EFFECTS OF THE SUSPENSION: GENERAL DERANGEMENT OF BUSINESS:
SUPPRESSION AND RIDICULE OF THE SPECIE CURRENCY: SUBMISSION OF THE
PEOPLE: CALL OF CONGRESS.
A great disturbance of course took place in the business of the
country, from the stoppage of the banks. Their agreement to receive
each others' notes made these notes the sole currency of the
country. It was a miserable substitute for gold and silver, falling
far below these metals when measured against them, and very unequal
to each other in different parts of the country. Those of the
interior, and of the west, being unfit for payments in the great
commercial Atlantic cities, were far below the standard of the
notes of those cities, and suffered a heavy loss from difference
of exchange, as it was called (although it was only the difference
of depreciation,) in all remittances to those cities:--to which
points the great payments tended. All this difference was considered
a loss, and charged upon the mismanagement of the public affairs
by the administration, although the clear effect of geographical
position. Specie disappeared as a currency, being systematically
suppressed. It became an article of merchandise, bought and sold
like any other marketable commodity; and especially bought in
quantities for exportation. Even metallic change disappeared, down
to the lowest subdivision of the dollar. Its place was supplied
by every conceivable variety of individual and corporation
tickets--issued by some from a feeling of necessity; by others, as a
means of small gains; by many, politically, as a means of exciting
odium against the administration for having destroyed the currency.
Fictitious and burlesque notes were issued with caricatures and
grotesque pictures and devices, and reproachful sentences, entitled
the "_better currency_:" and exhibited every where to excite
contempt. They were sent in derision to all the friends of the
specie circular, especially to him who had the credit (not untruly)
of having been its prime mover--most of them plentifully sprinkled
over with taunting expressions to give them a personal application:
such as--"This is what you have brought the country to:" "the end
of the experiment:" "the gold humbug exploded:" "is this what was
promised us?" "behold the effects of tampering with the currency."
The presidential mansion was infested, and almost polluted with
these missives, usually made the cover of some vulgar taunt. Even
gold and silver could not escape the attempted degradation--copper,
brass, tin, iron pieces being struck in imitation of gold and
silver coins--made ridiculous by figures and devices, usually the
whole hog, and inscribed with taunting and reproachful expressions.
Immense sums were expended in these derisory manufactures,
extensively carried on, and universally distributed; and reduced
to a system as a branch of party warfare, and intended to act on
the thoughtless and ignorant through appeals to their eyes and
passions. Nor were such means alone resorted to to inflame the
multitude against the administration. The opposition press teemed
with inflammatory publications. The President and his friends were
held up as great state criminals, ruthlessly destroying the property
of the people, and meriting punishment--even death. Nor did these
publications appear in thoughtless or obscure papers only, but in
some of the most weighty and influential of the bank party. Take,
for example, this paragraph from a leading paper in the city of New
York:
"We would put it directly to each and all of our readers,
whether it becomes this great people, quietly and tamely to
submit to any and every degree of lawless oppression which their
rulers may inflict, merely because _resistance_ may involve
us in trouble and expose those who resist, to censure? We are
very certain their reply will be, '_No_, but at what point
is "resistance to commence?"--is not the evil of resistance
greater "than the evil of submission?"' We answer promptly, that
resistance on the part of a free people, if they would preserve
their freedom, should always commence whenever it is made
plain and palpable that there has been a deliberate violation
of their rights; and whatever temporary evils may result from
such resistance, it can never be so great or so dangerous to
our institutions, as a blind submission to a most manifest act
of oppression and tyranny. And now, we would ask of all--what
shadow of right, what plea of expediency, what constitutional
or legal justification can MARTIN VAN BUREN offer to the people
of the United States, for having brought upon them all their
present difficulties by a continuance of the _specie circular_,
after two-thirds of their representatives had declared their
solemn convictions that it was injurious to the country and
should be repealed? Most assuredly, none, and we unhesitatingly
say, that it is a more high-handed measure of _tyranny_ than
that which cost _Charles_ the 1st his crown and his head--more
illegal and unconstitutional than the act of the British
ministry which caused the patriots of the revolution to destroy
the tea in the harbor of Boston--and one which calls more loudly
for resistance than any act of Great Britain which led to the
Declaration of Independence."
