CLAY LEADS THE PARTY ONSLAUGHT
I
Henry Clay sat in the little library at Ashland reading a letter from
Webster. “You must be aware of the strong desire manifested in many
parts of the country that you should come into the Senate,” the letter
ran. “The wish is entertained here as earnestly as elsewhere. We are to
have an interesting and arduous session. Everything is to be attacked.
An array is preparing much more formidable than has ever yet assaulted
what we think the leading and important public interests. Not only the
tariff, but the Constitution itself, in its elemental and fundamental
provisions, will be assailed with talent, vigor, and union. Everything
is to be debated as if nothing had ever been settled. It would be an
infinite gratification to me to have your aid, or rather, your lead. I
know nothing so likely to be useful. Everything valuable in the
government is to be fought for and we need your arm in the fight.”
The meaning was perfectly clear to Clay. The man in the White House,
contrary to Whig expectations, was disclosing masterful qualities of
leadership. The veto of the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Bills had
left no room for doubt as to his attitude toward internal improvements.
No Executive had ever before so freely exercised the power of
presidential rejection.[377] On the tariff he was known to favor such
reasonable reductions as would conciliate the Southern States, and his
brief reference to the National Bank in his first Message, disconcerting
in itself, had been followed by ominously hostile action on the part of
several State Legislatures.[378] Meanwhile Jackson’s candidacy for
reëlection was practically announced. Major Lewis, in his subterranean
manner, had been busy and with the usual results. The “New York Courier
and Enquirer,” organ of Van Buren, was advocating his reëlection, and
the President’s followers, quietly encouraged by Kendall and Lewis, had
placed him in nomination in the legislatures of five States.
Under these conditions the old party of Adams grew restive and impatient
for a strong leader, and instinctively turned to the magnetic figure of
Ashland. Already his nomination for the Presidency in 1832 was a
foregone conclusion. The enthusiastic acclaim which had greeted him on
his political tours during his retirement had impressed his sanguine
temperament as a sure omen of success. He would have preferred to have
remained in retirement pending the election, but the party demand for
his leadership in Washington was insistent. The Opposition needed a
figure around which it could rally, and as a party leader Webster was a
failure. With much reluctance Clay decided to respond to the call. The
election in Kentucky had been a keen disappointment, and the enemies of
the Administration had a bare majority in the legislature, but it was
enough, and he was elected.
Early in November he reached the capital, “borne up by the undying
spirit of ambition,” looking “well and animated,” to be received with
“the most marked deference and respect.”[379] From this time on,
throughout Jackson’s Presidency, he was to remain the brilliant,
resourceful, bitter, and unscrupulous leader of the Opposition--as
brilliant and remarkable an Opposition as has ever confronted a
Government in this or any other country.
And such a politician! There have been few remotely like him, none his
superior in personal popularity. His
[Illustration: JOHN C. CALHOUN
HENRY CLAY
DANIEL WEBSTER]
unprecedented sway over a party was due, in large measure, to his
remarkably fascinating personality, his audacity and dash, his amazing
powers of ingratiation, and his superb eloquence which acted upon the
spirit of the party workers like the sound of a bugle to a battle
charger. No American orator, perhaps, has ever approached his effect
upon a partisan audience. Fluent, and at times capable of passages of
inspired eloquence, a consummate master of the implements of sarcasm and
ridicule, his was the oratory that moves men to action. He could lash
his followers to fury or move them to tears. His speeches often lacked
literary finish, and, at times, in their colloquialisms descended
beneath the dignity of the man’s position, but even these occasional
descents to buffoonery contributed to his popularity. He often spoke the
language of the people--Webster and Calhoun, never. The contribution of
new ideas to a discussion was not his forte. But he could gather up the
material at hand, and weave it into a speech of fervent declamation
which created the momentary impression that he was breaking virgin soil.
His oratory was in his personality and his delivery. His voice was an
exquisite musical instrument, with a clarion note that carried his words
to the outskirts of the greatest throng. When he spoke, his expressive
countenance glowed with his genius, his eyes flashed or caressed, his
commanding figure seemed to grow, and in his combined dignity and grace
he looked the part of the splendid commander of men, and the inspiring
crusader of a cause. No man of his time, among all the great orators of
that golden age, could so hold an audience literally spell-bound,
Prentiss alone approaching him.
In personal intercourse, no politician ever possessed more of the
seductive graces. There his magnetism was compelling. When he cared to
put forth all his powers of attraction, no one could withstand his
charm. Webster was godlike and compelled admiration; Clay was human and
commanded love. Calhoun once said of him: “I don’t like Clay. He is a
bad man, an impostor, a creature of wicked schemes. I won’t speak to
him, but, by God, I love him!” His effect on both men and women has been
ascribed to the fact that, masculine and virile though he was, he
possessed feminine qualities that led to a sentimental feeling toward
him. Men would follow him, knowing him to be wrong; stake their
political fortunes on him, though they knew it would mean their own
undoing; and women wept over his defeats and idolized him as a god.
As a political leader he was an opportunist. He often changed his tack
to meet the passing breeze, but with the exception of his Bank reversal
nothing could force him to admit it. As we proceed with the story of the
party battles of the Jackson Administrations, we shall be impressed at
times with his capability for trickery, demagogy, misrepresentation,
deliberate misinterpretation, and dogmatic arrogance with his own
friends and supporters. He brooked no equals. He accepted no rebuke and
few suggestions, and led his party with a high-handedness that would
have wrecked a lesser man.
