THE RISING OF THE MASSES
I
With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to
this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies
had been a matter of manipulation among the congressional politicians.
The possessors of property and the aristocrats of intellect had been the
only classes with whom the politicians had concerned themselves. The
Virginia Dynasty and the Secretarial Succession died on the day that the
rising of the masses raised to the Presidency a man who had never served
in the Cabinet, distinguished himself in the Congress, or appealed to
the “aristocracy of intellect and culture.” To the politicians,
office-holders, and society leaders in Washington, the election of
Andrew Jackson was something more than a shock--it was an affront. In
the campaign he had been opposed by two thirds of the newspapers, four
fifths of the preachers, practically all the manufacturers, and seven
eighths of the banking capital. Respectability sternly set itself
against the presumptuous ambitions of what it conceived to be a rough,
illiterate representative of the “mob.”
Four years before, the stage had been set for a bitter battle. The
election of Adams, through the support of Clay, followed by the
appointment of the latter to the first place in the Cabinet, had carried
the suspicion of a bargain, and this suspicion had crystallized into a
firm conviction with a large portion of the people. Throughout the Adams
Administration, its enemies--and they were legion--harped constantly
upon the “bargain,” angering the crabbed Adams, and stinging Clay to
furious denunciation, and this but served to intensify the bitterness of
their foes.
The result was the most scurrilous campaign of vilification the country
had known. A new school of politicians, forerunners of the astute and
none too scrupulous managers of later days, sprang up to direct the
fight for the grim old warrior of the Hermitage, and the fact that Clay
took personal charge of the campaign for Adams was turned with telling
force against his chief. Early in the campaign we find the satirical and
caustic Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” of whom we shall
hear much, writing that “Clay is managing Adams’s campaign, not like a
statesman of the Cabinet, but like a shyster, pettifogging in a bastard
suit before a country squire.” And lest the motive for Clay’s interest
escape his readers, we find Hill writing again: “This is Mr. Clay’s
fight. The country has him on trial for bribery, and having no defense,
he accuses the prosecutor.”
This reference to the accusation of the prosecutor was inspired by the
outrageous calumny that was heaped upon the head of Jackson. He was
pictured as a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cockfighter, a
brawler, a drunkard, and a murderer. The good name of Mrs. Jackson, one
of the purest of women, was wantonly maligned; and in the drawing-rooms
of the intellectually elect she was not spared by the ladies who were
shocked at the “vulgarity” of her husband. The Adams organs stooped to
the attack, and while the “National Intelligencer,” under the editorship
of Joseph Gales, refused thus to pollute its columns, the “National
Journal,” under the editorial management of Peter Force, and specially
favored by the Adams Administration, specialized on the slander of an
excellent woman. A little later an attempt was made to justify the
infamy of this proceeding by charging that Mrs. Adams had been assailed,
but the extent of the assault was the charge that she was an English
woman with little sympathy for American institutions.
While history has accepted Adams’s indignant denial of the charge that
he had personally sanctioned the attack on Mrs. Jackson, the National
Central Committee, in charge of his campaign, was busily engaged in the
dissemination of the putrid literature. This has been thoroughly
established by the testimony of Thurlow Weed, editor of the “Albany
Journal,” who refused to degrade himself by its circulation. When, early
in August, before the election in November, he received “two large
drygoods boxes” of the pamphlets, with a letter from the National
Committee advising him that they contained “valuable campaign
documents,” with the request that he attend to their circulation
“throughout the western counties of the State,” he promptly “secured the
boxes with additional nails and placed them under lock and key.” And
when the National Committee learned that they were not being
distributed, and sent a representative to protest against his
inactivity, he frankly informed the emissary that “not a copy had been
seen or would be seen by an elector until the polls had closed.” For
this he was denounced in New York and Boston as “a traitor to the
Administration,” but the sagacious politician of Albany stoutly
maintained that he “would not permit a lady whose life had been
blameless to be dragged forth into the arena of politics.”[114]
The charge of murder lodged against Jackson, by editor, hack-writer, and
cartoonist, had reference to his execution of Arbuthnot, two Indian
chiefs, and seven of his soldiers, and to his duel with Dickinson.
Pictures of the coffins of the soldiers were printed on circulars and
distributed from farmhouse to farmhouse in New England.[115] This gave
Hill an opportunity to tickle Jackson with a rejoinder which was copied
from the “New Hampshire Patriot” into all the Jackson papers of the
country: “Pshaw! Why don’t you tell the whole truth? On the 8th of
January, 1815, he murdered in the coldest kind of cold blood 1500
British soldiers for merely trying to get into New Orleans in search of
Booty and Beauty.”
But all the scurrility of the campaign cannot be justly charged to the
enemies of Jackson. His friends were almost as offensive. Adams had
bribed Clay. He had bought the Presidency. While abroad he had pandered
to the sensuality of the Russian Court. He was stingy, undemocratic, an
enemy of American institutions, bent on the destruction of the people’s
liberties. He was an aristocrat, and had squandered the people’s money
in lavishly furnishing the East Room of the White House after the
fashion of the homes of kings. He had even purchased a billiard table
for the home of the President!
