Chapter XIII: Political Hydrophobia

I

Philip Hone, seated in the little Senate Chamber, and still entranced with Clay’s theatrical appeal to Van Buren, was awakened from his reverie by observing Webster beckoning him out of the room. The entertainer of the Whig celebrities followed the god of his idolatry to one of the committee rooms, where, for more than an hour, the orator “unburdened his mind fully on the state of affairs and future prospects.” The burden of it all was the importance of carrying the spring elections. When Hone called on Clay, he found him of the same opinion. “He says that the only hope is the election in our State and in Pennsylvania.” Meeting John Quincy Adams, “that sagacious man,” he found that the former President shared the belief that “our only hope lies in the elections in New York and Pennsylvania, particularly our charter election.”[753] That the Administration forces and the Kitchen Cabinet were equally impressed with the strategic value of victories in New York City is disclosed in a letter from Major Lewis to James A. Hamilton, “Have you any doubt of succeeding at your election?” he wrote. “I hope not; yet I confess I have my fears. The strongest ground to take with the people is the fact, that under the existing arrangements with the State banks, the whole revenue collected through your customs house is left to be dispensed in your own city, instead of being transferred to a neighboring rival city. Our friends should ring the changes upon this view in every quarter of the city.”[754] It is thus evident that the contending forces were concentrating for the election of aldermen and a mayor in a city then numbering few more than 200,000 people.

Early in March the Opposition deliberately made the Bank the issue by nominating Gulian C. Verplanck, driven from Congress by the Democrats because of his fidelity to the Bank, and planning for a popular vindication of that institution. Two days later the Democrats nominated Cornelius W. Lawrence, who had been exceedingly bitter against the Bank while in Congress. Accepting Hone’s opinion that “the personal characters of both the gentlemen is above reproach,”[755] the election would definitely determine the drift of public opinion on the contest then in its most bitter stage. The election returns were confusing. The mayoralty candidate, who had been ousted from his seat in Congress because of his support of Biddle, was defeated by the man whose bitterness against the Bank while in Congress had been notable. The Democrats won here, and the Opposition lost. The fact that the latter elected a majority of the aldermen was loudly hailed as a vote against Jackson on the Bank question, although, in the more spirited contest for the more important office, the Bank champion was overwhelmed by the Democrat. The Opposition was jubilant, or pretended to jubilation. A great celebration was held at Castle Garden, and the faithful poured forth by the tens of thousands to sit about the tables “spread in a row” and to do full justice to the “three pipes of wine and forty barrels of beer placed in the center under an awning.” Full of fire and froth, the exuberant partisans, learning that Webster was the guest of a lady at her home, moved thence _en masse_, where the orator, who had declined to appear among the beer kegs in the Garden, presented himself at the window and delivered “an address full of fire” which “was received with rapturous shouts.”[756] All over the Eastern country the Whigs insisted on accepting the defeat of the Bank candidate for mayor as a victory for the Bank, and the Philadelphians had “a grand celebration at Powelton on the Schuylkill”; the Whigs of Albany “fired one hundred guns”; the Whigs of Buffalo “made a great affair of it with guns and illuminations”; those of Portsmouth “received the news with one hundred guns” and “had a town meeting and made speeches.”[757] Meanwhile the Democrats were proclaiming the election of Lawrence a Jacksonian triumph. After the various salutes from Portsmouth to the Battery of a hundred guns, and the celebration in the Garden among the beer kegs, the Democrats arranged their celebration for the day that Lawrence was to make his triumphant entry. A steamboat went down to Amboy to receive the mayor-elect, and “with colors flying and loud huzzas,” the Jacksonians sat down to a dinner on board, “where Jackson toasts were drunk and Jackson speeches were made.” Landing at Castle Garden, the new mayor was conducted in a “barouche drawn by four white horses, and paraded through the streets.”[758]

But the desperate Opposition, hard pressed, and requiring encouragement for its followers, succeeded, through exaggerations and red fire, in convincing the rank and file that an anti-Jackson wave had swept the Nation. Rhode Island, never a Jackson State, went against the Democrats, and this was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as though a stronghold of the enemy had been taken. The triumph of the Whigs in the Philadelphia ward elections was exploited as a signal triumph. Virginia, anti-Bank as well as anti-Jackson, was lost to the Democrats, and the Opposition interpreted it as a pro-Bank as well as an anti-Jackson verdict. In Louisiana the Whigs won on the tariff, but the impression was given that the result reflected a popular resentment of the mistreatment of Nicholas Biddle. As a matter of fact, no intelligent politician could have attached any particular significance to the results of the spring elections, and the leaders immediately began their preparations for the congressional elections in the fall.

II

In these elections the Opposition to Jacksonian Democracy was to fight for the first time under its new party name. In February, 1834, James Watson Webb, the unscrupulous speculator in Bank stock, and editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York City, had proposed that the combination against the policies of Jackson should be known as the Whig Party. “It is a glorious name,” said John Forsyth, “and I have no doubt they will disgrace it.” Within six months the National Republicans and the Anti-Masons disappeared--united under the Whig banner. In September, 1834, Niles records, in his “Register,” that, “as if by universal consent, all parties opposed to the present Administration call themselves Whigs.” And all who called themselves Whigs denounced the Jacksonians as Tories. It was a pretty conceit. The Whigs of England had fought the battles of the people against the usurpations of the throne, and the Whigs of America were fighting the usurpations of Jackson. The Constitution against anarchy, the people against the Power--such was the fight of Nicholas Biddle, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun against Jackson.