His personal habits were not the best, and yet they were not of a nature
that greatly shocked his generation. Adams thought him “only half
educated” and was disgusted by the looseness of his public and his
private morals.[380] But Adams was not in harmony with his times. Clay
was an inveterate gambler--but so were a large portion of the public men
in the Washington of the Thirties. And while a heavy drinker, he does
not appear to have often been noticeably under the influence, as was
Webster. But these vices never interfered with his work or diverted him
for a moment from the pursuit of his ambition.
It was a militant figure that strode down the Avenue to the Capitol to
lead the fight, with the stride of an Indian, his well-shaped feet
encased in shoes instead of the boots generally worn at the time, and
fastidiously attired as was his wont--a Henry Clay, in shining armor,
his sword shimmering.
II
Five days after Congress convened, the Baltimore Convention nominated
Clay for the high office he long had sought. It had been inevitable from
the hour he rode out of Washington after the inauguration on his way to
Baltimore. During his retirement, his letters of 1829 and 1830 furnish
proof of his candidacy, albeit he carefully conveyed the impression that
he was a little indifferent to the nomination, and more than doubtful of
the result of the election.[381] In a letter to a political follower he
early predicted that if Jackson could unite New York, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania upon his candidacy, opposition would be futile.[382] Two
months later, Webster assured him of the support of Massachusetts, but
feared that a first nomination from that State would “only raise the cry
of coalition revived.”[383] And three days after his nomination at
Baltimore, Clay had written of his skepticism of success, with the
encouraging comment: “Something, however, may turn up (and that must be
our encouraging hope) to give a brighter aspect to our affairs.”[384]
Thus, when he entered the Senate we may be sure that it was with the
fixed determination that something should “turn up.” It was his belief,
as we have seen, that Jackson’s election depended upon his ability to
carry Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. At the time he entertained
no hope of diverting Virginia from Jackson, but he hoped to carry
Pennsylvania or New York, or both. Upon the former he pinned his
faith--and there the tariff was strong, and the National Bank had its
headquarters there, with its ramifications into every section of the
country. His platform had been carefully thought out and thoroughly
discussed in the correspondence of 1829 and 1830. It embraced internal
improvements, a protective tariff, and the rechartering of the Bank.
Thus, when Congress met, the Opposition candidate and his platform were
before the people, and the congressional battles of the session were but
heavy skirmishes preliminary to the battle for the Presidency.
As he looked over the personnel of Congress, Clay must have rejoiced
over his advantage. There, by his side, sat Webster, with all the
prestige of his great name and in all the splendor of his genius.
Presiding still over the deliberations of the Senate was the
stern-visaged political philosopher and sage who had definitely broken
with Jackson-Calhoun. It could not have taken him long to discover, in
the young Hercules with the harshly carven features, the brilliant
possibilities of John M. Clayton. And there, harboring a secret grudge,
and suffering acutely from the wounds inflicted on his mentor in the
chair, sat the eloquent Hayne, meditating revenge. In Thomas Ewing of
Ohio, a robust partisan and able debater, he found a fighter after his
own heart. And while they were of the State Rights persuasion, and
hostile to the tariff and internal improvements, he could scarcely have
failed to catch in the eyes of the erudite Tazewell and Tyler of
Virginia something of a promise that was to be fulfilled.
And against him, he saw John Forsyth and Benton, men of character and
power, supported by Felix Grundy and Hugh White, “Ike” Hill and Mahlon
Dickerson of New Jersey.
His was manifestly the advantage in the Senate.
But in the House his advantage was much greater, for among the members
of the Opposition was the most brilliant array of great orators ever
assembled in a single Congress. John Quincy Adams had reëntered public
life as a Representative from Quincy--as full of fire and pepper as ever
in his youth; Edward Everett, the most scholarly and polished orator of
his generation; Rufus Choate, the greatest forensic orator the Republic
has produced; Richard Henry Wilde, who combined the qualities of a
graceful poet, a vigorous debater and eloquent orator, and a sound
scholar; Tom Corwin, the wit and the slashing master of polemics; and
greater perhaps than all, as a congressional orator, the fiery and
indomitable George McDuffie of South Carolina.
And against this combination the best the Administration could do was to
put forth the commonplace plodder James K. Polk, assisted by Churchill
C. Cambreleng of New York.
If Jackson had the advantage of position, Clay had all the prestige of
genius on his side. Thus the two parties faced each other for the
battle.
III
A less provocative Message than that with which Jackson opened the
Congress could hardly have been penned. It was conciliatory and in good
taste. But Clay’s voice was for war. It was his determination that
something should “turn up,” if he had to turn it up, for the purposes of
the election, and he had instilled his spirit into his followers.
Instantly the gage of battle was thrown down in the consideration of the
nomination of Van Buren as Minister to England. A pettier piece of party
politics is scarcely found in the history of the Senate. Among all the
Opposition Senators, there were probably none who doubted his capacity
or questioned his integrity. With the Calhoun faction it was personal
spite; with Clay, Webster, and Clayton it was partisan spleen. Six
months before, Van Buren had ridden out of Washington with Jackson by
his side, and had sailed for England. In London he was at once received
into the most brilliant society. He became an intimate of the Duke of
Wellington, and Talleyrand, Ambassador from France, cultivated him,
while Rogers, the poet, entertained him frequently at his famous
breakfasts. He had been charged with an important mission--nothing less
than the negotiation of an agreement that would prevent the recurrence
of the causes of estrangement between the two peoples growing out of the
occurrences incidental to England’s participation in European wars.[385]
Welcomed to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, cultivated by the most
powerful of English statesmen, with the prestige in London of having
adjusted, while in the State Department, the long-standing differences
relative to the West Indian trade, he was in position to achieve
triumphs for his country when his nomination was sent to the Senate.
