THE DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH
Monroe's Administration drew to a close in a mellow sunset of popular
approval. But no prophetic genius was required to foresee that clouds
of discontent and controversy would hang heavy about the head of his
successor. Adams certainly did not expect it to be otherwise.
"Prospects are flattering for the immediate issue," he recorded in his
diary shortly before the election, "but the fearful condition of them
is that success would open to a far severer trial than defeat." The
darkest forebodings were more than realized. No one of our chief
executives, except possibly Andrew Johnson, was ever the target of more
relentless and vindictive attacks.
Adams was, in the first place, a minority President. Jackson's popular
vote was probably larger; his electoral vote was certainly so; and the
vote in the House of Representatives was at the last moment swung to
Adams only by certain unexpected and more or less accidental
developments. By thus receiving his office at the hands of a branch of
Congress, in competition with a candidate who had a wider popular
support, the New Englander fell heir to all the indignation that had
been aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially against the
selection of a President by Congressmen.
There was, in addition, the charge of a "corrupt bargain." It mattered
not greatly whether the accusation was true or not. The people widely
accepted it as true, and the Administration had to bear the stigma.
"The coalition of Blifil and Black George, of the Puritan and the
black-leg," John Randolph called the new alliance; and while Clay
sought to vindicate his honor in a duel with the author of the phrase,
nothing that he or Adams could do or say was able to overcome the
effect upon the public mind created by the cold fact that when the Clay
men turned their support to Adams their leader was forthwith made
Secretary of State.
A further source of difficulty in the situation was the temperament of
Adams himself. There was no abler, more honest, or more patriotic man
in public life; yet in the presidency he was, especially at this
juncture of affairs, a misfit. He was cold and reserved when every
consideration called for cordiality; he was petulant when tolerance and
good humor were the qualities most needful. He could neither arouse
enthusiasm nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping
out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite
to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts of
politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support.
In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of scruples and
values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics
on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand
him, but they felt instinctively that he was not one of themselves;
and, therefore, they cast him out." Nobody had ever called him "Old
Hickory" or any other name indicative of popular endearment.
Clay's appointment as Secretary of State was thoroughly typical of the
independent, unyielding attitude of the new Administration. Adams had
not the slightest sympathy with the idea of rotation in public
position: such a policy, he said, would make government "a perpetual
and unremitting scramble for office." He announced that there would be
no removals except such as complaint showed to be for the good of the
service, and only twelve removals took place during his entire term.
The spoilsmen argued and fumed. The editor of an administration
newspaper warmly told the President that in consequence of his policy
he would himself be removed as soon as the term for which he had been
elected had expired. But entreaties and threats were alike of no avail.
Even Clay could not get the removal of a naval officer guilty of
unbecoming conduct. In his zeal for nonpartizanship Adams fairly leaned
backwards, with the result that incompetents were shielded and the
offices were left in the hands of men who, in a very large number of
cases, were openly hostile to the President and to his policies.
"Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my
predecessors," wrote Adams in his first message to Congress, "I am
deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in
need of your indulgence." In the principles and measures which he urged
upon the legislative branch, none the less, he showed small regard for
moderation or expediency. He defined the object of government to be the
improvement of the condition of the people, and he refused to recognize
in the federal Constitution restrictions which would prevent the
national authorities from fulfilling this function in the highest
degree. He urged not only the building of roads and canals but the
establishment of a national university, the support of observatories,
"the light-houses of the skies," and the exploration of the interior
and of the far northwestern parts of the country. He advocated heavy
protective duties on goods imported from abroad, and asked Congress to
pass laws not alone for the betterment of agriculture, manufactures,
and trade but for the "encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant
arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences,
ornamental and profound." He thought that the public lands should be
sold at the highest prices they would bring and that the money should
be used by the Government to promote the general welfare. He had no
doubt of either the power or the duty of the Government to maintain a
national bank.