A more incongruous combination of contradictions and a more sinister and unholy alliance than that of the Whigs of the Jacksonian period has never appeared in the political life of the Republic. These men held common opinions on none of the fundamental principles of government. A few years, and few of the leaders and founders could agree as to the character of the combination.[759] The only plank in the platform of this ragged array on which all could stand was a hatred of Andrew Jackson. That was the open sesame to the temple. Beyond that no questions were asked. Born with the seed of inevitable disintegration, it was to stagger along through twenty years, to end without a mourner, and to leave no record worthy of an epitaph. And about the time of its birth, and after its insignificant successes in the spring elections, that astute journalist and politician, Thomas Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” foresaw its future with the clear light of a prophet. “When it comes to act upon any policy or principle,” he wrote, “not connected with a hatred of Jackson, it must fall to pieces and commence a war _inter se_. It contains all the elements of dissolution, and is destined to share the fate of other monstrous alliances.”[760]

But its creators were not concerned in 1834 with anything further than the overthrow of Jackson and his followers. Not daring to advance a constructive programme, for the very effort would have wrecked the party, they confined themselves to extravagant and absurd denunciations of Jackson as a tyrant usurping power and clambering to a throne. The congressional campaign opened with a rush. All over the land the Whigs were raising liberty poles--because they were fighting the battle of liberty against the despot. And Nicholas Biddle and his Bank, as usual, wore the liberty cap. When Congress adjourned in June, the moneyed institution was in a dying condition, and the money market was again about normal. Only a signal Whig triumph could now save the institution on Chestnut Street.

III

With the adjournment of Congress, Jackson, with his customary complacency and confidence in the support of the people, set forth for the Hermitage for a much-needed rest. He had just again reorganized his Cabinet because of the failure of the Senate to confirm Taney and the resignation of Louis McLane. The motive for the latter’s retirement is only conjectural. That he had never felt at home in the Cabinet circle, we may well believe. While in the Cabinet, he was not of it. But for the constant friendship and support of Van Buren, his position would have been delicate indeed. He was out of sympathy with Jackson at every stage of the Bank fight. He would have renewed the old charter without a change; would have renewed it with concessions from the Bank; but he would have renewed it. With the removal of the deposits he was entirely out of sympathy. He would not have removed them at all; but, if removed, he would not have removed them until Congress had convened. His social affiliations were largely with the old official aristocracy. That he entertained presidential aspirations was generally understood, and it is quite possible that he considered a complete separation from the Administration advantageous to his interests. His associations were such that he could not have heard much that was not venomously hostile to Jackson and the Jacksonians. But, a gentleman of dignity, he withdrew gracefully, plunging into no undignified recriminations.[761]

In appointing his successor, Jackson turned to John Forsyth, whose services as Administration floor leader in the Senate had been of immense value, and whose urbanity, wisdom, conservatism, diplomatic experience, fitted him for the post better than any of his Jacksonian predecessors. To the place left vacant by Taney, he transferred Mr. Woodbury, and to the navy he appointed Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, a gentleman of extensive public experience as a Senator for sixteen years. Just previous to his appointment, he had declined the Russian Mission. This was the only Cabinet upheaval of Jackson’s time which had not been accompanied with much bitterness, with charges and countercharges.

Thus, with affairs in Washington in capable hands, with victory in the Bank fight on his side, with the delights of the Hermitage just beyond, the iron man set forth in high spirits and with no regrets or fears. The Biddle threat of more “discipline” for the people during the summer and autumn, because of the failure of Congress to recharter the Bank, had not disturbed him so much as it had alarmed the Whigs. Those in Boston met the threat with a counter-threat of denunciation, and those in New York warned Biddle that more distress would certainly prove disastrous to the Whigs in the fall elections. Biddle deeply resented the criticism of the Whigs, who, under the leadership of Clay, had practically blackmailed him into using the Bank’s power against the Democrats. When those of Boston warned that more discipline of the people might “even create a necessity for the Whigs, in self-defense, to separate themselves entirely” from his institution, he wrote in defiant mood to the president of his Boston branch that “if ... any political party or association desires to separate itself from the Bank--be it so.” He had not read the letter to the board of directors lest the members favorable to the Democrats might use it to the disadvantage of the Whigs.[762] But he was to find that his frown had lost its force. Another Whig from New York wrote of much dissatisfaction in that city and State among the Bank’s friends and “those of influence in the Whig Party--and sure I am that it is increasing every day.” The feeling was prevalent, encouraged by the views of Albert Gallatin, that the Bank could have relieved the distress had it so desired. And Alexander Hamilton, the brother of Jackson’s friend, and son of the father of the National Bank, wrote a little later to a correspondent that “it has been found expedient to abandon the Bank in our political pilgrimage.” He found that “the people are now familiarly acquainted with the immense power of a national bank and apprehend all kinds of terrible consequences from its exercise.”[763] Thus, instead of more “discipline,” the Bank found it possible to take steps, which, according to Catterall, justified Jackson, the following December, in saying in his Message that “the Bank ... announced its ability and readiness to abandon the system of unparalleled curtailment ... and to extend its accommodations to the community.”

Just, as in 1832, when floating down the Ohio on his last visit to the Hermitage during the presidential campaign, Andrew Jackson was at peace with himself and the world. But his friends had given orders to take nothing for granted and to open the fighting along the whole line. They had a twofold purpose--to hold the line in Congress, and to defeat, wherever possible, any senatorial enemies who were candidates for reëlection. Blair, of the “Globe,” began to issue special editions and to send them broadcast all over the country.

The fight, as it was waged in New York, Virginia, and Mississippi, will suffice to illustrate the general character and method of the campaign. In all three States the Bank was the issue. Even the most hopeful of the Whigs entertained no illusions as to Pennsylvania, where the most powerful financial and commercial interests were arrayed with the Bank. The two parties in the Empire State were mobilized, organized on a military footing, and ready and eager for the fray.[764] The elections in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were held in October, a month before those in New York, and the first shock to the Whigs came in the returns from these two States. That Pennsylvania, the home of Biddle, Sergeant, and Duane, should have gone against the Bank and for Jackson, was not disappointing, for little had been expected there. But much was expected in New Jersey. There the issue was distinct. The two Senators from that State had voted with the Bank on the deposits question. The Legislature had adopted resolutions commendatory of Jackson’s actions, and in his Protest the fighting President had not scrupled to quote these resolutions to prove that the Senators had deliberately misrepresented their people. Senator Frelinghuysen, in commenting upon these instructions, had boasted that he and his colleague had “dared to meet the frowns of their constituents,” and would not “bow the knee to these instructions.”[765] Now he was before the people for reëlection, and the issue was plain. The people’s verdict was unmistakable. The little State swept into the Jackson column with a substantial majority, and Frelinghuysen was retired.

