JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE BANK.
If the struggle with the Nullifiers showed Benton at his best, in the
conflict with the Bank he exhibited certain qualities which hardly place
him in so favorable a light. Jackson's attack upon the Bank was a move
undertaken mainly on his own responsibility, and one which, at first,
most of his prominent friends were alarmed to see him undertake. Benton
alone supported him from the beginning. Captain and lieutenant alike
intensely appreciated the joy of battle; they cared for a fight because
it was a fight, and the certainty of a struggle, such as would have
daunted weaker or more timid men, simply offered to them an additional
inducement to follow out the course they had planned. Benton's
thorough-going support was invaluable to Jackson. The president sorely
needed a friend in the Senate who would uphold him through thick and
thin, and who yet commanded the respect of all his opponents by his
strength, ability, and courage. To be sure, Benton's knowledge of
financial economics was not always profound; but, on the other hand, a
thorough mastery of the laws of finance would have been, in this fight,
a very serious disadvantage to any champion of Jackson.
The rights and wrongs of this matter have been worn threadbare in
countless discussions. For much of the hostility of Jackson and Benton
towards the Bank, there were excellent grounds; but many of their
actions were wholly indefensible and very harmful in their results to
the country. An assault upon what Benton called "the money power" is apt
to be popular in a democratic republic, partly on account of the vague
fear with which the poorer and more ignorant voters regard a powerful
institution, whose working they do not understand, and partly on account
of the jealousy they feel towards those who are better off than
themselves. When these feelings are appealed to by men who are intensely
in earnest, and who are themselves convinced of the justice and wisdom
of their course, they become very formidable factors in any political
contest.
The struggle first became important when the question of the re-charter
of the Bank was raised, towards the end of Jackson's first term, the
present charter still having three years to run. This charter had in it
many grave faults; and there might well be a question as to whether it
should be renewed. The Bank itself, beyond doubt, possessed enormous
power; too much power for its own or outsiders' good. Its president,
Biddle, was a man of some ability, but conceited to the last degree,
untruthful, and to a certain extent unscrupulous in the use he made of
the political influence of the great moneyed institution over which he
presided. Some of the financial theories on which he managed the Bank
were wrong; yet, on the whole, it was well conducted, and under its care
the monetary condition of the country was quiet and good, infinitely
better than it had been before, or than, under the auspices of the
Jacksonian Democracy, it afterwards became.
The two great reasons for Jackson's success throughout his political
career were to be found in the strength of the feeling in his favor
among the poorer and least educated classes of voters, and in the ardent
support given him by the low politicians, who, by playing on his
prejudices and passions, moulded him to their wishes, and who organized
and perfected in their own and his interests a great political machine,
founded on the "spoils system"; and both the Jacksonian rank and file
and the Jacksonian politicians soon agreed heartily in their opposition
to the Bank. Jackson and Benton opposed it for the same reasons that the
bulk of their followers did; that is to say, partly from honest and
ignorant prejudice and partly from a well-founded feeling of distrust as
to some of its actions. The mass of their fellow party-leaders and
henchmen assailed it with the cry that it was exerting its influence to
debauch politics, while at the same time they really sought to use it as
a power in politics on their own side.
Jackson, in his first annual message in 1829, had hinted that he was
opposed to the re-charter of the Bank, then a question of the future and
not to arise for four or five years. At the same time he had called in
question the constitutionality and expediency of the Bank's existence,
and had criticised as vicious its currency system. The matter of
constitutionality had been already decided by the Supreme Court, the
proper tribunal, and was, and had been for years, an accepted fact; it
was an absurdity to call it in question. As regards the matter of
expediency, certainly the Jacksonians failed signally to put anything
better in its place. Yet it was undeniable that there were grave defects
in the currency system.
The president's message roused but little interest, and what little it
did rouse was among the Bank's friends. At once these began to prepare
the way for the re-charter by an active and extensive agitation in its
favor. The main bank was at Philadelphia, but it had branches
everywhere, and naturally each branch bank was a centre of opposition to
the president's proposed policy. As the friends of the Bank were greatly
interested, and as the matter did not immediately concern those who
afterwards became its foes, the former, for the time, had it all their
own way, and the drift of public opinion seemed to be strongly in its
favor.
