EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.--MR. BENTON'S THIRD SPEECH.
Mr. President: It is now near three years since the resolve was
adopted by the Senate, which it is my present motion to expunge
from the journal. At the moment that this resolve was adopted,
I gave notice of my intention to move to expunge it; and then
expressed my confident belief that the motion would eventually
prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition of
vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the
event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or an idle
assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice
done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the justice of
the American people. I felt that the President had been wronged;
and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed! The event
proves that I was not mistaken. The question of expunging this
resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has
been had upon it. They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their
decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us
in a great variety of ways. A great number of States have expressly
instructed their senators to vote for this expurgation. A very great
majority of the States have elected senators and representatives
to Congress, upon the express ground of favoring this expurgation.
The Bank of the United States, which took the initiative in the
accusation against the President, and furnished the material, and
worked the machinery which was used against him, and which was then
so powerful on this floor, has become more and more odious to the
public mind, and musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the
two Houses of Congress. The late Presidential election furnishes
additional evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the
friend of President Jackson, the supporter of his administration,
and the avowed advocate for the expurgation, has received a large
majority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an
express declaration of his sentiments on this precise point. The
evidence of the public will, exhibited in all these forms, is too
manifest to be mistaken, too explicit to require illustration, and
too imperative to be disregarded. Omitting details and specific
enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own files for the instructions
to expunge,--to the complexion of the two Houses for the temper of
the people,--to the denationalized condition of the Bank of the
United States for the fate of the imperious accuser,--and to the
issue of the Presidential election for the answer of the Union.
All these are pregnant proofs of the public will, and the last
pre-eminently so: because, both the question of the expurgation,
and the form of the process, was directly put in issue upon it. A
representative of the people from the State of Kentucky formally
interrogated a prominent candidate for the Presidency on these
points, and required from him a public answer for the information
of the public mind. The answer was given, and published, and read
by all the voters before the election; and I deem it right to refer
to that answer in this place, not only as evidence of the points
put in issue, but also for the purpose of doing more ample justice
to President Jackson by incorporating into the legislative history
of this case, the high and honorable testimony in his favor of the
eminent citizen, Mr. Van Buren, who has just been exalted to the
lofty honors of the American Presidency:
"Your last question seeks to know 'my' opinion as to the
constitutional power of the Senate or House of Representatives
to expunge or obliterate from the journals the proceedings of a
previous session.
"You will, I am sure, be satisfied upon further consideration,
that there are but few questions of a political character less
connected with the duties of the office of President of the
United States, or that might not with equal propriety be put by
an elector to a candidate for that station, than this. With the
journals of neither house of Congress can he properly have any
thing to do. But, as your question has doubtless been induced by
the pendency of Col. Benton's resolutions, to expunge from the
journals of the Senate certain other resolutions touching the
official conduct of President Jackson, I prefer to say, that I
regarded the passage of Col. Benton's preamble and resolutions
to be an act of justice to a faithful and greatly injured public
servant, not only constitutional in itself, but imperiously
demanded by a proper respect for the well known will of the
people."
I do not propose, sir, to draw violent, unwarranted, or strained
inferences. I do not assume to say that the question of this
expurgation was a leading, or a controlling point in the issue of
this election. I do not assume to say, or insinuate, that every
individual, and every voter, delivered his suffrage with reference
to this question. Doubtless there were many exceptions. Still, the
triumphant election of the candidate who had expressed himself
in the terms just quoted, and who was, besides, the personal and
political friend of President Jackson, and the avowed approver of
his administration, must be admitted to a place among the proofs in
this case, and ranked among the high concurring evidences of the
public sentiment in favor of the motion which I make.
Assuming, then, that we have ascertained the will of the people
on this great question, the inquiry presents itself, how far the
expression of that will ought to be conclusive of our action here?
