CLAY FINDS HIS ISSUE
I
During the early days of the Jackson régime, a remarkable and little
remembered figure passed furtively in and out of the closet of the
President, playing a quiet, but none the less effective, part in the
moulding of policies. This was none other than James A. Hamilton, son of
the creator of the National Bank. Then a trusted brave of the tribe of
Tammany, the reflector of Van Buren, the supporter of Jackson, he had
fought the Federalist machine of New York, been made acting Secretary of
State by the President pending the arrival of Van Buren, and later been
appointed District Attorney of New York. For several years on the eve of
portentous events he glided into the capital. That the son of Alexander
Hamilton should have had such intimate relations with the President who
denounced what he thought to be the persecution of Aaron Burr, is one of
the mysteries of history.
When the first Jackson Message was under consideration, Hamilton, in
response to the requests of Van Buren, Lewis, and others, reached
Washington to confer with Jackson. He hastened to Van Buren, who was no
doubt prolific of suggestions; thence to the White House to be cordially
received. The following morning he breakfasted with the President, who
urged him to remain at the White House while revising the Message. In
going over the draft, which he found the “work of different hands,” he
was surprised to find that “the Bank of the United States was attacked
at great length in a loose, newspaper slashing style.” He found much to
do. It was four o’clock in the morning when Jackson, hearing some one
tinkering with the fire in the grate, entered Hamilton’s room in his
nightgown.
“My dear Colonel, why are you up so late?” he asked.
“I am at my work which I intend to finish before I sleep,” Hamilton
replied.
At which the mulatto who slept on a rug in Jackson’s room was sent in to
keep Hamilton’s fire going. At eight in the morning the latter appeared
in the President’s room to report the completion of his task.
“What did you say about the Bank?” Jackson asked instantly.
“Very little.”
And the son of Alexander Hamilton read the brief paragraph challenging
the constitutionality and the expediency of the Bank his father had
created, and declaring that it had “failed in the great end of
establishing a uniform and sound currency.”
“Do you think that is all I ought to say?” asked Jackson.
“I think you ought to say nothing about the Bank at present,” was the
response.
“Oh, but, my friend, I am pledged against the Bank, but if you think
that is enough, so let it be.”[416]
Some students of the period are prone to ascribe Jackson’s hostility to
the Bank to a personal grievance of Isaac Hill. The flimsy assumption
that the President’s Bank policy was born of the quarrel of the Concord
editor with Biddle, because of the retention in the presidency of the
Portsmouth branch of Jeremiah Mason, is unimpressive. Equally absurd to
deny that the Mason incident played no part. According to some, Hill, in
his attempt to force the removal of Mason, was wholly actuated by a
desire to get political control of the institution; to others, to the
inability of the editor-politician to get a loan. The truth is that the
hostility to Mason was not confined to politicians, but was shared by
many of the merchants of New Hampshire. This hostility was due to
Mason’s austere action, on discovering that some bad loans had been made
on speculative ventures, in exacting hard terms of the local merchants.
The petition sent to Biddle by Hill contained the names of sixty members
of the legislature, and most of the business men of Portsmouth, of both
parties.[417] The president of the Portsmouth branch was a great lawyer,
a statesman of reputation, an orator of power, and a partisan as bitter
and intolerant as ever breathed the proscriptive air of New Hampshire.
In the correspondence which followed between Secretary Ingham, who is
said to have had a personal grievance,[418] and Nicholas Biddle, the
president of the Bank, who has been variously described according to the
bias of the writer, was unquestionably flippant and intolerant of
suggestions from the Administration. While his position in the Mason
incident can be justified, he was unnecessarily arrogant and tactless;
but quickly realizing his mistake, he thereafter changed his tone, and
throughout the summer and autumn of 1829 made every effort to conciliate
the President. His letters of this period to the heads of the various
branches insisting that the Bank be kept out of politics smack of
sincerity.[419] But the harm had been done, and there is every reason to
conclude that Amos Kendall was deeply concerned in the President’s
decision to attack the Bank in his first Message. Certain it is that a
letter from Kendall to Noah in November led the “New York Courier and
Enquirer” to launch its editorial campaign against the institution. This
letter, announcing the presidential decision to attack in his first
Message, and presenting an argument in support of the position he was to
assume, was sent by Noah to the newspaper, and “a portion of Amos
Kendall’s letter, with a head and tail put to it ... was published as an
editorial the next morning”; and this “was the first savage attack on
the United States Bank” in the columns of that paper.[420] And almost
immediately afterwards James Gordon Bennett, writing for the “Courier
and Enquirer,” began a series of powerful articles in support of the
policy of that journal.[421]
Indeed, if an explanation for Jackson’s position must be sought in the
Kitchen Cabinet, it would be more profitable to seek it in the
principles of Amos Kendall, who had written against the Bank long before
he had met the President, and while still on friendly terms with Clay.