Goaded by the sting of the New Jersey defeat, the New York Whigs redoubled their efforts. “The Whigs are raising liberty poles in all the wards,” wrote Hone. “I went to one of these ceremonies yesterday at the corner of the Bowery and Hester Street. The pole, a hundred feet high, with a splendid cap and gilt vane with suitable devices, was escorted by a procession of good men and true.”[766] Thus, if the “mob” could make the welkin ring at Democratic meetings, the more aristocratic Whigs could sally forth from their counting-rooms and libraries to rub shoulders with the common herd at Hester Street and the Bowery and shout approval of the raising of a pole. But all was in vain. By nine o’clock on the evening of the first day, Hone and his fellow Whigs realized that “enough was known to satisfy us to our hearts’ content that we are beaten--badly beaten; worse than the least sanguine of us expected.”[767] The jubilant Democrats, however, were determined that the Whig leaders should not feel utterly deserted, and a crowd of them surged before Hone’s house with hisses and catcalls which kept him awake all night. The Lord Holland of the American Whigs, who was sick at the time, was inclined to resent it, but the next evening he found consolation in dining with Webster who “was in a vein to be exceedingly pleasant.”[768]

Such was the intensity of feeling and the bitterness of the struggle that enthusiastic partisans partook of the nature of mobs in the larger centers. Nowhere were the Democrats so intense as in Philadelphia, where, on election day, the warring partisans exchanged shots, the headquarters of the Whigs was sacked and burned by a mob which drove back the firemen that attempted to quench the flames. A number of houses were completely reduced to ashes. Such was the panic of Nicholas Biddle that the day before the election he sent his wife and children into the country, filled his house with armed men, and prepared for a siege. The Bank building bristled with the bayonets and muskets of guards. But when the gray dawn came, the one-time financial dictator found that none of his property had been molested. It was blow enough to him to learn that the Whigs, the country over, had gone down before the popular uprising.

But the bitterest fight was waged in Virginia, where the situation was mixed to the point of chaos. The State was anti-Bank, but it was anti-Jackson. Opposed to the Bank, it had been equally opposed to the removal of the deposits. The feeling in Richmond was so inflamed that only personal respect for Ritchie saved the “Enquirer” from mob violence, for the courageous editor stuck to his guns and tried to divert attention to the Bank itself. Administration papers were established throughout the State with instructions to follow the lead of his pen. The Virginia plan was twofold: to make the most of the unpopularity of Leigh, who was again a candidate for the Senate, and to divide and distract the Whigs by playing Clay against Calhoun. Nowhere did the Democrats appreciate, as they did in Virginia, the impossible nature of the Whig combination, and they dwelt upon its inconsistencies from the beginning. Clay announced that he was not a candidate for the presidential nomination in 1836. “But Mr. Clay knows not himself,” wrote Ritchie. “But ambition does not burn so intensely in his bosom as it does in the heart of another leader of the Senate (Mr. Calhoun). If recent signs do not deceive us, this extraordinary man (extraordinary every way for the vigor of his mind, the variety of his principles, and the intensity of his ambition) will soon take the field, with feeble hopes of winning the votes of the South, as well as the support of the Bank. Then we shall see under which king the various members of the opposition will range themselves.”[769] This irrepressible conflict of Whig ambitions and interests was played upon by the Democratic press of Virginia all through the summer and autumn of 1834.

But the immediate purpose of the Virginia Democrats was to humiliate Leigh, who was unpopular with the masses because of his bitter fight in the Constitutional Convention against the extension of the suffrage. And he was as strongly with the Bank as Virginia was against it. A house-to-house canvass was made, and in districts where a majority were found against him it was proposed to evoke the right of instructions to Assemblymen. The plan succeeded to the extent of disclosing a majority hostile to the reëlection of Leigh, but the Whigs, who carried the State, succeeded after a bitter struggle in returning him through a flagrant disregard of the expressed will of the constituencies. The battle was thus but half lost. The Democrats were supplied with ammunition they were to use with deadly effect, and within little more than a year they were to drive the two anti-Jackson Senators of Virginia into private life. Ritchie began the next year’s battle without delay. The “Enquirer” was flooded with resolutions and letters protesting the election of Leigh over the instructions of the majority of the people.[770]

In Mississippi the Jacksonians determined to prevent the reëlection of Senator Poindexter, long the idol of the Mississippi Democracy, who had turned upon Jackson with a virulence scarcely equaled by any old-line Federalist, and cast his lot with Clay. With the adjournment of Congress, the Mississippi Senator hastened home, where the enemies of the Administration had planned a series of banquets at which he was to denounce the President and vindicate himself. The Whigs were with him. The Democrats, delighted with a slashing and brilliant assault on Poindexter by Robert J. Walker, put that able publicist in the field, and within a week he was engaged in one of the most spectacular canvasses Mississippi had ever known, firing enormous open-air meetings of frenzied Jacksonians. The outcome was the election of Walker--a victory sweet to Jackson, for it was the vanquished who had sponsored the resolution attacking his Protest.[771] And the triumph was all the sweeter from the fact that, while Poindexter had supported the Nullifiers, Walker had taken the lead against them in Mississippi, on the platform, and through the press.

Thus the elections of 1834 were more than pleasing to Jackson and his party. Two of his strongest senatorial opponents had lost their seats as a result of their opposition, and Leigh had been saved only by a disreputable betrayal of the people. In the Senate the Administration was strengthened; and in the House the Democratic majority was reduced but eight votes, leaving it a clear majority of 46 out of 242 members.