I hold that it ought to be binding and obligatory upon us! and
that, not only upon the principles of representative government,
which requires obedience to the known will of the people, but also
in conformity to the principles upon which the proceeding against
President Jackson was conducted when the sentence against him was
adopted. Then every thing was done with especial reference to the
will of the people! Their impulsion was assumed to be the sole
motive to action; and to them the ultimate verdict was expressly
referred. The whole machinery of alarm and pressure--every engine of
political and moneyed power--was put in motion, and worked for many
months, to excite the people against the President; and to stir up
meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling committees, and distress
deputations against him; and each symptom of popular discontent was
hailed as an evidence of public will, and quoted here as proof that
the people demanded the condemnation of the President. Not only
legislative assemblies, and memorials from large assemblies, were
then produced here as evidence of public opinion, but the petitions
of boys under age, the remonstrances of a few signers, and the
results of the most inconsiderable elections, were ostentatiously
paraded and magnified, as the evidence of the sovereign will of our
constituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was every thing while
that voice, partially obtained through political and pecuniary
machinations, was adverse to the President. Then the popular will
was the shrine at which all worshipped. Now, when that will is
regularly, soberly, repeatedly, and almost universally expressed
through the ballot boxes, at the various elections, and turns out
to be in favor of the President, certainly no one can disregard it,
nor otherwise look at it than as the solemn verdict of the competent
and ultimate tribunal upon an issue fairly made up, fully argued,
and duly submitted for decision. As such verdict, I receive it.
As the deliberate verdict of the sovereign people, I bow to it. I
am content. I do not mean to reopen the case, nor to recommence
the argument. I leave that work to others, if any others choose to
perform it. For myself, I am content; and, dispensing with further
argument, I shall call for judgment, and ask to have execution
done, upon that unhappy journal, which the verdict of millions of
freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an untrue, illegal,
and unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against the approved
President of the Republic.
But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and
refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is
another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching
termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly
proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my
duty, to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous
contest in which we have been so long engaged; I allude to the
general tenor of his administration, and to its effect, for good
or for evil, upon the condition of his country. This is the proper
time for such a view to be taken. The political existence of this
great man now draws to a close. In little more than forty days he
ceases to be a public character. In a few brief weeks he ceases to
be an object of political hope to any, and should cease to be an
object of political hate, or envy, to all. Whatever of motive the
servile and timeserving might have found in his exalted station for
raising the altar of adulation, and burning the incense of praise
before him, that motive can no longer exist. The dispenser of the
patronage of an empire--the chief of this great confederacy of
States--is soon to be a private individual, stripped of all power
to reward, or to punish. His own thoughts, as he has shown us in
the concluding paragraph of that message which is to be the last
of its kind that we shall ever receive from him, are directed to
that beloved retirement from which he was drawn by the voice of
millions of freemen, and to which he now looks for that interval of
repose which age and infirmities require. Under these circumstances,
he ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the passions,
and passes into a character for the contemplation of history.
Historically, then, shall I view him; and limiting this view to his
civil administration. I demand, where is there a chief magistrate
of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so much good
has come? Never has any man entered upon the chief magistracy of
a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never
has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never
has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination
of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any
country where the administration of justice has risen above the
knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and
condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence,
without the forms of law or justice! History has been ransacked to
find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate him by
comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently
strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted
in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes.
Tyrant, despot, usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his country;
rash, ignorant, imbecile; endangering the public peace with all
foreign nations; destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all
industry, all commerce, all manufactures; annihilating confidence
between man and man; delivering up the streets of populous cities
to grass and weeds, and the wharves of commercial towns to the
encumbrance of decaying vessels; depriving labor of all reward;
depriving industry of all employment; destroying the currency;
plunging an innocent and happy people from the summit of felicity to
the depths of misery, want, and despair. Such is the faint outline,
followed up by actual condemnation, of the appalling denunciations
daily uttered against this one MAN, from the moment he became an
object of political competition, down to the concluding moment of
his political existence.
"The sacred voice of inspiration has told us that there is a
time for all things. There certainly has been a time for every
evil that human nature admits of to be vaticinated of President
Jackson's administration; equally certain the time has now come for
all rational and well-disposed people to compare the predictions
with the facts, and to ask themselves if these calamitous
prognostications have been verified by events? Have we peace, or
war, with foreign nations? Certainly, we have peace with all the
world! peace with all its benign, and felicitous, and beneficent
influences! Are we respected, or despised abroad? Certainly the
American name never was more honored throughout the four quarters
of the globe, than in this very moment. Do we hear of indignity, or
outrage in any quarter? of merchants robbed in foreign ports? of
vessels searched on the high seas? of American citizens impressed
into foreign service? of the national flag insulted any where? On
the contrary, we see former wrongs repaired; no new ones inflicted.