Others of Jackson’s intimates were equally hostile. The views of Benton
had been urged for years; and Hugh L. White, Senator from Tennessee, one
of his confidential advisers in the early days of his Administration,
had long distrusted the institution as tending to extravagant
speculation, and as threatening the liberties of the people through its
increasing influence in elections.[422] But Jackson himself needed no
propagandists at his elbow. He had been prejudiced against the Bank for
twenty years by Clay’s slashing speech against it when the first Bank
applied for a recharter.[423]
In his Message of December, 1830, Jackson dismissed the Bank in a
paragraph, clearly indicative of unfriendliness; and in December, 1831,
he scarcely mentioned it at all, except to call attention to his
previous statements. But from the moment the first Message was read,
Biddle’s complacency was disturbed. His correspondence during the next
two years shows him active and alert in attempts to conciliate his foe
in the White House. Less than a week after one son of Alexander Hamilton
had penned the first warning of war, Biddle was reading a letter from
Alexander Hamilton, Jr., a brother, assuring him that the die was cast,
the war inevitable, and warning him against the presidential
aspirations of Van Buren, to whose political fortunes his brother was
then attached.[424] Biddle replied that the Bank views of the Message
were Jackson’s, honestly held, and that for the time the Bank’s policy
would be one of “abstinence and self-defense.”[425] “The expressions of
the Message were the President’s own,” he wrote the head of the
Washington branch immediately afterward, “ ... and inserted in
opposition to the wishes, if not the advice of all his habitual
counsellors. It is not, therefore, a cabinet measure, nor a party
measure, but a personal measure.”[426] And had he not ample
encouragement in the letters of Major Lewis, a household guest of
Jackson’s, recommending the appointment of certain men to the
directorship of the branch in Nashville?[427] Nevertheless, he was not
at all positive that the recharter might not be made a party measure.
Especially concerned with Van Buren’s attitude, he was being constantly
warned against him, but his advices were contradictory. Within a month
he was reassured by one correspondent[428] and alarmed by Clay, who
wrote him from Ashland that, while in Richmond, Van Buren had entered
into a conspiracy with politicians to destroy the Bank.[429] And to add
to the mystic maze of contradictions, Major Lewis wrote, in a
“confidential” note, that the report that Jackson would veto a bill
rechartering the Bank “must be some mistake because the report was at
variance with what I had heard him say upon the subject.”[430] Still
another correspondent[431] informed him that Van Buren had told him that
“he disapproved of that part of the message and was not hostile to the
Bank.”
About this time Jackson journeyed to the Hermitage, and Biddle asked a
leading citizen of Nashville to “feel him out.” The banker’s
correspondent entertained the President at his home, and after a
confidential chat felt justified in advising Biddle that he was “well
convinced that he will not interfere with Congress on the subject of the
renewing of the charter.”[432] By this time, however, Biddle had
convinced himself that political expediency would determine the
President’s attitude, and in a letter to one of Jackson’s personal
friends he pointed out the disastrous political results to the
Administration if the impression gained ground that it was “unfriendly
to sound currency.” He even graciously indicated the line the next
Message might take to save the Administration from that
embarrassment.[433] But before that suggestion reached its destination,
Clay solemnly wrote him that only a devoted friend of the Bank in the
Presidency would make a recharter possible, and warned him against Van
Buren. He was convinced that the Jacksonian politicians had determined
to make the Bank question the issue in the next campaign. “I have seen
many evidences of it,” he wrote. “The editors of certain papers have
received their orders to that effect, and embrace every occasion to act
in conformity with them.”[434] But when Congress met in December, and
Jackson reiterated his views on the Bank, Biddle was earnestly urged
from Washington to meet the issue at once by applying for a new charter.
