LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY.
The difficulty and duration of a war with an Indian tribe depend less
upon the numbers of the tribe itself than upon the nature of the ground
it inhabits. The two Indian tribes that have caused the most irritating
and prolonged struggle are the Apaches, who live in the vast, waterless,
mountainous deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and whom we are at this
present moment engaged in subduing, and the Seminoles, who, from among
the impenetrable swamps of Florida, bade the whole United States army
defiance for seven long years; and this although neither Seminoles nor
Apaches ever brought much force into the field, nor inflicted such
defeats upon us as have other Indian tribes, like the Creeks and Sioux.
The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left by Jackson
to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost thirty
millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts of several generals and
numerous troops, who had previously shown themselves equal to any in
the world. The expense, length, and ill-success of the struggle, and a
strong feeling that the Seminoles had been wronged, made it a great
handle for attack on the administration; and the defense was taken up by
Benton, who always accepted completely the Western estimate of any form
of the Indian question.
As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been much wrong done by
each side; but in this instance we were the more to blame, although the
Indians themselves were far from being merely harmless and suffering
innocents. The Seminoles were being deprived of their lands in pursuance
of the general policy of removing all the Indians west of the
Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and influenced,
probably, by fraudulent representations; but they declined to fulfill
their agreement. If they had been treated wisely and firmly they might
probably have been allowed to remain without serious injury to the
surrounding whites. But no such treatment was attempted, and as a result
we were plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever waged.
In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown and untrodden
recesses of the everglades the Indians found a secure asylum; and they
issued from their haunts to burn and ravage almost all the settled part
of Florida, fairly depopulating five counties; while the soldiers could
rarely overtake them, and when they did, were placed at such a
disadvantage that the Indians repulsed or cut off detachment after
detachment, generally making a merciless and complete slaughter of each.
The great Seminole leader, Osceola, was captured only by deliberate
treachery and breach of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out
rather than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable
capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature of their
territory.
Our troops generally fought with great bravery; but there is very little
else in the struggle, either as regards its origin or the manner in
which it was carried on, to which an American can look back with any
satisfaction. We usually group all our Indian wars together, in speaking
of their justice or injustice; and thereby show flagrant ignorance. The
Sioux and Cheyennes, for instance, have more often been sinning than
sinned against; for example, the so-called Chivington or Sandy Creek
Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the
whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the
frontier. On the other hand, the most cruel wrongs have been perpetrated
by whites upon perfectly peaceable and unoffending tribes like those of
California, or the Nez Perces. Yet the emasculated professional
humanitarians mourn as much over one set of Indians as over the
other--and indeed, on all points connected with Indian management, are
as untrustworthy and unsafe leaders as would be an equal number of the
most brutal white borderers. But the Seminole War was one of those where
the Eastern, or humanitarian view was more nearly correct than was any
other; although even here the case was far from being entirely
one-sided.
Benton made an elaborate but not always candid defense of the
administration, both as to the origin and as to the prosecution of the
war. He attempted to show that the Seminoles had agreed to go West, had
broken their treaty without any reason, had perpetrated causeless
massacres, had followed up their successes with merciless butcheries,
which last statement was true; and that Osceola had forfeited all claim
or right to have a flag of truce protect him. There was a certain
justice in his position even on these questions, and when he came to
defend the conduct of our soldiers he had the right entirely with him.
They were led by the same commander, and belonged to the same regiments,
that in Canada had shown themselves equal to the famous British
infantry; they had to contend with the country, rather than with their
enemies, as the sweltering heat, the stagnant lagoons, the quaking
morasses, and the dense forests of Florida made it almost impossible for
an army to carry on a successful campaign. Moreover, the Seminoles were
well armed; and many tribes of North American Indians show themselves,
when with good weapons and on their own ground, more dangerous
antagonists than would be an equal number of the best European troops.