And there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun eagerly awaited its coming. They
had been busily engaged for weeks in preparing the attack. Each drew all
his particular friends into the conspiracy, many of them entering
reluctantly rather than incur their displeasure. The charges against Van
Buren were transparently political. The Calhoun faction were prepared to
contend that he had engineered the quarrel of the President and the
Vice-President and had disrupted the Cabinet. Clay’s special point was
to be that he had introduced the policy of proscription, destined to
destroy American institutions, and he was to join with Webster in
viciously assailing him for his instructions to our Minister to England
in the negotiations on the West Indian trade.
The latter reason for refusing to confirm the nomination of Van Buren
was the only one that rose to the dignity of a pretense. For some time
the United States had been negotiating with London for the opening of
trade in American vessels between this country and the British
possessions, but without success. During the preceding Administration,
while Clay was Secretary of State, extravagant claims were advanced by
the American Government, and, by angering England, had only served to
make a settlement more remote. When Van Buren became Secretary of State,
and McLane was sent to London, he was charged with the duty of
reopening negotiations, and was given certain instructions for his
guidance. Among these was the abandonment of the untenable claims of
Clay, and the concession of the British point of view upon them. This
was denounced as a weakness and a surrender, and as an intentional
reflection upon the previous Administration for party purposes. As a
matter of record, the instructions furnished McLane by Van Buren were
predicated upon the report submitted to Clay, after the failure of the
preceding negotiations, by Albert Gallatin, the Minister to England
under Adams.[386] It consequently follows that when Clay, thoroughly
familiar with his own Minister’s report to him, and with the fact that
Van Buren had merely followed it in his preparation of the instructions,
vehemently denounced the latter for deliberately and maliciously
reflecting upon the previous Administration, he was tricking the Senate
and the country. He, at least, knew better. And the mere fact that
McLane was further instructed to stress the fact that the preceding
Administration had been repudiated by the people at the polls, and the
new régime should not be held accountable for the mistakes of the old,
while in doubtful taste, was scarcely an offense so heinous as to
justify the proposed humiliation of Van Buren.[387] The other charges
had less substance. It has never been convincingly shown that Van Buren
had any part in engineering the quarrel between Jackson and Calhoun, and
years after retiring from the Presidency, Jackson solemnly exonerated
him from any complicity.[388] Equally unproved, and unprovable, was the
claim that he had precipitated the Cabinet crisis, and the charge that
he had introduced the policy of proscription might well have emanated
from some one other than Clay.
The clear intent of the conspiracy was to destroy Van Buren and his
prospects for the Presidency.
When the nomination reached the Senate, nothing was done for five weeks.
Meanwhile the leaders of the conspiracy were carefully preparing their
speeches for publication and wide distribution. On the submission of the
report, the venom behind the remarkable procrastination was revealed in
a resolution, entrusted to one of the lesser lights,[389] to recommit
the nomination with instructions to investigate the disruption of the
Cabinet and whether Van Buren had “participated in any practices
disreputable to the national character.” This, offered as a weak
contribution to the attempt to blacken Van Buren’s reputation, having
served its purpose, was withdrawn without action. Then the orators
began. One after another, with a cheap simulation of sorrowful regret
over the necessity of injuring an amiable man, poured forth his protest
against the nomination. Clay, of course, made a slashing onslaught.
Webster confined himself to attacking the victim because of his
instructions to McLane. Clayton and Ewing, Hayne and seven others
recited their elaborately prepared partisan harangues under the
approving eye of Calhoun in the chair.
The principal reply, and only four were made, was that of Senator
John Forsyth, the accomplished floor leader of the Administration,
and one of the most eloquent and resourceful of men. He vigorously
protested against a partisan crucifixion, and sarcastically commended
the fine public spirit of Senators who could voluntarily bring such
distress upon themselves to serve the public good. This fling went
home to many. Hayne, in later years, admitted that he had spoken and
voted against his judgment at the behest of party,[390] and John
Tyler, who was incapable of a pose, voted for the confirmation,
“not that I liked the man overmuch,” but because he could find no
principle to justify his rejection, and did not care to join “the
notoriously factious opposition ... who oppose everything favored by
the Administration.”[391] Indeed, the cooler and wiser heads among the
enemies of the Administration considered the attack a serious political
blunder. Adams, on learning of the plan, warned that “to reject the
nomination would bring him [Van Buren] back with increased power to
do mischief here.”[392] And Thurlow Weed, of the “Albany Journal,”
uncannily wise and prophetic, sounded a solemn warning through his
editorial columns that such persecution of Van Buren “would change the
complexion of his prospects from despair to hope.” The plan persisted
in, and “he would return home as a persecuted man, and throw himself
upon the sympathy of the party, be nominated for Vice-President, and
huzzahed into office at the heels of General Jackson.”[393]
This was the view of Kendall and Blair, and of Benton, who refused to
participate in the Senate debate. The latter felt that, though
“rejection was a bitter medicine, there was health at the bottom of the
draught.” He alone among the senatorial friends of the rejected Minister
appears to have had the prescience to appreciate the ultimate advantage.
To one Senator, rejoicing over the rejection, he turned with triumphant
mien: “You have broken a Minister and made a Vice-President.” But the
enemies of the Administration and of the victim were jubilant. “It will
kill him, sir, kill him dead; he will never kick, sir, never kick,”
exclaimed Calhoun in the presence of “Old Bullion.”[394] And there was
an immediate reaction. Instead of killing, it made Van Buren. He
instantly became a party martyr, and idol.
On the evening of the day the news of his rejection reached London, Van
Buren appeared at a party at Talleyrand’s, smiling, suave, undisturbed,
as though he had scored a triumph. It was probably on that day that he
heard from Benton, urging that he hold himself free for the
Vice-Presidency.
