KITCHEN CABINET PORTRAITS
I
From the beginning the virile, militant, driving factors behind
Jackson’s policies were found outside his official family. The “Kitchen
Cabinet,” so called in derision, was more influential in the moulding of
events than the old-fashioned, conventional statesmen who advised their
chief in the seclusion of the Cabinet room. Had Jackson depended wholly
on his Cabinet for the support of his policies, he would have been
constantly confused by divided counsels. On scarcely any of the vital
issues of his Presidency did he have the hearty coöperation of his
constitutional advisers. But never before, nor since, has any President
been served by such tireless organizers of the people, such masters of
mass psychology, such geniuses in the art of publicity and propaganda.
These men, the small but loyal and sleepless group of the Kitchen
Cabinet, were the first of America’s great practical politicians.
Of this group the master mind was Amos Kendall, born in a New England
farmhouse in the latter days of the eighteenth century. In youth, he
preferred study to play, and because of a premature solemnity he was
familiarly known as “The Deacon.” His timidity was as painful as that
which tortured Charlotte Brontë. The stupid act of a teacher in
ridiculing his reading of an oration came near putting a period to his
education, and at Dartmouth he was almost moved to tears by professorial
praise of one of his essays. His college days were so serious and
laborious that his health suffered, and his constitution was impaired.
He played no pranks and had no dissipations. Taking his politics
seriously, the overwhelming preponderance of Federalists did not
restrain him from
[Illustration: AMOS KENDALL
From an engraving in the _Democratic Review_, March, 1838, after a
drawing by Charles Fenderick]
belligerently espousing the cause of the minority. It is significant of
his instinctive bent that when he turned to politics he shed his
timidity and stood forth a passionate militant. Graduating from the
college that Webster loved, he declined his diploma, partly because of
indifference, but largely because of his personal dislike of the
president. Thus early he entertained no illusions, and had the courage
of both his convictions and his prejudices.
Meanwhile the second war with England was on, and he was beginning to
detest the New England Federalists for their disloyalty and
illiberality. The pulpits rang with bitter denunciations of Madison, and
ministers proclaimed from the pulpits that Democrats were “irreligious
profligates.”[338] In Boston, Kendall heard the eloquent Harrison Gray
Otis ferociously denounce the war, and he hastened home to enlist, to be
rejected for physical disabilities.
In his twenty-fifth year he set forth from his bleak New Hampshire home
to seek his fortune, and we are able to sense the spirit and temper of
the youth from the jottings of his journal. At Boston he heard Edward
Everett whom he thought a “youth of great promise.” At Washington he
attended a White House levee, finding Dolly Madison “a noble and
dignified person,” the President’s “personal appearance very inferior,”
and meeting Felix Grundy and Lewis Cass. Thence he passed down the Ohio,
a guest of Major Barry, and became a citizen of Kentucky.
At Lexington he entered the home of Henry Clay, engaged by Mrs. Clay as
a tutor for the children. In later years, when he was the mysterious
power in the Jackson Administration, and Clay the leader of the
Opposition, the drawing-rooms of Washington buzzed with a fantastic
tale, intended to prove his depravity and ingratitude. Harriet
Martineau,[339] while in the capital, heard it and incorporated it in
her book. According to this story “tidings reached Mr. and Mrs. Clay
one evening that a young man, solitary and poor, lay ill of a fever in a
noisy hotel in the town. Mrs. Clay went down in the carriage without
delay, and brought the sufferer home to her house, where she nursed him
with her own hands till he recovered. Mr. Clay was struck with the
talents of the young man and retained him as a tutor of his sons,
heaping benefits upon him with characteristic bounty.” Unhappily for the
tale, Kendall was not ill, Mr. Clay was at Geneva at the time of his
employment and during the entire period of his stay in Ashland, and the
“benefits heaped upon him” consisted of $300 a year with board and
lodging, and the privilege of using Mr. Clay’s library. Soon after
leaving the service of the Clays, we find him recording in his diary:
“Rode to Lexington and visited H. Clay. I found him a very agreeable
man, and was familiarly acquainted with him in half an hour.”
However, his sojourn at Ashland was pleasurable and profitable. Mrs.
Clay, deeply interested in him, chaffed him on his timidity, criticized
the stiffness of his bows, and drove him to his room to practice before
the mirror, admitted him to her social gatherings, called upon him to
read his poetry to her friends, and rallied him about his love affairs.
Thus the “mediocre” and vulgar “writer for pay” of the Jackson régime
was once considered fit for the social circle in the home of Henry Clay.
Scarcely had he been admitted to the bar when he was enticed by Colonel
Richard M. Johnson into the editorship of the “Georgetown Patriot”; and
it is illuminative of his character to find him, when the slayer of
Tecumseh, a little later, upbraided him for refusing personally to abuse
the Opposition, writing in his diary: “I shall give Richard my vote, but
I shall not be his tool.”[340] His editorials constructive, his
specialty banking and currency, he soon found himself in the editorial
chair of the “Frankfort Argus,” where he was instantly engaged in
bitter political controversies. Whether in argument, where he excelled,
in invective, or in wit, he invariably scored heavily on the Opposition.
