CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE
The man against whom these powerful leaders were directing all their
energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and
indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in
New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange
inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to
power by means of a combination of South and West, Jackson had found his
followers divided and somewhat unmanageable. Half the members of his
Cabinet, S. D. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury; John Branch, Secretary
of the Navy; and John M. Berrien, Attorney-General, looked to Calhoun as
their chief, while the others, Martin Van Buren; Secretary of State,
John H. Eaton, Secretary of War, and William T. Barry, the
Postmaster-General, distrusted their colleagues and clung to the
President. It was natural, therefore, that cabinet meetings should be
embarrassing and that a nondescript group of clerks and newspaper
editors, William B. Lewis, Frank P. Blair, and Amos Kendall, all from
the West, should become a sort of closet cabinet with whom Jackson
should take council.
Moreover, Jackson increased his difficulties by gratifying the Western
demand that a clean sweep in the offices should be made. New and untried
men and hot-headed partisans were placed in the thousands of vacancies
created by removals. Such a change in the civil and subordinate offices
of the Government had never before been made, and Washington society,
which always takes a hearty interest in the offices, was not slow to
manifest its contempt for "the man of the people" and his "hungry"
followers. But there was still another trouble. Secretary Eaton had
married the daughter of a tavern-keeper; her reputation was unsavory and
notorious. She now proposed to enter Washington social life as a leader,
and Jackson gave her his blessing. The wives of the members of the
Cabinet refused to recognize Mrs. Eaton, and a social war followed, in
which President, preachers to the various local churches, and newspaper
editors had their say. Division in the Cabinet, bitter enmity between
certain leaders of the party, and the greater war between the powerful
industrial and agricultural sections of the country gave every assurance
that a storm was approaching.
To postpone the evil day Jackson resorted to evasions and oracular
utterances on the tariff and the other serious problems in all his
public papers and speeches. But the South pressed every day its
free-trade program; the East demanded at least a continuation of the
measure of protection already accorded to its interests; and the West,
really needing roadways and canals, insisted on the building of these
improvements and on the opening of the public lands to settlement on
easier terms. If the President yielded to any of these groups, his
administration was likely to fail. He naturally sought to shift the
issue and felt the public pulse on the question of a renewal of the
charter of the National Bank, which was not to expire till 1836. This
was looking to the future; but on this subject it was possible to
continue the union of South and West. The first annual message, in which
the Bank was discussed, aroused at once the great financial interests,
and they set in motion influences which speedily isolated the President
and secured to the Bank the enthusiastic support of a Cabinet, divided
on everything else, and of a majority of both houses of Congress.
Instead of preventing a disruption of his party, Jackson had only
hastened the event.
The people of South Carolina, supported as they hoped by most of the
South, pressed through Calhoun, during the winter of 1828-29 and again
in 1829-30, for some assurance that the President would aid them in
their attack upon the protective policy of the Government, threatening
state intervention in case of refusal. The East was no less insistent
that nothing should be done. Congress seemed to be completely
deadlocked. Under these circumstances Senator Foote, of Connecticut,
voicing the fears of his section, introduced December 29, 1829, his
famous resolution which contemplated the discontinuance of the federal
land sales and the substantial curbing of the growing West. It was a
blow at Benton and Jackson which was at once accepted by all the West as
a challenge. The representatives of all three sections were deeply
interested. Benton took the lead in the discussion which followed, and
he urged once more his preëmption and graduation bills. In the former
he would guarantee the prior claims of squatters on lands they had
already unlawfully taken up; in the latter he meant to regulate the
price of public lands according to quality and location. In both the
object was to make the way of the pioneer easy; and the West supported
him solidly. Whether the South would keep its tacit pledges in the face
of Jackson's non-committal attitude on the tariff was the query of all
until Hayne, an intimate friend of Calhoun and the recognized spokesman
of his section, arose on January 19, 1830, and took the strongest ground
on behalf of Benton and the West, and attacked the East for its
long-continued resistance to westward expansion. The next day Webster
made reply, and the debate between the two representative men continued
to the end of the month. The importance to the present-day reader of
this discussion consists in the revelation of the directly opposing and
hostile attitudes of South and East on the great problems then before
the country: (1) the South would support the West in its policy of easy
lands and rapid development; the East would resist that policy; (2) the
East would appeal to the nationalist sentiment of the interior and the
West on behalf of its program of protection to industry, while the South
would resist that program even to the extent of declaring national
tariff laws null and void. Hayne and Benton showed in their speeches the
substantial solidarity of the alliance of South and West. Webster
undertook to break that alliance by his powerful appeal to the feelings
of Western men who loved the Union, which the New Englander sought to
show to be in especial danger. What was really on trial was the American
system, the Tariff of 1828. It was a serious national crisis, as Calhoun
wrote in May following: "The times are perilous beyond any that I have
ever witnessed; all the great interests of the country are coming into
conflict." The protectionists thought they must control the country or
the Union would be worth little to them; the Southern free traders
insisted upon the mastery of the Government or else they would have a
quiet dissolution of the Confederation; while the Western men must have
freer control of the public lands and more immigrants or their sturdy
nationalism would rapidly disappear.
