The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thomas Hart Benton, by Theodore Roosevelt
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Title: Thomas Hart Benton
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: October 7, 2011 [EBook #37656]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS HART BENTON ***
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American Statesmen
EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
American Statesmen
THOMAS HART BENTON
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1890
Copyright, 1886,
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
_All rights reserved._
FIFTH EDITION.
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE YOUNG WEST 1
CHAPTER II.
BENTON'S EARLY LIFE AND ENTRY INTO THE SENATE 23
CHAPTER III.
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE 47
CHAPTER IV.
THE ELECTION OF JACKSON, AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM 69
CHAPTER V.
THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS 88
CHAPTER VI.
JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE BANK 114
CHAPTER VII.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS 143
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS 157
CHAPTER IX.
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE 184
CHAPTER X.
LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 209
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY 237
CHAPTER XII.
BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND 260
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE BARONS' PIPING 290
CHAPTER XIV.
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 317
CHAPTER XV.
THE LOSING FIGHT 341
THOMAS HART BENTON.
CHAPTER I.
THE YOUNG WEST.
Even before the end of the Revolutionary War the movement had begun
which was to change in form a straggling chain of sea-board republics
into a mighty continental nation, the great bulk of whose people would
live to the westward of the Appalachian Mountains. The hardy and
restless backwoodsmen, dwelling along the eastern slopes of the
Alleghanies, were already crossing the mountain-crests and hewing their
way into the vast, sombre forests of the Mississippi basin; and for the
first time English-speaking communities were growing up along waters
whose outlet was into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Atlantic
Ocean. Among these communities Kentucky and Tennessee were the earliest
to form themselves into states; and around them, as a nucleus, other
states of the woodland and the prairie were rapidly developed, until, by
the close of the second decade in the present century, the region
between the Great Lakes and the Gulf was almost solidly filled in, and
finally, in 1820, by the admission of Missouri, the Union held within
its borders a political body whose whole territory lay to the west of
the Mississippi.
All the men who founded these states were of much the same type; they
were rough frontiersmen, of strong will and adventurous temper,
accustomed to the hard, barren, and yet strangely fascinating life of
those who dwell as pioneers in the wilderness. Moreover, they were
nearly all of the same blood. The people of New York and New England
were as yet filling out their own territory; it was not till many years
afterwards that their stock became the predominant one in the
northwestern country. Most of the men who founded the new states north
of the Ohio came originally from the old states south of the Potomac;
Virginia and North Carolina were the first of the original thirteen to
thrust forth their children in masses, that they might shift for
themselves in the then untrodden West.
But though these early Western pioneers were for the most part of
Southern stock, they were by no means of the same stamp as the men who
then and thereafter formed the ruling caste in the old slave-holding
states. They were the mountaineers, the men of the foot-hills and
uplands, who lived in what were called the backwater counties. Many of
them were themselves of northern origin. In striking contrast to the
somewhat sluggish and peaceful elements going to make up the rest of its
heterogeneous population, Pennsylvania also originally held within its
boundaries many members of that most fiery and restless race, the
Scotch-Irish. These naturally drew towards the wilder, western parts of
the state, settling along the slopes of the numerous inland mountain
ridges running parallel to the Atlantic coast; and from thence they
drifted southward through the long valleys, until they met and mingled
with their kinsfolk of Virginia and the Carolinas, when the movement
again trended towards the West. In a generation or two, all, whether
their forefathers were English, Scotch, Irish, or, as was often the
case, German and Huguenot, were welded into one people; and in a very
short time the stern and hard surroundings of their life had hammered
this people into a peculiar and characteristically American type, which
to this day remains almost unchanged. In their old haunts we still see
the same tall, gaunt men, with strongly marked faces and saturnine,
resolute eyes; men who may pass half their days in listless idleness,
but who are also able to show on occasion the fiercest intensity of
purpose and the most sustained energy of action. We see them, moreover,
in many places, even across to the Pacific coast and down to the Rio
Grande. For after thronging through the gaps and passes of the
Appalachians, and penetrating the forest region to the outskirts of the
treeless country beyond, the whilom mountaineers and woodsmen, the
wielders of the axe and rifle, then streamed off far to the West and
South and even to the Northwest, their lumbering, white-topped wagons
being, even to the present moment, a familiar sight to those who travel
over the prairies and the great plains; while it is their descendants
who, in the saddle instead of afoot, and with rope and revolver instead
of axe and rifle, now form the bulk of the reckless horsemen who spend
their lives in guarding the wandering cattle herds that graze over the
vast, arid plains of the "Far West."
The method of settlement of these states of the Mississippi valley had
nothing whatever in common with the way in which California and the
Australian colonies were suddenly filled up by the promiscuous overflow
of a civilized population, which had practically no fear of any
resistance from the stunted and scanty native races. It was far more
closely akin to the tribe movements of the Germanic peoples in time
past; to that movement, for example, by which the Juttish and Low Dutch
sea-thieves on the coast of Britain worked their way inland at the cost
of the Cymric Celts. The early settlers of the territory lying
immediately west of the Alleghanies were all of the same kind; they were
in search of homes, not of riches, and their actions were planned
accordingly, except in so far as they were influenced by mere restless
love of adventure and excitement. Individuals and single families, of
course, often started off by themselves; but for the most part the men
moved in bands, with their wives and their children, their cattle and
their few household goods; each settler being from the necessity of the
case also a fighter, ready, and often forced, to do desperate battle in
defense of himself and his family. Where such a band or little party
settled, there would gradually grow up a village or small town; for
instance, where those renowned pioneers and heroes of the backwoods,
Boone and Harrod, first formed permanent settlements after they had
moved into Kentucky, now stand the towns of Boonsboro and Harrodsburg.
The country whither these settlers went was not one into which timid men
would willingly venture, and the founders of the West were perforce men
of stern stuff, who from the very beginning formed a most warlike race.
It is impossible to understand aright the social and political life of
the section, unless we keep prominently before our minds that it derived
its distinguishing traits largely from the extremely militant character
acquired by all the early settlers during the long drawn out warfare in
which the first two generations were engaged. The land was already held
by powerful Indian tribes and confederacies, who waged war after war, of
the most ferocious and bloody character, against the men of the border,
in the effort to avert their inevitable doom, or at least to stem for
the time being the invasion of the swelling tide of white settlement. At
the present time, when an Indian uprising is a matter chiefly of
annoyance, and dangerous only to scattered, outlying settlers, it is
difficult to realize the formidable nature of the savage Indian wars
waged at the end of the last and the beginning of the present centuries.
The red nations were then really redoubtable enemies, able to send into
the field thousands of well-armed warriors, whose ferocious bravery and
skill rendered them quite as formidable antagonists as trained European
soldiers would have been. Warfare with them did not affect merely
outlying farms or hamlets; it meant a complete stoppage of the white
movement westward, and great and imminent danger even to the large
communities already in existence; a state of things which would have to
continue until the armies raised among the pioneers were able, in fair
shock of battle, to shatter the strength of their red foes. The
victories of Wayne and Harrison were conditions precedent to the opening
of the Ohio valley; Kentucky was won by a hundred nameless and bloody
fights, whose heroes, like Shelby and Sevier, afterwards rose to
prominent rank in civil life; and it was only after a hard-fought
campaign and slaughtering victories that the Tennesseeans were able to
break the power of the great Creek confederacy, which was thrust in
between them and what were at that time the French and Spanish lands
lying to the south and southwest.
The founders of our Western States were valiant warriors as well as
hardy pioneers, and from the very first their fighting was not confined
to uncivilized foes. It was they who at King's Mountain slew gallant
Ferguson, and completely destroyed his little army; it was from their
ranks that most of Morgan's men were recruited, when that grizzled old
bush-fighter smote Tarleton so roughly at the battle of the Cowpens.
These two blows crippled Cornwallis, and were among the chief causes of
his final overthrow. At last, during the War of 1812, there was played
out the final act in the military drama of which the West had been the
stage during the lifetime of a generation. For this war had a twofold
aspect: on the sea-board it was regarded as a contest for the rights of
our sailors and as a revolt against Great Britain's domineering
insolence; west of the mountains, on the other hand, it was simply a
renewal on a large scale of the Indian struggles, all the red-skinned
peoples joining together in a great and last effort to keep the lands
which were being wrested from them; and there Great Britain's part was
chiefly that of ally to the savages, helping them with her gold and with
her well-drilled mercenary troops. The battle of the Thames is memorable
rather because of the defeat and death of Tecumseh, than because of the
flight of Proctor and the capture of his British regulars; and for the
opening of the Southwest the ferocious fight at the Horseshoe Bend was
almost as important as the far more famous conflict of New Orleans.
The War of 1812 brought out conspicuously the solidarity of interest in
the West. The people there were then all pretty much of the same blood;
and they made common cause against outsiders in the military field
exactly as afterwards they for some time acted together politically.
Further eastward, on the Niagara frontier, the fighting was done by the
troops of New York and New England, unassisted by the Southern States;
and in turn the latter had to shift for themselves when Washington was
burned and Baltimore menaced. It was far otherwise in the regions lying
beyond the Appalachians. Throughout all the fighting in the Northwest,
where Ohio was the state most menaced, the troops of Kentucky formed the
bulk of the American army, and it was the charge of their mounted
riflemen which at a blow won the battle of the Thames. Again, on that
famous January morning, when it seemed as if the fair Creole city was
already in Packenham's grasp, it was the wild soldiery of Tennessee who,
lolling behind their mud breastworks, peered out through the lifting fog
at the scarlet array of the English veterans, as the latter, fresh from
their long and unbroken series of victories over the best troops of
Europe, advanced, for the first time, to meet defeat.
This solidarity of interest and feeling on the part of the
trans-Appalachian communities is a factor often not taken into account
in relating the political history of the early part of this century;
most modern writers (who keep forgetting that the question of slavery
was then not one tenth as absorbing as it afterwards became) apparently
deeming that the line of demarkation between North and South was at
that period, as it has since in reality become, as strongly defined west
of the mountains as east of them. That such was not the case was due to
several different causes. The first comers into Tennessee and Kentucky
belonged to the class of so-called poor whites, who owned few or no
slaves, and who were far less sectionally southern in their feelings
than were the rich planters of the low, alluvial plains towards the
coast of the Atlantic; and though a slave-owning population quickly
followed the first pioneers, yet the latter had imprinted a stamp on the
character of the two states which was never wholly effaced,--as witness
the tens of thousands of soldiers which both, even the more southern of
the two, furnished to the Union army in the Civil War.
If this immigration made Kentucky and Tennessee, and afterwards
Missouri, less distinctively Southern in character than the South
Atlantic States, it at the same time, by furnishing the first and for
some time the most numerous element in the population of the states
north of the Ohio, made the latter less characteristically Northern than
was the case with those lying east of them. Up to 1810 Indiana kept
petitioning Congress to allow slavery within her borders; Illinois, in
the early days, felt as hostile towards Massachusetts as did Missouri.
Moreover, at first the Southern States west of the mountains greatly
outweighed the Northern, both in numbers and importance.
Thus several things came about. In the first place, all the communities
across the Alleghanies originally felt themselves to be closely knit
together by ties of blood, sentiment, and interest; they felt that they
were, taking them altogether, Western as opposed to Eastern. In the next
place, they were at first Southern rather than Northern in their
feeling. But, in the third place, they were by no means so extremely
Southern as were the Southern Atlantic States. This was the way in which
they looked at themselves; and this was the way in which at that time
others looked at them. In our day Kentucky is regarded politically as
being simply an integral portion of the solid South; but the greatest of
her sons, Clay, was known to his own generation, not as a Southern
statesman, but as "Harry of the West." Of the two presidents, Harrison
and Taylor, whom the Whigs elected, one lived in Ohio and one in
Louisiana; but both were chosen simply as Western men, and, as a matter
of fact, both were born in Virginia. Andrew Jackson's victory over Adams
was in some slight sense a triumph of the South over the North, but it
was far more a triumph of the West over the East. Webster's famous
sneer at old Zachary Taylor was aimed at him as a "frontier colonel;" in
other words, though Taylor had a large plantation in Louisiana, Webster,
and many others besides, looked upon him as the champion of the rough
democracy of the West rather than as the representative of the polished
slave-holders of the South.
Thus, during the first part of this century, the term "Western" was as
applicable to the states lying south of the Ohio as to those lying north
of it. Moreover, at first the Central, or, as they were more usually
termed, the Border States, were more populous and influential than were
those on either side of them, and so largely shaped the general tone of
Western feeling. While the voters in these states, whether Whigs or
Democrats, accepted as their leaders men like Clay in Kentucky, Benton
in Missouri, and Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, it could be taken for
granted that on the whole they felt for the South against the North, but
much more for the West against the East, and most strongly of all for
the Union as against any section whatsoever. Many influences came
together to start and keep alive this feeling; but one, more potent than
all the others combined, was working steadily, and with ever-increasing
power, against it; and when slavery finally brought about a break
between the Northern and Southern States of the West as complete as that
in the East, then the Democrats of the stamp of Jackson and Benton
disappeared as completely from public life as did the Whigs of the stamp
of Clay.
Benton's long political career can never be thoroughly understood unless
it is kept in mind that he was primarily a Western and not a Southern
statesman; and it owes its especial interest to the fact that during its
continuance the West first rose to power, acting as a unit, and to the
further fact that it was brought to a close by the same causes which
soon afterwards broke up the West exactly as the East was already
broken. Benton was not one of the few statesmen who have left the
indelible marks of their own individuality upon our history; but he was,
perhaps, the most typical representative of the statesmanship of the
Middle West at the time when the latter gave the tone to the political
thought of the entire Mississippi valley. The political school which he
represented came to its fullest development in the so-called Border
States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and swayed the destinies of
the West so long as the states to the north as well as the states to the
south were content to accept the leadership of those that lay between
them. It came to an end and disappeared from sight when people north of
the Ohio at last set up their own standard, and when, after some
hesitation, the Border States threw in their lot with the other side and
concluded to follow the Southern communities, which they had hitherto
led. Benton was one of those public men who formulate and express,
rather than shape, the thought of the people who stand behind them and
whom they represent. A man of strong intellect and keen energy, he was
for many years the foremost representative of at least one phase of that
thought; being, also, a man of high principle and determined courage,
when a younger generation had grown up and the bent of the thought had
changed, he declined to change with it, bravely accepting political
defeat as the alternative, and going down without flinching a hair's
breadth from the ground on which he had always stood.
To understand his public actions as well as his political ideas and
principles it is, of course, necessary to know at least a little of the
men among whom he lived and from whom he sprang: the men who were the
first of our people to press out beyond the limits of the thirteen old
states; who filled Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, and who
for so long a time were the dominant class all through the West, until,
at last, the flood of Northeastern immigration completely swamped their
influence north of the Ohio, while along the Gulf coast the political
control slipped from their hands into the grasp of the great planter
class.
The wood-choppers, game-hunters, and Indian-fighters, who first came
over the mountains, were only the forerunners of the more regular
settlers who followed them; but these last had much the same attributes
as their predecessors. For many years after the settlements were firmly
rooted, the life of the settlers was still subject to all the perils of
the wilderness. Above all, the constant warfare in which they were
engaged for nearly thirty-five years, and which culminated in the battle
of New Orleans, left a deep and lasting imprint on their character.
Their incessant wars were waged almost wholly by the settlers
themselves, with comparatively little help from the federal government,
and with hardly any regular troops as allies. A backwoods levy, whether
raised to meet an Indian inroad or to march against the disciplined
armies of the British, was merely a force of volunteers, made up from
among the full-grown male settlers, who were induced to join either from
motives of patriotism, or from love of adventure, or because they felt
that their homes and belongings were in danger from which they could
only extricate them by their own prowess. Every settler thus became more
or less of a soldier, was always expert with the rifle, and was taught
to rely upon his own skill and courage for his protection. But the
military service in which he was from time to time engaged was of such a
lawless kind, and was carried on with such utter absence of discipline,
that it did not accustom him in the least to habits of self-command, or
render him inclined to brook the exercise of authority by an outsider;
so that the Western people grew up with warlike traditions and habits of
thought, accustomed to give free rein to their passions, and to take
into their own hands the avenging of real or supposed wrongs, but
without any of the love for order and for acting in concert with their
fellows which characterize those who have seen service in regular
armies. On the contrary, the chief effect of this long-continued and
harassing Border warfare was to make more marked the sullen and almost
defiant self-reliance of the pioneer, and to develop his peculiarly
American spirit of individual self-sufficiency, his impatience of
outside interference or control, to a degree not known elsewhere, even
on this continent. It also gave a distinct military cast to his way of
looking at territory which did not belong to him. He stood where he was
because he was a conqueror; he had wrested his land by force from its
rightful Indian lords; he fully intended to repeat the same feat as soon
as he should reach the Spanish lands lying to the west and southwest; he
would have done so in the case of French Louisiana if it had not been
that the latter was purchased, and was thus saved from being taken by
force of arms. This belligerent, or, more properly speaking, piratical
way of looking at neighboring territory, was very characteristic of the
West, and was at the root of the doctrine of "manifest destiny."
All the early settlers, and most of those who came after them, were
poor, living narrow lives fraught with great hardship, and varying
between toil and half-aimless roving; even when the conditions of their
life became easier it was some time before the influence of their old
existence ceased to make itself felt in their way of looking at things.
The first pioneers were, it is true, soon followed by great
slave-owners; and by degrees there grew up a clan of large landed
proprietors and stock-raisers, akin to the planter caste which was so
all-powerful along the coast; but it was never relatively either so
large or so influential as the latter, and was not separated from the
rest of the white population by anything like so wide a gap as that
which, in the Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, marked the difference
between the rich growers of cotton, rice, and sugar, and the squalid
"poor whites" or "crackers."
The people of the Border States were thus mainly composed of small
land-owners, scattered throughout the country; they tilled their small
farms for themselves, were hewers of their own wood, and drawers of
their own water, and for generations remained accustomed to and skillful
in the use of the rifle. The pioneers of the Middle West were not
dwellers in towns; they kept to the open country, where each man could
shift for himself without help or hindrance from his neighbors, scorning
the irksome restraints and the lack of individual freedom of city life.
They built but few cities of any size; the only two really important
ones of whose inhabitants they formed any considerable part, St. Louis
and New Orleans, were both founded by the French long before our people
came across the mountains into the Mississippi valley. Their life was
essentially a country life, alike for the rich and for the bulk of the
population. The few raw frontier towns and squalid, straggling villages
were neither seats of superior culture nor yet centres for the
distribution of educated thought, as in the North. Large tracts of land
remained always populated by a class of backwoodsmen differing but
little from the first comers. Such was the district from which grand,
simple old Davy Crockett went to Washington as a Whig congressman; and
perhaps there was never a quainter figure in our national legislature
than that of the grim old rifleman, who shares with Daniel Boone the
honor of standing foremost in the list of our mighty hunters. Crockett
and his kind had little in common with the men who ruled supreme in the
politics of most of the Southern States; and even at this day many of
their descendants in the wooded mountain land are Republicans; for when
the Middle States had lost the control of the West, and when those who
had hitherto followed such leaders as Jackson, Clay, and Benton, drifted
with the tide that set so strongly to the South, it was only the men of
the type of dogged, stubborn old Crockett who dared to make head against
it. But, indeed, one of the characteristics of the people with whom we
are dealing was the slowness and suspicion with which they received a
new idea, and the tenacity with which they clung to one that they had at
last adopted.
They were above all a people of strong, virile character, certain to
make their weight felt either for good or for evil. They had many
virtues which can fairly be called great, and their faults were equally
strongly marked. They were not a thrifty people, nor one given to
long-sustained, drudging work; there were not then, nor are there now,
to be found in this land such comfortable, prosperous homes and farms as
those which dot all the country where dwell the men of Northeastern
stock. They were not, as a rule, even ordinarily well educated; the
public school formed no such important feature in their life as it did
in the life of their fellow-citizens farther north. They had narrow,
bitter prejudices and dislikes; the hard and dangerous lives they had
led had run their character into a stern and almost forbidding mould.
They valued personal prowess very highly, and respected no man who did
not possess the strongest capacity for self-help, and who could not
shift for himself in any danger. They felt an intense, although perhaps
ignorant, pride in and love for their country, and looked upon all the
lands hemming in the United States as territory which they or their
children should some day inherit; for they were a race of masterful
spirit, and accustomed to regard with easy tolerance any but the most
flagrant violations of law. They prized highly such qualities as
courage, loyalty, truth, and patriotism, but they were, as a whole,
poor, and not over-scrupulous of the rights of others, nor yet with the
nicest sense of money obligations; so that the history of their state
legislation affecting the rights of debtor and creditor, whether public
or private, in hard times, is not pleasant reading for an American who
is proud of his country. Their passions, once roused, were intense, and
if they really wished anything they worked for it with indomitable
persistency. There was little that was soft or outwardly attractive in
their character: it was stern, rude, and hard, like the lives they led;
but it was the character of those who were every inch men, and who were
Americans through to the very heart's core.
In their private lives their lawless and arrogant freedom and lack of
self-restraint produced much gross licentiousness and barbarous cruelty;
and every little frontier community could tell its story of animal
savagery as regards the home relations of certain of its members. Yet in
spite of this they, as a whole, felt the family ties strongly, and in
the main had quite a high standard of private morality. Many of them, at
any rate, were, according to their lights, deeply and sincerely
religious; though even their religion showed their strong,
coarse-fibred, narrow natures. Episcopalianism was the creed of the rich
slave-owner, who dwelt along the sea-board; but the Western settlers
belonged to some one or other of the divisions of the great Methodist
and Baptist churches. They were as savagely in earnest about this as
about everything else; meekness, mildness, broad liberality, and gentle
tolerance of difference in religious views were not virtues they
appreciated. They were always ready to do battle for their faith, and,
indeed, had to do it, as it was quite a common amusement for the wilder
and more lawless members of the community to try to break up by force
the great camp-meetings, which formed so conspicuous a feature in the
social and religious life of the country. For even irreligion took the
form of active rebellion against God, rather than disbelief in his
existence.
Physically they were, and are, especially in Kentucky, the finest
members of our race; an examination of the statistics relating to the
volunteers in the Civil War shows that the natives of no other state,
and the men from no foreign country whatsoever, came up to them in
bodily development.
Such a people, in choosing men to represent them in the national
councils, would naturally pay small heed to refined, graceful, and
cultivated statesmanship; their allegiance would be given to men of
abounding vitality, of rugged intellect, and of indomitable will. No
better or more characteristic possessor of these attributes could be
imagined than Thomas Benton.
CHAPTER II.
BENTON'S EARLY LIFE AND ENTRY INTO THE SENATE.
Thomas Hart Benton was born on March 14, 1782, near Hillsborough, in
Orange County, North Carolina,--the same state that fifteen years
before, almost to a day, had seen the birth of the great political chief
whose most prominent supporter he in after life became. Benton, however,
came of good colonial stock; and his early surroundings were not
characterized by the squalid poverty that marked Jackson's, though the
difference in the social condition of the two families was of small
consequence on the frontier, where caste was, and is, almost unknown,
and social equality is not a mere figure of speech--particularly it was
not so at that time in the Southwest, where there were no servants,
except black slaves, and where even what in the North would be called
"hired help" was almost an unknown quantity.
Benton's father, who was a lawyer in good standing at the North Carolina
bar, died when the boy was very young, leaving him to be brought up by
his Virginian mother. She was a woman of force, and, for her time, of
much education. She herself began the training of her son's mind,
studying with him history and biography, while he also, of course, had
access to his father's law library. The home in which he was brought up
was, for that time and for that part of the country, straightlaced; his
mother, though a Virginian, had many traits which belonged rather to the
descendants of the Puritans, and possessed both their strength of
character and their austerely religious spirit. Although living in a
roistering age, among a class peculiarly given to all the coarser kinds
of pleasure, and especially to drink and every form of gambling, she
nevertheless preserved the most rigid decorum and morality in her own
household, frowning especially upon all intemperance, and never
permitting a pack of cards to be found within her doors. She was greatly
beloved and respected by the son, whose mind she did so much to mould,
and she lived to see him become one of the foremost statesmen of the
country.
Young Benton was always fond of reading. He began his studies at home,
and continued them at a grammar school taught by a young New Englander
of good ability, a very large proportion of the school-teachers of the
country then coming from New England; indeed, school-teachers and
peddlers were, on the whole, the chief contributions made by the
Northeast to the _personnel_ of the new Southwest. Benton then began a
course at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, but broke off
before completing it, as his mother decided to move her family westward
to the almost unbroken wilderness near Nashville, Tennessee, where his
father had left them a large tract of land. But he was such an
insatiable student and reader that he rapidly acquired a very extensive
knowledge, not only of law, but of history and even of Latin and English
literature, and thus became a well-read and cultivated, indeed a
learned, man; though his frequent displays of learning and knowledge
were sometimes marked by a trace of that self-complacent, amusing
pedantry so apt to characterize a really well-educated man who lives in
a community in which he believes, and with which he has thoroughly
identified himself, but whose members are for the most part below the
average in mental cultivation.
The Bentons founded a little town, named after them, and in which, of
course, they took their position as leaders and rich landed proprietors.
It lay on the very outskirts of the Indian country; indeed, the great
war trail of the Southern Indians led right through the settlement, and
they at all times swarmed around it. The change from the still somewhat
rude civilization of North Carolina to the wildness on the border was
far less abrupt and startling then than would be the case under similar
circumstances now, and the Bentons soon identified themselves completely
with the life and interests of the people around them. They even
abandoned the Episcopalianism of their old home, and became Methodists,
like their neighbors. Young Benton himself had his hands full, at first,
in attending to his great backwoods farm, tilled by slaves, and in
pushing the growth of the settlement by building first a rude log
school-house (he himself taught school at one time, while studying law),
and a meeting-house of the same primitive construction, then mills,
roads, bridges, and so forth. The work hardened and developed him, and
he readily enough turned into a regular frontiersman of the better and
richer sort. The neighboring town of Nashville was a raw, pretentious
place, where horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, whiskey-drinking,
and the various coarse vices which masquerade as pleasures in frontier
towns, all throve in rank luxuriance. It was somewhat of a change from
Benton's early training, but he took to it kindly, and though never a
vicious or debauched man, he bore his full share in the savage brawls,
the shooting and stabbing affrays, which went to make up one of the
leading features in the excessively unattractive social life of the
place and epoch.
At that time dueling prevailed more or less throughout the United
States, and in the South and West to an extent never before or since
attained. On the frontier, not only did every man of spirit expect now
and then to be called on to engage in a duel, but he also had to make up
his mind to take occasional part in bloody street-fights. Tennessee, the
state where Benton then had his home, was famous for the affrays that
took place within its borders; and that they were common enough among
the people at large may be gathered from the fact that they were of
continual occurrence among judges, high state officials, and in the very
legislature itself, where senators and assemblymen were always becoming
involved in undignified rows and foolish squabbles, apparently without
fear of exciting any unfavorable comment, as witness Davy Crockett's
naive account of his early experiences as a backwoods member of the
Tennessee assembly. Like Jackson, Benton killed his man in a duel. This
was much later, in 1817, when he was a citizen of Missouri. His
opponent was a lawyer named Lucas. They fought twice, on Bloody Island,
near St. Louis. On the first occasion both were wounded; on the second
Lucas was killed. The latter came of a truculent family. A recent
biographer of his father, Judge John R. Lucas, remarks, with refreshing
unconsciousness of the grotesque humor of the chronicle: "This gentleman
was one of the most remarkable men who ever settled west of the
Mississippi River.... Towards the close of his life Judge Lucas became
melancholy and dejected--the result of domestic affliction, for six of
his sons met death by violence." One feels curious to know how the other
sons died.
But the most famous of Benton's affrays was that with Jackson himself,
in 1813. This rose out of a duel of laughable rather than serious
character, in which Benton's brother was worsted by General Carroll,
afterwards one of Jackson's lieutenants at New Orleans. The encounter
itself took place between the Benton brothers on one side, and on the
other, Jackson, General Coffee, also of New Orleans fame, and another
friend. The place was a great rambling Nashville inn, and the details
were so intricate that probably not even the participants themselves
knew exactly what had taken place, while all the witnesses impartially
contradicted each other and themselves. At any rate, Jackson was shot
and Benton was pitched headlong down-stairs, and all the other
combatants were more or less damaged; but it ended in Jackson being
carried off by his friends, leaving the Bentons masters of the field,
where they strutted up and down and indulged in a good deal of loud
bravado. Previous to this Benton and Jackson had been on the best of
terms, and although there was naturally a temporary break in their
friendship, yet it proved strong enough in the end to stand even such a
violent wrench as that given by this preposterously senseless and almost
fatal brawl. They not only became completely reconciled, but eventually
even the closest and warmest of personal and political friends; for
Benton was as generous and forgiving as he was hot-tempered, and
Jackson's ruder nature was at any rate free from any small meanness or
malice.
In spite of occasional interludes of this kind, which must have given a
rather ferocious fillip to his otherwise monotonous life, Benton
completed his legal studies, was admitted to the bar, and began to
practice as a frontier lawyer at Franklin. Very soon, however, he for
the first time entered the more congenial field of politics, and in 1811
served a single term in the lower house of the Tennessee legislature.
Even thus early he made his mark. He had a bill passed introducing the
circuit system into the state judiciary, a reform of much importance,
especially to the poorer class of litigants; and he also introduced, and
had enacted into a law, a bill providing that a slave should have the
same right to the full benefit of a jury trial as would a white man
suffering under the same accusation. This last measure is noteworthy as
foreshadowing the position which Benton afterwards took in national
politics, where he appeared as a slave-holder, it is true, but as one of
the most enlightened and least radical of his class. Its passage also
showed the tendency of Southern opinion at the time, which was
undoubtedly in the direction of bettering the condition of the blacks,
though the events of the next few years produced such a violent
revulsion of feeling concerning the negro race that this current of
public opinion was completely reversed. Benton, however, was made of
sturdy stuff, and as he grew older his views on the question did not
alter as did those of most of his colleagues.
Shortly after he left the legislature the War of 1812 broke out, and its
events impressed on Benton another of what soon became his cardinal
principles. The war was brought on by the South and West, the Democrats
all favoring it, while the Federalists, forming the then
anti-Democratic party, especially in the Northeast, opposed it; and
finally their more extreme members, at the famous Hartford Convention,
passed resolutions supposed to tend towards the dissolution of the
Union, and which brought upon the party the bitter condemnation of their
antagonists. Says Benton himself: "At the time of its first appearance
the right of secession was repulsed and repudiated by the Democracy
generally.... The leading language in respect to it south of the Potomac
was that no state had a right to withdraw from the Union, ... and that
any attempt to dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitutional
laws, was treason. If since that time political parties and sectional
localities have exchanged attitudes on this question, it cannot alter
the question of right." For, having once grasped an idea and made it his
own, Benton clung to it with unyielding tenacity, no matter whether it
was or was not abandoned by the majority of those with whom he had been
in the habit of acting.
Thus early Benton's political character became moulded into the shape
which it ever afterwards retained. He was a slave-holder, but as
advanced as a slave-holder could be; he remained to a certain extent a
Southerner, but his Southernism was of the type prevalent immediately
after the Revolution, and not of the kind that came to the fore prior to
the Rebellion. He was much more a Westerner in his feelings, and more
than all else he was emphatically a Union man.
Like every other hot spirit of the West--and the West was full of little
but hot spirits--Benton heartily favored the War of 1812. He served as a
colonel of volunteers under Jackson, but never saw actual fighting, and
his short term of soldiership was of no further account than to furnish
an excuse to Polk, thirty-five years later, for nominating him
commanding general in the time of the Mexican War,--an incident which,
as the nomination was rejected, may be regarded as merely ludicrous, the
gross impropriety of the act safely defying criticism. He was of genuine
use, however, in calling on and exciting the volunteers to come forward;
for he was a fluent speaker, of fine presence, and his pompous
self-sufficiency was rather admired than otherwise by the frontiersmen,
while his force, energy, and earnestness commanded their respect. He
also, when Jackson's reckless impetuosity got him into a snarl with the
feeble national administration, whose imbecile incapacity to carry on
the war became day by day more painfully evident, went to Washington,
and there finally extricated his chief by dint of threatening that, if
"justice" was not done him, Tennessee would, in future political
contests, be found ranged with the administration's foes. For Benton
already possessed political influence, and being, like most of his
class, anti-Federalist, or Democratic, in sentiment, was therefore of
the same party as the people at Washington, and was a man whose
representations would have some weight with them.
During his stay in Tennessee Benton's character was greatly influenced
by his being thrown into close contact with many of the extraordinary
men who then or afterwards made their mark in the strange and
picturesque annals of the Southwest. Jackson even thus early loomed up
as the greatest and arch-typical representative of his people and his
section. The religious bent of the time was shown in the life of the
grand, rugged old Methodist, Peter Cartwright, who, in the far-off
backwoods, was a preacher and practical exponent of "muscular
Christianity" half a century before the day when, under Bishop Selwyn
and Charles Kingsley, it became a cult among the most highly civilized
classes of England. There was David Crockett, rifleman and congressman,
doomed to a tragic and heroic death in that remarkable conflict of which
it was said at the time, that "Thermopylæ had its messengers of death,
but the Alamo had none;" and there was Houston, who, after a singular
and romantic career, became the greatest of the statesmen and soldiers
of Texas. It was these men, and their like, who, under the shadow of
world-old forests and in the sunlight of the great, lonely plains,
wrought out the destinies of a nation and a continent, and who, with
their rude war-craft and state-craft, solved problems that, in the
importance of their results, dwarf the issues of all European struggles
since the day of Waterloo as completely as the Punic wars in their
outcome threw into the shade the consequences of the wars waged at the
same time between the different Greek monarchies.
Benton, in his mental training, came much nearer to the statesmen of the
sea-board, and was far better bred and better educated, than the rest of
the men around him. But he was, and was felt by them to be, thoroughly
one of their number, and the most able expounder of their views; and it
is just because he is so completely the type of a great and important
class, rather than because even of his undoubted and commanding ability
as a statesman, that his life and public services will always repay
study. His vanity and boastfulness were faults which he shared with
almost all his people; and, after all, if they overrated the
consequence of their own deeds, the deeds, nevertheless, did possess
great importance, and their fault was slight compared to that committed
by some of us at the present day, who have gone to the opposite extreme
and try to belittle the actions of our fathers. Benton was deeply imbued
with the masterful, overbearing spirit of the West,--a spirit whose
manifestations are not always agreeable, but the possession of which is
certainly a most healthy sign of the virile strength of a young
community. He thoroughly appreciated that he was helping to shape the
future of a country, whose wonderful development is the most important
feature in the history of the nineteenth century; the non-appreciation
of which fact is in itself sufficient utterly to disqualify any American
statesman from rising to the first rank.
It was not in Tennessee, however, that Benton rose to political
prominence, for shortly after the close of the war he crossed the
Mississippi and made his permanent home in the territory of Missouri.
Missouri was then our extreme western outpost, and its citizens
possessed the characteristic western traits to an even exaggerated
extent. The people were pushing, restless, and hardy; they were lawless
and violent to a degree. In spite of the culture and education of some
families, society, as a whole, was marked by florid unconventionality
and rawness. The general and widespread intemperance of the judges and
high officials of state was even more marked than their proclivities for
brawling. The lawyers, as usual, furnished the bulk of the politicians;
success at the bar depended less upon learning than upon "push" and
audacity. The fatal feuds between individuals and families were as
frequent and as bloody as among Highland clans a century before. The
following quotations are taken at random from a work on the Bench and
Bar of Missouri, by an ex-judge of its supreme court: "A man by the name
of Hiram K. Turk, and four sons, settled in 1839 near Warsaw, and a
personal difficulty occurred between them and a family of the name of
Jones, resulting in the death of one or two. The people began to take
sides with one or the other, and finally a general outbreak took place,
in which many were killed, resulting in a general reign of terror and of
violence beyond the power of the law to subdue." The social annals of
this pleasant town of Warsaw could not normally have been dull; in 1844,
for instance, they were enlivened by Judge Cherry and Senator Major
fighting to the death on one of its principal streets, the latter being
slain. The judges themselves were by no means bigoted in their support
of law and order. "In those days it was common for people to settle
their quarrels during court week.... Judge Allen took great delight in
these exhibitions, and would at any time adjourn his court to witness
one.... He (Allen) always traveled with a holster of large pistols in
front of his saddle, and a knife with a blade at least a foot long."
Hannibal Chollop was no mere creature of fancy; on the contrary, his
name was legion, and he flourished rankly in every town throughout the
Mississippi valley. But, after all, this ruffianism was really not a
whit worse in its effects on the national character than was the case
with certain of the "universal peace" and "non-resistance" developments
in the Northeastern States; in fact, it was more healthy. A class of
professional non-combatants is as hurtful to the real, healthy growth of
a nation as is a class of fire-eaters; for a weakness or folly is
nationally as bad as a vice, or worse; and, in the long run, a Quaker
may be quite as undesirable a citizen as is a duelist. No man who is not
willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason
why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free
community. The decline of the militant spirit in the Northeast during
the first half of this century was much to be regretted. To it is due,
more than to any other cause, the undoubted average individual
inferiority of the Northern compared to the Southern troops; at any
rate, at the beginning of the great war of the Rebellion. The
Southerners, by their whole mode of living, their habits, and their love
of out-door sports, kept up their warlike spirit; while in the North the
so-called upper classes developed along the lines of a wealthy and timid
bourgeoisie type, measuring everything by a mercantile standard (a
peculiarly debasing one if taken purely by itself), and submitting to be
ruled in local affairs by low foreign mobs, and in national matters by
their arrogant Southern kinsmen. The militant spirit of these last
certainly stood them in good stead in the Civil War. The world has never
seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee; and their leader will
undoubtedly rank as without any exception the very greatest of all the
great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth--and
this, although the last and chief of his antagonists may himself claim
to stand as the full equal of Marlborough and Wellington.
The other Western States still kept touch on the old colonial
communities of the sea-coast, having a second or alternative outlet
through Louisiana, newly acquired by the United States, it is true, but
which was nevertheless an old settled land. Missouri, however, had lost
all connection with the sea-coast, and though, through her great river
towns, swarming with raftsmen and flat-boatmen, she drove her main and
most thriving trade with the other Mississippi cities, yet her restless
and adventure-loving citizens were already seeking other outlets for
their activity, and were establishing trade relations with the Mexicans;
being thus the earliest among our people to come into active contact
with the Hispano-Indian race from whom we afterwards wrested so large a
part of their inheritance. Missouri was thrust out beyond the
Mississippi into the vast plains-country of the Far West, and except on
the river-front was completely isolated, being flanked on every side by
great stretches of level wilderness, inhabited by roaming tribes of
warlike Indians. Thus for the first time the borderers began to number
in their ranks plainsmen as well as backwoodsmen. In such a community
there were sure to be numbers of men anxious to take part in any
enterprise that united the chance of great pecuniary gain with the
certainty of even greater personal risk, and both these conditions were
fulfilled in the trading expeditions pushed out from Missouri across the
trackless wastes lying between it and the fringe of Mexican settlements
on the Rio del Norte. The route followed by these caravans, which
brought back furs and precious metals, soon became famous under the name
of the Santa Fé trail; and the story of the perils, hardships, and gains
of the adventurous traders who followed it would make one of the most
striking chapters of American history.
Among such people Benton's views and habits of thought became more
markedly Western and ultra-American than ever, especially in regard to
our encroachments upon the territory of neighboring powers. The general
feeling in the West upon this last subject afterwards crystallized into
what became known as the "Manifest Destiny" idea, which, reduced to its
simplest terms, was: that it was our manifest destiny to swallow up the
land of all adjoining nations who were too weak to withstand us; a
theory that forthwith obtained immense popularity among all statesmen of
easy international morality. It cannot be too often repeated that no one
can understand even the domestic, and more especially the foreign,
policy of Benton and his school without first understanding the
surroundings amidst which they had been brought up and the people whose
chosen representatives they were. Recent historians, for instance,
always speak as if our grasping after territory in the Southwest was
due solely to the desire of the Southerners to acquire lands out of
which to carve new slave-holding states, and as if it was merely a move
in the interests of the slave-power. This is true enough so far as the
motives of Calhoun, Tyler, and the other public leaders of the Gulf and
southern sea-board states were concerned. But the hearty Western support
given to the movement was due to entirely different causes, the chief
among them being the fact that the Westerners honestly believed
themselves to be indeed created the heirs of the earth, or at least of
so much of it as was known by the name of North America, and were
prepared to struggle stoutly for the immediate possession of their
heritage.
One of Benton's earliest public utterances was in regard to a matter
which precisely illustrates this feeling. It was while Missouri was
still a territory, and when Benton, then a prominent member of the St.
Louis bar, had by his force, capacity, and power as a public speaker
already become well known among his future constituents. The treaty with
Spain, by which we secured Florida, was then before the Senate, which
body had to consider it several times, owing to the dull irresolution
and sloth of the Spanish government in ratifying it. The bounds it gave
us were far too narrow to suit the more fiery Western spirits, and these
cheered Benton to the echo when he attacked it in public with fierce
vehemence. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all
its fountains, springs, and floods; and woe to the statesman who shall
undertake to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of its soil to
any foreign power." So he said, his words ringing with the boastful
confidence so well liked by the masterful men of the West, strong in
their youth, and proudly conscious of their strength. The treaty was
ratified in the Senate, nevertheless, all the old Southern States
favoring it, and the only votes at any stage recorded against it being
of four Western senators, coming respectively from Ohio, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Louisiana. So that in 1818, at any rate, the desire for
territorial aggrandizement at the expense of Maine or Mexico was common
to the West as a whole, both to the free and the slave states, and was
not exclusively favored by the Southerners. The only effect of Benton's
speech was to give rise to the idea that he was hostile to the Southern
and Democratic administration at Washington, and against this feeling he
had to contend in the course of his successful candidacy for the United
States senatorship the following year, when Missouri was claiming
admittance to the Union.
It was in reference to this matter of admitting Missouri that the
slavery question for the first time made its appearance in national
politics, where it threw everything into confusion and for the moment
overshadowed all else; though it vanished almost as quickly as it had
appeared, and did not again come to the front for several years. The
Northerners, as a whole, desiring to "restrict" the growth of slavery
and the slave-power, demanded that Missouri, before being admitted as a
state, should abolish slavery within her boundaries. The South was
equally determined that she should be admitted as a slave state; and for
the first time the politicians of the country divided on geographical
rather than on party lines, though the division proved but temporary,
and was of but little interest except as foreshadowing what was to come
a score of years later. Even within the territory itself the same
contest was carried on with the violence bred by political conflicts in
frontier states, there being a very respectable "restriction" party,
which favored abolition. Benton was himself a slave-holder, and as the
question was in no way one between the East and the West, or between the
Union as a whole and any part of it, he naturally gave full swing to his
Southern feelings, and entered with tremendous vigor into the contest on
the anti-restriction side. So successful were his efforts, and so great
was the majority of the Missourians who sympathized with him, that the
restrictionists were completely routed and succeeded in electing but one
delegate to the constitutional convention. In Congress the matter was
finally settled by the passage of the famous Missouri Compromise bill, a
measure Southern in its origin, but approved at the time by many if not
most Northerners, and disapproved by not a few Southerners. Benton
heartily believed in it, announcing somewhat vaguely that he was
"equally opposed to slavery agitation and to slavery extension." By its
terms Missouri was admitted as a slave state, while slavery was
abolished in all the rest of the old province of Louisiana lying north
and west of it and north of the parallel of 36° 30'. Owing to an
objectionable clause in its Constitution, the admission was not fully
completed until 1821, and then only through the instrumentality of Henry
Clay. But Benton took his seat immediately, and entered on his thirty
years' of service in the United States Senate. His appearance in
national politics was thus coincident with the appearance of the
question which, it is true, almost immediately sank out of sight for a
period of fifteen years, but which then reappeared to stay for good and
to become of progressively absorbing importance, until, combining
itself with the still greater question of national unity, it dwarfed all
other issues, cleft the West as well as the East asunder, and, as one of
its minor results, brought about the political downfall of Benton
himself and of his whole school in what were called the Border States.
Before entering the Senate, Benton did something which well illustrates
his peculiar uprightness, and the care which he took to keep his public
acts free from the least suspicion of improper influence. When he was at
the bar in St. Louis, real estate litigation was much the most important
branch of legal business. The condition of Missouri land-titles was very
mixed, since many of them were based upon the thousands of "concessions"
of land made by the old French and Spanish governments, which had been
ratified by Congress, but subject to certain conditions which the Creole
inhabitants, being ignorant and lawless, had generally failed to
fulfill. By an act of Congress these inchoate claims were to be brought
before the United States recorder of land titles; and the Missouri bar
were divided as to what action should be taken on them, the majority
insisting that they should be held void, while Benton headed the
opposite party, which was averse to forfeiting property on technical
grounds, and advocated the confirmation of every honest claim. Further
and important legislation was needed to provide for these claims.
Benton, being much the most influential member of the bar who had
advocated the confirmation of the claims, and being so able, honest, and
energetic, was the favorite counsel of the claimants, and had hundreds
of their titles under his professional charge. Of course in such cases
the compensation of the lawyer depended solely upon his success; and
success to Benton would have meant wealth. Nevertheless, and though his
action was greatly to his own pecuniary hurt, the first thing he did
when elected senator was to convene his clients, and tell them that
henceforth he could have nothing more to do, as their attorney, with the
prosecution of their claims, giving as his reason that their success
largely depended upon the action of Congress, of which he was now
himself a member, so that he was bound to consult, not any private
interest, but the good of the community as a whole. He even refused to
designate his successor in the causes, saying that he was determined not
only to be quite unbiased in acting upon the subject of these claims as
senator, but not to have, nor to be suspected of having, any personal
interest in the fate of any of them. Many a modern statesman might most
profitably copy his sensitiveness.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE.
When Benton took his seat in the United States Senate, Monroe, the last
president of the great house of Virginia, was about beginning his second
term. He was a courteous, high-bred gentleman, of no especial ability,
but well fitted to act as presidential figure-head during the
politically quiet years of that era of good feeling which lasted from
1816 till 1824. The Federalist party, after its conduct during the war,
had vanished into well-deserved obscurity, and though influences of
various sorts were working most powerfully to split the dominant and
all-embracing Democracy into factional fragments, these movements had
not yet come to a head.
The slavery question, it cannot be too often said, was as yet of little
or no political consequence. The violent excitement over the admission
of Missouri had subsided as quickly as it had arisen; and though the
Compromise bill was of immense importance in itself, and still more as
giving a hint of what was to come, it must be remembered that its effect
upon general politics, during the years immediately succeeding its
passage, was slight. Later on, the slavery question became of such
paramount consequence, and so completely identified with the movement
for the dissolution of the Union, that it seems impossible for even the
best of recent historians of American politics to understand that such
was not the case at this time. One writer of note even goes so far as to
state that "From the night of March 2, 1820, party history is made up
without interruption or break of the development of geographical [the
context shows this to mean Northern and Southern] parties." There is
very little ground for such a sweeping assertion until a considerable
time after the date indicated; indeed, it was more than ten years later
before any symptom of the development spoken of became at all marked.