This advice was finally rejected. Congress, he wrote, was favorable,
“and moreover the President would not reject the bill,” but many members
favorable to the recharter would prefer not to vote that session. Then,
too, time was working the removal of prejudices.[435]
At the beginning of the session, December, 1831, with the charter five
years to run, we are confronted with the mystery of the injection of
the issue at that time. We know, however, that the strain of uncertainty
had been telling on Biddle’s temper. The vultures that play on the
political necessities of corporations were beginning to swoop down upon
him. Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had applied for a $20,000
loan.[436] And mindful of the importance of propaganda, he had already
decided to cultivate the press by paying it well for the publication of
Bank literature.[437] But just before the opening of the congressional
session, his negotiations with McLane and Livingston of the Cabinet,
both friendly to the Bank, had again diverted him from his disposition
to fight. In October the Secretary of the Treasury had sat in the
marble-front building in Philadelphia and told him of confidential
communications with the President. Anxious to keep the Bank question out
of the campaign, Jackson had reluctantly consented, on the importunities
of Livingston and McLane, to omit all references to the Bank in his
Message. Biddle feared it would be a mistake. Would it not be better
merely to remind Congress of his previous comments, and leave the
decision “with the representatives of the people?” The fact that this
course was followed is one of the ironies of history.[438] Hardly had
this decision been reached when Clay wrote from Ashland urging an
immediate application for a new charter. This was a sensational reversal
of views. Not only had he previously advised Biddle differently, but in
August, 1830, he had taken strong grounds against such application so
long before the expiration of the existing charter. “I am not prepared,”
he said then, “to say whether the charter ought, or ought not to be
renewed on the expiration of its present term. The question is
premature. I may not be alive to form any opinion on it. It belongs to
posterity. It ought to be indefinitely postponed.”[439] This speech was
to be used with deadly effect by Blair in the “Globe” a little
later.[440] Even then, before reaching Washington, Clay had determined
to “turn up” the Bank charter as an issue.
II
When Congress met, Jackson had concluded to postpone his fight on the
Bank. Three reasons entered into the decision--the friendliness of his
Secretary of the Treasury to the institution, the realization that a
majority in Congress favored the recharter, and the fear that a contest
during the session would throw the tremendous weight of the Bank’s
influence against him in the election. Most of his advisers, including
Benton, were anxious to postpone the contest. Just as Biddle had thought
that time would operate to the advantage of the institution, Benton was
confident that it would work to its detriment, and he wished to
strengthen the anti-Bank lines in the Senate and to have Van Buren in
the chair when the contest came. McLane’s pronouncedly pro-Bank report
had deeply embarrassed the President’s supporters. Creating indignation
in some quarters, consternation in others, Jackson hastened to explain
it away in a letter to Hamilton; but just how he persuaded himself that
the views of the report did “not express any opposition to those
entertained by myself,” is not clear.[441]
The Bank supporters had eagerly seized upon the McLane report, and Webb,
of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” now deserting the Administration
on the Bank question, commented glowingly upon its author and his views.
That this was gall and wormwood to Jackson and his intimates is evident
in the correspondence which passed between them. “The article ... was
calculated if Blair had replied, to do McLane irreparable injury in a
political point of view, because it might have brought him and the
President into seeming collision,” wrote Major Lewis to Hamilton.[442]
And all this time, McLane, who was one of Hamilton’s correspondents, was
frankly admitting to the latter that he had “most earnestly urged Mr.
Clay not to attempt to pass a Bank bill at this session, insisting that,
if deferred to the next session, he was satisfied that he could, by that
time, induce Jackson to approve it”; but that Clay had “persisted in the
hope, that if the President approved the bill, he would lose the support
of those of his party who had approved his opposition to the Bank, and a
vast many others who approved of the State Bank system.” Or, on the
other hand, “if the President vetoed the bill, he would lose
Pennsylvania and his election.”[443] Thus it is clear enough, that if
Jackson could have determined, the Bank would not have been an issue in
1832.