Indeed, under such conditions they can only be contended with on equal
terms if the opposing white force is made up of frontiersmen who are as
good woodsmen and riflemen as themselves, and who, moreover, have been
drilled by some man like Jackson, who knows how to handle them to the
best advantage, both in disciplining their lawless courage and in
forcing them to act under orders and together,--the lack of which
discipline and power of supporting each other has often rendered an
assemblage of formidable individual border-fighters a mere disorderly
mob when brought into the field.
The war dragged on tediously. The troops--regulars, volunteers, and
militia alike--fought the Indians again and again; there were pitched
battles, surprises, ambuscades, and assaults on places of unknown
strength; hundreds of soldiers were slain in battle or by treachery,
hundreds of settlers were slaughtered in their homes, or as they fled
from them; the bloody Indian forays reached even to the outskirts of
Tallahatchee and to within sight of the walls of quaint old St.
Augustine. Little by little, however, the power of the Seminoles was
broken; their war bands were scattered and driven from the field,
hundreds of their number were slain in fight, and five times as many
surrendered and were taken west of the Mississippi. The white troops
marched through Florida down to and into the everglades, and crossed it
backwards and forwards, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean;
they hunted their foes from morass to morass and from hummock to
hummock; they mapped out the whole hitherto unknown country; they
established numerous posts; opened hundreds of miles of wagon road; and
built very many causeways and bridges. But they could not end the war.
The bands of Indians broke up and entirely ceased to offer resistance to
bodies of armed whites; but as individuals they continued as dangerous
to the settlers as ever, prowling out at night like wild beasts from
their fastnesses in the dark and fetid swamps, murdering, burning, and
ravaging in all the outlying settlements, and destroying every lonely
farm-house or homestead.
There was but one way in which the war could be finally ended, and that
was to have the territory occupied by armed settlers; in other words, to
have it won and held exactly as almost all the land of the United States
has been in the beginning. Benton introduced a bill to bring this about,
giving to every such settler a good inheritance in the soil as a reward
for his enterprise, toil, and danger; and the war was finished only by
the adoption of this method. He supported his bill in a very effective
speech, showing that the proposed way was the only one by which a
permanent conquest could be effected; he himself had, when young, seen
it put into execution in Tennessee and Kentucky, where the armed
settlers, with their homesteads in the soil, formed the vanguard of the
white advance: where the rifle-bearing backwoodsmen went forth to fight
and to cultivate, living in assemblages of block-houses at first and
separating into individual settlements afterwards. The work had to be
done with axe, spade, and rifle alike. Benton rightly insisted that
there was no longer need of a large army in Florida:--
Why, the men who are there now can find nobody to fight! It is two
years since a fight has been had. Ten men who will avoid surprises
and ambuscades can now go from one end of Florida to the other. As
warriors, these Indians no longer appear; it is only as assassins,
as robbers, as incendiaries, that they lurk about. What is now
wanted is not an army to fight, but settlers and cultivators to take
possession and keep possession; and the armed cultivator is the man
for that. The block-house is the first house to be built in an
Indian country; the stockade the first fence to be put up. Within
that block-house, or within a hollow square of block-houses, two
miles long on each side, two hundred yards apart, and inclosing a
good field, safe habitations are to be found for families.
Cultivation and defense then go hand in hand. The heart of the
Indian sickens when he hears the crowing of the cock, the barking of
the dog, the sound of the axe, and the crack of the rifle. These are
the true evidences of the dominion of the white man; these are the
proofs that the owner has come and means to stay, and then the
Indians feel it to be time for them to go. While soldiers alone are
in the country they feel their presence to be temporary; that they
are mere sojourners in the land, and sooner or later must go away.
It is the settler alone, the armed settler, whose presence announces
the dominion, the permanent dominion, of the white man.
Benton's ideas were right, and were acted upon. It is impossible even to
subdue an Indian tribe by the army alone; the latter can only pave the
way for and partially protect the armed settlers who are to hold the
soil.
Benton continued to take a great interest in the disposal of the public
lands, as was natural in a senator from the West, where the bulk of
these lands lay. He was always a great advocate of a homestead law.
