitors with his fine courtesy,
courtliness, ability, and graciousness.[941] Never before or afterwards
were there such incongruous crowds at the receptions, but this
disclosed less the taste of the master of the Mansion than his political
principles; and his dinners in tone and taste commanded the admiration
of his enemies.[942] These receptions and dinners had drawn heavily on
his resources, and toward the close left him seriously embarrassed. He
himself could have lived on monastic fare. A weak stomach forced him to
eat sparingly, and he often dined on bread, milk, and vegetables; but
there were always guests at the table, which was invariably ladened as
for a feast.[943]
Perhaps it was not without regret that he passed through the rooms of
the historic house in those last days, for he had converted the White
House into a home, and it was rich in memories of the sort that tug at
the heart. Fond of his family, and especially of the young women
members, this “home” had been the scene of several marriages and
christenings. The beautiful Emily Donelson, the wife of his secretary
and niece, the mistress of the mansion, had presided with grace and
dignity and brightened the days and nights. In a physical sense she was
an exquisite woman, of medium height, her figure slender and
symmetrical, her hands and feet as tiny as a child’s. Her hair and eyes
were a dark brown, her lips beautifully moulded, her complexion fair.
Many found in her a striking resemblance to Mary, Queen of Scots, as she
appears in her pictures. Her taste in dress was beyond reproach, and
soon after entering the White House her toilette was “the envy and
admiration of the fashionable circles.”[944] Her judgment in social
matters was infallible, and Jackson depended upon her advice. “You know
best, my dear, do as you please,” was his only suggestion when delicate
problems were submitted to him. Fond of society, vivacious, dignified,
and always gracious, she not only commanded admiration, but affection.
An excellent conversationalist, she possessed the art, so seldom found
in good talkers, of being an ingratiating listener. In contact with the
brightest minds of the capital, she lost nothing by the comparison.
“Madame, you dance with the grace of a Parisian,” remarked a
condescending foreign minister. “I can hardly realize that you were born
in Tennessee.” “Count,” she retorted, “you forget that grace is a
cosmopolite, and, like a wild flower, is much oftener found in the woods
than in the streets of a city.” During her days in the White House her
four children were born, and Jackson, who was delighted to have
childhood about him, took a keen interest in their christenings. He was
godfather for two, Van Buren for one, and Polk--all Presidents--for the
other.
Another of the White House women was Sarah Yorke Jackson, daughter of
Peter Yorke, of Philadelphia, and wife of another nephew. She was much
younger than Mrs. Donelson, having been married but a short time before
the inauguration, but Jackson, fearing some misunderstanding as to
precedence, called them together and announced his will. “You, my dear,”
he said to Mrs. Jackson, “are mistress of the Hermitage, and Emily is
hostess of the White House.” The arrangement was satisfactory to both,
and no misunderstandings marred their relations. Mrs. Jackson was
happily indifferent to social prestige, but in the spirit of helpfulness
did her part. Highly accomplished and beautiful, graceful, and possessed
of wonderful poise in one so young, she was intensely devoted to
Jackson, and the old man reciprocated the affection in full measure.
Usually, in the evening, Jackson gathered his family about him, and if
Senators, diplomats, or Cabinet Ministers appeared, they were drawn into
the family circle. If the business which brought them happened to be of
importance, he would, perhaps, draw them into a distant part of the
simply furnished parlor which was lighted from above by a chandelier.
In the winter the fire blazed in the grate, and, arranging their chairs
about the fireplace, the women applied themselves to their sewing while
gossiping of the events of the day. Here would be found Mrs. Jackson and
Mrs. Donelson, perhaps Mrs. Livingston, possibly Mrs. McLane, or some
other woman of the White House circle. Playing about the room would be
five or six children in irreverent disregard of the old man in the long
loose coat, seated in an armchair, smoking his long reed-stem pipe with
a red clay bowl. Mayhap Livingston or Van Buren or Forsyth would be
reading him an important dispatch from a foreign minister, while the
children, with their shouts and screams, would all but drown the voice
of the visitor. Nothing disturbed by the clamor, the old man would bend
forward and listen more intently. Perhaps he would wave his long-stemmed
pipe toward the rowdies, with an apologetic smile. But never a cross
word.
The hour for retirement would come. The children would withdraw and be
tucked in their beds. The President would go to his room. There he would
sit awhile at the table, and, by the light of a single candle, would
read a chapter from the Bible that had belonged to Rachel, and then gaze
awhile at her picture propped up before him. The light would be snuffed.
The old man would retire, and the negro bodyguard would lie down on the
floor and join his master in sleep. Suddenly a child’s cry would
penetrate the President’s chamber, and he would awaken--and listen. Then
he would get up, go to the room of the little one, and, brushing
objections aside, take it in his arms and walk the floor with it until
it slept. This was not an unusual occurrence.[945]
After breakfasting in the morning, Jackson would go to his office, on
the second floor, and, lighting his pipe, would settle down to the
routine work of the day. Bookshelves lined the room. Busts of the
President, the work of various sculptors, and a number of portraits,
all by Earle, looked upon the original from shelves and tables. There
flocked the politicians, Lewis with a report, Blair with a leader,
Kendall with a programme. There he planned and fought his battles with
the politicians, but when evening came he looked forward to the joys of
domesticity, or the diversions of the company of women upon whom he
looked “with the most romantic, pure, and poetic devotion.”[946] The
accomplished Mrs. Livingston would enliven him with her vivacious
conversation on all manner of topics, her daughter Cora would delight
him with her animation and wit, and his eyes would fill when Mrs. Philip
Hamilton, daughter of McLane, responded to his never-failing invitation
to play and sing his favorite song from Burns. Mrs. McLane, an
attractive and entertaining chatterbox, with interested motives for
attempting to fascinate the old warrior, was always a welcome diversion,
and Mrs. Rives, the stately wife of the Virginia Senator; Mrs. Macomb,
wife of the General; and Sallie Coles Stevenson, who resembled Mrs.
Livingston in intelligence and tact, were frequent guests. These had
given to the White House something of the charm of the Hermitage; but at
times, in the bitterness of the continual struggle, when the old man
grew weary of the bauble of power, and felt his faith in mankind
slipping, and homesickness for the Hermitage possessing him, he had
often laid aside the cares of state, turned his back upon the scene of
his struggle and the house of his triumphs, and walked across the Avenue
to the home of the Blairs, where he knew he could find a haven of rest.
There he knew he could appear, not as the head of the State, but as
Andrew Jackson of the Hermitage. It became his second home. There he
could forget his enemies, and, in the homey atmosphere of a house
pervaded by the personality of a sincere and unaffected woman, he could
revive his fainting spirits.
But he was surfeited with triumphs, and the Hermitage called him home
to the tomb of Rachel. The twilight was closing in upon him. He knew it
was time to go.
V
The dawn of inauguration day found him so ill and debilitated that he
should have remained in bed, but the soldier spirit of the man refused
to yield to the promptings of the flesh. He was up early, doing his full
part. The day was ideal--as Van Buren had promised Clay. The clear sky,
the bright, cheery sunshine, the balmy air could not have been better
ordered for the distinguished invalid. A great throng stretched back
from the east front of the Capitol to witness the historic scene, and
the eastern windows were packed with the more favored spectators. It was
plainly to be seen from the attitude of the multitude that the real
reverence and enthusiasm was for the leader whose race was run, rather
than for his successor. “For once,” observed Benton, “the rising was
eclipsed by the setting sun.” The old man, feeble and bowed, sat
listening to the inaugural address of the man he had elevated to the
highest office in the world. Van Buren concluded. Jackson rose and began
slowly to descend the steps of the portico to his carriage which was
waiting to convey him back to the White House. At that moment, the
pent-up feelings of the crowd burst forth in cheers and acclamations.
“It was the acclaim of posterity breaking from the bosom of
contemporaries,” wrote Benton. The old man, deeply touched to tenderness
and humility, acknowledged his appreciation by mute signs. From one of
the upper windows a rough fighting man witnessed the scene with an
emotion he had never felt before. From thence, Benton looked down upon
the close of a memorable “reign,” of which he was to become the
historian as he had been its defender.
That night Jackson slept as usual in the White House as the guest of
President Van Buren, who insisted that he remain in his old quarters
until in May or June the trip back to the Hermitage could be made in
greater comfort, but the journey held no terrors for the homesick
statesman. The following afternoon he walked across the Avenue to the
home of Frank Blair for a final visit with the family within whose bosom
he had passed many joyous hours during the eight years of storm and
stress. A little later, Benton called with William Allen, then Senator
from Ohio, and for many years the world knew nothing of the nature of
that final conference. Benton himself was mysteriously silent, nor did
he furnish any enlightenment in his great history of the “Thirty Years.”
But long after most of the participants in the politics of that day were
mouldering in the grave, Blair and Allen told the story to one of the
President’s biographers. Jackson talked, and the others listened. He
told them of his two principal regrets--that he had never had an
opportunity to shoot Clay or to hang Calhoun. He had no regrets because
of his crushing of the Bank, nor because of his encouragement of the
spoils system. But he left office feeling that his work would have been
more nearly completed if Texas had been annexed and the Oregon boundary
dispute had been settled at fifty-four-forty. To his loyal supporters he
left one admonition that afternoon:
“Of all things, never once take your eyes off Texas, and never let go of
fifty-four-forty.”
The following day witnessed his departure. He took with him the picture
of Rachel which had been upon his desk through his eight years of trial,
her Bible, to which he had been devoted, her protégé Earle, the artist,
who was to remain with him at the Hermitage, and to be buried in its
peaceful shade.
Thus ended the reign of Andrew Jackson.
THE END
BOOKS, PAPERS, AND MANUSCRIPTS CITED AND CONSULTED
BOOKS, PAPERS, AND MANUSCRIPTS CITED AND CONSULTED
ABDY, EDWARD S., _Journal of a Tour of the United States_. 3 vols.
London, 1835.
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, _Memoirs_ of, ed. by C. F. Adams. 12 vols.
Philadelphia, 1876.
AMBLER, CHARLES HENRY, _Thomas Ritchie: A Study of Virginia
Politics_. Richmond, 1913.
Anonymous, _Life of Lewis Cass_. Detroit, 1848.
BABER, GEORGE, _The Blairs of Kentucky_. _Register Kentucky
Historical Society_, XIV.
BASSETT, JOHN SPENCER, _Life of Andrew Jackson_. 2 vols. New York,
1911.
BENNETT, JAMES GORDON. _See_ Isaac C. Pray.
BENTON, THOMAS H., _Thirty Years’ View, or a History of the Working
of the American Government from 1820 to 1850_. New York, 1861.
_See_ Theodore Roosevelt.
BEVERIDGE, ALBERT J., _Life of John Marshall_. 4 vols. Boston,
1916-19.
BIDDLE, NICHOLAS. _See_ Reginald C. McGrane.
BINNEY, C. N., _Life of Horace Binney_. Philadelphia, 1903.
BINNEY, HORACE. _See_ C. N. Binney.
BLAIR, GIST, _The Annals of Silver Springs. Columbian Historical
Society_, XXI.
BRADLEY, CYRUS P., _Life of Isaac Hill_. Concord, 1835.
BRANCH, JOHN. _See_ Marshall de Lancey Haywood.
BUCHANAN, JAMES. _See_ John Bassett Moore.
BUELL, AUGUSTUS C., _Life of Andrew Jackson_. 2 vols. New York,
1904.
BUTLER, WILLIAM ALLEN, _A Retrospect of Forty Years_. New York,
1911.
CALHOUN, JOHN. _See_ John Stilwell Jenkins, H. von Holst, Richard
K. Cralle.
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INDEX
Abolitionists, Taney and case, 138;
Thompson’s crusade, denunciations, 434;
exclusion of mail matter, 435, 445;
as issue (1836) and Van Buren, 435, 444, 446-48;
Calhoun and sectionalism over petitions, 443-45.
Adams, J. Q., and dining with colleagues, 13;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
effect of “bargain” story, 31;
and vilification (1828), 32, 34;
and defeat, 34-36;
and Jackson’s inauguration, 45, 48;
and Van Buren, 53, 55;
on Ingham, 57;
and crystallization of parties, 64;
disloyalty of officials under, 67;
and rejection of Hill, 83;
Calhoun’s opposition to Administration, 90, 92;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 98;
and Crawford, 107-09;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 111-13;
on Mrs. Eaton affair, 121, 132;
organ of Administration, 159;
on Clay, 174, 191;
as Opposition leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 181;
and Clay and tariff, 185, 186;
tariff report and bill (1832), 189, 193;
and overtures by Jackson, 189;
political character, 190, 191;
and Bank recharter as issue, 211;
Bank investigation report, 216;
on Nullification, 261, 265;
and compromise tariff, 281;
and ending of Twenty-second Congress, 286;
on Jackson at Harvard, 289;
on end of tour, 290;
and removal of deposits, 342;
on Choate, 348;
and House committee to investigate Bank (1834), 349;
and spring election (1834), 354;
and Florida Purchase Treaty, 389;
and French Spoliation Claims, 399, 400;
tributes to Jackson, 400, 417;
and Webster, 414;
castigation of Senate, 414-19;
Whig resentment, 419;
on Van Buren and other candidates (1836), 438, 450.
_See also_ Elections (1828, 1832).
Adams, Mrs. J. Q., “slandered,” 32, 83.
Alabama, and expunging of censure, 369.
_Albany Argus_, in campaign of 1832, 243.
_Albany Journal._ _See_ Weed, Thurlow.
Allen, William, and expunging of censure, 465;
final conference with Jackson, 480.
American system. _See_ Internal improvements; Tariff.
Amusements, in Washington, 16-29.
Anderson, ----, opera in Washington, 28 _n._
Anti-Masons, Clay’s attitude, 234, 238;
presidential nomination (1832), Wirt and Clay, 235-37;
Jacksonians denounce, 237;
in campaign, 249;
and Granger (1836), 433.
_Appeal_, as White’s organ, 451.
Archer, W. S., and Ingham, 43;
and Nullification, 261, 265;
and French Spoliation Claims, 400.
Arlington, as residence, 7.
Arnold, R., peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Assassination conspiracy, charge, 376-78;
Poindexter affair, 378, 379, 382.
Attorney-General. _See_ Berrien, J. M.; Butler, B. F.; Taney, R. B.
Austria, treaty, 229.
Baldwin, Henry, and Treasury portfolio, 42;
on Tyler, 78 _n._
Baltimore, National Republican Convention, 175;
Jacksonian, 289;
Bank harangues, 330;
Democratic Convention, 429.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, opening to Washington, 1.
Bank of the United States. _See_ National Bank.
Bankhead, Charles, and French Spoliation Claims, 420, 421.
Barbour, James, on Clay’s tariff speech, 188;
on presidential contest (1836), 432;
and slavery issue, 435;
and instructions to expunge censure, 441.
“Bargain” story, political effect, 31;
Tyler and, 79;
revival (1832), 249;
Forsyth and, 389.
Barry, W. T., selection as Postmaster-General, 49;
career and character, 61;
and recall of Harrison, 74;
at Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, 101;
and Berrien, 129;
and Blair, 161;
and Post-Office corruption, 183, 371-76;
and Bank, 210, 217;
and Houston, 241;
and removal of deposits, 293, 303;
Spanish mission, death, 374.
Barton, T. P., chargé at Paris, marriage,
406;
and French Spoliation Claims, 408, 409.
Bell, John, and White’s candidacy, Blair’s attack, 428, 429;
defeated for Speaker, 439;
and Van Buren, 439.
Bennett, J. G., press letters from Washington, 16;
attack on Bank, 204;
and removal of deposits, 297, 298.
Bentham, Jeremy, and Livingston Code, 135.
Benton, T. H., in campaign of 1828, 58;
and dismissals under Jackson, 72;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 92, 98, 103;
at Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, 101, 102;
on establishment of the _Globe_, 160;
as Jacksonian leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 181;
and tariff, 195;
land sale graduation plan, 196;
report on public lands, 198;
hostility to Bank, 204;
and postponement of Bank issue, 208;
and Bank investigation, 215;
and Bank veto, Clay episode, 219, 224, 225;
Jackson duel as campaign material, 246;
on Webster and Jackson, 276;
on compromise tariff, 278, 283 _n._;
and removal of deposits, 307;
leader against Bank, 319;
political character, 319;
and Senate measures on deposits, 322;
speech on censure, 331;
and Webster’s compromise recharter measure, 335;
on resolution to restore deposits, 350;
and Taney’s report on finances, 351;
and expunging censure, 368, 369, 371, 461, 462;
patronage inquiry, 383;
on extinguishment of debt, 385;
on Fortifications Bill, 404, 410, 412;
and French Spoliation Claims, 408, 409;
on politics in Abolitionist affairs, 447;
conciliation dinner, 465;
and expunging excitement, altercation with Clay, 470, 471;
at dinner celebrating expunging, 471;
on Jackson at Van Buren’s inauguration, 479;
last conference with Jackson, 480.
Bernard, Simon, on Calhoun, 89 _n._
Berrien, J. M., selection as Attorney-General, 44;
career and character, 60;
and Mrs. Eaton, Calhoun adherent, resignation, 121, 123,
125, 127, 129, 130;
and Nullification, 125, 127, 388;
becomes Whig, 132.
Bibb, G. M., on Barry, 372;
patronage inquiry, 383.
Biddle, Nicholas, and Lewis, 155;
Mason episode, 203;
warning against politics, 203;
and attitude of Administration (1831), 204-07;
and press propaganda, 207, 228;
and problem of application for recharter, 209;
forced to recharter application, 212, 213, 217;
character, 212;
and recharter before Congress, 216;
on veto message, 221;
in campaign of 1832, 238, 239;
hope in Clay-Nullifiers union, 291;
and Wall Street, 300 _n._;
control over Bank, 305;
policy of economic coercion, 310, 313-15;
and rejection of Government Bank directors, 324;
and Clay’s selfish attitude, 332, 360, 366;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 334;
and election riots, 363;
final opinion of a supporter, 368.
_See also_ National Bank.
Binney, Horace, on drinking, 18;
and removal of deposits, 314;
and Webster’s compromise recharter measure, 334;
as champion of Bank, as orator, 343;
in debate on deposits, 344, 346, 347;
and Jackson, 347;
report on deposits, 348.
