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Title: The party battles of the Jackson period

Author: Claude G. Bowers

Release date: December 3, 2023 [eBook #72299]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARTY
BATTLES OF THE JACKSON PERIOD ***

Preface to the Anniversary Edition
Preface
Contents
Illustrations
Index
Books, Papers, and Manuscripts Cited and Consulted
Footnotes

ANDREW JACKSON.
Engraved by H. B. Hall from a painting by Earl

THE PARTY BATTLES
OF THE
JACKSON PERIOD
BY
CLAUDE G. BOWERS

Anniversary Edition

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY CLAUDE G. BOWERS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

PREFACE TO THE ANNIVERSARY EDITION
This is the hundredth anniversary of the memorable campaign which
marked the rising of the people and the election of Andrew Jackson to the
Presidency, and it has been thought appropriate to issue an Anniversary
edition of “Party Battles of the Jackson Period” uniform with “Jefferson and
Hamilton.”
It has not been thought necessary to change the text of the first edition
materially. The passing of the century has brought a fairer appraisement of
Jackson’s character and career, but he remains, and ever must, a subject of
controversy, because he was a crusader for certain fundamentals of
government on which men divide honestly. His civic integrity, his flaming
patriotism, and his robust Americanism are beyond all controversy, and men
of all political persuasions do homage to his memory.
With a world-wide movement against democracy to-day, and with
striking manifestations of its existence here, it is well for Americans to
ponder the lessons of the struggle for its preservation by Jackson and the
masses whom he led with such superb courage and consummate ability.
There is little being urged against it now that was not heard during the
period of his leadership. It had never been in more deadly danger than when
he met its enemies in bitter battle. And now, after a hundred years, there are
indications that the battle he fought successfully must be fought again, if the
elemental ideas he stood for are to survive in governmental practice.
In some of the reviews of the first edition it was suggested that I had
been “hard on John Quincy Adams.” A careful reading convinces me that
the conclusion is not justified. Such was not my intention or desire. Though
often petty in small things, he was always heroic in big things, and these
determine the character of a public man. In the chapters on the French
quarrel I have sought to show him at his best, sinking his partisanship in his
Americanism, and subordinating his personal prejudices to his patriotism.
Claude G. Bowers
March 16, 1928

PREFACE
It is the purpose of the author to deal, more minutely than is possible in a
general history or biography, with the brilliant, dramatic, and epochal party
battles and the fascinating personalities of the eight years of Andrew
Jackson’s Administrations. From the foundation of the Republic to the last
two years of the Wilson Administration, the Nation has never known such
party acrimony; nor has there been a period when the contending party
organizations have been led by such extraordinary politicians and orators. It
was, in a large sense, the beginning of party government as we have come
to understand it. It was not until the Jacksonian epoch that we became a
democracy in fact. The selection of Presidents then passed from the caucus
of the politicians in the capital to the plain people of the factories, fields,
and marts. The enfranchisement of thousands of the poor, previously
excluded from the franchise, and the advent of the practical organization
politicians, wrought the change. Our government, as never before, became
one of parties, with well-defined, antagonistic principles and policies. Party
discipline and continuous propaganda became recognized essentials to party
success.
This period witnessed the origin of modern party methods. The spoils
system, instead of being a mere manifestation of some viciousness in
Jackson, grew out of the assumed necessity for rewarding party service. The
recognition of party government brought the national convention. The new
power of the masses necessitated compact and drilled party organizations
down to the precincts of the most remote sections, and even the card-index
system known to-day was part of the plan of the incomparable politicians of
the Kitchen Cabinet. The transfer of authority from the small coterie of
politicians to the people in the corn rows imposed upon the leaders the
obligation to furnish the rank and file of their followers with political
ammunition for the skirmishes at the country stores as well as for the heavy
engagements at the polls, and out of this sprang the intense development of
the party press, the delivery of congressional speeches for “home
consumption,” the party platform, and the keynote speech.
The triumph of the Jacksonians over the Clays, the Websters, and the
Calhouns was due, in large measure, to their development of the first great

practical politicians—that much-depreciated company sneeringly referred
to as the Kitchen Cabinet, to whom all politicians since have paid the
tribute of imitation.
With the appearance of Democracy in action came some evils that have
persisted through the succeeding years—the penalties of the rule of the
people. Demagogy then reared its head and licked its tongue. Class
consciousness and hatreds were awakened. And, on the part of the great
corporations, intimidation, coercion, and the corrupt use of money to
control elections were contributed. These evils are a heritage of the bitter
party battles of the Jacksonian period—battles as brilliant as they were
bitter.
The purpose of this volume is to describe these mad party struggles, and
to picture, as they really were, the great historical figures, “warts and all.” If
Henry Clay is here shown as an unscrupulous, selfish, scheming politician,
rather than as the mythical figure who “would rather be right than
President”; if John C. Calhoun is here described as petty in his personal
hates and spites and in his resentment over the failure of personal
ambitions; if Daniel Webster, the most admirable of the three during these
eight vivid years, is set forth, not only as the great Nationalist who replied
to Hayne and sustained Jackson’s Nullification Proclamation, but as the
defender of the Bank from which, at the beginning of the fight, he bluntly
solicited a “refreshment” of his retainer, it is not through any desire to
befoul their fame, but to set down the truth as irrefutably disclosed in the
records, and to depict them as they were—intensely human in their moral
limitations.
The necessities of history happily call for the featuring of some figures,
potent in their generation, attractive in their genius, and necessarily passed
over by historians covering much longer periods. No close-up picture of the
time can be painted that ignores Edward Livingston, patriot and
philosopher; Roger B. Taney, the militant party leader; John Forsyth, the
“greatest debater of his time”; John M. Clayton, the real master of both
Calhoun and Clay in the Compromise of 1833; George McDuffie, the
tempestuous Danton of the Opposition; Hugh Lawson White, the “Cato of
the Senate” and the Nemesis of Jacksonian Democracy; William Cabell
Preston and Horace Binney, the polished orators, now almost forgotten;
Major Lewis, the master of political details; Frank Blair, the slashing

journalistic champion of the Administration; and Amos Kendall, the genius
of the Kitchen Cabinet.
An analysis of motives and methods has led to some unconventional
conclusions. Not only do Clay, Webster, and Calhoun dwindle in moral
grandeur, but others, traditionally considered small, loom large. Thus the
John Tyler of these eight years stands out in intellectual honesty, courage,
and consistency far beyond others to whom history has been more
generous.
No apology need be offered for featuring the personalities of the time.
They throw light on motives and explain events. The episode of Mrs. Eaton
changed the current of political history. The gossip concerning Mrs. White
indicates the putridity of political factionalism. The scurrilous biography of
Van Buren written by Davie Crockett on the suggestion of Senator White is
illuminative of the popular prejudices of the times; and the solemn
investigation of the charge that Senator Poindexter had instigated the
attempt upon the life of the President at the Capitol discloses the morbidity
of the partisan madness. Through the gossip of the drawing-rooms, the
jottings of the diaries, the editorial comments of the contemporary press, the
social and political intrigues of women, the attempt is made to re-create
something of the atmosphere by which the remarkable statesmen and
politicians of the Jackson Administrations were affected.
Generations have been taught to respect or reverence the memories of
the extraordinary men of the Thirties who rode on the whirlwind to direct
the storms; and, their human weaknesses forgotten, their sinister, selfish
purposes ignored, their moral or intellectual limitations overlooked, they
seem, in the perspective of the years, stern, austere, always sincere, and
singularly free from the vices of politicians, as we have come to know them
in the leaders of a later day. And yet it would be difficult to find creatures
more thoroughly human than these who are usually presented to us as steel
engravings, hung high on the wall in a dim light. They move across the
page of history scarcely touching or suffering the contamination of the
ground. They seem to play their parts upon a stage impressive and
imposing, suspended between earth and heaven. That they lived in houses,
danced, gambled and drank, flattered and flirted, gossiped and lied, in a
Washington of unpaved streets and sticky black mud, made their way to
night conferences through dark, treacherous thoroughfares, and played their
brilliant parts in a bedraggled, village-like capital, is not apt to occur to one.

Thus, in tracing the political drama of this portentous period, an attempt is
made to facilitate the realization that they were flesh and blood, and mere
men to their contemporaries, not always heroic or even admirable, through
the visualization of the daily life they lived in a capital peculiarly crude and
filled with grotesque incongruities.
No period in American political history is so susceptible to
dramatization. There is grim tragedy in the baffled ambitions of Calhoun
and Clay; romance in the rise of Kendall and the fall of Mrs. Eaton; rich
comedy, when viewed behind the scenes, in the lugubrious procession of
“distress petitioners” trained to tears by the art of Clay and the money of
Biddle; and rollicking farce in the early morning flight of a dismissed
Cabinet minister, to escape the apprehended chastisement of an erstwhile
colleague whose wife’s good name had been assailed.
The drama of party politics, with its motives of love, hate, and vaulting
ambition—such is the unidealized story of the epochal period when the iron
will of the physically feeble Jackson dominated the life of the Nation, and
colored the politics of the Republic for a century.
The Drama—its motives—its actors—such the theme of this history.
Claude G. Bowers

CONTENTS

I. The Washington of the Thirties 1
The journey from Philadelphia—The first railroad—Communication
with the West—First impressions of visitors—Hotels—Looking for lions
—Trials of calling—Unpaved streets—Uncouth appearance of town—
Impressions of contemporaries—Surroundings of Capitol—Neighboring
quagmires—Cows in the streets—Unlighted thoroughfares—Advantages
of Georgetown—Drives and walks—Arlington—The Tayloe mansion—
The Van Ness mansion—Sight-seeing—The Capitol’s popularity—
Society in Senate—In House—In Supreme Court—Manner of living—
House rent—Servant hire—Slaves and Southern masters—Boarding-
houses—Congressional messes—The Woodbury mess—The law of the
mess—Popularity of—Adams a diner-out—Hospitality of the town—
Miss Martineau’s triumph—Ignorance of her books—Thomas
Hamilton’s experiences—Literary celebrities—First society letters—
First Washington correspondents—Crude performances in Washington
theater—Booth’s appearances—Fanny Kemble’s—Rules and prices in
theater—Weather postpones performances—Traveling circuses—The
race-course—Cockfighting—Gambling—Heavy drinking—Moral laxity
—A Washington season as a lark—Affectations of fashion—Parisian
gowns and hats—Leading shops—Daily routine of a lady of fashion—
Party lines in society—Mrs. Livingston’s leadership—Mrs. Stevenson—
Mrs. Woodbury—Mrs. Forsyth—Mrs. Tayloe—Men’s styles—
Conversationals—Formality—Pictures of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun in
society—Day of gossip—Of gallantry—Entertainments—Introduction
of ice-cream—The dances—Dense crowds—Incongruous dresses—
Diplomats set fast pace—Events at Carusi’s—The quiet Sundays—
Unhealthiness—Death-rate—The cholera scourge.

II. The Rising of the Masses 31
The scurrility of 1828—Slander of Jackson and Adams—Democracy
triumphs—Gloom of Whig aristocracy—The faithful march on the
capital—The throne room at Gadsby’s—Jackson receives office-seekers

—Politics in Cabinet appointments—Calhoun confers on patronage—
Jackson ignores Adams—King Mob at the inauguration—The reaction
on the Cabinet—Attempts to conciliate the disappointed—The morbid
bitterness of Clay—Miniatures of the Cabinet.

III. The Red Terror and the White 64
Party organization and the spoils system—Demands on Jackson for
place—The provocation—Jackson’s attitude—Van Buren’s doubts, and
Lewis’s—Kendall’s pain—The harassed Cabinet—Ingham and Van
Buren angrily rebuke Hoyt—Terror of the clerks—The exaggerated
impression of the dismissals—The “martyrs” who were also criminals—
The Senate launches the White Terror—Rejection of the nominations of
Jackson’s newspaper friends—John Tyler’s part in it—His personal and
political character—Type of anti-Jackson Democrat—The prejudice
against “printers”—The cases of Lee, of Noah, of Kendall, and of Hill—
Effect on Jackson—Hill sent to Senate that rejected him—
Unprecedented party bitterness foreshadowed.

IV. Jackson breaks with Calhoun 88
Political significance of the Jackson-Calhoun quarrel—Calhoun turns
the corner—His previous political character—Effect upon it of the
quarrel—Relations of Hayne-Webster debate to quarrel—Latter’s party
character—Jackson’s attitude—Livingston speaks for Administration—
Nullifiers miscalculate Jackson—The Jefferson dinner—Its purpose—
Jackson accepts the challenge—His toast—Effect on Calhoun—
Jackson’s dinner to Monroe—Learns of Calhoun’s hostility in Monroe’s
Cabinet—Crawford’s statement to Forsyth—Letter of Forsyth is shown
Lewis—Jackson hears of it and demands it—Jackson calls on Calhoun
for explanation—Latter’s reply—Jackson breaks—Crawford’s character
and career—Calhoun’s desperate efforts to extricate himself—Appeals
to Adams—Latter’s notations—Calhoun’s pamphlet—Newspaper battle
—Calhoun’s ambitions wrecked.

V. Mrs. Eaton demolishes the Cabinet 116

“Peggy” O’Neal—Marriage to Eaton—Society outraged—Mrs. Eaton
cut by Cabinet ladies—Jackson’s indignation and efforts—Van Buren’s
advantage in the game—He features “Peggy” at dinners—Cabinet
unable to confer—Van Buren proposes resignation—Jackson plans
complete reorganization of Cabinet—Mrs. Eaton’s attitude—Jackson’s
interview with Branch—How new Cabinet was formed—Branch and
Berrien place blame on “Peggy”—Mrs. Ingham tarred by same brush—
Eaton’s pursuit of Ingham—Latter’s early morning flight—Portraits of
Livingston, Taney, and Cass—A Van Buren Cabinet.

VI. Kitchen Cabinet Portraits 144
Dominance of Kitchen Cabinet—Portrait of Amos Kendall—Harriet
Martineau’s impressions—Portrait of Major Lewis—Of Isaac Hill—
Secret of partisan bitterness—The Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet—The
establishment of the “Washington Globe”—Portrait of Frank Blair—
Relations of the “Globe” to the President—To the National Democracy
—Considered the Court Journal by diplomats—Buchanan’s experience
with Nesselrode in Russia—The specialties of the Kitchen Cabinet
members.

VII. Clay leads the Party Onslaught 171
Whigs clamor for Senate leadership—Clay responds—Portrait of Clay
the politician—Is nominated for President—Doubts success—Hopes to
carry Pennsylvania or New York—His battery of genius in the Senate—
Whig advantage in ability in the House—The rejection of Van Buren’s
nomination as Minister to Great Britain—Its motive—Its stupidity—
Flimsy nature of charges—“Kill a Minister to make a Vice-President”—
Character of John M. Clayton—He opens attack on Post-Office
Department—His open appeal to Calhoun to join Opposition—Clay’s
tariff plans—Calls conference at Everett’s—His dogmatic manner—
Adams unimpressed—Clay’s great tariff speech—Tyler’s reply—
Impressions of public—Failure to involve Jackson as planned—The
House battle—The dual reference—Character study of Adams—Of
George McDuffie—Adams coöperates with Secretary McLane—Jackson
attempts a reconciliation—Cause of failure—McDuffie’s bill and report
—His slashing attack on protection—Adams reports bill based on

Treasury report—Adams’s bill passes House—Amended out of
recognition by Clay protectionists in Senate—Surrender of Senate
conferees—The politics in it—Clay’s fury—He fails to make political
capital—Tariff eliminated from campaign—Jacksonians take offensive
—Embarrass Clay on land question—Political effect in new States—
Kitchen Cabinet makes headway.

VIII. Clay finds his Issue 201
The son of Alexander Hamilton—His intimacy with Jackson—Phrases
first attack on National Bank—The inspiration of Jackson’s hostility—
The Mason incident—Biddle’s flippant reply to Ingham—Kendall’s
editorial in “New York Courier and Enquirer”—Biddle’s alarm—His
attempts to conciliate—His contradictory advice and information—The
strange attitude of Major Lewis—Clay plans to drag Bank into politics
for selfish purposes—Treachery of Livingston and McLane—Clay urges
immediate application for recharter—His inconsistency—Jackson
prefers to postpone Bank issue—Reasons—McLane’s embarrassing
report—Clay presses the Bank to act—Biddle sends agent to Washington
to investigate—Cadwalader’s conferences—Sees selfish political aims
of Clay and Webster—His conversion to Whig plan—An historical
conference—Biddle blackmailed into action by threats of Clay and
Webster—Application presented—The House investigates the Bank—
Results—Political effects—Biddle takes charge of fight in Congress—
Recharter Bill passes—Biddle and Clay expect veto—Plan to make
Bank the campaign issue—Effect on Jackson—Authorship of Veto
Message—Van Buren’s midnight conference at White House—The Veto
as a campaign document—Opinion of Biddle—Of Clay’s organ—Of the
“Globe”—Both parties pleased—Senate debate on the Veto—Webster’s
speech—Arrays Bank against Jackson in appeal to the people—Hugh
Lawson White accepts the issue—Clay’s unworthy performance—
Benton’s reply—Clay and Benton exchange the “lie”—The issue goes to
the people.

IX. The Dramatic Battle of 1832 227
New campaign methods of 1832—Class consciousness aroused by both
parties—The intensive use of the press—Biddle subsidizes newspapers

and bribes editors—Kendall’s campaign textbook—Clay’s intrigues—
Negotiates with the Nullifiers—Calhoun’s strange plan considered—
Coalition of Bank, Whigs, and Nullifiers—Blair makes the most of it—
Ties the Whigs to Nullification movement—Jackson defies the Nullifiers
—Clay intrigues with Anti-Masons—His letters—Nomination of Wirt—
Latter’s political relations with Clay—The trick planned for New York—
Seward’s testimony—Jacksonians ignore the Anti-Masons—The Bank
the issue—Clay’s campaign plans—Bank’s corruption of the press—
Bank resorts to intimidation and coercion—Attempts to frighten the
timid—Circulation of stories as to Jackson’s health—Blair meets them—
Stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness revived—The anti-Jackson cartoons
—Kitchen Cabinet arouses and organizes the masses—Use of the press
—Intensive organization—Monster meetings of Democrats—A Jackson
parade in New York—Hickory poles—Glee clubs—Songs—
Demonstration for Jackson at Lexington—Personalities—Cholera plays
a part—The presidential candidates—Jackson’s confidence—
Jacksonians “on the turf”—Notable Jackson victory—Ominous action of
South Carolina.

X. The Politics of Nullification 252
The Nullifiers win in South Carolina—Jackson’s fury—Hastens to the
capital—South Carolina’s changed views—Calhoun’s exposition—
Cavalier vs. Cavalier—Calhoun’s letter to Hamilton—Joel Poinsett’s
part—Jackson energetically prepares for defense—Steps taken—His
reliance on public opinion—His caution—His Proclamation—Drama of
its preparation—Effect on public—Hayne’s reply—Clay’s criticism—He
plays to Nullifiers—Effect on State-Rights Democrats—Ritchie’s
straddle in Virginia—Tyler’s despair—Jackson has Cass prepare appeal
to Virginia—Purpose to isolate South Carolina—Van Buren’s
embarrassment—Also straddles on Proclamation—Calhoun
disappointed with Proclamation—His “death march” to Washington—
Drawing-room sympathy for him—Takes the oath as Senator—Jackson-
Poinsett correspondence—Jackson asks Congress for additional powers
—Calhoun’s agitation—The Force Bill—Tyler’s attack—Appeal to Clay
—Clay’s interest in Tyler’s reëlection—Whig’s ungracious support of
Force Bill—Clayton’s speech—Bitterness of debate—Poindexter and
Grundy—Jackson clears decks for action—Webster asked to lead debate

for Administration—Livingston’s call upon him—Calhoun’s speech—
Webster’s reply—His relations with White House—Jackson’s delight—
Jacksonian cultivation of Webster—Calhoun concerned—Whig, Bank,
and Nullification combination—Dangers to the tariff—Clayton’s
proposal to Clay—The politics in Compromise Tariff of 1833—Calhoun
hears from Jackson—Clay’s Tariff Bill—Tyler’s delight—Jackson’s
disgust over the unholy alliance—Clay’s frankness—Force Bill passes—
Clayton whips Calhoun—Effect of Cass’s letter to Virginia—
Nullification Ordinance rescinded—Political effects of fight—The
drama of the last night of the session.

XI. Jackson vs. Biddle 287
Cabinet reorganization—Duane becomes Secretary of Treasury—His
reputation and party standing—Jackson’s New England tour—Plans
removal of deposits—Consults Hamilton in New York—Conversion of
Van Buren—The Bank’s cockiness over accession of Nullifiers—Blair
makes the most of the coalition—Kendall’s reasons for immediate action
—Conservatives of Cabinet alarmed—Kendall attempts to convince
McLane—Van Buren rebuked by Kendall—Jackson polls the Cabinet—
Kitchen Cabinet’s continuous sessions—Debate on the time for removal
—Kitchen Cabinet favors recess action—Conservatives would postpone
until Congress meets—Duane’s strange reticence—Jackson presses him
for decision—Kendall’s mission—His experiences with politicians en
route—Newspapers open fight—Jackson perfects his plans at Rip Raps
—Van Buren hard pressed—Taney moves to Jackson’s side—Jackson’s
Paper to the Cabinet—McLane and Cass threaten to resign—Benton’s
delight—Duane’s many letters of protest—Is dismissed—Taney assumes
command—Webster advises a “disciplining” of the people—The Bank
plans a panic—Its methods and results—Clay advises distress meetings
and petitions—Political purpose—Jackson and distress committees—
Reaction against Bank—New leaders—Benton—Preston—Leigh.

XII. The Battle of the Gods 322
Bitter battle in Congress—Clay leads onslaught—Calls for Paper read to
Cabinet—Forsyth kills the effect—Senate rejects Government directors
on Biddle’s demand—Webster reminds Biddle of his retainer—Attempt

to exclude Lewis from Senate—Webster appeals to Story for opinion—
Latter’s reply—Clay appeals to Tazewell—Is rebuked—Intense interest
in congressional battle—Distress oratory—Forsyth’s cynicism—
Jacksonians counter with memorials—Whig mob-baiters sent to country
to continue the excitement—Clay’s censure resolution—His bitter
speech—Speeches of Preston, Benton, Calhoun, Forsyth, and Webster—
Clay’s motive—Webster’s disgust over Clay’s plan—Proposes
compromise recharter plan—His speech—Calhoun presents another—
Bank champions divided—Clay’s fury over Webster’s independent
action—Forces Webster to kill his own bill—Forsyth makes the record
clear—Clay’s attempt to involve Van Buren—His histrionic appeal—
Van Buren makes it ridiculous—Censure passed—Jackson’s spirited
Protest—Effect on masses—Reception in Senate—Forsyth’s clever
move to pass the issue to the people—Protest rejected—Battle in the
House—Adams’s activities—Horace Binney—The debate—Blair’s
attack on Judge Hopkinson—Bank investigation ordered—Farcical
nature—Clay’s resolution orders restoration of deposits—Debate—
Senate rejects nominations of Stevenson and Taney.

XIII. Political Hydrophobia 354
Whigs determine to win in New York City election—Lewis’s advice to
Hamilton—Mayoralty nominees make Bank the issue—Mixed result—
Whig celebration at Castle Garden—Democrats celebrate inauguration
of anti-Bank mayor—The fall elections—The Whigs take their name—
Forsyth’s sharp comment—The hotch-potch combination—Jackson
visits the Hermitage—His confidence—Cabinet changes—Whigs
impatient of Bank issue—Biddle’s indignation—Jackson’s triumph in
New Jersey—Whigs redouble efforts in New York—Liberty poles—
Mobs in Philadelphia—The Virginia campaign—Leigh reëlected through
a betrayal—Effect—Poindexter defeated in Mississippi—Whigs accept
result as defeat—Weed dumps the Bank—Webster abandons it—Clay
tired of its troubles—Effect on politics of Bank fight—Bitter
congressional session of December, 1834—Attacks on Post-Office
Department—Instructions from legislatures to expunge censure—Effect
on Whigs—Post-Office scandal—Kendall made Postmaster-General—
What he found, and did—Mrs. Eaton tries a bribe—Attempt to
assassinate Jackson—Poindexter accused—His character and career—

His quarrel with Jackson—Demands an investigation—Is exonerated—
Calhoun’s fight on Federal patronage—Its political purpose—Debate—
Democrats celebrate wiping out of national debt—Whig Senators refuse
to buy paintings for President’s house.

XIV. Whig Disloyalty in the French Crisis 386

The French indemnity treaty—French indifference to the obligation—
Jackson determines to enforce treaty—Portrait of John Forsyth—
Livingston sent to Paris—Real cause of difficulty there—Chamber again
fails to appropriate—King sends regrets and assurances—Chamber
again fails—Livingston advises show of spirit in Presidential Message—
Jackson’s Message—Whig embarrassment, and criticism—Message
reaches Paris—Livingston presents copy to de Rigny—King recalls
French Minister—Livingston’s tact—Whigs plan to isolate Jackson—
Whig papers apologize to France—Foreign Relations Committee of
Senate packed against Jackson—Blair’s protest—Clay’s report—
Circulated as political document to isolate the President—Clay suggests
France may ask apology from Jackson—Buchanan explains the Paris
state of mind—Defends Message—Senate passes Clay’s resolution
—“Intelligencer” calls it to attention of France—Livingston’s spirited
reply to de Rigny—Approved by Jackson, Van Buren, and Forsyth—
Serurier refused audience by Forsyth—War clouds lower—Strange
happenings in French Legation—House considers crisis—Adams’s
attitude—Pays tribute to Jackson’s spirit—The amazing debate—Adams
protests against tributes to France—Amendment to Fortifications Bill—
Whig filibuster against it—The Nation naked to its foe—The Whig
jubilation—French Chamber authorizes payment conditional on an
apology from Jackson—Livingston leaves Paris—Mrs. Barton and
Madame Pageot—Livingston’s tumultuous ovations in New York—
Forsyth’s instructions to Barton—Diplomatic relations broken—“Oil or
water?”—Livingston advises moderate tone for Message—The Message
—Public indignation over failure of Fortifications Bill—Blair fans the
flame—Approach of French squadron—Webster defends Senate and
attacks House—Adams and Webster—Adams’s spectacular reply—
Democrats follow Adams’s lead—English offer of mediation—Terms of
acceptance—France recedes—Jackson’s triumph—Effect on America’s
prestige in world.

XV. The Battle of the Succession 423
Van Buren the heir apparent—Senator White’s disaffection—Whig plan
to use him—Clay’s plan of campaign—Whig sneers at Mrs. White—
Blair’s rebuke—The schism of Tennessee Democrats—Polk leads for

Van Buren—White wins—Portrait of White—Kitchen Cabinet’s attack
on him—Also determines to retire Bell from Speakership—“Globe’s”
attacks on latter—Baltimore Convention—New York and Virginia
combination broken—Van Buren’s reconciliation visit to Castle Hill—
Whig confusion—Clay sulks—His complaint—Slavery question in
campaign—Attempts to turn slave States against Van Buren—Davy
Crockett’s biography of Van Buren—Holland’s—Adams’s comment—
Van Buren’s serenity—Congress convenes—Bell defeated—Van Buren’s
toothache—Whig fight on Taney—Whig Senators harassed by
instructions from home—The embarrassment of Virginia Whigs—
Ritchie’s mirth—Calhoun’s fight against abolition literature in mail—
Purpose to embarrass Van Buren—Latter’s friends “play politics”—
Calhoun’s extreme bill—Its partisan motive—Tie votes—Van Buren
does not dodge—Calhoun’s bitter reference to Jackson—White’s bitter
attack—Calhoun’s insult to Van Buren—Congress adjourns—Issues of
1836—Adams’s contempt for all the candidates—Enthusiasm for
Jackson continues—Whig depression—Newspaper battles—Clay’s
sulking—His one speech—Jackson’s electioneering—White’s campaign
speech—Results of election—Their significance.

XVI. Twilight Triumphs 457
Jackson’s illness—Whigs attack him while down—He fights back—
House Whigs’ last effort against Whitney—Jacksonians turn the tables—
Threats of murder—Peyton and Wise—Benton plans to expunge—His
speech—Bitter replies—The conference at Boulanger’s—Refreshments
in Benton’s committee room—Clay’s theatrical speech—Scenes in
Senate Chamber—Webster’s protest—Benton wins—Dramatic situation
—The mob in the gallery—Benton’s friends arm—Mrs. Benton’s alarm
—The Clay-Benton altercation—Jackson dines his friends—Last days in
White House—His Farewell Address—Its real significance—His last
reception—Jackson the Man—White House memories and women—
The inauguration of Van Buren—Jackson the central figure—Homage of
the multitude—Last night in the White House—The last conference at
Blair’s—The end of the “Reign.”
Books, Papers, and Manuscripts cited and consulted 481
Index 489

ILLUSTRATIONS
Andrew Jackson Steel engraving frontispiece
From a painting by Ralph Earle.
Martin Van Buren 54
From a photograph by Brady in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill
Meserve.
Thomas Hart Benton 54
From a photograph by Brady in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill
Meserve.
Mrs. John H. Eaton (Peggy O’Neal) 118
From a photograph by Brady.
Edward Livingston 134
From the bust by Ball Hughes.
Amos Kendall 144
From an engraving in the Democratic Review, 1838.
Francis P. Blair 162
From an engraving by Sartain in the Democratic Review, 1845, after a
painting by T. Sully.
Roger B. Taney 162
From a photograph in the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve.
William B. Lewis 162
From a photograph reproduced in S. G. Heiskell’s Andrew Jackson and
Early Tennessee History.
John C. Calhoun 172
From an engraving in the Democratic Review, 1843, after a miniature by
Blanchard.
Henry Clay 172

From the portrait by Marchant in the State Department, Washington.
Daniel Webster 172
From the collection of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve.
Nicholas Biddle 212
From a painting by Thomas Sully.
John Forsyth 386
From a lithograph, by courtesy of Mr. Waddy B. Wood, of Washington,
D.C.

THE PARTY BATTLES
OF THE
JACKSON PERIOD

CHAPTER I

THE WASHINGTON OF THE THIRTIES
The tourist traveling from Philadelphia to Washington in the Thirties
anticipated few pleasures and no comforts from the trip that had to be made
by coach from Baltimore, over roads intolerably wretched under the best
conditions, and all but impassable and not without dangers in inclement
weather. The journey from Philadelphia to Baltimore was usually made by
boat through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and the entire trip, in
winter one of exposure, required the greater part of two days.[1] The fare
from Baltimore to Washington was four dollars. Sometimes the ruts in the
winter roads would overturn the coach, throwing the passengers into the
mire, and occasionally resulting in sprains and broken bones.[2] Later in
Jackson’s time, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was built, with a branch into
Washington, and when the first cars, drawn by horses, reached the country-
town capital, the enthusiastic statesmen felt that the problem of
transportation had been solved. Urging Butler to accept the attorney-
generalship, and stressing the fact that acceptance would not preclude his
appearance in personal cases in New York and Albany, Van Buren made
much of the fact that “to the former place you will next season be able to go
in fifteen hours, and to the latter in a day and a night.”[3] Blair, of the
“Globe,” boasted after the election of 1832 that “in eight days and nights
after the closing of the polls in Ohio, the result was known in the city of
Washington from all the organized counties except three.” This, he
declared, “is an instance of rapid communication from the West
unparalleled in this country.”[4]
The foreigner, expecting a national capital more or less pretentious and
compact, was invariably shocked on entering the environs over miserable
mud roads, to find only an occasional drab hut or cottage at wide intervals.
Usually, until the Capitol attracted his attention, he was wholly unconscious
of his arrival at his destination. One of these, who has left a record of his
visit, relates that he was “looking from the window of his coach in a sort of
brown study, at fields covered with snow,” when a fellow passenger startled
him with the inquiry as to how he liked Washington.

“I will tell you when I see it,” he replied.
“Why, you have been in Washington the last quarter of an hour,” was the
rejoinder.[5]
Another famous visitor “was taken by surprise” on finding herself within
the shadow of the hall of the lawmakers, “so sordid are the enclosures and
houses on its very verge.”[6]
But as the coach wound round the Capitol, and swung with a merry
clatter into Pennsylvania Avenue, the houses at more frequent intervals and
connected shops disclosed the town. With a characteristic “clatter and
clamp,”[7] with a gay cracking of whips, the coach would splash and rumble
up to one of the leading hotels, and the cramped and weary tourist would
joyously take leave of the conveyance and seek lodgment within.
If well advised, he would instruct the coachman to drop him at Gadsby’s,
then the most popular and comfortable hostelry in town, on the Avenue, a
short distance from the Capitol.[8] There he would find, not only a clean
bed, but excellent service and a lordly hospitality from the host. Gadsby, for
his generation, was a genius at his trade. He moved his small army of negro
servants with military precision. “Who that ever knew the hospitalities of
this gentlemanly and most liberal Boniface,” wrote one who enjoyed them,
“can ever forget his urbane manner, his careful attention to his guests, his
well-ordered house, his fine old wines, and the princely manner in which he
could send his bottle of choice Madeira to some old friend or favored guest
at the table?”[9] It was not always, however, that accommodations could be
found at Gadsby’s, and then the tourist would seek the Indian Queen at the
sign of the luridly painted picture of Pocahontas, where he would be met at
the curb by Jesse Brown, the landlord.[10] Here, for a dollar and a quarter a
day, he could not only find a pleasant room, but a table loaded with
decanters of brandy, rum, gin, at short intervals from the head to the foot. If
the host of the Indian Queen lacked the lordly elegance of Gadsby, he made
up for it in the homely virtues of hospitality. Wearing a large white apron,
he met his guests at the door of the dining-room, and then hastened to the
head of the table where he personally carved and helped to serve the
principal dish.[11] If this, too, was crowded, the tourist would try Fuller’s
near the White House,[12] where a room would be found for him either in
the hotel proper, or in one of the two or three houses adjoining, which had
been converted into an annex.[13]

Having rested from his journey and removed the stains of travel, if he
were a person of some importance, and especially a foreigner, he would be
speedily deluged with the cards of callers anxious to make his sojourn
pleasant. Day by day the hotel registers were eagerly scanned for the names
of visiting celebrities, for the Washington of the Thirties loved its lions and
lionesses. No possible person was ever neglected, and real personages were
fêted, wined, and dined. But not until he set forth to return the calls would
he appreciate the Portuguese Minister’s description of the capital as “a city
of magnificent distances.” Inquiring at the hotel how to reach the residences
of his callers, he would be not a little puzzled at the nonchalant reply that
the coachmen “knew where all the prominent people live.” Engaging a
coach, he would set forth gayly, in the confident expectation of leaving his
card at from thirty to forty houses in the course of the day. A short drive
would take him to the end of the macadamized pavement of the Avenue,
and thereafter for hours, pitching and plunging, over the ruts and the mud-
holes, through miry lanes, and across vacant lots, shaken in body, and sore
in spirit, he would find by evening that he had reached six or seven of the
forty houses, and was charged by the coachman at a rate “which would keep
a chariot and two posters for twice the time in London.”[14] In the course of
a week he would find that he had spent as much as thirty dollars for coach
hire—by odds, the most expensive feature of his Washington sojourn. An
English visitor, startled at the cost of travel, contracted with a coachman for
services from five o’clock to daylight for twenty dollars, but after having
attended five parties on the first evening, the morose driver repudiated his
contract, and it was necessary to add five dollars to retain his services.[15] “I
should imagine [Washington] to be the very paradise of hackney
coachmen,” wrote one disgusted visitor. “If these men do not get rich it
must be owing to some culpable extravagance, for their vehicles are in
continual demand from the hour of dinner[16] till five in the morning, and
long distances and heavy charges are all in their favor.”[17]
As the visitor drove about the town he found nothing in the physical
aspects of the country-town capital to indicate that L’Enfant ever had a
vision or produced a plan for a city beautiful. Because real estate dealers
had quarreled over the location of public buildings, the selection of the hill
for the Capitol had led to the location of the White House a mile or more to
the west, and for three decades the problem of building a compact city
between the two had failed. The streets were all unpaved when Jackson was

first inaugurated, and only Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and
the President’s Mansion had been rescued from the mire when he left office.
Hub-deep in mud in inclement weather, these country roads sent forth great
clouds of dust on dry and sunny days. With the exception of the Avenue, not
a single street approached compactness, the houses on all other streets being
occasionally grouped, but generally widely separated, and in some instances
so much so as to suggest country houses with their shade trees and
vegetable gardens.[18] “It looks as if it had rained naked buildings upon an
open plain, and every man had made a street in reference to his own door,”
wrote Nathaniel P. Willis, who knew his Washington.[19] Another writer of
the day who was impressed with “the houses scattered in straggling groups,
three in one quarter, and half a dozen in another,” was moved to
compassion for “some disconsolate dwelling, the first or last born of a
square or crescent, yet in nebulous suffering like an ancient maiden in the
mournful solitude of single blessedness.”[20] Still another contemporary
word painter tells us that even on the Avenue “the buildings were standing
with wide spaces between, like the teeth of some superannuated crone.”[21]
At the foot of the Capitol, itself beautiful even then, were desolate waste
lands being reserved for some ultimate Botanical Gardens, and a few
miserable shack-like boarding-houses.[22] “Everybody knows that
Washington has a capitol,” wrote a satirical English observer, “but the
misfortune is that the capitol wants a city. There it stands, reminding you of
a general without an army, only surrounded and followed by a parcel of
ragged little dirty boys; for such is the appearance of the dirty, straggling,
ill-built houses which lie at the foot of it.”[23] Where the Smithsonian
Institution has long stood were innumerable quagmires reeking with
miasma.[24] About the President’s Mansion, a few pretentious houses,
several still handsome homes after almost a century, had been built, and in
this section, and in Georgetown, lived the people of fashion and the
diplomats. “The Co’t end,” it was called. At the four corners of the Mansion
of the Presidents stood the plain brick buildings occupied by the State,
Treasury, War, and Navy Departments. On Capitol Hill a few good houses
had been erected, especially on North A and New Jersey Avenue, South.
Other than these, and those west of the White House, there was little but
pastures and enclosed fields in the eastern, southeastern, and northeastern
sections of the town.[25] East of Fourteenth Street, on the north side, but few
houses had been built beyond F Street, and the “country home” of William

H. Crawford, at the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Massachusetts
Avenue, was still considered as remote from town as on that winter day
after his defeat for the Presidency when no callers were expected because of
the heavy snow.[26]
Looking down upon the little town from the skylight of the Capitol,
Harriet Martineau could plainly discern the “seven theoretical avenues,” but
with the exception of Pennsylvania, all were “bare and forlorn,” and the city
which has become one of the most beautiful and impressive in the world
could then present to the naked eye only “a few mean houses dotted about,
the sheds of the navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four
villas on the other.”[27] With the streets full of ruts, the sidewalks dotted
with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown with grass, with cows
pasturing on many of the streets now lined with elegant homes, and
challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or Jackson, it is not
surprising that foreigners, even as late as the Thirties, were moved to
imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. The difficulties of locomotion kept the
pedestrian’s eyes upon the ground, and the inconveniences, in making calls,
of crossing ditches and stiles, and walking alternately upon grass and
pavement, and striking across fields to reach a street, were more noticeable
than the noble trees that lined the avenues.[28] Wretched enough in the
daytime, the poorly lighted streets at night were utterly impossible. “As for
lights,” wrote a contemporary, “if the pedestrian did not provide and carry
his own, he was in danger of discovering every mud-hole and sounding its
depths.”[29] More nearly possible to the fastidious were the narrower streets
of Georgetown, with its more imposing and interesting houses, and more
select society, where many of the statesmen lived, and not a few of the
Government clerks, who rode horseback to the departments in the morning.
Even in the Thirties there were many beautiful drives and walks in the
vicinity of Washington, and a few houses that were impressive to even the
most critical English visitor. Visible for many miles, and easily seen from
the town, loomed the pillared white mansion of Arlington, then the home of
George Washington Custis, to which many of the aristocrats of the capital
frequently found their way. There, during the Jacksonian period, Robert E.
Lee, standing in the room, whence, across the river, he could see the Capitol
building, was united in marriage to the daughter of the house.[30] Within the
city the most imposing mansions were those of John Tayloe, at Eighteenth
Street and New York Avenue, designed by Thornton, and even then rich in

political and social memories,[31] and the handsome residence of John Van
Ness, the work of Latrobe, built at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to make a
fit setting for the charm and beauty of Marcia Burns, at the foot of
Seventeenth Street, on the banks of the Potomac. From the doorstep the
master and his guests could watch the ships from across the sea mooring to
the docks of Alexandria, and the merchantmen, bound for the port of
Georgetown, laden with the riches of the West Indies.
The tourist in the Washington of the Thirties did not have the
opportunity for sight-seeing that means so much to the capital visitor of to-
day. Aside from the Capitol and the White House, there were no public
buildings of architectural distinction. The churches had “nothing about them
to attract attention,” and while St. John’s on Lafayette Square was then
summoning to worship, it did not at that time have the virtue of quaintness
or the mellowness of historical memories. A visit to the Patent Office was
customarily made, and most tourists found something to interest them in the
museum of the State Department, with its portraits of the Indian chiefs who
had visited Washington.[32] Occasionally the venturesome would ascend to
the skylight of the Capitol to survey the straggling and dreary town from the
height.[33] But always there was the dignified and stately white building of
the lawmakers and of the Supreme Court, and thither tourists and citizens,
men and women, daily found their way for the entertainment that never
failed. Surrounded by its terraces, its well-kept lawns, its profusion of
shrubbery, the visitor reached the entrance over its “beautifully gravelled
walks,”[34] and entered the rotunda with its four Trumbull paintings of
Revolutionary scenes, to be more impressed with the vacant spaces for four
more, and the explanation that “Congress cannot decide on what artist to
confer the honor.”[35] He would not fail to be delighted with the classic little
Senate Chamber, redolent of the genius of Latrobe, and with the ease with
which he might ignore the tiny gallery to find a hearty welcome on the
floor. If a foreigner, he would be surprised to find a constant stream of
fashionable ladies entering the chamber, crowding the Senators, accepting
their seats, and attracting attention with their “waving plumes glittering
with all the colors of the rainbow, and causing no little bustle.”[36] There he
would see Van Buren or Calhoun in the chair, and on the floor he would
want to have Webster, Clay, Benton, Forsyth, Preston, and Ewing pointed
out. And perhaps, like Miss Martineau, he would leave with the impression
that he had “seen no assembly of chosen men and no company of the high

born, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so
imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown,
original men brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency,
to work out the will of their diverse constituencies.”[37]
Having seen the Senate, he would seek the House of Representatives.
Inquiring his way to the Strangers’ Gallery from the rotunda, he would be
directed to a narrow stairs, and, on ascending, would find himself in a large
room of many columns, the work of the architect of the Senate, looking
down upon the seats of members arranged in concentric rows. Thence he
would look down upon the bald head of the venerable Adams, the anæmic
figure of Polk, the handsome form of Binney, and the ludicrous
conglomeration of garbs representing the diverse tastes of the tailors of
New York and the wilderness. If acquainted with one of the members, the
visitor might be invited to the corridor behind the Speaker’s desk, fitted
with seats and sofas drawn about the fireplace at either end, where members
and their guests were wont to lounge and smoke.[38] Having satisfied
himself with the chambers of the lawmakers, the visitor would want to see
the tribunal of interpretation, said by some to have more power in
determining the law of the land than the members of Congress, and to
observe the famous Marshall on the Supreme Bench. Descending to the
basement of the Capitol, immediately under the Senate, he would be shown
into a small plain room with low ceiling, and “a certain cellar-like aspect
which is not pleasant,”[39] and would probably be a little shocked at the
figure of Justice, “a wooden figure with the eyes unfilleted, and grasping
the scales like a groceress.”[40] On cushioned sofas, on either side of the
room, he might, if a favorite orator were making an argument, see gayly
dressed ladies—for, like the Senate Chamber, the court was one of the
fashionable resorts of the Thirties. But there, he would find dignity and
quiet and decorum, in striking contrast with most of the American courts of
that generation.[41] If fortunate, he might listen to the reading of a decision
by Marshall, and observe Butler, the Attorney-General, “his fingers playing
among his papers, his thick black eyes and thin, tremulous lips for once
fixed, his small face pale with thought,” contrasting with the more
composed countenances of Clay and Webster.[42]
In the days of Jackson, comparatively few families had a permanent
residence in Washington, and to an English visitor the town had the
appearance of a watering-place.[43] Many Senators and Representatives

considered it so impossible that they left their families at home.[44]
Attorney-General Butler at first refused to consider a position in the Cabinet
because “Mrs. Butler did not like the idea of bringing her daughters up
here.”[45] When the wives and daughters did accompany the statesmen to
the capital, it was the custom, with such as could afford to maintain an
establishment, to take a house. These usually purchased, albeit many of the
more desirable residences that could be leased were not for sale. An
establishment could be maintained at a surprisingly low cost. Houses
“suitable for the purposes of genteel people” could be had for from $50 to
$300 a year, and even the large mansions, many of them standing and still
occupied by fashionable families after almost a century, could be had for
from $500 to $800 a year.[46] The servant problem did not exist, for
domestics could be employed in abundance for $4 a month.[47] The
Southerners, bringing their slaves with them, or buying them in the slave
market at Alexandria, were able to entertain with a lavish display which set
the pace socially, and made the Southern dominance easy. Foreigners were
impressed, after hearing a senatorial orator rhapsodize in the Senate over
the blessings of American liberty, to see him driven from the Capitol after
his oration by one of his family slaves.[48] Others, not wishing to be
burdened with a house, lived in the hotels, where other people’s slaves
waited upon them. In these, too, the cost of living was low, the leading
hostelries taking guests at $1.75 a day, $10 a week, or $35 a month.
Transients sat down to tables fairly groaning with food, and with decanters
of brandy and whiskey at their elbows, free at these prices. The guest, in his
room, could order real Madeira for $3 a bottle, sherry, brandy, and gin for
$1.50, and Jamaica rum for $1. The statesman, leaving his hotel quarters for
the Senate or the House, could, if he wished, pause at the bar of the hostelry
for a toddy of unadulterated liquor and lump sugar for twelve and a half
cents.[49] But the greater part of the public men lived in boarding-houses,
and the “Intelligencer,” the “Globe,” and the “Telegraph” filled columns, at
the beginning of congressional sessions, with the enticing advertisements of
the landladies. Some few of these houses, such as Dawson’s, associated
with celebrities, live in history, but the majority were small, shabby, and
uncomfortable. In these, however, romances sometimes blossomed, and the
barmaid of one presided for a time over the establishment of a Cabinet
member, and the landlady of another over the household of a Senator who
aspired to the Presidency.[50]

