A third candidate within the Cabinet circle was Calhoun, Secretary of War. Like Crawford, he could expect to reach the presidency only by winning the support of one or more of the greater Northern States. For a while he had hopes of Pennsylvania. When it appeared that he had nothing to look for in this direction, he resigned himself to the conclusion that, since he was yet hardly forty years of age, his time had not yet come.

For the first time, the West now put forward candidates—two of them, Clay and Jackson. Clay was a Kentuckian, of Virginian birth and breeding, in whom were mingled the leading characteristics of both his native and his adopted section. He was "impetuous, wilful, high-spirited, daring, jealous, but, withal, a lovable man." For a decade he had been the most conspicuous figure in the national House of Representatives. He had raised the speakership to a high level of importance and through its power had fashioned a set of issues, reflective of western and middle-state ideas, upon which the politics of the country turned for more than a quarter of a century. As befitted a "great conciliator," he had admirers in every corner of the land. Whether his strength could be sufficiently massed to yield electoral results remained to be discovered.

But what of Jackson? If, as one writer has said, Clay was one of the favorites of the West, Jackson was the West itself. "While Clay was able to voice, with statesmanlike 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."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the contentious, self-confident, nationalistic democracy of the interior. He could make no claim to statesmanship. He had held no important legislative or administrative position in his State, and his brief career in Congress was entirely without distinction. He was a man of action, not a theorist, and his views on public questions were, even as late as 1820, not clear cut or widely known. In a general way he represented the school of Randolph and Monroe, rather than that of Jefferson and Madison. He was a moderate protectionist, because he believed that domestic manufactures would make the United States independent of European countries in time of war. On the Bank and internal improvements his mind was not made up, although he was inclined to regard both as unconstitutional.

Jackson's attitude toward the leading political personalities of the time left no room for doubt. He supported Monroe in 1816 and in 1820 and continued on friendly terms with him notwithstanding the President's failure on certain occasions to follow his advice. Among the new contenders for the presidency the one he disliked most was Crawford. "As to Wm. H. Crawford," he wrote to a friend in 1821, "you know my opinion. I would support the Devil first." Clay, also, he disliked—partly out of recollection of the Kentuckian's censorious attitude during the Seminole debates, partly because of the natural rivalry between the two men for the favor of the western people. Clay fully reciprocated by refusing to believe that "killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans" qualified Jackson for the "various difficult and complicated duties of the chief magistracy." Toward Adams, Jackson was not ill disposed; before he decided to permit his own name to be used, he said that he would give his support in 1824 to the New Englander—unless one other person should be brought forward. That person was Calhoun, for whom, among all the candidates of the day, he thus far had the warmest regard.

Among so many aspirants—and not all have been mentioned—how should the people make up their minds? In earlier days the party caucuses in Congress would have eliminated various candidates, and the voters would have found themselves called upon to make a choice between probably but two opponents. The caucus was an informal, voluntary gathering of the party members in the two houses to canvass the political situation and decide upon the men to be supported by the rank and file of the party for the presidency and vice presidency. In the lack of other nominating machinery it served a useful purpose, and nominations had been commonly made in this manner from 1796 onwards. There were obvious objections to the plan—chiefly that the authority exercised was assumed rather than delegated—and, as the campaign of 1824 approached, opposition flared up in a very impressive manner.

Crawford, as the "regular" candidate, wanted a caucus, and his adherents supported him in the wish. But all his rivals were opposed to it, partly because they felt that they could not gain a caucus nomination, partly because their followers generally objected to the system. "King Caucus" became the target of general criticism. Newspapers, except those for Crawford, denounced the old system; legislatures passed resolutions against it; public meetings condemned it; ponderous pamphlets were hurled at it; the campaigns of Jackson and Clay, in particular, found their keynote in hostility toward it. Failing to perceive that under the changed circumstances a caucus nomination might become a liability rather than an asset, the Crawford element pushed its plans, and on February 14, 1824, a caucus—destined to be the last of the kind in the country—was duly held. It proved a fiasco, for it was attended by only sixty-six persons. Crawford was "recommended to the people of the United States" by an almost unanimous vote, but the only effect was to infuse fresh energy into the campaigns of his leading competitors. "The caucus," wrote Daniel Webster to his brother Ezekiel, "has hurt nobody but its friends."

For the first time in eight years the country witnessed a real presidential contest. The campaign, none the less, was one in which the candidates themselves took but little active part. The days of "swinging around the circle" had not yet dawned in our national politics, nor had even those of the "front-porch" campaign. Adams made no effort either to be nominated or to be elected, retaining throughout the contest that austere reserve in public manner which contrasted so singularly with his amiability and good humor in private life. Jackson remained quietly at the Hermitage, replying to correspondents and acknowledging expressions of support, but leaving to his managers the work of winning the voters. Clay, whose oratorical gifts would have made him an invincible twentieth century campaigner, contented himself with a few interviews and speeches. The candidate who normally would have taken most active personal part in the campaign was Crawford. But in August, 1823—six months before the caucus nomination—he was stricken with paralysis and rendered speechless, almost blind, and practically helpless. For months he hovered between life and death in a "mansion" on the outskirts of Washington, while his friends labored to conceal the seriousness of his condition and to keep his canvass going. Gradually he rallied; but his powerful frame was shattered, and even when the caucus discharged its appointed task of nominating him, the politicians were cold-heartedly speculating upon who would receive the "old republican" support if he should die. He recovered and lived ten years; but his chances of the presidency were much diminished by his ill fortune. "He had fallen with his face toward the goal, with his eyes and his heart fixed upon it."

As the canvass progressed, Jackson steadily gained. His election to the United States Senate, in the autumn of 1823, over a stanch supporter of Crawford showed that his own State was acting in good faith when it proposed him for the higher position. Clever propaganda turned Pennsylvania "Jackson mad"; whereupon Calhoun, with an eye to the future, sought an alliance with his competitor. The upshot was that a convention held at Harrisburg in March, 1824, nominated Jackson almost unanimously and named Calhoun for the vice presidency. Hostility to the caucus became also a great asset. Tariff, internal improvements, and foreign policy were discussed in the campaign, but the real issue was the manner of selecting the President. Should he continue to be chosen by a combination of Congressmen, or should the people take matters into their own hands? Impatience with the caucus system showed itself in numerous nominations of Clay, Adams, and Jackson by sundry state conventions, legislatures, and other more or less official bodies. The supporters of Jackson, in particular, made "down with the caucus" their rallying cry and found it tremendously effective. In the earlier stages of the campaign the politicians, aside from Lewis and his coworkers, were unwilling to believe that Jackson could be elected. Later, however, they were forced to acknowledge his strength, and at the end the fight was really between Jackson and the field, rather than between Crawford and the field as had been anticipated.

At the beginning of November, Jackson, accompanied by his wife and traveling in a handsome coach drawn by four of the finest Hermitage thoroughbreds, set out for Washington. Hostile scribblers lost no time in contrasting this display of grandeur with the republican simplicity of Jefferson, who rode from Monticello to the capital on the back of a plantation nag without pedigree. But Jackson was not perturbed. At various points on the road he received returns from the elections, and when after four or five weeks the equipage drew up in the capital Jackson knew the general result. Calhoun had been elected vice president with little opposition. But no one of the presidential candidates had obtained an electoral majority, and the task of choosing among the highest three would, under the terms of the Constitution, devolve upon the House of Representatives. When, by the middle of December, the returns were all in, it was found that Jackson would have 99 votes in the electoral college, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37.

The country awaited the 9th of February—the day of the official count—with great interest. Clay was, of course, eliminated. Crawford likewise, by reason of his poor showing and the precarious state of his health, could not expect to do more than hold his own. The contest had narrowed to Jackson and Adams, with Clay holding the balance. There were twenty-four States in the Union; the successful candidate must command the votes of thirteen.

The choice that Clay now had to make was distasteful, although not really difficult. Jackson had obtained a substantial plurality of the electoral votes; he probably had a plurality of the popular vote, although in the six States in which the electors were chosen by the Legislature the popular vote could not be computed; the Legislature of Clay's own State called upon the Congressmen from the State to give the Tenneseean its support. But Clay had felt very bitterly about the candidacy of "this military chieftain." Furthermore, he knew that if Jackson were to be elected, the country would not be disposed to take his successor from the West. Besides, Calhoun had put himself in line for the Jacksonian succession. On the other hand, Clay was not without grievances against Adams. The New Englander had captured the coveted Secretaryship of State in Monroe's Cabinet; he had taken no pains to conceal his dislike of the Kentucky "gamester in politics"; his foreign policy had been the target of many of Clay's keenest oratorical thrusts. But the country would be safe in his hands; and a popular westerner might well hope to become his successor. The decision in favor of Adams was reached with little delay and was confided to intimates almost two months before the House balloted. Though Clay's choice did not insure the election of Adams, it made that outcome extremely probable.