Black, John, and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._
Blair, F. P., on rapid communication, 1;
on Washington society, 27;
establishment of the _Globe_ as Jackson’s organ, 160, 161, 164;
advent in Washington, appearance, relations with Jackson, 161,
162, 478, 480;
political career and character, 162-64;
Green contest, 164;
and daily paper, 165;
as editor of _Globe_, 165-67;
value of services, 169;
political use of rejection of Van Buren, 182;
and tariff issue, 188;
and Clay’s land policy, 200;
and Bank, 218;
and Bank veto, 219, 221;
on premature recharter of Bank, 208 _n._;
on Webb as turncoat, 228;
on Nullifiers and Clay, 232, 233;
on Clay and Anti-Masons, 237;
and Jackson retirement canard, 240;
campaign methods, 242-44;
campaign personalities, 247, 248;
on Jackson and Nullification, 252;
on compromise tariff combination, 280, 283;
and Bank and Clay-Calhoun union, 291;
and removal of deposits, 296, 298;
and Barry, 303;
and Cabinet paper on deposits, 305;
and excitement over deposits, 330;
on Hopkinson and Bank, 347;
on Whig Bank policy, 367;
and assassination conspiracy, 377, 378, 382;
and French crisis, 395, 396, 411;
and White, 424, 425;
and vice-presidential candidates (1835), 431;
denunciation of White’s candidacy and
Bell, 428, 429;
and Whitney affair, 461;
on Jackson’s last conference, 480.
_See also_ Kitchen Cabinet; _Washington Globe_.
Boarding houses, in Washington, 12.
Bodisco, Baron, as social leader, 27.
Booth, J. B., appearances in Washington Theater, 16.
Bouldin, J. W., and French Spoliation Claims, 400.
Branch, John, selection as Secretary of the Navy, 44;
career and character, 59;
appearance, manner, 59;
at Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, 101;
Mrs. Eaton controversy, resignation, Calhoun adherent, 119,
120, 123, 125, 126, 130;
becomes Whig, 132.
Branch, Mrs. John, and Mrs. Eaton, 120, 123.
Broglie, Duc de, and Spoliation Claims, 390, 406, 408.
Brooke, Francis, and Clay’s health, 249;
and instructions to expunge censure, 441.
Brown, Jesse, as hotel keeper, 3.
Bryant, W. C., on Biddle, 368.
Buchanan, James, and Cabinet position, 129;
and _Globe_ as official organ, 168;
and French Spoliation Claims, 390, 397;
and Fortifications Bill, 403;
and Abolitionist petitions, 444;
and Abolitionist mail, 445;
on expunging censure, 468.
Burges, Tristam “mess,” 12;
and French Spoliation Claims, 401.
Butler, B. F., and Cabinet offer, 1;
manner, 10;
appointment as Attorney-General, 310;
and Jackson’s Protest, 339;
confirmed, 352.
Bynum, J. A., and Fortifications Bill, 404.
Cabinet, Butler and portfolio, 1;
exclusion of presidential aspirants, 40;
Van Buren and Calhoun and selection, 40;
selection of first, 40-45, 119;
factional character, 45, 125;
character of Jackson’s first Secretaries, 53-63;
Tyler and selection, 79;
effect of Jackson-Calhoun break, 115;
wrecked by Mrs. Eaton, 116, 119, 123, 130-32;
resignation, 124-27;
construction of new, 127-30;
reception of new, 130;
character of new Secretaries, 132-43;
attitude on Bank recharter, 217;
second reorganization, 287;
and removal of deposits, 292, 293, 303, 305;
dismissal of Duane, third reorganization, 309, 310;
Senate’s rejection of Taney, 352;
fourth reorganization, 358, 359;
Kendall succeeds Barry, 374;
Van Buren’s, 473.
Cadwalader, Thomas, as Bank agent at Washington, 210-12;
bears recharter application, accident, 214.
Calhoun, J. C., “mess,” 12;
and Harriet Martineau, 14;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
in society, 24;
presidential aspirations and Van Buren, 40, 85;
and selection of Cabinet, 40-42, 44, 45;
and Tyler, 77;
and Jackson’s appointments, 85, 86;
political effect of break with Jackson, 88, 110, 111, 115;
political career and character, 88-91;
and War of 1812, 89;
opposition to Adams’s Administration, 90, 92;
appearance, 91;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 92, 97;
and Jackson’s Union toast, 102, 103;
and Jackson’s Seminole campaign, break with Jackson, 103-06, 110-15;
and Crawford, 107, 108;
Jackson pamphlet, 113;
followers eliminated from Cabinet, 125, 130;
Duff Green’s organ, 159;
and party leadership, 173;
and Clay, 173;
as anti-Jackson leader, 176, 285;
and rejection of Van Buren, 178, 181;
invitation to join Opposition, 184;
and Bank, 210;
and support of Clay (1832), 231-33;
Blair on attitude (1832), 233;
and South Carolina’s vote, 251;
Nullification and Jackson’s hatred, 252, 269, 277, 279, 480;
Exposition, 253;
letter urging Nullification, 254;
and Nullification Proclamation, 265;
journey to Washington, 266;
taking seat in Senate, 267;
and message on Nullification, 269;
constitutional resolutions, 269;
speech on Force Bill, 274;
and compromise tariff, 277-82;
and rescission of Nullification, 284;
and distress petitions, 327;
speech on censure, 331;
confidence in Bank success, 332;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 334, 335;
on Jackson’s Protest, 341;
Ritchie on presidential ambition, 364;
rage against Jackson, 368;
on Post-Office corruption, 369;
on expunging censure, 370, 371, 464;
and assassination conspiracy, 377;
patronage inquiry and report, 382-84;
and Abolitionist petitions and sectionalism, 443-45;
bill on Abolitionist mail, political motive, 445-48;
attack on
Jackson and Van Buren (1836), 449;
Jackson’s triumph, 472.
Calhoun, Mrs. J. C., and Mrs. Eaton, 120.
Cambreleng, C. C., as Jackson leader, 177;
and French Spoliation Claims, 399, 401;
and Fortifications Bill, 404, 411, 414.
Campbell, J. N., and Mrs. Eaton, 119, 120.
Capitol, in the thirties, 8-11.
Cartoons, in campaign of 1832, 241.
Carusi, Louis, assembly, 28.
Cass, Lewis, on McLean and justiceship, 49;
selection as Secretary of War, 129;
career and character, 140-43;
and Bank, 212, 217;
and Nullification, letter to Virginia, 255, 262;
in New England tour, 289;
and removal of deposits, question of resignation, 293, 303, 305, 309;
French mission, 473.
Censure of Jackson, Senate resolutions introduced, 325;
debate, 330-32;
passage, 337;
Jackson’s Protest, 338, 339;
debate on Protest, refusal to receive it, 339-42;
State Legislatures and instructions to expunge, attitude
of Senators, 368, 441-43;
first expunging movement (1836), 369-71;
expunging as national issue, and changes in Senate, 461, 462;
Benton’s and Buchanan’s speeches, 462, 463;
Whig speeches, 463-69;
Benton’s Democratic conciliation dinner, 465;
Benton’s refreshments at Capitol, 465, 468;
vote to expunge, 469;
tension, ceremony, protest of gallery, 470, 471;
Jackson’s dinner, 471.
Chabaulon, Henri de, and Spoliation Claims, 405.
Chapman, J. G., exhibition of paintings, 28.
Chevalier, Michel, on campaign parade, 245.
Cheves, Langdon, and Treasury portfolio, 43.
Choate, Rufus, as Opposition leader, 177;
Bank speech, 348.
Cholera, and campaign of 1832, 243, 247, 249.
Churches, of Washington, 8.
Civil service, office-seekers and Jackson, 38, 39, 66, 69, 70;
office-holders and Jackson, 39;
McLean and proscriptions, 49;
Van Buren’s attitude, 54;
Jackson and exigent origin of spoils system, 64, 67-69, 480;
office-holding class, 65;
demands for proscription, 65;
dismissals, hardships, extent, 70-74;
dismissal of criminal officials, 75;
Senate’s rejection of nomination of editors, 76, 80-87;
review under Jackson, 228;
Senate’s patronage inquiry, 382-84;
proposed repeal of four-year-tenure law, 384.
Clay, Henry, and Harriet Martineau, 14;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
in society, 24;
effect of “bargain” story, 31;
and campaign of 1828, vilified, 32;
and defeat (1828), 35, 36;
and Jackson’s inauguration, 48;
personal opposition to Jackson, 50-53;
and crystallization of parties, 65;
and Tyler, 77, 79;
and Kendall, 145, 146, 148;
return to Senate as leader of Opposition, 171, 172;
character, as politician, 172-75;
Calhoun on, 173;
Adams on, 174, 191;
nomination for Presidency, 175;
search for an issue, 175, 177;
platform, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 178-80;
West Indian trade negotiations, 178;
and confirmation of Livingston, 182;
tariff plan (1832), 185-87;
tariff speeches, 187, 188;
and conference tariff bill, 195;
vulnerable public lands policy, 195-97;
and public lands bill, speech, 197-200;
makes recharter of Bank his issue, 206-12, 217;
on Bank veto, 221, 222, 224;
Benton episode over Bank, 225;
conduct of campaign, 230;
and Nullifiers, 231;
and Anti-Masons, 234-38;
campaign abuse, 247;
during campaign, 249;
defeat, 251;
Nullification and playing politics, 260, 261, 264, 280, 285;
and Force Bill debate, 270;
and compromise tariff, 278-81, 283;
pocket veto of land bill, 286;
and distress petitions, 315, 327;
resolution on depository banks, 322;
demand for Cabinet paper on Bank, 323;
and legal basis of deposits controversy, 325;
resolutions censuring Jackson, 325;
speech on censure, 330;
confidence in Bank victory, 332;
selfish attitude toward Bank, 332, 335, 366;
and Webster’s compromise recharter measure, 335;
Van Buren and histrionics over distress, 335-37;
resolution to restore deposits, 350;
and Taney’s report on finances, 350;
and expunging censure, speech, 369, 371, 465-68;
and Barry, 372;
and Poindexter investigation, 382;
and Forsyth, 389;
and French crisis, 396,
397, 417;
and White’s candidacy, 424;
and candidacy (1836), 431;
on possible Whig candidates, 432, 433;
and rejection of Taney, 441;
during campaign, endorses Harrison, 452;
and election of Van Buren, 456;
Benton altercation after expunging, 471;
Jackson’s triumph, 472;
Jackson’s hatred, 480.
_See also_ Election (1832).
Clayton, A. S., and Bank investigation, 215.
Clayton, J. M., and crystallization of parties, 65;
as Opposition leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 180;
appearance, character, 183;
and Post-Office investigation, 183;
invitation to Nullifiers, 184;
and Force Bill, 270, 271;
and compromise tariff, 278, 280, 282, 283.
Coach hire, in Washington, 4.
Cockfighting at Washington, 18.
Colombia, relations with, 229.
Congress, _Twenty-first_: beginning of campaign speeches, 55;
Senate and Jackson’s nominations, 76, 80-87;
Webster-Hayne debate, 92-99.
_Twenty-second_: Clay as leader of Opposition, 172;
other leaders, 176, 177;
rejection of Van Buren, 177-82;
investigation of Post-Office, 183;
tariff of 1832, 185-89, 193-95;
public lands, 197-99, 286;
Bank recharter and investigation, 214-26;
campaign denunciation, 229;
Administration’s tariff bill (1833), 267;
annual message, 257;
message on Nullification, 268, 269;
Force Bill, 269-76, 281;
compromise tariff, 277-82;
dramatic end, 286.
_Twenty-third_: petitions on Bank question, 315, 327-29;
leaders in Bank controversy, 319-21;
Senate measures on removal of deposits, 322-24;
legal basis of deposits contest, 325;
public interest in Bank debate, 326;
censure of Jackson, 325, 330-33, 337, Webster’s
compromise recharter measure, 333-35;
Van Buren and Clay’s histrionics, 335-37;
Jackson’s Protest, not received, 338-42;
House measures and debate on deposits, 342-49;
House committee to investigate Bank, 349, 350;
Senate resolution to restore deposits, 350;
Taney’s special report on finances, 350-52;
rejection of nominations, 352;
and expunging censure, 368-71;
Post-Office investigation and reorganization, 369, 371-74;
Poindexter investigation, 382;
patronage inquiry, 382-84;
French crisis, 392, 393, 396, 397, 399-402;
Fortifications Bill, 402-05;
Speakership contest, 429.
_Twenty-fourth_: French crisis, 408-11;
debate on failure of Fortifications Bill, 410-20;
Speakership, 439;
confirmation of Taney, 440;
expunging censure, 441, 442, 461-71;
Abolitionist affairs and politics, 443-48;
Whitney affair, 457-61.
“Coodies,” 137 _n._
Cooper, Thomas, and National Bank, 291.
Corwin, Thomas, as Opposition leader, 177.
Cox, M. M., peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Crawford, W. H., Washington residence, 6;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 104-06;
political career and character, candidacy (1824), 106-10;
and Adams, Jackson, Calhoun, 107, 108;
charges against, investigation, 107, 108.
Crittenden, J. J., and expunging of censure, 463.
Crockett, Davy, biography of Van Buren, 436-38.
Custis, G. W., residence, 7.
Cuthbert, Alfred, Fortifications Bill, 413;
and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._;
on politics in Abolitionist affairs, 447.
Dallas, G. M., and Livingston, 128 _n._, 182;
Bank recharter bill, 214.
Dana, Judah, and expunging of censure, 463.
Dancing, in Washington, 26.
Daniel, P. V., and Attorney-Generalship, 310.
Davis, Jefferson, on Calhoun’s eyes, 92 _n._
Davis, M. L., press letters from Washington, 16.
Dawson, Moses, rejection by Senate, 82.
Denmark, claims against, 229.
Depository banks, proposed regulation, 383, 384.
Deposits. _See_ Removal of deposits.
Dickerson, Mahlon, as Jacksonian leader, 176;
vice-presidential candidacy, 182;
and tariff bill, 194, 195;
and Bank, 211 _n._, 217;
Secretary of the Navy, 359.
District of Columbia, Van Buren and slavery in, 451.
Donelson, A. J., and Jackson’s Union toast, 101;
in New England tour, 289;
and message on French crisis, 392.
Donelson, Mrs. Emily, and Mrs. Eaton, 123;
as mistress of White House, 475.
Drayton, William, and Ingham, 43;
and Cabinet position, 129;
and Nullification, 269.
Drinking, in Washington, 18.
Duane, W. J., character, selection as Secretary of the Treasury, 287, 288;
and removal of deposits, 294-97, 303;
recalcitrance and dismissal, 306-09.
Dupin, A. M. J. J., and Spoliation Claims, 391.
Earle, Ralph, in Jackson’s New England tour, 289;
at White House, 478;
return to Hermitage, 480.
Eaton, J. H., selection as Secretary of War, 43, 119;
political career and character, 57;
in campaign of 1828, 58;
at Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, 101;
and Peggy O’Neal, marriage, 118;
resignation, 124;
and return to Senate, 128;
pursuit of Ingham, 131, 132;
later career, 132.
Eaton, Mrs. J. H., [Peggy O’Neal], wrecks Cabinet, 116, 123-25, 130;
character, appearance, 117;
relations with Eaton, marriage, 118;
Jackson’s investigation and championship, 119, 120;
snubbing and championing, political effect, 119-22;
later career, 132;
as graft go-between, 376.
Edwards, Ninian, and Crawford, 107, 108.
Election of 1824, rival Cabinet candidates, 107-10.
Election of 1828, significance, 31, 34, 81;
Washington and, 31, 35;
vilification, 32-34;
Adams’s Administration and defeat, 35, 36;
Eaton as Jackson’s manager, 58;
newspapers in, 81;
Calhoun’s attitude, 91;
Lewis’s services, 153.
Election of 1832, quick returns, 2;
elimination of Calhoun, 110, 111, 115;
Jackson’s candidacy, 164, 172;
Clay’s nomination, his search for an issue, 175, 177, 226;
his platform, 176;
and Senate’s rejection of Van Buren, 181, 182;
union of elements of Opposition, 184;
failure of tariff as issue, 188, 195;
Clay’s land policy as issue, 196, 199, 200;
Bank as issue, 207, 209, 212-14, 217, 219, 223, 225, 226, 244, 248;
as democratic campaign, 227;
newspapers in, 228;
Kendall’s review of Jackson’s Administration, 228-30;
Nullifiers’ support of Clay, 230-33;
Anti-Masons and Clay, 234-37;
Jacksonians denounce Anti-Masons, 237, 238;
Bank propaganda, 238-40;
canards on Jackson, 240, 241;
Whig cartoons, 241;
Kitchen Cabinet and organization and publicity, 242-45;
meetings and parades, 245, 246;
personalities, 246;
candidates during campaign, 249, 250;
Democratic confidence, 250, 251;
result, 251;
and Nullification, 252.
Election of 1834, Bank and spring elections, 354-57;
Whig Party, 357;
Whig purpose and methods, 358;
Democratic purpose, 361;
verdict on Bank of fall elections, 361-65;
riots in Philadelphia, 363.
Election of 1836, Van Buren as heir apparent, 423;
White as anti-Van Buren prospect, 424;
Whigs and White’s candidacy, 424, 425;
Democratic efforts to suppress White, 426;
Blair’s denunciations of White and Bell, 428, 429;
Democratic Convention, Tennessee and, 429;
Democratic vice-presidential nomination, 430, 431;
Clay and candidacy, 431;
Whig candidates, 432, 433;
Whig hope in election by House, 432;
Whig vice-presidential candidates, 433;
slavery issue as anti-Van Buren weapon, 435, 436, 444, 446-48, 452;
Crockett’s biography of Van Buren, 436-38;
Adams on candidates, 438, 450;
Van Buren’s campaign attitude, 438;
Jackson’s activity, White’s attack on it, 448, 452, 453;
lack of issues, 449, 451;
basis of White’s candidacy, 449;
campaign methods, 451;
queries to candidates, 451, 452;
Clay and campaign, 452;
results, comparison with 1832, 454-56.
Everett, Edward, as Opposition leader, 177;
tariff conference, 185, 186;
and Jackson at Harvard, 289;
report on Bank, 349;
and French crisis, 399, 401.
Ewing, Thomas, as anti-Jackson leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 180;
and instructions to expunge censure, 442.