But Clay was pressing Biddle, and the latter devoted the whole of
December to feeling his way. “I think they [the Jackson leaders] are
desirous to have the Bank question settled by a renewal before the next
presidential canvass, with any modifications to free the President from
the charge of an entire abandonment of his original opposition,” wrote
one who had “seen a letter from the Private Secretary of the President
to a gentleman” in Louisville.[444] “Last night I had a long
conversation with McLane,” wrote the president of the Washington branch,
“and I am authorized by him to say that it is his deliberate opinion and
advice that a renewal of the charter ought not to be pressed during the
present session, in which I concur most sincerely. The message is as
much as you could expect. It shows that the Chief is wavering. If
pressed into a corner immediately, neither McLane nor myself will answer
for the consequences.”[445] From another correspondent Biddle learned
that Barry, Woodbury, and Taney were hostile, being “under the influence
of Blair, Lewis, Kendall & Co. who rule our Chief Magistrate”; that
Blair had written a slashing attack upon the McLane report, which was
only moderated after the Secretary of the Treasury had threatened to
resign if the original were published. “I fear you will yet have trouble
with our wise governors,” he added.[446] A Virginia Congressman urged
reasons for an immediate application. Jackson’s popularity was on the
wane, especially in Congress, and his reëlection notwithstanding being
certain, he would have more prestige in the next Congress. Calhoun,
still Vice-President, would be serviceable among the Bank’s enemies in
the South, and McDuffie, a follower of Calhoun, would be chairman of the
House Committee to pass upon the application.[447]
“My own belief,” wrote the wily Clay, “is that, if now called upon, he
[Jackson] would not negative the bill, but that if he should be
reëlected, the event might and probably would be different.” At any
rate, all the friends of the Bank with whom Clay had conversed “expect
the application to be made.”[448] In corroboration of Clay’s views,
Webster wrote that, as a result of conversations, he had been strongly
confirmed in his opinion “that it is expedient for the Bank to apply for
a renewal of the Charter without delay.”[449]
Confused by such a medley of counsel, Biddle decided to have the
situation studied on the ground. Thomas Cadwalader, a trusted Bank
agent, could be depended upon to leave party considerations out of his
survey, and on Tuesday, the 20th of December, this servitor took up his
quarters at Barnard’s Hotel.[450] The next day found him closeted, first
with McLane, who warned him of a certain veto, and advised him to
canvass Congress to ascertain whether the Bank could muster the two
thirds necessary to override it. A preliminary survey that day was
discouraging, and the evening found the agent again with McLane, who
reiterated his plea for a postponement until after the election. On
Thursday the agent met McDuffie, who urged an immediate application
until “staggered” by what Cadwalader had learned of the probable vote to
override the veto. He then advised the Bank to feel its way cautiously.
Friday found him dining with Senator Smith, a Democrat, who opposed the
agitation of the question that session, since it would mean a Jackson
and anti-Jackson vote, and lose the Bank ten votes it could depend upon
the next year.[451] It did not take the sagacious agent long to sense
the selfish political motives of the Clay leaders. “It is evident,” he
wrote Biddle, “that W.’s [Webster’s] opinions are guided, in some
degree, by party feelings--as seems to be the case with most of the Clay
men.” In John Quincy Adams he found a cooler head, and one in whose
judgment he had more confidence. Where Webster had urged that the
application be made if “a bare majority in Congress could be mustered,”
Adams favored postponement “unless a strong vote can be ascertained.”
But, thinking the situation over on Christmas Day, and after another and
more favorable canvass of the available votes, he began to lean toward
the Clay opinion. In the case of a postponement some of the Bank’s
friends would be “luke-warm,” Webster would be “cold or perhaps
hostile,” if the Bank bent to the Government influence. After another
conference with McLane, he thought he would advise the Bank to start the
memorial. In this disposition he was confirmed by a visit on Christmas
night from the brother of the Secretary of State, a Whig and a follower
of Clay, who brought the solemn assurance that Livingston, McLane, and
Cass would prevent the veto. The outcome of it all was that Cadwalader
was won over to the Whig plan.[452] The moment the agent returned to
Philadelphia, McLane, assuming the chilly dignity of resentment, wrote
Biddle, restating his position and curtly declaring that he could not,
“as one of the constitutional advisers of the President,” object to the
exercise of his veto power.[453] But three days later, Webster, in a
reassuring note, wrote that the decision to present the memorial was
“exactly right.”[454]
The Whig politicians were determined that the Bank should be dragged
into politics, and they had their way. The desire of Biddle to accept
compromises proposed by McLane were ruthlessly brushed aside by his
political friends. The story of the meeting at which Clay forced the
issue is significant and dramatic. McLane had summoned Biddle to
Washington and submitted a proposition for a recharter which, he
contended, would meet with the approval of the President. After
returning to Philadelphia and consulting with his directors, an
agreement was reached to accept the compromise. Hurrying back to the
capital, Biddle conceived the unhappy notion of first consulting with
the political friends of the institution in the Congress, before calling
upon McLane. Fatal error!
An historical political conference was called. There, of course, was
Nicholas Biddle, financial American autocrat of his time, elegant,
suave, polished to scintillation, a lover of literature, a brilliant
conversationalist, with a graceful epistolary style, which was as
dangerous to him as loquacity to a diplomat. He had been schooled in
tact while serving as the Secretary of the American Legation at Paris
under Monroe. Clever, unscrupulous, practicing diplomacy where
[Illustration: _N. Biddle_]
straightforward methods would have served better, he had assiduously
cultivated public men until he had created a bipartisan Bank party in
both branches of the Congress. In his Philadelphia home the great men of
his day partook of his hospitality. Before Jackson reached the
Presidency, the president of the Bank of the United States was in better
position to foresee the proceedings of Congress than the responsible
Chief Executive of the people. Instead of concealing his power, he loved
to flaunt it in the face of authority. “Emperor Nicholas” smiled and
bowed blandly to his title.