During Van Buren's administration, he succeeded in getting two or three
bills on the subject through the Senate. One of these allowed lands that
had been five years in the market to be reduced in price to a dollar an
acre, and if they stood five years longer to go down to seventy-five
cents. The bill was greatly to the interest of the Western farmer in the
newer, although not necessarily the newest, parts of the country. The
man who went on the newest land was in turn provided for by the
preemption bill, which secured the privilege of first purchase to the
actual settler on any lands to which the Indian title had been
extinguished; to be paid for at the minimum price of public lands at the
time. An effort was made to confine the benefits of this proposed law to
citizens of the United States, excluding unnaturalized foreigners from
its action. Benton, as representing the new states, who desired
immigrants of every kind, whether foreign or native, successfully
opposed this. He pointed out that there was no question of conferring
political rights, which involved the management of the government, and
which should not be conferred until the foreigner had become a
naturalized citizen; it was merely a question of allowing the alien a
right to maintain himself and to support his family. He especially
opposed the amendment on account of the class of foreigners it would
affect. Aliens who wished to take up public lands were not paupers or
criminals, and did not belong to the shiftless and squalid foreign mob
that drifted into the great cities of the sea-board and the interior;
but on the contrary were among our most enterprising, hardy, and thrifty
citizens, who had struck out for themselves into the remote parts of the
new states and had there begun to bring the wilderness into subjection.
Such men deserved to be encouraged in every way, and should receive from
the preemption laws the same benefits that would enure to native-born
citizens. The third bill introduced, which passed the Senate but failed
in the House, was one to permit the public lands sold to be immediately
taxed by the states in which they lay. Originally these lands had been
sold upon credit, the total amount not being paid, nor the title passed,
until five years after the sale; and during this time it would have been
unjust to tax them, as failure in paying the installments to the
government would have let the lands revert to the latter; but when the
cash system was substituted for credit Benton believed that there was no
longer reason why the new lands should not bear their share of the
state burdens.
During Van Buren's administration the standard of public honesty, which
had been lowering with frightful rapidity ever since, with Adams, the
men of high moral tone had gone out of power, went almost as far down as
it could go; although things certainly did not change for the better
under Tyler and Polk. Not only was there the most impudent and
unblushing rascality among the public servants of the nation, but the
people themselves, through their representatives in the state
legislatures, went to work to swindle their honest creditors. Many
states, in the rage for public improvements, had contracted debts which
they now refused to pay; in many cases they were unable, or at least so
professed themselves, even to pay the annual interest. The debts of the
states were largely held abroad; they had been converted into stock and
held in shares, which had gone into a great number of hands, and now, of
course, became greatly depreciated in value. It is a painful and
shameful page in our history; and every man connected with the
repudiation of the states' debts ought, if remembered at all, to be
remembered only with scorn and contempt. However, time has gradually
shrouded from our sight both the names of the leaders in the
repudiation and the names of the victims whom they swindled. Two alone,
one in each class, will always be kept in mind. Before Jefferson Davis
took his place among the arch-traitors in our annals he had already long
been known as one of the chief repudiators; it was not unnatural that to
dishonesty towards the creditors of the public he should afterwards add
treachery towards the public itself. The one most prominent victim was
described by Benton himself: "The Reverend Sydney Smith, of witty
memory, but amiable withal, was accustomed to lose all his amiability,
but no part of his wit, when he spoke of his Pennsylvania bonds--which,
in fact, was very often."
Many of the bond-holders, however, did not manifest their grief by
caustic wit, but looked to more substantial relief; and did their best
to bring about the assumption of the state debts, in some form, whether
open or disguised, by the federal government. The British capitalists
united with many American capitalists to work for some such action; and
there were plenty of people in the states willing enough to see it done.