Out of this life in hotels and boarding-houses, during the Jacksonian
period, came the custom of statesmen forming themselves and families into
“messes,” each “mess” having a table to itself and contracting with the
landlady or landlord for a caterer. In this way the lawgivers were socially
grouped according to their intellectual and financial standing, and some of
these “messes” were famous in their day. Friendships were formed that
survived all the vicissitudes of time and political change. One of these,
known as the “Woodbury mess,” consisted of such a notable coterie of
brilliancy and genius as Calhoun, John Randolph, Tazewell, Burges, and
Verplanck. About the table many celebrated measures were conceived and
the strategy of many a fight was planned.[51] According to the law of the
“mess” a member might invite a guest only with the consent of all the
others, and it was understood that a failure to get unanimous consent should
not be resented. Occasionally the guests were permitted to contribute
something to the usual outlay. Daniel Webster was glad enough to pay his
way on such occasions. The venerable Adams, who had a comfortable home
on F Street[52] and was not considered a notably social animal, delighted to
join his most interesting colleagues at the boarding-house or hotel table. “I
dined with John C. Calhoun at Dawson’s,” he recorded. “Mr. Preston, the
other Senator from South Carolina, and his wife were there, and Mangum,
Southard, Sprague of Maine. Company sat late at table and the conversation
was chiefly upon politics. The company was, at this time, adversaries of the
present Administration—most of them were adversaries to the last.”[53]
Three days later: “Dined with Benj. Gorham and Edward Everett. Calhoun,
Preston, Clay, and others were there.”[54] The next evening: “Dined with
Colonel Robert B. Campbell of S.C. at his lodgings at Gadsby’s”; thirty
people, including Calhoun and Preston, in attendance.[55]
It was inevitable that in a little city of twenty thousand, consisting in part
of the cleverest men and women in the Republic, and devoted wholly to
politics and society, celebrated sojourners should be fêted and lionized.
Foreigners visiting America in the Thirties, and recording their impressions,
have all paid tribute to the hospitality and brilliance of the capital, as
compared with other and larger cities. The most famous of the visitors was
Harriet Martineau, who arrived in the summer of 1834, in her thirty-second
year, and in the full flush of her literary fame. Introduced to the President
and the Senate leaders by the British Minister, it was the rumor at the time
that six hundred people called upon her the day after her arrival.[56] “The

drollest part of the whole,” wrote a lady of fashion, “is that these crowds, at
least in Washington, go to see the lion and nothing else. I have not met with
an individual, except Mrs. Seaton and her mother,[57] who have read any of
her works, or know for what she is celebrated. Our most fashionable
exclusive,[58] Mrs. Tayloe, said she intended to call, and asked what were
the novels she had written, and if they were pretty. The gentlemen laugh at a
woman’s writing on political economy. Not one of them has the least idea
of her work.”[59] But the fluency of the lioness captivated the men. Among
her constant visitors were Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Preston, and Justice
Story. When she entered the Senate Chamber or the Supreme Court room,
the leading men of the Nation left their seats to pay her homage. Calhoun’s
“mess” gave her a dinner. Clay insisted that at Lexington she should occupy
his house at Ashland, and that she should be the guest of his daughter in
New Orleans. Calhoun assured her triumph in Charleston through letters to
his friends. “No stranger except Lafayette ever received such universal and
marked testimonies of regard,” wrote a sympathetic observer of her
reception.[60] When Thomas Hamilton, the English writer, author of “Men
and Manners in America,” reached Washington, a member of Congress
escorted him, uninvited, to a ball on the evening of his arrival, with the
assurance that the “intrusion would be welcome.” After passing “through a
formidable array of introductions to distinguished persons, and after four
hours of almost unbroken conversation, much of which could not be carried
on without considerable expenditure of thought,” the weary tourist, at three
o’clock in the morning, rejoiced to find himself “stretched in a comfortable
bed at Gadsby’s.”[61] The experiences of Hamilton and Miss Martineau
were not exceptional.
Nor were American literary celebrities left in doubt as to the cordiality of
their welcome in the best social circles of the capital. The winter of 1833
found Washington Irving in Washington, where he was not unfamiliar with
the leading houses, living “in the neighborhood of the McLanes” and
making “use of a quiet corner and a little interval of leisure to exercise a
long neglected pen.”[62] Despite the flood of invitations, he found time to
report to Van Buren the attitude of McLane, and the hostilities, in select
circles, to Kendall. “Washington Irving is here now,” wrote John Tyler to
his daughter. “He stands at the head of our literati. His productions are
numerous and well spoken of in Europe.”[63] Nor did society in those days
lack their chronicler, for the first society letters from Washington were those

of Nathaniel P. Willis written for the “New York Mirror.” At that time he
was “a foppish, slender young man, with a profusion of curly light hair, and
was always dressed in the height of fashion.”[64] The doors of the most
exclusive homes were thrown open to this elegant youth, who, having
traveled in Europe, affected a contempt for the masses. He became the
faithful Pepys of the period, describing society people and events with
liveliness and fancy, and imparting a strange interest to the most
insignificant occurrences through the art of the telling. It was during this
period, too, that the political letters of Washington correspondents were
introduced into American journalism. Matthew L. Davis, famous as the
“Genevese Traveller” of the London “Times,” and as the capital
correspondent of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” was for years the
confidant and companion of Senators, Justices, and Presidents. And James
Gordon Bennett, young and clever, appeared upon the scene to give a new
and spicy touch to reporting with his Walpolean letters of wit, sarcasm, and
personalities, for the New York paper of James Watson Webb. Along with
the democratization of politics in the Thirties went a popularization of the
methods of the press.
The amusements of the Washington of this time were, for the most part,
crude. The theater featured players scarcely celebrated in their own day, and
most of the plays presented have happily been long since forgotten. Even
these were interspersed with songs and farce acts. In 1820 the Washington
Theater had been built, and hither, at long intervals, came celebrated artists,
but they came “like angels, few and far between.” From his rustic retreat in
Maryland the elder Booth, half mad, all genius, occasionally emerged to
curdle the blood of the statesmen and their families with his intense
interpretations of the Shakesperian tragedies. From a Booth night Jackson
was seldom absent. But of all the artists who played in the capital none
created such a furor as Fanny Kemble. The elder statesmen were captivated
by her art and charm. John Marshall and Justice Story were regular
attendants, and the Chief Justice was lustily cheered as he entered the box.
When she played Mrs. Haller in “The Stranger,” and the audience was
moved to tears, “the Chief Justice shed them in common with the younger
eyes.”[65] Inspiring audiences—those of the Thirties, with Marshall,
Jackson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in the boxes or the pit. Great, not only
in genius, but in their fresh capacity to enjoy, and when one of the most

learned Justices of the Supreme Court could be moved to poesy in paying
tribute to an actress’s art.[66]
But even with a Kemble playing, the haughty little country capital
refused to abandon its parties, and we have the record of a New Yorker
finding “Fanny Kemble in the Washington Theater like a canary bird in a
mouse trap,” leaving the theater in the midst of a performance to attend “a
delightful party at Mrs. Tayloe’s,” where he “met many distinguished
people and all the Washington belles.”[67] In those days the theater-goer
purchased his tickets between ten and one o’clock, and the doors were
thrown open at six, with the curtain rising promptly at seven. For the usual
performances the boxes were seventy-five cents, the pit twenty-five. When
the rain converted the streets into ribbons of sticky black mud, or the bitter
cold made an invitation to the people from the “magnificent distances”
unprofitable, the papers would announce a postponement, with an
explanation.[68] The pleasure-seekers were not restricted, however, to the
players of the Washington Theater, and occasionally a show would appear
advertising “the Great Anaconda of Java,” and the “Boa Constrictor of
Ceylon,” both “so docile that the most timid lady or child may view them
with safety and pleasure.”[69] Such were the amusements offered for the
entertainment of Jackson, Webster, Marshall, Calhoun, and Clay.
But for the men there were other forms of amusement, popular in their
day. The racing on the National Course near the city made it difficult to
maintain a quorum in Congress, and the statesmen mounted their horses to
ride to the track to cheer their favorites and to bet their money. Even the
President entered his horses and lost heavily on his wagers. There Jackson
and a goodly portion of the Cabinet, and a formidable sprinkling of the
leaders of the Opposition from Clay to Letcher, might be seen backing their
judgment as to horseflesh with their purses. And when it was not horse-
racing, it was cockfighting, with the President entering his own birds from
the Hermitage, and riding with his friends to Bladensburg to witness the
humiliation of his entries. It was a day of gambling, when statesmen, whose
names children are now taught to reverence, played for heavy stakes for
days and nights at a time, with Clay and Poindexter losing fortunes, and an
occasional victim of the lure blowing out his brains. While most of the
celebrities played in private houses, they could, if they preferred, find the
notorious gambling-houses along the Avenue. Along with racing,
cockfighting, and gambling went heavy drinking. “Since I have been here,”

wrote Horace Binney, after two years in Congress, “one man, an habitual
drunkard, blew out his brains; two have died notorious drunkards, and one
of them shamefully immoral. The honors are given to all, with equal eulogy
and ceremonial.”[70] The statesman of the Thirties who did not drink
heavily was a rarity. Just as whiskey, brandy, gin, and wine were served in
great decanters on the tables at hotels, “at the boarding-houses every guest
had his bottle or interest in a bottle.”[71] On the way to the Capitol, the
statesman could quench his thirst at numerous bars—and often did. And in
the basement of the Capitol building whiskey could be had. Never in
American history have so many promising careers been wrecked by
drunkenness as during the third decade. Frequently national celebrities
would appear upon the floor of the House or Senate in a state of
intoxication, and on at least one occasion the greater part of the house was
hilariously drunk.[72] Thus, despite the miry streets, the drabness and
rusticity, the Washington of the Jacksonian period was easily the gayest, the
most brilliant and dissipated community in the country. A penetrating
observer found, in its recklessness and extravagance, a striking similarity to
the spirit of the eighteenth century in England, as portrayed in Thackeray’s
“Humorists,” with “laxity of morals and the coolest disregard possible.”[73]
Its superior social charm was due to the fact that it was “the only place in
the Union where people consider it necessary to be agreeable—where
pleasing, as in the Old World, becomes a sort of business, and the
enjoyments of social intercourse enter into the habitual calculations of
every one.”[74] A goodly portion of the women of good society, and other
sojourners, were apt to contemplate a Washington season as “a sort of
annual lark,” which offered the most promising solution of the problem of a
weary winter in the country. Willis explained the attractions of the country
capital on the ground that “the great deficiency in all our cities, the
company of highly cultivated and superior men, is here supplied.”[75] Even
the supercilious and scolding Captain Marryat of England found it “an
agreeable city, full of pleasant, clever people, who come here to amuse and
be amused,” and he observed “much more usage du monde and Continental
ease than in any other parts of the States.”[76]
After spending several crowded weeks in the social and political heart of
the town, Harriet Martineau concluded that, while life there would be
“dreary” to women who loved domesticity, “persons who love dissipation,
who love to watch the game of politics, and those who make a study of

strong minds under strong excitement, like a season in Washington.”[77]
Ludicrous as it was in its incongruities, the little city bravely assumed the
pose of a real capital, plumed itself on the superiority of its society, and
made much of the fashions. At the crowded receptions the wondering
visitor might very easily be jostled against Webster or Sam Houston,
dandies like Willis or frontiersmen in boots and soiled linen, flirtatious
belles and matrons, beauties and beasts. But there were many leaders of
fashion who imitated the frivolities of European capitals, ordered their
dresses from Paris or London, and regularly summoned coiffeurs to their
homes to dress their hair for balls and receptions.[78] When Congress was in
session fashionable women from every section flocked to the seat of
government bringing their daughters for a Washington season. One of the
resident society leaders, commenting on their coming, dolefully complained
that they were “coming in such ton and expensive fashions, that the poor
citizens cannot pretend to vie with them and absolutely shrink into
insignificance.”[79] The shops made much of their Paris finery. Mrs.
Coursault announced “to the ladies of the metropolis that she has just
returned from Paris with a most splendid assortment of millinery and goods,
to be seen at the store of Mrs. Lamplier on the Avenue.”[80] Mr. Palmieri
advertised that he had “just received from Paris an elegant assortment of
caps and pelerines direct from Mademoiselle Minette’s, the first Milliner of
Paris, and a beautiful assortment of satin shoes.”[81] Another announced
“French dresses for balls,” and still another, “the arrival from Paris of an
elegant assortment of French jewelry.”
The daily life of the fashionable ladies of the time began with breakfast
at nine, when they amused themselves by comparing the conflicting
descriptions of scenes they had witnessed the day before in the
“Intelligencer” and the “Globe.” By eleven they were apt to be on their way
to the Capitol to enliven the solemnity of the Senate Chamber or the
Supreme Court, unless a neglected call, an appointment with an artist, or an
excursion interfered. Dinner was served from four to six, and soon
afterwards milady retired to her boudoir to dress for some ball, rout, levee,
or masquerade. Long drives through the mud—late hours with the breaking
dawn greeting her return—and the weary lady would relax and warm
awhile at the drawing-room fire before retiring for the night.[82] Contrary to
the popular belief, there was much social brilliance during the Jackson
Administrations. Nor is the prevailing impression that all the elegance,

cleverness, and charm was confined to the drawing-rooms of the Whig
aristocracy borne out by the facts. In truth, among the women of the
Jacksonian circle there were two or three who were easily superior to the
best the Whigs could offer, in intellect, culture, and beauty. Such was the
bigotry of the times that there was a tendency for society to segregate into
camps, but it was impossible to draw the party line on a number of the
fascinating and brilliant women who presided over the households of
Jacksonian Senators and Cabinet Ministers. While the Whigs generally
remained severely aloof from the house of the President, they were unable
to resist the invitations of the President’s friends.
Among all the women of the period none approached Mrs. Edward
Livingston in brilliance, charm, and elegance, nor did any of the ladies of
the Whig circle, not even Mrs. Tayloe, who wondered if Miss Martineau’s
novels were “pretty,” approach her in the lavishness and taste of her dinners
and parties. “Mrs. Livingston takes the lead in the fashionable world,”
wrote Mrs. Smith, who found it hard to concede the virtues of the
Jacksonians.[83] “I know that Mr. Livingston gives elegant dinners and his
wines are the best in the city,” recorded a press correspondent of the time.
[84] “We dined by invitation with Mr. Secretary Livingston,” wrote Justice
Story, an enemy of the Jacksonians. “The dinner was superb and unequalled
by anything I have seen in Washington except at some of the foreign
ministers’, and was served exclusively in the French style.”[85] This
captivating woman, of French descent, had known a childhood of romance
in a marble palace by the sea in St. Domingo, had miraculously escaped the
servile insurrection, and reached New Orleans to become the wife of
Livingston. Wonderfully vivacious, eloquent in conversation, intelligently
interested in politics, steeped in the literature of the ages, witty and spirited,
her home in Lafayette Square more nearly resembled a salon than anything
the capital has ever known. Even the most bigoted Whigs of the day were
glad to lay aside their partisanship at her threshold, and leaders, still flushed
with a verbal duel in the Senate, smiled amicably upon each other in her
drawing-room. Here one might meet John Marshall, Joseph Story, and
Bushrod Washington of the Supreme Court, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Wirt,
or Randolph. About her, too, she gathered a coterie of cultured women, and
Mrs. John Quincy Adams and Mrs. Andrew Stevenson came and went in
the house on the Square with as little ceremony as members of the
household. The charm of the house was enhanced by the exquisite Cora, the

daughter, who reigned as the belle and toast of the town until her marriage,
captivating, among others, the impressionable young Josiah Quincy, who
thought her “undoubtedly the greatest belle in the U.S.,” and, if not
“transcendently handsome,” possessed of a “fine figure, a pretty face.”
Finding it “the height of the ton to be her admirer,” the young Bostonian
followed the fashion with all his heart.[86]
Intimately identified with Mrs. Livingston was Mrs. Stevenson, to whom
the years had been kind since the days when, as Sally Coles, she was a
protégée of Dolly Madison.[87] At this time she was the wife of the
Jacksonian Speaker of the House, soon to become the hostess of the
American Legation in London, and to witness, in that rôle, the coronation of
Victoria. Strikingly handsome, tall and commanding, she resembled her
friend in an ineffable graciousness of manner and an extraordinary
conversational ability. Among the most famous hostesses of the Jacksonian
circle were Mrs. Louis McLane, “a gay, frank, communicative woman”
whose “self-complacence is united with so much good humor in others that
it is not offensive,” who gave popular weekly dinners and parties;[88] Mrs.
Levi Woodbury, beautiful of form and feature, who resembled Dolly
Madison in her suavity, ease of manner, and infinite tact, and presided over
her many dinners and dances with dignity and grace, and made a practice of
featuring the most dashing belles of Baltimore, Alexandria, and
Georgetown;[89] and Mrs. John Forsyth, more conventional and retiring than
the others, but yielding to none in culture and elegance, and having a certain
advantage in her “group of graces.”[90] Among the hostesses of the
Opposition, Mrs. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, a woman of grace and beauty, but
lacking in the intellectual sparkle of Mrs. Livingston, maintained the most
elegant establishment.
But these were only the most brilliant leaders, for the Jacksonian period
was one of hectic social activity, with foreign ministers and Cabinet
members entertaining constantly and lavishly, and the official underlings
desperately bent on a ruinous and riotous imitation. It was a day of much
pretense and pose, of ceremonious intercourse, and it was not easy to
determine from the swallow-tails and the buff waistcoats whether the
wearer were a Senator or a clerk.[91] It was a conversational period, and
seldom has the American capital contained at one time so many excellent
talkers. Nor was the talk mere chat and gossip. Even the women, especially
from the South, were clever conversationalists, able keenly to discuss the

politics of the day and the measures of the hour.[92] Even the busiest and
greatest party leaders had the time and inclination for calls on bright women
when they could enjoy the Johnsonian luxury of having their talk out. We
have a picture of Clay “sitting upright on the sofa, with a snuff box ever in
his hand,” discoursing “for many hours in his even, soft, deliberative tone”;
of Webster, “leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking
the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the
perfect felicity of the logical part of one’s constitution”; of Calhoun, the
“cast iron man,” who “looked as if he had never been born,” no longer
capable of mental relaxation, meeting men and haranguing them by the
fireside as in the Senate; of Justice Story, talking gushingly for hours, “his
face all the while, notwithstanding his gray hair, showing all the nobility
and ingenuousness of a child’s.”[93] The talk about the firesides and at the
receptions, that were given over entirely to conversation, was by no means
confined to art, eloquence, and poetry, for the Mother Grundys of gossip
were numerous among the women seeking to amuse and be amused. There
were personalities as well as personages in the years that Jackson directed a
triumphant party and Clay led a brilliant and militant opposition.[94] The
little town of twenty thousand was not so large that the ladies could not
know, from observation or deduction, when Adams dined with Calhoun,
when Webster called on Mrs. Livingston, and what Mrs. Tayloe served her
guests at her last reception.
“Did you have candied oranges at Mrs. Woodbury’s?” asked a lady who
had dined with Mrs. Cass, of a friend who had dined with the wife of the
Secretary of the Navy.
“No.”
“Then they had candied oranges at the Attorney-General’s,” was the
deduction.
“How do you know?”
“Oh, as we were on the way, I saw a dish carried; and as we had none at
Cass’s, I knew they were either for the Woodburys or the Attorney-
General’s.”[95]
It was the golden age of gallantry as well as gossip, some flirtatious,
some courtly. If the admirer of John Forsyth’s daughter proposed in a
Valentine Day verse[96] throbbing with adolescent passion, the more staid

and sober-minded Francis Scott Key wrote, in a fine hand, religious hymns
for the pleasure of her mother.[97]
The evening parties were the most popular form of entertainment, and
the hostesses of the Cabinet circle set the pace. The invitations were sent
out nine days in advance. Because of the exigencies of politics, and the
exactions of an awakened “Democracy,” these could be neither small nor
exclusive in character, and from seven to nine hundred invitations were
usually extended. Between nine and ten o’clock all the apartments would be
thrown open. The muddy streets in front would be congested with carriages.
The host and hostess, standing in the drawing-room, would receive their
guests, and then the more serious would withdraw to quiet corners for
conversation, the gay and frivolous would swing into the dance, and the
devotees of chance would seek and find a remote corner for cards. Servants
would gingerly thread their way through the throng with light refreshments
until eleven o’clock when an elaborate supper would be served. By three
o’clock the company would begin to retire, and usually, at daybreak, the
lights would be extinguished.[98]
It was a day of social novelties. Ice-cream as a refreshment first made its
appearance in the country capital at the home of the widow of Alexander
Hamilton. Introduced at the White House immediately afterwards by
Jackson, it took society by storm,[99] and Kinchy, the confectioner on the
Avenue, who had a monopoly on ice-cream and ices, became as
indispensable socially as the chef and the fiddler.[100] Of the dances, the
most popular was the waltz, introduced two years before Jackson’s
inauguration, and, considered at first of questionable modesty, it soon won
its way, and the matrons found it as alluring as the débutantes. Even then
there were censorious people to see in the dreamy glide an example of the
moral degeneracy of the age.[101] To accentuate their pessimism, the crowds
were invariably so dense that the dancers could scarcely move, reminding
an amused Kentuckian “of a Kentucky fight when the crowd draws the
circle so close that the combatants have no room to use their limbs.” But
despite the crowded quarters, the twenty-four fiddlers in a row bravely
sought “by dint of loud music to put the amateurs in motion,” until they
jumped “up and down in a hole, and nobody sees more of them than their
heads.”[102] Queer, conglomerate crowds packed the balls and receptions of
men in public life, forced to accept official society as they found it, and if
members of Congress appeared at the dance in their morning habiliments

and in unpolished boots, in worsted stockings and in garments fashioned by
a backwoods tailor, they were not conspicuous.[103] All, or most, entered
with zest into the social activities of the time. On the night of a big ball “the
rolling of carriages sounded like continual peals of thunder, or roaring of
the wind.” In the dark, dismal streets, the lamps on the vehicles alone were
visible, and these, moving rapidly in the blackness, “appeared like brilliant
meteors in the air.”[104] Sometimes, in the case of the more pretentious
entertainers, like the foreign ministers, the streets in front of the houses
were light as day from the line of flaming torches along the pavement. Fox,
the British Minister, a relative of the great orator; Baron von Roenne, the
Prussian, a brilliant jurist and publicist; and Baron Bodisco, the Russian,
made great displays of equipages and appointments, and were noted for
their wines and exotic entertainments. At the legations of Fox and Bodisco,
great sums passed over the card table, the most famous statesmen of the
time among the players, and the British Minister so seldom saw the sun that
on the occasion of a funeral, while seated beside the wife of the Spanish
Minister, he turned a puzzled look upon her with the comment, “How
strange we all look by daylight!” Both ministers contributed not a little to
the gayety of gossip, Bodisco, by his squat ugliness and courtliness, and
Fox, by his whimsical refusal at dinners to go to the table until the dishes
had cooled.[105] During the period the most celebrated functions were given
at Carusi’s Assembly rooms which could accommodate great numbers.
Leaders of fashion and the socially ambitious of Baltimore and Alexandria,
wishing to make an impression in introducing a débutante or to repay social
obligations, found these rooms suited to their purpose. It was in these rooms
that Washington society had its first presentation of the “Barber of Seville,”
and “John of Paris” in the winter of 1833.[106] The same year a Washington
birthday party was given there, both rooms thrown open, “decorated and
illuminated and with a band in each,” and diplomats admitted without an
entrance fee.[107] Hither all the ladies of the capital, unfamiliar with the
dances, or wishing to learn new ones, found their way to learn from the
popular Louis, only the inclemency of the weather and the impossible mire
of the streets interfering with his profits.[108] Thus the fashionables of the
Thirties managed to create the illusion of living in the great world,
chattering in the Senate, bustling into the Supreme Court chamber, dining,
dancing, flirting, gossiping, attending the theater to see a Booth or a
Kemble, going to the circus to see the animals fed at eight o’clock, “in the

presence of the audience,”[109] or riding to the National Course near town to
witness the races, or attending an exhibit of the paintings of John G.
Chapman on the Avenue.[110] Only on Sundays did the capital become quiet
and sedate, for, after a pious morning pilgrimage to church, the ladies
carrying a hymn or a prayer book and leaning on the arms of their escorts,
they retired to the seclusion of their homes and the streets were deserted or
given over to the promenades of the colored folks.[111]
In this Washington, where men were feverishly fighting for place and
prestige, and women were engaged in a hectic struggle for social leadership,
Death lurked always, for a less healthful spot could not easily have been
found. Built originally in a swamp reeking with malaria, surrounded with
morasses, and with not a few of these in the heart of the town, with
sanitation poor and water wretched, the residents were constantly menaced
by disease. With the gradual disappearance of the forests immediately
surrounding it, the conditions became worse. The death-rate was as high as
one in fifty-three, with August claiming the heaviest toll from fevers.[112]
Between the fevers of the summers and the influenza of the winters, the
residents had to be constantly on guard. Whiskey and quinine were taken
with the regularity of bread and meat, and tourists were wont to sit late at
their quarters “sipping gently a medicine which the doctors of the capital
thought destructive of the influenza germs which were lying in wait for the
unwary.”[113] Fevers, pneumonia, influenza, and the cholera made the
swampy capital of the Thirties as profitable to the doctors as to the
coachmen.
Such, in brief, was the scene of the most dramatic and significant
political battles that were staged in America between the foundation of the
Republic and the Administration of Woodrow Wilson. Such was the day-by-
day life of the men, now steel engravings, who played the leading rôles.
And by bearing in mind the sordidness and pettiness of the environment,
and of the men and women with whom they daily and nightly gossiped and
dined and danced, it may be less of a shock to discover, in the unfolding of
the story of these eight crowded years, that even the greatest were men of
moral weaknesses and limitations.

CHAPTER II

THE RISING OF THE MASSES

I
With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to
this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies had
been a matter of manipulation among the congressional politicians. The
possessors of property and the aristocrats of intellect had been the only
classes with whom the politicians had concerned themselves. The Virginia
Dynasty and the Secretarial Succession died on the day that the rising of the
masses raised to the Presidency a man who had never served in the Cabinet,
distinguished himself in the Congress, or appealed to the “aristocracy of
intellect and culture.” To the politicians, office-holders, and society leaders
in Washington, the election of Andrew Jackson was something more than a
shock—it was an affront. In the campaign he had been opposed by two
thirds of the newspapers, four fifths of the preachers, practically all the
manufacturers, and seven eighths of the banking capital. Respectability
sternly set itself against the presumptuous ambitions of what it conceived to
be a rough, illiterate representative of the “mob.”
Four years before, the stage had been set for a bitter battle. The election
of Adams, through the support of Clay, followed by the appointment of the
latter to the first place in the Cabinet, had carried the suspicion of a bargain,
and this suspicion had crystallized into a firm conviction with a large
portion of the people. Throughout the Adams Administration, its enemies—
and they were legion—harped constantly upon the “bargain,” angering the
crabbed Adams, and stinging Clay to furious denunciation, and this but
served to intensify the bitterness of their foes.
The result was the most scurrilous campaign of vilification the country
had known. A new school of politicians, forerunners of the astute and none
too scrupulous managers of later days, sprang up to direct the fight for the
grim old warrior of the Hermitage, and the fact that Clay took personal
charge of the campaign for Adams was turned with telling force against his
chief. Early in the campaign we find the satirical and caustic Isaac Hill, of

the “New Hampshire Patriot,” of whom we shall hear much, writing that
“Clay is managing Adams’s campaign, not like a statesman of the Cabinet,
but like a shyster, pettifogging in a bastard suit before a country squire.”
And lest the motive for Clay’s interest escape his readers, we find Hill
writing again: “This is Mr. Clay’s fight. The country has him on trial for
bribery, and having no defense, he accuses the prosecutor.”
This reference to the accusation of the prosecutor was inspired by the
outrageous calumny that was heaped upon the head of Jackson. He was
pictured as a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cockfighter, a brawler, a
drunkard, and a murderer. The good name of Mrs. Jackson, one of the
purest of women, was wantonly maligned; and in the drawing-rooms of the
intellectually elect she was not spared by the ladies who were shocked at
the “vulgarity” of her husband. The Adams organs stooped to the attack,
and while the “National Intelligencer,” under the editorship of Joseph
Gales, refused thus to pollute its columns, the “National Journal,” under the
editorial management of Peter Force, and specially favored by the Adams
Administration, specialized on the slander of an excellent woman. A little
later an attempt was made to justify the infamy of this proceeding by
charging that Mrs. Adams had been assailed, but the extent of the assault
was the charge that she was an English woman with little sympathy for
American institutions.
While history has accepted Adams’s indignant denial of the charge that
he had personally sanctioned the attack on Mrs. Jackson, the National
Central Committee, in charge of his campaign, was busily engaged in the
dissemination of the putrid literature. This has been thoroughly established
by the testimony of Thurlow Weed, editor of the “Albany Journal,” who
refused to degrade himself by its circulation. When, early in August, before
the election in November, he received “two large drygoods boxes” of the
pamphlets, with a letter from the National Committee advising him that
they contained “valuable campaign documents,” with the request that he
attend to their circulation “throughout the western counties of the State,” he
promptly “secured the boxes with additional nails and placed them under
lock and key.” And when the National Committee learned that they were
not being distributed, and sent a representative to protest against his
inactivity, he frankly informed the emissary that “not a copy had been seen
or would be seen by an elector until the polls had closed.” For this he was
denounced in New York and Boston as “a traitor to the Administration,” but

the sagacious politician of Albany stoutly maintained that he “would not
permit a lady whose life had been blameless to be dragged forth into the
arena of politics.”[114]
The charge of murder lodged against Jackson, by editor, hack-writer, and
cartoonist, had reference to his execution of Arbuthnot, two Indian chiefs,
and seven of his soldiers, and to his duel with Dickinson. Pictures of the
coffins of the soldiers were printed on circulars and distributed from
farmhouse to farmhouse in New England.[115] This gave Hill an opportunity
to tickle Jackson with a rejoinder which was copied from the “New
Hampshire Patriot” into all the Jackson papers of the country: “Pshaw! Why
don’t you tell the whole truth? On the 8th of January, 1815, he murdered in
the coldest kind of cold blood 1500 British soldiers for merely trying to get
into New Orleans in search of Booty and Beauty.”
But all the scurrility of the campaign cannot be justly charged to the
enemies of Jackson. His friends were almost as offensive. Adams had
bribed Clay. He had bought the Presidency. While abroad he had pandered
to the sensuality of the Russian Court. He was stingy, undemocratic, an
enemy of American institutions, bent on the destruction of the people’s
liberties. He was an aristocrat, and had squandered the people’s money in
lavishly furnishing the East Room of the White House after the fashion of
the homes of kings. He had even purchased a billiard table for the home of
the President!
And so it went on for weeks and months—the ordinary slanders of a
present-day municipal campaign. A foreigner traveling through the country
during the summer and autumn of 1828 would have thought the election of
Adams certain. In the marts, the counting-rooms, and the drawing-rooms,
he would have found but one opinion; but the astute Adams sensed the
coming disaster and recorded his misgivings in his diary. The
temperamental Clay was depressed one day, to be exultant the next. But the
new school of political leadership, managing the fight for Jackson, and
devoting itself assiduously to the newly enfranchised “mob” in the
highways and the byways, had no notion of defeat. The “hurrah for
Jackson” which shocked the sedate, unaccustomed to such noisy acclaim of
a presidential aspirant, and disgusted the “best people,” was music to the
ears of these modern politicians, who had carefully calculated upon the
strength of the “mob.” Their confidence was not misplaced. The result was
an upheaval. Adams, Clay, Federalism, the Virginia Dynasty, the Secretarial

Succession, were brushed aside by the rush of the cheering masses bearing
their hero to the White House. History has decided that in this campaign
“the people first assumed control of the governmental machinery which had
been held in trust for them since 1789”; and that “the party and
Administration which then came into power was the first in our history
which represented the people without restriction, and with all the faults of
the people.”[116]

II
The Administration circle in Washington was deeply depressed by the
result, and society looked forward to the reign of the barbarians with
mingled feelings of mirth and abhorrence. Although not unprepared for the
defeat, the bitter Adams, meditating on his political blunders, recorded that
“some think I have suffered for not turning my enemies out of office,
particularly the Postmaster-General.”[117] That John McLean, the official
referred to, had been disloyal to his chief was common knowledge. The first
reaction to defeat from the followers of the Adams Administration was
toward laughter, levity, extravagant manifestation of cynical gayety, with an
all too noticeable thawing of the frigidity of White House ceremonies. The
dying régime put on its best bib and tucker in a hectic and hysterical
demonstration of social hilarity. But this first reaction was short-lived. Very
soon thereafter callers at Clay’s home were “shocked at the alteration of his
looks,” and found him “much thinner, very pale, his eyes sunk in his head
and his countenance sad and melancholy.”[118] Mr. Rush (Secretary of the
Treasury) was soon “alarmingly ill”—the “first symptoms of disease was
altogether in the head.” Mr. Southard (Secretary of the Navy) was confined
to his room for three weeks. William Wirt (Attorney-General) suffered two
attacks of vertigo, “followed by a loss of the sense of motion.” General
Porter (Secretary of War) “was almost blind from inflammation of the eyes
and went to his office with two blisters, one behind each ear.” Even the
cold-blooded Adams, who appeared “in fine spirits,” was soon “so feeble as
to be obliged to relinquish his long walks and to substitute rides on
horseback.”[119] A social intimate of the leaders swept from power by the
rising of the masses mournfully recorded that they would retire to private
life “with blasted hopes, injured health, impaired or ruined fortunes,

imbittered tempers, and probably a total inability to enjoy the remnant of
their lives.”[120]
On none did the blow fall with such crushing force as on the proud-
spirited Clay. As the repudiated régime was approaching the end, the
presiding genius of one of the favorite Administration drawing-rooms met
him at a reception.
“What ails your heart?” he asked.
“Can it be otherwise than sad when I think what a good friend I am
about to lose?”
For a moment he held her hand without speaking, his eyes “filled with
tears.”
“We must not think of this or talk of such things now,” he said. And with
that he relinquished her hand, “drew out his handkerchief, turned away his
head and wiped his eyes, then pushed into the crowd and talked and smiled
as if his heart were light and easy.”[121]
On February 25th this lady made another poignant note: “Mr. Clay’s
furniture is to be sold this week.”
Thus the old régime died hard, and in bitterness.

III
But “The King is dead—long live the King”—was the mood of the strange
crowds in the streets of the capital—unusual creatures from the out-of-the-
way places to whom the city was not accustomed. Never before had the
inaugural ceremonies attracted the people of the farms and the villages,
from every nook and corner. Long before the 4th of March the city
swarmed with all sorts and conditions, the rustic, the rural politician, the
adventurer, along with politicians of influence and repute. They overflowed
the city, filled all the hotels and rooming-houses, spread out to Georgetown,
descended on Alexandria.[122] Webster, writing to his brother toward the
close of February, said: “I have never seen such a crowd before. Persons
have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem
to think that the country has been rescued from some dreadful danger.”[123]
What they really thought was that they had come into their own. They
hastened to “their capital,” to witness the inauguration of “their President,”
and, in many instances, in the hope of entering into their reward.

Out of the maze of incomprehensible contradictions, we may gather that
Jackson disappointed many of the faithful, who had planned a spectacular
entrance to the capital, by entering quietly and unannounced in the early
morning. Elaborate preparations had been made, a pompous reception
committee of the socially elect and politically pure had been organized,
headed by John P. Van Ness, the dean of society and husband of the
exquisite Marcia Burns, and plans had been perfected for leading a great
throng into the country to meet and escort him to the accompaniment of gun
fire into the city. Reaching the capital four hours before he was expected,
[124] he went directly to Gadsby’s where he took lodging.[125]

But the committee was not to be wholly deprived of its prerogatives. The
moment the news reached it and the crowds, the celebration began. “I hear
cannon firing, drums beating, and hurrahing. I really cannot write, so adieu
for the present,” wrote Mrs. Smith. The mob surged down the Avenue to the
hostelry famous for its whiskey, brandy, game, and the imposing ceremony
of the host, packed the streets and fought for the privilege of entering and
shaking the hand of the man of the hour. From the moment of his arrival
until he took the oath of office he was accessible to the most humble and
obscure. Importuned and petitioned by ambitious politicians, the old man
courteously heard them all, to the last man, and, according to all
contemporaries, kept his own counsel as to prospective appointments. Even
as late as March 2d, the observant Webster wrote his brother that the
President-to-be was close-mouthed, and predicted that there would be few
removals.[126] The crafty Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” had
arrived early upon the scene, and we are indebted to him for a side-light on
Jackson’s methods and mood, and the scenes about the hotel. Almost daily
this persistent aspirant for place wormed his way into the presence of the
source of all patronage. Jackson was cordial, remembered, quoted, laughed
about witticisms in Hill’s paper during the campaign, but said “little about
the future except in a general way.” There was cruel hilarity in that crowded
room at Gadsby’s over the maneuvers of the office-holders to retain their
places. A “funny story” was told of Wirt writing to Monroe “soliciting his
influence with the General to keep him on the pay roll.”[127] An old
translator of twenty years’ experience in the State Department had, in
conversation, expressed a curiosity to know where a Democrat could be
found to translate diplomatic French, and this was jokingly related to
Jackson. “Oh, just tell him,” said the General, “that if necessary I can bring

Planche’s whole Creole Battalion up here. Those French fellows, you know,
who helped to defend New Orleans against the Red Coats that had just
made all the translators here take to the woods for their lives.” This flare of
spirit gratified and encouraged the spoilsmen. “Good, wasn’t it?” Hill wrote
to his assistant in Concord. “Besides his courage and truth, Old Hickory has
a fund of humor in his make-up, but most of his sallies, like the above, are
likely to be a little bit cruel.”
About the time that Hill was writing to his assistant editor, he was
meeting daily, at the home of Obadiah B. Brown, a preacher-politician,
where Amos Kendall, a Kentucky editor, then obscure, but destined to
become the master mind of the Administration, was holding forth, and
organizing a number of fellow journalists who had been useful in the
campaign, to compel recognition. There, in the home of the jovial preacher,
Kendall and Hill were making common cause with the smiling Major M.
M. Noah of New York, Nathaniel Green of Massachusetts, and the quiet but
sagacious Gideon Welles of Connecticut. More political history was being
made in the humble abode of Brown than in the crowded, smoke-laden
room at Gadsby’s.[128] The Kentucky editor does not seem to have
encountered the same reticence in Jackson that Hill had found. After his
first call at Gadsby’s, we find him writing his wife: “He expressed his
regards for me and his disposition to serve me, in strong terms.” And a few
days later, after his second call, he writes: “The other day I had a long
conversation with General Jackson. At the close of it, after saying many
flattering things of my capacity, character, etc., he observed, ‘I told one of
my friends that you were fit for the head of a department, and I shall put
you as near the head as possible.’ ”[129]
It is significant of the change of the times that, while the practical
politicians of the new school were encouraged and jubilant, the seasoned
veterans of political battle-fields were discouraged and not a little
disgruntled. Amusing tales of the discomfiture of these were gayly carried
to the politicians of the Opposition in the salon of Mrs. Smith, who
recorded, toward the close of February, that “every one thinks there is great
confusion and difficulty, mortification and disappointment at the Wigwam,
as they call the General’s lodgings. Mr. Woodbury[130] looks glum, as well
as several other disappointed expectants.”[131]
The battle royal occurred in the selection of the Cabinet. The one
principle on which Jackson was determined was the exclusion from his

Cabinet table of any aspirant for the succession. He had been profoundly
impressed by the demoralizing effect of the intrigues of the presidential
candidates in the Cabinet of Monroe.[132] This, however, did not deter the
two powerful men of the party, Calhoun and Van Buren, from exerting
themselves to pack the Cabinet with men favorable to their respective
aspirations for the chief magistracy. Of the latter’s plans the President-elect
knew nothing. He had probably decided to ask the clever New York
politician to accept the portfolio of State before leaving the Hermitage. He
had been intimate with Van Buren in the Senate; had been impressed with
his tact, diplomacy, and ability, and especially with his genius in the
creation, consolidation, and drilling of a party, and in formulating its
policies. He was not unmindful of the part the “Red Fox”[133] had played in
his nomination and election. In view of all the conditions the selection of
Van Buren was logical and inevitable.[134] It was just as inevitable that
Calhoun, the Vice-President, should be hostile to the choice. Primarily, we
may be sure, the South Carolinian recognized in the suave and subtle New
Yorker a dangerous rival for the succession. Whether he was even that early
interested in strengthening the South at the expense of the North is not so
certain. However that may be, he appeared in the throng of wire-pulling
politicians at Gadsby’s, earnestly urging that Senator Tazewell of Virginia
should be placed at the head of the Cabinet. This able statesman but a little
time before had maintained close political relations with Van Buren,[135] but
he was an extreme State-Rights advocate, entirely satisfactory to Calhoun.
During the half-concealed struggle over the Cabinet, Van Buren, who had
been elected Governor of New York and was staying in Albany, was well
served in Washington by James A. Hamilton, whose mission was to keep in
intimate touch with events and inform the New Yorker of all developments.
Thus it happened that Hamilton was with Jackson when, at ten o’clock one
morning, Calhoun called for a conference with the President-elect. “I know
what it is about,” said Jackson to Van Buren’s agent. “He cannot succeed. I
wish you to remain until he leaves.” It was during this conference, the last
he ever had with the President on patronage matters, that Calhoun made his
final stand for Tazewell, or against Van Buren. With great solemnity he
urged the appointment of the Virginian, largely because of “his great
knowledge and wisdom,” but partly on the ground that it would assure the
support of Virginia for the Administration. It is doubtful whether, up to this
time, Calhoun had appreciated the political sagacity of the man with whom

he dealt. Jackson listened to his importunity with courteous attention, but
did not commit himself. One suggestion he made, however, which must
have warned the great Carolinian that his motives were divined. When
Calhoun stressed the importance of cultivating Virginia, Jackson blandly
inquired whether it would not be useful to have the support of New York.
Calhoun’s reply disclosed his animus against the “Little Magician.” The
appointment of Clinton, had he lived, might have guaranteed the support of
the Empire State, but the selection of no other citizen of that State would.
He left, no doubt with the feeling that he had failed in his mission, and
never again approached Jackson on the subject of appointments. And the
moment he left, a detailed story of the conference was given to Hamilton,
who promptly sent it to his chief in Albany.[136]
When Jackson reached the capital he had made no decision as to the
Treasury, and there he was to be buffeted about by many cross-currents. Van
Buren, who was socially and politically intimate with Louis McLane of
Delaware, was anxious that he should be named for the post, and the
gentleman himself was on the ground ready to respond to the summons that
failed to come. The political tacticians at Gadsby’s reached the decision
early that the place should be awarded to Pennsylvania, and Samuel D.
Ingham, who had rushed to Washington as a representative of one of the
factions, with an application for a subordinate position in the Treasury,
became an active candidate for the more important honor. This was
displeasing to Jackson, who favored Henry Baldwin, but in this preference
he was unable to secure any important support among his advisers.[137]
Strangely enough, powerful influences almost immediately rushed to the
support of the man who would have been delighted with a comparatively
obscure position. The Pennsylvania congressional delegation, on which he
had served for years, unanimously endorsed him. Stranger still, Calhoun,
with whom Jackson at this juncture had no desire to break, became an
ardent supporter of his candidacy. He had served in the House of
Representatives many years before with the mediocre Pennsylvanian, and
had found in him one of his most faithful idolaters. That his influence, and
the desire to recognize him in the making of the Cabinet, was the
determining factor, was the consensus of opinion at the time.
But here again appeared cross-currents difficult to understand. South
Carolina, usually so subservient to the wishes of her great statesman, but
now cool toward him, was uncompromisingly hostile to his favorite for the

Treasury. The other leading members of the South Carolina delegation,
known to be opposed to Ingham and to prefer McLane to him, had hesitated
from motives of delicacy to make their views known to Jackson; and Van
Buren’s favorite for the position authorized Hamilton, Van Buren’s
emissary, to notify the General of their willingness to call if their opinion
was wanted.[138] On February 17th, the Carolinians, including Senator
Hayne, McDuffie, Hamilton, Archer, and Drayton, filed into the throne
room at Gadsby’s, and Hamilton, who acted as spokesman, began by
tactfully commending the selection of Van Buren, and then turned to the
Treasury. Before he could announce his candidate, Jackson interrupted with
the announcement that Ingham had been chosen. Nothing daunted,
Hamilton suggested as a better choice the brilliant Langdon Cheves of
South Carolina. “Impossible,” snapped the grim old man. Then why not
McLane? That, too, was instantly dismissed, and the Carolinians left
Gadsby’s in a rage. “I assure you I am cool—damn cool—never half so
cool in my life,” Hamilton exclaimed immediately afterwards.[139]
For the War Department there was no such competition, and after an
unsuccessful attempt had been made to conciliate Tazewell with the post,
Jackson, who was anxious to have among his advisers one of his old friends
and managers, satisfied himself with the selection of Senator John H. Eaton
of Tennessee.
The processes of reasoning leading to the appointment of Senator John
Branch of North Carolina as Secretary of the Navy have been lost to history
and there is no clue. We know that Van Buren and his friends strongly urged
the selection of Woodbury of New Hampshire; and McLane expressed the
contemporary state of mind in a letter to his friend: “By what interest that
miserable old woman, Branch, was ever dreamed of, no one can tell.” This
much we know—that Branch himself did not have the most remote idea of
entering the Cabinet when the invitation reached him from Gadsby’s, and
he withheld his acceptance until he could consult with a number of his
friends.[140] Two reasons have been advanced as probable. The one, popular
at the time, was that Jackson’s advisers thought that something should be
done to promote the social prestige of the Administration; and the other,
generally accepted by historians, that the appointment was made as another
concession to Calhoun. While the Carolinian made no request for his
inclusion in the Cabinet, Branch was one of his most loyal followers.

There is no real justification for astonishment over the decision of the
conferees at the Wigwam to ask Senator John McPherson Berrien of
Georgia to accept the position of Attorney-General. Not only was he a
brilliant member of the Senate, noted as an orator, but his professional
reputation in his section was almost as great as that of Webster in New
England. His votes in the Senate on the party measures of the Adams
Administration had been pleasing to Jackson, and, whether he was named
as another gesture of good-will toward Calhoun, as generally assumed, or
not, his appointment could not have been displeasing to the Vice-President.
While the Postmaster-General had not hitherto been a member of the
Cabinet, the Jackson board of strategy, wishing to manifest its appreciation
of John McLean, who had held the post under Adams while exerting
himself on behalf of Jackson, determined to raise the position to the Cabinet
and retain him.[141]
Thus the Cabinet was completed, and after a fashion indicative of no
desire on the part of Jackson to quarrel with his Vice-President. Van Buren,
who did not enter into the President’s calculations as to the succession, had
been given the most desirable post, but his friends, McLane and Woodbury,
had been set aside for Ingham and Branch, both devoted to the political
fortunes of Calhoun. The latter was represented by half the Cabinet,
Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, and no stretch of the imagination could make
the other two members, Eaton and McLean, other than absolutely
independent of the wily politician of Kinderhook. The processes through
which all this was speedily changed enter into one of the most fascinating
dramas of political intrigue in the history of the Republic.

IV
While the President-elect was holding his conferences, with the mysterious
Major Lewis going in and out at Gadsby’s and playing with the destinies of
men, and the streets were seething with an incongruous crowd shouting
their “Hurrah for Jackson,” Jackson was remaining coldly aloof from the
occupant of the White House. He had carried to Washington a bitter
resentment against Adams and his personal lieutenants, because of the
dastardly attacks upon the woman then buried at the Hermitage. He made
no call of courtesy, and Adams was stung to the quick. Especially painful to
the old Puritan was the thought that he had been considered capable of a

vulgar assault upon the good name of a woman. After much struggling with
his pride, he made the first advance by sending a messenger to Jackson to
inform him that the White House would be ready for his occupancy on the
4th of March. “He brought me the answer,” Adams records, “that the
General cordially thanked him, and hoped that I would put myself to no
inconvenience to quit the house, but to remain in it as long as I pleased,
even for a month.”[142] A few days later, Adams sent his messenger to say
that his packing might require two or three days beyond the 3d, and Jackson
replied that he did not wish to put him to the slightest inconvenience, “but
that Mr. Calhoun had suggested that there might be danger of the excessive
crowds breaking down the rooms at Gadsby’s, and the General had
concluded, if it would be perfectly convenient to us, to receive his company
at the President’s house after the inauguration on Wednesday next.”
Whereupon Adams “concluded at all events to leave the house on
Tuesday.”[143] Thus the closing days of his Administration must have been
bitter, indeed, to the proud old Puritan of the White House. Deliberately
ignored by his successor, tortured by the thought of the treachery of
McLean and others, the co-workers of his régime, depressed, embittered, or
in hiding, he appears to have been utterly forgotten by the society of the
capital as well as by the general public. Justice Story observing his isolation
was moved to write in bitterness to a friend that he had never “felt so
forcibly the emptiness of public honors and public favor.” Certainly no
generous sympathy was felt for him by his triumphant foes. When, on the
last Sunday before the inauguration, the pastor of the President’s church
unhappily selected for his text, “What will ye do on the solemn day?” one
of Jackson’s courtiers, who had attended the services, hurried back to
Gadsby’s, and the company assembled there went into gales of laughter, and
agreed that it would be, for some, a “solemn day.”
That day was heralded by the thunder of cannon—a day of warmth and
sunshine. All roads led to the Capitol, and from an early hour the
thoroughfares were thronged with the eager, enthusiastic, motley crowd,
rejoicing audibly in the event. Down the Avenue the good-natured mob
fought its way, the splendid Barronet and the stately coaches splashed by
the wagons and the carts, women and children in exquisite finery crowded
by women and children in home-spun and rags, statesmen jostled by
uncouth frontiersmen, the laborer brushing inconsiderately, and perhaps a
little arrogantly, against the banker—for it was the People’s Day. When, at

eleven o’clock, the aristocratic Mrs. Smith set forth with her company, she
found the Avenue one living mass, flowing sluggishly eastward, with every
terrace and portico and balcony packed, and with all the windows of the
Capitol crowded, some to observe the approach on the west, and others to
witness the ceremony on the east. When the mob caught sight of Jackson
and his party walking from Gadsby’s in democratic fashion, it pressed in
upon him, impeding his approach, but seeming in nowise to challenge his
displeasure, for he alone of his party walked with bared head. The
spectators on the south terrace thrilled to the scene—an American king
going to his coronation, acclaimed and accompanied by the plain people.
The ceremonies over, he fought his way to his waiting horse—and down the
Avenue he rode, followed by the most picturesque cortège that ever trailed a
conqueror—gentlemen of society and backwoodsmen, scholars and the
illiterate, white and black, the old hobbling on crutches and canes and
children clinging to their mothers’ gowns, walking and riding in carriages
and wagons and carts—following to the People’s House.
There the unwieldy mob, in carnival mood, hundreds only accustomed to
the rough life of the frontier, stormed the mansion, fighting, scrambling,
elbowing, scratching. Waiters appearing with refreshments were rushed by
the uncouth guests, resulting in the crash of glass and china. Men in heavy
boots, covered with the mud of the unpaved streets, sprang upon the chairs
and sofas to get a better view of the hero of the hour.[144] Women fainted,
some were seen with bloody noses, and Jackson was saved from being
crushed only by the action of some gentlemen in making a barrier of their
bodies. After this the old soldier beat a hasty retreat through the back way to
the south, and sought relief at Gadsby’s.[145] “I never saw such a mixture,”
wrote Justice Story. “The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” And Mrs.
Smith writing of her experience said: “The noisy and disorderly rabble ...
brought to my mind descriptions I have read of the mobs in the Tuileries
and at Versailles.”
And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the
popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the
inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the
outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but
drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the dethroned
President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered his horse,
and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the city “through

F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until he reached a road
leading to the Porters’—reminded of the passing of his power by the
neglect of the people.[146]
Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the day
—tormented by bitter regrets.

V
Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and
his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were to
cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his
Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the
White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the capital
gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who had
betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale dismissals of
postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings against those
officials who had participated in politics he would be forced to include in
the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well as those who had been
faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment nonplussed, sat puffing at his
pipe, then arose, and, after walking up and down the room several times,
stopped abruptly before his obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr.
McLean, will you accept a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”—and
that McLean instantly accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent,
who says that on the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a
reception at the home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was
intimate, had just described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr.
McLean has been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential
aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many
postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he
secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably
saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly Jacksonian
way.
It is reasonable to assume that during the brief moments he walked the
floor puffing his pipe, he determined upon McLean’s successor. One week
before his inauguration, he had given James A. Hamilton a list of applicants
for office with the request for an opinion and report, and among these was
the application of William T. Barry of Kentucky for a place on the Supreme

Bench. The applications had been returned to him with the recommendation
that the Kentuckian be appointed. He was known to Jackson as an
“organization man.” It was probably the matter of a moment, for one of the
President’s quick decision, to make the exchange—McLean for the Bench,
Barry for the Cabinet.[149] His efforts to soothe the injured feelings of
Senator Tazewell, whose heart had been set on the portfolio of State, were
not so successful. After the disappointed statesman had refused the War
Department, some of the Jackson tacticians conceived the idea of offering
him the mission to London, and for a few days the Virginian seemed
tempted. But one week after the inauguration, he wrote the President that
domestic reasons precluded an acceptance. Keenly disappointed and
concerned, Jackson, after a consultation with one of his advisers,[150] wrote
a personal note to Tazewell requesting him to call at the White House. It is
not incomprehensible that in his angry mood the proud Southerner should
have resented the earnest importunity of the direct Jackson, and he left the
President with the statement to McLean that he had not liked the General’s
manner in looking him through and through and telling him he must go. He
had looked upon it as a military order, and considered the matter at rest.
This opened the way, however, for the recognition of Van Buren’s friend,
Louis McLane, whose ruffled feelings were smoothed by the appointment
to the English Court. But within a week two of Jackson’s party friends and
supporters, McLean and Tazewell, had been alienated and were ripe for the
seduction of the Opposition.
Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he
began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn opposition
to the Administration. As early as the first of January it was evident that
“the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in the Senate and thereby
to control the President.”[151] During the first few weeks of the new
Administration the iron sank deep into the souls of the dispossessed office-
holders and their friends. It was manifest that there was something more
than a new master in the White House—that a régime had passed, a dynasty
had fallen. Previous Presidents had entered office with the good wishes of
most of their political opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that
the dispossessed had steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning
to find fault on general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to
wreck the Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the
Whig drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.”