As the weeks passed, the situation became more tense. All the principals in the drama were at the capital—Adams as Secretary of State, Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury, Clay as Speaker of the House, Jackson as Senator—and the city was filled with followers who busied themselves in proposing combinations and making promises which, for the greater part, could not be traced to the candidates themselves. O'Neil's Tavern—graced by the vivacious "Peggy," who, as Mrs. John H. Eaton, was later to upset the equilibrium of the Jackson Administration—and other favorite lodging houses were the scenes of midnight conferences, intimate conversations, and mysterious comings and goings which kept their oldest and most sophisticated frequenters on the alert. "Incedo super ignes—I walk over fires," confided the straitlaced Adams to his diary, and not without reason. A group of Clay's friends came to the New Englander's room to urge in somewhat veiled language that their chief be promised, in return for his support, a place in the Cabinet. A Missouri representative who held the balance of power in his delegation plainly offered to swing the State for Adams if the latter would agree to retain a brother on the federal bench and be "reasonable" in the matter of patronage.

By the last week of January it was rather generally understood that Clay's strength would be thrown to Adams. Up to this time the Jackson men had refused to believe that such a thing could happen. But evidence had been piled mountain-high; adherents of both allies were openly boasting of the arrangements that had been made. The Jacksonians were furious, and the air was filled with recriminations. On January 28, 1825, an anonymous letter in the Columbian Observer of Philadelphia made the direct charge that the agents of Clay had offered the Kentuckian's support to both Jackson and Adams in return for an appointment as Secretary of State, and that, while the friends of Jackson would not descend to "such mean barter and sale," a bargain with the Adams forces had been duly closed. Clay's rage was ungovernable. Through the columns of the National Intelligencer he pronounced his unknown antagonist "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar," called upon him to "unveil himself," and declared that he would hold him responsible "to all the laws which govern and regulate men of honor."

Two days later an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman by the name of George Kremer tendered his respects to "the Honorable H. Clay," avowed his authorship of the communication in question, offered to prove the truth of his charges, and closed sententiously by affirming that as a representative of the people he would "not fear to 'cry aloud and spare not' when their rights and privileges are at stake." The matter was serious, but official Washington could hardly repress a smile. Kremer was a thoroughly honest but grossly illiterate rustic busybody who thus far had attracted the capital's attention mainly by reason of his curiously cut leopard-skin overcoat. The real author of the charge seems to have been James Buchanan, and Kremer was simple-minded and credulous enough to be made the catspaw in the business. Clay was taken aback. Kremer significantly made no reference to the "code of honor"; and since a duel with such a personage would be an absurdity, Clay substituted a request that the House make an immediate investigation of the charges. A committee of seven was appointed. But when it summoned Kremer to give his testimony, he refused to appear, on the ground—which in the present instance was a mere pretext—that the House had no jurisdiction over the conduct of its members outside the chamber.

The truth of the matter is that Kremer was only a tool in the hands of the Jackson managers. He admitted privately to members of the committee that he did not write the letter in the Observer, and it was plain enough that he did not understand its purport. His promise to substantiate its contents was made in a moment of surprise, because somebody had neglected to coach him on the point.

Finding that it could make no headway, the committee reported the fact, on the 9th of February, and the investigation was dropped. This was precisely what the Jackson managers wanted. Whatever happened, Jackson would be the gainer. "If Clay transferred his following to Adams, the charge would gain credence with the masses; if he were not made Secretary of State, it would be alleged that honest George Kremer (an ardent Jacksonian) had exposed the bargain and prevented its consummation."[6]

Was this charge of a "corrupt bargain" well founded? For a generation every public man had views on that subject for which he was ready to fight; mid-century and later historians came to conclusions of the most contradictory nature. The pros and cons are too complicated to be presented here, but certain things are fairly clear. In two elaborate speeches Clay marshaled evidence that before leaving Kentucky he decided to support Adams in preference to Jackson and Crawford. This evidence did not convince the Jacksonians; but it could hardly have been expected to do so, and nowadays it looks to be unimpeachable. It is certain that the friends of Clay approached the Adams managers with a view to a working agreement involving the Secretaryship of State; but it is equally clear that the Jackson and Crawford men solicited Clay's support "by even more unblushing offers of political reward than those alleged against Adams." Finally it is known that Adams gave some explicit preelection pledges, and that by doing so he drew some votes; but on the subject of an alliance with Clay he is not known to have gone further than to say to a delegation of Clay supporters that if elected by western votes he would naturally look to the West for much of the support which his Administration would need. At noon, on the 9th of February, the Senate and House met in joint session to witness the count of the electoral vote. Spectators packed the galleries and overflowed into every available space. The first acts were of a purely formal nature. Then the envelopes were opened; the votes were counted; Calhoun was declared elected to the vice presidency; and it was announced that no candidate for the presidency had received a majority. Then the senators withdrew, and the representatives addressed themselves to the task which the Constitution devolved upon them. The members of each delegation took their seats together; the vote of each State was placed in a separate box on a table; and Daniel Webster and John Randolph, acting as tellers, opened the boxes and tabulated the results. No one expected the first ballot to be decisive; indeed the friends of Crawford, who were present in large numbers, were pinning their hopes to the possibility that after repeated ballotings the House would break the deadlock between Jackson and Adams by turning to their candidate. A hush fell upon the expectant assemblage as Webster rose to announce the result; and seasoned politicians could hardly trust their ears when they heard: Adams, thirteen votes; Jackson, seven; Crawford, four. An eleventh-hour change of mind by a New York representative had thrown the vote of that State into the Adams column and had thereby assured the triumph of the New Englander.

That evening Jackson and Adams came face to face at a presidential levee, Jackson with a lady on his right arm. Each man hesitated an instant, and spectators wondered what was going to happen. But those who were looking for a sensation were disappointed. Reaching out his long arm, the General said in his most cordial manner: "How do you do, Mr. Adams? I give you my left hand, for the right, as you see, is devoted to the fair; I hope you are very well, sir." The reply came in clear but icy tones: "Very well, sir; I hope General Jackson is well." It is the testimony of an unprejudiced observer that of the two, the defeated Tenneseean bore himself more graciously than the victorious New Englander.

Two days later Adams, following a conference with Monroe, invited upon his head the fires of heaven by announcing that he had decided to appoint Clay Secretary of State, "considering it due to his talents and services to the western section of the United States, whence he comes, and to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations."



CHAPTER V

THE DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH

Monroe's Administration drew to a close in a mellow sunset of popular approval. But no prophetic genius was required to foresee that clouds of discontent and controversy would hang heavy about the head of his successor. Adams certainly did not expect it to be otherwise. "Prospects are flattering for the immediate issue," he recorded in his diary shortly before the election, "but the fearful condition of them is that success would open to a far severer trial than defeat." The darkest forebodings were more than realized. No one of our chief executives, except possibly Andrew Johnson, was ever the target of more relentless and vindictive attacks.

Adams was, in the first place, a minority President. Jackson's popular vote was probably larger; his electoral vote was certainly so; and the vote in the House of Representatives was at the last moment swung to Adams only by certain unexpected and more or less accidental developments. By thus receiving his office at the hands of a branch of Congress, in competition with a candidate who had a wider popular support, the New Englander fell heir to all the indignation that had been aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially against the selection of a President by Congressmen.

There was, in addition, the charge of a "corrupt bargain." It mattered not greatly whether the accusation was true or not. The people widely accepted it as true, and the Administration had to bear the stigma. "The coalition of Blifil and Black George, of the Puritan and the black-leg," John Randolph called the new alliance; and while Clay sought to vindicate his honor in a duel with the author of the phrase, nothing that he or Adams could do or say was able to overcome the effect upon the public mind created by the cold fact that when the Clay men turned their support to Adams their leader was forthwith made Secretary of State.

A further source of difficulty in the situation was the temperament of Adams himself. There was no abler, more honest, or more patriotic man in public life; yet in the presidency he was, especially at this juncture of affairs, a misfit. He was cold and reserved when every consideration called for cordiality; he was petulant when tolerance and good humor were the qualities most needful. He could neither arouse enthusiasm nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support. In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand him, but they felt instinctively that he was not one of themselves; and, therefore, they cast him out." Nobody had ever called him "Old Hickory" or any other name indicative of popular endearment.