For his generation and community, his editorial code was lofty. He
promised himself never knowingly to misrepresent; if, through mistake,
he did, to rectify the mistake without being asked; never to retract a
statement he thought true; to resent an insult in kind; to defend
himself, if assaulted, by any means necessary, even to killing, and
never to run. So great was his professional self-respect that on one
occasion, when vulgarly assailed in an Opposition paper, he had his
answer printed in bill form and circulated by hand, rather than befoul
his own journal with a suitable reply.
In seeming contradiction, however, we have his merciless bombardment of
the unfortunate Shadrach Penn, editor of a Louisville paper, who had a
genius for attracting the ridicule of his intellectual superiors; for
while Kendall was peppering him from Frankfort, George D. Prentice was
bombarding him from Louisville, and between the two, he was driven
whimpering from the State.[341]
The physical courage of Kendall may be read in his encounters with irate
victims. In one controversy he was spared the necessity of killing an
assailant with a dirk by the timely interference of friends. In another
he put an opponent to flight by cracking a whip and displaying the
sparkling silver handle in the sun. He never ran.
Under his editorship the “Argus” became a powerful political factor in
Kentucky. He inaugurated the plan of printing legislative speeches,
specialized on political news, intelligently discussed international
affairs, launched a campaign in favor of public schools, reviewed
contemporary books, dipped into religious subjects with his “Sunday
Reflections,” and significantly began a fight against the National Bank
in a series of articles combating the Supreme Court decision as to its
constitutionality. If, thirteen years later, he was not to flinch under
the lashings of the Bank press, it may have been because he had become
seasoned to the punishment more than a decade before when he was
described as a “political incendiary.”
His friendly relations with Clay were maintained at least until the
autumn of 1827, when, on a trip to New Hampshire, he wrote his wife of
dining with the orator in Washington. But the campaign of 1828 found
Kendall and the “Argus” valiant in the cause of Jackson, with Clay and
his friends “casting aspersions upon his motives and character.”[342] In
revenge for these attacks he sought the privilege of taking the
electoral vote of Kentucky to Washington. Meanwhile, after the election,
and before his departure, he had been informed by an emissary from the
Hermitage that Jackson intended to offer him an appointment.
The Kendall lingering at the capital awaiting an appointment presents an
interesting study. It is disappointing to note a certain humility and
manner usually associated with the lower order of place-hunters. He was
evidently ardent in his pursuit of a position. His inexperience is
disclosed in his disgust on finding so many obscure politicians
pretending to the distinction of having elected Jackson. And yet, so
anxious was he for place, that he was willing to accept one paying an
inadequate salary, and he wrote his wife that in that event he might
persuade Duff Green to pay him $1000 a year for writing for the
“Telegraph.”[343] During the weeks of waiting before the inauguration,
he was not a little embarrassed for funds, and yet, under these drab
conditions, he did not lack for invitations of a social nature. Meeting
General Macomb and finding him “a Jackson man,” he expressed the hope
that he might “find him a valuable acquaintance.”[344] Meanwhile he was
investigating houses and rents, and concluded to economize by taking a
house in Georgetown. “The house I contemplate taking,” he wrote, “is in
a charming neighborhood on First Street, near Cox’s Row.”
Receiving his appointment as Fourth Auditor, he dropped from public
view. Dinners and parties saw him no more. He immediately assumed the
rôle of a recluse. Taking his duties seriously, he uncovered the crimes
of his predecessor and sent him to jail. His rules for the conduct of
subordinates were such as to merit the approval of business men--rules
that the office-holder of those days scarcely understood. After a week
in office he wrote his wife: “The labor is very light, and when I am
master of the laws under which I act, will consist of little more than
looking at accounts and signing my name.” Thus we find him systematizing
his work to dedicate the greater portion of his time to the political
work of the Administration. “Hamilton,” said Martin Van Buren, a month
later, “Kendall is to be an influential man. I wish the President would
invite him to dinner, and if you have no objection, as you are so
intimate with the General, I wish you would propose to him to invite
Kendall to meet us at dinner to-morrow.”[345] The invitation was
extended and accepted, and the Red Fox, who had a genius for picking
men, was notably attentive to the timid subordinate.
During the five years he held his inferior post, Kendall became more
powerful than any Cabinet Minister in the determination of Jacksonian
policies. A little later, a contemporary observer of men at the capital
described him as “secretive, yet audacious in his political methods, a
powerful and ready writer, and the author of many of Jackson’s ablest
State papers.”[346] There in his office we may picture him, alone, with
pad and pencil, preparing elaborate political war maps, and literature
for propaganda, or in earnest conversation with Lewis and other members
of the Kitchen Cabinet, forging thunderbolts with which to smite the
foe. And it was very soon after he had left this subordinate post that
Harriet Martineau was impressed with the uncanny mystery of the
“invincible Amos Kendall.”