Strangely enough, so reliable an historian as McMaster has described these elections as a triumph of the Whigs. Such was not the interpretation of the Whigs themselves. Hone thought that they were “badly beaten--worse than the least sanguine of us expected.”[772] Webster accepted the verdict as final, and, much to the distress and indignation of Biddle, announced that he was through. But the most conclusive evidence of the contemporary opinion of the Whigs comes from Thurlow Weed, the sagacious Whig journalist of the “Albany Journal.” More prescient than most of the Whig leaders of the time, he had foreseen the inevitable result of an attempt to win upon the Bank issue. Quite early, when Webster’s keynote speech on the Bank, delivered at a mass meeting in Boston, was sent for publication to all the party papers, the copy that reached Weed never found its way into the “Albany Journal.”[773] And immediately after the election in 1834, he editorially expressed the feeling which appears to have taken possession of the party generally. “There is one cause,” he wrote, “for congratulations, connected with the recent election, in which even we participate. It has terminated the United States Bank war.... We have from the beginning deprecated the successive conflicts in defense of the Bank.... But we have gone with our friends through these three campaigns, under a strong and settled conviction that in every issue to be tried by the people to which the Bank was a party, we must be beaten. After struggling along from year to year with a doomed Bank upon our shoulders, both the Bank and our party are finally overwhelmed.[774]” Nor is it surprising that Clay, whose selfishness had forced Biddle into making the recharter a campaign issue, was glad to dump the doomed Bank from his shoulders. It is impossible to follow his course, pointing as every act does to a purely party purpose, without arriving at the conviction that he really cared little about the institution on Chestnut Street. As the fight became more hopeless, he found the importunities of Biddle more irksome. Viewed purely as a political or party contest, the clever politicians who dominated the Jacksonian camp had shown far more prescience and sagacity than the wisest of the Whigs. Amos Kendall had a better understanding of the psychology of the masses than Clay or Webster. Among the Whigs, Weed alone saw the end from the beginning. The attempt to arouse the people in behalf of a great moneyed institution against the attacks of a popular hero was in itself a grotesque and ghastly absurdity. But after the decision had been made to undertake it, the methods of Biddle and his political allies made defeat a certainty. Frank Blair, of the “Globe,” was evidently sincere in his assertion that had he been permitted to dictate the policy of the Whigs, he could not have hit upon a plan more satisfactory to the Democrats.

That Jackson knew little of banking and advanced some strange theories in the course of the fight; that he resorted to methods of violence in some instances; and that he fought to kill, rather than to reform, may be admitted. But the very nature of the fight he waged compelled the Bank to disclose its tremendous power over the prosperity of the people. No matter what they may have thought in the beginning, no one could have doubted toward the end that the Bank did have the power to precipitate panics, to punish the people for legislation it resented, to dominate, in the end, the legislation of the future by the threat of reprisal upon the business of the Nation. No one, in 1834, doubted that the National Bank, in the hands of a man like Biddle domineering over pliant directors, and assuming dictatorial authority over the members of Congress, possessed powers incompatible with the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people. From that day on, the Bank has had its apologists among historians, and Jackson has been excoriated as an ignorant usurper, but there has never been a time since when the American people would have tolerated a return to the system that was destroyed. Through several years the country was to be disturbed by the sometimes stumbling processes of transition from the old to the new system, but the Bank fight ended with the verdict of the polls in 1834. Only the censure of the Senate remained to poison the mind of the iron man in the White House. The Bank lingered on, a little while, under the laws of Pennsylvania, and then crashed to the earth, ruining many of its supporters.[775] And on the banker’s death, Hone copied into his diary the comment of William Cullen Bryant in the “New York Evening Post,” that Biddle “died at his country seat where he passed the last of his days in elegant retirement, which, if justice had taken place, would have been spent in the penitentiary.”[776]

The prolonged battle has left a lasting impression upon the political life and methods of the Republic. It aroused, as never before, that class consciousness, to which politicians have ever since appealed; it gave dignity to demagogy, and made it pay. It marked the beginning of the active participation of powerful corporations, as such, in the politics of the country, witnessed the adoption of the methods of intimidation and coercion, of systematic propaganda, of the subsidization of disreputable newspapers. From that day on, the powerful corporation has been anathema to the masses, monopoly has been a red rag, and the contest between capital and labor has been a reality. If this has been unfortunate, the fault has been no less with Clay, who sought and made the issue, and with Biddle and his arrogant reliance on the power of money, than with Jackson and the Kitchen Cabinet who challenged the political pretensions of the Bank.

IV

The Whig leaders entered upon the congressional session of December in a bitter mood. Calhoun was especially vicious and in a chronic rage against the President and the Administration. The fury of the Whigs was not moderated by the fact that State Legislatures were beginning to demand the expunging from the records of the resolution of censure. Benton, in the previous session, had served notice of his intention to move to expunge, and the Kitchen Cabinet in the meanwhile had been busy in building backfires against the offending Senators among their constituents. The first State to act was Alabama. The day before Senator King presented the Alabama resolutions, during a running discussion of the revelations of mismanagement and crookedness in the Post-Office Department, Senator Preston suggested that the Senate should censure some one. Just whom he would censure was not made clear, but he did refer to the previous declaration of Jackson that he was responsible for the Executive departments. “Does any one doubt the turpitude of the Post-Office?” asked Preston. “When hardly the age of man, it is found steeped in corruption the most foul, the most melancholy. If the President is responsible, and the officers acted improperly, is this the house to present the subject? And shall we stand by without saying or doing anything in regard to the present state of things in that department?”

Calhoun was instantly on his feet. He had listened to the report on the Post-Office “with sorrow and deep mortification.” After twenty-two years of connection with the Government he was able to say that “in all that time the charges of corruption against all the departments of the Government that he had ever heard of were not equal to the disclosures here made.” In truth he thought that “the exhibition would disgrace the rottenest age of the Roman Republic.” He hoped some resolution would be presented.