Fairfield, John, on Whitney affair, 459.
Farewell Address, purpose, character, 472.
Fashions, at Washington, 20.
Federalists, Webster as, 94, 95;
Taney as, 137.
Ferdinand of Spain, and Florida Treaty, 389.
Fiske, John, on Jackson’s foreign policy, 421.
Florida, Purchase Treaty, Forsyth’s credit, 389.
_See also_ Seminole campaign.
Floyd, John, overtures to Clay, 231;
South Carolina’s electoral vote, 251;
and Nullification, 261.
Foote, H. S., on Kendall, 374.
Force, Peter, in campaign of 1828, 32.
Force Bill, presentation, 269;
debate in Senate, 270-72;
Calhoun’s speech, 274;
Webster’s speech, 275;
passage, 282.
Foreign relations, Jackson’s selection of ministers, 50;
_Globe_ as official organ, 168, 169;
Van Buren as Minister to England, 177;
accomplishments under Jackson, 229;
character of Jackson’s advisers, 389;
Oregon boundary, 390, 480;
results of Jackson’s policy, 421.
_See also_ French Spoliation Claims.
Forsyth, John, and Webster-Hayne debate, 93;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 104-06;
as Jacksonian leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 180;
and Bank, 211 _n._;
and Nullification, 269, 271;
and compromise tariff, 282;
and Attorney-Generalship, 310;
on distress petitions, 315, 327, 329;
and call for Cabinet paper, 323;
in censure debate, 332;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 335;
and Jackson’s Protest, 341, 342;
on naming Whig Party, 357;
selection as Secretary of State, 359;
character, 386-89;
as diplomatist, 389, 390;
and French crisis, 392, 398, 405, 420;
and Fortifications Bill, 404, 411;
and slavery issue, 435;
and Georgia’s vote (1836), 455.
Forsyth, Mrs. John, as social leader, 23;
and F. S. Key, 25.
Fortifications Bill, failure (1835), responsibility, 402-05, 413;
Adams’s castigation of Senate, 414-20.
Foster, J. W., on Jackson’s foreign policy, 422.
Four-year-tenure law, proposed repeal, 384.
Fox, H. S., as social leader, 27.
France. _See_ French Spoliation Claims.
_Frankfort Argus_, under Kendall and Blair, 146-48, 163;
Blair’s attack on Nullification, 160.
Frelinghuysen, Theodore, in censure debate, 332;
on Jackson’s Protest, 340;
defeat, 362.
French Spoliation Claims, Jackson’s treaty, 229, 386;
failure to appropriate payments, 386, 391;
dilemma of French Government, 390, 391;
need of strong public stand, 391, 397;
annual message (1834) on, 392, 393;
Whig attitude, 393, 395, 396, 420, 422;
message and Whig opposition in France, 394, 405, 411;
French protest on message, 395;
Senate and message, adverse report, 396, 397;
Livingston’s reply to French protest, 398;
imminence of war, 398, 399, 409, 410;
House discussion, Adams’s attitude, 399-402;
failure of Fortifications Bill, responsibility, 402-05, 410-19;
explanation demanded of France, 405;
French demand for apology, 405, 408;
Livingston leaves, 406;
his ovation at home, 407;
personal phase of crisis, 406, 407, 409;
Jackson and demand for apology, 408;
message on crisis, 409-11;
British mediation, French backdown, 420, 421.
Fuller’s Hotel, 3.
Gadsby, John, as hotel keeper, 3.
Gales, Joseph, in campaign of 1828, 32;
printer to the House, 277.
_See also_ _National Intelligencer_.
Gallatin, Albert, West Indian trade negotiations, 178;
warning to Bank, 318, 360.
Gambling, in Washington, 18.
Gardner, J. B., rejection by Senate, 82.
Garrison, W. L., mobbed, 434.
Georgetown, as residence section, 5, 7.
Georgia, and Nullification, 388;
vote in 1836, 455.
_Globe._ _See_ _Washington Globe_.
Gossip, in Washington society, 25.
Granger, Francis, vice-presidential candidacy, 433.
Great Britain, character of Jackson’s Minister to, 50, 177;
West Indian trade negotiations, 178;
Oregon controversy, 390, 480.
Green, Duff, and spoils system, 65, 68;
and Calhoun’s presidential aspirations, 85, 91;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 97;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 113, 114, 159;
and Mrs. Eaton, 130;
paper as Jackson’s organ, 159;
and Blair, 164;
and loan from Bank, 207;
support of Clay, 231, 232;
printer to Senate, 277;
and Force Bill, 284;
and Bell, 429;
in campaign of 1836, 451.
_See also_ _United States Telegraph_.
Green, Nathaniel, pre-inaugural conferences, 39.
Grundy, Felix, on Barry, 372;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 93;
and White, 128, 426;
as Jacksonian leader, 176;
and tariff, 195;
and Force Bill, 271, 272;
in debate on censure, 332;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 335;
and Abolitionist mail, 445.
Hamilton, Alexander, Jr., and Bank, 204, 318, 360.
Hamilton, James, and Ingham, 43;
and Nullification, 253;
Calhoun’s Nullification letter, 254.
Hamilton, James A., as Van Buren’s Washington agent, 41;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 104, 105, 114;
and McLane, 125;
political importance, 201;
and Jackson’s first message, 201, 202;
and Bank investigation, 215;
and Bank veto, 217, 218;
and Nullification, 256, 257, 263;
and removal of deposits, 290, 291, 306;
and spring elections (1834), 354;
and French crisis, 398.
Hamilton, Mrs. Philip, and Jackson, 478.
Hamilton, Thomas, on Washington, 2, 4, 5;
on Supreme Court, 10 _n._;
on slavery, 11;
lionized, 14;
on Capital’s social charm, 19.
Hardin, Benjamin, and Spoliation Claims, 402;
Randolph on, 402.
Harper, William, and Nullification, 253, 388.
Harris, Thomas, removes bullet from Jackson, 246.
Harrison, Benjamin, as lawyer, 54.
Harrison, W. H., cause of final illness, 14 _n._;
recall,74;
presidential candidacy, Clay’s attitude, 432, 433, 452;
and slavery issue, 436;
Adams on, 438;
electoral vote, 454.
Hartford Convention, Webster’s attitude, 95.
Hawes, A. G., Johnson incident, 373.
Hayne, R. Y., and Ingham, 43;
Webster debate as political, 92, 93, 98;
Union issue, 93, 97, 99, 103;
political career and character, 96;
speech, effect, 96, 97;
Webster’s reply, 98;
and Jackson’s Union toast, 102;
as anti-Jackson leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 180;
and tariff, 187, 194;
and Nullification Proclamation, 265;
and arming of Nullifiers, 268;
urges caution, 277;
and rescission of Nullification, 284.
Health, conditions at Washington, 29.
Hendricks, William, and Bank, 211 _n._
Hermitage, Jackson’s journeys to and from, 250,
252, 358, 360, 361, 452, 453, 480.
Hill, Isaac, in campaign of 1828, vilification, 32, 33, 157;
pre-inaugural conferences, 38, 39;
and spoils system, 66, 71, 73;
rejection by Senate, 82, 83;
protests on rejection, 86, 87;
becomes Senator, 87, 129;
on Webster, 95;
political career and character, as editor, 155-58;
appearance, 158;
rôle in Kitchen Cabinet, 169;
and tariff, 195;
Mason episode, 202;
campaign methods, 242, 245, 248;
campaign bets, 251;
in New England tour, 289;
and petitions on Bank, 329;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 335;
and vice-presidential candidates (1835), 431;
on Calhoun and sectionalism, 444.
_See also_ Kitchen Cabinet.
Holland, W. M., biography of Van Buren, 438.
Holmes, John, and rejection of Van Buren, 180 _n._;
campaign abuse, 248.
Hone, Philip, on campaign of 1832, 251;
on Nullification Proclamation, 263;
on Jackson in New York, 289 _n._;
on Bank and depression, 311, 312, 352;
and distress meeting, 316;
on campaign (1834), 362, 365;
final judgment on Biddle, 368;
on French crisis, 393, 405, 407, 409;
on Van Buren during campaign, 438;
on campaign, 450.
Hopkinson, Joseph, and Bank, Blair’s accusation, 347.
Horse-racing, at Washington, 18.
Hotels, in Washington, 3.
House of Representatives, chamber, 9.
_See also_ Congress.
Houston, Sam, attack on Congressman, 241.
Hughes, ----, opera in Washington, 28 _n._
Hugo, Victor, on Livingston Code, 135.
Huygens, Madame, and Mrs. Eaton, 122.
Ice cream, as social novelty, 26.
Inauguration, of Jackson, character of crowd, 36, 47;
his arrival and reception, 37;
his attitude and conferences, 38-40;
selection of Cabinet 40-45;
Adams and, 45, 48;
ceremony, 46;
reception at White House 47;
Jackson’s second, 287;
Van Buren’s, 479.
Indian Queen, as hotel, 3.
Industry, prosperity, 229.
Ingersoll, C. J., and Bank recharter, 215, 218.
Ingham, S. D., selection as Secretary of the Treasury, 42;
political career and character, 57;
and office-seekers, 69;
and Mrs. Eaton controversy, resignation, 123, 126;
and Bank and Calhoun, 125;
flight from Eaton, 131, 132;
and Mason episode, 203;
Calhoun’s tribute, 275.
Ingham, Mrs. S. D., and Mrs. Eaton, 120, 123.
Internal improvements, Jackson’s vetoes, 171;
Clay’s platform, 176.
Irving, Washington, in Washington, 15.
Jackson, Andrew, and Booth’s acting, 16;
and horse-racing, 18;
and cock-fighting, 18;
election as revolution, 31, 34, 81;
vilified in 1828, and attacks on wife, 32-34;
arrival at Washington, 37;
pre-inaugural attitude and conferences, 38-40;
selection of first Cabinet, 40-45, 49;
and Adams, later overtures, 45, 189;
inauguration, reception at White House, 46-48;
first disaffections, 48, 50;
and McLean and proscriptions, 49;
and Tazewell and English mission, 50;
Clay’s personal opposition, 50-53;
and Eaton, 58;
and origin of spoils system, attitude of advisers, 64, 67-69, 480;
and crystallization of parties, 65, 67;
clamor of office-seekers, 66, 69, 70;
dismissals under, 70-76;
and recall of Harrison, 74;
Tyler’s hostility, 78-80;
and press, 81;
and rejections by Senate, 86;
political effect of break with Calhoun, 88, 110, 111, 115;
and Webster-Hayne debate, 93, 97, 99, 100;
Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, Union toast, 100-03;
Calhoun and Seminole campaign, break with Calhoun, 103-06, 110-15;
and Crawford, 107, 109;
and Eaton’s marriage, 118;
and Mrs. Eaton, 119-21;
resignation of Cabinet, 123-27;
construction of new Cabinet, 127-30;
and Eaton-Ingham letters, 132;
first contact with Livingston, 134;
Taney’s support (1824), 139;
character of Kitchen Cabinet, 144;
relations with Lewis, 151-54;
establishment of organ, 158-61;
and Duff Green, 160;
and Blair, 162, 166, 478, 480;
candidacy for reëlection, 164, 172;
and _Globe_ finances, 165 _n._;
services of Kitchen Cabinet, 169;
evidences of leadership, 171;
tariff views, 171, 185;
opponents and supporters in Congress (1832), 176, 177;
union of elements of Opposition, 184;
and tariff as issue, 188, 195;
and land policy, 196;
Bank in first message, reason for attack, 201-04;
attitude on Bank (1831), Biddle’s overtures, 204-08;
and Bank as issue, 209;
and compromise recharter, 212, 215;
and Bank investigation, 215;
Bank veto, 217-22, 244;
and Supreme Court, 220;
Kendall’s campaign review of Administration, 228-30;
and Anti-Masons, 237;
retirement and health canards, 240, 241;
and Houston’s attack, 241;
campaign abuse (1832), 246;
and cholera, 247;
during campaign, confidence, 249-51;
reëlection, 251;
and expected Nullification, 252;
and Unionist dinner, 254;
Poinsett as agent in South Carolina, 255;
preparation to combat Nullification, 255;
desire for peaceful settlement, 256-58, 268;
annual message (1832), 257;
Nullification Proclamation, 257-60;
intention to punish Nullifiers, 259, 269, 273, 277-79;
and Virginia’s attitude, 262;
and Van Buren’s attitude, 263, 264;
and tariff bill (1833), 267;
message on Nullification, 268;
and Webster’s attitude, overtures, 274-77, 288, 332;
and compromise tariff, 279, 280, 281;
Nullification and union of opponents, 285;
second inauguration, address, 287;
second reorganization of Cabinet, 287, 288;
New England tour, 288-90;
origin of plan to remove deposits, 289-92;
and Duane’s attitude on deposits, 295;
and delay in removal, 297;
and divided counsel on removal, 299;
and Van Buren’s attitude, 299-301;
and Taney’s advocacy, 301;
determines on removal, 302;
Cabinet paper on reasons for removal, 303-05;
and attitude
of Cabinet, 306, 309;
dismissal of Duane, third reorganization of Cabinet, 307-09;
and Bank’s curtailments, 313, 361;
and distress petitions, 316;
character of papers on Bank, 322;
and Senate’s call for Cabinet paper, 323;
censure by Senate, 325, 330-32, 337;
Protest, 338, 339;
Senate’s refusal to receive Protest, 339-42;
and Binney, 347;
fourth reorganization of Cabinet, 358, 359;
character of Bank fight, 367;
expunging of censure, 368-71, 441-43, 461-71;
and Post-Office reorganization, 372;
attempt to assassinate, conspiracy charge, Poindexter, 376-79, 382;
relations with Poindexter, 380, 381;
and extinguishment of debt, 385;
French Spoliation Claims treaty, 386;
and failure to pay claims, 386, 391, 392;
and foreign affairs advisers, 389;
and Oregon, 390;
annual message on failure to pay French claims, 392, 393;
and French protest on message, 398;
Adams’s tributes, 400, 417;
and Fortifications Bill, 404;
and Cora Livingston, 406;
and Mme. Pageot, 407;
and French demand for apology, 408;
special message on French crisis, 409-11;
and British mediation, 420;
and French backdown, 421;
results of foreign policy, 421;
and Van Buren as successor, 423;
White’s drift from, 424;
and White’s candidacy, 426;
and Abolitionists, 435, 445;
and memorial to Marshall, 440;
White’s attack on campaign activity, 448, 453;
campaigning in Tennessee, 453;
illness, 457;
and Whitney, 458;
dinner to celebrate expunging, 471;
triumphs, 471;
and future dangers, Farewell Address, 472, 473;
farewell reception, 473;
appearance, 473;
health, 474;
social attitude, 474;
life at White House, 475-77;
work routine, 477;
and society of women, 478;
at Van Buren’s inauguration, acclaimed, 479;
last day at Washington, 479;
final conference, advice, hatred of Clay and Calhoun, 480;
departure, 480.
_See also_ Election (1828, 1832).
Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, campaign attacks on, 32, 83.
Jackson, Sarah Y., and Jackson, 476.
James, G. P. R., on Tyler, 80.
Jefferson, Thomas, and Crawford, 109;
on Livingston Code, 135.
Jefferson’s Birthday, dinner (1830);
Nullifiers’ purpose, Jackson’s Union toast, 100-03.
Johnson, R. M., on Cabinet crisis over Mrs. Eaton, 123;
and Kendall, 146;
and overtures to Adams, 189;
vice-presidential nomination, 431.
Johnson, W. C., Barry incident, 373.
Johnston, J. S., and Nullification, 279.
Kane, E. K., and Bank, 211 _n._
Kemble, Fanny, in Washington, 16;
Story’s verses, 17 _n._
Kendall, Amos, pre-inaugural conferences, 39;
on Barry, 62;
and spoils system, 68, 73;
Senate and appointment, 84;
and Van Buren and Calhoun, 85;
and rejection of Hill, 87;
career and character, as editor, 144-48, 374;
and Clay, 145, 146, 148;
in campaign of 1828, 148;
as office-seeker, 148;
rôle in Kitchen Cabinet, 149-51;
and coming of Blair, 161;
value of services, 169;
political use of rejection of Van Buren, 182;
and tariff issue, 188;
and Clay’s land policy, 200;
hostility to Bank, 203, 204, 218;
and Bank veto, 219, 221;
campaign review of Administration, 228-30;
campaign methods, 242, 243;
and removal of deposits, 291-93;
and recess removal, 294;
and Duane’s attitude, 294, 295;
sounding of State banks, 296, 297, 302;
and Cabinet paper on deposits, 305;
on Duane, 308 _n._;
and Jackson’s Protest, 339;
wisdom in Bank controversy, 366;
Postmaster-General, reforms, 374-76;
and exclusion of Abolitionist mail, 435;
and Whitney affair, 461.
_See also_ Kitchen Cabinet.
Kent, James, and suffrage, 54;
on Livingston Code, 135;
in campaign of 1832, 236.
Kentucky, Eaton and campaign of 1828, 58;
“Courts” contest, 163.
Key, F. S., and Mrs. Forsyth, 25;
and Berrien, 129;
on disruption of Cabinet, 130.
Kinchy, ----, and ice cream, 26.
King, J. P., patronage inquiry, 383, 384.
King, W. R. and land report, 198;
and Force Bill. 272;
and expunging censure, 369, 370;
Poindexter investigation, 382;
and Fortifications Bill, 403;
on politics in Abolitionist affairs, 445, 446.
Kitchen Cabinet, importance, 144, 169;
character and rôle of members: Kendall, 144-51;
Lewis, 151-55;
Hill, 155-58;
Blair, 161-69;
and establishment of organ, 160, 161;
campaign methods, 227;
in campaign of 1832, 242-45;
and removal of deposits, 293;
and deposits excitement, 330, 350;
and expunging censure, 369;
Forsyth’s attitude, 389;
and French crisis, 422;
and Whitney, 458.
_See also_ members by name.
Krudener, Baron de, and Mrs. Eaton, 122.
Lafayette, Marquis de, and Spoliation Claims, 391.
Latrobe, B. H., Van Ness house, 8;
Senate Chamber, 9.
Lawrence, C. W., mayoral election, 355.
Leavenworth, Henry, on Isaac Hill, 86.
Lee, Henry, rejection by Senate, character, 82.
