Chapter II: The Rising of the Masses

I

With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies had been a matter of manipulation among the congressional politicians. The possessors of property and the aristocrats of intellect had been the only classes with whom the politicians had concerned themselves. The Virginia Dynasty and the Secretarial Succession died on the day that the rising of the masses raised to the Presidency a man who had never served in the Cabinet, distinguished himself in the Congress, or appealed to the “aristocracy of intellect and culture.” To the politicians, office-holders, and society leaders in Washington, the election of Andrew Jackson was something more than a shock--it was an affront. In the campaign he had been opposed by two thirds of the newspapers, four fifths of the preachers, practically all the manufacturers, and seven eighths of the banking capital. Respectability sternly set itself against the presumptuous ambitions of what it conceived to be a rough, illiterate representative of the “mob.”

Four years before, the stage had been set for a bitter battle. The election of Adams, through the support of Clay, followed by the appointment of the latter to the first place in the Cabinet, had carried the suspicion of a bargain, and this suspicion had crystallized into a firm conviction with a large portion of the people. Throughout the Adams Administration, its enemies--and they were legion--harped constantly upon the “bargain,” angering the crabbed Adams, and stinging Clay to furious denunciation, and this but served to intensify the bitterness of their foes.

The result was the most scurrilous campaign of vilification the country had known. A new school of politicians, forerunners of the astute and none too scrupulous managers of later days, sprang up to direct the fight for the grim old warrior of the Hermitage, and the fact that Clay took personal charge of the campaign for Adams was turned with telling force against his chief. Early in the campaign we find the satirical and caustic Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” of whom we shall hear much, writing that “Clay is managing Adams’s campaign, not like a statesman of the Cabinet, but like a shyster, pettifogging in a bastard suit before a country squire.” And lest the motive for Clay’s interest escape his readers, we find Hill writing again: “This is Mr. Clay’s fight. The country has him on trial for bribery, and having no defense, he accuses the prosecutor.”

This reference to the accusation of the prosecutor was inspired by the outrageous calumny that was heaped upon the head of Jackson. He was pictured as a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cockfighter, a brawler, a drunkard, and a murderer. The good name of Mrs. Jackson, one of the purest of women, was wantonly maligned; and in the drawing-rooms of the intellectually elect she was not spared by the ladies who were shocked at the “vulgarity” of her husband. The Adams organs stooped to the attack, and while the “National Intelligencer,” under the editorship of Joseph Gales, refused thus to pollute its columns, the “National Journal,” under the editorial management of Peter Force, and specially favored by the Adams Administration, specialized on the slander of an excellent woman. A little later an attempt was made to justify the infamy of this proceeding by charging that Mrs. Adams had been assailed, but the extent of the assault was the charge that she was an English woman with little sympathy for American institutions.

While history has accepted Adams’s indignant denial of the charge that he had personally sanctioned the attack on Mrs. Jackson, the National Central Committee, in charge of his campaign, was busily engaged in the dissemination of the putrid literature. This has been thoroughly established by the testimony of Thurlow Weed, editor of the “Albany Journal,” who refused to degrade himself by its circulation. When, early in August, before the election in November, he received “two large drygoods boxes” of the pamphlets, with a letter from the National Committee advising him that they contained “valuable campaign documents,” with the request that he attend to their circulation “throughout the western counties of the State,” he promptly “secured the boxes with additional nails and placed them under lock and key.” And when the National Committee learned that they were not being distributed, and sent a representative to protest against his inactivity, he frankly informed the emissary that “not a copy had been seen or would be seen by an elector until the polls had closed.” For this he was denounced in New York and Boston as “a traitor to the Administration,” but the sagacious politician of Albany stoutly maintained that he “would not permit a lady whose life had been blameless to be dragged forth into the arena of politics.”[114]

The charge of murder lodged against Jackson, by editor, hack-writer, and cartoonist, had reference to his execution of Arbuthnot, two Indian chiefs, and seven of his soldiers, and to his duel with Dickinson. Pictures of the coffins of the soldiers were printed on circulars and distributed from farmhouse to farmhouse in New England.[115] This gave Hill an opportunity to tickle Jackson with a rejoinder which was copied from the “New Hampshire Patriot” into all the Jackson papers of the country: “Pshaw! Why don’t you tell the whole truth? On the 8th of January, 1815, he murdered in the coldest kind of cold blood 1500 British soldiers for merely trying to get into New Orleans in search of Booty and Beauty.”

But all the scurrility of the campaign cannot be justly charged to the enemies of Jackson. His friends were almost as offensive. Adams had bribed Clay. He had bought the Presidency. While abroad he had pandered to the sensuality of the Russian Court. He was stingy, undemocratic, an enemy of American institutions, bent on the destruction of the people’s liberties. He was an aristocrat, and had squandered the people’s money in lavishly furnishing the East Room of the White House after the fashion of the homes of kings. He had even purchased a billiard table for the home of the President!