Until then, parties divided even less on geographical lines than had
been the case earlier, during the last years of the existence of the
Federalists; and what little division there was had no reference to
slavery. Nor was it till nearly a score of years after the passage of
the Missouri Compromise bill that the separatist spirit began to
identify itself for good with the idea of the maintenance of slavery.
Previously to that there had been outbursts of separatist feeling in
different states, but always due to entirely different causes. Georgia
flared up in hot defiance of the federal government, when the latter
rubbed against her on the question of removing the Cherokees from within
her borders. But her having negro slaves did not affect her feelings in
the least, and her attitude was just such as any Western state with
Indians on its frontier is now apt to assume so far as it dares,--such
an attitude as Arizona, for example, would at this moment take in
reference to the Apaches, if she were able. Slavery was doubtless
remotely one of the irritating causes that combined to work South
Carolina up to a fever heat of insanity over the nullification
excitement. But in its immediate origin nullification arose from the
outcry against the protective tariff, and it is almost as unfair to
ascribe it in any way to the influence of slavery as it would be to
assign a similar cause for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of
1798, or to say that the absence of slavery was the reason for the
abortively disloyal agitation in New England, which culminated in the
Hartford Convention. The separatist feeling is ingrained in the fibre of
our race, and though in itself a most dangerous failing and weakness, is
yet merely a perversion and distortion of the defiant and self-reliant
independence of spirit which is one of the chief of the race virtues;
and slavery was partly the cause and partly merely the occasion of the
abnormal growth of the separatist movement in the South. Nor was the
tariff question so intimately associated with that of slavery as has
been commonly asserted. This might be easily guessed from the fact that
the originator and chief advocate of a high tariff himself came from a
slave state, and drew many of his warmest supporters from among the
slave-holding sugar-planters. Except in the futile discussion over the
proposed Panama Congress it was not till Benton's third senatorial term
that slavery became of really great weight in politics.
One of the first subjects that attracted Benton's attention in the
Senate was the Oregon question, and on this he showed himself at once in
his true character as a Western man, proud alike of every part of his
country, and as desirous of seeing the West extended in a northerly as
in a southerly direction. Himself a slave-holder, from a slave state, he
was one of the earliest and most vehement advocates of the extension of
our free territory northwards along the Pacific coast. All the country
stretching north and south of the Oregon River was then held by the
United States in joint possession with Great Britain. But the whole
region was still entirely unsettled, and as a matter of fact our
British rivals were the only parties in actual occupation. The title to
the territory was doubtful, as must always be the case when it rests
upon the inaccurate maps of forgotten explorers, or upon the chance
landings of stray sailors and traders, especially if the land in dispute
is unoccupied and of vast but uncertain extent, of little present value,
and far distant from the powers claiming it. The real truth is that such
titles are of very little practical value, and are rightly enough
disregarded by any nations strong enough to do so. Benton's intense
Americanism, and his pride and confidence in his country and in her
unlimited capacity for growth of every sort, gifted him with the power
to look much farther into the future, as regarded the expansion of the
United States, than did his colleagues; and moreover caused him to
consider the question from a much more far-seeing and statesmanlike
stand-point. The land belonged to no man, and yet was sure to become
very valuable; our title to it was not very good, but was probably
better than that of any one else. Sooner or later it would be filled
with the overflow of our population, and would border on our dominion,
and on our dominion alone. It was therefore just, and moreover in the
highest degree desirable, that it should be made a part of that
dominion at the earliest possible moment. Benton introduced a bill to
enable the president to terminate the arrangement with Great Britain and
make a definite settlement in our favor; and though the Senate refused
to pass it, yet he had the satisfaction of bringing the subject
prominently before the people, and, moreover, of outlining the way in
which it would have to be and was finally settled. In one of his
speeches on the matter he said, using rather highflown language, (for he
was unfortunately deficient in sense of humor): "Upon the people of
Eastern Asia the establishment of a civilized power on the opposite
coast of America could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits.
Science, liberal principles in government, and the true religion might
cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia
might become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet to their
imprisoned and exuberant population." Could he have foreseen how, in the
future, the Americans of the valley of the Columbia would greet the
"imprisoned and exuberant population" of China, he would probably have
been more doubtful as to the willingness of the latter empire to accept
our standard of the true religion and liberal principles of government.
In the course of the same speech he for the first time, and by what was
then considered a bold flight of imagination, suggested the possibility
of sending foreign ministers to the Oriental nations, to China, Japan,
and Persia, "and even to the Grand Turk."
Better success attended a bill he introduced to establish a trading-road
from Missouri through the Indian country to New Mexico, which, after
much debate, passed both houses and was signed by President Monroe. The
road thus marked out and established became, and remained for many
years, a great thoroughfare, and among the chief of the channels through
which our foreign commerce flowed. Until Benton secured the enactment of
this law, so important to the interests and development of the West, the
overland trade with Mexico had been carried on by individual effort and
at the cost of incalculable hazard, hardship, and risk of life. Mexico,
with its gold and silver mines, its strange physical features, its
population utterly foreign to us in race, religion, speech, and ways of
life, and especially because of the glamour of mystery which surrounded
it and partly shrouded it from sight, always dazzled and strongly
attracted the minds of the Southwesterners, occupying much the same
place in their thoughts that the Spanish Main did in the imagination of
England during the reign of Elizabeth. The young men of the Mississippi
valley looked upon an expedition with one of the bands of armed traders,
who wound their way across Indian-haunted wastes, through deep canyons
and over lofty mountain passes, to Santa Fé, Chihuahua, and Sonora, with
the same feelings of eager excitement and longing that were doubtless
felt by some of their forefathers more than two centuries previously in
regard to the cruises of Drake and Hawkins. The long wagon trains or
pack trains of the traders carried with them all kinds of goods, but
especially cotton, and brought back gold and silver bullion, bales of
furs and droves of mules; and, moreover, they brought back tales of
lawless adventure, of great gains and losses, of fights against Indians
and Mexicans, and of triumphs and privations, which still further
inflamed the minds of the Western men. Where they had already gone as
traders, who could on occasion fight, they all hoped on some future day
to go as warriors, who would acquire gain by their conquests. These
hopes were openly expressed, and with very little more idea of there
being any right or wrong in the matter than so many Norse Vikings might
have felt. The Southwesterners are credited with altogether too complex
motives when it is supposed that they were actuated in regard to the
conquest of northern Mexico by a desire to provide for additional slave
states to offset the growth of the North; their emotions in regard to
their neighbor's land were in the main perfectly simple and purely
piratical. That the Northeast did not share in the greed for new
territory felt by the other sections of the country was due partly to
the decline in its militant spirit, (a decline on many accounts
sincerely to be regretted,) and partly to its geographical situation,
since it adjoined Canada, an unattractive and already well-settled
country, jealously guarded by the might of Great Britain.
Another question, on which Benton showed himself to be thoroughly a
representative of Western sentiment, was the removal of the Indian
tribes. Here he took a most active and prominent part in reporting and
favoring the bills, and in advocating the treaties, by which the Indian
tribes of the South and West were forced or induced, (for the latter
word was very frequently used as a euphemistic synonym of the former,)
to abandon great tracts of territory to the whites and to move farther
away from the boundaries of their ever-encroaching civilization. Nor was
his action wholly limited to the Senate, for it was at his instance that
General Clark, at St. Louis, concluded the treaties with the Kansas and
Osage tribes, by which the latter surrendered to the United States all
the vast territory which they nominally owned west of Missouri and
Arkansas, except small reserves for themselves. Benton, as was to be
expected, took the frontier view of the Indian question, which, by the
way, though often wrong, is much more apt to be right than is the
so-called humanitarian or Eastern view. But, so far as was compatible
with having the Indians removed, he always endeavored to have them
kindly and humanely treated. There was, of course, much injustice and
wrong inevitably attendant upon the Indian policy advocated by him, and
by the rest of the Southern and Western statesmen; but it is difficult
to see what other course could have been pursued with most of the
tribes. In the Western States there were then sixty millions of acres of
the best land, owned in great tracts by barbarous or half-barbarous
Indians, who were always troublesome and often dangerous neighbors, and
who did not come in any way under the laws of the states in which they
lived. The states thus encumbered would evidently never have been
satisfied until all their soil was under their own jurisdiction and open
to settlement. The Cherokees had advanced far on the road toward
civilization, and it was undoubtedly a cruel grief and wrong to take
them away from their homes; but the only alternative would have been to
deprive them of much of their land, and to provide for their gradually
becoming citizens of the states in which they were. For a movement of
this sort the times were not then, and, unfortunately, are not yet ripe.
Much maudlin nonsense has been written about the governmental treatment
of the Indians, especially as regards taking their land. For the simple
truth is that they had no possible title to most of the lands we took,
not even that of occupancy, and at the most were in possession merely by
virtue of having butchered the previous inhabitants. For many of its
actions towards them the government does indeed deserve the severest
criticism; but it has erred quite as often on the side of too much
leniency as on the side of too much severity. From the very nature of
things, it was wholly impossible that there should not be much mutual
wrong-doing and injury in the intercourse between the Indians and
ourselves. It was equally out of the question to let them remain as they
were, and to bring the bulk of their number up to our standard of
civilization with sufficient speed to enable them to accommodate
themselves to the changed condition of their surroundings. The policy
towards them advocated by Benton, which was much the same as, although
more humane than, that followed by most other Western men who have had
practically to face the problem, worked harshly in many instances, and
was the cause of a certain amount of temporary suffering. But it was
infinitely better for the nation, as a whole, and, in the end, was
really more just and merciful, than it would have been to attempt
following out any of the visionary schemes which the more impracticable
Indian enthusiasts are fond of recommending.
It was during Monroe's last term that Henry Clay brought in the first
protective tariff bill, as distinguished from tariff bills to raise
revenue with protection as an incident only. It was passed by a
curiously mixed vote, which hardly indicated any one's future position
on the tariff excepting that of Clay himself; Massachusetts, under the
lead of Webster, joining hands with the Southern sea-coast states to
oppose it, while Tennessee and New York split, and Missouri and
Kentucky, together with most of the North, favored it. Benton voted for
it, but on the great question of internal improvements he stood out
clearly for the views that he ever afterwards held. This was first
brought up by the veto, on constitutional grounds, of the Cumberland
Road bill, which had previously passed both houses with singular
unanimity, Benton's vote being one of the very few recorded against it.
In regard to all such matters Benton was strongly in favor of a strict
construction of the Constitution and of guarding the rights of the
states, in spite of his devoted attachment to the Union. While voting
against this bill, and denying the power or the right of the federal
government to take charge of improvements which would benefit one state
only, Benton was nevertheless careful to reserve to himself the right to
support measures for improving national rivers or harbors yielding
revenues. The trouble is, that however much the two classes of cases may
differ in point of expediency, they overlap so completely that it is
wholly impossible to draw a hard and fast line between them, and the
question of constitutionality, if waived in the one instance, can
scarcely with propriety be raised in the other.
With the close of Monroe's second term the "era of good feeling" came to
an end, and the great Democratic-Republican party split up into several
fragments, which gradually crystallized round two centres. But in 1824
this process was still incomplete, and the presidential election of that
year was a simple scramble between four different candidates,--Jackson,
Adams, Clay, and Crawford. Jackson had the greatest number of votes, but
as no one had a majority, the election was thrown into the House of
Representatives, where the Clay men, inasmuch as their candidate was out
of the race, went over to Adams and elected him. Benton at the time, and
afterwards in his "Thirty Years' View," inveighed against this choice as
being a violation of what he called the "principle demos krateo"--a
barbarous phrase for which he had a great fondness, and which he used
and misused on every possible occasion, whether in speaking or writing.
He insisted that, as Jackson had secured the majority of the electoral
vote, it was the duty of the House of Representatives to ratify promptly
this "choice of the people." The Constitution expressly provided that
this need not be done. So Benton, who on questions of state rights and
internal improvements was so pronounced a stickler for a strict
construction of the Constitution, here coolly assumed the absurd
position that the Constitution was wrong on this particular point, and
should be disregarded, on the ground that there was a struggle "between
the theory of the Constitution and the democratic principle." His
proposition was ridiculous. The "democratic principle" had nothing more
to do with the matter than had the law of gravitation. Either the
Constitution was or it was not to be accepted as a serious document,
that meant something; in the former case the election of Adams was
proper in every aspect, in the latter it was unnecessary to have held
any election at all.
At this period every one was floundering about in efforts to establish
political relations, Benton not less than others; for he had begun the
canvass as a supporter of Clay, and had then gone over to Crawford. But
at the end he had become a Jacksonian Democrat, and during the rest of
his political career he figured as the most prominent representative of
the Jacksonian Democracy in the Senate. Van Buren himself, afterwards
Jackson's prime favorite and political heir, was a Crawford man during
this campaign.
Adams, after his election, which was owing to Clay's support, gave Clay
the position of secretary of state in his cabinet. The affair
unquestionably had an unfortunate look, and the Jacksonians, especially
Jackson, at once raised a great hue and cry that there had been a
corrupt bargain. Benton, much to his credit, refused to join in the
outcry, stating that he had good and sufficient reasons--which he
gave--to be sure of its falsity; a position which brought him into
temporary disfavor with many of his party associates, and which a man
who had Benton's ambition and bitter partisanship, without having his
sturdy pluck, would have hesitated to take. The assault was directed
with especial bitterness against Clay, whom Jackson ever afterwards
included in the very large list of individuals whom he hated with the
most rancorous and unreasoning virulence. Randolph of Roanoke, the
privileged eccentric of the Senate, in one of those long harangues in
which he touched upon everybody and everything, except possibly the
point at issue, made a rabid onslaught upon the Clay-Adams coalition as
an alliance of "the blackleg and the Puritan." Clay, who was susceptible
enough to the charge of loose living, but who was a man of rigid honor
and rather fond than otherwise of fighting, promptly challenged him, and
a harmless interchange of shots took place. Benton was on the field as
the friend of both parties, and his account of the affair is very
amusing in its description of the solemn, hair-splitting punctilio with
which it is evident that both Randolph and many of his contemporaries
regarded points of dueling honor, which to us seem either absurd,
trivial, or wholly incomprehensible.
Two tolerably well-defined parties now emerged from the chaos of
contending politicians; one was the party of the administration, whose
members called themselves National Republicans, and later on Whigs; the
other was the Jacksonian Democracy. Adams's inaugural address and first
message outlined the Whig policy as favoring a protective tariff,
internal improvements, and a free construction of the Constitution
generally. The Jacksonians accordingly took the opposite side on all
these points, partly from principle and partly from perversity. In the
Senate they assailed with turgid eloquence every administration measure,
whether it was good or bad, very much of their opposition being purely
factious in character. There has never been a time when there was more
rabid, objectless, and unscrupulous display of partisanship. Benton,
little to his credit, was a leader in these purposeless conflicts. The
most furious of them took place over the proposed Panama mission. This
was a scheme that originated in the fertile brain of Henry Clay, whose
Americanism was of a type quite as pronounced as Benton's, and who was
always inclined to drag us into a position of hostility to European
powers. The Spanish-American States, having succeeded in winning their
independence from Spain, were desirous of establishing some principle of
concert in action among the American republics as a whole, and for this
purpose proposed to hold an international congress at Panama. Clay's
fondness for a spirited and spectacular foreign policy made him grasp
eagerly at the chance of transforming the United States into the head of
an American league of free republics, which would be a kind of
cis-Atlantic offset to the Holy Alliance of European despotisms. Adams
took up the idea, nominated ministers to the Panama Congress, and gave
his reasons for his course in a special message to the Senate. The
administration men drew the most rosy and impossible pictures of the
incalculable benefits which would be derived from the proposed congress;
and the Jacksonians attacked it with an exaggerated denunciation that
was even less justified by the facts.
Adams's message was properly open to attack on one or two points;
notably in reference to its proposals that we should endeavor to get the
Spanish-American States to introduce religious tolerance within their
borders. It was certainly an unhappy suggestion that we should endeavor
to remove the mote of religious intolerance from our brother's eye while
indignantly resenting the least allusion to the beam of slavery in our
own. It was on this very point of slavery that the real opposition
hinged. The Spanish States had emancipated their comparatively small
negro populations, and, as is usually the case with Latin nations, did
not have a very strong caste feeling against the blacks, some of whom
accordingly had risen to high civic and military rank; and they also
proposed to admit to their congress the negro republic of Hayti. Certain
of the slave-holders of the South fiercely objected to any such
association; and on this occasion Benton for once led and voiced the
ultra-Southern feeling on the subject, announcing in his speech that
diplomatic intercourse with Hayti should not even be discussed in the
senate chamber, and that we could have no association with republics who
had "black generals in their armies and mulatto senators in their
congresses." But this feeling on the part of the slave-holders against
the measure was largely, although not wholly, spurious; and really had
less to do with the attitude of the Jacksonian Democrats than had a mere
factious opposition to Adams and Clay. This was shown by the vote on the
confirmation of the ministers, when the senators divided on party and
not on sectional lines. The nominations were confirmed, but not till
after such a length of time that the ministers were unable to reach
Panama until after the congress had adjourned.
The Oregon question again came up during Adams's term, the
administration favoring the renewal of the joint occupation convention,
by which we held the country in common with Great Britain. There was
not much public feeling in the matter; in the East there was none
whatever. But Benton, when he opposed the renewal, and claimed the whole
territory as ours, gave expression to the desires of all the Westerners
who thought over the subject at all. He was followed by only half a
dozen senators, all but one from the West, and from both sides of the
Ohio--Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi; the Northwest and
Southwest as usual acting together.
The vote on the protective tariff law of 1828 furnished another
illustration of the solidarity of the West. New England had abandoned
her free trade position since 1824, and the North went strongly for the
new tariff; the Southern sea-coast states, except Louisiana, opposed it
bitterly; and the bill was carried by the support of the Western States,
both the free and the slave. This tariff bill was the first of the
immediate irritating causes which induced South Carolina to go into the
nullification movement. Benton's attitude on the measure was that of a
good many other men who, in their public capacities, are obliged to
appear as protectionists, but who lack his frankness in stating their
reasons. He utterly disbelieved in and was opposed to the principle of
the bill, but as it had bid for and secured the interest of Missouri by
a heavy duty on lead, he felt himself forced to support it; and so he
announced his position. He simply went with his state, precisely as did
Webster, the latter, in following Massachusetts' change of front and
supporting the tariff of 1828, turning a full and complete somersault.
Neither the one nor the other was to blame. Free traders are apt to look
at the tariff from a sentimental stand-point; but it is in reality
purely a business matter, and should be decided solely on grounds of
expediency. Political economists have pretty generally agreed that
protection is vicious in theory and harmful in practice; but if the
majority of the people in interest wish it, and it affects only
themselves, there is no earthly reason why they should not be allowed to
try the experiment to their hearts' content. The trouble is that it
rarely does affect only themselves; and in 1828 the evil was peculiarly
aggravated on account of the unequal way in which the proposed law would
affect different sections. It purported to benefit the rest of the
country, but it undoubtedly worked real injury to the planter states,
and there is small ground for wonder that the irritation over it in the
region so affected should have been intense.
During Adams's term Benton began his fight for disposing of the public
lands to actual settlers at a small cost. It was a move of enormous
importance to the whole West; and Benton's long and sturdy contest for
it, and for the right of preëmption, entitle him to the greatest credit.
He never gave up the struggle, although repulsed again and again, and at
the best only partially successful; for he had to encounter much
opposition, especially from the short-sighted selfishness of many of the
Northeasterners, who wished to consider the public lands purely as
sources of revenue. He utterly opposed the then existing system of
selling land to the highest bidder--a most hurtful practice; and
objected to the establishment of an arbitrary minimum price, which
practically kept all land below a certain value out of the market
altogether. He succeeded in establishing the preëmption system, and had
the system of renting public mines, etc., abolished; and he struggled
for the principle of giving land outright to settlers in certain cases.
As a whole, his theory of a liberal system of land distribution was
undoubtedly the correct one, and he deserves the greatest credit for
having pushed it as he did.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ELECTION OF JACKSON, AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM.
In the presidential election of 1828 Jackson and Adams were pitted
against each other as the only candidates before the people, and Jackson
won an overwhelming victory. The followers of the two were fast
developing respectively into Democrats and Whigs, and the parties were
hardening and taking shape, while the dividing lines were being drawn
more clearly and distinctly. But the contest was largely a personal one,
and Jackson's success was due to his own immense popularity more than to
any party principles which he was supposed to represent. Almost the
entire strength of Adams was in the Northeast; but it is absolutely
wrong to assume, because of this fact, that the election even remotely
foreshadowed the way in which party lines would be drawn in the coming
sectional antagonism over slavery. Adams led Jackson in the two slave
states of Maryland and Delaware; and in the free states outside of New
England Jackson had an even greater lead over Adams. East of the
Alleghanies it may here and there have been taken as in some sort a
triumph of the South over the North; but its sectional significance, as
far as it had any, really came from its being a victory of the West over
the East. Infinitely more important than this was the fact that it
represented the overwhelmingly successful upheaval of the most extreme
democratic elements in the community.
Until 1828 all the presidents, and indeed almost all the men who took
the lead in public life, alike in national and in state affairs, had
been drawn from what in Europe would have been called the "upper
classes." They were mainly college-bred men of high social standing, as
well educated as any in the community, usually rich or at least
well-to-do. Their subordinates in office were of much the same material.
It was believed, and the belief was acted upon, that public life needed
an apprenticeship of training and experience. Many of our public men had
been able; almost all had been honorable and upright. The change of
parties in 1800, when the Jeffersonian Democracy came in, altered the
policy of the government, but not the character of the officials. In
that movement, though Jefferson had behind him the mass of the people as
the rank and file of his party, yet all his captains were still drawn
from among the men in the same social position as himself. The
Revolutionary War had been fought under the leadership of the colonial
gentry; and for years after it was over the people, as a whole, felt
that their interests could be safely intrusted to and were identical
with those of the descendants of their revolutionary leaders. The
classes in which were to be found almost all the learning, the talent,
the business activity, and the inherited wealth and refinement of the
country, had also hitherto contributed much to the body of its rulers.
The Jacksonian Democracy stood for the revolt against these rulers; its
leaders, as well as their followers, all came from the mass of the
people. The majority of the voters supported Jackson because they felt
he was one of themselves, and because they understood that his election
would mean the complete overthrow of the classes in power and their
retirement from the control of the government. There was nothing to be
said against the rulers of the day; they had served the country and all
its citizens well, and they were dismissed, not because the voters could
truthfully allege any wrong-doing whatsoever against them, but solely
because, in their purely private and personal feelings and habits of
life, they were supposed to differ from the mass of the people. This
was such an outrageously absurd feeling that the very men who were
actuated by it, or who, like Benton, shaped and guided it, were ashamed
to confess the true reason of their actions, and tried to cloak it
behind an outcry, as vague and senseless as it was clamorous, against
"aristocratic corruption" and other shadowy and spectral evils. Benton
even talked loosely of "retrieving the country from the deplorable
condition in which the enlightened classes had sunk it," although the
country was perfectly prosperous and in its usual state of quiet,
healthy growth. On the other hand, the opponents of Jackson indulged in
talk almost as wild, and fears even more extravagant than his
supporters' hopes; and the root of much of their opposition lay in a
concealed but still existent caste antagonism to a man of Jackson's
birth and bringing up. In fact, neither side, in spite of all their loud
talk of American Republicanism, had yet mastered enough of its true
spirit to be able to see that so long as public officers did their whole
duty to all classes alike, it was not in the least the affair of their
constituents whether they chose to spend their hours of social
relaxation in their shirt-sleeves or in dress coats.
The change was a great one; it was not a change of the policy under
which the government was managed, as in Jefferson's triumph, but of the
men who controlled it. The two great democratic victories had little in
common; almost as little as had the two great leaders under whose
auspices they were respectively won,--and few men were ever more unlike
than the scholarly, timid, and shifty doctrinaire, who supplanted the
elder Adams, and the ignorant, headstrong, and straightforward soldier,
who was victor over the younger. That the change was the deliberate
choice of the great mass of the people, and that it was one for the
worse, was then, and has been ever since, the opinion of most thinking
men; certainly the public service then took its first and greatest step
in that downward career of progressive debasement and deterioration
which has only been checked in our own days. But those who would,
off-hand, decry the democratic principle on this account would do well
to look at the nearly contemporaneous career of the pet heroes of a
trans-Atlantic aristocracy before passing judgment. A very charming
English historian of our day[1] has compared Wellington with Washington;
it would have been far juster to have compared him with Andrew Jackson.
Both were men of strong, narrow minds and bitter prejudices, with few
statesmanlike qualities, who, for brilliant military services, were
raised to the highest civil positions in the gift of the state. The
feeling among the aristocratic classes of Great Britain in favor of the
Iron Duke was nearly as strong and quite as unreasonable as was the
homage paid by their homelier kinsfolk across the Atlantic to Old
Hickory. Wellington's military successes were far greater, for he had
more chances; but no single feat of his surpassed the remarkable victory
won against his ablest lieutenant and choicest troops by a much smaller
number of backwoods riflemen under Andrew Jackson. As a statesman
Wellington may have done less harm than Jackson, for he had less
influence; but he has no such great mark to his credit as the old
Tennessean's attitude toward the Nullifiers. If Jackson's election is a
proof that the majority is not always right, Wellington's elevation may
be taken as showing that the minority, or a fraction thereof, is in its
turn quite as likely to be wrong.
[1: Justin McCarthy.]
This caste antagonism was the distinguishing feature in the election of
1828, and the partially sectional character of the contest was due to
the different degree of development the caste spirit had reached in
different portions of the Union. In New England wealth was quite evenly
distributed, and education and intelligence were nearly universal; so
there the antagonism was slight, the bulk of the New England vote being
given, as usually before and since, in favor of the right candidate. In
the Middle States, on the contrary, the antagonism was very strong. In
the South it was of but little political account as between the whites
themselves, they all being knit together by the barbarous bond of a
common lordship of race; and here the feeling for Jackson was largely
derived from the close kinship still felt for the West. In the West
itself, where Jackson's great strength lay, the people were still too
much on the same plane of thought as well as of material prosperity, and
the wealthy and cultivated classes were of too limited extent to admit
of much caste feeling against the latter; and, accordingly, instead of
hostility to them, the Western caste spirit took the form of hostility
to their far more numerous representatives who had hitherto formed the
bulk of the political rulers of the East.
New England was not only the most advanced portion of the Union, as
regards intelligence, culture, and general prosperity, but was also most
disagreeably aware of the fact, and was possessed with a self-conscious
virtue that was peculiarly irritating to the Westerners, who knew that
they were looked down upon, and savagely resented it on every occasion;
and, besides, New England was apt to meddle in affairs that more nearly
concerned other localities. Several of Benton's speeches, at this time,
show this irritation against the Northeast, and also incidentally bring
out the solidarity of interest felt throughout the West. In a long and
able speech, favoring the repeal of the iniquitous "salt tax," or high
duty on imported salt (a great hobby of his, in which, after many
efforts, he was finally successful), he brought out the latter point
very strongly, besides complaining of the disproportionate lightness of
the burden imposed upon the Northeast by the high tariff, of which he
announced himself to be but a moderate adherent. In common with all
other Western statesmen, he resented keenly the suspicion with which the
Northeast was then only too apt to regard the West, quoting in one of
his speeches with angry resentment a prevalent New England sneer at "the
savages beyond the Alleghanies." At the time we are speaking of it must
be remembered that many even of the most advanced Easterners were
utterly incapable of appreciating the almost limitless capacity of their
country for growth and expansion, being in this respect far behind their
Western brethren; indeed, many regarded the acquisition of any new
territory in the West with alarm and regret, as tending to make the
Union of such unwieldy size that it would break of its own weight.
Benton was the leading opponent of a proposal, introduced by Senator
Foot of Connecticut, to inquire into the expediency of limiting the
sales of public lands to such lands as were then in the market. The
limitation would have been most injurious to the entire West, which was
thus menaced by the action of a New Englander, while Benton appeared as
the champion of the whole section, North and South alike, in the speech
wherein he strenuously and successfully opposed the adoption of the
resolution, and at the same time bitterly attacked the quarter of the
country from which it came, as having from the earliest years opposed
everything that might advance the interests of the people beyond the
Alleghanies. Webster came to the assistance of the mover of the measure
in a speech wherein, among other things, he claimed for the North the
merit of the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, in relation to the
Northwest Territory, and especially of the anti-slavery clause therein
contained. But Benton here caught him tripping, and in a very good
speech showed that he was completely mistaken in his facts. The debate
now, however, completely left the point at issue, taking a bitterly
sectional turn, and giving rise to the famous controversy between
Hayne, of South Carolina, who for the first time on the floor of the
Senate announced the doctrine of nullification, and Webster, who, in
response to his antagonist, voiced the feeling of the Union men of the
North in that wonderful and magnificent speech known ever since under
the name of the "Reply to Hayne," and the calling forth of which will
henceforward be Hayne's sole title to fame. Benton, though himself a
strong Union and anti-nullification man, was still too excited over the
subject-matter of the bill and the original discussion over it to
understand that the debate had ranged off upon matters of infinitely
greater importance, and entirely failed to realize that he had listened
to the greatest piece of oratory of the century. On the contrary,
encouraged by his success earlier in the debate, he actually attempted a
kind of reply to Webster, attacking him with invective and sarcasm as an
alarmist, and taunting him with the memory of the Hartford Convention,
which had been held by members of the Federalist party, to which Webster
himself had once belonged. Benton afterwards became convinced that
Webster's views were by no means those of a mere alarmist, and frankly
stated that he had been wrong in his position; but at the time, heated
by his original grievance, as a Western man, against New England, he
failed entirely to understand the true drift of Hayne's speech. Much of
New England's policy to the West was certainly excessively
narrow-minded.
Jackson's administration derives a most unenviable notoriety as being
the one under which the "spoils system" became, for the first time,
grafted on the civil service of the nation; appointments and removals in
the public service being made dependent upon political qualifications,
and not, as hitherto, upon merit or capacity. Benton, to his honor,
always stoutly opposed this system. It is unfair to assert that Jackson
was the originator of this method of appointment; but he was certainly
its foster-father, and more than any one else is responsible for its
introduction into the affairs of the national government. Despite all
the Eastern sneers at the "savages" of the West, it was from Eastern men
that this most effective method of debauching political life came. The
Jacksonian Democrats of the West, when they introduced it into the
working of the federal government, simply copied the system which they
found already firmly established by their Eastern allies in New York and
Pennsylvania. For many years the course of politics throughout the
country had been preparing and foreshadowing the advent of the "spoils
system." The greatest single stroke in its favor had been done at the
instigation of Crawford, when that scheming politician was seeking the
presidency, and, to further his ends, he procured the passage by
Congress of a law limiting the term of service of all public officials
to four years, thus turning out of office all the fifty thousand public
servants during each presidential term. This law has never been
repealed, every low politician being vitally interested in keeping it as
it is, and accordingly it is to be found on the statute-books at the
present day; and though it has the company of some other very bad
measures, it still remains very much the worst of all, as regards both
the evil it has done and that which it is still doing. This four years'
limitation law was passed without comment or protest, every one voting
in its favor, its probable working not being comprehended in the least.
Says Benton, who, with all his colleagues, voted for it: "The object of
the law was to pass the disbursing officers every four years under the
supervision of the appointing power, for the inspection of their
accounts, in order that defaulters might be detected and dropped, while
the faithful should be ascertained and continued.... It was found to
operate contrary to its intent, and to have become the facile means of
getting rid of faithful disbursing officers, instead of retaining
them." New York has always had a low political standard, one or the
other of its great party and factional organizations, and often both or
all of them, being at all times most unlovely bodies of excessively
unwholesome moral tone. Aaron Burr introduced the "spoils system" into
her state affairs, and his methods were followed and improved upon by
Marcy, Wright, Van Buren, and all the "Albany Regency." In 1829 these
men found themselves an important constituent portion of the winning
party, and immediately, by the help of the only too willing Jackson,
proceeded to apply their system to affairs at Washington. It was about
this time that, in the course of a debate in the Senate, Marcy gave
utterance to the now notorious maxim, "To the victors belong the
spoils."
Under Adams the non-partisan character of the public service had been
guarded with a scrupulous care that could almost be called exaggerated.
Indeed, Adams certainly went altogether too far in his non-partisanship
when it came to appointing cabinet and other high officers, his views on
such points being not only fantastic, but absolutely wrong. The
colorless character of his administration was largely due to his having,
in his anxiety to avoid blind and unreasoning adherence to party,
committed the only less serious fault of paying too little heed to
party; for a healthy party spirit is prerequisite to the performance of
effective work in American political life. Adams was not elected purely
for himself, but also on account of the men and the principles that he
was supposed to represent; and when he partly surrounded himself with
men of opposite principles, he just so far, though from the best of
motives, betrayed his supporters, and rightly forfeited much of their
confidence. But, under him, every public servant felt that, so long as
he faithfully served the state, his position was secure, no matter what
his political opinions might be.
With the incoming of the Jacksonians all this changed, and terribly for
the worse. A perfect reign of terror ensued among the office-holders. In
the first month of the new administration more removals took place than
during all the previous administrations put together. Appointments were
made with little or no attention to fitness, or even honesty, but solely
because of personal or political services. Removals were not made in
accordance with any known rule at all; the most frivolous pretexts were
sufficient, if advanced by useful politicians who needed places already
held by capable incumbents. Spying and tale-bearing became prominent
features of official life, the meaner office-holders trying to save
their own heads by denouncing others. The very best men were
unceremoniously and causelessly dismissed; gray-headed clerks, who had
been appointed by the earlier presidents,--by Washington, the elder
Adams, and Jefferson,--being turned off at an hour's notice, although a
quarter of a century's faithful work in the public service had unfitted
them to earn their living elsewhere. Indeed, it was upon the best and
most efficient men that the blow fell heaviest; the spies, tale-bearers,
and tricksters often retained their positions. In 1829 the public
service was, as it always had been, administered purely in the interest
of the people; and the man who was styled the especial champion of the
people dealt that service the heaviest blow it has ever received.
Benton himself always took a sound stand on the civil service question,
although his partisanship led him at times to defend Jackson's course
when he must have known well that it was indefensible. He viewed with
the greatest alarm and hostility the growth of the "spoils system," and
early introduced, as chairman of a special committee, a bill to repeal
the harmful four years' limitation act. In discussing this proposed bill
afterwards, he wrote, in words that apply as much at this time as they
did then: "The expiration of the four years' term came to be considered
as the termination and vacation of all the offices on which it fell,
and the creation of vacancies to be filled at the option of the
president. The bill to remedy this defect gave legal effect to the
original intention of the law by confining the vacation of office to
actual defaulters. The power of the president to dismiss civil officers
was not attempted to be curtailed, but the restraints of responsibility
were placed upon its exercise by requiring the cause of dismission to be
communicated to Congress in each case. The section of the bill to that
effect was in these words: _That in all nominations made by the
president to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by an exercise of
the president's power to remove from office, the fact of the removal
shall be stated to the Senate at the same time that the nomination is
made, with a statement of the reasons for which such officer may have
been removed._ This was intended to operate as a restraint upon removals
without cause."
In the "Thirty Years' View" he again writes, in language which would be
appropriate from every advanced civil service reformer of the present
day, that is, from every disinterested man who has studied the workings
of the "spoils system" with any intelligence:--
I consider "sweeping" removals, as now practiced by both parties, a
great political evil in our country, injurious to individuals, to
the public service, to the purity of elections, and to the harmony
and union of the people. Certainly no individual has a right to an
office; no one has an estate or property in a public employment; but
when a mere ministerial worker in a subordinate station has learned
its duties by experience and approved his fidelity by his conduct,
it is an injury to the public service to exchange him for a novice
whose only title to the place may be a political badge or partisan
service. It is exchanging experience for inexperience, tried ability
for untried, and destroying the incentive to good conduct by
destroying its reward. To the party displaced it is an injury, he
having become a proficient in that business, expecting to remain in
it during good behavior, and finding it difficult, at an advanced
age, and with fixed habits, to begin a new career in some new walk
of life. It converts elections into scrambles for office, and
degrades the government into an office for rewards and punishments;
and divides the people of the Union into two adverse parties, each
in its turn, and as it becomes dominant, to strip and proscribe the
other.
Benton had now taken the position which he was for many years to hold,
as the recognized senatorial leader of a great and well-defined party.
Until 1828 the prominent political chiefs of the nation had either been
its presidents, or had been in the cabinets of these presidents. But
after Jackson's time they were in the Senate, and it was on this body
that public attention was concentrated. Jackson's cabinet itself showed
such a falling off, when compared with the cabinets of any of his
predecessors, as to justify the caustic criticism that, when he took
office, there came in "the millennium of the minnows." In the Senate, on
the contrary, there were never before or since so many men of commanding
intellect and powers. Calhoun had been elected as vice-president on the
Jacksonian ticket, and was thus, in 1829, presiding over the body of
which he soon became an active member; Webster and Clay were already
taking their positions as the leaders of the great National Republican,
or, as it was afterwards called, Whig party.
When the rupture between Calhoun and the Jacksonian Democrats, and the
resignation of the former from the vice-presidency took place, three
parties developed in the United States Senate. One was composed of the
Jacksonian Democrats, with Benton at their head; one was made up of the
little band of Nullifiers, led by Calhoun; and the third included the
rather loose array of the Whigs, under Clay and Webster. The feeling of
the Jacksonians towards Calhoun and the Nullifiers and towards Clay and
the Clay Whigs were largely those of personal animosity; but they had
very little of this sentiment towards Webster and his associates, their
differences with them being on questions of party principle, or else
proceeding from merely sectional causes.
CHAPTER V.
THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS.
During both Jackson's presidential terms he and his adherents were
engaged in two great struggles; that with the Nullifiers, and that with
the Bank. Although these struggles were in part synchronous, it will be
easier to discuss each by itself.
The nullification movement in South Carolina, during the latter part of
the third and early part of the fourth decades in the present century,
had nothing to do, except in the most distant way, with slavery. Its
immediate cause was the high tariff; remotely it sprang from the same
feelings which produced the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798.
Certain of the Slave States, including those which raised hemp, indigo,
and sugar, were high-tariff states; indeed, it was not till towards the
close of the presidency of Monroe that there had been much sectional
feeling over the policy of protection. Originally, while we were a
purely agricultural and mercantile people, free trade was the only
economic policy which occurred to us as possible to be followed, the
first tariff bill being passed in 1816. South Carolina then was inclined
to favor the system, Calhoun himself supporting the bill, and, his
subsequent denials to the contrary notwithstanding, distinctly
advocating the policy of protection to native industries; while
Massachusetts then and afterwards stoutly opposed its introduction, as
hostile to her interests. However, the bill was passed, and
Massachusetts had to submit to its operation. After 1816 new tariff laws
were enacted about every four years, and soon the coast Slave States,
except Louisiana, realized that their working was hurtful to the
interests of the planters. New England also changed her attitude; and
when the protective tariff bill of 1828 came up, its opponents and
supporters were sharply divided by sectional lines. But these lines were
not such as would have divided the states on the question of slavery.
The Northeast and Northwest alike favored the measure, as also did all
the Southern States west of the Alleghanies, and Louisiana. It was
therefore passed by an overwhelming vote, against the solid opposition
of the belt of Southern coast states stretching from Virginia to
Mississippi, and including these two.
The states that felt themselves harmed by the tariff did something more
than record their disapproval by the votes of their representatives in
Congress. They nearly all, through their legislatures, entered emphatic
protests against its adoption, as being most harmful to them and
dangerous to the Union; and some accompanied their protests with threats
as to what would be done if the obnoxious laws should be enforced. They
certainly had grounds for discontent. In 1828 the tariff, whether it
benefited the country as a whole or not, unquestionably harmed the
South; and in a federal Union it is most unwise to pass laws which shall
benefit one part of the community to the hurt of another part, when the
latter receives no compensation. The truculent and unyielding attitude
of the extreme protectionists was irritating in the extreme; for cooler
men than the South Carolinians might well have been exasperated at such
an utterance as that of Henry Clay, when he stated that for the sake of
the "American system"--by which title he was fond of styling a doctrine
already ancient in mediæval times--he would "defy the South, the
president and the devil."
On the other hand, both the good and the evil effects of the tariff were
greatly exaggerated. Some harm to the planter states was doubtless
caused by it; but their falling back, as compared with the North, in
the race for prosperity, was doubtless caused much more by the presence
of slavery, as Dallas, of Pennsylvania, pointed out in the course of
some very temperate and moderate remarks in the Senate. Clay's
assertions as to what the tariff had done for the West were equally
ill-founded, as Benton showed in a good speech, wherein he described
picturesquely enough the industries and general condition of his portion
of the country, and asserted with truth that its revived prosperity was
due to its own resources, entirely independent of federal aid or
legislation. He said: "I do not think we are indebted to the high tariff
for our fertile lands and our navigable rivers; and I am certain we are
indebted to these blessings for the prosperity we enjoy." "In all that
comes from the soil the people of the West are rich. They have an
abundant supply of food for man and beast, and a large surplus to send
abroad. They have the comfortable living which industry creates for
itself in a rich soil, but beyond this they are poor.... They have no
roads paved or macadamized; no canals or aqueducts; no bridges of stone
across the innumerable streams; no edifices dedicated to eternity; no
schools for the fine arts; not a public library for which an ordinary
scholar would not apologize." Then he went on to speak of the commerce
of the West and its exports, "the marching myriads of living animals
annually taking their departure from the heart of the West, defiling
through the gorges of the Cumberland, the Alleghany, and the Appalachian
mountains, or traversing the plains of the South, diverging as they
march, ... and the flying steamboats and the fleets of floating arks,
loaded with the products of the forest, the farm, and the pasture,
following the courses of our noble rivers, and bearing their freights to
the great city" of New Orleans.
Unfortunately Benton would interlard even his best speeches with
theories of economics often more or less crude, and, still worse, with a
series of classic quotations and allusions; for he was grievously
afflicted with the rage for cheap pseudo-classicism that Jefferson and
his school had borrowed from the French revolutionists. Nor could he
resist the temptation to drag in allusions to some favorite hobby. The
repeal of the salt-tax was an especial favorite of his. He was perfectly
right in attacking the tax, and deserves the greatest credit for the
persistency which finally won him the victory. But his associates,
unless of a humorous turn of mind, must have found his allusions to it
rather tiresome, as when, apropos of the commerce of the Mississippi,
and without any possible excuse for speaking of the iniquity of taxing
salt, he suddenly alluded to New Orleans as "that great city which
revives upon the banks of the Mississippi the name of the greatest of
the emperors[2] that ever reigned upon the banks of the Tiber, and who
eclipsed the glory of his own heroic exploits by giving an order to his
legions never to levy a contribution of salt upon a Roman citizen!"
[2: Aurelian.]
It must be admitted that the tariff did some harm to the South, and that
it was natural for the latter to feel resentment at the way in which it
worked. But it must also be remembered that no law can be passed which
does not distribute its benefits more or less unequally, and which does
not, in all probability, work harm in some cases. Moreover, the South
was estopped from complaining of one section being harmed by a law that
benefited, or was supposed to benefit, the country at large, by her
position in regard to the famous embargo and non-intervention acts.
These inflicted infinitely more damage and loss in New England than any
tariff law could inflict on South Carolina, and, moreover, were put into
execution on account of a quarrel with England forced on by the West and
South contrary to the desire of the East. Yet the Southerners were
fierce in their denunciations of such of the Federalists as went to the
extreme in opposition to them. Even in 1816 Massachusetts had been
obliged to submit with good grace to the workings of a tariff which she
deemed hostile to her interests, and which many Southerners then
advocated. Certainly, even if the new tariff laws were ill-advised,
unjust, and unequal in their working, yet they did not, in the most
remote degree, justify any effort to break up the Union; especially the
South had no business to complain when she herself had joined in laying
heavier burdens on the shoulders of New England.
Complain she did, however; and soon added threats to complaints, and was
evidently ready to add acts to threats. Georgia, at first, took the lead
in denunciation; but South Carolina soon surpassed her, and finally went
to the length of advocating and preparing for separation from the Union;
a step that produced a revulsion of feeling even among her fellow
anti-tariff states. The South Carolinian statesmen now proclaimed the
doctrine of nullification,--that is, proclaimed that if any state deemed
a federal law improper, it could proceed to declare that law null and
void so far as its own territory was concerned,--and, as a corollary,
that it had the right forcibly to prevent execution of this void law
within its borders. This was proclaimed, not as an exercise of the right
of revolution, which, in the last resort, belongs, of course, to every
community and class, but as a constitutional privilege. Jefferson was
quoted as the father of the idea, and the Kentucky resolutions of
1798-99, which he drew, were cited as the precedent for the South
Carolinian action. In both these last assertions the Nullifiers were
correct. Jefferson was the father of nullification, and therefore of
secession. He used the word "nullify" in the original draft which he
supplied to the Kentucky legislature, and though that body struck it out
of the resolutions which they passed in 1798, they inserted it in those
of the following year. This was done mainly as an unscrupulous party
move on Jefferson's part, and when his side came into power he became a
firm upholder of the Union; and, being constitutionally unable to put a
proper value on truthfulness, he even denied that his resolutions could
be construed to favor nullification--though they could by no possibility
be construed to mean anything else.
At this time it is not necessary to discuss nullification as a
constitutional dogma; it is an absurdity too great to demand serious
refutation. The United States has the same right to protect itself from
death by nullification, secession, or rebellion, that a man has to
protect himself from death by assassination. Calhoun's hair-splitting
and metaphysical disquisitions on the constitutionality of nullification
have now little more practical interest than have the extraordinary
arguments and discussions of the school-men of the Middle Ages.
But at the time they were of vital interest, for they were words which
it was known South Carolina was prepared to back up by deeds. Calhoun
was vice-president, the second officer in the federal government, and
yet also the avowed leader of the most bitter disunionists. His state
supported him by an overwhelming majority, although even within its own
borders there was an able opposition, headed by the gallant and loyal
family of the Draytons,--the same family that afterwards furnished the
captain of Farragut's flag-ship, the glorious old Hartford. There was a
strong sentiment in the other Southern States in his favor; the public
men of South Carolina made speech after speech goading him on to take
even more advanced ground.
In Washington the current at first seemed to be all setting in favor of
the Nullifiers; they even counted on Jackson's support, as he was a
Southerner and a states'-rights man. But he was also a strong Unionist,
and, moreover, at this time, felt very bitterly towards Calhoun, with
whom he had just had a split, and had in consequence remodeled his
cabinet, thrusting out all Calhoun's supporters, and adopting Van Buren
as his political heir,--the position which it was hitherto supposed the
great Carolina separatist occupied.
The first man to take up the gauntlet the Nullifiers had thrown down was
Webster, in his famous reply to Hayne. He, of course, voiced the
sentiment of the Whigs, and especially of the Northeast, where the high
tariff was regarded with peculiar favor, where the Union feeling was
strong, and where there was a certain antagonism felt towards the South.