Clay's appointment as Secretary of State was thoroughly typical of the independent, unyielding attitude of the new Administration. Adams had not the slightest sympathy with the idea of rotation in public position: such a policy, he said, would make government "a perpetual and unremitting scramble for office." He announced that there would be no removals except such as complaint showed to be for the good of the service, and only twelve removals took place during his entire term. The spoilsmen argued and fumed. The editor of an administration newspaper warmly told the President that in consequence of his policy he would himself be removed as soon as the term for which he had been elected had expired. But entreaties and threats were alike of no avail. Even Clay could not get the removal of a naval officer guilty of unbecoming conduct. In his zeal for nonpartizanship Adams fairly leaned backwards, with the result that incompetents were shielded and the offices were left in the hands of men who, in a very large number of cases, were openly hostile to the President and to his policies.

"Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors," wrote Adams in his first message to Congress, "I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence." In the principles and measures which he urged upon the legislative branch, none the less, he showed small regard for moderation or expediency. He defined the object of government to be the improvement of the condition of the people, and he refused to recognize in the federal Constitution restrictions which would prevent the national authorities from fulfilling this function in the highest degree. He urged not only the building of roads and canals but the establishment of a national university, the support of observatories, "the light-houses of the skies," and the exploration of the interior and of the far northwestern parts of the country. He advocated heavy protective duties on goods imported from abroad, and asked Congress to pass laws not alone for the betterment of agriculture, manufactures, and trade but for the "encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." He thought that the public lands should be sold at the highest prices they would bring and that the money should be used by the Government to promote the general welfare. He had no doubt of either the power or the duty of the Government to maintain a national bank.

Since the War of 1812 the Republicans, with whom Adams had been numbered, had inclined strongly toward a liberal construction of the Constitution, but none had gone to the limits marked out in this program. Besides, a strong reaction was now setting in. The President's recommendations were received in some quarters with astonishment, in some rather with amusement. Nowhere were they regarded, in their entirety, with favor. Even Clay—spokesman of nationalism though he was—could not follow his chief in his untrammeled flights. Men still widely believed that, the National Government ought to spend money freely on highways, canals, and other improvements. But by his bold avowals Adams characteristically threw away support for both himself and his cause; and the era of federal initiative and management was thus hastened toward its close.

No one who knew Jackson and his political managers expected them to accept the anomalous electoral results of 1825 as expressing the real will of the nation, and it was a foregone conclusion not only that the General would again be a candidate, but that the campaign of 1828 would at once begin. The defeated Senator remained in Washington long enough to present himself at the White House on Inauguration Day and felicitate his successful rival. Then he set out on the long journey homeward. Every town through Pennsylvania and along the Ohio turned out en masse to greet him, and at Nashville he was given a prodigious reception. To friends and traveling companions he talked constantly about the election, leaving no doubt of his conviction that he had been defeated by intrigue. To a sympathetic group of passengers traveling down the Ohio with him on board the General Neville he declared emphatically that, if he had been willing to make the same promises and offers to Clay that Adams had made, he would that minute be in the presidential chair. If he should yet attain that dignity, he added significantly, he would do it "with clean hands." It is reported that as he spoke there was in his eye the fire of determination, such as his soldiers had seen there as he strode up and down the breastworks at New Orleans.

To this point Jackson had sought the presidency rather at the instigation of his friends than because of personal desire for the office. Now all was changed. The people had expressed their preference for him, and their will had been thwarted. Henceforth he was moved by an inflexible purpose to vindicate both his own right to the position and the right of his fellow citizens to choose their chief executive without hindrance. In this determination he was warmly backed up by his neighbors and advisers, and the machinery for a long, systematic, and resistless campaign was speedily put into running order. One group of managers took charge in Washington. Another set to work in New York. A third undertook to keep Pennsylvania in line. A fourth began to consolidate support in the South. At the capital the United States Telegraph, edited by Duff Green of Missouri, was established as a Jackson organ, and throughout the country friendly journals were set the task of keeping up an incessant fire upon the Administration and of holding the Jackson men together. Local committees were organized; pamphlets and handbills were put into circulation; receptions and public dinners were exploited, whenever possible, in the interest of the cause. First, last, and always, Jackson's candidacy was put forward as the hope and opportunity of the plain people as against the politicians.

In October the Tennessee Legislature again placed its favorite formally in nomination, and a few days later the candidate resigned his seat in the Senate in order to be more advantageously situated for carrying on his campaign. For more than a year he remained quietly at the Hermitage, dividing his attention between his blooded horses and dogs and his political interests. Lewis stayed at his side, partly to restrain him from outbreaks of temper or other acts that might injure his interests, partly to serve as an intermediary between him and the Washington manipulators.

Before Adams had been in the White House six months the country was divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the feeling of the South Carolinian's friends that they, and not Jackson's friends, should lead in the coming campaign. After a good deal of hesitation the supporters of Crawford came over also. Van Buren coquetted with the Adams forces for a year, and the old-line Republicans, strong in the Jeffersonian faith, brought themselves to the support of the Tenneseean with difficulty; but eventually both northern and southern wings of the Crawford contingent alined themselves against the Administration. The decision of Van Buren brought into the Jackson ranks a past master in party management, "the cleverest politician in a State in which the sort of politics that is concerned with the securing of elections rather than fighting for principles had grown into a science and an art." By 1826 the Jackson forces were welded into a substantial party, although for a long time their principles involved little more than hostility to Adams and enthusiasm for Jackson, and they bore no other designation than Jackson men.

The elements that were left to support the Administration were the followers of Adams and Clay. These eventually drew together under the name of National Republicans. Their strength, however, was limited, for Adams could make no appeal to the masses, even in New England; while Clay, by contributing to Jackson's defeat, had forfeited much of the popularity that would otherwise have been his.

If the story of Adams's Administration could be told in detail, it would be one long record of rancorous warfare between the President and the Jacksonian opposition in Congress. Adams, on the one hand, held inflexibly to his course, advocating policies and recommending measures which he knew had not the remotest chance of adoption; and, on the other hand, the opposition—which in the last two years of the Administration controlled the Senate as well as the House of Representatives—balked at no act that would humiliate the President and make capital for its western idol. At the outset the Jacksonians tried to hold up the confirmation of Clay. It fell furiously, and quite without discrimination, upon the President's great scheme of national improvements, professing to see in it evidence of an insatiable desire for "concentration." In the discussion of a proposed amendment to the Constitution providing for direct election of the President by the people it was constantly assumed and frequently stated that Adams had no moral right to the position which he occupied. The President's decision to send delegates to the Panama Congress of 1826 raised a storm of acrimonious debate and brought the Administration's enemies into closer unison. To cap the climax, Adams was solemnly charged with abuse of the federal patronage, and in the Senate six bills for the remedy of the President's pernicious practices were brought in by Benton in a single batch! Adams was able and honest, but he got no credit from his opponents for these qualities. He, in turn, displayed little magnanimity; and in refusing to shape his policies and methods to meet the conditions under which he had to work, he fell short of the highest statesmanship.

As election year approached, it became clear that the people would at last have an opportunity to make a direct choice between Adams and Jackson. Each candidate was formally nominated by sundry legislatures and other bodies; no one so much as suggested nomination by congressional caucus. In the early months of 1828 the campaign rapidly rose to an extraordinary level of vigor and public interest. Each party group became bitter and personal in its attacks upon the other; in our entire political history there have been not more than two or three campaigns so smirched with vituperation and abuse. The Jackson papers and stump speakers laid great stress on Adams's aristocratic temperament, denounced his policies as President, and exploited the "corrupt bargain" charge with all possible ingenuity.

On the other hand, the Adams-Clay forces dragged forth in long array Jackson's quarrels, duels, and rough-and-tumble encounters to prove that he was not fit to be President; they distributed handbills decorated with coffins bearing the names of the candidate's victims; they cited scores of actions, from the execution of mutinous militiamen in the Creek War to the quarrel with Callava, to show his arbitrary disposition; and they strove in a most malicious manner to undermine his popularity by breaking down his personal reputation, and even that of his wife and of his mother. It has been said that "the reader of old newspaper files and pamphlet collections of the Adamsite persuasion, in the absence of other knowledge, would gather that Jackson was a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cock-fighter, a brawler, a drunkard, and withal a murderer of the most cruel and blood-thirsty description." Issues—tariff, internal improvements, foreign policy, slavery—receded into the background; the campaign became for all practical purposes a personal contest between the Tennessee soldier and the two statesmen whom he accused of bargain and corruption. "Hurrah for Jackson!" was the beginning and end of the creed of the masses bent on the Tenneseean's election.