France pays twenty-five millions of francs for spoliations committed
thirty years ago; Naples pays two millions one hundred thousand
ducats for wrongs of the same date; Denmark pays six hundred and
fifty thousand rix dollars for wrongs done a quarter of a century
ago; Spain engages to pay twelve millions of reals vellon for
injuries of fifteen years date; and Portugal, the last in the list
of former aggressors, admits her liability, and only waits the
adjustment of details to close her account by adequate indemnity.
So far from war, insult, contempt, and spoliation from abroad; this
denounced administration has been the season of peace and good
will, and the auspicious era of universal reparation. So far from
suffering injury at the hands of foreign powers, our merchants
have received indemnities for all former injuries. It has been the
day of accounting, of settlement, and of retribution. The total
list of arrearages, extending through four successive previous
administrations, has been closed and settled up. The wrongs done
to commerce for thirty years back, and under so many different
Presidents, and indemnities withheld from all, have been repaired
and paid over under the beneficent and glorious administration of
President Jackson. But one single instance of outrage has occurred,
and that at the extremities of the world, and by a piratical
horde, amenable to no law but the law of force. The Malays of
Sumatra committed a robbery and massacre upon an American vessel.
Wretches! they did not then know that JACKSON was President of the
United States! and that no distance, no time, no idle ceremonial
of treating with robbers and assassins, was to hold back the arm
of justice. Commodore Downes went out. His cannon and his bayonets
struck the outlaws in their den. They paid in terror and in blood
for the outrage which was committed; and the great lesson was taught
to these distant pirates--to our antipodes themselves--that not even
the entire diameter of this globe could protect them! and that the
name of American citizen, like that of Roman citizen in the great
days of the Republic and of the empire, was to be the inviolable
passport of all that wore it throughout the whole extent of the
habitable world.
"At home, the most gratifying picture presents itself to the view:
the public debt paid off; taxes reduced one half; the completion
of the public defences systematically commenced; the compact with
Georgia, uncomplied with since 1802, now carried into effect, and
her soil ready to be freed, as her jurisdiction has been delivered,
from the presence and encumbrance of an Indian population.
Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina;
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas; in a word, all the
States encumbered with an Indian population have been relieved from
that encumbrance; and the Indians themselves have been transferred
to new and permanent homes, every way better adapted to the
enjoyment of their existence, the preservation of their rights, and
the improvement of their condition.
"The currency is not ruined! On the contrary, seventy-five millions
of specie in the country is a spectacle never seen before, and is
the barrier of the people against the designs of any banks which
may attempt to suspend payments, and to force a dishonored paper
currency upon the community. These seventy-five millions are
the security of the people against the dangers of a depreciated
and inconvertible paper money. Gold, after a disappearance of
thirty years, is restored to our country. All Europe beholds with
admiration the success of our efforts in three years, to supply
ourselves with the currency which our constitution guarantees,
and which the example of France and Holland shows to be so easily
attainable, and of such incalculable value to industry, morals,
economy, and solid wealth. The success of these efforts is styled in
the best London papers, not merely a reformation, but a revolution
in the currency! a revolution by which our America is now regaining
from Europe the gold and silver which she has been sending to it for
thirty years past."
Domestic industry is not paralyzed; confidence is not destroyed;
factories are not stopped; workmen are not mendicants for bread
and employment; credit is not extinguished; prices have not sunk;
grass is not growing in the streets of populous cities; the
wharves are not lumbered with decaying vessels; columns of curses,
rising from the bosoms of a ruined and agonized people, are not
ascending to heaven against the destroyer of a nation's felicity
and prosperity. On the contrary, the reverse of all this is true!
and true to a degree that astonishes and bewilders the senses. I
know that all is not gold that glitters; that there is a difference
between a specious and a solid prosperity. I know that a part of
the present prosperity is apparent only--the effect of an increase
of fifty millions of paper money, forced into circulation by one
thousand banks; but, after making due allowance for this fictitious
and delusive excess, the real prosperity of the country is still
unprecedentedly and transcendently great. I know that every flow
must be followed by its ebb, that every expansion must be followed
by its contraction. I know that a revulsion of the paper system is
inevitable; but I know, also, that these seventy-five millions of
gold and silver is the bulwark of the country, and will enable every
honest bank to meet its liabilities, and every prudent citizen to
take care of himself.