Benton was almost the only public man of prominence who tried to stem
this tide from the beginning. Jackson's own party associates were
originally largely against him, and so he stood all the more in need of
the vigorous support which he received from the Missouri senator.
Indeed, it would be unfair in the matter of the attack on the Bank to
call Benton Jackson's follower; he might with more propriety be called
the leader in the assault, although of course he could accomplish little
compared with what was done by the great popular idol. He had always
been hostile to the Bank, largely as a matter of Jeffersonian tradition,
and he had shown his hostility by resolutions introduced in the Senate
before Jackson was elected president.
Early in 1831 he asked leave to introduce a resolution against the
re-charter of the Bank; his purpose being merely to give formal notice
of war against it, and to attempt to stir up a current of feeling
counter to that which then seemed to be generally prevailing in its
favor. In his speech he carefully avoided laying stress upon any such
abstract point as that of constitutionality, and dwelt instead upon the
questions that would affect the popular mind; assailing the Bank "as
having too much power over the people and the government, over business
and politics, and as too much disposed to exercise that power to the
prejudice of the freedom and equality which should prevail in a
republic, to be allowed to exist in our country." The force of such an
argument in a popular election will be acknowledged by all practical
politicians. But, although Benton probably believed what he said, or at
any rate most of it, he certainly ought not to have opened the
discussion of a great financial measure with a demagogic appeal to caste
prejudices. He wished to substitute a gold currency in the place of the
existing bank-notes, and was not disturbed at all as to how he would
supply the place of the Bank, saying: "I am willing to see the charter
expire, without providing any substitute for the present Bank. I am
willing to see the currency of the federal government left to the hard
money mentioned and intended in the Constitution; ... every species of
paper might be left to the state authorities, unrecognized by the
federal government!" Of the beauties of such a system as the last the
country later on received practical demonstration. Some of his
utterances, however, could be commended to the friends of greenbacks and
of dishonest money even at the present day, as when he says: "Gold and
silver are the best currency for a republic; it suits the men of middle
property and the working people best; and if I was going to establish a
workingman's party it should be on the basis of hard money--a hard-money
party against a paper party." The Bank was in Philadelphia; much of the
stock was held in the East, and a good deal was held abroad, which gave
Benton a chance to play on sectional feelings, as follows: "To whom is
all the power granted? To a company of private individuals, many of them
foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a remote and narrow corner
of the Union, unconnected by any sympathy with the fertile regions of
the Great Valley, in which the natural power of this Union--the power of
numbers--will be found to reside long before the renewed term of a
second charter would expire." Among the other sentences occurs the
following bit of pure demagogic pyrotechnics: "It [the Bank] tends to
aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and paupers; and to deepen and widen the
gulf which separates Dives from Lazarus. A great moneyed power is
favorable to great capitalists, for it is the principle of money to
favor money. It is unfavorable to small capitalists, for it is the
principle of money to eschew the needy and unfortunate. It is injurious
to the laboring classes." Altogether it was not a speech to be proud of.
The Senate refused permission to introduce the resolution by the close
vote of twenty-three to twenty.
Benton lived only a generation after that one which had itself
experienced oppression from a king, from an aristocratic legislature and
from a foreign power; and so his rant about the undue influence of
foreigners in our governmental affairs, and his declamation over the
purely supposititious powers that were presumed to be conspiring against
the welfare of the poorer classes probably more nearly expressed his
real feelings than would be the case with the similar utterances of any
leading statesman nowadays. He was an enthusiastic believer in the
extreme Jeffersonian doctrinaire views as to the will of the majority
being always right, and as to the moral perfection of the average
voter. Like his fellow-statesmen he failed to see the curious absurdity
of supporting black slavery, and yet claiming universal suffrage for
whites as a divine right, not as a mere matter of expediency resulting
on the whole better than any other method. He had not learned that the
majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority
than, under a different system, the latter would have to oppress the
former; and that, if there is a moral principle at stake, the saying
that the voice of the people is the voice of God may be quite as untrue,
and do quite as much mischief, as the old theory of the divine right of
kings. The distinguishing feature of our American governmental system is
the freedom of the individual; it is quite as important to prevent his
being oppressed by many men as it is to save him from the tyranny of
one.
