PARTY POLITICS (1820-1822)
To the superficial observer, politics might have seemed never more
tranquil than when, in 1820, James Monroe received all but one of
the electoral votes for his second term as president of the United
States. One New Hampshire elector preferred John Quincy Adams,
although he was not a candidate, and this deprived Monroe of ranking
with Washington in the unanimity of official approval. But in truth
the calm was deceptive. The election of 1820 was an armistice rather
than a real test of political forces. The forming party factions
were not yet ready for the final test of strength, most of the
candidates were members of the cabinet, and the reelection of
Monroe, safe, conciliatory, and judicious, afforded an opportunity
for postponing the issue.
As we have seen, the Missouri contest had in it the possibility of a
revolutionary division of the Republican party into two parties on
sectional lines. The aged Jefferson, keen of scent for anything that
threatened the ascendancy of the triumphant democracy, saw in the
dissolution of the old alliance between Virginia and the
"fanaticized" Pennsylvania, [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's
ed.), X., 161, 171, 172, 177, 179, 192, 193 n., 279; King, Life and
Corresp. of King, VI., 279, 282, 290: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2
Sess., App. 63-67.] in the heat of the Missouri conflict, the menace
of a revived Federalist party, and the loss of Virginia's northern
following. So hotly did Virginia resent the Missouri Compromise,
that while the question was still pending, in February, 1820, her
legislative caucus, which had assembled to nominate presidential
electors, indignantly adjourned on learning that Monroe favored the
measure. "I trust in God," said H. St. George Tucker, "if the
president does sign a bill to that effect, the Southern people will
be able to find some man who has not committed himself to our foes;
for such are, depend on it, the Northern Politicians." [Footnote:
William and Mary College Quarterly, X., 11, 15.] But the sober
second thought of Virginia sustained Monroe. On the other side,
Rufus King believed that the issue of the Missouri question would
settle "forever the dominion of the Union." "Old Mr. Adams," said
he, "as he is the first, will on this hypothesis be the last
President from a free state." [Footnote: King, Life and Corresp. of
King, 267; cf. Adams, Memoirs, IV., 528.]
The truth is that the individual interests of the south were
stronger in opposing than those of the north in supporting a
limitation of slavery; [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 533.] the
northern phalanx had hardly formed before it began to dissolve.
[Footnote: Benton, Thirty Years' View, I., 10.] Nevertheless, the
Missouri question played some part in the elections in most of the
states. In Pennsylvania, under the leadership of Duane, the editor
of the Aurora, electors favorable to Clinton were nominated on an
antislavery ticket, [Footnote: Niles' Register, XIX., 129; National
Advocate, October 27, 1820; Franklin Gazette, October 25, November
8, 1820 (election returns); Ames, State Docs. on Federal Relations,
No. 5, p. 5.] but, outside of Philadelphia and the adjacent
district, this ticket received but slight support. With few
exceptions, the northern congressmen who had voted with the south
failed of re-election.
The elections in the various states in this year showed more
political division than was revealed by the vote for president, and
they showed that in state politics the Federalist party was by no
means completely extinct. In the congressional elections the flood
of Republicanism left only isolated islands of Federalism
unsubmerged. In Massachusetts eight of the thirteen members
professed this political faith; New York returned some half-dozen
men whose affiliations were with the same party; from Pennsylvania
came a somewhat larger number; and they numbered nearly half of the
delegation of Maryland. The cities of New York and Philadelphia were
represented by Federalists, and there were three or four other
districts, chiefly in New England, which adhered to the old party.
There were also a few congressmen from the south who had been
members of this organization. On the whole, however, the Federalists
awaited the new development of parties, determined to secure the
best terms from those to whom they should transfer their allegiance.
In New England, as has already been pointed out, [Footnote: See
chap. ii. above.] the toleration movement was completing its work of
transferring power to democracy.
