JACKSON BREAKS WITH CALHOUN
I
The definite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most
dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar
quarrel in American history. It furnished Clay with new material for the
building of his party. It decisively committed the party of Jackson to
the defense of the Union. It eliminated Calhoun from the list of
presidential possibilities, dropped the curtain on the South Carolinian
that the Nation had known for two decades, and raised it on another with
whom the world is well acquainted. It divided his life into two distinct
parts. It made Martin Van Buren President.
The Calhoun who was to become one of Clay’s most vituperative and
intemperate lieutenants in the fight against the Administration differs
as radically from the ambitious politician who had intrigued for the
election of Jackson as the Webster of the Great Debate differed from the
Webster of the Rockingham Resolutions.
The greatest biographer of the Carolinian[228] fixes the time that he
became the personification of the slavery cause as 1830--the date of the
quarrel--and says that “up to that time he is, in spite of his
uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and
nobler order, having many peers and even a considerable number of
superiors.” Of the three great figures, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, he
was admittedly the strongest intellectually, and the one most
unmistakably touched with genius. Nature made him a statesman. Swept
into Congress on the wave of patriotic enthusiasm following the attack
on the Chesapeake, his audacity, independent thinking, militancy, and
genius combined to place him in the very lead of the party of Young
America that clamored for the War of 1812. He sounded the first clear
official war note in his report on that part of Madison’s Message
dealing with our relations with England; and after the delivery of his
first war speech one of the leading editors of the day hailed “this
young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon
the age in which they live.”[229] In his haughty assumption of equality
with the oldest and most experienced members of the Congress, he
suggests the younger Pitt. His war speeches were classics of
argumentation, sober, and yet pulsating with patriotic passion. If any
sectional thought crossed his mind then, it never touched his tongue. He
was a superb Nationalist--one of the most splendid figures of his time.
Summoned into Monroe’s Cabinet as Secretary of War, he disclosed a high
order of executive as well as legislative ability. Finding the
department in confusion, he brought order out of chaos, and established
system. A former officer of the great Napoleon was impressed with the
resemblance between Calhoun’s plan of army organization and that of the
Corsican.[230] Even his friends were agreeably astonished at his
aptitude for organzation and general executive duties. And this
furthered his presidential plans, and a strong party in the Congress
perfected plans to advance him to the White House on the expiration of
Monroe’s term.
It is not now fashionable to think of him as a designing and ambitious
politician, but one of his biographers has commented on his tendency to
stoop “to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which
is lurking in the corner of his heart, and on the other side to break
off all social intercourse with old and highly respected associates,
merely because others whose services he wished to secure might not like
these connections.”[231] And yet, despite his efforts, his candidacy
appears to have made no impression upon the country. Among the
publicists he was strong; but the people were not impressed. He was the
original “young man’s candidate,” but this weakened him among the older
and more important leaders. “His age, or rather his youth,” wrote
one,[232] “at the present moment is a formidable objection to his
elevation to the chair.” Nevertheless, placing his reliance on the
younger element, he pushed on. Even in Massachusetts he was charged with
having “newspapers set up” to support him.[233] Certain it is that
Webster favored his election as long as it seemed possible of
achievement, and when failure there seemed certain, the greatest of his
future rivals earnestly urged his election to the Vice-Presidency.[234]
To the latter position he was elected through a combination of the
friends of Adams and Jackson.
And now we find the presidential fever consuming him. He becomes the
practical, scheming, not overly scrupulous politician--a rôle he is not
popularly supposed to have ever filled. From the very beginning he set
to work to undermine the Administration of his chief. His apologists
explain that when the “bargain” story was advanced, he was forced to
choose between the two factions that had combined to elect him, and
preferred to go with the Jackson forces.[235] Whatever his motive, he
entered into no half-hearted opposition. This notable activity against
Adams and in favor of Jackson has been ascribed to a presumptive
premonition that the latter was certain to reach the Presidency, and, in
view of Jackson’s assurance that he would be satisfied with one term,
Calhoun calculated that the defeat of Adams would shorten his period of
waiting by four years.[236] So ardently was he panting for the
Presidency at this time that he summoned his friends to assist in the
establishment of a paper, impatiently brushed aside the objections as to
cost, and calling Duff Green to the editorship of the “National
Telegraph,” created the most powerful party organ that had existed in
this country up to that time.[237] Less than a year after Adams’s
inauguration, Calhoun was actively organizing for his defeat. We find
him inviting a Philadelphian to his chamber in the Capitol to urge him
to coöperate with the Opposition party on the ground that “because of
the manner in which it came into power it must be defeated at all
hazards, regardless of its measures.”[238] This insistence on the defeat
of the Administration, “regardless of its measures,” was the reasoning
of an ambitious politician, none too scrupulous, in a pinch, in his
methods. The rest is known--how Calhoun threw his influence to Jackson
in 1828, and was reflected to the Vice-Presidency with the hero of the
Hermitage. Close students of the period are now convinced that
preliminary to this alliance an agreement had been made that Calhoun was
to succeed to the Presidency after four years.
