Chapter IX: The Dramatic Battle of 1832

I

The campaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have come to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the politicians were under the compulsion of cultivating and conciliating, not factions and groups, but the masses of the people. The day of Democracy had dawned, with all that means of good and evil. And in this struggle for the suffrage of the masses, Clay had unwittingly intrigued the Jacksonians into the advantage. Accustomed for years to relying solely on the wealthy and the influential, the great Whig leaders signally failed to appreciate that the very elements they had rallied to their support would tend to alienate the mechanics of the cities, the farmers of the plains, the pioneers struggling with poverty on the fringe of the forest. Thurlow Weed, who was one of the few practical Whig politicians, saw it, but he was then comparatively obscure. The clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet instantly sensed the opportunity and grasped it. A great moneyed institution, never popular with the masses, was seeking the humiliation of the most popular of Presidents. The most fortunate of that day were responding to the call of the Bank. The first battle at the polls between the “soul-less corporation” and the “sons of toil” was on. For the first time in a presidential election the demagogue appeared with his appeals to class prejudice and class hate, and all the demagogy was not on the part of the Jacksonians. If these sought to arouse the masses against the prosperous, the prosperous, with gibes about the “mob,” were quite as busy in prejudicing the classes against the masses.

And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an organization throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of the “Globe.” If the political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to grasp the potentiality of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was more alert, and, through his agency, the powerful “New York Courier and Enquirer,” edited by James Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to espouse the cause of Clay and “the monster.” That money played a part in the conversion was soon established in a congressional investigation; and when the “National Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed the convert, Blair was able sarcastically to comment on its being “charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty and independence in complying with his bargain with the Bank--and the bold, frank and honorable way in which he unsays all that he has said in favor of the President for the price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479] Thus the editors in 1832 fought with a ferocity never before approached.

From the beginning Amos Kendall realized that the appeal would have to be made to the masses. He therefore conceived the idea of inaugurating the campaign with a more solemn and dignified appeal to the more intellectual element. The result was a carefully prepared campaign document reviewing the work of the first three years of Jackson’s Administration. With a master hand he marshaled the triumphs of the Administration, and marched them--an imposing procession--before the reader. He anticipated and met all attacks. If parasites on the public service had been displaced by friends of Jackson, the new blood had injected new energy into the public offices. Business, long in arrears, had been brought up. Public accounts were more promptly rendered and settled. Scamps had been detected and scourged from office, and peculations to the amount of $280,000 had been uncovered. Economy and increased efficiency had resulted in the saving of hundreds of thousands.

In our foreign relations Kendall found nothing to be desired. Jackson had found Colombian cruisers depredating upon our commerce, and Colombian ports subjecting American cargoes to oppressive duties; he secured indemnities and the reduction of duties and the admission of American vessels to Colombian waters on the same footing as those of Colombia. He found no treaty with Turkey and the waters of the Bosphorus closed to us; he negotiated a treaty and our flag waved in the Bosphorus. He found no treaty with Austria--one was negotiated; a suspended treaty with Mexico--it was put in operation; the indemnity claims against Denmark for spoliation unpressed--he collected $750,000; the British West Indian controversy entangled by unskilled diplomacy--he untangled it with skillful diplomacy, and won a victory for American commerce; the French spoliation claims held in abeyance--and he triumphed there.

This brilliant foreign policy, he continued, had breathed new life into our domestic and foreign commerce, until “a commercial activity scarcely equaled in our history” was enjoyed. The hammers were heard in the shipyards, laborers were employed at high wages, prosperity pervaded every class and section. At Boston alone fifteen vessels were fitting out for trade in the Black Sea.

Despite these achievements Kendall complained that the President’s political foes had devoted their energy and ingenuity to obstruction alone. Congress had refused or delayed the necessary appropriations, denied him the means to maintain a mission to France, refused to confirm the appointment of his Minister to England, trumped up charges of fraud against his friends, resorted to childish investigations, charged the President with sending bullies to attack members of Congress and to spy upon them, and capped the climax of insufferable impudence with resolutions to inquire into the private conversations of the hero of New Orleans.

This campaign document, the first of its kind, was sent broadcast over the country to awaken the indignation of the faithful and to revive and intensify the cry, “Hurrah for Jackson.”[480] And it had the effect intended. The Jacksonians became all the more militant, ready to pounce upon and rend their enemies. Even the courageous Tyler, unfriendly to Jackson, cautioned his daughter in a letter home--“Speak of me always as a Jackson man whenever you are questioned.”[481] With this document in the hands of the intellectual, the Kitchen Cabinet turned with their appeal to the masses on the Bank issue. This speedily became paramount. But Clay and the Whigs were busy with intrigues with groups, and, to understand the remarkable campaign in its ramifications, it is necessary to pause for a peep behind the scenes where Clay may be seen in a light other than that of a man who “would rather be right than President.” We shall find him as willing, in Virginia, to unite with the champions of the Nullification he abhorred, as, in New York, with the party of the Anti-Masons he despised.

