POLITICAL HYDROPHOBIA
I
Philip Hone, seated in the little Senate Chamber, and still entranced
with Clay’s theatrical appeal to Van Buren, was awakened from his
reverie by observing Webster beckoning him out of the room. The
entertainer of the Whig celebrities followed the god of his idolatry to
one of the committee rooms, where, for more than an hour, the orator
“unburdened his mind fully on the state of affairs and future
prospects.” The burden of it all was the importance of carrying the
spring elections. When Hone called on Clay, he found him of the same
opinion. “He says that the only hope is the election in our State and in
Pennsylvania.” Meeting John Quincy Adams, “that sagacious man,” he found
that the former President shared the belief that “our only hope lies in
the elections in New York and Pennsylvania, particularly our charter
election.”[753] That the Administration forces and the Kitchen Cabinet
were equally impressed with the strategic value of victories in New York
City is disclosed in a letter from Major Lewis to James A. Hamilton,
“Have you any doubt of succeeding at your election?” he wrote. “I hope
not; yet I confess I have my fears. The strongest ground to take with
the people is the fact, that under the existing arrangements with the
State banks, the whole revenue collected through your customs house is
left to be dispensed in your own city, instead of being transferred to a
neighboring rival city. Our friends should ring the changes upon this
view in every quarter of the city.”[754] It is thus evident that the
contending forces were concentrating for the election of aldermen and a
mayor in a city then numbering few more than 200,000 people.
Early in March the Opposition deliberately made the Bank the issue by
nominating Gulian C. Verplanck, driven from Congress by the Democrats
because of his fidelity to the Bank, and planning for a popular
vindication of that institution. Two days later the Democrats nominated
Cornelius W. Lawrence, who had been exceedingly bitter against the Bank
while in Congress. Accepting Hone’s opinion that “the personal
characters of both the gentlemen is above reproach,”[755] the election
would definitely determine the drift of public opinion on the contest
then in its most bitter stage. The election returns were confusing. The
mayoralty candidate, who had been ousted from his seat in Congress
because of his support of Biddle, was defeated by the man whose
bitterness against the Bank while in Congress had been notable. The
Democrats won here, and the Opposition lost. The fact that the latter
elected a majority of the aldermen was loudly hailed as a vote against
Jackson on the Bank question, although, in the more spirited contest for
the more important office, the Bank champion was overwhelmed by the
Democrat. The Opposition was jubilant, or pretended to jubilation. A
great celebration was held at Castle Garden, and the faithful poured
forth by the tens of thousands to sit about the tables “spread in a row”
and to do full justice to the “three pipes of wine and forty barrels of
beer placed in the center under an awning.” Full of fire and froth, the
exuberant partisans, learning that Webster was the guest of a lady at
her home, moved thence _en masse_, where the orator, who had declined to
appear among the beer kegs in the Garden, presented himself at the
window and delivered “an address full of fire” which “was received with
rapturous shouts.”[756] All over the Eastern country the Whigs insisted
on accepting the defeat of the Bank candidate for mayor as a victory
for the Bank, and the Philadelphians had “a grand celebration at
Powelton on the Schuylkill”; the Whigs of Albany “fired one hundred
guns”; the Whigs of Buffalo “made a great affair of it with guns and
illuminations”; those of Portsmouth “received the news with one hundred
guns” and “had a town meeting and made speeches.”[757] Meanwhile the
Democrats were proclaiming the election of Lawrence a Jacksonian
triumph. After the various salutes from Portsmouth to the Battery of a
hundred guns, and the celebration in the Garden among the beer kegs, the
Democrats arranged their celebration for the day that Lawrence was to
make his triumphant entry. A steamboat went down to Amboy to receive the
mayor-elect, and “with colors flying and loud huzzas,” the Jacksonians
sat down to a dinner on board, “where Jackson toasts were drunk and
Jackson speeches were made.” Landing at Castle Garden, the new mayor was
conducted in a “barouche drawn by four white horses, and paraded through
the streets.”[758]
But the desperate Opposition, hard pressed, and requiring encouragement
for its followers, succeeded, through exaggerations and red fire, in
convincing the rank and file that an anti-Jackson wave had swept the
Nation. Rhode Island, never a Jackson State, went against the Democrats,
and this was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as though a stronghold
of the enemy had been taken. The triumph of the Whigs in the
Philadelphia ward elections was exploited as a signal triumph. Virginia,
anti-Bank as well as anti-Jackson, was lost to the Democrats, and the
Opposition interpreted it as a pro-Bank as well as an anti-Jackson
verdict. In Louisiana the Whigs won on the tariff, but the impression
was given that the result reflected a popular resentment of the
mistreatment of Nicholas Biddle. As a matter of fact, no intelligent
politician could have attached any particular significance to the
results of the spring elections, and the leaders immediately began
their preparations for the congressional elections in the fall.
II
In these elections the Opposition to Jacksonian Democracy was to fight
for the first time under its new party name. In February, 1834, James
Watson Webb, the unscrupulous speculator in Bank stock, and editor of
the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York City, had proposed that the
combination against the policies of Jackson should be known as the Whig
Party. “It is a glorious name,” said John Forsyth, “and I have no doubt
they will disgrace it.” Within six months the National Republicans and
the Anti-Masons disappeared--united under the Whig banner. In September,
1834, Niles records, in his “Register,” that, “as if by universal
consent, all parties opposed to the present Administration call
themselves Whigs.” And all who called themselves Whigs denounced the
Jacksonians as Tories. It was a pretty conceit. The Whigs of England had
fought the battles of the people against the usurpations of the throne,
and the Whigs of America were fighting the usurpations of Jackson. The
Constitution against anarchy, the people against the Power--such was the
fight of Nicholas Biddle, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun against
Jackson.