This speech on the re-charter showed a great deal of wide reading and
much information; but a good part of it was sheer declamation, in the
turgid, pompous style that Benton, as well as a great many other
American public speakers, was apt to mistake for genuine oratory. His
subsequent speech on the currency, however, was much better. This was
likewise delivered on the occasion of asking leave to present a joint
resolution, which leave was refused. The branch draft system was the
object of the assault. These branch drafts were for even sums of small
denomination, circulating like bank-notes; they were drawn on the parent
bank at Philadelphia to the order of some officer of the branch bank and
were indorsed by the latter to bearer. Thus paper was issued at one
place which was payable at another and a distant place; and among other
results there ensued a constant inflation of credit. They were very
mischievous in their workings; they had none of the marks of convertible
bank-notes or money, and so long as credit was active there could be no
check on the inflation of the currency by them. Payment could be
voluntarily made at the branch banks whence issued, but if it was
refused the owner had only the right to go to Philadelphia and sue the
directors there. Most of these drafts were issued at the most remote and
inaccessible branches, the payment of them being, therefore, much
delayed by distance and difficulty; nor were the directors liable for
excessive issues. They constituted the bulk of all the paper seen in
circulation; they were supposed to be equivalent to money, but being
bills of exchange they were merely negotiable instruments; they did not
have the properties of bank-notes, which are constantly and directly
interchangeable with money. In their issue Biddle had laid himself open
to attack; and in defending them he certainly did not always speak the
truth, willfully concealing or coloring facts. Moreover, his
self-satisfaction and the foolish pride in his own power, which he could
not conceal, led him into making imprudent boasts as to the great power
the Bank could exercise over other local banks, and over the general
prosperity of the country, while dilating upon its good conduct in not
using this power to the disadvantage of the public. All this was playing
into Benton's hands. He showed some of the evils of the branch draft
system, although apparently not seeing others that were quite as
important. He attacked the Bank for some real and many imaginary
wrongdoings; and quoted Biddle himself as an authority for the existence
of powers dangerous to the welfare of the state.
The advocates of the Bank were still in the majority in both houses of
Congress, and soon began preparations for pushing through a bill for the
re-charter. The issue began to become political. Webster, Clay, and most
of the other anti-administration men were for the Bank; and so when the
convention of the National Republicans, who soon afterwards definitely
assumed the name of Whigs, took place, they declared heartily in its
favor, and nominated for the presidency its most enthusiastic
supporter, Henry Clay. The Bank itself unquestionably preferred not to
be dragged into politics; but Clay, thinking he saw a chance for a
successful stroke, fastened upon it, and the convention that nominated
him made the fight against Jackson on the ground that he was hostile to
the Bank. Even had this not already been the case no more certain method
of insuring his hostility could have been adopted.
Still, however, many of Jackson's supporters were also advocates of
re-charter; and the bill for that purpose commanded the majority in
Congress. Benton took the lead in organizing the opposition, not with
the hope of preventing its passage, but "to attack incessantly, assail
at all points, display the evil of the institution, rouse the people,
and prepare them to sustain the veto." In other words, he was preparing
for an appeal to the people, and working to secure an anti-Bank majority
in the next Congress. He instigated and prepared the investigation into
the affairs of the Bank, which was made in the House, and he led the
harassing parliamentary warfare carried on against the re-chartering
bill in the Senate. He himself seems to have superintended the
preparation of the charges which were investigated by the House. A great
flurry was made over them, Benton and all his friends claiming that
they were fully substantiated; but the only real point scored was that
against the branch drafts. Benton, with the majority of the committee of
investigation, had the loosest ideas as to what a bank ought to do, loud
though they were in denunciation of what this particular Bank was
alleged to have done.