II

After the fashion of the old school politician of his day, Clay relied upon intrigue, upon the cultivation of groups with special interests and grievances. During the winter in Congress he had devoted himself to the consolidation of business and the ultra-conservative elements behind his candidacy. The bitterness of the contest was foreshadowed in the spring when Blair announced the publication of an extra weekly issue of the “Globe”; and in August, Duff Green made a similar announcement as to the “Telegraph.” While Clay planned to win on the Bank issue, he very early began a furious flirtation with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, thus injecting side issues that the Jacksonians were quick to accept. In April, Clay was writing a Virginia friend[482] of a possible coalition with the Nullification forces in three or four Southern States where extreme State-Rights views were prevalent. Governor Floyd of Virginia, destined to receive the electoral vote of the South Carolina Nullifiers, and for a time alienated from Clay, was making overtures for a conciliation. Duff Green, a messenger in Calhoun’s livery, had made a remarkable proposition. The purport of this proposition was that Calhoun’s friends would present his name for the Presidency if assured of three or four of the Southern States; that about August he would be announced as a candidate; that if arrangements could be made with Clay to place no electoral ticket in the field in Virginia, and to throw the support of his friends to Calhoun, the latter could carry the Old Dominion; that carrying Virginia, he would have a fair chance of carrying North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, with a fighting chance in Alabama and Mississippi; and, accomplishing that, he could defeat the reëlection of Jackson, and force the determination of the issue upon the House of Representatives where Clay would no doubt be elected to the satisfaction of Calhoun. The wily editor made it clear to Clay that he was to have no ticket in the States mentioned, and should actively coöperate with Calhoun in Virginia.

And Clay was not shocked! But he had not “assumed that Calhoun had much political capital anywhere outside South Carolina,” and doubted the practicability of abandoning a ticket in Virginia because of the imputations that would follow. And yet, if Calhoun could, by any chance, carry three or four of the Southern States, it was a consummation devoutly to be wished. “Let me hear from you, my dear friend, upon this matter,” he wrote, “and particularly your views as to the strength of the party of Mr. Calhoun in Virginia. Has it not relapsed into Jacksonism? Can it be brought forth again in its original force to the support of Mr. Calhoun? Suppose Mr. Calhoun is not put forth as a candidate, what course, generally, will his friends in Virginia pursue? Could our friends be prevailed upon to unite upon a ticket favorable to Mr. Calhoun? Or, in the event of no ticket being put up, would they not divide between Jackson and Calhoun, the larger part probably going to Jackson?”[483] The pet plan of the Calhoun conspirators failed, and in August, Duff Green set forth on a tour of investigation into New York and Pennsylvania, returning to Washington encouraged in the conviction that the defeat of Jackson could be accomplished through the unification of all the hostile elements against him. In announcing the campaign extras of the “Telegraph”--could he by chance have visited the marble bank building in Philadelphia?--he declared that “we believe that our duty requires us to demonstrate that General Jackson ought not to be reëlected.” There was no mistaking the meaning of this move, and the Jacksonians were instantly on their toes. Under the caption, “Consummation of the Coalition,” Blair vigorously denounced it in the “Globe.” “If Mr. Clay were elected,” he wrote, “Mr. Calhoun is well aware that it would instantly establish the Southern League, which is looked to by him as his only hope of ever attaining political power. This is the basis of the coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. It is like that of Octavius and Anthony which severed the Roman empire.”[484]

That Blair had not misinterpreted was immediately evident in the response of the Whig press. The influential Pleasants, of the “Richmond Whig,” warmly commended Green’s action and promised, “on the part of the ‘Telegraph,’ a luminous exposé of the misrule of Jacksonism.” “Ah,” wrote Blair, “the ‘Richmond Whig’ upon the appearance of Duff Green’s proposals for a joint opposition leaps into its embrace.”[485] And from that moment the “Globe” kept before its readers constantly the Calhoun heresy and the coalition with the Whigs. Early in September he began to discuss pointedly the Nullification meetings in South Carolina addressed by “Mr. Calhoun’s leading partisans,” warning that the sinister doctrine was “subversive of the Union,” and that “by forcing a clash between the Government and South Carolina, Calhoun hopes to arouse the sympathy of the entire South.” And he continued with a prescience that is now startling: “The Vice-President, as his prospect closes upon the elevated honors of the Federal Government, is exerting all his influence to place South Carolina in a position which shall compel the other Southern States to unite in a new system, or confederacy, which may open new views to his ambition.”[486]