And so it went on for weeks and months--the ordinary slanders of a
present-day municipal campaign. A foreigner traveling through the
country during the summer and autumn of 1828 would have thought the
election of Adams certain. In the marts, the counting-rooms, and the
drawing-rooms, he would have found but one opinion; but the astute Adams
sensed the coming disaster and recorded his misgivings in his diary. The
temperamental Clay was depressed one day, to be exultant the next. But
the new school of political leadership, managing the fight for Jackson,
and devoting itself assiduously to the newly enfranchised “mob” in the
highways and the byways, had no notion of defeat. The “hurrah for
Jackson” which shocked the sedate, unaccustomed to such noisy acclaim of
a presidential aspirant, and disgusted the “best people,” was music to
the ears of these modern politicians, who had carefully calculated upon
the strength of the “mob.” Their confidence was not misplaced. The
result was an upheaval. Adams, Clay, Federalism, the Virginia Dynasty,
the Secretarial Succession, were brushed aside by the rush of the
cheering masses bearing their hero to the White House. History has
decided that in this campaign “the people first assumed control of the
governmental machinery which had been held in trust for them since
1789”; and that “the party and Administration which then came into power
was the first in our history which represented the people without
restriction, and with all the faults of the people.”[116]
II
The Administration circle in Washington was deeply depressed by the
result, and society looked forward to the reign of the barbarians with
mingled feelings of mirth and abhorrence. Although not unprepared for
the defeat, the bitter Adams, meditating on his political blunders,
recorded that “some think I have suffered for not turning my enemies out
of office, particularly the Postmaster-General.”[117] That John McLean,
the official referred to, had been disloyal to his chief was common
knowledge. The first reaction to defeat from the followers of the Adams
Administration was toward laughter, levity, extravagant manifestation of
cynical gayety, with an all too noticeable thawing of the frigidity of
White House ceremonies. The dying régime put on its best bib and tucker
in a hectic and hysterical demonstration of social hilarity. But this
first reaction was short-lived. Very soon thereafter callers at Clay’s
home were “shocked at the alteration of his looks,” and found him “much
thinner, very pale, his eyes sunk in his head and his countenance sad
and melancholy.”[118] Mr. Rush (Secretary of the Treasury) was soon
“alarmingly ill”--the “first symptoms of disease was altogether in the
head.” Mr. Southard (Secretary of the Navy) was confined to his room for
three weeks. William Wirt (Attorney-General) suffered two attacks of
vertigo, “followed by a loss of the sense of motion.” General Porter
(Secretary of War) “was almost blind from inflammation of the eyes and
went to his office with two blisters, one behind each ear.” Even the
cold-blooded Adams, who appeared “in fine spirits,” was soon “so feeble
as to be obliged to relinquish his long walks and to substitute rides on
horseback.”[119] A social intimate of the leaders swept from power by
the rising of the masses mournfully recorded that they would retire to
private life “with blasted hopes, injured health, impaired or ruined
fortunes, imbittered tempers, and probably a total inability to enjoy
the remnant of their lives.”[120]
On none did the blow fall with such crushing force as on the
proud-spirited Clay. As the repudiated régime was approaching the end,
the presiding genius of one of the favorite Administration drawing-rooms
met him at a reception.
“What ails your heart?” he asked.
“Can it be otherwise than sad when I think what a good friend I am about
to lose?”
For a moment he held her hand without speaking, his eyes “filled with
tears.”
“We must not think of this or talk of such things now,” he said. And
with that he relinquished her hand, “drew out his handkerchief, turned
away his head and wiped his eyes, then pushed into the crowd and talked
and smiled as if his heart were light and easy.”[121]
On February 25th this lady made another poignant note: “Mr. Clay’s
furniture is to be sold this week.”
Thus the old régime died hard, and in bitterness.
III
But “The King is dead--long live the King”--was the mood of the strange
crowds in the streets of the capital--unusual creatures from the
out-of-the-way places to whom the city was not accustomed. Never before
had the inaugural ceremonies attracted the people of the farms and the
villages, from every nook and corner. Long before the 4th of March the
city swarmed with all sorts and conditions, the rustic, the rural
politician, the adventurer, along with politicians of influence and
repute. They overflowed the city, filled all the hotels and
rooming-houses, spread out to Georgetown, descended on Alexandria.[122]
Webster, writing to his brother toward the close of February, said: “I
have never seen such a crowd before. Persons have come five hundred
miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the
country has been rescued from some dreadful danger.”[123] What they
really thought was that they had come into their own. They hastened to
“their capital,” to witness the inauguration of “their President,” and,
in many instances, in the hope of entering into their reward.
Out of the maze of incomprehensible contradictions, we may gather that
Jackson disappointed many of the faithful, who had planned a spectacular
entrance to the capital, by entering quietly and unannounced in the
early morning. Elaborate preparations had been made, a pompous reception
committee of the socially elect and politically pure had been organized,
headed by John P. Van Ness, the dean of society and husband of the
exquisite Marcia Burns, and plans had been perfected for leading a great
throng into the country to meet and escort him to the accompaniment of
gun fire into the city. Reaching the capital four hours before he was
expected,[124] he went directly to Gadsby’s where he took lodging.[125]
But the committee was not to be wholly deprived of its prerogatives. The
moment the news reached it and the crowds, the celebration began. “I
hear cannon firing, drums beating, and hurrahing. I really cannot write,
so adieu for the present,” wrote Mrs. Smith. The mob surged down the
Avenue to the hostelry famous for its whiskey, brandy, game, and the
imposing ceremony of the host, packed the streets and fought for the
privilege of entering and shaking the hand of the man of the hour. From
the moment of his arrival until he took the oath of office he was
accessible to the most humble and obscure. Importuned and petitioned by
ambitious politicians, the old man courteously heard them all, to the
last man, and, according to all contemporaries, kept his own counsel as
to prospective appointments. Even as late as March 2d, the observant
Webster wrote his brother that the President-to-be was close-mouthed,
and predicted that there would be few removals.[126] The crafty Isaac
Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” had arrived early upon the scene,
and we are indebted to him for a side-light on Jackson’s methods and
mood, and the scenes about the hotel. Almost daily this persistent
aspirant for place wormed his way into the presence of the source of all
patronage. Jackson was cordial, remembered, quoted, laughed about
witticisms in Hill’s paper during the campaign, but said “little about
the future except in a general way.” There was cruel hilarity in that
crowded room at Gadsby’s over the maneuvers of the office-holders to
retain their places. A “funny story” was told of Wirt writing to Monroe
“soliciting his influence with the General to keep him on the pay
roll.”[127] An old translator of twenty years’ experience in the State
Department had, in conversation, expressed a curiosity to know where a
Democrat could be found to translate diplomatic French, and this was
jokingly related to Jackson. “Oh, just tell him,” said the General,
“that if necessary I can bring Planche’s whole Creole Battalion up here.