This implied threat was not lost on the ever alert Benton, and on the following day he took the floor, reminded the Senate of his promise, declared that nothing less than the expurgation of the offensive censure would suffice, and served notice of his intention to present the resolution. This opened the first debate on expurgation. Clay, with a personal fling at Benton, saltily expressed the hope that before acting the Missourian would carefully examine the Constitution, and concluded that he would “oppose such a resolution at the very threshold.” Preston conceded that his party had been “beaten down,” and demanded to know whether “everything that we have done shall be expunged.” Calhoun would “like to see a resolution which proposed to repeal the journal--to repeal a fact.” If the thing could be done, “the Senate itself could be expunged,” and the Government itself was at an end. He was “anxious to see who would attempt to carry out the doctrines of the Protest of last year--doctrines as despotic as those which were held by the autocrat of all the Russias.”

To this, King took vigorous exception. The resolution of censure was not “a fact.” “The Democracy of this land has spoken and pronounced its condemnation of the proceeding.” He had hoped, when Calhoun declared on a previous occasion that he would act for the country, he would have little more to do with party, but he had since manifested a very different feeling. Stung by the taunt, Calhoun made no half-hearted denial of partisan bias. “I have no purpose to serve,” he said. “I have no desire to be here.” And then, with evident insincerity, he added, “Sir, I would not turn upon my heel to be entrusted with the management of the Government.”[777]

When, a few weeks later, the day before the expiration of the session, the discussion was renewed, Hugh Lawson White, now rapidly cooling to frigidity toward Jackson, moved to amend Benton’s resolution by striking out the word “expunge” and substituting “rescind, reverse, and to make null and void.” This incident has been given an historical importance beyond its due by many who have attributed to the motion the final break between Jackson and White. The action of the Tennessee Senator unquestionably outraged the Jacksonians, who ascribed it to hostility, but such was not the dominating motive. He took the position that he could not vote to “obliterate and deface the journal of the Senate.” Benton protested that the word “expunge” was strictly parliamentary. To his astonishment and chagrin, he discovered that White was not the only Democrat who objected to his phrasing of the resolution, as others crowded about him to urge the acceptance of the amendment. Finding himself almost deserted, he afterwards said that he “yielded a mortifying and reluctant consent.”[778] All this the proud Missourian could stand. But when Webster immediately arose, and, after sounding the pæan of triumph, moved that the resolution be laid upon the table; and after Clay and Calhoun had spoken with bitterness and contempt, the spirit of compromise died out in his heart, and he then and there promised himself to continue the battle. The debate was acrimonious in spirit, and in the midst of “great excitement.”[779] This was the preliminary battle which was to have a spectacular ending in a Jacksonian triumph a short time before the expiration of the iron man’s Presidency.

V

To the Jacksonians, the most distressing feature of the short session was the disclosure of the utter incompetency, blackened by positive crookedness, in the rapidly growing Post-Office Department, which called for the management of a man of more than ordinary organizing and business ability. Major Barry possessed neither qualification. An honest man himself, without the slightest business sense, easily imposed upon, surrounded by subordinates who were scamps, and forced to deal with mail contractors who were criminals, he lost control early in his administration. When the Clayton investigation was completed, the department was found honeycombed with fraud, plastered with forgeries, and in a hopeless financial condition. And yet no one seriously suspected Barry of complicity. Clay, who had lost the support of Harry, his neighbor in Lexington, on the “bargain” story, did not hesitate to exonerate him from culpability. But there was no defense for the conditions, and Jackson, in his Message, had recommended a complete reorganization of the department better to safeguard the public interest. The two parties stood together on the Reorganization Bill, and no member of either party attempted any justification of the conditions. But the Democrats were on their toes throughout the-session to prevent any personal condemnation of either Barry or Jackson. The Whigs lost no opportunity to capitalize the scandal. The public money had been squandered. Crooked contractors had been permitted to loot the Treasury. They did not know the extent of the corruption, nor the responsibility of the head of the department, but they did know that the putridity of the thing had never been approached in American history. The majority report of the investigating committee found a deficit of $800.000; the minority placed the amount at $300,000; but both agreed that it was due in part at least to maladministration.[780] Felix Grundy, who had charge for the Administration, rejoiced in the fact, “to the honor of his countrymen,” that no one “had been found to accuse the Postmaster-General of corruption”;[781] and Senator Bibb of Kentucky, a supporter of Clay, paid tribute to the personal qualities of Barry and ascribed the failure to “the good disposition and kindness” of the head of the department, which had been imposed upon by “interested and selfish persons to further their own private interests.” Thus, in the Senate, the debate on the Reorganization Bill was conducted with decorum and without exciting personalities. An utter lack of system, a director deficient in business sense and over-credulous, and all preyed upon by dishonest subordinates and criminally inclined speculators--such was the sense of the Senate.

But in the House, Barry’s personal integrity was not to go unchallenged. In the lower branch he was unfortunate in friends who loved, not wisely, but too well, who thought to prevent assault by challenging it. Some of these had avowed a disposition to consider such an assault a personal offense. During a night session, William C. Johnson of Maryland, a promising and eloquent young Whig of imposing personal appearance, sought an opportunity to affront Representative Hawes of Kentucky, a member of the special dueling club. An insignificant incident during the discussion of a post-route bill sufficed. On obtaining the floor, Johnson looked significantly at Hawes, and with sinister deliberation began: “It has been broadly hinted by some gentlemen ... that he who shall have the temerity to criticize the acts of the Postmaster-General must answer therefor elsewhere than in this hall.... Sir, I come from a portion of the country where the law of personal responsibility is recognized among gentlemen. I hold myself amenable to that law ...; and now, in the face of those menaces which have been thrown out on this floor, and intending to be responsible for what I am about to say, I declare that the Post-Office Department is corrupt from head to foot, through and through, and I believe that the head of the department, William T. Barry, is as culpable as any officer under his control.”

