MRS. EATON DEMOLISHES THE CABINET
I
At the time the politicians were discussing the open rupture with
Calhoun, two horsemen might have been seen riding slowly through
Georgetown, and out on the Tenallytown road, engaged in earnest
conversation. It was not a novelty, however, to the people of the
ancient river town, for this had long been a favorite route of Jackson
and Van Buren on their daily rides. On this occasion Jackson had been
discussing the painful lack of harmony in his Cabinet and had expressed
the hope that his troubles were about over.
“No, General,” said Van Buren, a little nervously, “there is but one
thing that will give you peace.”
“What is that, sir?” snapped the grim one.
“My resignation.”
“Never, sir; even you know little of Andrew Jackson if you suppose him
capable of consenting to such a humiliation of his friends by his
enemies.”
To understand the conditions leading to such a suggestion from Van
Buren, it is necessary to refer to the serious petticoat entanglement in
which Jackson found himself within a few weeks after his inauguration,
because of the presence of Senator Eaton in his Cabinet. It is an
amusing fact that the first real democratic administration in American
history should have been all but wrecked on a social issue. Aside from
the agreeable work of “turning the rascals out,” little had occurred to
disturb the serenity of the new Administration between the inauguration
and the meeting of the Congress in the following December but this
social war. The call to battle had been sounded even before Jackson had
taken the oath of office; the battle raged with unprecedented fury for
many months, finally wrecking the Cabinet and advancing Van Buren to
within sight of the White House. It has not been uncommon for women to
change the course of political and dynastic history in other countries,
but to this day the case of the captivating Margaret O’Neal is unique in
the United States.
The pretty daughter of a popular tavern-keeper, whose old-fashioned
house was a favorite with statesmen and their wives, she had developed
into womanhood under the eyes of men famous in the State. Here Jackson
lived during his senatorial service, and grew fond of the vivacious
child he often held on his knee. With the education a doting father
lavished upon her, and with her intimate contact with men of ability and
women of refinement, she found herself, on the threshold of life, the
intellectual peer of the best of her sex. It is not unnatural that this
clever and beautiful girl should have incurred the jealous displeasure
of the less attractive spouses of the elder statesmen. Her rare beauty
alone would have done that had she been as virtuous as Cæsar’s wife
should have been. Perley Poore[287] describes her as of medium height,
straight and delicate and of perfect proportions; with a skin of
delicate white, tinged with red, and with an abundance of dark hair
clustered above her broad, expressive forehead; with a nose of perfect
Greek proportions, a finely curved mouth, a firm, round chin--the
Aspasia of Washington. When, in addition to her physical and
intellectual charms, it must be recorded that she occasionally played
the rôle of barmaid, permitting such liberties as men in the early
stages of their cups would take, it is easy to understand why the more
sedate matrons of the little capital were prone to look upon her as
beyond the pale. She had married a purser in the navy, and even her
enemies at the time conceded that the match was a _mésalliance_ because
of her intellectual superiority. In time the husband sailed across the
sea, leaving his comely young wife in the rather free-and-easy
atmosphere of her father’s tavern. The moral conditions of the capital
were not such as to spare the most virtuous, thus situated, from the
tongue of gossip. A contemporary has said that the Washington of those
days “resembled in recklessness and extravagance the spirit of the
England of the Seventeenth Century, so graphically portrayed in
Thackeray’s Humorists.’ ... Laxity of morals and the coolest disregard
possible, characterized that period of our existence.”[288]
Living at the O’Neal tavern at the time was the wealthy Senator Eaton,
who had manifested more than a passing interest in “Peggy,” as she was
called, before her marriage. Gossip had it that he became more than ever
attentive when the sailor went to sea. When, after a drunken debauch,
which the gossips, without the slightest justification, ascribed to the
worthless seaman’s knowledge of his wife’s friendship for the Senator,
the husband shot himself, and Eaton was found in her company with
increasing frequency, the case was complete as far as the drawing-rooms
were concerned. All that evidence could not furnish, the imagination
did, and pretty Peggy stood pilloried in the community.
It was at this juncture that Eaton asked the advice of Jackson as to a
marriage. With characteristic impulsiveness the old warrior replied that
if he loved her he should marry her and save her good name by the act.
Thus, on January 1, 1829, the future Secretary of War was married to the
tavern-keeper’s daughter, and instantly the drawing-rooms began to buzz.
One of the patrician ladies of the time of the wedding poured forth the
chatter of the social set. Here we find that Mrs. Eaton “had never been
admitted into good society”; that while “very handsome” she was “not of
an inspiring character” and had a “violent temper”; that notwithstanding
this she was “irresistible” and “carries
[Illustration: _Margaret Patton_]
whatever point she sets her mind on.” The enemies of Jackson were
laughing in the drawing-rooms and diverting themselves “with the idea of
what a suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will make for Mrs. Jackson,”
and were repeating “the old adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock
together.’”[289] In arriving at an understanding of Jackson’s vigorous
defense of the lady of his Cabinet, it is well to bear in mind that the
same scandal-mongers were rolling the name of Mrs. Jackson on their
tongues. The same letter relates how one of Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen
callers “laughed and joked about Mrs. Jackson and her pipe.”