“I was fortunate enough,” she wrote, “to catch a glimpse of the
invincible Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He
is supposed to be the moving spring of the Administration; the thinker,
the planner, the doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued,
the excellence of which prevents them from being attributed to the
persons that take the responsibility for them; a correspondence is kept
up all over the country, for which no one seems answerable; work is done
of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which makes men look about them
with superstitious wonder; and the invincible Amos Kendall has the
credit for it all. President Jackson’s letters to his Cabinet are said
to be Kendall’s; the report on Sunday mails is attributed to Kendall;
the letters sent from Washington to remote country newspapers, whence
they are collected and published in the ‘Globe’ as demonstrations of
public opinion, are pronounced to be written by Kendall; and it is some
relief that he now, having the office of Postmaster-General, affords
opportunity for open attack upon this twilight personage. He is
undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with all his ‘great talents for
silence’ a splendid audacity.
“It is clear he could not do the work he does if he went into society
like other men. He did, however, one evening.... The moment I went in,
intimations reached me from all quarters, amid nods and winks, ‘Kendall
is here,’ ‘There he is.’ I saw at once that his plea for seclusion (bad
health) is no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, the
hair of such perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a man of middle age,
testified to his disease.[347] His countenance does not help the
superstitious to throw off their dread of him. He probably does not
desire this superstition to melt away, for there is no calculating how
much influence is given the Jackson Administration by the universal
belief that there is a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of
Government, by which everything could be foreseen, and the hardest deeds
done. A member of Congress told me this night that he had watched
through five sessions for a sight of Kendall, and had never obtained one
until now. Kendall was leaning on a chair, his head bent down, and eyes
glancing up at a member of Congress with whom he was in earnest
conversation, and in a moment he was gone.”[348]
Such was the cleverest, most audacious, and powerful member of the
Kitchen Cabinet--a man who made history that historians have written and
ascribed to others who merely uttered the words or registered the will
of this indomitable journalist and politician.
II
When Jackson left the Hermitage, he was accompanied by Major William B.
Lewis, who had been intimately identified with his campaign for the
Presidency. This unobtrusive man found lodgment with his chief at
Gadsby’s, where he interested himself in analyzing the characters of
office-seekers for the guidance of his friend. After walking with
Jackson from the hotel to the Capitol, and seeing him inducted into
office, he announced his plan to return to the quiet life of Tennessee.
“Why, Major,” exclaimed the astonished Jackson, “you are not going to
leave me here alone, after doing more than any other man to bring me
here!”
Moved by the sincerity of the appeal, Lewis remained on in Washington
through the eight years of the reign, living at the White House, and
enjoying a greater personal intimacy with the President than any other
politician of the time. Accepting an insignificant auditorship at the
Treasury as an excuse for staying on, he interpreted his real function
as that of a political bodyguard. He came and went in the President’s
private apartments at will. No formalities were interposed between these
two strangely different men. No secrets formed a veil. In the midst of
the bitter fights against his idol, Lewis moved quietly and uncannily
about, gauging sentiment, determining the drift, analyzing men and
motives, guarding Jackson against the surprise attack. When the
ferocious onslaughts were at their worst in the Senate, Lewis could be
found somewhere in the shadows of the chamber watching every movement of
the enemy, and critically, if not always wisely, passing judgment upon
the strategy of the Administration forces; and when the fight was over,
he hastened to the White House, sure to find Jackson sitting up in his
room with the picture of Rachel and her Bible on the table before him,
awaiting the report.
There was this difference between Lewis and the other members of the
Kitchen Cabinet--they all loved Jackson; but where the others thought of
him as the personification of a party, Lewis could only think of him as
the friend of the Hermitage. He had fought and wrought for his election,
not to score a party victory, but to vindicate the man. Of Jackson’s
comfort, happiness, and prestige he was supremely jealous, but there
were times when he rebelled against the audacious proposals of others,
more given to thinking of party, to stake the General’s reputation and
success upon a party issue.
He has been called the “great father of wire-pullers,”[349] a closet
man’s definition of a great manipulator of men. At the time the public
began to speculate on the presidential possibilities of Jackson, the
Major was his neighbor. He was not a penniless adventurer or soldier of
fortune. There was nothing in politics for himself for which he cared a
bauble. He was living comfortably on his large productive plantation,
with slaves in the fields, and books in the library. Jackson had learned
to love and trust him years before when he was chief quartermaster on
the General’s staff in the campaign of 1812-15, and in the final
settlement the Government was found to be indebted to him to the amount
of three cents--which was never paid. When the Jackson movement became
serious, the Major, knowing the General’s strength and weaknesses, took
charge of all confidential matters. To just what extent he contributed
to Jackson’s election no one ever knew--but all knew that he had played
an important part. He conducted all the correspondence, and carefully
scrutinized, and often revised, the General’s letters; and another of
his functions was to serve as a sort of valet for all State occasions
when Jackson should be carefully groomed.
He possessed the qualities that Jackson lacked. Where Jackson was
impulsive, he was deliberative; where Jackson was prejudiced, he was
tolerant; where Jackson was rash, he was prudent, if not timid; where
Jackson was a man of action, he was a man of thought; and while Jackson
had ideas, he furnished the vehicle to bear them in parade. During the
many months preceding the election of 1828, this practical, polished
politician was studying the political war map, and quietly planning
successful battles in this State and that. He knew the politics of each
State, the personalities and prejudices entering in, the dominating
motives of all politicians, even to those never known outside their own
little communities, and he knew how to play one force against the other
without appearing in the game. Knowing as he did all the cross-currents
of local politics, nothing ever arose that he could not deal with
intelligently.