The House was instantly in an uproar as Hawes rose to ask if Johnson meant that the department was corrupt from Barry down. The young blade from Maryland jauntily replied in the affirmative. Hawes said that Barry was “as honest and honorable as any man who has a seat on this floor,” and asked Johnson for the grounds for his charge. In the spirit of swashbuckler he had set out to be, the latter merely reiterated what he had said. There was no misunderstanding the meaning of the situation--it meant a duel unless Johnson would agree to a qualification of his statement. To all such appeals he was adamant. When, as a result, he was challenged by Barry’s son, he began to hedge with the demand that the duel take place “immediately.” He would not even consent to a day’s delay, and young Barry withdrew the challenge. The incident proved nothing except that in the Thirties young men carried chips on their shoulders, and bandied words lightly.

The contemporaries of Barry exonerated him, and history has acquiesced in their verdict.[782] But it was apparent that his usefulness in the Cabinet was over. He had never been qualified. While the debate on the Reorganization Bill was still in progress, Jackson summoned Amos Kendall to the task of assuming charge and placing the department on a business basis. At that time, the wizard of the Kitchen Cabinet, in ill health, and without private means, was planning to retire from the public service to serve his family more satisfactorily in a financial way. He demurred--Jackson insisted--and in the end, like the good soldier that he was, he yielded.

Barry, gracefully let out with the mission to Spain, sailed away, to die in London on the way, and Kendall took charge. It is amazing that the party prejudices of ninety years ago should still persist and refuse justice to the genius of this exceptional man. Professor MacDonald does not overstate when he describes him “as a man of remarkable administrative power.”[783] Nor is it probable that so seasoned an observer of public men as Senator Foote was unduly impressed when he described him as “discoursing upon the gravest and most important questions with a profundity and power which left a lasting impress.”[784] Brilliant with the pen, sagacious beyond almost any man of his time as a politician, wise in counsel, and yet capable of managing the dry-as-dust details of the most practical of departments, Amos Kendall is probably one of the greatest all-around publicists the Republic has produced.

His first step on taking charge was thoroughly to familiarize himself with the minute details of his office, with the special functions of each subordinate, and the character of the man. He soon discovered the secret of the good-natured Barry’s undoing, when a clerk, suspected of having relations with a contractor as agent, approached him ingratiatingly with the announcement that he “had control of funds and would be happy to accommodate him with loans.” He was promptly discharged.[785] After a thorough survey, Kendall concluded that “a few powerful mail contractors, through favors to the officers and more influential clerks, had really controlled the department, and for their own selfish ends, and been the cause of all its embarrassments.”[786] He adopted stringent rules for the guidance of employees. The acceptance of a gift was to mean dismissal. So, too, with free rides on stage-coaches, steamboats, or railroad cars carrying mail. Applying the rules as rigidly to himself as to others, he promptly returned all presents and free tickets, and thenceforward the Postmaster-General paid his way. But the task confronting him was tremendous. The department was deeply in debt and was sinking deeper. Not satisfied with the showing of corruption by the congressional committee, he went over the ground and uncovered crookedness it had overlooked. The postmaster of New York was caught in the net and instantly dismissed. Some powerful and influential contractors who had carried the mail between Washington and Philadelphia were suspected, and Kendall made a searching investigation. Major Barry, still in Washington at this time, became seriously disturbed, and conceived the notion that his successor was bent on embarrassing him, and Kendall, who had no suspicion of his predecessor, sent for him and personally reassured him. But there were other embarrassments within the Administration household. Mrs. Eaton, then in Washington, and intimate with the family of one of the contractors who was pressing a claim that Kendall was examining, called one day on Mrs. Kendall with the bald proposition that if the claim were allowed, the contractor would present the wife of the Postmaster-General with “a carriage and a pair of horses.” The incident was promptly reported to Kendall, who recorded the story many years later.[787] Applying himself and his administrative genius diligently to his task, driving out the incompetent and corrupt, practicing economy while extending the scope of the department’s services, he soon put it on a paying basis, and before the expiration of Jackson’s Administration, less than two years later, wiped out the deficit. This is the man some historians have described as a vulgar politician and a “printer.”

VI

No incident of this session so well illustrates the partisan bitterness and the venomous nature of the hates engendered by the struggles of the preceding years as the attempt on the life of Jackson at the Capitol on January 30, 1835.[788] Under normal conditions and in ordinary times the incident would have been dismissed, and, properly, ascribed to the insanity of the assailant. But it was the first time an attempt had been made upon the life of a President--and it was a President who had been intemperately denounced as a tyrant, despot, and wrecker of American institutions and liberties. Just as John Tyler had instantly thought of “political effect,”[789] the ardent friends of Jackson caught the same idea from the opposite angle. And two days later, Frank Blair in the “Globe” threw out the suggestion of a conspiracy. “Whether Lawrence [the assailant] has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has prevailed the last two sessions of the Senate,” he wrote, “whether he has become infatuated with the chimeras which have troubled the brains of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the President as a Cæsar who ought to have a Brutus; as a Cromwell, a Nero, a Tiberius, we know not. If no secret conspiracy has prompted the perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and that hearing despotism and every horrible mischief threatened to the Republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the necessary consequence of the President’s measures, it may be that the infatuated man fancied that he had reason to become his country’s avenger. If he had heard and believed Mr. Calhoun’s speech of day before yesterday, he would have found in it ample justification for his attempt on one who was represented as the cause of the most dreadful calamities of the Nation; as one who made perfect rottenness and corruption to pervade the vitals of the Government, insomuch that it was scarcely worth preserving, if it were possible.”[790]

The intimation here thrown out was bitterly resented by the Opposition leaders, and particularly by Calhoun, who was mentioned. The very fact that the intemperate and insincere denunciations of high officials as responsible for the distress of the people, acting upon the diseased brain, can very easily persuade the madman to constitute himself the executioner, served to infuriate the orators who had given themselves full play. Stung to the quick, Calhoun denounced the “Globe” as “base and prostitute,” and described it as “the authentic and established organ” of Jackson, “sustained by his power and pampered by his hands.” “To what are we coming?” he exclaimed. “We are told that to denounce the abuse of the Administration even in general terms, without personal reference, is to instigate the assassination of the Chief Executive.... I have made up my mind as to my duty. I am no candidate for any office--I neither seek nor desire place--nothing shall intimidate--nothing shall prevent me from doing what I believe is due to my conscience and my country.”[791] Mr. Calhoun sat down--and Mr. Leigh immediately rose to present a report from the Committee on Revolutionary Claims.