At this time he was in the full maturity of his wonderful power, and the
future must have seemed secure. Quincy, who saw him about this time,
found him “a striking looking man, with thick black hair brushed back
defiantly,” and he comments on Calhoun’s policy of cultivating and
fascinating all young men visiting the National capital.[239] The world
is too familiar with the tragic features of the great Carolinian to
require a description. The rugged carving, the low broad brow, the spare
frame almost amounting to attenuation, the penetrating gaze of the
“glorious pair of yellow-brown shining eyes,” the bushy brows and the
sunken sockets--Calhoun looked unlike any other man in history.[240] He
was a commanding figure at the time of the quarrel which was to change
the entire course of his life, and to alter his political character.
II
We have seen that Calhoun was annoyed with Jackson over matters of
patronage, but the development of the quarrel to the breaking point is
to be traced in the story of a debate and two dinners.
While it has not been customary to attach any party significance to the
Webster-Hayne debate, it was conducted along party lines and was a party
battle. To such a seasoned observer of parliamentary fights as Thomas H.
Benton, it was little more than a party skirmish.[241] Even Webster, at
the time, evidently looked upon Hayne’s assault upon him as political in
its character. Some time before he had sent Senator White of Florida to
Calhoun to warn him that by permitting his friends to attack New
England, he was playing into the hands of Van Buren, who would capture
New England States that would otherwise go to the South Carolinian. And
Calhoun, no less alive to the political significance of the promised
fight, had, according to White’s story to Adams, been impressed. “He
said Calhoun seemed to be considerably at a loss what to do,” wrote
Adams at the time; “that he did not know what things were coming to;
that he had no feeling of unfriendliness to me, and would by now have
visited me but for fear of being misrepresented; that if I had consulted
him four years ago, and not have appointed Clay Secretary of State, I
should now have been President of the United States.”[242] This
purported warning of Webster to Calhoun is given color by the former’s
action during his great speech, in turning his fine black eyes upon the
latter, in the chair, while quoting:
“A barren sceptre in their gripe
Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,
No son of their’s succeeding”
--a prophecy said to have caused Calhoun to “change expression and show
some agitation.”[243]
Whether the attack on Webster and New England was conceived for the
purpose of serving a party or sectional end, the records show that the
Administration leaders who participated in the debate, Grundy, White,
and Livingston, followed the Webster-Hayne exchange with elaborate
indictments of New England Federalism, and John Forsyth, the real floor
leader of the Administration, while contributing little to the
discussion, was notably busy upon the floor. That the party phase was
uppermost in the minds of the politicians and the press immediately
following the verbal duel of the giants may be deduced from the nature
of the press comments. One paper, having a correspondent at the capital,
summed up the result: “The opposition party generally contend that Mr.
Webster overthrew Mr. Hayne; while, on the other hand, the result is
triumphantly hailed by the friends of the Administration as a decisive
victory over the eastern giant.”[244] And in keeping with the theory
that the mass attack on New England Federalism was to capture that
section for the Administration,[245] we find the speech of Hayne being
extensively circulated over the New England States. There can be no
doubt that Webster literally dragged in the really great issue of the
Union, that Hayne was forced to accept that diversion, and by so doing
gave to the debate its immortal character. Jackson was delighted with
Hayne’s first speech, and interested in the second, but on a more
mature consideration Webster’s glowing defense of the Union went home to
the old patriot at the White House. It is because of the effect of the
debate upon Jackson’s Administration, and not merely because it occurred
during his Presidency, that we cannot dismiss it as remote from the
party politics of the time.
It should be borne in mind that the Daniel Webster who emerged from the
debate was not the same public character who had entered it. By that
epochal utterance he obliterated the one vulnerable point in his
career--for the Daniel Webster of 1829 was vulnerable. He entered
politics in New Hampshire as a Federalist--“liberal Federalist,” to use
the phrase of his biographer.[246] Notwithstanding this “liberality,” he
was to become considerably smirched by party loyalty during the war with
England. This war was the occasion for his first public utterance, when,
on July 4, 1812, he bitterly denounced the war with true Federalistic
fervor at Portsmouth. This speech, printed and circulated for propaganda
purposes against the war, ran into two editions, and led to his
selection as a delegate to the notorious Rockingham County mass meeting.
Here it fell to him to prepare the address known to history as the
“Rockingham Memorial” to which the advocates of the sinister doctrine of
Nullification pointed approvingly up to the Civil War. The notoriety of
this document resulted in his election to Congress, where his record was
everything it should not have been.
His first move was to heckle the President by calling upon him for
information as to the time and manner of the repeal of the French
decrees--which was in line with his previous denunciation of France. The
enemies of the War of 1812 were bitter against the French, just as the
enemies of the World War, over a century later, were bitter against the
English. And while his country was at war with a powerful foe, he voted
against taxes necessary for the waging of it; fought the compulsory
draft of men for the miserable little army on the ground that the States
alone had the right to resort to conscription; and even threatened the
dissolution of the Union with the suggestion that “it would be the
solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their authority over
their own State militia, and to interpose between their citizens and
arbitrary power.” He stubbornly resisted the attempt to extend martial
law to all citizens suspected of treason; actually declaimed against the
bill to encourage enlistments; opposed the war policy of the war
Administration and urged a defensive warfare. And, of course, he
intemperately denounced the embargo.