The marriage might have remained merely one of the innumerable morsels
with which ladies sometimes regale the drawing-rooms but for the
announcement that Eaton had been invited into the Cabinet--and that
spread the controversy to the politicians. Among these Senator John
Branch had the courage or the insolence personally to press the point
upon Jackson that, because of social complications, the appointment of
Eaton would be “unpopular and unfortunate.”[290] Jackson heard his
future Secretary of the Navy in stern silence, and appointed Eaton
Secretary of War. The inauguration was scarcely over when the petticoat
battle began. The most fashionable minister at the capital at the time,
at whose church Mrs. Smith, the Branches, the Berriens, and the Inghams
worshiped,[291] importuned, no doubt, by the society women of the city,
and quite probably encouraged by the Cabinet ladies of his congregation,
persuaded a Philadelphia minister to write the President of the alleged
irregularities of Mrs. Eaton. Some of these ministerial charges are
unfit for print. Jackson sent a stinging reply, and at the same time
employed detectives to investigate the charges. The search of the
sleuths was unavailing, and the situation became so embarrassing to the
Philadelphia clergyman that he demanded that the Washington minister
should reveal himself.
Thus, on the evening of September 1, 1829, a unique conference was held
at the White House, when Jackson confronted the two clergymen, in the
presence of witnesses, and forced them to admit that they had no
evidence. One of the worst charges had been that a certain physician,
conveniently dead, had said that Mrs. Eaton had undergone a premature
_accouchement_ when her husband had been more than a year at sea--the
date fixed as 1821. When confronted by the fact that the first husband
had not gone to sea until 1824, the clergyman lightly changed the date
to conform. This disgusted and enraged Jackson. Because he
cross-examined the gentlemen of the cloth regarding a matter affecting
the reputation of a woman, some historians have been resentful of his
severity.[292] The purpose was to convince the members of the Cabinet,
who were present, that their ladies were working a grave injustice upon
the wife of a colleague in refusing her social intercourse. But far from
satisfying the women, the discomfiture of the minister and the utter
collapse of the case only embittered them the more against her. The
minister was placed in a painful position, dubbed by the irrepressible
“Ike” Hill as “the chaplain of the conspiracy,” and described by Mrs.
Smith[293] as having been “rendered incapable of attending to his
ministerial duties to such a degree as to produce great dissatisfaction
in his congregation.”
Meanwhile months had gone by and Mrs. Eaton was still snubbed. Mrs.
Calhoun, a thorough aristocrat, had positively refused to call. Mrs.
Ingham, whose own reputation was not unquestioned, took her cue from
Mrs. Calhoun. Branch tells us that when, in May, his wife and daughters
joined him in Washington, they found Mrs. Eaton “excluded from society,”
and that he “did not deem it their duty to endeavor to control or
counteract the decision of the ladies of Washington.”[294] Miss Berrien
had accepted the verdict of the women, and her father was openly
expressing his admiration for “the heroic virtues of John Branch for
hazarding his place rather than permit his wife and daughters to
associate with the wife of John H. Eaton.”[295] Parties were given and
Mrs. Eaton was not invited; at public receptions she was snubbed.
This was all meat and drink to Adams, who recorded in his diary, after
some scandal gossip with Mrs. Rush: “I told Mrs. Rush that this struggle
was likely to terminate in a party division of Caps and Hats.” It is
this suggestion as to party divisions which imposes upon the historian
the necessity of dwelling upon this strange petticoat squabble. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that, when Martin Van Buren appeared at
social functions with the pretty Peggy on his arm, he made himself
President of the United States.
When the Red Fox arrived in Washington and noted the passionate
determination of the iron man at the White House to force a social
recognition of Mrs. Eaton, he could not have been unmindful of his
advantage. He was a widower. No wife or daughters were with him to be
compromised. His biographer[296] makes the point that he called upon the
accused woman in response to common instincts of decency, and that his
failure to have done so would have amounted to a striking public
condemnation. But he did something more than merely call upon her--he
became an active and aggressive partisan of her cause, and by so doing
endeared himself to Jackson. Common decency did not demand that he
feature her at his dinners and receptions, or enter into an agreement
with two unmarried members of the diplomatic corps to do likewise.[297]
It is impossible to account for this extraordinary partisanship on any
other grounds than his desire to curry special favor with the
President. His conduct and activities became the subject of jests and
quips. “It is asserted that if Mr. Van Buren persists in visiting her
[Mrs. Eaton], our ladies will not go to his house,” wrote one of the
stubborn dames.[298] With the ladies of the Cabinet giving large
parties, the wife of Eaton was omitted from the invitation lists, and
Van Buren countered with dinners and dances at the British and Russian
Legations at which Mrs. Eaton was treated with marked distinction. But
even here “cotillion after cotillion dissolved into its original
elements when she was placed at its head.”[299] At the Russian Legation,
Madame Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, on finding that her seat was
beside Mrs. Eaton at the table, haughtily took her husband’s arm and
stalked impressively from the room. Because of this affront, Jackson was
prone to make it an international incident by demanding the recall of
the Minister, but Van Buren’s sense of humor intervened. In sheer
delight Adams wrote: “Mr. Vaughan ... gave a ball last night which was
opened by Mr. Bankhead, the Secretary of the British Legation, and Mrs.