And so it went on for weeks and months--the ordinary slanders of a present-day municipal campaign. A foreigner traveling through the country during the summer and autumn of 1828 would have thought the election of Adams certain. In the marts, the counting-rooms, and the drawing-rooms, he would have found but one opinion; but the astute Adams sensed the coming disaster and recorded his misgivings in his diary. The temperamental Clay was depressed one day, to be exultant the next. But the new school of political leadership, managing the fight for Jackson, and devoting itself assiduously to the newly enfranchised “mob” in the highways and the byways, had no notion of defeat. The “hurrah for Jackson” which shocked the sedate, unaccustomed to such noisy acclaim of a presidential aspirant, and disgusted the “best people,” was music to the ears of these modern politicians, who had carefully calculated upon the strength of the “mob.” Their confidence was not misplaced. The result was an upheaval. Adams, Clay, Federalism, the Virginia Dynasty, the Secretarial Succession, were brushed aside by the rush of the cheering masses bearing their hero to the White House. History has decided that in this campaign “the people first assumed control of the governmental machinery which had been held in trust for them since 1789”; and that “the party and Administration which then came into power was the first in our history which represented the people without restriction, and with all the faults of the people.”[116]

II

The Administration circle in Washington was deeply depressed by the result, and society looked forward to the reign of the barbarians with mingled feelings of mirth and abhorrence. Although not unprepared for the defeat, the bitter Adams, meditating on his political blunders, recorded that “some think I have suffered for not turning my enemies out of office, particularly the Postmaster-General.”[117] That John McLean, the official referred to, had been disloyal to his chief was common knowledge. The first reaction to defeat from the followers of the Adams Administration was toward laughter, levity, extravagant manifestation of cynical gayety, with an all too noticeable thawing of the frigidity of White House ceremonies. The dying régime put on its best bib and tucker in a hectic and hysterical demonstration of social hilarity. But this first reaction was short-lived. Very soon thereafter callers at Clay’s home were “shocked at the alteration of his looks,” and found him “much thinner, very pale, his eyes sunk in his head and his countenance sad and melancholy.”[118] Mr. Rush (Secretary of the Treasury) was soon “alarmingly ill”--the “first symptoms of disease was altogether in the head.” Mr. Southard (Secretary of the Navy) was confined to his room for three weeks. William Wirt (Attorney-General) suffered two attacks of vertigo, “followed by a loss of the sense of motion.” General Porter (Secretary of War) “was almost blind from inflammation of the eyes and went to his office with two blisters, one behind each ear.” Even the cold-blooded Adams, who appeared “in fine spirits,” was soon “so feeble as to be obliged to relinquish his long walks and to substitute rides on horseback.”[119] A social intimate of the leaders swept from power by the rising of the masses mournfully recorded that they would retire to private life “with blasted hopes, injured health, impaired or ruined fortunes, imbittered tempers, and probably a total inability to enjoy the remnant of their lives.”[120]

On none did the blow fall with such crushing force as on the proud-spirited Clay. As the repudiated régime was approaching the end, the presiding genius of one of the favorite Administration drawing-rooms met him at a reception.

“What ails your heart?” he asked.

“Can it be otherwise than sad when I think what a good friend I am about to lose?”

For a moment he held her hand without speaking, his eyes “filled with tears.”

“We must not think of this or talk of such things now,” he said. And with that he relinquished her hand, “drew out his handkerchief, turned away his head and wiped his eyes, then pushed into the crowd and talked and smiled as if his heart were light and easy.”[121]

On February 25th this lady made another poignant note: “Mr. Clay’s furniture is to be sold this week.”

Thus the old régime died hard, and in bitterness.

III

But “The King is dead--long live the King”--was the mood of the strange crowds in the streets of the capital--unusual creatures from the out-of-the-way places to whom the city was not accustomed. Never before had the inaugural ceremonies attracted the people of the farms and the villages, from every nook and corner. Long before the 4th of March the city swarmed with all sorts and conditions, the rustic, the rural politician, the adventurer, along with politicians of influence and repute. They overflowed the city, filled all the hotels and rooming-houses, spread out to Georgetown, descended on Alexandria.[122] Webster, writing to his brother toward the close of February, said: “I have never seen such a crowd before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country has been rescued from some dreadful danger.”[123] What they really thought was that they had come into their own. They hastened to “their capital,” to witness the inauguration of “their President,” and, in many instances, in the hope of entering into their reward.

Out of the maze of incomprehensible contradictions, we may gather that Jackson disappointed many of the faithful, who had planned a spectacular entrance to the capital, by entering quietly and unannounced in the early morning. Elaborate preparations had been made, a pompous reception committee of the socially elect and politically pure had been organized, headed by John P. Van Ness, the dean of society and husband of the exquisite Marcia Burns, and plans had been perfected for leading a great throng into the country to meet and escort him to the accompaniment of gun fire into the city. Reaching the capital four hours before he was expected,[124] he went directly to Gadsby’s where he took lodging.[125]

But the committee was not to be wholly deprived of its prerogatives. The moment the news reached it and the crowds, the celebration began. “I hear cannon firing, drums beating, and hurrahing. I really cannot write, so adieu for the present,” wrote Mrs. Smith. The mob surged down the Avenue to the hostelry famous for its whiskey, brandy, game, and the imposing ceremony of the host, packed the streets and fought for the privilege of entering and shaking the hand of the man of the hour. From the moment of his arrival until he took the oath of office he was accessible to the most humble and obscure. Importuned and petitioned by ambitious politicians, the old man courteously heard them all, to the last man, and, according to all contemporaries, kept his own counsel as to prospective appointments. Even as late as March 2d, the observant Webster wrote his brother that the President-to-be was close-mouthed, and predicted that there would be few removals.[126] The crafty Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” had arrived early upon the scene, and we are indebted to him for a side-light on Jackson’s methods and mood, and the scenes about the hotel. Almost daily this persistent aspirant for place wormed his way into the presence of the source of all patronage. Jackson was cordial, remembered, quoted, laughed about witticisms in Hill’s paper during the campaign, but said “little about the future except in a general way.” There was cruel hilarity in that crowded room at Gadsby’s over the maneuvers of the office-holders to retain their places. A “funny story” was told of Wirt writing to Monroe “soliciting his influence with the General to keep him on the pay roll.”[127] An old translator of twenty years’ experience in the State Department had, in conversation, expressed a curiosity to know where a Democrat could be found to translate diplomatic French, and this was jokingly related to Jackson. “Oh, just tell him,” said the General, “that if necessary I can bring Planche’s whole Creole Battalion up here. Those French fellows, you know, who helped to defend New Orleans against the Red Coats that had just made all the translators here take to the woods for their lives.” This flare of spirit gratified and encouraged the spoilsmen. “Good, wasn’t it?” Hill wrote to his assistant in Concord. “Besides his courage and truth, Old Hickory has a fund of humor in his make-up, but most of his sallies, like the above, are likely to be a little bit cruel.”