This course made him by long odds the most conspicuous Federalist in the
House, and while he opposed the Hartford Convention, he does not appear
to have looked upon it as seditious or treasonable, and as late as 1820,
in his Boston speech, utterly ignored by his biographers, he practically
proclaimed the right of secession. In brief, throughout the second war
against England he was found just on the safe side of the line of
sedition. His position at the time was notorious, and Isaac Hill, in the
“New Hampshire Patriot,” was openly accusing him of trying to dissolve
the Union and to array the North against the South.
Thus, the Webster that Hayne assailed had skeletons in his closet. His
reputation as an orator was greater than that of any living American.
Behind him was his Plymouth Oration which had rivaled Washington Irving
as a best seller;[247] his Dartmouth College plea, which had moved John
Marshall to tears; his Bunker Hill Address, which had been read with
avidity in England and translated into French; and his plea for Greek
independence, which had been read all over the world. Such was the
Daniel Webster who was challenged by Hayne--or the Democrats--or the
Administration.
Robert Y. Hayne was a knight of Southern chivalry, who in youth, like
the ancient Greeks and Romans, had studied oratory as an art, from his
first boyhood triumph moving with dash and audacity to his destiny, and
at thirty-two entered the Senate of the United States.[248] His
reputation as an orator previous to the great debate promised that the
contest would not be one-sided. His character as man and publicist
commanded universal respect and even the affection of political friend
and foe alike.[249] And he entered the contest with one distinct
advantage over his adversary: there were skeletons in Webster’s closet;
there were none in Hayne’s.
III
There is no doubt but that on the day Hayne opened his attack, he was in
fine fettle. Never had the Senate Chamber presented a more inspiring
scene. Before him, with folded arms, sat the most coveted prey in the
covey of the Opposition. From the Vice-President’s chair, Calhoun, the
god of his idolatry, encouraged him with the compliment of a happy
expression. About him were grouped the prominent “Jackson Senators”
ready to encourage him with their approving smiles.[250] There was a
gallant and confident air in the orator as he “dashed into the debate
like a Mameluke cavalry upon a charge.”[251] In a moment he was in the
full swing of his eloquence, and, as he poured forth his sarcasm, and
marshaled his facts against the Federalism of New England, and threw
wide the door revealing the Webster skeletons in the closet, the
realization was borne to all that they were listening to one of the most
effective speeches ever heard in the Senate. The Democrats were
jubilant--the enemy concerned--Webster was a mask, as unresponsive as
the sphinx. The blows at Federalism--at New England--at Webster, fell
like the hammer on an anvil. The speaker’s deadly parallel on Webster
and his tariff record was a superb piece of clever oratory. His analysis
of New England Federalism in the War of 1812 was a stinging
indictment--it was a conviction and a sentence.
The Democrats and Jackson Senators were naturally delighted. This was a
political speech that Hayne was making, and he was crucifying Federalism
and parading the closet skeletons of its greatest living champion, and
shaming the section that refused to be converted to the new faith. And
when the orator fell into the trap cleverly prepared for him by Webster,
and, ostentatiously encouraged by Calhoun with numerous notes of
suggestions sent by the pages from the chair, entered upon his
exposition of the theory of Nullification, it is improbable that the
delighted Jackson Senators caught the full significance of the
departure. Duff Green, in the “National Telegraph,” the Calhoun organ,
then supporting the Administration, was in a frenzy of delight. Andrew
Jackson, who had kept in close touch with the debate, sending Major
Lewis daily to the Senate Chamber, and was immensely pleased with the
political or party features of the speech, wrote the orator a cordial
letter of congratulation.
The depression of the Federalists, the New Englanders, and the
Opposition generally, was correspondingly great. A professional
observer,[252] writing of the event in later years, tells us that “the
immediate impression from the speech was most assuredly disheartening to
the cause Mr. Webster upheld.” And Henry Cabot Lodge accepts the
statement that “men of the North and of New England could be known in
Washington in those days by their indignant and dejected looks and
downcast eyes.”[253]
The day Webster began his reply was the coldest of the winter, a biting
wind filling the streets with clouds of dust, and Margaret Bayard Smith,
sitting before a blazing fire, and free from the interruption of callers
because “almost every one is thronging to the Capitol to hear Mr.
Webster reply to Colonel Hayne’s attack on him and his party,” wrote
regretfully of the growing tendency of women to monopolize the seats
both in the gallery and upon the floor.[254] The reader is too familiar
with that splendid oration to justify, for our purposes, any analysis or
extended reference to the substance. His replies to Hayne’s attacks on
the war policy of the Federalists, and upon his own inconsistencies,
while clever, were not, in truth, convincing answers, and it was upon
these points that the Jackson Senators were centering their attention.