Eaton; and Mr. Van Buren has issued cards also for a ball which is to be
given in honor of the same lady. I confine myself to the Russian and
Turkish war.”[300] In the late summer of 1829 the effect of the struggle
upon both Jackson and Van Buren was apparent. The President, disgusted,
worn, and sick at heart, was confiding to his correspondents his
partiality for the calm of the Hermitage. And Adams, riding about the
environs, and encountering Van Buren, similarly taking the air,
spitefully wrote: “His pale and haggard looks show it is already a
reward of mortification. If it should prove, as there is every
probability that it will, a reward of treachery, it will be but his
desert.”[301]
When the winter came and the social season opened, the contest naturally
intensified. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien gave large parties from which
Mrs. Eaton was excluded, while “on the other hand the President made her
doubly conspicuous by an over display of notice.”[302] At one of the
President’s drawing-rooms she was surrounded by a crowd eager to please
the host, but Mrs. Donelson, mistress of the White House, held aloof.
This rebellion under his own roof caused the aged President the deepest
pain. Adams records a melodramatic appeal by Van Buren to Mrs. Donelson,
which was highly colored by the ardent Pepys, but such an appeal was
made.[303] The effect of the fight was disastrous to the Administration.
The members of the Cabinet were speedily involved by their wives, and
for a time Eaton and Branch did not speak. It was at this juncture that
Jackson determined to intervene, and “to bring them to speaking
terms.”[304] His intermediary for the purpose, Colonel Richard M.
Johnson,[305] was not a Talleyrand, and his lack of tact in his talks
with Branch, Berrien, and Ingham made matters all the worse. When the
relations of the Cabinet members became threatening, Jackson demanded
that they meet and reach a basis for official intercourse at least. The
meeting was held at the home of Berrien, attended by Branch, Eaton, and
Barry. The negotiations were conducted with dignity and decorum, Branch
satisfactorily explained invitations to the ministers who had accused
Eaton’s wife, and the two shook hands as a token of reconciliation.[306]
Meanwhile Congress was in session. All attempts to hold Cabinet meetings
had long been abandoned. The lines were drawn tightly. The slights and
indignities to Mrs. Eaton had become all but intolerable. And much was
being heard of the alleged frailty and indiscretions of Mrs.
Ingham--stories that seem to have been well known at the time, but to
have been given renewed currency by Eaton.[307]
It was at this juncture that Van Buren, riding with Jackson, proposed
the acceptance of his resignation. Meditating the step for some time he
had been unable to muster the courage to broach the subject. For four
days the President and his Secretary of State rode the Tenallytown road
earnestly debating the propriety of the plan, and on the fourth day,
just as they reached their turning-point at the Tenallytown Gate,
Jackson gave a reluctant consent and suggested the British Mission. But
the grim old warrior was loath to part with his one strong friend in the
Cabinet, and early the next morning he summoned Van Buren to the White
House, and in great agitation, and with significance, explained anew
that it was his custom to release from association with him any man who
felt that he ought to go. Thoroughly alarmed, Van Buren, with emotion,
withdrew all he had said, and announced a willingness to retain his post
until dismissed. Deeply touched, Jackson proposed another discussion on
their afternoon ride. It was that afternoon that it was agreed to call
others into the conference; and the next night Van Buren had as dinner
guests Jackson, Barry, Eaton, and Major Lewis. Finally Eaton agreed to
follow with his resignation. Would Peggy consent, asked the tactful Fox.
Her husband thought she would. The next night the five met at dinner
again, with Eaton reporting his wife’s acquiescence in the plans. But
when, a few days later, Jackson and Van Buren, out for a stroll, stopped
at the Eaton house, their reception from the mistress was so cold and
formal that the Secretary commented upon it, and Jackson shrugged his
shoulders in silence. But the die was cast. The plan was made. Van Buren
and Eaton would resign, thus paving the way for the resignation of the
Calhoun followers, and a reorganization of the Cabinet--with the
Calhoun influence entirely eliminated.[308]
II
THE decision made, the old President must have felt a sense of ineffable
relief. His Cabinet had been a failure and he realized it. His
dissatisfaction with a majority of its members was not due entirely to
their hostility to Mrs. Eaton. The fight against the National Bank was
in its incipiency and he looked upon Ingham as a tool of the Bank; the
Nullification doctrine was being promulgated and he considered Berrien a
Nullifier--and in both surmises he was right. He thought Branch pompous,
incompetent, and subservient to petticoat rule. And we may be sure that
whether or not the Cabinet was to be reorganized in the interest of Van
Buren, the relations of all three toward the Carolinian entered into his
decision to rid himself of them. There is evidence that he quite early
determined to displace Berrien, but nothing of record to indicate the
cause. In the man selected for his place, however, we have ample
justification for the suspicion that the Red Fox had poisoned his mind
against his Attorney-General. It was on the suggestion of Van Buren,
very soon after the formation of the Cabinet in 1829, that the
Attorney-Generalship was offered to Louis McLane, who, in disgust, had
retired to Wilmington for the practice of his profession, with the
inducement that he would later be transferred to the Supreme Bench on
the death of the rapidly failing Justice Duval. Before breakfast one
morning, after a hard ride over the wretched mud roads, Hamilton, the
lieutenant of Van Buren, arrived at the McLane home with the proposal,
which was accepted. Nothing, however, was done--another mystery that
died with Jackson and his Secretary of State.[309]
But the coast was now clear. A strong workable Cabinet after Jackson’s
own heart could be created. The manner in which he went about ridding
himself of the undesirable members of the old Cabinet is graphically
illustrated in the account left by Branch.[310] It is easy to visualize
the scene in the President’s room, whither he has summoned Branch to
inform him of the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton. There is a
“solemn pause.” The Secretary, sensing the intent, smiles, and suggests
that the grim one is not “acting in a character nature intended him
for”; that he is not a diplomatist, and should speak frankly. Whereupon
Jackson, “with great apparent kindness,” explains his purpose, points to
a commission as Governor of Florida upon the table, and announces that
it will be a pleasure to fill in the name of the visitor. Branch
haughtily declares that he had “not supported him for the sake of
office,” and soon retires. Returning to his office, Branch prepares and
sends in his resignation courteously, but not omitting to mention that
the action was taken in response to the President’s wish. Whereupon
Jackson, splitting hairs, writes a protest against the statement that
his correspondent’s resignation had been asked. “I did not,” he writes,
“as to yourself, express a wish that you would retire.” But since the
Cabinet had come in “harmoniously and as a unit,” and two were
voluntarily retiring, it had become “indispensable” to reorganize
completely the official household “to guard against misrepresentation.”