The speeches of Clay, Webster, Hayne, and Clayton were published, the
veil of secrecy having been lifted from the executive session for this
party purpose, and the effect was wholly different from that expected.
It had been the part of Kendall and Blair to see to that. While the
Senators were talking, they had been busy with their pens, and when the
action was taken the Democratic press furiously denounced the rejection,
the rank and file of the party rose _en masse_ to proclaim the victim a
martyr, mass meetings were called in New York, Philadelphia, and Albany
to arraign the Senate, and the Democratic members of the New York
Legislature sent the President a letter of condolence. The Legislature
of New Jersey declared that after its favorite son, Senator Dickerson,
its choice for Vice-President would be the martyr. And Isaac Hill took
the stump in New Hampshire to denounce Webster as disloyal to friendship
and as a sniveling hypocrite.[395]
But the success of the conspiracy acted upon Clay like the taste of
blood on a tiger, and with an insinuative reference to Livingston’s
indebtedness to the Government, which he knew had been discharged to the
penny, he would have applied the political proscription of the Whigs to
the philosopher in the State Department but for the indignant protest of
Dallas. Thus the character of the fight to be waged against the
Administration was clearly revealed within a month after Clay’s return
to public life.
IV
The first month, too, witnessed an assault on the most vulnerable point
of the Administration lines, and an open invitation to Calhoun and the
Nullifiers to join their political fortunes with the party of Clay.
Both the attack and the invitation came from John M. Clayton, who was
almost to rival Clay in the leadership of the Whigs, and to surpass him
in some of the qualities of leadership. When he entered the Senate
practically unknown, he was the youngest member of that body, but there
was enough in his physical appearance and bearing to set him out in any
group as one destined to command. Over six feet in height, his figure
well filled out; of clear complexion, with large gray eyes of
intellectual power, and an enormous, superbly shaped head, he looked
both the physical and mental giant. It only required the personal
contact to attract men to him as steel shavings are attracted to the
magnet. His manner was easy and graceful, his disposition kindly and
benevolent, his wit keen, his conversational powers far beyond the
average. With a remarkable memory and an unusual gift for analysis, he
entered the Senate well equipped in a thorough knowledge of literature
and history. He had great talents and just fell short of genius. As an
orator, he was logical, forceful, at times dramatic and eloquent. Hating
the Jacksonians, he surveyed the field for an opportunity to attack, and
he found it in the Post-Office Department.
One of Jackson’s most unfortunate appointments had been that of Barry as
Postmaster-General. A genial and likable politician, a loyal friend, an
ardent champion of the President, and, personally, a man of undoubted
integrity, he was pitifully lacking in business ability, in a capacity
for organization, and was all too credulous of his subordinates. Within
two years after Jackson’s inauguration, the politicians knew that his
department offered a rich field for investigation. Knowing this, Clayton
introduced his celebrated resolution inquiring into its abuses. That the
Administration circles were not at all satisfied that nothing could be
uncovered is evident in the excitement the resolution caused, and every
effort was made by Administration Senators to block it. In his initial
speech in support of his resolution, Clayton sounded the keynote of the
Whig campaign against the prescriptive policies of Jackson, but more
significant still was his appeal, the first openly made, to Calhoun, to
join with the followers of Clay in a concerted assault upon the
Administration.
While the young Senator from Delaware was speaking, Calhoun sat in the
chair of the presiding officer. Turning in his direction, Clayton made
the first bold bid for his support of the party Opposition.
“But it will be seen,” he said, “whether there be not one man in this
nation to breast its [Administration’s] terrors whenever the President
hurls his thunders. There are hawks abroad, sir. Rumor alleges that that
plundering falcon has recently swooped upon a full-fledged eagle that
never yet flinched from a contest, and, as might be naturally expected,
all await the result with intense interest. It is given out that the
intended victim of proscription now is one distinguished far above all
in office for the vigor and splendor of his intellect.... But if that
integrity and fairness which have heretofore characterized him through
life do not desert him in this hour of greatest peril, we may yet live
to see one, who has been marked out as a victim, escape unscathed even
by that power which has thus far prostrated alike the barriers of public
law and the sanctity of private reputation.”
The appeal was entirely unnecessary, if not intended merely as a public
tribute to a newly acquired ally, for Calhoun and his friends were
already hostile to the Administration. It is historically interesting
only in that it shows the cleverness of the National Republicans, soon
to adopt the name of Whigs, in undertaking to coalesce with all elements
of the Opposition, no matter how divergent, or even inconsistent, the
causes leading to the disaffection.
Thus, within a few weeks after the assumption of the leadership by Clay,
we find Jackson’s favorite humiliated by the rejection of his
nomination; another wantonly insulted by the questioning of his personal
integrity; a movement launched to blacken the Administration through an
investigation of its most vulnerable department; and a plan conceived
for the consummation of an unholy alliance of incongruous elements.
V
Meanwhile Clay, devoted to the protective tariff policy, anxious to save
it from crucifixion by consent, and with a political eye on the
political effect of his championship in Pennsylvania, without which he
thought Jackson’s reëlection impossible, had been busy formulating a new
tariff which was to create more party clashes.
Within a month after Congress met, he called a meeting of the friends of
the protective tariff to determine plans for party action. The then
existing “tariff of abominations”[396] was doomed by public opinion. Two
months before he wrote a friend acknowledging a revision inevitable, and
announcing plans for one not compromising to the protective
principle.[397] The conference called by Clay met at the home of Edward
Everett, Representative from Boston, with the presidential nominee
himself presiding. He summoned his friends, not to consult, but to take
orders. He disclosed his plan--a repeal of all duties on tea, coffee,
spices, indigo, and similar articles, and thereby reduce the revenue as
much as seven millions that year without interfering with the prevailing
duties that had been imposed for protective purposes. Jackson intended
to destroy the protective system through the accumulation of revenue. It
was the duty of its friends to save it through the reductions proposed.