A more incongruous combination of contradictions and a more sinister and
unholy alliance than that of the Whigs of the Jacksonian period has
never appeared in the political life of the Republic. These men held
common opinions on none of the fundamental principles of government. A
few years, and few of the leaders and founders could agree as to the
character of the combination.[759] The only plank in the platform of
this ragged array on which all could stand was a hatred of Andrew
Jackson. That was the open sesame to the temple. Beyond that no
questions were asked. Born with the seed of inevitable disintegration,
it was to stagger along through twenty years, to end without a mourner,
and to leave no record worthy of an epitaph. And about the time of its
birth, and after its insignificant successes in the spring elections,
that astute journalist and politician, Thomas Ritchie, of the “Richmond
Enquirer,” foresaw its future with the clear light of a prophet. “When
it comes to act upon any policy or principle,” he wrote, “not connected
with a hatred of Jackson, it must fall to pieces and commence a war
_inter se_. It contains all the elements of dissolution, and is destined
to share the fate of other monstrous alliances.”[760]
But its creators were not concerned in 1834 with anything further than
the overthrow of Jackson and his followers. Not daring to advance a
constructive programme, for the very effort would have wrecked the
party, they confined themselves to extravagant and absurd denunciations
of Jackson as a tyrant usurping power and clambering to a throne. The
congressional campaign opened with a rush. All over the land the Whigs
were raising liberty poles--because they were fighting the battle of
liberty against the despot. And Nicholas Biddle and his Bank, as usual,
wore the liberty cap. When Congress adjourned in June, the moneyed
institution was in a dying condition, and the money market was again
about normal. Only a signal Whig triumph could now save the institution
on Chestnut Street.
III
With the adjournment of Congress, Jackson, with his customary
complacency and confidence in the support of the people, set forth for
the Hermitage for a much-needed rest. He had just again reorganized his
Cabinet because of the failure of the Senate to confirm Taney and the
resignation of Louis McLane. The motive for the latter’s retirement is
only conjectural. That he had never felt at home in the Cabinet circle,
we may well believe. While in the Cabinet, he was not of it. But for the
constant friendship and support of Van Buren, his position would have
been delicate indeed. He was out of sympathy with Jackson at every stage
of the Bank fight. He would have renewed the old charter without a
change; would have renewed it with concessions from the Bank; but he
would have renewed it. With the removal of the deposits he was entirely
out of sympathy. He would not have removed them at all; but, if removed,
he would not have removed them until Congress had convened. His social
affiliations were largely with the old official aristocracy. That he
entertained presidential aspirations was generally understood, and it is
quite possible that he considered a complete separation from the
Administration advantageous to his interests. His associations were such
that he could not have heard much that was not venomously hostile to
Jackson and the Jacksonians. But, a gentleman of dignity, he withdrew
gracefully, plunging into no undignified recriminations.[761]
In appointing his successor, Jackson turned to John Forsyth, whose
services as Administration floor leader in the Senate had been of
immense value, and whose urbanity, wisdom, conservatism, diplomatic
experience, fitted him for the post better than any of his Jacksonian
predecessors. To the place left vacant by Taney, he transferred Mr.
Woodbury, and to the navy he appointed Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, a
gentleman of extensive public experience as a Senator for sixteen years.
Just previous to his appointment, he had declined the Russian Mission.
This was the only Cabinet upheaval of Jackson’s time which had not been
accompanied with much bitterness, with charges and countercharges.
Thus, with affairs in Washington in capable hands, with victory in the
Bank fight on his side, with the delights of the Hermitage just beyond,
the iron man set forth in high spirits and with no regrets or fears. The
Biddle threat of more “discipline” for the people during the summer and
autumn, because of the failure of Congress to recharter the Bank, had
not disturbed him so much as it had alarmed the Whigs. Those in Boston
met the threat with a counter-threat of denunciation, and those in New
York warned Biddle that more distress would certainly prove disastrous
to the Whigs in the fall elections. Biddle deeply resented the criticism
of the Whigs, who, under the leadership of Clay, had practically
blackmailed him into using the Bank’s power against the Democrats. When
those of Boston warned that more discipline of the people might “even
create a necessity for the Whigs, in self-defense, to separate
themselves entirely” from his institution, he wrote in defiant mood to
the president of his Boston branch that “if ... any political party or
association desires to separate itself from the Bank--be it so.” He had
not read the letter to the board of directors lest the members favorable
to the Democrats might use it to the disadvantage of the Whigs.[762] But
he was to find that his frown had lost its force. Another Whig from New
York wrote of much dissatisfaction in that city and State among the
Bank’s friends and “those of influence in the Whig Party--and sure I am
that it is increasing every day.” The feeling was prevalent, encouraged
by the views of Albert Gallatin, that the Bank could have relieved the
distress had it so desired. And Alexander Hamilton, the brother of
Jackson’s friend, and son of the father of the National Bank, wrote a
little later to a correspondent that “it has been found expedient to
abandon the Bank in our political pilgrimage.” He found that “the people
are now familiarly acquainted with the immense power of a national bank
and apprehend all kinds of terrible consequences from its
exercise.”[763] Thus, instead of more “discipline,” the Bank found it
possible to take steps, which, according to Catterall, justified
Jackson, the following December, in saying in his Message that “the Bank
... announced its ability and readiness to abandon the system of
unparalleled curtailment ... and to extend its accommodations to the
community.”
Just, as in 1832, when floating down the Ohio on his last visit to the
Hermitage during the presidential campaign, Andrew Jackson was at peace
with himself and the world. But his friends had given orders to take
nothing for granted and to open the fighting along the whole line. They
had a twofold purpose--to hold the line in Congress, and to defeat,
wherever possible, any senatorial enemies who were candidates for
reëlection. Blair, of the “Globe,” began to issue special editions and
to send them broadcast all over the country.
The fight, as it was waged in New York, Virginia, and Mississippi, will
suffice to illustrate the general character and method of the campaign.
In all three States the Bank was the issue. Even the most hopeful of the
Whigs entertained no illusions as to Pennsylvania, where the most
powerful financial and commercial interests were arrayed with the Bank.
The two parties in the Empire State were mobilized, organized on a
military footing, and ready and eager for the fray.[764] The elections
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were held in October, a month before
those in New York, and the first shock to the Whigs came in the returns
from these two States. That Pennsylvania, the home of Biddle, Sergeant,
and Duane, should have gone against the Bank and for Jackson, was not
disappointing, for little had been expected there. But much was expected
in New Jersey. There the issue was distinct. The two Senators from that
State had voted with the Bank on the deposits question. The Legislature
had adopted resolutions commendatory of Jackson’s actions, and in his
Protest the fighting President had not scrupled to quote these
resolutions to prove that the Senators had deliberately misrepresented
their people. Senator Frelinghuysen, in commenting upon these
instructions, had boasted that he and his colleague had “dared to meet
the frowns of their constituents,” and would not “bow the knee to these
instructions.”[765] Now he was before the people for reëlection, and the
issue was plain. The people’s verdict was unmistakable. The little State
swept into the Jackson column with a substantial majority, and
Frelinghuysen was retired.
