PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1828, AND FURTHER ERRORS OF MONS. DE
TOCQUEVILLE.
General Jackson and Mr. Adams were the candidates;--with the latter,
Mr. Clay (his Secretary of State), so intimately associated in
the public mind, on account of the circumstances of the previous
presidential election in the House of Representatives, that their
names and interests were inseparable during the canvass. General
Jackson was elected, having received 178 electoral votes to 83
received by Mr. Adams. Mr. Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, was
the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of Mr. Adams, and
received an equal vote with that gentleman: Mr. Calhoun was the
vice-presidential candidate on the ticket with General Jackson, and
received a slightly less vote--the deficiency being in Georgia,
where the friends of Mr. Crawford still resented his believed
connection with the "A. B. plot." In the previous election, he had
been neutral between General Jackson and Mr. Adams; but was now
decided on the part of the General, and received the same vote every
where, except in Georgia. In this election there was a circumstance
to be known and remembered. Mr. Adams and Mr. Rush were both from
the non-slaveholding--General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun from the
slaveholding States, and both large slave owners themselves--and
both received a large vote (73 each) in the free States--and of
which at least forty were indispensable to their election. There was
no jealousy, or hostile, or aggressive spirit in the North at that
time against the South!
The election of General Jackson was a triumph of democratic
principle, and an assertion of the people's right to govern
themselves. That principle had been violated in the presidential
election in the House of Representatives in the session of 1824-'25;
and the sanction, or rebuke, of that violation was a leading
question in the whole canvass. It was also a triumph over the high
protective policy, and the federal internal improvement policy,
and the latitudinous construction of the constitution; and of the
democracy over the federalists, then called national republicans;
and was the re-establishment of parties on principle, according to
the landmarks of the early ages of the government. For although Mr.
Adams had received confidence and office from Mr. Madison and Mr.
Monroe, and had classed with the democratic party during the fusion
of parties in the "era of good feeling," yet he had previously
been federal; and in the re-establishment of old party lines which
began to take place after the election of Mr. Adams in the House
of Representatives, his affinities, and policy, became those of
his former party: and as a party, with many individual exceptions,
they became his supporters and his strength. General Jackson, on
the contrary, had always been democratic, so classing when he was a
senator in Congress under the administration of the first Mr. Adams,
and when party lines were most straightly drawn, and upon principle:
and as such now receiving the support of men and States which took
their political position at that time, and had maintained it ever
since--Mr. Macon and Mr. Randolph, for example, and the States of
Virginia and Pennsylvania. And here it becomes my duty to notice
an error, or a congeries of errors, of Mons. de Tocqueville, in
relation to the causes of General Jackson's election; and which he
finds exclusively in the glare of a military fame resulting from "a
very ordinary achievement, only to be remembered where battles are
rare." He says:
"General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to the
head of their government, is a man of a violent temper and
mediocre talents. No one circumstance in the whole course of
his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a free
people; and, indeed, the majority of the enlightened classes of
the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to
the Presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station,
solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained twenty
years ago, under the walls of New Orleans;--a victory which,
however, was a very ordinary achievement, and which could only
be remembered in a country where battles are rare."--(_Chapter
17._)
This may pass for American history, in Europe and in a foreign
language, and even finds abettors here to make it American history
in the United States, with a preface and notes to enforce and
commend it: but America will find historians of her own to do
justice to the national, and to individual character. In the mean
time I have some knowledge of General Jackson, and the American
people, and the two presidential elections with which they
honored the General; and will oppose it, that is, my knowledge,
to the flippant and shallow statements of Mons. de Tocqueville.
"_A man of violent temper._" I ought to know something about
that--contemporaries will understand the allusion--and I can say
that General Jackson had a good temper, kind and hospitable to
every body, and a feeling of protection in it for the whole human
race, and especially the weaker and humbler part of it. He had few
quarrels on his own account; and probably the very ones of which
Mons. de Tocqueville had heard were accidental, against his will,
and for the succor of friends. "_Mediocre talent, and no capacity
to govern a free people._" In the first place, free people are not
governed by any man, but by laws. But to understand the phrase as
perhaps intended, that he had no capacity for civil administration,
let the condition of the country at the respective periods when
he took up, and when he laid down the administration, answer. He
found the country in domestic distress--pecuniary distress--and
the national and state legislation invoked by leading politicians
to relieve it by empirical remedies;--tariffs, to relieve one part
of the community by taxing the other;--internal improvement, to
distribute pubic money;--a national bank, to cure the paper money
evils of which it was the author;--the public lands the pillage of
broken bank paper;--depreciated currency and ruined exchanges;--a
million and a half of "unavailable funds" in the treasury;--a large
public debt;--the public money the prey of banks;--no gold in the
country--only twenty millions of dollars in silver, and that in
banks which refused, when they pleased, to pay it down in redemption
of their own notes, or even to render back to depositors. Stay
laws, stop laws, replevin laws, baseless paper, the resource in
half the States to save the debtor from his creditor; and national
bankrupt laws from Congress, and local insolvent laws, in the
States, the demand of every session. Indian tribes occupying a
half, or a quarter of the area of southern States, and unsettled
questions of wrong and insult, with half the powers of Europe. Such
was the state of the country when General Jackson became President:
what was it when he left the Presidency? Protective tariffs, and
federal internal improvement discarded; the national bank left to
expire upon its own limitation; the public lands redeemed from
the pillage of broken bank paper; no more "unavailable funds;"
an abundant gold and silver currency; the public debt paid off;
the treasury made independent of banks; the Indian tribes removed
from the States; indemnities obtained from all foreign powers for
all past aggressions, and to new ones committed; several treaties
obtained from great powers that never would treat with us before;
peace, friendship, and commerce with all the world; and the measures
established which, after one great conflict with the expiring Bank
of the United States, and all her affiliated banks in 1837, put an
end to bank dominion in the United States, and all its train of
contractions and expansions, panic and suspension, distress and
empirical relief. This is the answer which the respective periods
of the beginning and the ending of General Jackson's administration
gives to the flippant imputation of no capacity for civil
government. I pass on to the next. "_The majority of the enlightened
classes always opposed to him._" A majority of those classes which
Mons. de Tocqueville would chiefly see in the cities, and along the
highways--bankers, brokers, jobbers, contractors, politicians, and
speculators--were certainly against him, and he as certainly against
them: but the mass of the intelligence of the country was with him!