All the members of the new official family were ridiculed with the
exception of Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound
politician,” was “not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic
and vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on
the pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together
with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had
rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the conduct
of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for place, and to
reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153]
While Adams indulged in these unfriendly reflections merely to feed his
personal vanity, and to record his superiority, Clay, equally bitter, was not
content to shut his reflection up between the covers of a book. To him
defeat had been especially bitter. He hated Jackson with vindictive malice
because the latter really credited the “bargain” story, and had sanctioned its
circulation. His overpowering passion was to reach the Presidency. He had
entered the official household of Adams as the head of the Cabinet when the
“Secretarial Succession” seemed definitely established, and had looked
forward to succeeding his chief at the end of his second Administration. The
fact that there had been no second Administration had been due, in part, to
the prevalent opinion that Clay had entered into a bargain for power, and he
faced retirement from public life feeling that his great opportunity had
failed him and that his reputation had been stained. He was the type of man
whose bitterness must find relief in action. From the moment he recovered
from the shock of the election, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of
Jackson.
In judging of the sincerity of his unrelenting opposition during the next
eight years, it is well to bear in mind that before Jackson had perfected a
policy, or proclaimed a principle, Mr. Clay attended a banquet given in his
honor within a stone’s throw of the White House, at which he assailed the
President with an intemperance of denunciation never exceeded in later
years. This was evidently personal. One week after the inauguration he said
to Mrs. Bayard Smith: “There is not in Cairo or in Constantinople a greater
moral despotism than is at this moment exercised over public opinion here.
Why, a man dare not avow what he thinks or feels, or shake hands with a
personal friend, if he happens to differ from the powers that be.”[154] On the
very day this remarkable statement was recorded by the chronicler of the
Whig drawing-rooms, Adams wrote in his diary: “Mr. Clay told me some

time since that he had received invitations at several places on his way to
Lexington to public dinners, and should attend them, and that he intended
freely to express his opinions.”[155] A little later Adams notes that while
riding he passed Mr. Clay in a carriage driving toward Baltimore on his way
to Kentucky—pale, stern, and sour. On that journey, and without having at
that time any particular actions of the new Administration on which to base
an attack, he spoke wherever the opportunity was afforded, and always with
a vehement denunciation of President Jackson.
The inauguration was over; the people from afar, having seen “their”
President and visited “their” White House, had returned to their homes; and
Henry Clay, the most consummate of politicians, one of the most eloquent
of men, was already meditating upon the organized assault that was to be
made upon the new régime. Now let us acquaint ourselves with the advisers
with whom the President had surrounded himself officially.

VI
By common consent the Whig aristocracy conceded that Martin Van Buren
was the strong man of the Cabinet because of an uncanny cleverness as a
politician, while denying him the qualities of statesmanship or intellectual
leadership. Even as a politician tradition would have him of the superficial,
manipulating, intriguing sort. History had generally accepted this tradition
until Mr. Shepard’s masterful biography[156] focused attention upon his
career, and the publication of his fascinating “Autobiography” disclosed his
intellectuality. He stood out among the politicians of his time, to whom
history has been kinder, because of his refusal to indulge in the popular
personal attacks or to stoop to disreputable intrigues. A man of even temper,
blessed with a sense of humor, he found it not only possible but profitable
and pleasurable to maintain social relations with political opponents, and all
that the embittered Adams could see in this was that “he thought it might
one day be to his interest to seek friendship.” In senatorial debates he had
discussed principles and policies calmly, instead of indulging in flamboyant
discourses flaming with personalities—and this was accepted in his day as
evidence that he held his principles lightly. Adams wrote that “his principles
are always subordinate to his ambition.”[157]
This “superficial politician” was the greatest lawyer elected to the
Presidency before the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of the

second Harrison, the greatest lawyer-President we have had. Living in a
community overwhelmingly Federalistic, this “trimmer without principles”
became a bitter opponent of Federalism. With all the rich and powerful of
the locality allied with Federalism, this “courtier” entered the other camp.
When Burr was a candidate for Governor, with the support of Van Buren’s
preceptor in the law, this young man, who “was under the influence of his
evil genius,” ardently supported the Clinton-Livingston candidate, who was
elected. When he entered politics, he found the spoils system thoroughly
established in New York, and political proscription practiced by both
parties, but that was not to prevent his enemies from charging him with its
initiation. He did not quarrel with the system. He used, but never abused it.
And in the days of his limitation to State politics, he displayed qualities of
statesmanship, patriotism, and courage. New York Federalism did not
dismiss him as a mere schemer and intriguer when he led his party in the
State Senate. He met the Federalist attack upon the War of 1812 upon the
floor of the Senate, and not in party caucus. When Federalism fought every
needful measure, he became as much the spokesman of the war party in
Albany as Clay, Calhoun, and Grundy in Washington. In reaching an
estimate of Van Buren, it is important to bear in mind that this alleged man
of indecision, without initiative or constructive capacity, was the author of
“the most energetic war measure” adopted in the country.[158] As a member
of the Constitutional Convention of New York, dealing with the extension
of suffrage, when Chancellor Kent, giving free rein to his aristocratic
tendencies, was opposing the extension, and mere demagogues were
advocating the immediate letting down of the bars to all, it is significant,
both of his Americanism and

MARTIN VAN BUREN THOMAS HART BENTON

his wisdom, that Van Buren scorned both the rôle of reactionary and
demagogue, and proposed the plan for the gradual extension of suffrage in a
speech couched in the language of seasoned statesmanship. Thus, at the time
he entered National life, there was nothing in his career to justify the
conventional estimate of his public character.
With the inauguration of Adams, soon after he had entered the United
States Senate, Van Buren became the recognized leader of the Opposition,
and he set himself the task of organizing and militantizing a party to fight the
Federalistic trend of the President. There were various elements on which he
could draw. With his genius for organization and direction, he made it his
work to seek a common ground upon which all could stand together in
harmony. He fought the principles and policies of the Administration in
dignified fashion, without recourse to scurrility; but he capitalized every
mistake and gave it fullest publicity through the circulation of carefully
prepared speeches, after the fashion of the present day. Careful to
discriminate, even in his attacks, between personal and political wrongdoing,

he treated Adams with the utmost courtesy. With a party formed, he drilled it
as carefully as was ever done by the Albany Regency. He instilled into it the
party spirit. He mobilized an army. With this he fought the Administration on
the floor.
But he was one of the first, if not the first, to take the people outside the
halls of Congress into consideration. To create a party without as well as
within the Congress, he arranged for the circulation of carefully prepared
senatorial speeches for the moulding of public opinion in the highways and
the byways. Thus he was probably responsible for the delivery of the first
congressional speeches intended solely for campaign use.
In person he was slight, erect, and scarcely of middle height. His
intellectuality was indicated by his high, broad forehead, and his bright,
quick eye. His smile, which was habitual, was genial and seemed sincere.
His features, generally, were pleasing. His manner was always courtly, and
he made a study of deportment. No professional diplomat of the Old World,
living in the atmosphere of courts, could have been more polished.
Contemporaries have described him as “extraordinarily bright and attractive,
but without anything supercilious.”[159] In social life he was a favorite. Few
men of his period were better fitted for the drawing-room. An entertaining
talker, he could converse intelligently upon a multitude of subjects and could
pass from a political conference with the Kitchen Cabinet to a social call on
Adams, or a chat with Clay, without effort or embarrassment. Fond of
feminine society, he could be as charming to a débutante as to a grande
dame, and we find him delighting the brilliant Mrs. Livingston with his
intellectual charm, while captivating her daughter, Cora, with his juvenile
levity. Fastidious to a degree, he could enjoy the unconventional moments of
Jackson in his shirt-sleeves and with his pipe, and make the pleasure mutual.
This premier of an Administration that contemporaries of the Opposition
loved to describe as plebeian and vulgar “was perhaps as polished and
captivating a person as the social circles of the Republic have ever
known.”[160] As we shall see, nothing ruffled him. He never forgot his
dignity nor lost his temper. He was all suavity. He was all art.
He lives in history as a politician and President and is never thought of as
an orator. He belonged rather to the type of parliamentary speaker which
followed the scintillating period when Pitt declaimed in stately sentences and
Fox thundered with emotional eloquence—the conversational type which is
still prevalent at Westminster. He made no pretense to an artful literary style,

but his speeches were in good taste. We have the tradition that he not only
prepared his speeches with infinite care, which is probable, but that he
rehearsed them before a mirror, which is debatable. It is said that on his
retirement from the Senate, and at the sale of his household goods at auction,
“it was noticed that the carpet before the large looking-glass was worn
threadbare,” and that “it was there that he rehearsed his speeches.”[161] That
he was something of an artist and an actor we shall see in the course of the
recital of the events of the Jackson Administration.
Secretary of the Treasury Ingham was a Pennsylvania paper manufacturer
who possessed little learning and stood in no awe of genius. His career had
been that of a petty but persistent plodder who knew the ways of cunning.
His mind was prosily practical, and he thought solely in terms of money. His
fourteen years in Congress had been barren of achievement, but his business
training had given him a certain advantage over more brilliant men in the
work of the committees. He was the forerunner of the machine politician of a
later day, skillful in intrigue, unscrupulous in methods, and resourceful in the
work of organization. His general character is not easily deduced from the
conflicting opinions of his contemporaries. One of these, unfriendly to the
Jackson régime, wrote that he “is a good man of unimpeachable and
unbending integrity”;[162] while Adams, after relating an incident tending to
an opposite conclusion, tells us that “there is a portrait of Ingham in
Caracci’s picture of the Lord’s Supper”—which is the nearest approach to a
description of his appearance that can be found. There is a general
agreement, however, as to the inferiority of his talents, and in our political
history he is scarcely the shadow of a silhouette.
Quite a different character was Secretary of War Eaton, a gentleman of
education, polish, amiability, capacity, and wealth. The possession of a
fortune deprived him of an incentive to the full exertion of his talents, and he
frankly preferred leisure to labor, discouraged the approach of clients, and
liked nothing better than a quiet corner of his library at his country home
near Nashville. There was nothing in his appearance, his manner, or
conversation remotely to suggest the frontiersman, and, on the contrary,
observers were impressed by his dignity and poise, his courtliness and
courtesy. Even in the bitter days when society was in league against his wife,
we find one of her harshest critics writing that “every one that knows
esteems, and many love him for his benevolence and amiability.”[163] He
possessed many advantages for a political career. Having the time and

money to devote to politics, he early developed a genius for organization,
and an uncanny capacity for intrigue. The campaign of 1828 found him
entrusted with much of the important work—the delicate missions.
Wherever Jackson lacked or needed an organization, or one in existence
required stiffening, there went Eaton, doing his work furtively, and on the
surface nothing but its achievement indicated that it had been undertaken.
[164] It was his fine Italian hand which wrought such havoc with Clay’s
forces in Kentucky. When that State began to waver as to Clay, Jackson
determined to force the fighting in a territory at first thought hopelessly lost
to the Democracy. Even Benton found his way to the “dark and bloody
ground,” but tradition has it that it was the suave and furtive Eaton, who
appeared in different parts of Kentucky, making no speeches, and half
concealing himself in a mantle of mystery, who divorced from Clay so many
of his supporters. There is a sinister aspect to the general description of his
activities; and his enemies, and Jackson’s, always insisted that he had
parceled out jobs with a lavish hand. A man of culture, a soldier of
acknowledged gallantry, a lawyer of ability, he was destined to an unhappy
notoriety, but he deserved a better fate.
The patrician of the Administration was Secretary of the Navy Branch,
who, like Eaton, had inherited an ample fortune, and had divided his time
between politics, the practice of the law, and the management of a large
plantation. At the time he entered the Cabinet, he had distinguished himself
in the politics of North Carolina, had served three terms as Governor, and
was a member of the United States Senate—scarcely the record of an
obscure man. As chief executive of his State, his record had been far from
that of a colorless time-serving politician without constructive qualities or
vision. If his messages were couched in the lofty, pompous phrases of the
period, they were not without substance. He was a pioneer in the field of
popular education, the leader of a crusade against capital punishment for
many crimes, an advocate of the substitution of imprisonment for the death
penalty, and he urged the establishment of a penitentiary based on the idea of
reformation. A man of great wealth, and an aristocrat by temperament, he led
a fight against imprisonment for debt.[165] His, too, is the distinction of
having in that early day proposed the strict regulation of the medical
profession as a protection of the public against impostors. A planter, and the
owner of many slaves, he insisted, while Governor, on the protection of the
legal rights of the blacks; and the petition of the entire population of Raleigh,

the importunities of a hundred and twenty young women, the plea of State
officials, were not sufficient to persuade him to save from the gallows a
young white man who had murdered a slave.[166] In the Senate, while not
distinguished as an orator, he was considered a strong debater and was
respected as a man of courage and deep convictions.
The portrait of Branch, which hangs in the Navy Department in
Washington, suggests, in the slender profile and luminous eyes, the poet,
rather than the politician. He is described by one who saw him often in his
Washington days as “tall, well-proportioned, graceful in gestures, and
affable and kindly in manner.”[167] He had the graciousness of the Southern
aristocrat of the old school, and was devoted to the social standards and
customs of his section. Strongly attached to his home and family, having the
poet’s love of the artistic, he surrounded himself with beauty, and his home
at Enfield was a comfortable and stately mansion surrounded by a smooth
lawn, in the midst of gardens, orchards, and shade trees. His political career
and the course of the Jackson Administration were to be greatly influenced
by his devotion to his wife and daughters, and to his social ideals.
In John McPherson Berrien, the Attorney-General, we have a character
with whom history has played strange pranks. When he entered the Cabinet,
he was conceded to be one of the most polished orators of his time and one
of the famous lawyers of the South. His Washington début in the Supreme
Court, in a case involving the seizure of an African slave ship, had been a
spectacular triumph.[168] All contemporaries agree as to his extraordinary
gifts of eloquence. Perley Poore describes him as “a polished and effective
orator.”[169] Another contemporary found him “a model for chaste, free,
beautiful elocution.”[170] Still another has it that “he spoke the court
language of the Augustan age.”[171] Even the blasé John Marshall, who
listened to Webster and Choate, was so impressed that he dubbed him “the
honey-tongued Georgian youth.”[172] He had been in the Senate three years
when a speech upon the tariff impelled the press of the period to describe
him as “the American Cicero”—a designation that clung to him through life.
The greatest speech made by any of the leaders of the Opposition on the
Panama Mission was the constitutional argument of Berrien.[173] As a man
he was cold and reserved, an aristocrat in manner, as in feeling. He made a
virtue of not cultivating the multitude, scorned all compromise with his
convictions, firmly believed in himself, and was not at all impressed with
opposition. Utterly without tact or diplomacy, caustic and sarcastic, he

incurred bitter enmities, but his admirers, who liked to compare him with
Cicero, took pride in this weakness.[174] As a political leader, he was
dictatorial and demanded obedience without question. The slightest
hesitation on the part of his tried and truest friends was usually followed by
coldness on his part. Selfish to a degree, he was always keen for his personal
advancement.[175] Few more brilliant men have ever been Attorney-General
of the United States.
If Postmaster-General Barry was unknown to Washington, it was a matter
of indifference to him. In politics he was an exotic. Entering Congress as a
young man, he could have remained indefinitely, but congressional life did
not allure him. For twenty years he had been an influential State politician,
serving in the legislature until sent to the United States Senate to fill an
unexpired term. It is an interesting commentary on his preference for State
office that he resigned from the Senate, where he might have remained, to
become Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. Living in Lexington as a
neighbor of Henry Clay, he had been for many years one of the great leader’s
most ardent supporters, and it is significant of the character of the man that,
while he supported Clay against Jackson in 1824, the “bargain” story
transformed him into a bitter foe.
In view of their relations to the Jackson Administration years later, the
estimate of Barry reached by Amos Kendall in 1814, and recorded in his
“Autobiography,” is interesting, and serves to account for the feeling,
scarcely concealed, with which the journalist-politician afterwards undertook
the unraveling of the difficulties into which Barry had plunged the Post-
Office Department. It was when Kendall was on his way to Kentucky that he
first met the Lexington politician and went down the Ohio River with him
and Mrs. Barry with “servants, horses, and carriages,” in a boat thirty feet
long, with three apartments. At the end of the journey Kendall wrote: “He
appears to be a very good man but not a great man. For our passage he
charged nothing, and in every way treated me like a gentleman. His lady
seems to be a woman of good disposition, but uneducated.” In contradiction
to this estimate, we have another in which he is described as possessing
extraordinary abilities, active business habits, an exact knowledge of men
and things, and as being “a great orator.”[176] And this same authority
describes Mrs. Barry as “frank, lady-like, free from affectations, possessing
a fine person and agreeable manners.” Parton tells us that he was “agreeable
and amiable, but not a business man”—which is the final verdict of history.

In person he was above the medium height, but slender and thin in face. He
was modest in demeanor, and energetic—even though he did not always
properly direct his energy—and fond of society. He became Postmaster-
General because, according to the Jackson standard, he had richly earned the
reward.
Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There
have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men
possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social
distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not possess
at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what he said he
proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant. It is strange that
the one man who developed into a candidate almost immediately was the
one to whom he became most ardently attached.
We shall now note the first troubles of the official family.

CHAPTER III

THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE

I
Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the
Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost
nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural
prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of his
political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The “spoils
system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political parties, thus
frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the intervening years
the civil service reformers have indulged in the most bitter denunciation of
Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him public offices would never
have been used as the spoils of party. Some of the most conscientious of
historians have created the impression that the adoption of a prescriptive
policy was due to something inherently wrong in the President. As a matter
of fact, Jackson was the victim of conditions and circumstances, and the new
political weapon grew out of the exigencies of a new political era.
For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and indefinite;
and if the politics of the young Republic had not been drifting toward
personal government, it had been partaking of the nature of government by
cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy Adams had made the
definite division of the people into political parties inevitable—these parties
standing for well-defined, antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught
the drift and had cleverly organized a party standing for principles and
policies, rather than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one
of the outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration,
who had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his
indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in 1828
something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in support
of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the organization of a
party pledged to internal improvements and a protective tariff.
The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as
we have known them for almost a century.

It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that
they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the
aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the intellectuals, alone,
determined the governmental personnel. Men went into training for the
Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a matter of course, from the
Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to the chief magistracy. An
office-holding class, feeling itself secure in a life tenure, had grown up.
As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the
masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played
influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs. Thus
they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration, rejoicing
in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too many pressing
claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering upon their reward.
Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior, awaiting the opportunity, at
Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had been fairly mobbed by ardent
partisans of his cause, demanding the expulsion of the enemy and the
appointment of his supporters to office. The Jackson press had been
particularly insistent upon this point. Duff Green, of the “National
Telegraph,” had early announced that he naturally assumed that the office-
holders who had actively campaigned for Adams would make way for the
victors. This same feeling had spread into every community in the country.
Isaac Hill, writing in the “New Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the
election, had sounded the onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177]
And soon after reaching Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at
Gadsby’s, the New England editor had written joyously to a friend: “You
may say to all our anxious Adamsites that The Barnacles will be scraped
clean off the Ship of State. Most of them have grown so large and stick so
tight that the scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”
Before Jackson’s entry into the White House, the scenes in and about
Gadsby’s were scarcely less than scandalous. A great perspiring mob
swarmed in the streets in front, crowded the tap-room, jostled its way in the
halls, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Major Lewis, it demanded and
secured admission to the President’s private apartment. All admitted
themselves responsible for Jackson’s election. Amos Kendall, encountering a
pompous stranger on the Avenue, was invited to look upon the man who had
“delivered Pennsylvania.”[178] James A. Hamilton, who was close to Jackson
in the early days of the Administration, was importuned by an Indianian,

who had taken the electoral vote of the State to the Capitol, to intercede on
his behalf for the Register’s office at Crawfordsville, or the Marshalship.
This typical office-seeker had “calculated to remain a few weeks ... hoping
that some of these violent Adams men may receive their walking papers.”
He carried letters of recommendation from all the Democratic members of
the State Legislature “for any office I can ask.” But, in view of the brisk
competition, would not Hamilton kindly recall that he had received letters
from the Hoosier bearing on the campaign, and personally testify to the
important part he had played?[179] Others depended upon the length of their
petitions, and two applicants from Pennsylvania, for the same office, had
signers so numerous that the number had to be estimated by the length of the
sheets.[180]
Meanwhile there is no question but that Jackson was eager to serve his
friends, if not to punish his enemies. From the moment of his election, he
had entertained no illusions as to the character of the opposition his
Administration would encounter. It was an open secret that his enemies, long
before the inauguration, had begun to organize for the discrediting of his
Administration. He was familiar with the bitterness of Clay. And, with the
determination to make his Administration a success, from his point of view,
he turned his attention to preparations for the fight. His military training told
him that it was fatal to enter a campaign with traitors in the camp. The
disloyalty from which Adams had suffered had not been lost upon him.[181]
And he had fixed convictions as to political organization. “To give effect to
any principles,” he said, “you must avail yourself of the physical force of an
organized body of men. This is true alike in war, politics, or religion. You
cannot organize men in effective bodies without giving them a reason for it.
And when the organization is once made, you cannot keep it together unless
you hold constantly before its members why they are organized.”[182] Thus
party politics, in the modern sense, began with Jackson, and the spoils
system grew out of the exigencies of party politics. Vicious though it may
be, it is significant of its appeal to the rank and file of party workers, upon
whom party success depends, that politicians of all parties, including
Lincoln, have adopted it without shame.
It does not appear that Jackson was greatly influenced in his course by his
advisers, of either his constitutional or Kitchen Cabinet. Van Buren, who has
been wrongfully accused of so many things, and among others, of having
been the dominating influence as to the spoils system, heard of the plan for

sweeping changes with grave misgivings. “If the General makes one
removal at this time,” he said in a letter to Hamilton written from Albany,
“he must go on. So far as depends on me, my course would be to restore by a
single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay for political
reasons, unless circumstances of a personal character have since arisen to
make the appointment in any case improper. To ascertain that will take a
little time. There I would pause.” This, from the head of his official family.
And the most intimate of his advisers, of the Kitchen Cabinet, Major
Lewis, is reported to have written to the President: “In relation to the
principle of rotation in office, I embrace this occasion to enter my solemn
protest against it; not on account of my office, but because I hold it to be
fraught with the greatest mischief to the country. If ever it should be carried
out in extenso, the days of this Republic will, in my opinion, be numbered;
for whenever the impression shall become general that the Government is
only valuable on account of its offices, the great and paramount interests of
the country will be lost sight of, and the Government itself ultimately
destroyed.” With the possible exception of Eaton, who was a practical
politician in the modern sense, and Van Buren, to the extent just indicated,
none of the members of the Cabinet were spoilsmen at heart; and Amos
Kendall, the genius of the Kitchen Cabinet, would unquestionably have
preferred to be spared the pain of turning men out of office. To be sure, the
jovial but vindictive Duff Green, who spent much time at the elbow of
Jackson in the early months of the Administration, was insistent upon the
punishment of enemies, but the responsibility for the adoption of the policy
rests upon the President himself.
And the result was that the spring and summer months of 1829 were
filled with the clamor of importunate pleas, not unmixed with threats and
curses, from the office-seekers. In many instances the wives and daughters
of the applicants fluttered down upon Washington to reënforce the husband
and the father.[183] One of the General’s most ardent supporters left the
capital two days after the inauguration bitterly denouncing him for his
failure to appoint the irate one to a position not then vacant.[184] Cabinet
officers were harassed, bombarded, followed from their offices to their
homes and back again, until several of them confessed that life had become a
burden, and they were forced to close their doors to applicants until a late
hour in the afternoon to find time for the transaction of public business.[185]
Such aspirants as were not upon the ground in person were either

represented by friends who were, or they peppered the members of the
Cabinet with letters. One peculiarly offensive candidate for the collectorship
of customs in New York wrote to an equally disreputable friend: “No damn
rascal who made use of an office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr.
Adams in and General Jackson out of power is entitled to the least leniency
save that of hanging. Whether or not I shall get anything in the general
scramble for plunder remains to be seen, but I rather guess I shall. I know
Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend that you push like the devil if
you expect anything from that quarter.”[186] And in the letter from Ingham to
the seeker of “plunder” we have abundant evidence that the advice was
accepted: “These [his duties] cannot be postponed; and I do assure you that I
am compelled daily to file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without
reading them, although I work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four with all
diligence. The appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it
was one of the prominent errors of the late Administration that they suffered
many important public interests to be neglected, while they were cruising
about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do.”[187] The same
man, having written an insolent letter to Van Buren, was sharply rebuked by
him. “Here I am,” wrote the Secretary of State, “engaged in the most
intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful
conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of the country
depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning until late at
night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me under such
circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility can read
without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon which you have
seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible.”[188]
Nor was this clamor for office confined to the more important positions—
it reached down to the most menial places, to those of the gardener, the
janitor, and messenger. Worse still—men in position to serve were even
appealed to for place by members of their immediate families. Thus we find
Amos Kendall writing to his wife: “I had thought before of trying to get
some place for your father, but I cannot do anything until I am myself
appointed. I hope in a year or two, and perhaps sooner, to find some situation
that will enable him to live near us, and comfortably.”[189]
Meanwhile the clerks in Washington lived in a state of terror. Men who
had long worked in harmony, and on terms of intimacy, were afraid to talk to
one another. Every one suddenly assumed the aspect of a spy and an

informer. “All the subordinate officers of the Government, and even the
clerks are full of tremblings and anxiety,” wrote one woman to a
correspondent. “To add to this general gloom, we have horrible weather,
snowstorm after snowstorm, the river frozen up and the poor suffering.”[190]
The majority of the subordinates and clerks, many the ne’er-do-wells of
distinguished families, assuming that they were assured of a life position,
had lived up to, and beyond, their meager incomes, and suddenly found
themselves unfit for other employment and confronted with dismissal.[191]
And slowly, but surely, the dismissals came, leaving many in desperate
straits, without sufficient funds to reach their homes, and unfit to earn a
livelihood if they did. Some were driven to desperation. One dismissed
employee of the Custom House in Boston went “in a transport of grief” to
Ingham with a plea to be informed of the cause of his dismissal, only to be
told that offices were not hereditary.[192] One clerk in the War Department
cut his throat from ear to ear; another in the State Department went stark
mad. But all appeals for sympathy were met by the proscriptionists with the
stern reminder: “The exclusive party who were never known to tolerate any
political opponent raise and reiterate the cry of persecution and proscription
at every removal that takes place. They have provoked retaliation by the
most profligate and abandoned course of electioneering; the most unheard-of
calumny and abuse was heaped upon the candidate of the people; he was
called by every epithet that could designate crime, and the amiable partner of
his bosom was dragged before the people as worse than a convicted felon.
What sympathy do men of such a party deserve when complaining that the
places which they have abused are given to others?”[193]
A dark picture—and yet only darker than similar pictures in years to
follow because, in 1829, the policy was new and caught the office-holders
unprepared. So gloomy has the picture been painted that the student of the
times is prepared to learn of a general massacre of the placemen. There was
no such massacre—no such massacre as followed the election of Lincoln.
One is prepared to hear that all the enemies of Jackson were driven from
office, but, as a matter of fact, the majority of the Federal office-holders
during his régime were unmolested. This could not be said of Roosevelt’s
Administration, nor of Cleveland’s. The exact number of removals during
the first year of Jackson’s Administration cannot be determined with
precision. Schouler,[194] while making no attempt definitely to fix the
number, says that “some have placed the number as high as two thousand.”

In view of the evidence of contemporaries available, it does seem that a
fairly accurate idea should be obtained. It is interesting to observe in this
connection that while Jackson’s enemies were dealing in sweeping
generalities, his defenders were furnishing figures.
And among the defenders none is more reliable than Thomas H. Benton,
whose veracity or personal honesty has never been impeached or questioned,
and he tells us[195] that there were whole classes of office-holders that were
not molested; that those whose functions were of a judicial nature were not
disturbed, and that in the departments at Washington a majority remained
opposed to Jackson through his two Administrations. More important still—
he tells us that Jackson not only left a majority of his enemies in office, but
that in some instances he actually reappointed personal and political enemies
where they were “especially efficient officers.” And he lays stress upon the
point that where men, who had bitterly fought Jackson in the election, were
not reappointed, a hue and cry was raised that they had been denied a right.
Corroborating this, we have the evidence of Amos Kendall,[196] who wrote,
after the Administration had been in power a year and a half: “He [Jackson]
is charged with having turned out of office all who were opposed to him,
when a majority of the office-holders in Washington are known to be in
favor of his rivals. In that city the removals have been but one seventh of
those in office, and most of them for bad conduct and character. In the Post-
Office Department, toward which have been directed the heaviest
complaints, the removals have been only about one sixteenth; in the whole
Government, one eleventh.” And to the evidence of both Benton and
Kendall, either one of whom would have been incapable of deliberate
falsehood, we may add the less reliable, because more prejudiced, evidence
of Isaac Hill, given in a public speech at Concord in the late summer of
1829. “It is worthy of observation,” he said, “that at least two thirds of the
offices of profit at the seat of the National Government, after the removals
thus far made, are still held by persons who were opposed to the election of
General Jackson.”[197] A more detailed study of the removals actually made
show that, while there were 8600 post-offices in 1829, less than 800
postmasters were removed, and these, largely, in the more important centers,
leaving 7800 undisturbed.
One of the most serious charges against Jackson in connection with these
removals is that he practiced duplicity, reassuring a trembling office-holder
one day only to remove him, without warning, on the next; and this story is

based upon what the officer in charge of Indian affairs under Adams declares
to have been his personal experience. According to his story, Eaton, his
superior officer, suggested that he should see the President to meet some
charges that had been made against him; that on visiting Jackson he had
made a solemn denial, satisfied the President, and been presented by him to
the members of his household; that on the next day a gentleman entered the
Indian Office, and, after looking around, explained that the place had been
offered him by the President that morning, but that he did not intend to
accept; that the position was afterwards offered to others, and that the
dismissal finally reached him in Philadelphia while there on official
business. This places Jackson in a sinister light; but our commissioner adds,
that one close to the Administration said: “Why, sir, everybody knows your
qualifications for the place, but General Jackson has been long satisfied that
you are not in harmony with his views in regard to the Indians.”[198] This
raises the question whether a President chosen by the people is entitled to his
own governmental policies or should be forced to accept such as may be
handed to him by subordinates who received their appointments by
preference, and not from the hands of the people. That this removal was the
President’s own idea may be gathered from the fact that Eaton, Secretary of
War, under whom Indian affairs came, was not in favor of the dismissal.
It is worth recording that Van Buren kept his department comparatively
free from the spoils idea. But even the most intense partisan of Jackson will
be hard pressed to find any proper reason for the spiteful recall of William
Henry Harrison from Bogota, where he had just presented his credentials as
United States Minister to Colombia. This recall was opposed very earnestly
by Postmaster-General Barry, who frankly said to the President:
“If you had seen him as I did on the Thames, you would, I think, let him
alone.”
“You may be right, Barry,” Jackson replied. “I reckon you are. But thank
God I didn’t see him there.”[199]
Dark though the picture is from the viewpoint of the civil service
reformer, there is another possible point of view. All the officials dismissed
from places were not high-minded, conscientious public servants, for among
them were numerous criminals. The dismissal of Tobias Watkins, an Adams
appointee and a personal friend of the former President, to make place for
Amos Kendall, was the occasion for a great outburst of indignation from the
Opposition. Within a month the product of the spoils system had discovered

frauds on the part of the “martyr” to the amount of more than $7000, and an
arrest followed. He was convicted and served his time in prison. Nor was
that of Watkins an isolated case. Thus the collector at Buffalo[200] had
procured false receipts for money never paid and was given credit at the
Treasury; the collector at Key West[201] had permitted an unlawful trade
between Cuba and Florida; the collector at Bath, Maine,[202] was dismissed
for personally using $56,315 of the public funds; the collector at
Portsmouth[203] was shown to have engaged in smuggling; the collector at
St. Marks[204] was shown to have been plundering live-oak from the public
lands; the collector at Petersburg[205] had used $24,857 of the public money;
the collector at Perth Amboy[206] had made false returns, appropriated to his
own use $88,000 of the public money, and fled to Canada; the collector at
Elizabeth City, North Carolina,[207] had converted $32,791 to his personal
use and joined the other “martyr” to the spoils system on Canadian soil.[208]
In brief, the introduction of the spoils system had resulted, in eighteen
months, in the uncovering of peculations in the Treasury Department alone
of more than $280,000 by men whose dismissal from office had called forth
the unmeasured denunciation of Jackson’s enemies, and it is manifestly
unfair to withhold these facts while placing emphasis upon the “dismissal of
collector to make way for Jackson’s henchmen.”
Thus, throughout the spring and summer of 1829, the President and his
Cabinet were bored, harassed, and tortured with importunities for place,
denounced as ingrates because they left any of the enemies in office, and
damned by the enemy for every dismissal that was made.

II
The spring and summer was the time of the Red Terror.
The White Terror of retaliation began with the meeting of the hostile
Senate in December.
The enemies of Jackson sought the earliest possible opportunity to
denounce the wholesale dismissals, and the brilliant orators of the
Opposition in the House made intemperate attacks, while in the Senate
Webster spoke against the policy of proscription, without, however, adopting
the absurd position that the President did not possess the constitutional
power.[209] The early part of the session was given over to denunciations of
the removals, and to a frankly hostile scrutiny, on the part of the Senate, of

all nominations requiring confirmation. It foreshadowed the bitter party
battles of the next eight years by rejecting the nominations of some of
Jackson’s most ardent supporters in the campaign, and by taking the
ridiculous position that journalists should be excluded from appointive
office. This proscription, or massacre of the editors, was aimed at men,
comparatively new to public life, who were speedily to develop into the
most brilliant and sagacious of the Jacksonian leaders. Long and
acrimonious executive sessions became the rule of the Senate. In some
instances, action upon nominations was postponed for months under
provocative circumstances that were not lost upon the fighting figure at the
other end of the Avenue. The charge was made that a number of the
President’s nominees were “vicious characters.” It was in the early days of
this session that a comparatively new Senator, elected upon the supposition
that he would support the President and his policies, and destined to be the
only member of the Senate to realize personally upon that body’s venomous
hostility to the Administration, stepped forth to organize and direct the fight
against the confirmation of nominees in whom the President was deeply
interested. John Tyler led the first onslaught on the Administration.
It is important to pause to contemplate Tyler’s character and career,
because he typifies those Democrats who were so soon to enter into
coöperation with the Whigs in opposition, and because history has been
unjust in underestimating both his capacity and courage. We shall find him
pursuing Jackson throughout the greater part of his Presidency, and paying
the penalty to the people with a manliness which found little emulation
among men to whom history has been more gracious.
John Tyler was the scion of a family distinguished in law and in politics.
His father was a fine Revolutionary figure, and one of the first lawyers in
Virginia. He inherited his father’s ability, predilections, and prejudices.
Within three months after his admission to the bar, he was employed in
every important case in the county, and when, at the age of twenty-seven, he
abandoned his practice to enter Congress, his income was $2000 a year,
which was $1300 more than Webster’s at the same age.[210] On reaching
Washington, he was cordially welcomed by the Madisons into the White
House circle. He was fond of the society of the President’s house, disliked
the French cooking, but found consolation in the excellent champagne of
which he was very fond.[211] He found Clay, with whom he was to be
associated in the fights against Jackson, in the Speaker’s chair, and fell under

the spell of his fascination. It was then, too, that he formed his intense
admiration for Calhoun.
His hostility to Jackson and Jacksonian methods was first manifested in
his support of the resolutions censuring the General for his course in Florida.
There is no doubt that at this time he had formed a deep-seated prejudice
against the military hero. “We are engaged with Jackson and the President,”
he wrote home at the time. “I do not hesitate to say that the constitutional
powers of the House of Representatives have been violated in the capture
and detention of Pensacola and the Barancas; that Jackson overstepped his
orders; and that the President has improperly approved his proceedings, and
that the whole are culpable.”[212] But there was a more powerful and less
personal reason for his enmity to the Jackson Administration, which
developed during this period. He had already become a sectionalist. Like
Calhoun in later life, and Webster in 1820, he began to sense a struggle
between the sections over the balance of power. Thus early he commenced
to question the permanency of the Union. In the Missouri fight, in a strong
speech against the restriction of slavery, he alone, among all participating on
his side, advanced the proposition that the Congress possessed no
constitutional power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the Territories.[213]
We find him writing[214] that “men talk of the dissolution of the Union with
perfect nonchalance and indifference.” When, in his thirty-first year, he
voluntarily retired to private life to retrieve his fortunes, he had made an
impression so profound that it was predicted that he would rise to high
station.[215]
When in 1827 he became a candidate for the Senate against the brilliant
and vitriolic John Randolph of Roanoke, we find the elements working that
were to ripen him for the break with the Jackson Administration, and for
association with Clay’s party of incongruities and nondescripts. After the
inauguration of Adams, he had written Clay commending his action in
throwing his support to the Puritan, assuring him of his contempt for the
“bargain” story, and unnecessarily adding a fling at Jackson: “I do not
believe that the sober and reflecting people of Virginia would have been so
far dazzled by military renown as to have conferred their suffrage upon a
mere soldier—one acknowledged on every hand to be of little value as a
civilian.”[216] When Randolph so viciously attacked Adams and Clay on the
“bargain” story, Tyler became his most uncompromising foe. In some
manner his letter to Clay found its way into the newspapers, resulting in

much feeling, letter-writing, charges and counter-charges and journalizing,
and the supporters of Tyler interpreted the use of the letter as an attempt to
coerce him into support of Jackson in 1828. If such was the purpose, it
failed. He was elected without having pledged himself, and at a
complimentary dinner after his election, he referred to Jackson in a sneering
fashion.
And now we begin to understand the underlying causes that took Tyler
and other Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Whig ranks
during the Jackson period. On reaching Washington in December, 1827, we
find him writing to a correspondent: “My hopes are increased from the
following fact ... that in the nature of things, General Jackson must surround
himself by a Cabinet composed of men advocating, to a great extent, the
doctrines so dear to us. Pass them in review before you—Clinton, Van
Buren, Tazewell, Cheves, Macon, P. P. Barbour, men who, in the main,
concur with us in sentiment. Furthermore, General Jackson will have to
encounter a strong opposition. He will require an active support at our hands.
Should he abuse Virginia by setting at nought her political sentiments, he
will find her at the head of the opposition, and he will probably experience
the fate of J. Q. A.”[217] The Cabinet, when announced, does not seem to
have satisfied him, albeit Van Buren, of whose views on slavery extension he
appears to have been misinformed, was a member. The presence of Berrien
and Branch ought, perhaps, to have reassured him, but they were a minority,
and they did not satisfy Calhoun, of whom they were devoted disciples.
Thus, from the very beginning of the Jackson régime, Tyler was
suspicious, and ripe for the Opposition. In the spoils system he found a
pretext for dissatisfaction, and he proceeded to develop this into a rather
petty persecution. It would be a mistake to underrate the effect of his
opposition. He was highly respected by his colleagues. His dignity,
courtliness, urbanity, and ease gave him a certain social prestige. He was an
interesting and likable companion, and his polished conversation had
impelled an English novelist[218] to describe it as superior to that of any one
he had met in America. His appearance was not against him. Tall and
slender, of patrician mould, his Roman nose, firm mouth, broad and lofty
brow, and honest blue eyes combined to give him a distinction that marked
him in an assembly. He was not a mere professional politician of a type to be
developed later in the Republic. His letters to his daughter[219] concerning
her studies, on poetry, fiction, and history, denote a discriminating student

and lover of literature. It was this occasional detachment from the political
world which made it possible for him, during the famous debate on the Foot
Resolution, to entertain himself in the Senate Chamber in the reading of
Moore’s “Life of Byron.” We shall now observe him launch the White Terror
against the Red.

III
Among the nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to
the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220] Strangely
enough, this seems to have rather affronted the somewhat ponderous dignity
of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it has made an
ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even Schouler[221] is
distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the list. Whether the fact
that they were mere editors was enough to make them “infamous
characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the strange antipathy to a
class long conceded to be among the most influential of any nation is
probably to be found in the fact that until this time the lawyers were
conceded a monopoly in public station. There was a reason for Jackson’s
change of policy, and it grew out of the organization of party and the
democratization of government. Unlike his predecessors, he had not
depended for support, nor did he expect to look exclusively for support to
the professional politicians and the wealthy. As a candidate his appeal had
been—for the first time in American history—to the people. As a President
he proposed to look to the same quarter. With the people actually established
as the ultimate power in the State, according to the theory of American
institutions, he was not unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people
with his case. He was the first President fully to appreciate the power of the
press. He could see no reason why men capable of presenting and
popularizing a policy or principle should be excluded from the privilege of
helping put it in operation.
In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of
the press, but he had found champions—men of capacity and talent, who had
fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The assumption that all
these men were bribed by the promise of place would be a violent one
indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent to the Senate were
men who had long been attached to the cause that Jackson personified. Some
had more recently allied themselves with the cause, but in every instance

there was a sound reason for the change of front, and in these cases it does
not appear that they had met the President in the campaign or had any
expectations.
And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts
or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of their
capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had speedily
uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor who was not a
“press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the penitentiary. The
Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to the State worthy of
reward. While there can be no doubt that the partisan enemies of Jackson
were delighted at the opportunity personally to affront him, and while it is
certain that Clay’s friends were anxious to punish one, and Adams’s friends
to humiliate another, the actual conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the
editors originated with John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator
Tazewell of Virginia—who was still smarting under his defeat in the contest
with Van Buren for the secretaryship of State.
The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate
were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M.
Noah, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.
Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been
appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E. Lee
and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with Jackson
at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers
ever penned in this country.”[222] One who saw him there at the time has
recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his half-brother, Robert
E. Lee, but rather ugly in face—a mouth without a line of the bow of Diana
about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic, but rather meaty, and, if we may
use the word, ‘blood meaty’; but he was one of the most attractive men in
conversation we ever listened to.”[223] He had served in the Virginia House
of Delegates with Tyler, and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes
Tyler, “I regarded him as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and
of a high order of talent.”[224] But this did not operate in his favor. He had
assisted in the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have
been mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were
not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of his
rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards protested that
he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation, and had expressed

his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more aggravated additions to the
charge under which he labored.”
Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on the
ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In
addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever
Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and his
offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was described
as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American institutions. The
hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that several Senators who had
been shocked at this offense had regaled drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs.
Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s being a proper “lady in waiting” for the
President’s wife since “birds of a feather flock together.”[225] The real reason
for his rejection was that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition
by his telling paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his
rejection, two Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the
news, and the old man made the comment in his diary that night that Hill
“was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous
newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me, in
the country.”
Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City,
appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to have
tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his
distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One important
and memorable service to the Nation should have made him immune from
the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as consul to Tunis
with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an annual tribute to
Algiers for the privilege of navigating the Mediterranean, and Noah, the
journalist, had denounced the practice and declared that the money could be
better spent in the building of warships. He succeeded on his Algerian
mission in ransoming American prisoners who were being held in slavery,
but such was the bigotry of the time that, after his work was done, he was
recalled on the flimsy pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in
Tunis. At the time he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished
by his public service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had
written his “Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He
deserves his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But

he had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the bigoted
members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.
The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of the
nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the time,
served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury, rooting out
old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his predecessor, but he
had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for Jackson, and that was
quite enough. Adams himself was deeply interested in his humiliation. In the
midst of the campaign he had been consulted by Clay touching upon
“testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate of Kentucky intended
to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt bargaining with me”; and, on
Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes the editor as “one of those authors
to let, whose profligacy is the child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall
was a tie, and Calhoun cast the deciding vote in his favor.
Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in
hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice
President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last
Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was saved.
Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through, and that
with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the scale.”[226]
Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the friends of Calhoun
were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors that their humiliation
had been brought about through the secret influence of Van Buren. Even
then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was called, was considered the
greatest obstacle in the way of the South Carolinian’s progress toward the
White House, and it was the evident purpose to send the editors, miserable
“press writers” though they were, back to their papers to fight the aspirations
of Van Buren. Before the vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by
Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that
the Van Buren influence was responsible for the fight against him. This
aroused the curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such
influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus,
when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian could
return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in Washington
in that event.
The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face. It
aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors who had

so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their reward. It was
the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly accepted. It was clear that
nothing could be done for Lee, where the vote was unanimous, but Jackson
decided to renominate Noah, and we find Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The
President this morning renominated Noah. This is a prelude to Hill’s
renomination. Your presence, I apprehend, would be immaterial, as the result
of any vote upon these subjects would not be varied. Monday is fixed for the
consideration of Noah’s case.”[227] On the second attempt, Noah was
confirmed, like Kendall, with the casting vote of Calhoun.
But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose sharp
retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign. Webb, the
editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in his paper
the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a printer and was the
editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always the friend of his
country and its republican institutions, and when that country, during the late
war, was about to be sold by traitors to the enemy; when the war was
declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the Hartford Convention meditated
the formation of a separate treaty with England, his voice was heard in the
Granite State and in the mountains of Vermont, animating the people and
arousing them to a just sense of their danger, and the blessings of freedom.
He was a thorn in the side of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of
the Opposition, he pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and
successfully.” Writing from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth
entered his protest, a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire
Patriot’ did more than any one man known to me to put down the ‘peace
societies’ during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him
following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.
It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and that
the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the
managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that the
most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy of
New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill and
looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it up to the
legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and true man, by the
unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire Democrats
understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the aisle of the Senate

that had humiliated and rejected him to take the oath as a Senator of the
United States.
Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible
moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it
was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to
affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.

CHAPTER IV

JACKSON BREAKS WITH CALHOUN

I
The definite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most
dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar quarrel in
American history. It furnished Clay with new material for the building of his
party. It decisively committed the party of Jackson to the defense of the
Union. It eliminated Calhoun from the list of presidential possibilities,
dropped the curtain on the South Carolinian that the Nation had known for
two decades, and raised it on another with whom the world is well
acquainted. It divided his life into two distinct parts. It made Martin Van
Buren President.
The Calhoun who was to become one of Clay’s most vituperative and
intemperate lieutenants in the fight against the Administration differs as
radically from the ambitious politician who had intrigued for the election of
Jackson as the Webster of the Great Debate differed from the Webster of the
Rockingham Resolutions.
The greatest biographer of the Carolinian[228] fixes the time that he
became the personification of the slavery cause as 1830—the date of the
quarrel—and says that “up to that time he is, in spite of his uncommonly
brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and nobler order, having
many peers and even a considerable number of superiors.” Of the three great
figures, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, he was admittedly the strongest
intellectually, and the one most unmistakably touched with genius. Nature
made him a statesman. Swept into Congress on the wave of patriotic
enthusiasm following the attack on the Chesapeake, his audacity,
independent thinking, militancy, and genius combined to place him in the
very lead of the party of Young America that clamored for the War of 1812.
He sounded the first clear official war note in his report on that part of
Madison’s Message dealing with our relations with England; and after the
delivery of his first war speech one of the leading editors of the day hailed
“this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names
upon the age in which they live.”[229] In his haughty assumption of equality

with the oldest and most experienced members of the Congress, he suggests
the younger Pitt. His war speeches were classics of argumentation, sober,
and yet pulsating with patriotic passion. If any sectional thought crossed his
mind then, it never touched his tongue. He was a superb Nationalist—one of
the most splendid figures of his time. Summoned into Monroe’s Cabinet as
Secretary of War, he disclosed a high order of executive as well as legislative
ability. Finding the department in confusion, he brought order out of chaos,
and established system. A former officer of the great Napoleon was
impressed with the resemblance between Calhoun’s plan of army
organization and that of the Corsican.[230] Even his friends were agreeably
astonished at his aptitude for organzation and general executive duties. And
this furthered his presidential plans, and a strong party in the Congress
perfected plans to advance him to the White House on the expiration of
Monroe’s term.
It is not now fashionable to think of him as a designing and ambitious
politician, but one of his biographers has commented on his tendency to
stoop “to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which is
lurking in the corner of his heart, and on the other side to break off all social
intercourse with old and highly respected associates, merely because others
whose services he wished to secure might not like these connections.”[231]
And yet, despite his efforts, his candidacy appears to have made no
impression upon the country. Among the publicists he was strong; but the
people were not impressed. He was the original “young man’s candidate,”
but this weakened him among the older and more important leaders. “His
age, or rather his youth,” wrote one,[232] “at the present moment is a
formidable objection to his elevation to the chair.” Nevertheless, placing his
reliance on the younger element, he pushed on. Even in Massachusetts he
was charged with having “newspapers set up” to support him.[233] Certain it
is that Webster favored his election as long as it seemed possible of
achievement, and when failure there seemed certain, the greatest of his
future rivals earnestly urged his election to the Vice-Presidency.[234] To the
latter position he was elected through a combination of the friends of Adams
and Jackson.
And now we find the presidential fever consuming him. He becomes the
practical, scheming, not overly scrupulous politician—a rôle he is not
popularly supposed to have ever filled. From the very beginning he set to
work to undermine the Administration of his chief. His apologists explain

that when the “bargain” story was advanced, he was forced to choose
between the two factions that had combined to elect him, and preferred to go
with the Jackson forces.[235] Whatever his motive, he entered into no half-
hearted opposition. This notable activity against Adams and in favor of
Jackson has been ascribed to a presumptive premonition that the latter was
certain to reach the Presidency, and, in view of Jackson’s assurance that he
would be satisfied with one term, Calhoun calculated that the defeat of
Adams would shorten his period of waiting by four years.[236] So ardently
was he panting for the Presidency at this time that he summoned his friends
to assist in the establishment of a paper, impatiently brushed aside the
objections as to cost, and calling Duff Green to the editorship of the
“National Telegraph,” created the most powerful party organ that had existed
in this country up to that time.[237] Less than a year after Adams’s
inauguration, Calhoun was actively organizing for his defeat. We find him
inviting a Philadelphian to his chamber in the Capitol to urge him to
coöperate with the Opposition party on the ground that “because of the
manner in which it came into power it must be defeated at all hazards,
regardless of its measures.”[238] This insistence on the defeat of the
Administration, “regardless of its measures,” was the reasoning of an
ambitious politician, none too scrupulous, in a pinch, in his methods. The
rest is known—how Calhoun threw his influence to Jackson in 1828, and
was reflected to the Vice-Presidency with the hero of the Hermitage. Close
students of the period are now convinced that preliminary to this alliance an
agreement had been made that Calhoun was to succeed to the Presidency
after four years.
At this time he was in the full maturity of his wonderful power, and the
future must have seemed secure. Quincy, who saw him about this time,
found him “a striking looking man, with thick black hair brushed back
defiantly,” and he comments on Calhoun’s policy of cultivating and
fascinating all young men visiting the National capital.[239] The world is too
familiar with the tragic features of the great Carolinian to require a
description. The rugged carving, the low broad brow, the spare frame almost
amounting to attenuation, the penetrating gaze of the “glorious pair of
yellow-brown shining eyes,” the bushy brows and the sunken sockets—
Calhoun looked unlike any other man in history.[240] He was a commanding
figure at the time of the quarrel which was to change the entire course of his
life, and to alter his political character.