Goaded by the sting of the New Jersey defeat, the New York Whigs
redoubled their efforts. “The Whigs are raising liberty poles in all the
wards,” wrote Hone. “I went to one of these ceremonies yesterday at the
corner of the Bowery and Hester Street. The pole, a hundred feet high,
with a splendid cap and gilt vane with suitable devices, was escorted by
a procession of good men and true.”[766] Thus, if the “mob” could make
the welkin ring at Democratic meetings, the more aristocratic Whigs
could sally forth from their counting-rooms and libraries to rub
shoulders with the common herd at Hester Street and the Bowery and shout
approval of the raising of a pole. But all was in vain. By nine o’clock
on the evening of the first day, Hone and his fellow Whigs realized that
“enough was known to satisfy us to our hearts’ content that we are
beaten--badly beaten; worse than the least sanguine of us
expected.”[767] The jubilant Democrats, however, were determined that
the Whig leaders should not feel utterly deserted, and a crowd of them
surged before Hone’s house with hisses and catcalls which kept him awake
all night. The Lord Holland of the American Whigs, who was sick at the
time, was inclined to resent it, but the next evening he found
consolation in dining with Webster who “was in a vein to be exceedingly
pleasant.”[768]
Such was the intensity of feeling and the bitterness of the struggle
that enthusiastic partisans partook of the nature of mobs in the larger
centers. Nowhere were the Democrats so intense as in Philadelphia,
where, on election day, the warring partisans exchanged shots, the
headquarters of the Whigs was sacked and burned by a mob which drove
back the firemen that attempted to quench the flames. A number of houses
were completely reduced to ashes. Such was the panic of Nicholas Biddle
that the day before the election he sent his wife and children into the
country, filled his house with armed men, and prepared for a siege. The
Bank building bristled with the bayonets and muskets of guards. But when
the gray dawn came, the one-time financial dictator found that none of
his property had been molested. It was blow enough to him to learn that
the Whigs, the country over, had gone down before the popular uprising.
But the bitterest fight was waged in Virginia, where the situation was
mixed to the point of chaos. The State was anti-Bank, but it was
anti-Jackson. Opposed to the Bank, it had been equally opposed to the
removal of the deposits. The feeling in Richmond was so inflamed that
only personal respect for Ritchie saved the “Enquirer” from mob
violence, for the courageous editor stuck to his guns and tried to
divert attention to the Bank itself. Administration papers were
established throughout the State with instructions to follow the lead of
his pen. The Virginia plan was twofold: to make the most of the
unpopularity of Leigh, who was again a candidate for the Senate, and to
divide and distract the Whigs by playing Clay against Calhoun. Nowhere
did the Democrats appreciate, as they did in Virginia, the impossible
nature of the Whig combination, and they dwelt upon its inconsistencies
from the beginning. Clay announced that he was not a candidate for the
presidential nomination in 1836. “But Mr. Clay knows not himself,” wrote
Ritchie. “But ambition does not burn so intensely in his bosom as it
does in the heart of another leader of the Senate (Mr. Calhoun). If
recent signs do not deceive us, this extraordinary man (extraordinary
every way for the vigor of his mind, the variety of his principles, and
the intensity of his ambition) will soon take the field, with feeble
hopes of winning the votes of the South, as well as the support of the
Bank. Then we shall see under which king the various members of the
opposition will range themselves.”[769] This irrepressible conflict of
Whig ambitions and interests was played upon by the Democratic press of
Virginia all through the summer and autumn of 1834.
But the immediate purpose of the Virginia Democrats was to humiliate
Leigh, who was unpopular with the masses because of his bitter fight in
the Constitutional Convention against the extension of the suffrage. And
he was as strongly with the Bank as Virginia was against it. A
house-to-house canvass was made, and in districts where a majority were
found against him it was proposed to evoke the right of instructions to
Assemblymen. The plan succeeded to the extent of disclosing a majority
hostile to the reëlection of Leigh, but the Whigs, who carried the
State, succeeded after a bitter struggle in returning him through a
flagrant disregard of the expressed will of the constituencies. The
battle was thus but half lost. The Democrats were supplied with
ammunition they were to use with deadly effect, and within little more
than a year they were to drive the two anti-Jackson Senators of Virginia
into private life. Ritchie began the next year’s battle without delay.
The “Enquirer” was flooded with resolutions and letters protesting the
election of Leigh over the instructions of the majority of the
people.[770]
In Mississippi the Jacksonians determined to prevent the reëlection of
Senator Poindexter, long the idol of the Mississippi Democracy, who had
turned upon Jackson with a virulence scarcely equaled by any old-line
Federalist, and cast his lot with Clay. With the adjournment of
Congress, the Mississippi Senator hastened home, where the enemies of
the Administration had planned a series of banquets at which he was to
denounce the President and vindicate himself. The Whigs were with him.
The Democrats, delighted with a slashing and brilliant assault on
Poindexter by Robert J. Walker, put that able publicist in the field,
and within a week he was engaged in one of the most spectacular
canvasses Mississippi had ever known, firing enormous open-air meetings
of frenzied Jacksonians. The outcome was the election of Walker--a
victory sweet to Jackson, for it was the vanquished who had sponsored
the resolution attacking his Protest.[771] And the triumph was all the
sweeter from the fact that, while Poindexter had supported the
Nullifiers, Walker had taken the lead against them in Mississippi, on
the platform, and through the press.
Thus the elections of 1834 were more than pleasing to Jackson and his
party. Two of his strongest senatorial opponents had lost their seats as
a result of their opposition, and Leigh had been saved only by a
disreputable betrayal of the people. In the Senate the Administration
was strengthened; and in the House the Democratic majority was reduced
but eight votes, leaving it a clear majority of 46 out of 242 members.