If we may accept Adams as a faithful reporter, Clay’s manner was
“exceedingly peremptory and dogmatical.” Various questions, indicative
of doubt, were asked. Everett, mindful of the ominous protest of the
South, thought the plan might be interpreted as “setting the South at
defiance.” Adams, who had a mind of his own, reported that the Committee
on Manufactures in the House, of which he was chairman, was “already
committed upon the principle that the reduction of the duties should be
prospective, and not to commence until after the extinguishment of the
public debt”; and he suggested that the Clay plan would be, not only “a
defiance of the South, but of the President and the Administration.” The
spirit of Clay is well disclosed in his none too gracious reply that “to
preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American System, he would defy
the South, the President, and the Devil; that if the Committee on
Manufactures had committed themselves ... they had given a very foolish
and improvident pledge; and that there was no necessity for the payment
of the debt by the 4th of March, 1833.”
This led to some debate between the former President and his premier,
with Adams insisting that Jackson’s desire to extinguish the debt should
be “indulged and not opposed,” and that the President’s idea “would take
greatly with the people.” This view piqued and mortified Clay, who had
found all the party leaders in the conference becomingly obsequious with
the exception of Adams. That Adams was equally disgusted we may gather
from his description of Clay’s manner as “super-presidential,” and from
the following entry in his journal: “Clay’s motives are obvious. He
sees, that next November, at the choice of presidential electors, the
great and irresistible electioneering cry will be the extinguishment of
the public debt. By instant repeal of the duties he wants to withdraw
seven or eight millions from the Treasury and make it impossible to
extinguish it by the 3rd of March, 1833. It is an electioneering
movement, and this was the secret of these movements, as well as of the
desperate efforts to take the whole business of the reduction of the
tariff into his own hands.”[398] The Democratic opinion that Clay was
partly actuated by a petty partisan desire to deprive the Administration
of the credit for wiping out the national debt, corroborated as it is by
Adams, is plausible enough. At the same time, it was manifestly Clay’s
purpose to rally the protected industries to his standard in the
presidential campaign.
Meanwhile the lobbyists of the protected interests, flocking to the
capital, crowded the rotunda every morning, mixing with the statesmen.
Here, at the time, was the Republic in miniature--lobbyists, statesmen,
correspondents, and plebeians mingling in a common arena, with the
visiting tourists ranged about to view the celebrities in their moments
of conversational unbending.[399] Clay made the presentation of his plan
the opportunity for his first political speech of his campaign. The
Senate was crowded to hear him. It was not enough that he should
acknowledge the approach of the extinguishment of the public debt, and
base his argument for the reduction of duties upon that fact. The
possibility of the passing of the debt during the Administration of
Jackson was clearly annoying, and he attempted, laboriously, and at
considerable length, to deprive it of any credit. The plan of the
Administration to reduce no duties on unprotected articles previous to
March, 1833, and to make a gradual and prospective reduction on
protected articles, he denounced as a scheme to “destroy the protecting
system by a slow but certain poison.” There was nothing remarkable in
his first speech except its affectation of modesty, and his reference to
old age and declining power.
But he was soon to find the incentive for his greatest speech upon the
tariff. Hayne attacked the protective system with all the vigor and
venom of a Nullificationist in the making; and Clay replied in the
brilliant fighting protectionist speech which ranks as one of the
masterful efforts of his life, and was to be used as a textbook for the
advocates of the system for fifty years. Read even to-day, after the
lapse of almost a century, it has a familiar sound, and transmits its
pulsations from the printed page as though the reader felt the heartbeat
of the orator.
Among the Southerners in the Senate, this speech created the greatest
excitement and the gravest forebodings, with John Tyler assailing both
the principle of protection and the method of framing bills under the
principle. But the most significant note struck by Tyler was the warning
that the continuance of the protective policy would inevitably lead to
the disruption of the Union. The speeches of both Clay and Tyler were
sent broadcast over the country. That of the former delighted
protectionists and impressed all. Harrison Gray Otis wrote
enthusiastically from Boston, but both James Madison and James Barbour
gently questioned the taste of the partisan attack on Albert Gallatin as
a “foreigner.”[400] Highly complimentary letters were received by Tyler
from John Marshall and James Madison, both of whom favored the reduction
of the tariff.[401]
And throughout it all, Clay found himself unable to maneuver Jackson or
his friends into a position of opposition to the system. Amos Kendall
and Blair had their hopes tied to another issue. They had no thought of
sacrificing the electoral vote of the Keystone State. The leaders of the
Senate opposition to the tariff were Hayne and Tyler, neither of whom
was longer considered as in the confidence of the President. Clay’s
speech, widely distributed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, proved
him a champion of the system, but nothing occurred in the Senate to
prove Jackson an enemy. This was the situation when the real battle was
transferred to the House of Representatives.
VI
Through some trickery or blunder, that portion of the Presidential
Message relating to “relieving the people from unnecessary taxation
after the extinguishment of the public debt,” was referred to the
Committee on Ways and Means a majority of whose members were hostile to
the protective system; and to the Committee on Manufactures was referred
that part concerning “manufactures and the modification of the
tariff”--a dual reference of the same subject to rival committees. At
the head of the Committee on Manufactures was John Quincy
Adams--certainly not a spokesman of the Administration; and the chairman
of the Committee on Ways and Means was George McDuffie of South
Carolina, a protégé of Calhoun, and now an implacable foe of Jackson.