During the eight years in the White House, Lewis was a whole regiment of
Swiss guards--always on duty and alert. “Keep William B. Lewis to ferret
out and make known to you all the plots and intrigues hatching against
your Administration, and you are safe,” was Jackson’s advice to Polk
when the latter was entering the White House. We shall find him
implicated in some of the most important events of his time, making
history, and yet escaping the historian. His great advantage was his
perfect understanding of Jackson’s character. He often became a buffer,
protecting the President against unpleasant revelations. If he thought a
disclosure necessary as a protection to the grim old warrior, he told
his secret; if he thought it would merely arouse to useless wrath, he
buried it; and sometimes, as in the case of the Crawford letter, he
bided his time for months before revealing it. All the politicians of
his day passed in review before him, Democrats and Whigs, Nullifiers and
Nationalists, friends and enemies, and he silently catalogued them
through a Bertillon system of his own. His advice to Jackson was that of
a friend to a friend, seated about the blazing White House hearth,
discussing politics and men in the midst of the tobacco smoke, as they
might have done in the private life of the Hermitage.
He did not possess Kendall’s genius for programmes, nor Blair’s for
propaganda, but he was invaluable in the field of personalities. He
alone of the three sometimes doubted and drew back in fear. When Jackson
vetoed the Maysville Bill, Van Buren found Lewis’s countenance “to the
last degree despondent.”[350] He dreaded and doubted the effect of the
veto of the measure rechartering the Bank, and later, the withdrawal of
the deposits. Having been Federalistic himself, in other days, he had a
fellow feeling for Louis McLane when that politician found himself in
trouble. But doubting and trembling though he sometimes was, Van Buren
has testified that “no considerations or temptations, through many of
which he was obliged to pass, could weaken his fidelity to the General
or his desire for the success of his Administration.”[351] In the early
stages of the Bank controversy, he alone of the members of the Kitchen
Cabinet maintained friendly relations with Biddle.[352]
Concerning his status among the Jacksonian leaders, biographers and
historians have radically disagreed. Even among the later writers this
disagreement persists, and where one dismisses the theory that he was a
politician, far-sighted and astute, as without sufficient evidence,[353]
another concludes that “in a day of astute politicians, Major Lewis was
one of the cleverest.”[354] The truth appears to be that while he was
not a moulder of policies and creator of programmes, he was one of the
most clever manipulators of men and masters of personal intrigue who
ever served a President. In the Kitchen Cabinet he was the personal
manager--the political secretary.
III
The most militant of the Kitchen Cabinet was Isaac Hill, whose name was
anathema to the Federalists of New England. A poor boy educated in a
printshop, slight and lame, hurling picturesque phrases and bitter
reproaches at the powerful enemy, excoriating it with his satire and
sarcasm, and slashing it with the keen blade of his wit, it is not
surprising that the impression handed down by the Intellectuals of the
Opposition is unfavorable. Where they have not dismissed him with a
shrug, they have damned him as a dunce--and largely because he gave
virility to a minority and made it militant, and, despite overwhelming
odds, established in the hotbed of proscriptive Federalism a vigorous
Democratic paper which was quoted from New Orleans to Detroit, and from
Boston to St. Louis. If he lacked the depth and the constructive faculty
of Kendall, and the literary finish of Blair, he possessed a genius as a
phrase-monger which spread his fame and served his party, and in the
heat of a campaign, one of his stinging paragraphs was as effective as
one of Kendall’s leaders. There was no finesse in his fighting--he
fought out in the open, in full range of his foe, and with any weapon on
which he could lay his hands. If the intensity of his partisanship
amounted to unfairness, it had been made so by the intolerance and
bigotry of the Opposition of his section. Since no member of the Kitchen
Cabinet more insistently demanded of Jackson the adoption of the spoils
system, it is not unprofitable to inquire into the origin of his state
of mind.
His life was a tragedy. Born in abject poverty, a cripple from
childhood, he had seen his father and grandfather become mental wrecks.
Under this cloud, in this state of penury, he looked out upon the world.
Shut off by his infirmity from physical labor, he had no money for an
education, and he lived on an unpromising New Hampshire farm, where
there were no schools, libraries, or books, and few papers. But before
he was eight he had read the Bible through. Two years before he had read
the story of the Revolution from books borrowed, and had supplemented
his reading by having a relative, who had fought with Washington,
describe the burning of Charlestown and the Concord fight. There was
infinite pathos in his passion for the printed page. But college was out
of the question, the printing-office the only possible substitute, and
thus, after a long apprenticeship, he took over a wobbling paper at
Concord and became an editor.