More important than local issues or the death throes of federalism,
was the democratic tendency revealed in the constitutional
conventions of this period. Between 1816 and 1830, ten states either
established new constitutions or revised their old ones. In this the
influence of the new west was peculiarly important. All of the new
states which were formed in that region, after the War of 1812, gave
evidence in their constitutions of the democratic spirit of the
frontier. With the exception of Mississippi, where the voter was
obliged either to be a tax-payer or a member of the militia, all the
western states entered the Union with manhood suffrage, and all of
them, in contrast with the south, from which their settlers had
chiefly been drawn, provided that apportionment of the legislature
should be based upon the white population, thus accepting the
doctrine of the rule of the majority rather than that of property.
As the flood of population moved towards the west and offered these
attractive examples of democratic growth, the influence reacted on
the older states. In her constitution of 1818, Connecticut gave the
franchise to tax-payers or members of the militia, as did
Massachusetts and New York in their constitutions of 1821. Maine
provided in her constitution of 1820 for manhood suffrage, but by
this time there was but slight difference between manhood suffrage
and one based upon tax-paying.
Webster in Massachusetts and Chancellor Kent in New York viewed with
alarm the prospect that freehold property should cease to be the
foundation of government. Kent particularly warned the landed class
that "one master capitalist with his one hundred apprentices, and
journeymen, and agents, and dependents, will bear down at the polls
an equal number of farmers of small estates in his vicinity, who
cannot safely unite for their common defense." [Footnote: Carter and
Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of
1821, 222.] It was the new counties of New York, particularly those
of the western and northeastern frontier, which were the stronghold
of the reform movement in that state. The abolition of the council
of appointments and the council of revision by the New York
convention contributed to the transfer of power to the people. But
under the leadership of Van Buren a group of politicians, dubbed
"The Albany Regency," controlled the political machinery as
effectively as before. [Footnote: McMaster, United States, V., 373-
432; ibid., Rights of Man, 61; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy (Am.
Nation, XV.), chap. iv.]
The campaign for the presidency of 1824 may be said to have begun as
early as 1816. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 89.] Adams observed in
1818 that the government was assuming daily the character of cabal,
"and preparation, not for the next Presidential election, but for
the one after"; [Footnote: Ibid., IV., 193.] and by 1820, when the
political sea appeared so placid, and parties had apparently
dissolved, bitter factional fights between the friends of the rival
candidates constituted the really significant indications of
American politics. From the details of the personal struggles
(usually less important to the student of party history) one must
learn the tendency towards the reappearance of parties in this
period, when idealists believed that all factions had been fused
into one triumphant organization. In all of the great sections,
candidates appeared, anxious to consolidate the support of their own
section and to win a following in the nation. It is time that we
should survey these men, for the personal traits of the aspirants
for the presidency had a larger influence than ever before or since
in the history of the country. Moreover, we are able to see in these
candidates the significant features of the sections from which they
came.
New England was reluctantly and slowly coming to the conclusion that
John Quincy Adams was the only available northern candidate. Adams
did not fully represent the characteristics of his section, for he
neither sprang from the democracy of the interior of New England nor
did he remain loyal to the Federalist ideas that controlled the
commercial interests of the coast. Moreover, of all the statesmen
whom the nation produced, he had had the largest opportunity to make
a comparative study of government. As an eleven-year-old boy, he
went with his father to Paris in 1778, and from then until 1817,
when he became Monroe's secretary of state, nearly half his time was
spent at European courts. He served in France, Holland, Sweden,
Russia, Prussia, and England, and had been senator of the United
States from Massachusetts.
Thus Adams entered on the middle period of his career, a man of
learning and broad culture, rich in experience of national affairs,
familiar with the centers of Old-World civilization and with methods
of European administration. He had touched life too broadly, in too
many countries, to be provincial in his policy. In the minds of a
large and influential body of his fellow-citizens, the Federalists,
he was an apostate, for in the days of the embargo he had warned
Jefferson of the temper of his section, had resigned, and had been
read out of the party. The unpopularity, as well as the fame, of his
father, was the heritage of the son. Perhaps the most decisive
indication of the weakening of sectional bias by his foreign
training is afforded by his diplomatic policy. An expansionist by
nature, he had been confirmed in the faith by his training in
foreign courts. "If we are not taken for Romans we shall be taken
for Jews," he exclaimed to one who questioned the wisdom of the bold
utterances of his diplomatic correspondence.