Thus, burning all bridges as far as the Nullifiers were concerned, the Jacksonian leaders, in the interest of the President, concentrated on capitalizing their connection with the Whigs and the Bank. When Whig and Bank papers warmly recommended the “Telegraph” to the patronage of the Clay supporters, Blair gave the recommendation publicity, with the suggestion that “that paper is the open advocate of Calhoun and Nullification.” Thus he forced the coalition into the open. “Are not the Bank party turning to the Nullifiers?” he asked. “If not, why do they circulate the extra of Duff Green which is devoted to Nullification?”[487] Thus, by boldly repudiating and defying the Nullification element and Calhoun, the Jackson leaders more than neutralized any benefit that Clay and the Whigs might receive from their sympathy and support.

III

But more important to Clay than the attitude of the Nullifiers was that of the Anti-Masons. Strangely enough, he had, at first, looked upon the growing movement, not only with complacency, but with approval. After the failure of the new party in New York in 1830, he had written to a friend: “If they had been successful they would probably have brought out an Anti-Masonic candidate for President. Still, if I had been in New York, I should have given my suffrage to Granger.[488] I will not trouble you with the reasons.”[489] In the same letter, however, he expresses the opinion that such strength as the proscriptive party might muster would ultimately go to the Whigs, in general, and himself in particular, because “it is in conformity with the general nature of minorities,” when they have no candidate of their own, to support the strongest opposition party. Then, too, they were protectionists, had been abused by Van Buren’s organization in New York, “and General Jackson has, as they think, persecuted them.” At any rate, wrote the intriguing politician, “there is no occasion for our friends to attack them.”

But a new light broke for Clay when, in the spring of 1831, the Anti-Masons called a national convention, to meet two months before the Whigs’. His close friends became apprehensive. The sounding of the Anti-Masons disclosed no Clay sentiment. Quite the contrary. Much distressed at this revelation, one of the leaders of the movement urged him to exert his well-known powers of conciliation.[490] By the latter part of June he had concluded that the new party might not prove so advantageous after all. Writing to his bosom friend, Francis Brooke, he found that “Anti-Masonry seems to be the only difficulty now in the way of success, both in Pennsylvania and New York.”[491] By the middle of July he was convinced that “it would be politic to leave the Jackson party exclusively to abuse the Antis.”[492] A few days later he had concluded that “the policy of the Antis is to force us to their support,” and that “ours should be to win them to ours.”[493]

As the time for the convention approached, the Antis were split on Clay, a small portion wishing the nomination of one who would later withdraw in his favor, but the majority hoping for the nomination of one who would be acceptable to the Whigs in their convention two months later. The problem was finally solved by the nomination of William Wirt.

That this brilliant man would have scorned the honor on any other theory than that his nomination would be acceptable to both the Whigs and Clay, with whom he had served in the Cabinet, and for whom he entertained an affection, is shown in his correspondence.[494] But, while resting at Ashland and still ignorant of the convention’s action, Clay was writing to Brooke that “if the alternative is between Andrew Jackson and an Anti-Masonic candidate with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I should be embarrassed in the choice.”[495]

In the interval between the two conventions, the Anti-Masons clung desperately to the hope that Clay would do violence to his dominating, domineering disposition by sacrificing himself. He was an intimate friend of Wirt’s. Their views on fundamentals were alike. With Wirt elected, Clay would be the power behind the throne. With a divided opposition, Jackson’s election would be inevitable, and Clay hated him with a consuming hate. For identical reasons the Whigs hoped that, on the nomination of Clay, Wirt would retire in his favor. As the Whig convention approached, Wirt abandoned all hope of his own nomination. “There seems to be no doubt of Mr. Clay’s nomination in the convention next week,” he wrote to Judge Carr. “So be it. In a personal point of view I shall feel that I have made a lucky escape.”[496] After the nomination of Clay, it was the ardent wish of Wirt to withdraw. His intimations to his party’s leaders only brought the assurance that were the party dissolved there “were not enough Clay men among them to touch New York or Pennsylvania, nor consequently to elect Mr. Clay,” and he was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that “there [was] no more chance for Mr. Clay with the Anti-Masons than for the Pope of Rome.”[497] But the absurdity of his situation annoyed him, and he was soon wishing for “a little villa in Florida, or somewhere else, to retire to, and beguile the painful hours, as Cicero did, in writing essays.”