Those French fellows, you know, who helped to defend New Orleans against
the Red Coats that had just made all the translators here take to the
woods for their lives.” This flare of spirit gratified and encouraged
the spoilsmen. “Good, wasn’t it?” Hill wrote to his assistant in
Concord. “Besides his courage and truth, Old Hickory has a fund of humor
in his make-up, but most of his sallies, like the above, are likely to
be a little bit cruel.”
About the time that Hill was writing to his assistant editor, he was
meeting daily, at the home of Obadiah B. Brown, a preacher-politician,
where Amos Kendall, a Kentucky editor, then obscure, but destined to
become the master mind of the Administration, was holding forth, and
organizing a number of fellow journalists who had been useful in the
campaign, to compel recognition. There, in the home of the jovial
preacher, Kendall and Hill were making common cause with the smiling
Major M. M. Noah of New York, Nathaniel Green of Massachusetts, and the
quiet but sagacious Gideon Welles of Connecticut. More political history
was being made in the humble abode of Brown than in the crowded,
smoke-laden room at Gadsby’s.[128] The Kentucky editor does not seem to
have encountered the same reticence in Jackson that Hill had found.
After his first call at Gadsby’s, we find him writing his wife: “He
expressed his regards for me and his disposition to serve me, in strong
terms.” And a few days later, after his second call, he writes: “The
other day I had a long conversation with General Jackson. At the close
of it, after saying many flattering things of my capacity, character,
etc., he observed, ‘I told one of my friends that you were fit for the
head of a department, and I shall put you as near the head as
possible.’”[129]
It is significant of the change of the times that, while the practical
politicians of the new school were encouraged and jubilant, the seasoned
veterans of political battle-fields were discouraged and not a little
disgruntled. Amusing tales of the discomfiture of these were gayly
carried to the politicians of the Opposition in the salon of Mrs.
Smith, who recorded, toward the close of February, that “every one
thinks there is great confusion and difficulty, mortification and
disappointment at the Wigwam, as they call the General’s lodgings. Mr.
Woodbury[130] looks glum, as well as several other disappointed
expectants.”[131]
The battle royal occurred in the selection of the Cabinet. The one
principle on which Jackson was determined was the exclusion from his
Cabinet table of any aspirant for the succession. He had been profoundly
impressed by the demoralizing effect of the intrigues of the
presidential candidates in the Cabinet of Monroe.[132] This, however,
did not deter the two powerful men of the party, Calhoun and Van Buren,
from exerting themselves to pack the Cabinet with men favorable to their
respective aspirations for the chief magistracy. Of the latter’s plans
the President-elect knew nothing. He had probably decided to ask the
clever New York politician to accept the portfolio of State before
leaving the Hermitage. He had been intimate with Van Buren in the
Senate; had been impressed with his tact, diplomacy, and ability, and
especially with his genius in the creation, consolidation, and drilling
of a party, and in formulating its policies. He was not unmindful of the
part the “Red Fox”[133] had played in his nomination and election. In
view of all the conditions the selection of Van Buren was logical and
inevitable.[134] It was just as inevitable that Calhoun, the
Vice-President, should be hostile to the choice. Primarily, we may be
sure, the South Carolinian recognized in the suave and subtle New Yorker
a dangerous rival for the succession. Whether he was even that early
interested in strengthening the South at the expense of the North is not
so certain. However that may be, he appeared in the throng of
wire-pulling politicians at Gadsby’s, earnestly urging that Senator
Tazewell of Virginia should be placed at the head of the Cabinet. This
able statesman but a little time before had maintained close political
relations with Van Buren,[135] but he was an extreme State-Rights
advocate, entirely satisfactory to Calhoun. During the half-concealed
struggle over the Cabinet, Van Buren, who had been elected Governor of
New York and was staying in Albany, was well served in Washington by
James A. Hamilton, whose mission was to keep in intimate touch with
events and inform the New Yorker of all developments. Thus it happened
that Hamilton was with Jackson when, at ten o’clock one morning, Calhoun
called for a conference with the President-elect. “I know what it is
about,” said Jackson to Van Buren’s agent. “He cannot succeed. I wish
you to remain until he leaves.” It was during this conference, the last
he ever had with the President on patronage matters, that Calhoun made
his final stand for Tazewell, or against Van Buren. With great solemnity
he urged the appointment of the Virginian, largely because of “his great
knowledge and wisdom,” but partly on the ground that it would assure the
support of Virginia for the Administration. It is doubtful whether, up
to this time, Calhoun had appreciated the political sagacity of the man
with whom he dealt. Jackson listened to his importunity with courteous
attention, but did not commit himself. One suggestion he made, however,
which must have warned the great Carolinian that his motives were
divined. When Calhoun stressed the importance of cultivating Virginia,
Jackson blandly inquired whether it would not be useful to have the
support of New York. Calhoun’s reply disclosed his animus against the
“Little Magician.” The appointment of Clinton, had he lived, might have
guaranteed the support of the Empire State, but the selection of no
other citizen of that State would. He left, no doubt with the feeling
that he had failed in his mission, and never again approached Jackson on
the subject of appointments. And the moment he left, a detailed story of
the conference was given to Hamilton, who promptly sent it to his chief
in Albany.[136]
When Jackson reached the capital he had made no decision as to the
Treasury, and there he was to be buffeted about by many cross-currents.
Van Buren, who was socially and politically intimate with Louis McLane
of Delaware, was anxious that he should be named for the post, and the
gentleman himself was on the ground ready to respond to the summons that
failed to come. The political tacticians at Gadsby’s reached the
decision early that the place should be awarded to Pennsylvania, and
Samuel D. Ingham, who had rushed to Washington as a representative of
one of the factions, with an application for a subordinate position in
the Treasury, became an active candidate for the more important honor.