But Mr. Calhoun’s attack on the “Globe” was not unnoticed by Blair, who replied by quoting from the most venomous portions of Calhoun’s and Preston’s tirades on the Post-Office report. A week later the Administration organ was still harping on conspiracy. “Every hour,” wrote Blair, “brings new proof to show that Lawrence has been operated on to seek the President’s life, precisely as we had supposed from the moment we learned that he had been an attendant on the debates in Congress.”[792]

Very soon the capital was startled with the connection of Senator Poindexter’s name with that of the assailant. The obsession took possession of Jackson that his Mississippi enemy had instigated the attempt at assassination. The examination of Lawrence had clearly established his insanity; just as clearly shown that he had taken to heart the charges of Jackson’s enemies that he was responsible for the distress of the people. Finding himself hard pressed by fate, and ascribing his unhappiness to the tyranny of Jackson, he had determined to kill him. That explanation was convincing and sufficient. But the suggestion that Poindexter had planned the deed fell on receptive soil. Affidavits had been placed in Jackson’s hands to the effect that “a gentleman who boarded in the same house informed him that Mr. Poindexter had interviews with Lawrence but a few days before the attempt on the President’s life.” Some time before the attack, “a captain in high standing in the navy” had said that Poindexter, on a voyage to New Orleans, had threatened to demand personal satisfaction of Jackson, and if he refused “he would shoot him wherever he saw him.” This had caused such anxiety to Jackson’s friends that the Reverend Mr. Hatch, chaplain of the Senate, had personally informed Jackson of the threat. All this, followed, after the assault, with an affidavit that Lawrence had been seen to “go repeatedly to Poindexter’s residence,” thoroughly convinced Jackson, who appears to have been in a morbid condition like his enemies.[793] He excitedly charged it in conversation with callers at the White House. Miss Martineau, who was friendly with the Poindexters, and apparently fond of the Senator, was literally forced to leave the White House by the abusive denunciation of the Mississippian. She became his ardent partisan, and took pains to record in her book that, on visiting the Poindexters on the night of the assault, she had “greatly admired the moderation with which Mr. Poindexter spoke of his foe.”[794]

Hearing from many quarters of Jackson’s charges, Poindexter wrote him that he would discredit the reports unless confirmed by the President, but that a failure to reply would be accepted as a confirmation. Jackson displayed Poindexter’s letter to visitors, but made no response. Thus a perfectly foolish notion of Jackson’s was forced to an issue. To understand the feeling behind it all, and to appreciate the bitter hostility of Poindexter, to which frequent reference has been made, it is necessary to know more of the character and career of this really remarkable but tragic figure.

George Poindexter was something of a genius, and, until his break with Jackson, an idol of Mississippi. From the beginning he had been accorded the leadership of the Democratic or Jeffersonian Party in that Territory. His early congressional career was a justification of his leadership. One who knew him in those days tells us that “his mind was logical and strong; his conception was quick and acute; his powers of combination and application were astonishing; his wit was pointed and caustic, and his sarcasm overwhelming.”[795] These qualities made him a tremendous power upon the stump with the then primitive people of his State. In the gubernatorial office he rendered invaluable service which strengthened his hold upon the masses. On the bench, he was noted for his ability and justice, and, among the lawyers, he was conceded to have few equals before a jury. During the War of 1812 he had further endeared himself to the Mississippians by his patriotic appeal for preparation, and, after he had aroused the Territory to fever heat, and Jackson had appeared upon the scene, he became a volunteer aid upon the staff of the future President. It was to Poindexter that the negro or soldier carried the infamous British countersign, “Booty and Beauty,” and it was Poindexter who conveyed it to Jackson. Later his enemies charged that he had forged it to win the favor of the General. That such a man should have made enemies was inevitable. So bitter were his denunciations of his political enemies, so unscrupulous his use of terms, that at one time a conspiracy was formed to force him into a duel and kill him. The opportunity came after a peculiarly vitriolic attack upon a wealthy merchant who affiliated with the Federalists. The merchant challenged and was killed. Then Poindexter’s enemies charged that he had fired before the word was given.

Nowhere in the campaign of 1828 did Jackson receive more ardent support than in Mississippi where his old friend Poindexter directed his forces, and one year after his inauguration, the lieutenant entered the Senate, and almost immediately the feud between the erstwhile friends began. The sordid feature of the story is the fact that it grew out of a patronage controversy. Jackson had determined on the appointment of a Tennesseean, a neighbor of the Hermitage, to the land office of Mississippi. Poindexter protested that this patronage belonged to his State and to him. Jackson refused to yield. Poindexter prevented the confirmation of the Tennesseean. Jackson made a recess appointment, and thenceforward the two comrades of 1812 were at swords’ points. Thus far Jackson was manifestly in the wrong. His loyalty to friendship cannot explain his disloyalty to Poindexter--who was also a friend, and a friend in need. But such was the Mississippian’s prejudice and hate that he abandoned, not only the President and purely Administration measures, but the principles he had espoused and advocated for a generation. He crossed the Rubicon, burned the bridges, and became a special favorite of Clay’s. In every great fight of the Jackson period, Poindexter was found arrayed with the Opposition. He stood with the Bank, favored the censure, and offered the resolutions denunciatory of the Protest. In the Nullification contest, he had essayed to lead the Nullifiers, and became more offensive than Calhoun.