Having failed for the moment to rally the leaders of his disintegrating
party on the Bank issue, Jackson and his intimate advisers decided that
above all things it was necessary for the old hero to stand again for
the Presidency in the next election. Van Buren, who had been steadily
growing in the estimation of Jackson, while Calhoun had been losing
ground, was the foremost to urge a second term despite the understanding
and the public promises that Jackson was to hold office only one term.
Amos Kendall and William B. Lewis supported his view heartily, fearing
as they did that Henry Clay would otherwise be the next President. At
the dinner on Jefferson Day, April 13, 1830, for which elaborate
preparations had been made, the President chose to give expression to
more decided opinions than had been customary during his first year in
office. His toast, "The Union, it must be preserved," was akin to the
utterances of Webster in the debate with Hayne. It was plain to the
South that he would not longer support their contentions, that he would
appeal to the same nationalist sentiment which had been shown to exist
by the speeches of the great New England orator. The cause of the
Southern radicals was lost in so far as it depended on the President,
and, moreover, the arrangement whereby Calhoun was to succeed Jackson
was dissolved. South Carolina, so long a leader in public life, was
isolated.
Meanwhile the friends of Clay and the devotees of the tariff had
prepared an internal improvements measure which was drawn so that the
appropriation would apply to purposes wholly within the State of
Kentucky. The Maysville Road Bill proposed to build a national highway
from Maysville on the Ohio to Lexington, Clay's home, and it was drawn
in order to compel the President to exercise his right of veto on a
proposition in which the West was interested, and thus break down his
popularity in that region. The proposed law came to him in May. Van
Buren had been sounding public opinion in the Middle States, and with
some hesitation he advised a veto. The President was of the same mind,
and a vigorous veto message was sent to Congress. To the dismay of the
tariff men, the country approved heartily, the West giving every
evidence of its continued faith in the Executive. The atmosphere in
Washington began to clear up; it was plain that a reorganization of the
Cabinet must ensue, and that the lower South, as yet in sympathy with
the stern anti-tariff policy of Calhoun, must be won away from the
South Carolinian. It seemed that the West would support the President
even if it were called upon to give up something that was held to be
very important.
In due time William B. Lewis produced a letter from William H. Crawford
which showed, what Jackson must have known since the summer of 1828,
that Calhoun had not been the President's defender in 1818, when he was
threatened with court-martial for his conduct during the Seminole War.
Jackson now made an issue of this, and welcomed a controversy with the
man who had done most to elevate him to the Presidency. Mrs. Eaton also
became a more important character, and the attitude of the families of
other members of the Cabinet were made subjects of official discussion
and displeasure. Calhoun's friends were commanded to receive her into
their circle or take the consequences. When these refused, it seemed
that this tempest in a teapot was about to become a grave matter of
state. None knew better than Jackson and Calhoun that other and deeper
causes were forcing the disruption of the party of 1828, the alliance
which had driven Adams and Clay from office.