Strangely enough, so reliable an historian as McMaster has described
these elections as a triumph of the Whigs. Such was not the
interpretation of the Whigs themselves. Hone thought that they were
“badly beaten--worse than the least sanguine of us expected.”[772]
Webster accepted the verdict as final, and, much to the distress and
indignation of Biddle, announced that he was through. But the most
conclusive evidence of the contemporary opinion of the Whigs comes from
Thurlow Weed, the sagacious Whig journalist of the “Albany Journal.”
More prescient than most of the Whig leaders of the time, he had
foreseen the inevitable result of an attempt to win upon the Bank issue.
Quite early, when Webster’s keynote speech on the Bank, delivered at a
mass meeting in Boston, was sent for publication to all the party
papers, the copy that reached Weed never found its way into the “Albany
Journal.”[773] And immediately after the election in 1834, he
editorially expressed the feeling which appears to have taken possession
of the party generally. “There is one cause,” he wrote, “for
congratulations, connected with the recent election, in which even we
participate. It has terminated the United States Bank war.... We have
from the beginning deprecated the successive conflicts in defense of the
Bank.... But we have gone with our friends through these three
campaigns, under a strong and settled conviction that in every issue to
be tried by the people to which the Bank was a party, we must be beaten.
After struggling along from year to year with a doomed Bank upon our
shoulders, both the Bank and our party are finally overwhelmed.[774]”
Nor is it surprising that Clay, whose selfishness had forced Biddle into
making the recharter a campaign issue, was glad to dump the doomed Bank
from his shoulders. It is impossible to follow his course, pointing as
every act does to a purely party purpose, without arriving at the
conviction that he really cared little about the institution on Chestnut
Street. As the fight became more hopeless, he found the importunities of
Biddle more irksome. Viewed purely as a political or party contest, the
clever politicians who dominated the Jacksonian camp had shown far more
prescience and sagacity than the wisest of the Whigs. Amos Kendall had
a better understanding of the psychology of the masses than Clay or
Webster. Among the Whigs, Weed alone saw the end from the beginning. The
attempt to arouse the people in behalf of a great moneyed institution
against the attacks of a popular hero was in itself a grotesque and
ghastly absurdity. But after the decision had been made to undertake it,
the methods of Biddle and his political allies made defeat a certainty.
Frank Blair, of the “Globe,” was evidently sincere in his assertion that
had he been permitted to dictate the policy of the Whigs, he could not
have hit upon a plan more satisfactory to the Democrats.
That Jackson knew little of banking and advanced some strange theories
in the course of the fight; that he resorted to methods of violence in
some instances; and that he fought to kill, rather than to reform, may
be admitted. But the very nature of the fight he waged compelled the
Bank to disclose its tremendous power over the prosperity of the people.
No matter what they may have thought in the beginning, no one could have
doubted toward the end that the Bank did have the power to precipitate
panics, to punish the people for legislation it resented, to dominate,
in the end, the legislation of the future by the threat of reprisal upon
the business of the Nation. No one, in 1834, doubted that the National
Bank, in the hands of a man like Biddle domineering over pliant
directors, and assuming dictatorial authority over the members of
Congress, possessed powers incompatible with the preservation of the
rights and liberties of the people. From that day on, the Bank has had
its apologists among historians, and Jackson has been excoriated as an
ignorant usurper, but there has never been a time since when the
American people would have tolerated a return to the system that was
destroyed. Through several years the country was to be disturbed by the
sometimes stumbling processes of transition from the old to the new
system, but the Bank fight ended with the verdict of the polls in 1834.
Only the censure of the Senate remained to poison the mind of the iron
man in the White House. The Bank lingered on, a little while, under the
laws of Pennsylvania, and then crashed to the earth, ruining many of its
supporters.[775] And on the banker’s death, Hone copied into his diary
the comment of William Cullen Bryant in the “New York Evening Post,”
that Biddle “died at his country seat where he passed the last of his
days in elegant retirement, which, if justice had taken place, would
have been spent in the penitentiary.”[776]
The prolonged battle has left a lasting impression upon the political
life and methods of the Republic. It aroused, as never before, that
class consciousness, to which politicians have ever since appealed; it
gave dignity to demagogy, and made it pay. It marked the beginning of
the active participation of powerful corporations, as such, in the
politics of the country, witnessed the adoption of the methods of
intimidation and coercion, of systematic propaganda, of the
subsidization of disreputable newspapers. From that day on, the powerful
corporation has been anathema to the masses, monopoly has been a red
rag, and the contest between capital and labor has been a reality. If
this has been unfortunate, the fault has been no less with Clay, who
sought and made the issue, and with Biddle and his arrogant reliance on
the power of money, than with Jackson and the Kitchen Cabinet who
challenged the political pretensions of the Bank.
IV
The Whig leaders entered upon the congressional session of December in a
bitter mood. Calhoun was especially vicious and in a chronic rage
against the President and the Administration. The fury of the Whigs was
not moderated by the fact that State Legislatures were beginning to
demand the expunging from the records of the resolution of censure.
Benton, in the previous session, had served notice of his intention to
move to expunge, and the Kitchen Cabinet in the meanwhile had been busy
in building backfires against the offending Senators among their
constituents. The first State to act was Alabama. The day before Senator
King presented the Alabama resolutions, during a running discussion of
the revelations of mismanagement and crookedness in the Post-Office
Department, Senator Preston suggested that the Senate should censure
some one. Just whom he would censure was not made clear, but he did
refer to the previous declaration of Jackson that he was responsible for
the Executive departments. “Does any one doubt the turpitude of the
Post-Office?” asked Preston. “When hardly the age of man, it is found
steeped in corruption the most foul, the most melancholy. If the
President is responsible, and the officers acted improperly, is this the
house to present the subject? And shall we stand by without saying or
doing anything in regard to the present state of things in that
department?”
Calhoun was instantly on his feet. He had listened to the report on the
Post-Office “with sorrow and deep mortification.” After twenty-two years
of connection with the Government he was able to say that “in all that
time the charges of corruption against all the departments of the
Government that he had ever heard of were not equal to the disclosures
here made.” In truth he thought that “the exhibition would disgrace the
rottenest age of the Roman Republic.” He hoped some resolution would be
presented.