About the time that Hill was writing to his assistant editor, he was meeting daily, at the home of Obadiah B. Brown, a preacher-politician, where Amos Kendall, a Kentucky editor, then obscure, but destined to become the master mind of the Administration, was holding forth, and organizing a number of fellow journalists who had been useful in the campaign, to compel recognition. There, in the home of the jovial preacher, Kendall and Hill were making common cause with the smiling Major M. M. Noah of New York, Nathaniel Green of Massachusetts, and the quiet but sagacious Gideon Welles of Connecticut. More political history was being made in the humble abode of Brown than in the crowded, smoke-laden room at Gadsby’s.[128] The Kentucky editor does not seem to have encountered the same reticence in Jackson that Hill had found. After his first call at Gadsby’s, we find him writing his wife: “He expressed his regards for me and his disposition to serve me, in strong terms.” And a few days later, after his second call, he writes: “The other day I had a long conversation with General Jackson. At the close of it, after saying many flattering things of my capacity, character, etc., he observed, ‘I told one of my friends that you were fit for the head of a department, and I shall put you as near the head as possible.’”[129]

It is significant of the change of the times that, while the practical politicians of the new school were encouraged and jubilant, the seasoned veterans of political battle-fields were discouraged and not a little disgruntled. Amusing tales of the discomfiture of these were gayly carried to the politicians of the Opposition in the salon of Mrs. Smith, who recorded, toward the close of February, that “every one thinks there is great confusion and difficulty, mortification and disappointment at the Wigwam, as they call the General’s lodgings. Mr. Woodbury[130] looks glum, as well as several other disappointed expectants.”[131]

The battle royal occurred in the selection of the Cabinet. The one principle on which Jackson was determined was the exclusion from his Cabinet table of any aspirant for the succession. He had been profoundly impressed by the demoralizing effect of the intrigues of the presidential candidates in the Cabinet of Monroe.[132] This, however, did not deter the two powerful men of the party, Calhoun and Van Buren, from exerting themselves to pack the Cabinet with men favorable to their respective aspirations for the chief magistracy. Of the latter’s plans the President-elect knew nothing. He had probably decided to ask the clever New York politician to accept the portfolio of State before leaving the Hermitage. He had been intimate with Van Buren in the Senate; had been impressed with his tact, diplomacy, and ability, and especially with his genius in the creation, consolidation, and drilling of a party, and in formulating its policies. He was not unmindful of the part the “Red Fox”[133] had played in his nomination and election. In view of all the conditions the selection of Van Buren was logical and inevitable.[134] It was just as inevitable that Calhoun, the Vice-President, should be hostile to the choice. Primarily, we may be sure, the South Carolinian recognized in the suave and subtle New Yorker a dangerous rival for the succession. Whether he was even that early interested in strengthening the South at the expense of the North is not so certain. However that may be, he appeared in the throng of wire-pulling politicians at Gadsby’s, earnestly urging that Senator Tazewell of Virginia should be placed at the head of the Cabinet. This able statesman but a little time before had maintained close political relations with Van Buren,[135] but he was an extreme State-Rights advocate, entirely satisfactory to Calhoun. During the half-concealed struggle over the Cabinet, Van Buren, who had been elected Governor of New York and was staying in Albany, was well served in Washington by James A. Hamilton, whose mission was to keep in intimate touch with events and inform the New Yorker of all developments. Thus it happened that Hamilton was with Jackson when, at ten o’clock one morning, Calhoun called for a conference with the President-elect. “I know what it is about,” said Jackson to Van Buren’s agent. “He cannot succeed. I wish you to remain until he leaves.” It was during this conference, the last he ever had with the President on patronage matters, that Calhoun made his final stand for Tazewell, or against Van Buren. With great solemnity he urged the appointment of the Virginian, largely because of “his great knowledge and wisdom,” but partly on the ground that it would assure the support of Virginia for the Administration. It is doubtful whether, up to this time, Calhoun had appreciated the political sagacity of the man with whom he dealt. Jackson listened to his importunity with courteous attention, but did not commit himself. One suggestion he made, however, which must have warned the great Carolinian that his motives were divined. When Calhoun stressed the importance of cultivating Virginia, Jackson blandly inquired whether it would not be useful to have the support of New York. Calhoun’s reply disclosed his animus against the “Little Magician.” The appointment of Clinton, had he lived, might have guaranteed the support of the Empire State, but the selection of no other citizen of that State would. He left, no doubt with the feeling that he had failed in his mission, and never again approached Jackson on the subject of appointments. And the moment he left, a detailed story of the conference was given to Hamilton, who promptly sent it to his chief in Albany.[136]

When Jackson reached the capital he had made no decision as to the Treasury, and there he was to be buffeted about by many cross-currents. Van Buren, who was socially and politically intimate with Louis McLane of Delaware, was anxious that he should be named for the post, and the gentleman himself was on the ground ready to respond to the summons that failed to come. The political tacticians at Gadsby’s reached the decision early that the place should be awarded to Pennsylvania, and Samuel D. Ingham, who had rushed to Washington as a representative of one of the factions, with an application for a subordinate position in the Treasury, became an active candidate for the more important honor. This was displeasing to Jackson, who favored Henry Baldwin, but in this preference he was unable to secure any important support among his advisers.[137] Strangely enough, powerful influences almost immediately rushed to the support of the man who would have been delighted with a comparatively obscure position. The Pennsylvania congressional delegation, on which he had served for years, unanimously endorsed him. Stranger still, Calhoun, with whom Jackson at this juncture had no desire to break, became an ardent supporter of his candidacy. He had served in the House of Representatives many years before with the mediocre Pennsylvanian, and had found in him one of his most faithful idolaters. That his influence, and the desire to recognize him in the making of the Cabinet, was the determining factor, was the consensus of opinion at the time.