II
We have seen that Calhoun was annoyed with Jackson over matters of
patronage, but the development of the quarrel to the breaking point is to be
traced in the story of a debate and two dinners.
While it has not been customary to attach any party significance to the
Webster-Hayne debate, it was conducted along party lines and was a party
battle. To such a seasoned observer of parliamentary fights as Thomas H.
Benton, it was little more than a party skirmish.[241] Even Webster, at the
time, evidently looked upon Hayne’s assault upon him as political in its
character. Some time before he had sent Senator White of Florida to Calhoun
to warn him that by permitting his friends to attack New England, he was
playing into the hands of Van Buren, who would capture New England
States that would otherwise go to the South Carolinian. And Calhoun, no
less alive to the political significance of the promised fight, had, according to
White’s story to Adams, been impressed. “He said Calhoun seemed to be
considerably at a loss what to do,” wrote Adams at the time; “that he did not
know what things were coming to; that he had no feeling of unfriendliness to
me, and would by now have visited me but for fear of being misrepresented;
that if I had consulted him four years ago, and not have appointed Clay
Secretary of State, I should now have been President of the United
States.”[242] This purported warning of Webster to Calhoun is given color by
the former’s action during his great speech, in turning his fine black eyes
upon the latter, in the chair, while quoting:
“A barren sceptre in their gripe
Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,
No son of their’s succeeding”

—a prophecy said to have caused Calhoun to “change expression and show
some agitation.”[243]
Whether the attack on Webster and New England was conceived for the
purpose of serving a party or sectional end, the records show that the
Administration leaders who participated in the debate, Grundy, White, and
Livingston, followed the Webster-Hayne exchange with elaborate
indictments of New England Federalism, and John Forsyth, the real floor
leader of the Administration, while contributing little to the discussion, was
notably busy upon the floor. That the party phase was uppermost in the
minds of the politicians and the press immediately following the verbal duel

of the giants may be deduced from the nature of the press comments. One
paper, having a correspondent at the capital, summed up the result: “The
opposition party generally contend that Mr. Webster overthrew Mr. Hayne;
while, on the other hand, the result is triumphantly hailed by the friends of
the Administration as a decisive victory over the eastern giant.”[244] And in
keeping with the theory that the mass attack on New England Federalism
was to capture that section for the Administration,[245] we find the speech of
Hayne being extensively circulated over the New England States. There can
be no doubt that Webster literally dragged in the really great issue of the
Union, that Hayne was forced to accept that diversion, and by so doing gave
to the debate its immortal character. Jackson was delighted with Hayne’s
first speech, and interested in the second, but on a more mature consideration
Webster’s glowing defense of the Union went home to the old patriot at the
White House. It is because of the effect of the debate upon Jackson’s
Administration, and not merely because it occurred during his Presidency,
that we cannot dismiss it as remote from the party politics of the time.
It should be borne in mind that the Daniel Webster who emerged from the
debate was not the same public character who had entered it. By that epochal
utterance he obliterated the one vulnerable point in his career—for the
Daniel Webster of 1829 was vulnerable. He entered politics in New
Hampshire as a Federalist—“liberal Federalist,” to use the phrase of his
biographer.[246] Notwithstanding this “liberality,” he was to become
considerably smirched by party loyalty during the war with England. This
war was the occasion for his first public utterance, when, on July 4, 1812, he
bitterly denounced the war with true Federalistic fervor at Portsmouth. This
speech, printed and circulated for propaganda purposes against the war, ran
into two editions, and led to his selection as a delegate to the notorious
Rockingham County mass meeting. Here it fell to him to prepare the address
known to history as the “Rockingham Memorial” to which the advocates of
the sinister doctrine of Nullification pointed approvingly up to the Civil War.
The notoriety of this document resulted in his election to Congress, where
his record was everything it should not have been.
His first move was to heckle the President by calling upon him for
information as to the time and manner of the repeal of the French decrees—
which was in line with his previous denunciation of France. The enemies of
the War of 1812 were bitter against the French, just as the enemies of the
World War, over a century later, were bitter against the English. And while

his country was at war with a powerful foe, he voted against taxes necessary
for the waging of it; fought the compulsory draft of men for the miserable
little army on the ground that the States alone had the right to resort to
conscription; and even threatened the dissolution of the Union with the
suggestion that “it would be the solemn duty of the State Governments to
protect their authority over their own State militia, and to interpose between
their citizens and arbitrary power.” He stubbornly resisted the attempt to
extend martial law to all citizens suspected of treason; actually declaimed
against the bill to encourage enlistments; opposed the war policy of the war
Administration and urged a defensive warfare. And, of course, he
intemperately denounced the embargo.
This course made him by long odds the most conspicuous Federalist in
the House, and while he opposed the Hartford Convention, he does not
appear to have looked upon it as seditious or treasonable, and as late as
1820, in his Boston speech, utterly ignored by his biographers, he practically
proclaimed the right of secession. In brief, throughout the second war
against England he was found just on the safe side of the line of sedition. His
position at the time was notorious, and Isaac Hill, in the “New Hampshire
Patriot,” was openly accusing him of trying to dissolve the Union and to
array the North against the South.
Thus, the Webster that Hayne assailed had skeletons in his closet. His
reputation as an orator was greater than that of any living American. Behind
him was his Plymouth Oration which had rivaled Washington Irving as a
best seller;[247] his Dartmouth College plea, which had moved John Marshall
to tears; his Bunker Hill Address, which had been read with avidity in
England and translated into French; and his plea for Greek independence,
which had been read all over the world. Such was the Daniel Webster who
was challenged by Hayne—or the Democrats—or the Administration.
Robert Y. Hayne was a knight of Southern chivalry, who in youth, like the
ancient Greeks and Romans, had studied oratory as an art, from his first
boyhood triumph moving with dash and audacity to his destiny, and at thirty-
two entered the Senate of the United States.[248] His reputation as an orator
previous to the great debate promised that the contest would not be one-
sided. His character as man and publicist commanded universal respect and
even the affection of political friend and foe alike.[249] And he entered the
contest with one distinct advantage over his adversary: there were skeletons
in Webster’s closet; there were none in Hayne’s.

III
There is no doubt but that on the day Hayne opened his attack, he was in
fine fettle. Never had the Senate Chamber presented a more inspiring scene.
Before him, with folded arms, sat the most coveted prey in the covey of the
Opposition. From the Vice-President’s chair, Calhoun, the god of his
idolatry, encouraged him with the compliment of a happy expression. About
him were grouped the prominent “Jackson Senators” ready to encourage him
with their approving smiles.[250] There was a gallant and confident air in the
orator as he “dashed into the debate like a Mameluke cavalry upon a
charge.”[251] In a moment he was in the full swing of his eloquence, and, as
he poured forth his sarcasm, and marshaled his facts against the Federalism
of New England, and threw wide the door revealing the Webster skeletons in
the closet, the realization was borne to all that they were listening to one of
the most effective speeches ever heard in the Senate. The Democrats were
jubilant—the enemy concerned—Webster was a mask, as unresponsive as
the sphinx. The blows at Federalism—at New England—at Webster, fell like
the hammer on an anvil. The speaker’s deadly parallel on Webster and his
tariff record was a superb piece of clever oratory. His analysis of New
England Federalism in the War of 1812 was a stinging indictment—it was a
conviction and a sentence.
The Democrats and Jackson Senators were naturally delighted. This was
a political speech that Hayne was making, and he was crucifying Federalism
and parading the closet skeletons of its greatest living champion, and
shaming the section that refused to be converted to the new faith. And when
the orator fell into the trap cleverly prepared for him by Webster, and,
ostentatiously encouraged by Calhoun with numerous notes of suggestions
sent by the pages from the chair, entered upon his exposition of the theory of
Nullification, it is improbable that the delighted Jackson Senators caught the
full significance of the departure. Duff Green, in the “National Telegraph,”
the Calhoun organ, then supporting the Administration, was in a frenzy of
delight. Andrew Jackson, who had kept in close touch with the debate,
sending Major Lewis daily to the Senate Chamber, and was immensely
pleased with the political or party features of the speech, wrote the orator a
cordial letter of congratulation.
The depression of the Federalists, the New Englanders, and the
Opposition generally, was correspondingly great. A professional observer,
[252] writing of the event in later years, tells us that “the immediate

impression from the speech was most assuredly disheartening to the cause
Mr. Webster upheld.” And Henry Cabot Lodge accepts the statement that
“men of the North and of New England could be known in Washington in
those days by their indignant and dejected looks and downcast eyes.”[253]
The day Webster began his reply was the coldest of the winter, a biting
wind filling the streets with clouds of dust, and Margaret Bayard Smith,
sitting before a blazing fire, and free from the interruption of callers because
“almost every one is thronging to the Capitol to hear Mr. Webster reply to
Colonel Hayne’s attack on him and his party,” wrote regretfully of the
growing tendency of women to monopolize the seats both in the gallery and
upon the floor.[254] The reader is too familiar with that splendid oration to
justify, for our purposes, any analysis or extended reference to the substance.
His replies to Hayne’s attacks on the war policy of the Federalists, and upon
his own inconsistencies, while clever, were not, in truth, convincing answers,
and it was upon these points that the Jackson Senators were centering their
attention. Thus it is not remarkable that the full import of his speech was
momentarily lost upon the heated partisans. Even Benton, refusing to believe
that the Union was in danger, or in any way involved in the debate, did not
care for Webster’s peroration, finding the sentiment nobly and oratorically
expressed, “but too elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in
the presence of a great calamity—of which calamity I saw no sign.”[255] To
Benton, the debate was a party combat and nothing more. Nor is there
anything in the notes recorded by Adams to indicate that he was impressed
with the Webster speech except as a defense of Federalism.[256] The party
issue had, for the moment, obscured all else. If in Charleston, the home of
Hayne, Webster became the idol of the old Federalists, and of the
Democratic mechanics, Hayne won the affectionate admiration of the
merchants of Boston, who had his speech printed on satin for presentation to
him.[257] The Democratic members of the Legislature of Maine, thinking
only of the denunciation of Federalism, ordered two thousand copies
published and distributed as “a fearless unanswerable defense of the
Democracy of New England”—showing that the Nullification feature was
overlooked in the party contest involved. Some contemporaries thought the
battle a draw.
And Jackson? Parton tells us that Major Lewis, who had been stationed in
the Senate during the debate, on returning from the Capitol after hearing
Webster, found Jackson up and eager for news. On being told that the New

England orator had made a powerful speech and demolished “our friend
Hayne,” the old man replied that he “expected it.”[258] A few days later the
full import of Hayne’s speech must have dawned upon Jackson and his
political intimates, and there is significance in the powerful speech delivered
a little later in the debate by Edward Livingston, Senator from Louisiana,
intimate friend of the President, who was destined to enter the Cabinet and to
frame Jackson’s immortal challenge to Nullification. After the speeches of
Webster and Hayne, that of Livingston stands out as the greatest made
during the prolonged discussion. He attempted again to center the fire on
Federalism, and in so doing brilliantly defended the Union against
Nullification, and vigorously defended the Jacksonian policies against the
attacks to which they had been subjected during the remarkable debate. If
the personal views of Jackson and the Administration are to be sought in any
of the senatorial speeches, they will be found, not in the speech of Hayne,
but in that of Livingston, which, for that reason, is entitled to more
consideration from historians than it has received. We shall now see that
within two months Jackson was to find a way to say the last word in the
Great Debate of 1830.

IV
For some reason the Nullifiers miscalculated the stern old patriot of the
While House. Perhaps it was his opposition to the tariff; possibly his South
Carolina nativity—whatever the cause, the extreme State Rights party
claimed him as its own. It is scarcely probable that, previous to the Webster-
Hayne debate, Jackson had ever given any serious consideration to the
danger of disunion, and most probable that the views advanced by Hayne in
the Nullification part of his speech first impressed him with the fact that a
sinister doctrine, brilliantly advanced and powerfully supported, was
preparing to challenge the authority of the Nation. But he had kept his own
counsels. He may have discussed the danger with Livingston or Van Buren,
but no public announcement of his position had escaped him up to the time
of the Jefferson dinner in the April following the Great Debate. This dinner,
if is now reasonable to conclude, had been arranged with a definite object in
view—to create the impression that, in a contest, the President would be
friendly to the doctrine of Calhoun and Hayne. The significance of the
selection of Jefferson’s birthday as the occasion was not lost upon the
President or his Secretary of State. It was the first formal observance of the

great Virginian’s natal day, and among the leaders in the preparations were
some “with whom the Virginia principles of ’98 had, until quite recently,
been in very bad odor.”[259] It was clear to the Red Fox that the intent was
“to use the Virginia model as a mask or stalking horse, rather than as an
armor of defense.” The plan, as it developed, was to undertake, through
various toasts and their responses, to associate this doctrine with
Jeffersonian Democracy. Of the twenty-four toasts, practically every one
bore upon this subject. The President, Vice-President Calhoun, the Cabinet
were to be guests.
It was a subscription dinner, and outside the conspirators in charge the
purchasers of tickets had no other thought than that it was intended solely as
a tribute to the memory of the sage of Monticello.
Talking it over with Van Buren, Jackson soon convinced himself as to the
motive of the conspirators. By prearrangement, Van Buren met Jackson at
the White House, in the presence only of Major Donelson, the President’s
secretary, to determine upon the attitude to be taken and the toasts to be
proposed. While the Nullifiers were jubilating over the promised
participation of the President, he was locked in with his Secretary of State
deliberating on the wisdom of showing by his toast his familiarity with the
purpose of the conspirators, and his determination to preserve the Union at
all hazards. The conferees decided upon that aggressive course, and the
toasts were framed accordingly.
“Thus armed,” wrote Van Buren years later, “we repaired to the dinner
with feelings on the part of the Chief akin to those which would have
animated his breast if the scene of this preliminary skirmish in defense of the
Union had been the field of battle instead of the festive board.”[260] When
Benton arrived that night, he found a full assemblage, with the guests
scattered about in groups excitedly examining the list of toasts, and
discussing their significance. The congressional delegation from
Pennsylvania, on scenting the conspiracy, left the hall before the dinner
began. Many others, not caring to associate themselves with such a
movement, retired, thus depriving themselves of a triumph. But many
remained, among them four members of the Cabinet, Van Buren, Eaton,
Branch, and Barry. During the toasts, which were so numerous and lengthy
that they required eleven columns in the “National Telegraph,” Jackson sat
stern and impassive, betraying nothing of his intention. At length, the regular
toasts given, the volunteer toasts were called for, and Jackson rose. As he did

so, Van Buren, who was short in stature, stood on his chair to observe the
effect better.[261] Straightening himself to his full height, and fixing Calhoun
with his penetrating eye, he paused a moment, and then, following the hush,
proposed the most dramatic and historical toast in American history:
“Our Federal Union: It must and shall be preserved.”[262]
There was no possible misunderstanding of the meaning. From the time
of the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been
discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was afloat
in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to place
himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State Rights men.
The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner conspiracy. And
Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife. It was something more
than a toast—it was a presidential proclamation.
Without a word more, Jackson lifted his glass as a sign that the toast was
to be drunk standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. “His glass trembled in his
hand and a little of the amber fluid trickled down the side.”[263] There was
no response. Jackson stood there, silent and impassive—clearly the master of
the situation. All hilarity had gone. Jackson left his place, and, going to the
far end of the room, engaged Benton in conversation, but not upon the
subject of the dinner.
When all were seated, Calhoun, who had remained standing, slowly and
hesitatingly proposed:
“The Union: next to our liberty, the most dear.”
Then, after a pause of half a minute, he proceeded in such a fashion as to
leave doubt as to whether the concluding sentence was a part of the toast, or
a brief speech:
“May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the
rights of the States, and by distributing equally the benefits and burdens of
the Union.”
Within five minutes after Calhoun had resumed his seat, the company of
more than a hundred had dwindled to thirty—men fled from the room as
from the scene of a battle.
The story of that Jacksonian toast spread over the country, justifying, as
Benton admits he then realized, the peroration of Webster’s speech, and
proclaiming to the people the existence of a conspiracy against the Union,
and the determination of Jackson to preserve it at all cost. That toast made

history. It marked the definite beginning of the history-making quarrel of
Jackson and Calhoun, and the beginning of the exodus from the Democratic
or Jacksonian party of the Nullifiers and Disunionists, who were to be
warmly welcomed by Clay into the party he was about to create to wage war
on the Jackson Administration.

V
Another dinner was to complete the break of Calhoun and Jackson.
In the spring of 1830, President Jackson gave a dinner at the White House
in honor of former President Monroe. During the evening, while the
President and his predecessor were engaged in animated conversation
concerning the days when the latter was in the White House and the former
in the field in Florida, Tench Ringgold, marshal of the District, turned to
Major Lewis with the observation that Calhoun had been an enemy of the
President in relation to his Florida campaign. It was not, however, a
revelation to Lewis at the time.
During Jackson’s first successful fight for the Presidency, the anniversary
of the battle of New Orleans was celebrated, with Jackson as the guest of
honor. James A. Hamilton had participated in the celebration as the
representative of the Tammany Society of New York; and, joining the
Jackson party at the Hermitage, had accompanied it to New Orleans. During
the conversation en route, there was some discussion of the charges that had
been made against Jackson in the presidential contest of four years before
relative to his conduct in the Seminole War, and the assertion had been made
that Crawford, a member of Monroe’s Cabinet, had urged his arrest. It was
expected that a similar attack would be made in the campaign then
beginning. Learning that Hamilton expected to return by way of Georgia,
Major Lewis requested him to visit Crawford, then living in retirement there,
and ascertain just what had occurred in the Cabinet meeting. The motive of
Lewis was to arm himself, if possible, to repel the attack, and to effect a
reconciliation between Jackson and the Georgian. Finding on his arrival in
Georgia that to reach the home of Crawford he would be forced to go
seventy miles out of his way, Hamilton requested John Forsyth to ascertain
from Crawford “whether the propriety or necessity for arresting or trying
General Jackson was ever presented as a question for the deliberation of Mr.
Monroe’s Cabinet.”[264] Passing through Washington on his way home,
Hamilton spent two days in the same house with Calhoun, and frankly made

inquiry of him also. The latter answered with an emphatic negative. The
impression Hamilton received from the conversation was that Calhoun had
been favorable to Jackson and Crawford hostile. On reaching New York he
wrote Major Lewis of his inability to see Crawford and of his conversation
with Calhoun. The reply of the Major shows conclusively that, up to this
time, there was not the slightest suspicion that Calhoun had been unfriendly
to Jackson, and the sole impression made upon Lewis by Hamilton’s letter
was that, since the subject of arresting or reprimanding Jackson had not been
broached in the Cabinet, a grave injustice had been done the Georgian which
ought to be righted. Soon afterwards, Hamilton heard from Forsyth to the
effect that Crawford informed him that in a meeting of the Cabinet Calhoun
had urged the propriety of arresting and trying Jackson.[265] Very soon after
the receipt of Forsyth’s amazing letter, Hamilton received a note from
Calhoun, suggesting the impropriety of disclosures as to Cabinet
proceedings and asking that no use be made of his name. Realizing now the
serious possibilities of a complete airing of the old controversy, Hamilton
filed Forsyth’s letter away and mentioned it to no one. For eighteen months
this letter was undisturbed. Then, in the autumn of 1829, when Major Lewis
was his guest in his New York home, some evil spirit impelled Hamilton to
show the letter to Jackson’s intimate who dwelt with him in the White
House. Lewis made no disclosure until after the Monroe dinner. In the
meanwhile, as we have seen, the relations between Jackson and Calhoun had
become strained, and the Major convinced himself that, since the fight was
inevitable, his idol should be furnished with all available ammunition. In
telling him of Ringgold’s statement at the dinner, Lewis added that it was
supported by the revelations of the Forsyth letter, and Jackson demanded the
fatal note.
On learning of Jackson’s demand, Forsyth took the precaution first to
send a copy of his letter to Hamilton to Crawford for verification in writing,
or for such corrections as the facts might necessitate. The reply, with a minor
correction, together with the Forsyth letter to Hamilton, were thereupon
turned over to Jackson.
The effect on the President was to infuriate him. Setting his jaws, he
wrote a sharp note to Calhoun demanding an explanation. This was the
beginning of one of the most acrimonious controversies in American
politics.

VI
With Crawford as the witness against Calhoun, it is essential to turn for a
moment to the career of this remarkable and singularly unfortunate
statesman. No student of the period, not poisoned by the prejudices and
jealousies of Adams, who filled the pages of his diary with grotesque
caricatures of his rivals, can escape the conclusion that William H. Crawford
was one of the purest and ablest statesmen of his day. At the time he entered
the Senate, in his thirty-fifth year, he was a splendid figure—handsome,
virile, magnetic, independent in thought, and audacious in action. He was the
great war leader in the Senate, as was Calhoun in the House. He had made
the most profound impression on the business men of the Nation of any
publicist since Hamilton by his fight for strict governmental economy, for
the scrutinizing of all expenditures, and by his championship of the National
Bank in a brilliant and exhaustive speech in reply to Clay. After two years as
Minister to France, Madison called him into his Cabinet to unravel the
hopeless tangle in the War Department. He served as adviser to Madison
during the remainder of his Administration, continued as the official adviser
of Monroe through the eight years of his Presidency, and was urged by
Adams to continue in a similar capacity under him. He was soon transferred
from the War Department to the Treasury, where he served for nine years to
the complete satisfaction of the business men of the Republic.
Even as early as the close of the Madison Administration, a powerful
element, opposed to the precedent which pointed to Monroe for the
succession, centered on Crawford. Numerous newspapers strongly urged his
election, offers of support poured in upon him, and had he at that time
entered actively into the plans of his friends, there is every reason to believe
he would have been chosen. When the Congress convened, the majority
favored his candidacy. The caucus was postponed. The Administration put
forth its utmost, exertions for Monroe. Crawford remained inactive. And
when he definitely put his claims aside, a number of his friends refused to
participate in the caucus, in which, notwithstanding his own lack of interest
and the prestige of the Administration, Monroe was barely nominated by a
vote of 65 to 54 for Crawford.
The Cabinet of Monroe was so constituted as to make it a house divided
three ways against itself. Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford were all members,
all were presidential candidates, and none had a clearer right to aspire to the
succession than the one who had lacked only twelve votes of the nomination

in 1816. The three-cornered fight began in earnest as early as 1821. With
Adams, Crawford’s relations were far from friendly, as we may judge from
the numerous vindictive comments in the former’s diary. Between Crawford
and Jackson no love was lost, and we find the Georgian writing to a
correspondent of Jackson’s “depravity and vindictiveness.”[266] But Calhoun
was to prove the most unscrupulous and hostile of his foes.
It was not unknown to Crawford that Calhoun had earnestly sought the
alienation of his supporters at the time of Monroe’s election. And, as the
election of 1824 approached, Calhoun’s personal organ at the capital became
intemperate in its attacks upon him. But the climax, involving Calhoun, was
reached in the spring of 1824, when the “A. B.” papers appeared in Calhoun
journals, followed by a formal charge in the House of Representatives, filed
by Ninian Edwards of Illinois, alleging irregularities and misconduct in
office against the Secretary of the Treasury. Here we have the issue direct
between Calhoun, seldom accused of being an unscrupulous intriguer, and
Crawford, against whom history has lodged the charge. The connection
between Calhoun and the attack appears clear enough. Edwards was
Calhoun’s friend. The paper that published the “A. B.” papers was Calhoun’s
paper and was edited by a clerk in Calhoun’s office.
Immediately after making the charges, Edwards was appointed Minister
to Mexico—on the recommendation of Adams, Secretary of State. During
the two weeks previous to Edwards’s departure for his post, Calhoun made
almost daily visits to his room in a lodging-house, spending from one to two
hours with him on each occasion.[267] Nor does Adams, judger of men and
motives, appear entirely free from complicity in view of his efforts to
dissuade Monroe from summoning Edwards back to Washington to testify in
the investigation ordered by the House on the demand of Crawford. The
investigation disclosed that Edwards was a liar, and the committee, including
Webster, Livingston, and Randolph, unanimously reported that “nothing has
been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary of the Treasury or to
bring into doubt the general correctness and ability of his administration of
the public finances.”
There is ample justification for the conclusion that Calhoun was directly
implicated in an unscrupulous attempt to blacken the reputation of a rival,
and that Adams shared with him in the earnest desire that the investigation
should be postponed until after the presidential election.

In the early stages of the contest everything indicated Crawford’s
triumph. Then Tragedy intervened. As a result of the administering of lobelia
by an unskilled physician, Crawford suffered a stroke. For a time he lost
both sight and the power of speech. His nervous system was shattered. He
lost the use of his lower limbs. But such is the pull of an overshadowing
ambition that even in this plight he refused to withdraw from the race. The
Opposition press was not above exaggerating his condition. And at such a
time the caucus was held. The galleries were packed, but the attendance on
the floor was slight. Out of the 261 members, only 68 were present, the
friends of Calhoun, Adams, Clay, and Jackson having reached an agreement
not to enter the caucus. Thus the contest was thrown into the House, where
Clay went over to Adams and elected him.
There are few more poignant pictures associated with the failure of lofty
political ambitions than that in the country home of the Georgian where he
sat with his family about the blazing fire, awaiting the news from the
Capitol.[268] His reputation had been dishonestly assailed, his health was
broken, his fortune was gone, and, after having almost touched the
Presidency, he calmly awaited the final word of failure. The daughters, who
adored him, in their efforts to soften the expected blow, told him of their
joyous dreams of a return to “Woodlawn,” the Georgia country home, where
all could be much happier. When the expected messenger arrived and
announced the election of Adams, the defeated statesman, without a change
of tone or countenance, merely remarked that he thought it would be
Jackson. The next day a letter from the new President urged him to continue
in the Cabinet, Jackson called, “frank, courteous, and almost cordial,” and a
little later Thomas Jefferson wrote his frank regrets.[269] And thus, having
declined the Adams invitation, after a remarkable career in the service of his
country, William H. Crawford, poorer than the day he entered public life,
and physically a wreck, returned to “Woodlawn” in its magnificent oak
forest, with its charming, winding driveways, with its peach and apple
blossoms, and its gardens and its shrubbery. And here under an ancient oak
he was to sit for many evenings with his children and his friends. That he
sometimes thought over the lost hope, we may be sure; that he often
associated it with Calhoun, there can be no doubt.

VII

The first act of Jackson’s, on being told of Calhoun’s hostility in the Monroe
Cabinet, was to call for a copy of Crawford’s letter to Forsyth, and to enclose
it in a letter to the Vice-President, expressing his surprise and asking for his
version. The next development in the controversy came in the form of a long
letter from Calhoun, practically admitting the charge, and elaborately
condemning and damning Crawford for the betrayal of a Cabinet secret. This
reply was delivered to Jackson on a Sunday on his way to church, and he
wrote a brief and significant answer on his return to the White House on the
same day. The closing words sealed the doom of Calhoun as far as the
Presidency was concerned. “In your and Mr. Crawford’s dispute I have no
interest whatever,” he wrote. “But it may become necessary for me hereafter,
when I shall have more leisure and the documents at hand, to notice the
historical facts and references in your communication—which will give a
very different view to the subject. Understanding you now, no further
communication with you on this subject is necessary.”
About this time he sent Calhoun’s letter to Van Buren, who refused to
read it, explaining that he would be accused of fomenting the trouble and
preferred to know nothing about it. When the messenger returned to Jackson
with the comment of his Secretary of State, he replied, “I reckon Van is
right. I dare say they will try to throw the blame on him.”[270]
And of course Van Buren was right. After many conferences on the subject
with Calhoun, Adams recorded in his diary that “Calhoun is under the firm
persuasion that the author of this combustion is Martin Van Buren, who has
used the agency of James A. Hamilton in producing it, and that Hamilton, as
well as Forsyth, had been a go-between to and from Nashville.”[271] The
denial of Van Buren at the time was discounted by the anxiety of Hamilton,
after talking with Forsyth in Georgia, to have Crawford’s statement in
writing. Nothing, however, could have been more effective in eliminating
Calhoun from the presidential race.
That he appreciated his predicament and fought desperately to extricate
himself is shown in various ways. Wirt declared, at the time, that “he has
blasted his prospects of future advancement,” and Adams described him as a
“drowning man.” But the most conclusive evidence of Calhoun’s desperate
efforts is to be found in the numerous notations in Adams’s journal. The first
entry is to the effect that he had “received a letter from John C. Calhoun ...
relating to his personal controversy with President Jackson and William H.
Crawford. He questions me concerning the letter of Gen. Jackson to Mr.

Monroe which Crawford alleges to have been produced at the Cabinet
meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for copies, if I think proper to give
them, of Crawford’s letter to me, which I received last summer, and of my
answer.” It is characteristic that the only comment of Adams is an impartial
damnation of the trio, Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, and especially of the
Carolinian for his “icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social
intercourse with me, solely from terror of Jackson.” But the day following,
we find Adams delving into his diary of 1818. “I thought it advisable,” he
writes, “to have extracts from it made of all those parts relating to the
Seminole War and the Cabinet meetings concerning it. As the copy must be
made by an entirely confidential hand, my wife undertakes the task.”[272] A
little later[273] we find a Mr. Crowninshield applying to him on behalf of Mr.
Crawford for a written verification of the Cabinet incident. And four days
after that we have Calhoun writing again “requesting statements of the
conduct of Mr. Crawford in the deliberations of the Cabinet upon the
Seminole War.”[274] The same day Wirt[275] informs Adams that he has
received a similar note from the Georgian, and asks for a conference.
That night Adams went to Wirt’s lodgings on Capitol Hill and found him
in bed and asleep. He was awakened, however, by a fellow lodger, and a
four-hour conference followed, with Adams reading the former Attorney-
General the letter from Crawford and the answer sent, and also from the
Adams diary of May to August, 1818.
It seems that Adams was not prompt in complying with Calhoun’s
request, and a third letter reached him pressing him for a statement of
Crawford’s conduct and opinions expressed at the Cabinet consultation on
the Seminole War, causing the former President to comment sourly in his
diary that he would give no letter until he had seen all the correspondence,
and knew precisely the points in dispute.[276] There appears to have been
little disposition on the part of Calhoun to meet this requirement, for Adams
notes that he had received from Calhoun “an extract” from Crawford’s letter
to Forsyth, but not all the correspondence.[277] On the next day, the
Carolinian, who was evidently devoting himself feverishly and exclusively
to the hopeless attempt to save himself, sent “a further extract from the
Crawford letter.”[278] The unpleasant old Puritan, thoroughly enjoying the
torture of the fighting politicians, calmly awaited all the correspondence, and
thus a week later we learn from the diary that “Mr. Martin took me aside and
delivered to me a letter from Vice-President Calhoun with a bundle of

papers, being the correspondence ...,” and that the messenger “said that Mr.
Calhoun wished to have the papers returned to him to-morrow morning.”[279]
On the following day Wirt, having moved to Gadsby’s, was there
informed by Adams that he had received the correspondence, but “that Mr.
Calhoun had withheld two important papers; one, the letter from General
Jackson to Mr. Monroe of Jan. 6, 1818, and the other, Crawford’s last letter
to Calhoun, which, he sent me word, he had returned to Crawford.”[280] A
few days later a Dr. Hunt called upon Adams, “more full of politics and
personalities than of physic,” with the announcement that “Mr. Calhoun’s
pamphlet is to be published to-morrow morning.”[281]
To Adams the issue was clear—a battle between Calhoun and Van Buren
for the Presidency. The next day this pamphlet, bearing the elaborate title,
“Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun,
President and Vice-President of the United States, on the Subject of the
Course of the latter in the deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe on the
Occurrences in the Seminole War,” was published at midnight by Duff
Green in the “National Telegraph.” “In my walk about the Capitol Square,”
writes Adams, “I met E. Everett, R. G. Amory, E. Wyer, and Matthew L.
Davis, all of whom, with the exception of Wyer, spoke of the pamphlet. I
received a copy of it under cover from Mr. Calhoun himself.”[282]
Then the war opened in earnest. The “Telegraph” favorably commented
upon the pamphlet, and the “Globe” unfavorably. Adams found that “the
effect of Mr. Calhoun’s pamphlet is yet scarcely perceptible in Congress,
still less upon public opinion,” and that, while the Administration was at war
with itself, “the stream of popularity runs almost as strongly in its favor as
ever.”[283] Not content with the pamphlet alone, the “National Telegraph”
followed it with Crawford’s letter to Calhoun, and another of Forsyth’s, and
Adams observed with interest that “in all this correspondence Van Buren is
not seen; but James A. Hamilton, intimately connected with him, is a busy
intermeddler throughout.”[284] This notation was in line with the gossip of
the capital at the time of the controversy.
A little more than a week after the appearance of the pamphlet, Calhoun
published his correspondence with Hamilton in the “Telegraph,” and Duff
Green, in the same issue, editorially charged Van Buren with responsibility
for the rumpus. And this was met on the following day by the latter in a
letter to the paper positively denying any interest in the controversy, or any
knowledge of Hamilton’s correspondence with Forsyth or Calhoun. Green

responded by writing Van Buren down as a liar.[285] Thus the controversy
raged, drawing politicians, one after another, into the fight. But in this
fearsome medley of charges and counter-charges one fact stood out—that
Calhoun had misrepresented his conduct in the Monroe Cabinet to Jackson,
and, on being betrayed by Crawford, had incurred the deadly enmity of the
President. As far as Jackson was concerned in the public controversy, the
matter rested with Calhoun’s initial letter of admission that he had opposed
Jackson’s course in the war. He prepared an elaborate statement of the facts
for the purposes of history, turned it over to the editor of the “Globe,” who
became his literary executor, and he, in turn, permitted Kendall to study it
when he was planning a biography of the President.[286] But of all this the
public knew nothing.
The inevitable storm had broken. Van Buren, suavely in the background,
was clearly the beneficiary, Calhoun just as clearly the victim. After this the
great Carolinian lost interest in the Presidency, all concern with party, and
henceforth, with occasional attacks on Jackson, concentrated on sectionalism
and slavery. His disaffection was to carry with it that of his more ardent
supporters, and thus in scarcely more than a year Calhoun, Tyler, Tazewell,
and the men who looked to them for guidance, passed from the
Administration camp to join the Opposition. And the incident had one
immediate effect—inseparable from it—the disruption of the Cabinet with
the eradication of the last vestige of Calhoun influence from all the executive
branches of the Government.

CHAPTER V

MRS. EATON DEMOLISHES THE CABINET

I
At the time the politicians were discussing the open rupture with Calhoun,
two horsemen might have been seen riding slowly through Georgetown, and
out on the Tenallytown road, engaged in earnest conversation. It was not a
novelty, however, to the people of the ancient river town, for this had long
been a favorite route of Jackson and Van Buren on their daily rides. On this
occasion Jackson had been discussing the painful lack of harmony in his
Cabinet and had expressed the hope that his troubles were about over.
“No, General,” said Van Buren, a little nervously, “there is but one thing
that will give you peace.”
“What is that, sir?” snapped the grim one.
“My resignation.”
“Never, sir; even you know little of Andrew Jackson if you suppose him
capable of consenting to such a humiliation of his friends by his enemies.”
To understand the conditions leading to such a suggestion from Van
Buren, it is necessary to refer to the serious petticoat entanglement in which
Jackson found himself within a few weeks after his inauguration, because of
the presence of Senator Eaton in his Cabinet. It is an amusing fact that the
first real democratic administration in American history should have been all
but wrecked on a social issue. Aside from the agreeable work of “turning the
rascals out,” little had occurred to disturb the serenity of the new
Administration between the inauguration and the meeting of the Congress in
the following December but this social war. The call to battle had been
sounded even before Jackson had taken the oath of office; the battle raged
with unprecedented fury for many months, finally wrecking the Cabinet and
advancing Van Buren to within sight of the White House. It has not been
uncommon for women to change the course of political and dynastic history
in other countries, but to this day the case of the captivating Margaret
O’Neal is unique in the United States.

The pretty daughter of a popular tavern-keeper, whose old-fashioned
house was a favorite with statesmen and their wives, she had developed into
womanhood under the eyes of men famous in the State. Here Jackson lived
during his senatorial service, and grew fond of the vivacious child he often
held on his knee. With the education a doting father lavished upon her, and
with her intimate contact with men of ability and women of refinement, she
found herself, on the threshold of life, the intellectual peer of the best of her
sex. It is not unnatural that this clever and beautiful girl should have incurred
the jealous displeasure of the less attractive spouses of the elder statesmen.
Her rare beauty alone would have done that had she been as virtuous as
Cæsar’s wife should have been. Perley Poore[287] describes her as of medium
height, straight and delicate and of perfect proportions; with a skin of
delicate white, tinged with red, and with an abundance of dark hair clustered
above her broad, expressive forehead; with a nose of perfect Greek
proportions, a finely curved mouth, a firm, round chin—the Aspasia of
Washington. When, in addition to her physical and intellectual charms, it
must be recorded that she occasionally played the rôle of barmaid,
permitting such liberties as men in the early stages of their cups would take,
it is easy to understand why the more sedate matrons of the little capital were
prone to look upon her as beyond the pale. She had married a purser in the
navy, and even her enemies at the time conceded that the match was a
mésalliance because of her intellectual superiority. In time the husband
sailed across the sea, leaving his comely young wife in the rather free-and-
easy atmosphere of her father’s tavern. The moral conditions of the capital
were not such as to spare the most virtuous, thus situated, from the tongue of
gossip. A contemporary has said that the Washington of those days
“resembled in recklessness and extravagance the spirit of the England of the
Seventeenth Century, so graphically portrayed in Thackeray’s Humorists.’ ...
Laxity of morals and the coolest disregard possible, characterized that period
of our existence.”[288]
Living at the O’Neal tavern at the time was the wealthy Senator Eaton,
who had manifested more than a passing interest in “Peggy,” as she was
called, before her marriage. Gossip had it that he became more than ever
attentive when the sailor went to sea. When, after a drunken debauch, which
the gossips, without the slightest justification, ascribed to the worthless
seaman’s knowledge of his wife’s friendship for the Senator, the husband
shot himself, and Eaton was found in her company with increasing

frequency, the case was complete as far as the drawing-rooms were
concerned. All that evidence could not furnish, the imagination did, and
pretty Peggy stood pilloried in the community.
It was at this juncture that Eaton asked the advice of Jackson as to a
marriage. With characteristic impulsiveness the old warrior replied that if he
loved her he should marry her and save her good name by the act. Thus, on
January 1, 1829, the future Secretary of War was married to the tavern-
keeper’s daughter, and instantly the drawing-rooms began to buzz. One of
the patrician ladies of the time of the wedding poured forth the chatter of the
social set. Here we find that Mrs. Eaton “had never been admitted into good
society”; that while “very handsome” she was “not of an inspiring character”
and had a “violent temper”; that notwithstanding this she was “irresistible”
and “carries

Margaret Patton

whatever point she sets her mind on.” The enemies of Jackson were laughing
in the drawing-rooms and diverting themselves “with the idea of what a
suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will make for Mrs. Jackson,” and were
repeating “the old adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ ”[289] In arriving
at an understanding of Jackson’s vigorous defense of the lady of his Cabinet,
it is well to bear in mind that the same scandal-mongers were rolling the
name of Mrs. Jackson on their tongues. The same letter relates how one of
Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen callers “laughed and joked about Mrs. Jackson and
her pipe.”
The marriage might have remained merely one of the innumerable
morsels with which ladies sometimes regale the drawing-rooms but for the
announcement that Eaton had been invited into the Cabinet—and that spread
the controversy to the politicians. Among these Senator John Branch had the
courage or the insolence personally to press the point upon Jackson that,
because of social complications, the appointment of Eaton would be
“unpopular and unfortunate.”[290] Jackson heard his future Secretary of the
Navy in stern silence, and appointed Eaton Secretary of War. The
inauguration was scarcely over when the petticoat battle began. The most
fashionable minister at the capital at the time, at whose church Mrs. Smith,
the Branches, the Berriens, and the Inghams worshiped,[291] importuned, no
doubt, by the society women of the city, and quite probably encouraged by
the Cabinet ladies of his congregation, persuaded a Philadelphia minister to
write the President of the alleged irregularities of Mrs. Eaton. Some of these
ministerial charges are unfit for print. Jackson sent a stinging reply, and at
the same time employed detectives to investigate the charges. The search of
the sleuths was unavailing, and the situation became so embarrassing to the
Philadelphia clergyman that he demanded that the Washington minister
should reveal himself.
Thus, on the evening of September 1, 1829, a unique conference was held
at the White House, when Jackson confronted the two clergymen, in the
presence of witnesses, and forced them to admit that they had no evidence.
One of the worst charges had been that a certain physician, conveniently
dead, had said that Mrs. Eaton had undergone a premature accouchement
when her husband had been more than a year at sea—the date fixed as 1821.
When confronted by the fact that the first husband had not gone to sea until

1824, the clergyman lightly changed the date to conform. This disgusted and
enraged Jackson. Because he cross-examined the gentlemen of the cloth
regarding a matter affecting the reputation of a woman, some historians have
been resentful of his severity.[292] The purpose was to convince the members
of the Cabinet, who were present, that their ladies were working a grave
injustice upon the wife of a colleague in refusing her social intercourse. But
far from satisfying the women, the discomfiture of the minister and the utter
collapse of the case only embittered them the more against her. The minister
was placed in a painful position, dubbed by the irrepressible “Ike” Hill as
“the chaplain of the conspiracy,” and described by Mrs. Smith[293] as having
been “rendered incapable of attending to his ministerial duties to such a
degree as to produce great dissatisfaction in his congregation.”
Meanwhile months had gone by and Mrs. Eaton was still snubbed. Mrs.
Calhoun, a thorough aristocrat, had positively refused to call. Mrs. Ingham,
whose own reputation was not unquestioned, took her cue from Mrs.
Calhoun. Branch tells us that when, in May, his wife and daughters joined
him in Washington, they found Mrs. Eaton “excluded from society,” and that
he “did not deem it their duty to endeavor to control or counteract the
decision of the ladies of Washington.”[294] Miss Berrien had accepted the
verdict of the women, and her father was openly expressing his admiration
for “the heroic virtues of John Branch for hazarding his place rather than
permit his wife and daughters to associate with the wife of John H.
Eaton.”[295] Parties were given and Mrs. Eaton was not invited; at public
receptions she was snubbed.
This was all meat and drink to Adams, who recorded in his diary, after
some scandal gossip with Mrs. Rush: “I told Mrs. Rush that this struggle was
likely to terminate in a party division of Caps and Hats.” It is this suggestion
as to party divisions which imposes upon the historian the necessity of
dwelling upon this strange petticoat squabble. It is scarcely an exaggeration
to say that, when Martin Van Buren appeared at social functions with the
pretty Peggy on his arm, he made himself President of the United States.
When the Red Fox arrived in Washington and noted the passionate
determination of the iron man at the White House to force a social
recognition of Mrs. Eaton, he could not have been unmindful of his
advantage. He was a widower. No wife or daughters were with him to be
compromised. His biographer[296] makes the point that he called upon the
accused woman in response to common instincts of decency, and that his

failure to have done so would have amounted to a striking public
condemnation. But he did something more than merely call upon her—he
became an active and aggressive partisan of her cause, and by so doing
endeared himself to Jackson. Common decency did not demand that he
feature her at his dinners and receptions, or enter into an agreement with two
unmarried members of the diplomatic corps to do likewise.[297] It is
impossible to account for this extraordinary partisanship on any other
grounds than his desire to curry special favor with the President. His conduct
and activities became the subject of jests and quips. “It is asserted that if Mr.
Van Buren persists in visiting her [Mrs. Eaton], our ladies will not go to his
house,” wrote one of the stubborn dames.[298] With the ladies of the Cabinet
giving large parties, the wife of Eaton was omitted from the invitation lists,
and Van Buren countered with dinners and dances at the British and Russian
Legations at which Mrs. Eaton was treated with marked distinction. But
even here “cotillion after cotillion dissolved into its original elements when
she was placed at its head.”[299] At the Russian Legation, Madame Huygens,
wife of the Dutch Minister, on finding that her seat was beside Mrs. Eaton at
the table, haughtily took her husband’s arm and stalked impressively from
the room. Because of this affront, Jackson was prone to make it an
international incident by demanding the recall of the Minister, but Van
Buren’s sense of humor intervened. In sheer delight Adams wrote: “Mr.
Vaughan ... gave a ball last night which was opened by Mr. Bankhead, the
Secretary of the British Legation, and Mrs. Eaton; and Mr. Van Buren has
issued cards also for a ball which is to be given in honor of the same lady. I
confine myself to the Russian and Turkish war.”[300] In the late summer of
1829 the effect of the struggle upon both Jackson and Van Buren was
apparent. The President, disgusted, worn, and sick at heart, was confiding to
his correspondents his partiality for the calm of the Hermitage. And Adams,
riding about the environs, and encountering Van Buren, similarly taking the
air, spitefully wrote: “His pale and haggard looks show it is already a reward
of mortification. If it should prove, as there is every probability that it will, a
reward of treachery, it will be but his desert.”[301]
When the winter came and the social season opened, the contest naturally
intensified. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien gave large parties from which Mrs.
Eaton was excluded, while “on the other hand the President made her doubly
conspicuous by an over display of notice.”[302] At one of the President’s
drawing-rooms she was surrounded by a crowd eager to please the host, but

Mrs. Donelson, mistress of the White House, held aloof. This rebellion under
his own roof caused the aged President the deepest pain. Adams records a
melodramatic appeal by Van Buren to Mrs. Donelson, which was highly
colored by the ardent Pepys, but such an appeal was made.[303] The effect of
the fight was disastrous to the Administration. The members of the Cabinet
were speedily involved by their wives, and for a time Eaton and Branch did
not speak. It was at this juncture that Jackson determined to intervene, and
“to bring them to speaking terms.”[304] His intermediary for the purpose,
Colonel Richard M. Johnson,[305] was not a Talleyrand, and his lack of tact
in his talks with Branch, Berrien, and Ingham made matters all the worse.
When the relations of the Cabinet members became threatening, Jackson
demanded that they meet and reach a basis for official intercourse at least.
The meeting was held at the home of Berrien, attended by Branch, Eaton,
and Barry. The negotiations were conducted with dignity and decorum,
Branch satisfactorily explained invitations to the ministers who had accused
Eaton’s wife, and the two shook hands as a token of reconciliation.[306]
Meanwhile Congress was in session. All attempts to hold Cabinet meetings
had long been abandoned. The lines were drawn tightly. The slights and
indignities to Mrs. Eaton had become all but intolerable. And much was
being heard of the alleged frailty and indiscretions of Mrs. Ingham—stories
that seem to have been well known at the time, but to have been given
renewed currency by Eaton.[307]
It was at this juncture that Van Buren, riding with Jackson, proposed the
acceptance of his resignation. Meditating the step for some time he had been
unable to muster the courage to broach the subject. For four days the
President and his Secretary of State rode the Tenallytown road earnestly
debating the propriety of the plan, and on the fourth day, just as they reached
their turning-point at the Tenallytown Gate, Jackson gave a reluctant consent
and suggested the British Mission. But the grim old warrior was loath to part
with his one strong friend in the Cabinet, and early the next morning he
summoned Van Buren to the White House, and in great agitation, and with
significance, explained anew that it was his custom to release from
association with him any man who felt that he ought to go. Thoroughly
alarmed, Van Buren, with emotion, withdrew all he had said, and announced
a willingness to retain his post until dismissed. Deeply touched, Jackson
proposed another discussion on their afternoon ride. It was that afternoon
that it was agreed to call others into the conference; and the next night Van

Buren had as dinner guests Jackson, Barry, Eaton, and Major Lewis. Finally
Eaton agreed to follow with his resignation. Would Peggy consent, asked the
tactful Fox. Her husband thought she would. The next night the five met at
dinner again, with Eaton reporting his wife’s acquiescence in the plans. But
when, a few days later, Jackson and Van Buren, out for a stroll, stopped at
the Eaton house, their reception from the mistress was so cold and formal
that the Secretary commented upon it, and Jackson shrugged his shoulders in
silence. But the die was cast. The plan was made. Van Buren and Eaton
would resign, thus paving the way for the resignation of the Calhoun
followers, and a reorganization of the Cabinet—with the Calhoun influence
entirely eliminated.[308]

II
The decision made, the old President must have felt a sense of ineffable
relief. His Cabinet had been a failure and he realized it. His dissatisfaction
with a majority of its members was not due entirely to their hostility to Mrs.
Eaton. The fight against the National Bank was in its incipiency and he
looked upon Ingham as a tool of the Bank; the Nullification doctrine was
being promulgated and he considered Berrien a Nullifier—and in both
surmises he was right. He thought Branch pompous, incompetent, and
subservient to petticoat rule. And we may be sure that whether or not the
Cabinet was to be reorganized in the interest of Van Buren, the relations of
all three toward the Carolinian entered into his decision to rid himself of
them. There is evidence that he quite early determined to displace Berrien,
but nothing of record to indicate the cause. In the man selected for his place,
however, we have ample justification for the suspicion that the Red Fox had
poisoned his mind against his Attorney-General. It was on the suggestion of
Van Buren, very soon after the formation of the Cabinet in 1829, that the
Attorney-Generalship was offered to Louis McLane, who, in disgust, had
retired to Wilmington for the practice of his profession, with the inducement
that he would later be transferred to the Supreme Bench on the death of the
rapidly failing Justice Duval. Before breakfast one morning, after a hard ride
over the wretched mud roads, Hamilton, the lieutenant of Van Buren, arrived
at the McLane home with the proposal, which was accepted. Nothing,
however, was done—another mystery that died with Jackson and his
Secretary of State.[309]

But the coast was now clear. A strong workable Cabinet after Jackson’s
own heart could be created. The manner in which he went about ridding
himself of the undesirable members of the old Cabinet is graphically
illustrated in the account left by Branch.[310] It is easy to visualize the scene
in the President’s room, whither he has summoned Branch to inform him of
the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton. There is a “solemn pause.” The
Secretary, sensing the intent, smiles, and suggests that the grim one is not
“acting in a character nature intended him for”; that he is not a diplomatist,
and should speak frankly. Whereupon Jackson, “with great apparent
kindness,” explains his purpose, points to a commission as Governor of
Florida upon the table, and announces that it will be a pleasure to fill in the
name of the visitor. Branch haughtily declares that he had “not supported
him for the sake of office,” and soon retires. Returning to his office, Branch
prepares and sends in his resignation courteously, but not omitting to
mention that the action was taken in response to the President’s wish.
Whereupon Jackson, splitting hairs, writes a protest against the statement
that his correspondent’s resignation had been asked. “I did not,” he writes,
“as to yourself, express a wish that you would retire.” But since the Cabinet
had come in “harmoniously and as a unit,” and two were voluntarily retiring,
it had become “indispensable” to reorganize completely the official
household “to guard against misrepresentation.” More correspondence
follows, ending with a gracious acceptance of the resignation, coupled with
an expression of appreciation of the “integrity and zeal” with which the
Secretary of the Navy had discharged his duties.[311]
Ingham made the President’s task easy with a brief note of resignation,
and passed permanently from public life.[312] But Berrien was loath to go. In
discussing the situation with friends, he made no secret of his desire to retain
his post, but on learning that Jackson had no such notion, he withdrew in a
friendly and dignified letter.[313]
The period between the announcement of Van Buren’s resignation and the
appointment of the new Cabinet was rich in food for the gossips. What
would become of the Red Fox? Would Mrs. Eaton have her triumph in the
elevation of her husband to some other post of distinction? And what would
be the factional complexion of the new Cabinet? John Tyler, sending his
budget of gossip home, rather questioned the rumor that Van Buren would be
groomed for Vice-President and thought he would prefer to go abroad. It had
also reached Tyler that Hugh L. White might become Secretary of War, and

that “Livingston is to rule the roost,” and he lamented that in the latter event
“the Constitution may be construed to mean anything and everything.” He
had likewise heard that McLane would be Secretary of the Treasury, “but
how,” he asked, “can he ever be acceptable to the South with his notions on
the tariff and internal improvement?”[314] Meanwhile there appears to have
been a rather definite plan on the part of Jackson and Van Buren for the
building of the new Cabinet.