This was displeasing to Jackson, who favored Henry Baldwin, but in this
preference he was unable to secure any important support among his
advisers.[137] Strangely enough, powerful influences almost immediately
rushed to the support of the man who would have been delighted with a
comparatively obscure position. The Pennsylvania congressional
delegation, on which he had served for years, unanimously endorsed him.
Stranger still, Calhoun, with whom Jackson at this juncture had no
desire to break, became an ardent supporter of his candidacy. He had
served in the House of Representatives many years before with the
mediocre Pennsylvanian, and had found in him one of his most faithful
idolaters. That his influence, and the desire to recognize him in the
making of the Cabinet, was the determining factor, was the consensus of
opinion at the time.
But here again appeared cross-currents difficult to understand. South
Carolina, usually so subservient to the wishes of her great statesman,
but now cool toward him, was uncompromisingly hostile to his favorite
for the Treasury. The other leading members of the South Carolina
delegation, known to be opposed to Ingham and to prefer McLane to him,
had hesitated from motives of delicacy to make their views known to
Jackson; and Van Buren’s favorite for the position authorized Hamilton,
Van Buren’s emissary, to notify the General of their willingness to call
if their opinion was wanted.[138] On February 17th, the Carolinians,
including Senator Hayne, McDuffie, Hamilton, Archer, and Drayton, filed
into the throne room at Gadsby’s, and Hamilton, who acted as spokesman,
began by tactfully commending the selection of Van Buren, and then
turned to the Treasury. Before he could announce his candidate, Jackson
interrupted with the announcement that Ingham had been chosen. Nothing
daunted, Hamilton suggested as a better choice the brilliant Langdon
Cheves of South Carolina. “Impossible,” snapped the grim old man. Then
why not McLane? That, too, was instantly dismissed, and the Carolinians
left Gadsby’s in a rage. “I assure you I am cool--damn cool--never half
so cool in my life,” Hamilton exclaimed immediately afterwards.[139]
For the War Department there was no such competition, and after an
unsuccessful attempt had been made to conciliate Tazewell with the post,
Jackson, who was anxious to have among his advisers one of his old
friends and managers, satisfied himself with the selection of Senator
John H. Eaton of Tennessee.
The processes of reasoning leading to the appointment of Senator John
Branch of North Carolina as Secretary of the Navy have been lost to
history and there is no clue. We know that Van Buren and his friends
strongly urged the selection of Woodbury of New Hampshire; and McLane
expressed the contemporary state of mind in a letter to his friend: “By
what interest that miserable old woman, Branch, was ever dreamed of, no
one can tell.” This much we know--that Branch himself did not have the
most remote idea of entering the Cabinet when the invitation reached him
from Gadsby’s, and he withheld his acceptance until he could consult
with a number of his friends.[140] Two reasons have been advanced as
probable. The one, popular at the time, was that Jackson’s advisers
thought that something should be done to promote the social prestige of
the Administration; and the other, generally accepted by historians,
that the appointment was made as another concession to Calhoun. While
the Carolinian made no request for his inclusion in the Cabinet, Branch
was one of his most loyal followers.
There is no real justification for astonishment over the decision of the
conferees at the Wigwam to ask Senator John McPherson Berrien of Georgia
to accept the position of Attorney-General. Not only was he a brilliant
member of the Senate, noted as an orator, but his professional
reputation in his section was almost as great as that of Webster in New
England. His votes in the Senate on the party measures of the Adams
Administration had been pleasing to Jackson, and, whether he was named
as another gesture of good-will toward Calhoun, as generally assumed, or
not, his appointment could not have been displeasing to the
Vice-President.
While the Postmaster-General had not hitherto been a member of the
Cabinet, the Jackson board of strategy, wishing to manifest its
appreciation of John McLean, who had held the post under Adams while
exerting himself on behalf of Jackson, determined to raise the position
to the Cabinet and retain him.[141]
Thus the Cabinet was completed, and after a fashion indicative of no
desire on the part of Jackson to quarrel with his Vice-President. Van
Buren, who did not enter into the President’s calculations as to the
succession, had been given the most desirable post, but his friends,
McLane and Woodbury, had been set aside for Ingham and Branch, both
devoted to the political fortunes of Calhoun. The latter was represented
by half the Cabinet, Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, and no stretch of the
imagination could make the other two members, Eaton and McLean, other
than absolutely independent of the wily politician of Kinderhook. The
processes through which all this was speedily changed enter into one of
the most fascinating dramas of political intrigue in the history of the
Republic.
IV
While the President-elect was holding his conferences, with the
mysterious Major Lewis going in and out at Gadsby’s and playing with the
destinies of men, and the streets were seething with an incongruous
crowd shouting their “Hurrah for Jackson,” Jackson was remaining coldly
aloof from the occupant of the White House. He had carried to Washington
a bitter resentment against Adams and his personal lieutenants, because
of the dastardly attacks upon the woman then buried at the Hermitage. He
made no call of courtesy, and Adams was stung to the quick. Especially
painful to the old Puritan was the thought that he had been considered
capable of a vulgar assault upon the good name of a woman. After much
struggling with his pride, he made the first advance by sending a
messenger to Jackson to inform him that the White House would be ready
for his occupancy on the 4th of March. “He brought me the answer,”
Adams records, “that the General cordially thanked him, and hoped that I
would put myself to no inconvenience to quit the house, but to remain in
it as long as I pleased, even for a month.”[142] A few days later, Adams
sent his messenger to say that his packing might require two or three
days beyond the 3d, and Jackson replied that he did not wish to put him
to the slightest inconvenience, “but that Mr. Calhoun had suggested that
there might be danger of the excessive crowds breaking down the rooms at
Gadsby’s, and the General had concluded, if it would be perfectly
convenient to us, to receive his company at the President’s house after
the inauguration on Wednesday next.” Whereupon Adams “concluded at all
events to leave the house on Tuesday.”[143] Thus the closing days of his
Administration must have been bitter, indeed, to the proud old Puritan
of the White House. Deliberately ignored by his successor, tortured by
the thought of the treachery of McLean and others, the co-workers of his
régime, depressed, embittered, or in hiding, he appears to have been
utterly forgotten by the society of the capital as well as by the
general public. Justice Story observing his isolation was moved to write
in bitterness to a friend that he had never “felt so forcibly the
emptiness of public honors and public favor.” Certainly no generous
sympathy was felt for him by his triumphant foes. When, on the last
Sunday before the inauguration, the pastor of the President’s church
unhappily selected for his text, “What will ye do on the solemn day?”
one of Jackson’s courtiers, who had attended the services, hurried back
to Gadsby’s, and the company assembled there went into gales of
laughter, and agreed that it would be, for some, a “solemn day.”