Jackson never wearied of saying that he was "no politician." He was, none the less, one of the most forceful and successful politicians that the country has known. He was fortunate in being able to personify a cause which was grounded deeply in the feelings and opinions of the people, and also in being able to command the services of a large group of tireless and skillful national and local managers. He was willing to leave to these managers the infinite details of his campaign. But he kept in close touch with them and their subordinates, and upon occasion he did not hesitate to take personal command. In politics, as in war, he was imperious; persons not willing to support him with all their might, and without question or quibble, he preferred to see on the other side. Throughout the campaign his opponents hoped, and his friends feared, that he would commit some deed of anger that would ruin his chances of election. The temptation was strong, especially when the circumstances of his marriage were dragged into the controversy. But while he chafed inwardly, and sometimes expressed himself with more force than elegance in the presence of his friends, he maintained an outward calm and dignity. His bitterest feeling was reserved for Clay, who was known to be the chief inspirer of the National Republicans' mud-slinging campaign. But he felt that Adams had it in his power to put a stop to the slanders that were set in circulation, had he cared to do so.

As the campaign drew to a close, circumstances pointed with increasing sureness to the triumph of the Jackson forces. Adams, foreseeing the end, found solace in harsh and sometimes picturesque entries in his diary. A group of opposition Congressmen he pronounced "skunks of party slander." Calhoun he described as "stimulated to frenzy by success, flattery, and premature advancement; governed by no steady principle, but sagacious to seize upon every prevailing popular breeze to swell his own sails." Clay, likewise, became petulant and gloomy. In the last two months of the canvass Jackson ordered a general onslaught upon Kentucky, and when finally it was affirmed that the State had been "carried out from under" its accustomed master, Clay knew only too well that the boast was true. To Adams's assurances that after four years of Jackson the country would gladly turn to the Kentuckian, the latter could only reply that there would, indeed, be a reaction, but that before another President would be taken from the West he would be too old; and it was with difficulty that Adams persuaded him not to retire immediately from the Cabinet.

The results of the contest fully bore out the apprehensions of the Administration. Jackson received nearly 140,000 more popular votes than Adams and carried every State south of the Potomac and west of the Alleghanies. He carried Pennsylvania also by a vote of two to one and divided about equally with his opponent the votes of New York and Maryland. Only New England held fast for Adams. As one writer has facetiously remarked, "It took a New England conscience to hold a follower in line for the New England candidate." The total electoral vote was 178 for Jackson and 83 for Adams. Calhoun was easily reelected to the vice presidency. Both branches of Congress remained under the control of Jackson's partizans.

Months before the election, congratulatory messages began to pour into the Hermitage. Some came from old friends and disinterested well-wishers, many from prospective seekers of office or of other favors. Influential people in the East, and especially at the capital, hastened to express their desire to be of service to the Jacksons in the new life to which they were about to be called. In the list one notes with interest the names of General Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, salaried lobbyist for the United States Bank, and Senator Robert Y. Hayne, the future South Carolina nullifier.

Returns sufficiently complete to leave no doubt of Jackson's election reached the Hermitage on the 9th of December. That afternoon, Lewis, Carroll, and a few other members of the "general headquarters staff" gathered at the Jackson home to review the situation and look over the bulky correspondence that had come in. "General Jackson," reports Lewis, "showed no elation. In fact, he had for some time considered his election certain, the only question in his mind being the extent of the majority. When he finished looking over the summary by States, his only remark was that Isaac Hill, considering the odds against him, had done wonders in New Hampshire!"

When, two weeks later, the final returns were received, leading Tenneseeans decided to give a reception, banquet, and ball which would outshine any social occasion in the annals of the Southwest. Just as arrangements were completed, however, Mrs. Jackson, who had long been in failing health, suffered an attack of heart trouble; and at the very hour when the General was to have been received, amid all the trappings of civil and military splendor, with the huzzas of his neighbors, friends, and admirers, he was sitting tearless, speechless, and almost expressionless by the corpse of his life companion. Long after the beloved one had been laid to rest in the Hermitage garden amid the rosebushes she had planted, the President-elect continued as one benumbed. He never gave up the idea that his wife had been killed by worry over the attacks made upon him and upon her by the Adams newspapers—that, as he expressed it, she was "murdered by slanders that pierced her heart." Only under continued prodding from Lewis and other friends did he recall himself to his great task and set about preparing for the arduous winter journey to Washington, composing his inaugural address, selecting his Cabinet, and laying plans for the reorganization of the federal Civil Service on lines already definitely in his mind.



CHAPTER VI

THE "REIGN" BEGINS

Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828 was correctly described by Senator Benton as "a triumph of democratic principle, and an assertion of the people's right to govern themselves." Jefferson in his day was a candidate of the masses, and his triumph over John Adams in 1800 was received with great public acclaim. Yet the Virginian was at best an aristocratic sort of democrat; he was never in the fullest sense a man of the people. Neither Madison nor Monroe inspired enthusiasm, and for John Quincy Adams even New Englanders voted, as Ezekiel Webster confessed, from a cold sense of duty. Jackson was, as no President before him, the choice of the masses. His popular vote in 1824 revealed not only his personal popularity but the growing power of the democratic elements in the nation, and his defeat in the House of Representatives only strengthened his own and the people's determination to be finally victorious. The untrained, self-willed, passionate frontier soldier came to power in 1828 as the standard bearer of a mighty democratic uprising which was destined before it ran its course to break down oligarchical party organizations, to liberalize state and local governments, and to turn the stream of national politics into wholly new channels. It was futile for men of the old school to protest and to prophesy misfortune for the country under its new rulers. The people had spoken, and this time the people's will was not to be denied.

Still haggard from his recent personal loss, the President-elect set out for Washington, at the middle of January, 1829. With him went his nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, who was to be his private secretary; Mrs. Donelson, who was to preside over the executive mansion; an accomplished niece of Mrs. Jackson, who was to be of social assistance; an artist by the name of Earl, who resided at the White House throughout Jackson's two Administrations, engaged continually in painting portraits of the General; and, finally, the faithful Major Lewis, whose intention was merely to attend the inauguration and then return to his plantation. The puffing little steamboat on which the party traveled down the Cumberland and up the Ohio was saluted and cheered a hundred times a day; at Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh there were great outpourings of demonstrative citizens. Duff Green, one of the party managers, proposed that a great cavalcade should meet the victor at Pittsburgh and escort him by relays to the capital. On Van Buren's advice the plan was abandoned. But as the party passed along the National Road toward its destination it was accorded an ovation which left nothing to be desired as an evidence of the public favor.

Arrived in Washington, on the 11th of February—the day on which the electoral votes were counted in the Senate—Jackson and his friends found temporary lodgings at the Indian Queen Tavern, commonly known as "the Wigwam." During the next three weeks the old inn was the scene of unwonted activity. Office seekers besieged it morning, noon, and night; politicians came to ask favors or give advice; exponents of every sort of cause watched for opportunities to obtain promises of presidential support; scores of the curious came with no other purpose than to see what a backwoods President looked like. "The city is full of speculation and speculators," wrote Daniel Webster to his sister-in-law a few days after Jackson's arrival; "a great multitude, too many to be fed without a miracle, are already in the city, hungry for office. Especially, I learn that the typographical corps is assembled in great force. From New Hampshire, our friend Hill; from Boston, Mr. Greene ... and from everywhere else somebody else. So many friends ready to advise, and whose advice is so disinterested, make somewhat of a numerous council about the President-elect; and, if report be true, it is a council which only makes that darker which was dark enough before."

To all, Jackson was accessible. But he was not communicative, and up to Inauguration Day people were left to speculate not only upon the truth of the rumor that there was to be a "full sweep" in the offices but upon the new Administration's attitude on public questions in general. Even Isaac Hill, a warm friend and supporter, was obliged to write to an acquaintance four days before the inauguration that Jackson had little to say about the future, "except in a general way." The men with whom the Executive-elect was daily closeted were Major Lewis and Senators Eaton and White. Van Buren would have been of the number, had not his recently assumed duties as Governor kept him at Albany. He was ably represented, however, by James A. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, to whose correspondence we owe most of what we know about the laying of the plans for the new Administration.

The most pressing question was the personnel of the Cabinet. Upon only one appointment was Jackson fully determined when he reached Washington: Van Buren was to be Secretary of State. The "little magician" had been influential in turning New York from Crawford to Jackson; he had resigned his seat in the Senate and run for the governorship with a view to uniting the party for Jackson's benefit; he was the cleverest politician and, next to Calhoun, the ablest man, in the Democratic ranks. When offered the chief place in the Cabinet he promptly accepted. Edward Livingston was given his choice of the remaining positions, but preferred to accept an election to the Senate. With due regard for personal susceptibilities and sectional interests, the list was then completed. A Pennsylvania Congressman Samuel D. Ingham, became Secretary of the Treasury; Senator John H. Eaton was made Secretary of War; a Calhoun supporter from North Carolina, John Branch, was given the Navy portfolio; Senator John M. Berrien of Georgia became Attorney-General; and William T. Barry of Kentucky was appointed Postmaster-General, after the incumbent, John McLean, refused to accept the policy of a clean slate in the department. The appointments were kept secret until one week before the inauguration, when they were announced in the party organ at the capital, Duff Green's United States Telegraph.