Of course it would have been criminal folly on the part of the federal
government to take any such step; and Benton determined to meet and
check the effort at the very beginning. The London Bankers' Circular had
contained a proposition recommending that the Congress of the United
States should guarantee, or otherwise provide for, the ultimate payment
of the debts which the states had contracted for state or local
purposes. Benton introduced a series of resolutions declaring utter
opposition to the proposal, both on the ground of expediency and on that
of constitutionality. The resolutions were perfectly proper in their
purpose, but were disfigured by that cheap species of demagogy which
consists in denouncing purely supposititious foreign interference,
complicated by an allusion to Benton's especial pet terror, the
inevitable money power. As he put it: "Foreign interference and
influence are far more dangerous in the invidious intervention of the
moneyed power than in the forcible invasions of fleets and armies."
An attempt was made directly to reverse the effect of the resolutions by
amending them so as to provide that the public land revenue should be
divided among the states, to help them in the payment of these debts.
Both Webster and Clay supported this amendment, but it was fortunately
beaten by a large vote.
Benton's speech, like the resolutions in support of which he spoke, was
right in its purpose, but contained much matter that was beside the
mark. He had worked himself into such a condition over the
supposititious intrigues of the "money power"--an attack on which is
almost always sure to be popular--that he was very certain to discover
evidence of their existence on all, even the most unlikely, occasions;
and it is difficult to think that he was not himself aware how overdrawn
was his prophecy of the probable interference of foreign powers in our
affairs, if the resolutions he had presented were not adopted.
The tariff had once more begun to give trouble, and the South was again
complaining of its workings, aware that she was falling always more to
the rear in the race for prosperity, and blindly attributing her failure
to everything but the true reason,--the existence of slavery. Even
Benton himself showed a curiously pathetic eagerness to prove both to
others and himself that the cause of the increasing disparity in growth,
and incompatibility in interest between the two sections, must be due to
some temporary and artificial cause, and endeavored to hide from all
eyes, even from his own, the fact that the existence of slavery was
working, slowly but surely, and with steadily increasing rapidity, to
rend in sunder the Union which he loved and served with such heartfelt
devotion. He tried to prove that the main cause of discontent was to be
found in the tariff and other laws, which favored the North at the
expense of the South. At the same time he entered an eloquent plea for a
warmer feeling between the sections, and pointed out the absolute
hopelessness of attempting to better the situation in any way by
disunion. The great Missourian could look back with fond pride and
regret to the condition of the South as it was during and immediately
after the colonial days, when it was the seat of wealth, power, high
living, and free-handed hospitality, and was filled to overflowing with
the abounding life of its eager and turbulent sons. The change for the
worse in its relative condition was real and great. He reproved his
fellow-Southerners for attributing this change to a single cause, the
unequal working of the federal government, "which gave all the benefits
of the Union to the South and all its burdens to the North;" he claimed
that it was due to many other causes as well. Yet those whom he rebuked
were as near right as he was; for the change _was_ due in the main to
only one cause--but that cause was slavery. It is almost pitiful to see
the strong, stern, self-reliant statesman refusing, with nervous and
passionate willfulness, to look the danger in the face, and, instead
thereof, trying to persuade himself into the belief that "the remedy
lies in the right working of the Constitution; in the cessation of
unequal legislation; in the reduction of the inordinate expenses of the
government; in its return to the simple, limited, and economical machine
it was intended to be; and in the revival of fraternal feelings and
respect for each other's rights and just complaints." Like many another
man he thought, or tried to think, that by sweeping the dust from the
door-sill he could somehow stave off the whirling rush of the
sand-storm.
The compromise tariff of 1833 had abolished all specific duties,
establishing _ad valorem_ ones in their place; and the result had been
great uncertainty and injustice in its working. Now whether a protective
tariff is right or wrong may be open to question; but if it exists at
all, it should work as simply and with as much certainty and exactitude
as possible; if its interpretation varies, or if it is continually
meddled with by Congress, great damage ensues. It is in reality of far
less importance that a law should be ideally right than that it should
be certain and steady in its workings. Even supposing that a high tariff
is all wrong, it would work infinitely better for the country than would
a series of changes between high and low duties. Benton strongly
advocated a return to specific duties, as being simpler, surer, and
better on every account. In commenting on the _ad valorem_ duties, he
showed how they had been adopted blindly and without discussion by the
frightened, silent multitude of congressmen and senators, who jumped at
Clay's compromise bill in 1833 as giving them a loop-hole of escape from
a situation where they would have had to face evil consequences, no
matter what stand they took. Benton's comment on men of this stamp
deserves chronicling, from its justice and biting severity: "It (the
compromise act) was passed by the aid of the votes of those--always a
considerable _per centum_ in every public body--to whom the name of
compromise is an irresistible attraction; amiable men, who would do no
wrong of themselves, and without whom the designing could also do but
little wrong."