That day was heralded by the thunder of cannon--a day of warmth and
sunshine. All roads led to the Capitol, and from an early hour the
thoroughfares were thronged with the eager, enthusiastic, motley crowd,
rejoicing audibly in the event. Down the Avenue the good-natured mob
fought its way, the splendid Barronet and the stately coaches splashed
by the wagons and the carts, women and children in exquisite finery
crowded by women and children in home-spun and rags, statesmen jostled
by uncouth frontiersmen, the laborer brushing inconsiderately, and
perhaps a little arrogantly, against the banker--for it was the People’s
Day. When, at eleven o’clock, the aristocratic Mrs. Smith set forth with
her company, she found the Avenue one living mass, flowing sluggishly
eastward, with every terrace and portico and balcony packed, and with
all the windows of the Capitol crowded, some to observe the approach on
the west, and others to witness the ceremony on the east. When the mob
caught sight of Jackson and his party walking from Gadsby’s in
democratic fashion, it pressed in upon him, impeding his approach, but
seeming in nowise to challenge his displeasure, for he alone of his
party walked with bared head. The spectators on the south terrace
thrilled to the scene--an American king going to his coronation,
acclaimed and accompanied by the plain people. The ceremonies over, he
fought his way to his waiting horse--and down the Avenue he rode,
followed by the most picturesque cortège that ever trailed a
conqueror--gentlemen of society and backwoodsmen, scholars and the
illiterate, white and black, the old hobbling on crutches and canes and
children clinging to their mothers’ gowns, walking and riding in
carriages and wagons and carts--following to the People’s House.
There the unwieldy mob, in carnival mood, hundreds only accustomed to
the rough life of the frontier, stormed the mansion, fighting,
scrambling, elbowing, scratching. Waiters appearing with refreshments
were rushed by the uncouth guests, resulting in the crash of glass and
china. Men in heavy boots, covered with the mud of the unpaved streets,
sprang upon the chairs and sofas to get a better view of the hero of
the hour.[144] Women fainted, some were seen with bloody noses, and
Jackson was saved from being crushed only by the action of some
gentlemen in making a barrier of their bodies. After this the old
soldier beat a hasty retreat through the back way to the south, and
sought relief at Gadsby’s.[145] “I never saw such a mixture,” wrote
Justice Story. “The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” And Mrs. Smith
writing of her experience said: “The noisy and disorderly rabble ...
brought to my mind descriptions I have read of the mobs in the Tuileries
and at Versailles.”
And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the
popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the
inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the
outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but
drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the
dethroned President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered
his horse, and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the
city “through F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until
he reached a road leading to the Porters’--reminded of the passing of
his power by the neglect of the people.[146]
Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the
day--tormented by bitter regrets.
V
Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and
his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were
to cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his
Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the
White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the
capital gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who
had betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale
dismissals of postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings
against those officials who had participated in politics he would be
forced to include in the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well
as those who had been faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment
nonplussed, sat puffing at his pipe, then arose, and, after walking up
and down the room several times, stopped abruptly before his
obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr. McLean, will you accept a
seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”--and that McLean instantly
accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent, who says that on
the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a reception at the
home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was intimate, had just
described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr. McLean has
been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential
aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many
postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he
secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably
saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly
Jacksonian way.
It is reasonable to assume that during the brief moments he walked the
floor puffing his pipe, he determined upon McLean’s successor. One week
before his inauguration, he had given James A. Hamilton a list of
applicants for office with the request for an opinion and report, and
among these was the application of William T. Barry of Kentucky for a
place on the Supreme Bench. The applications had been returned to him
with the recommendation that the Kentuckian be appointed. He was known
to Jackson as an “organization man.” It was probably the matter of a
moment, for one of the President’s quick decision, to make the
exchange--McLean for the Bench, Barry for the Cabinet.[149] His efforts
to soothe the injured feelings of Senator Tazewell, whose heart had been
set on the portfolio of State, were not so successful. After the
disappointed statesman had refused the War Department, some of the
Jackson tacticians conceived the idea of offering him the mission to
London, and for a few days the Virginian seemed tempted. But one week
after the inauguration, he wrote the President that domestic reasons
precluded an acceptance. Keenly disappointed and concerned, Jackson,
after a consultation with one of his advisers,[150] wrote a personal
note to Tazewell requesting him to call at the White House. It is not
incomprehensible that in his angry mood the proud Southerner should have
resented the earnest importunity of the direct Jackson, and he left the
President with the statement to McLean that he had not liked the
General’s manner in looking him through and through and telling him he
must go. He had looked upon it as a military order, and considered the
matter at rest. This opened the way, however, for the recognition of Van
Buren’s friend, Louis McLane, whose ruffled feelings were smoothed by
the appointment to the English Court. But within a week two of Jackson’s
party friends and supporters, McLean and Tazewell, had been alienated
and were ripe for the seduction of the Opposition.
Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he
began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn
opposition to the Administration. As early as the first of January it
was evident that “the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in
the Senate and thereby to control the President.”[151] During the first
few weeks of the new Administration the iron sank deep into the souls
of the dispossessed office-holders and their friends. It was manifest
that there was something more than a new master in the White House--that
a régime had passed, a dynasty had fallen. Previous Presidents had
entered office with the good wishes of most of their political
opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that the dispossessed had
steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning to find fault on
general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to wreck the
Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the Whig
drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.” All the
members of the new official family were ridiculed with the exception of
Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound politician,” was
“not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic and
vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on the
pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together
with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had
rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the
conduct of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for
place, and to reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153]
While Adams indulged in these unfriendly reflections merely to feed his
personal vanity, and to record his superiority, Clay, equally bitter,
was not content to shut his reflection up between the covers of a book.
To him defeat had been especially bitter. He hated Jackson with
vindictive malice because the latter really credited the “bargain”
story, and had sanctioned its circulation. His overpowering passion was
to reach the Presidency. He had entered the official household of Adams
as the head of the Cabinet when the “Secretarial Succession” seemed
definitely established, and had looked forward to succeeding his chief
at the end of his second Administration. The fact that there had been
no second Administration had been due, in part, to the prevalent opinion
that Clay had entered into a bargain for power, and he faced retirement
from public life feeling that his great opportunity had failed him and
that his reputation had been stained. He was the type of man whose
bitterness must find relief in action. From the moment he recovered from
the shock of the election, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of
Jackson.
In judging of the sincerity of his unrelenting opposition during the
next eight years, it is well to bear in mind that before Jackson had
perfected a policy, or proclaimed a principle, Mr. Clay attended a
banquet given in his honor within a stone’s throw of the White House, at
which he assailed the President with an intemperance of denunciation
never exceeded in later years. This was evidently personal. One week
after the inauguration he said to Mrs. Bayard Smith: “There is not in
Cairo or in Constantinople a greater moral despotism than is at this
moment exercised over public opinion here. Why, a man dare not avow what
he thinks or feels, or shake hands with a personal friend, if he happens
to differ from the powers that be.”[154] On the very day this remarkable
statement was recorded by the chronicler of the Whig drawing-rooms,
Adams wrote in his diary: “Mr. Clay told me some time since that he had
received invitations at several places on his way to Lexington to public
dinners, and should attend them, and that he intended freely to express
his opinions.”[155] A little later Adams notes that while riding he
passed Mr. Clay in a carriage driving toward Baltimore on his way to
Kentucky--pale, stern, and sour. On that journey, and without having at
that time any particular actions of the new Administration on which to
base an attack, he spoke wherever the opportunity was afforded, and
always with a vehement denunciation of President Jackson.
The inauguration was over; the people from afar, having seen “their”
President and visited “their” White House, had returned to their homes;
and Henry Clay, the most consummate of politicians, one of the most
eloquent of men, was already meditating upon the organized assault that
was to be made upon the new régime. Now let us acquaint ourselves with
the advisers with whom the President had surrounded himself officially.
VI
By common consent the Whig aristocracy conceded that Martin Van Buren
was the strong man of the Cabinet because of an uncanny cleverness as a
politician, while denying him the qualities of statesmanship or
intellectual leadership. Even as a politician tradition would have him
of the superficial, manipulating, intriguing sort. History had generally
accepted this tradition until Mr. Shepard’s masterful biography[156]
focused attention upon his career, and the publication of his
fascinating “Autobiography” disclosed his intellectuality. He stood out
among the politicians of his time, to whom history has been kinder,
because of his refusal to indulge in the popular personal attacks or to
stoop to disreputable intrigues. A man of even temper, blessed with a
sense of humor, he found it not only possible but profitable and
pleasurable to maintain social relations with political opponents, and
all that the embittered Adams could see in this was that “he thought it
might one day be to his interest to seek friendship.” In senatorial
debates he had discussed principles and policies calmly, instead of
indulging in flamboyant discourses flaming with personalities--and this
was accepted in his day as evidence that he held his principles lightly.
Adams wrote that “his principles are always subordinate to his
ambition.”[157]
This “superficial politician” was the greatest lawyer elected to the
Presidency before the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of the
second Harrison, the greatest lawyer-President we have had. Living in a
community overwhelmingly Federalistic, this “trimmer without principles”
became a bitter opponent of Federalism. With all the rich and powerful
of the locality allied with Federalism, this “courtier” entered the
other camp. When Burr was a candidate for Governor, with the support of
Van Buren’s preceptor in the law, this young man, who “was under the
influence of his evil genius,” ardently supported the Clinton-Livingston
candidate, who was elected. When he entered politics, he found the
spoils system thoroughly established in New York, and political
proscription practiced by both parties, but that was not to prevent his
enemies from charging him with its initiation. He did not quarrel with
the system. He used, but never abused it. And in the days of his
limitation to State politics, he displayed qualities of statesmanship,
patriotism, and courage. New York Federalism did not dismiss him as a
mere schemer and intriguer when he led his party in the State Senate. He
met the Federalist attack upon the War of 1812 upon the floor of the
Senate, and not in party caucus. When Federalism fought every needful
measure, he became as much the spokesman of the war party in Albany as
Clay, Calhoun, and Grundy in Washington. In reaching an estimate of Van
Buren, it is important to bear in mind that this alleged man of
indecision, without initiative or constructive capacity, was the author
of “the most energetic war measure” adopted in the country.[158] As a
member of the Constitutional Convention of New York, dealing with the
extension of suffrage, when Chancellor Kent, giving free rein to his
aristocratic tendencies, was opposing the extension, and mere demagogues
were advocating the immediate letting down of the bars to all, it is
significant, both of his Americanism and
[Illustration: MARTIN VAN BUREN]
[Illustration: THOMAS HART BENTON]
his wisdom, that Van Buren scorned both the rôle of reactionary and
demagogue, and proposed the plan for the gradual extension of suffrage
in a speech couched in the language of seasoned statesmanship. Thus, at
the time he entered National life, there was nothing in his career to
justify the conventional estimate of his public character.