But here again appeared cross-currents difficult to understand. South Carolina, usually so subservient to the wishes of her great statesman, but now cool toward him, was uncompromisingly hostile to his favorite for the Treasury. The other leading members of the South Carolina delegation, known to be opposed to Ingham and to prefer McLane to him, had hesitated from motives of delicacy to make their views known to Jackson; and Van Buren’s favorite for the position authorized Hamilton, Van Buren’s emissary, to notify the General of their willingness to call if their opinion was wanted.[138] On February 17th, the Carolinians, including Senator Hayne, McDuffie, Hamilton, Archer, and Drayton, filed into the throne room at Gadsby’s, and Hamilton, who acted as spokesman, began by tactfully commending the selection of Van Buren, and then turned to the Treasury. Before he could announce his candidate, Jackson interrupted with the announcement that Ingham had been chosen. Nothing daunted, Hamilton suggested as a better choice the brilliant Langdon Cheves of South Carolina. “Impossible,” snapped the grim old man. Then why not McLane? That, too, was instantly dismissed, and the Carolinians left Gadsby’s in a rage. “I assure you I am cool--damn cool--never half so cool in my life,” Hamilton exclaimed immediately afterwards.[139]

For the War Department there was no such competition, and after an unsuccessful attempt had been made to conciliate Tazewell with the post, Jackson, who was anxious to have among his advisers one of his old friends and managers, satisfied himself with the selection of Senator John H. Eaton of Tennessee.

The processes of reasoning leading to the appointment of Senator John Branch of North Carolina as Secretary of the Navy have been lost to history and there is no clue. We know that Van Buren and his friends strongly urged the selection of Woodbury of New Hampshire; and McLane expressed the contemporary state of mind in a letter to his friend: “By what interest that miserable old woman, Branch, was ever dreamed of, no one can tell.” This much we know--that Branch himself did not have the most remote idea of entering the Cabinet when the invitation reached him from Gadsby’s, and he withheld his acceptance until he could consult with a number of his friends.[140] Two reasons have been advanced as probable. The one, popular at the time, was that Jackson’s advisers thought that something should be done to promote the social prestige of the Administration; and the other, generally accepted by historians, that the appointment was made as another concession to Calhoun. While the Carolinian made no request for his inclusion in the Cabinet, Branch was one of his most loyal followers.

There is no real justification for astonishment over the decision of the conferees at the Wigwam to ask Senator John McPherson Berrien of Georgia to accept the position of Attorney-General. Not only was he a brilliant member of the Senate, noted as an orator, but his professional reputation in his section was almost as great as that of Webster in New England. His votes in the Senate on the party measures of the Adams Administration had been pleasing to Jackson, and, whether he was named as another gesture of good-will toward Calhoun, as generally assumed, or not, his appointment could not have been displeasing to the Vice-President.

While the Postmaster-General had not hitherto been a member of the Cabinet, the Jackson board of strategy, wishing to manifest its appreciation of John McLean, who had held the post under Adams while exerting himself on behalf of Jackson, determined to raise the position to the Cabinet and retain him.[141]

Thus the Cabinet was completed, and after a fashion indicative of no desire on the part of Jackson to quarrel with his Vice-President. Van Buren, who did not enter into the President’s calculations as to the succession, had been given the most desirable post, but his friends, McLane and Woodbury, had been set aside for Ingham and Branch, both devoted to the political fortunes of Calhoun. The latter was represented by half the Cabinet, Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, and no stretch of the imagination could make the other two members, Eaton and McLean, other than absolutely independent of the wily politician of Kinderhook. The processes through which all this was speedily changed enter into one of the most fascinating dramas of political intrigue in the history of the Republic.

IV

While the President-elect was holding his conferences, with the mysterious Major Lewis going in and out at Gadsby’s and playing with the destinies of men, and the streets were seething with an incongruous crowd shouting their “Hurrah for Jackson,” Jackson was remaining coldly aloof from the occupant of the White House. He had carried to Washington a bitter resentment against Adams and his personal lieutenants, because of the dastardly attacks upon the woman then buried at the Hermitage. He made no call of courtesy, and Adams was stung to the quick. Especially painful to the old Puritan was the thought that he had been considered capable of a vulgar assault upon the good name of a woman. After much struggling with his pride, he made the first advance by sending a messenger to Jackson to inform him that the White House would be ready for his occupancy on the 4th of March. “He brought me the answer,” Adams records, “that the General cordially thanked him, and hoped that I would put myself to no inconvenience to quit the house, but to remain in it as long as I pleased, even for a month.”[142] A few days later, Adams sent his messenger to say that his packing might require two or three days beyond the 3d, and Jackson replied that he did not wish to put him to the slightest inconvenience, “but that Mr. Calhoun had suggested that there might be danger of the excessive crowds breaking down the rooms at Gadsby’s, and the General had concluded, if it would be perfectly convenient to us, to receive his company at the President’s house after the inauguration on Wednesday next.” Whereupon Adams “concluded at all events to leave the house on Tuesday.”[143] Thus the closing days of his Administration must have been bitter, indeed, to the proud old Puritan of the White House. Deliberately ignored by his successor, tortured by the thought of the treachery of McLean and others, the co-workers of his régime, depressed, embittered, or in hiding, he appears to have been utterly forgotten by the society of the capital as well as by the general public. Justice Story observing his isolation was moved to write in bitterness to a friend that he had never “felt so forcibly the emptiness of public honors and public favor.” Certainly no generous sympathy was felt for him by his triumphant foes. When, on the last Sunday before the inauguration, the pastor of the President’s church unhappily selected for his text, “What will ye do on the solemn day?” one of Jackson’s courtiers, who had attended the services, hurried back to Gadsby’s, and the company assembled there went into gales of laughter, and agreed that it would be, for some, a “solemn day.”