In one important respect Adams was the personification of his
section. He was a Puritan, and his whole career was deeply affected
by the fact. A man of method and regularity, tireless in his work
(for he rose before the dawn and worked till midnight), he never had
a childhood and never tried to achieve self-forgetfulness. His
diary, printed in twelve volumes, is a unique document for the study
of the Puritan in politics. Not that it was an entirely unreserved
expression of his soul, for he wrote with a consciousness that
posterity would read the record, and its pages are a compound of
apparently spontaneous revelation of his inmost thought and of
silence upon subjects of which we would gladly know more. He had the
Puritan's restraint, self-scrutiny, and self-condemnation. "I am,"
he writes, "a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding
manners." Nor can this estimate be pronounced unjust. He was a
lonely man, communing with his soul in his diary more than with a
circle of admiring friends. It was not easy for men to love John
Quincy Adams. The world may respect the man who regulates his course
by a daily dead-reckoning, but it finds it easier to make friends
with him who stumbles towards rectitude by the momentum of his own
nature. Popularity, in any deep sense, was denied him. This
deprivation he repaid by harsh, vindictive, and censorious judgments
upon his contemporaries, and by indifference to popular prejudices.
With the less lovely qualities of the Puritan aggravated by his own
critical nature, Adams found himself in a struggle for the
presidency against some of the most engaging personalities in
American history. He must win over his enemies in New England and
attach that section to his fortunes; he must find friends in the
middle states, conciliate the south, and procure a following in the
west, where Clay, the Hotspur of debate, with all the power of the
speakership behind him, and Jackson, "Old Hickory," the hero of New
Orleans, contested the field. And all the time he must satisfy his
conscience, and reach his goal by the craft and strength of his
intellect rather than by the arts of popular management. No
statesman ever handled the problems of his public career with a
keener understanding of the conditions of success.
The middle region was too much divided by the game of politics
played by her multitude of minor leaders to unite upon a favorite
son in this campaign; but De Witt Clinton, finding elements of
strength in the prestige which his successful advocacy of the Erie
Canal had brought to him throughout the region where internal
improvements were popular, and relying upon his old connections with
the Federalists, watched events with eager eye, waiting for an
opportunity which never came. Although the south saw in Rufus King's
advocacy of the exclusion of slavery from Missouri a deep design to
win the presidency by an antislavery combination of the northern
states, there was little ground for this belief. In truth, the
middle region was merely the fighting-ground for leaders in the
other sections.
In the south, Calhoun and Crawford were already contending for the
mastery. Each of them represented fundamental tendencies in the
section. Born in Virginia in 1772, Crawford had migrated with his
father in early childhood to South Carolina, and soon after to
Georgia. [Footnote: Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights," in Am.
Hist. Assoc., Report 1901, II., 95; Cobb, Leisure Labors; Miller,
Bench and Bar of Georgia; West, "Life and Times of William H.
Crawford," in National Portrait Gallery, IV.; Adams, Life of
Gallatin. 598.] Here he became the leader of the Virginia element
against the interior democracy. But in his coarse strength and
adaptability the burly Georgian showed the impress which frontier
influences had given to his state. His career in national politics
brought him strange alliances. This Georgia candidate had been no
mere subject of the Virginia dynasty, for he supported John Adams in
his resistance to France in 1798; challenged the administration of
Jefferson by voting with the Federalists in the United States Senate
against the embargo; and ridiculed the ambiguous message of Madison
when the issue of peace or war with Great Britain was under
consideration. A fearless supporter of the recharter of the national
bank, he had championed the doctrine of implied powers and denied
the right of a state to resist the laws of Congress except by
changing its representation or appealing to the sword under the
right of revolution.
Nevertheless, in the period of this volume, Crawford joined the
ranks of the southerners who demanded a return to strict
construction and insistence on state rights. In the congressional
caucus of 1816, he obtained 54 votes for the presidency against 65
for Monroe. Had not the influence of Madison been thrown for the
latter, it seems probable that Crawford would have obtained the
nomination; but his strength in building up a following in Congress
was much greater than his popularity with the people at large.