If he remained in the field, it was because Henry Clay preferred it. The relations of the ostensible rivals were close and confidential throughout the campaign. Clay feared that Wirt’s withdrawal would be ascribed to his influence, and would intensify the Anti-Masonic feeling against him. Then, again, the Whig board of strategy planned to deprive Jackson of the electoral vote of New York and Pennsylvania through an ingenious combination of the two opposition parties in those States. In New York the proscriptive party, meeting first, endorsed its national nominees, and nominated leaders of their own for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. With great cunning they selected an electoral ticket, including Chancellor Kent, an idolater of Clay. The Whigs followed, and accepted the Anti-Masonic ticket, and thus the Opposition was consolidated in the Empire State. There was no mystery as to the intent in regard to the State ticket--it was to have the united support of both parties. The weakness, with the public, was the absence of any indication as to the intended disposal of the electoral vote. The plan of the conspirators was to throw the electoral votes to Wirt provided there was a possibility of his election, or no possibility of the election of either Wirt or Clay; and for Clay in the event Wirt could not win and the Whig nominee could with the electoral vote of New York.[498] The plan met with the hearty approval of Clay, who entertained high hopes of its success in depriving Jackson of the electoral vote upon which his election depended.[499] Thus, before the campaign had fairly started, the politicians of these two parties were working in close coöperation with a complete understanding, while the rank and file of both parties were left entirely in the dark. Wirt, with no faith in the coalition, was doing nothing to advance his candidacy.[500] Thus the nominee of one party was secretly planning to deliver the prize to the man his own party had repudiated. Not only did he write no letters to advance his party’s cause, but he “refused to answer whenever such answers could be interpreted as canvassing for office.”[501]

Meanwhile the Jacksonians were merely amused at these intrigues of the old school politicians. The secret of their strength, here as always, was in their daring. Not only did they ignore the Anti-Masons and refuse to conciliate them, but they cast them off as completely as they had the Nullifiers. The highest member of the Masonic order in America was at the head of Jackson’s Cabinet, and John Quincy Adams gave the utmost publicity to the fact by addressing his attacks on Masonry to Edward Livingston. Jackson himself sought and found an opportunity to go on record against the prescriptive hysteria. In this manner the Jacksonian managers rallied the Masons to their banner, and they held in their hands the ammunition with which to blow to atoms the plan of the coalition leaders to deliver the rank and file of the enemies of Masonry to Clay.

Early in October Blair published in the “Globe,” without comment, Clay’s manly letter to some Anti-Masons in Indiana refusing to be drawn into sectarian quarrels. “If a President of the United States ... were to employ his official power to sustain, or to abolish, or to advance the interest of Masonry or Anti-Masonry,” he had written, “it would be an act of usurpation and tyranny.”[502] That was enough. The Democratic press of the country, taking the cue from the “Globe,” reproduced the letter, and thus the rank and file of the party everywhere was strengthened in its determination not to support its author.

While Clay was intriguing with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, the Democrats were audaciously denouncing both, and were gaining rather than losing by their temerity.

IV

There was but one issue--and that the Bank. Clay had made it the issue with the officers of the institution and their allied business interests; the clever leaders of the Jackson forces made it an issue with the masses of the people, who had always looked with suspicion and dislike upon the powerful financial institution.[503] And then, perhaps, the “Emperor Nicholas” bitterly regretted having yielded to the blandishments of Clay. If he had not considered the cost in money to the institution when he yielded, Clay understood it as well as Webster. They knew that a fight against the “weak old man,” as they foolishly called Jackson, would be “no holiday affair.” Satisfied of the support of the business element, they had calculated the cost of reaching the people generally--and they had the work of Biddle cut out for him.[504] And almost immediately, Biddle was as deeply involved as Clay himself.

The campaign plans of the two parties differed, since their special appeals were to different elements. The Clay men relied on the distribution, with Bank money, of the printed speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, of tracts and pamphlets. These, falling into the hands of the masses, were thrown aside. They were sympathetically perused by the bankers, merchants, manufacturers, preachers, professors, and lawyers who were in no need of conversion.[505] The Bank made desperate efforts to win to its support the press of the larger cities and towns. It was notoriously willing to prove its appreciation of such support with the coin of the realm.[506] That Webb’s paper had been won over with Bank money was common knowledge after the congressional investigation, and Amos Kendall, in the “Globe,” charged that the “Evening Post” had been “approached,” and that the “Standard” of Philadelphia had been offered five hundred dollars and a new set of type, and the inducement had been increased by five hundred dollars two days later.

Thoroughly frightened, Biddle spent lavishly for the printing and distribution of speeches and articles. Mailing the president of the Kentucky Bank[507] Webster’s speech on the Veto, and an article reviewing the Message, he instructed that these, “as well as Mr. Clay’s & Mr. Ewing’s speeches on the same subject,” be “printed and dispersed.”[508] More than $80,000--an enormous sum for those days--was spent by the Bank under the head of “stationery and printing” during the period of the campaign. Thousands of friendly newspapers were bought in bulk and scattered broadcast, and Blair announced the discovery that “about four bushels of the ‘Extra Telegraph’ is sent to New York to a single individual for distribution.”[509] An analysis of Benton’s speech and a reply was printed in pamphlet form, and thousands flooded the country and burdened the mails.