Since the War of 1812 the Republicans, with whom Adams had been
numbered, had inclined strongly toward a liberal construction of the
Constitution, but none had gone to the limits marked out in this
program. Besides, a strong reaction was now setting in. The President's
recommendations were received in some quarters with astonishment, in
some rather with amusement. Nowhere were they regarded, in their
entirety, with favor. Even Clay--spokesman of nationalism though he
was--could not follow his chief in his untrammeled flights. Men still
widely believed that the National Government ought to spend money
freely on highways, canals, and other improvements. But by his bold
avowals Adams characteristically threw away support for both himself
and his cause; and the era of federal initiative and management was
thus hastened toward its close.
No one who knew Jackson and his political managers expected them to
accept the anomalous electoral results of 1825 as expressing the real
will of the nation, and it was a foregone conclusion not only that the
General would again be a candidate, but that the campaign of 1828 would
at once begin. The defeated Senator remained in Washington long enough
to present himself at the White House on Inauguration Day and
felicitate his successful rival. Then he set out on the long journey
homeward. Every town through Pennsylvania and along the Ohio turned out
en masse to greet him, and at Nashville he was given a prodigious
reception. To friends and traveling companions he talked constantly
about the election, leaving no doubt of his conviction that he had been
defeated by intrigue. To a sympathetic group of passengers traveling
down the Ohio with him on board the General Neville he declared
emphatically that, if he had been willing to make the same promises and
offers to Clay that Adams had made, he would that minute be in the
presidential chair. If he should yet attain that dignity, he added
significantly, he would do it "with clean hands." It is reported that
as he spoke there was in his eye the fire of determination, such as his
soldiers had seen there as he strode up and down the breastworks at New
Orleans.
To this point Jackson had sought the presidency rather at the
instigation of his friends than because of personal desire for the
office. Now all was changed. The people had expressed their preference
for him, and their will had been thwarted. Henceforth he was moved by
an inflexible purpose to vindicate both his own right to the position
and the right of his fellow citizens to choose their chief executive
without hindrance. In this determination he was warmly backed up by his
neighbors and advisers, and the machinery for a long, systematic, and
resistless campaign was speedily put into running order. One group of
managers took charge in Washington. Another set to work in New York. A
third undertook to keep Pennsylvania in line. A fourth began to
consolidate support in the South. At the capital the United States
Telegraph, edited by Duff Green of Missouri, was established as a
Jackson organ, and throughout the country friendly journals were set
the task of keeping up an incessant fire upon the Administration and of
holding the Jackson men together. Local committees were organized;
pamphlets and handbills were put into circulation; receptions and
public dinners were exploited, whenever possible, in the interest of
the cause. First, last, and always, Jackson's candidacy was put forward
as the hope and opportunity of the plain people as against the
politicians.
In October the Tennessee Legislature again placed its favorite formally
in nomination, and a few days later the candidate resigned his seat in
the Senate in order to be more advantageously situated for carrying on
his campaign. For more than a year he remained quietly at the
Hermitage, dividing his attention between his blooded horses and dogs
and his political interests. Lewis stayed at his side, partly to
restrain him from outbreaks of temper or other acts that might injure
his interests, partly to serve as an intermediary between him and the
Washington manipulators.
Before Adams had been in the White House six months the country was
divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or
administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were
many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the
self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him
its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the
Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the
feeling of the South Carolinian's friends that they, and not Jackson's
friends, should lead in the coming campaign. After a good deal of
hesitation the supporters of Crawford came over also. Van Buren
coquetted with the Adams forces for a year, and the old-line
Republicans, strong in the Jeffersonian faith, brought themselves to
the support of the Tenneseean with difficulty; but eventually both
northern and southern wings of the Crawford contingent alined
themselves against the Administration. The decision of Van Buren
brought into the Jackson ranks a past master in party management, "the
cleverest politician in a State in which the sort of politics that is
concerned with the securing of elections rather than fighting for
principles had grown into a science and an art." By 1826 the Jackson
forces were welded into a substantial party, although for a long time
their principles involved little more than hostility to Adams and
enthusiasm for Jackson, and they bore no other designation than Jackson
men.