More correspondence follows, ending with a gracious acceptance of the
resignation, coupled with an expression of appreciation of the
“integrity and zeal” with which the Secretary of the Navy had discharged
his duties.[311]
Ingham made the President’s task easy with a brief note of resignation,
and passed permanently from public life.[312] But Berrien was loath to
go. In discussing the situation with friends, he made no secret of his
desire to retain his post, but on learning that Jackson had no such
notion, he withdrew in a friendly and dignified letter.[313]
The period between the announcement of Van Buren’s resignation and the
appointment of the new Cabinet was rich in food for the gossips. What
would become of the Red Fox? Would Mrs. Eaton have her triumph in the
elevation of her husband to some other post of distinction? And what
would be the factional complexion of the new Cabinet? John Tyler,
sending his budget of gossip home, rather questioned the rumor that Van
Buren would be groomed for Vice-President and thought he would prefer to
go abroad. It had also reached Tyler that Hugh L. White might become
Secretary of War, and that “Livingston is to rule the roost,” and he
lamented that in the latter event “the Constitution may be construed to
mean anything and everything.” He had likewise heard that McLane would
be Secretary of the Treasury, “but how,” he asked, “can he ever be
acceptable to the South with his notions on the tariff and internal
improvement?”[314] Meanwhile there appears to have been a rather
definite plan on the part of Jackson and Van Buren for the building of
the new Cabinet.
III
Either the President or Van Buren could very plausibly have been
responsible for the decision as to Livingston and the State portfolio,
but the fact remains that the proffer of the post was made through the
latter. The Louisiana statesman was spending his summer vacation at his
country place on the Hudson when a mysterious letter reached him from
the New York politician, summoning him instantly to Washington, and
warning him, on leaving, to conceal his destination. Observing both the
summons and the injunction, he proceeded at once to the capital, and
with some misgivings accepted the post of Secretary of State.[315] That
this was Van Buren’s appointment seems more than probable.
For the Treasury, Louis McLane, Minister to England, a subordinate, as
such, to Van Buren, with whom he had worked in perfect accord
politically, and whose wife was ambitious for Cabinet honors,[316] was
summoned home from London. As Van Buren had, at this time, selected the
London post for himself, this appointment was unquestionably his own.
The one embarrassing hitch came in the selection of a Secretary of War.
It was the plan to have Senator Hugh L. White of Tennessee relinquish
his seat for the War Office, thus opening the way for the election of
Eaton to his old position in the Senate. But White was cold to the
proposition. The mutual friends of the President and the Tennessee
Senator importuned him to no effect. James K. Polk strongly urged him.
Felix Grundy added his appeal. Another wrote him: “The old man says that
all his plans will be defeated unless you agree to come.”[317] Jackson
himself did not hesitate to go with White’s brother-in-law to Virginia
to request Senator Tazewell, an intimate of White’s, to exert his
influence--but to no avail. The reason for this refusal, furnished by a
kinswoman, throws light on the general understanding as to the purpose
of the Cabinet reorganization--he did not intend to “thereby aid in the
elevation of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency.”[318] Thus did Jackson’s
earnest wish to serve his friends, the Eatons, fail at a critical
juncture. After the place was also refused by Representative Drayton of
South Carolina, an enemy of Nullification, Jackson turned to his old
co-worker in the War of 1812, and Lewis Cass, then Governor of Michigan,
entered the new Cabinet. This was probably Jackson’s personal
appointment, albeit years before, while acting as judge advocate in the
court-martial of General Hull, Van Buren had learned to his discomfiture
that Cass was no ordinary man.[319] More successful in caring for his
friend Isaac Hill than for the Eatons, a proffer of the Navy portfolio
to Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire created a senatorial vacancy
that fell to the fighting journalist. Incidentally the relations between
Van Buren and Woodbury were close.
In finding a successor for Berrien the President was handicapped by the
general opinion of his friends, including Van Buren, that his retention
would serve a good purpose. During the period of uncertainty numerous
names were canvassed, the favorite of the politicians being James
Buchanan.[320] The first suggestion of Roger Taney was made to Jackson
by a Washington physician who had ventured to say that he knew “a man
who will suit for Attorney-General.” The disinterestedness and high
character of this truly great and much-maligned man shines forth in his
conduct during this period of negotiations. He not only did not press
his claims, but urged the retention of Berrien, and, under his
instructions, his brother-in-law (Key) did likewise. Thus we find Key
calling upon Livingston, Barry, and Woodbury, urging the keeping of
Berrien on the ground that “it would have a good effect upon the affairs
of the party, both as to its bearing on the Indian and the Eaton
questions.”[321] All three agreed, but confessed a delicacy about
broaching the subject unless consulted. In the midst of these
negotiations, Key was summoned to the White House and informed of the
intention to invite Taney into the Cabinet. Again Key urged the wisdom
of retaining Berrien; the President firmly rejected the idea, and thus,
on his personal judgment, Jackson secured the services of one of the
strongest figures to be associated with him in his most bitter battle.