He not only devoted himself to the general subject of the tariff in
relation to specific duties, but he also took up several prominent
abuses. One subject, on which he was never tired of harping with
monotonous persistency, was the duty on salt. The idea of making salt
free had become one which he was almost as fond of bringing into every
discussion, no matter how inappropiate to the matter in hand, as he was
of making irrelevant and abusive allusions to his much-enduring and
long-suffering hobby, the iniquitous "money power." Benton had all the
tenacity of a snapping turtle, and was as firm a believer in the policy
of "continuous hammering" as Grant himself. His tenacity and his
pertinacious refusal to abandon any contest, no matter what the odds
were against him, and no matter how often he had to return to the
charge, formed two of his most invaluable qualities, and when called
into play on behalf of such an object as the preservation of the Union,
cannot receive too high praise at our hands; for they did the country
services so great and lasting that they should never be forgotten. It
would have been fortunate indeed if Clay and Webster had possessed the
fearless, aggressive courage and iron will of the rugged Missourian, who
was so often pitted against them in the political arena. But when
Benton's attention was firmly fixed on the accomplishment of something
comparatively trivial, his dogged, stubborn, and unyielding earnestness
drew him into making efforts of which the disproportion to the result
aimed at was rather droll. Nothing could thwart him or turn him aside;
and though slow to take up an idea, yet, if it was once in his head, to
drive it out was a simply hopeless task. These qualities were of such
invaluable use to the state on so many great occasions that we can well
afford to treat them merely with a good-humored laugh, when we see them
exercised on behalf of such a piece of foolishness as, for example, the
expunging resolution.
The repeal of the salt tax, then, was a particular favorite in Benton's
rather numerous stable of hobbies, because it gave free scope for the
use of sentimental as well as of economic arguments. He had the right of
the question, and was not in the least daunted by his numerous rebuffs
and the unvarying ill success of his efforts. Speaking in 1840, he
stated that he had been urging the repeal for twelve years; and for the
purpose of furnishing data with which to compare such a period of time,
and without the least suspicion that there was anything out of the way
in the comparison, he added, in a solemn parenthesis, that this was two
years longer than the siege of Troy lasted. In the same speech was a
still choicer morsel of eloquence about salt: "The Supreme Ruler of the
Universe has done everything to supply his creatures with it; man, the
fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little brief authority,
has done much to deprive them of it." After which he went on to show a
really extensive acquaintance with the history of salt taxes and
monopolies, and with the uses and physical structure and surroundings of
the mineral itself--all which might have taught his hearers that a man
may combine much erudition with a total lack of the sense of humor. The
salt tax is dragged, neck and heels, into many of Benton's speeches
much as Cooper manages, on all possible occasions, throughout his
novels, to show the unlikeness of the Bay of Naples to the Bay of New
York--not the only point of resemblance, by the way, between the
characters of the Missouri statesman and the New York novelist. Whether
the subject under discussion was the taxation of bank-notes, or the
abolition of slavery, made very little difference to Benton as to
introducing an allusion to the salt monopoly. One of his happy arguments
in favor of the repeal, which was addressed to an exceedingly practical
and commonplace Congress, was that the early Christian disciples had
been known as the salt of the earth--a biblical metaphor, which Benton
kindly assured his hearers was very expressive; and added that a salt
tax was morally as well as politically wrong, and in fact "was a species
of impiety."