That day was heralded by the thunder of cannon--a day of warmth and sunshine. All roads led to the Capitol, and from an early hour the thoroughfares were thronged with the eager, enthusiastic, motley crowd, rejoicing audibly in the event. Down the Avenue the good-natured mob fought its way, the splendid Barronet and the stately coaches splashed by the wagons and the carts, women and children in exquisite finery crowded by women and children in home-spun and rags, statesmen jostled by uncouth frontiersmen, the laborer brushing inconsiderately, and perhaps a little arrogantly, against the banker--for it was the People’s Day. When, at eleven o’clock, the aristocratic Mrs. Smith set forth with her company, she found the Avenue one living mass, flowing sluggishly eastward, with every terrace and portico and balcony packed, and with all the windows of the Capitol crowded, some to observe the approach on the west, and others to witness the ceremony on the east. When the mob caught sight of Jackson and his party walking from Gadsby’s in democratic fashion, it pressed in upon him, impeding his approach, but seeming in nowise to challenge his displeasure, for he alone of his party walked with bared head. The spectators on the south terrace thrilled to the scene--an American king going to his coronation, acclaimed and accompanied by the plain people. The ceremonies over, he fought his way to his waiting horse--and down the Avenue he rode, followed by the most picturesque cortège that ever trailed a conqueror--gentlemen of society and backwoodsmen, scholars and the illiterate, white and black, the old hobbling on crutches and canes and children clinging to their mothers’ gowns, walking and riding in carriages and wagons and carts--following to the People’s House.

There the unwieldy mob, in carnival mood, hundreds only accustomed to the rough life of the frontier, stormed the mansion, fighting, scrambling, elbowing, scratching. Waiters appearing with refreshments were rushed by the uncouth guests, resulting in the crash of glass and china. Men in heavy boots, covered with the mud of the unpaved streets, sprang upon the chairs and sofas to get a better view of the hero of the hour.[144] Women fainted, some were seen with bloody noses, and Jackson was saved from being crushed only by the action of some gentlemen in making a barrier of their bodies. After this the old soldier beat a hasty retreat through the back way to the south, and sought relief at Gadsby’s.[145] “I never saw such a mixture,” wrote Justice Story. “The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” And Mrs. Smith writing of her experience said: “The noisy and disorderly rabble ... brought to my mind descriptions I have read of the mobs in the Tuileries and at Versailles.”

And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the dethroned President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered his horse, and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the city “through F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until he reached a road leading to the Porters’--reminded of the passing of his power by the neglect of the people.[146]

Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the day--tormented by bitter regrets.

V

Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were to cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the capital gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who had betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale dismissals of postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings against those officials who had participated in politics he would be forced to include in the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well as those who had been faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment nonplussed, sat puffing at his pipe, then arose, and, after walking up and down the room several times, stopped abruptly before his obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr. McLean, will you accept a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”--and that McLean instantly accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent, who says that on the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a reception at the home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was intimate, had just described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr. McLean has been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly Jacksonian way.

It is reasonable to assume that during the brief moments he walked the floor puffing his pipe, he determined upon McLean’s successor. One week before his inauguration, he had given James A. Hamilton a list of applicants for office with the request for an opinion and report, and among these was the application of William T. Barry of Kentucky for a place on the Supreme Bench. The applications had been returned to him with the recommendation that the Kentuckian be appointed. He was known to Jackson as an “organization man.” It was probably the matter of a moment, for one of the President’s quick decision, to make the exchange--McLean for the Bench, Barry for the Cabinet.[149] His efforts to soothe the injured feelings of Senator Tazewell, whose heart had been set on the portfolio of State, were not so successful. After the disappointed statesman had refused the War Department, some of the Jackson tacticians conceived the idea of offering him the mission to London, and for a few days the Virginian seemed tempted. But one week after the inauguration, he wrote the President that domestic reasons precluded an acceptance. Keenly disappointed and concerned, Jackson, after a consultation with one of his advisers,[150] wrote a personal note to Tazewell requesting him to call at the White House. It is not incomprehensible that in his angry mood the proud Southerner should have resented the earnest importunity of the direct Jackson, and he left the President with the statement to McLean that he had not liked the General’s manner in looking him through and through and telling him he must go. He had looked upon it as a military order, and considered the matter at rest. This opened the way, however, for the recognition of Van Buren’s friend, Louis McLane, whose ruffled feelings were smoothed by the appointment to the English Court. But within a week two of Jackson’s party friends and supporters, McLean and Tazewell, had been alienated and were ripe for the seduction of the Opposition.

Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn opposition to the Administration. As early as the first of January it was evident that “the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in the Senate and thereby to control the President.”[151] During the first few weeks of the new Administration the iron sank deep into the souls of the dispossessed office-holders and their friends. It was manifest that there was something more than a new master in the White House--that a régime had passed, a dynasty had fallen. Previous Presidents had entered office with the good wishes of most of their political opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that the dispossessed had steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning to find fault on general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to wreck the Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the Whig drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.” All the members of the new official family were ridiculed with the exception of Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound politician,” was “not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic and vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on the pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the conduct of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for place, and to reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153]

While Adams indulged in these unfriendly reflections merely to feed his personal vanity, and to record his superiority, Clay, equally bitter, was not content to shut his reflection up between the covers of a book. To him defeat had been especially bitter. He hated Jackson with vindictive malice because the latter really credited the “bargain” story, and had sanctioned its circulation. His overpowering passion was to reach the Presidency. He had entered the official household of Adams as the head of the Cabinet when the “Secretarial Succession” seemed definitely established, and had looked forward to succeeding his chief at the end of his second Administration. The fact that there had been no second Administration had been due, in part, to the prevalent opinion that Clay had entered into a bargain for power, and he faced retirement from public life feeling that his great opportunity had failed him and that his reputation had been stained. He was the type of man whose bitterness must find relief in action. From the moment he recovered from the shock of the election, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of Jackson.

In judging of the sincerity of his unrelenting opposition during the next eight years, it is well to bear in mind that before Jackson had perfected a policy, or proclaimed a principle, Mr. Clay attended a banquet given in his honor within a stone’s throw of the White House, at which he assailed the President with an intemperance of denunciation never exceeded in later years. This was evidently personal. One week after the inauguration he said to Mrs. Bayard Smith: “There is not in Cairo or in Constantinople a greater moral despotism than is at this moment exercised over public opinion here. Why, a man dare not avow what he thinks or feels, or shake hands with a personal friend, if he happens to differ from the powers that be.”[154] On the very day this remarkable statement was recorded by the chronicler of the Whig drawing-rooms, Adams wrote in his diary: “Mr. Clay told me some time since that he had received invitations at several places on his way to Lexington to public dinners, and should attend them, and that he intended freely to express his opinions.”[155] A little later Adams notes that while riding he passed Mr. Clay in a carriage driving toward Baltimore on his way to Kentucky--pale, stern, and sour. On that journey, and without having at that time any particular actions of the new Administration on which to base an attack, he spoke wherever the opportunity was afforded, and always with a vehement denunciation of President Jackson.

The inauguration was over; the people from afar, having seen “their” President and visited “their” White House, had returned to their homes; and Henry Clay, the most consummate of politicians, one of the most eloquent of men, was already meditating upon the organized assault that was to be made upon the new régime. Now let us acquaint ourselves with the advisers with whom the President had surrounded himself officially.

VI

By common consent the Whig aristocracy conceded that Martin Van Buren was the strong man of the Cabinet because of an uncanny cleverness as a politician, while denying him the qualities of statesmanship or intellectual leadership. Even as a politician tradition would have him of the superficial, manipulating, intriguing sort. History had generally accepted this tradition until Mr. Shepard’s masterful biography[156] focused attention upon his career, and the publication of his fascinating “Autobiography” disclosed his intellectuality. He stood out among the politicians of his time, to whom history has been kinder, because of his refusal to indulge in the popular personal attacks or to stoop to disreputable intrigues. A man of even temper, blessed with a sense of humor, he found it not only possible but profitable and pleasurable to maintain social relations with political opponents, and all that the embittered Adams could see in this was that “he thought it might one day be to his interest to seek friendship.” In senatorial debates he had discussed principles and policies calmly, instead of indulging in flamboyant discourses flaming with personalities--and this was accepted in his day as evidence that he held his principles lightly. Adams wrote that “his principles are always subordinate to his ambition.”[157]

This “superficial politician” was the greatest lawyer elected to the Presidency before the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of the second Harrison, the greatest lawyer-President we have had. Living in a community overwhelmingly Federalistic, this “trimmer without principles” became a bitter opponent of Federalism. With all the rich and powerful of the locality allied with Federalism, this “courtier” entered the other camp. When Burr was a candidate for Governor, with the support of Van Buren’s preceptor in the law, this young man, who “was under the influence of his evil genius,” ardently supported the Clinton-Livingston candidate, who was elected. When he entered politics, he found the spoils system thoroughly established in New York, and political proscription practiced by both parties, but that was not to prevent his enemies from charging him with its initiation. He did not quarrel with the system. He used, but never abused it. And in the days of his limitation to State politics, he displayed qualities of statesmanship, patriotism, and courage. New York Federalism did not dismiss him as a mere schemer and intriguer when he led his party in the State Senate. He met the Federalist attack upon the War of 1812 upon the floor of the Senate, and not in party caucus. When Federalism fought every needful measure, he became as much the spokesman of the war party in Albany as Clay, Calhoun, and Grundy in Washington. In reaching an estimate of Van Buren, it is important to bear in mind that this alleged man of indecision, without initiative or constructive capacity, was the author of “the most energetic war measure” adopted in the country.[158] As a member of the Constitutional Convention of New York, dealing with the extension of suffrage, when Chancellor Kent, giving free rein to his aristocratic tendencies, was opposing the extension, and mere demagogues were advocating the immediate letting down of the bars to all, it is significant, both of his Americanism and

his wisdom, that Van Buren scorned both the rôle of reactionary and demagogue, and proposed the plan for the gradual extension of suffrage in a speech couched in the language of seasoned statesmanship. Thus, at the time he entered National life, there was nothing in his career to justify the conventional estimate of his public character.