The Jacksonian Democrats, whose strength lay in the West, had not yet
spoken. They were, for the most part, neither ultra protectionists nor
absolute free-traders; Jackson's early presidential utterances had given
offense to the South by not condemning all high-tariff legislation, but
at the same time had declared in favor of a much more moderate degree of
protection than suited the Whigs. Only a few weeks after Webster's
speech Jackson's chance came, and he declared himself in unmistakable
terms. It was on the occasion of the Jefferson birthday banquet, April
13, 1830. An effort was then being made to have Jefferson's birthday
celebrated annually; and the Nullifiers, rightly claiming him as their
first and chief apostle, attempted to turn this particular feast into a
demonstration in favor of nullification. Most of the speakers present
were actively or passively in favor of the movement, and the toasts
proposed strongly savored of the new doctrine. But Jackson, Benton, and
a number of other Union men were in attendance also, and when it came to
Jackson's turn he electrified the audience by proposing: "Our federal
Union; it must be preserved." Calhoun at once answered with: "The Union;
next to our liberty the most dear; may we all remember that it can only
be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and distributing
equally the benefit and burden of the Union." The issue between the
president and the vice-president was now complete, and the Jacksonian
Democracy was squarely committed against nullification. Jackson had
risen to the occasion as only a strong and a great man could rise, and
his few, telling words, finely contrasting at every point with Calhoun's
utterances, rang throughout the whole country, and will last as long as
our government. One result, at least, the Nullifiers accomplished,--they
completely put an end to the Jefferson birthday celebrations.
The South Carolinians had no intention of flinching from the contest
which they had provoked, even when they saw that the North and West were
united against them, and though the tide began to set the same way in
their sister states of the South; North Carolina, among the latter,
being the first and most pronounced in her support of the president and
denunciation of the Nullifiers. The men of the Palmetto State have
always ranked high for hotheaded courage, and they soon showed that they
had wills as fiery as that of Jackson himself. Yet in the latter they
had met an antagonist well worthy of any foeman's steel. In declining an
invitation to be present at Charleston, on July 4, 1831, the president
again defined most clearly his position in favor of the Union, and his
words had an especial significance because he let it be seen that he was
fully determined to back them up by force if necessary. But his letter
only had the effect of inflaming still more the minds of the South
Carolinians. The prime cause of irritation, the tariff, still remained;
and in 1832, Clay, having entered the Senate after a long retirement
from politics, put the finishing stroke to their anger by procuring the
passage of a new tariff bill, which left the planter states almost as
badly off as did the law of 1828. Jackson signed this, although not
believing that it went far enough in the reduction of duties.
In the presidential election of 1832, Jackson defeated Clay by an
enormous majority; Van Buren was elected vice-president, there being
thus a Northern man on the ticket. South Carolina declined to take part
in the election, throwing away her vote. Again, it must be kept in mind
that the slave question did not shape, or, indeed, enter into this
contest at all, directly, although beginning to be present in the
background as a source of irritation. In 1832 there was ten-fold more
feeling in the North against Masonry, and secret societies generally,
than there was against slavery.
Benton threw himself in, heart and soul, with the Union party, acting as
Jackson's right-hand man throughout the contest with South Carolina, and
showing an even more resolute and unflinching front than Old Hickory
himself. No better or trustier ally than the Missouri statesman, in a
hard fight for a principle, could be desired. He was intensely national
in all his habits of thought; he took a deep, personal pride in all his
country,--North, South, East, and West. He had been very loath to
believe that any movement hostile to the Union was really on foot; but
once thoroughly convinced of it he chose his own line of action without
an instant's hesitation.
A fortnight after the presidential election South Carolina passed her
ordinance of nullification, directed against the tariff laws generally,
and against those of 1828 and 1832 in particular. The ordinance was to
take effect on February 1st; and if meantime the federal government
should make any attempt to enforce the laws, the fact of such attempt
was to end the continuance of South Carolina in the Union.
Jackson promptly issued a proclamation against nullification, composed
jointly by himself and the great Louisiana jurist and statesman,
Livingston. It is one of the ablest, as well as one of the most
important, of all American state papers. It is hard to see how any
American can read it now without feeling his veins thrill. Some claim it
as being mainly the work of Jackson, others as that of Livingston; it is
great honor for either to have had a hand in its production.
In his annual message the president merely referred, in passing, to the
Nullifiers, expressing his opinion that the action in reducing the
duties, which the extinction of the public debt would permit and
require, would put an end to the proceedings. As matters grew more
threatening, however, South Carolina making every preparation for war
and apparently not being conciliated in the least by the evident desire
in Congress to meet her more than half-way on the tariff question,
Jackson sent a special message to both houses. He had already sent
General Scott to Charleston, and had begun the concentration of certain
military and naval forces in or near the state boundaries. He now asked
Congress to pass a measure to enable him to deal better with possible
resistance to the laws. South Carolina having complained of the
oppressed condition in which she found herself, owing to the working of
the tariff, Jackson, in his message, with some humor, quoted in reply
the last Thanksgiving proclamation of her governor, wherein he dilated
upon the state's unexampled prosperity and happiness.
It must always be kept in mind in describing the attitude of the
Jacksonian Democrats towards the Nullifiers that they were all along,
especially in the West, hostile to a very high tariff. Jackson and
Benton had always favored a much lower tariff than that established in
1828 and hardly changed in 1832. It was no change of front on their part
now to advocate a reduction of duties. Jackson and Benton both felt that
there was much ground for South Carolina's original complaint, although
as strongly opposed to her nullification attitude as any Northerner.
Most of the Southern senators and representatives, though opposed to
nullification, were almost equally hostile to the high tariff; and very
many others were at heart in sympathy with nullification itself. The
intensely national and anti-separatist tone of Jackson's declaration,--a
document that might well have come from Washington or Lincoln, and that
would have reflected high honor on either,--though warmly approved by
Benton, was very repugnant to many of the Southern Democrats, and was
too much even for certain of the Whigs. In fact, it reads like the
utterance of some great Federalist or Republican leader. The feeling in
Congress, as a whole, was as strong against the tariff as it was against
nullification; and Jackson had to take this into account, all the more
because not only was he in some degree of the same way of thinking, but
also many of his followers entertained the sentiment even more
earnestly.
Calhoun introduced a series of nullification resolutions into the
Senate, and defended them strongly in the prolonged constitutional
debate that followed. South Carolina meanwhile put off the date at which
her decrees were to take effect, so that she might see what Congress
would do. Beyond question, Jackson's firmness, and the way in which he
was backed up by Benton, Webster, and their followers, was having some
effect. He had openly avowed his intention, if matters went too far, of
hanging Calhoun "higher than Haman." He unquestionably meant to
imprison him, as well as the other South Carolina leaders, the instant
that state came into actual collision with the Union; and to the end of
his life regretted, and with reason, that he had not done so without
waiting for an overt act of resistance. Some historians have treated
this as if it were an idle threat; but such it certainly was not.
Jackson undoubtedly fully meant what he said, and would have acted
promptly had the provocation occurred, and, moreover, he would have been
sustained by the country. He was not the man to weigh minutely what
would and what would not fall just on one side or the other of the line
defining treason; nor was it the time for too scrupulous adherence to
precise wording. Had a collision occurred, neither Calhoun nor his
colleague would ever have been permitted to leave Washington; and brave
though they were, the fact unquestionably had much influence with them.
Webster was now acting heartily with Benton. He introduced a set of
resolutions which showed that in the matters both of the tariff and of
nullification his position was much the same as was that of the
Missourian. Unfortunately Congress, as a whole, was by no means so
stiff-kneed. A certain number of Whigs followed Webster, and a certain
number of Democrats clung to Benton; but most Southerners were very
reluctant to allow pressure to be brought to bear on South Carolina, and
many Northerners were as willing to compromise as Henry Clay himself. In
accordance with Jackson's recommendations two bills were introduced: one
the so-called "Force bill," to allow the president to take steps to
defend the federal authority in the event of actual collision; and the
other a moderate, and, on the whole, proper tariff bill, to reduce
protective duties. Both were introduced by administration supporters.
Benton and Webster warmly sustained the "Force bill," which was bitterly
attacked by the Nullifiers and by most of the Southerners, who really
hardly knew what stand to take, the leading opponent being Tyler of
Virginia, whose disunion attitude was almost as clearly marked as that
of Calhoun himself. The measure was eminently just, and was precisely
what the crisis demanded; and the Senate finally passed it and sent it
to the House.
All this time an obstinate struggle was going on over the tariff bill.
Calhoun and his sympathizers were beginning to see that there was real
danger ahead, alike to themselves, their constituents, and their
principles, if they followed unswervingly the course they had laid
down; and the weak-kneed brethren on the other side, headed by Clay,
were becoming even more uneasy. Calhoun wished to avert collision with
the federal government; Clay was quite as anxious to avoid an outbreak
in the South and to save what he could of the protective system, which
was evidently doomed. Calhoun was willing to sacrifice some of his
constitutional theories in regard to protection; Clay was ready greatly
to reduce protection itself. Each, of them, but especially Clay, was
prepared to shift his stand somewhat from that of abstract moral right
to that of expediency. Benton and Webster were too resolute and
determined in their hostility to any form of yielding to South
Carolina's insolent defiance to admit any hope of getting them to accept
a compromise; but the majority of the members were known to be only too
ready to jump at any half-way measure which would patch up the affair
for the present, no matter what the sacrifice of principle or how great
the risk incurred for the future. Accordingly, Clay and Calhoun met and
agreed on a curious bill, in reality recognizing the protective system,
but making a great although gradual reduction of duties; and Clay
introduced this as a "compromise measure." It was substituted in the
House for the administration tariff bill, was passed and sent to the
Senate. It gave South Carolina much, but not all, that she demanded.
Her representatives announced themselves satisfied, and supported it,
together with all their Southern sympathizers. Webster and Benton fought
it stoutly to the last, but it was passed by a great majority; a few
Northerners followed Webster, and Benton received fair support from his
Missouri colleagues and the Maryland senators; the other senators, Whigs
and Democrats alike, voted for the measure. Many of the Southerners were
imbued with separatist principles, although not yet to the extent that
Calhoun was; others, though Union men, did not possess the unflinching
will and stern strength of character that enabled Benton to stand out
against any section of the country, even his own, if it was wrong. Silas
Wright, of New York, a typical Northern "dough-face" politician, gave
exact expression to the "dough-face" sentiment, which induced Northern
members to vote for the compromise, when he stated that he was
unalterably opposed to the principle of the bill, but that on account of
the attitude of South Carolina, and of the extreme desire which he had
to remove all cause of discontent in that state, and in order to enable
her again to become an affectionate member of the Union, he would vote
for what was satisfactory to her, although repugnant to himself.
Wright, Marcy, and their successors in New York politics, almost up to
the present day, certainly carried cringing subserviency to the South to
a pitch that was fairly sublime.
The "Force bill" and the compromise tariff bill passed both houses
nearly simultaneously, and were sent up to the president, who signed
both on the same day. His signing the compromise bill was a piece of
weakness out of keeping with his whole character, and especially out of
keeping with his previous course towards the Nullifiers. The position
assumed by Benton and Webster, that South Carolina should be made to
submit first and should have the justice of her claims examined into
afterwards, was unquestionably the only proper attitude.
Benton wrote:--
My objections to this bill, and to its mode of being passed, were
deep and abiding, and went far beyond its own obnoxious provisions,
and all the transient and temporary considerations connected with
it.... A compromise made with a state in arms is a capitulation to
that state.... The injury was great then, and a permanent evil
example. It remitted the government to the condition of the old
confederation, acting upon sovereignties instead of individuals. It
violated the feature of our Union which discriminated it from all
confederacies that ever existed, and which was wisely and
patriotically put into the Constitution to save it from the fate
which had attended all confederacies, ancient and modern.... The
framers of our Constitution established a Union instead of a
League--to be sovereign and independent within its sphere, acting
upon persons through its own laws and courts, instead of acting on
communities through persuasion or force. The effect of this
compromise legislation was to destroy this great feature of our
Union--to bring the general and state governments into conflict--and
to substitute a sovereign state for an offending individual as often
as a state chose to make the cause of that individual her own.
Not only was Benton's interpretation of the Constitution sound, and one
that by the course of events has now come to be universally accepted,
but his criticisms on the wisdom of the compromise bill were perfectly
just. Had the Anti-Nullifiers stood firm, the Nullifiers would probably
have given way, and if not, would certainly have been crushed. Against a
solid North and West, with a divided South, even her own people not
being unanimous, and with Jackson as chief executive, South Carolina
could not have made even a respectable resistance. A salutary lesson
then might very possibly have saved infinite trouble and bloodshed
thereafter. But in Jackson's case it must be remembered that, so far as
his acts depended purely upon his own will and judgment, no fault can be
found with him; he erred only in ratifying a compromise agreed to by the
vast majority of the representatives of the people in both houses of
Congress.
The battle did not result in a decisive victory for either side. This
was shown by the very fact that each party insisted that it had won a
signal triumph. Calhoun and Clay afterwards quarreled in the senate
chamber as to which had given up the more in the compromise. South
Carolina had declared, first, that the tariff was unconstitutional, and
therefore to be opposed upon principle; second, that it worked injustice
to her interests, and must be abolished forthwith; thirdly, that, if it
were not so abolished, she would assert her power to nullify a federal
law, and, if necessary, would secede from the Union. When her
representatives agreed to the compromise bill, they abandoned the first
point; the second was decided largely in her favor, though protection
was not by any means entirely given up; the third she was allowed to
insist upon with impunity, although the other side, by passing the
"Force bill," showed that in case matters did proceed to extremities
they were prepared to act upon the opposite conviction. Still, she
gained most of that for which she contended, and the victory, as a
whole, rested with her. Calhoun's purposes seem to have been, in the
main, pure; but few criminals have worked as much harm to their country
as he did. The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to
have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose
wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or
helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political
applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect
that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but
that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally.
Without doubt, the honors of the nullification dispute were borne off by
Benton and Webster. The latter's reply to Hayne is, perhaps, the
greatest single speech of the nineteenth century, and he deserves the
highest credit for the stubbornness with which he stood by his colors to
the last. There never was any question of Webster's courage; on the
occasions when he changed front he was actuated by self-interest and
ambition, not by timidity. Usually he appears as an advocate rather than
an earnest believer in the cause he represents; but when it came to be a
question of the Union, he felt what he said with the whole strength of
his nature.
An even greater meed of praise attaches to Benton for the unswerving
fidelity which he showed to the Union in this crisis. Webster was a
high-tariff man, and was backed up by all the sectional antipathies of
the Northeast in his opposition to the Nullifiers; Benton, on the
contrary, was a believer in a low tariff, or in one for revenue merely,
and his sectional antipathies were the other way. Yet, even when
deserted by his chief, and when he was opposed to every senator from
south of the Potomac and the Ohio, he did not flinch for a moment from
his attitude of aggressive loyalty to the national Union. He had a
singularly strong and upright character; this country has never had a
statesman more fearlessly true to his convictions, when great questions
were at stake, no matter what might be the cost to himself, or the
pressure from outside,--even when, as happened later, his own state was
against him. Intellectually he cannot for a moment be compared to the
great Massachusetts senator; but morally he towers much higher.
Yet, while praising Jackson and Benton for their behavior towards South
Carolina, we cannot forget that but a couple of years previously they
had not raised their voices even in the mildest rebuke of Georgia for
conduct which, though not nearly so bad in degree as that of South
Carolina, was of much the same kind. Towards the close of Adams's term,
Georgia had bid defiance to the mandates of the Supreme Court, and
proceeded to settle the Indian question within her borders without
regard to the authority of the United States, and these matters were
still unsettled when Jackson became president. Unfortunately he let his
personal feelings bias him; and, as he took the Western and Georgian
view of the Indian question, and, moreover, hated the Supreme Court
because it was largely Federalist in its composition, he declined to
interfere. David Crockett, himself a Union man and a nationalist to the
backbone, rated Jackson savagely, and with justice, for the
inconsistency of his conduct in the two cases, accusing him of having,
by his harmful leniency to Georgia, encouraged South Carolina to act as
she did, and ridiculing him because, while he smiled at the deeds of the
one state, when the like acts were done by the other, "he took up the
rod of correction and shook it over her".
CHAPTER VI.
JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE BANK.
If the struggle with the Nullifiers showed Benton at his best, in the
conflict with the Bank he exhibited certain qualities which hardly place
him in so favorable a light. Jackson's attack upon the Bank was a move
undertaken mainly on his own responsibility, and one which, at first,
most of his prominent friends were alarmed to see him undertake. Benton
alone supported him from the beginning. Captain and lieutenant alike
intensely appreciated the joy of battle; they cared for a fight because
it was a fight, and the certainty of a struggle, such as would have
daunted weaker or more timid men, simply offered to them an additional
inducement to follow out the course they had planned. Benton's
thorough-going support was invaluable to Jackson. The president sorely
needed a friend in the Senate who would uphold him through thick and
thin, and who yet commanded the respect of all his opponents by his
strength, ability, and courage. To be sure, Benton's knowledge of
financial economics was not always profound; but, on the other hand, a
thorough mastery of the laws of finance would have been, in this fight,
a very serious disadvantage to any champion of Jackson.
The rights and wrongs of this matter have been worn threadbare in
countless discussions. For much of the hostility of Jackson and Benton
towards the Bank, there were excellent grounds; but many of their
actions were wholly indefensible and very harmful in their results to
the country. An assault upon what Benton called "the money power" is apt
to be popular in a democratic republic, partly on account of the vague
fear with which the poorer and more ignorant voters regard a powerful
institution, whose working they do not understand, and partly on account
of the jealousy they feel towards those who are better off than
themselves. When these feelings are appealed to by men who are intensely
in earnest, and who are themselves convinced of the justice and wisdom
of their course, they become very formidable factors in any political
contest.
The struggle first became important when the question of the re-charter
of the Bank was raised, towards the end of Jackson's first term, the
present charter still having three years to run. This charter had in it
many grave faults; and there might well be a question as to whether it
should be renewed. The Bank itself, beyond doubt, possessed enormous
power; too much power for its own or outsiders' good. Its president,
Biddle, was a man of some ability, but conceited to the last degree,
untruthful, and to a certain extent unscrupulous in the use he made of
the political influence of the great moneyed institution over which he
presided. Some of the financial theories on which he managed the Bank
were wrong; yet, on the whole, it was well conducted, and under its care
the monetary condition of the country was quiet and good, infinitely
better than it had been before, or than, under the auspices of the
Jacksonian Democracy, it afterwards became.
The two great reasons for Jackson's success throughout his political
career were to be found in the strength of the feeling in his favor
among the poorer and least educated classes of voters, and in the ardent
support given him by the low politicians, who, by playing on his
prejudices and passions, moulded him to their wishes, and who organized
and perfected in their own and his interests a great political machine,
founded on the "spoils system"; and both the Jacksonian rank and file
and the Jacksonian politicians soon agreed heartily in their opposition
to the Bank. Jackson and Benton opposed it for the same reasons that the
bulk of their followers did; that is to say, partly from honest and
ignorant prejudice and partly from a well-founded feeling of distrust as
to some of its actions. The mass of their fellow party-leaders and
henchmen assailed it with the cry that it was exerting its influence to
debauch politics, while at the same time they really sought to use it as
a power in politics on their own side.
Jackson, in his first annual message in 1829, had hinted that he was
opposed to the re-charter of the Bank, then a question of the future and
not to arise for four or five years. At the same time he had called in
question the constitutionality and expediency of the Bank's existence,
and had criticised as vicious its currency system. The matter of
constitutionality had been already decided by the Supreme Court, the
proper tribunal, and was, and had been for years, an accepted fact; it
was an absurdity to call it in question. As regards the matter of
expediency, certainly the Jacksonians failed signally to put anything
better in its place. Yet it was undeniable that there were grave defects
in the currency system.
The president's message roused but little interest, and what little it
did rouse was among the Bank's friends. At once these began to prepare
the way for the re-charter by an active and extensive agitation in its
favor. The main bank was at Philadelphia, but it had branches
everywhere, and naturally each branch bank was a centre of opposition to
the president's proposed policy. As the friends of the Bank were greatly
interested, and as the matter did not immediately concern those who
afterwards became its foes, the former, for the time, had it all their
own way, and the drift of public opinion seemed to be strongly in its
favor.
Benton was almost the only public man of prominence who tried to stem
this tide from the beginning. Jackson's own party associates were
originally largely against him, and so he stood all the more in need of
the vigorous support which he received from the Missouri senator.
Indeed, it would be unfair in the matter of the attack on the Bank to
call Benton Jackson's follower; he might with more propriety be called
the leader in the assault, although of course he could accomplish little
compared with what was done by the great popular idol. He had always
been hostile to the Bank, largely as a matter of Jeffersonian tradition,
and he had shown his hostility by resolutions introduced in the Senate
before Jackson was elected president.
Early in 1831 he asked leave to introduce a resolution against the
re-charter of the Bank; his purpose being merely to give formal notice
of war against it, and to attempt to stir up a current of feeling
counter to that which then seemed to be generally prevailing in its
favor. In his speech he carefully avoided laying stress upon any such
abstract point as that of constitutionality, and dwelt instead upon the
questions that would affect the popular mind; assailing the Bank "as
having too much power over the people and the government, over business
and politics, and as too much disposed to exercise that power to the
prejudice of the freedom and equality which should prevail in a
republic, to be allowed to exist in our country." The force of such an
argument in a popular election will be acknowledged by all practical
politicians. But, although Benton probably believed what he said, or at
any rate most of it, he certainly ought not to have opened the
discussion of a great financial measure with a demagogic appeal to caste
prejudices. He wished to substitute a gold currency in the place of the
existing bank-notes, and was not disturbed at all as to how he would
supply the place of the Bank, saying: "I am willing to see the charter
expire, without providing any substitute for the present Bank. I am
willing to see the currency of the federal government left to the hard
money mentioned and intended in the Constitution; ... every species of
paper might be left to the state authorities, unrecognized by the
federal government!" Of the beauties of such a system as the last the
country later on received practical demonstration. Some of his
utterances, however, could be commended to the friends of greenbacks and
of dishonest money even at the present day, as when he says: "Gold and
silver are the best currency for a republic; it suits the men of middle
property and the working people best; and if I was going to establish a
workingman's party it should be on the basis of hard money--a hard-money
party against a paper party." The Bank was in Philadelphia; much of the
stock was held in the East, and a good deal was held abroad, which gave
Benton a chance to play on sectional feelings, as follows: "To whom is
all the power granted? To a company of private individuals, many of them
foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a remote and narrow corner
of the Union, unconnected by any sympathy with the fertile regions of
the Great Valley, in which the natural power of this Union--the power of
numbers--will be found to reside long before the renewed term of a
second charter would expire." Among the other sentences occurs the
following bit of pure demagogic pyrotechnics: "It [the Bank] tends to
aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and paupers; and to deepen and widen the
gulf which separates Dives from Lazarus. A great moneyed power is
favorable to great capitalists, for it is the principle of money to
favor money. It is unfavorable to small capitalists, for it is the
principle of money to eschew the needy and unfortunate. It is injurious
to the laboring classes." Altogether it was not a speech to be proud of.
The Senate refused permission to introduce the resolution by the close
vote of twenty-three to twenty.
Benton lived only a generation after that one which had itself
experienced oppression from a king, from an aristocratic legislature and
from a foreign power; and so his rant about the undue influence of
foreigners in our governmental affairs, and his declamation over the
purely supposititious powers that were presumed to be conspiring against
the welfare of the poorer classes probably more nearly expressed his
real feelings than would be the case with the similar utterances of any
leading statesman nowadays. He was an enthusiastic believer in the
extreme Jeffersonian doctrinaire views as to the will of the majority
being always right, and as to the moral perfection of the average
voter. Like his fellow-statesmen he failed to see the curious absurdity
of supporting black slavery, and yet claiming universal suffrage for
whites as a divine right, not as a mere matter of expediency resulting
on the whole better than any other method. He had not learned that the
majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority
than, under a different system, the latter would have to oppress the
former; and that, if there is a moral principle at stake, the saying
that the voice of the people is the voice of God may be quite as untrue,
and do quite as much mischief, as the old theory of the divine right of
kings. The distinguishing feature of our American governmental system is
the freedom of the individual; it is quite as important to prevent his
being oppressed by many men as it is to save him from the tyranny of
one.
This speech on the re-charter showed a great deal of wide reading and
much information; but a good part of it was sheer declamation, in the
turgid, pompous style that Benton, as well as a great many other
American public speakers, was apt to mistake for genuine oratory. His
subsequent speech on the currency, however, was much better. This was
likewise delivered on the occasion of asking leave to present a joint
resolution, which leave was refused. The branch draft system was the
object of the assault. These branch drafts were for even sums of small
denomination, circulating like bank-notes; they were drawn on the parent
bank at Philadelphia to the order of some officer of the branch bank and
were indorsed by the latter to bearer. Thus paper was issued at one
place which was payable at another and a distant place; and among other
results there ensued a constant inflation of credit. They were very
mischievous in their workings; they had none of the marks of convertible
bank-notes or money, and so long as credit was active there could be no
check on the inflation of the currency by them. Payment could be
voluntarily made at the branch banks whence issued, but if it was
refused the owner had only the right to go to Philadelphia and sue the
directors there. Most of these drafts were issued at the most remote and
inaccessible branches, the payment of them being, therefore, much
delayed by distance and difficulty; nor were the directors liable for
excessive issues. They constituted the bulk of all the paper seen in
circulation; they were supposed to be equivalent to money, but being
bills of exchange they were merely negotiable instruments; they did not
have the properties of bank-notes, which are constantly and directly
interchangeable with money. In their issue Biddle had laid himself open
to attack; and in defending them he certainly did not always speak the
truth, willfully concealing or coloring facts. Moreover, his
self-satisfaction and the foolish pride in his own power, which he could
not conceal, led him into making imprudent boasts as to the great power
the Bank could exercise over other local banks, and over the general
prosperity of the country, while dilating upon its good conduct in not
using this power to the disadvantage of the public. All this was playing
into Benton's hands. He showed some of the evils of the branch draft
system, although apparently not seeing others that were quite as
important. He attacked the Bank for some real and many imaginary
wrongdoings; and quoted Biddle himself as an authority for the existence
of powers dangerous to the welfare of the state.
The advocates of the Bank were still in the majority in both houses of
Congress, and soon began preparations for pushing through a bill for the
re-charter. The issue began to become political. Webster, Clay, and most
of the other anti-administration men were for the Bank; and so when the
convention of the National Republicans, who soon afterwards definitely
assumed the name of Whigs, took place, they declared heartily in its
favor, and nominated for the presidency its most enthusiastic
supporter, Henry Clay. The Bank itself unquestionably preferred not to
be dragged into politics; but Clay, thinking he saw a chance for a
successful stroke, fastened upon it, and the convention that nominated
him made the fight against Jackson on the ground that he was hostile to
the Bank. Even had this not already been the case no more certain method
of insuring his hostility could have been adopted.
Still, however, many of Jackson's supporters were also advocates of
re-charter; and the bill for that purpose commanded the majority in
Congress. Benton took the lead in organizing the opposition, not with
the hope of preventing its passage, but "to attack incessantly, assail
at all points, display the evil of the institution, rouse the people,
and prepare them to sustain the veto." In other words, he was preparing
for an appeal to the people, and working to secure an anti-Bank majority
in the next Congress. He instigated and prepared the investigation into
the affairs of the Bank, which was made in the House, and he led the
harassing parliamentary warfare carried on against the re-chartering
bill in the Senate. He himself seems to have superintended the
preparation of the charges which were investigated by the House. A great
flurry was made over them, Benton and all his friends claiming that
they were fully substantiated; but the only real point scored was that
against the branch drafts. Benton, with the majority of the committee of
investigation, had the loosest ideas as to what a bank ought to do, loud
though they were in denunciation of what this particular Bank was
alleged to have done.
Webster made the great argument in favor of the re-charter bill. Benton
took the lead in opposition, stating, what was probably true,--that the
bill was brought up so long before the charter expired for political
reasons, and criticising it as premature; a criticism unfortunately
applicable with even greater force to Jackson's message. His speech was
largely mere talking against time, and he wandered widely from the
subject. Among other things he invoked the aid of the principle of
states'-rights, because the Bank then had power to establish branches in
any state, whether the latter liked it or not, and free from state
taxation. He also appealed to the Western members as such, insisting
that the Bank discriminated against their section of the country in
favor of the East; the facts being that the shrewdness and commercial
morality of the Northeast, particularly of New England, saved them from
the evils brought on the Westerners by the foolishness with which they
abused their credit and the laxness with which they looked on monetary
obligations. But in spite of all that Benton could do the bill passed
both houses, the Senate voting in its favor by twenty-eight ayes against
twenty nays.
Jackson, who never feared anything, and was more than ready to accept
the fight which was in some measure forced on him, yet which in some
degree he had courted, promptly vetoed the bill in a message which
stated some truths forcibly and fearlessly, which developed some very
queer constitutional and financial theories, and which contained a
number of absurdities, evidently put in, not for the benefit of the
Senate, but to influence voters at the coming presidential election. The
leaders of the opposition felt obliged to make a show of trying to pass
the bill over the veto in order to get a chance to answer Jackson.
Webster again opened the argument. Clay made the fiercest onslaught,
assailing the president personally, besides attacking the veto power,
and trying to discredit its use. But the presidential power of veto is
among the best features of our government, and Benton had no difficulty
in making a good defense of it; although many of the arguments adduced
by him in its favor were entirely unsound, being based on the wholly
groundless assumption that the function of the president corresponded
to that of the ancient Roman tribune of the people, and was supposed to
be exercised in the interests of the people to control the
legislature--thus willfully overlooking the fact that the legislature
also was elected by the people. When on his ultra-democratic hobby
Benton always rode very loose in the saddle, and with little knowledge
of where he was going. Clay and Benton alike drew all sorts of analogies
between the state of affairs in the United States and that formerly
prevailing in France, England, and above all in the much-suffering
republics of antiquity. Benton insisted that the Bank had wickedly
persuaded the West to get in debt to it so as to have that section in
its power, and that the Western debt had been created with a view to
political engineering; the fact being that the Westerners had run into
debt purely by their own fault, and that the Bank itself was seriously
alarmed at the condition of its Western branches. The currency being in
much worse shape in the West than in the Northeast, gold and silver
naturally moved towards the latter place; and this result of their own
shortcomings was again held up as a grievance of the Westerners against
the Bank. He also read a severe lecture on the interests of party
discipline to the Democrats who had voted for the re-charter, assuring
them that they could not continue to be both for the Bank and for
Jackson. The Jacksonian Democracy, nominally the party of the multitude,
was in reality the nearest approach the United States has ever seen to
the "one man power;" and to break with Jackson was to break with the
Democratic party. The alternative of expulsion or of turning a
somersault being thus plainly presented to the recalcitrant members,
they for the most part chose the latter, and performed the required feat
of legislative acrobatics with the most unobtrusive and submissive
meekness. The debate concluded with a sharp and undignified interchange
of personalities between the Missouri and Kentucky senators, Clay giving
Benton the lie direct, and the latter retorting in kind. Each side, of
course, predicted the utter ruin of the country, if the other prevailed.
Benton said that, if the Bank conquered, the result would be the
establishment of an oligarchy, and then of a monarchy, and finally the
death of the Republic by corruption. Webster stated as his belief that,
if the sentiments of the veto message received general approbation, the
Constitution could not possibly survive its fiftieth year. Webster,
however, in that debate, showed to good advantage. Benton was no match
for him, either as a thinker or as a speaker; but with the real leader
of the Whig party, Henry Clay, he never had much cause to fear
comparison.
All the state banks were of course rabidly in favor of Jackson; and the
presidential election of 1832 was largely fought on the bank issue. In
Pennsylvania, however, the feeling for the Bank was only less strong
than that for Jackson; and accordingly that Boeotian community sapiently
cast its electoral votes for the latter, while instructing its senators
and representatives to support the former. But the complete and hopeless
defeat of Clay by Jackson sealed the fate of the Bank. Jackson was not
even content to let it die naturally by the lapse of its charter. His
attitude towards it so far had been one for which much could be said;
indeed, very good grounds can be shown for thinking his veto proper. But
of the impropriety of his next step there could be no possible question.
Congress had passed a resolution declaring its belief in the safety of
the United States deposits in the Bank; but the president, in the summer
of 1833, removed these deposits and placed them in certain state banks.
He experienced some difficulty in getting a secretary of the treasury
who would take such a step; finally he found one in Taney.
The Bank memorialized Congress at once; and the anti-administration
majority in the Senate forthwith took up the quarrel. They first
rejected Jackson's nominations for bank directors, and then refused to
confirm Taney himself. Two years later Jackson made the latter Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, in which position he lived to do even more
mischief than he had time or opportunity to accomplish as secretary of
the treasury.
Benton was the administration champion in the Senate. Opposed to him
were Webster and Clay, as leaders of the Whigs, supported for the time
being by Calhoun. The feeling of Clay and Calhoun against the president
was bitterly personal, and was repaid by his rancorous hatred. But
Webster, though he was really on most questions even more antagonistic
to the ideas of the Jacksonian school, always remained personally on
good terms with its leaders.
Clay introduced a resolution directing the return of the deposits;
Benton opposed it; it passed by a vote of twenty-eight to eighteen, but
was lost in the House. Clay then introduced a resolution demanding to
know from the president whether the paper alleged to have been published
by his authority as having been read to the cabinet, in relation to the
removal of the deposits, was genuine or not; and, if it was, asking for
a copy. Benton opposed the motion, which nevertheless passed. But the
president refused to accede to the demand. Meanwhile the new departure
in banking, inaugurated by the president, was working badly. One of the
main grounds for removing the deposits was the allegation that they were
used to debauch politics. This was never proved against the old United
States Bank; but under Jackson's administration, which corrupted the
public service in every way, the deposits became fruitful sources of
political reward and bribery.
Clay then introduced his famous resolution censuring the president for
his action, and supported it in a long and fiery speech; a speech which,
like most of Clay's, was received by his followers at the time with
rapture, but in which this generation fails to find the sign of that
remarkable ability with which his own contemporaries credited the great
Kentuckian. He attacked Jackson with fierce invective, painting him as
an unscrupulous tyrant, who was inaugurating a revolution in the
government of the Union. But he was outdone by Calhoun, who, with
continual interludes of complacent references to the good already done
by the Nullifiers, assailed Jackson as one of a band of artful, corrupt,
and cunning politicians, and drew a picture even more lurid than Clay's
of the future of the country, and the danger of impending revolution.
Webster's speeches were more self-contained in tone. Benton was the only
Jacksonian senator who could contend with the great Nullifier and the
two great Whigs; and he replied at length, and in much the same style as
they had spoken.
The Senate was flooded with petitions in favor of the Bank, which were
presented with suitable speeches by the leading Whigs. Benton ridiculed
the exaggerated tone of alarm in which these petitions were drawn, and
declared that the panic, excitement, and suffering existing in business
circles throughout the country were due to the deliberate design of the
Bank, and afforded a fresh proof that the latter was a dangerous power
to the state.
The resolution of censure was at last passed by a vote of twenty-six to
twenty, and Jackson, in a fury, sent in a written protest against it,
which the Senate refused to receive. The excitement all over the country
was intense throughout the struggle. The suffering, which was really
caused by the president's act, but which was attributed by his
supporters to the machinations of the Bank, was very real; even Benton
admitted this, although contending that it was not a natural result of
the policy pursued, but had been artificially excited--or, as he very
clumsily phrased it, "though fictitious and forged, yet the distress
was real, and did an immensity of damage." Neither Jackson nor Benton
yielded an inch to the outside pressure; the latter was the soul of the
fight in Congress, making over thirty speeches during the struggle.
During the debate on receiving the president's protest, Benton gave
notice of his intention at an early day to move to expunge from the
journal the resolution of censure. This idea was entirely his own, and
he gave the notice without having consulted anybody. It was, however, a
motion after Jackson's own heart, as the latter now began to look upon
the affair as purely personal to himself. His party accepted this view
of the matter with a servile alacrity only surpassed by the way in which
its leaders themselves bowed down before the mob; and for the next two
years the state elections were concerned purely with personal politics,
the main point at issue in the choice for every United States senator
being, whether he would or would not support Benton's expunging
resolution. The whole affair seems to us so puerile that we can hardly
understand the importance attached to it by the actors themselves. But
the men who happened at that period to be the leaders in public affairs
were peculiarly and frankly incapable of separating in their minds
matters merely affecting themselves from matters affecting their
constituents. Each firmly believed that if he was not the whole state,
he was at least a most important fraction of it; and this was as plainly
seen in Webster's colossal egoism and the frank vanity of Henry Clay as
in Benton's ponderous self-consciousness and the all-pervading
personality of Andrew Jackson.
Some of the speeches on the expunging resolution show delicious,
although entirely unconscious, humor. If there ever was a wholly
irrational state of mind it was that in which the Jacksonians
perpetually kept themselves. Every canvass on Jackson's behalf was one
of sound, fury, and excitement, of appeal to the passions, prejudices,
and feelings, but never the reason, of the people. A speech for him was
generally a mere frantic denunciation of whatever and whoever was
opposed to him, coupled with fulsome adulation of "the old hero." His
supporters rarely indeed spoke to the cool judgment of the country, for
the very excellent reason that the cool judgment of the country was apt
to be against them. Such being the case, it is amusing to read in
Benton's speech on receiving the protest the following sentences,
apparently uttered in solemn good faith, and with sublime
unconsciousness of irony:--
To such a community [the American body politic]--in an appeal on a
great question of constitutional law to the understandings of such a
people--declamation, passion, epithets, opprobrious language, will
stand for nothing. They will float harmless and unheeded through the
empty air, and strike in vain upon the ear of a sober and
dispassionate tribunal. Indignation, real or affected; wrath,
however hot; fury, however enraged; asseverations, however violent;
denunciation, however furious, will avail nothing. Facts, inexorable
facts, are all that will be attended to; reason, calm and
self-possessed, is all that will be listened to.
The description of the mass of Jacksonian voters as forming "a sober and
dispassionate tribunal" is an artistic touch of fancy quite unique, but
admirably characteristic of Benton, whose statements always rose
vigorously to the necessities of the occasion.
Webster, in an effort to make the best of untoward circumstances,
brought in a bill to re-charter the Bank for a short period, at the same
time doing away with some of the features that were objectionable in the
old charter. This bill might have passed, had it not been opposed by the
extreme Bank men, including Clay and Calhoun. In the course of the
debate over it Benton delivered a very elaborate and carefully studied
speech in favor of hard money and a currency of the precious metals; a
speech which is to this day well worth careful reading. Some of his
financial theories were crude and confused; but on the main question he
was perfectly sound. Both he and Jackson deserve great credit for having
done much to impress the popular mind with the benefit of hard, that is
to say honest, money. Benton was the strongest hard-money man then in
public life, being, indeed, popularly nicknamed "Old Bullion." He
thoroughly appreciated that a metallic currency was of more vital
importance to the laboring men and to men of small capital generally
than to any of the richer classes. A metallic currency is always surer
and safer than a paper currency; where it exists a laboring man
dependent on his wages need fear less than any other member of the
community the evils of bad banking. Benton's idea of the danger to the
masses from "the money power" was exaggerated; but in advocating a sound
gold currency he took the surest way to overcome any possible dangerous
tendency. A craze for "soft," or dishonest, money--a greenback movement,
or one for short weight silver dollars--works more to the disadvantage
of the whole mass of the people than even to that of the capitalists; it
is a move directly in the interests of "the money power," which its
loud-mouthed advocates are ostensibly opposing in the interests of
democracy.
Benton continued his speeches. The panic was now subsiding; there had
not been time for Jackson's ruinous policy of making deposits in
numerous state banks, and thereby encouraging wild inflation of credit,
to bear fruit and, as it afterwards did, involve the whole country in
financial disaster. Therefore Benton was able to exult greatly over the
favorable showing of affairs in the report of the secretary of the
treasury. He also procured the passage of a gold currency law, which,
however, fixed the ratio of value between gold and silver at sixteen to
one; an improper proportion, but one which had prevailed for three
centuries in the Spanish-American countries, from which he copied it. In
consequence of this law gold, long banished, became once more a
circulating medium of exchange.
The Bank of the United States afterwards was turned into the State Bank
of Pennsylvania; it was badly managed and finally became insolvent. The
Jacksonians accepted its downfall as a vindication of their policy; but
in reality it was due to causes not operative at the time of the great
struggle between the president and the Senate over its continued
existence. Certainly by no possible financial policy could it have
produced such widespread ruin and distress as did the system introduced
by Jackson.
Long after the Bank controversy had lost all practical bearing it
continued to be agitated by the chief parties to it, who still felt sore
from the various encounters. Jackson assailed it again in his message; a
friendly committee of the Senate investigated it and reported in its
favor, besides going out of their way to rake up charges against Jackson
and Benton. The latter replied in a long speech, and became involved in
personalities with the chairman, Tyler of Virginia. Neither side paid
attention to any but the partisan aspect of the question, and the
discussions were absolutely profitless.
The whole matter was threshed over again and again, long after nothing
but chaff was left, during the debates on Benton's expunging resolution.
Few now would defend this resolution. The original resolution of censure
may have been of doubtful propriety; but it was passed, was entered on
the record, and had become a part of the journal of the Senate. It would
have been perfectly proper to pass another resolution condemning or
reversing the original one, and approving the course of the president;
but it was in the highest degree improper to set about what was in form
falsifying the record. Still, Benton found plenty of precedents in the
annals of other legislative bodies for what he proposed to do, and the
country, as a whole, backed him up heartily. He was further stimulated
by the knowledge that there was probably no other legislative act in
which Jackson took such intense interest, or which could so gratify his
pride; the mortification to Clay and Calhoun would be equally great.
Benton's motion failed more than once, but the complexion of the Senate
was rapidly changed by the various states substituting Democratic for
Whig or anti-Jackson senators. Some of the changes were made, as in
Virginia, by senators refusing to vote for the expunging resolution, as
required by the state legislatures, and then resigning their seats,
pursuant to a ridiculous theory of the ultra Democrats, which, if
carried out, would completely nullify the provision for a six year's
senatorial term. Finally, at the very close of Jackson's administration,
Benton found himself with a fair majority behind him, and made the final
move. His speech was of course mainly filled with a highly colored
account of the blessings wrought for the American people by Andrew
Jackson, and equally of course the latter was compared at length to a
variety of ancient Roman worthies. The final scene in the Senate had an
element of the comic about it. The expungers held a caucus and agreed to
sit the session out until the resolution was passed; and with prudent
forethought Benton, well aware that when hungry and tired his followers
might show less inflexibility of purpose, provided in an adjoining
committee-room "an ample supply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef,
pickles, wines, and cups of hot coffee," wherewith to inspirit the
faint-hearted.
Fortified by the refreshments, the expungers won a complete victory. If
the language of Jackson's admirers was overdrawn and strained to the
last degree in lauding him for every virtue that he had or had not, it
must be remembered that his opponents went quite as far wrong on the
other side in their denunciations and extravagant prophecies of gloom.
Webster made a very dignified and forcible speech in closing the
argument against the resolution, but Calhoun and Clay were much less
moderate,--the latter drawing a vivid picture of a rapidly approaching
reign of lawless military violence, and asserting that his opponents had
"extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burnt at
the altar of civil liberty." As a proper finale Jackson, to show his
appreciation, gave a great dinner to the expungers and their wives,
Benton sitting at the head of the table. Jackson and Benton solemnly
thought that they were taking part in a great act of justice, and were
amusingly unable to see the comic side of their acts. They probably
really believed most of their own denunciations of the Bank, and very
possibly thought that the wickedness of its followers might tempt them
to do any desperate deed. At any rate they enjoyed posing alike to
themselves and to the public as persons of antique virtue, who had
risked both life and reputation in a hazardous but successful attempt to
save the liberties of the people from the vast and hostile forces of the
aristocratic "money power."
The best verdict on the expunging resolution was given by Webster when
he characterized the whole affair as one which, if it were not regarded
as a ruthless violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to be
little elevated above the character of a contemptible farce.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS.
Benton was supremely self-satisfied with the part he had played in the
struggle with the Bank. But very few thinking men would now admit that
his actions, as a whole, on the occasion in question, were to his
credit, although in the matter of the branch drafts he was perfectly
right, and in that of the re-charter at least occupied defensible
ground. His general views on monetary matters, however, were sound, and
on some of the financial questions that shortly arose he occupied a
rather lonely pre-eminence of good sense among his fellow senators; such
being particularly the case as regards the various mischievous schemes
in relation to disposing of the public lands, and of the money drawn
from their sale. The revenue derived from all sources, including these
sales of public lands, had for some years been much in excess of the
governmental expenses, and a surplus had accumulated in the treasury.
This surplus worked more damage than any deficit would have done.
There were gold mines in the Southern States, which had been growing
more and more productive; and, as the cost of freighting the bullion was
excessive, a bill was introduced to establish branch mints at New
Orleans and in the gold regions of Georgia and North Carolina. Benton
advocated this strongly, as a constitutional right of the South and
West, and as greatly in the interest of those two sections; and also as
being another move in favor of a hard-money currency as opposed to one
of paper. There was strong opposition to the bill; many of the Whigs
having been carried so far by their heated devotion to the United States
Bank in its quarrel that they had become paper-money men. But the vote
was neither sectional nor partisan in its character. Clay led the
opposition, while Webster supported Benton.
Before this time propositions to distribute among the states the revenue
from the public lands had become common; and they were succeeded by
propositions to distribute the lands themselves, and then by others to
distribute all the surplus revenue. Calhoun finally introduced an
amendment to the Constitution to enable the surplus in the treasury
during the next eight years to be distributed among the various states;
the estimate being that for the time mentioned there would be about nine
millions surplus annually. Benton attacked the proposal very ably,
showing the viciousness of a scheme which would degrade every state
government into the position of a mendicant, and would allow money to be
collected from the citizens with one hand in order to be given back to
them with the other; and also denying that the surplus would reach
anything like the dimensions indicated. He ridiculed the idea of making
a constitutional amendment to cover so short a period of time; and
stated that he would greatly prefer to see the price paid for public
lands by incoming settlers reduced, and what surplus there was expended
on strengthening the defenses of the United States against foreign
powers. This last proposition was eminently proper. We were then, as
always, in our chronic state of utter defenselessness against any
hostile attack, and yet were in imminent danger of getting embroiled
with at least one great power--France. Our danger is always that we
shall spend too little, and not too much, in keeping ourselves prepared
for foreign war. Calhoun's resolution was a total failure, and was never
even brought to a vote.