In feverish haste McDuffie, representing the extreme free-trade school,
began the preparation of his report and the formulation of his bill to
get in before the more deliberate Adams. He proceeded independently of
the forthcoming report and tentative Administration measure from
Secretary McLane, such was his precipitation. Adams, more considerate,
awaited the report, in the meanwhile making many morning calls upon the
Secretary.[402] Strangely enough, the former President had favorably
impressed many Southerners by his admission that existing rates were
unfair to the South. His position, as on a more notable occasion later,
was unique. Even Jackson was actively making overtures to him. The
ever-convenient Colonel Johnson of Tecumseh fame, approaching the old
Puritan with a suggestion of a reconciliation, tactfully hinted that he
thought the President should make the first move. The cautious Adams,
not at all averse, reminded the emissary that Jackson had broken, not
he; to which Johnson replied that the General had been poisoned by
“scoundrel office-seekers” when he first reached the capital. Would
Adams dine at the White House, if invited? The wily old man parried with
the reminder that such would only be the courtesy customarily accorded
all members. But would Adams dine at the White House with a small and
select company? He would not--and on similar grounds. At the end of his
rope, the anxious Johnson asked Adams for a suggestion, only to receive
the reply that it was a matter for Jackson to decide.[403] The next day
Adams received a note from Johnson to the effect that Jackson had
“expressed great satisfaction” over the conversation and sent his
“personal regards and friendship,” together with the assurance that he
was “anxious to have social and friendly intercourse restored.” Thinking
it over, the suspicious Adams could not but meditate upon the attacks
from Clay’s friends if he should cross the threshold of the White
House--and there the matter appears to have rested finally.[404]
There has never been another character in American history quite like
Adams. His real portrait, self-painted, peers at the world from between
the covers of his monumental diary, in which he communed with himself
unreservedly, and expressed his opinion of men and their motives with
brutal frankness. He was a professional statesman of a high order.
Entering upon diplomatic duties in his youth, he knew the cross-currents
of world politics at an age when most Americans are laboriously
projecting themselves into the politics of their immediate neighborhood.
From his earliest years he had been in contact with great minds, and
with men of power and broad vision. A thorough scholar, he was, at the
same time, a man of the world. Conscious of his ability and his
advantages, cold and reserved, and dignified to the point of frigidity,
it is not difficult to understand his supercilious attitude toward men
less favored, and yet placed in lofty station. Inspired by the highest
ideals of public service, holding himself under such rigid discipline as
to have made himself immune to the small vices, placing duty above
friendship, scarcely ever yielding his dignity to mirth, and on those
rare occasions smiling sardonically, he stood upon an isolated peak--of
humanity, and yet separated from it.[405] No one living the monastic
life could have lived more by rule, or have scourged himself more
faithfully to his tasks.
Of friendships, he knew little from experience. Naturally of a
suspicious disposition, he suspected treachery where it was not. Holding
to no ordinary standard of perfection, he could not forgive the
imperfections of his fellows. Even the transcendent genius of Clay could
not hide from him the great man’s lack of education. One searches the
pages of his diary in eager quest of some complimentary
references--there are scarcely any. That he bitterly realized his
isolation is clearly disclosed. “I am a man of reserve,” he wrote,
“cold, austere and forbidding manners. My political adversaries say a
gloomy misanthrope; my personal enemies, an unsocial savage. With a
knowledge of the actual defects of my character, I have not had the
pliability to reform it.” That such a man, entertaining such an opinion
of his own merits and the failings of his contemporaries, should have
consented to serve in the lower House of Congress, after having served
in the Presidency, can only mean that he loved his country and sought
the opportunity for service. That it was not to punish his enemies, we
shall find on more than one occasion when he took his stand with the
Administration of the man who displaced him. Not least among the merits
of Adams was his capacity to work in serious coöperation with McLane in
the moulding of the tariff of 1832.
Quite a different type, and in some respects a greater genius, was
George McDuffie. His career was a mingling of romance and tragedy. A
child of poverty, the protégé of a Calhoun,[406] he had while yet in
college been regarded “as a young man of extraordinary talents,” albeit
at that time “he had not that passionate and eloquent declamation which
he was afterwards to display in Congress.”[407] After hearing his great
speech on the tariff in 1827, Josiah Quincy, who heard him, described
him as “the most sensational orator of the time.”[408] In the fight
against the Panama Mission, Sargent thought him “decidedly the most
violent and aggressive speaker arrayed against the Administration.”[409]
His passionate and impulsive nature frequently led to personal
encounters; and in reaching an understanding of his irritable and sour
disposition, it is profitable to know that just before entering Congress
he had been wounded in the spine in a duel, and never afterwards knew a
day free from personal discomfort. This wound, which ultimately killed
him, changed a good-tempered and jovial man into the irritable, morose,
and nervous creature known to history.[410] The indifference of the
protectionists to the interests of the South, and the intemperate
attacks of the abolitionists upon the Southern people, acted upon the
diseased genius as an irritant and drove him to extremes. Even so, he
rejected Nullification as a remedy, and insisted that the sole recourse
of the Southerners was revolution.[411] Intellectually honest, morally
clean, physically ailing, he put such of himself as he cared for the
world to see into his public acts. He withdrew into himself--taciturn,
lonely. “A spare, grim looking man, who was an admirer of Milton, and
who was never known to smile or jest,” as Perley Poore describes
him.[412] His health gone, his life uncertain, an idolized wife taken
from him within a year, his leader’s aspirations wrecked, his section
threatened, it is not strange that he poured forth on Andrew Jackson
such torrents of eloquent vituperation.