Throwing discretion to the winds and with a sublime audacity, he took up
the challenge of the powerful majority; and it required courage to
pursue that course in the New Hampshire of 1809. To be a Democrat
(Republican) there in those days was to offend God; boldly to preach
hostility to Federalism was to proclaim blasphemy and invite
destruction. The Federalistic press opened their batteries of abuse upon
the obscure youth. One paper solemnly announced the discovery that he
was a direct descendant of the witches who had suffered at Salem. Hill
returned a spirited fire, and rejoiced in the combat. “I have hit them,
for they flutter,” he said.[355] In the campaign of 1810 he fairly
galvanized the prostrate friends of the National Administration into
life and incurred an unbelievable hatred of the Opposition. When this
crippled boy was brutally assaulted on the streets of Concord, the
Federalist press of New Hampshire gloated over the attack. Nor was it
above sneering at his infirmity.
Throughout the War of 1812 he was a pillar of strength to the Republic
in New Hampshire. During the darkest days it was said that he was worth
a thousand soldiers in heartening the patriots.[356] With the approach
of the campaign of 1828, Hill’s paper, the “Patriot,” began to bombard
the Adams Administration, and Clay, who was to shudder later at the
wickedness of the spoils system, promptly deprived him of the public
printing.
Thus the campaign of 1828 began. The stinging paragraphs of Hill made
the rounds of the Democratic press of the country, and in his own State
he was shamelessly assailed. Not satisfied with maligning his personal
character, his enemies stooped to references to the insanity of his
father in disseminating the story that he was crazy.[357] In view of
this cruel personal persecution, it was but human that, on the election
of Jackson, his voice should have been for war on all the Federalist
office-holders. Thus his psychology is easily understood. Because of
his political convictions, he had been proscribed. A cripple, he had
been personally attacked in the streets. In suffering he had been
ridiculed. The insanity of his father had been made the subject of
vulgar jests. His personal character had been assailed. And in the hour
of victory, all the pent-up hatred of the years was let loose upon the
vanquished foe.
Hill was the Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet, the fanatic, calling for
heads--more heads--and unseemly in his mirth as they fell.
In appearance he was not prepossessing. Below the medium height, he was
spare as well as crippled. In his high forehead and the expression of
his eyes his intellect was indicated, and he carried himself with that
haughty air of superiority which men, forced to fight for their
existence, are apt to assume. This was described by his enemies as
“demoniacal.” He always dressed plainly as a workingman. Without
imagination or dreams, severely practical and to the point, conscious of
his limitations, and passionately devoted to both his convictions and
prejudices, there was nothing about him to appeal to the fashionable or
the intellectually elect. In no sense dazzling in his gifts, hesitating
instead of eloquent, shocking the Senate of his time by reading his
speeches, and proud of his profession, he was not pointed out to
travelers who wrote books, nor lionized in the drawing-rooms, nor
dignified by the complimentary notices of the women letter-writers or
diarists of his day. He has come down largely as his enemies have
painted him, and their very hate of him discloses his effectiveness as a
politician.
He was one of the Republic’s first uncompromising partisans--“My party,
right or wrong.”
IV
An Administration and party paper had been considered important in the
political circles of the Republic from the beginning, but it was left
to the editors of the Kitchen Cabinet to develop it to the highest
degree of efficiency. The “National Journal,” Court paper of the Adams
Administration, had awakened the Opposition to an appreciation of the
practical value of a powerful party paper. Duff Green and the
“Telegraph,” in a sense, met the requirements, but even then there were
Democrats of influence and aspirations who found something lacking. To
Van Buren, the editor, devoted to Calhoun, was unsatisfactory. It is
inconceivable that he felt the need for a more aggressive pen for the
Opposition. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1826, while planning a more
vigorous attack on the Adams Administration, he had an “animated
conversation” concerning the need of a strictly party paper with
Calhoun, at the latter’s house in Georgetown. The Carolinian urged the
adoption of the “Telegraph” as the party organ, with Van Buren pressing
the advantage of prevailing upon Thomas Ritchie of the “Richmond
Enquirer” to accept the editorship of a new party paper at the
capital.[358] Failing to persuade Calhoun, the Red Fox cleverly
approached Senator Tazewell of Virginia, an ardent friend of the
Carolinian, and persuaded him to join in an invitation to the Richmond
journalist.[359] Ritchie declined, however, on the ground of his
attachment to Virginia and his reluctance to leave old friends and
associates.[360] Thus, at the beginning of the Administration, it seemed
that Duff Green and the “Telegraph” were destined to become the pen and
organ of the Jacksonian Democracy.
At a White House levee in the winter of 1830-31, under the very nose of
Jackson, and under his roof, the intriguing Green drew the proprietor of
a Washington printing-house aside to tell him confidentially of the
hastening rupture of Jackson and Calhoun, and of the plans in incubation
for the advancement of the presidential aspirations of the latter.
Calhoun organs were to be acquired or established in all the strategic
political points in the country, and when the rupture came these were to
follow the lead of the “Telegraph” in a nationwide denunciation of
Jackson. The printer was offered the editorship of one of these papers,
and a liberal amount for his Washington plant. Thoroughly devoted to the
political fortunes of the President, and not relishing the idea of being
the depositary of a secret which threatened the President’s position,
the printer consulted freely with his friends, and, on their advice,
carried the story to the White House.
