CHAPTER I

[Illustration: 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_

[Illustration: colophon]

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.