Webster made the great argument in favor of the re-charter bill. Benton
took the lead in opposition, stating, what was probably true,--that the
bill was brought up so long before the charter expired for political
reasons, and criticising it as premature; a criticism unfortunately
applicable with even greater force to Jackson's message. His speech was
largely mere talking against time, and he wandered widely from the
subject. Among other things he invoked the aid of the principle of
states'-rights, because the Bank then had power to establish branches in
any state, whether the latter liked it or not, and free from state
taxation. He also appealed to the Western members as such, insisting
that the Bank discriminated against their section of the country in
favor of the East; the facts being that the shrewdness and commercial
morality of the Northeast, particularly of New England, saved them from
the evils brought on the Westerners by the foolishness with which they
abused their credit and the laxness with which they looked on monetary
obligations. But in spite of all that Benton could do the bill passed
both houses, the Senate voting in its favor by twenty-eight ayes against
twenty nays.
Jackson, who never feared anything, and was more than ready to accept
the fight which was in some measure forced on him, yet which in some
degree he had courted, promptly vetoed the bill in a message which
stated some truths forcibly and fearlessly, which developed some very
queer constitutional and financial theories, and which contained a
number of absurdities, evidently put in, not for the benefit of the
Senate, but to influence voters at the coming presidential election. The
leaders of the opposition felt obliged to make a show of trying to pass
the bill over the veto in order to get a chance to answer Jackson.
Webster again opened the argument. Clay made the fiercest onslaught,
assailing the president personally, besides attacking the veto power,
and trying to discredit its use. But the presidential power of veto is
among the best features of our government, and Benton had no difficulty
in making a good defense of it; although many of the arguments adduced
by him in its favor were entirely unsound, being based on the wholly
groundless assumption that the function of the president corresponded
to that of the ancient Roman tribune of the people, and was supposed to
be exercised in the interests of the people to control the
legislature--thus willfully overlooking the fact that the legislature
also was elected by the people. When on his ultra-democratic hobby
Benton always rode very loose in the saddle, and with little knowledge
of where he was going. Clay and Benton alike drew all sorts of analogies
between the state of affairs in the United States and that formerly
prevailing in France, England, and above all in the much-suffering
republics of antiquity. Benton insisted that the Bank had wickedly
persuaded the West to get in debt to it so as to have that section in
its power, and that the Western debt had been created with a view to
political engineering; the fact being that the Westerners had run into
debt purely by their own fault, and that the Bank itself was seriously
alarmed at the condition of its Western branches. The currency being in
much worse shape in the West than in the Northeast, gold and silver
naturally moved towards the latter place; and this result of their own
shortcomings was again held up as a grievance of the Westerners against
the Bank. He also read a severe lecture on the interests of party
discipline to the Democrats who had voted for the re-charter, assuring
them that they could not continue to be both for the Bank and for
Jackson. The Jacksonian Democracy, nominally the party of the multitude,
was in reality the nearest approach the United States has ever seen to
the "one man power;" and to break with Jackson was to break with the
Democratic party. The alternative of expulsion or of turning a
somersault being thus plainly presented to the recalcitrant members,
they for the most part chose the latter, and performed the required feat
of legislative acrobatics with the most unobtrusive and submissive
meekness. The debate concluded with a sharp and undignified interchange
of personalities between the Missouri and Kentucky senators, Clay giving
Benton the lie direct, and the latter retorting in kind. Each side, of
course, predicted the utter ruin of the country, if the other prevailed.
Benton said that, if the Bank conquered, the result would be the
establishment of an oligarchy, and then of a monarchy, and finally the
death of the Republic by corruption. Webster stated as his belief that,
if the sentiments of the veto message received general approbation, the
Constitution could not possibly survive its fiftieth year. Webster,
however, in that debate, showed to good advantage. Benton was no match
for him, either as a thinker or as a speaker; but with the real leader
of the Whig party, Henry Clay, he never had much cause to fear
comparison.
All the state banks were of course rabidly in favor of Jackson; and the
presidential election of 1832 was largely fought on the bank issue. In
Pennsylvania, however, the feeling for the Bank was only less strong
than that for Jackson; and accordingly that Boeotian community sapiently
cast its electoral votes for the latter, while instructing its senators
and representatives to support the former. But the complete and hopeless
defeat of Clay by Jackson sealed the fate of the Bank. Jackson was not
even content to let it die naturally by the lapse of its charter. His
attitude towards it so far had been one for which much could be said;
indeed, very good grounds can be shown for thinking his veto proper. But
of the impropriety of his next step there could be no possible question.