With the inauguration of Adams, soon after he had entered the United
States Senate, Van Buren became the recognized leader of the Opposition,
and he set himself the task of organizing and militantizing a party to
fight the Federalistic trend of the President. There were various
elements on which he could draw. With his genius for organization and
direction, he made it his work to seek a common ground upon which all
could stand together in harmony. He fought the principles and policies
of the Administration in dignified fashion, without recourse to
scurrility; but he capitalized every mistake and gave it fullest
publicity through the circulation of carefully prepared speeches, after
the fashion of the present day. Careful to discriminate, even in his
attacks, between personal and political wrongdoing, he treated Adams
with the utmost courtesy. With a party formed, he drilled it as
carefully as was ever done by the Albany Regency. He instilled into it
the party spirit. He mobilized an army. With this he fought the
Administration on the floor.
But he was one of the first, if not the first, to take the people
outside the halls of Congress into consideration. To create a party
without as well as within the Congress, he arranged for the circulation
of carefully prepared senatorial speeches for the moulding of public
opinion in the highways and the byways. Thus he was probably responsible
for the delivery of the first congressional speeches intended solely for
campaign use.
In person he was slight, erect, and scarcely of middle height. His
intellectuality was indicated by his high, broad forehead, and his
bright, quick eye. His smile, which was habitual, was genial and seemed
sincere. His features, generally, were pleasing. His manner was always
courtly, and he made a study of deportment. No professional diplomat of
the Old World, living in the atmosphere of courts, could have been more
polished. Contemporaries have described him as “extraordinarily bright
and attractive, but without anything supercilious.”[159] In social life
he was a favorite. Few men of his period were better fitted for the
drawing-room. An entertaining talker, he could converse intelligently
upon a multitude of subjects and could pass from a political conference
with the Kitchen Cabinet to a social call on Adams, or a chat with Clay,
without effort or embarrassment. Fond of feminine society, he could be
as charming to a débutante as to a grande dame, and we find him
delighting the brilliant Mrs. Livingston with his intellectual charm,
while captivating her daughter, Cora, with his juvenile levity.
Fastidious to a degree, he could enjoy the unconventional moments of
Jackson in his shirt-sleeves and with his pipe, and make the pleasure
mutual. This premier of an Administration that contemporaries of the
Opposition loved to describe as plebeian and vulgar “was perhaps as
polished and captivating a person as the social circles of the Republic
have ever known.”[160] As we shall see, nothing ruffled him. He never
forgot his dignity nor lost his temper. He was all suavity. He was all
art.
He lives in history as a politician and President and is never thought
of as an orator. He belonged rather to the type of parliamentary speaker
which followed the scintillating period when Pitt declaimed in stately
sentences and Fox thundered with emotional eloquence--the conversational
type which is still prevalent at Westminster. He made no pretense to an
artful literary style, but his speeches were in good taste. We have the
tradition that he not only prepared his speeches with infinite care,
which is probable, but that he rehearsed them before a mirror, which is
debatable. It is said that on his retirement from the Senate, and at the
sale of his household goods at auction, “it was noticed that the carpet
before the large looking-glass was worn threadbare,” and that “it was
there that he rehearsed his speeches.”[161] That he was something of an
artist and an actor we shall see in the course of the recital of the
events of the Jackson Administration.
Secretary of the Treasury Ingham was a Pennsylvania paper manufacturer
who possessed little learning and stood in no awe of genius. His career
had been that of a petty but persistent plodder who knew the ways of
cunning. His mind was prosily practical, and he thought solely in terms
of money. His fourteen years in Congress had been barren of achievement,
but his business training had given him a certain advantage over more
brilliant men in the work of the committees. He was the forerunner of
the machine politician of a later day, skillful in intrigue,
unscrupulous in methods, and resourceful in the work of organization.
His general character is not easily deduced from the conflicting
opinions of his contemporaries. One of these, unfriendly to the Jackson
régime, wrote that he “is a good man of unimpeachable and unbending
integrity”;[162] while Adams, after relating an incident tending to an
opposite conclusion, tells us that “there is a portrait of Ingham in
Caracci’s picture of the Lord’s Supper”--which is the nearest approach
to a description of his appearance that can be found. There is a general
agreement, however, as to the inferiority of his talents, and in our
political history he is scarcely the shadow of a silhouette.
Quite a different character was Secretary of War Eaton, a gentleman of
education, polish, amiability, capacity, and wealth. The possession of a
fortune deprived him of an incentive to the full exertion of his
talents, and he frankly preferred leisure to labor, discouraged the
approach of clients, and liked nothing better than a quiet corner of his
library at his country home near Nashville. There was nothing in his
appearance, his manner, or conversation remotely to suggest the
frontiersman, and, on the contrary, observers were impressed by his
dignity and poise, his courtliness and courtesy. Even in the bitter days
when society was in league against his wife, we find one of her harshest
critics writing that “every one that knows esteems, and many love him
for his benevolence and amiability.”[163] He possessed many advantages
for a political career. Having the time and money to devote to politics,
he early developed a genius for organization, and an uncanny capacity
for intrigue. The campaign of 1828 found him entrusted with much of the
important work--the delicate missions. Wherever Jackson lacked or needed
an organization, or one in existence required stiffening, there went
Eaton, doing his work furtively, and on the surface nothing but its
achievement indicated that it had been undertaken.[164] It was his fine
Italian hand which wrought such havoc with Clay’s forces in Kentucky.
When that State began to waver as to Clay, Jackson determined to force
the fighting in a territory at first thought hopelessly lost to the
Democracy. Even Benton found his way to the “dark and bloody ground,”
but tradition has it that it was the suave and furtive Eaton, who
appeared in different parts of Kentucky, making no speeches, and half
concealing himself in a mantle of mystery, who divorced from Clay so
many of his supporters. There is a sinister aspect to the general
description of his activities; and his enemies, and Jackson’s, always
insisted that he had parceled out jobs with a lavish hand. A man of
culture, a soldier of acknowledged gallantry, a lawyer of ability, he
was destined to an unhappy notoriety, but he deserved a better fate.