This implied threat was not lost on the ever alert Benton, and on the
following day he took the floor, reminded the Senate of his promise,
declared that nothing less than the expurgation of the offensive censure
would suffice, and served notice of his intention to present the
resolution. This opened the first debate on expurgation. Clay, with a
personal fling at Benton, saltily expressed the hope that before acting
the Missourian would carefully examine the Constitution, and concluded
that he would “oppose such a resolution at the very threshold.” Preston
conceded that his party had been “beaten down,” and demanded to know
whether “everything that we have done shall be expunged.” Calhoun would
“like to see a resolution which proposed to repeal the journal--to
repeal a fact.” If the thing could be done, “the Senate itself could be
expunged,” and the Government itself was at an end. He was “anxious to
see who would attempt to carry out the doctrines of the Protest of last
year--doctrines as despotic as those which were held by the autocrat of
all the Russias.”
To this, King took vigorous exception. The resolution of censure was not
“a fact.” “The Democracy of this land has spoken and pronounced its
condemnation of the proceeding.” He had hoped, when Calhoun declared on
a previous occasion that he would act for the country, he would have
little more to do with party, but he had since manifested a very
different feeling. Stung by the taunt, Calhoun made no half-hearted
denial of partisan bias. “I have no purpose to serve,” he said. “I have
no desire to be here.” And then, with evident insincerity, he added,
“Sir, I would not turn upon my heel to be entrusted with the management
of the Government.”[777]
When, a few weeks later, the day before the expiration of the session,
the discussion was renewed, Hugh Lawson White, now rapidly cooling to
frigidity toward Jackson, moved to amend Benton’s resolution by striking
out the word “expunge” and substituting “rescind, reverse, and to make
null and void.” This incident has been given an historical importance
beyond its due by many who have attributed to the motion the final break
between Jackson and White. The action of the Tennessee Senator
unquestionably outraged the Jacksonians, who ascribed it to hostility,
but such was not the dominating motive. He took the position that he
could not vote to “obliterate and deface the journal of the Senate.”
Benton protested that the word “expunge” was strictly parliamentary. To
his astonishment and chagrin, he discovered that White was not the only
Democrat who objected to his phrasing of the resolution, as others
crowded about him to urge the acceptance of the amendment. Finding
himself almost deserted, he afterwards said that he “yielded a
mortifying and reluctant consent.”[778] All this the proud Missourian
could stand. But when Webster immediately arose, and, after sounding the
pæan of triumph, moved that the resolution be laid upon the table; and
after Clay and Calhoun had spoken with bitterness and contempt, the
spirit of compromise died out in his heart, and he then and there
promised himself to continue the battle. The debate was acrimonious in
spirit, and in the midst of “great excitement.”[779] This was the
preliminary battle which was to have a spectacular ending in a
Jacksonian triumph a short time before the expiration of the iron man’s
Presidency.
V
To the Jacksonians, the most distressing feature of the short session
was the disclosure of the utter incompetency, blackened by positive
crookedness, in the rapidly growing Post-Office Department, which called
for the management of a man of more than ordinary organizing and
business ability. Major Barry possessed neither qualification. An honest
man himself, without the slightest business sense, easily imposed upon,
surrounded by subordinates who were scamps, and forced to deal with mail
contractors who were criminals, he lost control early in his
administration. When the Clayton investigation was completed, the
department was found honeycombed with fraud, plastered with forgeries,
and in a hopeless financial condition. And yet no one seriously
suspected Barry of complicity. Clay, who had lost the support of Harry,
his neighbor in Lexington, on the “bargain” story, did not hesitate to
exonerate him from culpability. But there was no defense for the
conditions, and Jackson, in his Message, had recommended a complete
reorganization of the department better to safeguard the public
interest. The two parties stood together on the Reorganization Bill, and
no member of either party attempted any justification of the conditions.
But the Democrats were on their toes throughout the-session to prevent
any personal condemnation of either Barry or Jackson. The Whigs lost no
opportunity to capitalize the scandal. The public money had been
squandered. Crooked contractors had been permitted to loot the Treasury.
They did not know the extent of the corruption, nor the responsibility
of the head of the department, but they did know that the putridity of
the thing had never been approached in American history. The majority
report of the investigating committee found a deficit of $800.000; the
minority placed the amount at $300,000; but both agreed that it was due
in part at least to maladministration.[780] Felix Grundy, who had charge
for the Administration, rejoiced in the fact, “to the honor of his
countrymen,” that no one “had been found to accuse the
Postmaster-General of corruption”;[781] and Senator Bibb of Kentucky, a
supporter of Clay, paid tribute to the personal qualities of Barry and
ascribed the failure to “the good disposition and kindness” of the head
of the department, which had been imposed upon by “interested and
selfish persons to further their own private interests.” Thus, in the
Senate, the debate on the Reorganization Bill was conducted with decorum
and without exciting personalities. An utter lack of system, a director
deficient in business sense and over-credulous, and all preyed upon by
dishonest subordinates and criminally inclined speculators--such was the
sense of the Senate.
But in the House, Barry’s personal integrity was not to go unchallenged.
In the lower branch he was unfortunate in friends who loved, not wisely,
but too well, who thought to prevent assault by challenging it. Some of
these had avowed a disposition to consider such an assault a personal
offense. During a night session, William C. Johnson of Maryland, a
promising and eloquent young Whig of imposing personal appearance,
sought an opportunity to affront Representative Hawes of Kentucky, a
member of the special dueling club. An insignificant incident during the
discussion of a post-route bill sufficed. On obtaining the floor,
Johnson looked significantly at Hawes, and with sinister deliberation
began: “It has been broadly hinted by some gentlemen ... that he who
shall have the temerity to criticize the acts of the Postmaster-General
must answer therefor elsewhere than in this hall.... Sir, I come from a
portion of the country where the law of personal responsibility is
recognized among gentlemen. I hold myself amenable to that law ...; and
now, in the face of those menaces which have been thrown out on this
floor, and intending to be responsible for what I am about to say, I
declare that the Post-Office Department is corrupt from head to foot,
through and through, and I believe that the head of the department,
William T. Barry, is as culpable as any officer under his control.”