Benton's proposed method of using the surplus came in with peculiar
propriety on account of the conduct of the Whigs and Nullifiers in
joining to oppose the appropriation of three millions of dollars for
purposes of defense, which was provided for in the general fortification
bill. The House passed this bill by a great majority. It was eminently
proper that we should at once take steps to provide for the very
possible contingency of a war with France, as the relations with that
power were growing more threatening every day; but the opposition of the
anti-Jackson men to the administration and to all its measures had
become so embittered that they were willing to run the risk of seriously
damaging the national credit and honor, if they could thereby score a
point against their political adversaries. Accordingly, under the lead
of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, they defeated the bill in the Senate, in
spite of all that could be done to save it by Benton, who, whatever his
faults, was always patriotic. The appropriation had been very irregular
in form, and under ordinary circumstances there would have been good
justification for inquiring into it before permitting its passage; but
under the circumstances its defeat at the moment was most unfortunate.
For the president had been pressing France, even to the point of
tolerably plain threats, in order to induce or compel her to fulfill the
conditions of the recent treaty by which she had bound herself to pay a
considerable indemnity, long owing by her to the United States for
depredations on our commerce. Now she menaced war, avowedly on the
ground that we were unprepared to resist her; and this vote in the
Senate naturally led the French government to suppose that Jackson was
not sustained by the country in the vigorous position which he had
assumed. In speaking on the message of the president which alluded to
this state of affairs, Benton strongly advocated our standing firmly for
our rights, making a good speech, which showed much historical learning.
He severely reproached the anti-administration senators for their
previous conduct in causing the loss of the defense appropriation bill,
and for preferring to do worse than waste the surplus by distributing it
among the different states instead of applying it according to the
provisions of that wise measure.
This brought on a bitter wrangle, in which Benton certainly had the best
of it. Calhoun was in favor of humiliating non-resistance; he never
advocated warlike measures when the dignity of the nation was at stake,
fond though he was of threatening violence on behalf of slavery or that
form of secession known as nullification. Benton quoted from speeches in
the French Chamber of Deputies to show that the French were encouraged
to take the position that they did on account of the action of the
Senate, and the disposition shown by a majority among the senators
rather to pull down the president in a party struggle than to uphold him
in his efforts to save the national honor in a contest with France. A
curious feature of his speech was that in which he warned the latter
power that, in the event of a conflict, it would have to do with a
branch of the same race which, "from the days of Agincourt and Crecy, of
Blenheim and Ramillies, down to the days of Salamanca and Waterloo, has
always known perfectly well how to deal with the impetuous and fiery
courage of the French." This sudden out-cropping of what, in Bentonian
English, might be called Pan-Anglo-Saxon sentiment was all the more
surprising inasmuch as both Benton himself and the party to which he
belonged were strongly anti-English in their way of looking at our
foreign policy, at least so far as North America was concerned. In the
end France yielded, though trying to maintain her dignity by stating
that she had not done so, and the United States received what was due
them.
Benton strongly opposed the payment by the United States of the private
claims of its citizens for damages arising from the French spoliations
at the end of the last century. He pointed out that the effort to pay
such claims, scores of years after the time of their accruing, rarely
benefits any of the parties originally in interest, and can only do real
service to dishonest speculators. His speech on this matter would not be
bad reading for some of the pension-jobbing congressmen of the present
day, and their supporters; but as concerned these French claims he could
have been easily answered.
In the controversy over the bill introduced by Clay, to distribute the
revenue derived from the public lands among the states for the next five
years, Benton showed to great advantage compared both to the introducer
of the bill himself, and to Webster, his supporter. He had all along
taken the view of the land question that would be natural to a
far-seeing Western statesman desirous of encouraging immigration. He
wished the public lands to be sold in small parcels to actual settlers,
at prices that would allow any poor man who was thrifty to take up a
claim. He had already introduced a bill to sell them at graduated
prices, the minimum being established at a dollar and twenty-five cents
an acre; but if land remained unsold at this rate for three years it was
then to be sold for what it would bring in the market. This bill passed
the Senate, but failed in the House.
In opposing Clay's distribution scheme Benton again brought forward his
plan of using the surplus to provide for the national defenses; and in
his speech showed the strongly national turn of his mind, saying:--
In this great system of national defense the whole Union is equally
interested; for the country, in all that concerns its defenses, is
but a unit, and every section is interested in the defense of every
other section, and every individual citizen is interested in the
defense of the whole population. It is in vain to say that the navy
is on the sea, and the fortifications on the sea-board, and that the
citizens in the interior states, or in the valley of the
Mississippi, have no interest in these remote defenses. Such an idea
is mistaken and delusive; the inhabitant of Missouri or of Indiana
has a direct interest in keeping open the mouths of the rivers,
defending the sea-port towns, and preserving a naval force that will
protect the produce of his labor in crossing the ocean and arriving
safely in foreign markets.
Benton's patriotism always included the whole country in spite of the
strength of his local sympathies.
The bill passed the Senate by a rather close vote, and went to the
House, where it soon become evident that it was doomed to failure. There
was another bill, practically of much the same import, before the
Senate, providing for the distribution of the surplus among the states
in proportion to their electoral votes, but omitting the excellent
proviso concerning the defenses. To suit the views of Calhoun and the
sticklers for strict construction generally, the form of this rival bill
was changed, so that the "distribution" purported to be a "deposit"
merely; the money being nominally only loaned to the states, who pledged
their faith to return it when Congress should call for it. As it was of
course evident that such a loan would never be repaid, the substitution
of "deposit" for "distribution" can only be regarded as a verbal change
to give the doctrinaires a loop-hole for escape from their previous
position; they all took advantage of it, and the bill received
overwhelming support, and was passed by both houses.
Benton, however, stood out against it to the last, and in a very
powerful speech foretold the evils which the plan would surely work. He
scornfully exposed the way in which some of the members were trying, by
a trick of wording, to hide the nature of the bill they were enacting
into a law, and thus to seem to justify themselves for the support they
were giving it. "It is in name a deposit; in form, a loan; in essence
and design, a distribution," said Benton. He ridiculed the attitude of
the hair-splitting strict constructionists, like Calhoun, who had
always pretended most scrupulously to respect the exact wording of the
Constitution, and who had previously refused to vote for distribution on
the ground that it was unconstitutional:--
At the commencement of the present session a proposition was made
[by Calhoun] to amend the Constitution, to permit this identical
distribution to be made. That proposition is now upon our calendar,
for the action of Congress. All at once it is discovered that a
change of name will do as well as a change of the Constitution.
Strike out the word "distribute" and insert the word "deposit," and
incontinently the impediment is removed; the constitutional
difficulty is surmounted, and the distribution can be made.
He showed that to the states themselves the moneys distributed would
either be useless, or else--and much more probably--they would be
fruitful sources of corruption and political debauchery. He was quite
right. It would have been very much better to have destroyed the surplus
than to have distributed it as was actually done. None of the states
gained any real benefit by the transaction; most were seriously harmed.
At the best, the money was squandered in the rage for public
improvements that then possessed the whole people; often it was stolen
outright, or never accounted for. In the one case, it was an incentive
to extravagance; in the other, it was a corruption fund. Yet the
popular feeling was strongly in favor of the measure at the time, and
Benton was almost the only public man of note who dared to resist it. On
this occasion, as in the closing act of the struggle with the
Nullifiers, he showed more backbone than did his great chief; for
Jackson signed the bill, although criticising it most forcibly and
pungently.
The success of this measure naturally encouraged the presentation of
others. Clay attempted to revive his land-money distribution bill, but
was defeated, mainly through Benton's efforts. Three or four other
similar schemes, including one of Calhoun's, also failed. Finally a
clause providing for a further "deposit" of surplus moneys with the
states was tacked to a bill appropriating money for defenses, thereby
loading it down so that it was eventually lost. In the Senate the
"deposit" amendment was finally struck out, in spite of the opposition
of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Throughout the whole discussion of the
distribution of the surplus Benton certainly shines by comparison with
any one of his three great senatorial rivals.
He shows to equally great advantage compared to them in the part taken
by him in reference to Jackson's so-called specie circulars. The craze
for speculation had affected the sales of public lands, which were
increasing at an extraordinary rate, nearly twenty-five million dollars'
worth being sold in 1836. As a rule, the payments were made in the notes
of irresponsible banks, gotten up in many cases by the land speculators
themselves. The sales were running up to five millions a month, with
prospect of a boundless increase, so that all the public land bade fair
to be converted into inconvertible paper. Benton had foreseen the evil
results attending such a change, and, though well aware that he was
opposing powerful interests in his own section of the country, had
already tried to put a stop to it by law. In his speech he had stated
that the unprecedented increase in the sale of public lands was due to
the accommodations received by speculators from worthless banks, whose
notes in small denominations would be taken to some distant part of the
country, whence it would be a long time before they were returned and
presented for payment. The speculators, with paper of which the real
value was much below par, could outbid settlers and cultivators who
could only offer specie, or notes that were its equivalent. He went on
to say that "the effect was equally injurious to every interest
concerned--except the banks and the speculators: it was injurious to the
treasury, which was filling up with paper; to the new states, which
were flooded with paper; and to settlers and cultivators, who were
outbid by speculators loaded with this borrowed paper. A return to
specie payments for lands was the remedy for all these evils."
Benton's reasoning was perfectly sound. The effects on settlers, on the
new states, and on the government itself were precisely such as he
described, and the proposed remedy was the right one. But his bill
failed; for the Whigs, including even Webster, had by this time worked
themselves up until they were fairly crazy at the mere mention of
paper-money banks.
Jackson, however, not daunted by the fate of the bill, got Benton to
draw up a treasury order, and had it issued. This served the same
purpose, as it forbade the land-offices to receive anything but gold and
silver in payment for land. It was not issued until Congress had
adjourned, for fear that body might counteract it by a law; and this was
precisely what was attempted at the next session, when a joint
resolution was passed rescinding the order, and practically endeavoring
to impose the worthless paper currency of the states upon the federal
government. Benton stood almost alone in the fight he made against this
resolution, although the right of the matter was so plainly on his
side. In his speech he foretold clearly the coming of the great
financial crisis that was then near at hand. The resolution, however,
amounted to nothing, as it turned out, for it was passed so late in the
session that the president, by simply withholding his signature from it,
was enabled to prevent it from having effect.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS.
Towards the close of Jackson's administration, slavery for the first
time made its permanent appearance in national politics; although for
some years yet it had little or no influence in shaping the course of
political movements. In 1833 the abolition societies of the North came
into prominence; they had been started a couple of years previously.
Black slavery was such a grossly anachronistic and un-American form of
evil, that it is difficult to discuss calmly the efforts to abolish it,
and to remember that many of these efforts were calculated to do, and
actually did, more harm than good. We are also very apt to forget that
it was perfectly possible and reasonable for enlightened and virtuous
men, who fully recognized it as an evil, yet to prefer its continuance
to having it interfered with in a way that would produce even worse
results. Black slavery in Hayti was characterized by worse abuse than
ever was the case in the United States; yet, looking at the condition
of that republic now, it may well be questioned whether it would not
have been greatly to her benefit in the end to have had slavery continue
a century or so longer,--its ultimate extinction being certain,--rather
than to have had her attain freedom as she actually did, with the
results that have flowed from her action. When an evil of colossal size
exists, it is often the case that there is no possible way of dealing
with it that will not itself be fraught with baleful results. Nor can
the ultra-philanthropic method be always, or even often, accepted as the
best. If there is one question upon which the philanthropists of the
present day, especially the more emotional ones, are agreed, it is that
any law restricting Chinese immigration is an outrage; yet it seems
incredible that any man of even moderate intelligence should not see
that no greater calamity could now befall the United States than to have
the Pacific slope fill up with a Mongolian population.
The cause of the Abolitionists has had such a halo shed round it by the
after course of events, which they themselves in reality did very little
to shape, that it has been usual to speak of them with absurdly
exaggerated praise. Their courage, and for the most part their
sincerity, cannot be too highly spoken of, but their share in
abolishing slavery was far less than has commonly been represented; any
single non-abolitionist politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more
than all the professional Abolitionists combined really to bring about
its destruction. The abolition societies were only in a very restricted
degree the causes of the growing feeling in the North against slavery;
they are rather to be regarded as themselves manifestations or
accompaniments of that feeling. The anti-slavery outburst in the
Northern States over the admission of Missouri took place a dozen years
before there was an abolition society in existence; and the influence of
the professional abolitionists upon the growth of the anti-slavery
sentiment as often as not merely warped it and twisted it out of proper
shape,--as when at one time they showed a strong inclination to adopt
disunion views, although it was self-evident that by no possibility
could slavery be abolished unless the Union was preserved. Their
tendency towards impracticable methods was well shown in the position
they assumed towards him who was not only the greatest American, but
also the greatest man, of the nineteenth century; for during all the
terrible four years that sad, strong, patient Lincoln worked and
suffered for the people, he had to dread the influence of the extreme
Abolitionists only less than that of the Copperheads. Many of their
leaders possessed no good qualities beyond their fearlessness and
truth--qualities that were also possessed by the Southern fire-eaters.
They belonged to that class of men that is always engaged in some
agitation or other; only it happened that in this particular agitation
they were right. Wendell Phillips may be taken as a very good type of
the whole. His services against slavery prior to the war should always
be remembered with gratitude; but after the war, and until the day of
his death, his position on almost every public question was either
mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both.
When the abolitionist movement started it was avowedly designed to be
cosmopolitan in character; the originators looked down upon any merely
national or patriotic feeling. This again deservedly took away from
their influence. In fact, it would have been most unfortunate had the
majority of the Northerners been from the beginning in hearty accord
with the Abolitionists; at the best it would have resulted at that time
in the disruption of the Union and the perpetuation of slavery in the
South.
But after all is said, the fact remains, that on the main issue the
Abolitionists were at least working in the right direction. Sooner or
later, by one means or another, slavery had to go. It is beyond doubt a
misfortune that in certain districts the bulk of the population should
be composed of densely ignorant negroes, often criminal or vicious in
their instincts; but such is the case, and the best, and indeed the only
proper course to pursue, is to treat them with precisely the same
justice that is meted out to whites. The effort to do so in time
immediately past has not resulted so successfully as was hoped and
expected; but nevertheless no other way would have worked as well.
Slavery was chiefly responsible for the streak of coarse and brutal
barbarism which ran through the Southern character, and which marked the
ferocious outcry instantly raised by the whole Southern press against
the Abolitionists. There had been an abortive negro rising in Virginia
almost at the same time that the abolitionist movement first came into
prominence; and this fact added to the rage and terror with which the
South regarded the latter. The clamor against the North was deafening;
and though it soon subsided for the time being, it never afterwards
entirely died away. As has been shown already, there had always been a
strong separatist feeling in the South; but hitherto its manifestations
had been local and sporadic, never affecting all the states at the same
time; for it had never happened that the cause which called forth any
particular manifestation was one bearing on the whole South alike. The
alien and sedition laws were more fiercely resented in Virginia and
Kentucky than in South Carolina; the tariff, which so angered the
latter, pleased Louisiana; and Georgia and Alabama alone were affected
by the presence of great Indian communities within their borders. But
slavery was an interest common to the whole South. When it was felt to
be in any way menaced, all Southerners came together for its protection;
and, from the time of the rise of the Abolitionists onward, the
separatist movement throughout the South began to identify itself with
the maintenance of slavery, and gradually to develop greater and greater
strength. Its growth was furthered and hastened by the actions of the
more ambitious and unscrupulous of the Southern politicians, who saw
that it offered a chance for them to push themselves forward, and who
were perfectly willing to wreak almost irreparable harm to the nation if
by so doing they could advance their own selfish interests. It was in
reference to these politicians that Benton quoted with approval a letter
from ex-President Madison, which ran:--
The danger is not to be concealed, that the sympathy arising from
known causes, and the inculcated impression of a permanent
incompatibility of interests between the South and the North may put
it in the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest
stations, to unite the South, on some critical occasion, in a course
that will end by creating a new theatre of great, though inferior,
interest. In pursuing this course the first and most obvious step is
nullification, the next secession, and the last a farewell
separation.
This was a pretty good forecast of the crisis that was precipitated by
the greedy and reckless ambition of the secessionist leaders in 1860.
The moral difference between Benedict Arnold on the one hand, and Aaron
Burr or Jefferson Davis on the other, is precisely the difference that
obtains between a politician who sells his vote for money and one who
supports a bad measure in consideration of being given some high
political position.
The Abolitionists immediately contrived to bring themselves before the
notice of Congress in two ways; by the presentation of petitions for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and by sending out to
the Southern States a shoal of abolition pamphlets, newspapers, and
rather ridiculous illustrated cuts. What the precise point of the last
proceeding was no one can tell; the circulation of such writings as
theirs in the South could not possibly serve any good purpose. But they
had a right to send what they wished, and the conduct of many of the
Southerners in trying to get a federal law passed to prohibit their
writings from being carried in the mail was as wrong as it was foolish;
while the brutal clamor raised in the South against the whole North as
well as against the Abolitionists, and the conduct of certain Southern
legislatures in practically setting prices on the heads of the leaders
in the objectionable movement, in turn angered the North and gave the
Abolitionists ten-fold greater strength than they would otherwise have
had.
The question first arose upon the presentation of a perfectly proper and
respectful petition sent to the Senate by a society of Pennsylvania
Quakers, and praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia. The District was solely under the control of Congress, and was
the property of the nation at large, so that Congress was the proper and
the only body to which any petition concerning the affairs of the
District could be sent; and if the right of petition meant anything, it
certainly meant that the people, or any portion thereof, should have the
right to petition their representatives in regard to their own affairs.
Yet certain Southern extremists, under the lead of Calhoun, were
anxious to refuse to receive the paper. Benton voted in favor of
receiving it, and was followed in his action by a number of other
Southern senators. He spoke at length on the subject, and quite
moderately, even crediting the petitioners, or many of them, with being
"good people, aiming at benevolent objects, and endeavoring to
ameliorate the condition of one part of the human race, without
inflicting calamities on another part," which was going very far indeed
for a slave-holding senator of that time. He was of course totally
opposed to abolition and the Abolitionists, and showed that the only
immediate effect of the movement had been to make the lot of the slaves
still worse, and for the moment to do away with any chance of
intelligently discussing the question of emancipation. For, like many
other Southerners, he fondly cherished the idea of gradual peaceful
emancipation,--an idea which the course of events made wholly visionary,
but which, under the circumstances, might well have been realized. He
proceeded to give most questionable praise to the North for some acts as
outrageous and disgraceful as were ever perpetrated by its citizens,
stating that--
Their conduct was above all praise, above all thanks, above all
gratitude. They had chased off the foreign emissaries, silenced the
gabbling tongues of female dupes, and dispersed the assemblages,
whether fanatical, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated
to preach against evils that affected others, not themselves; and to
propose remedies to aggravate the disease which they had pretended
to cure. They had acted with a noble spirit. They had exerted a
vigor beyond all law. They had obeyed the enactments, not of the
statute-book, but of the heart.
These fervent encomiums were fully warranted by the acts of various
Northern mobs, that had maltreated abolitionist speakers, broken up
anti-slavery meetings, and committed numerous other deeds of lawless
violence. But however flattered the Northerners of that generation may
have been, in feeling that they thoroughly deserved Benton's eulogy, it
is doubtful if their descendants will take quite the same pride in
looking back to it. An amusing incident of the debate was Calhoun's
attack upon one of the most subservient allies the South ever had in the
Northern States; he caused to be sent up to the desk and read an
abolition paper published in New Hampshire, which contained a bitter
assault upon Franklin Pierce, then a member of Congress. Nominally he
took this course to show that there was much greater strength in the
abolition movement, and therefore much greater danger to the South, than
the Northern senators were willing to admit; in reality he seems to
have acted partly from wanton malice, partly from overbearing contempt
for the truckling allies and apologists of slavery in the North, and
partly from a desire not to see the discussion die out, but rather, in
spite of his continual profession to the contrary, to see it maintained
as a standing subject of irritation. He wished to refuse to receive the
petitions, on the ground that they touched a subject that ought not even
to be discussed; yet he must have known well that he was acting in the
very way most fitted to give rise to discussion,--a fact that was
pointed out to him by Benton, in a caustic speech. He also took the
ground that the question of emancipation affected the states
exclusively, and that Congress had no more jurisdiction over the subject
in the District of Columbia than she had in the State of North Carolina.
This precious contribution to the true interpretation of the
Constitution was so farcically and palpably false that it is incredible
that he should himself have believed what he was saying. He was still
smarting from the nullification controversy; he had seceded from his
party, and was sore with disappointed ambition; and it seems very
improbable that he was honest in his professions of regret at seeing
questions come up which would disturb the Union. On the contrary, much
of the opposition he was continually making to supposititious federal
and Northern encroachments on the rights of the South must have been
merely factious, and it seems likely that, partly from a feeling of
revenge and partly with the hope of gratifying his ambition, he was
anxious to do all he could to work the South up to the highest pitch of
irritation, and keep her there until there was a dissolution of the
Union. Benton evidently thought that this was the case; and in reading
the constant threats of nullification and secession which run through
all Calhoun's speeches, and the innumerable references he makes to the
alleged fact that he had come off victorious in his treasonable struggle
over the tariff in 1833, it is difficult not to accept Benton's view of
the matter. He always spoke of Calhoun with extreme aversion, and there
were probably moments when he was inclined heartily to sympathize with
Jackson's death-bed regret that he had not hung the South Carolina
Nullifier. Doubtless in private life, or as regards any financial
matters, Calhoun's conduct was always blameless; but it may well be that
he has received far more credit for purity of motive in his public
conduct than his actions fairly entitle him to.
Calhoun was also greatly exercised over the circulation of abolition
documents in the South. At his request a committee of five was appointed
to draft a bill on the subject; he was chairman, and three of the other
four members were from the Slave States; yet his report was so extreme
that only one of the latter would sign it with him. He introduced into
it a long argument to the effect that the Constitution was a mere
compact between sovereign states, and inferentially that nullification
and secession were justifiable and constitutional; and then drew a vivid
picture of the unspeakable horrors with which, as he contended, the
action of the Northern Abolitionists menaced the South. The bill
subjected to penalties any postmaster who should knowingly receive and
put into the mail any publication touching slavery, to go into any state
which had forbidden by law the circulation of such a publication. In
discussing this bill he asserted that Congress, in refusing to pass it,
would be coöperating with the Abolitionists; and then he went on to
threaten as usual that in such case nullification or secession would
become necessary. Benton had become pretty well tired of these threats,
his attachment to the Union even exceeding his dislike to seeing slavery
meddled with; and he headed the list of half a dozen Southern senators
who joined with the bulk of the Northerners in defeating the bill,
which was lost by a vote of twenty-five to nineteen. A few of the
Northern "dough-faces" voted with Calhoun. There is a painfully striking
contrast between the courage shown by Benton, a slave-holder with a
slave-holding constituency, in opposing this bill, and the obsequious
subserviency to the extreme Southern feeling shown on the same occasion
by Wright, Van Buren, and Buchanan--fit representatives of the sordid
and odious political organizations of New York and Pennsylvania.
Several other questions came up towards the end of Jackson's
administration which were more or less remotely affected by the feeling
about slavery. Benton succeeded in getting a bill through to extend the
boundaries of the State of Missouri so as to take in territory lying
northwest of her previous limit, the Indian title to which was
extinguished by treaty. This annexed land lay north of the boundary for
slave territory established by the Missouri Compromise; but Benton
experienced no difficulty in getting his bill through. It was not,
however, in the least a move designed in the interests of the slave
power. Missouri's feeling was precisely that which would actuate Oregon
or Washington Territory to-day, if either wished to annex part of
Northern Idaho.
The territories of Arkansas and Michigan had applied for admission into
the Union as states; and as one would be a free and the other a slave
state, it was deemed proper that they should come in together. Benton
himself urged the admission of the free state of Michigan, while the
interests of Arkansas were confided to Buchanan of Pennsylvania. The
slavery question entered but little into the matter; although some
objections were raised on that score, as well as on account of the
irregular manner in which the would-be states had acted in preparing for
admission. The real ground of opposition to the admission of the two new
states was political, as it was known that they could both be relied
upon for Democratic majorities at the approaching presidential election.
Many Whigs, therefore, both from the North and the South, opposed it.
The final removal of the Cherokees from Georgia and Alabama was brought
about in 1836 by means of a treaty with those Indians. Largely through
the instrumentality of Benton, and in spite of the opposition of Clay,
Calhoun, and Webster, this instrument was ratified in the Senate by the
close vote of thirty-one to fifteen. Although new slave territory was
thus acquired, the vote on the treaty was factional and not sectional,
being equally divided between the Northern and the Southern States,
Calhoun and six other Southern senators opposing it, chiefly from
hostility to the administration. The removal of the Indians was probably
a necessity; undoubtedly it worked hardship in individual instances, but
on the whole it did not in the least retard the civilization of the
tribe, which was fully paid for its losses; and moreover, in its new
home, continued to make progress in every way until it became involved
in the great civil war, and received a setback from which it has not yet
recovered. These Cherokees were almost the last Indians left in any
number east of the Mississippi, and their removal solved the Indian
problem so far as the old states were concerned.
Later on Benton went to some trouble to disprove the common statement
that we have robbed the original Indian occupants of their lands. He
showed by actual statistics that up to 1840 we had paid to the Indians
eighty-five millions of dollars for land purchases, which was over five
times as much as the United States gave the great Napoleon for
Louisiana; and about three times as much as we paid France, Spain, and
Mexico together for the purchase of Louisiana, Florida, and California;
while the amount of land received in return would not equal any one of
these purchases, and was but a fractional part of Louisiana or
California. We paid the Cherokees for their territory exactly as much as
we paid the French, at the height of their power, for Louisiana; while
as to the Creek and Choctaw nations, we paid each more for their lands
than we paid for Louisiana and Florida combined. The dealings of the
government with the Indian have often been unwise, and sometimes unjust;
but they are very far indeed from being so black as is commonly
represented, especially when the tremendous difficulties of the case are
taken into account.
Far more important than any of these matters was the acknowledgment of
the independence of Texas; and in this, as well as in the troubles with
Mexico which sprang from it, slavery again played a prominent part,
although not nearly so important at first as has commonly been
represented. Doubtless the slave-holders worked hard to secure
additional territory out of which to form new slave states; but Texas
and California would have been in the end taken by us, had there not
been a single slave in the Mississippi valley. The greed for the
conquest of new lands which characterized the Western people had nothing
whatever to do with the fact that some of them owned slaves. Long before
there had been so much as the faintest foreshadowing of the importance
which the slavery question was to assume, the West had been eagerly
pressing on to territorial conquest, and had been chafing and fretting
at the restraint put upon it, and at the limits set to its strivings by
the treaties established with foreign powers. The first settlers beyond
the Alleghanies, and their immediate successors, who moved down along
the banks of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and thence out
to the Mississippi itself, were not generally slave-holders; but they
were all as anxious to wrest the Mississippi valley from the control of
the French as their descendants were to overrun the Spanish lands lying
along the Rio Grande. In other words, slavery had very little to do with
the Western aggressions on Mexican territory, however it might influence
the views of Southern statesmen as to lending support to the Western
schemes.
The territorial boundaries of all the great powers originally claiming
the soil of the West--France, Spain, and the United States--were very
ill-defined, there being no actual possession of the lands in dispute,
and each power making a great showing on its own map. If the extreme
views of any one were admitted, its adversary, for the time being,
would have had nothing. Thus before the treaty of 1819 with Spain our
nominal boundaries and those of the latter power in the West overlapped
each other; and the extreme Western men persisted in saying that we had
given up some of the territory which belonged to us because we had
consented to adopt a middle line of division, and had not insisted
upon being allowed the full extent of our claims. Benton always took
this view of it, insisting that we had given up our rights by the
adoption of this treaty. Many Southerners improved on this idea, and
spoke of the desirability of "re-annexing" the territory we had
surrendered,--endeavoring by the use of this very inappropriate word
to give a color of right to their proceedings. As a matter of fact it
was inevitable, as well as in the highest degree desirable for the good
of humanity at large, that the American people should ultimately crowd
out the Mexicans from their sparsely populated Northern provinces. But
it was quite as desirable that this should not be done in the interests
of slavery.
American settlers had begun to press into the outlying Spanish province
of Texas before the treaty of 1819 was ratified. Their numbers went on
increasing, and at first the Mexican government, having achieved
independence of Spain, encouraged their incoming. But it soon saw that
their presence boded danger, and forbade further immigration; without
effect, however, as the settlers and adventurers came thronging in as
fast as ever. The Americans had brought their slaves with them, and when
the Mexican government issued a decree liberating all slaves, they
refused to be bound by it; and this decree was among the reasons alleged
for their revolt. It has been represented as the chief if not the sole
cause of the rebellion; but in reality it was not the cause at all; it
was merely one of the occasions. Long before slavery had been abolished
in Mexico, and before it had become an exciting question in the United
States, the infant colony of Texas, when but a few months old, had made
an abortive attempt at insurrection. Any one who has ever been on the
frontier, and who knows anything whatever of the domineering, masterful
spirit and bitter race prejudices of the white frontiersmen, will
acknowledge at once that it was out of the question that the Texans
should long continue under Mexican rule; and it would have been a great
misfortune if they had. It was out of the question to expect them to
submit to the mastery of the weaker race, which they were supplanting.
Whatever might be the pretexts alleged for revolt, the real reasons were
to be found in the deeply-marked difference of race, and in the absolute
unfitness of the Mexicans then to govern themselves, to say nothing of
governing others. During the dozen years that the American colony in
Texas formed part of Mexico, the government of the latter went through
revolution after revolution,--republic, empire, and military
dictatorship following one another in bewildering succession. A state of
things like this in the central government, especially when the latter
belonged to a race alien in blood, language, religion, and habits of
life, would warrant any community in determining to shift for itself.
Such would probably have been the result even on people as sober and
peaceable as the Texan settlers were warlike, reckless, and overbearing.
But the majority of those who fought for Texan independence were not men
who had already settled in that territory, but, on the contrary, were
adventurers from the States, who had come to help their kinsmen and to
win for themselves, by their own prowess, homes on what was then Mexican
soil. It may as well be frankly admitted that the conduct of the
American frontiersmen all through this contest can be justified on no
possible plea of international morality or law. Still, we cannot judge
them by the same standard we should apply to the dealings between highly
civilized powers of approximately the same grade of virtue and
intelligence. Two nations may be contemporaneous so far as mere years
go, and yet, for all that, may be existing among surroundings which
practically are centuries apart. The nineteenth century on the banks of
the Thames, the Seine, and the Rhine, or even of the Hudson and the
Potomac, was one thing; the nineteenth century in the valley of the Rio
Grande was another and quite a different thing.
The conquest of Texas should properly be classed with conquests like
those of the Norse sea-rovers. The virtues and faults alike of the
Texans were those of a barbaric age. They were restless, brave, and
eager for adventure, excitement, and plunder; they were warlike,
resolute, and enterprising; they had all the marks of a young and hardy
race, flushed with the pride of strength and self-confidence. On the
other hand they showed again and again the barbaric vies of
boastfulness, ignorance, and cruelty; and they were utterly careless of
the rights of others, looking upon the possessions of all weaker races
as simply their natural prey. A band of settlers entering Texas was
troubled by no greater scruples of conscience than, a thousand years
before, a ship-load of Knut's followers might have felt at landing in
England; and when they were engaged in warfare with the Mexicans they
could count with certainty upon assistance from their kinsfolk who had
been left behind, and for the same reasons that had enabled Rolf's
Norsemen on the sea-coast of France to rely confidently on Scandinavian
help in their quarrels with their Karling over-lords. The great Texan
hero, Houston, who drank hard and fought hard, who was mighty in battle
and crafty in council, with his reckless, boastful courage and his
thirst for changes and risks of all kinds, his propensity for private
brawling, and his queerly blended impulses for good and evil, might,
with very superficial alterations of character, stand as the type of an
old-world Viking--plus the virtue of a deep and earnestly patriotic
attachment to his whole country. Indeed his career was as picturesque
and romantic as that of Harold Hardraada himself, and, to boot, was much
more important in its results.
Thus the Texan struggle for independence stirred up the greatest
sympathy and enthusiasm in the United States. The administration
remained nominally neutral, but obviously sympathized with the Texans,
permitting arms and men to be sent to their help, without hindrance, and
indeed doing not a little discreditable bullying in the diplomatic
dealing with Mexico, which that unfortunate community had her hands too
full to resent. Still we did not commit a more flagrant breach of
neutrality than, for instance, England was at the same time engaged in
committing in reference to the civil wars in Spain. The victory of San
Jacinto, in which Houston literally annihilated a Mexican force twice
the strength of his own, virtually decided the contest; and the Senate
at once passed a resolution recognizing the independence of Texas.
Calhoun wished that body to go farther, and forthwith admit Texas as a
state into the Union; but Benton and his colleagues were not prepared to
take such a step at so early a date, although intending of course that
in the end she should be admitted. There was little opposition to the
recognition of Texan independence, although a few members of the lower
house, headed by Adams, voted against it. While a cabinet officer, and
afterwards as president, Adams had done all that he could to procure by
purchase or treaty the very land which was afterwards the cause of our
troubles with Mexico.
Much the longest and most elaborate speech in favor of the recognition
of Texan independence was made by Benton, to whom the subject appealed
very strongly. He announced emphatically that he spoke as a Western
senator, voicing the feeling of the West; and he was right. The
opposition to the growth of our country on its southwestern frontier
was almost confined to the Northeast; the West as a whole, free states
as well as slave, heartily favored the movement. The settlers of Texas
had come mainly, it is true, from the slave states; but there were also
many who had been born north of the Ohio. It was a matter of comment
that the guns used at San Jacinto had come from Cincinnati--and so had
some of those who served them.
In Benton's speech he began by pointing out the impropriety of doing
what Calhoun had done in attempting to complicate the question of the
recognition of Texan independence with the admission of Texas as a
state. He then proceeded to claim for us a good deal more credit than we
were entitled to for our efforts to preserve neutrality; drew a very
true picture of the commercial bonds that united us to Mexico, and of
the necessity that they should not be lightly broken; gave a spirited
sketch of the course of the war hitherto, condemning without stint the
horrible butcheries committed by the Mexicans, but touching gingerly on
the savage revenge taken by the Americans in their turn; and ended by a
eulogy of the Texans themselves, and their leaders.
It was the age of "spread-eagle" speeches, and many of Benton's were no
exception to the rule. As a people we were yet in a condition of raw,
crude immaturity; and our very sensitiveness to foreign criticism--a
sensitiveness which we now find it difficult to understand--and the
realization of our own awkwardness made us inclined to brag about and
exaggerate our deeds. Our public speakers and writers acquired the
abominable habit of speaking of everything and everybody in the United
States in the superlative; and therefore, as we claimed the highest rank
for all our fourth-rate men, we put it out of our power to do justice to
the really first-rate ones; and on account of our continual
exaggerations we were not believed by others, and hardly even believed
ourselves, when we presented estimates that were truthful. When every
public speaker was declared to be a Demosthenes or a Cicero, people
failed to realize that we actually had, in Webster, the greatest orator
of the century; and when every general who whipped an Indian tribe was
likened to Napoleon, we left ourselves no words with which properly to
characterize the really heroic deeds done from time to time in the grim
frontier warfare. All Benton's oratory took on this lurid coloring; and
in the present matter his final eulogy of the Texan warriors was greatly
strained, though it would hardly have been in his power to pay too high
a tribute to some of the deeds they had done. It was the heroic age of
the Southwest; though, as with every other heroic age, there were plenty
of failings, vices, and weaknesses visible, if the stand-point of
observation was only close enough.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE.
In his dealings with the Bank and his disposal of the deposits Jackson
ate sour grapes to his heart's content; and now the teeth of his adopted
child Van Buren were to be set on edge.
Van Buren was the first product of what are now called "machine
politics" that was put into the presidential chair. He owed his
elevation solely to his own dexterous political manipulation, and to the
fact that, for his own selfish ends, and knowing perfectly well their
folly, he had yet favored or connived at all the actions into which the
administration had been led either through Jackson's ignorance and
violence, or by the crafty unscrupulousness and limited knowledge of the
Kitchen Cabinet. The people at large would never have thought of him for
president of their own accord; but he had become Jackson's political
legatee, partly because he had personally endeared himself to the
latter, and partly because the politicians felt that he was a man whom
they could trust. The Jacksonian Democracy was already completely ruled
by a machine, of which the most important cogs were the countless
office-holders, whom the spoils system had already converted into a band
of well-drilled political mercenaries. A political machine can only be
brought to a state of high perfection in a party containing very many
ignorant and uneducated voters; and the Jacksonian Democracy held in its
ranks the mass of the ignorance of the country. Besides this such an
organization requires, in order that it may do its most effective work,
to have as its leader and figure-head a man who really has a great hold
on the people at large, and who yet can be managed by such politicians
as possess the requisite adroitness; and Jackson fulfilled both these
conditions. The famous Kitchen Cabinet was so called because its members
held no official positions, and yet were known to have Jackson more
under their influence than was the case with his nominal advisers. They
stood as the first representatives of a type common enough afterwards,
and of which Thurlow Weed was perhaps the best example. They were men
who held no public position, and yet devoted their whole time to
politics, and pulled the strings in obedience to which the apparent
public leaders moved.
Jackson liked Van Buren because the latter had served him both
personally and politically--indeed Jackson was incapable of
distinguishing between a political and a personal service. This liking,
however, would not alone have advanced Van Buren's interests, if the
latter, who was himself a master in the New York state machine, had not
also succeeded in enlisting the good-will and self-interest of the
members of the Kitchen Cabinet and the other intimate advisers of the
president. These first got Jackson himself thoroughly committed to Van
Buren, and then used his name and enormous influence with the masses,
coupled with their own mastery of machine methods, to bring about the
New Yorker's nomination. In both these moves they had been helped, and
Van Buren's chances had been immensely improved, by an incident that had
seemed at the time very unfortunate for the latter. When he was
secretary of state, in carrying on negotiations with Great Britain
relative to the West India trade, he had so far forgotten what was due
to the dignity of the nation as to allude disparagingly, while thus
communicating with a foreign power, to the course pursued by the
previous administration. This extension of party lines into our
foreign diplomacy was discreditable to the whole country. The
anti-administration men bitterly resented it, and emphasized their
resentment by rejecting the nomination of Van Buren when Jackson wished
to make him minister to England. Their action was perfectly proper, and
Van Buren, by right, should have suffered for his undignified and
unpatriotic conduct. But instead of this, and in accordance with the
eternal unfitness of things, what really happened was that his rejection
by the Senate actually helped him; for Jackson promptly made the quarrel
his own, and the masses blindly followed their idol. Benton exultingly
and truthfully said that the president's foes had succeeded in breaking
a minister only to make a president.
Van Buren faithfully served the mammon of unrighteousness, both in his
own state and, later on, at Washington; and he had his reward, for he
was advanced to the highest offices in the gift of the nation. He had no
reason to blame his own conduct for his final downfall; he got just as
far along as he could possibly get; he succeeded because of, and not in
spite of, his moral shortcomings; if he had always governed his actions
by a high moral standard he would probably never have been heard of.
Still, there is some comfort in reflecting that, exactly as he was made
president for no virtue of his own, but simply on account of being
Jackson's heir, so he was turned out of the office, not for personal
failure, but because he was taken as scapegoat, and had the sins of his
political fathers visited on his own head.
The opposition to the election of Van Buren was very much disorganized,
the Whig party not yet having solidified,--indeed it always remained a
somewhat fluid body. The election did not have the slightest sectional
significance, slavery not entering into it, and both Northern and
Southern States voting without the least reference to the geographical
belongings of the candidates. He was the last true Jacksonian
Democrat--Union Democrat--who became president; the South Carolina
separatists and many of their fellows refused to vote for him. The
Democrats who came after him, on the contrary, all had leanings to the
separatist element which so soon obtained absolute control of the party,
to the fierce indignation of men like Benton, Houston, and the other old
Jacksonians, whose sincere devotion to the Union will always entitle
them to the gratitude of every true American. As far as slavery was
concerned, however, the Southerners had hitherto had nothing whatever to
complain of in Van Buren's attitude. He was careful to inform them in
his inaugural address that he would not sanction any attempt to
interfere with the institution, whether by abolishing it in the
District of Columbia or in any other way distasteful to the South. He
also expressed a general hope that he would be able throughout to follow
in the footsteps of Jackson.
He had hardly been elected before the ruinous financial policy to which
he had been party, but of which the effects, it must in justice be said,
were aggravated by many of the actions of the Whigs, began to bear fruit
after its kind. The use made of the surplus was bad enough, but the
withdrawal of the United States deposits from one responsible bank and
their distribution among scores of others, many of which were in the
most rickety condition, was a step better calculated than any other to
bring about a financial crash. It gave a stimulus to extravagance, and
evoked the wildest spirit of speculation that the country had yet seen.
The local banks, to whom the custody of the public moneys had been
intrusted, used them as funds which they and their customers could
hazard for the chance of gain; and the gambling spirit, always existent
in the American mercantile community, was galvanized into furious life.
The public dues were payable in the paper of these deposit banks and of
the countless others that were even more irresponsible. The deposit
banks thus became filled up with a motley mass of more or less worthless
bank paper, which thus formed the "surplus," of which the distribution
had caused Congress so much worry. Their condition was desperate, as
they had been managed with the most reckless disregard for the morrow.
Many of them had hardly kept as much specie in hand as would amount to
one fiftieth of the aggregate of their deposits and other immediate
liabilities.
The people themselves were of course primarily responsible for the then
existing state of affairs; but the government had done all in its power
to make matters worse. Panics were certain to occur more or less often
in so speculative and venturesome a mercantile community, where there
was such heedless trust in the future and such recklessness in the use
of credit. But the government, by its actions, immensely increased the
severity of this particular panic, and became the prime factor in
precipitating its advent. Benton tried to throw the blame mainly on the
bankers and politicians, who, he alleged, had formed an alliance for the
overthrow of the administration; but he made the plea more
half-heartedly than usual, and probably in his secret soul acknowledged
its puerility.
The mass of the people were still happy in the belief that all things
were working well, and that their show of unexampled prosperity and
business activity denoted a permanent and healthy condition. Yet all the
signs pointed to a general collapse at no distant date; an era of
general bank suspensions, of depreciated currency, and of insolvency of
the federal treasury was at hand. No one but Benton, however, seemed
able to read the signs aright, and his foreboding utterances were
laughed at or treated with scorn by his fellow statesmen. He recalled
the memory of the times of 1818-19, when the treasury reports of one
year showed a superfluity of revenue of which there was no want, and
those of the next showed a deficit which required to be relieved by a
loan; and he foretold an infinitely worse result from the inflation of
the paper system, saying:--
Are we not at this moment, and from the same cause, realizing the
first part--the elusive and treacherous part--of this picture? and
must not the other, the sad and real sequel, speedily follow? The
day of revulsion in its effects may be more or less disastrous; but
come it must. The present bloat in the paper system cannot continue;
violent contraction must follow enormous expansion; a scene of
distress and suffering must ensue--to come of itself out of the
present state of things, without being stimulated and helped on by
our unwise legislation.... _I_ am one of those who _promised_ gold,
not paper; _I did not join in putting down the Bank of the United_
_States to put up a wilderness of local banks. I did not join in
putting down the currency of a national bank to put up a national
paper currency of a thousand local banks._ I did not strike Cæsar to
make Antony master of Rome.
These last sentences referred to the passage of the act repealing the
specie circular and making the notes of the banks receivable in payment
of federal dues. The act was most mischievous, and Benton's criticisms
both of it and of the great Whig senator who pressed it were perfectly
just; but they apply with quite as much weight to Jackson's dealings
with the deposits, which Benton had defended.
Benton foresaw the coming of the panic so clearly, and was so
particularly uneasy about the immediate effects upon the governmental
treasury, that he not only spoke publicly on the matter in the Senate,
but even broached the subject in the course of a private conversation
with the president-elect, to get him to try to make what preparations he
could. Van Buren, cool, skillful, and far-sighted politician though he
was, on this occasion showed that he was infected with the common
delusion as to the solidity of the country's business prosperity. He was
very friendly with Benton, and was trying to get him to take a position
in his cabinet, which the latter refused, preferring service in the
Senate; but now he listened with scant courtesy to the warning, and
paid no heed to it. Benton, an intensely proud man, would not speak
again; and everything went on as before. The law distributing the
surplus among the states began to take effect; under its operations
drafts for millions of dollars were made on the banks containing the
deposits, and these banks, already sinking, were utterly unable to honor
them. It would have been impossible, under any circumstances, for the
president to ward off the blow, but he might at least, by a little
forethought and preparation, have saved the government from some galling
humiliations. Had Benton's advice been followed, the moneys called for
by the appropriation acts might have been drawn from the banks, and the
disbursing officers might have been prevented from depositing in them
the sums which they drew from the treasury to provide for their ordinary
expenses; thus the government would have been spared the disgrace of
being obliged to stop the actual daily payments to the public servants;
and the nation would not have seen such a spectacle as its rulers
presented when they had not a dollar with which to pay even a day
laborer, while at the same time a law was standing on the statute-book
providing for the distribution of forty millions of nominal surplus.
No effort was made to stave off even so much of the impending disaster
as was at that late date preventable; and a few days after Van Buren's
inauguration the country was in the throes of the worst and most
widespread financial panic it has ever seen. The distress was fairly
appalling both in its intensity and in its universal distribution. All
the banks stopped payment, and bankruptcy was universal. Bank paper
depreciated with frightful rapidity, especially in the West; specie
increased in value so that all the coin in the country, down to the
lowest denomination, was almost immediately taken out of circulation,
being either hoarded, or gathered for shipment abroad as bullion. For
small change every kind of device was made use of,--tokens, bank-bills
for a few cents each, or brass and iron counters.
Benton and others pretended to believe that the panic was the result of
a deep-laid plot on the part of the rich classes, who controlled the
banks, to excite popular hostility against the Jacksonian Democracy, on
account of the caste antagonism which these same richer classes were
supposed to feel towards the much-vaunted "party of the people;" and as
Benton's mental vision was singularly warped in regard to some subjects,
it is possible that the belief was not altogether a pretense. It is
entirely unnecessary now seriously to discuss the proposition that it
would be possible to drag the commercial classes into so widespread and
profoundly secret a conspiracy, with such a vague end in view, and with
the certainty that they themselves would be, from a business
stand-point, the main sufferers.
The efforts made by Benton and the other Jacksonians to stem the tide of
public feeling and direct it through the well-worn channel of suspicious
fear of, and anger at, the banks, as the true authors of the general
wretchedness, were unavailing; the stream swelled into a torrent and ran
like a mill-race in the opposite way. The popular clamor against the
administration was deafening; and if much of it was based on good
grounds, much of it was also unreasonable. But a very few years before
the Jacksonians had appealed to a senseless public dislike of the
so-called "money power," in order to help themselves to victory; and now
they had the chagrin of seeing an only less irrational outcry raised
against themselves in turn, and used to oust them from their places,
with the same effectiveness which had previously attended their own
frothy and loud-mouthed declamations. The people were more than ready to
listen to any one who could point out, or pretend to point out, the
authors of, and the reasons for, the calamities that had befallen them.