The patrician of the Administration was Secretary of the Navy Branch,
who, like Eaton, had inherited an ample fortune, and had divided his
time between politics, the practice of the law, and the management of a
large plantation. At the time he entered the Cabinet, he had
distinguished himself in the politics of North Carolina, had served
three terms as Governor, and was a member of the United States
Senate--scarcely the record of an obscure man. As chief executive of his
State, his record had been far from that of a colorless time-serving
politician without constructive qualities or vision. If his messages
were couched in the lofty, pompous phrases of the period, they were not
without substance. He was a pioneer in the field of popular education,
the leader of a crusade against capital punishment for many crimes, an
advocate of the substitution of imprisonment for the death penalty, and
he urged the establishment of a penitentiary based on the idea of
reformation. A man of great wealth, and an aristocrat by temperament, he
led a fight against imprisonment for debt.[165] His, too, is the
distinction of having in that early day proposed the strict regulation
of the medical profession as a protection of the public against
impostors. A planter, and the owner of many slaves, he insisted, while
Governor, on the protection of the legal rights of the blacks; and the
petition of the entire population of Raleigh, the importunities of a
hundred and twenty young women, the plea of State officials, were not
sufficient to persuade him to save from the gallows a young white man
who had murdered a slave.[166] In the Senate, while not distinguished as
an orator, he was considered a strong debater and was respected as a man
of courage and deep convictions.
The portrait of Branch, which hangs in the Navy Department in
Washington, suggests, in the slender profile and luminous eyes, the
poet, rather than the politician. He is described by one who saw him
often in his Washington days as “tall, well-proportioned, graceful in
gestures, and affable and kindly in manner.”[167] He had the
graciousness of the Southern aristocrat of the old school, and was
devoted to the social standards and customs of his section. Strongly
attached to his home and family, having the poet’s love of the artistic,
he surrounded himself with beauty, and his home at Enfield was a
comfortable and stately mansion surrounded by a smooth lawn, in the
midst of gardens, orchards, and shade trees. His political career and
the course of the Jackson Administration were to be greatly influenced
by his devotion to his wife and daughters, and to his social ideals.
In John McPherson Berrien, the Attorney-General, we have a character
with whom history has played strange pranks. When he entered the
Cabinet, he was conceded to be one of the most polished orators of his
time and one of the famous lawyers of the South. His Washington début in
the Supreme Court, in a case involving the seizure of an African slave
ship, had been a spectacular triumph.[168] All contemporaries agree as
to his extraordinary gifts of eloquence. Perley Poore describes him as
“a polished and effective orator.”[169] Another contemporary found him
“a model for chaste, free, beautiful elocution.”[170] Still another has
it that “he spoke the court language of the Augustan age.”[171] Even the
blasé John Marshall, who listened to Webster and Choate, was so
impressed that he dubbed him “the honey-tongued Georgian youth.”[172] He
had been in the Senate three years when a speech upon the tariff
impelled the press of the period to describe him as “the American
Cicero”--a designation that clung to him through life. The greatest
speech made by any of the leaders of the Opposition on the Panama
Mission was the constitutional argument of Berrien.[173] As a man he was
cold and reserved, an aristocrat in manner, as in feeling. He made a
virtue of not cultivating the multitude, scorned all compromise with his
convictions, firmly believed in himself, and was not at all impressed
with opposition. Utterly without tact or diplomacy, caustic and
sarcastic, he incurred bitter enmities, but his admirers, who liked to
compare him with Cicero, took pride in this weakness.[174] As a
political leader, he was dictatorial and demanded obedience without
question. The slightest hesitation on the part of his tried and truest
friends was usually followed by coldness on his part. Selfish to a
degree, he was always keen for his personal advancement.[175] Few more
brilliant men have ever been Attorney-General of the United States.
If Postmaster-General Barry was unknown to Washington, it was a matter
of indifference to him. In politics he was an exotic. Entering Congress
as a young man, he could have remained indefinitely, but congressional
life did not allure him. For twenty years he had been an influential
State politician, serving in the legislature until sent to the United
States Senate to fill an unexpired term. It is an interesting commentary
on his preference for State office that he resigned from the Senate,
where he might have remained, to become Chief Justice of the State
Supreme Court. Living in Lexington as a neighbor of Henry Clay, he had
been for many years one of the great leader’s most ardent supporters,
and it is significant of the character of the man that, while he
supported Clay against Jackson in 1824, the “bargain” story transformed
him into a bitter foe.
In view of their relations to the Jackson Administration years later,
the estimate of Barry reached by Amos Kendall in 1814, and recorded in
his “Autobiography,” is interesting, and serves to account for the
feeling, scarcely concealed, with which the journalist-politician
afterwards undertook the unraveling of the difficulties into which Barry
had plunged the Post-Office Department. It was when Kendall was on his
way to Kentucky that he first met the Lexington politician and went down
the Ohio River with him and Mrs. Barry with “servants, horses, and
carriages,” in a boat thirty feet long, with three apartments. At the
end of the journey Kendall wrote: “He appears to be a very good man but
not a great man. For our passage he charged nothing, and in every way
treated me like a gentleman. His lady seems to be a woman of good
disposition, but uneducated.” In contradiction to this estimate, we have
another in which he is described as possessing extraordinary abilities,
active business habits, an exact knowledge of men and things, and as
being “a great orator.”[176] And this same authority describes Mrs.
Barry as “frank, lady-like, free from affectations, possessing a fine
person and agreeable manners.” Parton tells us that he was “agreeable
and amiable, but not a business man”--which is the final verdict of
history. In person he was above the medium height, but slender and thin
in face. He was modest in demeanor, and energetic--even though he did
not always properly direct his energy--and fond of society. He became
Postmaster-General because, according to the Jackson standard, he had
richly earned the reward.
Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There
have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men
possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social
distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not
possess at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what
he said he proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant.
It is strange that the one man who developed into a candidate almost
immediately was the one to whom he became most ardently attached.
We shall now note the first troubles of the official family.