The House was instantly in an uproar as Hawes rose to ask if Johnson
meant that the department was corrupt from Barry down. The young blade
from Maryland jauntily replied in the affirmative. Hawes said that Barry
was “as honest and honorable as any man who has a seat on this floor,”
and asked Johnson for the grounds for his charge. In the spirit of
swashbuckler he had set out to be, the latter merely reiterated what he
had said. There was no misunderstanding the meaning of the situation--it
meant a duel unless Johnson would agree to a qualification of his
statement. To all such appeals he was adamant. When, as a result, he was
challenged by Barry’s son, he began to hedge with the demand that the
duel take place “immediately.” He would not even consent to a day’s
delay, and young Barry withdrew the challenge. The incident proved
nothing except that in the Thirties young men carried chips on their
shoulders, and bandied words lightly.
The contemporaries of Barry exonerated him, and history has acquiesced
in their verdict.[782] But it was apparent that his usefulness in the
Cabinet was over. He had never been qualified. While the debate on the
Reorganization Bill was still in progress, Jackson summoned Amos Kendall
to the task of assuming charge and placing the department on a business
basis. At that time, the wizard of the Kitchen Cabinet, in ill health,
and without private means, was planning to retire from the public
service to serve his family more satisfactorily in a financial way. He
demurred--Jackson insisted--and in the end, like the good soldier that
he was, he yielded.
Barry, gracefully let out with the mission to Spain, sailed away, to die
in London on the way, and Kendall took charge. It is amazing that the
party prejudices of ninety years ago should still persist and refuse
justice to the genius of this exceptional man. Professor MacDonald does
not overstate when he describes him “as a man of remarkable
administrative power.”[783] Nor is it probable that so seasoned an
observer of public men as Senator Foote was unduly impressed when he
described him as “discoursing upon the gravest and most important
questions with a profundity and power which left a lasting
impress.”[784] Brilliant with the pen, sagacious beyond almost any man
of his time as a politician, wise in counsel, and yet capable of
managing the dry-as-dust details of the most practical of departments,
Amos Kendall is probably one of the greatest all-around publicists the
Republic has produced.
His first step on taking charge was thoroughly to familiarize himself
with the minute details of his office, with the special functions of
each subordinate, and the character of the man. He soon discovered the
secret of the good-natured Barry’s undoing, when a clerk, suspected of
having relations with a contractor as agent, approached him
ingratiatingly with the announcement that he “had control of funds and
would be happy to accommodate him with loans.” He was promptly
discharged.[785] After a thorough survey, Kendall concluded that “a few
powerful mail contractors, through favors to the officers and more
influential clerks, had really controlled the department, and for their
own selfish ends, and been the cause of all its embarrassments.”[786] He
adopted stringent rules for the guidance of employees. The acceptance of
a gift was to mean dismissal. So, too, with free rides on stage-coaches,
steamboats, or railroad cars carrying mail. Applying the rules as
rigidly to himself as to others, he promptly returned all presents and
free tickets, and thenceforward the Postmaster-General paid his way. But
the task confronting him was tremendous. The department was deeply in
debt and was sinking deeper. Not satisfied with the showing of
corruption by the congressional committee, he went over the ground and
uncovered crookedness it had overlooked. The postmaster of New York was
caught in the net and instantly dismissed. Some powerful and influential
contractors who had carried the mail between Washington and Philadelphia
were suspected, and Kendall made a searching investigation. Major Barry,
still in Washington at this time, became seriously disturbed, and
conceived the notion that his successor was bent on embarrassing him,
and Kendall, who had no suspicion of his predecessor, sent for him and
personally reassured him. But there were other embarrassments within the
Administration household. Mrs. Eaton, then in Washington, and intimate
with the family of one of the contractors who was pressing a claim that
Kendall was examining, called one day on Mrs. Kendall with the bald
proposition that if the claim were allowed, the contractor would present
the wife of the Postmaster-General with “a carriage and a pair of
horses.” The incident was promptly reported to Kendall, who recorded the
story many years later.[787] Applying himself and his administrative
genius diligently to his task, driving out the incompetent and corrupt,
practicing economy while extending the scope of the department’s
services, he soon put it on a paying basis, and before the expiration of
Jackson’s Administration, less than two years later, wiped out the
deficit. This is the man some historians have described as a vulgar
politician and a “printer.”
VI
No incident of this session so well illustrates the partisan bitterness
and the venomous nature of the hates engendered by the struggles of the
preceding years as the attempt on the life of Jackson at the Capitol on
January 30, 1835.[788] Under normal conditions and in ordinary times the
incident would have been dismissed, and, properly, ascribed to the
insanity of the assailant. But it was the first time an attempt had been
made upon the life of a President--and it was a President who had been
intemperately denounced as a tyrant, despot, and wrecker of American
institutions and liberties. Just as John Tyler had instantly thought of
“political effect,”[789] the ardent friends of Jackson caught the same
idea from the opposite angle. And two days later, Frank Blair in the
“Globe” threw out the suggestion of a conspiracy. “Whether Lawrence [the
assailant] has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has
prevailed the last two sessions of the Senate,” he wrote, “whether he
has become infatuated with the chimeras which have troubled the brains
of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the
President as a Cæsar who ought to have a Brutus; as a Cromwell, a Nero,
a Tiberius, we know not. If no secret conspiracy has prompted the
perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some
delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and
that hearing despotism and every horrible mischief threatened to the
Republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the
necessary consequence of the President’s measures, it may be that the
infatuated man fancied that he had reason to become his country’s
avenger. If he had heard and believed Mr. Calhoun’s speech of day before
yesterday, he would have found in it ample justification for his attempt
on one who was represented as the cause of the most dreadful calamities
of the Nation; as one who made perfect rottenness and corruption to
pervade the vitals of the Government, insomuch that it was scarcely
worth preserving, if it were possible.”[790]
The intimation here thrown out was bitterly resented by the Opposition
leaders, and particularly by Calhoun, who was mentioned. The very fact
that the intemperate and insincere denunciations of high officials as
responsible for the distress of the people, acting upon the diseased
brain, can very easily persuade the madman to constitute himself the
executioner, served to infuriate the orators who had given themselves
full play. Stung to the quick, Calhoun denounced the “Globe” as “base
and prostitute,” and described it as “the authentic and established
organ” of Jackson, “sustained by his power and pampered by his
hands.” “To what are we coming?” he exclaimed. “We are told that
to denounce the abuse of the Administration even in general terms,
without personal reference, is to instigate the assassination of the
Chief Executive.... I have made up my mind as to my duty. I am no
candidate for any office--I neither seek nor desire place--nothing
shall intimidate--nothing shall prevent me from doing what I believe is
due to my conscience and my country.”[791] Mr. Calhoun sat down--and
Mr. Leigh immediately rose to present a report from the Committee on
Revolutionary Claims.