Controlling the patronage of the treasury department, he enlarged
his political influence. As the author of the four-years'-tenure-of-
office act, in 1820, he has been vehemently criticized as a founder
of the spoils system. But there are reasons for thinking that
Crawford's advocacy of this measure was based upon considerations of
efficiency at least as much as those of politics, [Footnote: Fish,
Civil Service and Patronage, 66 et seq.] and the conduct of his
department was marked by sagacity. The administration of such a man
would probably have been characterized by an accommodating spirit
which would have carried on the traditions of Monroe.
In the career of Calhoun are strikingly exhibited the changing
characteristics of the south in this era. His grandfather was a
Scotch-Irishman who came to Pennsylvania with the emigration of that
people in the first half of the eighteenth century, and thence
followed the stream of settlement that passed up the Great Valley
and into South Carolina to the frontier, from which men like Daniel
Boone crossed the mountains to the conquest of Kentucky and
Tennessee. [Footnote: Cf. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution
(Am. Nation, VIII.), chap. xiii.] The Calhoun family were frontier
Indian fighters, but, instead of crossing the mountains as did
Andrew Jackson, Calhoun remained to grow up with his section and to
share its changes from a community essentially western to a cotton-
planting and slave-holding region. This is the clew to his career.
In his speech in the House of Representatives in 1817, on internal
improvements, Calhoun warned his colleagues against "a low, sordid,
selfish, and sectional spirit," and declared that "in a country so
extensive, and so various in its interests, what is necessary for
the common good, may apparently be opposed to the interests of
particular sections. It must be submitted to as the condition of our
greatness." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 14 Cong., 2 Sess., 854,
855.] This was the voice of the nationalistic west, as well as that
of South Carolina in Calhoun's young manhood.
In view of his later career, it is significant that many of those
who described him in these youthful years of his nationalistic
policy found in him a noticeable tendency to rash speculation and
novelty. "As a politician," said Senator Mills, of Massachusetts,
about 1823, he is "too theorizing, speculative, and metaphysical,--
magnificent in his views of the powers and capacities of the
government, and of the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of the
PEOPLE. He is in favor of elevating, cherishing, and increasing all
the institutions of the government, and of a vigorous and energetic
administration of it. From his rapidity of thought, he is often
wrong in his conclusions, and his theories are sometimes wild,
extravagant, and impractical. He has always claimed to be, and is,
of the Democratic party, but of a very different class from that of
Crawford; more like Adams, and his schemes are sometimes denounced
by his party as ultra-fanatical." [Footnote: Mass. Hist. Soc.,
Proceedings, XIX., 37 (1881-1882).]
Another contemporary, writing prior to 1824, declared: "He wants, I
think, consistency and perseverance of mind, and seems incapable of
long-continued and patient investigation. What he does not see at
the first examination, he seldom takes pains to search for; but
still the lightning glance of his mind, and the rapidity with which
he analyzes, never fail to furnish him with all that may be
necessary for his immediate purposes. In his legislative career,
which, though short, was uncommonly luminous, his love of novelty,
and his apparent solicitude to astonish were so great, that he has
occasionally been known to go beyond even the dreams of political
visionaries, and to propose schemes which were in their nature
impracticable or injurious, and which he seemed to offer merely for
the purpose of displaying the affluence of his mind, and the
fertility of his ingenuity." [Footnote: Quoted by Hodgson, Letters
from North Am., I., 81.] "Calhoun," said William Wirt, in 1824,
"advised me the other day to study less and trust more to genius;
and I believe the advice is sound. He has certainly practiced on his
own precepts, and has become, justly, a distinguished man. It may do
very well in politics, where a proposition has only to be compared
with general principles with which the politician is familiar."
[Footnote: Kennedy, William Wirt, II., 143; other views of Calhoun
in MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, v., ix.; Hart, Slavery
and Abolition, chap. xix.; Garrison, Westward Extension (Am. Nation,
XV., XVI., XVII.).]