But in attacking some of the abuses which had developed out of the
tariff of 1833 Benton made a very shrewd and practical speech, without
permitting himself to indulge in any such intellectual pranks as
accompanied his salt orations. He especially aimed at reducing the
drawbacks on sugar, molasses, and one or two other articles. In
accordance with our whole clumsy, hap-hazard system of dealing with the
tariff we had originally put very high duties on the articles in
question, and then had allowed correspondingly heavy drawbacks; and yet,
when in 1833, by Clay's famous compromise tariff bill, the duties were
reduced to a fractional part of what they had previously been, no
parallel reduction was made in the drawbacks, although Benton (supported
by Webster) made a vain effort even then, while the compromise bill was
on its passage, to have the injustice remedied. As a consequence, the
exporters of sugar and rum, instead of drawing back the exact amounts
paid into the treasury, drew back several times as much; and the
ridiculous result was that certain exporters were paid a naked bounty
out of the treasury, and received pay for doing and suffering nothing.
In 1839 the drawback paid on the exportation of refined sugar exceeded
the amount of revenue derived from imported sugar by over twenty
thousand dollars. Benton showed this clearly, by unimpeachable
statistics, and went on to prove that in that year the whole amount of
the revenue from brown and clayed sugar, plus the above-mentioned twenty
thousand dollars, was paid over to twenty-nine sugar refiners; and that
these men thus "drew back" from the treasury what they had never put
into it. Abuses equally gross existed in relation to various other
articles. But in spite of the clear justice of his case Benton was able
at first to make but little impression on Congress; and it was some time
before matters were straightened out, as all the protective interests
felt obliged to make common cause with each other, no matter what evils
might be perpetrated by their taking such action.
Towards the close of Van Buren's administration, when he was being
assailed on every side, as well for what Jackson as for what he himself
had done or left undone, one of the chief accusations brought against
him was that he had squandered the public money, and that, since Adams
had been ousted from the presidency, the expenses of running the
government had increased out of all proportion to what was proper. There
was good ground for their complaint, as the waste and peculation in some
of the departments had been very great; but Benton, in an elaborate
defense of both Jackson and Van Buren, succeeded in showing that at
least certain of the accusations were unfounded--although he had to
stretch a point or two in trying to make good his claim that the
administration was really economical, being reduced to the rather lame
expedient of ruling out about two thirds of the expenditures on the
ground that they were "extraordinary."
The charge of extravagance was one of the least of the charges urged
against the Jacksonian Democrats during the last days of their rule.
While they had been in power the character of the public service had
deteriorated frightfully, both as regarded its efficiency and infinitely
more as regarded its honesty; and under Van Buren the amount of money
stolen by the public officers, compared to the amount handed in to the
treasury, was greater than ever before or since. For this the
Jacksonians were solely and absolutely responsible; they drove out the
merit system of making appointments, and introduced the "spoils" system
in its place; and under the latter they chose a peculiarly dishonest and
incapable set of officers, whose sole recommendation was to be found in
the knavish trickery and low cunning that enabled them to manage the
ignorant voters who formed the backbone of Jackson's party. The
statesmen of the Democracy in after days forgot the good deeds of the
Jacksonians; they lost their attachment to the Union, and abandoned
their championship of hard money; but they never ceased to cling to the
worst legacy their predecessors had left them. The engrafting of the
"spoils" system on our government was, of all the results of Jacksonian
rule, the one which was most permanent in its effects.
All these causes--the corruption of the public officials, the
extravagance of the government, and the widespread distress, which might
be regarded as the aftermath of its ruinous financial policy--combined
with others that were as little to the discredit of the Jacksonians as
they were to the credit of the Whigs, brought about the overthrow of the
former. There was much poetic justice in the fact that the presidential
election which decided their fate was conducted on as purely irrational
principles, and was as merely one of sound and fury, as had been the
case in the election twelve years previously, when they came into power.