But Mr. Calhoun’s attack on the “Globe” was not unnoticed by Blair, who
replied by quoting from the most venomous portions of Calhoun’s and
Preston’s tirades on the Post-Office report. A week later the
Administration organ was still harping on conspiracy. “Every hour,”
wrote Blair, “brings new proof to show that Lawrence has been operated
on to seek the President’s life, precisely as we had supposed from the
moment we learned that he had been an attendant on the debates in
Congress.”[792]
Very soon the capital was startled with the connection of Senator
Poindexter’s name with that of the assailant. The obsession took
possession of Jackson that his Mississippi enemy had instigated the
attempt at assassination. The examination of Lawrence had clearly
established his insanity; just as clearly shown that he had taken to
heart the charges of Jackson’s enemies that he was responsible for the
distress of the people. Finding himself hard pressed by fate, and
ascribing his unhappiness to the tyranny of Jackson, he had determined
to kill him. That explanation was convincing and sufficient. But the
suggestion that Poindexter had planned the deed fell on receptive soil.
Affidavits had been placed in Jackson’s hands to the effect that “a
gentleman who boarded in the same house informed him that Mr.
Poindexter had interviews with Lawrence but a few days before the
attempt on the President’s life.” Some time before the attack, “a
captain in high standing in the navy” had said that Poindexter, on a
voyage to New Orleans, had threatened to demand personal satisfaction of
Jackson, and if he refused “he would shoot him wherever he saw him.”
This had caused such anxiety to Jackson’s friends that the Reverend Mr.
Hatch, chaplain of the Senate, had personally informed Jackson of the
threat. All this, followed, after the assault, with an affidavit that
Lawrence had been seen to “go repeatedly to Poindexter’s residence,”
thoroughly convinced Jackson, who appears to have been in a morbid
condition like his enemies.[793] He excitedly charged it in conversation
with callers at the White House. Miss Martineau, who was friendly with
the Poindexters, and apparently fond of the Senator, was literally
forced to leave the White House by the abusive denunciation of the
Mississippian. She became his ardent partisan, and took pains to record
in her book that, on visiting the Poindexters on the night of the
assault, she had “greatly admired the moderation with which Mr.
Poindexter spoke of his foe.”[794]
Hearing from many quarters of Jackson’s charges, Poindexter wrote him
that he would discredit the reports unless confirmed by the President,
but that a failure to reply would be accepted as a confirmation. Jackson
displayed Poindexter’s letter to visitors, but made no response. Thus a
perfectly foolish notion of Jackson’s was forced to an issue. To
understand the feeling behind it all, and to appreciate the bitter
hostility of Poindexter, to which frequent reference has been made, it
is necessary to know more of the character and career of this really
remarkable but tragic figure.
George Poindexter was something of a genius, and, until his break with
Jackson, an idol of Mississippi. From the beginning he had been
accorded the leadership of the Democratic or Jeffersonian Party in that
Territory. His early congressional career was a justification of his
leadership. One who knew him in those days tells us that “his mind was
logical and strong; his conception was quick and acute; his powers of
combination and application were astonishing; his wit was pointed and
caustic, and his sarcasm overwhelming.”[795] These qualities made him a
tremendous power upon the stump with the then primitive people of his
State. In the gubernatorial office he rendered invaluable service which
strengthened his hold upon the masses. On the bench, he was noted for
his ability and justice, and, among the lawyers, he was conceded to have
few equals before a jury. During the War of 1812 he had further endeared
himself to the Mississippians by his patriotic appeal for preparation,
and, after he had aroused the Territory to fever heat, and Jackson had
appeared upon the scene, he became a volunteer aid upon the staff of the
future President. It was to Poindexter that the negro or soldier carried
the infamous British countersign, “Booty and Beauty,” and it was
Poindexter who conveyed it to Jackson. Later his enemies charged that he
had forged it to win the favor of the General. That such a man should
have made enemies was inevitable. So bitter were his denunciations of
his political enemies, so unscrupulous his use of terms, that at one
time a conspiracy was formed to force him into a duel and kill him. The
opportunity came after a peculiarly vitriolic attack upon a wealthy
merchant who affiliated with the Federalists. The merchant challenged
and was killed. Then Poindexter’s enemies charged that he had fired
before the word was given.
Nowhere in the campaign of 1828 did Jackson receive more ardent support
than in Mississippi where his old friend Poindexter directed his forces,
and one year after his inauguration, the lieutenant entered the Senate,
and almost immediately the feud between the erstwhile friends began.
The sordid feature of the story is the fact that it grew out of a
patronage controversy. Jackson had determined on the appointment of a
Tennesseean, a neighbor of the Hermitage, to the land office of
Mississippi. Poindexter protested that this patronage belonged to his
State and to him. Jackson refused to yield. Poindexter prevented the
confirmation of the Tennesseean. Jackson made a recess appointment, and
thenceforward the two comrades of 1812 were at swords’ points. Thus far
Jackson was manifestly in the wrong. His loyalty to friendship cannot
explain his disloyalty to Poindexter--who was also a friend, and a
friend in need. But such was the Mississippian’s prejudice and hate that
he abandoned, not only the President and purely Administration measures,
but the principles he had espoused and advocated for a generation. He
crossed the Rubicon, burned the bridges, and became a special favorite
of Clay’s. In every great fight of the Jackson period, Poindexter was
found arrayed with the Opposition. He stood with the Bank, favored the
censure, and offered the resolutions denunciatory of the Protest. In the
Nullification contest, he had essayed to lead the Nullifiers, and became
more offensive than Calhoun.