Convinced that Van Buren had been the marplot of the Administration,
Calhoun attacked him publicly, and all the world saw what some astute
minds had long seen, that the two wings of the party in power were
irreconcilable enemies. Congress adjourned in March, 1831, and in April
the President demanded the resignations of all the friends of the
Vice-President in the Cabinet. Calhoun and Hayne returned sadly to
their constituents to advise actual resistance to the tariff, since both
the President--"an ungrateful son of Carolina"--and Congress had, during
two years, refused all relief to the suffering planters. Not one of the
problems, the solution of which had been the purpose of Jackson's
election, had been settled or seriously attacked. The East had defeated
Benton's land program; the President had refused to take up the tariff;
and internal improvements as a national policy had only been toyed with
in the Maysville Bill. As Calhoun had said, all the great interests of
the country had come into conflict, and even the most resolute of men
knew not how to proceed.
But Jackson gathered about him a new official family who were supposed
to owe no double allegiance. Edward Livingston, of Louisiana,
protectionist, became Secretary of State in place of Van Buren, who had
resigned for appearance' sake; Louis McLane, of Delaware, a conservative
party leader of protectionist views, was made Secretary of the Treasury
while Roger B. Taney, a former Federalist of Maryland, became
Attorney-General. Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, was the only distinctly
Western man in this new body. Jackson seems to have expected to make the
Bank question the great issue between his party and that of Clay, but
the new Cabinet soon proved as strongly pro-Bank as the old one had
been, and he must still rely on the "kitchen council" for support in
that direction.
The initiative in the great sectional struggle which all foresaw was
left to South Carolina, but the men of that planter Commonwealth refused
to throw discretion to the winds. The price of cotton was falling and
the tribute to the manufacturer under the law of 1828 seemed to be more
burdensome than ever; yet it might be well to try Congress again. The
new Congress, which would assemble in December, 1831, might give relief.
This was Calhoun's last recourse; if it failed nullification must
follow.
When the next Congress assembled, Clay was in the Senate and John Quincy
Adams, his former ally, was just beginning his long career as a member
of the House. Webster and the other New England tariff advocates were
there, and as unbending as the Southerners themselves. The President
sent in a non-committal message on the burning question, and even on his
favorite Bank problem he showed signs of yielding. Clay took the message
as preliminary to surrender, and his proverbial boldness rapidly grew to
arrogance. On the tariff, on the Bank, and on the proposed nullification
problems, he would give the deciding word and that word was defiance.
When, therefore, the cotton and tobacco interests presented once more
their demand for immediate downward revision of the tariff, Clay and his
more ardent protectionists brushed aside the cautious Adams and defied
"the South, the Democratic party, and the Devil." The revision of the
tariff which was made in 1832 was no revision, save in a few unimportant
schedules in which the planters were not interested; but the vote on
this measure showed a curious combination of the Jackson and the Clay
politicians in the West and considerable indifference in New
England, as the accompanying map shows. Having challenged Calhoun to do
his worst, Clay now pressed upon Jackson the question of renewing the
Bank charter. Under his instructions the president of the Bank, Nicholas
Biddle, a very able man, hitherto inclining to settle matters with
Jackson and his friendly advisers, offered a memorial for a re-charter.
That is, the Bank men thought the President of the United States was
losing ground and they would take their chances with the party of the
future. The Maysville veto was thought to have weakened Jackson; he had
lost the support of Calhoun and had been compelled to reorganize his
Cabinet; on the tariff he had no opinions, and he had done nothing to
weld to him the Westerners. It seemed a very simple matter, with the
East behind the brilliant Kentucky leader, to make the American System
the law of the land and to drive the Goths and Vandals from the capital.