III
Either the President or Van Buren could very plausibly have been
responsible for the decision as to Livingston and the State portfolio, but the
fact remains that the proffer of the post was made through the latter. The
Louisiana statesman was spending his summer vacation at his country place
on the Hudson when a mysterious letter reached him from the New York
politician, summoning him instantly to Washington, and warning him, on
leaving, to conceal his destination. Observing both the summons and the
injunction, he proceeded at once to the capital, and with some misgivings
accepted the post of Secretary of State.[315] That this was Van Buren’s
appointment seems more than probable.
For the Treasury, Louis McLane, Minister to England, a subordinate, as
such, to Van Buren, with whom he had worked in perfect accord politically,
and whose wife was ambitious for Cabinet honors,[316] was summoned home
from London. As Van Buren had, at this time, selected the London post for
himself, this appointment was unquestionably his own.
The one embarrassing hitch came in the selection of a Secretary of War. It
was the plan to have Senator Hugh L. White of Tennessee relinquish his seat
for the War Office, thus opening the way for the election of Eaton to his old
position in the Senate. But White was cold to the proposition. The mutual
friends of the President and the Tennessee Senator importuned him to no
effect. James K. Polk strongly urged him. Felix Grundy added his appeal.
Another wrote him: “The old man says that all his plans will be defeated
unless you agree to come.”[317] Jackson himself did not hesitate to go with
White’s brother-in-law to Virginia to request Senator Tazewell, an intimate
of White’s, to exert his influence—but to no avail. The reason for this
refusal, furnished by a kinswoman, throws light on the general
understanding as to the purpose of the Cabinet reorganization—he did not
intend to “thereby aid in the elevation of Mr. Van Buren to the

Presidency.”[318] Thus did Jackson’s earnest wish to serve his friends, the
Eatons, fail at a critical juncture. After the place was also refused by
Representative Drayton of South Carolina, an enemy of Nullification,
Jackson turned to his old co-worker in the War of 1812, and Lewis Cass,
then Governor of Michigan, entered the new Cabinet. This was probably
Jackson’s personal appointment, albeit years before, while acting as judge
advocate in the court-martial of General Hull, Van Buren had learned to his
discomfiture that Cass was no ordinary man.[319] More successful in caring
for his friend Isaac Hill than for the Eatons, a proffer of the Navy portfolio to
Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire created a senatorial vacancy that
fell to the fighting journalist. Incidentally the relations between Van Buren
and Woodbury were close.
In finding a successor for Berrien the President was handicapped by the
general opinion of his friends, including Van Buren, that his retention would
serve a good purpose. During the period of uncertainty numerous names
were canvassed, the favorite of the politicians being James Buchanan.[320]
The first suggestion of Roger Taney was made to Jackson by a Washington
physician who had ventured to say that he knew “a man who will suit for
Attorney-General.” The disinterestedness and high character of this truly
great and much-maligned man shines forth in his conduct during this period
of negotiations. He not only did not press his claims, but urged the retention
of Berrien, and, under his instructions, his brother-in-law (Key) did likewise.
Thus we find Key calling upon Livingston, Barry, and Woodbury, urging the
keeping of Berrien on the ground that “it would have a good effect upon the
affairs of the party, both as to its bearing on the Indian and the Eaton
questions.”[321] All three agreed, but confessed a delicacy about broaching
the subject unless consulted. In the midst of these negotiations, Key was
summoned to the White House and informed of the intention to invite Taney
into the Cabinet. Again Key urged the wisdom of retaining Berrien; the
President firmly rejected the idea, and thus, on his personal judgment,
Jackson secured the services of one of the strongest figures to be associated
with him in his most bitter battle.
Livingston, McLane, Cass, Woodbury, and Taney—this at any rate was
not the “millennial of the minnows.” But the new Cabinet was not to be
received with universal acclaim. The Calhoun followers grumbled that it was
a Van Buren Cabinet; and Tyler, thinking in terms of State Rights,

complained bitterly that State-Rights men had been left “entirely out in the
cold.”[322]
Nor did the Eaton trouble dissipate instantly on the passing of the first
Cabinet. The retired members stoutly insisted on every occasion that they
had been forced out because of their refusal to coerce their wives to
associate with naughty Peggy. After his return to his North Carolina home,
Branch, in a voluminous letter, charged all the responsibility for the
disruption of the Cabinet to the social issue. Berrien, albeit not only willing
but anxious to remain, on his return to Georgia eulogized Jackson at a
complimentary dinner in his honor, but added that when he attempted to
prescribe rules for the association of the families of his Ministers he scorned
the dictation.[323] And Duff Green was so active and persistent in ascribing
the upheaval to the Eaton affair that Key was convinced “that that matter had
not occasioned the change in the Cabinet.”[324] The gossips of the drawing-
rooms, distressed at being deprived of a choice morsel, set their teeth into it
with a grim determination to hold on. Mrs. Bayard Smith, as though
personally affronted, wrote to a friend: “The papers do not exaggerate, nay
do not retail one half his [Jackson’s]
imbecilities. He is completely under the domination of Mrs. Eaton, one of
the most ambitious, violent, malignant, yet silly women you ever heard of.”
And a few days later she returns to the attack: “Mrs. Eaton cannot be forced
or persuaded to leave Washington.... She ... believes that next winter the
present Cabinet Ministers will open their doors to her. Mrs. McLane has
already committed herself on that point. Previous to her going to England,
while on a visit here, in direct violation of her most violent asseverations
previously made, she visited this lady, and instantly became a great favorite
with the President.”[325]
However, if Mrs. Eaton lingered, others departed with undignified
celerity. As soon as the robes of office fell from his shoulders, Eaton began a
search for Ingham to administer a personal chastisement. The latter, who had
been peculiarly offensive, and whose own wife was a victim of the gossips,
would not fight a duel. He did not care to fight at all. Thus began an amusing
chase. Eaton lay in wait for him in the streets, while the dignified ex-
Minister of Finance carefully picked his way home through the muddy alleys
and back yards into the back door of his house. At length the chase became
uncomfortable. A stage-coach was chartered. The Inghams’ baggage was
packed. Two hours before daybreak, the coach driver might have been seen

lashing his horses through the mud and water of the capital, bearing on their
way to Philadelphia the erstwhile Cabinet Minister and his family.
The first Cabinet, which almost immediately put on a drawing-room
comedy, went out with a rip-roaring farce, with seconds bearing ominous
messages, and with Cabinet officers lying in wait in the shadows, creeping
through alleys, brandishing pistols, and in the darkest hours before the dawn
lumbering in stage-coaches out of the capital city to escape a shot.
The thoroughly frightened Ingham openly charged that Eaton intended to
murder him, and the letters of the former secretaries concerning the “murder
conspiracy” added mightily to the amusement of the enemies of the
Administration and to the chagrin and disgust of its friends. “Before you
receive this,” wrote a Washingtonian to Senator John Forsyth, “you will have
seen the disgraceful publications of Eaton and Ingham, which, of course, are
the sole topics of conversation here. The rumor was that the President was
engaged the day before yesterday in investigating the matter, and I know that
he had a magistrate with him taking depositions.”[326] The hilarity of
Jackson’s enemies was vividly expressed in a cartoon, entitled “The Rats
Leaving a Falling House,” published in Philadelphia, and, with childish
delight, Adams records in his diary that “two thousand copies of this print
have been sold in Philadelphia this day,” and that the ten thousand copies
struck of “will be disposed of within a fortnight.”[327]
Van Buren was sent to the English Court. Eaton was made Governor of
Florida and later Minister to Spain, where Mrs. Eaton, in the most dignified
Court in Europe, became a brilliant success. Ingham passed from public life.
Branch affiliated with the Whigs in 1832 and in 1836, and was made
Governor of Florida by Tyler. Berrien became one of the orators and leaders
of the Whigs, and one of the founders of the Know-Nothing Party. Thus,
after two years of disorganization and domestic turmoil, the Jackson
Administration, with a powerful Cabinet, and, for the first time, a definite
policy, began to strike its stride. At least two of the new Ministers were to
play leading and spectacular parts in the great party battles that were to
follow.
It must have been with a sense of ineffable relief that Jackson, seated at
the head of the Cabinet table, surveyed the new men with whom he had
surrounded himself—a feeling in which the public shared. But as his glance
moved about the table it no doubt lingered with greatest confidence and
satisfaction upon the three whose very appearance bespoke character,

intellectuality, and power. At his right hand the tall figure, with the student’s
stoop, the meditative manner, the benevolent expression, which had stood
beside him in the stirring days of New Orleans—the scholarly Livingston.
Nearby he recognized in the imposing figure with the robust, well-knit
frame, the huge head, the bushy brows, the penetrating, fighting blue eyes of
Cass, a man of the solidity and strength that he admired and trusted. The one
strange figure about the table, destined to prove more nearly a man after his
own heart than any other who was to serve him in the Cabinet, was Taney—
thin and delicate like Jackson himself, with the student’s stoop of
Livingston, but without his calm. Between these three and the others, there
was a decided descent, although they were men of ability and reputation.

IV
Edward Livingston was one of the strongest characters of his time, a
Nationalist as intense as Webster, who was to pen a document as virile and
militant as Webster’s speech for the Union—one of the most brilliant,
talented, and polished publicists the Republic has known. This premier of
the greatest of democrats, was a thorough aristocrat, tracing his lineage back
to the English peerage. Compared with him, the Opposition leaders and even
their ladies of the drawing-rooms lamenting the social crudities of the
Jacksonians were of mongrel breed. And yet this highest type of aristocrat
was, by preference, one of the most ardent of democrats. When, in his
thirtieth year, he entered the National House of Representatives from his
native city of New York, he had behind him every advantage and before him
every opportunity. Distinguishing himself by brilliancy in debate, vigor in
attack, when he left Congress his militant leadership of the Jeffersonian
party had convinced Hamilton that he had to be destroyed.[328] Jefferson
made him district attorney; the people elected him to the mayoralty of New
York, and the attempt to serve in both capacities wrought his financial ruin.
While personally directing the fight against the yellow fever plague, he was
himself stricken, and he recovered only to find that his assistant in the
district attorney’s office had squandered $100,000 of the public money on
wine and women. Without a moment’s hesitation he conveyed all his
property to a trustee for sale, beggared himself completely, and resigned
both his offices. The public protested against his abandonment of the
mayoralty, and for two months the Governor refused to accept his
resignation, but he knew that the path of duty led to the replenishment of his

purse. Thus, at thirty-nine, leaving behind him the prestige of his family
connections and his own career, he turned toward Louisiana, then the
Promised Land, and set forth for New Orleans. There he immediately took
high rank in his profession, established a lucrative practice, and soon
acquired valuable real estate abutting the river which promised a fortune.
The story of how he was deprived of this through the incomprehensible spite
of President Jefferson constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters in the
history of American litigation.[329] But Livingston was sustained by infinite
patience, a happy philosophy, and natural buoyancy of temperament, and he
soon found other matters to enlist his interest. When Jackson reached New
Orleans to defend the town, it was Livingston who aroused the militant spirit
of the people with his martial eloquence, and served as the soldier’s aid,
translator, and adviser. It was in these days amidst the barking of the English
guns that Jackson discovered

Edw Livingston

in Livingston the man he could trust as a patriot and fighter in two of the
bitterest battles of his Presidency.[330] It was soon after this that Livingston
began the greatest undertaking of his life—one so far-reaching in its effect
on humanity as to carry his name to the thinkers, philosophers, and
philanthropists of every land. The “Livingston Code” alone entitles him to a
place high on the scroll of humanitarians who have served mankind. Victor
Hugo declared that he would be “numbered among the men of this age who
have deserved most and best of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham was
tremendously impressed. Dr. H. S. Maine, author of the “Ancient Laws,”
pronounced him “the first legal genius of modern times.” Villemain, of the
Paris Sorbonne, described his work as “a work without example from the
hand of any one man.” From the Emperor of Russia and the King of Sweden
came autograph letters, from the King of the Netherlands a gold medal and a
eulogy, and statesmen and philosophers of Europe vied with kings and
emperors in paying homage. The Government of Guatemala, not content
with translating his “Code on Reform and Prison Discipline,” and adopting it
without the change of a word, bestowed upon a new city and district the
name of Livingston. Jefferson wrote: “It will certainly array your name with
the sages of antiquity”; Kent and Story, Madison and Marshall joined in the
common praise, and he was elected a member of the Institute of France.
Such was the prestige he took to Washington, when, in his fifty-ninth year,
he again entered the House as a Representative from New Orleans.
He was now an old man, but of unusual vigor, and able to wear out
younger men with his long pedestrian jaunts. He loved society and mingled
with it freely, unable to escape it if he would because of the social and
intellectual brilliance of his wife and the charm and beauty of his daughter.
His fame was seemingly secure. His reputation was world-wide. His
conversational gifts were of an uncommon order. His friends and social
intimates were confined to no party, and embraced the best of both. After a
brief period in the House he had entered the Senate where he stood among
the foremost. Such was the man Jackson called to the head of his Cabinet—
one whose character and career suffer nothing by comparison with those of
his most distinguished predecessors, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and
Henry Clay.

V

We are not concerned with the Roger B. Taney who wrote the Dred Scott
decision, but with that portion of his career, little known and appreciated,
which convinced Jackson that he was worthy of wearing the mantle of John
Marshall. And that is by far the most dramatic phase of his life—his battling
years. Born and reared on a Maryland plantation, among horses and slaves,
he grew up to be an independent, self-reliant youth. At Dickinson College he
refused to take down a portion of a lecture which assailed our republican
governmental system. As valedictorian of his class he suffered torments
from a morbid fear of public speaking. Thus even as a student he was
independent in thought, courageously devoted to his convictions, brave in
battle, but miserably self-conscious on parade.
On graduating, he returned to the woods and fields of the plantation,
abandoned his books, and gave himself up to the joys of fox-hunting, leading
the life of the old-fashioned English country gentleman. When he took up
the study of law in Annapolis, however, he abandoned this outdoor life in
turn, and, declining all social invitations, devoted himself to his studies, and
to fighting his native timidity, in a debating society. Here also he studied the
methods of two of the Nation’s greatest advocates, Luther Martin and
William Pinkney.
And, strangely enough, this great lawyer in the making, began the
practice of the law as a side issue to politics. In the quiet rural community of
his nativity, where there was little litigation and no opportunity for
professional distinction, he settled, for the sole purpose of entering the
House of Delegates. This, however, in compliance with the wishes of his
aggressively Federalistic father. Thus, at the age of twenty-two, we find
young Taney responding to the roll-call as a pronounced Federalist of the
school of Hamilton. It is noteworthy that he was defeated in the next election
because of the Jeffersonian revolution of 1800.
This setback changed the course of his career. An uncompromising
Federalist with Federalism apparently dead, politics no longer promised a
future, and he turned now to the serious consideration of the law, and located
at Frederick where the Democrats were overwhelmingly predominant. In this
community, rich, intellectual, cultured, and hospitable, he instantly took his
place among the leaders of the bar and entered upon a lucrative practice. A
Federalist from principle, he did not hesitate, when called to lead the forlorn
hope. As a Federalist, he opposed the War of 1812. Up to this point his
political career was similar to that of Webster.

And it is in the divergence of the two careers at this point that the future
of Taney turned. He fought the war until the die was cast, and then threw
himself with intense fervor into the support of his country against the foreign
foe. Contemptuous of the disloyalists of his political family, he summoned
the Federalists to the unqualified support of the American arms, and such
was his prestige that a large portion of the party in Maryland followed his
lead.[331] By subordinating party to country, he all but obliterated party lines,
and when he was nominated for Congress as a war Federalist he all but
wiped out the normal Democratic majority. Had he gone to Washington at
that time as a lone Federalist supporting the war, to face Webster, fighting
the organization of the army and the appropriations, his national reputation
would have come eighteen years before it did. For his was no half-hearted
hate of the disloyalty of his party co-workers. This is the first decisive action
upon which an interpretation of his political character may be predicated.
Meanwhile, restricting himself more and more to his profession,
frequently associated with Luther Martin in the most important litigation, his
reputation spread throughout the State, and the politician was merged with
the lawyer. It was in connection with one of his most sensational cases that
he took a position on slavery and the right of abolitionists to be heard that
throws a high light on his character and courage.
An abolitionist minister from Pennsylvania had gone to Maryland and
made a ferocious attack on slavery in a public meeting attended by some
slaves. The excitement and feeling against him were intense. To the sensitive
slave-owners the speech seemed a deliberate incitation of the slaves to
insurrection. The minister’s life was in danger. It required supreme courage
for a Maryland lawyer in that slave-holding community to stand between the
abolitionist and the popular clamor against him, and Taney stepped from the
professional ranks to plead his cause, not perfunctorily, but with a passionate
defiance worthy of the highest traditions of his profession. He made his
defense on no less grounds than “the rights of conscience and the freedom of
speech.” And he spoke on slavery even as Garrison or Lincoln might have
spoken. In a courtroom crowded with slave-owners who were his neighbors,
he touched boldly on the pathos and the tragedy of the institution. After this
daring defense before a slave-holding jury, the hated abolitionist was
acquitted—and the records of the American courts record no nobler triumph.
The death of Pinkney and the disqualification of Martin soon advanced
Taney to the head of the Maryland bar. It was one year after he had

established himself in Baltimore that he first allied himself with the
supporters of Andrew Jackson. During the campaign of 1824 was published
a letter written by Jackson to Madison seven years before, urging the
recognition of those Federalists who had broken with their party to support
the War of 1812, and suggesting the name of Colonel Drayton of South
Carolina.[332] Discriminating between the anti-war Federalists and the pro-
war Federalists, Jackson here declared that had he been commander of the
military department in which the Hartford Convention was held, he would
have court-martialed the three leaders of the Convention. This
announcement of his views had attracted to his standard many pro-war
Federalists of Maryland, and the most notable acquisition was Roger B.
Taney. He was impelled to his course with no thought of political reward.
His whole mind and heart were in his profession. Jackson knew nothing of
Taney’s partiality at the time, and only learned of it about the time he was
seeking a successor for Berrien. At no time in his life had the Maryland
lawyer been so thoroughly satisfied with his lot. He had been made
Attorney-General of the State on the unanimous recommendation of the bar,
and this was the only office to which he ever aspired. It was in line with his
work and left him at home with his family and his books. Such was his
situation, when, through a non-political suggestion, he was offered the
position in the Cabinet of Jackson.
At this time he was in his fifty-fourth year, with no taste for the trickery
and intrigues of politics, and he asked nothing better for his leisure hours
than meditative tramps through the woods, a canter on his horse, a volume of
poetry or history, or the delights of his home, presided over by the sister of
the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” An ardent Catholic, he was strict
in the observance of his religious duties. Always vehement in his views, and
uncompromising in his convictions, he was almost unpleasantly decisive in
the expression of his political opinions. Such was his lofty conception of
official propriety that while in office he was to refuse to accept the slightest
token of appreciation from people with whom he had official relations.[333]
He had all the courtesy and courtliness of his culture, all the caution of the
painstaking lawyer, and all the circumspection of the man jealous of his
honor. He was to become the most virile assistant of Jackson in the bitterest
fight of his Presidency, the most trusted of his Cabinet, because the most like
Jackson in the vigor of his blows.

VI
To describe Lewis Cass as an American politician would be damning with
faint praise, for he was something infinitely more and greater—he was an
empire-builder of the company of Clive and Rhodes, one of the most robust
figures in American history. His first remembered view of the world was that
of being held in his mother’s arms, and looking out the windows of his New
Hampshire home upon the bonfires blazing in celebration of the ratification
of the Constitution. Crossing the Alleghanies on foot, with a knap-sack on
his back, sleeping beneath the stars, his Americanism had expanded in the
contemplation of the magnitude of the Republic. Riding the circuit, as
Western lawyers did in those days, he was a witness of the stubborn battles
against the wilderness, and he had enough imagination to see, in the rough
men wielding axes, Homeric figures. And it was while pursuing his lonely
way through the virgin forests of Ohio that he found time for the
assimilation of his reading and learned to be the independent and courageous
thinker he became.
He had established a sound reputation at the bar, when the War of 1812
added that of a gallant and brilliant soldier. To him especially are we
indebted for the shameful story of Hull’s cowardly surrender of Detroit—an
act so maddening that Cass broke his sword in protest. But his reputation as
lawyer and soldier pales by comparison with the reputation he was to make
as an empire-builder.
Never was a ruler confronted by more disheartening difficulties than
Cass, when, in 1813, he became the civil Governor of Michigan. For two
years he was forced to battle against anarchy and famine. Organized society
was demoralized. The country was disorganized. The savages had driven
away the cattle of the settlers, and the French especially were in desperate
straits. The war-whoops of the red men had so terrorized the people that they
were afraid to settle down to the cultivation of the land. The morale of the
Territory was pathetically low. And Cass, with the empire-builder’s decision
and genius, instantly formed his plan to combat the threatened disintegration.
The people had to be fed—he fed them from the public stores, drew upon the
Government for further assistance, personally directed the battle against
famine—and won. The confidence of the people had to be restored as a
preliminary to progress—he determined to restore it by demonstrating his
mastery of the savages. Organizing the young men, he personally led them
against the Indians in a bloody skirmish—and won. He repeated it—and

won. Again—and won. And thus the terror of the people passed, and they
returned to their homes.
He then turned to the organization of civil government. Courts were
created, civil officers selected, territorial divisions established, new counties
were carved, and he began an elaborate policy of road-building and internal
improvements. One of his first acts was to establish a school system, and to
encourage the building of churches with the assurance of religious liberty.
This accomplished, he turned with his usual zeal to the Americanizing of
the people, many of whom were French, and to encouraging the migration of
colonists. Knowing the industry and energy of his native New England, he
planned to draw immigrants from that section hoping that the French would
learn by their success to emulate their example. But here he had another
battle to overcome the general notion of the Eastern States that the land of
Michigan was valueless. In time he succeeded.
And then he found time to challenge the right of the British across the
border to interfere in the affairs of the Territory. In those days Michigan was
only a Territory on the outskirts, and it was easier for the National
Government to ignore insults than to challenge a mighty empire by
protesting against them. As late as 1816 vessels were stopped on their way to
Detroit and searched by British agents. Cass, with lawyer-like care, collected
his evidence, transmitted it to Washington, vigorously protested to the
British authorities—and won.[334]
Nowhere, perhaps, does his vision as an empire-builder, shine more
luminously than in his letter to Calhoun, Secretary of War, proposing a
scientific expedition in 1819, under the sanction and with the coöperation of
the Federal Government.[335] This was the programme of a statesman. And
he asked for experts for the expedition—engineers, zoölogists, botanists,
mineralogists. Determining to accompany the expedition, it is interesting to
note the sagacity of the reason he assigns: “I think it very important to carry
the flag of the United States into those remote sections where it has never
been borne by any one in public station.” This was the most important
expedition ever undertaken by the American Government up to that time,
and was so regarded by the press of the period.
If we add to this, his successful negotiations of treaties with the Indians
under dramatic circumstances, we have the work and record of “The Father
of the West”—empire-builder from 1813 until he entered the Cabinet of
Jackson in 1831.

And this man of action, fighting life-and-death battles on the fringe of
civilization, found time for the gratification of literary tastes. Here he
suggests the Roosevelt of a much later day. When starting forth on an
expedition into the wilderness, it was his custom to supply himself with a
small library for his entertainment while floating in canoes on the rivers or
the lakes. His articles in later years disclose the scholar.[336] Just before
entering the Cabinet he had delivered a scholarly address at Hamilton
College which has been preserved in a number of the popular collections of
orations.[337]
Livingston the Nationalist.
Cass, the Empire-Builder.
Taney, the Crusader.
Out of the career of any one of these might be woven a romance. All were
of heroic mould, veritable Plutarchian figures. And we shall see that the time
had arrived when Jackson would need the wisest and most courageous of
counselors—for Henry Clay was returning in shining armor to lead the
bitterest of partisan battles against the Administration.

CHAPTER VI

KITCHEN CABINET PORTRAITS

I
From the beginning the virile, militant, driving factors behind Jackson’s
policies were found outside his official family. The “Kitchen Cabinet,” so
called in derision, was more influential in the moulding of events than the
old-fashioned, conventional statesmen who advised their chief in the
seclusion of the Cabinet room. Had Jackson depended wholly on his Cabinet
for the support of his policies, he would have been constantly confused by
divided counsels. On scarcely any of the vital issues of his Presidency did he
have the hearty coöperation of his constitutional advisers. But never before,
nor since, has any President been served by such tireless organizers of the
people, such masters of mass psychology, such geniuses in the art of
publicity and propaganda. These men, the small but loyal and sleepless
group of the Kitchen Cabinet, were the first of America’s great practical
politicians.
Of this group the master mind was Amos Kendall, born in a New England
farmhouse in the latter days of the eighteenth century. In youth, he preferred
study to play, and because of a premature solemnity he was familiarly
known as “The Deacon.” His timidity was as painful as that which tortured
Charlotte Brontë. The stupid act of a teacher in ridiculing his reading of an
oration came near putting a period to his education, and at Dartmouth he was
almost moved to tears by professorial praise of one of his essays. His college
days were so serious and laborious that his health suffered, and his
constitution was impaired. He played no pranks and had no dissipations.
Taking his politics seriously, the overwhelming preponderance of Federalists
did not restrain him from

AMOS KENDALL
From an engraving in the Democratic Review, March, 1838, after a drawing by
Charles Fenderick

belligerently espousing the cause of the minority. It is significant of his
instinctive bent that when he turned to politics he shed his timidity and stood
forth a passionate militant. Graduating from the college that Webster loved,
he declined his diploma, partly because of indifference, but largely because
of his personal dislike of the president. Thus early he entertained no
illusions, and had the courage of both his convictions and his prejudices.
Meanwhile the second war with England was on, and he was beginning to
detest the New England Federalists for their disloyalty and illiberality. The
pulpits rang with bitter denunciations of Madison, and ministers proclaimed
from the pulpits that Democrats were “irreligious profligates.”[338] In
Boston, Kendall heard the eloquent Harrison Gray Otis ferociously denounce
the war, and he hastened home to enlist, to be rejected for physical
disabilities.
In his twenty-fifth year he set forth from his bleak New Hampshire home
to seek his fortune, and we are able to sense the spirit and temper of the
youth from the jottings of his journal. At Boston he heard Edward Everett
whom he thought a “youth of great promise.” At Washington he attended a
White House levee, finding Dolly Madison “a noble and dignified person,”
the President’s “personal appearance very inferior,” and meeting Felix
Grundy and Lewis Cass. Thence he passed down the Ohio, a guest of Major
Barry, and became a citizen of Kentucky.
At Lexington he entered the home of Henry Clay, engaged by Mrs. Clay
as a tutor for the children. In later years, when he was the mysterious power
in the Jackson Administration, and Clay the leader of the Opposition, the
drawing-rooms of Washington buzzed with a fantastic tale, intended to prove
his depravity and ingratitude. Harriet Martineau,[339] while in the capital,
heard it and incorporated it in her book. According to this story “tidings
reached Mr. and Mrs. Clay one evening that a young man, solitary and poor,
lay ill of a fever in a noisy hotel in the town. Mrs. Clay went down in the
carriage without delay, and brought the sufferer home to her house, where
she nursed him with her own hands till he recovered. Mr. Clay was struck
with the talents of the young man and retained him as a tutor of his sons,
heaping benefits upon him with characteristic bounty.” Unhappily for the
tale, Kendall was not ill, Mr. Clay was at Geneva at the time of his

employment and during the entire period of his stay in Ashland, and the
“benefits heaped upon him” consisted of $300 a year with board and
lodging, and the privilege of using Mr. Clay’s library. Soon after leaving the
service of the Clays, we find him recording in his diary: “Rode to Lexington
and visited H. Clay. I found him a very agreeable man, and was familiarly
acquainted with him in half an hour.”
However, his sojourn at Ashland was pleasurable and profitable. Mrs.
Clay, deeply interested in him, chaffed him on his timidity, criticized the
stiffness of his bows, and drove him to his room to practice before the
mirror, admitted him to her social gatherings, called upon him to read his
poetry to her friends, and rallied him about his love affairs. Thus the
“mediocre” and vulgar “writer for pay” of the Jackson régime was once
considered fit for the social circle in the home of Henry Clay.
Scarcely had he been admitted to the bar when he was enticed by Colonel
Richard M. Johnson into the editorship of the “Georgetown Patriot”; and it is
illuminative of his character to find him, when the slayer of Tecumseh, a
little later, upbraided him for refusing personally to abuse the Opposition,
writing in his diary: “I shall give Richard my vote, but I shall not be his
tool.”[340] His editorials constructive, his specialty banking and currency, he
soon found himself in the editorial chair of the “Frankfort Argus,” where he
was instantly engaged in bitter political controversies. Whether in argument,
where he excelled, in invective, or in wit, he invariably scored heavily on the
Opposition. For his generation and community, his editorial code was lofty.
He promised himself never knowingly to misrepresent; if, through mistake,
he did, to rectify the mistake without being asked; never to retract a
statement he thought true; to resent an insult in kind; to defend himself, if
assaulted, by any means necessary, even to killing, and never to run. So great
was his professional self-respect that on one occasion, when vulgarly
assailed in an Opposition paper, he had his answer printed in bill form and
circulated by hand, rather than befoul his own journal with a suitable reply.
In seeming contradiction, however, we have his merciless bombardment
of the unfortunate Shadrach Penn, editor of a Louisville paper, who had a
genius for attracting the ridicule of his intellectual superiors; for while
Kendall was peppering him from Frankfort, George D. Prentice was
bombarding him from Louisville, and between the two, he was driven
whimpering from the State.[341]

The physical courage of Kendall may be read in his encounters with irate
victims. In one controversy he was spared the necessity of killing an
assailant with a dirk by the timely interference of friends. In another he put
an opponent to flight by cracking a whip and displaying the sparkling silver
handle in the sun. He never ran.
Under his editorship the “Argus” became a powerful political factor in
Kentucky. He inaugurated the plan of printing legislative speeches,
specialized on political news, intelligently discussed international affairs,
launched a campaign in favor of public schools, reviewed contemporary
books, dipped into religious subjects with his “Sunday Reflections,” and
significantly began a fight against the National Bank in a series of articles
combating the Supreme Court decision as to its constitutionality. If, thirteen
years later, he was not to flinch under the lashings of the Bank press, it may
have been because he had become seasoned to the punishment more than a
decade before when he was described as a “political incendiary.”
His friendly relations with Clay were maintained at least until the autumn
of 1827, when, on a trip to New Hampshire, he wrote his wife of dining with
the orator in Washington. But the campaign of 1828 found Kendall and the
“Argus” valiant in the cause of Jackson, with Clay and his friends “casting
aspersions upon his motives and character.”[342] In revenge for these attacks
he sought the privilege of taking the electoral vote of Kentucky to
Washington. Meanwhile, after the election, and before his departure, he had
been informed by an emissary from the Hermitage that Jackson intended to
offer him an appointment.
The Kendall lingering at the capital awaiting an appointment presents an
interesting study. It is disappointing to note a certain humility and manner
usually associated with the lower order of place-hunters. He was evidently
ardent in his pursuit of a position. His inexperience is disclosed in his
disgust on finding so many obscure politicians pretending to the distinction
of having elected Jackson. And yet, so anxious was he for place, that he was
willing to accept one paying an inadequate salary, and he wrote his wife that
in that event he might persuade Duff Green to pay him $1000 a year for
writing for the “Telegraph.”[343] During the weeks of waiting before the
inauguration, he was not a little embarrassed for funds, and yet, under these
drab conditions, he did not lack for invitations of a social nature. Meeting
General Macomb and finding him “a Jackson man,” he expressed the hope
that he might “find him a valuable acquaintance.”[344] Meanwhile he was

investigating houses and rents, and concluded to economize by taking a
house in Georgetown. “The house I contemplate taking,” he wrote, “is in a
charming neighborhood on First Street, near Cox’s Row.”
Receiving his appointment as Fourth Auditor, he dropped from public
view. Dinners and parties saw him no more. He immediately assumed the
rôle of a recluse. Taking his duties seriously, he uncovered the crimes of his
predecessor and sent him to jail. His rules for the conduct of subordinates
were such as to merit the approval of business men—rules that the office-
holder of those days scarcely understood. After a week in office he wrote his
wife: “The labor is very light, and when I am master of the laws under which
I act, will consist of little more than looking at accounts and signing my
name.” Thus we find him systematizing his work to dedicate the greater
portion of his time to the political work of the Administration. “Hamilton,”
said Martin Van Buren, a month later, “Kendall is to be an influential man. I
wish the President would invite him to dinner, and if you have no objection,
as you are so intimate with the General, I wish you would propose to him to
invite Kendall to meet us at dinner to-morrow.”[345] The invitation was
extended and accepted, and the Red Fox, who had a genius for picking men,
was notably attentive to the timid subordinate.
During the five years he held his inferior post, Kendall became more
powerful than any Cabinet Minister in the determination of Jacksonian
policies. A little later, a contemporary observer of men at the capital
described him as “secretive, yet audacious in his political methods, a
powerful and ready writer, and the author of many of Jackson’s ablest State
papers.”[346] There in his office we may picture him, alone, with pad and
pencil, preparing elaborate political war maps, and literature for propaganda,
or in earnest conversation with Lewis and other members of the Kitchen
Cabinet, forging thunderbolts with which to smite the foe. And it was very
soon after he had left this subordinate post that Harriet Martineau was
impressed with the uncanny mystery of the “invincible Amos Kendall.”
“I was fortunate enough,” she wrote, “to catch a glimpse of the invincible
Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He is supposed
to be the moving spring of the Administration; the thinker, the planner, the
doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued, the excellence of which
prevents them from being attributed to the persons that take the
responsibility for them; a correspondence is kept up all over the country, for
which no one seems answerable; work is done of goblin extent and with

goblin speed, which makes men look about them with superstitious wonder;
and the invincible Amos Kendall has the credit for it all. President Jackson’s
letters to his Cabinet are said to be Kendall’s; the report on Sunday mails is
attributed to Kendall; the letters sent from Washington to remote country
newspapers, whence they are collected and published in the ‘Globe’ as
demonstrations of public opinion, are pronounced to be written by Kendall;
and it is some relief that he now, having the office of Postmaster-General,
affords opportunity for open attack upon this twilight personage. He is
undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with all his ‘great talents for silence’ a
splendid audacity.
“It is clear he could not do the work he does if he went into society like
other men. He did, however, one evening.... The moment I went in,
intimations reached me from all quarters, amid nods and winks, ‘Kendall is
here,’ ‘There he is.’ I saw at once that his plea for seclusion (bad health) is
no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, the hair of such
perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a man of middle age, testified to his
disease.[347] His countenance does not help the superstitious to throw off
their dread of him. He probably does not desire this superstition to melt
away, for there is no calculating how much influence is given the Jackson
Administration by the universal belief that there is a concealed eye and hand
behind the machinery of Government, by which everything could be
foreseen, and the hardest deeds done. A member of Congress told me this
night that he had watched through five sessions for a sight of Kendall, and
had never obtained one until now. Kendall was leaning on a chair, his head
bent down, and eyes glancing up at a member of Congress with whom he
was in earnest conversation, and in a moment he was gone.”[348]
Such was the cleverest, most audacious, and powerful member of the
Kitchen Cabinet—a man who made history that historians have written and
ascribed to others who merely uttered the words or registered the will of this
indomitable journalist and politician.

II
When Jackson left the Hermitage, he was accompanied by Major William B.
Lewis, who had been intimately identified with his campaign for the
Presidency. This unobtrusive man found lodgment with his chief at
Gadsby’s, where he interested himself in analyzing the characters of office-
seekers for the guidance of his friend. After walking with Jackson from the

hotel to the Capitol, and seeing him inducted into office, he announced his
plan to return to the quiet life of Tennessee.
“Why, Major,” exclaimed the astonished Jackson, “you are not going to
leave me here alone, after doing more than any other man to bring me here!”
Moved by the sincerity of the appeal, Lewis remained on in Washington
through the eight years of the reign, living at the White House, and enjoying
a greater personal intimacy with the President than any other politician of the
time. Accepting an insignificant auditorship at the Treasury as an excuse for
staying on, he interpreted his real function as that of a political bodyguard.
He came and went in the President’s private apartments at will. No
formalities were interposed between these two strangely different men. No
secrets formed a veil. In the midst of the bitter fights against his idol, Lewis
moved quietly and uncannily about, gauging sentiment, determining the
drift, analyzing men and motives, guarding Jackson against the surprise
attack. When the ferocious onslaughts were at their worst in the Senate,
Lewis could be found somewhere in the shadows of the chamber watching
every movement of the enemy, and critically, if not always wisely, passing
judgment upon the strategy of the Administration forces; and when the fight
was over, he hastened to the White House, sure to find Jackson sitting up in
his room with the picture of Rachel and her Bible on the table before him,
awaiting the report.
There was this difference between Lewis and the other members of the
Kitchen Cabinet—they all loved Jackson; but where the others thought of
him as the personification of a party, Lewis could only think of him as the
friend of the Hermitage. He had fought and wrought for his election, not to
score a party victory, but to vindicate the man. Of Jackson’s comfort,
happiness, and prestige he was supremely jealous, but there were times when
he rebelled against the audacious proposals of others, more given to thinking
of party, to stake the General’s reputation and success upon a party issue.
He has been called the “great father of wire-pullers,”[349] a closet man’s
definition of a great manipulator of men. At the time the public began to
speculate on the presidential possibilities of Jackson, the Major was his
neighbor. He was not a penniless adventurer or soldier of fortune. There was
nothing in politics for himself for which he cared a bauble. He was living
comfortably on his large productive plantation, with slaves in the fields, and
books in the library. Jackson had learned to love and trust him years before
when he was chief quartermaster on the General’s staff in the campaign of

1812-15, and in the final settlement the Government was found to be
indebted to him to the amount of three cents—which was never paid. When
the Jackson movement became serious, the Major, knowing the General’s
strength and weaknesses, took charge of all confidential matters. To just
what extent he contributed to Jackson’s election no one ever knew—but all
knew that he had played an important part. He conducted all the
correspondence, and carefully scrutinized, and often revised, the General’s
letters; and another of his functions was to serve as a sort of valet for all
State occasions when Jackson should be carefully groomed.
He possessed the qualities that Jackson lacked. Where Jackson was
impulsive, he was deliberative; where Jackson was prejudiced, he was
tolerant; where Jackson was rash, he was prudent, if not timid; where
Jackson was a man of action, he was a man of thought; and while Jackson
had ideas, he furnished the vehicle to bear them in parade. During the many
months preceding the election of 1828, this practical, polished politician was
studying the political war map, and quietly planning successful battles in this
State and that. He knew the politics of each State, the personalities and
prejudices entering in, the dominating motives of all politicians, even to
those never known outside their own little communities, and he knew how to
play one force against the other without appearing in the game. Knowing as
he did all the cross-currents of local politics, nothing ever arose that he could
not deal with intelligently.
During the eight years in the White House, Lewis was a whole regiment
of Swiss guards—always on duty and alert. “Keep William B. Lewis to
ferret out and make known to you all the plots and intrigues hatching against
your Administration, and you are safe,” was Jackson’s advice to Polk when
the latter was entering the White House. We shall find him implicated in
some of the most important events of his time, making history, and yet
escaping the historian. His great advantage was his perfect understanding of
Jackson’s character. He often became a buffer, protecting the President
against unpleasant revelations. If he thought a disclosure necessary as a
protection to the grim old warrior, he told his secret; if he thought it would
merely arouse to useless wrath, he buried it; and sometimes, as in the case of
the Crawford letter, he bided his time for months before revealing it. All the
politicians of his day passed in review before him, Democrats and Whigs,
Nullifiers and Nationalists, friends and enemies, and he silently catalogued
them through a Bertillon system of his own. His advice to Jackson was that

of a friend to a friend, seated about the blazing White House hearth,
discussing politics and men in the midst of the tobacco smoke, as they might
have done in the private life of the Hermitage.
He did not possess Kendall’s genius for programmes, nor Blair’s for
propaganda, but he was invaluable in the field of personalities. He alone of
the three sometimes doubted and drew back in fear. When Jackson vetoed
the Maysville Bill, Van Buren found Lewis’s countenance “to the last degree
despondent.”[350] He dreaded and doubted the effect of the veto of the
measure rechartering the Bank, and later, the withdrawal of the deposits.
Having been Federalistic himself, in other days, he had a fellow feeling for
Louis McLane when that politician found himself in trouble. But doubting
and trembling though he sometimes was, Van Buren has testified that “no
considerations or temptations, through many of which he was obliged to
pass, could weaken his fidelity to the General or his desire for the success of
his Administration.”[351]
In the early stages of the Bank controversy, he alone of the members of the
Kitchen Cabinet maintained friendly relations with Biddle.[352]
Concerning his status among the Jacksonian leaders, biographers and
historians have radically disagreed. Even among the later writers this
disagreement persists, and where one dismisses the theory that he was a
politician, far-sighted and astute, as without sufficient evidence,[353] another
concludes that “in a day of astute politicians, Major Lewis was one of the
cleverest.”[354] The truth appears to be that while he was not a moulder of
policies and creator of programmes, he was one of the most clever
manipulators of men and masters of personal intrigue who ever served a
President. In the Kitchen Cabinet he was the personal manager—the political
secretary.

III
The most militant of the Kitchen Cabinet was Isaac Hill, whose name was
anathema to the Federalists of New England. A poor boy educated in a
printshop, slight and lame, hurling picturesque phrases and bitter reproaches
at the powerful enemy, excoriating it with his satire and sarcasm, and
slashing it with the keen blade of his wit, it is not surprising that the
impression handed down by the Intellectuals of the Opposition is
unfavorable. Where they have not dismissed him with a shrug, they have

damned him as a dunce—and largely because he gave virility to a minority
and made it militant, and, despite overwhelming odds, established in the
hotbed of proscriptive Federalism a vigorous Democratic paper which was
quoted from New Orleans to Detroit, and from Boston to St. Louis. If he
lacked the depth and the constructive faculty of Kendall, and the literary
finish of Blair, he possessed a genius as a phrase-monger which spread his
fame and served his party, and in the heat of a campaign, one of his stinging
paragraphs was as effective as one of Kendall’s leaders. There was no
finesse in his fighting—he fought out in the open, in full range of his foe,
and with any weapon on which he could lay his hands. If the intensity of his
partisanship amounted to unfairness, it had been made so by the intolerance
and bigotry of the Opposition of his section. Since no member of the Kitchen
Cabinet more insistently demanded of Jackson the adoption of the spoils
system, it is not unprofitable to inquire into the origin of his state of mind.
His life was a tragedy. Born in abject poverty, a cripple from childhood,
he had seen his father and grandfather become mental wrecks. Under this
cloud, in this state of penury, he looked out upon the world. Shut off by his
infirmity from physical labor, he had no money for an education, and he
lived on an unpromising New Hampshire farm, where there were no schools,
libraries, or books, and few papers. But before he was eight he had read the
Bible through. Two years before he had read the story of the Revolution
from books borrowed, and had supplemented his reading by having a
relative, who had fought with Washington, describe the burning of
Charlestown and the Concord fight. There was infinite pathos in his passion
for the printed page. But college was out of the question, the printing-office
the only possible substitute, and thus, after a long apprenticeship, he took
over a wobbling paper at Concord and became an editor.
Throwing discretion to the winds and with a sublime audacity, he took up
the challenge of the powerful majority; and it required courage to pursue that
course in the New Hampshire of 1809. To be a Democrat (Republican) there
in those days was to offend God; boldly to preach hostility to Federalism
was to proclaim blasphemy and invite destruction. The Federalistic press
opened their batteries of abuse upon the obscure youth. One paper solemnly
announced the discovery that he was a direct descendant of the witches who
had suffered at Salem. Hill returned a spirited fire, and rejoiced in the
combat. “I have hit them, for they flutter,” he said.[355] In the campaign of
1810 he fairly galvanized the prostrate friends of the National

Administration into life and incurred an unbelievable hatred of the
Opposition. When this crippled boy was brutally assaulted on the streets of
Concord, the Federalist press of New Hampshire gloated over the attack.
Nor was it above sneering at his infirmity.
Throughout the War of 1812 he was a pillar of strength to the Republic in
New Hampshire. During the darkest days it was said that he was worth a
thousand soldiers in heartening the patriots.[356] With the approach of the
campaign of 1828, Hill’s paper, the “Patriot,” began to bombard the Adams
Administration, and Clay, who was to shudder later at the wickedness of the
spoils system, promptly deprived him of the public printing.
Thus the campaign of 1828 began. The stinging paragraphs of Hill made
the rounds of the Democratic press of the country, and in his own State he
was shamelessly assailed. Not satisfied with maligning his personal
character, his enemies stooped to references to the insanity of his father in
disseminating the story that he was crazy.[357] In view of this cruel personal
persecution, it was but human that, on the election of Jackson, his voice
should have been for war on all the Federalist office-holders. Thus his
psychology is easily understood. Because of his political convictions, he had
been proscribed. A cripple, he had been personally attacked in the streets. In
suffering he had been ridiculed. The insanity of his father had been made the
subject of vulgar jests. His personal character had been assailed. And in the
hour of victory, all the pent-up hatred of the years was let loose upon the
vanquished foe.
Hill was the Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet, the fanatic, calling for heads
—more heads—and unseemly in his mirth as they fell.
In appearance he was not prepossessing. Below the medium height, he
was spare as well as crippled. In his high forehead and the expression of his
eyes his intellect was indicated, and he carried himself with that haughty air
of superiority which men, forced to fight for their existence, are apt to
assume. This was described by his enemies as “demoniacal.” He always
dressed plainly as a workingman. Without imagination or dreams, severely
practical and to the point, conscious of his limitations, and passionately
devoted to both his convictions and prejudices, there was nothing about him
to appeal to the fashionable or the intellectually elect. In no sense dazzling in
his gifts, hesitating instead of eloquent, shocking the Senate of his time by
reading his speeches, and proud of his profession, he was not pointed out to
travelers who wrote books, nor lionized in the drawing-rooms, nor dignified

by the complimentary notices of the women letter-writers or diarists of his
day. He has come down largely as his enemies have painted him, and their
very hate of him discloses his effectiveness as a politician.
He was one of the Republic’s first uncompromising partisans—“My
party, right or wrong.”

IV
An Administration and party paper had been considered important in the
political circles of the Republic from the beginning, but it was left to the
editors of the Kitchen Cabinet to develop it to the highest degree of
efficiency. The “National Journal,” Court paper of the Adams
Administration, had awakened the Opposition to an appreciation of the
practical value of a powerful party paper. Duff Green and the “Telegraph,” in
a sense, met the requirements, but even then there were Democrats of
influence and aspirations who found something lacking. To Van Buren, the
editor, devoted to Calhoun, was unsatisfactory. It is inconceivable that he felt
the need for a more aggressive pen for the Opposition. Nevertheless, in the
summer of 1826, while planning a more vigorous attack on the Adams
Administration, he had an “animated conversation” concerning the need of a
strictly party paper with Calhoun, at the latter’s house in Georgetown. The
Carolinian urged the adoption of the “Telegraph” as the party organ, with
Van Buren pressing the advantage of prevailing upon Thomas Ritchie of the
“Richmond Enquirer” to accept the editorship of a new party paper at the
capital.[358] Failing to persuade Calhoun, the Red Fox cleverly approached
Senator Tazewell of Virginia, an ardent friend of the Carolinian, and
persuaded him to join in an invitation to the Richmond journalist.[359]
Ritchie declined, however, on the ground of his attachment to Virginia and
his reluctance to leave old friends and associates.[360] Thus, at the beginning
of the Administration, it seemed that Duff Green and the “Telegraph” were
destined to become the pen and organ of the Jacksonian Democracy.
At a White House levee in the winter of 1830-31, under the very nose of
Jackson, and under his roof, the intriguing Green drew the proprietor of a
Washington printing-house aside to tell him confidentially of the hastening
rupture of Jackson and Calhoun, and of the plans in incubation for the
advancement of the presidential aspirations of the latter. Calhoun organs
were to be acquired or established in all the strategic political points in the
country, and when the rupture came these were to follow the lead of the

“Telegraph” in a nationwide denunciation of Jackson. The printer was
offered the editorship of one of these papers, and a liberal amount for his
Washington plant. Thoroughly devoted to the political fortunes of the
President, and not relishing the idea of being the depositary of a secret which
threatened the President’s position, the printer consulted freely with his
friends, and, on their advice, carried the story to the White House.
Benton tells us that the story did not surprise Jackson, who was
“preparing for it.”[361] Thus we are told that in the summer of 1830 he had
been impressed with a powerful editorial attack on Nullification in the
“Frankfort Argus,” had made inquiries as to the identity of the author, and
had authorized the extension of an invitation to assume the editorship of an
Administration paper in the capital. The version of Benton differs in material
points from the version of Amos Kendall,[362] who was far more intimately
identified with the launching of the new paper than either Benton or Van
Buren. Here we have it that the idea was not Jackson’s, and that when plans
for a Jacksonian organ were presented to him “he entirely disapproved.” At
that time Jackson was unable to bring himself to believe in the treachery of
Green. When ultimately, however, he saw the drift, he gave his “tacit
consent.”
Here Kendall’s story clashes with the theory, put forth by Green, that Van
Buren was the directing genius behind the whole project. When the President
finally gave his “tacit consent,” the practical politicians of the Kitchen
Cabinet took charge. The various governmental offices were visited for an
understanding as to what portion of the Government printing could be
expected. When Van Buren, then at the head of the State Department, was
approached, he announced that he would not give a dollar of the printing of
his department, on the ground that “were such a paper established its origin
would be attributed to him, and he was resolved to be able to say that he had
nothing to do with it.” This is typical of Van Buren, and is no doubt true. But
the responses from all the other departments were satisfactory and the plans
were pushed.
Having positively settled upon the paper, the next step was to find a
managerial genius. In a conference between Kendall and Barry, the
Postmaster-General, the latter suggested the availability of Frank P. Blair,
then writing occasionally for the “Frankfort Argus,” though not attached to
the paper in a regular capacity. The correspondence with Blair was
conducted by Kendall. The Kentuckian, surprised, momentarily hesitated,

and it was not until Kendall had agreed to bear an equal part of the
responsibility that he consented.
While Blair was getting his affairs in order in Kentucky, Kendall
proceeded with the arrangements in Washington, and when the editor
reached the capital nothing remained unsettled but the name and a motto.
The two agreed to call the paper the “Globe,” and the motto, suggested by
Blair, “The World is Governed Too Much.”
Thus there appears no reason to doubt that Kendall’s version is the
correct one, that Jackson was no more a leader in the movement than Van
Buren, and that the idea was conceived by the little group of new and
practical politicians, then coming to the fore, and who, while friends of
Jackson, were interested in “measures more than men.”