Benton tells us that the story did not surprise Jackson, who was
“preparing for it.”[361] Thus we are told that in the summer of 1830 he
had been impressed with a powerful editorial attack on Nullification in
the “Frankfort Argus,” had made inquiries as to the identity of the
author, and had authorized the extension of an invitation to assume the
editorship of an Administration paper in the capital. The version of
Benton differs in material points from the version of Amos Kendall,[362]
who was far more intimately identified with the launching of the new
paper than either Benton or Van Buren. Here we have it that the idea was
not Jackson’s, and that when plans for a Jacksonian organ were presented
to him “he entirely disapproved.” At that time Jackson was unable to
bring himself to believe in the treachery of Green. When ultimately,
however, he saw the drift, he gave his “tacit consent.”
Here Kendall’s story clashes with the theory, put forth by Green, that
Van Buren was the directing genius behind the whole project. When the
President finally gave his “tacit consent,” the practical politicians of
the Kitchen Cabinet took charge. The various governmental offices were
visited for an understanding as to what portion of the Government
printing could be expected. When Van Buren, then at the head of the
State Department, was approached, he announced that he would not give a
dollar of the printing of his department, on the ground that “were such
a paper established its origin would be attributed to him, and he was
resolved to be able to say that he had nothing to do with it.” This is
typical of Van Buren, and is no doubt true. But the responses from all
the other departments were satisfactory and the plans were pushed.
Having positively settled upon the paper, the next step was to find a
managerial genius. In a conference between Kendall and Barry, the
Postmaster-General, the latter suggested the availability of Frank P.
Blair, then writing occasionally for the “Frankfort Argus,” though not
attached to the paper in a regular capacity. The correspondence with
Blair was conducted by Kendall. The Kentuckian, surprised, momentarily
hesitated, and it was not until Kendall had agreed to bear an equal part
of the responsibility that he consented.
While Blair was getting his affairs in order in Kentucky, Kendall
proceeded with the arrangements in Washington, and when the editor
reached the capital nothing remained unsettled but the name and a motto.
The two agreed to call the paper the “Globe,” and the motto, suggested
by Blair, “The World is Governed Too Much.”
Thus there appears no reason to doubt that Kendall’s version is the
correct one, that Jackson was no more a leader in the movement than Van
Buren, and that the idea was conceived by the little group of new and
practical politicians, then coming to the fore, and who, while friends
of Jackson, were interested in “measures more than men.”
V
The arrival of Frank Blair in Washington was an historical event, not
appreciated at the time, and scarcely properly appraised to this day.
But the ugly, illy dressed stranger, who presented himself at the White
House immediately after reaching the capital, gave little promise, in
his appearance, of the power within him. Instead of a large, raw-boned,
husky Kentuckian expected, Major Lewis, who met him, was confronted by a
short, slender man, poorly garbed, and rather timid and retiring than
otherwise. The Major was frankly disappointed and probably disgusted.
But when the editor was presented to Jackson, that genius took note
neither of his dress nor appearance. Although expecting foreign
diplomats and distinguished statesmen to dinner, he could see no reason
why the unimposing little man, with the ill-fitting clothes and the ugly
visage, should not remain as his guest. Assuming that he would be alone,
Blair accepted, and, to his horror, he found himself in the presence of
ministers in all the splendor of their official regalia. Unaccustomed to
such show, and feeling the conspicuousness of his garb, he fled to a
corner, hoping to escape notice. But Jackson, who never judged men by
their appearance, least of all by their clothes, sought him out with the
kindest intentions, and placed him beside him at the table. This act of
courtesy, painful to Blair at the time, was understood and appreciated,
and not only won his ardent support, but his deepest affection.
Although unknown to Jackson, who would have been uninterested if he had
known, Frank Blair was qualified by blood to sit at the table of the
first gentleman of the land. His grandfather had been acting president
of Princeton when Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration, was summoned
to New Jersey to accept the presidency. Born forty years before becoming
editor of the “Globe,” he had displayed, in college, the remarkable
intellectual qualities that were to make him the adviser of Presidents,
and one of the most influential moulders of public opinion of his time.
He distinguished himself as the best rhetorician and linguist of his
class.[363] The
[Illustration: FRANCIS P. BLAIR
ROGER B. TANEY
WILLIAM B. LEWIS]
weakness of his voice discouraged his ambition for forensic distinction.