Lee, R. E., marriage, 8.
Leigh, B. W., Virginia commissioner to Nullifiers, 284;
as leader of Opposition, 285;
Bank leader, 319;
political character, 321;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 334;
on Jackson’s Protest, 340, 341;
protested reëlection to Senate, 363, 364;
and French crisis, 397 _n._;
and Fortifications Bill, 412;
and instructions to expunge censure, 441, 442;
and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._;
and Abolitionist mail, 445.
Letcher, R. P., and compromise tariff, 278-80, 282;
and White, 425.
Lewis, Delia, marriage, and Jackson, 407.
Lewis, W. B., and spoils system, 68;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 103-05;
character, rôle in Kitchen Cabinet, 151-55, 169;
in election of 1828, 153;
and Biddle, 155;
and coming of Blair, 162;
and Jackson’s candidacy for reëlection, 172;
and Bank, 205, 218;
on McLane’s Bank report, 209;
and Bank veto, 219;
campaign methods, 242, 244;
and Nullification, 275;
and removal of deposits, 305, 306;
attempt to exclude from floor of House, 324;
and spring elections (1834), 354;
and French crisis, 398;
and McLean’s candidacy, 423;
and vice-presidential candidates (1835), 431.
_See also_ Kitchen Cabinet.
Lexington, Ky., greeting of Jackson, 246.
_Lexington Observer_, on Bank veto, 221.
Linn, L. F., and expunging censure, 465, 470.
Livingston, Cora, as belle, 23, 406;
marriage, and Jackson, 406, 478.
Livingston, Edward, and Webster-Hayne debate, 93, 99;
Crawford investigation, 108;
selection as Secretary of State, 127;
and Berrien, 129;
career and character, 133-36;
Code, 135;
Clay and confirmation, 182;
and Bank issue, 207, 212, 215, 216;
and Bank veto, 219;
and Anti-Masons, 237;
Nullification Proclamation, 257-60;
and Webster’s attitude on Nullification, 274;
French mission, 287;
and removal of deposits, 293;
and Spoliation Claims, 386, 390, 391, 394, 395, 398;
leaves France, 406;
ovation on return, 407;
and message on crisis, 409.
Livingston, Mrs. Edward, as social leader, 22;
and Jackson, 478.
Livingston Code, 135.
Locofocos, and Van Buren, 452.
Lodge, H. C., on Webster-Hayne debate, 97;
on Webster and Jackson, 277.
Louis Philippe, and Spoliation Claims, 390, 391.
Louisiana, Bank and election (1834), 356.
McDuffie, George, and Ingham, 43;
as Opposition leader, 177, 285;
career and character, 191-93;
tariff report and speech, 189, 193;
and Bank issue, 211;
Bank recharter bill, 214, 215;
and Nullification, 253;
and Nullification Proclamation, 265;
public harangues on deposits, 330;
and deposits question in House, 343-45, 348.
McLane, Louis, and Treasury portfolio (1829), 42, 43;
on Branch, 44;
English mission, 50;
and Attorney-Generalship, 125;
selection as Secretary of the Treasury, 127, 128;
West Indian trade negotiations, 178;
tariff report, 189, 193;
public lands report, 196;
Bank report, 208, 210;
and Bank issue, 207, 209, 210, 212, 216;
transfer to State portfolio, 287;
and removal of deposits,
question of resignation, 290 _n._, 292, 293,
296, 297, 300, 303, 305, 309;
resigns, 359.
McLane, Mrs. Louis, as social leader, 23;
and Mrs. Eaton, 131;
and Jackson, 478.
McLean, John, treachery to Adams, 35;
selection as Postmaster-General, 44;
and proscriptions, transfer to Supreme Court, 49;
and presidential candidacy, 423, 432.
Macomb, Alexander, and Kendall, 148.
Madison, James, on Livingston Code, 135;
and tariff, 188.
Maine, H. J. S., on Livingston Code, 135.
Mangum, W. P., and Bank, 211 _n._;
and Force Bill, 271;
Poindexter investigation, 382;
and French crisis, 396;
electoral vote for, 433, 454.
March, C. W., on Webster-Hayne debate, 97.
Marcy, W. L., and tariff, 195;
and Bank, 318.
Marryat, Frederick, on Washington, 6;
on Capital’s social charm, 19.
Marshall, John, and Fanny Kemble, 16;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
on Berrien, 60;
on Livingston Code, 135;
and tariff, 188;
and Nullification Proclamation, 260;
and Taney, 440;
Jackson and memorial, 440.
Martineau, Harriet, on Washington, 2;
on the avenues, 6;
on Senate, 9;
lionized, 13;
on Washington life, 20;
on statesmen in society, 24;
on Kendall, 150;
and assassination conspiracy, 379.
Mason, Jeremiah, Hill episode, 202.
Massachusetts, in election of 1836, 433, 454.
_Mechanics’ Free Press_, in campaign of 1832, 248.
“Messes” at Washington, 12.
Mexico, relations with, 229.
Michigan, Cass’s services, 141.
“Millennium of the minnows,” 51, 130.
Mississippi, election (1834), 364.
Monroe, James, and Wirt and Jackson, 38;
and Jackson’s Florida operations, 78.
Moore, Gabriel, and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._
National Bank, Jacksonian hostility, first message on, 171, 201-04;
Hill-Mason episode, 202;
attitude of Administration on, as issue (1831), 204-09;
and warnings, overtures to Jackson, 204;
Clay forces recharter as issue, 207, 209;
subsidized press, 207, 228;
Administration and McLane favorable report, 208, 210;
problem of application for recharter, 209-12;
Whig leaders force application, 212-14;
recharter in Congress, 214, 215;
congressional investigation, results, 215, 216;
veto expected, 217;
Cabinet and veto, 217;
preparation of veto message, 218;
veto message as campaign appeal, its character, 219-21, 244;
its reception, 221;
excitement over question, 222;
veto before Congress, speeches, 222-26;
propaganda in campaign of 1832, 238-40;
Democratic campaign literature on, 243, 244, 248.
_See also_ Removal of deposits.
_National Gazette_, “Vindex” articles, 347;
and French crisis, 396;
on Fortifications Bill, 411.
_National Intelligencer_, in campaign of 1828, 32;
and Jackson retirement canard, 240;
and removal of deposits, 298;
and French crisis, 394, 395, 397, 411;
on Fortifications Bill, 414.
_National Journal_, in campaign of 1828, 32;
as Adams organ, 159.
National Republican Party. _See_ Whig Party.
_National Telegraph._ _See_ _United States Telegraph_.
Navy Department. _See_ Branch, John; Dickerson, Mahlon; Woodbury, Levi.
Negro colonization, use of public lands proceeds, 198, 199.
Nesselrode, Count, and _Globe_, 168.
New England, Jackson’s tour, 288-90.
_New Hampshire Patriot_, under Hill, 157;
in campaign of 1832, 243, 248, 249.
_See also_ Hill, Isaac.
New Jersey, and Van Buren, 182;
election (1834), 361.
New York, Anti-Masons in, 234;
coalition electoral ticket (1832), 236;
and Nullification, 263, 264;
election (1834), 361, 362;
and Democratic vice-presidential nomination (1835), 430, 431.
New York City, Jackson parade, 245;
Jackson in, 289;
Bank meeting, 316;
Bank harangues, 330;
Bank question in municipal election (1834), 354-56;
and French crisis, 407.
_New York Courier and Enquirer_, Van Buren organ,
and Jackson’s reëlection, 172;
attack on Bank, 203;
goes over to Bank, 208, 228;
and French crisis, 394.
_See also_ Webb, J. W.
_New York Evening Post_, and Bank, 239.
Newspapers, Washington correspondents, 16;
Senate’s rejection of nomination
of editors, 80;
Jackson and power, 81;
in campaign of 1828, 81;
establishment of Jackson organ, _Globe_, 158-61;
in Bank controversy, 207;
in campaign of 1832, 228, 242;
Bank controlled, 305;
in campaign of 1836, 451.
Nicholas, R. C., and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._
Niles, J. M., and expunging censure, 464.
_Niles’ Register_, on Bank and depression, 312, 341;
on Whigs, 357.
Noah, M. M., pre-inaugural conferences, 39;
rejection by Senate, career, 82;
reappointment, confirmation, 86;
and attack on Bank, 203.
Nullification, and Webster-Hayne debate, 97-99;
Jefferson’s Birthday dinner, Jackson’s Union toast, 100-03;
and reorganized Cabinet, 130;
Nullifiers and support of Clay (1832), 231-33;
denounced by Jacksonians, 233;
Jackson and anticipated, 252;
growth of South Carolina sentiment, 253;
Calhoun’s Exposition, 253;
Calhoun’s letter to Hamilton, 254;
Unionists, Poinsett as Jackson’s agent, 254, 255;
Jackson’s preparation to combat, 255;
Jackson’s desire for peaceful settlement, 256-58, 68;
annual message on, 257;
preparation of Jackson’s Proclamation, 257-59;
his intention to punish, 259, 269, 273, 277, 279;
character of Proclamation, 260, 263;
Webster’s attitude and speech, 260, 273-77;
Clay’s political play, 261, 264, 270, 280;
attitude of Virginia, Clay’s intrigue, Cass’s letter, 261-63;
Virginia commissioner to South Carolina, 262, 284;
Van Buren and attitude of New York, 263, 264;
South Carolina and Proclamation, 265;
Calhoun’s journey to Washington and senatorial oath, 266, 267;
Administration’s tariff bill, 267;
armed preparations, 268;
Jackson’s special message, reception, 268, 269;
Force Bill, 269;
Calhoun’s resolutions, 269;
debate in Senate, 270-72;
Calhoun’s speech, 274;
union of Jackson’s opponents, 277, 285;
origin of compromise tariff, 277-81;
compromise bill, Clayton’s amendments, 281-84;
passage of Force Bill, 282;
Ordinance rescinded, 284;
and origin of Whigs, 285;
Georgia and, 388.
Octagon House, 8 _n._
Offices. _See_ Civil service.
Ohio, in election of 1836, 431.
O’Neal, Margaret. _See_ Eaton, Mrs. J. H.
Opera, in Washington, 28.
Oregon, Jackson’s attitude, 390, 480.
Otis, H. G., on Clay’s tariff speech, 188;
denounces Abolitionists, 434.
Pageot, Alphonse, American marriage and Spoliation Claims, 398, 407, 409.
Parton, James, on Barry, 62.
Patent Office, visitors and, 8.
Patronage. _See_ Civil service.
Penn, Shadrach, attacks on, 147.
Pennsylvania, tariff and election of 1832, 185, 188;
and Bank as issue, 209;
election of 1834, 361.
Peyton, Balie, Whitney affair, 459;
and expunging censure, 470.
Philadelphia, Jackson in, 289;
Bank harangues, 330;
election riots, 363;
and French crisis, 407.
_Philadelphia Standard_, and Bank, 239.
Pinckney, William, peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
_Pittsburgh Statesman_, in campaign of 1832, 247.
Pleasants, J. H., and Nullifiers and Clay, 232, 262.
Poindexter, George, on Blair, 164;
and Bank, 211 _n._, 217;
and Force Bill, 272, 276;
as leader of Opposition, 285;
public harangues on deposits, 330;
on Jackson’s Protest, 339;
defeat, 365;
and assassination conspiracy, 378, 379, 382;
career and character, relations with Jackson, 379-82;
on evils of patronage, 384.
Poinsett, J. R., and opposition to Nullification, 254, 255, 268, 269;
later career, 285, 473.
Political parties, beginning of basis in policies, 64, 65, 67.
Polk, J. K., and White, 128;
as Jacksonian leader, 177;
and Bank, 232;
in debate on deposits, 344, 345;
report on deposits, 348;
and White’s candidacy, 426;
Speakership contests, 429, 439.
Poore, B. P., on Washington morals, 19;
on Berrien, 60;
on Mrs. Eaton, 117;
on McDuffie, 192;
on Jackson and Calhoun, 279.
Porter, Alexander, and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._
Porter, P. B., and defeat (1828), 35.
Post-Office Department, head made Cabinet officer, 44;
corruption, investigation,
reorganization, 183, 369, 371-74;
Kendall’s reforms, 374-76;
exclusion of Abolitionist mail, 435, 445.
_See also_ Barry, W. T.
Pozzo di Borgo, Count, and Spoliation Claims, 390.
Prentice, G. D., and Shadrach Penn, 147.
Prentiss, Samuel, as orator, 173;
appearance, 321.
Preston, W. C., and Harriet Martineau, 14;
and Nullification, 253;
on Nullification Proclamation, 265;
as leader of Opposition, 285;
Bank leader, 319;
character, 320;
public harangues on deposits, 330;
speech on censure, 332;
confidence in Bank’s victory, 332;
and Post-Office corruption, 369;
and expunging censure, 370, 463, 464;
and pictures for White House, 385;
and French crisis, 397 _n._;
and Fortifications Bill, 412;
and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._;
and Abolitionist mail, 445.
Public debt, and tariff bill (1832), 185-87;
Bank and extinguishment, 304;
celebration of extinguishment, 384.
Public lands, Benton’s gradation policy, 196;
Clay’s attitude, effect in West, 196;
Administration’s distribution policy, 197;
Clay’s report, 197;
recommittal, Benton’s report, 198;
pocket veto of Clay’s bill, 286.
Quincy, Josiah, and Cora Livingston, 23, 406;
on Calhoun, 91;
on McDuffie, 192.
Rance, M., and Spoliation Claims, 406.
Randolph, John, “mess,” 12;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
defeat by Tyler, 78, 79;
Crawford investigation, 108;
on Hardin, 402.
Red Fox, nickname for Van Buren, 40.
Removal of deposits, origin of plan, 289-92;
Bank’s relations with Opposition, 291, 324;
attitude of Van Buren and Cabinet, 292, 295, 299-301, 303, 305, 309;
political basis of removal, 292, 294;
question of recess removal, 293, 297;
Duane’s attitude, 295, 303;
Kendall’s sounding of State banks, 296-98, 302;
warnings to and by Bank, 297, 298;
Taney as advocate of removal, 301, 306;
determined upon, 302;
Cabinet paper on reasons, 303-05;
Bank and extinguishment of public debt, 304;
Biddle’s control of Bank. 305;
Bank’s subsidized press, 305;
removal announced, 306;
Duane’s recalcitrance and dismissal, 306-09;
Bank memorial to Congress, 309;
curtailment and depression to force recharter, 310-15;
distress petitions, Jackson and, 315-17;
business reaction against Bank, 317-19, 329, 341, 352;
controversy in Congress, leaders there, 319-21;
Jackson’s papers as appeal to public, 322;
Senate and depository banks, 322;
Senate and Cabinet paper, 323;
Senate’s rejection of Government Bank directors, 324;
legal basis of opposition to removal, 325;
resolution to censure Jackson, 325;
public interest in senatorial debate, 326;
distress petitions before Congress, 327, 328;
counter-petitions, 328, 329;
political stimulation of excitement, 330, 350;
debate on censure, 330-32;
confidence of Opposition, 332;
Clay’s selfish attitude, 332, 335, 366;
Webster’s compromise recharter measure, 333-35;
Van Buren and Clay’s histrionics, 335-37;
passage of censure, 337;
Jackson’s Protest, 338, 339;
debate on Protest, 339-42;
House measures and debate on removal, 342-49;
attack on Hopkinson’s Bank connection, 347;
House committee to investigate Bank, frustration, 349, 350;
Senate resolution ordering restoration of deposits, 350;
Taney’s special report on finances, publicity, 350-52;
question in spring elections (1834), 354-57;
in fall elections, 358, 361-67;
Whig warnings against further contractions, 360;
mistakes in Whig methods, 366, 367;
revelations through Jackson’s method of attack, 367;
fall of Bank, 368; influence and lesson of battle, 368;
expunging censure, 368-41, 441-43, 461-71.
_See also_ National Bank.
Revenue, proposed reduction and distribution, 383.
Rhode Island, Bank and election (1834), 356.
_Richmond Whig_, on Jackson and Marshall, 440.
_See also_ Pleasants, J. H.
Rigny, Comte de, and Spoliation Claims, 394.
Ringgold, Tench, on Calhoun and Jackson, 103.
Rip Raps, Jackson at, 296, 299.
Ritchie, Thomas, on Calhoun, 89 _n._;
and
Jackson organ, 159;
in campaign of 1832, 240;
and Nullification, 261, 262;
on Duane, 288;
and removal of deposits, 299;
on Whig Party, 358;
in election of 1834, 363, 364;
and vice-presidential candidates (1835), 430;
on Senators and instructions to expunge, 442.
Rives, J. C., and message on French crisis, 392.
Rives, W. C., and Senate, 261;
and Force Bill, 271;
speech on censure, 332;
and vice-presidential nomination, 430, 431;
and expunging censure, 464.
Roads, condition, to Washington, 1.
Robertson, J., peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Robinson, J. M., and Bank, 211 _n._
Rockingham Memorial, 94.
Roenne, Baron von, as social leader, 27.
Rogerson, Asa, peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Rucker, E., in Democratic Convention, 430.
“Ruckerize,” origin of word, 430.
Rush, Richard, and defeat (1828), 35;
report on public lands, 196.
St. John’s Church, 8.
_St. Louis Republican_, on Bank and depression, 341.
Sargent, Nathan, on Washington streets, 7;
on McLean and justiceship, 49.
Schaaf, Arthur, on Eaton-Ingham affair, 132.
Scott, Winfield, and Nullification, 255, 273.
Sectionalism, Tyler’s attitude, 78;
Calhoun’s efforts (1836), 443-48.
_See also_ Nullification.
Seminole campaign, criticism of Jackson, 78;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 103-06, 110-15.
Senate, chamber, women visitors, 9.
_See also_ Congress.
Sergeant, John, and Bank recharter application, 213;
on union against Jackson, 277;
and Webster’s compromise recharter measure, 334;
and House investigation committee, 349.
Serurier, Comte, and Spoliation Claims, recall, 395, 398, 405, 411.
Seward, W. H., and Nullification, 264.
Shepard, E. M., biography of Van Buren, 53.
Slavery, Tyler and territorial, 78.
_See also_ Abolitionists.
Slaves, in Washington, 11.