Turning to some points in the civil administration of President
Jackson, and how much do we not find to admire! The great cause of
the constitution has been vindicated from an imputation of more than
forty years' duration. He has demonstrated, by the fact itself,
that a national bank is not 'necessary' to the fiscal operations
of the federal government; and in that demonstration he has upset
the argument of General Hamilton, and the decision of the Supreme
Court of the United States, and all that ever has been said in favor
of the constitutionality of a national bank. All this argument and
decision rested on the single assumption of the 'necessity' of
that institution to the federal government. He has shown it is not
'necessary;' that the currency of the constitution, and especially
a gold currency, is all that the federal government wants, and that
she can get that whenever she pleases. In this single act, he has
vindicated the constitution from an unjust imputation, and knocked
from under the decision of the Supreme Court the assumed fact on
which it rested. He has prepared the way for the reversal of that
decision; and it is a question for lawyers to answer, whether the
case is not ripe for the application of that writ of most remedial
nature, as Lord Coke calls it, and which was invented, lest, in any
case, there should be an oppressive defect of justice! the venerable
writ of _audita querela defendentis_, to ascertain the truth of a
fact happening since the judgment; and upon the due finding of which
the judgment will be vacated. Let the lawyers bring their books, and
answer us, if there is not a case here presented for the application
of that ancient and most remedial writ?
From President Jackson, the country has first learned the true
theory and practical intent of the constitution, in giving to the
Executive a qualified negative on the legislative power of Congress.
Far from being an odious, dangerous, or kingly prerogative, this
power, as vested in the President, is nothing but a qualified copy
of the famous veto power vested in the tribunes of the people among
the Romans, and intended to suspend the passage of a law until the
people themselves should have time to consider it. The qualified
veto of the President destroys nothing; it only delays the passage
of a law, and refers it to the people for their consideration and
decision. It is the reference of a law, not to a committee of the
House, or of the whole House, but to the committee of the whole
Union. It is a recommitment of the bill to the people, for them
to examine and consider; and if, upon this examination, they are
content to pass it, it will pass at the next session. The delay
of a few months is the only effect of a veto, in a case where the
people shall ultimately approve a law; where they do not approve it,
the interposition of the veto is the barrier which saves them the
adoption of a law, the repeal of which might afterwards be almost
impossible. The qualified negative is, therefore, a beneficent
power, intended, as General Hamilton expressly declares in the
'Federalist,' to protect, first, the executive department from the
encroachments of the legislative department; and, secondly, to
preserve the people from hasty, dangerous, or criminal legislation
on the part of their representatives. This is the design and
intention of the veto power; and the fear expressed by General
Hamilton was, that Presidents, so far from exercising it too often,
would not exercise it as often as the safety of the people required;
that they might lack the moral courage to stake themselves in
opposition to a favorite measure of the majority of the two Houses
of Congress; and thus deprive the people, in many instances, of
their right to pass upon a bill before it becomes a final law. The
cases in which President Jackson has exercised the veto power has
shown the soundness of these observations. No ordinary President
would have staked himself against the Bank of the United States,
and the two Houses of Congress, in 1832. It required President
Jackson to confront that power--to stem that torrent--to stay the
progress of that charter, and to refer it to the people for their
decision. His moral courage was equal to the crisis. He arrested
the charter until it could go to the people, and they have arrested
it for ever. Had he not done so, the charter would have become law,
and its repeal almost impossible. The people of the whole Union
would now have been in the condition of the people of Pennsylvania,
bestrode by the monster, in daily conflict with him, and maintaining
a doubtful contest for supremacy between the government of a State
and the directory of a moneyed corporation.