Their condition was pitiable; and this was especially true in the newer
and Western states, where in many places there was absolutely no money
at all in circulation, even the men of means not being able to get
enough coin or its equivalent to make the most ordinary purchases. Trade
was at a complete stand-still; laborers were thrown out of employment
and left almost starving; farmers, merchants, mechanics, craftsmen of
every sort,--all alike were in the direst distress. They naturally, in
seeking relief, turned to the government, it being almost always the
case that the existing administration receives more credit if the
country is prosperous, and greater blame if it is not, than in either
case it is rightfully entitled to. The Democracy was now held to strict
reckoning, not only for some of its numerous real sins but also for a
good many imaginary ones; and the change in the political aspect of many
of the commonwealths was astounding. Jackson's own home State of
Tennessee became strongly Whig; and Van Buren had the mortification of
seeing New York follow suit; two stinging blows to the president and the
ex-president. The distress was a godsend to the Whig politicians. They
fairly raved in their anger against the administration, and denounced
all its acts, good and bad alike, with fluent and incoherent
impartiality. Indeed, in their speeches, and in the petitions which they
circulated and then sent to the president, they used language that was
to the last degree absurd in its violence and exaggeration, and drew
descriptions of the iniquities of the rulers of the country which were
so overwrought as to be merely ridiculous. The speeches about the panic,
and in reference to the proposed laws to alleviate it, were remarkable
for their inflation, even in that age of windy oratory.
Van Buren, Benton, and their associates stood bravely up against the
storm of indignation which swept over the whole country, and lost
neither head nor nerve. They needed both to extricate themselves with
any credit from the position in which they were placed. In deference to
the urgent wish of almost all the people an extra session of Congress
was called especially to deal with the panic. Van Buren's message to
this body was a really statesmanlike document, going exhaustively into
the subject of the national finances. The Democrats still held the
majority in both houses, but there was so large a floating vote, and the
margins were so narrow, as to make the administration feel that its hold
was precarious.
The first thing to be done was to provide for the immediate wants of
the government, which had not enough money to pay even its most
necessary running expenses. To make this temporary provision two plans
were proposed. The fourth instalment of the surplus--ten millions--was
due to the states. As there was really no surplus, but a deficit
instead, it was proposed to repeal the deposit law so far as it affected
their fourth payment; and treasury notes were to be issued to provide
for immediate and pressing needs.
The Whigs frantically attacked the president's proposals, and held him
and his party accountable for all the evils of the panic; and in truth
it was right enough to hold them so accountable for part; but, after
all, the harm was largely due to causes existing throughout the
civilized world, and especially to the speculative folly rife among the
whole American people. But it is always an easy and a comfortable thing
to hold others responsible for what is primarily our own fault.
Benton did not believe, as a matter of principle, in the issue of
treasury notes, but supported the bill for that purpose on account of
the sore straits the administration was in, and its dire need of
assistance from any source. He treated it as a disagreeable but
temporary makeshift, only allowable on the ground of the sternest and
most grinding necessity, He stated that he supported the issue only
because the treasury notes were made out in such a form that they could
not become currency; they were merely loan notes. Their chief
characteristic was that they bore interest; they were transferable only
by indorsement; were payable at a fixed time; were not reissuable, nor
of small denominations; and were to be canceled when paid. Such being
the case he favored their issue, but expressly stated that he only did
so on account of the urgency of the governmental wants; and that he
disapproved of any such issue until the ordinary resources of taxes and
loans had been tried to the utmost and failed. "I distrust, dislike, and
would fain eschew this treasury-note resource; I prefer the direct loans
of 1820-21. I could only bring myself to support this present measure
when it was urged that there was not time to carry a loan through in its
forms; nor even then would I consent to it until every feature of a
currency character had been eradicated from the bill."
A sharp struggle took place over the bill brought in by the friends of
the administration and advocated by Benton, to repeal the obligation to
deposit the fourth instalment of the surplus with the states. This
scheme of a distribution, thinly disguised under the name of deposit to
soothe the feelings of Calhoun and the other strict constructionist
pundits, had worked nothing but mischief from the start; and now that
there was no surplus to distribute, it would seem incredible that there
should have been opposition to its partial repeal. Yet Webster, Clay,
and their followers strenuously opposed even such repeal. It is possible
that their motives were honest, but much more probable that they were
actuated by partisan hostility to the administration, or that they
believed they would increase their own popularity by favoring a plan
that seemingly distributed money as a gift among the states. The bill
was finally amended so as to make it imperative to pay this fourth
instalment in a couple of years; yet it was not then paid, since on the
date appointed the national treasury was bankrupt and the states could
therefore never get the money,--which was the only satisfactory incident
in the whole proceeding. The financial theories of Jackson and Benton
were crude and vicious, it is true, but Webster, Clay, and most other
public men of the day seem to have held ideas on the subject that were
almost, if not quite, as mischievous.
The great financial measures advocated by the administration of Van
Buren, and championed with especial zeal by Benton, were those providing
for an independent treasury and for hard-money payments; that is,
providing that the government should receive nothing but gold and silver
for its revenues, and that this gold and silver should be kept by its
own officers in real, not constructive, treasuries,--in strong
buildings, with special officers to hold the keys. The treasury was to
be at Washington, with branches or sub-treasuries at the principal
points of collection and disbursement.
These measures, if successful, meant that there would be a total
separation of the federal government from all banks; in the political
language of the times they became known as those for the divorce of bank
and state. Hitherto the local banks chosen by Jackson to receive the
deposits had been actively hostile to Biddle's great bank and to its
friends; but self-interest now united them all in violent opposition to
the new scheme. Webster, Clay, and the Whigs generally fought it
bitterly in the Senate; but Calhoun now left his recent allies and
joined with Benton in securing its passage. However, it was for the time
being defeated in the House of Representatives. Most of the opposition
to it was characterized by sheer loud-mouthed demagogy--cries that the
government was too aristocratic to accept the money that was thought
good enough for the people, and similar claptrap. Benton made a very
earnest plea for hard money, and especially denounced the doctrine that
it was the government's duty to interfere in any way in private
business; for, as usual in times of general distress, a good many people
had a vague idea that in some way the government ought to step in and
relieve them from the consequences of their own folly.
Meanwhile the banks had been endeavoring to resume specie payment. Those
of New York had taken steps in that direction but little more than three
months after the suspension. Their weaker Western neighbors, however,
were not yet in condition to follow suit; and the great bank at
Philadelphia also at first refused to come in with them. But the New
York banks persisted in their purpose, resumed payment a year after they
had suspended, and eventually the others had to fall into line; the
reluctance to do so being of course attributed by Benton to "the
factious and wicked machinations" of a "powerful combined political and
moneyed confederation"--a shadowy and spectral creation of vivid
Jacksonian imaginations, in the existence of which he persisted in
believing.
Clay, always active as the friend of the banks, introduced a resolution,
nominally to quicken the approach of resumption, but really to help out
precisely those weak banks which did not deserve help, making the notes
of the resuming banks receivable in payment of all dues to the federal
government. This was offered after the banks of New York had resumed,
and when all the other solvent banks were on the point of resuming also;
so its nominal purpose was already accomplished, as Benton, in a caustic
speech, pointed out. He then tore the resolution to shreds, showing that
it would be of especial benefit to the insolvent and unsound banks, and
would insure a repetition of the worst evils under which the country was
already suffering. He made it clear that the proposition practically was
to force the government to receive paper promises to pay from banks that
were certain to fail, and therefore to force the government in turn to
pay out this worthless paper to its honest creditors. Benton's speech
was an excellent one, and Clay's resolution was defeated.
All through this bank controversy, and the other controversies relating
to it, Benton took the leading part, as mouthpiece of the
administration. He heartily supported the suggestion of the president,
that a stringent bankrupt law against the banks should be passed.
Webster stood out as the principal opponent of this measure, basing his
objections mainly upon constitutional grounds; that is, questioning the
right, rather than the expediency, of the proposed remedy. Benton
answered him at length in a speech showing an immense amount of careful
and painstaking study and a wide range of historical reading and legal
knowledge; he replied point by point, and more than held his own with
his great antagonist. His speech was an exhaustive study of the history
and scope of bankruptcy laws against corporations. Benton's capacity for
work was at all times immense; he delighted in it for its own sake, and
took a most justifiable pride in his wide reading, and especially in his
full acquaintance with history, both ancient and modern. He was very
fond of illustrating his speeches on American affairs with continual
allusions and references to events in foreign countries or in old times,
which he considered to be more or less parallel to those he was
discussing; and indeed he often dragged in these comparisons when there
was no particular need for such a display of his knowledge. He could
fairly be called a learned man, for he had studied very many subjects
deeply and thoroughly; and though he was too self-conscious and pompous
in his utterances not to incur more than the suspicion of pedantry, yet
the fact remains that hardly any other man has ever sat in the Senate
whose range of information was as wide as his.
He made another powerful and carefully wrought speech in favor of what
he called the act to provide for the divorce of bank and state. This
bill, as finally drawn, consisted of two distinct parts, one portion
making provision for the keeping of the public moneys in an independent
treasury, and the other for the hard-money currency, which was all that
the government was to accept in payment of revenue dues. This last
provision, however, was struck out, and the bill thereby lost the
support of Calhoun, who, with Webster, Clay, and the other Whigs, voted
against it; but, mainly through Benton's efforts, it passed the Senate,
although by a very slender majority. Benton, in his speech, dwelt with
especial admiration on the working of the monetary system of France, and
held it up as well worthy to be copied by us. Most of the points he made
were certainly good ones, although he overestimated the beneficent
results that would spring from the adoption of the proposed system,
believing that it would put an end for the future to all panics and
commercial convulsions. In reality it would have removed only one of the
many causes which go to produce the latter, leaving the others free to
work as before; the people at large, not the government, were mainly to
blame, and even with them it was in some respects their misfortune as
much as their fault. Benton's error, however, was natural; like most
other men he was unable fully to realize that hardly any phenomenon,
even the most simple, can be said to spring from one cause only, and not
from a complex and interwoven tissue of causation--and a panic is one of
the least simple and most complex of mercantile phenomena. Benton's
deep-rooted distrust of and hostility to such banking as then existed in
the United States certainly had good grounds for existence.
This distrust was shown again when the bill for the re-charter of the
district banks came up. The specie basis of many of them had been
allowed to become altogether too low; and Benton showed himself more
keenly alive than any other public man to the danger of such a state of
things, and argued strongly that a basis of specie amounting to one
third the total of liabilities was the only safe proportion, and should
be enforced by law. He made a most forcible argument, using numerous and
apt illustrations to show the need of his amendment.
Nor was the tireless Missouri senator satisfied even yet; for he
introduced a resolution asking leave to bring in a bill to tax the
circulation of banks and bankers, and of all corporations, companies, or
individuals, issuing paper currency. One object of the bill was to raise
revenue; but even more he aimed at the regulation of the currency by
the suppression of small notes; and for this end the tax was proposed to
be made heaviest on notes under twenty dollars, and to be annually
augmented until it had accomplished its object and they had been driven
out of circulation. In advocating his measure he used, as was perhaps
unavoidable, some arguments that savored strongly of demagogy; but on
the whole he made a strong appeal, using as precedents for the law he
wished to see enacted both the then existing banking laws in England and
those that had obtained previously in the history of the United States.
Taken altogether, while the Jacksonians, during the period of Van
Buren's presidency, rightly suffered for their previous financial
misdeeds, yet so far as their actions at the time were concerned, they
showed to greater advantage than the Whigs. Nor did they waver in their
purpose even when the tide of popular feeling changed. The great
financial measure of the administration, in which Benton was most
interested, the independent treasury bill, he succeeded in getting
through the Senate twice; the first time it was lost in the House of
Representatives; but on the second occasion, towards the close of Van
Buren's term, firmness and perseverance met their reward. The bill
passed the Senate by an increased majority, scraped through the House
after a bitter contest, and became a law. It developed the system known
as that of the sub-Treasury, which has proved satisfactory to the
present day.
It was during Van Buren's term that Biddle's great bank, so long the
pivot on which turned the fortunes of political parties, finally
tottered to its fall. It was ruined by unwise and reckless management;
and Benton sang a pæan over its downfall, exulting in its fate as a
justification of all that he had said and done. Yet there can be little
doubt that its mismanagement became gross only after all connection with
the national government had ceased; and its end, attributable to causes
not originally existent or likely to exist, can hardly be rightly
considered in passing judgment upon the actions of the Jacksonians in
reference to it.
CHAPTER X.
LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY.
The difficulty and duration of a war with an Indian tribe depend less
upon the numbers of the tribe itself than upon the nature of the ground
it inhabits. The two Indian tribes that have caused the most irritating
and prolonged struggle are the Apaches, who live in the vast, waterless,
mountainous deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and whom we are at this
present moment engaged in subduing, and the Seminoles, who, from among
the impenetrable swamps of Florida, bade the whole United States army
defiance for seven long years; and this although neither Seminoles nor
Apaches ever brought much force into the field, nor inflicted such
defeats upon us as have other Indian tribes, like the Creeks and Sioux.
The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left by Jackson
to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost thirty
millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts of several generals and
numerous troops, who had previously shown themselves equal to any in
the world. The expense, length, and ill-success of the struggle, and a
strong feeling that the Seminoles had been wronged, made it a great
handle for attack on the administration; and the defense was taken up by
Benton, who always accepted completely the Western estimate of any form
of the Indian question.
As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been much wrong done by
each side; but in this instance we were the more to blame, although the
Indians themselves were far from being merely harmless and suffering
innocents. The Seminoles were being deprived of their lands in pursuance
of the general policy of removing all the Indians west of the
Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and influenced,
probably, by fraudulent representations; but they declined to fulfill
their agreement. If they had been treated wisely and firmly they might
probably have been allowed to remain without serious injury to the
surrounding whites. But no such treatment was attempted, and as a result
we were plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever waged.
In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown and untrodden
recesses of the everglades the Indians found a secure asylum; and they
issued from their haunts to burn and ravage almost all the settled part
of Florida, fairly depopulating five counties; while the soldiers could
rarely overtake them, and when they did, were placed at such a
disadvantage that the Indians repulsed or cut off detachment after
detachment, generally making a merciless and complete slaughter of each.
The great Seminole leader, Osceola, was captured only by deliberate
treachery and breach of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out
rather than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable
capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature of their
territory.
Our troops generally fought with great bravery; but there is very little
else in the struggle, either as regards its origin or the manner in
which it was carried on, to which an American can look back with any
satisfaction. We usually group all our Indian wars together, in speaking
of their justice or injustice; and thereby show flagrant ignorance. The
Sioux and Cheyennes, for instance, have more often been sinning than
sinned against; for example, the so-called Chivington or Sandy Creek
Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the
whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the
frontier. On the other hand, the most cruel wrongs have been perpetrated
by whites upon perfectly peaceable and unoffending tribes like those of
California, or the Nez Perçés. Yet the emasculated professional
humanitarians mourn as much over one set of Indians as over the
other--and indeed, on all points connected with Indian management, are
as untrustworthy and unsafe leaders as would be an equal number of the
most brutal white borderers. But the Seminole War was one of those where
the Eastern, or humanitarian view was more nearly correct than was any
other; although even here the case was far from being entirely
one-sided.
Benton made an elaborate but not always candid defense of the
administration, both as to the origin and as to the prosecution of the
war. He attempted to show that the Seminoles had agreed to go West, had
broken their treaty without any reason, had perpetrated causeless
massacres, had followed up their successes with merciless butcheries,
which last statement was true; and that Osceola had forfeited all claim
or right to have a flag of truce protect him. There was a certain
justice in his position even on these questions, and when he came to
defend the conduct of our soldiers he had the right entirely with him.
They were led by the same commander, and belonged to the same regiments,
that in Canada had shown themselves equal to the famous British
infantry; they had to contend with the country, rather than with their
enemies, as the sweltering heat, the stagnant lagoons, the quaking
morasses, and the dense forests of Florida made it almost impossible for
an army to carry on a successful campaign. Moreover, the Seminoles were
well armed; and many tribes of North American Indians show themselves,
when with good weapons and on their own ground, more dangerous
antagonists than would be an equal number of the best European troops.
Indeed, under such conditions they can only be contended with on equal
terms if the opposing white force is made up of frontiersmen who are as
good woodsmen and riflemen as themselves, and who, moreover, have been
drilled by some man like Jackson, who knows how to handle them to the
best advantage, both in disciplining their lawless courage and in
forcing them to act under orders and together,--the lack of which
discipline and power of supporting each other has often rendered an
assemblage of formidable individual border-fighters a mere disorderly
mob when brought into the field.
The war dragged on tediously. The troops--regulars, volunteers, and
militia alike--fought the Indians again and again; there were pitched
battles, surprises, ambuscades, and assaults on places of unknown
strength; hundreds of soldiers were slain in battle or by treachery,
hundreds of settlers were slaughtered in their homes, or as they fled
from them; the bloody Indian forays reached even to the outskirts of
Tallahatchee and to within sight of the walls of quaint old St.
Augustine. Little by little, however, the power of the Seminoles was
broken; their war bands were scattered and driven from the field,
hundreds of their number were slain in fight, and five times as many
surrendered and were taken west of the Mississippi. The white troops
marched through Florida down to and into the everglades, and crossed it
backwards and forwards, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean;
they hunted their foes from morass to morass and from hummock to
hummock; they mapped out the whole hitherto unknown country; they
established numerous posts; opened hundreds of miles of wagon road; and
built very many causeways and bridges. But they could not end the war.
The bands of Indians broke up and entirely ceased to offer resistance to
bodies of armed whites; but as individuals they continued as dangerous
to the settlers as ever, prowling out at night like wild beasts from
their fastnesses in the dark and fetid swamps, murdering, burning, and
ravaging in all the outlying settlements, and destroying every lonely
farm-house or homestead.
There was but one way in which the war could be finally ended, and that
was to have the territory occupied by armed settlers; in other words, to
have it won and held exactly as almost all the land of the United States
has been in the beginning. Benton introduced a bill to bring this about,
giving to every such settler a good inheritance in the soil as a reward
for his enterprise, toil, and danger; and the war was finished only by
the adoption of this method. He supported his bill in a very effective
speech, showing that the proposed way was the only one by which a
permanent conquest could be effected; he himself had, when young, seen
it put into execution in Tennessee and Kentucky, where the armed
settlers, with their homesteads in the soil, formed the vanguard of the
white advance: where the rifle-bearing backwoodsmen went forth to fight
and to cultivate, living in assemblages of block-houses at first and
separating into individual settlements afterwards. The work had to be
done with axe, spade, and rifle alike. Benton rightly insisted that
there was no longer need of a large army in Florida:--
Why, the men who are there now can find nobody to fight! It is two
years since a fight has been had. Ten men who will avoid surprises
and ambuscades can now go from one end of Florida to the other. As
warriors, these Indians no longer appear; it is only as assassins,
as robbers, as incendiaries, that they lurk about. What is now
wanted is not an army to fight, but settlers and cultivators to take
possession and keep possession; and the armed cultivator is the man
for that. The block-house is the first house to be built in an
Indian country; the stockade the first fence to be put up. Within
that block-house, or within a hollow square of block-houses, two
miles long on each side, two hundred yards apart, and inclosing a
good field, safe habitations are to be found for families.
Cultivation and defense then go hand in hand. The heart of the
Indian sickens when he hears the crowing of the cock, the barking of
the dog, the sound of the axe, and the crack of the rifle. These are
the true evidences of the dominion of the white man; these are the
proofs that the owner has come and means to stay, and then the
Indians feel it to be time for them to go. While soldiers alone are
in the country they feel their presence to be temporary; that they
are mere sojourners in the land, and sooner or later must go away.
It is the settler alone, the armed settler, whose presence announces
the dominion, the permanent dominion, of the white man.
Benton's ideas were right, and were acted upon. It is impossible even to
subdue an Indian tribe by the army alone; the latter can only pave the
way for and partially protect the armed settlers who are to hold the
soil.
Benton continued to take a great interest in the disposal of the public
lands, as was natural in a senator from the West, where the bulk of
these lands lay. He was always a great advocate of a homestead law.
During Van Buren's administration, he succeeded in getting two or three
bills on the subject through the Senate. One of these allowed lands that
had been five years in the market to be reduced in price to a dollar an
acre, and if they stood five years longer to go down to seventy-five
cents. The bill was greatly to the interest of the Western farmer in the
newer, although not necessarily the newest, parts of the country. The
man who went on the newest land was in turn provided for by the
preëmption bill, which secured the privilege of first purchase to the
actual settler on any lands to which the Indian title had been
extinguished; to be paid for at the minimum price of public lands at the
time. An effort was made to confine the benefits of this proposed law to
citizens of the United States, excluding unnaturalized foreigners from
its action. Benton, as representing the new states, who desired
immigrants of every kind, whether foreign or native, successfully
opposed this. He pointed out that there was no question of conferring
political rights, which involved the management of the government, and
which should not be conferred until the foreigner had become a
naturalized citizen; it was merely a question of allowing the alien a
right to maintain himself and to support his family. He especially
opposed the amendment on account of the class of foreigners it would
affect. Aliens who wished to take up public lands were not paupers or
criminals, and did not belong to the shiftless and squalid foreign mob
that drifted into the great cities of the sea-board and the interior;
but on the contrary were among our most enterprising, hardy, and thrifty
citizens, who had struck out for themselves into the remote parts of the
new states and had there begun to bring the wilderness into subjection.
Such men deserved to be encouraged in every way, and should receive from
the preëmption laws the same benefits that would enure to native-born
citizens. The third bill introduced, which passed the Senate but failed
in the House, was one to permit the public lands sold to be immediately
taxed by the states in which they lay. Originally these lands had been
sold upon credit, the total amount not being paid, nor the title passed,
until five years after the sale; and during this time it would have been
unjust to tax them, as failure in paying the installments to the
government would have let the lands revert to the latter; but when the
cash system was substituted for credit Benton believed that there was no
longer reason why the new lands should not bear their share of the
state burdens.
During Van Buren's administration the standard of public honesty, which
had been lowering with frightful rapidity ever since, with Adams, the
men of high moral tone had gone out of power, went almost as far down as
it could go; although things certainly did not change for the better
under Tyler and Polk. Not only was there the most impudent and
unblushing rascality among the public servants of the nation, but the
people themselves, through their representatives in the state
legislatures, went to work to swindle their honest creditors. Many
states, in the rage for public improvements, had contracted debts which
they now refused to pay; in many cases they were unable, or at least so
professed themselves, even to pay the annual interest. The debts of the
states were largely held abroad; they had been converted into stock and
held in shares, which had gone into a great number of hands, and now, of
course, became greatly depreciated in value. It is a painful and
shameful page in our history; and every man connected with the
repudiation of the states' debts ought, if remembered at all, to be
remembered only with scorn and contempt. However, time has gradually
shrouded from our sight both the names of the leaders in the
repudiation and the names of the victims whom they swindled. Two alone,
one in each class, will always be kept in mind. Before Jefferson Davis
took his place among the arch-traitors in our annals he had already long
been known as one of the chief repudiators; it was not unnatural that to
dishonesty towards the creditors of the public he should afterwards add
treachery towards the public itself. The one most prominent victim was
described by Benton himself: "The Reverend Sydney Smith, of witty
memory, but amiable withal, was accustomed to lose all his amiability,
but no part of his wit, when he spoke of his Pennsylvania bonds--which,
in fact, was very often."
Many of the bond-holders, however, did not manifest their grief by
caustic wit, but looked to more substantial relief; and did their best
to bring about the assumption of the state debts, in some form, whether
open or disguised, by the federal government. The British capitalists
united with many American capitalists to work for some such action; and
there were plenty of people in the states willing enough to see it done.
Of course it would have been criminal folly on the part of the federal
government to take any such step; and Benton determined to meet and
check the effort at the very beginning. The London Bankers' Circular had
contained a proposition recommending that the Congress of the United
States should guarantee, or otherwise provide for, the ultimate payment
of the debts which the states had contracted for state or local
purposes. Benton introduced a series of resolutions declaring utter
opposition to the proposal, both on the ground of expediency and on that
of constitutionality. The resolutions were perfectly proper in their
purpose, but were disfigured by that cheap species of demagogy which
consists in denouncing purely supposititious foreign interference,
complicated by an allusion to Benton's especial pet terror, the
inevitable money power. As he put it: "Foreign interference and
influence are far more dangerous in the invidious intervention of the
moneyed power than in the forcible invasions of fleets and armies."
An attempt was made directly to reverse the effect of the resolutions by
amending them so as to provide that the public land revenue should be
divided among the states, to help them in the payment of these debts.
Both Webster and Clay supported this amendment, but it was fortunately
beaten by a large vote.
Benton's speech, like the resolutions in support of which he spoke, was
right in its purpose, but contained much matter that was beside the
mark. He had worked himself into such a condition over the
supposititious intrigues of the "money power"--an attack on which is
almost always sure to be popular--that he was very certain to discover
evidence of their existence on all, even the most unlikely, occasions;
and it is difficult to think that he was not himself aware how overdrawn
was his prophecy of the probable interference of foreign powers in our
affairs, if the resolutions he had presented were not adopted.
The tariff had once more begun to give trouble, and the South was again
complaining of its workings, aware that she was falling always more to
the rear in the race for prosperity, and blindly attributing her failure
to everything but the true reason,--the existence of slavery. Even
Benton himself showed a curiously pathetic eagerness to prove both to
others and himself that the cause of the increasing disparity in growth,
and incompatibility in interest between the two sections, must be due to
some temporary and artificial cause, and endeavored to hide from all
eyes, even from his own, the fact that the existence of slavery was
working, slowly but surely, and with steadily increasing rapidity, to
rend in sunder the Union which he loved and served with such heartfelt
devotion. He tried to prove that the main cause of discontent was to be
found in the tariff and other laws, which favored the North at the
expense of the South. At the same time he entered an eloquent plea for a
warmer feeling between the sections, and pointed out the absolute
hopelessness of attempting to better the situation in any way by
disunion. The great Missourian could look back with fond pride and
regret to the condition of the South as it was during and immediately
after the colonial days, when it was the seat of wealth, power, high
living, and free-handed hospitality, and was filled to overflowing with
the abounding life of its eager and turbulent sons. The change for the
worse in its relative condition was real and great. He reproved his
fellow-Southerners for attributing this change to a single cause, the
unequal working of the federal government, "which gave all the benefits
of the Union to the South and all its burdens to the North;" he claimed
that it was due to many other causes as well. Yet those whom he rebuked
were as near right as he was; for the change _was_ due in the main to
only one cause--but that cause was slavery. It is almost pitiful to see
the strong, stern, self-reliant statesman refusing, with nervous and
passionate willfulness, to look the danger in the face, and, instead
thereof, trying to persuade himself into the belief that "the remedy
lies in the right working of the Constitution; in the cessation of
unequal legislation; in the reduction of the inordinate expenses of the
government; in its return to the simple, limited, and economical machine
it was intended to be; and in the revival of fraternal feelings and
respect for each other's rights and just complaints." Like many another
man he thought, or tried to think, that by sweeping the dust from the
door-sill he could somehow stave off the whirling rush of the
sand-storm.
The compromise tariff of 1833 had abolished all specific duties,
establishing _ad valorem_ ones in their place; and the result had been
great uncertainty and injustice in its working. Now whether a protective
tariff is right or wrong may be open to question; but if it exists at
all, it should work as simply and with as much certainty and exactitude
as possible; if its interpretation varies, or if it is continually
meddled with by Congress, great damage ensues. It is in reality of far
less importance that a law should be ideally right than that it should
be certain and steady in its workings. Even supposing that a high tariff
is all wrong, it would work infinitely better for the country than would
a series of changes between high and low duties. Benton strongly
advocated a return to specific duties, as being simpler, surer, and
better on every account. In commenting on the _ad valorem_ duties, he
showed how they had been adopted blindly and without discussion by the
frightened, silent multitude of congressmen and senators, who jumped at
Clay's compromise bill in 1833 as giving them a loop-hole of escape from
a situation where they would have had to face evil consequences, no
matter what stand they took. Benton's comment on men of this stamp
deserves chronicling, from its justice and biting severity: "It (the
compromise act) was passed by the aid of the votes of those--always a
considerable _per centum_ in every public body--to whom the name of
compromise is an irresistible attraction; amiable men, who would do no
wrong of themselves, and without whom the designing could also do but
little wrong."
He not only devoted himself to the general subject of the tariff in
relation to specific duties, but he also took up several prominent
abuses. One subject, on which he was never tired of harping with
monotonous persistency, was the duty on salt. The idea of making salt
free had become one which he was almost as fond of bringing into every
discussion, no matter how inappropiate to the matter in hand, as he was
of making irrelevant and abusive allusions to his much-enduring and
long-suffering hobby, the iniquitous "money power." Benton had all the
tenacity of a snapping turtle, and was as firm a believer in the policy
of "continuous hammering" as Grant himself. His tenacity and his
pertinacious refusal to abandon any contest, no matter what the odds
were against him, and no matter how often he had to return to the
charge, formed two of his most invaluable qualities, and when called
into play on behalf of such an object as the preservation of the Union,
cannot receive too high praise at our hands; for they did the country
services so great and lasting that they should never be forgotten. It
would have been fortunate indeed if Clay and Webster had possessed the
fearless, aggressive courage and iron will of the rugged Missourian, who
was so often pitted against them in the political arena. But when
Benton's attention was firmly fixed on the accomplishment of something
comparatively trivial, his dogged, stubborn, and unyielding earnestness
drew him into making efforts of which the disproportion to the result
aimed at was rather droll. Nothing could thwart him or turn him aside;
and though slow to take up an idea, yet, if it was once in his head, to
drive it out was a simply hopeless task. These qualities were of such
invaluable use to the state on so many great occasions that we can well
afford to treat them merely with a good-humored laugh, when we see them
exercised on behalf of such a piece of foolishness as, for example, the
expunging resolution.
The repeal of the salt tax, then, was a particular favorite in Benton's
rather numerous stable of hobbies, because it gave free scope for the
use of sentimental as well as of economic arguments. He had the right of
the question, and was not in the least daunted by his numerous rebuffs
and the unvarying ill success of his efforts. Speaking in 1840, he
stated that he had been urging the repeal for twelve years; and for the
purpose of furnishing data with which to compare such a period of time,
and without the least suspicion that there was anything out of the way
in the comparison, he added, in a solemn parenthesis, that this was two
years longer than the siege of Troy lasted. In the same speech was a
still choicer morsel of eloquence about salt: "The Supreme Ruler of the
Universe has done everything to supply his creatures with it; man, the
fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little brief authority,
has done much to deprive them of it." After which he went on to show a
really extensive acquaintance with the history of salt taxes and
monopolies, and with the uses and physical structure and surroundings of
the mineral itself--all which might have taught his hearers that a man
may combine much erudition with a total lack of the sense of humor. The
salt tax is dragged, neck and heels, into many of Benton's speeches
much as Cooper manages, on all possible occasions, throughout his
novels, to show the unlikeness of the Bay of Naples to the Bay of New
York--not the only point of resemblance, by the way, between the
characters of the Missouri statesman and the New York novelist. Whether
the subject under discussion was the taxation of bank-notes, or the
abolition of slavery, made very little difference to Benton as to
introducing an allusion to the salt monopoly. One of his happy arguments
in favor of the repeal, which was addressed to an exceedingly practical
and commonplace Congress, was that the early Christian disciples had
been known as the salt of the earth--a biblical metaphor, which Benton
kindly assured his hearers was very expressive; and added that a salt
tax was morally as well as politically wrong, and in fact "was a species
of impiety."
But in attacking some of the abuses which had developed out of the
tariff of 1833 Benton made a very shrewd and practical speech, without
permitting himself to indulge in any such intellectual pranks as
accompanied his salt orations. He especially aimed at reducing the
drawbacks on sugar, molasses, and one or two other articles. In
accordance with our whole clumsy, hap-hazard system of dealing with the
tariff we had originally put very high duties on the articles in
question, and then had allowed correspondingly heavy drawbacks; and yet,
when in 1833, by Clay's famous compromise tariff bill, the duties were
reduced to a fractional part of what they had previously been, no
parallel reduction was made in the drawbacks, although Benton (supported
by Webster) made a vain effort even then, while the compromise bill was
on its passage, to have the injustice remedied. As a consequence, the
exporters of sugar and rum, instead of drawing back the exact amounts
paid into the treasury, drew back several times as much; and the
ridiculous result was that certain exporters were paid a naked bounty
out of the treasury, and received pay for doing and suffering nothing.
In 1839 the drawback paid on the exportation of refined sugar exceeded
the amount of revenue derived from imported sugar by over twenty
thousand dollars. Benton showed this clearly, by unimpeachable
statistics, and went on to prove that in that year the whole amount of
the revenue from brown and clayed sugar, plus the above-mentioned twenty
thousand dollars, was paid over to twenty-nine sugar refiners; and that
these men thus "drew back" from the treasury what they had never put
into it. Abuses equally gross existed in relation to various other
articles. But in spite of the clear justice of his case Benton was able
at first to make but little impression on Congress; and it was some time
before matters were straightened out, as all the protective interests
felt obliged to make common cause with each other, no matter what evils
might be perpetrated by their taking such action.
Towards the close of Van Buren's administration, when he was being
assailed on every side, as well for what Jackson as for what he himself
had done or left undone, one of the chief accusations brought against
him was that he had squandered the public money, and that, since Adams
had been ousted from the presidency, the expenses of running the
government had increased out of all proportion to what was proper. There
was good ground for their complaint, as the waste and peculation in some
of the departments had been very great; but Benton, in an elaborate
defense of both Jackson and Van Buren, succeeded in showing that at
least certain of the accusations were unfounded--although he had to
stretch a point or two in trying to make good his claim that the
administration was really economical, being reduced to the rather lame
expedient of ruling out about two thirds of the expenditures on the
ground that they were "extraordinary."
The charge of extravagance was one of the least of the charges urged
against the Jacksonian Democrats during the last days of their rule.
While they had been in power the character of the public service had
deteriorated frightfully, both as regarded its efficiency and infinitely
more as regarded its honesty; and under Van Buren the amount of money
stolen by the public officers, compared to the amount handed in to the
treasury, was greater than ever before or since. For this the
Jacksonians were solely and absolutely responsible; they drove out the
merit system of making appointments, and introduced the "spoils" system
in its place; and under the latter they chose a peculiarly dishonest and
incapable set of officers, whose sole recommendation was to be found in
the knavish trickery and low cunning that enabled them to manage the
ignorant voters who formed the backbone of Jackson's party. The
statesmen of the Democracy in after days forgot the good deeds of the
Jacksonians; they lost their attachment to the Union, and abandoned
their championship of hard money; but they never ceased to cling to the
worst legacy their predecessors had left them. The engrafting of the
"spoils" system on our government was, of all the results of Jacksonian
rule, the one which was most permanent in its effects.
All these causes--the corruption of the public officials, the
extravagance of the government, and the widespread distress, which might
be regarded as the aftermath of its ruinous financial policy--combined
with others that were as little to the discredit of the Jacksonians as
they were to the credit of the Whigs, brought about the overthrow of the
former. There was much poetic justice in the fact that the presidential
election which decided their fate was conducted on as purely irrational
principles, and was as merely one of sound and fury, as had been the
case in the election twelve years previously, when they came into power.
The Whigs, having exhausted their language in denouncing their opponents
for nominating a man like Andrew Jackson, proceeded to look about in
their own party to find one who should come as near him as possible in
all the attributes that had given him so deep a hold on the people; and
they succeeded perfectly when they pitched on the old Indian fighter,
Harrison. "Tippecanoe" proved quite as effective a war-cry in bringing
about the downfall of the Jacksonians as "Old Hickory" had shown itself
to be a dozen years previously in raising them up. General Harrison had
already shown himself to be a good soldier, and a loyal and honest
public servant, although by no means standing in the first rank either
as regards war-craft or state-craft; but the mass of his supporters
apparently considered the facts, or supposed facts, that he lived in a
log-cabin the walls of which were decorated with coon-skins, and that he
drank hard cider from a gourd, as being more important than his capacity
as a statesman or his past services to the nation.
The Whigs having thus taken a shaft from the Jacksonians' quiver, it was
rather amusing to see the latter, in their turn, hold up their hands in
horror at the iniquity of what would now be called a "hurrah" canvass;
blandly ignoring the fact that it was simply a copy of their own
successful proceedings. Says Benton, with amusing gravity: "The class of
inducements addressed to the passions and imaginations of the people was
such as history blushes to record," a remark that provokes criticism,
when it is remembered that Benton had been himself a prominent actor on
the Jacksonian side in the campaigns of '28 and '32, when it was
exclusively to "the passions and imaginations of the people" that all
arguments were addressed.
The Democrats did not long remain out of power; and they kept the
control of the governmental policy in their hands pretty steadily until
the time of the civil war; nevertheless it is true that with the defeat
of Van Buren the Jacksonian Democracy, as such, lost forever its grip on
the direction of national affairs. When, under Polk, the Democrats came
back, they came under the lead of the very men whom the original
Jacksonians had opposed and kept down. With all their faults, Jackson
and Benton were strong Union men, and under them their party was a Union
party. Calhoun and South Carolina, and the disunionists in the other
Southern States were their bitter foes. But the disunion and extreme
slavery elements within the Democratic ranks were increasing rapidly all
the time; and they had obtained complete and final control when the
party reappeared as victors after their defeat in 1840. Until Van
Buren's overthrow the nationalists had held the upper hand in shaping
Democratic policy; but after that event the leadership of the party
passed completely into the hands of the separatists.
The defeat of Van Buren marks an era in more ways than one. During his
administration slavery played a less prominent part in politics than did
many other matters; this was never so again. His administration was the
last in which this question, or the question springing from it, did not
overtop and dwarf in importance all others. Again, the presidential
election of 1840 was the last into which slavery did not enter as a most
important, and in fact as the vital and determining factor. In the
contest between Van Buren and Harrison it did not have the least
influence upon the result. Moreover, Van Buren was the last Democratic
president who ruled over a Union of states; all his successors, up to
the time of Lincoln's election, merely held sway over a Union of
sections. The spirit of separation had identified itself with the
maintenance of slavery, and the South was rapidly uniting into a compact
array of states with interests that were hostile to the North on the
point most vitally affecting the welfare of the whole country.
No great question involving the existence of slavery was brought before
the attention of Congress during Van Buren's term of office; nor was the
matter mooted except in the eternal wrangles over receiving the
abolitionist petitions. Benton kept silent in these discussions,
although voting to receive the petitions. As he grew older he
continually grew wiser, and better able to do good legislative work on
all subjects; but he was not yet able to realize that the slavery
question was one which could not be kept down, and which was bound to
force itself into the sphere of national politics. He still insisted
that it was only dragged before Congress by a few fanatics at the
North, and that in the South it was made the instrument by which
designing and unscrupulous men wished to break up the federal republic.
His devotion to the Union, ever with him the chief and overmastering
thought, made him regard with horror and aversion any man, at the North
or at the South, who brought forward a question so fraught with peril to
its continuance. He kept trying to delude himself into the belief that
the discussion and the danger would alike gradually die away, and the
former state of peaceful harmony between the sections, and freedom from
disunion excitement, would return.
But the time for such an ending already lay in the past; thereafter the
outlook was to grow steadily darker year by year. Slavery lowered like a
thunder-storm on the horizon; and though sometimes it might seem for a
moment to break away, yet in reality it had reached that stage when,
until the final all-engulfing outburst took place, the clouds were bound
for evermore to return after the rain.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY.
The Whigs in 1840 completely overthrew the Democrats, and for the first
time elected a president and held the majority in both houses of
Congress. Yet, as it turned out, all that they really accomplished was
to elect a president without a party, for Harrison died when he had
hardly more than sat in the presidential chair, and was succeeded by the
vice-president, Tyler of Virginia.
Harrison was a true Whig; he was, when nominated, a prominent member of
the Whig party, although of course not to be compared with its great
leader, Henry Clay, or with its most mighty intellectual chief and
champion in the Northeast, Daniel Webster, whose mutual rivalry had done
much to make his nomination possible. Tyler, however, could hardly be
called a Whig at all; on the contrary, he belonged rightfully in the
ranks of those extreme Democrats who were farthest removed from the Whig
standard, and who were as much displeased with the Union sentiments of
the Jacksonians as they were with the personal tyranny of Jackson
himself. He was properly nothing but a dissatisfied Democrat, who hated
the Jacksonians, and had been nominated only because the Whig
politicians wished to strengthen their ticket and insure its election by
bidding for the votes of the discontented in the ranks of their foes.
Now a chance stroke of death put the presidency in the hands of one who
represented this, the smallest, element in the coalition that overthrew
Van Buren.
The principles of the Whigs were hazily outlined at the best, and the
party was never a very creditable organization; indeed, throughout its
career, it could be most easily defined as the opposition to the
Democracy. It was a free constructionist party, believing in giving a
liberal interpretation to the doctrines of the Constitution; otherwise,
its principles were purely economic, as it favored a high tariff,
internal improvements, a bank, and kindred schemes; and its leaders,
however they might quarrel among themselves, agreed thoroughly in their
devout hatred of Jackson and all his works.
It was on this last point only that Tyler came in. His principles had
originally been ultra-Democratic. He had been an extreme strict
constructionist, had belonged to that wing of the Democracy which
inclined more and more towards separation, and had thus, on several
grounds, found himself opposed to Jackson, Benton, and their followers.
Indeed, he went into opposition to his original party for reasons akin
to those that influenced Calhoun; and Seward's famous remark about the
"ill-starred coalition between Whigs and Nullifiers" might with certain
changes have been applied to the presidential election of 1840 quite as
well as to the senatorial struggles to which it had reference.
Tyler, however, had little else in common with Calhoun, and least of all
his intellect. He has been called a mediocre man; but this is
unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness.
Owing to the nicely-divided condition of parties, and to the sheer
accident which threw him into a position of such prominence that it
allowed him to hold the balance of power between them, he was enabled to
turn politics completely topsy-turvy; but his chief mental and moral
attributes were peevishness, fretful obstinacy, inconsistency,
incapacity to make up his own mind, and the ability to quibble
indefinitely over the most microscopic and hair-splitting plays upon
words, together with an inordinate vanity that so blinded him to all
outside feeling as to make him really think that he stood a chance to be
renominated for the presidency.
The Whigs, especially in the Senate, under Henry Clay, prepared at once
to push through various measures that should undo the work of the
Jacksonians. Clay was boastfully and domineeringly sure of the necessity
of applying to actual governmental work the economic theories that
formed the chief stock in trade of his party. But it was precisely on
these economic theories that Tyler split off from the Whigs. The result
was that very shortly the real leader of the dominant party, backed by
almost all his fellow party men in both houses of Congress, was at
daggers drawn with the nominal Whig president, who in his turn was
supported only by a "corporal's guard" of followers in the House of
Representatives, by all the office-holders whom fear of removal reduced
to obsequious subserviency, and by a knot of obscure politicians who
used him for their own ends, and worked alternately on his vanity and on
his fears. The Democrats, led by Benton, played out their own game, and
were the only parties to the three-cornered fight who came out of it
with profit. The details now offer rather dry reading, as the economic
theories of all the contestants were more or less crude, the results of
the conflict indecisive, and the effects upon our history ephemeral.
Clay began by a heated revival of one of Jackson's worst ideas, namely,
that when the people elect a president they thereby mark with the seal
of their approval any and every measure with which that favored mortal
or his advisers may consider themselves identified, and indorse all his
and their previous actions. He at once declared that the people had
shown, by the size of Harrison's majority, that they demanded the repeal
of the independent treasury act, and the passage of various other laws
in accordance with some of his own favorite hobbies, two out of three
voters, as a matter of fact, probably never having given a second
thought to any of them. Accordingly he proceeded to introduce a whole
batch of bills, which he alleged that it was only yielding due respect
to the spirit of Democracy to pass forthwith.
Benton, however, even outdid Clay in paying homage to what he was
pleased to call the "democratic idea." At this time he speaks of the
last session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress as being "barren of measures,
and necessarily so, as being the last of an administration superseded by
the popular voice and soon to expire; and therefore restricted by a
sense of propriety, during the brief remainder of its existence, to the
details of business and the routine of service." According to this
theory an interregnum of some sixteen weeks would intervene between the
terms of service of every two presidents. He also speaks of Tyler as
having, when the legislature of Virginia disapproved of a course he
wished to follow, resigned his seat "in obedience to the democratic
principle," which, according to his views, thus completely nullified the
section of the Constitution providing for a six years' term of service
in the Senate. In truth Benton, like most other Jacksonian and
Jeffersonian leaders, became both foolish and illogical when he began to
talk of the bundle of vague abstractions, which he knew collectively as
the "democratic principle." Although not so bad as many of his school he
had yet gradually worked himself up to a belief that it was almost
impious to pay anything but servile heed to the "will of the majority;"
and was quite unconscious that to surrender one's own manhood and
judgment to a belief in the divine right of kings was only one degree
more ignoble, and was not a shadow more logical, and but little more
defensible, than it was blindly to deify a majority--not of the whole
people, but merely of a small fraction consisting of those who happened
to be of a certain sex, to have reached a certain age, to belong to a
certain race, and to fulfill some other conditions. In fact there is no
natural or divine law in the matter at all; how large a portion of the
population should be trusted with the control of the government is a
question of expediency merely. In any purely native American community
manhood suffrage works infinitely better than would any other system of
government, and throughout our country at large, in spite of the large
number of ignorant foreign-born or colored voters, it is probably
preferable as it stands to any modification of it; but there is no more
"natural right" why a white man over twenty-one should vote than there
is why a negro woman under eighteen should not. "Civil rights" and
"personal freedom" are not terms that necessarily imply the right to
vote. People make mistakes when governing themselves, exactly as they
make mistakes when governing others; all that can be said is, that in
the former case their self-interest is on the side of good government,
whereas in the latter it always may be, and often must be, the reverse;
so that, when any people reaches a certain stage of mental development
and of capacity to take care of its own concerns, it is far better that
it should itself take the reins. The distinctive features of the
American system are its guarantees of personal independence and
individual freedom; that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each
man his right to live as he chooses and to regulate his own private
affairs as he wishes, without being interfered with or tyrannized over
by an individual, or by an oligarchic minority, or by a democratic
majority; while, when the interests of the whole community are at stake,
it is found best in the long run to let them be managed in accordance
with the wishes of the majority of those presumably concerned.
Clay's flourish of trumpets foreboded trouble and disturbance to the
Jacksonian camp. At last he stood at the head of a party controlling
both branches of the legislative body, and devoted to his behests; and,
if a little doubtful about the president, he still believed he could
frighten him into doing as he was bid. He had long been in the minority,
and had seen his foes ride roughshod over all he most believed in; and
now he prepared to pay them back in their own coin and to leave a heavy
balance on his side of the reckoning. Nor could any Jacksonian have
shown himself more domineering and influenced by a more insolent
disregard for the rights of others than Clay did in his hour of triumph.
On the other side, Benton braced himself with dogged determination for
the struggle; for he was one of those men who fight a losing or a
winning battle with equal resolution.
Tyler's first message to Congress read like a pretty good Whig document.