VII
Standing not on ceremony, McDuffie hastened to report a bill,
accompanied by an elaborate report in the nature of an indictment of the
protective system, which “ought to be abandoned with all convenient and
practical despatch, upon every principle of justice, patriotism and
sound policy.” The bill provided an immediate reduction of duties on all
articles except iron, steel, salt, cotton-bagging, hemp and flax, and on
everything made of cotton, wool, and iron, to a basis of twenty-five per
cent ad valorem. On the excepted articles the reduction was to be
gradual, tumbling to twenty-five per cent at once, to eighteen and three
quarters per cent on June 30, 1833, and to twelve and a half per cent
one year later.
With Adams still laboring on his bill, McDuffie called his up with a
slashing speech. This prodigiously long philippic was historical in that
it tended to force the issue of Nullification a little earlier than its
sponsors had planned.
In the meanwhile the Administration measure, with McLane’s report, had
been submitted, providing for the repeal of the existing tariff after
March 3, 1833, and the reduction of the revenue to the financial
requirements of the Government. This contemplated the reduction of the
revenue to $12,000,000 a year, and the arrangement of the rates so as
sufficiently to protect the great interests involved.
Using the Administration measure as a basis, Adams thereupon prepared
his bill and report. In his statement the patriotic statesman,
indifferent to the clamor of party, or class, or section, shines forth
luminously. It may have been unnecessary to expose the protectionist’s
fallacy that raising the duties lowers the price of the domestic
product; equally unnecessary to warn the Southerners that a persistence
in their course would lead to appalling consequences, but he made these
points. In presenting his bill, Adams frankly explained that it was
based on the Administration measure, with some changes as to details.
With the Adams bill before it, the House made short shrift of the
McDuffie measure. The protectionists were in despair. The Legislatures
of Pennsylvania and Connecticut passed condemnatory resolutions, and
mass meetings were held protesting against reductions. An unsuccessful
attempt was made to substitute the Clay Senate plan. And yet Clay
himself was fairly well satisfied, and on its passage in the House wrote
that “with some alterations it will be a very good measure of
protection.”[413] At the time he wrote, however, he was convinced that
the alterations would be made in the Senate and accepted by the House,
and upon the failure of these plans to materialize hangs another story
of politics.
The Senate lost no time making amendments, and as it was now July, with
all anxious to adjourn, no time was wasted on unnecessary speeches, and
the amendments, which were numerous, were hurried through. In a few
instances, not many, the protectionists lost, but on the whole theirs
was the victory when the bill went back to the House. There a few of the
Senate amendments were accepted, but the majority were rejected and the
bill was thrown into conference.
And here enters one of the comedy-tragedies of politics. Calhoun was
absent, Tazewell in the chair, when the measure was returned to the
Senate. The motion for a conference carried. And then it was, in the
naming of the Senate conferees, that Tazewell either made a blunder or
turned a trick. Hayne, named as the minority member, was expected to act
badly, but the protectionists pinned implicit faith in Wilkins of
Pennsylvania and Dickerson of New Jersey, the former a business man,
manufacturer, banker from a protectionist State, the latter with a
powerful protectionist constituency. Unhappily the friends of the Senate
bill did not attach sufficient importance to the candidacy of both men
for the Vice-Presidential nomination with Jackson--to the pull of
personal ambition. Whatever their special motives in surrendering to the
conferees of the House, they gave only a perfunctory support to the
Senate amendments and capitulated.
The amazement and indignation of Clay and his followers were unbounded.
Clay sharply cross-examined Wilkins and Dickerson upon the proceedings
in the conference, and then had to content himself by joining Webster in
a warm denunciation of the surrender. There was nothing to be done,
however, but for the Senate to recede, and the bill was passed and
promptly signed by Jackson.
Thus the tariff battle on which Clay relied to strengthen him in the
pre-presidential contest was practically barren of party significance.
By no sophistry or reasoning could the protectionist States of
Pennsylvania and New York be turned against Jackson, who had promptly
signed the bill that Adams had sponsored, and which had been supported
by such Administration Democrats as Isaac Hill, Dickerson, Marcy,
Wilkins, Grundy, White, and Benton.
The tariff issue was dead before the campaign was fairly begun.
VIII
If Clay had failed to embarrass the Administration on the tariff, the
keen Jacksonian politicians were to be more successful in embarrassing
Clay on the land question. This was a peculiarly delicate subject for
Clay to touch in the midst of the campaign. In the Southern and Western
States more than 1,090,000,000 acres remained the property of the
National Government--a vast empire. The proceeds from the sale of these
lands had been originally dedicated to the payment of the national debt;
and now with the extinguishment of the debt in sight, all manner of
schemes were advanced as to the future disposition of the lands and the
proceeds. For a number of years Benton, with characteristic tenacity,
had been urging his plan of graduated prices, with free grants to actual
settlers, and he had won Jackson over to his theory with Edmund Burke’s
proposition, advanced in his speech on the disposition of the crown
lands in England, that the principal revenue to be had from uncultivated
tracts “springs from the improvement of the population of the kingdom.”
The sturdy Missourian looked with repugnance upon the idea of
considering these uncultivated acres as sources of revenue, rather than
as an opportunity for settlers, and he gradually converted the
Democratic Party to his point of view.