Everywhere the list caused consternation. Van Buren's was the only name of distinction in it; and only one of the appointees had had experience in the administration of national affairs. Hamilton pronounced the group "the most unintellectual Cabinet we ever had." Van Buren doubted whether he ought to have accepted a seat in such company. A crowning expression of dissatisfaction came from the Tennessee delegation in Congress, which formally protested against the appointment of Eaton. But the President-elect was not to be swayed. His ideas of administrative efficiency were not highly developed, and he believed that his Cabinet would prove equal to all demands made upon it. Not the least of its virtues in his eyes was the fact that, although nearly evenly divided between his own followers and the friends of Calhoun, it contained not one person who was not an uncompromising anti-Clay man.

Meanwhile a motley army of office seekers, personal friends, and sightseers—to the number of ten or fifteen thousand—poured into Washington to see the old regime of Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts go out and the new regime of the people come in. "A monstrous crowd of people," wrote Webster on Inauguration Day, "is in the city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." Another observer, who was also not a Jacksonian, wrote[7]:

"No one who was in Washington at the time of General Jackson's inauguration is likely to forget that period to the day of his death. To us, who had witnessed the quiet and orderly period of the Adams Administration, it seemed as if half the nation had rushed at once into the capital. It was like the inundation of the northern barbarians into Rome, save that the tumultuous tide came in from a different point of the compass. The West and the South seemed to have precipitated themselves upon the North and overwhelmed it....

"Strange faces filled every public place, and every face seemed to bear defiance on its brow. It appeared to me that every Jackson editor in the country was on the spot. They swarmed, especially in the lobbies of the House, an expectant host, a sort of Praetorian band, which, having borne in upon their shields their idolized leader, claimed the reward of the hard-fought contest."

The 4th of March dawned clear and balmy. "By ten o'clock," says an eye-witness, "the Avenue was crowded with carriages of every description, from the splendid baronet and coach, down to wagons and carts, filled with women and children, some in finery and some in rags, for it was the People's president." The great square which now separates the Capitol and the Library of Congress was in Jackson's day shut in by a picket fence. This enclosure was filled with people—"a vast agitated sea"—while in all directions the slopes of Capitol Hill were thickly occupied. At noon watchers on the west portico, looking down Pennsylvania Avenue, saw a group of gentlemen issue from the Indian Queen and thread its way slowly up the hill. All wore their hats except one tall, dignified, white-haired figure in the middle, who was quickly recognized as Jackson. Passing through the building, the party, reinforced by Chief Justice Marshall and certain other dignitaries, emerged upon the east portico, amid the deafening cheers of the spectators. The President-elect bowed gravely, and, stepping forward to a small cloth-covered table, read in a low voice the inaugural address; the aged Chief Justice, "whose life was a protest against the political views of the Jackson party," administered the oath of office; and the ceremony was brought to a close in the customary manner by the new Executive kissing the Bible. Francis Scott Key, watching the scene from one of the gates, was moved to exclaim: "It is beautiful, it is sublime."

Thus far the people had been sufficiently impressed by the dignity of the occasion to keep their places and preserve a reasonable silence. But when the executive party started to withdraw, men, women, and children rushed past the police and scrambled up the steps in a wild effort to reach their adored leader and grasp his hand. Disheveled and panting, the President finally reached a gate at which his horse was in waiting; and, mounting with difficulty, he set off for the White House, followed by a promiscuous multitude, "countrymen, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and unmounted, boys, women, and children, black and white."

The late President had no part in the day's proceedings. On arriving in Washington, Jackson had refused to make the usual call of the incoming upon the outgoing Executive, mainly because he held Adams responsible for the news paper virulence which had caused Mrs. Jackson such distress and had possibly shortened her life. Deserted by all save his most intimate friends, the New Englander faced the last hours of his Administration in bitterness. His diary bears ample evidence of his ill-humor and chagrin. On the 3d of March he took up his residence on Meridian Hill, near the western limits of the city; and thence he did not venture until the festivities of the ensuing day were ended. No amount of effort on the part of mediators ever availed to bring about a reconciliation between him and his successor.

According to custom, the inaugural program came to an end with a reception at the White House; and arrangements were made to entertain a large number of guests. Police control, however, proved wholly inadequate, and when the throng that followed the President up the Avenue reached the executive grounds it engulfed the mansion and poured in by windows as well as doors, until the reception rooms were packed to suffocation. Other guests, bidden and unbidden—"statesmen and stable-boys, fine ladies and washerwomen, white people and blacks"—continued for hours to besiege the doors. "I never saw such a mixture," records Judge Story; "the reign of King Mob seemed triumphant. I was glad to escape from the scene as soon as possible." The President, too, after being jostled for an hour, very willingly made his way by a side entrance to the street and thence to his hotel.

A profusion of refreshments, including barrels of orange punch, had been provided; and an attempt to serve the guests led to a veritable saturnalia. Waiters emerging from doors with loaded trays were borne to the floor by the crush; china and glassware were smashed; gallons of punch were spilled on the carpets; in their eagerness to be served men in muddy boots leaped upon damask-covered chairs, overturned tables, and brushed bric-a-brac from mantles and walls. "It would have done Mr. Wilberforce's heart good," writes a cynical observer, "to have seen a stout black wench eating in this free country a jelly with a gold spoon at the President's House." Only when some thoughtful person directed that tubs of punch be placed here and there on the lawn was the congestion indoors relieved. When it was all over, the White House resembled a pigsty. "Several thousand dollars' worth of broken china and cut glass and many bleeding noses attested the fierceness of the struggle." It was the people's day, and it was of no avail for fastidious Adamsites to lift their eyebrows in ridicule or scorn.

Those in whom the establishment of the new order aroused keenest apprehension were the officeholders. A favorite theme of the Jackson forces during the late campaign was the abuses of the patronage, and the General came into office fully convinced that an overhauling of the civil service would be one of the greatest contributions that he could make to his country's welfare. Even if he had been less sure of this than he was, the pressure which office seekers and their friends brought to bear upon him would have been irresistible. Four-fifths of the people who flocked to Washington at inauguration time were seekers after office for themselves or their friends, and from every county and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly, that many of the incumbents had grown lax in the performance of their duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt that one man had as much right to public office as another, and he was so unacquainted with the tasks of administration as to suppose all honest citizens equally capable of serving their fellowmen in public station. As for the grievances of persons removed, his view was that "no individual wrong is done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right."

Shortly after the election Major Lewis wrote to a friend that the General was "resolved on making a pretty clean sweep of the departments." It is expected, he added, that "he will cleanse the Augean stables, and I feel pretty confident that he will not disappoint the popular expectation in this particular." If a complete overturn was ever really contemplated, the plan was not followed up; and it is more than possible that it was Van Buren who marked off the limits beyond which it would not be expedient to go. None the less, Jackson's removals far exceeded those made by his predecessors. Speaking broadly, the power of removal had never yet been exercised in the Federal Government with offensive partizanship. Even under Jefferson, when the holders of half of the offices were changed in the space of four years, there were few removals for political reasons.

No sooner was Jackson in office, however, than wholesale proscription began. The ax fell in every department and bureau, and cut off chiefs and clerks with equal lack of mercy. Age and experience counted rather against a man than in his favor, and rarely was any reason given for removal other than that some one else wanted the place. When Congress met, in December, it was estimated that a thousand persons had been ousted; and during the first year of the Administration the number is said to have reached two thousand. The Post-Office Department and the Customs Service were purged with special severity. The sole principle on which the new appointees were selected was loyalty to Jackson. Practically all were inexperienced, most were incompetent, and several proved dishonest.

"There has been," wrote the President in his journal a few weeks after the inauguration, "a great noise made about removals." Protest arose not only from the proscribed and their friends, but from the Adams-Clay forces generally, and even from some of the more moderate Jacksonians. "Were it not for the outdoor popularity of General Jackson," wrote Webster, "the Senate would have negatived more than half his nominations." As it was, many were rejected; and some of the worst were, under pressure, withdrawn. On the general principle the President held his ground. "It is rotation in office," he again and again asserted in all honesty, "that will perpetuate our liberty," and from this conviction no amount of argument or painful experience could shake him. After 1830 one hears less about the subject, but only because the novelty and glamor of the new regime had worn off.