Smith, Margaret B., on Harriet Martineau in Washington, 14;
on Mrs. Livingston, 22;
on defeat of Adams, 35, 36;
on office-holders and Jackson, 40;
on inauguration of Jackson, 47, 48;
on Webster-Hayne debate, 98;
on Mrs. Eaton, 120, 130.
Smith, Nathan, Poindexter investigation, 382.
Smith, Samuel, and Bank recharter as issue, 211.
Society in Washington and celebrities, 13-15;
strenuousness, 20;
fashions, 20;
brilliance, 21;
leaders, 22-24;
character, statesmen in, 24;
gossip, 25;
gallantry, 25;
evening parties, dancing, 25;
diplomatists as leaders, 27;
assemblies, 28;
other amusements, 28;
on Sunday, 29.
South Carolina, in election of 1832, 251;
of 1836, 454.
_See also_ Nullification.
Southard, S. L., and defeat (1828), 35;
on Jackson’s Protest, 340;
patronage inquiry, 383.
Sparks, W. H., on Poindexter, 380.
Sprague, Peleg, on Jackson’s Protest, 340;
and French crisis, 396.
State Department, museum, 8.
_See also_ Foreign relations; Forsyth, John;
Livingston, Edward; McLane, Louis; Van Buren, Martin.
Stevenson, Andrew, and Bank, recharter, 214;
rejection for English mission, 352;
in Baltimore Convention, 430.
Stevenson, Mrs. Andrew, and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
as social leader, 23.
Story, Joseph, and Harriet Martineau, 14;
and Fanny Kemble, verses, 16;
on Mrs. Livingston, 22;
in society, 24;
on isolation of Adams, 46;
on Calhoun, 90 _n._;
on Livingston Code, 135;
on Nullification Proclamation, 260;
and legal phase of removal of deposits, 325;
on French crisis, 393.
Streets, condition of Washington, 4, 5, 7.
Suffrage, Van Buren’s attitude, 54;
extension and campaign of 1832, 242.
Sunday, in Washington, 29.
Supreme Court, chamber, aspect, 10;
appointment of McLean, 49;
Jackson’s attitude in Bank veto, 220;
Taney’s appointment, 440.
Surplus revenue, proposed distribution, 383.
Swanton, J. B., peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Swartwout, Samuel, as office-seeker, 69;
on Bank, 312.
Tallmadge, N. P., and Abolitionist mail bill, 448.
Taney, R. B., selection as Attorney-General, 129;
career and character, 136-40;
and War of 1812, 136;
Abolitionist case, 138;
hostility to Bank, 210, 218;
and Bank veto, 219;
and removal of deposits, 292, 293, 294, 299, 301, 306;
and Cabinet paper on removal, 305;
and dismissal of Duane, 309;
special report on finances, 350;
rejected by Senate as Secretary of the Treasury, 352;
confirmed as Chief Justice, 440;
and Farewell Address, 472.
Tariff, Jackson’s attitude, 171;
Clay’s plan (1832), 185-87;
Clay’s speech, 187;
Tyler’s Southern warning, 188;
McDuffie’s report and speech, 189, 193;
Administration measure, 193;
Adams’s report and bill, 193;
conference bill, 194, 195;
failure as issue, 195;
of 1828 and 1832 and Nullification, 253;
Administration bill (1833), 267;
origin of compromise bill, 277-81;
provisions of compromise, Nullifiers and Clayton’s amendments, 281-84.
Tayloe, B. O., and W. H. Harrison, 14 _n._
Tayloe, Mrs. B. O., and Harriet Martineau, 14;
as social leader, 24.
Tayloe, John, residence, 8.
Tazewell, L. W., “mess,” 12;
and State portfolio, 41;
and War portfolio, 43;
and English mission, 50;
and rejection of Jackson’s nominations, 82;
joins Opposition, 115, 176;
and White for Cabinet, 128;
and Jackson organ, 159;
and conference on tariff, 194;
and legal basis of deposits controversy, 325.
_Telegraph._ _See_ _United States Telegraph_.
Tennessee, and White’s presidential candidacy, 426, 427;
and Democratic Convention (1835), 430;
in election of 1836, Jackson and canvass, 433, 448, 453, 455.
Territories, Tyler and slavery in, 78.
Texas, Jackson and, 480.
Theater, in Washington, 16, 17.
Thompson, George, Abolitionist crusade, 434.
Thornton, William, Octagon House, 8.
Travel, conditions, to Washington, 1-3.
Treasury Department. _See_ Duane, W. J.; Ingham,
S. D.; McLane, Louis; Taner, R. B.; Woodbury, Levi.
_Troy Sentinel_, in campaign of 1832, 248.
Turkey, treaty, 229.
Tyler, John, on Irving, 15;
career and character, 77-80, 441;
origin and development of hostility to Jackson, 78-80;
sectionalist, 78;
and Jackson’s Cabinet, 79;
appearance, 80;
and rejection of Jackson’s nominations, 82, 83, 85;
joins Opposition, 115, 176;
on Cabinet reorganization, 127, 130;
on Taney’s official propriety, 140 _n._;
and rejection of Van Buren, 180;
and tariff, 188;
caution in campaign of 1832, 230;
and Nullification, 261;
and Force Bill, 270, 282;
and compromise tariff, 278, 280, 281;
as leader of Opposition, 285;
and removal of deposits, 329;
and rejection of Stevenson, 352;
on attempt to assassinate Jackson, 376;
Poindexter investigation, 382;
vice-presidential candidacy, 433;
and instructions to expunge censure, resignation, 441, 442.
Union. _See_ Nullification; Sectionalism.
_United States Telegraph_, and spoils system, 65;
as Calhoun’s organ, 85, 91;
campaign extras (1832), 230, 239;
rescue by Whigs, 277;
and Abolitionism and sectionalism, 444.
_See also_ Green, Duff.
Upham, Timothy, peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
Van Buren, John, campaign bets, 251.
Van Buren, Martin, and Butler, 1, 310;
and selection of Jackson’s Cabinet, 40, 42, 45;
presidential aspirations and Calhoun, 40, 85;
selection for State portfolio, 40;
and Hamilton, 41, 201;
political career and character, 53-57;
as lawyer, 53;
and civil service, 54, 68, 70, 74;
in War of 1812, 54;
and suffrage, 54;
as leader against Adams’s Administration, 55, 64;
appearance, 55;
manner, 56;
as orator, 56;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, beneficiary, 88, 110, 111, 114, 115, 179;
and Jackson’s Union toast, 100;
resignation from Cabinet, 116, 124;
and Mrs. Eaton, political effect, 121, 122;
and Louis McLane, 125, 359 _n._;
future (1830), 127;
and new Cabinet, 127-29;
and Kendall, 149;
on Lewis, 154;
and organ for Jackson, 159-61;
organ 172, 243;
as Minister, 177;
rejection by Senate, political effect, 178-82;
West Indian trade negotiations, 178;
and Bank, 205, 206;
and Bank veto, 218, 219;
on Webster’s Bank veto speech, 223;
campaign canard on (1832) 240;
and Nullification, 263, 264;
on compromise tariff, 280 _n._;
in New England tour, 289;
and removal of deposits, 290, 292-95, 297, 299-301, 310;
and Clay’s histrionics over distress, 335-37;
and French crisis, 398;
and Fortifications Bill, 404, 411;
and Cora Livingston, 406;
Adams on, 438, 450;
Jackson and succession, 423;
and vice-presidential candidates, 431;
and slavery issue, 435, 444, 446-48, 452;
Crockett’s biography, 436-38;
attitude during campaign, 438;
and Bell, 439;
Calhoun’s attack, 449;
and campaign queries, 452;
electoral vote, 454;
and results of election, 455, 456;
Cabinet, 473;
at Jackson’s last reception, 473;
Jackson at inaugural, 479.
Van Ness, J. P., residence, 8;
and reception of Jackson, 37.
Vaughan, C. R., and Mrs. Eaton, 121 _n._, 122.
Verplanck, G. C., “mess,” 13;
tariff bill, 267;
mayoral campaign, 355.
Vigne, G. T., on Arlington, 8 _n._;
on Supreme Court, 10 _n._
Villemain, A. F., on Livingston Code, 135.
Virginia, in campaign of 1832, 231;
and Nullification, 261-63, 284;
and removal of deposits, 329;
election of 1834, 356, 363, 364;
and Democratic vice-presidential nomination, 430, 431;
Senators and instructions to expunge censure, 441, 442.
Walker, R. J., election to Senate, 365;
and Abolitionist petitions, 444 _n._
War Department. _See_ Cass, Lewis; Eaton, J. H.
War of 1812, Van Buren’s attitude, 54;
Calhoun’s services, 89;
Webster’s attitude, 94, 95;
Taney’s attitude, 136.
Washington, Bushrod, and Mrs. Livingston, 22.
Washington in the thirties, condition of travel to, 1;
approach, 2;
hotels, 3;
streets, coach hire, lighting, 4, 5, 7;
lack of compactness, 5, 6;
avenues, 6;
special residences, 7, 8;
public buildings, 8;
Capitol, 8-11;
housing conditions, 11;
servants, slaves, 11;
cost of living, 12;
boarding-houses, messes, 12;
and celebrities, 13-15;
press letters from, 16;
theater, 16, 17;
dissipation, 18, 19;
social charm, 19;
fashions, 20;
society leaders, 21-25;
evening parties, 25-27;
foreign ministers in society, 27;
assemblies, opera, 28;
social character, 28;
Sunday in, 29;
unhealthfulness, 29;
and election of Jackson, 31, 35.
_See also_ White House.
_Washington Globe_, establishment as Jackson organ, 160, 161, 164;
daily, finances, 165;
political power, 166-68;
and foreign affairs, 168, 169;
lead in campaign of 1832, 228, 242, 248.
_See also_ Blair, F. P.
Washington Theater, 16.
Watkins, Tobias, peculation, dismissal, 75.
Webb, J. W., on Isaac Hill, 86;
and Bank controversy, 208, 228;
losses through Bank policy, 318;
names Whig Party, 357.
_See also New York Courier and Enquirer._
Webster, Daniel, and Harriet Martineau, 14;
and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
in society, 24;
on inauguration crowd (1829), 37;
on Jackson as president-elect, 38;
denunciation of Jackson’s removals, 76;
and Calhoun’s candidacy, 90;
Hayne debate as political, 92, 93, 98;
Union issue of debate, 93, 97, 99, 103;
political career and character, 94-96;
and War of 1812, 94, 95;
as orator, 95;
effect of Hayne’s speech, 96, 97;
reply, effect, 98;
Crawford investigation, 108;
and Clay’s return to Senate, 171;
and party leadership, 172, 173;
as anti-Jackson leader, 176;
and rejection of Van Buren, 178, 180;
and tariff (1832), 195;
and Bank recharter as issue, 210-12;
and forcing of recharter application, 213;
on veto message, 222, 223;
in campaign of 1832, 244;
attitude on Nullification, and Jackson, 260, 273-77, 288;
and compromise tariff, 278, 280;
and removal of deposits, 309;
advice to Bank, 310, 314;
and Bank retainers, 324;
and legal phase of removal, 325;
and distress petitions, 327;
Bank harangue, 330, 355;
and censure debate, 332;
compromise recharter measure, 333-35;
on Jackson’s Protest, 342;
and spring elections (1834), 354;
on elections of 1834, 365;
and expunging censure, 371, 469;
patronage inquiry, 383;
and Fortifications Bill, 403, 410, 412;
and Adams, 414;
presidential candidacy (1836), 432, 433, 452;
Adams on candidacy, 438, 450;
and confirmation of Taney, 441.
Weed, Thurlow, and attacks on Mrs. Jackson, 33;
and rejection of Van Buren, 181;
as practical politician, 227;
and removal of deposits, 298;
on elections of 1834 and Bank, 366, 367.
Welles, Gideon, pre-inaugural conferences, 39.
West, and Clay’s public lands policy, 196;
Democrats and (1835), 431.
West Indies, American trade negotiations, 178, 229.
Whig (National Republican) Party, need of leader, 176;
and other elements of Opposition, 184;
origin, antagonistic elements, 285, 357;
assumes name, 357.
White, D. L., peculation, dismissal, 75 _n._
White, H. L., and Cabinet position, 127, 128;
and Calhoun and Webster-Hayne debate, 92, 93;
as Jacksonian leader, 176;
and tariff, 195;
hostility to Bank, 204;
on Bank veto, 222, 224;
on tension in Bank issue, 222;
and removal of deposits, 293, 334, 335;
and expunging censure, 370;
and Fortifications Bill, 403;
drift from Jackson, 423;
as logical anti-Van Buren candidate, 424, 425;
Whigs and candidacy, 424, 432;
Democratic efforts to suppress, 426;
character, 427;
Tennessee and candidacy, 427;
Blair’s denunciation, 428;
and slavery issue, 436;
and Crockett’s biography of Van Buren, 436;
Adams on, 438, 450;
and Abolitionist petitions, 445;
and Abolitionist mail bill, 448;
attack in Senate on Jackson, 448;
basis of candidacy, 449;
organ, 451;
on Jackson’s canvass in Tennessee, 453;
electoral vote, 454, 455.
White, Mrs. H. L., boarding-house, 12;
and husband’s presidential candidacy, 425.
White House, Jackson’s receptions, 47, 473;
pictures for, 385;
Jackson’s life in, 475-78.
Whitney, R. M., affair, 458-61.
Wilde, R. H., as Opposition leader, 177;
tariff speech, 268;
and Lewis, 324.
Wilkins, William, and tariff bill, 194, 195;
and Bank, 211 _n._, 217;
Force Bill, 269, 270.
Willis, N. P., on Washington, 5;
in Washington society, 15.
Wirt, William, and Mrs. Livingston, 22;
and defeat (1828), 35;
advances to Jackson, 38;
and Jackson-Calhoun break, 111-13;
Anti-Masonic candidacy, and Clay, 234, 249, 303.
Wise, H. A., on Jackson and distress petitions, 317;
and Fortifications Bill, 404;
and Adams’s speech against Senate, 419;
Whitney affair, 457-61;
on expunging censure, 471.
Wolf, George, and Bank, Senate resolution on, 318, 329.
Woodbury, Levi, “mess,” 12;
and Jackson (1829), 40;
selection as Secretary of the Navy, 129;
and Berrien, 129;
and Bank, 210, 217;
in New England tour, 289;
and removal of deposits, 293;
transfer to Treasury portfolio, 359.
Woodbury, Mrs. Levi, as social leader, 23.
Wright, Silas, and removal of deposits, 299;
and Webster’s recharter measure, 335;
Poindexter investigation, 382;
and vice-presidential candidates (1835), 431;
and Abolitionist mail bill, 448;
and expunging censure, 465.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Life of Binney_, 104.
[2] Benton’s explanation of the delay of the Bank messenger with the
petition for a recharter. _Thirty Years’ View._
[3] Van Buren to Butler, _Retrospect of Forty Years_, by Butler, 39-43.
[4] _Washington Globe_, Nov. 17, 1832.
[5] Thomas Hamilton, _Men and Manners in America_, 14.
[6] Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_,
I, 143.
[7] _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 47.
[8] The present site of the National Hotel.
[9] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 53-54.
[10] On the site of the present Metropolitan.
[11] Perley’s _Reminiscences_, I, 43.
[12] Present site of the Willard.
[13] _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 48.
[14] N. P. Willis, _American Scenery_, III, 49.
[15] _Men and Manners in America_, 20, note.
[16] Four o’clock.
[17] _Men and Manners_, 20.
[18] Frederick Seward’s _Reminiscences_, 17-19.
[19] _American Scenery_, III, 49.
[20] _Men and Manners_, 17.
[21] _Public Men and Events_, I, 54.
[22] _American Scenery_, II, 55.
[23] Captain Marryat, _A Diary in America_, 163.
[24] _Public Men and Events_, I, 55.
[25] _Public Men and Events_, I, 54.
[26] _Life of Crawford_, 183.
[27] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 160.
[28] _Ibid._, I, 144.
[29] _Public Men and Events_, I, 54.
[30] Godfrey T. Vigne, in _Six Months in America_, thought that “in the
distance” Arlington “has the appearance of a superior English country
residence.”
[31] The Octagon House still standing and being preserved by the
Institute of American Architects.
[32] _Men and Manners_, 75.
[33] Miss Martineau tells of visits to the museum and the skylight,
I, 159.
[34] William H. Seward’s _Autobiography_, I, 277.
[35] _Ibid._
[36] Miss Martineau comments severely upon the levity of the women,
I, 180.
[37] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 179.
[38] _Men and Manners_, 16.
[39] _Ibid._, 65.
[40] _Six Months in America_, 64.
[41] Both Hamilton (_Men and Manners_) and Vigne, the English barrister
(_Six Months in America_), were shocked at the utter lack of respect
for the dignity of American courts, but were impressed with the
solemnity and decorum in the Supreme Court.
[42] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 165.
[43] _Men and Manners_, 21.
[44] Senator Tazewell of Virginia was one of these.
[45] Van Buren to Butler, _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 39-43.
[46] _National Intelligencer_, Jan. 30, 1831, advertised a house in
Georgetown on Gay Street, “convenient for the accommodation of a
genteel family, having all necessary outhouses, stabling, etc.,” for
$300 a year payable quarterly.
[47] _Public Men and Events_, I, 55.
[48] Hamilton, in _Men and Manners_, comments severely upon this
incongruity.
[49] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 143.
[50] Peggy Eaton and Mrs. Hugh Lawson White.
[51] _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 59.
[52] Near Fourteenth Street on the north side of the street.
[53] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 8, 1834.
[54] _Ibid._, March 11, 1834.
[55] _Ibid._, March 12, 1834.
[56] Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, who recorded it in _First Forty Years
of American Society_, Jan. 12, 1835, thought it exaggerated.
[57] Mrs. Seaton, wife of the editor of the _Intelligencer_.
[58] Mrs. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe lived in the house still standing on
Lafayette Square, known in recent years as “The Little White House.”
She was a famous hostess. President W. H. Harrison contracted the cold
that killed him while walking through the slush from the White House to
the Tayloes’ to offer a diplomatic post to the master of the house.
[59] _First Forty Years_, 356.
[60] _Ibid._, 368.
[61] _Men and Manners_, 17.
[62] Irving to Van Buren, Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 610.
[63] _Letters and Times._
[64] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 107.
[65] Story to Sarah Waldo Story, _Life and Letters of Story_,
II, 117.