And there, of course, was Clay, leader of his party, the greatest genius
in the Senate, seemingly destined to the presidential dignity, and for
years one of Biddle’s most trusted friends and advisers. He had been on
the pay-roll of the Bank as its counsel in Kentucky and Ohio.
There, too, was John Sergeant, there by right as chief counsel of the
Bank, but there, too, by right, as Clay’s running mate in the election,
for he had been nominated for Vice-President.
And there sat Webster, upon whose eloquence and wisdom the Bank had
learned to lean. But he sat there that day, less as the champion of the
Bank than as a partisan supporter of Clay and Sergeant.
The compromise proposition was submitted by Biddle, and, after some
pretense at discussion, it was vetoed by Clay and Webster, on the ground
that “the question of a recharter had progressed too far to render any
compromise or change of front expedient.”[455]
A little nonplussed, Biddle and Sergeant retired for further
consideration, and returned to the conference with the politicians in
the evening still convinced that the McLane compromise should be
accepted. And it was then that Clay and Webster, by assuming an injured
air, literally blackmailed their Philadelphia friends into the
acceptance of their plan, asserting their ability at the time to carry
the charter through in the face of a veto, but significantly adding that
they would no longer be responsible for anything that might occur “if in
the heat of the contest the Bank, abandoning its reliable friends,
should strike hands with its foe.”[456] Thus it was neither Jackson nor
Biddle that forced the Bank into the campaign of 1832, but Henry Clay,
thinking solely in terms of politics and self-interest, as he saw them.
III
The winter roads between Philadelphia and Washington were ribbons of
mud, cut across by frozen streams. A stagecoach, bumping and splattering
through the mire, struck an obstruction, turned over, and General
Cadwalader, with the Bank’s memorial in his pocket, arose from the wreck
with an injured shoulder that was to delay its presentation to the
Congress. But three weeks after the conference in Washington it was
delivered into the hands of its friends.
In the Senate it was presented by a Democrat, George M. Dallas of
Pennsylvania, acting under strict instructions from the Legislature of
his State, but very much against his personal judgment. In the House it
was entrusted to one who could act with greater spirit, because of
venomous hostility to Jackson--the vehement and picturesque McDuffie.
On the motion of Dallas, a select committee was chosen in the Senate to
consider the memorial, composed of four friends of the Bank and one
enemy. In the House, the fighting began at once. Instead of requesting a
select committee, McDuffie asked a reference to his own Committee on
Ways and Means--packed with friends of the Bank. This was good tactics.
Andrew Stevenson, Speaker of the House, and a Jacksonian Democrat, could
clearly not be entrusted with the selection of a special committee. An
animated debate followed, and the McDuffie motion prevailed by a narrow
margin of ten votes. But that was not to be the end of the matter--not
so long as there was a Jackson in the White House, a Benton in the
Senate, and a Kendall on the side lines. The plan of parliamentary
warfare was devised by the master parliamentarian from Missouri. It
contemplated numerous amendments and elaborate discussion in the Senate;
and in the House, an investigation into the condition and methods of the
Bank. Benton immediately furnished a new member of the House, Clayton,
with an indictment in many counts, some justifiable, and others having
nothing more substantial than gossip behind them. But even these served.
The debate was brisk. James K. Polk led for the Administration in the
strongest speech of his congressional career; and McDuffie, sincerely
believing in the purity of the Bank, and fearing the effect of
opposition to an investigation, making only a perfunctory objection. At
the time it was presented, Biddle was relying for information on Charles
Jared Ingersoll, who had been sent to Washington in an attempt to
conciliate Jackson, and was in constant communication with Livingston
and McLane. It is significant of Jackson’s methods that his Secretary of
State authorized Ingersoll to inform Biddle that the President had
nothing to do with the resolution, wished to end the matter that
session, and would sign a rechartering measure if satisfactorily
framed.[457] But the easy capitulation of McDuffie in permitting the
passage of the resolution caused poignant distress in Bank circles.