At the beginning of the campaign, Calhoun was the confidant and
friend of Adams, apparently considering the alternative of throwing
his influence in the latter's favor, if it proved impossible to
realize his own aspirations.
From beyond the Alleghenies came two candidates who personified the
forces of their section. We can see the very essence of the west in
Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. Clay was a Kentuckian, with the
characteristics of his state; but, in a larger sense, he represented
the stream of migration which had occupied the Ohio Valley during
the preceding half-century. This society was one which, in its
composition, embraced elements of the middle region as well as of
the south. It tended towards freedom, but had slaves in its midst,
and had been accustomed, through experience, to adjust relations
between slavery and free labor by a system of compromise.
Economically, it was in need of internal improvements and the
development of manufactures to afford a home market. It had the
ideal of American expansion, and in earlier days vehemently demanded
the control of the Mississippi and the expulsion of the Spaniard
from the coasts of the Gulf. In the War of 1812 it sent its sons to
destroy English influence about the Great Lakes and had been
ambitious to conquer Canada.
It is an evidence of the rapidity with which the west stamped itself
upon its colonists, that although Clay was born, and bred to the
law, in Virginia, he soon became the mouth-piece of these western
forces. In his personality, also, he reflected many of the traits of
this region. Kentucky, ardent in its spirit, not ashamed of a strain
of sporting blood, fond of the horse-race, partial to its whiskey,
ready to "bluff" in politics as in poker, but sensitive to honor,
was the true home of Henry Clay. To a Puritan like John Quincy
Adams, Clay was, "in politics, as in private life, essentially a
gamester."[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 59.] But if the Puritan
mind did not approve of Henry Clay, multitudes of his fellow-
countrymen in other sections did. There was a charm about him that
fastened men to him. He was "Harry of the West," an impetuous,
willful, high-spirited, daring, jealous, but, withal, a lovable man.
He had the qualities of leadership; was ambitious, impulsive, often
guided by his intuitions and his sensibilities, but, at the same
time, an adroit and bold champion of constructive legislation. He
knew, too, the time for compromise and for concession. Perhaps he
knew it too well; for, although no statesman of this era possessed
more courageous initiative and constructive power, his tact and his
powers of management were such that his place in history is quite as
much that of the "great compromiser" as it is that of the author of
the "American system."
It is not too much to say that Clay made the speakership one of the
important American institutions. He was the master of the House of
Representatives, shaping its measures by the appointment of his
committees and his parliamentary management.[Footnote: Follett,
Speaker of the House, pp. 41-46.] By the period of our survey, with
the power of this office behind him, Clay had fashioned a set of
American political issues reflective of western and middle-state
ideas, and had made himself a formidable rival in the presidential
struggle. He had caught the self-confidence, the continental
aspirations, the dash and impetuosity of the west. But he was also,
as a writer of the time declared, "able to captivate high and low,
l'homme du salon and the 'squatter' in the Western wilderness." He
was a mediator between east and west, between north and south--the
"great conciliator." [Footnote: Grund, Aristocracy in America, II.,
213. For other views of Clay, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap.
xii.; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chap. xi.; Garrison, Westward
Extension, chap. iii. (Am. Nation, XIII., XV., XVII.).]
If Henry Clay was one of the favorites of the west, Andrew Jackson
was the west itself. While Clay was able to voice, with statesman-
like ability, the demand for economic legislation to promote her
interests, and while he exercised an extraordinary fascination by
his personal magnetism and his eloquence, he never became the hero
of the great masses of the west; he appealed rather to the more
intelligent--to the men of business and of property. Andrew Jackson
was the very personification of the contentious, nationalistic
democracy of the interior. He was born, in 1767, of Scotch-Irish
parents, who had settled near the boundary-line between North and
South Carolina, not far from the similar settlements from which,
within a few years of Jackson's birth, Daniel Boone and Robertson
went forth to be the founders of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1788,
with a caravan of emigrants, Jackson crossed the Alleghenies to
Nashville, Tennessee, then an outpost of settlement still exposed to
the incursions of Indians. During the first seven or eight years of
his residence he was public prosecutor--an office that called for
nerve and decision, rather than legal acumen, in that turbulent
country.