Livingston, McLane, Cass, Woodbury, and Taney--this at any rate was not
the “millennial of the minnows.” But the new Cabinet was not to be
received with universal acclaim. The Calhoun followers grumbled that it
was a Van Buren Cabinet; and Tyler, thinking in terms of State Rights,
complained bitterly that State-Rights men had been left “entirely out in
the cold.”[322]
Nor did the Eaton trouble dissipate instantly on the passing of the
first Cabinet. The retired members stoutly insisted on every occasion
that they had been forced out because of their refusal to coerce their
wives to associate with naughty Peggy. After his return to his North
Carolina home, Branch, in a voluminous letter, charged all the
responsibility for the disruption of the Cabinet to the social issue.
Berrien, albeit not only willing but anxious to remain, on his return to
Georgia eulogized Jackson at a complimentary dinner in his honor, but
added that when he attempted to prescribe rules for the association of
the families of his Ministers he scorned the dictation.[323] And Duff
Green was so active and persistent in ascribing the upheaval to the
Eaton affair that Key was convinced “that that matter had not occasioned
the change in the Cabinet.”[324] The gossips of the drawing-rooms,
distressed at being deprived of a choice morsel, set their teeth into it
with a grim determination to hold on. Mrs. Bayard Smith, as though
personally affronted, wrote to a friend: “The papers do not exaggerate,
nay do not retail one half his [Jackson’s] imbecilities. He is
completely under the domination of Mrs. Eaton, one of the most
ambitious, violent, malignant, yet silly women you ever heard of.” And a
few days later she returns to the attack: “Mrs. Eaton cannot be forced
or persuaded to leave Washington.... She ... believes that next winter
the present Cabinet Ministers will open their doors to her. Mrs. McLane
has already committed herself on that point. Previous to her going to
England, while on a visit here, in direct violation of her most violent
asseverations previously made, she visited this lady, and instantly
became a great favorite with the President.”[325]
However, if Mrs. Eaton lingered, others departed with undignified
celerity. As soon as the robes of office fell from his shoulders, Eaton
began a search for Ingham to administer a personal chastisement. The
latter, who had been peculiarly offensive, and whose own wife was a
victim of the gossips, would not fight a duel. He did not care to fight
at all. Thus began an amusing chase. Eaton lay in wait for him in the
streets, while the dignified ex-Minister of Finance carefully picked his
way home through the muddy alleys and back yards into the back door of
his house. At length the chase became uncomfortable. A stage-coach was
chartered. The Inghams’ baggage was packed. Two hours before daybreak,
the coach driver might have been seen lashing his horses through the mud
and water of the capital, bearing on their way to Philadelphia the
erstwhile Cabinet Minister and his family.
The first Cabinet, which almost immediately put on a drawing-room
comedy, went out with a rip-roaring farce, with seconds bearing ominous
messages, and with Cabinet officers lying in wait in the shadows,
creeping through alleys, brandishing pistols, and in the darkest hours
before the dawn lumbering in stage-coaches out of the capital city to
escape a shot.
The thoroughly frightened Ingham openly charged that Eaton intended to
murder him, and the letters of the former secretaries concerning the
“murder conspiracy” added mightily to the amusement of the enemies of
the Administration and to the chagrin and disgust of its friends.
“Before you receive this,” wrote a Washingtonian to Senator John
Forsyth, “you will have seen the disgraceful publications of Eaton and
Ingham, which, of course, are the sole topics of conversation here. The
rumor was that the President was engaged the day before yesterday in
investigating the matter, and I know that he had a magistrate with him
taking depositions.”[326] The hilarity of Jackson’s enemies was vividly
expressed in a cartoon, entitled “The Rats Leaving a Falling House,”
published in Philadelphia, and, with childish delight, Adams records in
his diary that “two thousand copies of this print have been sold in
Philadelphia this day,” and that the ten thousand copies struck of “will
be disposed of within a fortnight.”[327]
Van Buren was sent to the English Court. Eaton was made Governor of
Florida and later Minister to Spain, where Mrs. Eaton, in the most
dignified Court in Europe, became a brilliant success. Ingham passed
from public life. Branch affiliated with the Whigs in 1832 and in 1836,
and was made Governor of Florida by Tyler. Berrien became one of the
orators and leaders of the Whigs, and one of the founders of the
Know-Nothing Party. Thus, after two years of disorganization and
domestic turmoil, the Jackson Administration, with a powerful Cabinet,
and, for the first time, a definite policy, began to strike its stride.
At least two of the new Ministers were to play leading and spectacular
parts in the great party battles that were to follow.