V
The arrival of Frank Blair in Washington was an historical event, not
appreciated at the time, and scarcely properly appraised to this day. But the
ugly, illy dressed stranger, who presented himself at the White House
immediately after reaching the capital, gave little promise, in his appearance,
of the power within him. Instead of a large, raw-boned, husky Kentuckian
expected, Major Lewis, who met him, was confronted by a short, slender
man, poorly garbed, and rather timid and retiring than otherwise. The Major
was frankly disappointed and probably disgusted. But when the editor was
presented to Jackson, that genius took note neither of his dress nor
appearance. Although expecting foreign diplomats and distinguished
statesmen to dinner, he could see no reason why the unimposing little man,
with the ill-fitting clothes and the ugly visage, should not remain as his
guest. Assuming that he would be alone, Blair accepted, and, to his horror,
he found himself in the presence of ministers in all the splendor of their
official regalia. Unaccustomed to such show, and feeling the
conspicuousness of his garb, he fled to a corner, hoping to escape notice. But
Jackson, who never judged men by their appearance, least of all by their
clothes, sought him out with the kindest intentions, and placed him beside
him at the table. This act of courtesy, painful to Blair at the time, was
understood and appreciated, and not only won his ardent support, but his
deepest affection.

Although unknown to Jackson, who would have been uninterested if he
had known, Frank Blair was qualified by blood to sit at the table of the first
gentleman of the land. His grandfather had been acting president of
Princeton when Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration, was summoned to
New Jersey to accept the presidency. Born forty years before becoming
editor of the “Globe,” he had displayed, in college, the remarkable
intellectual qualities that were to make him the adviser of Presidents, and
one of the most influential moulders of public opinion of his time. He
distinguished himself as the best rhetorician and linguist of his class.[363]

FRANCIS P. BLAIR
ROGER B. TANEY WILLIAM B. LEWIS

The weakness of his voice discouraged his ambition for forensic distinction.
In the Governor’s Mansion at Frankfort he was married, early in life, to a
charming woman noted for “her extraordinary mental force and her
sagacity.”[364]
Like Kendall and Barry, Blair had begun his political career as an ardent
supporter of Clay, and like them, had broken with him on the “bargain”
story. According to Blair’s contention through life, Clay had confided to him
in advance that, if such a contingency as did develop should arise in the
congressional caucus, he would throw his support to Adams, and that he had
protested against the plan. Whether true or not, that event marked the end of
Blair’s interest in the political ambitions of the man from Ashland. From
1823 to 1827 he played a conspicuous part as one of the principals in the
famous fight between the New and the Old Courts which all but reduced the
State to a condition bordering on anarchy. This part of his career is difficult
to understand. The New Court Party, with which he was affiliated, was a
revolutionary organization mustering its strength from the indebtedness and
poverty of the people. It proposed to relieve the condition of the poor
through methods frankly revolutionary and worse. During the period of the
court fight, and while acting as the clerk of the revolutionary court, two
events completely changed the course of his career. He broke with Clay and
allied himself with the Democratic Party; and he became a regular
contributor to the columns of the “Frankfort Argus,” and a journalist by
profession. On abandoning the court clerkship he immediately identified
himself with Kendall in the publication of the paper, and the combined
genius of these two extraordinary men converted the little Western journal
into one of the most powerful and popular of the Jacksonian organs. All the
credit appears to have gone to Kendall and none to his associate, for after the
election it was Kendall and not Blair who was assured of recognition from
the incoming Administration. After Kendall went to Washington, Blair,
without the slightest notion of ever following, remained in Frankfort, writing
special articles in support of Jacksonian policies for the “Argus.” Thus he
plied his trenchant pen against the Bank, excoriated Nullification, attacked
Clay, and damned Calhoun. He had suffered financial reverses, been forced
to sacrifice much property, and was in distressed circumstances. Later, when
he was assailed by Senator Poindexter as having gone to Washington as a

“beggar,” he was indignantly to repel the charge. “The editor of the ‘Globe’
resigned, on leaving Frankfort to take charge of the press here,” he wrote,
“the clerkship of the circuit court, the fees of which alone averaged $2000
annually, and the presidency of the Bank of the Commonwealth, and other
employments which made his annual income upward of $3000—a sum twice
as great as the salaries of the judges of the Supreme Court, and a third
greater than that of the Governor of the State.”[365] Nevertheless, it was the
state of his finances which had necessitated the temporary suppression of the
fact that he had accepted the editorship of the “Globe.”
Once in the editorial chair, he assumed a militant attitude, and frankly
announced that the paper would be devoted “to the discussion and
maintenance of the principles which brought General Jackson into office”;
and as early as April, 1831, four months after the first appearance of the
paper, he began vigorously to advocate the reëlection of his idol in the White
House.
The first issue appeared on December 7, 1830, published twice a week. In
its initial days the inevitable quarrel between Blair and Green simmered, and
while the “Globe” and the “Telegraph” were nervously toying with their
pistols, the actual fight did not commence until Green published the Calhoun
letters. Thereafter the contest was acrimonious and continuous. The
immediate result of this battle was to impress Blair with the necessity of a
daily publication, requiring a much larger outlay in money than either Blair
or Kendall or both were able to advance. This, however, did not discourage
the plucky little Kentuckian in the least. He called upon the friends and
supporters of Jackson in the capital and throughout the country to subscribe
for six hundred copies and pay for them in advance at the rate of ten dollars
per annum. This money was easily collected, and thus, without the advance,
by Blair, of a dollar of capital, the “Globe” was placed upon a firm and sure
foundation.[366]
The journalistic genius of the little editor almost immediately gave the
paper first rank in importance among all the papers then published in the
country. Some of his admirers have said that “he became the master of a
style of composition that compared favorably with that of Junius.”[367]
However that may be, he unquestionably was forceful, entertaining, and at
times, eloquent. He could be dignified and argumentative without being dull.
He knew how to appeal at once to the lover of pure English and the
uneducated artisan of the city or the frontiersman in the wilderness. He was a

pioneer among the journalists who have known how to produce a paper that
would be as welcome on the library table of the student as in the hut of the
farmer on the outskirts of civilization. The secret of his strength was his
direct method. There was nothing of equivocation or compromise in his
character. He did not qualify away all force for the sake of conservatism. He
liked to cross the Rubicon, burn the bridges, and devastate the country. Any
one could understand precisely what he meant. He was intense in his
convictions, and he had the audacity, inseparable from political genius, to
move in a straight line, prepared to meet the enemy even on ground of the
latter’s choosing. His gift of satire and sarcasm was a joy to his fellow
partisans who delighted in him. At first intended as their spokesman, he
became their leader. Politicians soon learned that it was not necessary to
carry suggestions to the editor of the “Globe”—they went to his sanctum to
get them. Capable of a skillful use of the rapier, he preferred the meat-axe.
Nothing pleased him so much as the crushing of the skulls of the enemies of
Jackson, and if these should happen to be Democrats, all the greater was the
joy of the operation.
This slashing, brilliant style delighted Jackson, who, strangely enough,
had a profound admiration for the fluent writer. The old warrior took him to
his bosom. That the editor of the “Court journal” should be mistaken was
unthinkable to the President; and when any one asked him for information
on any subject with which he was unfamiliar, he would invariably reply: “Go
to Frank Blair—he knows everything.” And Jackson believed it. Firmly
convinced that the people were entitled to all public information, when any
such came to his attention he would instantly say, “Give it to Blair.”[368] He
consulted the little ugly Kentuckian constantly on all matters of domestic
policy, on party matters and patronage, and even on delicate points
concerned with international programmes. The intimacy of this relationship
soon trickled down from the capital to the party workers in the most remote
sections, and, in time, the paper took its place with the Bible in all well-
regulated Democratic households. Jackson himself is said to have read
nothing during his Presidency but the Bible, his correspondence, and the
“Globe.”[369] The Democratic press throughout the country got its cue from
Blair’s editorials, and he, astute politician and advertiser, took pains to
cultivate intimate relations with all papers supporting the Administration.
Many articles, written by Kendall in the office of the “Globe,” and sent to
country papers for publication as their own, were afterwards collected and

reproduced in the Administration organ to indicate the trend of public
opinion.
Naturally the enemies of the Administration in Congress looked upon
Blair and his paper with venomous hatred, and not without cause. No head
was too distinguished for his bludgeon, and it descended with resounding
whacks upon the craniums of the greatest as well as the least of these,
leading to many furious protests and denunciations on the floor of the House
and Senate. The “Congressional Globe” is thickly sprinkled with references
to the paper. There was nothing of novelty in a statesman rising to a question
of personal privilege to explain that the editor had done him an injustice in
describing him as a liar, an anarchist, or a traitor. Occasionally Clay, or some
lesser light, would rise to protest against the action of the President in
conveying information, to which the Congress was entitled, through the
columns of his organ. Henry A. Wise would complain that “the Secretary of
the Treasury has already informed Congress and the country, through the
columns of the ‘Globe’ of Saturday last,” that a certain policy would be
pursued.[370] Or perhaps he would merely desire to explain that a certain
editorial was a “total perversion of the facts.”[371] Or maybe it was John
Quincy Adams who took the floor to describe the editor of the “Globe” as
“the ambassador of the Executive,” an ambassador being “a distinguished
person sent abroad to lie for the benefit of his country.”[372] One member
would secure recognition to “indignantly repel the charge made against him
by the ‘Globe’ of being an anarchist and a revolutionist.”[373] Even Webster
was not impervious to the darts of the journalist, and did not think it beneath
his dignity formally to protest against an editorial paragraph, “flagitiously
false,” which had reflected upon him as chairman of the Finance Committee.
[374]

With the politicians, the country press, and the party leaders in the
Congress treating the “Globe” as the editorial reflection of the President, it is
not surprising that the diplomatic corps should have accepted the general
assumption, and that the foreign offices of Europe should have attached no
little significance to any of its observations on international affairs. Of the
truth of this we have one very striking illustration.
While Livingston was Secretary of State, James Buchanan was the
American Minister at St. Petersburg, charged with the negotiation of a highly
important commercial treaty. All went well until the terms of the treaty had
been practically agreed upon, when he had an interview with the brilliant

Count Nesselrode, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who protested against what
he termed the unfriendly attitude of the American press toward the Emperor
and Russia, apropos of Poland. Not only, he complained, had the “Globe,”
which he characterized as “the Government paper,” failed to correct the false
impressions of the press generally, but it “had itself been distinguished by
falsehoods.” He hoped, therefore, that the President “would adopt measures
to remove this cause of complaint in the future, at least against the official
paper in Washington.”[375] Recovering as quickly as possible from his
astonishment, Buchanan explained that the press in the United States was not
subject to governmental supervision, but the practical-minded Nesselrode
was not at all impressed. He baldly charged that the “Globe” “formed an
exception to the rule and was a paper over which the Government exercised
a direct control.” Such being the Russian understanding, the Count was
disappointed at the failure of Livingston, when he had met the Russian
Minister to the United States in New York City, to offer assurances that no
more offensive articles would appear in that journal, and even more
chagrined to learn, after that interview, that the “Globe” had been “more
violent than before.” Buchanan was forced to concede that the “Globe” was
commonly called the “official paper,” but earnestly protested that it was free
from governmental control. He was “persuaded that even the influence of
Mr. Livingston over the editor” was not much greater than his own, and he
had no influence at all. Here Buchanan was on safe ground, but Nesselrode
was not so easily convinced. With a disconcerting smile of incredulity, he
suggested that “General Jackson himself must certainly have some influence
over the editor.” Finding himself in a blind alley, Buchanan was lamely
admitting that the President might have such influence, when Nesselrode,
taking instant advantage of the admission, and without waiting for the
conclusion of the sentence, requested him to ask Jackson to “exercise it for
the purpose of inducing the ‘Globe’ to pursue a more cautious course
hereafter.” Buchanan, glad of the opportunity to drop the subject, hastened to
assure the Count that it would afford him great pleasure “to make his wishes
known to the President.”[376]
Thus, such was the genius of Blair and Kendall in impressing themselves
upon the affairs of the Nation that, within three years after the establishment
of the “Globe,” they had become political powers in the Republic, and so
much international figures that their editorials were carefully read in the
foreign offices of Europe.

Of the members of the Kitchen Cabinet, Lewis’s influence in determining
the political fate of men, and Hill’s in establishing the system of spoils, were
of no small importance, but the publicity work of Blair and Kendall, more
than any other one thing, contributed to the solidarity of the party, and the
general popularity of Jackson and his measures. Benton, Van Buren, Forsyth,
were masterful managers of Jackson’s congressional battles, where he
frequently lost to Clay, but the practical politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet,
through the free use of patronage and the press, aroused and organized the
masses with the ballots for the succession of successful battles at the polls.

CHAPTER VII

CLAY LEADS THE PARTY ONSLAUGHT

I
Henry Clay sat in the little library at Ashland reading a letter from Webster.
“You must be aware of the strong desire manifested in many parts of the
country that you should come into the Senate,” the letter ran. “The wish is
entertained here as earnestly as elsewhere. We are to have an interesting and
arduous session. Everything is to be attacked. An array is preparing much
more formidable than has ever yet assaulted what we think the leading and
important public interests. Not only the tariff, but the Constitution itself, in
its elemental and fundamental provisions, will be assailed with talent, vigor,
and union. Everything is to be debated as if nothing had ever been settled. It
would be an infinite gratification to me to have your aid, or rather, your lead.
I know nothing so likely to be useful. Everything valuable in the government
is to be fought for and we need your arm in the fight.”
The meaning was perfectly clear to Clay. The man in the White House,
contrary to Whig expectations, was disclosing masterful qualities of
leadership. The veto of the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Bills had left
no room for doubt as to his attitude toward internal improvements. No
Executive had ever before so freely exercised the power of presidential
rejection.[377] On the tariff he was known to favor such reasonable
reductions as would conciliate the Southern States, and his brief reference to
the National Bank in his first Message, disconcerting in itself, had been
followed by ominously hostile action on the part of several State
Legislatures.[378] Meanwhile Jackson’s candidacy for reëlection was
practically announced. Major Lewis, in his subterranean manner, had been
busy and with the usual results. The “New York Courier and Enquirer,”
organ of Van Buren, was advocating his reëlection, and the President’s
followers, quietly encouraged by Kendall and Lewis, had placed him in
nomination in the legislatures of five States.
Under these conditions the old party of Adams grew restive and impatient
for a strong leader, and instinctively turned to the magnetic figure of
Ashland. Already his nomination for the Presidency in 1832 was a foregone

conclusion. The enthusiastic acclaim which had greeted him on his political
tours during his retirement had impressed his sanguine temperament as a
sure omen of success. He would have preferred to have remained in
retirement pending the election, but the party demand for his leadership in
Washington was insistent. The Opposition needed a figure around which it
could rally, and as a party leader Webster was a failure. With much
reluctance Clay decided to respond to the call. The election in Kentucky had
been a keen disappointment, and the enemies of the Administration had a
bare majority in the legislature, but it was enough, and he was elected.
Early in November he reached the capital, “borne up by the undying spirit
of ambition,” looking “well and animated,” to be received with “the most
marked deference and respect.”[379] From this time on, throughout Jackson’s
Presidency, he was to remain the brilliant, resourceful, bitter, and
unscrupulous leader of the Opposition—as brilliant and remarkable an
Opposition as has ever confronted a Government in this or any other
country.
And such a politician! There have been few remotely like him, none his
superior in personal popularity. His

JOHN C. CALHOUN
HENRY CLAY DANIEL WEBSTER

unprecedented sway over a party was due, in large measure, to his
remarkably fascinating personality, his audacity and dash, his amazing
powers of ingratiation, and his superb eloquence which acted upon the spirit
of the party workers like the sound of a bugle to a battle charger. No
American orator, perhaps, has ever approached his effect upon a partisan
audience. Fluent, and at times capable of passages of inspired eloquence, a
consummate master of the implements of sarcasm and ridicule, his was the
oratory that moves men to action. He could lash his followers to fury or
move them to tears. His speeches often lacked literary finish, and, at times,
in their colloquialisms descended beneath the dignity of the man’s position,
but even these occasional descents to buffoonery contributed to his
popularity. He often spoke the language of the people—Webster and
Calhoun, never. The contribution of new ideas to a discussion was not his
forte. But he could gather up the material at hand, and weave it into a speech
of fervent declamation which created the momentary impression that he was
breaking virgin soil. His oratory was in his personality and his delivery. His
voice was an exquisite musical instrument, with a clarion note that carried
his words to the outskirts of the greatest throng. When he spoke, his
expressive countenance glowed with his genius, his eyes flashed or caressed,
his commanding figure seemed to grow, and in his combined dignity and
grace he looked the part of the splendid commander of men, and the
inspiring crusader of a cause. No man of his time, among all the great orators
of that golden age, could so hold an audience literally spell-bound, Prentiss
alone approaching him.
In personal intercourse, no politician ever possessed more of the
seductive graces. There his magnetism was compelling. When he cared to
put forth all his powers of attraction, no one could withstand his charm.
Webster was godlike and compelled admiration; Clay was human and
commanded love. Calhoun once said of him: “I don’t like Clay. He is a bad
man, an impostor, a creature of wicked schemes. I won’t speak to him, but,
by God, I love him!” His effect on both men and women has been ascribed
to the fact that, masculine and virile though he was, he possessed feminine
qualities that led to a sentimental feeling toward him. Men would follow
him, knowing him to be wrong; stake their political fortunes on him, though

they knew it would mean their own undoing; and women wept over his
defeats and idolized him as a god.
As a political leader he was an opportunist. He often changed his tack to
meet the passing breeze, but with the exception of his Bank reversal nothing
could force him to admit it. As we proceed with the story of the party battles
of the Jackson Administrations, we shall be impressed at times with his
capability for trickery, demagogy, misrepresentation, deliberate
misinterpretation, and dogmatic arrogance with his own friends and
supporters. He brooked no equals. He accepted no rebuke and few
suggestions, and led his party with a high-handedness that would have
wrecked a lesser man.
His personal habits were not the best, and yet they were not of a nature
that greatly shocked his generation. Adams thought him “only half educated”
and was disgusted by the looseness of his public and his private morals.[380]
But Adams was not in harmony with his times. Clay was an inveterate
gambler—but so were a large portion of the public men in the Washington of
the Thirties. And while a heavy drinker, he does not appear to have often
been noticeably under the influence, as was Webster. But these vices never
interfered with his work or diverted him for a moment from the pursuit of his
ambition.
It was a militant figure that strode down the Avenue to the Capitol to lead
the fight, with the stride of an Indian, his well-shaped feet encased in shoes
instead of the boots generally worn at the time, and fastidiously attired as
was his wont—a Henry Clay, in shining armor, his sword shimmering.

II
Five days after Congress convened, the Baltimore Convention nominated
Clay for the high office he long had sought. It had been inevitable from the
hour he rode out of Washington after the inauguration on his way to
Baltimore. During his retirement, his letters of 1829 and 1830 furnish proof
of his candidacy, albeit he carefully conveyed the impression that he was a
little indifferent to the nomination, and more than doubtful of the result of
the election.[381] In a letter to a political follower he early predicted that if
Jackson could unite New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania upon his
candidacy, opposition would be futile.[382] Two months later, Webster
assured him of the support of Massachusetts, but feared that a first

nomination from that State would “only raise the cry of coalition
revived.”[383] And three days after his nomination at Baltimore, Clay had
written of his skepticism of success, with the encouraging comment:
“Something, however, may turn up (and that must be our encouraging hope)
to give a brighter aspect to our affairs.”[384] Thus, when he entered the
Senate we may be sure that it was with the fixed determination that
something should “turn up.” It was his belief, as we have seen, that
Jackson’s election depended upon his ability to carry Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and New York. At the time he entertained no hope of diverting Virginia from
Jackson, but he hoped to carry Pennsylvania or New York, or both. Upon the
former he pinned his faith—and there the tariff was strong, and the National
Bank had its headquarters there, with its ramifications into every section of
the country. His platform had been carefully thought out and thoroughly
discussed in the correspondence of 1829 and 1830. It embraced internal
improvements, a protective tariff, and the rechartering of the Bank. Thus,
when Congress met, the Opposition candidate and his platform were before
the people, and the congressional battles of the session were but heavy
skirmishes preliminary to the battle for the Presidency.
As he looked over the personnel of Congress, Clay must have rejoiced
over his advantage. There, by his side, sat Webster, with all the prestige of
his great name and in all the splendor of his genius. Presiding still over the
deliberations of the Senate was the stern-visaged political philosopher and
sage who had definitely broken with Jackson-Calhoun. It could not have
taken him long to discover, in the young Hercules with the harshly carven
features, the brilliant possibilities of John M. Clayton. And there, harboring a
secret grudge, and suffering acutely from the wounds inflicted on his mentor
in the chair, sat the eloquent Hayne, meditating revenge. In Thomas Ewing
of Ohio, a robust partisan and able debater, he found a fighter after his own
heart. And while they were of the State Rights persuasion, and hostile to the
tariff and internal improvements, he could scarcely have failed to catch in
the eyes of the erudite Tazewell and Tyler of Virginia something of a
promise that was to be fulfilled.
And against him, he saw John Forsyth and Benton, men of character and
power, supported by Felix Grundy and Hugh White, “Ike” Hill and Mahlon
Dickerson of New Jersey.
His was manifestly the advantage in the Senate.

But in the House his advantage was much greater, for among the
members of the Opposition was the most brilliant array of great orators ever
assembled in a single Congress. John Quincy Adams had reëntered public
life as a Representative from Quincy—as full of fire and pepper as ever in
his youth; Edward Everett, the most scholarly and polished orator of his
generation; Rufus Choate, the greatest forensic orator the Republic has
produced; Richard Henry Wilde, who combined the qualities of a graceful
poet, a vigorous debater and eloquent orator, and a sound scholar; Tom
Corwin, the wit and the slashing master of polemics; and greater perhaps
than all, as a congressional orator, the fiery and indomitable George
McDuffie of South Carolina.
And against this combination the best the Administration could do was to
put forth the commonplace plodder James K. Polk, assisted by Churchill C.
Cambreleng of New York.
If Jackson had the advantage of position, Clay had all the prestige of
genius on his side. Thus the two parties faced each other for the battle.

III
A less provocative Message than that with which Jackson opened the
Congress could hardly have been penned. It was conciliatory and in good
taste. But Clay’s voice was for war. It was his determination that something
should “turn up,” if he had to turn it up, for the purposes of the election, and
he had instilled his spirit into his followers. Instantly the gage of battle was
thrown down in the consideration of the nomination of Van Buren as
Minister to England. A pettier piece of party politics is scarcely found in the
history of the Senate. Among all the Opposition Senators, there were
probably none who doubted his capacity or questioned his integrity. With the
Calhoun faction it was personal spite; with Clay, Webster, and Clayton it was
partisan spleen. Six months before, Van Buren had ridden out of Washington
with Jackson by his side, and had sailed for England. In London he was at
once received into the most brilliant society. He became an intimate of the
Duke of Wellington, and Talleyrand, Ambassador from France, cultivated
him, while Rogers, the poet, entertained him frequently at his famous
breakfasts. He had been charged with an important mission—nothing less
than the negotiation of an agreement that would prevent the recurrence of the
causes of estrangement between the two peoples growing out of the
occurrences incidental to England’s participation in European wars.[385]

Welcomed to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, cultivated by the most
powerful of English statesmen, with the prestige in London of having
adjusted, while in the State Department, the long-standing differences
relative to the West Indian trade, he was in position to achieve triumphs for
his country when his nomination was sent to the Senate.
And there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun eagerly awaited its coming. They
had been busily engaged for weeks in preparing the attack. Each drew all his
particular friends into the conspiracy, many of them entering reluctantly
rather than incur their displeasure. The charges against Van Buren were
transparently political. The Calhoun faction were prepared to contend that he
had engineered the quarrel of the President and the Vice-President and had
disrupted the Cabinet. Clay’s special point was to be that he had introduced
the policy of proscription, destined to destroy American institutions, and he
was to join with Webster in viciously assailing him for his instructions to our
Minister to England in the negotiations on the West Indian trade.
The latter reason for refusing to confirm the nomination of Van Buren
was the only one that rose to the dignity of a pretense. For some time the
United States had been negotiating with London for the opening of trade in
American vessels between this country and the British possessions, but
without success. During the preceding Administration, while Clay was
Secretary of State, extravagant claims were advanced by the American
Government, and, by angering England, had only served to make a
settlement more remote. When Van Buren became Secretary of State, and
McLane was sent to London, he was charged with the duty of reopening
negotiations, and was given certain instructions for his guidance. Among
these was the abandonment of the untenable claims of Clay, and the
concession of the British point of view upon them. This was denounced as a
weakness and a surrender, and as an intentional reflection upon the previous
Administration for party purposes. As a matter of record, the instructions
furnished McLane by Van Buren were predicated upon the report submitted
to Clay, after the failure of the preceding negotiations, by Albert Gallatin, the
Minister to England under Adams.[386] It consequently follows that when
Clay, thoroughly familiar with his own Minister’s report to him, and with the
fact that Van Buren had merely followed it in his preparation of the
instructions, vehemently denounced the latter for deliberately and
maliciously reflecting upon the previous Administration, he was tricking the
Senate and the country. He, at least, knew better. And the mere fact that

McLane was further instructed to stress the fact that the preceding
Administration had been repudiated by the people at the polls, and the new
régime should not be held accountable for the mistakes of the old, while in
doubtful taste, was scarcely an offense so heinous as to justify the proposed
humiliation of Van Buren.[387] The other charges had less substance. It has
never been convincingly shown that Van Buren had any part in engineering
the quarrel between Jackson and Calhoun, and years after retiring from the
Presidency, Jackson solemnly exonerated him from any complicity.[388]
Equally unproved, and unprovable, was the claim that he had precipitated
the Cabinet crisis, and the charge that he had introduced the policy of
proscription might well have emanated from some one other than Clay.
The clear intent of the conspiracy was to destroy Van Buren and his
prospects for the Presidency.
When the nomination reached the Senate, nothing was done for five
weeks. Meanwhile the leaders of the conspiracy were carefully preparing
their speeches for publication and wide distribution. On the submission of
the report, the venom behind the remarkable procrastination was revealed in
a resolution, entrusted to one of the lesser lights,[389] to recommit the
nomination with instructions to investigate the disruption of the Cabinet and
whether Van Buren had “participated in any practices disreputable to the
national character.” This, offered as a weak contribution to the attempt to
blacken Van Buren’s reputation, having served its purpose, was withdrawn
without action. Then the orators began. One after another, with a cheap
simulation of sorrowful regret over the necessity of injuring an amiable man,
poured forth his protest against the nomination. Clay, of course, made a
slashing onslaught. Webster confined himself to attacking the victim because
of his instructions to McLane. Clayton and Ewing, Hayne and seven others
recited their elaborately prepared partisan harangues under the approving
eye of Calhoun in the chair.
The principal reply, and only four were made, was that of Senator John
Forsyth, the accomplished floor leader of the Administration, and one of the
most eloquent and resourceful of men. He vigorously protested against a
partisan crucifixion, and sarcastically commended the fine public spirit of
Senators who could voluntarily bring such distress upon themselves to serve
the public good. This fling went home to many. Hayne, in later years,
admitted that he had spoken and voted against his judgment at the behest of
party,[390] and John Tyler, who was incapable of a pose, voted for the

confirmation, “not that I liked the man overmuch,” but because he could find
no principle to justify his rejection, and did not care to join “the notoriously
factious opposition ... who oppose everything favored by the
Administration.”[391] Indeed, the cooler and wiser heads among the enemies
of the Administration considered the attack a serious political blunder.
Adams, on learning of the plan, warned that “to reject the nomination would
bring him [Van Buren] back with increased power to do mischief here.”[392]
And Thurlow Weed, of the “Albany Journal,” uncannily wise and prophetic,
sounded a solemn warning through his editorial columns that such
persecution of Van Buren “would change the complexion of his prospects
from despair to hope.” The plan persisted in, and “he would return home as a
persecuted man, and throw himself upon the sympathy of the party, be
nominated for Vice-President, and huzzahed into office at the heels of
General Jackson.”[393]
This was the view of Kendall and Blair, and of Benton, who refused to
participate in the Senate debate. The latter felt that, though “rejection was a
bitter medicine, there was health at the bottom of the draught.” He alone
among the senatorial friends of the rejected Minister appears to have had the
prescience to appreciate the ultimate advantage. To one Senator, rejoicing
over the rejection, he turned with triumphant mien: “You have broken a
Minister and made a Vice-President.” But the enemies of the Administration
and of the victim were jubilant. “It will kill him, sir, kill him dead; he will
never kick, sir, never kick,” exclaimed Calhoun in the presence of “Old
Bullion.”[394] And there was an immediate reaction. Instead of killing, it
made Van Buren. He instantly became a party martyr, and idol.
On the evening of the day the news of his rejection reached London, Van
Buren appeared at a party at Talleyrand’s, smiling, suave, undisturbed, as
though he had scored a triumph. It was probably on that day that he heard
from Benton, urging that he hold himself free for the Vice-Presidency.
The speeches of Clay, Webster, Hayne, and Clayton were published, the
veil of secrecy having been lifted from the executive session for this party
purpose, and the effect was wholly different from that expected. It had been
the part of Kendall and Blair to see to that. While the Senators were talking,
they had been busy with their pens, and when the action was taken the
Democratic press furiously denounced the rejection, the rank and file of the
party rose en masse to proclaim the victim a martyr, mass meetings were
called in New York, Philadelphia, and Albany to arraign the Senate, and the

Democratic members of the New York Legislature sent the President a letter
of condolence. The Legislature of New Jersey declared that after its favorite
son, Senator Dickerson, its choice for Vice-President would be the martyr.
And Isaac Hill took the stump in New Hampshire to denounce Webster as
disloyal to friendship and as a sniveling hypocrite.[395]
But the success of the conspiracy acted upon Clay like the taste of blood
on a tiger, and with an insinuative reference to Livingston’s indebtedness to
the Government, which he knew had been discharged to the penny, he would
have applied the political proscription of the Whigs to the philosopher in the
State Department but for the indignant protest of Dallas. Thus the character
of the fight to be waged against the Administration was clearly revealed
within a month after Clay’s return to public life.

IV
The first month, too, witnessed an assault on the most vulnerable point of the
Administration lines, and an open invitation to Calhoun and the Nullifiers to
join their political fortunes with the party of Clay. Both the attack and the
invitation came from John M. Clayton, who was almost to rival Clay in the
leadership of the Whigs, and to surpass him in some of the qualities of
leadership. When he entered the Senate practically unknown, he was the
youngest member of that body, but there was enough in his physical
appearance and bearing to set him out in any group as one destined to
command. Over six feet in height, his figure well filled out; of clear
complexion, with large gray eyes of intellectual power, and an enormous,
superbly shaped head, he looked both the physical and mental giant. It only
required the personal contact to attract men to him as steel shavings are
attracted to the magnet. His manner was easy and graceful, his disposition
kindly and benevolent, his wit keen, his conversational powers far beyond
the average. With a remarkable memory and an unusual gift for analysis, he
entered the Senate well equipped in a thorough knowledge of literature and
history. He had great talents and just fell short of genius. As an orator, he
was logical, forceful, at times dramatic and eloquent. Hating the
Jacksonians, he surveyed the field for an opportunity to attack, and he found
it in the Post-Office Department.
One of Jackson’s most unfortunate appointments had been that of Barry
as Postmaster-General. A genial and likable politician, a loyal friend, an
ardent champion of the President, and, personally, a man of undoubted

integrity, he was pitifully lacking in business ability, in a capacity for
organization, and was all too credulous of his subordinates. Within two years
after Jackson’s inauguration, the politicians knew that his department offered
a rich field for investigation. Knowing this, Clayton introduced his
celebrated resolution inquiring into its abuses. That the Administration
circles were not at all satisfied that nothing could be uncovered is evident in
the excitement the resolution caused, and every effort was made by
Administration Senators to block it. In his initial speech in support of his
resolution, Clayton sounded the keynote of the Whig campaign against the
prescriptive policies of Jackson, but more significant still was his appeal, the
first openly made, to Calhoun, to join with the followers of Clay in a
concerted assault upon the Administration.
While the young Senator from Delaware was speaking, Calhoun sat in the
chair of the presiding officer. Turning in his direction, Clayton made the first
bold bid for his support of the party Opposition.
“But it will be seen,” he said, “whether there be not one man in this
nation to breast its [Administration’s] terrors whenever the President hurls
his thunders. There are hawks abroad, sir. Rumor alleges that that plundering
falcon has recently swooped upon a full-fledged eagle that never yet flinched
from a contest, and, as might be naturally expected, all await the result with
intense interest. It is given out that the intended victim of proscription now is
one distinguished far above all in office for the vigor and splendor of his
intellect.... But if that integrity and fairness which have heretofore
characterized him through life do not desert him in this hour of greatest peril,
we may yet live to see one, who has been marked out as a victim, escape
unscathed even by that power which has thus far prostrated alike the barriers
of public law and the sanctity of private reputation.”
The appeal was entirely unnecessary, if not intended merely as a public
tribute to a newly acquired ally, for Calhoun and his friends were already
hostile to the Administration. It is historically interesting only in that it
shows the cleverness of the National Republicans, soon to adopt the name of
Whigs, in undertaking to coalesce with all elements of the Opposition, no
matter how divergent, or even inconsistent, the causes leading to the
disaffection.
Thus, within a few weeks after the assumption of the leadership by Clay,
we find Jackson’s favorite humiliated by the rejection of his nomination;
another wantonly insulted by the questioning of his personal integrity; a

movement launched to blacken the Administration through an investigation
of its most vulnerable department; and a plan conceived for the
consummation of an unholy alliance of incongruous elements.

V
Meanwhile Clay, devoted to the protective tariff policy, anxious to save it
from crucifixion by consent, and with a political eye on the political effect of
his championship in Pennsylvania, without which he thought Jackson’s
reëlection impossible, had been busy formulating a new tariff which was to
create more party clashes.
Within a month after Congress met, he called a meeting of the friends of
the protective tariff to determine plans for party action. The then existing
“tariff of abominations”[396] was doomed by public opinion. Two months
before he wrote a friend acknowledging a revision inevitable, and
announcing plans for one not compromising to the protective principle.[397]
The conference called by Clay met at the home of Edward Everett,
Representative from Boston, with the presidential nominee himself
presiding. He summoned his friends, not to consult, but to take orders. He
disclosed his plan—a repeal of all duties on tea, coffee, spices, indigo, and
similar articles, and thereby reduce the revenue as much as seven millions
that year without interfering with the prevailing duties that had been
imposed for protective purposes. Jackson intended to destroy the protective
system through the accumulation of revenue. It was the duty of its friends to
save it through the reductions proposed.
If we may accept Adams as a faithful reporter, Clay’s manner was
“exceedingly peremptory and dogmatical.” Various questions, indicative of
doubt, were asked. Everett, mindful of the ominous protest of the South,
thought the plan might be interpreted as “setting the South at defiance.”
Adams, who had a mind of his own, reported that the Committee on
Manufactures in the House, of which he was chairman, was “already
committed upon the principle that the reduction of the duties should be
prospective, and not to commence until after the extinguishment of the
public debt”; and he suggested that the Clay plan would be, not only “a
defiance of the South, but of the President and the Administration.” The
spirit of Clay is well disclosed in his none too gracious reply that “to
preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American System, he would defy the
South, the President, and the Devil; that if the Committee on Manufactures

had committed themselves ... they had given a very foolish and improvident
pledge; and that there was no necessity for the payment of the debt by the
4th of March, 1833.”
This led to some debate between the former President and his premier,
with Adams insisting that Jackson’s desire to extinguish the debt should be
“indulged and not opposed,” and that the President’s idea “would take
greatly with the people.” This view piqued and mortified Clay, who had
found all the party leaders in the conference becomingly obsequious with the
exception of Adams. That Adams was equally disgusted we may gather from
his description of Clay’s manner as “super-presidential,” and from the
following entry in his journal: “Clay’s motives are obvious. He sees, that
next November, at the choice of presidential electors, the great and
irresistible electioneering cry will be the extinguishment of the public debt.
By instant repeal of the duties he wants to withdraw seven or eight millions
from the Treasury and make it impossible to extinguish it by the 3rd of
March, 1833. It is an electioneering movement, and this was the secret of
these movements, as well as of the desperate efforts to take the whole
business of the reduction of the tariff into his own hands.”[398] The
Democratic opinion that Clay was partly actuated by a petty partisan desire
to deprive the Administration of the credit for wiping out the national debt,
corroborated as it is by Adams, is plausible enough. At the same time, it was
manifestly Clay’s purpose to rally the protected industries to his standard in
the presidential campaign.
Meanwhile the lobbyists of the protected interests, flocking to the capital,
crowded the rotunda every morning, mixing with the statesmen. Here, at the
time, was the Republic in miniature—lobbyists, statesmen, correspondents,
and plebeians mingling in a common arena, with the visiting tourists ranged
about to view the celebrities in their moments of conversational unbending.
[399] Clay made the presentation of his plan the opportunity for his first
political speech of his campaign. The Senate was crowded to hear him. It
was not enough that he should acknowledge the approach of the
extinguishment of the public debt, and base his argument for the reduction of
duties upon that fact. The possibility of the passing of the debt during the
Administration of Jackson was clearly annoying, and he attempted,
laboriously, and at considerable length, to deprive it of any credit. The plan
of the Administration to reduce no duties on unprotected articles previous to
March, 1833, and to make a gradual and prospective reduction on protected

articles, he denounced as a scheme to “destroy the protecting system by a
slow but certain poison.” There was nothing remarkable in his first speech
except its affectation of modesty, and his reference to old age and declining
power.
But he was soon to find the incentive for his greatest speech upon the
tariff. Hayne attacked the protective system with all the vigor and venom of
a Nullificationist in the making; and Clay replied in the brilliant fighting
protectionist speech which ranks as one of the masterful efforts of his life,
and was to be used as a textbook for the advocates of the system for fifty
years. Read even to-day, after the lapse of almost a century, it has a familiar
sound, and transmits its pulsations from the printed page as though the
reader felt the heartbeat of the orator.
Among the Southerners in the Senate, this speech created the greatest
excitement and the gravest forebodings, with John Tyler assailing both the
principle of protection and the method of framing bills under the principle.
But the most significant note struck by Tyler was the warning that the
continuance of the protective policy would inevitably lead to the disruption
of the Union. The speeches of both Clay and Tyler were sent broadcast over
the country. That of the former delighted protectionists and impressed all.
Harrison Gray Otis wrote enthusiastically from Boston, but both James
Madison and James Barbour gently questioned the taste of the partisan
attack on Albert Gallatin as a “foreigner.”[400] Highly complimentary letters
were received by Tyler from John Marshall and James Madison, both of
whom favored the reduction of the tariff.[401]
And throughout it all, Clay found himself unable to maneuver Jackson or
his friends into a position of opposition to the system. Amos Kendall and
Blair had their hopes tied to another issue. They had no thought of
sacrificing the electoral vote of the Keystone State. The leaders of the Senate
opposition to the tariff were Hayne and Tyler, neither of whom was longer
considered as in the confidence of the President. Clay’s speech, widely
distributed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, proved him a champion of
the system, but nothing occurred in the Senate to prove Jackson an enemy.
This was the situation when the real battle was transferred to the House of
Representatives.

VI

Through some trickery or blunder, that portion of the Presidential Message
relating to “relieving the people from unnecessary taxation after the
extinguishment of the public debt,” was referred to the Committee on Ways
and Means a majority of whose members were hostile to the protective
system; and to the Committee on Manufactures was referred that part
concerning “manufactures and the modification of the tariff”—a dual
reference of the same subject to rival committees. At the head of the
Committee on Manufactures was John Quincy Adams—certainly not a
spokesman of the Administration; and the chairman of the Committee on
Ways and Means was George McDuffie of South Carolina, a protégé of
Calhoun, and now an implacable foe of Jackson.
In feverish haste McDuffie, representing the extreme free-trade school,
began the preparation of his report and the formulation of his bill to get in
before the more deliberate Adams. He proceeded independently of the
forthcoming report and tentative Administration measure from Secretary
McLane, such was his precipitation. Adams, more considerate, awaited the
report, in the meanwhile making many morning calls upon the Secretary.[402]
Strangely enough, the former President had favorably impressed many
Southerners by his admission that existing rates were unfair to the South. His
position, as on a more notable occasion later, was unique. Even Jackson was
actively making overtures to him. The ever-convenient Colonel Johnson of
Tecumseh fame, approaching the old Puritan with a suggestion of a
reconciliation, tactfully hinted that he thought the President should make the
first move. The cautious Adams, not at all averse, reminded the emissary that
Jackson had broken, not he; to which Johnson replied that the General had
been poisoned by “scoundrel office-seekers” when he first reached the
capital. Would Adams dine at the White House, if invited? The wily old man
parried with the reminder that such would only be the courtesy customarily
accorded all members. But would Adams dine at the White House with a
small and select company? He would not—and on similar grounds. At the
end of his rope, the anxious Johnson asked Adams for a suggestion, only to
receive the reply that it was a matter for Jackson to decide.[403] The next day
Adams received a note from Johnson to the effect that Jackson had
“expressed great satisfaction” over the conversation and sent his “personal
regards and friendship,” together with the assurance that he was “anxious to
have social and friendly intercourse restored.” Thinking it over, the
suspicious Adams could not but meditate upon the attacks from Clay’s

friends if he should cross the threshold of the White House—and there the
matter appears to have rested finally.[404]
There has never been another character in American history quite like
Adams. His real portrait, self-painted, peers at the world from between the
covers of his monumental diary, in which he communed with himself
unreservedly, and expressed his opinion of men and their motives with brutal
frankness. He was a professional statesman of a high order. Entering upon
diplomatic duties in his youth, he knew the cross-currents of world politics
at an age when most Americans are laboriously projecting themselves into
the politics of their immediate neighborhood. From his earliest years he had
been in contact with great minds, and with men of power and broad vision. A
thorough scholar, he was, at the same time, a man of the world. Conscious of
his ability and his advantages, cold and reserved, and dignified to the point
of frigidity, it is not difficult to understand his supercilious attitude toward
men less favored, and yet placed in lofty station. Inspired by the highest
ideals of public service, holding himself under such rigid discipline as to
have made himself immune to the small vices, placing duty above
friendship, scarcely ever yielding his dignity to mirth, and on those rare
occasions smiling sardonically, he stood upon an isolated peak—of
humanity, and yet separated from it.[405] No one living the monastic life
could have lived more by rule, or have scourged himself more faithfully to
his tasks.
Of friendships, he knew little from experience. Naturally of a suspicious
disposition, he suspected treachery where it was not. Holding to no ordinary
standard of perfection, he could not forgive the imperfections of his fellows.
Even the transcendent genius of Clay could not hide from him the great
man’s lack of education. One searches the pages of his diary in eager quest
of some complimentary references—there are scarcely any. That he bitterly
realized his isolation is clearly disclosed. “I am a man of reserve,” he wrote,
“cold, austere and forbidding manners. My political adversaries say a
gloomy misanthrope; my personal enemies, an unsocial savage. With a
knowledge of the actual defects of my character, I have not had the pliability
to reform it.” That such a man, entertaining such an opinion of his own
merits and the failings of his contemporaries, should have consented to serve
in the lower House of Congress, after having served in the Presidency, can
only mean that he loved his country and sought the opportunity for service.
That it was not to punish his enemies, we shall find on more than one

occasion when he took his stand with the Administration of the man who
displaced him. Not least among the merits of Adams was his capacity to
work in serious coöperation with McLane in the moulding of the tariff of
1832.
Quite a different type, and in some respects a greater genius, was George
McDuffie. His career was a mingling of romance and tragedy. A child of
poverty, the protégé of a Calhoun, [406]
he had while yet in college been regarded “as a young man of
extraordinary talents,” albeit at that time “he had not that passionate and
eloquent declamation which he was afterwards to display in Congress.”[407]
After hearing his great speech on the tariff in 1827, Josiah Quincy, who
heard him, described him as “the most sensational orator of the time.”[408] In
the fight against the Panama Mission, Sargent thought him “decidedly the
most violent and aggressive speaker arrayed against the Administration.”[409]
His passionate and impulsive nature frequently led to personal encounters;
and in reaching an understanding of his irritable and sour disposition, it is
profitable to know that just before entering Congress he had been wounded
in the spine in a duel, and never afterwards knew a day free from personal
discomfort. This wound, which ultimately killed him, changed a good-
tempered and jovial man into the irritable, morose, and nervous creature
known to history.[410] The indifference of the protectionists to the interests of
the South, and the intemperate attacks of the abolitionists upon the Southern
people, acted upon the diseased genius as an irritant and drove him to
extremes. Even so, he rejected Nullification as a remedy, and insisted that
the sole recourse of the Southerners was revolution.[411] Intellectually
honest, morally clean, physically ailing, he put such of himself as he cared
for the world to see into his public acts. He withdrew into himself—taciturn,
lonely. “A spare, grim looking man, who was an admirer of Milton, and who
was never known to smile or jest,” as Perley Poore describes him.[412] His
health gone, his life uncertain, an idolized wife taken from him within a
year, his leader’s aspirations wrecked, his section threatened, it is not strange
that he poured forth on Andrew Jackson such torrents of eloquent
vituperation.

VII
Standing not on ceremony, McDuffie hastened to report a bill, accompanied
by an elaborate report in the nature of an indictment of the protective system,

which “ought to be abandoned with all convenient and practical despatch,
upon every principle of justice, patriotism and sound policy.” The bill
provided an immediate reduction of duties on all articles except iron, steel,
salt, cotton-bagging, hemp and flax, and on everything made of cotton, wool,
and iron, to a basis of twenty-five per cent ad valorem. On the excepted
articles the reduction was to be gradual, tumbling to twenty-five per cent at
once, to eighteen and three quarters per cent on June 30, 1833, and to twelve
and a half per cent one year later.
With Adams still laboring on his bill, McDuffie called his up with a
slashing speech. This prodigiously long philippic was historical in that it
tended to force the issue of Nullification a little earlier than its sponsors had
planned.
In the meanwhile the Administration measure, with McLane’s report, had
been submitted, providing for the repeal of the existing tariff after March 3,
1833, and the reduction of the revenue to the financial requirements of the
Government. This contemplated the reduction of the revenue to $12,000,000
a year, and the arrangement of the rates so as sufficiently to protect the great
interests involved.
Using the Administration measure as a basis, Adams thereupon prepared
his bill and report. In his statement the patriotic statesman, indifferent to the
clamor of party, or class, or section, shines forth luminously. It may have
been unnecessary to expose the protectionist’s fallacy that raising the duties
lowers the price of the domestic product; equally unnecessary to warn the
Southerners that a persistence in their course would lead to appalling
consequences, but he made these points. In presenting his bill, Adams
frankly explained that it was based on the Administration measure, with
some changes as to details.
With the Adams bill before it, the House made short shrift of the
McDuffie measure. The protectionists were in despair. The Legislatures of
Pennsylvania and Connecticut passed condemnatory resolutions, and mass
meetings were held protesting against reductions. An unsuccessful attempt
was made to substitute the Clay Senate plan. And yet Clay himself was fairly
well satisfied, and on its passage in the House wrote that “with some
alterations it will be a very good measure of protection.”[413] At the time he
wrote, however, he was convinced that the alterations would be made in the
Senate and accepted by the House, and upon the failure of these plans to
materialize hangs another story of politics.

The Senate lost no time making amendments, and as it was now July,
with all anxious to adjourn, no time was wasted on unnecessary speeches,
and the amendments, which were numerous, were hurried through. In a few
instances, not many, the protectionists lost, but on the whole theirs was the
victory when the bill went back to the House. There a few of the Senate
amendments were accepted, but the majority were rejected and the bill was
thrown into conference.
And here enters one of the comedy-tragedies of politics. Calhoun was
absent, Tazewell in the chair, when the measure was returned to the Senate.
The motion for a conference carried. And then it was, in the naming of the
Senate conferees, that Tazewell either made a blunder or turned a trick.
Hayne, named as the minority member, was expected to act badly, but the
protectionists pinned implicit faith in Wilkins of Pennsylvania and
Dickerson of New Jersey, the former a business man, manufacturer, banker
from a protectionist State, the latter with a powerful protectionist
constituency. Unhappily the friends of the Senate bill did not attach
sufficient importance to the candidacy of both men for the Vice-Presidential
nomination with Jackson—to the pull of personal ambition. Whatever their
special motives in surrendering to the conferees of the House, they gave only
a perfunctory support to the Senate amendments and capitulated.
The amazement and indignation of Clay and his followers were
unbounded. Clay sharply cross-examined Wilkins and Dickerson upon the
proceedings in the conference, and then had to content himself by joining
Webster in a warm denunciation of the surrender. There was nothing to be
done, however, but for the Senate to recede, and the bill was passed and
promptly signed by Jackson.
Thus the tariff battle on which Clay relied to strengthen him in the pre-
presidential contest was practically barren of party significance. By no
sophistry or reasoning could the protectionist States of Pennsylvania and
New York be turned against Jackson, who had promptly signed the bill that
Adams had sponsored, and which had been supported by such
Administration Democrats as Isaac Hill, Dickerson, Marcy, Wilkins, Grundy,
White, and Benton.
The tariff issue was dead before the campaign was fairly begun.