The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor of Congress was an
omen full of significance. He reached Philadelphia at the close of
Washington's administration, having ridden on horseback nearly eight
hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin (himself a western
Pennsylvanian) afterwards graphically described Jackson, as he
entered the halls of Congress, as "a tall, lank, uncouth-looking
personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a cue
down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners
and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman."[Footnote: Hildreth,
United States, iv., 692.] Jefferson afterwards testified to Webster:
"His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he
was a Senator, and he could never speak, on account of the rashness
of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often
choke with rage."[Footnote: Webster, Writings (National ed.), XVII.,
371.] At length the frontier, in the person of its leader, had found
a place in the government. This six-foot backwoodsman, angular,
lantern-jawed, and thin, with blue eyes that blazed on occasion;
this choleric, impetuous, Scotch-Irish leader of men; this expert
duelist and ready fighter; this embodiment of the contentious,
vehement, personal west, was in politics to stay.[Footnote: For
other appreciations, see Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap, xvii.;
MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, ii., xviii.(Am. Nation,
XIII., XV.).] In the War of 1812, by the defeat of the Indians of
the Gulf plains, he made himself the conqueror of a new province for
western settlement, and when he led his frontier riflemen to the
victory of New Orleans he became the national hero, the self-made
man, the incarnation of the popular ideal of democracy. The very
rashness and arbitrariness which his Seminole campaign displayed
appealed to the west, for he went to his object with the relentless
directness of a frontiersman. This episode gave to Adams the
opportunity to write his masterly state paper defending the actions
of the general. But Henry Clay, seeing, perhaps, in the rising star
of the frontier military hero a baneful omen to his own career, and
hoping to break the administration forces by holding the government
responsible for Jackson's actions, led an assault upon him in the
Seminole debates on the floor of the House of
Representatives.[Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation,
XIII.), chap. xvii.] Leaving Tennessee when he heard of the attack
which was meditated against him, the general rushed (1819) to this
new field of battle, and had the satisfaction of winning what he
regarded as "the greatest victory he ever obtained"--a triumph on
every count of Clay's indictment. This contest Jackson considered
"the Touchstone of the election of the next president."[Footnote: N.
Y. Publ. Library, Bulletin, IV., 160, 161; Parton, Jackson, II.,
chap. xl.] From this time the personality of the "Old Hero" was as
weighty a factor in
American politics as the tariff or internal improvements. He had now
outgrown the uncouthness of his earlier days and had become stately
and dignified in his manner. Around this unique personality there
began to gather all those democratic forces which we have noted as
characteristic of the interior of the country, reinforced by the
democracy of the cities, growing into self-consciousness and power.
A new force was coming into American life. This fiery Tennesseean
was becoming the political idol of a popular movement which swept
across all sections, with but slight regard to their separate
economic interests. The rude, strong, turbulent democracy of the
west and of the country found in him its natural leader.
All these candidates and the dominant element in every section
professed the doctrines of republicanism; but what were the orthodox
tenets of republicanism at the end of the rule of the Virginia
dynasty? To this question different candidates and different
sections gave conflicting answers. Out of their differences there
was already the beginning of a new division of parties.
The progress of events gave ample opportunity for collision between
the various factions. The crisis of 1819 and the depression of the
succeeding years worked, on the whole, in the interests of Jackson,
inclining the common people to demand a leader and a new
dispensation. Not, perhaps, without a malicious joy did John Quincy
Adams write in his diary at that time that "Crawford has labors and
perils enough before him in the management of the finances for the
three succeeding years."[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 391.] From
the negotiation of the Florida treaty in 1819, and especially from
the relinquishment by Spain of her claims to the Pacific coast north
of the forty-second parallel, the secretary of state expected to
reap a harvest of political advantage.[Footnote: Ibid., IV., 238,
273, 451, V., 53, 109, 290; Monroe, Writings, VI., 127.] But Clay,
as well as Benton and the west in general, balked his hopes by
denouncing the treaty as an abandonment of American rights; and,
although Adams won friends in the south by the acquisition of
Florida, Spain's delay of two years in the ratification of the
treaty so far neutralized the credit that the treaty was, after all,
but a feast of Tantalus. In these intervening years, when the United
States was several times on the verge of forcibly occupying Florida,
the possibility of a war with Spain, into which European powers
might be drawn, increased the importance of General Jackson as a
figure in the eyes of the public.