Thus it is not remarkable that the full import of his speech was
momentarily lost upon the heated partisans. Even Benton, refusing to
believe that the Union was in danger, or in any way involved in the
debate, did not care for Webster’s peroration, finding the sentiment
nobly and oratorically expressed, “but too elaborately and too
artistically composed for real grief in the presence of a great
calamity--of which calamity I saw no sign.”[255] To Benton, the debate
was a party combat and nothing more. Nor is there anything in the notes
recorded by Adams to indicate that he was impressed with the Webster
speech except as a defense of Federalism.[256] The party issue had, for
the moment, obscured all else. If in Charleston, the home of Hayne,
Webster became the idol of the old Federalists, and of the Democratic
mechanics, Hayne won the affectionate admiration of the merchants of
Boston, who had his speech printed on satin for presentation to
him.[257] The Democratic members of the Legislature of Maine, thinking
only of the denunciation of Federalism, ordered two thousand copies
published and distributed as “a fearless unanswerable defense of the
Democracy of New England”--showing that the Nullification feature was
overlooked in the party contest involved. Some contemporaries thought
the battle a draw.
And Jackson? Parton tells us that Major Lewis, who had been stationed in
the Senate during the debate, on returning from the Capitol after
hearing Webster, found Jackson up and eager for news. On being told that
the New England orator had made a powerful speech and demolished “our
friend Hayne,” the old man replied that he “expected it.”[258] A few
days later the full import of Hayne’s speech must have dawned upon
Jackson and his political intimates, and there is significance in the
powerful speech delivered a little later in the debate by Edward
Livingston, Senator from Louisiana, intimate friend of the President,
who was destined to enter the Cabinet and to frame Jackson’s immortal
challenge to Nullification. After the speeches of Webster and Hayne,
that of Livingston stands out as the greatest made during the prolonged
discussion. He attempted again to center the fire on Federalism, and in
so doing brilliantly defended the Union against Nullification, and
vigorously defended the Jacksonian policies against the attacks to which
they had been subjected during the remarkable debate. If the personal
views of Jackson and the Administration are to be sought in any of the
senatorial speeches, they will be found, not in the speech of Hayne, but
in that of Livingston, which, for that reason, is entitled to more
consideration from historians than it has received. We shall now see
that within two months Jackson was to find a way to say the last word in
the Great Debate of 1830.
IV
For some reason the Nullifiers miscalculated the stern old patriot of
the While House. Perhaps it was his opposition to the tariff; possibly
his South Carolina nativity--whatever the cause, the extreme State
Rights party claimed him as its own. It is scarcely probable that,
previous to the Webster-Hayne debate, Jackson had ever given any serious
consideration to the danger of disunion, and most probable that the
views advanced by Hayne in the Nullification part of his speech first
impressed him with the fact that a sinister doctrine, brilliantly
advanced and powerfully supported, was preparing to challenge the
authority of the Nation. But he had kept his own counsels. He may have
discussed the danger with Livingston or Van Buren, but no public
announcement of his position had escaped him up to the time of the
Jefferson dinner in the April following the Great Debate. This dinner,
if is now reasonable to conclude, had been arranged with a definite
object in view--to create the impression that, in a contest, the
President would be friendly to the doctrine of Calhoun and Hayne. The
significance of the selection of Jefferson’s birthday as the occasion
was not lost upon the President or his Secretary of State. It was the
first formal observance of the great Virginian’s natal day, and among
the leaders in the preparations were some “with whom the Virginia
principles of ’98 had, until quite recently, been in very bad
odor.”[259] It was clear to the Red Fox that the intent was “to use the
Virginia model as a mask or stalking horse, rather than as an armor of
defense.” The plan, as it developed, was to undertake, through various
toasts and their responses, to associate this doctrine with Jeffersonian
Democracy. Of the twenty-four toasts, practically every one bore upon
this subject. The President, Vice-President Calhoun, the Cabinet were to
be guests.
It was a subscription dinner, and outside the conspirators in charge the
purchasers of tickets had no other thought than that it was intended
solely as a tribute to the memory of the sage of Monticello.
Talking it over with Van Buren, Jackson soon convinced himself as to the
motive of the conspirators. By prearrangement, Van Buren met Jackson at
the White House, in the presence only of Major Donelson, the President’s
secretary, to determine upon the attitude to be taken and the toasts to
be proposed. While the Nullifiers were jubilating over the promised
participation of the President, he was locked in with his Secretary of
State deliberating on the wisdom of showing by his toast his familiarity
with the purpose of the conspirators, and his determination to preserve
the Union at all hazards. The conferees decided upon that aggressive
course, and the toasts were framed accordingly.
“Thus armed,” wrote Van Buren years later, “we repaired to the dinner
with feelings on the part of the Chief akin to those which would have
animated his breast if the scene of this preliminary skirmish in defense
of the Union had been the field of battle instead of the festive
board.”[260] When Benton arrived that night, he found a full assemblage,
with the guests scattered about in groups excitedly examining the list
of toasts, and discussing their significance. The congressional
delegation from Pennsylvania, on scenting the conspiracy, left the hall
before the dinner began. Many others, not caring to associate themselves
with such a movement, retired, thus depriving themselves of a triumph.