To make matters all the more embarrassing to Clay, his party had been
placed in the position of deliberately withholding this vast domain from
the axe of the pioneer and the spade of the cultivator, in the interest
of the manufacturers of the East. This had resulted from the unfortunate
wording of an official report of Richard Rush, a colleague of Clay’s in
the Cabinet of Adams, in which he had lamented the preference of the
American people for agricultural over manufacturing pursuits. The report
had been referred to Clay whose practiced political eye instantly saw
the possibilities in the perversion or exaggeration of the meaning of
these paragraphs, and he had fruitlessly urged their elimination. The
Democrats were quick to grasp their opportunity. The protectionists,
Clay and his friends, planned that the National Government should, by
holding on to the lands, retard their settlement by maintaining prices
prohibitive to the settler; they proposed to maintain a large labor
market in the industrial labor centers of the East where competition
would be keen enough to keep down wages. For the sake of the protected
interests, they were ready to sacrifice the opportunities of the poor of
the Eastern cities and make them the galley slaves of the factories;
retard the development of the West, and immolate the national interest
on the altar of greed. And there was just enough truth in these charges,
rather luridly put forth, to make them exceedingly dangerous in a
presidential year.
The issue had been accentuated by the suggestion of McLane, Secretary of
the Treasury, that the public lands should be sold to the States in
which they were located, and the proceeds apportioned among all the
States in the Union. This, naturally enough, made an instant appeal to
the States most intimately concerned, and six of the new Commonwealths
hastened to petition Congress for the cession. This brought the subject
before the Senate, and in the spring of 1832 two motions were submitted,
one to inquire into the wisdom of reducing the price of the public
lands, the other into the expediency of the McLane proposition.
And it was at this juncture that the Jacksonians turned the trick on
Clay and forced him into the open as an aggressive enemy of the wishes
of the new States. With a regular Senate Committee on Public Lands,
composed of men intimately acquainted with the subject, the amazing
motion was made and carried that the matter be referred to the Committee
on Manufactures of which Clay was chairman. The friends of the candidate
bitterly protested against the reference; and Clay himself “protested,”
“entreated,” and “implored” that the reference be changed to the
Committee on Public Lands. “I felt,” he said later, “that the design was
to place in my hands a many-edged instrument which I could not touch
without being wounded.”[414]
Unable to extricate himself from the embarrassment, Clay set to work,
and in a short time submitted a report, accompanied by a bill, providing
against the reduction of the price of the land, but for granting to
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi twelve and a
half per cent of the proceeds from the sale of lands within their
borders, to be applied to the purposes of education and internal
improvements. This, of course, was a frank attempt to prevent the
resentment of the people of these States from asserting itself at the
polls. The remainder of the proceeds was then to be apportioned to the
remaining States, according to their population, to be used for the
schools, internal improvements, and negro colonization. The act was to
remain in force for five years, provided no war intervened, in which
event all the proceeds were to be used in defraying the expenses of the
conflict. In this way Clay attempted to maintain the existing economic
conditions while satisfying the new States whose electoral votes he
sought.
If the political intent of the reference to Clay’s committee had been in
the least open to doubt, all such was removed by the action of the
Senate in thereupon ordering the matter referred to the Committee on
Public Lands. Again Clay vehemently protested. He had not wanted to
report upon the subject. He had protested against the reference. But the
reference having been made, and the report submitted, he protested anew
against the reflection upon his committee implied by the new reference.
At the head of the Committee on Public Lands was Senator King of
Alabama, but Clay was right in ascribing the authorship of the report,
soon to be submitted, to Thomas H. Benton.[415] This report vigorously
assailed the reasoning and conclusions of Clay; attacked the disposition
to look upon the public lands as useful primarily for revenue and
secondarily for settlement, and reversed the order; and deprecated the
suggestion of the use of the money to be distributed among the States
for the colonization of the negroes as calculated to “light up the fires
of the extinguished conflagration which lately blazed on the Missouri
question.” It favored the reduction of the price of land to one dollar
per acre during the next five years; then to fifty cents, with fifteen
per cent of the proceeds to be apportioned among the States. Whatever
may have been the objections to the Democratic plan, it gave promise of
an earlier redemption of the wilderness by the cultivation of man, and
the more speedy enhancement of the land of the pioneers already in
possession.
Keenly appreciative of the purpose of his enemies, Clay delivered a long
and powerful speech, his second campaign speech in the Senate, plausibly
defending his position, explaining Rush’s meaning, and attempting to
divert the greed of the new States into a different channel. That he
made a profound impression may be properly assumed from the fact that
the bill passed the Senate, although it was checked by a hostile House.
Thus his friends flattered themselves that he had scored a triumph and
outwitted his foes. The old school politicians still gauged public
opinion by the roll-calls of the Congress. The new school, which came in
with Jackson, were least of all concerned with the views of the
politicians at the capital. They were interesting themselves with the
plain voters, and were devising means for reaching these in the campaign
to follow. They had sensed the feelings and the prejudices and
suspicions of the pioneers of the new States. They were an agricultural
people and easily inflamed by the suggestion that their interests were
to be subordinated or sacrificed to the interests of the Eastern
industrial centers. They wanted the speedy felling of the forests, the
cultivation of the fields, the building of homes and schools and
churches, and the Benton plan of reduced prices and preemption for
actual settlers appealed to them as in harmony with their desires.
And thus, while the friends of Clay were rejoicing in what they
conceived to be the unanswerable logic of the Clay report, the
politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet, Kendall and Blair, were rejoicing in
having, in documentary form, the proof that Clay and the protectionists
were hostile to the wishes of the new States. Amos Kendall knew that
“free trade and free lands” was a shibboleth that these pioneers could
understand. And while Clay, Webster, and Clayton were rejoicing over the
passage of the bill in the Senate, Kendall and Blair were joyously
arranging to spread the story of that triumph to the voters of the new
States. After all, they had succeeded in their purpose. They had a Clay
and a Jackson report to hold side by side, and the event disclosed that
the politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet were wiser than the politicians
of the Senate house.