To detail specific acts which adorn the administration of President
Jackson, and illustrate the intuitive sagacity of his intellect,
the firmness of his mind, his disregard of personal popularity,
and his entire devotion to the public good, would be inconsistent
with this rapid sketch, intended merely to present general views,
and not to detail single actions, howsoever worthy they may be
of a splendid page in the volume of history. But how can we pass
over the great measure of the removal of the public moneys from
the Bank of the United States, in the autumn of 1833? that wise,
heroic, and masterly measure of prevention, which has rescued an
empire from the fangs of a merciless, revengeful, greedy, insatiate,
implacable, moneyed power! It is a remark for which I am indebted
to the philosophic observation of my most esteemed colleague and
friend (pointing to Dr. Linn), that, while it requires far greater
talent to foresee an evil before it happens, and to arrest it by
precautionary measures, than it requires to apply an adequate remedy
to the same evil after it has happened, yet the applause bestowed
by the world is always greatest in the latter case. Of this, the
removal of the public moneys from the Bank of the United States is
an eminent instance. The veto of 1832, which arrested the charter
which Congress had granted, immediately received the applause and
approbation of a majority of the Union: the removal of the deposits,
which prevented the bank from forcing a recharter, was disapproved
by a large majority of the country, and even of his own friends; yet
the veto would have been unavailing, and the bank would inevitably
have been rechartered, if the deposits had not been removed. The
immense sums of public money since accumulated would have enabled
the bank, if she had retained the possession of it, to have coerced
a recharter. Nothing but the removal could have prevented her
from extorting a recharter from the sufferings and terrors of the
people. If it had not been for that measure, the previous veto would
have been unavailing; the bank would have been again installed
in power; and this entire federal government would have been held
as an appendage to that bank; and administered according to her
directions, and by her nominees. That great measure of prevention,
the removal of the deposits, though feebly and faintly supported by
friends at first, has expelled the bank from the field, and driven
her into abeyance under a State charter. She is not dead, but,
holding her capital and stockholders together under a State charter,
she has taken a position to watch events, and to profit by them. The
royal tiger has gone into the jungle; and, crouched on his belly,
he awaits the favorable moment for emerging from his covert, and
springing on the body of the unsuspicious traveller!
The Treasury order for excluding paper money from the land offices
is another wise measure, originating in enlightened forecast,
and preventing great mischiefs. The President foresaw the evils
of suffering a thousand streams of paper money, issuing from a
thousand different banks, to discharge themselves on the national
domain. He foresaw that if these currents were allowed to run their
course, that the public lands would be swept away, the Treasury
would be filled with irredeemable paper, a vast number of banks must
be broken by their folly, and the cry set up that nothing but a
national bank could regulate the currency. He stopped the course of
these streams of paper; and, in so doing, has saved the country from
a great calamity, and excited anew the machinations of those whose
schemes of gain and mischief have been disappointed; and who had
counted on a new edition of panic and pressure, and again saluting
Congress with the old story of confidence destroyed, currency
ruined, prosperity annihilated, and distress produced, by the
tyranny of one man. They began their lugubrious song; but ridicule
and contempt have proved too strong for money and insolence; and the
panic letter of the ex-president of the denationalized bank, after
limping about for a few days, has shrunk from the lash of public
scorn, and disappeared from the forum of public debate.
The difficulty with France: what an instance it presents of the
superior sagacity of President Jackson over all the commonplace
politicians who beset and impede his administration at home! That
difficulty, inflamed and aggravated by domestic faction, wore, at
one time, a portentous aspect; the skill, firmness, elevation of
purpose, and manly frankness of the President, avoided the danger,
accomplished the object, commanded the admiration of Europe, and
retained the friendship of France. He conducted the delicate affair
to a successful and mutually honorable issue. All is amicably
and happily terminated, leaving not a wound, nor even a scar,
behind--leaving the Frenchman and American on the ground on which
they have stood for fifty years, and should for ever stand; the
ground of friendship, respect, good will, and mutual wishes for the
honor, happiness, and prosperity, of each other.
But why this specification? So beneficent and so glorious has been
the administration of this President, that where to begin, and
where to end, in the enumeration of great measures, would be the
embarrassment of him who has his eulogy to make. He came into office
the first of generals; he goes out the first of statesmen. His
civil competitors have shared the fate of his military opponents;
and Washington city has been to the American politicians who have
assailed him, what New Orleans was to the British generals who
attacked his lines. Repulsed! driven back! discomfited! crushed!
has been the fate of all assailants, foreign and domestic, civil
and military. At home and abroad, the impress of his genius and of
his character is felt. He has impressed upon the age in which he
lives the stamp of his arms, of his diplomacy, and of his domestic
policy. In a word, so transcendent have been the merits of his
administration, that they have operated a miracle upon the minds
of his most inveterate opponents. He has expunged their objections
to military chieftains! He has shown them that they were mistaken;
that military men were not the dangerous rulers they had imagined,
but safe and prosperous conductors of the vessel of state. He has
changed their fear into love. With visible signs they admit their
error, and, instead of deprecating, they now invoke the reign of
chieftains. They labored hard to procure a military successor to the
present incumbent; and if their love goes on increasing at the same
rate, the republic may be put to the expense of periodical wars, to
breed a perpetual succession of these chieftains to rule over them
and their posterity for ever.