[Illustration: The Vote in the House of Representatives on the Tariff of
1832, In Eastern and Western States]
Mr. Clay had been nominated for the Presidency by an enthusiastic
convention of his followers in December, 1831; and his friend William
Wirt had also been nominated three months earlier by the Anti-Masons,
who, it was supposed, would draw supporters from the Democrats,
especially in Virginia, where Jackson had never won the approval of the
ablest leaders. Never did the outlook of a political party seem so
bright as when the plans of the tariff and Bank men were being laid in
the spring of 1832. John Sargent, one of the directors of the Bank and
brother-in-law of Henry A. Wise, a shrewd politician of Virginia, was
made candidate for the Vice-Presidency; a large majority of the Senate
was committed to the renewal of the charter,--even the Calhoun men
agreed as to this,--and in the House John Quincy Adams and George
McDuffie led a decided majority in the same direction. All the
industrial forces of the country were enlisted and well organized. If
there was any doubt that the old hero would be reëlected, there was none
that the Bank and the tariff groups would retain control of Congress.
If Jackson was less confident than his opponents, he was not afraid. The
effects of his "Union, it-must-be-preserved" speech were becoming
evident; he gradually came to stand for the budding nationality among
the self-seeking groups who would have their way or break up the
Confederation. With the large majority of the up-country of the Middle
States and South in favor of a tariff, even a high tariff, he promptly
accepted the proposed revision. Already nominated by many of the States,
his friends had no difficulty in securing him a unanimous renomination
from the Democratic National Convention which met in Baltimore late in
May, 1832. Meanwhile Van Buren had been appointed Minister to England.
After reaching his post, the Senate, to gratify Calhoun as well as
strike at the President, rejected the nomination. The humiliated
minister was now nominated Vice-President and plainly marked by Jackson
as his successor.
When the votes of both houses were shown to be decidedly for a
continuation of the protective system as enacted in 1828, Calhoun and
the planter party gave every assurance that South Carolina, at least,
would resist. The President gave out no indications of what his attitude
would be, but the extreme Southerners could not expect that Jackson
would support their contentions; nor could they think Clay, if elected,
would yield the very base of the system on which he proposed to stand as
President. But as the tariff bill came to its final reading, it was seen
that even New England hesitated, and many voted against the measure;
many districts of the Southern up-country gave their votes for the
proposed law. In the West most men favored the bill. The tariff was,
therefore, a local issue, and the test must come on the Bank. The bill
for a re-charter of the National Bank reached the President on July 4.
It was considered most carefully, and doubtless the desperate situation
of the Administration was duly canvassed. With every evidence of a
strong Southern secession from his party, with Clay and Webster leading
the solid ranks of the East, it did seem that Jackson would fail if he
vetoed the bill passed by great majorities in both Senate and House.
On July 10 the veto message went to Congress. Its contention about the
constitutionality of the Bank was not important, for it was not a
question of what was constitutional, but of sheer power. The majority of
the votes in the coming election was what each side sought. Jackson
appealed to the West and South, urging that the Bank was a sectional
institution constantly drawing money to the big cities of the East, or
worse still, sending it to England; that it was a monopoly which had
given millions of the people's money to a few men, and that it was then
proposed to continue that monopoly. So certain were Clay and Biddle that
they would defeat the President that they circulated at the expense of
the Bank thirty thousand copies of this remarkable document. Biddle
declared that Jackson was like "a chained panther, biting the bars of
his cage." Webster and John Quincy Adams, taking counsel of their hopes,
declared that the old man in the White House was in his dotage and at
the end of his career.
A remarkable campaign ensued. While South Carolina prepared to put into
effect its remedy of state intervention, the West and the lower South
united, as in 1828, against the East. The gubernatorial contest in
Kentucky, which came in August, showed that Clay had not regained his
former hold on that State. From midsummer to November every effort was
made to break the power of Jackson, but to no avail. Without the planter
support of the older South the President proved stronger than he had
been four years before with it; the plain people were now more of a unit
than they had ever been before, though many of their number still voted
for the industrial or planter interests. The outcome surprised all
parties. Jackson received 219 electoral votes, while Clay received only
49. The popular majority over all other candidates, including William
Wirt and John Floyd, for whom the Calhoun party of South Carolina cast
its vote, was more than 125,000. No President has since received such a
large proportion of the suffrages of the people. Only one Western State,
Kentucky, supported Henry Clay; while Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York
gave Jackson larger majorities than ever. The alliance of the West and
the up-country held together in spite of the untoward circumstances.