Next the Missouri controversy, like "a flaming sword," [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, V., 91.]cut in every direction and affected the
future of all the presidential candidates. The hope of Crawford to
reap the reward of his renunciation in 1816 was based, not only upon
his moderation in his earlier career, which had brought him friends
among the Federalists, but also upon the prospect of attracting a
following in Pennsylvania, with the aid of the influence of
Gallatin, and in New York as the regular candidate of the party.
These hopes of northern support demanded that Crawford should trim
his sails with care, attacking the policies of his rivals rather
than framing issues of his own. But for a time the Missouri
controversy alienated both Pennsylvania and New York from the south,
and it brought about a bitterness of feeling fatal to his success in
those two states. To Clay, too, the slavery struggle brought
embarrassments, for his attitude as a compromiser failed to
strengthen him in the south, while it diminished his following in
the north. Calhoun suffered from the same difficulty, although his
position in the cabinet enabled him to keep in the background in
this heated contest. Jackson stood in a different situation. At the
time he was remote from the controversy, having his own troubles as
governor of Florida, and, as a slave-holding planter he was not
suspected by the south, while at the same time his popularity as the
representative of the new democracy was steadily winning him friends
in the antislavery state of Pennsylvania.
To Adams all the agitation was a distinct gain, since it broke the
concert between Virginia and New York and increased his chances as
the only important northern candidate. He saw--none more clearly--
the possibility of this issue as a basis for a new party
organization,[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529.] but he saw also
that it menaced a dissolution of the Union.[Footnote: Ibid., V., 12,
13, 53.] He was not disposed to alienate the south, and he contented
himself with confiding his denunciation of slavery to the secret
pages of his diary, while publicly he took his stand on the doctrine
that the proposed restriction upon Missouri was against the
Constitution.[Footnote: Ibid., IV., 529.] As early as 1821 he
recognized that the number of candidates in the field made it almost
certain that the election would be decided by the vote of states in
the House of Representatives, where the vote of the single member
from Illinois would count as much as that of the whole delegation of
New York or Pennsylvania. What Adams needed, therefore, was to
combine New England in his support, obtain, if possible, a majority
in New York, and add the votes of a sufficient number of smaller
states to win the election.
The seventeenth Congress, which met in December, 1821, and lasted
until the spring of 1823, was one of the most ineffective
legislative bodies in the country's history. Henry Clay had returned
to Kentucky to resume the practice of the law as a means of
restoring his financial fortunes, and the importance of his
leadership was emphasized by his absence. Without mastery, and in
the absence of party discipline, Congress degenerated into a. mere
arena for the conflicts of rival personal factions, each anxious to
destroy the reputation of the candidate favored by the other.
In December, 1821, Barbour, of Virginia, was chosen speaker, by a
close vote, over Taylor, the favorite of Adams, thus transferring
the control of the congressional committees again to the south,
aided by its New York allies. The advantage to Crawford arising from
this election was partly neutralized by the fact that in this year
his partisans in Georgia were defeated by the choice of his
bitterest enemy for the governorship. It may have been this
circumstance which aroused the hope of Crawford's southern rivals
and led to the calling of a legislative caucus in South Carolina,
which, on December 18, 1821, by a close vote, nominated William
Lowndes instead of Calhoun for the presidency. Many of Calhoun's
partisans refused to attend this caucus, and the vote was a close
one (57 to 53). [Footnote: Ravenel, William Lowndes, chap, x.;
Adams, Memoirs, V., 468, 470; National Intelligencer, January 19,
1822.] Lowndes was a wealthy South Carolina planter, judicious and
dispassionate, with a reputation for fair-mindedness and wisdom that
gained him the respect of his foes as well as his friends. According
to tradition, Clay once declared that among the many men he had
known he found it difficult to decide who was the greatest, but
added, "I think the wisest man I ever knew was William
Lowndes."[Footnote: Ravenel, William Lowndes, 238.] His death, in
less than a year, removed from the presidential contest an important
figure, and from the south one of the most gifted of her sons.