In the Governor’s Mansion at Frankfort he was married, early in life, to
a charming woman noted for “her extraordinary mental force and her
sagacity.”[364]
Like Kendall and Barry, Blair had begun his political career as an
ardent supporter of Clay, and like them, had broken with him on the
“bargain” story. According to Blair’s contention through life, Clay had
confided to him in advance that, if such a contingency as did develop
should arise in the congressional caucus, he would throw his support to
Adams, and that he had protested against the plan. Whether true or not,
that event marked the end of Blair’s interest in the political ambitions
of the man from Ashland. From 1823 to 1827 he played a conspicuous part
as one of the principals in the famous fight between the New and the Old
Courts which all but reduced the State to a condition bordering on
anarchy. This part of his career is difficult to understand. The New
Court Party, with which he was affiliated, was a revolutionary
organization mustering its strength from the indebtedness and poverty of
the people. It proposed to relieve the condition of the poor through
methods frankly revolutionary and worse. During the period of the court
fight, and while acting as the clerk of the revolutionary court, two
events completely changed the course of his career. He broke with Clay
and allied himself with the Democratic Party; and he became a regular
contributor to the columns of the “Frankfort Argus,” and a journalist by
profession. On abandoning the court clerkship he immediately identified
himself with Kendall in the publication of the paper, and the combined
genius of these two extraordinary men converted the little Western
journal into one of the most powerful and popular of the Jacksonian
organs. All the credit appears to have gone to Kendall and none to his
associate, for after the election it was Kendall and not Blair who was
assured of recognition from the incoming Administration. After Kendall
went to Washington, Blair, without the slightest notion of ever
following, remained in Frankfort, writing special articles in support of
Jacksonian policies for the “Argus.” Thus he plied his trenchant pen
against the Bank, excoriated Nullification, attacked Clay, and damned
Calhoun. He had suffered financial reverses, been forced to sacrifice
much property, and was in distressed circumstances. Later, when he was
assailed by Senator Poindexter as having gone to Washington as a
“beggar,” he was indignantly to repel the charge. “The editor of the
‘Globe’ resigned, on leaving Frankfort to take charge of the press
here,” he wrote, “the clerkship of the circuit court, the fees of which
alone averaged $2000 annually, and the presidency of the Bank of the
Commonwealth, and other employments which made his annual income upward
of $3000--a sum twice as great as the salaries of the judges of the
Supreme Court, and a third greater than that of the Governor of the
State.”[365] Nevertheless, it was the state of his finances which had
necessitated the temporary suppression of the fact that he had accepted
the editorship of the “Globe.”
Once in the editorial chair, he assumed a militant attitude, and frankly
announced that the paper would be devoted “to the discussion and
maintenance of the principles which brought General Jackson into
office”; and as early as April, 1831, four months after the first
appearance of the paper, he began vigorously to advocate the reëlection
of his idol in the White House.
The first issue appeared on December 7, 1830, published twice a week. In
its initial days the inevitable quarrel between Blair and Green
simmered, and while the “Globe” and the “Telegraph” were nervously
toying with their pistols, the actual fight did not commence until Green
published the Calhoun letters. Thereafter the contest was acrimonious
and continuous. The immediate result of this battle was to impress
Blair with the necessity of a daily publication, requiring a much larger
outlay in money than either Blair or Kendall or both were able to
advance. This, however, did not discourage the plucky little Kentuckian
in the least. He called upon the friends and supporters of Jackson in
the capital and throughout the country to subscribe for six hundred
copies and pay for them in advance at the rate of ten dollars per annum.
This money was easily collected, and thus, without the advance, by
Blair, of a dollar of capital, the “Globe” was placed upon a firm and
sure foundation.[366]
The journalistic genius of the little editor almost immediately gave the
paper first rank in importance among all the papers then published in
the country. Some of his admirers have said that “he became the master
of a style of composition that compared favorably with that of
Junius.”[367] However that may be, he unquestionably was forceful,
entertaining, and at times, eloquent. He could be dignified and
argumentative without being dull. He knew how to appeal at once to the
lover of pure English and the uneducated artisan of the city or the
frontiersman in the wilderness. He was a pioneer among the journalists
who have known how to produce a paper that would be as welcome on the
library table of the student as in the hut of the farmer on the
outskirts of civilization. The secret of his strength was his direct
method. There was nothing of equivocation or compromise in his
character. He did not qualify away all force for the sake of
conservatism. He liked to cross the Rubicon, burn the bridges, and
devastate the country. Any one could understand precisely what he meant.
He was intense in his convictions, and he had the audacity, inseparable
from political genius, to move in a straight line, prepared to meet the
enemy even on ground of the latter’s choosing. His gift of satire and
sarcasm was a joy to his fellow partisans who delighted in him. At first
intended as their spokesman, he became their leader. Politicians soon
learned that it was not necessary to carry suggestions to the editor of
the “Globe”--they went to his sanctum to get them. Capable of a skillful
use of the rapier, he preferred the meat-axe. Nothing pleased him so
much as the crushing of the skulls of the enemies of Jackson, and if
these should happen to be Democrats, all the greater was the joy of the
operation.
This slashing, brilliant style delighted Jackson, who, strangely enough,
had a profound admiration for the fluent writer. The old warrior took
him to his bosom. That the editor of the “Court journal” should be
mistaken was unthinkable to the President; and when any one asked him
for information on any subject with which he was unfamiliar, he would
invariably reply: “Go to Frank Blair--he knows everything.” And Jackson
believed it. Firmly convinced that the people were entitled to all
public information, when any such came to his attention he would
instantly say, “Give it to Blair.”[368] He consulted the little ugly
Kentuckian constantly on all matters of domestic policy, on party
matters and patronage, and even on delicate points concerned with
international programmes. The intimacy of this relationship soon
trickled down from the capital to the party workers in the most remote
sections, and, in time, the paper took its place with the Bible in all
well-regulated Democratic households. Jackson himself is said to have
read nothing during his Presidency but the Bible, his correspondence,
and the “Globe.”[369] The Democratic press throughout the country got
its cue from Blair’s editorials, and he, astute politician and
advertiser, took pains to cultivate intimate relations with all papers
supporting the Administration. Many articles, written by Kendall in the
office of the “Globe,” and sent to country papers for publication as
their own, were afterwards collected and reproduced in the
Administration organ to indicate the trend of public opinion.