The significance of the election was that the President could rely upon
the people in a fight with Congress; it was the first appeal to the
country made over the heads of the national legislature. To this
triumphant President, Calhoun and his ardent nullifiers must refer their
case; the Bank would also have to reckon with a much stronger man than
its spokesmen had contemplated.
Without awaiting the results of the election, Calhoun, Hayne, and their
allies called South Carolina into special convention to consider the
state of the Union. The nullification program was carried by safe
majorities, despite the most strenuous resistance on the part of the
minority who called themselves Unionists. South Carolina now formally
declared the tariff laws of the United States suspended after February
1, 1833, unless the Federal Government gave some relief; and it was
further declared that in case no relief were accorded, and the national
authority should be enforced within the boundaries of their State, war
would immediately ensue. The new governor, James Hamilton, and the
legislature, which might be called into extra session at any time, were
authorized to call out the militia, purchase arms, and organize for the
conflict.
Meanwhile Jackson had been preparing for the contest in the Southwest.
In 1827-28 all the legislatures of that region had declared the
protective tariff unconstitutional and some had threatened secession.
But after the election of 1828 these same legislatures refused to concur
in the doctrines of nullification which South Carolina submitted to
them. The situation had changed. John Quincy Adams, the New Englander,
was President in 1828; Andrew Jackson, the Westerner and the most
popular man in the country, was at the head of the Union in 1832.
Besides, Jackson was already moving the Indians from the cotton lands,
going so far as to acquiesce in the flagrant nullification of the
federal law by the Georgia governor and legislature. The decision of the
Supreme Court in favor of the Cherokees, who refused to surrender their
lands, was publicly flouted by the President. It was plain that the
planters of the Southwest would get what they wanted even if they had to
violate treaties of the Federal Government. They refused to sustain
South Carolina. Had not the President carried every county in Alabama
and Mississippi in the recent election?
And in the older South the anti-national feeling had wonderfully cooled
since 1828. North Carolina reversed her attitude; Tennessee would not
consider Calhoun's plan of bringing the Union to terms. In Virginia the
tobacco counties of the Piedmont section united with the tidewater
counties and made a show of supporting South Carolina. New England men
who had as recently as 1820 declared the protective system
unconstitutional had no thought of maintaining such a doctrine when
advocated by Calhoun.
Thus, instead of a solid group of planter States, South Carolina's
proposed national referendum met with almost unanimous opposition.
Jackson had undermined the party of Calhoun, which at the time of the
break-up of the Cabinet in 1831 seemed more powerful in the South than
any other. Jackson and Van Buren had proved to be master politicians,
and when Congress met for the short session in December, 1832, it was
plain that Calhoun was practically alone and that the President would
have to deal with only one recalcitrant State.
From this vantage-ground, Jackson issued his proclamation of December
10, in which he plainly told South Carolina that the federal laws would
be enforced at the point of the bayonet, and that, furthermore, the
Union was an indissoluble nation, as Webster and himself had declared;
and he at the same time urged upon Congress the so-called "Force Bill,"
granting him full power to punish all infractions of the national
revenue laws. And now for the first time he expressed his real view that
the tariff was unjust. The Verplanck Bill to reduce the tariff to a
twenty-five per cent basis was the President's confession that Calhoun
had been right. The two measures were pressed by the Administration, the
one strongly national and supported by a strong majority, the other
strongly Jacksonian and opposed by most of the leaders who desired to
see Calhoun humiliated. It seemed almost certain, early in 1833, that
this program would be carried out to the letter.