As soon as the news of the nomination of Lowndes reached Washington,
a delegation of members of Congress, from various sections, secured
Calhoun's consent to avow his candidacy. His career as a tariff man
and as a friend of internal improvements had won him northern
supporters, especially in Pennsylvania, although, as South
Carolina's action showed, he was not able to control his state. The
announcement of Calhoun's candidacy turned against him all the
batteries of his rivals. Pleading the depleted condition of the
treasury, Crawford's partisans in Congress attacked the measures of
Calhoun as secretary of war. Retrenchment in the expenditures for
the army was demanded, and finally, under the leadership of
Crawford's friends, the Senate refused to ratify certain nominations
of military officers made by the president on the recommendation of
the secretary of war, giving as a reason that they were not in
accordance with the law for the reduction of the army. In the
cabinet discussion, Crawford openly supported this opposition, and
his relations with the president became so strained that, in the
spring of 1822, reports were rife that his resignation would be
demanded. [Footnote: Cf. Adams, Memoirs, V., 525.] Crawford himself
wrote to Gallatin that it would not be to his disadvantage to be
removed from office. [Footnote: Gallatin, Writings, 31., 241.]
In the summer the matter was brought to a head by a correspondence
in which Monroe indignantly intimated that Crawford had given
countenance to the allegation that the president's principles and
policy were not in sympathy with the early Jeffersonian system of
economy and state rights. Believing that Crawford was aiming at the
creation of a new party (a thing which distressed Monroe, who
regarded parties as an evil),[Footnote: Monroe, Writings, VI., 286-
291.] he made it clear that it was the duty of a cabinet officer,
when once the policy of the executive had been determined, to give
that policy co-operation and support.[Footnote: Monroe to Crawford,
August 22, 1822, MS. in N.Y. Pub. Library.] In his reply Crawford
denied that he had personally antagonized the measures of the
administration; [Footnote: Crawford to Monroe, September 3, 1822,
MS. in N.Y. Pub. Library; cf. Adams, Memoirs, VI., 390.] but he took
the ground that a cabinet officer should not attempt to influence
his friends in Congress either for or against the policy of the
government.
His assurances of loyalty satisfied Monroe and averted the breach.
It is easy to see, however, that Crawford's attitude strengthened
the feeling on the part of his rivals that he was intriguing against
the administration. They believed, whether he instigated his
partisans to oppose measures favored by the president or was unable
to restrain them, in either case he should be forced into open
opposition. [Footnote: Cf. Poinsett to Monroe, May 10, 1822, Monroe
MSS., in Library of Cong.; Adams, Memoirs, V., 315, VI., 57.] The
truth is that the government was so divided within itself that it
was difficult to determine with certainty what its policy was.
Monroe's greatest weakness was revealed at this time in his
inability to create and insist upon a definite policy. The situation
was aggravated by the president's determination to remain neutral
between the rival members of his official family, and by the loss of
influence which he suffered through the knowledge that he was soon
to lay down the presidential power.
Meanwhile, John Quincy Adams watched these intrigues with bitterness
of soul. Debarred by his Puritan principles from the open
solicitation of votes which his rivals practiced, he yet knew every
move in the game and gauged the political tendencies with the
astuteness of the politician, albeit a Puritan politician. Nor did
he disdain to make such use of his position as would win friends or
remove enemies. He proposed to Calhoun a foreign mission, suggested
the same to Clay, favored an ambassadorship for Clinton, and urged
the appointment of Jackson to Mexico. These overtures were politely
declined by the candidates, and Adams was forced to fight for the
presidency against the men whom he would so gladly have sent to
honor their country abroad.