It must have been with a sense of ineffable relief that Jackson, seated
at the head of the Cabinet table, surveyed the new men with whom he had
surrounded himself--a feeling in which the public shared. But as his
glance moved about the table it no doubt lingered with greatest
confidence and satisfaction upon the three whose very appearance bespoke
character, intellectuality, and power. At his right hand the tall
figure, with the student’s stoop, the meditative manner, the benevolent
expression, which had stood beside him in the stirring days of New
Orleans--the scholarly Livingston. Nearby he recognized in the imposing
figure with the robust, well-knit frame, the huge head, the bushy brows,
the penetrating, fighting blue eyes of Cass, a man of the solidity and
strength that he admired and trusted. The one strange figure about the
table, destined to prove more nearly a man after his own heart than any
other who was to serve him in the Cabinet, was Taney--thin and delicate
like Jackson himself, with the student’s stoop of Livingston, but
without his calm. Between these three and the others, there was a
decided descent, although they were men of ability and reputation.
IV
Edward Livingston was one of the strongest characters of his time, a
Nationalist as intense as Webster, who was to pen a document as virile
and militant as Webster’s speech for the Union--one of the most
brilliant, talented, and polished publicists the Republic has known.
This premier of the greatest of democrats, was a thorough aristocrat,
tracing his lineage back to the English peerage. Compared with him, the
Opposition leaders and even their ladies of the drawing-rooms lamenting
the social crudities of the Jacksonians were of mongrel breed. And yet
this highest type of aristocrat was, by preference, one of the most
ardent of democrats. When, in his thirtieth year, he entered the
National House of Representatives from his native city of New York, he
had behind him every advantage and before him every opportunity.
Distinguishing himself by brilliancy in debate, vigor in attack, when he
left Congress his militant leadership of the Jeffersonian party had
convinced Hamilton that he had to be destroyed.[328] Jefferson made him
district attorney; the people elected him to the mayoralty of New York,
and the attempt to serve in both capacities wrought his financial ruin.
While personally directing the fight against the yellow fever plague, he
was himself stricken, and he recovered only to find that his assistant
in the district attorney’s office had squandered $100,000 of the public
money on wine and women. Without a moment’s hesitation he conveyed all
his property to a trustee for sale, beggared himself completely, and
resigned both his offices. The public protested against his abandonment
of the mayoralty, and for two months the Governor refused to accept his
resignation, but he knew that the path of duty led to the replenishment
of his purse. Thus, at thirty-nine, leaving behind him the prestige of
his family connections and his own career, he turned toward Louisiana,
then the Promised Land, and set forth for New Orleans. There he
immediately took high rank in his profession, established a lucrative
practice, and soon acquired valuable real estate abutting the river
which promised a fortune. The story of how he was deprived of this
through the incomprehensible spite of President Jefferson constitutes
one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of American
litigation.[329] But Livingston was sustained by infinite patience, a
happy philosophy, and natural buoyancy of temperament, and he soon found
other matters to enlist his interest. When Jackson reached New Orleans
to defend the town, it was Livingston who aroused the militant spirit of
the people with his martial eloquence, and served as the soldier’s aid,
translator, and adviser. It was in these days amidst the barking of the
English guns that Jackson discovered
[Illustration: _Edw Livingston_]
in Livingston the man he could trust as a patriot and fighter in two of
the bitterest battles of his Presidency.[330] It was soon after this
that Livingston began the greatest undertaking of his life--one so
far-reaching in its effect on humanity as to carry his name to the
thinkers, philosophers, and philanthropists of every land. The
“Livingston Code” alone entitles him to a place high on the scroll of
humanitarians who have served mankind. Victor Hugo declared that he
would be “numbered among the men of this age who have deserved most and
best of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham was tremendously impressed. Dr. H. S.
Maine, author of the “Ancient Laws,” pronounced him “the first legal
genius of modern times.” Villemain, of the Paris Sorbonne, described his
work as “a work without example from the hand of any one man.” From the
Emperor of Russia and the King of Sweden came autograph letters, from
the King of the Netherlands a gold medal and a eulogy, and statesmen and
philosophers of Europe vied with kings and emperors in paying homage.
The Government of Guatemala, not content with translating his “Code on
Reform and Prison Discipline,” and adopting it without the change of a
word, bestowed upon a new city and district the name of Livingston.
Jefferson wrote: “It will certainly array your name with the sages of
antiquity”; Kent and Story, Madison and Marshall joined in the common
praise, and he was elected a member of the Institute of France. Such was
the prestige he took to Washington, when, in his fifty-ninth year, he
again entered the House as a Representative from New Orleans.
He was now an old man, but of unusual vigor, and able to wear out
younger men with his long pedestrian jaunts. He loved society and
mingled with it freely, unable to escape it if he would because of the
social and intellectual brilliance of his wife and the charm and beauty
of his daughter. His fame was seemingly secure. His reputation was
world-wide. His conversational gifts were of an uncommon order. His
friends and social intimates were confined to no party, and embraced the
best of both. After a brief period in the House he had entered the
Senate where he stood among the foremost. Such was the man Jackson
called to the head of his Cabinet--one whose character and career suffer
nothing by comparison with those of his most distinguished predecessors,
Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.
V
We are not concerned with the Roger B. Taney who wrote the Dred Scott
decision, but with that portion of his career, little known and
appreciated, which convinced Jackson that he was worthy of wearing the
mantle of John Marshall. And that is by far the most dramatic phase of
his life--his battling years. Born and reared on a Maryland plantation,
among horses and slaves, he grew up to be an independent, self-reliant
youth. At Dickinson College he refused to take down a portion of a
lecture which assailed our republican governmental system. As
valedictorian of his class he suffered torments from a morbid fear of
public speaking. Thus even as a student he was independent in thought,
courageously devoted to his convictions, brave in battle, but miserably
self-conscious on parade.