Congress had passed a resolution declaring its belief in the safety of
the United States deposits in the Bank; but the president, in the summer
of 1833, removed these deposits and placed them in certain state banks.
He experienced some difficulty in getting a secretary of the treasury
who would take such a step; finally he found one in Taney.
The Bank memorialized Congress at once; and the anti-administration
majority in the Senate forthwith took up the quarrel. They first
rejected Jackson's nominations for bank directors, and then refused to
confirm Taney himself. Two years later Jackson made the latter Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, in which position he lived to do even more
mischief than he had time or opportunity to accomplish as secretary of
the treasury.
Benton was the administration champion in the Senate. Opposed to him
were Webster and Clay, as leaders of the Whigs, supported for the time
being by Calhoun. The feeling of Clay and Calhoun against the president
was bitterly personal, and was repaid by his rancorous hatred. But
Webster, though he was really on most questions even more antagonistic
to the ideas of the Jacksonian school, always remained personally on
good terms with its leaders.
Clay introduced a resolution directing the return of the deposits;
Benton opposed it; it passed by a vote of twenty-eight to eighteen, but
was lost in the House. Clay then introduced a resolution demanding to
know from the president whether the paper alleged to have been published
by his authority as having been read to the cabinet, in relation to the
removal of the deposits, was genuine or not; and, if it was, asking for
a copy. Benton opposed the motion, which nevertheless passed. But the
president refused to accede to the demand. Meanwhile the new departure
in banking, inaugurated by the president, was working badly. One of the
main grounds for removing the deposits was the allegation that they were
used to debauch politics. This was never proved against the old United
States Bank; but under Jackson's administration, which corrupted the
public service in every way, the deposits became fruitful sources of
political reward and bribery.
Clay then introduced his famous resolution censuring the president for
his action, and supported it in a long and fiery speech; a speech which,
like most of Clay's, was received by his followers at the time with
rapture, but in which this generation fails to find the sign of that
remarkable ability with which his own contemporaries credited the great
Kentuckian. He attacked Jackson with fierce invective, painting him as
an unscrupulous tyrant, who was inaugurating a revolution in the
government of the Union. But he was outdone by Calhoun, who, with
continual interludes of complacent references to the good already done
by the Nullifiers, assailed Jackson as one of a band of artful, corrupt,
and cunning politicians, and drew a picture even more lurid than Clay's
of the future of the country, and the danger of impending revolution.
Webster's speeches were more self-contained in tone. Benton was the only
Jacksonian senator who could contend with the great Nullifier and the
two great Whigs; and he replied at length, and in much the same style as
they had spoken.
The Senate was flooded with petitions in favor of the Bank, which were
presented with suitable speeches by the leading Whigs. Benton ridiculed
the exaggerated tone of alarm in which these petitions were drawn, and
declared that the panic, excitement, and suffering existing in business
circles throughout the country were due to the deliberate design of the
Bank, and afforded a fresh proof that the latter was a dangerous power
to the state.
The resolution of censure was at last passed by a vote of twenty-six to
twenty, and Jackson, in a fury, sent in a written protest against it,
which the Senate refused to receive. The excitement all over the country
was intense throughout the struggle. The suffering, which was really
caused by the president's act, but which was attributed by his
supporters to the machinations of the Bank, was very real; even Benton
admitted this, although contending that it was not a natural result of
the policy pursued, but had been artificially excited--or, as he very
clumsily phrased it, "though fictitious and forged, yet the distress
was real, and did an immensity of damage." Neither Jackson nor Benton
yielded an inch to the outside pressure; the latter was the soul of the
fight in Congress, making over thirty speeches during the struggle.