[66] Story wrote the following lines to Miss Kemble:
“Genius and taste and feeling all combine
To make each province of the drama thine.
She first to Fancy’s bright creation gives
The very form and soul; it breathes--it lives.
She next with grace inimitable plays
In every gesture, action, tone and gaze.
The last to nature lends its subtlest art
And warms and wins and thrills and melts the heart.
Go, lovely woman, go. Enjoy thy fame.
A second Kemble with a deathless name.”
_Life and Letters of Story_, II, 117.
[67] Hone’s _Diary_, March 3, 1834.
[68] “The public is most respectfully informed that, in consequence of
the weather, the performance advertised for Thursday is postponed until
Saturday evening, September 17th, 1831.” (_National Intelligencer_,
Sept. 17, 1831.) “The Tyrolese Minstrels have to announce that, in
consequence of the severity of the weather, their concert which was
advertised for Saturday will be deferred until Monday evening.”
(_Ibid._, Dec. 19. 1831.)
[69] Advertisement in the _Globe_.
[70] _Life of Binney_, 127.
[71] Quincy’s _Figures of the Past_.
[72] This charge was made on the floor by Henry A. Wise.
[73] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 120.
[74] _Men and Manners_, 20.
[75] _American Scenery_, II, 50.
[76] _Diary in America_, 163.
[77] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 143.
[78] A. Lafore, a coiffeur from Paris, had his establishment at Mrs.
Doynes’s millinery store on the Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets,
and advertised his skill in the local papers. _National Intelligencer_,
Jan. 1, 1831.
[79] _First Forty Years_, Jan. 26, 1830.
[80] _National Intelligencer_, Jan. 2, 1831.
[81] _National Intelligencer_, Feb. 16, 1831.
[82] Miss Martineau thus describes the life of a lady of fashion,
_Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 145.
[83] _First Forty Years_, Nov. 7, 1831.
[84] Quoted by Ellet in _Court Circles of the Republic_, 163 n.
[85] Letter to Mrs. Sarah Waldo Story, _Life and Letters of Story_,
II, 117.
[86] _Figures of the Past._
[87] Mrs. Wharton’s _Social Life of the Republic_, 139, 179.
[88] _First Forty Years_, Aug. 29, 1831.
[89] Ellet’s _Court Circles of the Republic_, 226.
[90] A poet describing one of the Adams parties referred to “Forsyth
with her group of graces”--her beautiful daughters.
[91] _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 60.
[92] Quincy, in _Figures of the Past_, was thus impressed, particularly
with the daughter of Calhoun.
[93] These descriptions of Miss Martineau’s are in harmony with those
that sprinkle the pages of Mrs. Smith’s work.
[94] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_, Miss Martineau’s _Retrospect of
Western Travel_, and Adams’s _Diary_ all indicate a gossipy city.
[95] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 152.
[96] The original from “Alphonse” in possession of Waddy Wood,
Washington, D.C.
[97] This, too, in the possession of Waddy Wood.
[98] _Court Circles of the Republic_, 180.
[99] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 168.
[100] _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 60.
[101] Mary C. Crawford, _Romantic Days of the Early Republic_, 207.
[102] Francis Blair’s description, quoted in Rufus Rockwell _Wilson’s
Washington, the Capital City_.
[103] Hamilton, in _Men and Manners_, describes such garb at a ball
given by the French Minister to the members of Congress.
[104] _First Forty Years_, Jan. 1, 1829.
[105] Butler, in his _Retrospect of Forty Years_, refers to this
peculiarity of Fox’s (p. 61), and Bodisco, who gave the most brilliant
dinners and dances, figured in the celebrated marriage to a girl of
seventeen during Van Buren’s Administration.
[106] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 1, 1833, announces these operas with
Miss Hughes and Mrs. Anderson in leading rôles.
[107] Advertisement in _Washington Globe_.
[108] Announcing the opening of a spring school, and commenting on the
general preference for the spring over the winter term, Carusi, in the
_Globe_ of Jan. 3, 1831, explained the disadvantages of the winter term
to be “the disagreeable and long walks ... the frequent inclemency of
the weather, and the liability of sickness from exposure.”
[109] Advertisement of Birchard & Company’s Shows, _Washington Globe_,
June 13, 1833.
[110] Chapman had not then been given the contract for the historical
paintings in the Capitol rotunda, and exhibited fifty paintings on
Pennsylvania Avenue, near Fourth Street, in the winter of 1833,
charging twenty-five cents for admission and a catalogue. His
advertisement in the _Globe_, Jan. 21.
[111] _Retrospect of Forty Years._
[112] _Six Months in America_, 101.
[113] _Figures of the Past._
[114] Weed’s _Autobiography_, 308-09.
[115] Bradley’s _Life of Isaac Hill_. This circular may be seen in the
Congressional Library.
[116] Johnston and Woodburn’s _American Political History_.
[117] Adams’s _Memoirs_.
[118] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_, Jan. 1, 1829.
[119] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_, Jan. 1, 1829.
[120] _Ibid._, Jan. 12, 1829.
[121] _Ibid._
[122] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_.
[123] Webster’s _Correspondence_.
[124] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_.
[125] Buell, in his _Life of Jackson_, says he went to the Indian
Queen, “where he was temporarily domiciled.” Mrs. Smith and President
Adams, who were on the ground, agree that he stopped at Gadsby’s. It
is possible that he went first to the Indian Queen and then removed to
Gadsby’s.
[126] Webster’s _Correspondence_.
[127] Wirt wrote Monroe asking his advice about resigning, and Monroe
advised this course, but expressed the opinion that Jackson would not
want to dispense with his services.
[128] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 96.
[129] Amos Kendall’s _Autobiography_.
[130] Later in the Cabinet.
[131] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_, 283.
[132] Adams, Crawford, and Calhoun.
[133] Van Buren was thus known in his day.
[134] Van Buren in his _Autobiography_ ascribes his selection to the
party managers.
[135] See letter of Tazewell to Ritchie regarding the establishment of
a party organ in Washington in Ambler’s _Life of Thomas Ritchie_.
[136] See Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 101.
[137] See _ibid._, p. 97, on Ingham’s original ambition.
[138] Hamilton, in his _Reminiscences_, p. 99, makes this unqualified
statement. Professor Bassett, in his admirable _Life of Jackson_, p.
416, says that Jackson told Calhoun to notify the delegation of his
willingness to see them. Knowing the delegation to be opposed to the
man he favored, and to prefer Van Buren’s candidate, it seems more
probable that Hamilton was the emissary and not the Carolinian.
[139] The Carolinian’s opposition to Ingham was due to his tariff views.
[140] From speech of Branch, quoted in Haywood’s brochure on Branch,
pp. 14-15.
[141] Adams knew of McLean’s treachery, and in his _Memoirs_ denounces
him bitterly.
[142] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Feb. 24, 1829.
[143] _Ibid._, Feb. 28, 1829.
[144] Wilson’s _Washington, the Capital City_, I, 251.
[145] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_, 295.
[146] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 4, 1829.
[147] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 98.
[148] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 165-66.
[149] Hamilton, in his _Reminiscences_, p. 100, tells of his report to
Jackson on Barry’s application.
[150] Hamilton. See Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 90-91.
[151] Mrs. Smith thus writes in the _First Forty Years_, and her salon
was the center of Whig gossip.
[152] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_.
[153] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 14, 1829.
[154] _First Forty Years_, March 12, 1829.
[155] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 12, 1829.
[156] American Statesmen Series.
[157] Adams’s _Memoirs_, April 4, 1829.
[158] Benton’s characterization of Van Buren’s Classification Bill;
_Thirty Years’ View_.
[159] Ellet’s _Court Circles of the Republic_, 149.
[160] Senator Foote’s _Casket of Reminiscences_, 59.
[161] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 65.
[162] Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty Years_.
[163] _First Forty Years_, Feb. 25, 1829.
[164] Buell’s _Life of Jackson_.
[165] His message of 1819, found in Haywood’s brochure on Branch, deals
with the strangely barbarous custom of the times of lopping off the
ears of perjurers.
[166] Haywood relates this incident in his brochure.
[167] Ellet’s _Court Circles of the Republic_, 155.
[168] Senator Foote describes it, in his _Casket of Reminiscences_, p.
14.
[169] _Perley’s Reminiscences._
[170] _Sketches of Public Characters._ New York, 1830.
[171] Lucian Lamar Knight, _Reminiscences of Famous Georgians_.
[172] Northern’s _Men of Mark in Georgia_.
[173] This speech was incorporated in the 4th volume of _Elliot’s
Debates_ as an exposition of the Constitution.
[174] Knight’s _Reminiscences_.
[175] Miller’s _Bench and Bar of Georgia_.
[176] Ellet’s _Court Circles of the Republic_, 148.
[177] “Every State in New England is now ruled by the same aristocracy
that ruled in 1798--that ruled during the late war.... A band of
New England Democrats have encountered the dominant party at vast
odds--they have suffered every species of persecution and contumely.
Shall these men not be protected by the Administration of the people
under General Jackson? If that Administration fail to extend this
protection, then indeed it will fail of one of the principal objects
for which the people placed them in power by at least two to one of the
votes of the Union.”
[178] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 307.
[179] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 98.
[180] _Ibid._
[181] Adams turned out but five.
[182] Quoted by Francis P. Blair to Buell, author of the _Life of
Jackson_.
[183] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 98.
[184] McMaster’s _History of the People of the United States_.
[185] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 98.
[186] Samuel Swartwout to Jesse Hoyt, in Mackenzie’s _Life of Van
Buren_.
[187] Ingham to Jesse Hoyt, Shepard’s _Life of Van Buren_, 210-11.
[188] Shepard’s _Life of Van Buren_, 210.
[189] Amos Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 286.
[190] _First Forty Years_, 283.
[191] Amos Kendall in a letter to his wife describes the extravagant
lives of these clerks. _Autobiography_, 278.
[192] Schouler’s _History of the United States_, 457.
[193] Isaac Hill, quoted in Cyrus Bradley’s _Life of Hill_.
[194] _History of the United States._
[195] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 160.
[196] Kendall’s _Autobiography_.
[197] Bradley’s _Life of Hill_.
[198] McKinney, _The Office-Holder’s Sword of Damocles_.
[199] Story related by William Allen to Buell.
[200] M. M. Cox.
[201] William Pinckney.
[202] John B. Swanton.
[203] Timothy Upham.
[204] D. L. White.
[205] J. Robertson.
[206] R. Arnold.
[207] Asa Rogerson.
[208] These facts are taken from Ritchie’s _Richmond Enquirer_, and are
quoted in Professor Tyler’s _Letters and Times of the Tylers_.
[209] Lodge’s _Life of Webster_, 167.
[210] Professor Tyler’s _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 236.
[211] Letter to his wife, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 288.
[212] Letter to Dr. Curtis, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 305.
[213] _National Intelligencer_, Sept. 15, 1859.
[214] To Dr. Curtis.
[215] The prediction of Justice Baldwin of the Supreme Court.
[216] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 360.
[217] Letter to John Rutherford, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 378.
[218] G. P. R. James.
[219] _Letters and Times of the Tylers._
[220] Tyler’s term, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 408.
[221] _History of the United States._
[222] Henry S. Wise, _Seven Decades of the Union_, 99.
[223] Henry S. Wise, _Seven Decades of the Union_, 99.
[224] Letter to Richard T. Brown, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 409.
[225] Mrs. Smith, in _First Forty Years_, p. 253, refers to such
conversations.
[226] Letter to R. W. Christian, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 408.
[227] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 408.
[228] Von Holst.
[229] Ritchie, in the _Richmond Enquirer_.
[230] General Bernard, chief of staff of the engineers.
[231] Von Holst, 58.
[232] Joseph Story.
[233] Adams’s _Memoirs_.
[234] Webster wrote to his brother: “I hope all of New England
will support Mr. Calhoun for the Vice-Presidency.” (Webster’s
_Correspondence_.)
[235] Von Holst, 62-63.
[236] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 108.
[237] _Ibid._, 109.
[238] Sargent tells of his interview with Joseph McIlvaine, Recorder of
Philadelphia, I, 108.
[239] Quincy’s _Figures of the Past_.
[240] Jefferson Davis in his _Memoirs_ describes Calhoun’s eyes as
“yellow-brown,” while his contemporary biographer, Jenkins, tells us
they were dark blue. It seems unlikely that Davis, who knew him well,
could have been mistaken.
[241] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 13-40.
[242] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Feb. 28, 1830.
[243] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[244] _Philadelphia Gazette._
[245] March’s idea.
[246] Henry Cabot Lodge.
[247] Lodge’s _Life of Webster_, 118.
[248] Senator Foote, in _A Casket of Reminiscences_, 34-36, describes
his early struggles to overcome defects in enunciation, and Ludwig
Lewisohn, in his _History of Literature in South Carolina_, refers to
his first oratorical triumph.
[249] March, an idolater of Webster, in his _Reminiscences of
Congress_, is almost extravagant in his praise, and Benton, in his
_Thirty Years’ View_, is even more complimentary.
[250] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 172.
[251] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[252] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[253] Lodge’s _Life of Webster_, 177.
[254] _First Forty Years_, 310.
[255] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 142.
[256] Adams, in his _Memoirs_, refers to the speech as “a remarkable
instance of readiness in debate--a reply of at least four hours to
a speech of equal length. It demolishes the whole fabric of Hayne’s
speech, so that it leaves scarcely a wreck to be seen.”
[257] Letter from Washington Alston Hayne, grandson, to Jervey, Hayne’s
biographer.
[258] Parton’s _Life of Jackson_.
[259] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_.
[260] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 414.
[261] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 415.
[262] Van Buren is authority for the statement that the President,
who had prepared the toast as given in the text, really gave it--“Our
Union--it must be preserved,” and that Hayne left his seat and hastened
to him to beg him to insert the word “Federal.” “This,” says Van
Buren, “was an ingenuous suggestion, as it seemed to make the rebuke
less pungent, although it really had no such effect. The President
cheerfully assented because, in point of fact, the addition only made
the toast what he originally designed it to be--he having rewritten it
in the bustle and excitement of the occasion, on the back of the list
of regular toasts which had been laid before him, instead of using the
copy in his pocket, and having omitted that word inadvertently.” (Van
Buren’s _Autobiography_, 415).
[263] Isaac Hill’s description.
[264] Hamilton to Forsyth, Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 369.
[265] This he afterwards amended to the extent of saying that Calhoun
had urged a reprimand of some sort.
[266] Letter to Judge Tait, Shipp’s _Life of William H. Crawford_, 152.
[267] Crawford in his letter to Calhoun quotes Senator Noble of
Indiana, who lived in the same lodging-house with Edwards, to this
effect. Shipp’s _Life of Crawford_, 247.
[268] Crawford’s Washington country home was situated near Thomas
Circle, five blocks from the Willard Hotel, and all beyond was
farmlands.
[269] The scene at the Crawford home is elaborately described by an
eye-witness in Shipp’s biography of Crawford.
[270] Van Buren, in his _Autobiography_, p. 376, convincingly
exonerates himself from all complicity.
[271] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Jan. 30, 1831.
[272] _Memoirs_, Jan. 15, 1831.
[273] _Ibid._, Jan. 26. 1831.
[274] _Ibid._, Jan. 30, 1831.
[275] Attorney-General in Monroe’s and Adams’s Cabinets.
[276] _Memoirs_, Feb. 4, 1831.
[277] _Ibid._, Feb. 4. 1831.
[278] _Ibid._, Feb. 5, 1831.
[279] _Memoirs_, Feb. 12, 1831.
[280] This letter of Crawford’s was returned to the writer, according
to Shipp’s _Life of Crawford_, p. 210, which contains the letter--a
vicious philippic--and Calhoun’s brief note on returning it.
[281] _Memoirs_, Feb. 16, 1831.
[282] _Ibid._, Feb. 17, 1831.
[283] _Memoirs_, Feb. 21, 1831.
[284] _Ibid._, Feb. 22, 1831.
[285] It was not until Jackson had asked Hamilton for Forsyth’s
letter that the latter told Van Buren of its contents. Van Buren’s
_Autobiography_, 373.
[286] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 168.
[287] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 122.
[288] _Perley’s Reminiscences._
[289] _First Forty Years_, 253.
[290] Haywood’s _Branch_.
[291] Rev. J. N. Campbell.
[292] Schouler, III, 492.
[293] _First Forty Years_, 311.
[294] Haywood’s _Branch_.
[295] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 18, 1830.
[296] Shepard.
[297] Vaughan of Great Britain and the Russian Minister.
[298] Mrs. Smith.
[299] Mary C. Crawford, _Romantic Days of the Early Republic_, 219.
[300] _Memoirs_, March 3, 1830.
[301] _Ibid._, July 8, 1829.
[302] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Feb. 6, 1830.
[303] Van Buren probably gives the true story in his _Autobiography_,
343-44.
[304] Adams’s _Memoirs_.
[305] Later Vice-President and noted as slayer of Tecumseh.
[306] Letter from Branch, in Haywood’s _Branch_.
[307] _First Forty Years_, 311.
[308] The story of the resignation is told in detail in Van Buren’s
_Autobiography_.
[309] Hamilton, in his _Reminiscences_, p. 130, tells of the ride to
Wilmington.
[310] Published in Haywood’s _Branch_.
[311] Letters published in Haywood’s _Branch_.
[312] During the Bank controversy Ingham attacked Jackson and defended
the Bank. He died in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1860, never having held
office after leaving the Jackson Cabinet.
[313] Berrien’s position is clearly disclosed in conversations with
Francis Scott Key, who wrote Roger Taney. See Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[314] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 423.
[315] At Philadelphia, where he met Dallas, an intimate, Livingston
appears to have discussed nothing more important than his rosebuds at
Montgomery Place. Hunt’s _Life of Livingston_.
[316] _First Forty Years_, 252, 319.
[317] Letter from F. W. Armstrong, quoted in Nancy Scott’s _Memoir of
Hugh Lawson White_.
[318] Nancy Scott’s _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_.
[319] Van Buren commenced the cross-examination of Cass in a flippant
manner, but was almost instantly sobered by the demeanor and dignity of
the witness. Young’s _Life of Lewis Cass_.
[320] Key’s letter to Taney, Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[321] Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[322] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 423.