Ingersoll concluded that the Carolinian preferred to have the tariff
debate precede that on the Bank.[458]
Thus the investigation was ordered. The apologists for the Bank among
historians persist in the fallacy that its enemies had no expectation of
finding anything wrong. This is a remarkable conclusion. Benton
thoroughly expected it. The son of Alexander Hamilton had no doubt of
it.[459] Jackson was serious about it. “The affairs of the Bank I
anticipated to be precisely such as you have intimated,” he wrote to
Hamilton. “When fully disclosed, and the branches looked into it will be
seen that its corrupting influence has been extended everywhere that
could add to its strength and secure its recharter. I wish it may not
have extended its influence over too many members of Congress.”[460]
The committee of investigation submitted three reports. The majority
report charged usury, the issuance of branch bank notes as currency, the
selling of coin, loans to editors, brokers, and members of Congress,
donations to roads and canals, the construction of houses to rent and
sell, and the sale of stock obtained from the Government through special
acts of Congress. The minority report, and that of Adams, who reported
separately, were laudatory of the institution. Nothing was proved.
Campaign material was furnished, and nothing more.
In the midst of the fighting, on May 30th, Nicholas Biddle moved upon
the capital and took personal charge of his forces. He entertained at
dinners at Barnard’s. He daily repaired to the Capitol to meet
emergencies. He conferred freely with Livingston and McLane, hoping
through them to conciliate the President. So positive was he that the
investigation, by proving nothing, had disarmed hostility, that he wrote
expansively, on his arrival, of his willingness to consider with Jackson
such modifications as would satisfy the President.[461] In less than a
week he was disillusioned of the idea of an easy triumph. “It has been a
week of hard work, anxiety and alternating hopes and fears,” he wrote
Cadwalader, “but I think that we may now rely with confidence in a
favorable result.”[462] All through June the battle raged in the Senate,
and it was not until July 3d that the “Emperor Nicholas” was able to
write of the passage of the bill by that body, and to “congratulate our
friends most cordially upon their most satisfactory results.” The
victory was achieved by a vote of 28 to 20, with Dallas, Wilkins, and
Poindexter, among the Democrats, voting for the bill. In the House, the
Bank won by a vote of 106 to 84.
“Now for the President,” wrote Biddle. “My belief is that the President
will veto the bill, though that is not generally known or
believed.”[463] And Clay at the same time wrote: “The Bank bill will, I
believe, pass the House, and if Jackson is to be believed, he will veto
it.”[464] Thus, at this stage, it is evident that Biddle had reconciled
himself to Clay’s plan of making the fate of the Bank the issue in the
campaign. Among Jackson’s friends there was no doubt as to his
intentions. Both McLane and Livingston had warned the banker. Three
months before, Hamilton had written a friend that, in the event of its
passage, Jackson would promptly veto the measure. “He is open and
determined upon this point. I conferred with him yesterday upon the
subject. I told him what the Opposition avowed as their motive for
pushing the bill at this session. He replied: ‘I will prove to them that
I never flinch; that they were mistaken when they expected to act upon
me with such considerations.’”[465]
IV
When the bill reached Jackson, he knew that he could not count on the
unanimous support of his Cabinet on the veto. Livingston, McLane, and
Cass were frankly antagonistic to his purpose, Woodbury was uncertain,
while Barry, always acquiescing in his chief’s policies, scarcely
counted. Among all the men who sat about the table in the Cabinet room,
the only one who heartily sympathized with his intent was Roger Taney.
In February, Ingersoll had found him against the Bank, but Livingston
then “hoped to convert him”; and while the Bank representative had
“found him just now closeted with Kendall,” this was so far from
discouraging him that he had not even despaired of Kendall and Lewis,
and felt that he had established “a good understanding” with Blair of
the “Globe.”[466] On the day the bill reached the White House, Taney was
absent from Washington, but he had gone over the ground thoroughly with
the President, and had written him a letter setting forth reasons why,
in the event of the bill’s passage, it should be vetoed.
On the day of its passage, Martin Van Buren landed in New York, and the
following morning he started for the capital. It was midnight when he
reached Washington, but, in compliance with a letter from Jackson, which
awaited him on landing, he proceeded through the dark streets to the
White House where he was instantly ushered into the President’s room.
The grim old fighter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, his
wretched health clearly denoted in his countenance.[467] But there was
the passion of battle in his blood, and it flashed in his eye as he
eagerly grasped the hand of his favorite, and, retaining it, poured
forth the story of the Bank Bill, and expressed his satisfaction on the
arrival of a faithful friend at such a critical juncture. When Van Buren
expressed the hope that he would not hesitate to veto the bill,
Jackson’s face beamed. “It is the only way,” said the Red Fox, “you can
discharge the great duty you owe to the country and yourself.”[468] By
Van Buren, the old man’s gratification was easily understood, for he
knew of the desertion of the greater part of the Cabinet.