But more sinister still was the appearance, for the first time in American politics, of the weapons of intimidation and coercion. In New Orleans a bank commenced discounting four months’ paper at eight per centum--“because of the veto.” An advertisement appeared in a Cincinnati paper offering $2.50 per hundred for pork if Clay should be elected, $1.50 if Jackson won--a bribe of one dollar a head on each hundred pounds of pork. From Brownsville, Pennsylvania, went forth the disturbing report that “a large manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and others have given notice to do so,” and that “not a single steam boat will be built this season at Wheeling, Pittsburg or Louisville.” From Baltimore: “A great many mechanics are thrown out of employment by the stoppage of building. The prospect ahead is that we shall have a very distressing winter.” And so the work went on, with the Bank and its political champions holding the sword of Damocles over the heads of the masses who dared to vote for Jackson.[510] Jackson was held before the conservative and timid as rash, dangerous, destructive. Webster’s State convention speech at Worcester, expanding on the unfortunate sentence from the Veto Message as to the finality of Supreme Court decisions, was given general circulation. Even the brilliant Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” lived in constant terror of some rash act of Jackson’s that would wreck the country.[511]

For the benefit of the ardent Jacksonians who disliked and distrusted Van Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, the Whig and Bank press gravely quoted some mysterious “Philadelphian” to whom Jackson had said, “with his own lips,” that a reëlection would satisfy him as a vindication, and that he would resign and go home, leaving Van Buren in the Presidency. Even the “National Intelligencer” referred to the rumor as “the disclosure of an important fact ... going to confirm our own impressions.” And Blair had been forced to notice and denounce the story with the comment that “we had always thought Simpson the most depraved of all the miscreants purchased by the Bank, but certainly now Gales[512] deserves to be put below him.”[513] Earlier in the campaign the Whigs had attempted to serve the same purpose by circulating alarming reports regarding Jackson’s health. And Blair, in denouncing this canard, announced that the President “receives from 50 to 100 persons daily, is incessantly engaged in the despatch of the duties of his office, and joins regularly at table his large dinner parties of from 40 to 50 persons twice a week.”[514]

For the benefit of the preachers, teachers, and moral forces, the old stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness were revived, apropos of the attack by Sam Houston on a member of Congress. At first the President had merely instigated the assault--and then the imaginative Whig scribes worked out a bloodcurdling, circumstantial story. After the brutal attack, the swaggering Houston had met Postmaster-General Barry at the theater, and the two had talked it over at the theater bar, and, after being congratulated by the Cabinet member, he had called on Jackson and been heartily commended for his act.

Thus the Whigs used every weapon that came into their hands--money, subsidized and bought papers, the hostility to Masonry, the hate of the Nullifiers, the fear of Van Buren, intimidation, coercion, and slander. And something comparatively new to politics--the cartoon--soon became a feature of the fight. Here the Democrats were at a disadvantage, and the pictorial editorials that have come down to us are largely anti-Jackson. Here we find the President pictured as a raving maniac, as Don Quixote tilting at the pillars of the splendid marble bank building in Philadelphia, as a burglar attempting to force the bank doors with a battering ram, while the most popular cartoon among the friends of Clay pictured Jackson receiving a crown from Van Buren and a scepter from the Devil.[515]

V

But all the while the consummate politicians of the Jackson party were reaching and arousing the masses. Long before the opening of the campaign, Amos Kendall, Lewis, Hill, and Blair were cunningly appealing to the interests, the prejudices, and the hero worship of the voters of the cornfield and the village. These forerunners of the modern politician were keenly appreciative of the fact that between 1824 and 1832 a great body of voters, previously proscribed because of their poverty and lack of property, had been newly enfranchised. With the Whigs these were non-existent. The journalistic training of Kendall, Hill, and Blair pointed to the press as the surest way to reach the masses with their propaganda. The old-fashioned politician still affected a contempt for the press, and particularly for the little struggling papers of the country. The genius of Kendall immediately seized upon these, and, long before the campaign began, the sallow, prematurely gray young man of mystery, shut up in his petty office in the Treasury, was busy night and day, and especially at night, preparing articles and editorials laudatory of the Jackson policies, denunciatory of the Opposition, and these, sent to editors all over the country, were printed as their own. Thus the followers of Jackson in every nook and corner of the country were constantly supplied with ammunition in the shape of arguments they could comprehend and assimilate.