[323] Miller’s _Bench and Bar of Georgia_.
[324] Letter to Taney, Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[325] _First Forty Years_, 320.
[326] MS. letter of Arthur Schaaf to Senator John Forsyth, written
from Georgetown June 25, 1831, furnished the author by Mr. Waddy Wood,
Washington, D.C.
[327] _Memoirs_, April 25, 1831.
[328] Hamilton took the stump in a vain attempt to defeat his
reëlection.
[329] Senator Beveridge, in his monumental work on John Marshall, gives
in detail the legal phases of the controversy, IV, 100-16.
[330] Hunt’s _Life of Livingston_ describes in detail Livingston’s
activities in connection with the battle of New Orleans.
[331] These came to be known as the “Coodies,” and Taney was known an
“King Coodie” to indicate his unquestioned leadership. Tyler’s _Life of
Taney_.
[332] Drayton was Congressman from Charleston during the Nullification
fight and strongly supported Jackson.
[333] Tyler relates the incident of a personal friend of Taney’s,
temporarily connected with the custom house in New York, sending him
a box of cigars without his card, while he was Attorney-General. Not
knowing who sent them, Taney put them aside. After leaving office, and
learning the donor’s identity, he wrote an appreciative note enclosing
the price of the cigars.
[334] See McLaughlin’s _Life of Cass_, 99, 100, for details of his
fight against British insults and interference.
[335] See Smith’s _Life of Cass_ for letter.
[336] “France: Its King, Court and Government”; “Three Hours at St.
Cloud’s”; and “The Modern French Judicature.” He also, on the request
of Jackson, wrote the best account of the battle of New Orleans.
[337] See McLaughlin’s _Life of Cass_; Young’s biography, written
during Cass’s lifetime, in Smith’s _Life of Cass_.
[338] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 73.
[339] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 156.
[340] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 175.
[341] Henry Watterson’s oration on Prentice, “Compromises of Life.”
[342] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 303.
[343] _Ibid._, 278.
[344] _Ibid._, 279.
[345] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 130.
[346] Rufus Rockwell Wilson, _Washington the Capital City_,
I, 263.
[347] Kendall is thus described at forty-five.
[348] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 155-57.
[349] Sumner’s _Life of Jackson_.
[350] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 325.
[351] _Ibid._, 579.
[352] In the _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_ (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1919) are numerous letters between the banker and Lewis,
indicative of a desire on the part of the latter to conciliate the
former and save his chief from the hazards of a bitter fight.
[353] Professor J. S. Bassett’s _Life of Jackson_, II,
399.
[354] Professor Frederic Austin Ogg’s _Reign of Andrew Jackson_.
[355] Bradley’s _Life of Hill_.
[356] General Leavenworth’s letter, quoted in Bradley’s _Life of Hill_.
[357] Hill took notice of this brutality: “There is an Almighty Power
Who tempers the wind to the shorn lambs, Who will preserve us from
such a calamity, and Who will not suffer our intellectual vision to be
dimmed until our work shall be accomplished.”
[358] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 541.
[359] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 109.
[360] _Ibid._, 247.
[361] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 128, gives the
version of the establishment of the _Globe_ which Van Buren in his
_Autobiography_ quotes.
[362] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 370-74.
[363] George Baber’s _Blairs of Kentucky, Register of Kentucky
Historical Society_, vol. XIV.
[364] George Baber’s _Blairs of Kentucky. Register of Kentucky
Historical Society_, vol. XIV.
[365] _Globe_, Feb. 17, 1834.
[366] This is Kendall’s story in his _Autobiography_. He gives no hint
that Jackson contributed a penny. George Henry Payne, in his _History
of Journalism in the United States_, says that the establishment of the
Globe cost Jackson $50,000 a year, but as this version is Green’s, it
is not at all convincing or probable.
[367] Baber’s _Blairs of Kentucky_.
[368] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 323.
[369] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 191.
[370] _Cong. Globe_, April 14. 1836.
[371] _Ibid._, April 20, 1836.
[372] _Ibid._, May 13, 1836.
[373] Mr. Williams of Kentucky, _ibid._, May 30. 1836.
[374] _Cong. Globe_, June 3, 1836.
[375] Buchanan to Livingston. Buchanan’s _Works_, II,
899.
[376] Buchanan’s _Works_, II, 300-01.
[377] The public improvement feature of internal improvement was of
less importance with the politician than the pork-barrel phase. See
Schouler’s _History_.
[378] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 187.
[379] _First Forty Years_, Nov. 7, 1831.
[380] Adams’s _Memoirs_.
[381] Colton’s _Life and Correspondence of Clay_.
[382] Clay to Senator Johnson, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 265.
[383] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 275.
[384] _Ibid._, IV, 321.
[385] Jackson refers to his instructions in his Message of December,
1831.
[386] Benton, by quoting the instructions and Gallatin’s report, shows
the dishonesty of the simulated indignation. (_Thirty Years’ View_,
I, 216-17.)
[387] Rufus King had furnished a precedent when he described the John
Adams Administration to the British. (King’s _Works_.)
[388] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 217.
[389] Senator Holmes of Maine.
[390] Jervey’s _Robert Y. Hayne_.
[391] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 427.
[392] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 22, 1831.
[393] Weed’s _Autobiography_, 375.
[394] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 219.
[395] Bradley’s _Life of Hill_.
[396] So described by Senator Smith of Maryland.
[397] Clay to Brooke, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 314.
[398] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 22, 1831.
[399] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 46.
[400] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 328-29.
[401] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 438.
[402] Adams in his _Memoirs_ makes numerous references to these calls.
[403] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 2, 1832.
[404] _Ibid._, March 3, 1832.
[405] March, in his _Reminiscences of Congress_, describes him as
“cold, passionless and inscrutable as the Egyptian sphinx, whose fate,
too, his own resembled.”
[406] Brother of John C.
[407] O’Neall’s _Bench and Bar of South Carolina_.
[408] _Figures of the Past._
[409] _Public Men and Events_, I, 117.
[410] O’Neall’s _Bench and Bar of South Carolina_.
[411] “I know that he had no faith in Nullification.” (O’Neall.) “It
would seem that he was willing to rest the case of the State upon the
bare right of revolution.” (David F. Houston’s _Study of Nullification
in South Carolina_.)
[412] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 81.
[413] Clay to Brooke, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 340.
[414] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 331.
[415] “He [King] has availed himself of another’s aid, and the hand of
the Senator from Missouri is as visible in the composition, as if his
name had been subscribed to the instrument.” (Clay’s speech of June 20,
1832.)
[416] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 150.
[417] Hill’s explanatory speech in the Senate, March 3, 1834, differs
radically from the generally accepted story, and has the ring of truth.
[418] Schouler, IV, 44.
[419] In Reginald C. McGrane’s _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, see
Biddle to John Harper, 67; to John Nichol, 72; to Robert Lenox, 72; to
A. Dickens, 77; to Major Lewis, 80; to Samuel Jaudon, 82.
[420] Pray, _Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett_, I, 148.
[421] _Ibid._
[422] _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 80.
[423] Parton, II, 654.
[424] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 88.
[425] _Ibid._, 91.
[426] Biddle to Samuel Smith, _ibid._, 94.
[427] _Ibid._, 97.
[428] Charles Augustus Davis, _ibid._, 101.
[429] Clay to Biddle, _ibid._, 105.
[430] Lewis to Biddle, _ibid._, 103.
[431] Roswell L. Colt, _ibid._, 104.
[432] Josiah Nichol to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 196.
[433] Biddle to Nichol, _ibid._, 107.
[434] Clay to Biddle, _ibid._, 110.
[435] Biddle to Clay, _ibid._, 115.
[436] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 124.
[437] _Ibid._, 126.
[438] See Biddle’s memorandum on conference, _ibid._, 128.
[439] Speech at Cincinnati, Clay’s _Works_, VII, 396.
[440] Commenting on it in the _Globe_, Jan. 14, 1832, Blair concludes:
“The object of the Bank and politicians who build their hopes upon its
power is at once to procure a new charter from a Congress which has not
been elected by the people to pass upon that question.”
[441] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 234.
[442] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 235-36.
[443] _Ibid._, 234-35.
[444] Edward Shippen to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_,
136.
[445] _Ibid._, 138.
[446] Robert Gibbs to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 139.
[447] C. F. Mercer to Biddle, _ibid._, 140.
[448] Clay to Biddle, _ibid._, 142.
[449] Webster to Biddle, _ibid._, 145.
[450] Site of the Willard, 14th Street and the Avenue.
[451] These ten, Dickerson of New Jersey, Dallas and Wilkins of
Pennsylvania, Smith of Maryland, Mangum of North Carolina, Forsyth of
Georgia, Poindexter of Mississippi, Kane and Robinson of Illinois, and
Hendricks of Indiana.
[452] For Cadwalader’s reports see _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_,
146-61.
[453] McLane to Biddle, _ibid._, 165.
[454] Webster to Biddle, _ibid._, 169.
[455] Weed’s _Autobiography_, I, 373.
[456] Weed’s _Autobiography_, I, 373.
[457] Ingersoll to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 187.
[458] _Ibid._, 188.
[459] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 243.
[460] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 244.
[461] Biddle to Cadwalader, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 191.
[462] _Ibid._, 192.
[463] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 192.
[464] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 340.
[465] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 243.
[466] Ingersoll to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 183.
[467] Van Buren’s _Political Parties in the United States_, 314.
[468] _Ibid._
[469] Buell.
[470] Van Buren’s _Political Parties in the United Slates_, 218.
[471] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 193.
[472] _Political Parties in the United States_, 313-14, and 317.
[473] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 196.
[474] Blair reproduced this in the _Globe_ of July 26th in the midst of
the campaign.
[475] _Washington Globe_, July 14, 1832.
[476] _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 80.
[477] _Political Parties in the United States_, 321.
[478] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_.
[479] _Globe_, Aug. 29, 1832.
[480] This document is in Amos Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 296-303.
[481] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 429.
[482] Judge Brooke.
[483] Clay to Brooke. Clay’s _Works_, IV, 332-33.
[484] _Globe_, Aug. 25, 1832.
[485] _Globe_, Aug. 29, 1832.
[486] _Ibid._, Sept. 5, 1832.
[487] _Ibid._, Sept. 7, 1832.
[488] Anti-Mason candidate for Governor.
[489] Clay to Bailbache, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 289.
[490] Richard Rush to Clay, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 299.
[491] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 304.
[492] _Ibid._, 306.
[493] _Ibid._, 307-08.
[494] See Kennedy’s _Life of Wirt_.
[495] Clay’s _Works_, IV, 316.
[496] Kennedy’s _Life of Wirt_, II, 314.
[497] _Ibid._, 318.
[498] William H. Seward’s _Autobiography_, 100.
[499] Clay to Brooke, Clay’s _Works_, IV, 339.
[500] Wirt to Carr, Kennedy’s _Life of Wirt_, II, 328-29.
[501] Kennedy’s _Life of Wirt_, II, 331.
[502] _Globe_, Oct. 8, 1832.
[503] McMaster, IV, 145.
[504] Van Buren’s _Political Parties_, 323.
[505] McMaster, IV, 146.
[506] See Biddle to James Hunter, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_,
127.
[507] John Tilford.
[508] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 197.
[509] _Globe_, Sept. 26, 1832.
[510] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 281.
[511] Van Buren’s _Political Parties_, 323.
[512] Editor of the _Intelligencer_.
[513] _Globe_, Sept. 15, 1832.
[514] _Ibid._, Feb. 1. 1832.
[515] Parton’s _Jackson_, III, 423; McMaster,
IV, 147. Some of these cartoons may be seen at the
Congressional Library.
[516] _Globe_, Sept. 26, 1832, affidavit of John C. Rives.
[517] _Globe_, July 28, 1832.
[518] Duff Green’s expression.
[519] _Globe_, Oct. 17, 1832.
[520] Clay’s home.
[521] _Globe_, Oct. 23, 1832.
[522] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 248.
[523] M. Chevalier, as quoted by Sargent, _Public Men and Events_,
I, 249.
[524] From the _Globe_.
[525] Description in the _Globe_.
[526] _Globe_, Jan. 14, 1832.
[527] _Ibid._, Jan. 18, 1832.
[528] _Ibid._, July 21, 1832.
[529] _Globe_, Aug. 22, 1832. The _Globe_ published Hill’s speech in
full, the only one thus noticed in the campaign except Forsyth’s tariff
speech attacking Clay, and C. K. Ingersoll’s tribute to Jackson at
Philadelphia.
[530] That this was done is disclosed in the _Correspondence of
Nicholas Biddle_.
[531] Clay’s _Works_, IV. 337.
[532] _Life of Wirt_, II, 378.
[533] This story was related by William Allen of Ohio to Buell, who
uses it in his _Life of Jackson_.
[534] Letters to Hamilton, _Reminiscences_, 231.
[535] Blair, as quoted by Buell.
[536] See Houston’s _Nullification in South Carolina_, 27-28.
[537] _Ibid._, 70.
[538] Stillé’s _Life and Services of Joel R. Poinsett_.
[539] For this letter in full see Calhoun’s _Works_, or Jenkins’s _Life
of Calhoun_, 195-232.
[540] Poinsett’s letter to Jackson, Oct. 23, 1830. Stillé’s _Life of
Poinsett_.
[541] Adams’s _Memoirs_, May 13, 1830.
[542] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 247.
[543] George Breathitt, brother of the Governor of Kentucky.
[544] Smith’s _Life of Cass_, 269-71.
[545] Cass to Scott, Smith’s _Life of Cass_.
[546] Jackson to Poinsett, Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[547] Letter to Poinsett, Feb. 7, 1833, _Life of Poinsett_.
[548] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 248.
[549] These letters, in possession of the Livingston family, were used
by Hunt in his _Life of Livingston_.
[550] Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[551] Lodge’s _Life of Webster_, 208.
[552] Beveridge’s _John Marshall_, IV, 570-73.
[553] Letter to Richard Peters, _Life and Letters of Story_,
II, 113.
[554] _Memoirs_, Dec. 25, 1832.
[555] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 152.
[556] _Ibid._
[557] _Ibid._, 153.
[558] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 448.
[559] _Ibid._, 451.
[560] _Richmond Enquirer_, Dec. 13, 1832.
[561] _Diary_, Dec. 12, 1832.
[562] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 250.
[563] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 545-53.
[564] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 553.
[565] For Van Buren’s report, see _Autobiography_, 550-52.
[566] Jervey’s _Robert Y. Hayne_.
[567] _Memoirs_, Dec. 26, 1832.
[568] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[569] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 14, 1832.
[570] Jenkins, 246.
[571] _First Forty Years_, Dec. 25, 1832.
[572] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[573] Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[574] Letter to Jackson, Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[575] Poinsett to Drayton, Stillés _Life of Poinsett_.
[576] Letter to Poinsett, Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[577] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 460.
[578] Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[579] Instructions in letter of Cass to Scott, Smith’s _Life of Cass_.
[580] Jackson to Poinsett, Feb. 7, 1833, Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[581] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 140.
[582] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_, and _Perley’s Reminiscences_.
[583] Story to Brazier, _Life and Letters of Story_, II,
124.
[584] March, in his _Reminiscences of Congress_, gives the best
description of the Force Bill debate.
[585] Jackson to Poinsett, Feb. 17, 1833, Stillé’s _Life of Poinsett_.
[586] _Thirty Years’ View._
[587] _Life of Webster_, 214-15.
[588] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 201.
[589] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 342.
[590] _Ibid._
[591] _Ibid._
[592] Comegys, _Memoir of Clayton_.
[593] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 467.
[594] _Thirty Years’ View._
[595] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 343.
[596] _Perley’s Reminiscences._
[597] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 138.
[598] Clayton’s speech on the compromise tariff.
[599] Van Buren thought Clay’s action patriotic and Webster’s “bloody.”
(_Autobiography_, 554-57.)
[600] _Globe_, Feb. 20, 1833.
[601] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 467.
[602] Jackson to Hamilton, Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_.
[603] Letcher’s character and status are discussed by Adams, _Memoirs_,
March 5, 1831.
[604] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 467.
[605] Benton makes the point that Clayton, and not Clay or Calhoun, was
the master of the situation. (_Thirty Years’ View_, I,
344.)
[606] _Globe_, March 2, 1833.
[607] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 345.
[608] _Mohawk Gazette._
[609] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 2, 1833.
[610] _Autobiography_, 600.
[611] Professor Bassett credits the appointment to McLane (_Life of
Jackson_), and Parton has it that it was a personal appointment of
Jackson’s (Parton’s _Life of Jackson_, II, 632).
[612] See George Henry Payne’s _History of Journalism in the United
States_, 176-89.
[613] These editorial comments were copied in the _Globe_ by Blair.
[614] Henry Lee, quoted by Bassett, _Life of Jackson_,
II, 633.
[615] Thurlow Weed’s _Autobiography_.
[616] Hone in his Diary, hostile, recorded, after witnessing the
ovation, that he was “certainly the most popular man we have ever
known.” (June 13, 1833.)
[617] Josiah Quincy’s _Figures of the Past_.
[618] _Memoirs_, June 17, June 18, June 27, July 2, 1833.
[619] See Quincy’s _Figures of the Past_ for graphic description of the
Massachusetts ovations.
[620] Hamilton had been previously warned of the plan by McLane.
(Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 253.)
[621] Van Buren gives the impression that he actually helped Jackson
work out his plans on this trip. (_Autobiography_, 602-03.)
[622] Hamilton’s story in his _Reminiscences_.
[623] _Memoirs_, July 2, 1833.
[624] Catterall’s _Second Bank of the United States_, 128.
[625] Cooper to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 208.
[626] _Globe_, March 23, 1833.
[627] Catterall, _Second Bank of the United Slates_, 290.
[628] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 251.
[629] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 374-75.
[630] See Theodore Roosevelt’s _Life of Benton_, 103 and 110, on
Biddle’s character.
[631] Kendall’s _Autobiography_.
[632] Taney’s letter to Jackson at Rip Raps in August thus referred to
this advice previously given. (Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.)
[633] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 376.
[634] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 602.
[635] During this time Jackson was deluged by propaganda letters on
behalf of the Bank from “friends.” (Blair to Van Buren, Van Buren’s
_Autobiography_, 607.)
[636] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 214.
[637] Kendall’s _Autobiography_.