It did not display any especial signs of his former strict construction
theories, and gave little hope to the Democrats. The leader of the
latter, indeed, Benton, commented upon both it and its author with
rather grandiloquent severity, on account of its latitudinarian bias,
and of its recommendation of a bank of some sort. However, the ink with
which the message was written could hardly have been dry before the
president's mind began to change. He himself probably had very little
idea what he intended to do, and so contrived to give the Whigs the
impression that he would act in accordance with their wishes; but the
leaven had already begun working in his mind, and, not having much to
work on, soon changed it so completely that he was willing practically
to eat his own words.
Shortly after Tyler had sent in his message outlining what legislation
he deemed proper, he being by virtue of his position the nominal and
titular leader of the Whigs, Clay, who was their real and very positive
chief, and who was, moreover, determined to assert his chieftainship, in
his turn laid down a programme for his party to follow, introducing a
series of resolutions declaring it necessary to pass a bill to repeal
the sub-treasury act, another to establish a bank, another to distribute
the proceeds of the public land sales, and one or two more, to which was
afterwards added a bankruptcy measure.
The sub-treasury bill was first taken up and promptly passed and signed.
Benton, of course, led the hopeless fight against it, making a long and
elaborate speech, insisting that the finances were in excellent shape,
as they were, showing the advantages of hard money, and denouncing the
bill on account of the extreme suddenness with which it took effect, and
because it made no provision for any substitute. He also alluded
caustically to the curious and anomalous bank bill, which was then being
patched up by the Whig leaders so as to get it into some such shape that
the president would sign it.
The other three important measures, that is, the bank, distribution, and
bankruptcy bills, were all passed nearly together; as Benton pointed
out, they were got through only by a species of bargain and sale, the
chief supporters of each agreeing to support the other, so as to get
their own pet measure through. "All must go together or fall together.
This is the decree out of doors. When the sun dips below the horizon a
private congress is held; the fate of the measures is decided; a bundle
is tied together; and while one goes ahead as a bait, another is held
back as a rod."
The bankruptcy bill went through and was signed. It was urged by all the
large debtor class, whose ranks had been filled to overflowing by the
years of wild speculation and general bank suspension and insolvency.
These debtors were quite numerous enough to constitute an important
factor in politics, but Benton disregarded them nevertheless, and fought
the bill as stoutly as he did its companions, alleging that it was a
gross outrage on honesty and on the rights of property, and was not a
bankrupt law at all, but practically an insolvent law for the abolition
of debts at the will of the debtor. He pointed out grave and numerous
defects of detail, and gave an exhaustive abstract of bankruptcy
legislation in general; the speech gave evidence of the tireless
industry and wide range of learning for which Benton was preëminently
distinguished.
The third bill to be taken up and passed was that providing for the
distribution of the public lands revenue, and thus indirectly for
assuming the debts of the states. Tyler, in his message, had
characteristically stated that, though it would be wholly
unconstitutional for the federal government to assume the debts of the
states, yet it would be highly proper for it to give the latter money
wherewith to pay them. Clay had always been an enthusiastic advocate of
a distribution bill; and accordingly one was now passed and signed with
the least possible delay. It was an absolutely indefensible measure. The
treasury was empty, and loan and tax bills were pending at the very
moment, in order to supply money for the actual running of the
government. As Benton pointed out, Congress had been called together (a
special session having been summoned by Harrison before his death) to
raise revenue, and the first thing done was to squander it. The
distribution took place when the treasury reports showed a deficit of
sixteen millions of dollars. The bill was pushed through mainly by the
states which had repudiated their debts in whole or in part; and as
these debts were largely owed abroad, many prominent foreign
banking-houses and individuals took an active part in lobbying for the
bill. Benton was emphatically right in his opposition to the measure,
but he was very wrong in some of the grounds he took. Thus he inveighed
vigorously against the foreign capitalists who had come to help push the
bill through Congress; but he did not have anything to say against the
scoundrelly dishonesty displayed by certain states towards their
creditors, which had forced these capitalists into the endeavor to
protect themselves. He also incidentally condemned the original
assumption by the national government of the debts of the states, at the
time of the formation of the Constitution, which was an absolute
necessity; and his constitutional views throughout seem rather strained.
But he was right beyond cavil on the main point. It was criminal folly
to give the states the impression that they would be allowed to create
debts over which Congress could have no control, yet which Congress in
the end would give them the money to pay. To reward a state for
repudiating a debt by giving her the wherewithal to pay it was a direct
and unequivocal encouragement of dishonesty. In every respect the bill
was wholly improper; and Benton's attitude towards it and towards
similar schemes was incomparably better than the position of Clay,
Webster, and the other Whigs.
Both the bankrupt bill and the distribution bill were repealed very
shortly; the latter before it had time to take effect. This was an
emphatic indorsement by the public of Benton's views, and a humiliating
rebuke to the Whig authors of the measures. Indeed, the whole
legislation of the session was almost absolutely fruitless in its
results.
One feature of the struggle was an attempt by Clay, promptly and
successfully resisted by Benton and Calhoun, to institute the hour limit
for speeches in the Senate. There was a good deal of excuse for Clay's
motion. The House could cut off debate by the previous question, which
the Senate could not, and nevertheless had found it necessary to
establish the hour limit in addition. Of course it is highly undesirable
that there should not be proper freedom of debate in Congress; but it is
quite as hurtful to allow a minority to exercise their privileges
improperly. The previous question is often abused and used tyrannically;
but on the whole it is a most invaluable aid to legislation. Benton,
however, waxed hot and wrathful over the proposed change in the Senate
rules. He, with Calhoun and their followers, had been consuming an
immense amount of time in speech-making against the Whig measures, and
in offering amendments; not with any hopes of bettering the bills, but
for outside effect, and to annoy their opponents. He gives an amusingly
naive account of their course of action, and the reasons for it,
substantially as follows:--
The Democratic senators acted upon a system, and with a thorough
organization and a perfect understanding. Being a minority, and able
to do nothing, they became assailants, and attacked incessantly;
not by formal orations against the whole body of a measure, but by
sudden, short, and pungent speeches directed against the vulnerable
parts, and pointed by proffered amendments. Amendments were
continually offered--a great number being prepared every night and
placed in suitable hands for use the next day--always commendably
calculated to expose an evil and to present a remedy. Near forty
propositions of amendment were offered to the first fiscal agent
bill alone--the yeas and nays were taken upon them seven and thirty
times. All the other prominent bills--distribution, bankrupt, fiscal
corporation, new tariff act, called revenue--were served the same
way; every proposed amendment made an issue. There were but
twenty-two of us, but every one was a speaker and effective. The
"Globe" newspaper was a powerful ally, setting out all we did to the
best advantage in strong editorials, and carrying out our speeches,
fresh and hot, to the people; and we felt victorious in the midst of
unbroken defeats.
It is no wonder that such rank filibustering, coupled with the
exasperating self-complacency of its originators, should have excited in
Whig bosoms every desperate emotion short of homicidal mania.
Clay, to cut off such useless talk, gave notice that he would move to
have the time for debate for each individual restricted; remarking very
truthfully that he did not believe the people at large would complain of
the abridgment of speeches in Congress. But the Democratic senators,
all rather fond of windy orations, fairly foamed at the mouth at what
they affected to deem such an infringement of their liberties; and
actually took the inexcusable resolution of bidding defiance to the rule
if it was adopted, and refusing to obey it, no matter what degree of
violence their conduct might bring about,--a resolution that was wholly
unpardonable. Benton was selected to voice their views upon the matter,
which he did in a long, and not very wise speech; while Calhoun was
quite as emphatic in his threats of what would happen if attempt should
be made to enforce the proposed rule. Clay was always much bolder in
opening a campaign than in carrying it through; and when it came to
putting his words into deeds, he wholly lacked the nerve which would
have enabled him to contend with two such men as the senators from
Missouri and South Carolina. Had he possessed a temperament like that of
either of his opponents, he would have gone on and have simply forced
acquiescence; for any legislative body can certainly enforce what rules
it may choose to make as to the conduct of its own members in addressing
it; but his courage failed him, and he withdrew from the contest,
leaving the victory with Democrats.
When the question of the re-charter of the district banks came up, it of
course gave Benton another chance to attack his favorite foe. He offered
a very proper amendment, which was voted down, to prohibit the banks
from issuing a currency of small notes, fixing upon twenty dollars as
being the lowest limit. This he supported in a strong speech, wherein he
once again argued at length in favor of a gold and silver currency, and
showed the evil effects of small bank-notes, which might not be, and
often were not, redeemable at par. He very properly pointed out that to
have a sound currency, especially in all the smaller denominations, was
really of greater interest to the working men than to any one else.
The great measure of the session, however, and the one that was intended
to be the final crown and glory of the Whig triumph, was the bill to
establish a new national bank. Among the political theories to which
Clay clung most closely, only the belief in a bank ranked higher in his
estimation than his devotion to a protective tariff. The establishment
of a national bank seemed to him to be the chief object of a Whig
success; and that it would work immediate and immense benefit to the
country was with him an article of faith. With both houses of Congress
under his control, he at once prepared to push his pet measure through,
impatiently brushing aside all resistance.
But at the very outset difficulty was feared from the action of the
president. Tyler could not at first make up his mind what to do; or
rather, he made it up in half a dozen different ways every day. His
peevishness, vacillation, ambitious vanity, and sheer puzzle-headedness
made him incline first to the side of his new friends and present
supporters, the Whigs, and then to that of his old democratic allies,
whose views on the bank, as on most other questions, he had so often
openly expressed himself as sharing. But though his mind oscillated like
a pendulum, yet each time it swung farther and farther over to the side
of the Democracy, and it began to look as if he would certainly in the
end come to a halt in the camp of the enemies of the Whigs; his approach
to this destination was merely hastened by Clay's overbearing violence
and injudicious taunts.
However, at first Tyler did not dare to come out openly against any and
all bank laws, but tried to search round for some compromise measure;
and as he could not invent a compromise in fact, he came to the
conclusion that one in words would do just as well. He said that his
conscience would not permit him to sign a bill to establish a bank that
was called a bank, but that he was willing to sign a bill establishing
such an institution provided that it was called something else, though
it should possess all the properties of a bank. Such a proposal opened a
wide field for the endless quibbling in which his soul delighted.
The secretary of the treasury, in response to a call from the Senate,
furnished a plan for a bank, having modeled it studiously so as to
overcome the president's scruples; and a select committee of the Senate
at once shaped a bill in accordance with the plans. Said Benton: "Even
the title was made ridiculous to please the president, though not so
much so as he wished. He objected to the name of bank either in the
title or the body of the charter, and proposed to style it 'Fiscal
Institute;' and afterwards the 'Fiscal Agent,' and finally the 'Fiscal
Corporation.'" Such preposterous folly on the president's part was more
than the hot-blooded and overbearing Kentuckian could stand; and, in
spite of his absorbing desire for the success of his measure, and of the
vital necessity for conciliating Tyler, Clay could not bring himself to
adopt such a ludicrous title, even though he had seen that the charter
provided that the institution, whatever it might be styled in form,
should in fact have all the properties of a bank. After a while,
however, a compromise title was agreed on, but only a shadow less
imbecile than the original one proposed by the president; and it was
agreed to call the measure the "Fiscal Bank" bill.
The president vetoed it, but stated that he was ready to approve any
similar bill that should be free from the objections he named. Clay
could not resist reading Tyler a lecture on his misconduct, during the
course of a speech in the Senate; but the Whigs generally smothered
their resentment, and set about preparing something which the president
would sign, and this time concluded that they would humor him to the top
of his bent, even by choosing a title as ridiculous as he wished; so
they styled their bill one to establish a "Fiscal Corporation." Benton
held the title up to well-deserved derision, and showed that, though
there had been quite an elaborate effort to disguise the form of the
measure, and to make it purport to establish a bank that should have the
properties of a treasury, yet that in reality it was simply a revival of
the old scheme under another name. The Whigs swallowed the sneers of
their opponents as best they could, and passed their bill.
The president again interposed his veto. An intrigue was going on among
a few unimportant congressmen and obscure office-holders to form a new
party with Tyler at its head; and the latter willingly entered into the
plan, his mind, which was not robust at the best, being completely
dazzled by his sudden elevation and his wild hopes that he could
continue to keep the place which he had reached. He had given the Whigs
reason to expect that he would sign the bill, and had taken none of his
cabinet into his confidence. So, when his veto came in, it raised a
perfect whirlwind of wrath and bitter disappointment. His cabinet all
resigned, except Webster, who stayed to finish the treaty with Great
Britain; and the Whigs formally read him out of the party. The Democrats
looked on with huge enjoyment, and patted Tyler on the back, for they
could see that he was bringing their foes to ruin; but nevertheless they
despised him heartily, and abandoned him wholly when he had served their
turn. Left without any support among the regulars of either side, and
his own proposed third party turning out a still-born abortion, he
simply played out his puny part until his term ended, and then dropped
noiselessly out of sight. It is only the position he filled, and not in
the least his ability, for either good or bad, in filling it, that
prevents his name from sinking into merciful oblivion.
There was yet one more brief spasm over the bank, however; the president
sending in a plan for a "Fiscal Agent," to be called a Board of
Exchequer. Congress contemptuously refused to pay any attention to the
proposition, Benton showing its utter unworthiness in an excellent
speech, one of the best that he made on the whole financial question.
Largely owing to the cross purposes at which the president and his party
were working, the condition of the treasury became very bad. It sought
to provide for its immediate wants by the issue of treasury notes,
differing from former notes of the kind in that they were made
reissuable. Benton at once, and very properly, attacked this proceeding.
He had a check drawn for a few days' compensation as senator, demanded
payment in hard money, and when he was given treasury notes instead,
made a most emphatic protest in the Senate, which was entirely
effectual, the practically compulsory tender of the paper money being
forthwith stopped.
It was at this time, also, that bills to subsidize steamship lines were
first passed, and that the enlarging and abuse of the pension system
began, which in our own day threatens to become a really crying evil.
Benton opposed both sets of measures; and in regard to the pension
matter showed that he would not let himself, by any specious plea of
exceptional suffering or need for charity, be led into vicious special
legislation, sure in the end to bring about the breaking down of some of
the most important principles of government.
CHAPTER XII.
BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND.
Two important controversies with foreign powers became prominent during
Tyler's presidency; but he had little to do with the settlement of
either, beyond successively placing in his cabinet the two great
statesmen who dealt with them. Webster, while secretary of state,
brought certain of the negotiations with England to a close; and later
on, Calhoun, while holding the same office, took up Webster's work and
also grappled with--indeed partly caused--the troubles on the Mexican
border, and turned them to the advantage of the South and slavery.
Our boundaries were still very ill-defined, except where they were
formed by the Gulf and the Ocean, the Great Lakes, and the river St.
John. Even in the Northeast, where huge stretches of unbroken
forest-land separated the inhabited portions of Canada from those of New
England, it was not yet decided how much of this wilderness belonged to
us and how much to the Canadians; and in the vast, unsettled regions of
the far West our claims came into direct conflict with those of Mexico
and of Great Britain. The ownership of these little known and badly
mapped regions could with great difficulty be decided on grounds of
absolute and abstract right; the title of each contestant to the land
was more or less plausible, and at the same time more or less defective.
The matter was sure to be decided in favor of the strongest; and, say
what we will about the justice and right of the various claims, the
honest truth is, that the comparative might of the different nations,
and not the comparative righteousness of their several causes, was the
determining factor in the settlement. Mexico lost her northern provinces
by no law of right, but simply by the law of the longest sword--the same
law that gave India to England. In both instances the result was greatly
to the benefit of the conquered peoples and of every one else; though
there is this wide difference between the two cases: that whereas the
English rule in India, while it may last for decades or even for
centuries, must eventually come to an end and leave little trace of its
existence; on the other hand our conquests from Mexico determined for
all time the blood, speech, and law of the men who should fill the lands
we won.
The questions between Great Britain and ourselves were compromised by
each side accepting about half what it claimed, only because neither was
willing to push the other to extremities. Englishmen like Palmerston
might hector and ruffle, and Americans like Benton might swagger and
bully; but when it came to be a question of actual fighting each people
recognized the power of the other, and preferred to follow the more
cautious and peaceful, not to say timid, lead of such statesmen as
Webster and Lord Melbourne. Had we been no stronger than the Sikhs,
Oregon and Washington would at present be British possessions; and if
Great Britain had been as weak as Mexico, she would not now hold a foot
of territory on the Pacific coast. Either nation might perhaps have
refused to commit a gross and entirely unprovoked and uncalled-for act
of aggression; but each, under altered conditions, would have readily
found excuses for showing much less regard for the claims of the other
than actually was shown. It would be untrue to say that nations have not
at times proved themselves capable of acting with great
disinterestedness and generosity towards other peoples; but such conduct
is not very common at the best, and although it often may be desirable,
it certainly is not always so. If the matter in dispute is of great
importance, and if there is a doubt as to which side is right, then the
strongest party to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself the
benefit of that doubt; and international morality will have to take
tremendous strides in advance before this ceases to be the case.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the treaties and wars by
means of which we finally gave definite bounds to our territory beyond
the Mississippi. Contemporary political writers and students, of the
lesser sort, are always painfully deficient in the sense of historic
perspective; and to such the struggles for the possession of the unknown
and dimly outlined western wastes seemed of small consequence compared
to similar European contests for territorial aggrandizement. Yet, in
reality, when we look at the far-reaching nature of the results, the
questions as to what kingdom should receive the fealty of Holstein or
Lorraine, of Savoy or the Dobrudscha, seem of absolutely trivial
importance compared to the infinitely more momentous ones as to the
future race settlement and national ownership of the then lonely and
unpeopled lands of Texas, California, and Oregon.
Benton, greatly to the credit of his foresight, and largely in
consequence of his strong nationalist feeling, thoroughly appreciated
the importance of our geographical extensions. He was the great
champion of the West and of western development, and a furious partisan
of every movement in the direction of the enlargement of our western
boundaries. Many of his expressions, when talking of the greatness of
our country and of the magnitude of the interests which were being
decided, not only were grandiloquent in manner, but also seem
exaggerated and overwrought even as regards matter. But when we think of
the interests for which he contended, as they were to become, and not as
they at the moment were, the appearance of exaggeration is lost, and the
intense feeling of his speeches no longer seems out of place or
disproportionate to the importance of the subject with which he dealt.
Without clearly formulating his opinions, even to himself, and while
sometimes prone to attribute to his country at the moment a greatness
she was not to possess for two or three generations to come, he,
nevertheless, had engrained in his very marrow and fibre the knowledge
that inevitably, and beyond all doubt, the coming years were to be hers.
He knew that, while other nations held the past, and shared with his own
the present, yet that to her belonged the still formless and unshaped
future. More clearly than almost any other statesman he beheld the
grandeur of the nation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the advancing
years.
He was keenly alive to the need of our having free chance to spread
towards the northwest; he very early grasped the idea that in that
direction we ought to have room for continental development. In his
earliest years, to be sure, when the Mississippi seemed a river of the
remote western border, when nobody, not even the hardiest trapper, had
penetrated the boundless and treeless plains that stretch to the
foot-hills of the Rockies, and when the boldest thinkers had not dared
to suppose that we could ever hold together as a people, when once
scattered over so wide a territory, he had stated in a public speech
that he considered the mountains to be our natural frontier line to the
west, and the barrier beyond which we ought not to pass, and had
expressed his trust that on the Pacific coast there would grow up a
kindred and friendly Republic. But very soon, as the seemingly
impossible became the actual, he himself changed, and ever afterwards
held that we should have, wherever possible, no boundaries but the two
Oceans.
Benton's violent and aggressive patriotism undoubtedly led him to assume
positions towards foreign powers that were very repugnant to the quiet,
peaceable, and order-loving portion of the community, especially when
he gave vent to the spirit of jealous antagonism which he felt towards
Great Britain, the power that held sway over the wilderness bordering us
on the north. Yet the arrogant attitude he assumed was more than
justified by the destiny of the great Republic; and it would have been
well for all America if we had insisted even more than we did upon the
extension northward of our boundaries. Not only the Columbia but also
the Red River of the North--and the Saskatchewan and Frazer as
well--should lie wholly within our limits, less for our own sake than
for the sake of the men who dwell along their banks. Columbia,
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba would, as states of the American Union, hold
positions incomparably more important, grander, and more dignified than
they can ever hope to reach either as independent communities or as
provincial dependencies of a foreign power that regards them with a
kindly tolerance somewhat akin to contemptuous indifference. Of course
no one would wish to see these, or any other settled communities, now
added to our domain by force; we want no unwilling citizens to enter our
Union; the time to have taken the lands was before settlers came into
them. European nations war for the possession of thickly settled
districts which, if conquered, will for centuries remain alien and
hostile to the conquerors; we, wiser in our generation, have seized the
waste solitudes that lay near us, the limitless forests and never ending
plains, and the valleys of the great, lonely rivers; and have thrust our
own sons into them to take possession; and a score of years after each
conquest we see the conquered land teeming with a people that is one
with ourselves.
Benton felt that all the unoccupied land to the northwest was by right
our heritage, and he was willing to do battle for it if necessary. He
was a perfect type of western American statesmanship in his way of
looking at our foreign relations; he was always unwilling to compromise,
being of that happy temperament which is absolutely certain that its
claims are just and righteous in their entirety, and that it would be
wrong to accept anything less than all that is demanded; he was willing
to bully if our rights, as he deemed them, were not granted us; and he
was perfectly ready to fight if the bullying was unsuccessful. True, he
did not consistently carry through all his theories to their logical
consequences; but it may well be questioned whether, after all, his
original attitude towards Great Britain was not wiser, looking to its
probable remote results, than that which was finally taken by the
national government, whose policy was on this point largely shaped by
the feeling among the richer and more educated classes of the Northeast.
These classes have always been more cautious and timid than any others
in the Union, especially in their way of looking at possible foreign
wars, and have never felt much of the spirit which made the West stretch
out impatiently for new lands. Fortunately they have rarely been able to
control our territorial growth.
No foot of soil to which we had any title in the Northwest should have
been given up; we were the people who could use it best, and we ought to
have taken it all. The prize was well worth winning, and would warrant a
good deal of risk being run. We had even then grown to be so strong that
we were almost sure eventually to win in any American contest for
continental supremacy. We were near by, our foes far away--for the
contest over the Columbia would have been settled in Canada. We should
have had hard fighting to be sure, but sooner or later the result would
have been in our favor. There were no better soldiers in the world than
the men of Balaclava and Inkerman, but the victors of Buena Vista and
Chapultepec were as good. Scott and Taylor were not great generals, but
they were, at least, the equals of Lord Raglan; and we did not have in
our service any such examples of abnormal military inaptitude as Lords
Lucan and Cardigan and their kind.
It was of course to be expected that men like Benton would bitterly
oppose the famous Ashburton treaty, which was Webster's crowning work
while secretary of state, and the only conspicuous success of Tyler's
administration. The Ashburton treaty was essentially a compromise
between the extreme claims of the two contestants, as was natural where
the claims were based on very unsubstantial grounds and the contestants
were of somewhat the same strength. It was most beneficial in its
immediate effects; and that it was a perfectly dignified and proper
treaty for America to make is best proved by the virulent hostility with
which Palmerston and his followers assailed it as a "surrender" on the
part of England, while Englishmen of the same stamp are to this day
never tired of lamenting the fact that they have allowed our western
boundaries to be pushed so far to the north. But there appears to be
much excuse for Benton's attitude, when we look at the treaty as one in
a chain of incidents, and with regard to its future results. Our
territorial quarrels with Great Britain were not like those between most
other powers. It was for the interest of the whole western hemisphere
that no European nation should have extensive possessions between the
Atlantic and the Pacific; and by right we should have given ourselves
the benefit of every doubt in all territorial questions, and have shown
ourselves ready to make prompt appeal to the sword whenever it became
necessary as a last resort.
Still, as regards the Ashburton treaty itself, it must be admitted that
much of Benton's opposition was merely factious and partisan, on account
of its being a Whig measure; and his speeches on the subject contain a
number of arguments that are not very creditable to him.
Some of his remarks referred to a matter which had been already a cause
of great excitement during Van Buren's administration, and on which he
had spoken more than once. This was the destruction of the steamer
Caroline by the British during the abortive Canadian insurrection of
1837. Much sympathy had been felt for the rebels by the Americans along
the border, and some of them had employed the Caroline in conveying
stores to the insurgents; and in revenge a party of British troops
surprised and destroyed her one night while she was lying in an American
port. This was a gross and flagrant violation of our rights, and was
promptly resented by Van Buren, who had done what he could to maintain
order along the border, and had been successful in his efforts. Benton
had supported the president in preventing a breach of neutrality on our
part, and was fiercely indignant when the breach was committed by the
other side. Reparation was demanded forthwith. The British government at
first made evasive replies. After a while a very foolish personage named
McLeod, a British subject, who boasted that he had taken part in the
affair, ventured into New York and was promptly imprisoned by the state
authorities. His boastings, fortunately for him, proved to be totally
unfounded, and he was acquitted by the jury before whom he was taken,
after a detention of several months in prison. But meanwhile the British
government demanded his release--adopting a very different tone with
Tyler and the Whigs from that which they had been using towards Van
Buren, who still could conjure with Jackson's terrible name. The United
States agreed to release McLeod, but New York refused to deliver him up;
and before the question was decided he was acquitted, as said above. It
was clearly wrong for a state to interfere in a disagreement between the
nation and a foreign power; and on the other hand the federal
authorities did not show as much firmness in their dealings with
England as they should have shown. Benton, true to certain of his
states-rights theories and in pursuance of his policy of antagonism to
Great Britain, warmly supported the attitude of New York, alleging that
the United States had no right to interfere with her disposal of McLeod;
and asserting that while if the citizens of one country committed an
outrage upon another it was necessary to apply to the sovereign for
redress, yet that if the wrong-doers came into the country which had
been aggrieved they might be seized and punished; and he exultingly
referred to Jackson's conduct at the time of the first Seminole War,
when he hung off-hand two British subjects whom he accused of inciting
the Indians against us, Great Britain not making any protest. The
Caroline matter was finally settled in the Ashburton treaty, the British
making a formal but very guarded apology for her destruction,--an
apology which did not satisfy Benton in the least.
It is little to Benton's credit, however, that, while thus courting
foreign wars, he yet opposed the efforts of the Whigs to give us a
better navy. Our navy was then good of its kind, but altogether too
small. Benton's opposition to its increase seems to have proceeded
partly from mere bitter partisanship, partly from sheer ignorance, and
partly from the doctrinaire dread of any kind of standing military or
naval force, which he had inherited, with a good many similar ideas,
from the Jeffersonians.
He attacked the whole treaty, article by article, when it came up for
ratification in the Senate, making an extremely lengthy and elaborate
speech, or rather set of speeches, against it. Much of his objection,
especially to the part compromising the territorial claims of the two
governments, was well founded; but much was also factious and
groundless. The most important point of all that was in controversy, the
ownership of Oregon, was left unsettled; but, as will be shown farther
on, this was wise. He made this omission a base or pretext for the
charge that the treaty was gotten up in the interests of the
East,--although with frank lack of logic he also opposed it because it
sacrificed the interests of Maine,--and that it was detrimental to the
South and West; and he did his best to excite sectional feeling against
it. He also protested against the omission of all reference to the
impressment of American sailors by British vessels; and this was a valid
ground of opposition,--although Webster had really settled the matter by
writing a formal note to the British government, in which he practically
gave official notice that any attempt to revive the practice would be
repelled by force of arms.
Benton occupied a much less tenable position when he came to the
question of slavery, and inveighed against the treaty because it did not
provide for the return of fugitive slaves, or of slaves taken from
American coasting vessels when the latter happened to be obliged to put
into West Indian ports, and because it did contain a provision that we
ourselves should keep in commission a squadron on the coast of Africa to
coöperate with the British in the suppression of the slave-trade.
Benton's object in attacking the treaty on this point was to excite the
South to a degree that would make the senators from that section refuse
to join in ratifying it; but the attempt was a flat failure. It is
hardly to be supposed that he himself was as indignant over this
question as he pretended to be. He must have realized that, so long as
we had among ourselves an institution so wholly barbarous and out of
date as slavery, just so long we should have to expect foreign powers to
treat us rather cavalierly on that one point. Whatever we might say
among ourselves as to the rights of property or the necessity of
preserving the Union by refraining from the disturbance of slavery, it
was certain that foreign nations would place the manhood and liberty of
the slave above the vested interest of the master--all the more readily
because they were jealous of the Union and anxious to see it break up,
and were naturally delighted to take the side of abstract justice and
humanity, when to do so was at the expense of outsiders and redounded to
their own credit, without causing them the least pecuniary loss or
personal inconvenience. The attitude of slave-holders towards freedom in
the abstract was grotesque in its lack of logic; but the attitude of
many other classes of men, both abroad and at home, towards it was
equally full of a grimly unconscious humor. The southern planters, who
loudly sympathized with Kossuth and the Hungarians, were entirely
unconscious that their tyranny over their own black bondsmen made their
attacks upon Austria's despotism absurd; and Germans, who were shocked
at our holding the blacks in slavery, could not think of freedom in
their own country without a shudder. On one night the Democrats of the
Northern States would hold a mass meeting to further the cause of Irish
freedom, on the next night the same men would break up another meeting
held to help along the freeing of the negroes; while the English
aristocracy held up its hands in horror at American slavery and set its
face like a flint against all efforts to do Ireland tardy and incomplete
justice.
Again, in his opposition to the extradition clause of the treaty,
Benton was certainly wrong. Nothing is clearer than that nations ought
to combine to prevent criminals from escaping punishment merely by
fleeing over an imaginary line; the crime is against all society, and
society should unite to punish it. Especially is there need of the most
stringent extradition laws between countries whose people have the same
speech and legal system, as with the United States and Great Britain.
Indeed, it is a pity that our extradition laws are not more stringent.
But Benton saw, or affected to see, in the extradition clause, a menace
to political refugees, and based his opposition to it mainly on this
ground. He also quoted on his side the inevitable Jefferson; for
Jefferson, or rather the highly idealized conception of what Jefferson
had been, shared with the "demos krateo principle" the honor of being
one of the twin fetiches to which Benton, in common with most of his
fellow-Democrats, especially delighted to bow down.
But when he came to the parts of the treaty that defined our
northeastern boundary and so much of our northwestern boundary as lay
near the Great Lakes, Benton occupied far more defensible ground; and
the parts of his speech referring to these questions were very strong
indeed. He attempted to show that in the matter of the Maine frontier
we had surrendered very much more than there was any need of our doing,
and that the British claim was unfounded; and there seems now to be good
reason for thinking him right, although it must be admitted that in
agreeing to the original line in earlier treaties the British had acted
entirely under a misapprehension as to where it would go. Benton was
also able to make a good point against Webster for finally agreeing to
surrender so much of Maine's claim by showing the opposition the latter
had made, while in the Senate, to a similar but less objectionable
clause in a treaty which Jackson's administration had then been trying
to get through. Again Webster had, in defending the surrender of certain
of our claims along the boundary west of Lake Superior, stated that the
country was not very valuable, as it was useless for agricultural
purposes; and Benton had taken him up sharply on this point, saying that
we wanted the land anyhow, whether it produced corn and potatoes or only
furs and lumber. The amounts of territory as to which our claims were
compromised were not very large compared to the extent of the Pacific
coast lands which were still left in dispute; and it was perhaps well
that the treaty was ratified; but certainly there is much to be said on
Benton's side so far as his opposition to the proposed frontier was
concerned.
However, he was only able to rally eight other senators to his support,
and the treaty went through the Senate triumphantly. It encountered an
even more bitter opposition in Parliament, where Palmerston headed a
series of furious attacks upon it, for reasons the precise opposite of
those which Benton alleged, arguing that England received much less,
instead of much more, than her due, and thereby showing Webster's
position in a very much better light than that in which it would
otherwise have appeared. Eventually the British government ratified the
treaty.
The Ashburton treaty did not touch on the Oregon matter at all; nor was
this dealt with by Webster while he was secretary of state. But it came
before the Senate at that time, and later on Calhoun took it up, when
filling Webster's place in the cabinet, although a final decision was
not reached until during Polk's presidency. Webster did not appreciate
the importance of Oregon in the least, and moreover came from a section
of the country that was not inclined to insist on territorial expansion
at the hazard of a war, in which the merchants of the sea-board would be
the chief sufferers. Calhoun, it is true, came from a peculiarly
militant and bellicose state, but on the other hand from a section that
was not very anxious to see the free North acquire new territory. So it
happened that neither of Tyler's two great secretaries felt called upon
to insist too vehemently upon going to extremes in defense of our
rights, or supposed rights, along the Pacific coast; and though in the
end the balance was struck pretty evenly between our claims and those of
our neighbor, yet it is to be regretted that we did not stand out
stiffly for the whole of our demand. Our title was certainly not
perfect, but it was to the full as good as, or better than, Great
Britain's; and it would have been better in the end had we insisted upon
the whole territory being given to us, no matter what price we had to
pay.
The politico-social line of division between the East and the West had
been gradually growing fainter as that between the North and South grew
deeper; but on the Oregon question it again became prominent.
Southeastern Democrats, like the Carolinian McDuffie, spoke as
slightingly of the value of Oregon, and were as little inclined to risk
a war for its possession, as the most peace-loving Whigs of New England;
while the intense western feeling against giving up any of our rights on
the Pacific coast was best expressed by the two senators from the slave
state of Missouri. Benton was not restrained in his desire to add to
the might of the Union by any fear of the possible future effect upon
the political power of the Slave States. Although a slave-holder and the
representative of slave-holders, he was fully alive to the evils of
slavery, though as yet not seeing clearly how all-important a question
it had become. The preservation and extension of the Union and obedience
to the spirit of Democracy were the chief articles of his political
creed, and to these he always subordinated all others. When, in speaking
of slavery, he made use, as he sometimes did, of expressions that were
not far removed from those of men really devoted to the slave interests,
it was almost always because he had some ulterior object in view, or for
factional ends; for unfortunately his standard of political propriety
was not sufficiently high to prevent his trying to make use of any
weapon, good or bad, with which to overturn his political foes. In
protesting against the Ashburton treaty, he outdid even such slavery
champions as Calhoun in the extravagance of his ideas as to what we
should demand of foreign powers in reference to their treatment of our
"peculiar institution"; but he seems to have done this merely because
thereby he got an additional handle of attack against the Whig measures.
The same thing was true earlier of his fulmination against Clay's
proposed Panama Congress; and even before that, in attacking Adams for
his supposed part in the treaty whereby we established the line of our
Spanish frontier, he dragged slavery into the question, not, apparently,
because he really particularly wished to see our slave territory
extended, but because he thought that he might use the slavery cry to
excite in one other section of the country a feeling as strong as that
which the West already felt in regard to territorial expansion
generally. Indeed, his whole conduct throughout the Oregon controversy,
especially when taken in connection with the fact that he stood out for
Maine's frontier rights more stoutly than the Maine representatives
themselves, shows how free from sectional bias was his way of looking at
our geographical growth.
The territory along the Pacific coast lying between California on the
south and Alaska on the north--"Oregon," as it was comprehensively
called--had been a source of dispute for some time between the United
States and Great Britain. After some negotiations both had agreed with
Russia to recognize the line of 54° 40' as the southern boundary of the
latter's possessions; and Mexico's undisputed possession of California
gave an equally well marked southern limit, at the forty-second
parallel. All between was in dispute. The British had trading posts at
the mouth of the Columbia, which they emphatically asserted to be
theirs; we, on the other hand, claimed an absolutely clear title up to
the forty-ninth parallel, a couple of hundred miles north of the mouth
of the Columbia, and asserted that for all the balance of the territory
up to the Russian possessions our title was at any rate better than that
of the British. In 1818 a treaty had been made providing for the joint
occupation of the territory by the two powers, as neither was willing to
give up its claim to the whole, or at the time at all understood the
value of the possession, then entirely unpeopled. This treaty of joint
occupancy had remained in force ever since. Under it the British had
built great trading stations, and used the whole country in the
interests of certain fur companies. The Americans, in spite of some vain
efforts, were unable to compete with them in this line; but, what was
infinitely more important, had begun, even prior to 1840, to establish
actual settlers along the banks of the rivers, some missionaries being
the first to come in. As long, however, as the territory remained
sparsely settled, and the communication with it chiefly by sea, the hold
of Great Britain gave promise of being the stronger. But the aspect of
affairs was totally changed when in 1842 a huge caravan of over a
thousand Americans made the journey overland from the frontiers of
Missouri, taking with them their wives and their children, their flocks
and herds, carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, and their axes
and spades in the great canvas-topped wagons. The next year, two
thousand more settlers of the same sort in their turn crossed the vast
plains, wound their way among the Rocky Mountains through the pass
explored by Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, and after suffering every kind
of hardship and danger, and warding off the attacks of hostile Indians,
descended the western slope of the great water-shed to join their
fellows by the banks of the Columbia. When American settlers were once
in actual possession of the disputed territory, it became evident that
the period of Great Britain's undisputed sway was over.
The government of the United States, meanwhile, was so far from helping
these settlers that it on the contrary rather threw obstacles in their
way. As usual with us, the individual activity of the citizens
themselves, who all acted independently and with that peculiar
self-reliance that is the chief American characteristic, outstripped the
activity of their representatives, who were obliged all to act together,
and who were therefore held back by each other,--our Constitution,
while giving free scope for individual freedom, wisely providing such
checks as to make our governmental system eminently conservative in its
workings. Tyler's administration did not wish to embroil itself with
England; so it refused any aid to the settlers, and declined to give
them grants of land, as under the joint occupancy treaty that would have
given England offense and cause for complaint. But Benton and the other
Westerners were perfectly willing to offend England, if by so doing they
could help America to obtain Oregon, and were too rash and headstrong to
count the cost of their actions. Accordingly, a bill was introduced
providing for the settlement of Oregon, and giving each settler six
hundred and forty acres, and additional land if he had a family; so that
every inducement was held out to the emigrants, the West wanting to
protect and encourage them by all the means in its power. The laws and
jurisdiction of the Territory of Iowa were to be extended to all the
settlers on the Pacific coast, who hitherto had governed themselves
merely by a system of mutual agreements.
The bill was, of course, strongly opposed, especially on account of the
clause giving land to the settlers. It passed the Senate by a close
vote, but failed in the House. Naturally Benton was one of its chief
supporters, and spoke at length in its favor. He seized the kernel of
the matter when, in advocating the granting of land, he spoke of
immigration as "the only thing which can save the country from the
British, acting through their powerful agent, the Hudson's Bay Company."
He then blew a lusty note of defiance to Great Britain herself:--
I think she will take offense, do what we may in relation to this
territory. She wants it herself, and means to quarrel for it, if she
does not fight for it.... I grant that she will take offense, but
that is not the question with me. Has she a _right_ to take offense?
That is my question! And this being decided in the negative, I
neither fear nor calculate consequences.... Courage will keep her
off, fear will bring her upon us. The assertion of our rights will
command her respect; the fear to assert them will bring us her
contempt.... Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger by
fearing it. They must face it and defy it. An abandonment of a right
for fear of bringing on an attack, instead of keeping it off, will
inevitably bring on the outrage that is dreaded.
He was right enough in his disposition to resent the hectoring spirit
which, at that time, characterized Great Britain's foreign policy; but
he was all wrong in condemning delay, and stating that if things were
left as they were time would work against us, and not for us.
In this respect Calhoun, who opposed the bill, was much wiser. He
advocated a policy of "masterly inactivity," foreseeing that time was
everything to us, inasmuch as the land was sure in the end to belong to
that nation whose people had settled in it, and we alone were able to
furnish a constantly increasing stream of immigrants. Later on, however,
Calhoun abandoned this policy, probably mainly influenced by fear of the
extension of free territory, and consented to a compromise with Great
Britain. The true course to have pursued would have been to have
combined the ideas of both Benton and Calhoun, and to have gone farther
than either; that is, we should have allowed the question to remain
unsettled as long as was possible, because every year saw an increasing
American population in the coveted lands, and rendered the ultimate
decision surer to be for us. When it was impossible to postpone the
question longer, we should have insisted upon its being settled entirely
in our favor, no matter at what cost. The unsuccessful attempts, made by
Benton and his supporters, to persuade the Senate to pass a resolution,
requiring that notice of the termination of the joint occupancy treaty
should forthwith be given, were certainly ill-advised.
However, even Benton was not willing to go to the length to which
certain Western men went, who insisted upon all or nothing. He had
become alarmed and angry over the intrigue for the admission of Texas
and the proposed forcible taking away of Mexican territory. The
Northwestern Democrats wanted all Texas and all Oregon; the Southeastern
ones wished all the former and part of the latter. Benton then concluded
that it would be best to take part of each; for, although no friend to
compromises, yet he was unwilling to jeopardize the safety of the Union
as it was by seeking to make it still larger. Accordingly, he
sympathized with the effort made by Calhoun while secretary of state to
get the British to accept the line of 49° as the frontier; but the
British government then rejected this proposition. In 1844 the Democrats
made their campaign upon the issue of "fifty-four forty or fight;" and
Polk, when elected, felt obliged to insist upon this campaign boundary.
To this, however, Great Britain naturally would not consent; it was,
indeed, idle to expect her to do so, unless things should be kept as
they were until a fairly large American population had grown up along
the Pacific coast, and had thus put her in a position where she could
hardly do anything else. Polk's administration was neither capable nor
warlike, however well disposed to bluster; and the secretary of state,
the timid, shifty, and selfish politician, Buchanan, naturally fond of
facing both ways, was the last man to wish to force a quarrel on a
high-spirited and determined antagonist like England. Accordingly, he
made up his mind to back down and try for the line of 49°, as proposed
by Calhoun, when in Tyler's cabinet; and the English, for all their
affected indifference, had been so much impressed by the warlike
demonstrations in the United States, that they in turn were delighted,
singing in a much lower key than before the "fifty-four forty" cry had
been raised; accordingly they withdrew their former pretensions to the
Columbia River and accepted the offered compromise. Now, however, came
the question of getting the treaty through the Senate; and Buchanan
sounded Benton, to see if he would undertake this task.
Benton, worried over the Texas matter, was willing to recede somewhat
from the very high ground he had taken,--although, of course, he
insisted that he had been perfectly consistent throughout, and that the
49th parallel was the line he had all along been striving for. Under his
lead the proposal for a treaty on the basis indicated was carried
through the Senate, and the line in consequence ultimately became our
frontier, in spite of the frantic opposition of the Northwestern
Democrats, the latter hurling every sort of charge of bad faith and
treachery at their Southern associates, who had joined with the Whigs
in defeating them. Benton's speech in support of the proposal was
pitched much lower than had been his previous ones; and, a little
forgetful of some of his own remarks, he was especially severe upon
those members who denounced England and held up a picture of her real or
supposed designs to excite and frighten the people into needless
opposition to her.
In its immediate effects the adoption of the 49th parallel as the
dividing line between the two countries was excellent, and entailed no
loss of dignity on either. Yet, as there was no particular reason why we
should show any generosity in our diplomatic dealings with England, it
may well be questioned whether it would not have been better to have
left things as they were until we could have taken all. Wars are, of
course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain
kinds of peace. Every war in which we have been engaged, except the one
with Mexico, has been justifiable in its origin; and each one, without
any exception whatever, has left us better off, taking both moral and
material considerations into account, than we should have been if we had
not waged it.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE BARONS' PIPING.
In 1844 the Whig candidate for the Presidency, Henry Clay, was defeated
by a Mr. Polk, the nominee of the Democracy. The majorities in several
of the states were very small; this was the case, for example in New
York, the change in whose electoral vote would have also changed the
entire result.
Up to 1860 there were very few political contests in which the dividing
lines between right and wrong so nearly coincided with those drawn
between the two opposing parties as in that of 1844. The Democrats
favored the annexation of Texas, and the addition of new slave territory
to the Union; the Whigs did not. Almost every good element in the
country stood behind Clay; the vast majority of intelligent,
high-minded, upright men supported him. Polk was backed by rabid
Southern fire-eaters and slavery extensionists, who had deified negro
bondage and exalted it beyond the Union, the Constitution, and
everything else; by the almost solid foreign vote, still unfit for the
duties of American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in
all the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt
politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged to
their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without which
the election would have been lost; and, lastly, he was also backed
indirectly but most powerfully by the political Abolitionists.
These Abolitionists had formed themselves into the Liberty party, and
ran Birney for president; and though they polled but little over sixty
thousand votes, yet as these were drawn almost entirely from the ranks
of Clay's supporters, they were primarily responsible for his defeat;
for the defections were sufficiently large to turn the scale in certain
pivotal and closely contested states, notably New York. Their action in
this case was wholly evil, alike in its immediate and its remote
results; they simply played into the hands of the extreme slavery men
like Calhoun, and became, for the time being, the willing accomplices of
the latter. Yet they would have accomplished nothing had it not been for
the frauds and outrages perpetrated by the gangs of native and
foreign-born ruffians in the great cities, under the leadership of such
brutal rowdies as Isaiah Rynders.
These three men, Calhoun, Birney, and Isaiah Rynders, may be taken as
types of the classes that were chiefly instrumental in the election of
Polk, and that must, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the
evils attendant thereon, including among them the bloody and unrighteous
war with Mexico. With the purpose of advancing the cause of abstract
right, but with the result of sacrificing all that was best, most
honest, and most high-principled in national politics, the Abolitionists
joined hands with Northern roughs and Southern slavocrats to elect the
man who was, excepting Tyler, the very smallest of the line of small
presidents who came in between Jackson and Lincoln.
Owing to a variety of causes, the Abolitionists have received an immense
amount of hysterical praise, which they do not deserve, and have been
credited with deeds done by other men, whom they in reality hampered and
opposed rather than aided. After 1840 the professed Abolitionists formed
but a small and comparatively unimportant portion of the forces that
were working towards the restriction and ultimate destruction of
slavery; and much of what they did was positively harmful to the cause
for which they were fighting. Those of their number who considered the
Constitution as a league with death and hell, and who therefore
advocated a dissolution of the Union, acted as rationally as would
anti-polygamists nowadays if, to show their disapproval of Mormonism,
they should advocate that Utah should be allowed to form a separate
nation. The only hope of ultimately suppressing slavery lay in the
preservation of the Union, and every Abolitionist who argued or signed a
petition for its dissolution was doing as much to perpetuate the evil he
complained of as if he had been a slave-holder. The Liberty party, in
running Birney, simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all
its consequences; they in no sense paved the way for the Republican
party, or helped forward the anti-slavery cause, or hurt the existing
organizations. Their effect on the Democracy was _nil_; and all they
were able to accomplish with the Whigs was to make them put forward for
the ensuing campaign a slave-holder from Louisiana, with whom they were
successful. Such were the remote results of their conduct; the immediate
evils they produced have already been alluded to. They bore considerable
resemblance--except that, after all, they really did have a principle to
contend for--to the political prohibitionists of the present day, who go
into the third party organizations, and are, not even excepting the
saloon-keepers themselves, the most efficient allies on whom
intemperance and the liquor traffic can count.