The Whigs, having exhausted their language in denouncing their opponents
for nominating a man like Andrew Jackson, proceeded to look about in
their own party to find one who should come as near him as possible in
all the attributes that had given him so deep a hold on the people; and
they succeeded perfectly when they pitched on the old Indian fighter,
Harrison. "Tippecanoe" proved quite as effective a war-cry in bringing
about the downfall of the Jacksonians as "Old Hickory" had shown itself
to be a dozen years previously in raising them up. General Harrison had
already shown himself to be a good soldier, and a loyal and honest
public servant, although by no means standing in the first rank either
as regards war-craft or state-craft; but the mass of his supporters
apparently considered the facts, or supposed facts, that he lived in a
log-cabin the walls of which were decorated with coon-skins, and that he
drank hard cider from a gourd, as being more important than his capacity
as a statesman or his past services to the nation.
The Whigs having thus taken a shaft from the Jacksonians' quiver, it was
rather amusing to see the latter, in their turn, hold up their hands in
horror at the iniquity of what would now be called a "hurrah" canvass;
blandly ignoring the fact that it was simply a copy of their own
successful proceedings. Says Benton, with amusing gravity: "The class of
inducements addressed to the passions and imaginations of the people was
such as history blushes to record," a remark that provokes criticism,
when it is remembered that Benton had been himself a prominent actor on
the Jacksonian side in the campaigns of '28 and '32, when it was
exclusively to "the passions and imaginations of the people" that all
arguments were addressed.
The Democrats did not long remain out of power; and they kept the
control of the governmental policy in their hands pretty steadily until
the time of the civil war; nevertheless it is true that with the defeat
of Van Buren the Jacksonian Democracy, as such, lost forever its grip on
the direction of national affairs. When, under Polk, the Democrats came
back, they came under the lead of the very men whom the original
Jacksonians had opposed and kept down. With all their faults, Jackson
and Benton were strong Union men, and under them their party was a Union
party. Calhoun and South Carolina, and the disunionists in the other
Southern States were their bitter foes. But the disunion and extreme
slavery elements within the Democratic ranks were increasing rapidly all
the time; and they had obtained complete and final control when the
party reappeared as victors after their defeat in 1840. Until Van
Buren's overthrow the nationalists had held the upper hand in shaping
Democratic policy; but after that event the leadership of the party
passed completely into the hands of the separatists.
The defeat of Van Buren marks an era in more ways than one. During his
administration slavery played a less prominent part in politics than did
many other matters; this was never so again. His administration was the
last in which this question, or the question springing from it, did not
overtop and dwarf in importance all others. Again, the presidential
election of 1840 was the last into which slavery did not enter as a most
important, and in fact as the vital and determining factor. In the
contest between Van Buren and Harrison it did not have the least
influence upon the result. Moreover, Van Buren was the last Democratic
president who ruled over a Union of states; all his successors, up to
the time of Lincoln's election, merely held sway over a Union of
sections. The spirit of separation had identified itself with the
maintenance of slavery, and the South was rapidly uniting into a compact
array of states with interests that were hostile to the North on the
point most vitally affecting the welfare of the whole country.
No great question involving the existence of slavery was brought before
the attention of Congress during Van Buren's term of office; nor was the
matter mooted except in the eternal wrangles over receiving the
abolitionist petitions. Benton kept silent in these discussions,
although voting to receive the petitions. As he grew older he
continually grew wiser, and better able to do good legislative work on
all subjects; but he was not yet able to realize that the slavery
question was one which could not be kept down, and which was bound to
force itself into the sphere of national politics. He still insisted
that it was only dragged before Congress by a few fanatics at the
North, and that in the South it was made the instrument by which
designing and unscrupulous men wished to break up the federal republic.
His devotion to the Union, ever with him the chief and overmastering
thought, made him regard with horror and aversion any man, at the North
or at the South, who brought forward a question so fraught with peril to
its continuance. He kept trying to delude himself into the belief that
the discussion and the danger would alike gradually die away, and the
former state of peaceful harmony between the sections, and freedom from
disunion excitement, would return.
But the time for such an ending already lay in the past; thereafter the
outlook was to grow steadily darker year by year. Slavery lowered like a
thunder-storm on the horizon; and though sometimes it might seem for a
moment to break away, yet in reality it had reached that stage when,
until the final all-engulfing outburst took place, the clouds were bound
for evermore to return after the rain.