Taken by surprise in the deprivation of its revenues,--specie
denied it by the banks which held its gold and silver,--the federal
government could only do as others did, and pay out depreciated
paper. Had the event been foreseen by the government, it might have
been provided against, and much specie saved. It was now too late
to enter into a contest with the banks, they in possession of the
money, and the suspension organized and established. They would only
render their own notes: the government could only pay in that which
it received. Depreciated paper was their only medium of payment;
and every such payment (only received from a feeling of duresse)
brought resentment, reproach, indignation, loss of popularity to
the administration; and loud calls for the re-establishment of the
National Bank, whose notes had always been equal to specie, and
were then contrived to be kept far above the level of those of
other suspended banks. Thus the administration found itself, in the
second month of its existence, struggling with that most critical of
all government embarrassments--deranged finances, and depreciated
currency; and its funds dropping off every day. Defections were
incessant, and by masses, and sometimes by whole States: and all on
account of these vile payments in depreciated paper. Take a single
example. The State of Tennessee had sent numerous volunteers to
the Florida Indian war. There were several thousands of them, and
came from thirty different counties, requiring payments to be made
through a large part of the State, and to some member of almost
every family in it. The paymaster, Col. Adam Duncan Steuart, had
treasury drafts on the Nashville deposit banks for the money to make
the payments. They delivered their own notes, and these far below
par--even twenty per cent. below those of the so-called Bank of the
United States, which the policy of the suspension required to be
kept in strong contrast with those of the government deposit banks.
The loss on each payment was great--one dollar in every five. Even
patriotism could not stand it. The deposit banks and their notes
were execrated: the Bank of the United States and its notes were
called for. It was the children of Israel wailing for the fleshpots
of Egypt. Discontent, from individual became general, extending
from persons to masses. The State took the infection. From being
one of the firmest and foremost of the democratic States, Tennessee
fell off from her party, and went into opposition. At the next
election she showed a majority of 20,000 against her old friends;
and that in the lifetime of General Jackson; and contrary to what it
would have been if his foresight had been seconded. He foresaw the
consequences of paying out this depreciated paper. The paymaster had
foreseen them, and before drawing a dollar from the banks he went
to General Jackson for his advice. This energetic man, then aged,
and dying, and retired to his beloved hermitage,--but all head and
nerve to the last, and scorning to see the government capitulate
to insurgent banks,--acted up to his character. He advised the
paymaster to proceed to Washington and ask for solid money--for the
gold and silver which was then lying in the western land offices. He
went; but being a military subordinate, he only applied according
to the rules of subordination, through the channels of official
intercourse: and was denied the hard money, wanted for payments
on debenture bonds and officers of the government. He did not go
to Mr. Van Buren, as General Jackson intended he should do. He
did not feel himself authorized to go beyond official routine. It
was in the recess of Congress, and I was not in Washington to go
to the President in his place (as I should instantly have done);
and, returning without the desired orders, the payments were
made, through a storm of imprecations, in this loathsome trash:
and Tennessee was lost. And so it was, in more or less degree,
throughout the Union. The first object of the suspension had been
accomplished--a political revolt against the administration.
Miserable as was the currency which the government was obliged to
use, it was yet in the still more miserable condition of not having
enough of it! The deposits with the States had absorbed two sums
of near ten millions each: two more sums of equal amount were
demandable in the course of the year. Financial embarrassment, and
general stagnation of business, diminished the current receipts from
lands and customs: an absolute deficit--that horror, and shame, and
mortal test of governments--showed itself ahead. An extraordinary
session of Congress became a necessity, inexorable to any
contrivance of the administration: and, on the 15th day of May--just
five days after the suspension in the principal cities--the
proclamation was issued for its assembling: to take place on
the first Monday of the ensuing September. It was a mortifying
concession to imperative circumstances; and the more so as it had
just been refused to the grand committee of Fifty--demanding it in
the imposing name of that great meeting in the city of New York.