The elements that were left to support the Administration were the
followers of Adams and Clay. These eventually drew together under the
name of National Republicans. Their strength, however, was limited, for
Adams could make no appeal to the masses, even in New England; while
Clay, by contributing to Jackson's defeat, had forfeited much of the
popularity that would otherwise have been his.
If the story of Adams's Administration could be told in detail, it
would be one long record of rancorous warfare between the President and
the Jacksonian opposition in Congress. Adams, on the one hand, held
inflexibly to his course, advocating policies and recommending measures
which he knew had not the remotest chance of adoption; and, on the
other hand, the opposition--which in the last two years of the
Administration controlled the Senate as well as the House of
Representatives--balked at no act that would humiliate the President
and make capital for its western idol. At the outset the Jacksonians
tried to hold up the confirmation of Clay. It fell furiously, and quite
without discrimination, upon the President's great scheme of national
improvements, professing to see in it evidence of an insatiable desire
for "concentration." In the discussion of a proposed amendment to the
Constitution providing for direct election of the President by the
people it was constantly assumed and frequently stated that Adams had
no moral right to the position which he occupied. The President's
decision to send delegates to the Panama Congress of 1826 raised a
storm of acrimonious debate and brought the Administration's enemies
into closer unison. To cap the climax, Adams was solemnly charged with
abuse of the federal patronage, and in the Senate six bills for the
remedy of the President's pernicious practices were brought in by
Benton in a single batch! Adams was able and honest, but he got no
credit from his opponents for these qualities. He, in turn, displayed
little magnanimity; and in refusing to shape his policies and methods
to meet the conditions under which he had to work, he fell short of the
highest statesmanship.
As election year approached, it became clear that the people would at
last have an opportunity to make a direct choice between Adams and
Jackson. Each candidate was formally nominated by sundry legislatures
and other bodies; no one so much as suggested nomination by
congressional caucus. In the early months of 1828 the campaign rapidly
rose to an extraordinary level of vigor and public interest. Each party
group became bitter and personal in its attacks upon the other; in our
entire political history there have been not more than two or three
campaigns so smirched with vituperation and abuse. The Jackson papers
and stump speakers laid great stress on Adams's aristocratic
temperament, denounced his policies as President, and exploited the
"corrupt bargain" charge with all possible ingenuity.
On the other hand, the Adams-Clay forces dragged forth in long array
Jackson's quarrels, duels, and rough-and-tumble encounters to prove
that he was not fit to be President; they distributed handbills
decorated with coffins bearing the names of the candidate's victims;
they cited scores of actions, from the execution of mutinous militiamen
in the Creek War to the quarrel with Callava, to show his arbitrary
disposition; and they strove in a most malicious manner to undermine
his popularity by breaking down his personal reputation, and even that
of his wife and of his mother. It has been said that "the reader of old
newspaper files and pamphlet collections of the Adamsite persuasion, in
the absence of other knowledge, would gather that Jackson was a
usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cock-fighter, a brawler, a
drunkard, and withal a murderer of the most cruel and blood-thirsty
description." Issues--tariff, internal improvements, foreign policy,
slavery--receded into the background; the campaign became for all
practical purposes a personal contest between the Tennessee soldier and
the two statesmen whom he accused of bargain and corruption. "Hurrah
for Jackson!" was the beginning and end of the creed of the masses bent
on the Tenneseean's election.
Jackson never wearied of saying that he was "no politician." He was,
none the less, one of the most forceful and successful politicians that
the country has known. He was fortunate in being able to personify a
cause which was grounded deeply in the feelings and opinions of the
people, and also in being able to command the services of a large group
of tireless and skillful national and local managers. He was willing to
leave to these managers the infinite details of his campaign. But he
kept in close touch with them and their subordinates, and upon occasion
he did not hesitate to take personal command. In politics, as in war,
he was imperious; persons not willing to support him with all their
might, and without question or quibble, he preferred to see on the
other side. Throughout the campaign his opponents hoped, and his
friends feared, that he would commit some deed of anger that would ruin
his chances of election. The temptation was strong, especially when the
circumstances of his marriage were dragged into the controversy. But
while he chafed inwardly, and sometimes expressed himself with more
force than elegance in the presence of his friends, he maintained an
outward calm and dignity. His bitterest feeling was reserved for Clay,
who was known to be the chief inspirer of the National Republicans'
mud-slinging campaign. But he felt that Adams had it in his power to
put a stop to the slanders that were set in circulation, had he cared
to do so.