During the debate on receiving the president's protest, Benton gave
notice of his intention at an early day to move to expunge from the
journal the resolution of censure. This idea was entirely his own, and
he gave the notice without having consulted anybody. It was, however, a
motion after Jackson's own heart, as the latter now began to look upon
the affair as purely personal to himself. His party accepted this view
of the matter with a servile alacrity only surpassed by the way in which
its leaders themselves bowed down before the mob; and for the next two
years the state elections were concerned purely with personal politics,
the main point at issue in the choice for every United States senator
being, whether he would or would not support Benton's expunging
resolution. The whole affair seems to us so puerile that we can hardly
understand the importance attached to it by the actors themselves. But
the men who happened at that period to be the leaders in public affairs
were peculiarly and frankly incapable of separating in their minds
matters merely affecting themselves from matters affecting their
constituents. Each firmly believed that if he was not the whole state,
he was at least a most important fraction of it; and this was as plainly
seen in Webster's colossal egoism and the frank vanity of Henry Clay as
in Benton's ponderous self-consciousness and the all-pervading
personality of Andrew Jackson.
Some of the speeches on the expunging resolution show delicious,
although entirely unconscious, humor. If there ever was a wholly
irrational state of mind it was that in which the Jacksonians
perpetually kept themselves. Every canvass on Jackson's behalf was one
of sound, fury, and excitement, of appeal to the passions, prejudices,
and feelings, but never the reason, of the people. A speech for him was
generally a mere frantic denunciation of whatever and whoever was
opposed to him, coupled with fulsome adulation of "the old hero." His
supporters rarely indeed spoke to the cool judgment of the country, for
the very excellent reason that the cool judgment of the country was apt
to be against them. Such being the case, it is amusing to read in
Benton's speech on receiving the protest the following sentences,
apparently uttered in solemn good faith, and with sublime
unconsciousness of irony:--
To such a community [the American body politic]--in an appeal on a
great question of constitutional law to the understandings of such a
people--declamation, passion, epithets, opprobrious language, will
stand for nothing. They will float harmless and unheeded through the
empty air, and strike in vain upon the ear of a sober and
dispassionate tribunal. Indignation, real or affected; wrath,
however hot; fury, however enraged; asseverations, however violent;
denunciation, however furious, will avail nothing. Facts, inexorable
facts, are all that will be attended to; reason, calm and
self-possessed, is all that will be listened to.
The description of the mass of Jacksonian voters as forming "a sober and
dispassionate tribunal" is an artistic touch of fancy quite unique, but
admirably characteristic of Benton, whose statements always rose
vigorously to the necessities of the occasion.
Webster, in an effort to make the best of untoward circumstances,
brought in a bill to re-charter the Bank for a short period, at the same
time doing away with some of the features that were objectionable in the
old charter. This bill might have passed, had it not been opposed by the
extreme Bank men, including Clay and Calhoun. In the course of the
debate over it Benton delivered a very elaborate and carefully studied
speech in favor of hard money and a currency of the precious metals; a
speech which is to this day well worth careful reading. Some of his
financial theories were crude and confused; but on the main question he
was perfectly sound. Both he and Jackson deserve great credit for having
done much to impress the popular mind with the benefit of hard, that is
to say honest, money. Benton was the strongest hard-money man then in
public life, being, indeed, popularly nicknamed "Old Bullion." He
thoroughly appreciated that a metallic currency was of more vital
importance to the laboring men and to men of small capital generally
than to any of the richer classes. A metallic currency is always surer
and safer than a paper currency; where it exists a laboring man
dependent on his wages need fear less than any other member of the
community the evils of bad banking. Benton's idea of the danger to the
masses from "the money power" was exaggerated; but in advocating a sound
gold currency he took the surest way to overcome any possible dangerous
tendency. A craze for "soft," or dishonest, money--a greenback movement,
or one for short weight silver dollars--works more to the disadvantage
of the whole mass of the people than even to that of the capitalists; it
is a move directly in the interests of "the money power," which its
loud-mouthed advocates are ostensibly opposing in the interests of
democracy.
Benton continued his speeches. The panic was now subsiding; there had
not been time for Jackson's ruinous policy of making deposits in
numerous state banks, and thereby encouraging wild inflation of credit,
to bear fruit and, as it afterwards did, involve the whole country in
financial disaster. Therefore Benton was able to exult greatly over the
favorable showing of affairs in the report of the secretary of the
treasury. He also procured the passage of a gold currency law, which,
however, fixed the ratio of value between gold and silver at sixteen to
one; an improper proportion, but one which had prevailed for three
centuries in the Spanish-American countries, from which he copied it. In
consequence of this law gold, long banished, became once more a
circulating medium of exchange.