On graduating, he returned to the woods and fields of the plantation,
abandoned his books, and gave himself up to the joys of fox-hunting,
leading the life of the old-fashioned English country gentleman. When he
took up the study of law in Annapolis, however, he abandoned this
outdoor life in turn, and, declining all social invitations, devoted
himself to his studies, and to fighting his native timidity, in a
debating society. Here also he studied the methods of two of the
Nation’s greatest advocates, Luther Martin and William Pinkney.
And, strangely enough, this great lawyer in the making, began the
practice of the law as a side issue to politics. In the quiet rural
community of his nativity, where there was little litigation and no
opportunity for professional distinction, he settled, for the sole
purpose of entering the House of Delegates. This, however, in compliance
with the wishes of his aggressively Federalistic father. Thus, at the
age of twenty-two, we find young Taney responding to the roll-call as a
pronounced Federalist of the school of Hamilton. It is noteworthy that
he was defeated in the next election because of the Jeffersonian
revolution of 1800.
This setback changed the course of his career. An uncompromising
Federalist with Federalism apparently dead, politics no longer promised
a future, and he turned now to the serious consideration of the law, and
located at Frederick where the Democrats were overwhelmingly
predominant. In this community, rich, intellectual, cultured, and
hospitable, he instantly took his place among the leaders of the bar and
entered upon a lucrative practice. A Federalist from principle, he did
not hesitate, when called to lead the forlorn hope. As a Federalist, he
opposed the War of 1812. Up to this point his political career was
similar to that of Webster.
And it is in the divergence of the two careers at this point that the
future of Taney turned. He fought the war until the die was cast, and
then threw himself with intense fervor into the support of his country
against the foreign foe. Contemptuous of the disloyalists of his
political family, he summoned the Federalists to the unqualified support
of the American arms, and such was his prestige that a large portion of
the party in Maryland followed his lead.[331] By subordinating party to
country, he all but obliterated party lines, and when he was nominated
for Congress as a war Federalist he all but wiped out the normal
Democratic majority. Had he gone to Washington at that time as a lone
Federalist supporting the war, to face Webster, fighting the
organization of the army and the appropriations, his national reputation
would have come eighteen years before it did. For his was no
half-hearted hate of the disloyalty of his party co-workers. This is the
first decisive action upon which an interpretation of his political
character may be predicated.
Meanwhile, restricting himself more and more to his profession,
frequently associated with Luther Martin in the most important
litigation, his reputation spread throughout the State, and the
politician was merged with the lawyer. It was in connection with one of
his most sensational cases that he took a position on slavery and the
right of abolitionists to be heard that throws a high light on his
character and courage.
An abolitionist minister from Pennsylvania had gone to Maryland and made
a ferocious attack on slavery in a public meeting attended by some
slaves. The excitement and feeling against him were intense. To the
sensitive slave-owners the speech seemed a deliberate incitation of the
slaves to insurrection. The minister’s life was in danger. It required
supreme courage for a Maryland lawyer in that slave-holding community to
stand between the abolitionist and the popular clamor against him, and
Taney stepped from the professional ranks to plead his cause, not
perfunctorily, but with a passionate defiance worthy of the highest
traditions of his profession. He made his defense on no less grounds
than “the rights of conscience and the freedom of speech.” And he spoke
on slavery even as Garrison or Lincoln might have spoken. In a courtroom
crowded with slave-owners who were his neighbors, he touched boldly on
the pathos and the tragedy of the institution. After this daring defense
before a slave-holding jury, the hated abolitionist was acquitted--and
the records of the American courts record no nobler triumph.
The death of Pinkney and the disqualification of Martin soon advanced
Taney to the head of the Maryland bar. It was one year after he had
established himself in Baltimore that he first allied himself with the
supporters of Andrew Jackson. During the campaign of 1824 was published
a letter written by Jackson to Madison seven years before, urging the
recognition of those Federalists who had broken with their party to
support the War of 1812, and suggesting the name of Colonel Drayton of
South Carolina.[332] Discriminating between the anti-war Federalists and
the pro-war Federalists, Jackson here declared that had he been
commander of the military department in which the Hartford Convention
was held, he would have court-martialed the three leaders of the
Convention. This announcement of his views had attracted to his standard
many pro-war Federalists of Maryland, and the most notable acquisition
was Roger B. Taney. He was impelled to his course with no thought of
political reward. His whole mind and heart were in his profession.
Jackson knew nothing of Taney’s partiality at the time, and only learned
of it about the time he was seeking a successor for Berrien. At no time
in his life had the Maryland lawyer been so thoroughly satisfied with
his lot. He had been made Attorney-General of the State on the unanimous
recommendation of the bar, and this was the only office to which he ever
aspired. It was in line with his work and left him at home with his
family and his books. Such was his situation, when, through a
non-political suggestion, he was offered the position in the Cabinet of
Jackson.