But many remained, among them four members of the Cabinet, Van Buren,
Eaton, Branch, and Barry. During the toasts, which were so numerous and
lengthy that they required eleven columns in the “National Telegraph,”
Jackson sat stern and impassive, betraying nothing of his intention. At
length, the regular toasts given, the volunteer toasts were called for,
and Jackson rose. As he did so, Van Buren, who was short in stature,
stood on his chair to observe the effect better.[261] Straightening
himself to his full height, and fixing Calhoun with his penetrating eye,
he paused a moment, and then, following the hush, proposed the most
dramatic and historical toast in American history:
“Our Federal Union: It must and shall be preserved.”[262]
There was no possible misunderstanding of the meaning. From the time of
the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been
discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was
afloat in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to
place himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State
Rights men. The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner
conspiracy. And Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife.
It was something more than a toast--it was a presidential proclamation.
Without a word more, Jackson lifted his glass as a sign that the toast
was to be drunk standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. “His glass
trembled in his hand and a little of the amber fluid trickled down the
side.”[263] There was no response. Jackson stood there, silent and
impassive--clearly the master of the situation. All hilarity had gone.
Jackson left his place, and, going to the far end of the room, engaged
Benton in conversation, but not upon the subject of the dinner.
When all were seated, Calhoun, who had remained standing, slowly and
hesitatingly proposed:
“The Union: next to our liberty, the most dear.”
Then, after a pause of half a minute, he proceeded in such a fashion as
to leave doubt as to whether the concluding sentence was a part of the
toast, or a brief speech:
“May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the
rights of the States, and by distributing equally the benefits and
burdens of the Union.”
Within five minutes after Calhoun had resumed his seat, the company of
more than a hundred had dwindled to thirty--men fled from the room as
from the scene of a battle.
The story of that Jacksonian toast spread over the country, justifying,
as Benton admits he then realized, the peroration of Webster’s speech,
and proclaiming to the people the existence of a conspiracy against the
Union, and the determination of Jackson to preserve it at all cost. That
toast made history. It marked the definite beginning of the
history-making quarrel of Jackson and Calhoun, and the beginning of the
exodus from the Democratic or Jacksonian party of the Nullifiers and
Disunionists, who were to be warmly welcomed by Clay into the party he
was about to create to wage war on the Jackson Administration.
V
Another dinner was to complete the break of Calhoun and Jackson.
In the spring of 1830, President Jackson gave a dinner at the White
House in honor of former President Monroe. During the evening, while the
President and his predecessor were engaged in animated conversation
concerning the days when the latter was in the White House and the
former in the field in Florida, Tench Ringgold, marshal of the District,
turned to Major Lewis with the observation that Calhoun had been an
enemy of the President in relation to his Florida campaign. It was not,
however, a revelation to Lewis at the time.
During Jackson’s first successful fight for the Presidency, the
anniversary of the battle of New Orleans was celebrated, with Jackson as
the guest of honor. James A. Hamilton had participated in the
celebration as the representative of the Tammany Society of New York;
and, joining the Jackson party at the Hermitage, had accompanied it to
New Orleans. During the conversation _en route_, there was some
discussion of the charges that had been made against Jackson in the
presidential contest of four years before relative to his conduct in the
Seminole War, and the assertion had been made that Crawford, a member of
Monroe’s Cabinet, had urged his arrest. It was expected that a similar
attack would be made in the campaign then beginning. Learning that
Hamilton expected to return by way of Georgia, Major Lewis requested him
to visit Crawford, then living in retirement there, and ascertain just
what had occurred in the Cabinet meeting. The motive of Lewis was to arm
himself, if possible, to repel the attack, and to effect a
reconciliation between Jackson and the Georgian. Finding on his arrival
in Georgia that to reach the home of Crawford he would be forced to go
seventy miles out of his way, Hamilton requested John Forsyth to
ascertain from Crawford “whether the propriety or necessity for
arresting or trying General Jackson was ever presented as a question for
the deliberation of Mr. Monroe’s Cabinet.”[264] Passing through
Washington on his way home, Hamilton spent two days in the same house
with Calhoun, and frankly made inquiry of him also. The latter answered
with an emphatic negative. The impression Hamilton received from the
conversation was that Calhoun had been favorable to Jackson and Crawford
hostile. On reaching New York he wrote Major Lewis of his inability to
see Crawford and of his conversation with Calhoun. The reply of the
Major shows conclusively that, up to this time, there was not the
slightest suspicion that Calhoun had been unfriendly to Jackson, and the
sole impression made upon Lewis by Hamilton’s letter was that, since the
subject of arresting or reprimanding Jackson had not been broached in
the Cabinet, a grave injustice had been done the Georgian which ought to
be righted. Soon afterwards, Hamilton heard from Forsyth to the effect
that Crawford informed him that in a meeting of the Cabinet Calhoun had
urged the propriety of arresting and trying Jackson.[265] Very soon
after the receipt of Forsyth’s amazing letter, Hamilton received a note
from Calhoun, suggesting the impropriety of disclosures as to Cabinet
proceedings and asking that no use be made of his name. Realizing now
the serious possibilities of a complete airing of the old controversy,
Hamilton filed Forsyth’s letter away and mentioned it to no one. For
eighteen months this letter was undisturbed. Then, in the autumn of
1829, when Major Lewis was his guest in his New York home, some evil
spirit impelled Hamilton to show the letter to Jackson’s intimate who
dwelt with him in the White House. Lewis made no disclosure until after
the Monroe dinner. In the meanwhile, as we have seen, the relations
between Jackson and Calhoun had become strained, and the Major convinced
himself that, since the fight was inevitable, his idol should be
furnished with all available ammunition. In telling him of Ringgold’s
statement at the dinner, Lewis added that it was supported by the
revelations of the Forsyth letter, and Jackson demanded the fatal note.