Naturally the enemies of the Administration in Congress looked upon
Blair and his paper with venomous hatred, and not without cause. No head
was too distinguished for his bludgeon, and it descended with resounding
whacks upon the craniums of the greatest as well as the least of these,
leading to many furious protests and denunciations on the floor of the
House and Senate. The “Congressional Globe” is thickly sprinkled with
references to the paper. There was nothing of novelty in a statesman
rising to a question of personal privilege to explain that the editor
had done him an injustice in describing him as a liar, an anarchist, or
a traitor. Occasionally Clay, or some lesser light, would rise to
protest against the action of the President in conveying information, to
which the Congress was entitled, through the columns of his organ. Henry
A. Wise would complain that “the Secretary of the Treasury has already
informed Congress and the country, through the columns of the ‘Globe’ of
Saturday last,” that a certain policy would be pursued.[370] Or perhaps
he would merely desire to explain that a certain editorial was a “total
perversion of the facts.”[371] Or maybe it was John Quincy Adams who
took the floor to describe the editor of the “Globe” as “the ambassador
of the Executive,” an ambassador being “a distinguished person sent
abroad to lie for the benefit of his country.”[372] One member would
secure recognition to “indignantly repel the charge made against him by
the ‘Globe’ of being an anarchist and a revolutionist.”[373] Even
Webster was not impervious to the darts of the journalist, and did not
think it beneath his dignity formally to protest against an editorial
paragraph, “flagitiously false,” which had reflected upon him as
chairman of the Finance Committee.[374]
With the politicians, the country press, and the party leaders in the
Congress treating the “Globe” as the editorial reflection of the
President, it is not surprising that the diplomatic corps should have
accepted the general assumption, and that the foreign offices of Europe
should have attached no little significance to any of its observations
on international affairs. Of the truth of this we have one very striking
illustration.
While Livingston was Secretary of State, James Buchanan was the American
Minister at St. Petersburg, charged with the negotiation of a highly
important commercial treaty. All went well until the terms of the treaty
had been practically agreed upon, when he had an interview with the
brilliant Count Nesselrode, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who protested
against what he termed the unfriendly attitude of the American press
toward the Emperor and Russia, apropos of Poland. Not only, he
complained, had the “Globe,” which he characterized as “the Government
paper,” failed to correct the false impressions of the press generally,
but it “had itself been distinguished by falsehoods.” He hoped,
therefore, that the President “would adopt measures to remove this cause
of complaint in the future, at least against the official paper in
Washington.”[375] Recovering as quickly as possible from his
astonishment, Buchanan explained that the press in the United States was
not subject to governmental supervision, but the practical-minded
Nesselrode was not at all impressed. He baldly charged that the “Globe”
“formed an exception to the rule and was a paper over which the
Government exercised a direct control.” Such being the Russian
understanding, the Count was disappointed at the failure of Livingston,
when he had met the Russian Minister to the United States in New York
City, to offer assurances that no more offensive articles would appear
in that journal, and even more chagrined to learn, after that interview,
that the “Globe” had been “more violent than before.” Buchanan was
forced to concede that the “Globe” was commonly called the “official
paper,” but earnestly protested that it was free from governmental
control. He was “persuaded that even the influence of Mr. Livingston
over the editor” was not much greater than his own, and he had no
influence at all. Here Buchanan was on safe ground, but Nesselrode was
not so easily convinced. With a disconcerting smile of incredulity, he
suggested that “General Jackson himself must certainly have some
influence over the editor.” Finding himself in a blind alley, Buchanan
was lamely admitting that the President might have such influence, when
Nesselrode, taking instant advantage of the admission, and without
waiting for the conclusion of the sentence, requested him to ask Jackson
to “exercise it for the purpose of inducing the ‘Globe’ to pursue a more
cautious course hereafter.” Buchanan, glad of the opportunity to drop
the subject, hastened to assure the Count that it would afford him great
pleasure “to make his wishes known to the President.”[376]
Thus, such was the genius of Blair and Kendall in impressing themselves
upon the affairs of the Nation that, within three years after the
establishment of the “Globe,” they had become political powers in the
Republic, and so much international figures that their editorials were
carefully read in the foreign offices of Europe.
Of the members of the Kitchen Cabinet, Lewis’s influence in determining
the political fate of men, and Hill’s in establishing the system of
spoils, were of no small importance, but the publicity work of Blair and
Kendall, more than any other one thing, contributed to the solidarity of
the party, and the general popularity of Jackson and his measures.
Benton, Van Buren, Forsyth, were masterful managers of Jackson’s
congressional battles, where he frequently lost to Clay, but the
practical politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet, through the free use of
patronage and the press, aroused and organized the masses with the
ballots for the succession of successful battles at the polls.