At this time he was in his fifty-fourth year, with no taste for the
trickery and intrigues of politics, and he asked nothing better for his
leisure hours than meditative tramps through the woods, a canter on his
horse, a volume of poetry or history, or the delights of his home,
presided over by the sister of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
An ardent Catholic, he was strict in the observance of his religious
duties. Always vehement in his views, and uncompromising in his
convictions, he was almost unpleasantly decisive in the expression of
his political opinions. Such was his lofty conception of official
propriety that while in office he was to refuse to accept the slightest
token of appreciation from people with whom he had official
relations.[333] He had all the courtesy and courtliness of his culture,
all the caution of the painstaking lawyer, and all the circumspection of
the man jealous of his honor. He was to become the most virile assistant
of Jackson in the bitterest fight of his Presidency, the most trusted of
his Cabinet, because the most like Jackson in the vigor of his blows.
VI
To describe Lewis Cass as an American politician would be damning with
faint praise, for he was something infinitely more and greater--he was
an empire-builder of the company of Clive and Rhodes, one of the most
robust figures in American history. His first remembered view of the
world was that of being held in his mother’s arms, and looking out the
windows of his New Hampshire home upon the bonfires blazing in
celebration of the ratification of the Constitution. Crossing the
Alleghanies on foot, with a knap-sack on his back, sleeping beneath the
stars, his Americanism had expanded in the contemplation of the
magnitude of the Republic. Riding the circuit, as Western lawyers did in
those days, he was a witness of the stubborn battles against the
wilderness, and he had enough imagination to see, in the rough men
wielding axes, Homeric figures. And it was while pursuing his lonely way
through the virgin forests of Ohio that he found time for the
assimilation of his reading and learned to be the independent and
courageous thinker he became.
He had established a sound reputation at the bar, when the War of 1812
added that of a gallant and brilliant soldier. To him especially are we
indebted for the shameful story of Hull’s cowardly surrender of
Detroit--an act so maddening that Cass broke his sword in protest. But
his reputation as lawyer and soldier pales by comparison with the
reputation he was to make as an empire-builder.
Never was a ruler confronted by more disheartening difficulties than
Cass, when, in 1813, he became the civil Governor of Michigan. For two
years he was forced to battle against anarchy and famine. Organized
society was demoralized. The country was disorganized. The savages had
driven away the cattle of the settlers, and the French especially were
in desperate straits. The war-whoops of the red men had so terrorized
the people that they were afraid to settle down to the cultivation of
the land. The morale of the Territory was pathetically low. And Cass,
with the empire-builder’s decision and genius, instantly formed his plan
to combat the threatened disintegration. The people had to be fed--he
fed them from the public stores, drew upon the Government for further
assistance, personally directed the battle against famine--and won. The
confidence of the people had to be restored as a preliminary to
progress--he determined to restore it by demonstrating his mastery of
the savages. Organizing the young men, he personally led them against
the Indians in a bloody skirmish--and won. He repeated it--and won.
Again--and won. And thus the terror of the people passed, and they
returned to their homes.
He then turned to the organization of civil government. Courts were
created, civil officers selected, territorial divisions established, new
counties were carved, and he began an elaborate policy of road-building
and internal improvements. One of his first acts was to establish a
school system, and to encourage the building of churches with the
assurance of religious liberty.
This accomplished, he turned with his usual zeal to the Americanizing of
the people, many of whom were French, and to encouraging the migration
of colonists. Knowing the industry and energy of his native New England,
he planned to draw immigrants from that section hoping that the French
would learn by their success to emulate their example. But here he had
another battle to overcome the general notion of the Eastern States that
the land of Michigan was valueless. In time he succeeded.
And then he found time to challenge the right of the British across the
border to interfere in the affairs of the Territory. In those days
Michigan was only a Territory on the outskirts, and it was easier for
the National Government to ignore insults than to challenge a mighty
empire by protesting against them. As late as 1816 vessels were stopped
on their way to Detroit and searched by British agents. Cass, with
lawyer-like care, collected his evidence, transmitted it to Washington,
vigorously protested to the British authorities--and won.[334]
Nowhere, perhaps, does his vision as an empire-builder, shine more
luminously than in his letter to Calhoun, Secretary of War, proposing a
scientific expedition in 1819, under the sanction and with the
coöperation of the Federal Government.[335] This was the programme of a
statesman. And he asked for experts for the expedition--engineers,
zoölogists, botanists, mineralogists. Determining to accompany the
expedition, it is interesting to note the sagacity of the reason he
assigns: “I think it very important to carry the flag of the United
States into those remote sections where it has never been borne by any
one in public station.” This was the most important expedition ever
undertaken by the American Government up to that time, and was so
regarded by the press of the period.
If we add to this, his successful negotiations of treaties with the
Indians under dramatic circumstances, we have the work and record of
“The Father of the West”--empire-builder from 1813 until he entered the
Cabinet of Jackson in 1831.
And this man of action, fighting life-and-death battles on the fringe of
civilization, found time for the gratification of literary tastes. Here
he suggests the Roosevelt of a much later day. When starting forth on an
expedition into the wilderness, it was his custom to supply himself with
a small library for his entertainment while floating in canoes on the
rivers or the lakes. His articles in later years disclose the
scholar.[336] Just before entering the Cabinet he had delivered a
scholarly address at Hamilton College which has been preserved in a
number of the popular collections of orations.[337]
Livingston the Nationalist.
Cass, the Empire-Builder.
Taney, the Crusader.
Out of the career of any one of these might be woven a romance. All were
of heroic mould, veritable Plutarchian figures. And we shall see that
the time had arrived when Jackson would need the wisest and most
courageous of counselors--for Henry Clay was returning in shining armor
to lead the bitterest of partisan battles against the Administration.