[638] Bennett soon afterwards established the _New York Herald_.
[639] Significantly enough, Van Buren overlooks this incident in his
_Autobiography_.
[640] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 383.
[641] _Globe_, July 31, 1833.
[642] _Pennsylvanian._
[643] _Globe_, Sept. 7, 1833.
[644] Blair carefully collected all such threats and published them in
the _Globe_.
[645] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 391.
[646] Letter to Stevenson, in Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 160.
[647] Diddle was trying to make it appear that the real fight was
“between Chestnut Street and Wall Street--between a Faro Bank and a
National Bank,” as shown in his letter to Dr. Cooper. (_Correspondence
of Nicholas Biddle_, 209.)
[648] Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[649] Catterall, _Second Bank of the United States_, 203.
[650] Kendall, in his _Autobiography_, gives no hint of such
discouragement or advice.
[651] Letter in Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[652] The story of the added paragraph is told in Tyler’s _Life of
Taney_.
[653] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 886.
[654] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 266.
[655] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 379.
[656] These notes are incorporated in the 5th Exhibit accompanying
Duane’s _Address to the People of the United States_.
[657] Kendall charges that Duane hoped to “feather his nest.”
(_Autobiography_, 385.)
[658] He served the Bank feebly during the fight that followed.
[659] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 216.
[660] Van Buren’s first choice was John Forsyth, or some Southerner,
“if he is a speaking man.” (_Autobiography_, 606.) He tells of Daniel’s
timidity in his _Political Parties in the United States_, 322.
[661] See Van Buren’s letter to Butler, in William Allen Butler’s _A
Retrospect of Forty Years_, 39-43.
[662] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 280.
[663] Catterall, _Second Bank of the United States_, 318.
[664] _Ibid._
[665] _Diary_, Nov. 18, 1833.
[666] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 218.
[667] Hone’s _Diary_, Dec. 27, 1833.
[668] Hone’s _Diary_, Dec. 30, 1833.
[669] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 270.
[670] William Appleton.
[671] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 219.
[672] Catterall severely criticizes the banker for this attitude; for
Catterall’s righteous sentence on this state of mind, see _Second Bank
of the United States_, 229.
[673] _Second Bank of the United States_, 321.
[674] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 219.
[675] Notably James Watson Webb.
[676] Binney to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 220.
[677] _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 222.
[678] _Ibid._, 218.
[679] _Memoirs_, April 14, 1834.
[680] Hone’s _Diary_, Jan. 28, 1834.
[681] _Ibid._, Feb. 7, 1834.
[682] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 411.
[683] _History of the United States_, IV, 201.
[684] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 412.
[685] _Seven Decades of the Union_, 107.
[686] Catterall’s view, _Second Bank of the United States_, 344.
[687] Laborde.
[688] Wilson’s _Washington the Capital City_, I, 244.
[689] _Seven Decades of the Union._
[690] _Ibid._
[691] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 6, 1833.
[692] _Cong. Globe_, I, 20-21.
[693] _Cong. Globe_, 23.
[694] Written Dec. 30, 1833, and quoted by Catterall.
[695] Webster to Biddle, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 218.
[696] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 19, 1833.
[697] Story to Webster, _Life and Letters of Story_, II,
156-58.
[698] Clay’s _Works_, V, 379.
[699] Mrs. Smith, in _First Forty Years_, touches on this feature.
[700] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 424.
[701] _Cong. Globe_, I, 74 and 123.
[702] Van Buren vividly describes these scenes, in his _Autobiography_,
726-27.
[703] _Cong. Globe_, I, 101.
[704] Senator Frelinghuysen, _Cong. Globe_, I, 129.
[705] _Cong. Globe_, I, 203.
[706] _Cong. Globe_, I, 228.
[707] Clay’s _Works_, V, 377.
[708] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 484.
[709] _Cong. Globe_, I, 344.
[710] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 422.
[711] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 13, 1834.
[712] Clay’s _Works_, VII, 575-620.
[713] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Jan. 23, 1834; Mrs. Smith’s _First Forty
Years_, 353.
[714] March’s _Reminiscences of Congress_.
[715] Catterall, _Second Bank of the United States_, 333.
[716] _Ibid._
[717] Clay’s _Works_, V, 377.
[718] Such is Catterall’s view.
[719] _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 143.
[720] Catterall, _Second Bank of the United States_, 336.
[721] _Cong. Globe_, I, 264.
[722] “Our city is full of distress committees. The more the better.”
(Clay to Brooke, _Works_, V, 377.)
[723] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 420.
[724] Van Buren’s statement to Senator Foote, as given in the _Casket
of Reminiscences_.
[725] Clay’s speech, _Cong. Globe_, I, 269.
[726] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 424.
[727] See Richardson’s _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_.
[728] _Cong. Globe_, I, 317.
[729] _Ibid._, 318.
[730] _Ibid._
[731] _Ibid._, 321.
[732] _Ibid._, 323.
[733] Feb. 10, 1834.
[734] _Cong. Globe_, I, 328.
[735] _Ibid._, 368.
[736] Especially the famous passage inspired by memories of his
emotions on the ramparts of Quebec.
[737] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, II, 213.
[738] _Cong. Globe_, I, 24.
[739] _Cong. Globe_, 25.
[740] _Ibid._, 43.
[741] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 23, 1833.
[742] _Cong. Globe_, I, 68.
[743] _Ibid._, 84-94.
[744] _Washington Globe_, June 3, 1834.
[745] Adams’s _Memoirs_, March 28, 1834.
[746] Adams refers to his “cadaverous look.”
[747] _Cong. Globe_, I, 272.
[748] Jenkins, _Life of Polk_.
[749] The report very clearly explained the reasons. (_Cong. Globe_,
I, 446-48.)
[750] _Cong. Globe_, I, 409.
[751] _Cong. Globe_, I, 454.
[752] _Letters and Times of the Tylers._
[753] Hone’s _Diary_, March 4, 5, 6, 1834.
[754] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 282.
[755] Hone’s _Diary_, March 21, 1834.
[756] _Ibid._, April 15, 1834.
[757] Hone’s _Diary_, April 23, 1834.
[758] _Ibid._, May 12, 1834.
[759] Professor Tyler, in _Letters and Times of the Tylers_,
I, 478, graphically shows the hotchpotch nature of the alliance.
[760] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_.
[761] Van Buren, finding his friend treacherous, discusses
the resignation and the character of McLane at length in his
_Autobiography_, 611.
[762] Biddle to Appleton, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 240.
[763] Hamilton to Woodworth, _Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle_, 244.
[764] Hone’s _Diary_, Oct. 4, 1834.
[765] _Cong. Globe_, I, 318.
[766] _Diary_, Oct. 31, 1834.
[767] _Ibid._, Nov. 5, 1834.
[768] _Diary_, Nov. 6, 1834.
[769] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 160.
[770] _Ibid._, 166.
[771] The story of the Mississippi contest is told by Senator Foote in
_A Casket of Reminiscences_, 217-18.
[772] _Diary_, Nov. 5, 1834.
[773] Weed’s _Autobiography_, I, 372.
[774] _Albany Journal_, Nov. 15, 1834.
[775] Hone’s _Diary_, April 17, and Dec. 14, 1841.
[776] _Ibid._, Jan. 18, 1844.
[777] _Cong. Globe_, I, 176.
[778] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 550.
[779] The words of the official reporter of the _Congressional Globe_.
[780] Professor MacDonald, in _Jacksonian Democracy_, p. 246, says that
“a large part of the deficit, however, was fairly chargeable to the
cost of the large number of post-offices and post-routes established in
1832.”
[781] _Cong. Globe_, I, 206.
[782] _Cong. Globe_, I, 283, merely refers to the
excitement. Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_ gives the details.
[783] _Jacksonian Democracy_, 51.
[784] _A Casket of Reminiscences_, 65.
[785] Kendall’s _Autobiography_, 337.
[786] _Ibid._
[787] _Autobiography_, 351.
[788] Miss Martineau graphically describes the attempt in her
_Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 161.
[789] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 509.
[790] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 2, 1835.
[791] _Cong. Globe_, I, 183-84.
[792] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 7. 1835.
[793] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 23, 1835, sets forth all these facts.
[794] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, I, 163.
[795] Sparks, _Memories of Fifty Years_, 335.
[796] Sparks, _Memories of Fifty Years_.
[797] Sparks, _Memories of Fifty Years_, 336-41; also, Foote’s _Casket
of Reminiscences_, 218-20.
[798] _Washington Globe_, Feb. 28. 1835.
[799] _Forsyth of Nydie_, by Forsyth de Fronsac.
[800] J. F. H. Claiborne, in _The Cabinet: Past and Present._
[801] Knight’s _Reminiscences of Famous Georgians_.
[802] In a letter written Mrs. Forsyth on board the U.S.S. Hornet
bearing him to the Court of Spain, now in possession of Waddy Wood, a
descendant, Washington, D.C., the beautiful relations of the Forsyths
are impressively disclosed.
[803] Miller’s _Bench and Bar of Georgia_.
[804] _Ibid._
[805] Northern’s _Men of Mark in Georgia_.
[806] Knight’s _Reminiscences of Famous Georgians_.
[807] Claiborne’s _The Cabinet: Past and Present_.
[808] Sparks, _Memories of Fifty Years_.
[809] See Foote’s _Casket of Reminiscences_; Miller’s _Bench and Bar of
Georgia_; and Northern’s _Men of Mark in Georgia_.
[810] This letter from Arthur Schaaf to Forsyth, written from
Georgetown, June 25, 1831, is in possession of Waddy Wood, Washington,
D.C.
[811] Livingston to McLane, _Messages and Papers_, III,
130.
[812] Buchanan’s diary, Sept. 12, 1833, Buchanan’s _Works_,
II, 388.
[813] Buchanan’s _Works_, II, 290-91.
[814] Livingston to Forsyth, _Messages and Papers_, III,
130.
[815] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 163.
[816] Associated with Blair in the publication of the _Globe_.
[817] Wise’s _Seven Decades of the Union_, 145-46.
[818] Lewis to Hamilton, Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 283.
[819] Hone’s _Diary_, Dec. 3, 1834.
[820] _Ibid._, Jan. 1, 1835.
[821] Letter to Judge May, _Life and Letters of Story_,
II, 192.
[822] Livingston to Forsyth, _Messages and Papers_, III,
132.
[823] _Ibid._
[824] _Ibid._, 135-36.
[825] Livingston to Forsyth, _Messages and Papers_, III,
137-38.
[826] De Rigny to Livingston, _ibid._, 138-39.
[827] _Washington Globe_, Dec. 6, 1834.
[828] _Ibid._
[829] _Ibid._, Dec. 17, 1834.
[830] _Cong. Globe_, II, 95.
[831] Leigh and Preston.
[832] _Cong. Globe_, II, 125.
[833] Hunt’s _Life of Livingston; Messages and Papers_,
III, 202-08.
[834] Notes exchanged between Forsyth and Serurier, _Messages and
Papers_, III, 144-45.
[835] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 283.
[836] Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 284.
[837] _Cong. Globe_, II, 309-10.
[838] _Ibid._, 310-11.
[839] _Cong. Globe_, II, 312.
[840] _Ibid._, 312-13.
[841] _Ibid._, 313.
[842] Binney’s _Diary; Life of Binney_, 126.
[843] _Cong. Globe_, II, 320.
[844] _Cong. Globe_, II, 322.
[845] General Linder’s _Early Bench and Bar of Illinois_, 48.
[846] _Cong. Globe_, II, 322.
[847] Buchanan’s _Works_, II, 439-41.
[848] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 594.
[849] The then prevalent belief.
[850] _Cong. Globe_, II, 330.
[851] Serurier to Forsyth, _Messages and Papers_, III,
211; Forsyth to Livingston, _ibid._, 210.
[852] Hone’s _Diary_, March 14, 1835.
[853] Quoted by Benton, _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 592.
[854] _Messages and Papers_, III, 178-79.
[855] Hone’s _Diary_, June 23, 1835.
[856] Hone’s _Diary_, July 4. 1835.
[857] Hone’s _Diary_, Jan. 26, 1836.
[858] Hunt’s _Life of Livingston_.
[859] The naval activities in France are set forth by Benton, in
_Thirty Years’ View_, I, 592-93.
[860] _Cong. Globe_, II, 91-92.
[861] _Ibid._, 92.
[862] At that time it was generally believed that a Congress died at
midnight on the 3d of March rather than at noon on the 4th, as now
assumed.
[863] Webster’s _Works_, IV, 205-29.
[864] _Cong. Globe_, II. 130-32. Reference is also made
to the debate in Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I,
309.
[865] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Dec. 29, 1836.
[866] _Messages and Papers_, III, 221-22.
[867] Fiske’s _Historical Essays_, I, 308.
[868] _Ibid._, 307.
[869] Foster’s _A Century of American Diplomacy_, 273.
[870] Lewis to Hamilton, Hamilton’s _Reminiscences_, 259.
[871] Clay’s _Works_, V, 393-94.
[872] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_.
[873] This letter was published in the _Frankfort Argus_ and copied by
Blair into the _Washington Globe_, Nov. 28, 1835.
[874] _Washington Globe_, Nov. 30, 1835.
[875] Polk to White, _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 254.
[876] _Washington Globe_, April 2, 1835.
[877] May 28th, “Mr. Bell and the Speakership”; May 30th, “Mr. Bell and
Judge White”; June 1st, “The Bank President and Mr. Bell”; June 2d,
“Mr. Bell and the Bank”; June 3d, “Mr. Bell--His Banking Facilities”;
June 4th, “The Result of Mr. Bell’s Machinations”; July 3d, “Bell and
Gales”; July 10th, “John Bell and Davy Crockett”; August 21st, “Mr.
Bell’s Preparation to Bargain Off Judge White’s Party in the House of
Representatives.”
[878] _Washington Globe_, June 5, 1834.
[879] Ambler’s _Thomas Ritchie_, 170.
[880] Clay’s _Works_, V, 393-95.
[881] _Ibid._, 397-99.
[882] _Clay’s Works_, V, 399.
[883] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 519.
[884] John Quincy Adams could see no other object.
[885] Clay’s _Works_, V, 378.
[886] Forsyth to Van Buren, Butler’s _Retrospect of Forty Years_, 78,
79.
[887] See Montgomery’s _Life of Harrison_, 308-10.
[888] This is Shepard’s view in his _Life of Van Buren_, 256.
[889] Crockett’s _Life of Van Buren_, 26.
[890] _Ibid._, 58.
[891] _Ibid._, 27.
[892] Crockett’s _Life of Van Buren_, 80.
[893] Adams’s _Diary_, April 13, 1835.
[894] Hone’s _Diary_, Oct. 26, 1835.
[895] Van Buren’s _Autobiography_, 225-26, n.
[896] Tyler’s _Life of Taney_.
[897] Blair gives the details of the conversation, in which he
participated, in the _Globe_ of August 12, 1835.
[898] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 527.
[899] _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, I, 537.
[900] _Cong. Globe_, 1st Session, 24th Congress, 308.
[901] For story of the attempt see Foster’s letter to White, _Memoir of
Hugh Lawson White_, 337-38.
[902] Black of Mississippi; Leigh of Virginia; Nicholas and Porter of
Louisiana; and Preston of South Carolina.
[903] Cuthbert, Moore, and Walker.
[904] Calhoun and White.
[905] _Cong. Globe_, 1st Session, 24th Congress, Dec. 21, 1835.
[906] _Ibid._
[907] _Ibid._
[908] _Ibid._
[909] Calhoun’s speech, _Cong. Globe_, April 12, 1836.
[910] _Ibid._
[911] _Cong. Globe_, April 13, 1836.
[912] _Ibid._
[913] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 587.
[914] Charles. H. Peck in _The Jacksonian Epoch_, implies (p. 281)
that the tie vote was arranged by Van Buren’s friends, but Benton,
who was one of the most intimate, takes the opposite view. In his
_Autobiography_, Van Buren makes no reference to the incident.
[915] _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 340-42.
[916] South Carolina’s candidate for President.
[917] _Cong. Globe_, Feb. 17, 1836.
[918] _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 333-34.
[919] Adams’s _Memoirs_, Nov. 11, 1836.
[920] _Ibid._, Oct. 9, 1834. As we have noted, however, Adams in
other parts of his diary is cordial to Van Buren, and Van Buren’s
_Autobiography_ shows the latter to have admired Adams.
[921] Hone’s _Diary_, April 8, 1836.
[922] Clay to White, _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 367. Clay’s real
dislike of Webster is discussed by Van Buren in his _Autobiography_,
677-79.
[923] For Jackson’s activities in Tennessee see _Memoir of Hugh Lawson
White_, 356.
[924] White’s speech, _Memoir of Hugh Lawson White_, 346-55.
[925] _Perley’s Reminiscences_, I, 198.
[926] Appendix, _Cong. Globe_, 2d Session, 24th Congress, 274-77.
[927] Schouler, IV, 133.
[928] Afterward Senator.
[929] Fairfield’s testimony, _Cong. Globe_, 2d Session, 24th Congress.
[930] Sargent’s _Public Men and Events_, I, 334.
[931] Appendix, _Cong. Globe_, 2d Session, 24th Congress, 135.
[932] Removal of deposits.
[933] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 727.
[934] Sargent describes Clay’s manner and the effect, _Public Men and
Events_, I, 337-39.
[935] Sargent, _Public Men and Events_ I, 341.
[936] _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 730.
[937] Wise, _Seven Decades of the Union_, 143.
[938] Wise, _Seven Decades of the Union_, 144.
[939] Richardson, _Messages and Papers_.
[940] Wilson, _Washington the Capital City_, I, 328.
[941] Mrs. Wharton, _Social Life of the Republic_, 261; Wise, _Seven
Decades of the Union_, 81; Seward, _Autobiography_, I, 278; Frederick
Seward, _Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat_, 17;
Quincy, _Figures of the Past_; Powers, _Impressions of America_.
[942] Hone’s _Diary_, March 15, 1832; _Life and Letters of Story_,
II, 117.
[943] Letter of John Fairfield, quoted from manuscript by Professor
Bassett in his _Life of Jackson_.
[944] Holloway, _Ladies of the White House_.
[945] Holloway, _Ladies of the White House_, and Mary Crawford,
_Romantic Days of the Young Republic_, 22-23.
[946] Wise, _Seven Decades of the Union_.
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