Anti-slavery men like Giddings, who supported Clay, were doing a
thousand-fold more effective work for the cause they had at heart than
all the voters who supported Birney; or, to speak more accurately, they
were doing all they could to advance the cause, and the others were
doing all they could to hold it back. Lincoln in 1860 occupied more
nearly the ground held by Clay than that held by Birney; and the men who
supported the latter in 1844 were the prototypes of those who wished to
oppose Lincoln in 1860, and only worked less hard because they had less
chance. The ultra Abolitionists discarded expediency, and claimed to act
for abstract right, on principle, no matter what the results might be;
in consequence they accomplished very little, and that as much for harm
as for good, until they ate their words, went counter to their previous
course, thereby acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in the
Republican party the men and principles they had so fiercely condemned.
The Liberty party was not in any sense the precursor of the Republican
party, which was based as much on expediency as on abstract right, and
was therefore able to accomplish good instead of harm. To say that the
extreme Abolitionists triumphed in Republican success and were causes of
it, is as absurd as it would be to call prohibitionists successful if,
after countless futile efforts totally to prohibit the liquor traffic,
and after savage denunciation of those who try to regulate it, they
should then turn round and form a comparatively insignificant portion of
a victorious high-license party.
Many people in speaking of the Abolitionists apparently forget that the
national government, even under Republican rule, would never have
meddled with slavery in the various states unless as a war measure, made
necessary by the rebellion into which the South was led by a variety of
causes, of which slavery was chief, but among which there were others
that were also prominent; such as the separatist spirit of certain of
the communities and the unscrupulous, treacherous ambition of such men
as Davis, Floyd, and the rest. The Abolitionists' political
organizations, such as the Liberty party, generally produced very little
effect either way, and were scarcely thought of during the contests
waged for freedom in Congress. The men who took a great and effective
part in the fight against slavery were the men who remained within their
respective parties; like the Democrats Benton and Wilmot, or the Whigs
Seward and Stevens. When a new party with more clearly defined
principles was formed, they, for the most part, went into it; but, like
all other men who have ever had a really great influence, whether for
good or bad, on American politics, they did not act independently of
parties, but on the contrary kept within party lines,--although, of
course, none of them were mere blind and unreasoning partisans.
The plea that slavery was a question of principle, on which no
compromise could be accepted, might have been made and could still be
made on twenty other points,--woman suffrage, for instance. Of course,
to give women their just rights does not by any means imply that they
should necessarily be allowed to vote, any more than the bestowal of the
rights of citizenship upon blacks and aliens must of necessity carry
with it the same privilege. But there were until lately, and in some
states there are now, laws on the statute-book in reference to women
that are in principle as unjust, and that are quite as much the remnants
of archaic barbarism as was the old slave code; and though it is true
that they do not work anything like the evil of the latter, they yet
certainly work evil enough. The same laws that in one Southern state
gave a master a right to whip a slave also allowed him to whip his wife,
provided he used a stick no thicker than his little finger; the legal
permission to do the latter was even more outrageous than that to do the
former, yet no one considered it a ground for wishing a dissolution of
the Union or for declaring against the existing parties. The folly of
voting the Liberty ticket in 1844 differed in degree, but not at all in
kind, from the folly of voting the Woman Suffrage ticket in 1884.
The intrigue for the annexation of Texas, and for thereby extending the
slave territory of the Union, had taken shape towards the close of
Tyler's term of office, while Calhoun was secretary of state. Benton, as
an aggressive Western man, desirous of seeing our territorial
possessions extended in any direction, north or south, always hoped that
in the end Texas might be admitted into the Union; but he disliked
seeing any premature steps taken, and was no party to the scheme of
forcing an immediate annexation in the interests of slavery. Such
immediate annexation was certain, among other things, to bring us into
grave difficulties not only with Mexico, but also with England, which
was strongly inclined to take much interest of a practical sort in the
fate of Texas, and would, of course, have done all it could to bring
about the abolition of slavery in that state. The Southerners, desirous
of increasing the slave domain, and always in a state of fierce alarm
over the proximity of any free state that might excite a servile
insurrection, were impatient to add the Lone Star Republic of the Rio
Grande to the number of their states; the Southwesterners fell in with
them, influenced, though less strongly, by the same motives, and also by
the lust for new lands and by race hatred towards the Mexicans and
traditional jealousy of Great Britain; and these latter motives induced
many Northwesterners to follow suit. By a judicious harping on all these
strings Jackson himself, whose name was still a mighty power among the
masses, was induced to write a letter favoring instant and prompt
annexation.
This letter was really procured for political purposes. Tyler had
completely identified himself with the Democracy, and especially with
its extreme separatist wing, to which Calhoun also belonged, and which
had grown so as to be already almost able to take the reins. The
separatist chiefs were intriguing for the presidency, and were using
annexation as a cry that would help them; and, failing in this attempt,
many of the leaders were willing to break up the Union, and turn the
Southern States, together with Texas, into a slave-holding confederacy.
After Benton, the great champion of the old-style Union Democrats was
Van Buren, who was opposed to immediate annexation, sharing the feeling
that prevailed throughout the Northeast generally; although in certain
circles all through the country there were men at work in its favor,
largely as a mere matter of jobbery and from base motives, on account of
speculations in Texan land and scrip, into which various capitalists and
adventurers had gone rather extensively. Jackson, though a Southerner,
warmly favored Van Buren, and was bitterly opposed to separatists; but
the latter, by cunningly working on his feelings, without showing their
own hands, persuaded him to write the letter mentioned, and promptly
used it to destroy the chances of Van Buren, who was the man they
chiefly feared; and though Jackson, at last roused to what was going on,
immediately announced himself as in favor of Van Buren's candidacy, it
was too late to undo the mischief.
Benton showed on this, as on many other occasions, much keener political
ideas than his great political chief. He was approached by a politician,
who himself was either one of those concerned in the presidential
intrigues, or else one of their dupes, and who tried to win him over to
take the lead on their side, complimenting him upon his former services
to the cause of territorial expansion towards the southwest. Ordinarily
the great Missourian was susceptible enough to such flattery; but on
this occasion, preoccupied with the idea of an intrigue for the
presidency, and indignant that there should be an effort made to
implicate him in it, especially as it was mixed up with schemes of
stock-jobbing and of disloyalty to the Union, he took fire at once, and
answered with hot indignation, in words afterwards highly resented by
his questioner, "that it was on the part of some an intrigue for the
presidency, and a plot to dissolve the Union; on the part of others, a
Texas scrip and land speculation; and that he was against it." The
answer was published in the papers, and brought about a total break
between Benton and the annexation party.
He was now thoroughly on the alert, and actively opposed at all points
the schemes of those whom he regarded as concerned in or instigating the
intrigue. He commented harshly on Tyler's annual message, which made a
strong plea for annexation, even at the cost of a war both with Great
Britain and Mexico; also on Calhoun's letter to Lord Aberdeen, which was
certainly a remarkable diplomatic document,--being a thesis on slavery
and the benefits resulting from it. Tyler's object was to prepare the
way for a secret treaty, which should secure the desired object. Benton,
in the course of some severe strictures on his acts, said, very truly,
that it was evidently the intention to keep the whole matter as secret
as possible until the treaty was concluded, "and then to force its
adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of slave territory, or
to make its rejection a cause for the secession of the Southern States;
and in either event and in all cases to make the question of annexation
a controlling one in the nomination of presidential candidates, and also
in the election itself."
When the treaty proposed by the administration was rejected, and when it
became evident that neither Tyler nor Calhoun, the two most prominent
champions of the extreme separatists, had any chance for the Democratic
nomination, the disunion side of the intrigue was brought to the front
in many of the Southern States, beginning of course with South Carolina.
A movement was made for a convention of the Southern States, to be held
in the interest of the scheme; the key-note being struck in the cry of
"Texas or disunion!" But this convention was given up, on account of the
strong opposition it excited in the so-called "Border States,"--an
opposition largely stirred up and led by Benton. Once more the haughty
slave leaders of the Southeast had found that in the Missouri Senator
they had an opponent whose fearlessness quite equaled their own, and
whose stubborn temper and strength of purpose made him at least a match
for themselves, in spite of all their dash and fiery impetuosity. It
must have sounded strange, indeed, to Northern ears, accustomed to the
harsh railings and insolent threats of the South Carolina senators, to
hear one of the latter complaining that Benton's tone in the debate was
arrogant, overbearing, and dictatorial towards those who were opposed to
him. This same Senator, McDuffie, had been speaking of the proposed
Southern meeting at Nashville; and Benton warned him that such a meeting
would never take place, and that he had mistaken the temper of the
Tennesseans; and also reminded him that General Jackson was still alive,
and that the South Carolinians in particular must needs be careful if
they hoped to agree with his followers, whose name was still legion,
because he would certainly take the same position towards a disunion
movement in the interests of slavery that he had already taken towards a
nullification movement in the interests of free trade. "Preservation of
the federal Union is as strong in the old Roman's heart now as ever; and
while, as a Christian, he forgives all that is past (if it were past),
yet no old tricks under new names! Texas disunion will be to him the
same as tariff disunion; and if he detects a Texas disunionist nestling
into his bed, I say again: Woe unto the luckless wight!" Boldly and
forcibly he went on to paint the real motives of the promoters of the
scheme, and the real character of the scheme itself; stating that,
though mixed up with various speculative enterprises and with other
intrigues, yet disunion was at the bottom of it all, and that already
the cry had become, "Texas without the Union, rather than the Union
without Texas!" "Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union the
scheme is to get the South out of it. A Southern Confederacy stretching
from the Atlantic to the Californias ... is the cherished vision of
disappointed ambition." He bitterly condemned secession, as simply
disunion begat by nullification, and went on to speak of his own
attitude in apparently opposing the admission of Texas, which he had
always desired to see become a part of the Union, and which he had
always insisted rightfully belonged to us, and to have been given away
by Monroe's treaty with Spain. "All that is intended and foreseen. The
intrigue for the presidency was the first act in the drama; the
dissolution of the Union the second. And I, who hate intrigue and love
the Union, can only speak of the intriguers and disunionists with warmth
and indignation. The oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I must
be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who
prostituted the question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and
delayed its success by degrading and disgracing it. A Western man, and
coming from a state more than any other interested in the recovery of
this country, so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must
be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon
it, and making it a sectional question for the purposes of ambition and
disunion. I have spoken warmly of these plotters and intriguers; but I
have not permitted their conduct to alter my own, or to relax my zeal
for the recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to reject the
disunion treaty; and that obstacle being removed, I have brought in the
bill which will insure the recovery of Texas, with peace and honor, and
with the Union."
It is important to remember, in speaking of his afterwards voting to
admit Texas, that this was what he had all along favored, and that he
now opposed it only on account of special circumstances. In both cases
he was right; for, slavery or no slavery, it would have been a most
unfortunate thing for us, and still worse for the Texans, if the latter
had been allowed to develop into an independent nation. Benton deserves
the greatest credit for the way in which he withstood the ignorant
popular feeling of his own section in regard to Tyler's proposed treaty;
and not only did he show himself able to withstand pressure from behind
him, but also prompt in resenting threats made by outsiders. When
McDuffie told him that the remembrance of his attitude on the bill
would, to his harm, meet him on some future day, like the ghost that
appeared to Brutus at Philippi, he answered:--
I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the fight goes
against me at this new Philippi, with which I am threatened, and the
enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of
Roman liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall
upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be killed, and run it
through my own body; but I shall save it and save myself for another
day and another use,--for the day when the battle of the disunion of
these states is to be fought, not with words but with iron, and for
the hearts of the traitors who appear in arms against their country.
Such a stern, defiant, almost prophetic warning did more to help the
Union cause than volumes of elaborate constitutional argument, and it
would have been well for the Northern States had they possessed men as
capable of uttering it as was the iron Westerner. Benton always showed
at his best when the honor or integrity of the nation was menaced,
whether by foes from without or by foes from within. On such occasions
his metal always rang true. When there was any question of breaking
faith with the Union, or of treachery towards it, his figure always
loomed up as one of the chief in the ranks of its defenders; and his
follies and weaknesses sink out of sight when we think of the tremendous
debt which the country owes him for his sorely tried and unswerving
loyalty.
The treaty alluded to by Benton in his speech against the abortive
secession movement was the one made with Texas while Calhoun was
secretary of state, and submitted to the Senate by Tyler, with a message
as extraordinary as some of his secretary's utterances. The treaty was
preposterously unjust and iniquitous. It provided for the annexation of
Texas, and also of a very large portion of Mexico, to which Texas had no
possible title, and this without consulting Mexico in any way whatever;
Calhoun advancing the plea that it was necessary to act immediately on
account of the danger that Texas was in of falling under the control of
England, and therefore having slavery abolished within its borders;
while Tyler blandly announced that we had acquired title to the ceded
territory--which belonged to one power and was ceded to us by
another--through his signature to the treaty, and that, pending its
ratification by the Senate, he had dispatched troops to the scene of
action to protect the ceded land "from invasion,"--the territory to be
thus protected from Mexican invasion being then and always having been
part and parcel of Mexico.
Benton opposed the ratification of the treaty in a very strong speech,
during which he mercilessly assailed both Tyler and Calhoun. The conduct
of the former he dismissed with the contemptuous remark that he had
committed "a caper about equal to the mad freaks with which the
unfortunate Emperor Paul, of Russia, was accustomed to astonish Europe;"
and roughly warned him to be careful how he tried to imitate Jackson's
methods, because in heroic imitations there was no middle ground, and if
he failed to fill the rôle of hero he would then perforce find himself
playing that of harlequin. Calhoun received more attention, for he was
far more worthy of a foeman's steel than was his nominal superior, and
Benton exposed at length the willful exaggeration and the perversion of
the truth of which the Carolinian had been guilty in trying to raise the
alarm of English interference in Texas, for the purpose of excusing the
haste with which the treaty was carried through.
He showed at length the outrage we should inflict upon Mexico by seizing
"two thousand miles of her territory, without a word of explanation with
her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas to which she was no party;"
and he conclusively proved, making use of his own extensive acquaintance
with history, especially American history, that the old Texas, the only
territory that the Texans themselves or we could claim with any shadow
of right, made but a fraction of the territory now "ceded" to us. He
laughed at the idea of calling the territory Texas, and speaking of its
forcible cutting off as re-annexation, "Humboldt calls it New Mexico,
Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Santander; and the civilized world may
qualify this _re_-annexation by some odious and terrible epithet ...
robbery;" then he went on to draw a biting contrast between our
treatment of Mexico and our treatment of England. "Would we take two
thousand miles of Canada in the same way? I presume not. And why not?
Why not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike? Why not march up to
'fifty-four forty' as courageously as we march upon the Rio Grande?
Because Great Britain is powerful and Mexico weak,--a reason which may
fail in policy as much as in morals." Also he ridiculed the flurry of
fear into which the Southern slave-holders affected to be cast by the
dread of England's hostility to slavery, when they had just acquiesced
in making a treaty with her by which we bound ourselves to help to put
down the slave-trade. He then stated his own position, showing why he
wished us to have the original Texan lands, if we could get them
honorably, and without robbing Mexico of new territory; and at the same
time sneered at Calhoun and Tyler because they had formerly favored the
Monroe treaty, by which we abandoned our claims to them:--
We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La Salle; and we want it
for great natural reasons, obvious as day, and permanent as nature.
We want it because it is geographically appurtenant to our division
of North America, essential to our political, commercial, and social
system, and because it would be detrimental and injurious to us to
have it fall into the hands or sink under the domination of any
foreign power. For these reasons I was against sacrificing the
country when it was thrown away,--and thrown away by those who are
now so suddenly possessed of a fury to get it back. For these
reasons I am for getting it back whenever it can be done with peace
and honor, or even at the price of just war against any intrusive
European power; but I am against all disguise and artifice,--against
all pretexts,--and especially against weak and groundless pretexts,
discreditable to ourselves and offensive to others, too thin and
shallow not to be seen through by every beholder, and merely
invented to cover unworthy purposes.
The treaty was rejected by an overwhelming vote, although Buchanan led a
few of his timeserving comrades from the North to the support of the
extreme Southern element. Benton then tried, but failed, to get through
a bill providing for a joint agreement between Mexico, Texas, and the
United States to settle definitely all boundary questions. Meanwhile the
presidential election occurred, with the result already mentioned. The
separatist and annexationist Democrats, the extreme slavery wing of the
party, defeated Van Buren and nominated Polk, who was their man; the
Whigs nominated Clay, who was heartily opposed to all the schemes of the
disunion and extreme slavery men, and who, if elected, while he might
very properly have consented to the admission of Texas with its old
boundaries, would never have brought on a war nor have attempted to add
a vast extent of new slave territory to the Union. Clay would have been
elected, and the slavery disunionists defeated, if in the very nick of
time the Abolitionists had not stepped in to support the latter, and by
their blindness in supporting Birney given the triumph to their own most
bitter opponents. Then the Abolitionists, having played their only
card, and played it badly, had to sit still and see what evil their acts
had produced; they had accomplished just as much as men generally do
accomplish when they dance to the tune that their worst foes play.
Polk's election gave an enormous impulse to the annexation movement, and
made it doubly and trebly difficult for any one to withstand it. The
extreme disunion and slavery men, of course, hated Benton, himself a
Southwesterner from a slave-holding state, with peculiar venom, on
account of his attitude, very justly regarding him as the main obstacle
in their path; and the din and outcry raised against all who opposed the
schemes of the intriguers was directed with especial fury against the
Missourian. He was accused of being allied to the Whigs, of wishing to
break up the Democracy, and of many other things. Indeed, Benton's own
people were very largely against him, and it must always be remembered
that whereas Northeastern statesmen were certain to be on the popular
side in taking a stand against the extreme pro-slavery men, Benton's
position was often just the reverse. With them it was politic to do
right; with him it was not; and for this reason the praise awarded the
latter should be beyond measure greater than that awarded to the former.
Still, there can be little question that he was somewhat, even although
only slightly, influenced by the storm of which he had to bear the
brunt; indeed, he would have been more than human if he had not been;
and probably this outside pressure was one among the causes that induced
him to accept a compromise in the matter, which took effect just before
Polk was inaugurated. The House of Representatives had passed a
resolution giving the consent of Congress to the admission of Texas as a
state, and allowing it the privilege of forming four additional states
out of its territory, whenever it should see fit. The line of the
Missouri Compromise, 36° 30', was run through this new territory,
slavery being prohibited in the lands lying north of it, and permissible
or not, according to the will of the state seeking admission, in those
lying south of it. Benton meanwhile had introduced a bill merely
providing that negotiations should be entered into with Texas for its
admission, the proposed treaty or articles of agreement to be submitted
to the Senate or to Congress. He thereby kept the control in the hands
of the legislature, which the joint resolution did not; and moreover, as
he said in his speech, he wished to provide for due consideration being
shown Mexico in the arrangement of the boundary, and for the matter
being settled by commissioners.
Neither resolution nor bill could get through by itself; and
accordingly it was proposed to combine both into one measure, leaving
the president free to choose either plan. To this proposition Benton
finally consented, it being understood that, as only three days of
Tyler's term remained, the execution of the act would be left to the
incoming president, and that the latter would adopt Benton's plans. The
friends of the admission of Texas assured the doubtful voters that such
would be the case. Polk himself gave full assurance that he would
appoint a commission, as provided by Benton's bill, if passed, with the
House resolution as an alternative; and McDuffie, Calhoun's friend, and
the senator from South Carolina, announced without reserve that
Calhoun--for Tyler need not be considered in the matter, after it had
been committed to the great nullifier--would not have the "audacity" to
try to take the settlement of the question away from the president, who
was to be inaugurated on the fourth of March. On the strength of these
assurances, which, if made good, would, of course, have rendered the
"alternative" a merely nominal one, Benton supported the measure, which
was then passed. Contrary to all expectation, Calhoun promptly acted
upon the legislative clause, and Polk made no effort to undo what the
former had done. This caused intense chagrin and anger to the
Bentonians; but they should certainly have taken such a contingency into
account, and though they might with much show of reason say that they
had been tricked into acting as they had done, yet it is probable that
the immense pressure from behind had made Benton too eager to follow any
way he could find that would take him out of the position into which his
conscience had led him. No amount of pressure would have made him
deliberately sanction a wrong; but it did render him a little less wary
in watching to see that the right was not infringed upon. It was most
natural that he should be anxious to find a common ground for himself
and his constituents to stand on; but it is to be regretted that this
anxiety to find a common ground should have made him willing to trust
blindly to vague pledges and promises, which he ought to have known
would not be held in the least binding by those on whose behalf they
were supposed to be made.
Acting under this compromise measure Texas was admitted, and the
foundation for our war with Mexico was laid. Calhoun, under whom this
was done, nevertheless sincerely regretted the war itself, and freely
condemned Polk's administration for bringing it on; his own position
being that he desired to obtain without a war what it was impossible we
should get except at the cost of one. Benton, who had all along
consistently opposed doing a wrong to Mexico, attacked the whole war
party, and in a strong and bitter speech accused Calhoun of being the
cause of the contest; showing plainly that, whatever the ex-secretary of
state might say in regard to the acts immediately precipitating the
conflict, he himself was responsible as being in truth their original
cause. While stating his conviction, however, that Calhoun was the real
author of the war, Benton added that he did not believe that war was his
object, although an inevitable incident of the course he had pursued.
Although heartily opposed to the war in its origin, Benton very properly
believed in prosecuting it with the utmost vigor when once we were
fairly in; and it was mainly owing to him that the proposed policy of a
"masterly inactivity" was abandoned, and the scheme of pushing straight
for the city of Mexico adopted in its stead. Indeed, it was actually
proposed to make him lieutenant-general, and therefore the
commander-in-chief of our forces in Mexico; but this was defeated in the
Senate, very fortunately, as it would have been a great outrage upon
Scott, Taylor, and every other soldier with real military training. It
seems extraordinary that Benton himself should not have seen the
absurdity and wrong of such a proposition.
The wonderful hardihood and daring shown in the various expeditions
against Mexico, especially in those whereby her northwest territory was
wrested from her, naturally called forth all Benton's sympathy; and one
of his best speeches was that made to welcome Doniphan's victorious
volunteers after their return home from their famous march to
Chihuahua.
CHAPTER XIV.
SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES.
Hardly was Polk elected before it became evident to Benton and the other
Jacksonians that the days of the old Union or Nationalist Democracy were
over, and that the separatist and disunion elements within the party had
obtained the upper hand. The first sign of the new order of things was
the displacement of Blair, editor of the "Globe," the Democratic
newspaper organ. Blair was a strong Unionist, and had been bitterly
hostile to Calhoun and the Nullifiers. He had also opposed Tyler, the
representative of those states-rights and separatist Democrats, who by
their hostility to Jackson had been temporarily driven into the Whig
camp, and who, finding themselves in very uncongenial society, and
seeing, moreover, that their own principles were gradually coming to the
front in the old party, had begun drifting back again into it. Polk's
chances of election were so precarious that he was most anxious to
conciliate the Separatists; besides which he at heart sympathized with
their views, and had himself been brought forward in the Democratic
convention to beat the National candidate, Van Buren. Moreover, Tyler
withdrew from the contest in his favor; in part payment for which help,
soon after the election, Blair was turned out, and Ritchie of Virginia,
a man whose views suited the new Democratic leaders, was put in his
place; to the indignation not only of Benton, but also of Jackson
himself, then almost on his death-bed. Of course the break between the
two wings was as yet by no means complete. Polk needed the Union
Democrats, and the latter were still in good party standing. Benton
himself, as has been seen, was offered the command of all the forces in
Mexico, but the governmental policy, and the attitude of the party in
Congress after 1844, were widely different from what they had been while
Jackson's influence was supreme, or while the power he left behind him
was wielded by a knot of Union men.
From this time the slavery question dwarfed all others, and was the one
with which Benton, as well as other statesmen, had mainly to deal. He
had been very loath to acknowledge that it was ever to become of such
overshadowing importance; until late in his life he had not realized
that, interwoven with the disunionist movement, it had grown so as to
become in reality the one and only question before the people; but, this
once thoroughly understood, he henceforth devoted his tremendous
energies to the struggle with it. He possessed such phenomenal power of
application and of study, and his capacity for and his delight in work
were so extraordinary, that he was able at the same time to grapple with
many other subjects of importance, and to present them in a way that
showed he had thoroughly mastered them both in principle and detail,--as
witness his speech in favor of giving the control of the coast survey to
the navy; but henceforth the importance of his actions lay in their
relation to the slavery extension movements.
He had now entered on what may fairly be called the heroic part of his
career; for it would be difficult to choose any other word to express
our admiration for the unflinching and defiant courage with which,
supported only by conscience and by his loving loyalty to the Union, he
battled for the losing side, although by so doing he jeopardized and
eventually ruined his political prospects, being finally, as punishment
for his boldness in opposing the dominant faction of the Missouri
Democracy, turned out of the Senate, wherein he had passed nearly half
his life. Indeed, his was one of those natures that show better in
defeat than in victory. In his career there were many actions that must
command our unqualified admiration; such were his hostility to the
Nullifiers, wherein, taking into account his geographical location and
his refusal to compromise, he did better than any other public man, not
even excepting Jackson and Webster; his belief in honest money; and his
attitude towards all questions involving the honor or the maintenance
and extension of the Union. But in all these matters he was backed more
or less heartily by his state, and he had served four terms in the
federal Senate as the leading champion and representative, not alone of
Missouri, but also of the entire West. When, however, the slavery
question began to enter upon its final stage, Benton soon found himself
opposed to a large and growing faction of the Missouri Democracy, which
increased so rapidly that it soon became dominant. But he never for an
instant yielded his convictions, even when he saw the ground being thus
cut from under his feet, fighting for the right as sturdily as ever,
facing his fate fearlessly, and going down without a murmur. The
contrast between the conduct towards the slavery disunionists of this
Democrat from a slave-holding state, with a hostile majority at home
against him, and the conduct of Webster, a Whig, enthusiastically
backed by his own free state, in the same issue, is a painful one for
the latter. Indeed, on any moral point, Benton need have no cause to
fear comparison with any of his great rivals in the political arena.
During his career, the United States Senate was perhaps the most
influential, and certainly the ablest legislative body in the world; and
after Jackson's presidency came to an end the really great statesmen and
political leaders of the country were to be found in it, and not in the
executive chair. The period during which the great Missourian was so
prominent a figure in our politics, and which lasted up to the time of
the Civil War, might very appropriately be known in our history as the
time of the supremacy of the Senate. Such senators as Benton, Webster,
Clay, and Calhoun, and later on Douglas, Seward, and Sumner, fairly
towered above presidents like the obscure Southerners, Tyler and Polk,
or the truckling, timeserving Northern politicians, Pierce and Buchanan.
During the long interval coming between the two heroic ages of American
history,--the age of Washington and Franklin, and the age of Lincoln and
Grant,--it was but rarely that the nation gave its greatest gift to its
best or its greatest son.
Benton had come into the Senate at the same time that Missouri was
admitted into the Union, with thanks, therefore, to the same measure,
the Missouri Compromise bill. This shut out slavery from all territory
north of the line of 36° 30', and did not make it obligatory even where
it was permissible; and the immediate cause of Benton's downfall was his
courage and persistency in defending the terms of this compromise from
the attacks of the Southern slavery extensionists and disunionists. The
pro-slavery feeling was running ever higher and higher throughout the
South; and his stand on this question aroused the most furious anger
among a constantly increasing number of his constituents, and made him
the target for bitter and savage assaults on the part of his foes, the
spirit of hostility against him being carried to such length as finally
almost to involve him in an open brawl on the floor of the Senate with
one of his colleagues, Foote, who, like his fellow fire-eaters, found
that Benton was not a man who could be bullied. Indeed, his iron will
and magnificent physique both fitted him admirably for such a contest
against odds, and he seems to have entered into it with a positive zest.
The political Abolitionists having put Polk in power, their action bore
fruit after its kind, and very soon the question had to be faced, as to
what should be done with the immense tracts of territory conquered from
Mexico. Benton opposed, as being needless and harmful, the Wilmot
Proviso, which forbade the introduction of slavery into any part of the
territory so acquired. He argued, and produced in evidence the laws and
Constitution of Mexico, that the soil of California and Mexico was
already free, and that as slavery would certainly never be, and indeed
could never be, introduced into either territory, the agitation of the
question could only result in harm. Calhoun and the other extreme
slavery leaders welcomed the discussion over this proviso, which led
Benton to remark that the Abolitionists and the Nullifiers were
necessary to each other,--the two blades of a pair of shears, neither of
which could cut until they were joined together.
When Calhoun introduced his famous resolutions declaring that Congress
had no power to interfere with slavery in the territories, and therefore
no power to prevent the admission of new states except on the condition
of their prohibiting slavery within their limits, Benton promptly and
strongly opposed them as being firebrands needlessly thrown to inflame
the passions of the extremists, and, moreover, as being disunionist in
tendency. The following is his own account of what then took place: "Mr.
Calhoun said he had expected the support of Mr. Benton 'as the
representative of a slave-holding state.' Mr. Benton answered that it
was impossible that he could have expected such a thing. 'Then,' said
Mr. Calhoun, 'I shall know where to find that gentleman.' To which Mr.
Benton said: 'I shall be found in the right place,--on the side of my
country and the Union.' This answer, given on that day and on the spot,
is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity
to remember." We can easily pardon the vanity which wishes and hopes
that such an answer, given under such conditions, may be remembered.
Indeed, Benton's attitude throughout all this period should never be
forgotten; and the words he spoke in answer to Calhoun marked him as the
leader among those Southerners who held the nation above any section
thereof, even their own, and whose courage and self-sacrifice in the
cause of the Union entitled them to more praise than by right belongs to
any equal number of Northerners; those Southerners who in the civil war
furnished Farragut, Thomas, Bristow, and countless others as loyal as
they were brave. The effect of Benton's teachings and the still
remaining influence of his intense personality did more than aught else
to keep Missouri within the Union, when her sister states went out of
it.
Benton always regarded much of the slavery agitation in the South as
being political in character, and the result of the schemes of ambitious
and unscrupulous leaders. He believed that Calhoun had introduced a set
of resolutions that were totally uncalled for, simply for the purpose of
carrying a question to the Slave States on which they could be formed
into a unit against the Free States; and there is much to be said in
support of his view. Certainly the resolutions mark the beginning of the
first great slavery agitation throughout the Southern States, which was
engineered and guided for their own ends by politicians like Jefferson
Davis. These resolutions were absolutely inconsistent with many of
Calhoun's previous declarations; and that fact was also sharply
commented on by Benton in his speeches and writings. He also criticised
with caustic severity Calhoun's statements that he wished to save the
Union by forcing the North to take a position so agreeable to the South
as to make the latter willing not to separate. He showed that Calhoun's
proposed "constitutional" and "peaceable" methods of bringing this about
by prohibiting commercial intercourse between the two sections would
themselves be flagrant breaches of the Constitution and acts of
disunion,--all the more so as it was proposed to discriminate in favor
of the Northwest as against the Northeast. Calhoun wished to bring
about a convention of the Southern States, in order to secure the
necessary unity of action; and one of the main obstacles to the success
of the plan was Missouri's refusal to take part in it. Great efforts
were made to win her over, and to beat down Benton; the extreme
pro-slavery men honoring him with a hatred more intense than that they
harbored towards any Northerner. Some of Calhoun's recent biographers
have credited him with being really a Union man at heart. It seems
absolutely impossible that this could have been the case; and the
supposition is certainly not compatible with the belief that he retained
his right senses. Benton characterizes his system of slavery agitation,
very truthfully, as being one "to force issues upon the North under the
pretext of self-defense, and to sectionalize the South, preparatory to
disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional conventions, composed
wholly of delegates from the slave-holding states."
When the question of the admission of Oregon came up, Calhoun attempted
to apply to it a dogma wholly at variance with all his former positions
on the subject. This was the theory of the self-extension of the slavery
part of the Constitution to the territories; that is, he held that the
exclusion of slavery from any part of the new territory was itself a
subversion of the Constitution. Such a dogma was so monstrous in
character, so illogical, so inconsistent with all his former theories,
and so absolutely incompatible with the preservation of the Union, that
it renders it impossible to believe that his asseverations of devotion
to the latter were uttered honestly or in good faith. Most modern
readers will agree with Benton that he deliberately worked to bring
about secession.
Meanwhile the Missourian had gained an ally of his own stamp in the
Senate. This was Houston, from the new State of Texas, who represented
in that state, like Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, and Benton himself in
Missouri, the old Nationalist Democracy, which held the preservation of
the Union dear above all other things. Houston was a man after Benton's
own heart, and was thoroughly Jacksonian in type. He was rough, honest,
and fearless, a devoted friend and a vengeful enemy, and he promised
that combination of stubborn courage and capacity of devotion to an
ideal that renders a man an invaluable ally in a fight against odds for
principle.
After much discussion and amendment, the Oregon bill, containing a
radical anti-slavery clause, passed both houses and became a law in
spite of the violent opposition of some of the Southerners, headed by
Calhoun, who announced that the great strife between the North and the
South was ended, and that the time had come for the South to show that,
though she prized the Union, yet there were matters which she regarded
as of greater importance than its preservation. His ire was most
fiercely excited by the action of Benton and Houston in supporting the
bill, and after his return to South Carolina he denounced them by name
as traitors to the South,--"a denunciation," says Benton, "which they
took for a distinction; as what he called treason to the South they knew
to be allegiance to the Union." When it was proposed to extend by bill
the Constitution of the United States into the territories, with a view
to carrying slavery into California, Utah, and New Mexico, Benton was
again opposed to Calhoun. As a matter of course, too, he was the
stoutest opponent of the Southern convention and other similar disunion
movements that were beginning to take shape throughout the South,
instigated by the two rank secession states of South Carolina and
Mississippi.
Most of the momentous questions springing out of the war with Mexico
were left by Polk as legacies to his successor, when the former went out
of office, after an administration that Benton criticised with extreme
sharpness, although he tried to shield the president by casting the
blame for his actions upon his cabinet advisers; characterizing the
Mexican War as one of "speculation and intrigue," and as the "great
blot" of his four years' term of office, and ridiculing the theory that
we were acting in self-defense, or that our soil had been invaded. In
1848 the Democrats nominated Cass, a Northern pro-slavery politician of
moderate abilities, and the Whigs put up and elected old Zachary Taylor,
the rough frontier soldier and Louisiana slave-holder. The political
Abolitionists again took a hand in the contest, but this time abandoned
their abolition theories, substituting instead thereof the prohibition
of slavery in the new territories. They derived much additional
importance from their alliance with a disappointed politician in the
pivotal State of New York; and in this case, in sharp contrast to the
result in 1844, their actions worked good, and not evil. Van Buren,
chagrined and angered by the way he was treated by the regular
Democrats, organized a revolt against them, and used the banner of the
new Free Soil party as one under which to rally his adherents. This
movement was of consequence mainly in New York, and there it soon became
little more than a mere fight between the two sections of the Democracy.
Benton himself visited this all-important state to try to patch up
matters, but he fortunately failed. The factions proved very nearly
equal in strength; and as a consequence the Whigs carried the state and
the election, and once more held the reins of government.
When a Louisiana slave-holder was thus installed in the White House, the
extreme Southern men may have thought that they were sure of him as an
ally in their fight against freedom. But, if so, they soon found they
had reckoned without their host, for the election of Taylor affords a
curious, though not solitary, instance in which the American people
builded better than they knew in choosing a chief executive. Nothing
whatever was known of his political theories, and the Whigs nominated
him simply because he was a successful soldier, likely to take the
popular fancy. But once elected he turned out to have the very qualities
we then most needed in a president,--a stout heart, shrewd common sense,
and thorough-going devotion to the Union. Although with widely different
training from Benton, and nominally differing from him in politics, he
was yet of the same stamp both in character and principles; both were
Union Southerners, not in the least afraid of openly asserting their
opinions, and, if necessary, of making them good by their acts. In his
first and only annual message, Taylor expressed, upon all the important
questions of the day, views that were exactly similar to those advanced
before or after by Benton himself in the Senate; and he used similar
emphasis and plainness of speech. He declared the Union to be the
greatest of blessings, which he would maintain in every way against
whatever dangers might threaten it; he advised the admission of
California, which wished to come in as a free state; he thought that the
territories of Utah and New Mexico should be left as they were; and he
warned the Texans, who were blustering about certain alleged rights to
New Mexican soil, and threatening to take them by force of arms, that
this could not be permitted, and that the matter would have to be
settled by the judicial authority of the United States. Benton heartily
indorsed the message. Naturally, it was bitterly assailed by the
disunionists under Calhoun; and even Clay, who entirely lacked Taylor's
backbone, was dissatisfied with it as being too extreme in tone, and
conflicting with his proposed compromise measures. These same compromise
measures brought the Kentucky leader into conflict with Benton also,
especially on the point of their interfering with the immediate
admission of California into the Union.
This is not the place to discuss Clay's proposed compromise, which was
not satisfactory to the extreme Southerners, and still less so to the
Unionists and anti-slavery men. It consisted of five different parts,
relating to the recovery of fugitive slaves, the suppression of the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as
a state, and the territorial condition of Utah and New Mexico. Benton
opposed it as mixing up incongruous measures; as being unjust to
California, inasmuch as it confounded the question of her admission with
the general slavery agitation in the United States; and above all as
being a concession or capitulation to the spirit of disunion and
secession, and therefore a repetition of the error of 1833. Benton
always desired to meet and check any disunion movement at the very
outset, and, if he had had his way, would have carried matters with a
high hand whenever it came to dealing with threats of such a proceeding;
and therein he was perfectly right. In regard to the proposed compromise
he believed in dealing with each question as it arose, beginning with
the admission of California, and refusing to have any compromise at all
with those who threatened secession.
The slavery extensionists endeavored to have the Missouri compromise
line stretched on to the Pacific. Benton, avowing his belief that
slavery was an evil, opposed this, and gave his reasons why he did not
wish to see the line which had been used to divide free and slave soil
in the French or Louisiana purchase extended into the lands won from
Mexico. Slavery had always existed in Louisiana, while it had been long
abolished in Mexico. "The Missouri compromise line, extending to New
Mexico and California, though astronomically the same as that in
Louisiana, would be politically directly the opposite. One went through
a territory all slave, and made one half free; the other would go
through territory all free, and make one half slave." In fact Benton, as
he grew older, unlike most of his compatriots, gained a clearer insight
into the effects of slavery. This was shown in his comments upon
Calhoun's statement, made in the latter's last speech, in reference to
the unequal development of the North and South; which, Benton said, was
partly owing to the existence of "slavery itself, which he (Calhoun) was
so anxious to extend." It was in this same speech that Calhoun hinted at
his plan for a dual executive,--one president from the Free and one from
the Slave States,--a childish proposition, that Benton properly treated
as a simple absurdity.
In his speech against the compromise, Benton discussed it, section by
section, with great force, and with his usual blunt truthfulness. His
main count was the injustice done to California by delaying her
admittance, and making it dependent upon other issues; but he made
almost as strong a point against the effort to settle the claims of
Texas to New Mexican territory. The Texan threats to use force he
treated with cavalier indifference, remarking that as long as New Mexico
was a territory, and therefore belonged to the United States, any
controversy with her was a controversy with the federal government,
which would know how to play her part by "defending her territory from
invasion, and her people from violence,"--a hint that had a salutary
effect upon the Texans; in fact the disunionists, generally, were not
apt to do much more than threaten while a Whig like Taylor was backed up
by a Democrat like Benton. He also pointed out that it was not
necessary, however desirable, to make a compact with Texas about the
boundaries, as they could always be settled, whether she wished it or
not, by a suit before the Supreme Court; and again intimated that a
little show of firmness would remove all danger of a collision. "As to
anything that Texas or New Mexico may do in taking or relinquishing
possession, that is all moonshine. New Mexico is the property of the
United States, and she cannot dispose of herself or any part of
herself, nor can Texas take her or any part of her." He showed a
thorough acquaintance with New Mexican geography and history, and
alluded to the bills he had already brought in, in 1844 and 1850, to
establish a divisional line between the territory and Texas, on the
longitude first of one hundred and then of one hundred and two degrees.
He recalled the fact that before the annexation of Texas, and in a bill
proposing to settle all questions with her, he had inserted a provision
forever prohibiting slavery in all parts of the annexed territory lying
west of the hundredth degree of longitude. He also took the opportunity
of formally stating his opposition to any form of slavery extension,
remarking that it was no new idea with him, but dated from the time when
in 1804, while a law student in Tennessee, he had studied Blackstone as
edited by the learned Virginian, Judge Tucker, who, in an appendix,
treated of, and totally condemned, black slavery in the United States.
The very difficulty, or, as he deemed it, the impossibility, of getting
rid of the evil, made Benton all the more determined in opposing its
extension. "The incurability of the evil is the greatest objection to
the extension of slavery. If it is wrong for the legislator to inflict
an evil which can be cured, how much more to inflict one that is
incurable, and against the will of the people who are to endure it
forever! I quarrel with no one for deeming slavery a blessing; I deem it
an evil, and would neither adopt it nor impose it on others." The
solution of the problem of disposing of existent slavery, he confessed,
seemed beyond human wisdom; but "there is a wisdom above human, and to
that we must look. In the mean time, do not extend the evil." In
justification of his position he quoted previous actions of Congress,
done under the lead of Southern men, in refusing again and again, down
to 1807, to allow slavery to be introduced into Indiana, when that
community petitioned for it. He also repudiated strongly the whole
spirit in which Clay had gotten up his compromise bill, stating that he
did not believe in geographical parties; that he knew no North and no
South, and utterly rejected any slavery compromises except those to be
found in the Constitution. Altogether it was a great speech, and his
opposition was one of the main causes of the defeat of Clay's measure.
Benton's position on the Wilmot Proviso is worth giving in his own
words: "That measure was rejected again as heretofore, and by the votes
of those who were opposed to extending slavery into the territories,
because it was unnecessary and inoperative,--irritating to the Slave
States, without benefit to the Free States, a mere work of
supererogation, of which the fruit was discontent. It was rejected, not
on the principle of non-intervention; not on the principle of leaving to
the territories to do as they pleased on the question, but because there
had been intervention; because Mexican law and constitution had
intervened, had abolished slavery by law in those dominions; which law
would remain in force until repealed by Congress. All that the opponents
to the extension of slavery had to do, then, was to do nothing. And they
did nothing."
Before California was admitted into the Union old Zachary Taylor had
died, leaving behind him a name that will always be remembered among our
people. He was neither a great statesman nor yet a great commander; but
he was an able and gallant soldier, a loyal and upright public servant,
and a most kindly, honest, and truthful man. His death was a greater
loss to the country than perhaps the people ever knew.
The bill for the admission of California as a free state, heartily
sustained by Benton, was made a test question by the Southern
disunionists; but on this occasion they were thoroughly beaten. The
great struggle was made over a proposition to limit the southern
boundary of the state to the line of 36° 30', and to extend the Missouri
line through to the Pacific, so as to authorize the existence of slavery
in all the territory south of that latitude. This was defeated by a vote
of thirty-two to twenty-four. Not only Benton, but also Spruance and
Wales of Delaware, and Underwood of Kentucky, joined with the
representatives from the Free States in opposing it. Had it not been for
the action of these four slave-state senators in leaving their
associates, the vote would have been a tie; and their courage and
patriotism should be remembered. The bill was then passed by a vote of
thirty-four to eighteen, two other Southern senators, Houston of Texas,
and Bell of Tennessee, voting for it, in addition to the four already
mentioned. After its passage, ten of the senators who had voted against
it, including, of course, Jefferson Davis, and also Benton's own
colleague from Missouri, Atchison, joined in a protest against what had
been done, ending with a thinly veiled threat of disunion,--"dissolution
of the confederacy," as they styled it. Benton stoutly and successfully
opposed allowing this protest to be received or entered upon the
journal, condemning it, with a frankness that very few of his
fellow-senators would have dared to copy, as being sectional and
disunion in form, and therefore unfit even for preservation on the
records.
When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, through the help of some
Northern votes, Benton refused to support it; and this was the last act
of importance that he performed as United States Senator. He had risen
and grown steadily all through his long term of service; and during its
last period he did greater service to the nation than any of his
fellow-senators. Compare his stand against the slavery extremists and
disunionists, such as Calhoun, with the position of Webster at the time
of his famous seventh of March speech, or with that of Clay when he
brought in his compromise bill! In fact, as the times grew more
troublesome, he grew steadily better able to do good work in them.
It is this fact of growth that especially marks his career. No other
American statesman, except John Quincy Adams,--certainly neither of his
great contemporaries, Webster and Clay,--kept doing continually better
work throughout his term of public service, or showed himself able to
rise to a higher level at the very end than at the beginning. Yet such
was the case with Benton. He always rose to meet a really great
emergency; and his services to the nation grew steadily in importance
to the very close of his life. Whereas Webster and Clay passed their
zenith and fell, he kept rising all the time.
CHAPTER XV.
THE LOSING FIGHT.
Benton had now finished his fifth and last term in the United States
Senate. He had been chosen senator from Missouri before she was admitted
into the Union, and had remained such for thirty years. During all that
time the state had been steadily Democratic, the large Whig minority
never being able to get control; but on the question of the extension of
slavery the dominant party itself began at this time to break into two
factions. Hitherto Benton had been the undisputed leader of the
Democracy, but now the pro-slavery and disunionist Democrats organized a
very powerful opposition to him; while he still received the
enthusiastic support of an almost equally numerous body of followers.
Although the extension of slavery and the preservation of the Union were
the two chief and vital points on which the factions differed, yet the
names by which they designated each other were adopted in consequence of
their differing also on a third and only less important one. Benton was
such a firm believer in hard money, and a currency of gold and silver,
as to have received the nickname of "Old Bullion," and his followers
were called "hards;" his opponents were soft money men, in addition to
being secessionists and pro-slavery fanatics, and took the name of
"softs." The principles of the Bentonians were right, and those of their
opponents wrong; but for all that the latter gradually gained upon the
former. Finally, in the midst of Benton's fight against the extension of
slavery into the territories, the "softs" carried the Missouri
legislature, and passed a series of resolutions based upon those of
Calhoun. These were most truculent and disloyal in tone, demanding that
slavery be permitted to exist in all the new states to be admitted, and
instructing their senators to vote accordingly. These resolutions were
presented in the senate by Benton's colleague from Missouri, Atchison,
who was rather hostile to him and to every other friend of the Union,
and later on achieved disreputable notoriety as a leader of the "border
ruffians" in the affrays on the soil of Kansas. Benton at once picked up
the glove that had been flung down. He utterly refused to obey the
resolutions, denounced them savagely as being treasonable and offensive
in the highest degree, asserted that they did not express the true
opinions of the voters of the state, and appealed from the Missouri
legislature to the Missouri people.