The center and soul of the Democratic organization was the office of the “Globe.” Among the papers of national reputation, but two others were supporting Jackson, the “New Hampshire Patriot” of “Ike” Hill, and Van Buren’s organ, the “Albany Argus.” But the “Globe” was equal to the demand upon it. Doubling the number of issues, the ferociously partisan Blair sat in the office writing feverishly, with Kendall gliding in and out with copy. Both possessed a genius for controversy. Both had mastered a style combining literary qualities, attractive to the educated, with the “pep” and “punch” that impressed, interested, delighted, the multitude. Blair dipped his pen in vitriol. In satire and sarcasm he had few equals. He was no parlor warrior, and he struck resounding blows like a boiler-maker. And he wrote in a flowing style that, at times, approached real eloquence. Having the average man in mind, his editorials, filling the greater part of the paper, were concise and brief. When language seemed weak, he resorted to italics. The longer and more sustained argumentative articles were written by the more brilliant Kendall. Through July, August, September, and October he wrote a series of articles on “The Bank and the Veto,” beginning in an argumentative vein, and gradually growing personal until he was devoting one issue to the financial connections between the Bank and Duff Green, another to similar connections of Webb, of the “Courier and Enquirer,” and another to Gales, of the “Intelligencer.”

Infuriated by the gibes, taunts, and attacks, the Whigs charged that the “Globe” was being distributed gratuitously--the business manager replied with an affidavit as to the legitimacy of its circulation.[516] News of the deepest import was crowded out by the exigencies of the campaign, and with the cholera scourge taking a heavy toll of lives in Washington, the only mention of it in the “Globe” was in the official reports of the Board of Health. But there was room for columns of quotations from Democratic papers on the Veto, all striking the exultant key--“The Monster is Destroyed.”

Only the persistent hammering of the Whigs on the unfortunate sentence of the Veto Message caused acute distress in Democratic circles. Webster’s Worcester speech was annoying. Here a sneer, there a gibe in the “Globe,” but sneers and gibes did not quite satisfy the editor, who finally made a laborious effort to explain,[517] and, finding the effort tame, Blair countercharged with the publication of Clay’s bitter anti-Bank speech of 1811 with appropriate comments upon it from the Jacksonian papers of the country.

As the campaign approached the end, Blair stressed the theory that the real fight was between Jackson and the Bank, with Clay a mere pawn in the game. “We see,” he wrote, “the most profligate apostasies invited and applauded--the grossest misrepresentations circulated--the worst forgeries committed--open briberies practiced, and all for what? Not avowedly to elect Henry Clay or William Wirt, but any ‘available candidate’[518]--in other words, any candidate with whom, in the end, the Bank directors can make the best bargain.”[519] And a week later, under the caption, “The Gold,” Blair announces that through private advices “we learn that certain heavy trunks, securely hooped with iron, have arrived at Lexington[520] from the East.”[521] Such was the character of the publicity with which the Jacksonians appealed to the masses of the people.

But the practical minds of the leaders of the Kitchen Cabinet were not content with creating public opinion--they systematically organized and directed it. In every community, no matter how obscure, some Jackson leader, with a genius for organization work, was busy welding the Jackson forces into a solid mass. Here Major Lewis took charge. He anticipated the card-index system of the modern politicians. There was scarcely a county in the country in which he did not know the precise man or men upon whom absolute reliance could be placed. And “Ike” Hill, now a United States Senator, made an extensive organizing tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania in early August.

In both publicity and organization, the greater part of the ability and all the genius was with Jackson.

VI

The Jacksonians depended also to a greater extent than the Opposition on appeals to the people, face to face. A creature of another world, looking down from the skies upon the United States in the late summer and autumn of 1832, would have concluded that its people moved about in enormous processions on horseback, with waving flags, branches and banners. Great meetings were held in groves, addressed by fiery orators, furiously denouncing “The Monster” and the “Corporation” and calling upon the people to “stand by the Hero.” Men left their homes, bade farewell to their families as though enlisting for a war, and rode from one meeting to another for weeks at a time.[522] Nor was this hysterical enthusiasm confined to the more primitive sections of the country. A French traveler sojourning in New York City was profoundly impressed by a Jackson parade there. “It was nearly a mile long,” he wrote. “The Democrats marched in good order to the glare of torches; the banners were more numerous than I have ever seen in any religious festival; all were in transparency on account of the darkness. On some were inscribed the names of Democratic societies, or sections; others bore imprecations against the Bank of the United States. Nick Biddle and Old Nick here figured largely.... From farther than the eye could reach came marching on the Democrats. The procession stopped before the houses of the Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted at the door of the leaders of the opposition to give three, six or nine groans. These scenes belong to history and partake of the grand; they are the episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to posterity.”[523]

And into these amazing demonstrations the campaign glee club, also new to American politics, entered, to play a conspicuous part, with pretty girls, and children gayly dressed, singing round the hickory poles that were raised wherever there were idolaters of Jackson. And so they sang:

“Here’s a health to the heroes who fought
And conquered in Liberty’s cause;
Here’s health to Old Andy who could not be bought
To favor aristocrat laws.
Hurrah for the Roman-like Chief--
He never missed fire at all;
But ever when called to his country’s relief
Had a ready picked flint and a ball.