As the campaign drew to a close, circumstances pointed with increasing
sureness to the triumph of the Jackson forces. Adams, foreseeing the
end, found solace in harsh and sometimes picturesque entries in his
diary. A group of opposition Congressmen he pronounced "skunks of party
slander." Calhoun he described as "stimulated to frenzy by success,
flattery, and premature advancement; governed by no steady principle,
but sagacious to seize upon every prevailing popular breeze to swell
his own sails." Clay, likewise, became petulant and gloomy. In the last
two months of the canvass Jackson ordered a general onslaught upon
Kentucky, and when finally it was affirmed that the State had been
"carried out from under" its accustomed master, Clay knew only too well
that the boast was true. To Adams's assurances that after four years of
Jackson the country would gladly turn to the Kentuckian, the latter
could only reply that there would, indeed, be a reaction, but that
before another President would be taken from the West he would be too
old; and it was with difficulty that Adams persuaded him not to retire
immediately from the Cabinet.
The results of the contest fully bore out the apprehensions of the
Administration. Jackson received nearly 140,000 more popular votes than
Adams and carried every State south of the Potomac and west of the
Alleghanies. He carried Pennsylvania also by a vote of two to one and
divided about equally with his opponent the votes of New York and
Maryland. Only New England held fast for Adams. As one writer has
facetiously remarked, "It took a New England conscience to hold a
follower in line for the New England candidate." The total electoral
vote was 178 for Jackson and 83 for Adams. Calhoun was easily reÎlected
to the vice presidency. Both branches of Congress remained under the
control of Jackson's partizans.
Months before the election, congratulatory messages began to pour into
the Hermitage. Some came from old friends and disinterested
well-wishers, many from prospective seekers of office or of other
favors. Influential people in the East, and especially at the capital,
hastened to express their desire to be of service to the Jacksons in
the new life to which they were about to be called. In the list one
notes with interest the names of General Thomas Cadwalader of
Philadelphia, salaried lobbyist for the United States Bank, and Senator
Robert Y. Hayne, the future South Carolina nullifier.
Returns sufficiently complete to leave no doubt of Jackson's election
reached the Hermitage on the 9th of December. That afternoon, Lewis,
Carroll, and a few other members of the "general headquarters staff"
gathered at the Jackson home to review the situation and look over the
bulky correspondence that had come in. "General Jackson," reports
Lewis, "showed no elation. In fact, he had for some time considered his
election certain, the only question in his mind being the extent of the
majority. When he finished looking over the summary by States, his only
remark was that Isaac Hill, considering the odds against him, had done
wonders in New Hampshire!"
When, two weeks later, the final returns were received, leading
Tenneseeans decided to give a reception, banquet, and ball which would
outshine any social occasion in the annals of the Southwest. Just as
arrangements were completed, however, Mrs. Jackson, who had long been
in failing health, suffered an attack of heart trouble; and at the very
hour when the General was to have been received, amid all the trappings
of civil and military splendor, with the huzzas of his neighbors,
friends, and admirers, he was sitting tearless, speechless, and almost
expressionless by the corpse of his life companion. Long after the
beloved one had been laid to rest in the Hermitage garden amid the
rosebushes she had planted, the President-elect continued as one
benumbed. He never gave up the idea that his wife had been killed by
worry over the attacks made upon him and upon her by the Adams
newspapers--that, as he expressed it, she was "murdered by slanders
that pierced her heart." Only under continued prodding from Lewis and
other friends did he recall himself to his great task and set about
preparing for the arduous winter journey to Washington, composing his
inaugural address, selecting his Cabinet, and laying plans for the
reorganization of the federal Civil Service on lines already definitely
in his mind.