On learning of Jackson’s demand, Forsyth took the precaution first to
send a copy of his letter to Hamilton to Crawford for verification in
writing, or for such corrections as the facts might necessitate. The
reply, with a minor correction, together with the Forsyth letter to
Hamilton, were thereupon turned over to Jackson.
The effect on the President was to infuriate him. Setting his jaws, he
wrote a sharp note to Calhoun demanding an explanation. This was the
beginning of one of the most acrimonious controversies in American
politics.
VI
With Crawford as the witness against Calhoun, it is essential to turn
for a moment to the career of this remarkable and singularly unfortunate
statesman. No student of the period, not poisoned by the prejudices and
jealousies of Adams, who filled the pages of his diary with grotesque
caricatures of his rivals, can escape the conclusion that William H.
Crawford was one of the purest and ablest statesmen of his day. At the
time he entered the Senate, in his thirty-fifth year, he was a splendid
figure--handsome, virile, magnetic, independent in thought, and
audacious in action. He was the great war leader in the Senate, as was
Calhoun in the House. He had made the most profound impression on the
business men of the Nation of any publicist since Hamilton by his fight
for strict governmental economy, for the scrutinizing of all
expenditures, and by his championship of the National Bank in a
brilliant and exhaustive speech in reply to Clay. After two years as
Minister to France, Madison called him into his Cabinet to unravel the
hopeless tangle in the War Department. He served as adviser to Madison
during the remainder of his Administration, continued as the official
adviser of Monroe through the eight years of his Presidency, and was
urged by Adams to continue in a similar capacity under him. He was soon
transferred from the War Department to the Treasury, where he served for
nine years to the complete satisfaction of the business men of the
Republic.
Even as early as the close of the Madison Administration, a powerful
element, opposed to the precedent which pointed to Monroe for the
succession, centered on Crawford. Numerous newspapers strongly urged his
election, offers of support poured in upon him, and had he at that time
entered actively into the plans of his friends, there is every reason to
believe he would have been chosen. When the Congress convened, the
majority favored his candidacy. The caucus was postponed. The
Administration put forth its utmost, exertions for Monroe. Crawford
remained inactive. And when he definitely put his claims aside, a number
of his friends refused to participate in the caucus, in which,
notwithstanding his own lack of interest and the prestige of the
Administration, Monroe was barely nominated by a vote of 65 to 54 for
Crawford.
The Cabinet of Monroe was so constituted as to make it a house divided
three ways against itself. Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford were all
members, all were presidential candidates, and none had a clearer right
to aspire to the succession than the one who had lacked only twelve
votes of the nomination in 1816. The three-cornered fight began in
earnest as early as 1821. With Adams, Crawford’s relations were far from
friendly, as we may judge from the numerous vindictive comments in the
former’s diary. Between Crawford and Jackson no love was lost, and we
find the Georgian writing to a correspondent of Jackson’s “depravity and
vindictiveness.”[266] But Calhoun was to prove the most unscrupulous and
hostile of his foes.
It was not unknown to Crawford that Calhoun had earnestly sought the
alienation of his supporters at the time of Monroe’s election. And, as
the election of 1824 approached, Calhoun’s personal organ at the capital
became intemperate in its attacks upon him. But the climax, involving
Calhoun, was reached in the spring of 1824, when the “A. B.” papers
appeared in Calhoun journals, followed by a formal charge in the House
of Representatives, filed by Ninian Edwards of Illinois, alleging
irregularities and misconduct in office against the Secretary of the
Treasury. Here we have the issue direct between Calhoun, seldom accused
of being an unscrupulous intriguer, and Crawford, against whom history
has lodged the charge. The connection between Calhoun and the attack
appears clear enough. Edwards was Calhoun’s friend. The paper that
published the “A. B.” papers was Calhoun’s paper and was edited by a
clerk in Calhoun’s office.
Immediately after making the charges, Edwards was appointed Minister to
Mexico--on the recommendation of Adams, Secretary of State. During the
two weeks previous to Edwards’s departure for his post, Calhoun made
almost daily visits to his room in a lodging-house, spending from one to
two hours with him on each occasion.[267] Nor does Adams, judger of men
and motives, appear entirely free from complicity in view of his efforts
to dissuade Monroe from summoning Edwards back to Washington to testify
in the investigation ordered by the House on the demand of Crawford. The
investigation disclosed that Edwards was a liar, and the committee,
including Webster, Livingston, and Randolph, unanimously reported that
“nothing has been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary of
the Treasury or to bring into doubt the general correctness and ability
of his administration of the public finances.”
There is ample justification for the conclusion that Calhoun was
directly implicated in an unscrupulous attempt to blacken the reputation
of a rival, and that Adams shared with him in the earnest desire that
the investigation should be postponed until after the presidential
election.