There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the
authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called
in, albeit sympathizing heartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to
one of his biographers[469] the ideas were contributed by Livingston,
Benton, Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair,
and Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may
safely accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was
inevitable that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that
Taney was summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During
the entire time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the
capital, with the document open to his inspection, did not have any
“direct agency in its construction.”[470] His enemies at the time,
however, insisted that he was a party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren
arrived at the President’s on Sunday,” a correspondent in Washington
wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent to the Senate his veto on
the Bank Bill.”[471] That Major Lewis and Blair were called in to assist
in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be set down as
positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the Senate
was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall.
That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly
strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of
the Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as
demagogic because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against
the conversion by the rich of governmental agencies to their personal
ends, and because of its objections to the foreign stockholders in the
Bank of the United States. It was, of course, a campaign
document--intended as such. Jackson understood perfectly that the
presentation of the memorial for a recharter four years before the
expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the presidential
election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew that Clay was
appealing to wealth and power--he appealed to the people. And his
appeal was to the people of the United States.
In this stirring appeal to the prejudices of the people, as well as to
their interests, as the Jacksonians saw it, there was but one real
blunder, and that in phrasing. In discussing the constitutionality of
the Bank, Jackson said: “Each officer who takes an oath to support the
Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and
not as it is understood by others.” Upon this was to be predicated the
assertion that Jackson had announced a philosophy of chaos, with each
petty officer passing upon the constitutionality of laws, and
irrespective and in contempt of the Supreme Court. The more conservative
friends of the President interpreted the words employed as meaning “that
in giving or withholding his assent to the bill for the recharter of the
Bank, it was his right and duty to decide the question of its
constitutionality for himself, uninfluenced by any opinion or judgment
which the Supreme Court had pronounced upon that point, farther than his
judgment was satisfied by the reasons it had given for its
decision.”[472] But there were other expressions in the Message that
must have appeared as little short of appeals to anarchy to the more
conservative element. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful
too often bend the acts of Government to their selfish purposes.” “Every
man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws
undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial
distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to
make the rich richer and the powerful more potent, the humble members of
society--the farmers, mechanics and laborers--who have neither the time
nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to
complain of the injustice of their government.” “There are no necessary
evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.” “Many of our
rich have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits,
but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.”
Here was a Message striking an entirely new note in American politics,
and not without justification. So completely had the country been under
the domination of the powerful, politically, financially, and socially,
previous to the Jackson régime, that the Message was actually hailed
with delight by the followers of Clay.
“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has
all the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It
is really a manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might
have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that
it will contribute to relieve the country from the domination of these
miserable people.”[473] The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington
Observer,” commented thus: “It is a mixture of the Demagogue and the
Despot, of depravity, desperation and feelings of malice and vengeance
partially smothered. It is the type of the detested hypocrite, who,
cornered at all points, still cannot abandon entirely his habitual
artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked, in a tone of
defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will I.’”[474]
So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology of
the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the
Message at its own expense!
But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were
delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe”
found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of
the moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person
of Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the
battle-field are eclipsed--it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal
fame.”[475] And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man
of property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would
give to Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the
greatest of his victories in the field.
Both parties were satisfied with the Message.
V
Never in the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more
dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White,
a calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he
could escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he
wrote. “Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to
slumber. Ill blood is produced by almost every event; and a great
disposition is manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle....
No man can tell when or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all
that a prudent man ought to do to avoid difficulties, but should it be
my lot to have them forced upon me, my reliance is that Providence will
guide me through them safely.”[476]
The debate in the Senate following the Veto Message was significant. The
great Field Marshals of the Bank, who had maintained silence until now,
appeared upon the scene with impassioned speeches of denunciation and
solemn warning. The import of the speeches of Clay and Webster could not
have been clearer. They were designed to intimidate the electorate into
voting against Jackson by the most gloomy predictions of panic and
distress. Webster, who spoke first and made by long odds the most
powerful presentation against the Veto, dwelt with funereal melancholy
upon the President’s determination to overturn American institutions,
basing this absurd theory on the unhappy sentence referred to above.
But the one note he struck in the beginning and pounded to the end was
that of intimidation. The country was prosperous and yet there was “an
unaccountable disposition to destroy the most useful and most approved
institutions of the Government.” Unless Jackson should be defeated at
the polls the Bank would fall, and in its fall pull down the pillars of
prosperity and involve all in a common ruin. The Bank would have to call
in its debts at once. The distress would be especially acute in the
States on the Mississippi and its waters--where votes were needed for
Clay. There thirty millions of the Bank’s money was out on loans and
discounts, and how could this be immediately collected without untold
suffering and misery? The great orator, however, evidently afraid that
his hints at the election had been too subtle, soon threw off the mask
boldly.