The issue between the two sides was now sharply brought out, and, as
this took place towards the end of Benton's fifth term, the struggle to
command the legislature which should reëlect him or give him a successor
was most exciting. Benton himself took an active part in the preliminary
canvass. Neither faction was able to get a majority of the members, and
the deadlock was finally broken by the "softs" coming to the support of
the Whigs, and helping them to elect Benton's rival. Thus, after serving
his state faithfully and ably for thirty years, he was finally turned
out of the position which he so worthily filled, because he had
committed the crime of standing loyally by the Union.
But the stout old Nationalist was not in the least cast down or even
shaken by his defeat. He kept up the fight as bitterly as ever, though
now an old man, and in 1852 went to Congress as a representative Union
Democrat. For thirty years he had been the autocrat of Missouri
politics, and had at one time wielded throughout his own state a power
as great as Calhoun possessed in South Carolina; greater than Webster
held in Massachusetts, or Clay in Kentucky. But the tide which had so
long flowed in his favor now turned, and for the few remaining years of
his life set as steadily against him; yet at no time of his long public
career did he stand forth as honorably and prominently as during his
last days, when he was showing so stern a front to his victorious foes.
His love for work was so great that, when out of the Senate, he did not
find even his incessant political occupations enough for him. During his
contest for the senatorship his hands had been full, for he had spoken
again and again throughout the entire state, his carefully prepared
speeches showing remarkable power, and filled with scathing denunciation
and invective and biting and caustic sarcasm. But so soon as his defeat
was assured he turned his attention immediately to literature, setting
to work on his great "Thirty Years' View," of which the first volume was
printed during his congressional term, and was quoted on the floor of
the House, both by his friends and foes, during the debates in which he
was taking part.
In 1852, when he was elected to Congress as a member of the House, he
had supported Pierce for the presidency against Scott, a good general,
but otherwise a wholly absurd and flatulent personage, who was the Whig
nominee. But it soon became evident that Pierce was completely under
the control of the secession wing of the party, and Benton
thereafterwards treated him with contemptuous hostility, despising him,
and seeing him exactly as he was,--a small politician, of low capacity
and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse
than himself but also stronger and abler. He was ever ready to do any
work the slavery leaders set him, and to act as their attorney in
arguing in its favor,--to quote Benton's phrase, with "undaunted
mendacity, moral callosity [and] mental obliquity." His last message to
Congress in the slavery interest Benton spoke of as characteristic, and
exemplifying "all the modes of conveying untruths which long ages have
invented,--direct assertion, fallacious inference, equivocal phrase, and
false innuendo." As he entertained such views of the head of the
Democratic party, and as this same head was in hearty accord with, and a
good representative of the mass of the rank and file politicians of the
organization, it is small wonder that Benton found himself, on every
important question that came up while he was in Congress, opposed to the
mass of his fellow-Democrats.
Although the great questions to which he devoted himself, while a
representative in Congress, were those relating to the extension of
slavery, yet he also found time to give to certain other subjects,
working as usual with indomitable energy, and retaining his marvelous
memory to the last. The idea of desponding or giving up, for any cause
whatever, simply never entered his head. When his house, containing all
the manuscript and papers of the nearly completed second volume of his
"Thirty Years' View," was burned up, he did not delay a minute in
recommencing his work, and the very next day spoke in Congress as usual.
His speeches were showing a steady improvement; they were not
masterpieces, even at the last, but in every way, especially in style,
they were infinitely superior to those that he had made on his first
entrance into public life. Of course, a man with his intense pride in
his country, and characterized by such a desire to see her become
greater and more united in every way, would naturally support the
proposal to build a Pacific Railroad, and accordingly he argued for it
at great length and with force and justness, at the same time opposing
the propositions to build northern and southern trans-continental roads
as substitutes for the proposed central route. He showed the character
of the land through which the road would run, and the easiness of the
passes across the Rockies, and prophesied a rapid increase of states as
one of the results attendant upon its building. At the end of his speech
he made an elaborate comparison of the courses of trade and commerce at
different periods of the world's history, and showed that, as we had
reached the Pacific coast, we had finally taken a position where our
trade with the Oriental kingdoms, backed up by our own enormous internal
development, rendered us more than ever independent of Europe.
In another speech he discussed very intelligently, and with his usual
complete command of the facts of the case, some of the contemporary
Indian uprisings in the far West. He attacked our whole Indian policy,
showing that the corruption of the Indian agents, coupled with astute
aggressions, were the usual causes of our wars. Further, he criticised
our regular troops as being unfit to cope with the savages, and
advocated the formation of companies of frontier rangers, who should
also be settlers, and should receive from the government a bounty in
land as part reward for their service. Many of his remarks on our Indian
policy apply quite as well now as they did then, and our regular
soldiers are certainly not the proper opponents for the Indians; but
Benton's military views were, as a rule, the reverse of sensible, and we
cannot accept his denunciations of the army, and especially of West
Point, as being worth serious consideration. His belief in the marvelous
efficacy of a raw militia, especially as regards war with European
powers, was childish, and much of his feeling against the regular army
officer was dictated by jealousy. He was, by all the peculiarities of
his habits and education, utterly unfitted for military command; and it
would have been an evil day for his good fame if Polk had succeeded in
having him made lieutenant-general of our forces in Mexico.
His remarks upon our Indian policy were not the only ones he made that
would bear study even yet. Certain of his speeches upon the different
land-bounty and pension bills, passed nominally in the interests of
veterans, but really through demagogy and the machination of
speculators, could be read with profit by not a few Congressmen at the
present time. One of his utterances was: "I am a friend to old soldiers
... but not to old speculators;" and while favoring proper pension bills
he showed the foolishness and criminality of certain others very
clearly, together with the fact that, when passed long after the
services have been rendered, they always fail to relieve the real
sufferers, and work in the interests of unworthy outsiders.
But his great speech, and one of the best and greatest that he ever
made, was the one in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which was
being pushed through Congress by the fire-eaters and their Northern
pro-slavery followers. His own position upon the measure was best
expressed by the words he used in commenting on the remarks of a
Georgian member: "He votes as a Southern man, and votes sectionally; I
also am a Southern man, but vote nationally on national questions."
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had expressly abolished slavery in the
territory out of which Kansas and Nebraska were carved. By the proposed
bill this compromise was to be repealed, and the famous doctrine of
non-intervention, or "squatter sovereignty," was to take its place, the
people of each territory being allowed to choose for themselves whether
they did or did not wish slavery. Benton attacked the proposal with all
the strength of his frank, open nature as "a bungling attempt to smuggle
slavery into the territory, and throughout all the country, up to the
Canada line and out to the Rocky Mountains." He showed exhaustively the
real nature of the original Missouri Compromise, which, as he said, was
forced by the South upon the North, and which the South now proposed to
repeal, that it might humiliate the North still further. The compromise
of 1820 was, he justly contended, right; it was like the original
compromises of the Constitution, by which the Slave States were admitted
to the formation of the Union; no greater concession of principle was
involved in the one case than in the other; and, had either compromise
failed, the Union would not now be in existence. But the day when
compromises had been necessary, or even harmless, had passed. The time
had come when the extension of slavery was to be opposed in every
constitutional way; and it was an outrage to propose to extend its
domain by repealing all that part of a compromise measure which worked
against it, when the South had already long taken advantage of such
parts of the law as worked in its favor. Said Benton: "The South divided
and took half, and now it will not do to claim the other half." Exactly
as a proposition to destroy the slavery compromises of the Constitution
would be an open attempt to destroy the Union, so, he said, the attempt
to abrogate the compromise of 1820 would be a preparation for the same
ending. "I have stood upon the Missouri Compromise for about thirty
years, and mean to stand upon it to the end of my life ... [it is] a
binding covenant upon both parties, and the more so upon the South, as
she imposed it."
The squatter sovereignty theories of Douglas he treated with deserved
ridicule, laughing at the idea that the territories were not the actual
property of the nation, to be treated as the latter wished, and having
none of the rights of sovereign states; and he condemned even more
severely the theory advanced to the effect that Congress had no power to
legislate on slavery in the territories. Thus, he pointed out that to
admit any such theories was directly to reverse the principles upon
which we had acted for seventy years in regard to the various
territories that from time to time grew to such size as entitled them to
come into the Union as states. After showing that there was no excuse
for bringing in the bill on the plea of settling the slavery question,
since there was not a foot of territory in the United States where the
subject of slavery was not already settled by law, he closed with an
earnest appeal against such an attempt to break up the Union and outrage
the North by forcing slavery into a land where its existence was already
forbidden by law. His speech exceeded the hour allotted to it, and he
was allowed to go on only by the courtesy of a member from Illinois,
who, when some of the Southerners protested against his being heard
farther, gave up part of his own time to the grand old Missourian, and
asked the House to hear him, if only "as the oldest living man in
Congress, the only man in Congress who was present at the passage of
the Missouri Compromise bill." Many a man at the North, ashamed and
indignant at seeing the politicians of his own section cower at the
crack of the Southern whip, felt a glow of sincere gratitude and
admiration for the rugged Westerner, who so boldly bade defiance to the
ruling slave party that held the reins not only in his own section, but
also in his own state, and to oppose which was almost certain political
death.
The Gadsden treaty was also strongly opposed and condemned by Benton,
who considered it to be part of a great scheme or movement in the
interests of the slavery disunionists, of which he also believed the
Kansas-Nebraska bill to be the first development,--the "thin end of the
wedge." He opposed the acquirement even of the small piece of territory
we were actually able to purchase from Mexico; and showed good grounds
for his belief that the administration, acting as usual only in the
interest of the secessionists, had tried to get enough North-Mexican
territory to form several new states, and had also attempted to purchase
Cuba, both efforts being for the purpose of enabling the South either to
become again dominant in the Union or else to set up a separate
confederacy of her own. For it must be kept in mind that Benton always
believed that the Southern disunion movements were largely due to
conspiracies among ambitious politicians, who used the slavery question
as a handle by which to influence the mass of the people. This view has
certainly more truth in it than it is now the fashion to admit. His
objection to the actual treaty was mainly based on its having been done
by the executive without the consent of the legislature, and he also
criticised it for the secrecy with which it had been put through. In
bringing forward the first objection, however, he was confronted with
Jefferson's conduct in acquiring Louisiana, which he endeavored, not
very successfully, to show had nothing in common with the actions of
Pierce, who, he said, simply demanded a check from the House with which
to complete a purchase undertaken on his own responsibility.
Throughout his congressional term of service, Benton acted so as to
deserve well of the Union as a whole, and most well of Missouri in
particular. But he could not stem the tide of folly and madness in this
state, and was defeated when he was a candidate for reëlection. The
Whigs had now disappeared from the political arena, and the
Know-nothings were running through their short and crooked lease of
life; they foolishly nominated a third candidate in Benton's district,
who drew off enough votes from him to enable his pro-slavery Democratic
competitor to win.
No sooner had he lost his seat in Congress than Benton, indefatigable as
ever, set to work to finish his "Thirty Years' View," and produced the
second volume in 1856, the year when he made his last attempt to regain
his hold in politics, and to win Missouri back to the old Union
standard. Although his own son-in-law, Fremont, the daring western
explorer, was running as the first presidential candidate ever nominated
by the Republicans, the old partisan voted for the Democrat, Buchanan.
He did not like Buchanan, considering him weak and unsuitable, but the
Republican party he believed to be entirely too sectional in character
for him to give it his support. For governor there was a triangular
fight, the Know-nothings having nominated one candidate, the
secessionist Democrats a second, while Benton himself ran as the choice
of the Union Democracy. He was now seventy-four years old, but his mind
was as vigorous as ever, and his iron will kept up a frame that had
hardly even yet begun to give way. During the course of the campaign he
traveled throughout the state, going in all twelve hundred miles, and
making forty speeches, each one of two or three hours' length. This was
a remarkable feat for so old a man; indeed, it has very rarely been
paralleled, except by Gladstone's recent performances. The vote was
quite evenly divided between the three candidates; but Benton came in
third, and the extreme pro-slavery men carried the day. After this,
during the few months of life he yet had left, he did not again mingle
in the politics of Missouri.
But in the days of his defeat at home, the regard and respect in which
he was held in the other states, especially at the North, increased
steadily; and in the fall of 1856 he made by request a lecturing tour in
New England, speaking on the danger of the political situation and the
imperative necessity of preserving the Union, which he now clearly saw
to be gravely threatened. He was well received, for the North was
learning to respect him, and he had gotten over his early hostility to
New England,--a hostility originally shared by the whole West. The New
Englanders were not yet aware, however, of the importance of the
secession movements, and paid little heed to the warnings that were to
be so fully justified by the events of the next few years. But Benton,
in spite of his great age, saw distinctly the changes that were taking
place, and the dangers that were impending,--an unusual thing for a man
whose active life has already been lived out under widely different
conditions.
He again turned his attention to literature, and produced another great
work, the "Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1787 to 1856," in
sixteen volumes, besides writing a valuable pamphlet on the Dred Scott
decision, which he severely criticised. The amount of labor all this
required was immense, and his health completely gave way; yet he
continued working to the very end, dictating the closing portion of the
"Abridgment" in a whisper as he lay on his death-bed. When he once began
to fail his advanced years made him succumb rapidly; and on April 10,
1858, he died, in the city of Washington. As soon as the news reached
Missouri, a great revulsion of feeling took place, and all classes of
the people united to do honor to the memory of the dead statesman,
realizing that they had lost a man who towered head and shoulders above
both friends and foes. The body was taken to St. Louis, and after lying
in state was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, more than forty thousand
people witnessing the funeral. All the public buildings were draped in
mourning; all places of business were closed, and the flags everywhere
were at half-mast. Thus at the very end the great city of the West at
last again paid fit homage to the West's mightiest son.
Benton's most important writings are those mentioned above. The "Thirty
Years' View" ("a history of the working of the American government for
thirty years, from 1820 to 1850") will always be indispensable to every
student of American history. It deals with the deeds of both houses of
Congress, and of some of the higher federal officials during his thirty
years' term of service in the Senate, and is valuable alike for the
original data it contains, and because it is so complete a record of our
public life at that time. The book is also remarkable for its courteous
and equable tone, even towards bitter personal and political enemies. It
shows a vanity on the part of the author that is too frank and free from
malice to be anything but amusing; the style is rather ponderous, and
the English not always good, for Benton began life, and, in fact,
largely passed it, in an age of ornate periods, when grandiloquence was
considered more essential than grammar. In much of the Mississippi
valley the people had their own canons of literary taste; indeed, in a
recent book by one of Benton's admirers, there is a fond allusion to his
statement, anent the expunging resolution, that "solitary and alone" he
had set the ball in motion,--the pleonasm being evidently looked upon in
the light of a rather fine oratorical outburst.
"The Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1856" he was
only able to bring down to 1850. Sixteen volumes were published. It was
a compilation needing infinite labor, and is invaluable to the
historian. While in the midst of the vast work he also found time to
write his "Examination of the Dred Scott case," in so far as it decided
the Missouri Compromise law to be unconstitutional, and asserted the
self-extension of the Constitution into the territories, carrying
slavery with it,--the decision in this case promulgated by Judge Taney,
of unhappy fame, having been the last step taken in the interests of
slavery and for the overthrow of freedom. The pamphlet contained nearly
two hundred pages, and showed, as was invariably the case with anything
Benton did, the effects of laborious research and wide historical and
legal learning. His summing up was, "that the decision conflicts with
the uniform action of all the departments of the federal government from
its foundation to the present time, and cannot be accepted as a rule to
govern Congress and the people, without severing that act and admitting
the political supremacy of the court and accepting an altered
constitution from its hands, and taking a new and portentous point of
departure in the working of the government." He denounced the new party
theories of the Democracy, which had abandoned the old belief of the
founders of the Republic, that Congress had power to legislate upon
slavery in territories, and which had gone on "from the abrogation of
the Missouri Compromise, which saved the Union, to squatter sovereignty,
which killed the compromise, and thence to the decisions of the supreme
court, which kill both." In closing he touched briefly on the history of
the pro-slavery agitation. "Up to Mr. Pierce's administration the plan
had been defensive, that is to say, to make the secession of the South a
measure of self-defense against the abolition encroachments and crusades
of the North. In the time of Mr. Pierce the plan became offensive, that
is to say, to commence the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of
territory to spread it over, so as to overpower the North with new Slave
States, and drive them out of the Union.... The rising in the Free
States, in consequence of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise,
checked these schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to
the revival of the agitation which enables them to wield the South
against the North in all the federal elections and all federal
legislation. Accidents and events have given the party a strange
preëminence,--under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason;
since at the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The
death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great
lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point." This was
the last protest of the last of the old Jacksonian leaders against that
new generation of Democrats, whose delight it had become to bow down to
strange gods.
In his private life Benton's relations were of the pleasantest. He was a
religious man, although, like his great political chief, he could on
occasions swear roundly. He was rigidly moral, and he was too fond of
work ever to make social life a business. But he liked small dinners,
with just a few intimate friends or noted and brilliant public men, and
always shone at such an entertainment. Although he had not traveled
much, he gave the impression of having done so, by reason of his wide
reading, and because he always made a point of knowing all explorers,
especially those who had penetrated our great western wilds. His
geographical knowledge was wonderful; and his good nature, as well as
his delight in work for work's sake, made him of more use than any
library of reference, if his friends needed information upon some
abstruse matter,--Webster himself acknowledging his indebtedness to him
on one occasion, and being the authority for the statement that Benton
knew more political facts than any other man he had ever met, even than
John Quincy Adams, and possessed a wonderful fund of general knowledge.
Although very gentle in his dealings with those for whom he cared,
Benton originally was rather quarrelsome and revengeful in character.
His personal and political prejudices were bitter, and he denounced his
enemies freely in public and from the stump; yet he always declined to
take part in joint political debates, on account of the personal
discourtesy with which they were usually conducted. He gave his whole
time to public life, rarely or never attending to his law practice after
he had fairly entered the political field.
Benton was one of those who were present and escaped death at the time
of the terrible accident on board the Princeton, during Tyler's
administration, when the bursting of her great gun killed so many
prominent men. Benton was saved owing to the fact that,
characteristically enough, he had stepped to one side the better to note
the marksmanship of the gunner. Ex-Governor Gilmer, of Virginia, who had
taken his place, was instantly killed. Tyler, who was also on board, was
likewise saved in consequence of the exhibition of a characteristic
trait; for, just as the gun was about to be fired, something occurred in
another part of the ship which distracted the attention of the fussy,
fidgety president, who accordingly ran off to see what it was, and thus
escaped the fatal explosion. The tragic nature of the accident and his
own narrow escape made a deep impression upon Benton; and it was noticed
that ever afterwards he was far more forbearing and forgiving than of
old. He became good friends with Webster and other political opponents,
with whom he had formerly hardly been on speaking terms. Calhoun alone
he would never forgive. It was not in his nature to do anything by
halves; and accordingly, when he once forgave an opponent, he could not
do enough to show him that the forgiveness was real. A Missourian named
Wilson, who had been his bitter and malignant political foe for years,
finally becoming broken in fortune and desirous of bettering himself by
going to California, where Benton's influence, through his son-in-law,
Fremont, was supreme, was persuaded by Webster to throw himself on the
generosity of his old enemy. The latter not only met him half-way, but
helped him with a lavish kindness that would hardly have been warranted
by less than a life-long friendship. Webster has left on record the
fact that, when once they had come to be on good terms with each other,
there was no man in the whole Senate of whom he would more freely have
asked any favor that could properly be granted.
He was a most loving father. At his death he left four surviving
daughters,--Mrs. William Carey Jones, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacobs, Madame
Susan Benton Boilleau, and Mrs. Jessie Ann Benton Fremont, the wife of
the great explorer, whose wonderful feats and adventures, ending with
the conquest of California, where he became a sort of viceroy in point
of power, made him an especial favorite with his father-in-law, who
loved daring and hardihood. Benton took the keenest delight in Fremont's
remarkable successes, and was never tired of talking of them, both
within and without the Senate. He records with very natural pride the
fact that it was only the courage and judgment displayed in a trying
crisis by his own gifted daughter, Fremont's wife, which enabled the
adventurous young explorer to prosecute one of the most important of his
expeditions, when threatened with fatal interference from jealous
governmental superiors.
He was an exceptionally devoted husband. His wife was Miss Elizabeth
McDowell, of Virginia, whom he married after he had entered the Senate.
Their life was most happy until 1844, when she was struck by paralysis.
From that time till her death in 1854, he never went out to a public
place of amusement, spending all his time not occupied with public
duties in writing by her bedside. It is scant praise to say that, while
mere acquiescence on his part would have enabled him to become rich
through government influence, he nevertheless died a poor man. In
public, as in private life, he was a man of sensitive purity of
character; he would never permit any person connected with him by blood
or marriage to accept office under the government, nor would he ever
favor any applicant for a government contract on political grounds.
During his last years, when his sturdy independence and devotion to the
Union had caused him the loss of his political influence in his own
state and with his own party, he nevertheless stood higher with the
country at large than ever before. He was a faithful friend and a bitter
foe; he was vain, proud, utterly fearless, and quite unable to
comprehend such emotions as are expressed by the terms despondency and
yielding. Without being a great orator or writer, or even an original
thinker, he yet possessed marked ability; and his abounding vitality and
marvelous memory, his indomitable energy and industry, and his
tenacious persistency and personal courage, all combined to give him a
position and influence such as few American statesmen have ever held.
His character grew steadily to the very last; he made better speeches
and was better able to face new problems when past three score and ten
than in his early youth or middle age. He possessed a rich fund of
political, legal, and historical learning, and every subject that he
ever handled showed the traces of careful and thorough study. He was
very courteous, except when provoked; his courage was proof against all
fear, and he shrank from no contest, personal or political. He was
sometimes narrow-minded, and always wilful and passionate; but he was
honest and truthful. At all times and in all places he held every good
gift he had completely at the service of the American Federal Union.
INDEX.
Adams, John Quincy:
In presidential election of 1824-5, 59-61;
makes Clay secretary of state, 61;
and is assailed therefor, 62;
outlines Whig policy in his inaugural, 63;
on the Panama mission, 64;
in election of 1828, 69;
preserves purity of civil service, 81;
on recognition of Texas, 180.
"Albany Regency," the, adopts "spoils system," 81.
Arnold, Benedict:
compared with Burr and J. Davis, 163.
Atchison, protests against admission of California, 338.
Benton, town of, founded, 25.
Benton, Thomas Hart:--
local character of his statesmanship, 13;
birth, 23;
boyhood and education, 24 _et seq._;
religious training, 26;
fights a duel, 27;
affray with Jackson, 28;
admitted to the bar, 29;
in legislature of Tennessee, 29;
on the Hartford Convention, 31;
a slave-holder, 31;
favors war of 1812, 32, in service, 32; befriends Jackson, 32;
associations in Tennessee, 33 _et seq._;
some traits of character, 34;
settles in Missouri, 35;
surroundings and influences there, 40;
speech on treaty with Spain concerning Florida, 41;
first position concerning slavery, 43;
enters U. S. Senate, 44;
honorable financial sacrifice, 45;
position on the Oregon question, 50-53, 65, 263-270, 273-279,
281-289;
bill to establish a trading road through Missouri, 53;
on the removal of the Indians, 55;
votes for Clay's protective tariff bill, 58;
opposes internal improvements and Cumberland Road bill, 58;
condemns election of John Q. Adams to Presidency, 60;
supports Clay, then Jackson, 61;
will not join outcry against Adams and Clay, 61;
a leader of the opposition to Adams in the Senate, 63;
represents ultra-Southern feeling concerning revolted
Spanish colonies, 65;
vote on the protective tariff of 1828, 66, 91, 102;
efforts concerning disposal of public land, 68, 77, 149, 154, 217;
hostility to the Northeastern States, 76;
in the Webster-Hayne debate, 78;
opposes Jackson's "spoils system," 79-85;
leader of the Jacksonians in the Senate, 85, 86;
shows that protective tariff has not helped the West, 91;
urges repeal of the tax on salt, 92, 227;
vigorously sustains Jackson in the nullification troubles, 100-105;
sustains the Force bill, 105;
opposes Clay's compromise measure, 107-109;
remarks on his position at this period, 112;
campaign against the Bank of the United States, 114, 130, 136, 143;
speech on the currency, 122, 136-138, 253;
conflict with Clay, 129;
on the removal of the deposits, 131;
opposes the resolution of censure against Jackson, 133;
and pushes through his own expunging resolution, 134-136, 139-142;
advocates establishment of mints at the South, 144;
opposes distribution of surplus, 145, 149;
wishes it used for fortifications, 146, 150-153;
advocates insisting on our claims against France, 147;
but opposes paying claims of American citizens, 148;
opposes the so-called specie circulars, 154;
views concerning Southern slavery politicians, 162;
opposed to the Abolitionists, 165;
criticises Calhoun, 167, 168;
aids to defeat bill prohibiting circulation of abolition
documents through U. S. mails, 169;
carries bill extending boundaries of Missouri, 170;
urges admission of Michigan, 171;
carries through treaty with Cherokees, 171;
defends governmental treatment of Indians, 172;
condemns treaty establishing Southwestern boundary, 175;
position concerning annexation of Texas, 180-183;
hostility to separatist doctrines, 188;
blames bankers and politicians for financial crisis of 1837, 190,
194;
his forebodings of this trouble, 191-193;
demeanor in the crisis, 197;
supports issue of Treasury notes, 198;
opposes payment of further installment of surplus, 199;
supports scheme for independent Treasury, 200, 207;
action concerning resumption by bonds, 203;
a supporter of the administration in these times, 263;
his knowledge, 204;
hostile to paper currency, 206;
defends administration in matters of Seminole war, 212;
theory for conducting this war, 215;
advocates; homestead law, 217;
opposes assumption of State debts by national government, 220;
explains greater rapidity of progress at North than at South, 222;
on the tariff of 1833, 224-230;
defends Jackson and Van Buren against charges of squandering
public moneys, 230;
in the Harrison campaign, 233;
holds the Democrats for the Union, 234;
feeling concerning slavery about Van Buren's time, 235;
leads the Democrats in struggle between President Tyler and Clay,
240-244;
exalts the "Democratic idea," 241;
comments on Tyler's first message to Congress, 245;
opposes sub-Treasury bill, 246;
also the bank, distribution and bankruptcy bills, 246-249;
opposes the hour limit for speeches in the Senate, 250-252;
speech concerning the district banks and the currency, 253;
opposes effort to establish a national bank during Tyler's
administration, 255-258;
opposes new form of Treasury notes, 258;
opposes subsidizing steamship lines, 258;
also the abuse of the pension system, 258;
always an advocate of extending the national boundaries, 263, 267;
opposes the Ashburton treaty, 269, 273-279;
remarks concerning the Caroline imbroglio, 270;
opposes making an efficient navy, 272;
references to slavery in speeches on the Ashburton treaty, 274, 280;
on the Oregon question, 281-289;
position concerning annexation of Texas in time of Polk, 299-317;
opposes the South, 301;
opposes Calhoun's treaty, 306-310;
hoodwinked by the annexationists, 313;
attacks Calhoun and opposes the Mexican war, 315;
offered the command of the army, 318;
awakes to importance of slavery question, 318;
his later position concerning it, 320, 333-336;
contests with pro-slavery Senators, 322, 323;
opposes Calhoun as to power of Congress over slavery in territories,
323-327;
and as to admission of Oregon, 328;
criticises Polk's administration, 328;
visits New York in presidential campaign in 1848, 329;
defends Taylor's message, 331;
opposes Clay's compromise, 332, 333-336;
more antagonism towards Calhoun, 333;
position on the Wilmot Proviso, 336;
advocates admission of California as a Free State, 337;
refuses to support Fugitive Slave Act, 339;
nickname of "Old Bullion," 342;
opposition to him in Missouri, 342;
defeated, 343;
goes to House of Representatives, 343;
begins work on the "Thirty Years' View," 344;
supports Pierce for Presidency, 344;
but later goes into opposition, 345;
supports scheme for Pacific Railroad, 346;
discusses the Indian policy, 347;
speeches on land-bounty and pension bills, 348;
opposes Kansas-Nebraska bill, 349-352;
discusses historically the Missouri Compromise, 349;
ridicules squatter sovereignty, 350;
opposes the Gladstone treaty, 352;
view of Southern disunion scheme, 352;
again defeated in Missouri elections, 353;
returns to labor on "Thirty Years' View," 354;
votes for Buchanan, 354;
candidate for governorship, 354;
stumps the State, 354;
respected at the North, 355;
prepares his "Abridgment of the Debates of Congress," 356;
death, 356;
value of his works 357;
criticism of the Dred Scott case, 358;
and of the new Democratic theories, 358;
domestic relations, 360;
extensive knowledge, 360;
on board the Princeton at time of explosion of great gun, 361;
generous temper, 362.
Biddle, Nicholas:
president of Bank of United States, 116;
his errors, 124;
his bank goes to pieces, 208.
Birney, James G.:
abolitionist candidate for Presidency, 291, 292;
folly of nominating him, 293, 294, 310.
Blair, Francis C., displaced, 317.
Buchanan, James:
on annexation of Texas, 310;
Benton votes for him, 354.
Burr, Aaron:
introduces "spoils system" in New York, 81;
compared with Benedict Arnold, 163.
Calhoun, John C.:
rupture with Jackson, resignation from Vice-Presidency, 86;
position concerning tariff in 1816, 89;
position as a nullifier, 96;
introduces nullification resolutions, 103;
threatened with hanging, 104;
arranges compromise with Clay, 106;
subsequent quarrel with Clay concerning this, 110;
his purposes at this time, 111;
assails Jackson, 132;
opposes Webster's bill for rechartering bank, 133;
on the expunging resolution, 141;
proposes constitutional amendment for distribution of Treasury
surplus, 144;
opposes appropriating Treasury surplus for fortifications, 146;
attack on President Pierce, 166;
his honesty, 168;
on admission of Texas 180;
in connection with trouble with Mexico, 260;
on the Oregon question, 285;
instrumental in election of Polk, 292;
letter to Lord Aberdeen, 300;
assailed by Benton as to annexation of Texas, 307, 309;
action as to legislation about Texas, 313;
relations as to Mexican war, 314;
and the Wilmot Proviso, 323;
resolution as to power of Congress over slavery in the territories,
323-326;
not a "Union man," 326;
on the admission of Oregon, 326, 327, 328;
dislikes Taylor's message to Congress, 331.
California, admission of, 337.
Caroline, affair of the, 270.
Cartwright, Peter, 33.
Cass, Lewis: nominated for Presidency, 329.
Cherokees, treaty for their removal, 171.
Clay, Henry:
introduces his first tariff bill, 58;
secretary of state under Adams, 61;
assailed therefor, and fights Randolph, 62;
devises the Panama mission, 63;
leader of National Republican or Whig party, 86;
defies "the South, the President, and the devil," 90;
erroneous statement as to effect of tariff in the West, 91;
angers the nullifiers, 99;
defeated in presidential election in 1832, 100;
alarmed at position of Calhoun, 106;
and prepares compromise, 106;
afterward quarrels about it with Calhoun, 110;
befriends Bank of the United States, 124, 127, 129;
effect on his political fortunes, 125;
introduces resolution for return of deposits, 131;
also for censuring President Jackson, 132;
opposes Webster's bill for rechartering Bank, 136;
on the expunging resolution, 141;
opposes establishment of mints at the South, 144;
also appropriating surplus for fortifications, 146;
in financial crisis of 1837, 200;
on the sub-Treasury bill, 201, 205;
on resumption, 202, 203;
opposes payment of state debts by national government, 221;
prepares financial measures upon Tyler's accession, 240, 244;
construction of a presidential election, 241;
programme for legislation under Tyler, 245;
attempts to introduce hour-limits for speeches in Senate, 250-252;
lectures Tyler in the Bank debate, 256;
defeated by Polk, 290;
causes thereof, 310;
attacks Taylor's message to Congress, 331;
proposes compromise of slavery controversy, 331;
defeated by Benton, 336;
compared with Benton, 339.
Crawford, William H.:
adopts the "spoils system," 80.
Crockett, David, 27, 33;
berates Jackson, 113.
Cumberland Road, Benton votes against bill for, 58.
Davis, Jefferson:
compared with Benedict Arnold, 163;
a repudiator, 220;
and Calhoun's resolution as to slavery in the territories, 325;
protests against admission of California, 338.
Drayton, family, loyalty of the family in South Carolina, 96.
Florida, the treaty securing it to the United States, 41.
Foote, Senator from Mississippi, opposition to his public land scheme
by Benton and Webster, 77.
Fremont, John C.:
explores Rocky Mountains, 283;
Benton will not vote for, 354;
Benton's interest in his explorations, 363.
Giddings, Joshua R., sound policy of, 294.
Harrison, Wm. Henry:
election not affected by slavery question, 235;
death and character, 237.
Hartford Convention, criticised by Benton, 31, 78;
causes of, 49.
Houston, Samuel, 34:
wins victory of San Jacinto, 180;
hates Van Buren, 188; description of, 327;
votes to admit California, 338.
Indian tribes, Benton on the removal of, 55;
criticism on treatment of, 57, 172, 347;
removal of Cherokees in 1836, 171.
Jackson, Andrew:
affray with Benton, 28;
befriended by Benton at Washington, 32;
in presidential election of 1824, 29, 60;
incensed against Adams and Clay, 61;
success in election of 1828, 59;
character of his following, 71, 74, 75;
his opponents, 72;
his victory compared with Jefferson's, 73;
compared with Wellington, 73;
foster-father of the "spoils system," 79, 82;
inferior character of his cabinet, 86;
relations of his followers with those of Clay and Calhoun, 86;
struggles with the Bank and the nullifiers, 88;
expected to support nullification, 96;
but does not, 97;
repudiates Calhoun and adopts Van Buren, 97;
at the Jefferson birthday banquet, 98;
again defines his position, 99;
signs new tariff bill, 99;
reelected in 1832, 100;
issues proclamation against nullification, 101;
special message on nullification, 102;
opinion on tariff, 102;
threatens to hang Calhoun, 104;
signs "Force Bill," also Clay's compromise bill, 108;
behaves badly in case of Georgia, 112;
attack on U. S. Bank, 114 _et seq._;
reasons of his political success, 116;
opposes re-charter
of Bank in message of 1829, 117;
vetoes bill for re-charter, 127;
reelected, 130;
removes the deposits, 130;
protests against Clay's resolution of censure, 133;
continued
assaults on the Bank, 139;
gives a dinner to the expungers, 141;
signs bill for distributing Treasury surplus, 153;
issues Treasury order concerning payments for public lands, 155;
Kitchen Cabinet and "machine politics," 184, 185;
liking for Van Buren, 186;
his nationalism, 234;
praised by Benton for hanging Arbuthnot and Ambrister, 272;
favors annexation of Texas, 298;
and Van Buren, 299.
Jefferson, Thomas:
character of his following, 70, 71;
his victory compared with Jackson's, 73;
his pseudo-classicism, 92;
quoted as authority for nullification, 95;
celebration of birthday of, 97.
Lee, Robert E.:
military standing of, 38.
Lincoln, Abraham:
services in anti-slavery cause, 159.
Livingston, Edward:
aids in preparing proclamation against nullification, 101.
Lucas, Benton's duel with, 28.
Madison, James, quoted, 163.
Marcy, Wm. L., adopts "spoils system," 81;
cringes to the South, 108.
McDuffie, passage at arms with Benton, 304, 305;
deceives Benton as to taxes, 313.
McLeod, Alexander, case of, 271.
Missouri, character of its population, 39;
admission to the Union, 43, 47;
land titles in, 45.
Missouri Compromise bill, 43;
not the beginning of the slavery and anti-slavery divisions in the
Union, 48;
Benton concerning repeal of, 349.
Monroe, James, remarks, 47, 58, 59;
signs bill for trading road, 53.
New Orleans, Benton's astonishing description of, 93.
Oregon, disputed between Great Britain and the United States, 50;
Benton's remarks concerning, 51;
comes into notice again in J. Q. Adams's term, 65;
final settlement of the matter, 260-273;
neglected in Ashburton treaty, 278,
and by Calhoun, 278,
and others, 279;
Benton's feeling about, 281, 284;
bill for settlement of, 284;
Calhoun on the admission of, 326-328.
Panama mission, disputes concerning, 63-65.
Phillips, Wendell, estimate of, 160.
Pierce, Franklin, assailed by Calhoun, 166;
relations with Benton, 344, 345;
a valuation of, 345;
Benton upon pro-slavery tendencies of, 359.
Polk, James K., character of his following, 234;
and the Southwestern boundary, 287;
elected President, 290, 310;
estimate of, 292;
deceives Benton as to Texas, 313;
displaces Blair, 317;
relations with various portions of Democratic party, 317, 318.
Randolph, John:
duel with Clay, 62.
Rynders, Isaiah, a type, 291, 292.
Seminoles, war with, 209-216.
Taney, Roger B., removes the deposits, 130;
afterward made chief justice, 131;
criticised by Benton for his opinion in Dred Scott case, 358.
Taylor, Zachary, elected President, 329;
character, 330, 337;
message to Congress, 331;
dies, 337.
Tyler, John, opposes "Force Bill," 105;
estimate of, on his accession, 237;
his political affiliations, 238-240;
first message to Congress, 245;
conduct concerning bill for establishing a bank, 254-257;
his cabinet resigns, 257;
identifies himself with the separatist Democrats, 298;
schemes for annexation of Texas, 300, 306;
assailed by Benton, 307, 309;
behavior at time of explosion of gun on board the Princeton, 361.
Van Buren, Martin, supports Crawford for Presidency in 1824, 61;
adopts "spoils system," 81;
adopted by Jackson as his heir, 97;
Vice-President, 100;
product of "machine politics," 184;
befriended by Jackson, 186;
sketch of, and causes of his elevation, 186-188;
his inaugural, 188;
financial crisis and his doings therein, 189 _et seq._,
194, 196, 197;
financial measures, 200;
has to deal with the Seminoles, 209;
public dishonesty under, 219;
charged with squandering the public money, 230;
significance of his defeat, 234;
slavery question did not arise in his administration, 235;
champion of old-style Union Democrats, and opposed to annexation
of Texas, 298;
candidate for Presidency, 299, 310;
and the Free Soil party, 329.
War of 1812, a cause of the, 7;
political influence on Benton, 30.
Warsaw, social habits of the town, 36.
Webster, Daniel, position of, concerning Clay's first tariff bill, 58;
position on the tariff question in 1828, 67;
in the debate on Foote's resolution concerning sales of public land,
77, 97;
leader of National Republican, or Whig, party, 86;
aids Jackson in nullification troubles, 103, 104;
advocates the "Force Bill," 105;
resolute in opposition to the South, 106, 107, 108;
remarks as to his services, 111;
befriends Bank of United States, 124, 126, 127, 129;
personal relations with the Jacksonians, 131;
introduces bill for re-charter of Bank, 136;
on the expunging resolution, 142;
supports establishment of mints at the South, 144;
opposes appropriating Treasury surplus for fortifications, 146;
in financial crisis of 1837, 200;
on sub-Treasury scheme, 201, 205;
opposes payment of state debt by national government, 221;
remains in Tyler's cabinet, 257;
negotiates treaty with England, settling boundaries between United
States and British possessions, 260, 262, 268;
criticised by Benton, 273-277, 280;
neglects Oregon controversy, 278;
compared with Benton on the slavery question, 320, 339;
compliments Benton's knowledge, 360;
on friendly terms with Benton, 362.
Wellington, Duke of, compared with Washington and Jackson, 73.
Wilmot Proviso, Benton's remarks upon, 323, 336.
Wright, Silas, adopts "spoils system," 81;
expresses the "dough face" sentiment at time of nullification
troubles, 107.
American Statesmen
Edited by John T. Morse, Jr.
Each, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25; half morocco, $2.50.
The set, 31 volumes, half levant, $77.50.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By John T. Morse, Jr.
SAMUEL ADAMS. By James K. Hosmer.
PATRICK HENRY. By Moses Coit Tyler.
GEORGE WASHINGTON. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 2 vols.
JOHN ADAMS. By John T. Morse, Jr.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. By Henry Cabot Lodge.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. By Theodore Roosevelt.
JOHN JAY. By George Pellew.
JOHN MARSHALL. By Allan B. Magruder.
THOMAS JEFFERSON. By John T. Morse, Jr.
JAMES MADISON. By Sydney Howard Gay.
ALBERT GALLATIN. By John Austin Stevens.
JAMES MONROE. By President D. C. Gilman.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. By John T. Morse, Jr.
JOHN RANDOLPH. By Henry Adams.
ANDREW JACKSON. By Prof. William G. Sumner.
MARTIN VAN BUREN. By Edward M. Shepard.
HENRY CLAY. By Carl Schurz. 2 vols.
DANIEL WEBSTER. By Henry Cabot Lodge.
JOHN C. CALHOUN. By Dr. H. Von Holst.
THOMAS HART BENTON. By Theodore Roosevelt.
LEWIS CASS. By Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By John T. Morse, Jr. With Portrait and Map. 2 vols.
WILLIAM H. SEWARD. By Thornton K. Lothrop.
SALMON P. CHASE. By Prof. A. B. Hart.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. By C. F. Adams.
CHARLES SUMNER. By Moorfield Storey.
THADDEUS STEVENS. By Samuel W. McCall.
_CRITICAL NOTICES._
_FRANKLIN._ He has managed to condense the whole mass of matter gleaned
from all sources into his volume without losing in a single sentence the
freedom or lightness of his style or giving his book in any part the
crowded look of an epitome.--_The Independent_ (New York).
_SAMUEL ADAMS._ Thoroughly appreciative and sympathetic, yet fair and
critical.... This biography is a piece of good work--a clear and simple
presentation of a noble man and pure patriot; it is written in a spirit
of candor and humanity.--_Worcester Spy._
_HENRY._ Professor Tyler has not only made one of the best and most
readable of American biographies; he may fairly be said to have
reconstructed the life of Patrick Henry, and to have vindicated the
memory of that great man from the unappreciative and injurious estimate
which has been placed upon it.--_New York Evening Post._
_WASHINGTON._ Mr. Lodge has written an admirable biography, and one
which cannot but confirm the American people in the prevailing estimate
concerning the Father of his Country.--_New York Tribune._
_JOHN ADAMS._ A good piece of literary work.... It covers the ground
thoroughly, and gives just the sort of simple and succinct account that
is wanted.--_New York Evening Post._
_HAMILTON._ Mr. Lodge has done his work with conscientious care, and the
biography of Hamilton is a book which cannot have too many readers. It
is more than a biography; it is a study in the science of
government.--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._
_MORRIS._ Mr. Roosevelt has produced an animated and intensely
interesting biographical volume.... Mr. Roosevelt never loses sight of
the picturesque background of politics, war-governments, and
diplomacy.--_Magazine of American History_ (New York).
_JAY._ It is an important addition to the admirable series of "American
Statesmen," and elevates yet higher the character of a man whom all
American patriots most delight to honor.--_New York Tribune._
_MARSHALL._ Well done, with simplicity, clearness, precision, and
judgment, and in a spirit of moderation and equity. A valuable addition
to the series.--_New York Tribune._
_JEFFERSON._ A singularly just, well-proportioned, and interesting
sketch of the personal and political career of the author of the
Declaration of Independence.--_Boston Journal._
_MADISON._ The execution of the work deserves the highest praise. It is
very readable, in a bright and vigorous style, and is marked by unity
and consecutiveness of plan.--_The Nation_ (New York).
_GALLATIN._ It is one of the most carefully prepared of these very
valuable volumes, ... abounding in information not so readily
accessible as is that pertaining to men more often treated by the
biographer.--_Boston Correspondent Hartford Courant._
_MONROE._ President Gilman has made the most of his hero, without the
least hero-worship, and has done full justice to Mr. Monroe's "relations
to the public service during half a century." ... The appendix is
peculiarly valuable for its synopsis of Monroe's Presidential Messages,
and its extensive Bibliography of Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine.--_N.
Y. Christian Intelligencer._
_JOHN QUINCY ADAMS._ That Mr. Morse's conclusions will in the main be
those of posterity we have very little doubt, and he has set an
admirable example to his coadjutors in respect of interesting narrative,
just proportion, and judicial candor.--_New York Evening Post._
_RANDOLPH._ The book has been to me intensely interesting.... It is rich
in new facts and side lights, and is worthy of its place in the already
brilliant series of monographs on American Statesmen.--Prof. MOSES COIT
TYLER.
_JACKSON._ Professor Sumner has ... all in all, made the justest long
estimate of Jackson that has had itself put between the covers of a
book.--_New York Times._
_VAN BUREN._ This absorbing book.... To give any adequate idea of the
personal interest of the book, or its intimate bearing on nearly the
whole course of our political history, would be equivalent to quoting
the larger part of it.--_Brooklyn Eagle._
_CLAY._ We have in this life of Henry Clay a biography of one of the
most distinguished of American statesmen, and a political history of the
United States for the first half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it
is not too much to say that, for the period covered, we have no other
book which equals or begins to equal this life of Henry Clay as an
introduction to the study of American politics.--_Political Science
Quarterly_ (New York).
_WEBSTER._ It will be read by students of history; it will be invaluable
as a work of reference; it will be an authority as regards matters of
fact and criticism; it hits the key-note of Webster's durable and
ever-growing fame; it is adequate, calm, impartial; it is
admirable.--_Philadelphia Press._
_CALHOUN._ Nothing can exceed the skill with which the political career
of the great South Carolinian is portrayed in these pages.... The whole
discussion in relation to Calhoun's position is eminently philosophical
and just.--_The Dial_ (Chicago).
_BENTON._ An interesting addition to our political literature, and will
be of great service if it spread an admiration for that austere public
morality which was one of the marked characteristics of its chief
figure.--_The Epoch_ (New York).
_CASS._ Professor McLaughlin has given us one of the most satisfactory
volumes in this able and important series.... The early life of Cass was
devoted to the Northwest, and in the transformation which overtook it
the work of Cass was the work of a national statesman.--_New York
Times._
_LINCOLN._ As a life of Lincoln it has no competitors; as a political
history of the Union side during the Civil War, it is the most
comprehensive, and, in proportion to its range, the most
compact.--_Harvard Graduates' Magazine._
_SEWARD._ The public will be grateful for his conscientious efforts to
write a popular vindication of one of the ablest, most brilliant,
fascinating, energetic, ambitious, and patriotic men in American
history.--_New York Evening Post._
_CHASE._ His great career as anti-slavery leader, United States Senator,
Governor of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the
United States, is described in an adequate and effective manner by
Professor Hart.
_CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS._ His wise statesmanship before the Civil War,
and the masterly ability and consummate diplomatic skill displayed by
him while Minister to Great Britain, are judiciously set forth by his
eminent son.
_SUMNER._ The majestic devotion of Sumner to the highest political
ideals before and during his long term of lofty service to freedom in
the United States Senate is fittingly delineated by Mr. Storey.
_STEVENS._ Thaddeus Stevens was unquestionably one of the most
conspicuous figures of his time.... The book shows him the eccentric,
fiery, and masterful congressional leader that he was.--_City and State_
(Philadelphia).
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
4 PARK ST., BOSTON; 85 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
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Transcriber's Notes: Minor typographical errors and inconsistencies
have been silently normalized.
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