In the early stages of the contest everything indicated Crawford’s
triumph. Then Tragedy intervened. As a result of the administering of
lobelia by an unskilled physician, Crawford suffered a stroke. For a
time he lost both sight and the power of speech. His nervous system was
shattered. He lost the use of his lower limbs. But such is the pull of
an overshadowing ambition that even in this plight he refused to
withdraw from the race. The Opposition press was not above exaggerating
his condition. And at such a time the caucus was held. The galleries
were packed, but the attendance on the floor was slight. Out of the 261
members, only 68 were present, the friends of Calhoun, Adams, Clay, and
Jackson having reached an agreement not to enter the caucus. Thus the
contest was thrown into the House, where Clay went over to Adams and
elected him.
There are few more poignant pictures associated with the failure of
lofty political ambitions than that in the country home of the Georgian
where he sat with his family about the blazing fire, awaiting the news
from the Capitol.[268] His reputation had been dishonestly assailed, his
health was broken, his fortune was gone, and, after having almost
touched the Presidency, he calmly awaited the final word of failure. The
daughters, who adored him, in their efforts to soften the expected blow,
told him of their joyous dreams of a return to “Woodlawn,” the Georgia
country home, where all could be much happier. When the expected
messenger arrived and announced the election of Adams, the defeated
statesman, without a change of tone or countenance, merely remarked that
he thought it would be Jackson. The next day a letter from the new
President urged him to continue in the Cabinet, Jackson called, “frank,
courteous, and almost cordial,” and a little later Thomas Jefferson
wrote his frank regrets.[269] And thus, having declined the Adams
invitation, after a remarkable career in the service of his country,
William H. Crawford, poorer than the day he entered public life, and
physically a wreck, returned to “Woodlawn” in its magnificent oak
forest, with its charming, winding driveways, with its peach and apple
blossoms, and its gardens and its shrubbery. And here under an ancient
oak he was to sit for many evenings with his children and his friends.
That he sometimes thought over the lost hope, we may be sure; that he
often associated it with Calhoun, there can be no doubt.
VII
The first act of Jackson’s, on being told of Calhoun’s hostility in the
Monroe Cabinet, was to call for a copy of Crawford’s letter to Forsyth,
and to enclose it in a letter to the Vice-President, expressing his
surprise and asking for his version. The next development in the
controversy came in the form of a long letter from Calhoun, practically
admitting the charge, and elaborately condemning and damning Crawford
for the betrayal of a Cabinet secret. This reply was delivered to
Jackson on a Sunday on his way to church, and he wrote a brief and
significant answer on his return to the White House on the same day. The
closing words sealed the doom of Calhoun as far as the Presidency was
concerned. “In your and Mr. Crawford’s dispute I have no interest
whatever,” he wrote. “But it may become necessary for me hereafter, when
I shall have more leisure and the documents at hand, to notice the
historical facts and references in your communication--which will give a
very different view to the subject. Understanding you now, no further
communication with you on this subject is necessary.”
About this time he sent Calhoun’s letter to Van Buren, who refused to
read it, explaining that he would be accused of fomenting the trouble
and preferred to know nothing about it. When the messenger returned to
Jackson with the comment of his Secretary of State, he replied, “I
reckon Van is right. I dare say they will try to throw the blame on
him.”[270] And of course Van Buren was right. After many conferences on
the subject with Calhoun, Adams recorded in his diary that “Calhoun is
under the firm persuasion that the author of this combustion is Martin
Van Buren, who has used the agency of James A. Hamilton in producing it,
and that Hamilton, as well as Forsyth, had been a go-between to and from
Nashville.”[271] The denial of Van Buren at the time was discounted by
the anxiety of Hamilton, after talking with Forsyth in Georgia, to have
Crawford’s statement in writing. Nothing, however, could have been more
effective in eliminating Calhoun from the presidential race.
That he appreciated his predicament and fought desperately to extricate
himself is shown in various ways. Wirt declared, at the time, that “he
has blasted his prospects of future advancement,” and Adams described
him as a “drowning man.” But the most conclusive evidence of Calhoun’s
desperate efforts is to be found in the numerous notations in Adams’s
journal. The first entry is to the effect that he had “received a letter
from John C. Calhoun ... relating to his personal controversy with
President Jackson and William H. Crawford. He questions me concerning
the letter of Gen. Jackson to Mr. Monroe which Crawford alleges to have
been produced at the Cabinet meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for
copies, if I think proper to give them, of Crawford’s letter to me,
which I received last summer, and of my answer.” It is characteristic
that the only comment of Adams is an impartial damnation of the trio,
Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, and especially of the Carolinian for his
“icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with
me, solely from terror of Jackson.” But the day following, we find Adams
delving into his diary of 1818. “I thought it advisable,” he writes, “to
have extracts from it made of all those parts relating to the Seminole
War and the Cabinet meetings concerning it. As the copy must be made by
an entirely confidential hand, my wife undertakes the task.”[272] A
little later[273] we find a Mr. Crowninshield applying to him on behalf
of Mr. Crawford for a written verification of the Cabinet incident. And
four days after that we have Calhoun writing again “requesting
statements of the conduct of Mr. Crawford in the deliberations of the
Cabinet upon the Seminole War.”[274] The same day Wirt[275] informs
Adams that he has received a similar note from the Georgian, and asks
for a conference.