“An important election is at hand,” he said, “and the renewal of the
Bank Charter is a pending object of great interest, and some excitement.
Should not the opinions of men high in office and candidates for
reëlection be known on this as on other important questions?” And thence
he argued that the life of the Republic, the preservation of the
Constitution, the salvation of society from anarchy, and the prosperity
of the people, were all inseparably interwoven with the National Bank
and the candidacy of Clay. “No old school Federalist,” says Van Buren,
“who had grown to man’s estate with views and opinions in regard to the
character of the people which that faith seldom failed to inspire, could
doubt the efficacy of such an exposition in turning the minds of all
classes of the community in the desired direction.”[477]
If the Veto was satisfactory to the Whigs--to the surprise of the
Democrats--Webster’s avowed purpose to make it the issue in the campaign
was satisfactory to the Democrats--to the equal astonishment of the
Whigs. When the great New England orator sat down, Hugh Lawson White of
Tennessee, a banker, fluent, logical, and forceful, lost no time in
accepting Webster’s “issue.”
“I thank the Senator,” he said, “for the candid avowal, that unless the
President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they
intend to interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With
the same candor I state, that after this declaration, this charter shall
never be renewed with my consent.... Sir, if under these circumstances
the charter is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and the
liberties and prosperity of the people are delivered over to this
moneyed institution, to be disposed of at their discretion. Against this
I enter my solemn protest.”
Even the most ardent supporters of Clay will hardly point to his speech
on the Veto as evidence of his power. Compared with Webster’s or
White’s, it was mere froth, lacking in both substance and style, and
only notable in its insistence that the failure of the recharter would
be fatal to the West, as the continuance of Jackson in office would be
subversive of all government.
The reply of Benton was characteristic in its slashing style, its
exhaustive appeal to facts and figures, and chiefly important as a
campaign argument in its elaborate discussion of the relations of the
Bank with the Western States. Not to be outdone in dire predictions, he
insisted that the triumph of the Bank would mean the end of free
institutions; that “no individual could stand in the States against the
power of the Bank, and the Bank flushed with the victory over the
conqueror of the conquerors of Bonaparte”; that “an oligarchy would be
immediately established, and that oligarchy, in a few generations, would
ripen into a monarchy.” He realized that all nations must ultimately
perish. “Rome had her Pharsalia and Greece her Chæronea, and this
Republic, more illustrious in her birth, was entitled to a death as
glorious as theirs.” He would not have her “die by poison” or “perish
in corruption,” but “a field of arms and glory should be her end.”
And he, too, eagerly accepted the challenge of Webster: “Why debate the
Bank question now, and not before?” he asked. “With what object do they
speak? Sir, this _post facto_ debate is not for the Senate, nor the
President, nor to alter the fate of the Bank Bill. It is to arouse the
officers of the Bank--to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their
designs upon the people--to bring out its streams of corrupting
influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the
polls to vote against Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this;
but we have not been left without an avowal. The Senator from
Massachusetts commenced his speech by showing that Jackson must be put
down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the Bank and a new
charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at
the presidential election. The object of this debate is then known,
confessed, declared, avowed; the Bank is in the field; enlisted for the
war; a battering ram--the catapulta, not of the Romans but of the
National Republicans [Whigs]; not to beat down the walls of hostile
cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down
the rights of the people; to destroy a patriot and a hero; to command
the elections and to elect a Bank President.”
Thus the politicians sounded the keynotes of the two parties in the
approaching campaign in the country.
The debate was not to end without its serio-comedy. Benton had
criticized Clay for lack of decent courtesy to the President, and when
he resumed his seat, Clay arose to question the Missourian’s
qualification to pass on decent courtesy, and to revive the story that
Benton had once said that should Jackson ever reach the Presidency,
Senators “would have to legislate with pistols and dirks.” Benton
excitedly denied it. The lie was passed. The angry statesmen were called
to order and forced to apologize to the Senate, and thus the Whig
nominee for the Presidency closed the debate in a none too dignified
fashion.
The necessary two thirds to override the veto could not be mustered, and
Clay left Washington on the adjournment of Congress, July 16th, happy in
the knowledge that “something had turned up” that would force the Bank
and all its resources and influence to battle with a personal motive for
his election.
And Jackson and his friends were jubilant.
Thus ended one of the longest and most bitter sessions the American
Congress had ever known, “fierce in the beginning, and becoming more
furious to the end.”[478]