VIII

If Clay had failed to embarrass the Administration on the tariff, the keen
Jacksonian politicians were to be more successful in embarrassing Clay on
the land question. This was a peculiarly delicate subject for Clay to touch in
the midst of the campaign. In the Southern and Western States more than
1,090,000,000 acres remained the property of the National Government—a
vast empire. The proceeds from the sale of these lands had been originally
dedicated to the payment of the national debt; and now with the
extinguishment of the debt in sight, all manner of schemes were advanced as
to the future disposition of the lands and the proceeds. For a number of years
Benton, with characteristic tenacity, had been urging his plan of graduated
prices, with free grants to actual settlers, and he had won Jackson over to his
theory with Edmund Burke’s proposition, advanced in his speech on the
disposition of the crown lands in England, that the principal revenue to be
had from uncultivated tracts “springs from the improvement of the
population of the kingdom.” The sturdy Missourian looked with repugnance
upon the idea of considering these uncultivated acres as sources of revenue,
rather than as an opportunity for settlers, and he gradually converted the
Democratic Party to his point of view.
To make matters all the more embarrassing to Clay, his party had been
placed in the position of deliberately withholding this vast domain from the
axe of the pioneer and the spade of the cultivator, in the interest of the
manufacturers of the East. This had resulted from the unfortunate wording of
an official report of Richard Rush, a colleague of Clay’s in the Cabinet of
Adams, in which he had lamented the preference of the American people for
agricultural over manufacturing pursuits. The report had been referred to
Clay whose practiced political eye instantly saw the possibilities in the
perversion or exaggeration of the meaning of these paragraphs, and he had
fruitlessly urged their elimination. The Democrats were quick to grasp their
opportunity. The protectionists, Clay and his friends, planned that the
National Government should, by holding on to the lands, retard their
settlement by maintaining prices prohibitive to the settler; they proposed to
maintain a large labor market in the industrial labor centers of the East
where competition would be keen enough to keep down wages. For the sake
of the protected interests, they were ready to sacrifice the opportunities of
the poor of the Eastern cities and make them the galley slaves of the
factories; retard the development of the West, and immolate the national
interest on the altar of greed. And there was just enough truth in these

charges, rather luridly put forth, to make them exceedingly dangerous in a
presidential year.
The issue had been accentuated by the suggestion of McLane, Secretary
of the Treasury, that the public lands should be sold to the States in which
they were located, and the proceeds apportioned among all the States in the
Union. This, naturally enough, made an instant appeal to the States most
intimately concerned, and six of the new Commonwealths hastened to
petition Congress for the cession. This brought the subject before the Senate,
and in the spring of 1832 two motions were submitted, one to inquire into
the wisdom of reducing the price of the public lands, the other into the
expediency of the McLane proposition.
And it was at this juncture that the Jacksonians turned the trick on Clay
and forced him into the open as an aggressive enemy of the wishes of the
new States. With a regular Senate Committee on Public Lands, composed of
men intimately acquainted with the subject, the amazing motion was made
and carried that the matter be referred to the Committee on Manufactures of
which Clay was chairman. The friends of the candidate bitterly protested
against the reference; and Clay himself “protested,” “entreated,” and
“implored” that the reference be changed to the Committee on Public Lands.
“I felt,” he said later, “that the design was to place in my hands a many-
edged instrument which I could not touch without being wounded.”[414]
Unable to extricate himself from the embarrassment, Clay set to work,
and in a short time submitted a report, accompanied by a bill, providing
against the reduction of the price of the land, but for granting to Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi twelve and a half per
cent of the proceeds from the sale of lands within their borders, to be applied
to the purposes of education and internal improvements. This, of course, was
a frank attempt to prevent the resentment of the people of these States from
asserting itself at the polls. The remainder of the proceeds was then to be
apportioned to the remaining States, according to their population, to be used
for the schools, internal improvements, and negro colonization. The act was
to remain in force for five years, provided no war intervened, in which event
all the proceeds were to be used in defraying the expenses of the conflict. In
this way Clay attempted to maintain the existing economic conditions while
satisfying the new States whose electoral votes he sought.
If the political intent of the reference to Clay’s committee had been in the
least open to doubt, all such was removed by the action of the Senate in

thereupon ordering the matter referred to the Committee on Public Lands.
Again Clay vehemently protested. He had not wanted to report upon the
subject. He had protested against the reference. But the reference having
been made, and the report submitted, he protested anew against the
reflection upon his committee implied by the new reference.
At the head of the Committee on Public Lands was Senator King of
Alabama, but Clay was right in ascribing the authorship of the report, soon
to be submitted, to Thomas H. Benton.[415] This report vigorously assailed
the reasoning and conclusions of Clay; attacked the disposition to look upon
the public lands as useful primarily for revenue and secondarily for
settlement, and reversed the order; and deprecated the suggestion of the use
of the money to be distributed among the States for the colonization of the
negroes as calculated to “light up the fires of the extinguished conflagration
which lately blazed on the Missouri question.” It favored the reduction of the
price of land to one dollar per acre during the next five years; then to fifty
cents, with fifteen per cent of the proceeds to be apportioned among the
States. Whatever may have been the objections to the Democratic plan, it
gave promise of an earlier redemption of the wilderness by the cultivation of
man, and the more speedy enhancement of the land of the pioneers already
in possession.
Keenly appreciative of the purpose of his enemies, Clay delivered a long
and powerful speech, his second campaign speech in the Senate, plausibly
defending his position, explaining Rush’s meaning, and attempting to divert
the greed of the new States into a different channel. That he made a profound
impression may be properly assumed from the fact that the bill passed the
Senate, although it was checked by a hostile House.
Thus his friends flattered themselves that he had scored a triumph and
outwitted his foes. The old school politicians still gauged public opinion by
the roll-calls of the Congress. The new school, which came in with Jackson,
were least of all concerned with the views of the politicians at the capital.
They were interesting themselves with the plain voters, and were devising
means for reaching these in the campaign to follow. They had sensed the
feelings and the prejudices and suspicions of the pioneers of the new States.
They were an agricultural people and easily inflamed by the suggestion that
their interests were to be subordinated or sacrificed to the interests of the
Eastern industrial centers. They wanted the speedy felling of the forests, the
cultivation of the fields, the building of homes and schools and churches,

and the Benton plan of reduced prices and preemption for actual settlers
appealed to them as in harmony with their desires.
And thus, while the friends of Clay were rejoicing in what they conceived
to be the unanswerable logic of the Clay report, the politicians of the Kitchen
Cabinet, Kendall and Blair, were rejoicing in having, in documentary form,
the proof that Clay and the protectionists were hostile to the wishes of the
new States. Amos Kendall knew that “free trade and free lands” was a
shibboleth that these pioneers could understand. And while Clay, Webster,
and Clayton were rejoicing over the passage of the bill in the Senate,
Kendall and Blair were joyously arranging to spread the story of that
triumph to the voters of the new States. After all, they had succeeded in their
purpose. They had a Clay and a Jackson report to hold side by side, and the
event disclosed that the politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet were wiser than
the politicians of the Senate house.

CHAPTER VIII

CLAY FINDS HIS ISSUE

I
During the early days of the Jackson régime, a remarkable and little
remembered figure passed furtively in and out of the closet of the President,
playing a quiet, but none the less effective, part in the moulding of policies.
This was none other than James A. Hamilton, son of the creator of the
National Bank. Then a trusted brave of the tribe of Tammany, the reflector of
Van Buren, the supporter of Jackson, he had fought the Federalist machine of
New York, been made acting Secretary of State by the President pending the
arrival of Van Buren, and later been appointed District Attorney of New
York. For several years on the eve of portentous events he glided into the
capital. That the son of Alexander Hamilton should have had such intimate
relations with the President who denounced what he thought to be the
persecution of Aaron Burr, is one of the mysteries of history.
When the first Jackson Message was under consideration, Hamilton, in
response to the requests of Van Buren, Lewis, and others, reached
Washington to confer with Jackson. He hastened to Van Buren, who was no
doubt prolific of suggestions; thence to the White House to be cordially
received. The following morning he breakfasted with the President, who
urged him to remain at the White House while revising the Message. In
going over the draft, which he found the “work of different hands,” he was
surprised to find that “the Bank of the United States was attacked at great
length in a loose, newspaper slashing style.” He found much to do. It was
four o’clock in the morning when Jackson, hearing some one tinkering with
the fire in the grate, entered Hamilton’s room in his nightgown.
“My dear Colonel, why are you up so late?” he asked.
“I am at my work which I intend to finish before I sleep,” Hamilton
replied.
At which the mulatto who slept on a rug in Jackson’s room was sent in to
keep Hamilton’s fire going. At eight in the morning the latter appeared in the
President’s room to report the completion of his task.

“What did you say about the Bank?” Jackson asked instantly.
“Very little.”
And the son of Alexander Hamilton read the brief paragraph challenging
the constitutionality and the expediency of the Bank his father had created,
and declaring that it had “failed in the great end of establishing a uniform
and sound currency.”
“Do you think that is all I ought to say?” asked Jackson.
“I think you ought to say nothing about the Bank at present,” was the
response.
“Oh, but, my friend, I am pledged against the Bank, but if you think that
is enough, so let it be.”[416]
Some students of the period are prone to ascribe Jackson’s hostility to the
Bank to a personal grievance of Isaac Hill. The flimsy assumption that the
President’s Bank policy was born of the quarrel of the Concord editor with
Biddle, because of the retention in the presidency of the Portsmouth branch
of Jeremiah Mason, is unimpressive. Equally absurd to deny that the Mason
incident played no part. According to some, Hill, in his attempt to force the
removal of Mason, was wholly actuated by a desire to get political control of
the institution; to others, to the inability of the editor-politician to get a loan.
The truth is that the hostility to Mason was not confined to politicians, but
was shared by many of the merchants of New Hampshire. This hostility was
due to Mason’s austere action, on discovering that some bad loans had been
made on speculative ventures, in exacting hard terms of the local merchants.
The petition sent to Biddle by Hill contained the names of sixty members of
the legislature, and most of the business men of Portsmouth, of both parties.
[417] The president of the Portsmouth branch was a great lawyer, a statesman
of reputation, an orator of power, and a partisan as bitter and intolerant as
ever breathed the proscriptive air of New Hampshire. In the correspondence
which followed between Secretary Ingham, who is said to have had a
personal grievance,[418] and Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank, who
has been variously described according to the bias of the writer, was
unquestionably flippant and intolerant of suggestions from the
Administration. While his position in the Mason incident can be justified, he
was unnecessarily arrogant and tactless; but quickly realizing his mistake, he
thereafter changed his tone, and throughout the summer and autumn of 1829
made every effort to conciliate the President. His letters of this period to the

heads of the various branches insisting that the Bank be kept out of politics
smack of sincerity.[419] But the harm had been done, and there is every
reason to conclude that Amos Kendall was deeply concerned in the
President’s decision to attack the Bank in his first Message. Certain it is that
a letter from Kendall to Noah in November led the “New York Courier and
Enquirer” to launch its editorial campaign against the institution. This letter,
announcing the presidential decision to attack in his first Message, and
presenting an argument in support of the position he was to assume, was sent
by Noah to the newspaper, and “a portion of Amos Kendall’s letter, with a
head and tail put to it ... was published as an editorial the next morning”; and
this “was the first savage attack on the United States Bank” in the columns
of that paper.[420] And almost immediately afterwards James Gordon
Bennett, writing for the “Courier and Enquirer,” began a series of powerful
articles in support of the policy of that journal.[421]
Indeed, if an explanation for Jackson’s position must be sought in the
Kitchen Cabinet, it would be more profitable to seek it in the principles of
Amos Kendall, who had written against the Bank long before he had met the
President, and while still on friendly terms with Clay. Others of Jackson’s
intimates were equally hostile. The views of Benton had been urged for
years; and Hugh L. White, Senator from Tennessee, one of his confidential
advisers in the early days of his Administration, had long distrusted the
institution as tending to extravagant speculation, and as threatening the
liberties of the people through its increasing influence in elections.[422] But
Jackson himself needed no propagandists at his elbow. He had been
prejudiced against the Bank for twenty years by Clay’s slashing speech
against it when the first Bank applied for a recharter.[423]
In his Message of December, 1830, Jackson dismissed the Bank in a
paragraph, clearly indicative of unfriendliness; and in December, 1831, he
scarcely mentioned it at all, except to call attention to his previous
statements. But from the moment the first Message was read, Biddle’s
complacency was disturbed. His correspondence during the next two years
shows him active and alert in attempts to conciliate his foe in the White
House. Less than a week after one son of Alexander Hamilton had penned
the first warning of war, Biddle was reading a letter from Alexander
Hamilton, Jr., a brother, assuring him that the die was cast, the war
inevitable, and warning him against the presidential aspirations of Van
Buren, to whose political fortunes his brother was then attached.[424] Biddle

replied that the Bank views of the Message were Jackson’s, honestly held,
and that for the time the Bank’s policy would be one of “abstinence and self-
defense.”[425] “The expressions of the Message were the President’s own,”
he wrote the head of the Washington branch immediately afterward, “ ... and
inserted in opposition to the wishes, if not the advice of all his habitual
counsellors. It is not, therefore, a cabinet measure, nor a party measure, but a
personal measure.”[426] And had he not ample encouragement in the letters
of Major Lewis, a household guest of Jackson’s, recommending the
appointment of certain men to the directorship of the branch in Nashville?
[427] Nevertheless, he was not at all positive that the recharter might not be
made a party measure. Especially concerned with Van Buren’s attitude, he
was being constantly warned against him, but his advices were contradictory.
Within a month he was reassured by one correspondent[428] and alarmed by
Clay, who wrote him from Ashland that, while in Richmond, Van Buren had
entered into a conspiracy with politicians to destroy the Bank.[429] And to
add to the mystic maze of contradictions, Major Lewis wrote, in a
“confidential” note, that the report that Jackson would veto a bill
rechartering the Bank “must be some mistake because the report was at
variance with what I had heard him say upon the subject.”[430] Still another
correspondent[431] informed him that Van Buren had told him that “he
disapproved of that part of the message and was not hostile to the Bank.”
About this time Jackson journeyed to the Hermitage, and Biddle asked a
leading citizen of Nashville to “feel him out.” The banker’s correspondent
entertained the President at his home, and after a confidential chat felt
justified in advising Biddle that he was “well convinced that he will not
interfere with Congress on the subject of the renewing of the charter.”[432]
By this time, however, Biddle had convinced himself that political
expediency would determine the President’s attitude, and in a letter to one of
Jackson’s personal friends he pointed out the disastrous political results to
the Administration if the impression gained ground that it was “unfriendly to
sound currency.” He even graciously indicated the line the next Message
might take to save the Administration from that embarrassment.[433] But
before that suggestion reached its destination, Clay solemnly wrote him that
only a devoted friend of the Bank in the Presidency would make a recharter
possible, and warned him against Van Buren. He was convinced that the
Jacksonian politicians had determined to make the Bank question the issue
in the next campaign. “I have seen many evidences of it,” he wrote. “The

editors of certain papers have received their orders to that effect, and
embrace every occasion to act in conformity with them.”[434] But when
Congress met in December, and Jackson reiterated his views on the Bank,
Biddle was earnestly urged from Washington to meet the issue at once by
applying for a new charter. This advice was finally rejected. Congress, he
wrote, was favorable, “and moreover the President would not reject the bill,”
but many members favorable to the recharter would prefer not to vote that
session. Then, too, time was working the removal of prejudices.[435]
At the beginning of the session, December, 1831, with the charter five
years to run, we are confronted with the mystery of the injection of the issue
at that time. We know, however, that the strain of uncertainty had been
telling on Biddle’s temper. The vultures that play on the political necessities
of corporations were beginning to swoop down upon him. Duff Green, of the
“National Telegraph,” had applied for a $20,000 loan.[436] And mindful of
the importance of propaganda, he had already decided to cultivate the press
by paying it well for the publication of Bank literature.[437] But just before
the opening of the congressional session, his negotiations with McLane and
Livingston of the Cabinet, both friendly to the Bank, had again diverted him
from his disposition to fight. In October the Secretary of the Treasury had sat
in the marble-front building in Philadelphia and told him of confidential
communications with the President. Anxious to keep the Bank question out
of the campaign, Jackson had reluctantly consented, on the importunities of
Livingston and McLane, to omit all references to the Bank in his Message.
Biddle feared it would be a mistake. Would it not be better merely to remind
Congress of his previous comments, and leave the decision “with the
representatives of the people?” The fact that this course was followed is one
of the ironies of history.[438] Hardly had this decision been reached when
Clay wrote from Ashland urging an immediate application for a new charter.
This was a sensational reversal of views. Not only had he previously advised
Biddle differently, but in August, 1830, he had taken strong grounds against
such application so long before the expiration of the existing charter. “I am
not prepared,” he said then, “to say whether the charter ought, or ought not
to be renewed on the expiration of its present term. The question is
premature. I may not be alive to form any opinion on it. It belongs to
posterity. It ought to be indefinitely postponed.”[439] This speech was to be
used with deadly effect by Blair in the “Globe” a little later.[440] Even then,

before reaching Washington, Clay had determined to “turn up” the Bank
charter as an issue.

II
When Congress met, Jackson had concluded to postpone his fight on the
Bank. Three reasons entered into the decision—the friendliness of his
Secretary of the Treasury to the institution, the realization that a majority in
Congress favored the recharter, and the fear that a contest during the session
would throw the tremendous weight of the Bank’s influence against him in
the election. Most of his advisers, including Benton, were anxious to
postpone the contest. Just as Biddle had thought that time would operate to
the advantage of the institution, Benton was confident that it would work to
its detriment, and he wished to strengthen the anti-Bank lines in the Senate
and to have Van Buren in the chair when the contest came. McLane’s
pronouncedly pro-Bank report had deeply embarrassed the President’s
supporters. Creating indignation in some quarters, consternation in others,
Jackson hastened to explain it away in a letter to Hamilton; but just how he
persuaded himself that the views of the report did “not express any
opposition to those entertained by myself,” is not clear.[441]
The Bank supporters had eagerly seized upon the McLane report, and
Webb, of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” now deserting the
Administration on the Bank question, commented glowingly upon its author
and his views. That this was gall and wormwood to Jackson and his
intimates is evident in the correspondence which passed between them. “The
article ... was calculated if Blair had replied, to do McLane irreparable injury
in a political point of view, because it might have brought him and the
President into seeming collision,” wrote Major Lewis to Hamilton.[442] And
all this time, McLane, who was one of Hamilton’s correspondents, was
frankly admitting to the latter that he had “most earnestly urged Mr. Clay not
to attempt to pass a Bank bill at this session, insisting that, if deferred to the
next session, he was satisfied that he could, by that time, induce Jackson to
approve it”; but that Clay had “persisted in the hope, that if the President
approved the bill, he would lose the support of those of his party who had
approved his opposition to the Bank, and a vast many others who approved
of the State Bank system.” Or, on the other hand, “if the President vetoed the
bill, he would lose Pennsylvania and his election.”[443] Thus it is clear

enough, that if Jackson could have determined, the Bank would not have
been an issue in 1832.
But Clay was pressing Biddle, and the latter devoted the whole of
December to feeling his way. “I think they [the Jackson leaders] are desirous
to have the Bank question settled by a renewal before the next presidential
canvass, with any modifications to free the President from the charge of an
entire abandonment of his original opposition,” wrote one who had “seen a
letter from the Private Secretary of the President to a gentleman” in
Louisville.[444] “Last night I had a long conversation with McLane,” wrote
the president of the Washington branch, “and I am authorized by him to say
that it is his deliberate opinion and advice that a renewal of the charter ought
not to be pressed during the present session, in which I concur most
sincerely. The message is as much as you could expect. It shows that the
Chief is wavering. If pressed into a corner immediately, neither McLane nor
myself will answer for the consequences.”[445] From another correspondent
Biddle learned that Barry, Woodbury, and Taney were hostile, being “under
the influence of Blair, Lewis, Kendall & Co. who rule our Chief Magistrate”;
that Blair had written a slashing attack upon the McLane report, which was
only moderated after the Secretary of the Treasury had threatened to resign if
the original were published. “I fear you will yet have trouble with our wise
governors,” he added.[446] A Virginia Congressman urged reasons for an
immediate application. Jackson’s popularity was on the wane, especially in
Congress, and his reëlection notwithstanding being certain, he would have
more prestige in the next Congress. Calhoun, still Vice-President, would be
serviceable among the Bank’s enemies in the South, and McDuffie, a
follower of Calhoun, would be chairman of the House Committee to pass
upon the application.[447]
“My own belief,” wrote the wily Clay, “is that, if now called upon, he
[Jackson] would not negative the bill, but that if he should be reëlected, the
event might and probably would be different.” At any rate, all the friends of
the Bank with whom Clay had conversed “expect the application to be
made.”[448] In corroboration of Clay’s views, Webster wrote that, as a result
of conversations, he had been strongly confirmed in his opinion “that it is
expedient for the Bank to apply for a renewal of the Charter without
delay.”[449]
Confused by such a medley of counsel, Biddle decided to have the
situation studied on the ground. Thomas Cadwalader, a trusted Bank agent,

could be depended upon to leave party considerations out of his survey, and
on Tuesday, the 20th of December, this servitor took up his quarters at
Barnard’s Hotel.[450] The next day found him closeted, first with McLane,
who warned him of a certain veto, and advised him to canvass Congress to
ascertain whether the Bank could muster the two thirds necessary to override
it. A preliminary survey that day was discouraging, and the evening found
the agent again with McLane, who reiterated his plea for a postponement
until after the election. On Thursday the agent met McDuffie, who urged an
immediate application until “staggered” by what Cadwalader had learned of
the probable vote to override the veto. He then advised the Bank to feel its
way cautiously. Friday found him dining with Senator Smith, a Democrat,
who opposed the agitation of the question that session, since it would mean a
Jackson and anti-Jackson vote, and lose the Bank ten votes it could depend
upon the next year.[451] It did not take the sagacious agent long to sense the
selfish political motives of the Clay leaders. “It is evident,” he wrote Biddle,
“that W.’s [Webster’s] opinions are guided, in some degree, by party feelings
—as seems to be the case with most of the Clay men.” In John Quincy
Adams he found a cooler head, and one in whose judgment he had more
confidence. Where Webster had urged that the application be made if “a bare
majority in Congress could be mustered,” Adams favored postponement
“unless a strong vote can be ascertained.” But, thinking the situation over on
Christmas Day, and after another and more favorable canvass of the
available votes, he began to lean toward the Clay opinion. In the case of a
postponement some of the Bank’s friends would be “luke-warm,” Webster
would be “cold or perhaps hostile,” if the Bank bent to the Government
influence. After another conference with McLane, he thought he would
advise the Bank to start the memorial. In this disposition he was confirmed
by a visit on Christmas night from the brother of the Secretary of State, a
Whig and a follower of Clay, who brought the solemn assurance that
Livingston, McLane, and Cass would prevent the veto. The outcome of it all
was that Cadwalader was won over to the Whig plan.[452] The moment the
agent returned to Philadelphia, McLane, assuming the chilly dignity of
resentment, wrote Biddle, restating his position and curtly declaring that he
could not, “as one of the constitutional advisers of the President,” object to
the exercise of his veto power.[453] But three days later, Webster, in a
reassuring note, wrote that the decision to present the memorial was “exactly
right.”[454]

The Whig politicians were determined that the Bank should be dragged
into politics, and they had their way. The desire of Biddle to accept
compromises proposed by McLane were ruthlessly brushed aside by his
political friends. The story of the meeting at which Clay forced the issue is
significant and dramatic. McLane had summoned Biddle to Washington and
submitted a proposition for a recharter which, he contended, would meet
with the approval of the President. After returning to Philadelphia and
consulting with his directors, an agreement was reached to accept the
compromise. Hurrying back to the capital, Biddle conceived the unhappy
notion of first consulting with the political friends of the institution in the
Congress, before calling upon McLane. Fatal error!
An historical political conference was called. There, of course, was
Nicholas Biddle, financial American autocrat of his time, elegant, suave,
polished to scintillation, a lover of literature, a brilliant conversationalist,
with a graceful epistolary style, which was as dangerous to him as loquacity
to a diplomat. He had been schooled in tact while serving as the Secretary of
the American Legation at Paris under Monroe. Clever, unscrupulous,
practicing diplomacy where

N. Biddle

straightforward methods would have served better, he had assiduously
cultivated public men until he had created a bipartisan Bank party in both
branches of the Congress. In his Philadelphia home the great men of his day
partook of his hospitality. Before Jackson reached the Presidency, the
president of the Bank of the United States was in better position to foresee
the proceedings of Congress than the responsible Chief Executive of the
people. Instead of concealing his power, he loved to flaunt it in the face of
authority. “Emperor Nicholas” smiled and bowed blandly to his title.
And there, of course, was Clay, leader of his party, the greatest genius in
the Senate, seemingly destined to the presidential dignity, and for years one
of Biddle’s most trusted friends and advisers. He had been on the pay-roll
of the Bank as its counsel in Kentucky and Ohio.
There, too, was John Sergeant, there by right as chief counsel of the
Bank, but there, too, by right, as Clay’s running mate in the election, for he
had been nominated for Vice-President.
And there sat Webster, upon whose eloquence and wisdom the Bank had
learned to lean. But he sat there that day, less as the champion of the Bank
than as a partisan supporter of Clay and Sergeant.
The compromise proposition was submitted by Biddle, and, after some
pretense at discussion, it was vetoed by Clay and Webster, on the ground
that “the question of a recharter had progressed too far to render any
compromise or change of front expedient.”[455]
A little nonplussed, Biddle and Sergeant retired for further consideration,
and returned to the conference with the politicians in the evening still
convinced that the McLane compromise should be accepted. And it was
then that Clay and Webster, by assuming an injured air, literally
blackmailed their Philadelphia friends into the acceptance of their plan,
asserting their ability at the time to carry the charter through in the face of a
veto, but significantly adding that they would no longer be responsible for
anything that might occur “if in the heat of the contest the Bank,
abandoning its reliable friends, should strike hands with its foe.”[456] Thus it
was neither Jackson nor Biddle that forced the Bank into the campaign of
1832, but Henry Clay, thinking solely in terms of politics and self-interest,
as he saw them.

III
The winter roads between Philadelphia and Washington were ribbons of
mud, cut across by frozen streams. A stagecoach, bumping and splattering
through the mire, struck an obstruction, turned over, and General
Cadwalader, with the Bank’s memorial in his pocket, arose from the wreck
with an injured shoulder that was to delay its presentation to the Congress.
But three weeks after the conference in Washington it was delivered into the
hands of its friends.
In the Senate it was presented by a Democrat, George M. Dallas of
Pennsylvania, acting under strict instructions from the Legislature of his
State, but very much against his personal judgment. In the House it was
entrusted to one who could act with greater spirit, because of venomous
hostility to Jackson—the vehement and picturesque McDuffie.
On the motion of Dallas, a select committee was chosen in the Senate to
consider the memorial, composed of four friends of the Bank and one
enemy. In the House, the fighting began at once. Instead of requesting a
select committee, McDuffie asked a reference to his own Committee on
Ways and Means—packed with friends of the Bank. This was good tactics.
Andrew Stevenson, Speaker of the House, and a Jacksonian Democrat,
could clearly not be entrusted with the selection of a special committee. An
animated debate followed, and the McDuffie motion prevailed by a narrow
margin of ten votes. But that was not to be the end of the matter—not so
long as there was a Jackson in the White House, a Benton in the Senate, and
a Kendall on the side lines. The plan of parliamentary warfare was devised
by the master parliamentarian from Missouri. It contemplated numerous
amendments and elaborate discussion in the Senate; and in the House, an
investigation into the condition and methods of the Bank. Benton
immediately furnished a new member of the House, Clayton, with an
indictment in many counts, some justifiable, and others having nothing
more substantial than gossip behind them. But even these served. The
debate was brisk. James K. Polk led for the Administration in the strongest
speech of his congressional career; and McDuffie, sincerely believing in the
purity of the Bank, and fearing the effect of opposition to an investigation,
making only a perfunctory objection. At the time it was presented, Biddle
was relying for information on Charles Jared Ingersoll, who had been sent
to Washington in an attempt to conciliate Jackson, and was in constant

communication with Livingston and McLane. It is significant of Jackson’s
methods that his Secretary of State authorized Ingersoll to inform Biddle
that the President had nothing to do with the resolution, wished to end the
matter that session, and would sign a rechartering measure if satisfactorily
framed.[457] But the easy capitulation of McDuffie in permitting the passage
of the resolution caused poignant distress in Bank circles. Ingersoll
concluded that the Carolinian preferred to have the tariff debate precede
that on the Bank.[458]
Thus the investigation was ordered. The apologists for the Bank among
historians persist in the fallacy that its enemies had no expectation of
finding anything wrong. This is a remarkable conclusion. Benton
thoroughly expected it. The son of Alexander Hamilton had no doubt of it.
[459] Jackson was serious about it. “The affairs of the Bank I anticipated to
be precisely such as you have intimated,” he wrote to Hamilton. “When
fully disclosed, and the branches looked into it will be seen that its
corrupting influence has been extended everywhere that could add to its
strength and secure its recharter. I wish it may not have extended its
influence over too many members of Congress.”[460]
The committee of investigation submitted three reports. The majority
report charged usury, the issuance of branch bank notes as currency, the
selling of coin, loans to editors, brokers, and members of Congress,
donations to roads and canals, the construction of houses to rent and sell,
and the sale of stock obtained from the Government through special acts of
Congress. The minority report, and that of Adams, who reported separately,
were laudatory of the institution. Nothing was proved. Campaign material
was furnished, and nothing more.
In the midst of the fighting, on May 30th, Nicholas Biddle moved upon
the capital and took personal charge of his forces. He entertained at dinners
at Barnard’s. He daily repaired to the Capitol to meet emergencies. He
conferred freely with Livingston and McLane, hoping through them to
conciliate the President. So positive was he that the investigation, by
proving nothing, had disarmed hostility, that he wrote expansively, on his
arrival, of his willingness to consider with Jackson such modifications as
would satisfy the President.[461] In less than a week he was disillusioned of
the idea of an easy triumph. “It has been a week of hard work, anxiety and
alternating hopes and fears,” he wrote Cadwalader, “but I think that we may
now rely with confidence in a favorable result.”[462] All through June the

battle raged in the Senate, and it was not until July 3d that the “Emperor
Nicholas” was able to write of the passage of the bill by that body, and to
“congratulate our friends most cordially upon their most satisfactory
results.” The victory was achieved by a vote of 28 to 20, with Dallas,
Wilkins, and Poindexter, among the Democrats, voting for the bill. In the
House, the Bank won by a vote of 106 to 84.
“Now for the President,” wrote Biddle. “My belief is that the President
will veto the bill, though that is not generally known or believed.”[463] And
Clay at the same time wrote: “The Bank bill will, I believe, pass the House,
and if Jackson is to be believed, he will veto it.”[464] Thus, at this stage, it is
evident that Biddle had reconciled himself to Clay’s plan of making the fate
of the Bank the issue in the campaign. Among Jackson’s friends there was
no doubt as to his intentions. Both McLane and Livingston had warned the
banker. Three months before, Hamilton had written a friend that, in the
event of its passage, Jackson would promptly veto the measure. “He is open
and determined upon this point. I conferred with him yesterday upon the
subject. I told him what the Opposition avowed as their motive for pushing
the bill at this session. He replied: ‘I will prove to them that I never flinch;
that they were mistaken when they expected to act upon me with such
considerations.’ ”[465]

IV
When the bill reached Jackson, he knew that he could not count on the
unanimous support of his Cabinet on the veto. Livingston, McLane, and
Cass were frankly antagonistic to his purpose, Woodbury was uncertain,
while Barry, always acquiescing in his chief’s policies, scarcely counted.
Among all the men who sat about the table in the Cabinet room, the only
one who heartily sympathized with his intent was Roger Taney. In February,
Ingersoll had found him against the Bank, but Livingston then “hoped to
convert him”; and while the Bank representative had “found him just now
closeted with Kendall,” this was so far from discouraging him that he had
not even despaired of Kendall and Lewis, and felt that he had established “a
good understanding” with Blair of the “Globe.”[466] On the day the bill
reached the White House, Taney was absent from Washington, but he had
gone over the ground thoroughly with the President, and had written him a

letter setting forth reasons why, in the event of the bill’s passage, it should
be vetoed.
On the day of its passage, Martin Van Buren landed in New York, and
the following morning he started for the capital. It was midnight when he
reached Washington, but, in compliance with a letter from Jackson, which
awaited him on landing, he proceeded through the dark streets to the White
House where he was instantly ushered into the President’s room. The grim
old fighter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, his wretched health
clearly denoted in his countenance.[467] But there was the passion of battle
in his blood, and it flashed in his eye as he eagerly grasped the hand of his
favorite, and, retaining it, poured forth the story of the Bank Bill, and
expressed his satisfaction on the arrival of a faithful friend at such a critical
juncture. When Van Buren expressed the hope that he would not hesitate to
veto the bill, Jackson’s face beamed. “It is the only way,” said the Red Fox,
“you can discharge the great duty you owe to the country and yourself.”[468]
By Van Buren, the old man’s gratification was easily understood, for he
knew of the desertion of the greater part of the Cabinet.
There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the
authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called in,
albeit sympathizing heartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to one of
his biographers[469] the ideas were contributed by Livingston, Benton,
Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair, and
Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may safely
accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was inevitable
that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that Taney was
summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During the entire
time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the capital, with the
document open to his inspection, did not have any “direct agency in its
construction.”[470] His enemies at the time, however, insisted that he was a
party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren arrived at the President’s on Sunday,”
a correspondent in Washington wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent
to the Senate his veto on the Bank Bill.”[471] That Major Lewis and Blair
were called in to assist in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be
set down as positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the
Senate was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall.
That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly
strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of the

Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as demagogic
because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against the conversion by
the rich of governmental agencies to their personal ends, and because of its
objections to the foreign stockholders in the Bank of the United States. It
was, of course, a campaign document—intended as such. Jackson
understood perfectly that the presentation of the memorial for a recharter
four years before the expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the
presidential election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew
that Clay was appealing to wealth and power—he appealed to the people.
And his appeal was to the people of the United States.
In this stirring appeal to the prejudices of the people, as well as to their
interests, as the Jacksonians saw it, there was but one real blunder, and that
in phrasing. In discussing the constitutionality of the Bank, Jackson said:
“Each officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he
will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.”
Upon this was to be predicated the assertion that Jackson had announced a
philosophy of chaos, with each petty officer passing upon the
constitutionality of laws, and irrespective and in contempt of the Supreme
Court. The more conservative friends of the President interpreted the words
employed as meaning “that in giving or withholding his assent to the bill for
the recharter of the Bank, it was his right and duty to decide the question of
its constitutionality for himself, uninfluenced by any opinion or judgment
which the Supreme Court had pronounced upon that point, farther than his
judgment was satisfied by the reasons it had given for its decision.”[472] But
there were other expressions in the Message that must have appeared as
little short of appeals to anarchy to the more conservative element. “It is to
be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of
Government to their selfish purposes.” “Every man is equally entitled to
protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and
just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and
exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the powerful more potent,
the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics and laborers—
who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to
themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.”
“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its
abuses.” “Many of our rich have not been content with equal protection and

equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of
Congress.”
Here was a Message striking an entirely new note in American politics,
and not without justification. So completely had the country been under the
domination of the powerful, politically, financially, and socially, previous to
the Jackson régime, that the Message was actually hailed with delight by
the followers of Clay.
“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has all
the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It is really a
manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might have issued to
the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that it will contribute
to relieve the country from the domination of these miserable people.”[473]
The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington Observer,” commented thus: “It
is a mixture of the Demagogue and the Despot, of depravity, desperation
and feelings of malice and vengeance partially smothered. It is the type of
the detested hypocrite, who, cornered at all points, still cannot abandon
entirely his habitual artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked,
in a tone of defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will
I.’ ”[474] So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology
of the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the
Message at its own expense!
But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were
delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe”
found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of the
moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person of
Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the battle-field are
eclipsed—it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal fame.” [475]
And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man of
property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would give to
Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the greatest of his
victories in the field.
Both parties were satisfied with the Message.

V
Never in the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more
dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White, a

calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he could
escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he wrote.
“Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to slumber. Ill
blood is produced by almost every event; and a great disposition is
manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle.... No man can tell when
or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all that a prudent man ought to
do to avoid difficulties, but should it be my lot to have them forced upon
me, my reliance is that Providence will guide me through them safely.”[476]
The debate in the Senate following the Veto Message was significant.
The great Field Marshals of the Bank, who had maintained silence until
now, appeared upon the scene with impassioned speeches of denunciation
and solemn warning. The import of the speeches of Clay and Webster could
not have been clearer. They were designed to intimidate the electorate into
voting against Jackson by the most gloomy predictions of panic and
distress. Webster, who spoke first and made by long odds the most powerful
presentation against the Veto, dwelt with funereal melancholy upon the
President’s determination to overturn American institutions, basing this
absurd theory on the unhappy sentence referred to above.
But the one note he struck in the beginning and pounded to the end was
that of intimidation. The country was prosperous and yet there was “an
unaccountable disposition to destroy the most useful and most approved
institutions of the Government.” Unless Jackson should be defeated at the
polls the Bank would fall, and in its fall pull down the pillars of prosperity
and involve all in a common ruin. The Bank would have to call in its debts
at once. The distress would be especially acute in the States on the
Mississippi and its waters—where votes were needed for Clay. There thirty
millions of the Bank’s money was out on loans and discounts, and how
could this be immediately collected without untold suffering and misery?
The great orator, however, evidently afraid that his hints at the election had
been too subtle, soon threw off the mask boldly.
“An important election is at hand,” he said, “and the renewal of the Bank
Charter is a pending object of great interest, and some excitement. Should
not the opinions of men high in office and candidates for reëlection be
known on this as on other important questions?” And thence he argued that
the life of the Republic, the preservation of the Constitution, the salvation
of society from anarchy, and the prosperity of the people, were all
inseparably interwoven with the National Bank and the candidacy of Clay.

“No old school Federalist,” says Van Buren, “who had grown to man’s
estate with views and opinions in regard to the character of the people
which that faith seldom failed to inspire, could doubt the efficacy of such an
exposition in turning the minds of all classes of the community in the
desired direction.”[477]
If the Veto was satisfactory to the Whigs—to the surprise of the
Democrats—Webster’s avowed purpose to make it the issue in the
campaign was satisfactory to the Democrats—to the equal astonishment of
the Whigs. When the great New England orator sat down, Hugh Lawson
White of Tennessee, a banker, fluent, logical, and forceful, lost no time in
accepting Webster’s “issue.”
“I thank the Senator,” he said, “for the candid avowal, that unless the
President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they intend to
interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With the same
candor I state, that after this declaration, this charter shall never be renewed
with my consent.... Sir, if under these circumstances the charter is renewed,
the elective franchise is destroyed, and the liberties and prosperity of the
people are delivered over to this moneyed institution, to be disposed of at
their discretion. Against this I enter my solemn protest.”
Even the most ardent supporters of Clay will hardly point to his speech
on the Veto as evidence of his power. Compared with Webster’s or White’s,
it was mere froth, lacking in both substance and style, and only notable in
its insistence that the failure of the recharter would be fatal to the West, as
the continuance of Jackson in office would be subversive of all government.
The reply of Benton was characteristic in its slashing style, its
exhaustive appeal to facts and figures, and chiefly important as a campaign
argument in its elaborate discussion of the relations of the Bank with the
Western States. Not to be outdone in dire predictions, he insisted that the
triumph of the Bank would mean the end of free institutions; that “no
individual could stand in the States against the power of the Bank, and the
Bank flushed with the victory over the conqueror of the conquerors of
Bonaparte”; that “an oligarchy would be immediately established, and that
oligarchy, in a few generations, would ripen into a monarchy.” He realized
that all nations must ultimately perish. “Rome had her Pharsalia and Greece
her Chæronea, and this Republic, more illustrious in her birth, was entitled

to a death as glorious as theirs.” He would not have her “die by poison” or
“perish in corruption,” but “a field of arms and glory should be her end.”
And he, too, eagerly accepted the challenge of Webster: “Why debate the
Bank question now, and not before?” he asked. “With what object do they
speak? Sir, this post facto debate is not for the Senate, nor the President, nor
to alter the fate of the Bank Bill. It is to arouse the officers of the Bank—to
direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the people—to
bring out its streams of corrupting influence, by inspiring hope, and to
embody all its recruits at the polls to vote against Jackson. Without an
avowal we would all know this; but we have not been left without an
avowal. The Senator from Massachusetts commenced his speech by
showing that Jackson must be put down; that he stood as an impassable
barrier between the Bank and a new charter; and that the road to success
was through the ballot boxes at the presidential election. The object of this
debate is then known, confessed, declared, avowed; the Bank is in the field;
enlisted for the war; a battering ram—the catapulta, not of the Romans but
of the National Republicans [Whigs]; not to beat down the walls of hostile
cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down the
rights of the people; to destroy a patriot and a hero; to command the
elections and to elect a Bank President.”
Thus the politicians sounded the keynotes of the two parties in the
approaching campaign in the country.
The debate was not to end without its serio-comedy. Benton had
criticized Clay for lack of decent courtesy to the President, and when he
resumed his seat, Clay arose to question the Missourian’s qualification to
pass on decent courtesy, and to revive the story that Benton had once said
that should Jackson ever reach the Presidency, Senators “would have to
legislate with pistols and dirks.” Benton excitedly denied it. The lie was
passed. The angry statesmen were called to order and forced to apologize to
the Senate, and thus the Whig nominee for the Presidency closed the debate
in a none too dignified fashion.
The necessary two thirds to override the veto could not be mustered, and
Clay left Washington on the adjournment of Congress, July 16th, happy in
the knowledge that “something had turned up” that would force the Bank
and all its resources and influence to battle with a personal motive for his
election.

And Jackson and his friends were jubilant.
Thus ended one of the longest and most bitter sessions the American
Congress had ever known, “fierce in the beginning, and becoming more
furious to the end.”[478]

CHAPTER IX

THE DRAMATIC BATTLE OF 1832

I
The campaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have
come to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the
politicians were under the compulsion of cultivating and conciliating, not
factions and groups, but the masses of the people. The day of Democracy
had dawned, with all that means of good and evil. And in this struggle for
the suffrage of the masses, Clay had unwittingly intrigued the Jacksonians
into the advantage. Accustomed for years to relying solely on the wealthy
and the influential, the great Whig leaders signally failed to appreciate that
the very elements they had rallied to their support would tend to alienate the
mechanics of the cities, the farmers of the plains, the pioneers struggling
with poverty on the fringe of the forest. Thurlow Weed, who was one of the
few practical Whig politicians, saw it, but he was then comparatively
obscure. The clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet instantly sensed the
opportunity and grasped it. A great moneyed institution, never popular with
the masses, was seeking the humiliation of the most popular of Presidents.
The most fortunate of that day were responding to the call of the Bank. The
first battle at the polls between the “soul-less corporation” and the “sons of
toil” was on. For the first time in a presidential election the demagogue
appeared with his appeals to class prejudice and class hate, and all the
demagogy was not on the part of the Jacksonians. If these sought to arouse
the masses against the prosperous, the prosperous, with gibes about the
“mob,” were quite as busy in prejudicing the classes against the masses.
And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important
part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political
possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an organization
throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of the “Globe.” If the
political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to grasp the potentiality
of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was more alert, and, through his
agency, the powerful “New York Courier and Enquirer,” edited by James

Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to espouse the cause of Clay and
“the monster.” That money played a part in the conversion was soon
established in a congressional investigation; and when the “National
Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed the convert, Blair was able
sarcastically to comment on its being “charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty
and independence in complying with his bargain with the Bank—and the
bold, frank and honorable way in which he unsays all that he has said in
favor of the President for the price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479] Thus the
editors in 1832 fought with a ferocity never before approached.
From the beginning Amos Kendall realized that the appeal would have to
be made to the masses. He therefore conceived the idea of inaugurating the
campaign with a more solemn and dignified appeal to the more intellectual
element. The result was a carefully prepared campaign document reviewing
the work of the first three years of Jackson’s Administration. With a master
hand he marshaled the triumphs of the Administration, and marched them—
an imposing procession—before the reader. He anticipated and met all
attacks. If parasites on the public service had been displaced by friends of
Jackson, the new blood had injected new energy into the public offices.
Business, long in arrears, had been brought up. Public accounts were more
promptly rendered and settled. Scamps had been detected and scourged
from office, and peculations to the amount of $280,000 had been
uncovered. Economy and increased efficiency had resulted in the saving of
hundreds of thousands.
In our foreign relations Kendall found nothing to be desired. Jackson had
found Colombian cruisers depredating upon our commerce, and Colombian
ports subjecting American cargoes to oppressive duties; he secured
indemnities and the reduction of duties and the admission of American
vessels to Colombian waters on the same footing as those of Colombia. He
found no treaty with Turkey and the waters of the Bosphorus closed to us;
he negotiated a treaty and our flag waved in the Bosphorus. He found no
treaty with Austria—one was negotiated; a suspended treaty with Mexico—
it was put in operation; the indemnity claims against Denmark for spoliation
unpressed—he collected $750,000; the British West Indian controversy
entangled by unskilled diplomacy—he untangled it with skillful diplomacy,
and won a victory for American commerce; the French spoliation claims
held in abeyance—and he triumphed there.

This brilliant foreign policy, he continued, had breathed new life into our
domestic and foreign commerce, until “a commercial activity scarcely
equaled in our history” was enjoyed. The hammers were heard in the
shipyards, laborers were employed at high wages, prosperity pervaded
every class and section. At Boston alone fifteen vessels were fitting out for
trade in the Black Sea.
Despite these achievements Kendall complained that the President’s
political foes had devoted their energy and ingenuity to obstruction alone.
Congress had refused or delayed the necessary appropriations, denied him
the means to maintain a mission to France, refused to confirm the
appointment of his Minister to England, trumped up charges of fraud
against his friends, resorted to childish investigations, charged the President
with sending bullies to attack members of Congress and to spy upon them,
and capped the climax of insufferable impudence with resolutions to inquire
into the private conversations of the hero of New Orleans.
This campaign document, the first of its kind, was sent broadcast over
the country to awaken the indignation of the faithful and to revive and
intensify the cry, “Hurrah for Jackson.”[480] And it had the effect intended.
The Jacksonians became all the more militant, ready to pounce upon and
rend their enemies. Even the courageous Tyler, unfriendly to Jackson,
cautioned his daughter in a letter home—“Speak of me always as a Jackson
man whenever you are questioned.”[481] With this document in the hands of
the intellectual, the Kitchen Cabinet turned with their appeal to the masses
on the Bank issue. This speedily became paramount. But Clay and the
Whigs were busy with intrigues with groups, and, to understand the
remarkable campaign in its ramifications, it is necessary to pause for a peep
behind the scenes where Clay may be seen in a light other than that of a
man who “would rather be right than President.” We shall find him as
willing, in Virginia, to unite with the champions of the Nullification he
abhorred, as, in New York, with the party of the Anti-Masons he despised.

II
After the fashion of the old school politician of his day, Clay relied upon
intrigue, upon the cultivation of groups with special interests and
grievances. During the winter in Congress he had devoted himself to the
consolidation of business and the ultra-conservative elements behind his

candidacy. The bitterness of the contest was foreshadowed in the spring
when Blair announced the publication of an extra weekly issue of the
“Globe”; and in August, Duff Green made a similar announcement as to the
“Telegraph.” While Clay planned to win on the Bank issue, he very early
began a furious flirtation with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, thus
injecting side issues that the Jacksonians were quick to accept. In April,
Clay was writing a Virginia friend[482] of a possible coalition with the
Nullification forces in three or four Southern States where extreme State-
Rights views were prevalent. Governor Floyd of Virginia, destined to
receive the electoral vote of the South Carolina Nullifiers, and for a time
alienated from Clay, was making overtures for a conciliation. Duff Green, a
messenger in Calhoun’s livery, had made a remarkable proposition. The
purport of this proposition was that Calhoun’s friends would present his
name for the Presidency if assured of three or four of the Southern States;
that about August he would be announced as a candidate; that if
arrangements could be made with Clay to place no electoral ticket in the
field in Virginia, and to throw the support of his friends to Calhoun, the
latter could carry the Old Dominion; that carrying Virginia, he would have a
fair chance of carrying North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, with a
fighting chance in Alabama and Mississippi; and, accomplishing that, he
could defeat the reëlection of Jackson, and force the determination of the
issue upon the House of Representatives where Clay would no doubt be
elected to the satisfaction of Calhoun. The wily editor made it clear to Clay
that he was to have no ticket in the States mentioned, and should actively
coöperate with Calhoun in Virginia.
And Clay was not shocked! But he had not “assumed that Calhoun had
much political capital anywhere outside South Carolina,” and doubted the
practicability of abandoning a ticket in Virginia because of the imputations
that would follow. And yet, if Calhoun could, by any chance, carry three or
four of the Southern States, it was a consummation devoutly to be wished.
“Let me hear from you, my dear friend, upon this matter,” he wrote, “and
particularly your views as to the strength of the party of Mr. Calhoun in
Virginia. Has it not relapsed into Jacksonism? Can it be brought forth again
in its original force to the support of Mr. Calhoun? Suppose Mr. Calhoun is
not put forth as a candidate, what course, generally, will his friends in
Virginia pursue? Could our friends be prevailed upon to unite upon a ticket
favorable to Mr. Calhoun? Or, in the event of no ticket being put up, would

they not divide between Jackson and Calhoun, the larger part probably
going to Jackson?”[483] The pet plan of the Calhoun conspirators failed, and
in August, Duff Green set forth on a tour of investigation into New York
and Pennsylvania, returning to Washington encouraged in the conviction
that the defeat of Jackson could be accomplished through the unification of
all the hostile elements against him. In announcing the campaign extras of
the “Telegraph”—could he by chance have visited the marble bank building
in Philadelphia?—he declared that “we believe that our duty requires us to
demonstrate that General Jackson ought not to be reëlected.” There was no
mistaking the meaning of this move, and the Jacksonians were instantly on
their toes. Under the caption, “Consummation of the Coalition,” Blair
vigorously denounced it in the “Globe.” “If Mr. Clay were elected,” he
wrote, “Mr. Calhoun is well aware that it would instantly establish the
Southern League, which is looked to by him as his only hope of ever
attaining political power. This is the basis of the coalition between Mr. Clay
and Mr. Calhoun. It is like that of Octavius and Anthony which severed the
Roman empire.”[484]
That Blair had not misinterpreted was immediately evident in the
response of the Whig press. The influential Pleasants, of the “Richmond
Whig,” warmly commended Green’s action and promised, “on the part of
the ‘Telegraph,’ a luminous exposé of the misrule of Jacksonism.” “Ah,”
wrote Blair, “the ‘Richmond Whig’ upon the appearance of Duff Green’s
proposals for a joint opposition leaps into its embrace.”[485] And from that
moment the “Globe” kept before its readers constantly the Calhoun heresy
and the coalition with the Whigs. Early in September he began to discuss
pointedly the Nullification meetings in South Carolina addressed by “Mr.
Calhoun’s leading partisans,” warning that the sinister doctrine was
“subversive of the Union,” and that “by forcing a clash between the
Government and South Carolina, Calhoun hopes to arouse the sympathy of
the entire South.” And he continued with a prescience that is now startling:
“The Vice-President, as his prospect closes upon the elevated honors of the
Federal Government, is exerting all his influence to place South Carolina in
a position which shall compel the other Southern States to unite in a new
system, or confederacy, which may open new views to his ambition.”[486]
Thus, burning all bridges as far as the Nullifiers were concerned, the
Jacksonian leaders, in the interest of the President, concentrated on
capitalizing their connection with the Whigs and the Bank. When Whig and

Bank papers warmly recommended the “Telegraph” to the patronage of the
Clay supporters, Blair gave the recommendation publicity, with the
suggestion that “that paper is the open advocate of Calhoun and
Nullification.” Thus he forced the coalition into the open. “Are not the Bank
party turning to the Nullifiers?” he asked. “If not, why do they circulate the
extra of Duff Green which is devoted to Nullification?”[487] Thus, by boldly
repudiating and defying the Nullification element and Calhoun, the Jackson
leaders more than neutralized any benefit that Clay and the Whigs might
receive from their sympathy and support.