Jackson was not the author of the spoils system. The device of using the offices as rewards for political service had long been familiar in the state and local governments, notably in New York. What Jackson and his friends did was simply to carry over the spoils principle into the National Government. No more unfortunate step was ever taken by an American President; the task of undoing the mischief has been long and laborious. Yet the spoils system was probably an inevitable feature of the new rule of the people; at all events, it was accepted by all parties and sanctioned by public sentiment for more than half a century.

Like Philip II of Spain, who worked twelve hours a day at the business of being a King, Jackson took the duties of his exalted post very seriously. No man had ever accused him of laxness in public office, civil or military; on the contrary, his superiors commonly considered themselves fortunate if they could induce or compel him to keep his energies within reasonable bounds. As President he was not without distressing shortcomings. He was self-willed, prejudiced, credulous, petulant. But he was honest, and he was industrious. No President ever kept a closer watch upon Congress to see that the rights of the executive were not invaded or the will of the people thwarted; and his vigilance was rewarded, not only by his success in vindicating the independence of the executive in a conflict whose effects are felt to this day, but by the very respectable amount of legislation which he contrived to obtain in the furtherance of what he believed to be the public welfare. When a rebellious Congress took the bit in its teeth, he never hesitated to crack the whip over its head. Sometimes the pressure was applied indirectly, but with none the less effect. One of the first acts of the Senate to arouse strong feelings in the White House was the rejection of the nomination of Isaac Hill to be Second Comptroller of the Treasury. A New Hampshire senatorship soon falling vacant, the President deftly brought about the election of Hill to the position; and many a gala hour he had in later days as Lewis and other witnesses described the chagrin of the senators at being obliged to accept as one of their colleagues a man whom they had adjudged unfit for a less important office.

Much thought had been bestowed upon the composition of the Cabinet, and some of the President's warmest supporters urged that he should make use of the group as a council of state, after the manner of his predecessors. Jackson's purposes, however, ran in a different direction. He had been on intimate terms with fewer than half of the members, and he saw no reason why these men, some of whom were primarily the friends of Calhoun, should be allowed to supplant old confidants like Lewis. Let them, he reasoned, go about their appointed tasks as heads of the administrative departments, while he looked for counsel whithersoever he desired. Hence the official Cabinet fell into the background, and after a few weeks the practice of holding meetings was dropped.

As advisers on party affairs and on matters of general policy the President drew about himself a heterogeneous group of men which the public-labeled the "Kitchen Cabinet." Included in the number were the two members of the regular Cabinet in whom Jackson had implicit confidence, Van Buren and Eaton. Isaac Hill was a member. Amos Kendall, a New Englander who had lately edited a Jackson paper in Kentucky, and who now found his reward in the fourth auditorship of the Treasury, was another. William B. Lewis, prevailed upon by Jackson to accept another auditorship along with Kendall, rather than to follow out his original intention to return to his Tennessee plantation, was not only in the Kitchen Cabinet but was also a member of the President's household. Duff Green, editor of the Telegraph, and A. J. Donelson, the President's nephew and secretary, were included in the group; as was also Francis P. Blair after, in 1830, he became editor of the new administration organ, the Globe. It was the popular impression that the influence of these men, especially of Lewis and Kendall, was very great—that, indeed, they virtually ruled the country. There was some truth in the supposition. In matters upon which his mind was not fully made up, Jackson was easily swayed; and his most intimate "Kitchen" advisers were adepts at playing upon his likes and dislikes. He, however, always resented the insinuation that he was not his own master, and all testimony goes to show that when he was once resolved upon a given course his friends were just as powerless to stop him as were his enemies.

The Jacksonians were carried into office on a great wave of popular enthusiasm, an for the time being all the powers of government were theirs. None the less, their position was imperiled almost from the beginning by a breach within the administration ranks. Calhoun had contented himself with reelection to the vice presidency in 1828 on the understanding that, after Jackson should have had one term, the road to the White House would be left clear for himself. Probably Jackson, when elected, fully expected Calhoun to be his successor. Before long, however, the South Carolinian was given ground for apprehension. Men began to talk about a second term for Jackson, and the White House gave no indication of disapproval. Even more disconcerting was the large place taken in the new regime by Van Buren. The "little magician" held the chief post in the Cabinet; he was in the confidence of the President as Calhoun was not; there were multiplying indications that he was aiming at the presidency; and if he were to enter the race he would be hard to beat, for by general admission he was the country's most astute politician. With every month that passed the Vice President's star was in graver danger of eclipse.

Several curious circumstances worked together to widen the breach between the Calhoun and Van Buren elements and at the same time to bring the President definitely into the ranks of the New Yorker's supporters. One was the controversy over the social status of "Peggy" Eaton. Peggy was the daughter of a tavern keeper, William O'Neil, at whose hostelry both Jackson and Eaton had lived when they were senators. Her first husband, a purser in the navy, committed suicide at sea; and Washington gossips said that he was driven to the act by chagrin caused by his wife's misconduct, both before and after her marriage. On the eve of Jackson's inauguration the widow became Mrs. Eaton, and certain disagreeable rumors connecting the names of the two were confirmed in the public mind. When Eaton was made Secretary of War, society shrugged its shoulders and wondered what sort of figure "Peg O'Neil" would cut in Cabinet circles. The question was soon answered. At the first official functions Mrs. Eaton was received with studied neglect by the wives of the other Cabinet officers; and all refused either to call on her or to receive her in their homes.

Jackson was furious. It was enough for him that Mrs. Jackson had thought well of the suspected woman, and all his gallantry rose in her defense. Professing to regard the attitude of the protesters as nothing less than an affront to his Administration, he called upon the men of the Cabinet, and upon the Vice President, to remonstrate with their wives in Mrs. Eaton's behalf. But if any such remonstrances were made, nothing came of them. "For once in his life, Andrew Jackson was defeated. Creeks and Spaniards and Redcoats he could conquer, but the ladies of Washington never surrendered, and Peggy Eaton though her affairs became a national question, never got into Washington society."[8] The political effect of the episode was considerable. Van Buren was a widower, and, having no family to object, he showed Mrs. Eaton all possible courtesy. On the other hand, Mrs. Calhoun was the leader of those who refused Mrs. Eaton recognition. Jackson was not slow to note these facts, and his opinion of Van Buren steadily rose, while he set down Calhoun as an obdurate member of the "conspiracy."

Throughout the winter of 1829-30 the Calhoun and Van Buren factions kept up a contest which daily became more acrimonious and open. Already the clique around the President had secretly decided that in 1832 he must run again, with Van Buren as a mate, and that the New Yorker should be the presidential candidate in 1836. Though irritated by the Vice President's conduct in the Eaton affair and in other matters, Jackson threw over the understanding of 1828 with reluctance. Even when, on the last day of 1829, his friends, alarmed by the state of his health, persuaded him to write a letter to a Tennessee judge warmly commending Van Buren and expressing grave doubts about the South Carolinian—a statement which, in the event of worst fears being realized, would be of the utmost value to the Van Buren men—he was unwilling to go the full length of an open break.

But Lewis and his coworkers were craftily laying the train of powder that would lead to an explosion, and in the spring of 1830 they were ready to apply the match. When the President had been worked up to the right stage of suspicion, it was suddenly made known to him that it was Calhoun, not Crawford, who in Monroe's Cabinet circle in 1818 had urged that the conqueror of Florida be censured for his bold deeds. This had the full effect desired. Jackson made a peremptory demand upon the Vice President for an explanation of his perfidy. Calhoun responded in a letter which explained and explained, yet got nowhere. Whereupon Jackson replied in a haughty communication, manifestly prepared by the men who were engineering the whole business, declaring the former Secretary guilty of the most reprehensible duplicity and severing all relations with him. This meant the end of Calhoun's hopes, at all events for the present. He could never be President while Jackson's influence lasted. Van Buren had won; and the embittered South Carolinian could only turn for solace to the nullification movement, in which he was already deeply engulfed.

Pursuing their plans to the final stroke, the Administration managers forced a reconstruction of the Cabinet, and all of Calhoun's supporters were displaced. Louis McLane of Delaware became Secretary of the Treasury; Lewis Cass of Michigan, Secretary of War; Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, Secretary of the Navy; and Roger B. Taney of Maryland, Attorney-General. Van Buren also retired, in conformity with Jackson's announced intention not to have any one in the Cabinet who was a candidate for the succession; and Edward Livingston, Jackson's old Louisiana friend, became Secretary of State.