Unfortunately for Poindexter, in the fighting that followed he was far from invulnerable on the personal side. Having been unfortunate in his domestic relations, he had divorced his wife, denied the paternity of his children, and plunged into the most reckless dissipation.[796] His indecent reflections upon the purity of his wife drove her family, extensive and influential, to his enemies; his intemperate tirades against Jackson alienated the dominant Democratic sentiment of the State; and while he fought boldly and bitterly to sustain himself, he failed, and, at the time of the attack on Jackson by the madman at the Capitol, was so discredited in Mississippi that he was planning to leave the State, with his second wife, on the expiration of his term. A man of genius whose morals failed to sustain his mentality--such the epitaph of George Poindexter.[797]

Three weeks after Lawrence had fired and failed, Poindexter called the Senate’s attention to an anonymous letter stating that affidavits were in the hands of the President charging that interviews had taken place between the assailant and himself a few days before the attempt on Jackson’s life, and asking the appointment of a special committee of investigation. Henry Clay, avowing that the rumors “inspired him with nothing but the deepest mortification and regret,” and that it was “impossible to credit the statement that affidavits should have been procured at the instance of the Chief Executive for the purpose of implicating a Senator of the United States in so foul a transaction,” reluctantly consented to an investigation. Without further discussion, a committee, consisting of John Tyler, chairman, Smith, Mangum, King, and Silas Wright, was appointed, with permission to sit during the sessions of the Senate; and three days later it unanimously exonerated Poindexter from suspicion. Webster asked for the yeas and nays on its acceptance; every Senator voted yea, and thus ended the most unfortunate incident in the career of Andrew Jackson. The “Washington Globe,” which had published the affidavits, wholly discredited them about the same time.[798]

VII

The Calhoun inquiry “into the extent of federal patronage, the circumstances which have contributed to its great increase of late, the expediency and practicability of reducing the same, and the means of such reduction,” served further to fan the flames of partisan madness during this session. Persisting in the fallacy that he was not moved by partisan or political considerations, he suggested that the committee be composed of two members of each party. The Senate, however, was not deceived as to his purpose, and selected four enemies of the Administration, Calhoun, Webster, Southard, and Bibb, and two Democrats, Benton, and King of Georgia. In due time an elaborate report was submitted. It set forth that 60,294 persons were in the employ of the Government; that together with the pensioners this meant more than 100,000 dependent on the Treasury. Implying that these constituted a federal machine, Calhoun added all engaged in business who wished to furnish supplies as part of the organization, influenced by patronage. Worse--there were thousands who wished to get upon the pay-roll who would willingly play the part of pliant tools to curry favor with Executive power. And how was this to be remedied? Since one of the causes contributing to the enlargement of the President’s patronage was the increase in governmental expenditure, the statesmanlike thing to do would be to reduce the revenue. A great amount of public land had been thrown upon the market, calling for an army of receivers, registers, and surveyors--all of whom were tools of Jackson. The Jacksonian policy of removing men from office to make way for henchmen had reduced the efficiency of the public service by making reappointments dependent on something other than faithful service. This, by making the officials dependent upon the President, tended to make them all subservient to his will, and little better than his slaves. More: the power assumed by the President to select the banks for the public deposits made them a part of the presidential machine. If the public revenue could be reduced, and the Government thus starved, many would be forced from the public crib, but unhappily this could not be done. He proposed, therefore, a constitutional amendment permitting the annual distribution of the surplus till 1843 by a division of it into as many shares as there were Senators and Representatives, with ten shares for each Territory and the District of Columbia. And in addition to all this, he would enact a law to regulate the deposits of public money, and another to repeal that part of the Act of 1820 which limited the terms of customs officers.

When the report was submitted to the Senate, Poindexter made it the occasion for mournful and indignant reflections upon the growing tyranny of Jackson. He was profoundly moved by the revelations. Surely as many as thirty thousand extra copies of the report should be published for distribution. “The question now submitted to the Nation,” he said, “is whether power is to be perpetuated in the hands of him who now wields it, and the one he may select as his successor.” It was most unfortunate that the people would not awaken to the sinister attacks upon their liberties and institutions. The thoughtful, however, could not but see the trend.

But why print thirty thousand copies, asked King of Georgia, if not to serve a party purpose at the expense of the taxpayers? “What a spectacle we do present from day to day!” he exclaimed. “The Senate has been a week making war on the extras of the Post-Office Department. We are now warring against the extravagance of the Executive; and whilst brandishing the sword in one hand in defense of the public Treasury against the ravages of the Executive, we are, with the other, slipping it into our own pockets, or scattering it in profuse and wasteful extravagance.”

The Senate compromised on ten thousand copies, and a rather dull debate, in which the Bank question was revived, resulted. The bills proposed by the Whig committee passed the Whig Senate to be promptly rejected in the Democratic House. These measures merely served as pegs on which to hang further denunciations of Jackson and his policies.

And the Democrats countered with an enthusiastic banquet in celebration of the wiping-out of the national debt for the first time in history. This had been one of Jackson’s ambitions--a consummation Clay had determined should not come before the presidential election of 1832. But it could not be prevented; and while the Whigs were expanding on extravagance and the crowded public crib, the Jacksonians were pointing to the extinguishment of the public debt as an answer to the attacks. Benton, who presided as toastmaster at the banquet, was in flamboyant mood.

“The national debt is paid,” he said. “This month of January, 1835, in the fifty-eighth year of the Republic, Andrew Jackson being President, the national debt is paid, and the apparition, so long unseen on earth--a great nation without a national debt--stands revealed to the astonished vision of a wondering world. Gentlemen, my heart is in this double celebration, and I offer you a sentiment, which, coming directly from my own bosom, will find its response in yours: President Jackson: may the evening of his days be as tranquil and as happy for himself as their meridian has been resplendent, glorious, and beneficent for his country.”

Such was the partisan madness of this short session that a resolution, offered and urged by Preston, the Whig, for the purchase of some pictures for “the President’s house,” was promptly voted down, and Preston’s efforts to have the vote reconsidered were unavailing. It was into this madhouse of partisan rancor that the French crisis, threatening war, involving the world prestige of the Republic, had been thrown by Jackson; and we shall now note how nearly partisanship came to compromising and weakening the Nation in the face of a foreign antagonist.