III
But more important to Clay than the attitude of the Nullifiers was that of
the Anti-Masons. Strangely enough, he had, at first, looked upon the
growing movement, not only with complacency, but with approval. After
the failure of the new party in New York in 1830, he had written to a friend:
“If they had been successful they would probably have brought out an Anti-
Masonic candidate for President. Still, if I had been in New York, I should
have given my suffrage to Granger.[488] I will not trouble you with the
reasons.”[489] In the same letter, however, he expresses the opinion that such
strength as the proscriptive party might muster would ultimately go to the
Whigs, in general, and himself in particular, because “it is in conformity
with the general nature of minorities,” when they have no candidate of their
own, to support the strongest opposition party. Then, too, they were
protectionists, had been abused by Van Buren’s organization in New York,
“and General Jackson has, as they think, persecuted them.” At any rate,
wrote the intriguing politician, “there is no occasion for our friends to attack
them.”
But a new light broke for Clay when, in the spring of 1831, the Anti-
Masons called a national convention, to meet two months before the
Whigs’. His close friends became apprehensive. The sounding of the Anti-
Masons disclosed no Clay sentiment. Quite the contrary. Much distressed at
this revelation, one of the leaders of the movement urged him to exert his
well-known powers of conciliation.[490] By the latter part of June he had
concluded that the new party might not prove so advantageous after all.
Writing to his bosom friend, Francis Brooke, he found that “Anti-Masonry
seems to be the only difficulty now in the way of success, both in

Pennsylvania and New York.”[491] By the middle of July he was convinced
that “it would be politic to leave the Jackson party exclusively to abuse the
Antis.”[492] A few days later he had concluded that “the policy of the Antis
is to force us to their support,” and that “ours should be to win them to
ours.”[493]
As the time for the convention approached, the Antis were split on Clay,
a small portion wishing the nomination of one who would later withdraw in
his favor, but the majority hoping for the nomination of one who would be
acceptable to the Whigs in their convention two months later. The problem
was finally solved by the nomination of William Wirt.
That this brilliant man would have scorned the honor on any other theory
than that his nomination would be acceptable to both the Whigs and Clay,
with whom he had served in the Cabinet, and for whom he entertained an
affection, is shown in his correspondence.[494] But, while resting at Ashland
and still ignorant of the convention’s action, Clay was writing to Brooke
that “if the alternative is between Andrew Jackson and an Anti-Masonic
candidate with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I should be
embarrassed in the choice.”[495]
In the interval between the two conventions, the Anti-Masons clung
desperately to the hope that Clay would do violence to his dominating,
domineering disposition by sacrificing himself. He was an intimate friend
of Wirt’s. Their views on fundamentals were alike. With Wirt elected, Clay
would be the power behind the throne. With a divided opposition, Jackson’s
election would be inevitable, and Clay hated him with a consuming hate.
For identical reasons the Whigs hoped that, on the nomination of Clay, Wirt
would retire in his favor. As the Whig convention approached, Wirt
abandoned all hope of his own nomination. “There seems to be no doubt of
Mr. Clay’s nomination in the convention next week,” he wrote to Judge
Carr. “So be it. In a personal point of view I shall feel that I have made a
lucky escape.”[496] After the nomination of Clay, it was the ardent wish of
Wirt to withdraw. His intimations to his party’s leaders only brought the
assurance that were the party dissolved there “were not enough Clay men
among them to touch New York or Pennsylvania, nor consequently to elect
Mr. Clay,” and he was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that “there [was]
no more chance for Mr. Clay with the Anti-Masons than for the Pope of
Rome.”[497] But the absurdity of his situation annoyed him, and he was

soon wishing for “a little villa in Florida, or somewhere else, to retire to,
and beguile the painful hours, as Cicero did, in writing essays.”
If he remained in the field, it was because Henry Clay preferred it. The
relations of the ostensible rivals were close and confidential throughout the
campaign. Clay feared that Wirt’s withdrawal would be ascribed to his
influence, and would intensify the Anti-Masonic feeling against him. Then,
again, the Whig board of strategy planned to deprive Jackson of the
electoral vote of New York and Pennsylvania through an ingenious
combination of the two opposition parties in those States. In New York the
proscriptive party, meeting first, endorsed its national nominees, and
nominated leaders of their own for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor.
With great cunning they selected an electoral ticket, including Chancellor
Kent, an idolater of Clay. The Whigs followed, and accepted the Anti-
Masonic ticket, and thus the Opposition was consolidated in the Empire
State. There was no mystery as to the intent in regard to the State ticket—it
was to have the united support of both parties. The weakness, with the
public, was the absence of any indication as to the intended disposal of the
electoral vote. The plan of the conspirators was to throw the electoral votes
to Wirt provided there was a possibility of his election, or no possibility of
the election of either Wirt or Clay; and for Clay in the event Wirt could not
win and the Whig nominee could with the electoral vote of New York.[498]
The plan met with the hearty approval of Clay, who entertained high hopes
of its success in depriving Jackson of the electoral vote upon which his
election depended.[499] Thus, before the campaign had fairly started, the
politicians of these two parties were working in close coöperation with a
complete understanding, while the rank and file of both parties were left
entirely in the dark. Wirt, with no faith in the coalition, was doing nothing
to advance his candidacy.[500] Thus the nominee of one party was secretly
planning to deliver the prize to the man his own party had repudiated. Not
only did he write no letters to advance his party’s cause, but he “refused to
answer whenever such answers could be interpreted as canvassing for
office.”[501]
Meanwhile the Jacksonians were merely amused at these intrigues of the
old school politicians. The secret of their strength, here as always, was in
their daring. Not only did they ignore the Anti-Masons and refuse to
conciliate them, but they cast them off as completely as they had the
Nullifiers. The highest member of the Masonic order in America was at the

head of Jackson’s Cabinet, and John Quincy Adams gave the utmost
publicity to the fact by addressing his attacks on Masonry to Edward
Livingston. Jackson himself sought and found an opportunity to go on
record against the prescriptive hysteria. In this manner the Jacksonian
managers rallied the Masons to their banner, and they held in their hands
the ammunition with which to blow to atoms the plan of the coalition
leaders to deliver the rank and file of the enemies of Masonry to Clay.
Early in October Blair published in the “Globe,” without comment,
Clay’s manly letter to some Anti-Masons in Indiana refusing to be drawn
into sectarian quarrels. “If a President of the United States ... were to
employ his official power to sustain, or to abolish, or to advance the interest
of Masonry or Anti-Masonry,” he had written, “it would be an act of
usurpation and tyranny.”[502] That was enough. The Democratic press of the
country, taking the cue from the “Globe,” reproduced the letter, and thus the
rank and file of the party everywhere was strengthened in its determination
not to support its author.
While Clay was intriguing with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, the
Democrats were audaciously denouncing both, and were gaining rather than
losing by their temerity.

IV
There was but one issue—and that the Bank. Clay had made it the issue
with the officers of the institution and their allied business interests; the
clever leaders of the Jackson forces made it an issue with the masses of the
people, who had always looked with suspicion and dislike upon the
powerful financial institution.[503] And then, perhaps, the “Emperor
Nicholas” bitterly regretted having yielded to the blandishments of Clay. If
he had not considered the cost in money to the institution when he yielded,
Clay understood it as well as Webster. They knew that a fight against the
“weak old man,” as they foolishly called Jackson, would be “no holiday
affair.” Satisfied of the support of the business element, they had calculated
the cost of reaching the people generally—and they had the work of Biddle
cut out for him.[504] And almost immediately, Biddle was as deeply
involved as Clay himself.
The campaign plans of the two parties differed, since their special
appeals were to different elements. The Clay men relied on the distribution,

with Bank money, of the printed speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, of
tracts and pamphlets. These, falling into the hands of the masses, were
thrown aside. They were sympathetically perused by the bankers,
merchants, manufacturers, preachers, professors, and lawyers who were in
no need of conversion.[505] The Bank made desperate efforts to win to its
support the press of the larger cities and towns. It was notoriously willing to
prove its appreciation of such support with the coin of the realm.[506] That
Webb’s paper had been won over with Bank money was common
knowledge after the congressional investigation, and Amos Kendall, in the
“Globe,” charged that the “Evening Post” had been “approached,” and that
the “Standard” of Philadelphia had been offered five hundred dollars and a
new set of type, and the inducement had been increased by five hundred
dollars two days later.
Thoroughly frightened, Biddle spent lavishly for the printing and
distribution of speeches and articles. Mailing the president of the Kentucky
Bank[507] Webster’s speech on the Veto, and an article reviewing the
Message, he instructed that these, “as well as Mr. Clay’s & Mr. Ewing’s
speeches on the same subject,” be “printed and dispersed.”[508] More than
$80,000—an enormous sum for those days—was spent by the Bank under
the head of “stationery and printing” during the period of the campaign.
Thousands of friendly newspapers were bought in bulk and scattered
broadcast, and Blair announced the discovery that “about four bushels of
the ‘Extra Telegraph’ is sent to New York to a single individual for
distribution.”[509] An analysis of Benton’s speech and a reply was printed in
pamphlet form, and thousands flooded the country and burdened the mails.
But more sinister still was the appearance, for the first time in American
politics, of the weapons of intimidation and coercion. In New Orleans a
bank commenced discounting four months’ paper at eight per centum
—“because of the veto.” An advertisement appeared in a Cincinnati paper
offering $2.50 per hundred for pork if Clay should be elected, $1.50 if
Jackson won—a bribe of one dollar a head on each hundred pounds of pork.
From Brownsville, Pennsylvania, went forth the disturbing report that “a
large manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and others have given
notice to do so,” and that “not a single steam boat will be built this season at
Wheeling, Pittsburg or Louisville.” From Baltimore: “A great many
mechanics are thrown out of employment by the stoppage of building. The
prospect ahead is that we shall have a very distressing winter.” And so the

work went on, with the Bank and its political champions holding the sword
of Damocles over the heads of the masses who dared to vote for Jackson.
[510] Jackson was held before the conservative and timid as rash, dangerous,
destructive. Webster’s State convention speech at Worcester, expanding on
the unfortunate sentence from the Veto Message as to the finality of
Supreme Court decisions, was given general circulation. Even the brilliant
Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” lived in constant terror of some rash
act of Jackson’s that would wreck the country.[511]
For the benefit of the ardent Jacksonians who disliked and distrusted Van
Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, the Whig and Bank press gravely
quoted some mysterious “Philadelphian” to whom Jackson had said, “with
his own lips,” that a reëlection would satisfy him as a vindication, and that
he would resign and go home, leaving Van Buren in the Presidency. Even
the “National Intelligencer” referred to the rumor as “the disclosure of an
important fact ... going to confirm our own impressions.” And Blair had
been forced to notice and denounce the story with the comment that “we
had always thought Simpson the most depraved of all the miscreants
purchased by the Bank, but certainly now Gales[512] deserves to be put
below him.”[513] Earlier in the campaign the Whigs had attempted to serve
the same purpose by circulating alarming reports regarding Jackson’s
health. And Blair, in denouncing this canard, announced that the President
“receives from 50 to 100 persons daily, is incessantly engaged in the
despatch of the duties of his office, and joins regularly at table his large
dinner parties of from 40 to 50 persons twice a week.”[514]
For the benefit of the preachers, teachers, and moral forces, the old
stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness were revived, apropos of the attack by
Sam Houston on a member of Congress. At first the President had merely
instigated the assault—and then the imaginative Whig scribes worked out a
bloodcurdling, circumstantial story. After the brutal attack, the swaggering
Houston had met Postmaster-General Barry at the theater, and the two had
talked it over at the theater bar, and, after being congratulated by the
Cabinet member, he had called on Jackson and been heartily commended
for his act.
Thus the Whigs used every weapon that came into their hands—money,
subsidized and bought papers, the hostility to Masonry, the hate of the
Nullifiers, the fear of Van Buren, intimidation, coercion, and slander. And
something comparatively new to politics—the cartoon—soon became a

feature of the fight. Here the Democrats were at a disadvantage, and the
pictorial editorials that have come down to us are largely anti-Jackson. Here
we find the President pictured as a raving maniac, as Don Quixote tilting at
the pillars of the splendid marble bank building in Philadelphia, as a burglar
attempting to force the bank doors with a battering ram, while the most
popular cartoon among the friends of Clay pictured Jackson receiving a
crown from Van Buren and a scepter from the Devil.[515]

V
But all the while the consummate politicians of the Jackson party were
reaching and arousing the masses. Long before the opening of the
campaign, Amos Kendall, Lewis, Hill, and Blair were cunningly appealing
to the interests, the prejudices, and the hero worship of the voters of the
cornfield and the village. These forerunners of the modern politician were
keenly appreciative of the fact that between 1824 and 1832 a great body of
voters, previously proscribed because of their poverty and lack of property,
had been newly enfranchised. With the Whigs these were non-existent. The
journalistic training of Kendall, Hill, and Blair pointed to the press as the
surest way to reach the masses with their propaganda. The old-fashioned
politician still affected a contempt for the press, and particularly for the
little struggling papers of the country. The genius of Kendall immediately
seized upon these, and, long before the campaign began, the sallow,
prematurely gray young man of mystery, shut up in his petty office in the
Treasury, was busy night and day, and especially at night, preparing articles
and editorials laudatory of the Jackson policies, denunciatory of the
Opposition, and these, sent to editors all over the country, were printed as
their own. Thus the followers of Jackson in every nook and corner of the
country were constantly supplied with ammunition in the shape of
arguments they could comprehend and assimilate.
The center and soul of the Democratic organization was the office of the
“Globe.” Among the papers of national reputation, but two others were
supporting Jackson, the “New Hampshire Patriot” of “Ike” Hill, and Van
Buren’s organ, the “Albany Argus.” But the “Globe” was equal to the
demand upon it. Doubling the number of issues, the ferociously partisan
Blair sat in the office writing feverishly, with Kendall gliding in and out
with copy. Both possessed a genius for controversy. Both had mastered a

style combining literary qualities, attractive to the educated, with the “pep”
and “punch” that impressed, interested, delighted, the multitude. Blair
dipped his pen in vitriol. In satire and sarcasm he had few equals. He was
no parlor warrior, and he struck resounding blows like a boiler-maker. And
he wrote in a flowing style that, at times, approached real eloquence.
Having the average man in mind, his editorials, filling the greater part of the
paper, were concise and brief. When language seemed weak, he resorted to
italics. The longer and more sustained argumentative articles were written
by the more brilliant Kendall. Through July, August, September, and
October he wrote a series of articles on “The Bank and the Veto,” beginning
in an argumentative vein, and gradually growing personal until he was
devoting one issue to the financial connections between the Bank and Duff
Green, another to similar connections of Webb, of the “Courier and
Enquirer,” and another to Gales, of the “Intelligencer.”
Infuriated by the gibes, taunts, and attacks, the Whigs charged that the
“Globe” was being distributed gratuitously—the business manager replied
with an affidavit as to the legitimacy of its circulation.[516] News of the
deepest import was crowded out by the exigencies of the campaign, and
with the cholera scourge taking a heavy toll of lives in Washington, the only
mention of it in the “Globe” was in the official reports of the Board of
Health. But there was room for columns of quotations from Democratic
papers on the Veto, all striking the exultant key—“The Monster is
Destroyed.”
Only the persistent hammering of the Whigs on the unfortunate sentence
of the Veto Message caused acute distress in Democratic circles. Webster’s
Worcester speech was annoying. Here a sneer, there a gibe in the “Globe,”
but sneers and gibes did not quite satisfy the editor, who finally made a
laborious effort to explain,[517] and, finding the effort tame, Blair
countercharged with the publication of Clay’s bitter anti-Bank speech of
1811 with appropriate comments upon it from the Jacksonian papers of the
country.
As the campaign approached the end, Blair stressed the theory that the
real fight was between Jackson and the Bank, with Clay a mere pawn in the
game. “We see,” he wrote, “the most profligate apostasies invited and
applauded—the grossest misrepresentations circulated—the worst forgeries
committed—open briberies practiced, and all for what? Not avowedly to
elect Henry Clay or William Wirt, but any ‘available candidate’[518]—in

other words, any candidate with whom, in the end, the Bank directors can
make the best bargain.”[519] And a week later, under the caption, “The
Gold,” Blair announces that through private advices “we learn that certain
heavy trunks, securely hooped with iron, have arrived at Lexington[520]
from the East.”[521] Such was the character of the publicity with which the
Jacksonians appealed to the masses of the people.
But the practical minds of the leaders of the Kitchen Cabinet were not
content with creating public opinion—they systematically organized and
directed it. In every community, no matter how obscure, some Jackson
leader, with a genius for organization work, was busy welding the Jackson
forces into a solid mass. Here Major Lewis took charge. He anticipated the
card-index system of the modern politicians. There was scarcely a county in
the country in which he did not know the precise man or men upon whom
absolute reliance could be placed. And “Ike” Hill, now a United States
Senator, made an extensive organizing tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania
in early August.
In both publicity and organization, the greater part of the ability and all
the genius was with Jackson.

VI
The Jacksonians depended also to a greater extent than the Opposition on
appeals to the people, face to face. A creature of another world, looking
down from the skies upon the United States in the late summer and autumn
of 1832, would have concluded that its people moved about in enormous
processions on horseback, with waving flags, branches and banners. Great
meetings were held in groves, addressed by fiery orators, furiously
denouncing “The Monster” and the “Corporation” and calling upon the
people to “stand by the Hero.” Men left their homes, bade farewell to their
families as though enlisting for a war, and rode from one meeting to another
for weeks at a time.[522] Nor was this hysterical enthusiasm confined to the
more primitive sections of the country. A French traveler sojourning in New
York City was profoundly impressed by a Jackson parade there. “It was
nearly a mile long,” he wrote. “The Democrats marched in good order to
the glare of torches; the banners were more numerous than I have ever seen
in any religious festival; all were in transparency on account of the
darkness. On some were inscribed the names of Democratic societies, or

sections; others bore imprecations against the Bank of the United States.
Nick Biddle and Old Nick here figured largely.... From farther than the eye
could reach came marching on the Democrats. The procession stopped
before the houses of the Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted
at the door of the leaders of the opposition to give three, six or nine groans.
These scenes belong to history and partake of the grand; they are the
episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to
posterity.”[523]
And into these amazing demonstrations the campaign glee club, also
new to American politics, entered, to play a conspicuous part, with pretty
girls, and children gayly dressed, singing round the hickory poles that were
raised wherever there were idolaters of Jackson. And so they sang:
“Here’s a health to the heroes who fought
And conquered in Liberty’s cause;
Here’s health to Old Andy who could not be bought
To favor aristocrat laws.
Hurrah for the Roman-like Chief—
He never missed fire at all;
But ever when called to his country’s relief
Had a ready picked flint and a ball.

“Hurrah for the Hickory tree
From the mountain tops down to the sea.
It shall wave o’er the grave of the Tory and knave,
And shelter the honest and free.”[524]

Even where the Whigs were strongest, the militant Democrats poured forth
in defiant demonstrations. When Jackson, returning to Washington from the
Hermitage in the closing days of the campaign, approached Lexington, the
home of his rival, a multitude streamed down the road five miles to meet
him, with over a thousand on horseback and in carriages, and before he
reached his lodging the throng extended back two miles along the road
“with green hickory bushes waving like bright banners in a breeze.”[525]
It was inevitable that in such a campaign personalities should intrude. In
the winter of 1831-32, while Congress was in session, Jackson took
advantage of the presence of Dr. Harris, an eminent Philadelphia surgeon, to
have the bullet from Benton’s pistol, long lodged in his shoulder, removed.
When the surgeon appeared at the White House, he was engaged with
company, but excused himself with the explanation that he would have to

submit to an operation; and a few hours later he reappeared among his
friends with his arm in a sling. “Precisely,” wrote Blair, “as he had appeared
with it in battle among the enemies of his country.”[526] This gave the
Whigs their cue, and their press teemed with references to the “disgusting
affair” in which the shot had been fired. And Blair himself was able to
retaliate in kind with the story of a wound received by Clay in a personal
conflict. “He was taken to a kind friend’s house,” he wrote, “he was treated
with the utmost tenderness and courtesy by that friend’s wife and family,
and while enjoying their hospitality, he amused himself ... by winning the
money of his kind host at Brag.”
If Jackson was a brawler, it was given out thus that Clay was not only a
brawler, but a gambler and an ingrate. Both stories made their way through
the country.[527]
If the cholera was not of sufficient importance for the news columns of
the party press, it was rich in suggestion to the politicians. The Dutch Synod
requested Jackson to set a day aside for prayer. He replied that he had faith
in the efficacy of prayer, but that the special day to be set aside should be
designated by the State authorities. Whereupon Clay arose to offer a
resolution in the Senate setting a day aside and fixing the day. Aha, cried
Blair, he wants a veto on a religious subject. “It is not the cholera that
makes them so pious; it is the hope to steal a march on the old Hero.... What
whited sepulchers some of these partisan leaders are!” he wrote.[528]
And when, a little later, the “Pittsburgh Statesman,” a Clay paper,
suggested that “the only effectual cure, under existing circumstances, for
genuine Jacksonism is the equally genuine Asiatic Spasmodic Cholera,” the
“Troy Budget,” supporting Jackson, was not surprised at “such political
depravity,” coming from the “editorial slanderers and ruthless murderers of
Mrs. Jackson.” And “Ike” Hill, in the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was
reminded that Clay himself had prayed “for war, pestilence and famine” in
preference to the reëlection of Jackson. When the President left the capital
for the Hermitage, the “Troy Sentinel,” Whig, with its eye on the church
vote, announced with emphasis that he had left Washington “at eight
o’clock on Sunday morning.” Blair, denouncing the story as “a lie,”
declared that “he did not leave the city until Monday morning and spent the
Sabbath in religious duties as usual.” When “Ike” Hill, speaking at a
complimentary dinner at the Eagle Coffee House, in Concord, assailed Clay
and Senator John Holmes, and referred to some Senators as “low and

blackguard,” the “National Intelligencer” protested, and Blair replied with a
description of Holmes as a “besotted Senator who had indulged in indecent
and ribald slang throughout the session,” and as one given to “low
buffoonery”—the “mere Thersites of the Senate.”[529] Charges of
impropriety touching on the personal integrity of political leaders were
commonplace. The “Globe,” centering its fire upon the activities of the
Bank, charged it with subsidizing and seducing the press by paying for the
publication of political speeches at advertising rates.[530] “Every press in
Philadelphia,” it said, “is closed by its influence, against the admission of
anything unfavorable to its pretensions. The ‘Mechanics’ Free Press’ broke
ground against it in conformity with the principles of its party, when lo! a
shower of gold, amounting to $1700 for publishing Mr. McDuffie’s report,
silenced it, and for good reasons, doubtless, it has ever since held its peace
about the Bank.” And the Whig press was equally shocked to find that
officers high in the Government were sending the “Globe” all over the
country under their official frank. “A lie!” screamed Blair. And so the battle
of personalities went on. From Hill’s “New Hampshire Patriot” came the
resurrection of the long-discredited “bargain” story against Clay.
Meanwhile, what had become of the candidates and what were their
feelings as to the prospects? While scarcely due to the strain of the
campaign, all three, Jackson, Clay, and Wirt, were threatened with serious
illness. As we have seen, Clay was threatened with paralysis about the time
of his retirement from the Cabinet. During the summer and autumn of 1832
the old trouble returned. His friend, Brooke, who became concerned over
his health, urged him to caution, and Clay, much moved by his friend’s
solicitude, promised to be more careful of his diet, to abstain from wine,
and to reduce his consumption of tobacco to “one form.”[531] At times,
during the summer session, he had been forced to leave Washington for a
brief period of rest at his friend’s home at St. Julien, Virginia; and as soon
as Congress adjourned, he hastened to White Sulphur Springs for two
weeks in hope of relief from the waters. Skeptical at first of his election, his
confidence increased until he and Webster were exchanging letters of
congratulation on its certainty.
Wirt, who had a serious attack, and was in a weakened condition, was
forced by his physician to leave Baltimore, rather than take a chance with
the cholera. After a brief sojourn at Bedford Springs, he went with his
family to Berkley Springs where he remained through September. Here,

with no thought of his own election, but with ardent hopes for Clay, he
ignored the clamor of the campaign. Riding and lounging about the grounds
during the day, regaling company with ghost stories in the evening, he bore
no resemblance to a presidential candidate.[532]
Soon after Congress adjourned, the scourge reached Washington, taking
heavy toll of the Irish and Swedish laborers engaged in the first
macadamizing of Pennsylvania Avenue, and spreading rapidly from the
poorer parts to the White House section. Because of Jackson’s weakened
condition, his physicians insisted that he spend three months at the
Hermitage, and near the middle of August, accompanied part of the way by
Amos Kendall, Frank Blair, “Ike” Hill, Major Lewis, Lewis Cass, and
Benton, he left the sweltering and infected capital and went down the Ohio.
He was in high glee. Never for a moment had he doubted the result of the
election. During the congressional fight over the recharter bill he had not
punished those who had withheld their support by denying them patronage,
except in the case of his most bitter foes. Just before the vote in the House,
an Ohio Representative solicited an appointment for a constituent, and,
upon being granted the favor, he explained that he thought it due Jackson
for him to know that the favor was being granted a member who would vote
for the Bank.
“I can’t help that, sir, but I already knew it. See here—I can take a roll of
the House and check off every Democrat who will vote for the Bank. In fact
I have one here.”
Turning briskly, he produced it, and the Representative, running over the
list, indicated one name as that of a man who would vote with Jackson.
“How do you know?” demanded Jackson.
When told that this Congressman had been so unmercifully berated by
his constituents that he had felt compelled to change his tack, the old
warrior smiled grimly.
“He is a lucky fellow,” he said, “to get the views of his constituents
beforehand. There are several other Democrats in the House who will not
get similar notice until next fall, sir.”[533]
Nothing occurred after that incident to alter his opinion of the sentiment
of the people. As Hill left the boat bearing the presidential party down the
Ohio, at Wheeling, Jackson said, as he clasped his hand: “Isaac, it’ll be a

walk. If our fellows didn’t raise a finger from now on the thing would be
just as well as done. In fact, Isaac, it’s done now.”
That his friends shared his confidence we have ample evidence. Hill,
writing to a friend, advised him to bet all he could on Pennsylvania and
Ohio for Jackson—“not on stated majorities, but hang on to the general
result.” And he added frankly, “I am on the turf myself. Benton and his
friends out West are picking up all they can get.” John Van Buren, the son
of Martin, and popularly known as “Prince John,” made a small fortune
with his ventures on the election, and Hone, commenting on the manner and
appearance of Martin Van Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, thought it
indicated a feeling of absolute security.
The result was a notable victory for Jackson and his policies—an
unmistakable rebuke to Clay. In electoral votes Jackson received 219, Clay
49, and Wirt 7, and the popular vote gave Jackson 124,392 over the
combined strength of Clay and Wirt, thus proving the absurdity of Thurlow
Weed’s theory that if Clay had acquiesced in the wishes of the Anti-Masons
he could have been elected. The only State carried by Wirt was Vermont—
as he had predicted. Clay carried Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Delaware, and Kentucky, and five out of the eight electoral votes of
Maryland. All the other States went to Jackson but one—South Carolina,
with childish petulance, threw its vote away at the behest of Calhoun.
Nothing could have been more ominous than this action. Going entirely
outside the regularly nominated candidates, and acting in conformity with
the views of the Nullifying party, which insisted on placing the State
outside the Union, she gave her vote to Governor Floyd of Virginia. And
Jackson, getting the returns, instantly caught the significance of the act, and
girded his loins for a life-and-death struggle with Calhoun and
Nullification.

CHAPTER X

THE POLITICS OF NULLIFICATION

I
Callers at the Hermitage about the first of October were surprised to find
Jackson’s thoughts remote from the election. Instead of a jubilant politician,
they found an old man frothing with fury over the news from South
Carolina that the Nullifiers had won a majority of seats in the Legislature
and were arranging for an early summoning of a Nullification Convention.
His indignation was so intense that his friends were shocked at the ferocity
of his mood. The crisis had not crept upon him unaware. With keen, far-
seeing eyes he had watched its advance, hoping that something would
intervene to divert his native State from its mad course, but determined, if
the issue came, to crush it with an iron hand. His hatred of Calhoun had, by
this time, become an obsession, and when he threatened to “hang every
leader ... of that infatuated people, sir, by martial law, irrespective of his
name, or political or social position,” there was no doubt as to whom he
referred.[534] Taking no further interest in the election, he put the campaign
behind him and hastened to the capital. Blair, the politician always, hurried
to the White House with some papers relating to the election. After a hasty
and perfunctory glance, Jackson returned them to the editor, with a “Thank
you, sir,” and launched into a denunciation of the Nullifiers. The date set for
the Nullification Convention had just reached him. Even Blair, accustomed
to his fits of temper, was startled. He was in the presence of a Jackson he
had never seen or known before. “The lines in his face were hard drawn, his
tones were full of wrath and resentment.... Any one would have thought he
was planning another great battle.”[535] Even the announcement of victory
at the polls scarcely interested him. Blair and Kendall called with a table
showing the electoral vote. Glancing at it indifferently for a moment, his
face brightened. “The best thing about this, gentlemen, is that it strengthens
my hands in this trouble.” Such was the spirit with which Andrew Jackson
faced the gravest crisis the Nation had yet known.

Beginning with an intensely nationalistic spirit,[536] South Carolina
commenced to veer about with the tariff of 1816, and every succeeding
tariff measure had been a provocation. Two years before Jackson’s
inauguration, the “Brutus” articles on the “Usurpations of the Federal
Government,” eloquent, fiery, defiant of the “Monster of the North,” had
created a profound impression, commanding the adherence of McDuffie,
the Mirabeau of the disaffected, Hamilton, Preston, and Chancellor William
Harper, described by Houston as “scarcely inferior to Calhoun as an
exponent of meta-physical doctrines.”[537] The principles of “Brutus” only
awaited the authoritative sanction of Calhoun to place upon them the stamp
of the State’s approval.
The tariff of 1828 was the last straw, and sedition was openly talked by
the greater part of the South Carolina congressional delegation at the home
of Senator Hayne. One week later, Calhoun, at his home at Fort Hill,
finished his “Exposition,” enunciating the principles of Nullification, which
the committee of seven of the State Legislature presented as its own. During
the summer, politicians made numerous pilgrimages to Fort Hill for
conferences, but not the scratch of a pen remains to indicate the character of
the discussions. Calhoun was still “under cover.” He was about to enter
upon his second term in the Vice-Presidency, and his friends were looking
forward to the Presidency in 1832. The world was to wait awhile for the
openly avowed views of the Master.
With the publication of the “Exposition,” the battle royal began, Cavalier
against Cavalier, the Union cause brilliantly led by the elegant Joel R.
Poinsett. In the early stages of the fight the Nullifiers did not scruple to
represent Jackson as friendly to their cause. “I had supposed,” wrote
Jackson, in reply to a letter from Poinsett, “that every one acquainted with
me knew that I was opposed to the Nullifying doctrine, and my toast at the
Jefferson dinner was sufficient evidence of that fact.”[538] Having no reason,
after that, to doubt Jackson’s position, the Unionists invited Jackson to
attend one of their public dinners, and he sent a letter settling beyond all
possibility of dispute his position on Nullification. The Nullifiers, dining at
a rival banquet, and learning of the reading of the Jackson letter, reminded
the writer that “old Waxhaw still stands where Jackson left it, and the old
stock of ’76 has not run out.” After that the drama hurried to a climax. The
tariff of 1832 was but oil on the flames. The fight was carried to the polls
and Nullification won by a majority of 6000 out of 40,000 votes cast.

The most portentous feature of the campaign was the appearance in
August of Calhoun’s famous letter to Hamilton, decisively accepting as his
own, and urging upon his people, the doctrine of Nullification. It was
intended and timed to serve the purposes of the campaign. Unhappily
Calhoun must ever remain more or less a steel engraving. His private life
was carefully screened. Jefferson prowling among the brickmasons at the
University, Jackson with his clay pipe on the veranda of the Hermitage,
Webster among his cattle at Marshfield, Clay meditating speeches under the
trees at Ashland, are possible of contact by future generations, but Calhoun
at Fort Hill seems hopelessly remote and cannot be visualized. He stalks
upon the stage, a dramatic and impressive figure, and plays his public part,
but no one is admitted to the dressing-room. Thus all we know of the
occasion of the preparation of the famous letter, which became the Magna
Carta of the Nullifiers, is told in the letter itself.[539] The events of that
summer and early autumn were intimately known to Jackson as he walked
the grounds of the Hermitage, and lingered mournfully about the tomb of
his beloved Rachel. In the spring of 1830 the brilliant Poinsett, fresh from
his mission to Mexico, had been shocked, on his return to the drawing-
rooms of Charleston, to find sedition poured with the tea, and had hurried to
Washington to be closeted with Jackson at the White House. Before he
emerged, he had been designated by the President as his personal
ambassador in South Carolina,[540] and after calling upon Adams, in
retirement, to tell him of his hopes and fears,[541] he made all haste home to
combat, inch by inch, the growing madness, and prepared, if need be, to die
with a musket in his hands. During the intervening three years his
confidential reports had kept Jackson in close touch with all the movements
of the enemy, and the grim old warrior, reëntering the White House on his
return from Tennessee, entertained no illusions as to what he faced.
Three days after Jackson reached Washington, the South Carolina
Legislature fixed November 3d as the date for the Nullification Convention.
Silently, but sternly, soldier-wise, the President was clearing the decks for
action. The day he left the Hermitage the Collector of Customs in
Charleston received instructions as to his course; on reaching the capital,
the commander in charge of troops there was warned of possible attempts to
seize the forts; to his apprehensive friends he was sending reassuring
messages. “I am well advised as to the views and proceedings of the leading
Nullifiers,” he wrote Hamilton on November 2d. “We are wide awake here.

The Union will be preserved; rest assured of that.”[542] Five days later,
Cass was ordering additional troops to Fort Moultrie, and Jackson was
dispatching a secret emissary to Charleston, with instructions to
communicate with Poinsett, and to report upon the conditions of the forts
and the lengths to which the Nullifiers might go.[543] The day preceding the
meeting of the Nullification Convention, Cass ordered General Scott to
Charleston, with minute instructions.[544] With Scott hurrying to South
Carolina, the convention met, the Nullification Ordinance was passed, and
February 1st was set as the day for it to go into operation. Three days after
the convention adjourned, the Legislature met and passed laws to put the
ordinance into effect. The Unionist Convention immediately met,
denounced Nullification, and began to organize their forces for a possible
armed conflict.
Meanwhile Scott had performed his mission with a discretion and sound
judgment which called forth the commendation of Jackson.[545] Five days
before Congress met, five thousand stand of muskets with equipment had
been ordered to Castle Pinckney, and a sloop of war with smaller vessels
were on their way to Charleston Harbor.[546] “The Union must be preserved,
and its laws duly executed, but BY PROPER MEANS,” wrote the President to
Poinsett.
Thus, in this real crisis, the “law,” the “Constitution,” and “public
opinion” were uppermost in the mind of the man generally described as
reckless in the use of power. Long after the event, but while the contest was
still on, he wrote to Poinsett of his regret at the failure of the Unionist
Convention to memorialize Congress “to extend to you the guarantees of
the Constitution, of a republican form of government, stating the actual
despotism which now controls the State.” This, he explained, “would have
placed your situation before the whole nation, and filled the heart of every
true lover of his country and its liberties with indignation.”[547] While at
work on his Proclamation, he wrote Hamilton in New York, urging that
public opinion assert itself in an unmistakable manner. “The crisis must be,
and AS FAR AS MY CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL POWERS
AUTHORIZE, will be, met with energy and firmness. Hence the propriety
of the public voice being heard;—and it ought now to be spoken in a voice
of thunder.”[548] Thus, when the gavel fell on the opening of the Congress,
Jackson had the situation well in hand, had perfected his plans for vigorous
action within the limits of the Constitution and the laws, but still hoped,

through the pressure of public opinion and the returning good sense of the
Carolinians, it would be unnecessary to resort to force.

II
On the opening day of the Congress the great Carolinian was not in his
Senate seat, to which he had been immediately elected on his resignation
from the Vice-Presidency, but public interest centered in it, nevertheless.
The Jackson Message was awaited with keen anxiety. In its
recommendation of a reduction of the tariff was easily recognized a
conciliatory gesture toward the South Carolinians. Even his discussion of
the crisis was temperate and unprovocative. No one listening to the
Message could have had the slightest notion of what was taking place at
that very hour in Jackson’s workroom in the White House.
Even before the Congress met, Edward Livingston was at work
preparing the Proclamation which was to thrill the country like a bugle
blast, perpetuate the memory of Jackson, and reflect glory on himself. It
was no mere accident which led to the selection of the Secretary of State for
this task. His views on the integrity and perpetuity of the Union were
intimately known to his chief; and it was a duty upon which Livingston
could enter with all his heart. But the first draft of the Proclamation was
written by Jackson in a frenzy of composition, so hurriedly that he scattered
the pages over the table to let them dry. The general tenor of the document
was therefore his. If the wording was Livingston’s, the document breathed
the soul of Andrew Jackson. During the period of its preparation, Jackson
was in constant touch. He was thinking of nothing else. Thus, on the day his
Message was read to Congress, the iron man was meditating his appeal to
public opinion. It was almost midnight. In his room in the southeast corner
of the mansion, he sat before the fireplace smoking his pipe—thinking.
Bitter as he was against Calhoun and the leaders whom he felt had seduced
the people of his native State, he felt an affection for the confused masses
who had been deluded; and, while prepared, if need be, to strike with the
military arm of the Government, he passionately hoped that this would not
become necessary. Going over to the table on which always stood the
picture of his Rachel, and the Bible to which she had been devoted, he
wrote a conclusion to the Proclamation in the nature of a touching appeal to
the patriotic memories of the South Carolinians. Then he wrote to

Livingston: “I submit the above as the conclusion of the Proclamation for
your amendment and revision. Let it receive your best flight of eloquence,
to strike to the heart, and speak to the feelings of my deluded countrymen of
South Carolina.”
Three days later, the night again found Jackson obsessed with the
preparation of the Proclamation. Livingston, in his writing, was sending it
as he proceeded to the White House, where Major Donelson, the private
secretary, was engaged in copying it for the printer. At four o’clock in the
afternoon the Secretary of State had sent a number of sheets, and Donelson
had finished copying and was waiting for more. Jackson was impatient of
the delay. The Message having gone forth, he thought it important that it
should be followed immediately by the Proclamation for the effect on South
Carolina. Again he wrote to Livingston explaining the reason for his
anxiety. The Secretary would therefore please send over at once, “sealed, by
the bearer,” such sheets as were completed, and the harassed Livingston
complied. Under these conditions of pressure the immortal document was
written.[549]
On the day Jackson gave this Proclamation to the Nation he made his
last appeal. A letter written to Poinsett that day discloses a determination to
move sternly and unhesitatingly to what he conceived to be his solemn duty.
This letter breathed the spirit of the battle-field. The act of the Nullifiers
was sheer treason. He had been assured that he would be sustained by
Congress. “I will meet it [treason] at the threshold, and have the leaders
arrested and arraigned for treason,” he wrote. He was only waiting for the
Acts of the Legislature “to make a communication to Congress, ask the
means necessary to carry my Proclamation into complete effect, and by an
exemplary punishment of those leaders for treason so unprovoked, put
down this rebellion, and strengthen our Government both at home and
abroad.” The Unionists of South Carolina need not fear. In forty days he
could have 50,000 men in the State, in forty more another 50,000. “How
impotent,” he wrote, “the threats of resistance with only a population of
250,000 whites, and nearly double that in blacks, with our ships in the port
to aid in the execution of the laws!”[550]
Thus hoping that necessity would not compel him to send armed forces,
determined to meet the issue, however, as it might present itself, careful to
observe all the constitutional and legal limitations of his power, enraged to
fury against the leaders and eager to lay his hands on Calhoun, he gave the

country the Proclamation which instantly wiped out party lines with most,
and rallied the patriotic forces of the Union to his support.

III
At the time of the writing of the Proclamation, Andrew Jackson was sixty-
six, and Edward Livingston sixty-nine years old, but it breathes the fire, the
passion, the enthusiasm, and the eloquence of impetuous youth. As an
oration, it was to be treasured as a masterpiece; as a public document, it has
taken its place alongside the Emancipation Proclamation as one of the
greatest pronouncements of American history. Its publication appealed to
the Unionists of the country like a charge on the battle-field. To no one did
it give keener pleasure than to Webster, who read it in New Jersey on his
way to the capital. In Philadelphia he met Clay, and a friend of the latter
explained Clay’s plan of concessions to the Nullifiers through a new tariff
of gradual reductions. The martial call of Jackson aroused the fighting
blood within Webster, and Clay’s game of politics repelled him. He
hastened to Washington determined to give his best blows for Jackson and
the Administration.[551]
John Marshall, in gloomy mood, found in the Proclamation the elixir for
his pessimism.[552] Justice Story, despite his deep-seated prejudice, could
not withhold his commendation, coupled with an expression of strange
surprise. “The President’s Proclamation is excellent,” he wrote, “and
contains the true principles of the Constitution; but will he stand to it? Will
he not surrender all to the guidance of Virginia?”[553]
Adams described it as a “blister plaster.”[554] Among all his long-time
political opponents, Clay alone withheld enthusiastic commendation, with
the comment that, “although there are some good things in it, there are
some entirely too ultra for me.” In truth, the man who would “rather be
right than President” seized eagerly upon the President’s patriotic position
to curry favor with the extreme State-Rights men of the South.
Thus we soon enter upon the party phase of the fight. The effect upon
some of Jackson’s State-Rights supporters was one of painful
embarrassment. While the average Virginian had no sympathy with
Nullification, he subscribed to the State-Rights doctrine and to the right of
secession. The very point on which Clay cunningly and unscrupulously
pounced was therefore the one which caused the greatest consternation

among the Administration Democrats of the Old Dominion. It was to them
that Clay was making his appeal. The Virginia Assembly, which had just
unanimously elected W. C. Rives, a Jacksonian, to the Senate, instantly
reversed itself by electing John Tyler, an enemy, to that body, to succeed
Tazewell, who had resigned. W. S. Archer, writing to Cambreleng in New
York, declared that it would be ridiculous to expect Virginia to endorse the
Proclamation,[555] and Governor Floyd, who had received South Carolina’s
vote in the recent election, rejoiced to find “the poor unworthy dogs,
Ritchie, Van Buren & Co. deserted.”[556] To the momentarily embarrassed
Ritchie, his cleverness pointed a way out. Penning a mild objection to some
of the doctrinal points, he accepted it as primarily a denunciation of
Nullification, and, as such, gave it the support of his great prestige and pen.
[557]

Such was the position of many others among the Southern leaders of the
Jackson party, but Ritchie found himself in a minority. John Tyler, never
friendly to Jackson, now seized upon the Proclamation as a pretext for
pushing to the head of the Opposition. Writing heatedly to Tazewell of the
“servility” to party of many Southern statesmen supporting the President, he
drew a gloomy picture of the future. The Proclamation, he thought, had
“swept away all the barriers of the Constitution,” had established “a
consolidated military despotism.” He “trembled” for South Carolina. “The
war cry is up—rely upon it,” he wrote. “The boast is that the President by
stamping like another Pompey on the earth can raise a hundred thousand
men.”[558]
It is significant of Whig hopes, that, when Tyler wrote and Ritchie was
supporting the President, John Hampden Pleasants, the editor of the
“Richmond Whig,” and an intimate of Clay’s, was denouncing the
principles enunciated by Jackson and Livingston.[559] Resolutions were
adopted by the Legislature denouncing both Nullification and the
Proclamation.
Nor was Jackson indifferent to the attitude Virginia might assume. He
planned to isolate South Carolina, and he feared an alliance with Virginia
more than with any other State. Wishing to reach the Virginians as speedily
as possible, he called upon Lewis Cass to prepare a letter in the form of an
appeal to be published in Ritchie’s “Richmond Enquirer.” Within a few
days after the appearance of the Proclamation, Virginians were reading a
letter described by Ritchie as from “one of the ablest men in the country.”

Making no defense of the tariff, but pointing out the impossibility of the
radical changes demanded being made within the limited time allowed by
the Carolina politicians, he suggested that “Virginia might interpose most
efficaciously, and add another leaf to the wreath which adorns her civic
chaplet,” if her Legislature would appoint a committee to proceed to South
Carolina and “entreat her convention ... to recall its late steps, and at all
events to delay her final action till another trial is made to reduce the
tariff.”[560] This was to lead, a little later, to the adoption of a similar plan.
Strange as it may now seem, the position of Virginia prevented New
York from endorsing the Proclamation unqualifiedly, through her
Legislature—and thereon hangs a tale of the political cunning of Martin
Van Buren. In the Empire State the Proclamation had been received with
enthusiasm. Even so bitter a partisan as Philip Hone poured forth his
admiration and commendation on the pages of his diary. “As a composition,
it is splendid,” he wrote, “and will take its place in the archives of our
country, and dwell in the memory of our citizens alongside of the Farewell
Address.... I think Jackson’s election may save the Union. If he is sincere in
his Proclamation, he will put down this rebellion. Mr. Clay, pursuing the
same measures, would not have been equally successful.”[561] We have
seen, in Jackson’s letter to Hamilton, his desire that every agency of
publicity should be employed to focus the sentiment against Nullification.
The New York Legislature being then in session, Hamilton wrote leading
men in Albany urging the passage of a commendatory resolution. In the
absence of definite encouragement, he then wrote Van Buren, his political
and personal friend, suggesting that he bring pressure to bear upon his
friends in the Assembly. The letter was returned, opened, but unanswered,
and Hamilton lost no time in writing of the incident to Jackson, with the
comment that “this unfriendly, nay offensive course, resulted from Van
Buren’s fear of offending the dominant political party in Virginia.”[562]
That Van Buren was deeply embarrassed by the doctrinal features of the
Proclamation, if not by the possible effect upon his candidacy for the
Presidency and his popularity among the Virginia politicians, has been
admitted and explained by himself.[563] The document was delivered to him
at the home of a friend in Albany as the party was in the act of going in to
dinner. Instantly his practiced eye caught the phrasing that would arouse the
ire of the State-Rights element. The Whigs in Albany were just as keen, and
proceeded, with celerity, to take advantage. William H. Seward immediately

offered a resolution in the State Senate to the effect that “the President of
the United States ... had advanced the true principles upon which only the
Constitution can be maintained and defended.” With Van Buren on the
ground, and with the Democrats in the majority, the Whigs hoped, not
without reason, either to force the Jacksonians to accept the conclusions of
the resolution, or to a rejection of the endorsement, which would be
interpreted as a rupture of the relations of the President and Vice-President.
The Democrats did neither—they postponed action. It was probably at this
juncture that Van Buren received the letter from Hamilton and returned it
unanswered. Realizing, however, the fatality of non-action, Van Buren
prepared a resolution, together with an elaborate and laborious report,
taking issue with “the history given by the President of the formation of our
Government,” and calculated to satisfy the State-Rights men of Virginia.
These were adopted, and sent to the White House with an explanation. Just
what Jackson thought of it will never be known, for he filed the letter
without a word of comment to his secretary, in whose presence it was read.
[564] Nor was the subject ever mentioned in future conversations between
the two leaders.[565] That a copy was also sent to Rives and Ritchie in
Virginia we may be sure.
Such were the cross-currents of party politics at the time, with Jackson
playing a bold and straight game, thinking solely of the Union, and Clay
and Van Buren, rival candidates for the Presidency, pussyfooting and
conciliating on a vital issue.
Meanwhile what was the effect in South Carolina? Senator Hayne, now
Governor, met the challenge of the President in an able document, bitter in
its defiance, which fired the fighting blood of the Nullifiers. Preston
described it as “a document whose elegance of diction, elaborate and
conclusive argument, just and clear constitutional exposition, confuted all
the show of argument of the President’s Proclamation.”[566] Outside of
Nullification circles, the bitterness of this counterblast made a deep
impression. Adams found it “full of bitter words,” and, after reading it, sent
it to James K. Polk, the Jackson leader in the House.[567] The Hayne
defiance was echoed by the Nullifiers. The eloquent Preston, addressing a
mass meeting in Charleston, declared that “there are 16,000 back
countrymen with arms in their hands and cockades in their hats, ready to
march to our city at a moment’s warning to defend us.... I will pour down a
torrent of volunteers that will sweep the myrmidons of the tyrant from the

soil of Carolina.”[568] But Calhoun was disappointed with the Proclamation.
He had hoped for an intemperate, ranting denunciation of the Carolinians
that would heat their blood and put them on the march. The sober dignity of
the document and its impressive appeal to the better natures of the people
interfered with his plans.
In the House of Representatives, the Carolinians were seething with
wrath. The impassioned McDuffie, according to Adams, “could not contain
himself,” and declared that “if Congress should approve the principles of
that proclamation, the liberties of the country were gone forever.”
Whereupon Archer rose to suggest that a communication “would very
shortly be received upon which the gentleman would have an opportunity to
express his opinion without restraint.”[569]

IV
The excitement over the Proclamation found Calhoun remote from the
turmoil and in the midst of his family at Fort Hill. There he lingered to
enjoy the Christmas festivities, and the day following he started to
Washington to take his place in the Senate. There was much drama in this
winter journey to the capital. One of his biographers has compared it to
“that of Luther to attend the diet of Worms.”[570] The public was convinced
of the temper of Jackson and realized the possibilities when the lion in him
was aroused. To some Calhoun’s journey suggested a death march. Looked
upon as the prime mover, the instigator, the leader of the seditious
movement, many thought that he would be arrested on the charge of treason
before he crossed the Virginia border. Interest in his progress was intense,
and even among those who abhorred the new doctrine there was no little
sympathy for the grim, impeccably pure statesman who had the courage to
beard the lion in his den. New Year’s Day found him at Raleigh, where he
rested. Here crowds gathered to welcome, or merely to observe him, and a
public dinner was offered him by his admirers. This he politely declined.
There was something of grandeur in the dignity of his demeanor. As he
proceeded from town to town, his approach was announced and elaborate
preparations were made for his reception, for both North Carolina and
Virginia were devoted to State Rights, and not a few of their citizens
sympathized with the Carolina doctrine, and looked upon secession as an
inevitable result of the crisis. Unlike the case of Burr, nothing personally