Such a victory for the Union forces and especially for Jackson was too
much for the opposition. Henry Clay stopped in Philadelphia on his way
to Washington and held a conference there with the industrial leaders of
the Middle States. He went on to the capital with a plan of his own. Its
purpose was to keep the control of things in the hands of the friends of
the American System and to deprive the President of the prestige of
settling the tariff and the nullification problems at the same time. He
held a _carte blanche_ from the leading protected interests to do what
he thought best. Webster and John Quincy Adams hesitated. They urged the
passage of the "Force Bill" at once; but hoped to defeat the Verplanck
measure, its counterpart. Clay made overtures to Calhoun, and Washington
was surprised to see the two great antagonists associating and planning
together, apparently in concert as of old when they forced the War of
1812 upon an unwilling President.
The "Force Bill" was to be accepted by the Calhoun men; but a new and
final tariff measure was to take the place of the one upon which Jackson
had set his heart. The famous compromise law of 1833 was the result.
This gave the planters a reduction to twenty per cent, a lower rate than
Jackson had offered, but the reductions were to be made gradually during
a period of ten years, thus giving time for the industrial men to
readjust their affairs without great losses. There was one joker in the
scheme which the Southerners seem to have winked at: that which exempted
the wool-growers of the Middle States and the West from the reductions.
The author of the American System now hotly urged the men who a year
ago would defy the "South, the Democratic party, and the Devil" to undo
all their work. On March 1, three days before the close of the session,
both the President's "Force Bill" and Clay's compromise tariff passed.
Meanwhile South Carolina, acting on Calhoun's advice, had postponed the
enforcement of her nullifying ordinance, and now, as Congress adjourned,
the former Vice-President, ill and greatly discouraged, hurried by rapid
stages to Columbia to make sure that the crisis should be brought to a
peaceful close. The convention was reassembled; an embassy from Virginia
was on the ground urging peace, and, as was natural, the ordinance was
repealed. The planters had really won a victory and the rising
industrial groups understood this both at the time and later, when they
clamored for the restoration of their privileges. The cotton and tobacco
men, producing the larger part of the national exports, had shown their
strength. Their opponents, the manufacturers and the bankers of the
East, with a much greater income, were as yet not so strong as the
planters. The West and the South were their markets, and concessions
must be made; the Union was to them essential, while to the South,
selling its huge crops in European markets, it was less important. As
yet the West, with its hero the master in Washington, had obtained none
of the reforms for which it had so long striven. Benton and his friends
looked to the next Congress for results. Would they be disappointed?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
_The Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1900), vol. _II_, gives
Jackson's official statements. Bassett's and Parton's biographies,
already mentioned, are still very serviceable. There is no full
biography of Clay, but C. Colton's _The Private Life of Henry Clay_
contains some of Clay's letters. Carl Schurz's _Henry Clay_ and T. H.
Clay's _Henry Clay_, already noted, offer some good information. The
best source for Calhoun is J. F. Jameson's _The Correspondence of John
C. Calhoun_ (1899). G. Hunt's _Life of Calhoun_ (1908), in _American
Crises_ series, is excellent, while D. F. Houston's _Critical Study of
Nullification_, already referred to, and W. E. Dodd's _Calhoun_, in
_Statesmen of the Old South_ (1911), offer still further information as
to Calhoun and nullification. C. H. Van Tyne's _Letters of Daniel
Webster_ (1902) supplies information about Webster which is lacking in
the older _Works_ by Everett (1851) or F. Webster (1857). H. C. Lodge's
_Daniel Webster_, in _American Statesmen_ series and J. B. McMaster's
_Daniel Webster_ (1902) are the standard biographies. Thomas H. Benton
has told his own story in his _Thirty Years' View_ (1854), though
Roosevelt's _Thomas Hart Benton_, in the _American Statesmen_, and W. M.
Meigs's _Thomas Hart Benton_, in the _American Crises_ series, are good
brief portraits. William McDonald's _The Jacksonian Democracy_ (1906),
in the _American Nation_ series, is an excellent general survey, while
E. Stanwood's _American Tariff Controversies_ (1903) is the best account
of the tariff disputes.