The Bank of the United States afterwards was turned into the State Bank
of Pennsylvania; it was badly managed and finally became insolvent. The
Jacksonians accepted its downfall as a vindication of their policy; but
in reality it was due to causes not operative at the time of the great
struggle between the president and the Senate over its continued
existence. Certainly by no possible financial policy could it have
produced such widespread ruin and distress as did the system introduced
by Jackson.
Long after the Bank controversy had lost all practical bearing it
continued to be agitated by the chief parties to it, who still felt sore
from the various encounters. Jackson assailed it again in his message; a
friendly committee of the Senate investigated it and reported in its
favor, besides going out of their way to rake up charges against Jackson
and Benton. The latter replied in a long speech, and became involved in
personalities with the chairman, Tyler of Virginia. Neither side paid
attention to any but the partisan aspect of the question, and the
discussions were absolutely profitless.
The whole matter was threshed over again and again, long after nothing
but chaff was left, during the debates on Benton's expunging resolution.
Few now would defend this resolution. The original resolution of censure
may have been of doubtful propriety; but it was passed, was entered on
the record, and had become a part of the journal of the Senate. It would
have been perfectly proper to pass another resolution condemning or
reversing the original one, and approving the course of the president;
but it was in the highest degree improper to set about what was in form
falsifying the record. Still, Benton found plenty of precedents in the
annals of other legislative bodies for what he proposed to do, and the
country, as a whole, backed him up heartily. He was further stimulated
by the knowledge that there was probably no other legislative act in
which Jackson took such intense interest, or which could so gratify his
pride; the mortification to Clay and Calhoun would be equally great.
Benton's motion failed more than once, but the complexion of the Senate
was rapidly changed by the various states substituting Democratic for
Whig or anti-Jackson senators. Some of the changes were made, as in
Virginia, by senators refusing to vote for the expunging resolution, as
required by the state legislatures, and then resigning their seats,
pursuant to a ridiculous theory of the ultra Democrats, which, if
carried out, would completely nullify the provision for a six year's
senatorial term. Finally, at the very close of Jackson's administration,
Benton found himself with a fair majority behind him, and made the final
move. His speech was of course mainly filled with a highly colored
account of the blessings wrought for the American people by Andrew
Jackson, and equally of course the latter was compared at length to a
variety of ancient Roman worthies. The final scene in the Senate had an
element of the comic about it. The expungers held a caucus and agreed to
sit the session out until the resolution was passed; and with prudent
forethought Benton, well aware that when hungry and tired his followers
might show less inflexibility of purpose, provided in an adjoining
committee-room "an ample supply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef,
pickles, wines, and cups of hot coffee," wherewith to inspirit the
faint-hearted.
Fortified by the refreshments, the expungers won a complete victory. If
the language of Jackson's admirers was overdrawn and strained to the
last degree in lauding him for every virtue that he had or had not, it
must be remembered that his opponents went quite as far wrong on the
other side in their denunciations and extravagant prophecies of gloom.
Webster made a very dignified and forcible speech in closing the
argument against the resolution, but Calhoun and Clay were much less
moderate,--the latter drawing a vivid picture of a rapidly approaching
reign of lawless military violence, and asserting that his opponents had
"extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burnt at
the altar of civil liberty." As a proper finale Jackson, to show his
appreciation, gave a great dinner to the expungers and their wives,
Benton sitting at the head of the table. Jackson and Benton solemnly
thought that they were taking part in a great act of justice, and were
amusingly unable to see the comic side of their acts. They probably
really believed most of their own denunciations of the Bank, and very
possibly thought that the wickedness of its followers might tempt them
to do any desperate deed. At any rate they enjoyed posing alike to
themselves and to the public as persons of antique virtue, who had
risked both life and reputation in a hazardous but successful attempt to
save the liberties of the people from the vast and hostile forces of the
aristocratic "money power."
The best verdict on the expunging resolution was given by Webster when
he characterized the whole affair as one which, if it were not regarded
as a ruthless violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to be
little elevated above the character of a contemptible farce.