With the inauguration of Adams, soon after he had entered the United States Senate, Van Buren became the recognized leader of the Opposition, and he set himself the task of organizing and militantizing a party to fight the Federalistic trend of the President. There were various elements on which he could draw. With his genius for organization and direction, he made it his work to seek a common ground upon which all could stand together in harmony. He fought the principles and policies of the Administration in dignified fashion, without recourse to scurrility; but he capitalized every mistake and gave it fullest publicity through the circulation of carefully prepared speeches, after the fashion of the present day. Careful to discriminate, even in his attacks, between personal and political wrongdoing, he treated Adams with the utmost courtesy. With a party formed, he drilled it as carefully as was ever done by the Albany Regency. He instilled into it the party spirit. He mobilized an army. With this he fought the Administration on the floor.

But he was one of the first, if not the first, to take the people outside the halls of Congress into consideration. To create a party without as well as within the Congress, he arranged for the circulation of carefully prepared senatorial speeches for the moulding of public opinion in the highways and the byways. Thus he was probably responsible for the delivery of the first congressional speeches intended solely for campaign use.

In person he was slight, erect, and scarcely of middle height. His intellectuality was indicated by his high, broad forehead, and his bright, quick eye. His smile, which was habitual, was genial and seemed sincere. His features, generally, were pleasing. His manner was always courtly, and he made a study of deportment. No professional diplomat of the Old World, living in the atmosphere of courts, could have been more polished. Contemporaries have described him as “extraordinarily bright and attractive, but without anything supercilious.”[159] In social life he was a favorite. Few men of his period were better fitted for the drawing-room. An entertaining talker, he could converse intelligently upon a multitude of subjects and could pass from a political conference with the Kitchen Cabinet to a social call on Adams, or a chat with Clay, without effort or embarrassment. Fond of feminine society, he could be as charming to a débutante as to a grande dame, and we find him delighting the brilliant Mrs. Livingston with his intellectual charm, while captivating her daughter, Cora, with his juvenile levity. Fastidious to a degree, he could enjoy the unconventional moments of Jackson in his shirt-sleeves and with his pipe, and make the pleasure mutual. This premier of an Administration that contemporaries of the Opposition loved to describe as plebeian and vulgar “was perhaps as polished and captivating a person as the social circles of the Republic have ever known.”[160] As we shall see, nothing ruffled him. He never forgot his dignity nor lost his temper. He was all suavity. He was all art.

He lives in history as a politician and President and is never thought of as an orator. He belonged rather to the type of parliamentary speaker which followed the scintillating period when Pitt declaimed in stately sentences and Fox thundered with emotional eloquence--the conversational type which is still prevalent at Westminster. He made no pretense to an artful literary style, but his speeches were in good taste. We have the tradition that he not only prepared his speeches with infinite care, which is probable, but that he rehearsed them before a mirror, which is debatable. It is said that on his retirement from the Senate, and at the sale of his household goods at auction, “it was noticed that the carpet before the large looking-glass was worn threadbare,” and that “it was there that he rehearsed his speeches.”[161] That he was something of an artist and an actor we shall see in the course of the recital of the events of the Jackson Administration.

Secretary of the Treasury Ingham was a Pennsylvania paper manufacturer who possessed little learning and stood in no awe of genius. His career had been that of a petty but persistent plodder who knew the ways of cunning. His mind was prosily practical, and he thought solely in terms of money. His fourteen years in Congress had been barren of achievement, but his business training had given him a certain advantage over more brilliant men in the work of the committees. He was the forerunner of the machine politician of a later day, skillful in intrigue, unscrupulous in methods, and resourceful in the work of organization. His general character is not easily deduced from the conflicting opinions of his contemporaries. One of these, unfriendly to the Jackson régime, wrote that he “is a good man of unimpeachable and unbending integrity”;[162] while Adams, after relating an incident tending to an opposite conclusion, tells us that “there is a portrait of Ingham in Caracci’s picture of the Lord’s Supper”--which is the nearest approach to a description of his appearance that can be found. There is a general agreement, however, as to the inferiority of his talents, and in our political history he is scarcely the shadow of a silhouette.

Quite a different character was Secretary of War Eaton, a gentleman of education, polish, amiability, capacity, and wealth. The possession of a fortune deprived him of an incentive to the full exertion of his talents, and he frankly preferred leisure to labor, discouraged the approach of clients, and liked nothing better than a quiet corner of his library at his country home near Nashville. There was nothing in his appearance, his manner, or conversation remotely to suggest the frontiersman, and, on the contrary, observers were impressed by his dignity and poise, his courtliness and courtesy. Even in the bitter days when society was in league against his wife, we find one of her harshest critics writing that “every one that knows esteems, and many love him for his benevolence and amiability.”[163] He possessed many advantages for a political career. Having the time and money to devote to politics, he early developed a genius for organization, and an uncanny capacity for intrigue. The campaign of 1828 found him entrusted with much of the important work--the delicate missions. Wherever Jackson lacked or needed an organization, or one in existence required stiffening, there went Eaton, doing his work furtively, and on the surface nothing but its achievement indicated that it had been undertaken.[164] It was his fine Italian hand which wrought such havoc with Clay’s forces in Kentucky. When that State began to waver as to Clay, Jackson determined to force the fighting in a territory at first thought hopelessly lost to the Democracy. Even Benton found his way to the “dark and bloody ground,” but tradition has it that it was the suave and furtive Eaton, who appeared in different parts of Kentucky, making no speeches, and half concealing himself in a mantle of mystery, who divorced from Clay so many of his supporters. There is a sinister aspect to the general description of his activities; and his enemies, and Jackson’s, always insisted that he had parceled out jobs with a lavish hand. A man of culture, a soldier of acknowledged gallantry, a lawyer of ability, he was destined to an unhappy notoriety, but he deserved a better fate.