It was decided that a fitting post for a successor while awaiting his turn—particularly for one who was not popular—would be the ministership to Great Britain; and Van Buren duly traveled to London to take up the duties of this position. But when the appointment was submitted to the Senate, Calhoun's friends adroitly managed matters so that the Vice President should have the satisfaction of preventing confirmation by his casting vote. "It will kill him, sir, kill him dead," declared the vengeful South Carolinian to a doubting friend. "He will never kick, sir, never kick." But no greater tactical error could have been committed. Benton showed the keener insight when he informed the jubilant Calhoun men that they had "broken a minister," only to elect a Vice President.



CHAPTER VII

THE WEBSTER-HAYNE DEBATE

The United States came out of her second war with Great Britain a proud and fearless nation, though her record was not, on its face, glorious. She went to war shockingly unprepared; the people were of divided opinion, and one great section was in open revolt; the military leaders were without distinction; the soldiery was poorly trained and equipped; finances were disordered; the operations on land were mostly failures; and the privateers, which achieved wonders in the early stages of the contest, were driven to cover long before the close; for the restoration of peace the nation had to thank England's war weariness far more than her own successes; and the Treaty of Ghent did not so much as mention impressment, captures, or any of the other matters mainly at issue when the war was begun. Peace, however, brought gratitude, enthusiasm, optimism. Defeats were quickly forgotten; and Jackson's victory at New Orleans atoned for the humiliations of years. After all, the contest had been victorious in its larger outcome, for the new world conditions were such as to insure that the claims and practices which had troubled the relations of the United States and Great Britain would never be revived. The carpings of critics were drowned in the public rejoicings. The Hartford Convention dissolved unwept and unsung. Flushed with pride and confidence, the country entered upon a new and richer epoch.

The dominant tone of this dawning period was nationalism. The nation was to be made great and rich and free; sectional interests and ambitions were to be merged in the greater national purpose. Congress voiced the sentiment of the day by freely laying tariffs to protect newly risen manufactures, by appropriating money for "internal improvements," by establishing a second United States Bank, and by giving full support to the annexation of territory for the adjustment of border difficulties and the extension of the country to its natural frontiers.

Under the leadership of John Marshall, the Supreme Court handed down an imposing series of decisions restricting the powers of the States and throwing open the floodgates for the expansion of national functions and activities. Statesmen of all sections put the nation first in their plans and policies as they had not always done in earlier days. John C. Calhoun was destined shortly to take rank as the greatest of sectionalists. Nevertheless, between 1815 and 1820 he voted for protective tariffs, brought in a great bill for internal improvements, and won from John Quincy Adams praise for being "above all sectional...prejudices more than any other statesman of this union" with whom he "had ever acted."

The differences between the nationalist and state rights schools were, however, deep-rooted—altogether too fundamental to be obliterated by even the nationalizing swing of the war period; and in a brief time the old controversy of Hamilton and Jefferson was renewed on the former lines. The pull of political tradition and of sectional interest was too strong to be resisted. In the commercial and industrial East tradition and interest supported, in general, the doctrine of broad national powers; and the same was true of the West and Northwest. The South, however, inclined to limited national powers, large functions for the States, and such a construction of the Constitution as would give the benefit of the doubt in all cases to the States.

The political theory current south of the Potomac and the Ohio made of state rights a fetish. Yet the powerful sectional reaction which set in after 1820 against the nationalizing tendency had as its main impetus the injustice which the Southern people felt had been done to them through the use of the nation's larger powers. They objected to the protective tariff as a device which not only brought the South no benefit but interfered with its markets and raised the cost of certain of its staple supplies. They opposed internal improvements at national expense because of their consolidating tendency, and because few of the projects carried out were of large advantage to the Southern people. They regarded the National Bank as at best useless; and they resisted federal legislation imposing restrictions on slavery as prejudicial to vested rights in the "peculiar institution."

After 1820 the pendulum swung rapidly back toward particularism. State rights sentiment was freely expressed by men, both Southern and Northern, whose views commanded respect; and in more than one State—notably in Ohio and Georgia—bold actions proclaimed this sentiment to be no mere matter of academic opinion. Ohio in 1819 forcibly collected a tax on the United States Bank in defiance of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of M'Culloch vs. Maryland; and in 1821 her Legislature reaffirmed the doctrines of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and persisted in resistance, even after the Supreme Court had rendered a decision[9] specifically against the position which the State had taken. Judge Roane of Virginia, in a series of articles in the Richmond Enquirer, argued that the Federal Union was a compact among the States and that the nationalistic reasoning of his fellow Virginian, Marshall, in the foregoing decisions was false; and Jefferson heartily endorsed his views. In Cohens vs. Virginia, in 1821, the Supreme Court held that it had appellate jurisdiction in a case decided by a state court where the Constitution and laws of the United States were involved, even though a State was a party; whereupon the Virginia House of Delegates declared that the State's lawyers had been right in their contention that final construction of the Constitution lay with the courts of the States. Jefferson, also, gave this assertion his support, and denounced the centralizing tendencies of the Judiciary, "which, working like gravity without any intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated mass."

In 1825 Jefferson actually proposed that the Virginia Legislature should pass a set of resolutions pronouncing null and void the whole body of federal laws on the subject of internal improvements. The Georgia Legislature, aroused by growing antislavery activities in the North, declared in 1827 that the remedy lay in "a firm and determined union of the people and the States of the South" against interference with the institutions of that section of the country. Already Georgia had placed herself in an attitude of resistance to the Federal Government upon the rights of the Indians within her borders, and within the next decade she repeatedly nullified decisions of the federal courts on this subject. In 1828 the South Carolina Legislature adopted a series of eight resolutions denouncing the lately enacted "tariff of abominations," and a report, originally drafted by Calhoun and commonly known as The South Carolina Exposition, in which were to be found all of the essentials of the constitutional argument underlying the nullification movement of 1832.

When Jackson went into the White House, the country was therefore fairly buzzing with discussions of constitutional questions. What was the true character of the Constitution and of the Union established under it? Were the States sovereign? Who should determine the limits of state and federal powers? What remedy had a State against unconstitutional measures of the National Government? Who should say when an act was unconstitutional?

The South, in particular, was in an irritable frame of mind. Agriculture was in a state of depression; manufacturing was not developing as had been expected; the steadily mounting tariffs were working economic disadvantage; the triumph of members of Congress and of the Supreme Court who favored a loose construction of the Constitution indicated that there would be no end of acts and decisions contrary to what the South regarded as her own interests. Some apprehensive people looked to Jackson for reassurance. But his first message to Congress assumed that the tariff would continue as it was, and, indeed, gave no promise of relief in any direction.

It was at this juncture that the whole controversy flared up unexpectedly in one of the greatest debates ever heard on the floor of our Congress or in the legislative halls of any country. On December 29, 1829, Senator Samuel A. Foote of Connecticut offered an innocent-looking resolution proposing a temporary restriction of the sale of public lands to such lands as had already been placed on the market. The suggestion was immediately resented by western members, who professed to see in it a desire to check the drain of eastern population to the West; and upon the reconvening of Congress following the Christmas recess Senator Benton of Missouri voiced in no uncertain terms the indignation of his State and section. The discussion might easily have led to nothing more than the laying of the resolution on the table; and in that event we should never have heard of it. But it happened that one of the senators from South Carolina, Robert Y. Hayne, saw in the situation what he took to be a chance to deliver a telling blow for his own discontented section. On the 19th of January he got the floor, and at the fag-end of a long day he held his colleagues' attention for an hour.

The thing that Hayne had in mind to do primarily was to draw the West to the side of the South, in common opposition to the East. He therefore vigorously attacked the Foote resolution, agreeing with Benton that it was an expression of Eastern jealousy and that its adoption would greatly retard the development of the West. He laid much stress upon the common interests of the Western and Southern people and openly invited the one to an alliance with the other. He deprecated the tendencies of the Federal Government to consolidation and declared himself "opposed, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the States, or the people of the States." Throughout the speech ran side by side the twin ideas of strict construction and state rights; in every sentence breathed the protest of South Carolina against the protective tariff.

Just as the South Carolinian began speaking, a shadow darkened the doorway of the Senate chamber, and Daniel Webster stepped casually inside. The Massachusetts member was at the time absorbed in the preparation of certain cases that were coming up before the Supreme Court, and he had given little attention either to Foote's resolution or to the debate upon it. What he now heard, however, quickly drove Carver's Lessee vs. John Jacob Astor quite out of his mind. Aspersions were being cast upon his beloved New England; the Constitution was under attack; the Union itself was being called in question. Webster's decision was instantaneous: Hayne must be answered—and answered while his arguments were still hot.

"Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked," the New Englander subsequently explained at a public dinner in New York, "I raised my voice in its favor, I must confess, with no preparation or previous intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest from a sense of duty. It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination, not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its suggestions. I felt it to be a contest for the integrity of the Constitution, and I was ready to enter into it, not thinking, or caring, personally, how I came out." In a speech characterized by Henry Cabot Lodge as "one of the most effective retorts, one of the strongest pieces of destructive criticism, ever uttered in the Senate," Webster now defended his section against the charges of selfishness, jealousy, and snobbishness that had been brought against it, and urged that the Senate and the people be made to hear no more utterances, such as those of Hayne, tending "to bring the Union into discussion, as a mere question of present and temporary expediency."

The debate was now fairly started, and the word quickly went round that a battle of the giants was impending. Each foeman was worthy of the other's steel. Hayne was representative of all that was proudest and best in the South Carolina of his day. "Nature had lavished on him," says Benton, "all the gifts which lead to eminence in public, and to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as the South's ablest and boldest spokesman in the upper chamber.

Webster was an equally fitting representative of rugged New England. Born nine years earlier than Hayne, he struggled up from a boyhood of physical frailty and poverty to an honored place at the Boston bar, and in 1812, at the age of thirty, was elected to Congress. To the Senate he brought, in 1827, qualities that gave him at once a preeminent position. His massive head, beetling brow, flashing eye, and stately carriage attracted instant attention wherever he went. His physical impressiveness was matched by lofty traits of character and by extraordinary powers of intellect; and by 1830 he had acquired a reputation for forensic ability and legal acumen which were second to none.

When, therefore, on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his First Reply, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his Second Reply—probably the greatest effort in the history of American legislative oratory—the little chamber then used by the Senate, but nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a spectacle fairly to be described as historic. Every senator who could possibly be present answered at roll call. Here were Webster's more notable fellow New Englanders—John Holmes of Maine, Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, Horatio Seymour of Vermont. There were Mahlon Dickerson and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and John M. Clayton of Delaware. Here, John Tyler of Virginia, John Forsyth of Georgia, William R. King of Alabama; there, Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. From the President's chair Hayne's distinguished fellow South Carolinian, Calhoun, looked down upon the assemblage with emotions which he vainly strove to conceal.

During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate galleries. Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in the morning every available inch of space was instantly filled with interested and excited spectators. So great was the pressure that all rules governing the admission of the public were waived. On the day of Webster's greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance was so scant that no business could be transacted.

Hayne's speech—begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of January—was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever fallen upon the ear of Congress. It was no mere piece of abstract argumentation. Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and Webster himself of complicity in "bargain and corruption." Thrusting and parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved even the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval. The nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able to measure up with so keen an antagonist. Webster sat staring into space, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.

The debate reached a climax in Webster's powerful Second Reply, on the 26th and 27th of January. Everything was favorable for a magnificent effort: the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital, the speaker was in the prime of his matchless powers. On the desk before the New Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper pages of notes. He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the labors of a single evening made possible. But it may be doubted whether any forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly prepared for, because Webster lived his speech before he spoke it. The origins of the Federal Union, the theories and applications of the Constitution, the history and bearings of nullification—these were matters with which years of study, observation, professional activity, and association with men had made him absolutely familiar. If any living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster was the man to do it.

Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by this speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the Southern charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the time are more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the oration to a close: "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart.... There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever." If this had been all, the speech would have been only a spirited defense of the good name of a section and would hardly have gained immortality. It was the Union, however, that most needed defense; and for that service the orator reserved his grandest efforts.

From the opening of the discussion Webster's object had been to "force from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working scheme."[10] In the Southerner's First Reply Webster found the statement that he wanted; he now proceeded to demolish it. Many pages of print would be required to reproduce, even in substance, the arguments which he employed. Yet the fundamentals are so simple that they can be stated in a dozen lines. Sovereignty, under our form of government, resides in the people of the United States. The exercise of the powers of sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the National Government and partly to the state Governments. This division of functions is made in the federal Constitution. If differences arise, as they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the decision rests—not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had said—but with the federal courts, which were established in part for that very purpose. No State has a right to "nullify" a federal law; if one State has this right, all must have it, and the result can only be conflicts that would plunge the Government into chaos and the people ultimately into war. If the Constitution is not what the people want, they can amend it; but as long as it stands, the Constitution and all lawful government under it must be obeyed.

The incomparably eloquent peroration penetrated to the heart of the whole matter. The logic of nullification was disunion. Fine theories might be spun and dazzling phrases made to convince men otherwise, but the hard fact would remain. Hayne, Calhoun, and their like were playing with fire. Already they were boldly weighing "the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder"; already they were hanging over the precipice of disunion, to see whether they could "fathom the depth of the abyss below." The last powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a glorification of the Union:

"While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise.... When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly 'Liberty first and Union afterward'; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart—'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!'"

Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded nothing. Each State, he still maintained, is "an independent sovereignty"; the Union is based upon a compact; and every party to the compact has a right to interpret for itself the terms of the agreement by which all are bound together. In a short, crisp speech, traversing the main ground which he had already gone over.

Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers involved in this argument; and the debate was over. The Foote resolution, long since forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four months and was then tabled. Webster went back to his cases; the politicians turned again to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of congressional business was resumed; and popular interest drifted to other things.

Both sides were well satisfied with the presentation of their views. Certainly neither was converted to the position of the other. The debate served, however, to set before the country with greater clearness than ever before the two great systems of constitutional interpretation that were struggling for mastery, and large numbers of men whose ideas had been hazy were now led to adopt thoughtfully either the one body of opinions or the other. The country was not yet ready to follow the controversy to the end which Webster clearly foresaw—civil war. But each side treasured its vitalized and enriched arguments for use in a more strenuous day.

Advantage in the great discussion lay partly with Hayne and partly with his brilliant antagonist. On the whole, the facts of history were on the side of Hayne. Webster attempted to argue from the intent of the framers of the Constitution and from early opinion concerning the nature of the Union; but a careful appraisal of the evidence hardly bears out his contentions. On economic matters also, notably the operation of the protective tariff, he trod uncertain ground. He realized this fact and as far as possible kept clear of economic discussion. The South had real grievances, and Webster was well enough aware that they could not be argued out of existence.

On the other hand, the Northerner was vastly superior to his opponent in his handling of the theoretical issues of constitutional law; and in his exposition of the practical difficulties that would attend the operation of the principle of nullification he employed a fund of argument that was simply unanswerable. The logic of the larger phases of the situation lay, too, with him. If the Union for which he pleaded was not the Union which the Fathers intended to establish or even that which actually existed in the days of Washington and the elder Adams, it was at all events the Union in which, by the close of the fourth decade under the Constitution, a majority of the people of the United States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they put into popular convictions that until then were vague and inarticulate—convictions which, as has been well said, "went on broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a force sufficient to sustain the North and enable her to triumph in the terrible struggle which resulted in the preservation of national life." It was the Second Reply to Hayne which, more than any other single event or utterance between 1789 and 1860, "compacted the States into a nation."



CHAPTER VIII

TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION

It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his State—and, for aught one could tell, his section—was about to put into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming controversy.

South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the Virginian's leadership was never fully accepted, and even before the Republican party had elsewhere submitted to the inevitable nationalization the South Carolina membership was openly arrayed on the side of a protective tariff, the National Bank, and internal improvements. Calhoun and Cheves were for years among the most ardent exponents of broad constitutional construction; Hayne himself was elected to the Senate in 1822 as a nationalist, and over another candidate whose chief handicap was that he had proposed that his State secede rather than submit to the Missouri Compromise.

After 1824 sentiment rapidly shifted. The cause appeared to be the tariff; but in reality deeper forces were at work. South Carolina was an agricultural State devoted almost exclusively to the raising of cotton and rice. Soil and climate made her such, and the "peculiar institution" confirmed what Nature already had decreed. But the planters were now beginning to feel keenly the competition of the new cotton lands of the Gulf plains. As production increased, the price of cotton fell. "In 1816," writes Professor Turner, "the average price of middling uplands...was nearly thirty cents, and South Carolina's leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the South saw in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the South Carolinians denounced the tariff as unconstitutional."[11]

Men of the Clay-Adams school argued that the tariff stimulated industry, doubled the profits of agriculture, augmented wealth, and hence promoted the well-being of the nation as a whole. The Southern planter was never able to discover in the protective system any real advantage for himself, but as long as the tariffs were moderate he was influenced by nationalistic sentiment to accept them. The demand for protection on the part of the Northern manufacturers seemed, however, insatiable. An act of 1824 raised the duties on cotton and woolen goods. A measure of 1827 which applied to woolens the ruinous principle already applied to cottons was passed by the House and was laid on the table in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice President Calhoun. The climax was reached in the Tariff Act of 1828, which the Southerners themselves loaded with objectionable provisions in the vain hope of making it so abominable that even New England congressmen would vote against it.