“Hurrah for the Hickory tree
From the mountain tops down to the sea.
It shall wave o’er the grave of the Tory and knave,
And shelter the honest and free.”[524]

Even where the Whigs were strongest, the militant Democrats poured forth in defiant demonstrations. When Jackson, returning to Washington from the Hermitage in the closing days of the campaign, approached Lexington, the home of his rival, a multitude streamed down the road five miles to meet him, with over a thousand on horseback and in carriages, and before he reached his lodging the throng extended back two miles along the road “with green hickory bushes waving like bright banners in a breeze.”[525]

It was inevitable that in such a campaign personalities should intrude. In the winter of 1831-32, while Congress was in session, Jackson took advantage of the presence of Dr. Harris, an eminent Philadelphia surgeon, to have the bullet from Benton’s pistol, long lodged in his shoulder, removed. When the surgeon appeared at the White House, he was engaged with company, but excused himself with the explanation that he would have to submit to an operation; and a few hours later he reappeared among his friends with his arm in a sling. “Precisely,” wrote Blair, “as he had appeared with it in battle among the enemies of his country.”[526] This gave the Whigs their cue, and their press teemed with references to the “disgusting affair” in which the shot had been fired. And Blair himself was able to retaliate in kind with the story of a wound received by Clay in a personal conflict. “He was taken to a kind friend’s house,” he wrote, “he was treated with the utmost tenderness and courtesy by that friend’s wife and family, and while enjoying their hospitality, he amused himself ... by winning the money of his kind host at Brag.”

If Jackson was a brawler, it was given out thus that Clay was not only a brawler, but a gambler and an ingrate. Both stories made their way through the country.[527]

If the cholera was not of sufficient importance for the news columns of the party press, it was rich in suggestion to the politicians. The Dutch Synod requested Jackson to set a day aside for prayer. He replied that he had faith in the efficacy of prayer, but that the special day to be set aside should be designated by the State authorities. Whereupon Clay arose to offer a resolution in the Senate setting a day aside and fixing the day. Aha, cried Blair, he wants a veto on a religious subject. “It is not the cholera that makes them so pious; it is the hope to steal a march on the old Hero.... What whited sepulchers some of these partisan leaders are!” he wrote.[528]

And when, a little later, the “Pittsburgh Statesman,” a Clay paper, suggested that “the only effectual cure, under existing circumstances, for genuine Jacksonism is the equally genuine Asiatic Spasmodic Cholera,” the “Troy Budget,” supporting Jackson, was not surprised at “such political depravity,” coming from the “editorial slanderers and ruthless murderers of Mrs. Jackson.” And “Ike” Hill, in the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was reminded that Clay himself had prayed “for war, pestilence and famine” in preference to the reëlection of Jackson. When the President left the capital for the Hermitage, the “Troy Sentinel,” Whig, with its eye on the church vote, announced with emphasis that he had left Washington “at eight o’clock on Sunday morning.” Blair, denouncing the story as “a lie,” declared that “he did not leave the city until Monday morning and spent the Sabbath in religious duties as usual.” When “Ike” Hill, speaking at a complimentary dinner at the Eagle Coffee House, in Concord, assailed Clay and Senator John Holmes, and referred to some Senators as “low and blackguard,” the “National Intelligencer” protested, and Blair replied with a description of Holmes as a “besotted Senator who had indulged in indecent and ribald slang throughout the session,” and as one given to “low buffoonery”--the “mere Thersites of the Senate.”[529] Charges of impropriety touching on the personal integrity of political leaders were commonplace. The “Globe,” centering its fire upon the activities of the Bank, charged it with subsidizing and seducing the press by paying for the publication of political speeches at advertising rates.[530] “Every press in Philadelphia,” it said, “is closed by its influence, against the admission of anything unfavorable to its pretensions. The ‘Mechanics’ Free Press’ broke ground against it in conformity with the principles of its party, when lo! a shower of gold, amounting to $1700 for publishing Mr. McDuffie’s report, silenced it, and for good reasons, doubtless, it has ever since held its peace about the Bank.” And the Whig press was equally shocked to find that officers high in the Government were sending the “Globe” all over the country under their official frank. “A lie!” screamed Blair. And so the battle of personalities went on. From Hill’s “New Hampshire Patriot” came the resurrection of the long-discredited “bargain” story against Clay.