and sustained him in retrieving the country from the deplorable
condition in which the "enlightened classes" had sunk it! and in
advancing it to that state of felicity at home, and respect abroad,
which has made it the envy and admiration of the civilized world,
and the absorbent of populations of Europe. I pass on. "_Raised to
the Presidency and maintained there solely by the recollection of
the victory at New Orleans._" Here recollection, and military glare,
reverse the action of their ever previous attributes, and become
stronger, instead of weaker, upon the lapse of time. The victory
at New Orleans was gained in the first week of the year 1815; and
did not bear this presidential fruit until fourteen and eighteen
years afterwards, and until three previous good seasons had passed
without production. There was a presidential election in 1816, when
the victory was fresh, and the country ringing, and imaginations
dazzled with it: but it did not make Jackson President, or even
bring him forward as a candidate. The same four years afterwards, at
the election of 1820--not even a candidate then. Four years still
later, at the election of 1824, he became a candidate, and--was
not elected;--receiving but 99 electoral votes out of 261. In the
year 1828 he was first elected, receiving 178 out of 261 votes;
and in 1832 he was a second time elected, receiving 219 out of
288 votes. Surely there must have been something besides an old
military recollection to make these two elections so different from
the two former; and there was! That something else was principle!
and the same that I have stated in the beginning of this chapter
as entering into the canvass of 1828, and ruling its issue. I
pass on to the last disparagement. "A victory which was a very
ordinary achievement, and only to be remembered where battles were
rare." Such was not the battle at New Orleans. It was no ordinary
achievement. It was a victory if 4,600 citizens just called from
their homes, without knowledge of scientific war, under a leader
as little schooled as themselves in that particular, without other
advantages than a slight field work (a ditch and a bank of earth)
hastily thrown up--over double their numbers of British veterans,
survivors of the wars of the French Revolution, victors in the
Peninsula and at Toulouse, under trained generals of the Wellington
school, and with a disparity of loss never before witnessed. On one
side 700 killed (including the first, second and third generals);
1400 wounded; 500 taken prisoners. On the other, six privates
killed, and seven wounded; and the total repulse of an invading army
which instantly fled to its "wooden walls," and never again placed a
hostile foot on American soil. Such an achievement is not ordinary,
much less "very" ordinary. Does Mons. de Tocqueville judge the
importance of victories by the numbers engaged, and the quantity of
blood shed, or by their consequences? If the former, the cannonade
on the heights of Valmy (which was not a battle, nor even a combat,
but a distant cannon firing in which few were hurt), must seem to
him a very insignificant affair. Yet it did what the marvellous
victories of Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry, Vauchamps
and Montereau could not do--turned back the invader, and saved the
soil of France from the iron hoof of the conqueror's horse! and
was commemorated twelve years afterwards by the great emperor in a
ducal title bestowed upon one of its generals. The victory at New
Orleans did what the connonade at Valmy did--drove back the invader!
and also what it did not do--destroyed the one fourth part of his
force. And, therefore, it is not to be disparaged, and will not
be, by any one who judges victories by their consequences, instead
of by the numbers engaged. And so the victory at New Orleans will
remain in history as one of the great achievements of the world,
in spite of the low opinion which the writer on American democracy
entertains of it. But Mons. de Tocqueville's disparagement of
General Jackson, and his achievement, does not stop at him and his
victory. It goes beyond both, and reaches the American people, their
republican institutions, and the elective franchise: It represents
the people as incapable of self-government--as led off by a little
military glare to elect a man twice President who had not one
qualification for the place, who was violent and mediocre, and whom
the enlightened classes opposed: all most unjustly said, but still
to pass for American history in Europe, and with some Americans at
home.
Regard for Mons. de Tocqueville is the cause of this correction of
his errors: it is a piece of respect which I do not extend to the
riffraff of European writers who come here to pick up the gossip
of the highways, to sell it in Europe for American history, and to
requite with defamation the hospitalities of our houses. He is not
of that class: he is above it: he is evidently not intentionally
unjust. But he is the victim of the company which he kept while
among us; and his book must pay the penalty of the impositions
practised upon him. The character of our country, and the cause of
republican government, require his errors to be corrected: and,
unhappily, I shall have further occasion to perform that duty.