The patrician of the Administration was Secretary of the Navy Branch, who, like Eaton, had inherited an ample fortune, and had divided his time between politics, the practice of the law, and the management of a large plantation. At the time he entered the Cabinet, he had distinguished himself in the politics of North Carolina, had served three terms as Governor, and was a member of the United States Senate--scarcely the record of an obscure man. As chief executive of his State, his record had been far from that of a colorless time-serving politician without constructive qualities or vision. If his messages were couched in the lofty, pompous phrases of the period, they were not without substance. He was a pioneer in the field of popular education, the leader of a crusade against capital punishment for many crimes, an advocate of the substitution of imprisonment for the death penalty, and he urged the establishment of a penitentiary based on the idea of reformation. A man of great wealth, and an aristocrat by temperament, he led a fight against imprisonment for debt.[165] His, too, is the distinction of having in that early day proposed the strict regulation of the medical profession as a protection of the public against impostors. A planter, and the owner of many slaves, he insisted, while Governor, on the protection of the legal rights of the blacks; and the petition of the entire population of Raleigh, the importunities of a hundred and twenty young women, the plea of State officials, were not sufficient to persuade him to save from the gallows a young white man who had murdered a slave.[166] In the Senate, while not distinguished as an orator, he was considered a strong debater and was respected as a man of courage and deep convictions.

The portrait of Branch, which hangs in the Navy Department in Washington, suggests, in the slender profile and luminous eyes, the poet, rather than the politician. He is described by one who saw him often in his Washington days as “tall, well-proportioned, graceful in gestures, and affable and kindly in manner.”[167] He had the graciousness of the Southern aristocrat of the old school, and was devoted to the social standards and customs of his section. Strongly attached to his home and family, having the poet’s love of the artistic, he surrounded himself with beauty, and his home at Enfield was a comfortable and stately mansion surrounded by a smooth lawn, in the midst of gardens, orchards, and shade trees. His political career and the course of the Jackson Administration were to be greatly influenced by his devotion to his wife and daughters, and to his social ideals.

In John McPherson Berrien, the Attorney-General, we have a character with whom history has played strange pranks. When he entered the Cabinet, he was conceded to be one of the most polished orators of his time and one of the famous lawyers of the South. His Washington début in the Supreme Court, in a case involving the seizure of an African slave ship, had been a spectacular triumph.[168] All contemporaries agree as to his extraordinary gifts of eloquence. Perley Poore describes him as “a polished and effective orator.”[169] Another contemporary found him “a model for chaste, free, beautiful elocution.”[170] Still another has it that “he spoke the court language of the Augustan age.”[171] Even the blasé John Marshall, who listened to Webster and Choate, was so impressed that he dubbed him “the honey-tongued Georgian youth.”[172] He had been in the Senate three years when a speech upon the tariff impelled the press of the period to describe him as “the American Cicero”--a designation that clung to him through life. The greatest speech made by any of the leaders of the Opposition on the Panama Mission was the constitutional argument of Berrien.[173] As a man he was cold and reserved, an aristocrat in manner, as in feeling. He made a virtue of not cultivating the multitude, scorned all compromise with his convictions, firmly believed in himself, and was not at all impressed with opposition. Utterly without tact or diplomacy, caustic and sarcastic, he incurred bitter enmities, but his admirers, who liked to compare him with Cicero, took pride in this weakness.[174] As a political leader, he was dictatorial and demanded obedience without question. The slightest hesitation on the part of his tried and truest friends was usually followed by coldness on his part. Selfish to a degree, he was always keen for his personal advancement.[175] Few more brilliant men have ever been Attorney-General of the United States.

If Postmaster-General Barry was unknown to Washington, it was a matter of indifference to him. In politics he was an exotic. Entering Congress as a young man, he could have remained indefinitely, but congressional life did not allure him. For twenty years he had been an influential State politician, serving in the legislature until sent to the United States Senate to fill an unexpired term. It is an interesting commentary on his preference for State office that he resigned from the Senate, where he might have remained, to become Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. Living in Lexington as a neighbor of Henry Clay, he had been for many years one of the great leader’s most ardent supporters, and it is significant of the character of the man that, while he supported Clay against Jackson in 1824, the “bargain” story transformed him into a bitter foe.

In view of their relations to the Jackson Administration years later, the estimate of Barry reached by Amos Kendall in 1814, and recorded in his “Autobiography,” is interesting, and serves to account for the feeling, scarcely concealed, with which the journalist-politician afterwards undertook the unraveling of the difficulties into which Barry had plunged the Post-Office Department. It was when Kendall was on his way to Kentucky that he first met the Lexington politician and went down the Ohio River with him and Mrs. Barry with “servants, horses, and carriages,” in a boat thirty feet long, with three apartments. At the end of the journey Kendall wrote: “He appears to be a very good man but not a great man. For our passage he charged nothing, and in every way treated me like a gentleman. His lady seems to be a woman of good disposition, but uneducated.” In contradiction to this estimate, we have another in which he is described as possessing extraordinary abilities, active business habits, an exact knowledge of men and things, and as being “a great orator.”[176] And this same authority describes Mrs. Barry as “frank, lady-like, free from affectations, possessing a fine person and agreeable manners.” Parton tells us that he was “agreeable and amiable, but not a business man”--which is the final verdict of history. In person he was above the medium height, but slender and thin in face. He was modest in demeanor, and energetic--even though he did not always properly direct his energy--and fond of society. He became Postmaster-General because, according to the Jackson standard, he had richly earned the reward.

Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not possess at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what he said he proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant. It is strange that the one man who developed into a candidate almost immediately was the one to whom he became most ardently attached.

We shall now note the first troubles of the official family.