Meanwhile, what had become of the candidates and what were their feelings as to the prospects? While scarcely due to the strain of the campaign, all three, Jackson, Clay, and Wirt, were threatened with serious illness. As we have seen, Clay was threatened with paralysis about the time of his retirement from the Cabinet. During the summer and autumn of 1832 the old trouble returned. His friend, Brooke, who became concerned over his health, urged him to caution, and Clay, much moved by his friend’s solicitude, promised to be more careful of his diet, to abstain from wine, and to reduce his consumption of tobacco to “one form.”[531] At times, during the summer session, he had been forced to leave Washington for a brief period of rest at his friend’s home at St. Julien, Virginia; and as soon as Congress adjourned, he hastened to White Sulphur Springs for two weeks in hope of relief from the waters. Skeptical at first of his election, his confidence increased until he and Webster were exchanging letters of congratulation on its certainty.

Wirt, who had a serious attack, and was in a weakened condition, was forced by his physician to leave Baltimore, rather than take a chance with the cholera. After a brief sojourn at Bedford Springs, he went with his family to Berkley Springs where he remained through September. Here, with no thought of his own election, but with ardent hopes for Clay, he ignored the clamor of the campaign. Riding and lounging about the grounds during the day, regaling company with ghost stories in the evening, he bore no resemblance to a presidential candidate.[532]

Soon after Congress adjourned, the scourge reached Washington, taking heavy toll of the Irish and Swedish laborers engaged in the first macadamizing of Pennsylvania Avenue, and spreading rapidly from the poorer parts to the White House section. Because of Jackson’s weakened condition, his physicians insisted that he spend three months at the Hermitage, and near the middle of August, accompanied part of the way by Amos Kendall, Frank Blair, “Ike” Hill, Major Lewis, Lewis Cass, and Benton, he left the sweltering and infected capital and went down the Ohio. He was in high glee. Never for a moment had he doubted the result of the election. During the congressional fight over the recharter bill he had not punished those who had withheld their support by denying them patronage, except in the case of his most bitter foes. Just before the vote in the House, an Ohio Representative solicited an appointment for a constituent, and, upon being granted the favor, he explained that he thought it due Jackson for him to know that the favor was being granted a member who would vote for the Bank.

“I can’t help that, sir, but I already knew it. See here--I can take a roll of the House and check off every Democrat who will vote for the Bank. In fact I have one here.”

Turning briskly, he produced it, and the Representative, running over the list, indicated one name as that of a man who would vote with Jackson.

“How do you know?” demanded Jackson.

When told that this Congressman had been so unmercifully berated by his constituents that he had felt compelled to change his tack, the old warrior smiled grimly.

“He is a lucky fellow,” he said, “to get the views of his constituents beforehand. There are several other Democrats in the House who will not get similar notice until next fall, sir.”[533]

Nothing occurred after that incident to alter his opinion of the sentiment of the people. As Hill left the boat bearing the presidential party down the Ohio, at Wheeling, Jackson said, as he clasped his hand: “Isaac, it’ll be a walk. If our fellows didn’t raise a finger from now on the thing would be just as well as done. In fact, Isaac, it’s done now.”

That his friends shared his confidence we have ample evidence. Hill, writing to a friend, advised him to bet all he could on Pennsylvania and Ohio for Jackson--“not on stated majorities, but hang on to the general result.” And he added frankly, “I am on the turf myself. Benton and his friends out West are picking up all they can get.” John Van Buren, the son of Martin, and popularly known as “Prince John,” made a small fortune with his ventures on the election, and Hone, commenting on the manner and appearance of Martin Van Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, thought it indicated a feeling of absolute security.

The result was a notable victory for Jackson and his policies--an unmistakable rebuke to Clay. In electoral votes Jackson received 219, Clay 49, and Wirt 7, and the popular vote gave Jackson 124,392 over the combined strength of Clay and Wirt, thus proving the absurdity of Thurlow Weed’s theory that if Clay had acquiesced in the wishes of the Anti-Masons he could have been elected. The only State carried by Wirt was Vermont--as he had predicted. Clay carried Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Kentucky, and five out of the eight electoral votes of Maryland. All the other States went to Jackson but one--South Carolina, with childish petulance, threw its vote away at the behest of Calhoun.

Nothing could have been more ominous than this action. Going entirely outside the regularly nominated candidates, and acting in conformity with the views of the Nullifying party, which insisted on placing the State outside the Union, she gave her vote to Governor Floyd of Virginia. And Jackson, getting the returns, instantly caught the significance of the act, and girded his loins for a life-and-death struggle with Calhoun and Nullification.