That night Adams went to Wirt’s lodgings on Capitol Hill and found him
in bed and asleep. He was awakened, however, by a fellow lodger, and a
four-hour conference followed, with Adams reading the former
Attorney-General the letter from Crawford and the answer sent, and also
from the Adams diary of May to August, 1818.
It seems that Adams was not prompt in complying with Calhoun’s request,
and a third letter reached him pressing him for a statement of
Crawford’s conduct and opinions expressed at the Cabinet consultation on
the Seminole War, causing the former President to comment sourly in his
diary that he would give no letter until he had seen all the
correspondence, and knew precisely the points in dispute.[276] There
appears to have been little disposition on the part of Calhoun to meet
this requirement, for Adams notes that he had received from Calhoun “an
extract” from Crawford’s letter to Forsyth, but not all the
correspondence.[277] On the next day, the Carolinian, who was evidently
devoting himself feverishly and exclusively to the hopeless attempt to
save himself, sent “a further extract from the Crawford letter.”[278]
The unpleasant old Puritan, thoroughly enjoying the torture of the
fighting politicians, calmly awaited all the correspondence, and thus a
week later we learn from the diary that “Mr. Martin took me aside and
delivered to me a letter from Vice-President Calhoun with a bundle of
papers, being the correspondence ...,” and that the messenger “said that
Mr. Calhoun wished to have the papers returned to him to-morrow
morning.”[279]
On the following day Wirt, having moved to Gadsby’s, was there informed
by Adams that he had received the correspondence, but “that Mr. Calhoun
had withheld two important papers; one, the letter from General Jackson
to Mr. Monroe of Jan. 6, 1818, and the other, Crawford’s last letter to
Calhoun, which, he sent me word, he had returned to Crawford.”[280] A
few days later a Dr. Hunt called upon Adams, “more full of politics and
personalities than of physic,” with the announcement that “Mr. Calhoun’s
pamphlet is to be published to-morrow morning.”[281]
To Adams the issue was clear--a battle between Calhoun and Van Buren for
the Presidency. The next day this pamphlet, bearing the elaborate title,
“Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun,
President and Vice-President of the United States, on the Subject of the
Course of the latter in the deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe
on the Occurrences in the Seminole War,” was published at midnight by
Duff Green in the “National Telegraph.” “In my walk about the Capitol
Square,” writes Adams, “I met E. Everett, R. G. Amory, E. Wyer, and
Matthew L. Davis, all of whom, with the exception of Wyer, spoke of the
pamphlet. I received a copy of it under cover from Mr. Calhoun
himself.”[282]
Then the war opened in earnest. The “Telegraph” favorably commented upon
the pamphlet, and the “Globe” unfavorably. Adams found that “the effect
of Mr. Calhoun’s pamphlet is yet scarcely perceptible in Congress, still
less upon public opinion,” and that, while the Administration was at war
with itself, “the stream of popularity runs almost as strongly in its
favor as ever.”[283] Not content with the pamphlet alone, the “National
Telegraph” followed it with Crawford’s letter to Calhoun, and another of
Forsyth’s, and Adams observed with interest that “in all this
correspondence Van Buren is not seen; but James A. Hamilton, intimately
connected with him, is a busy intermeddler throughout.”[284] This
notation was in line with the gossip of the capital at the time of the
controversy.
A little more than a week after the appearance of the pamphlet, Calhoun
published his correspondence with Hamilton in the “Telegraph,” and Duff
Green, in the same issue, editorially charged Van Buren with
responsibility for the rumpus. And this was met on the following day by
the latter in a letter to the paper positively denying any interest in
the controversy, or any knowledge of Hamilton’s correspondence with
Forsyth or Calhoun. Green responded by writing Van Buren down as a
liar.[285] Thus the controversy raged, drawing politicians, one after
another, into the fight. But in this fearsome medley of charges and
counter-charges one fact stood out--that Calhoun had misrepresented his
conduct in the Monroe Cabinet to Jackson, and, on being betrayed by
Crawford, had incurred the deadly enmity of the President. As far as
Jackson was concerned in the public controversy, the matter rested with
Calhoun’s initial letter of admission that he had opposed Jackson’s
course in the war. He prepared an elaborate statement of the facts for
the purposes of history, turned it over to the editor of the “Globe,”
who became his literary executor, and he, in turn, permitted Kendall to
study it when he was planning a biography of the President.[286] But of
all this the public knew nothing.
The inevitable storm had broken. Van Buren, suavely in the background,
was clearly the beneficiary, Calhoun just as clearly the victim. After
this the great Carolinian lost interest in the Presidency, all concern
with party, and henceforth, with occasional attacks on Jackson,
concentrated on sectionalism and slavery. His disaffection was to carry
with it that of his more ardent supporters, and thus in scarcely more
than a year Calhoun, Tyler, Tazewell, and the men who looked to them for
guidance, passed from the Administration camp to join the Opposition.
And the incident had one immediate effect--inseparable from it--the
disruption of the Cabinet with the eradication of the last vestige of
Calhoun influence from all the executive branches of the Government.