Unfortunately for Poindexter, in the fighting that followed he was far
from invulnerable on the personal side. Having been unfortunate in his
domestic relations, he had divorced his wife, denied the paternity of
his children, and plunged into the most reckless dissipation.[796] His
indecent reflections upon the purity of his wife drove her family,
extensive and influential, to his enemies; his intemperate tirades
against Jackson alienated the dominant Democratic sentiment of the
State; and while he fought boldly and bitterly to sustain himself, he
failed, and, at the time of the attack on Jackson by the madman at the
Capitol, was so discredited in Mississippi that he was planning to leave
the State, with his second wife, on the expiration of his term. A man
of genius whose morals failed to sustain his mentality--such the epitaph
of George Poindexter.[797]
Three weeks after Lawrence had fired and failed, Poindexter called the
Senate’s attention to an anonymous letter stating that affidavits were
in the hands of the President charging that interviews had taken place
between the assailant and himself a few days before the attempt on
Jackson’s life, and asking the appointment of a special committee of
investigation. Henry Clay, avowing that the rumors “inspired him with
nothing but the deepest mortification and regret,” and that it was
“impossible to credit the statement that affidavits should have been
procured at the instance of the Chief Executive for the purpose of
implicating a Senator of the United States in so foul a transaction,”
reluctantly consented to an investigation. Without further discussion, a
committee, consisting of John Tyler, chairman, Smith, Mangum, King, and
Silas Wright, was appointed, with permission to sit during the sessions
of the Senate; and three days later it unanimously exonerated Poindexter
from suspicion. Webster asked for the yeas and nays on its acceptance;
every Senator voted yea, and thus ended the most unfortunate incident in
the career of Andrew Jackson. The “Washington Globe,” which had
published the affidavits, wholly discredited them about the same
time.[798]
VII
The Calhoun inquiry “into the extent of federal patronage, the
circumstances which have contributed to its great increase of late, the
expediency and practicability of reducing the same, and the means of
such reduction,” served further to fan the flames of partisan madness
during this session. Persisting in the fallacy that he was not moved by
partisan or political considerations, he suggested that the committee be
composed of two members of each party. The Senate, however, was not
deceived as to his purpose, and selected four enemies of the
Administration, Calhoun, Webster, Southard, and Bibb, and two Democrats,
Benton, and King of Georgia. In due time an elaborate report was
submitted. It set forth that 60,294 persons were in the employ of the
Government; that together with the pensioners this meant more than
100,000 dependent on the Treasury. Implying that these constituted a
federal machine, Calhoun added all engaged in business who wished to
furnish supplies as part of the organization, influenced by patronage.
Worse--there were thousands who wished to get upon the pay-roll who
would willingly play the part of pliant tools to curry favor with
Executive power. And how was this to be remedied? Since one of the
causes contributing to the enlargement of the President’s patronage was
the increase in governmental expenditure, the statesmanlike thing to do
would be to reduce the revenue. A great amount of public land had been
thrown upon the market, calling for an army of receivers, registers, and
surveyors--all of whom were tools of Jackson. The Jacksonian policy of
removing men from office to make way for henchmen had reduced the
efficiency of the public service by making reappointments dependent on
something other than faithful service. This, by making the officials
dependent upon the President, tended to make them all subservient to his
will, and little better than his slaves. More: the power assumed by the
President to select the banks for the public deposits made them a part
of the presidential machine. If the public revenue could be reduced, and
the Government thus starved, many would be forced from the public crib,
but unhappily this could not be done. He proposed, therefore, a
constitutional amendment permitting the annual distribution of the
surplus till 1843 by a division of it into as many shares as there were
Senators and Representatives, with ten shares for each Territory and the
District of Columbia. And in addition to all this, he would enact a law
to regulate the deposits of public money, and another to repeal that
part of the Act of 1820 which limited the terms of customs officers.
When the report was submitted to the Senate, Poindexter made it the
occasion for mournful and indignant reflections upon the growing tyranny
of Jackson. He was profoundly moved by the revelations. Surely as many
as thirty thousand extra copies of the report should be published for
distribution. “The question now submitted to the Nation,” he said, “is
whether power is to be perpetuated in the hands of him who now wields
it, and the one he may select as his successor.” It was most unfortunate
that the people would not awaken to the sinister attacks upon their
liberties and institutions. The thoughtful, however, could not but see
the trend.
But why print thirty thousand copies, asked King of Georgia, if not to
serve a party purpose at the expense of the taxpayers? “What a spectacle
we do present from day to day!” he exclaimed. “The Senate has been a
week making war on the extras of the Post-Office Department. We are now
warring against the extravagance of the Executive; and whilst
brandishing the sword in one hand in defense of the public Treasury
against the ravages of the Executive, we are, with the other, slipping
it into our own pockets, or scattering it in profuse and wasteful
extravagance.”
The Senate compromised on ten thousand copies, and a rather dull debate,
in which the Bank question was revived, resulted. The bills proposed by
the Whig committee passed the Whig Senate to be promptly rejected in the
Democratic House. These measures merely served as pegs on which to hang
further denunciations of Jackson and his policies.
And the Democrats countered with an enthusiastic banquet in celebration
of the wiping-out of the national debt for the first time in history.
This had been one of Jackson’s ambitions--a consummation Clay had
determined should not come before the presidential election of 1832. But
it could not be prevented; and while the Whigs were expanding on
extravagance and the crowded public crib, the Jacksonians were pointing
to the extinguishment of the public debt as an answer to the attacks.
Benton, who presided as toastmaster at the banquet, was in flamboyant
mood.
“The national debt is paid,” he said. “This month of January, 1835, in
the fifty-eighth year of the Republic, Andrew Jackson being President,
the national debt is paid, and the apparition, so long unseen on
earth--a great nation without a national debt--stands revealed to the
astonished vision of a wondering world. Gentlemen, my heart is in this
double celebration, and I offer you a sentiment, which, coming directly
from my own bosom, will find its response in yours: President Jackson:
may the evening of his days be as tranquil and as happy for himself as
their meridian has been resplendent, glorious, and beneficent for his
country.”
Such was the partisan madness of this short session that a resolution,
offered and urged by Preston, the Whig, for the purchase of some
pictures for “the President’s house,” was promptly voted down, and
Preston’s efforts to have the vote reconsidered were unavailing. It was
into this madhouse of partisan rancor that the French crisis,
threatening war, involving the world prestige of the Republic, had been
thrown by Jackson; and we shall now note how nearly partisanship came to
compromising and weakening the Nation in the face of a foreign
antagonist.