To drop this irony, which the inconsistency of mad opponents
has provoked, and to return to the plain delineations of
historical painting, the mind instinctively dwells on the vast and
unprecedented popularity of this President. Great is the influence,
great the power, greater than any man ever before possessed in our
America, which he has acquired over the public mind. And how has he
acquired it? Not by the arts of intrigue, or the juggling tricks
of diplomacy; not by undermining rivals, or sacrificing public
interests for the gratification of classes or individuals. But he
has acquired it, first, by the exercise of an intuitive sagacity
which, leaving all book learning at an immeasurable distance behind,
has always enabled him to adopt the right remedy, at the right time,
and to conquer soonest when the men of forms and office thought
him most near to ruin and despair. Next, by a moral courage which
knew no fear when the public good beckoned him to go on. Last,
and chiefest, he has acquired it by an open honesty of purpose,
which knew no concealments; by a straightforwardness of action,
which disdained the forms of office and the arts of intrigue; by
a disinterestedness of motive, which knew no selfish or sordid
calculation; a devotedness of patriotism, which staked every thing
personal on the issue of every measure which the public welfare
required him to adopt. By these qualities, and these means, he has
acquired his prodigious popularity, and his transcendent influence
over the public mind; and if there are any who envy that influence
and popularity, let them envy, also, and emulate, if they can, the
qualities and means by which they were acquired.
Great has been the opposition to President Jackson's administration;
greater, perhaps, than ever has been exhibited against any
government, short of actual insurrection and forcible resistance.
Revolution has been proclaimed! and every thing has been done that
could be expected to produce revolution. The country has been
alarmed, agitated, convulsed. From the Senate chamber to the village
bar-room, from one end of the continent to the other, denunciation,
agitation, excitement, has been the order of the day. For eight
years the President of this republic has stood upon a volcano,
vomiting fire and flames upon him, and threatening the country
itself with ruin and desolation, if the people did not expel the
usurper, despot, and tyrant, as he was called, from the high place
to which the suffrages of millions of freemen had elevated him.
Great is the confidence which he has always reposed in the
discernment and equity of the American people. I have been
accustomed to see him for many years, and under many discouraging
trials; but never saw him doubt, for an instant, the ultimate
support of the people. It was my privilege to see him often, and
during the most gloomy period of the panic conspiracy, when the
whole earth seemed to be in commotion against him, and when many
friends were faltering, and stout hearts were quailing, before the
raging storm which bank machination, and senatorial denunciation,
had conjured up to overwhelm him. I saw him in the darkest moments
of this gloomy period; and never did I see his confidence in the
ultimate support of his fellow-citizens forsake him for an instant.
He always said the people would stand by those who stand by them;
and nobly have they justified that confidence! That verdict, the
voice of millions, which now demands the expurgation of that
sentence, which the Senate and the bank then pronounced upon him,
is the magnificent response of the people's hearts to the implicit
confidence which he then reposed in them. But it was not in the
people only that he had confidence; there was another, and a far
higher Power, to which he constantly looked to save the country, and
its defenders, from every danger; and signal events prove that he
did not look to that high Power in vain.
Sir, I think it right, in approaching the termination of this great
question, to present this faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant,
beneficent, and glorious administration of President Jackson. It
is not for me to attempt to do it justice; it is not for ordinary
men to attempt its history. His military life, resplendent with
dazzling events, will demand the pen of a nervous writer; his
civil administration, replete with scenes which have called into
action so many and such various passions of the human heart, and
which has given to native sagacity so many victories over practised
politicians, will require the profound, luminous, and philosophical
conceptions of a Livy, a Plutarch, or a Sallust. This history is not
to be written in our day. The cotemporaries of such events are not
the hands to describe them. Time must first do its office--must
silence the passions, remove the actors, develope consequences,
and canonize all that is sacred to honor, patriotism, and glory.
In after ages the historic genius of our America shall produce the
writers which the subject demands--men far removed from the contests
of this day, who will know how to estimate this great epoch, and how
to acquire an immortality for their own names by painting, with a
master's hand, the immortal events of the patriot President's life.
And now, sir, I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed
on myself. Solitary and alone, and amidst the jeers and taunts of
my opponents, I put this ball in motion. The people have taken it
up, and rolled it forward, and I am no longer any thing but a unit
in the vast mass which now propels it. In the name of that mass I
speak. I demand the execution of the edict of the people; I demand
the expurgation of that sentence which the voice of a few senators,
and the power of their confederate, the Bank of the United States,
has caused to be placed on the journal of the Senate; and which the
voice of millions of freemen has ordered to be expunged from it.