Amongthe nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220]Strangely enough, this seems to have ratheraffronted the somewhat ponderous dignity of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it has made an ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even Schouler[221]is distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the list. Whether the fact that they were mere editors was enough to make them “infamous characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the strange antipathy to a class long conceded to be among the most influential of any nation is probably to be found in the fact that until this time the lawyers were conceded a monopoly in public station. There was a reason for Jackson’s change of policy, and it grew out of the organization of party and the democratization of government. Unlike his predecessors, he had not depended for support, nor did he expect to look exclusively for support to the professional politicians and the wealthy. As a candidate his appeal had been—for the first time in American history—to the people. As a President he proposed to look to the same quarter. With the people actually established as the ultimate power in the State, according to the theory of American institutions, he was not unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people with his case. He was the first President fully to appreciate the power of the press. He could see no reason why men capable of presenting and popularizing a policy or principle should be excluded from the privilege of helping put it in operation.
In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of the press, but he had found champions—men of capacity and talent, who had fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The assumption that all these men were bribed by the promise of place would be a violent one indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent to the Senate were men who had long been attached to the cause that Jackson personified. Some had more recently allied themselves with the cause, but in everyinstance there was a sound reason for the change of front, and in these cases it does not appear that they had met the President in the campaign or had any expectations.
And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of their capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had speedily uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor who was not a “press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the penitentiary. The Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to the State worthy of reward. While there can be no doubt that the partisan enemies of Jackson were delighted at the opportunity personally to affront him, and while it is certain that Clay’s friends were anxious to punish one, and Adams’s friends to humiliate another, the actual conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the editors originated with John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator Tazewell of Virginia—who was still smarting under his defeat in the contest with Van Buren for the secretaryship of State.
The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M. Noah, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.
Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E. Lee and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with Jackson at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers ever penned in this country.”[222]One who saw him there at the time has recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his half-brother, Robert E. Lee, but rather ugly in face—a mouth without a line of the bow of Diana about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic, but rather meaty, and, if we may use the word, ‘blood meaty’;but he was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever listened to.”[223]He had served in the Virginia House of Delegates with Tyler, and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes Tyler, “I regarded him as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and of a high order of talent.”[224]But this did not operate in his favor. He had assisted in the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have been mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of his rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards protested that he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation, and had expressed his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more aggravated additions to the charge under which he labored.”
Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on the ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and his offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was described as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American institutions. The hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that several Senators who had been shocked at this offense had regaled drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs. Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s being a proper “lady in waiting” for the President’s wife since “birds of a feather flock together.”[225]The real reason for his rejection was that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition by his telling paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his rejection, two Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the news, and the oldman made the comment in his diary that night that Hill “was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me, in the country.”
Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City, appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to have tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One important and memorable service to the Nation should have made him immune from the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as consul to Tunis with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an annual tribute to Algiers for the privilege of navigating the Mediterranean, and Noah, the journalist, had denounced the practice and declared that the money could be better spent in the building of warships. He succeeded on his Algerian mission in ransoming American prisoners who were being held in slavery, but such was the bigotry of the time that, after his work was done, he was recalled on the flimsy pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in Tunis. At the time he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished by his public service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had written his “Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He deserves his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But he had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the bigoted members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.
The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of the nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the time, served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury, rooting out old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his predecessor, but he had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for Jackson, and that was quite enough. Adams himself wasdeeply interested in his humiliation. In the midst of the campaign he had been consulted by Clay touching upon “testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate of Kentucky intended to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt bargaining with me”; and, on Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes the editor as “one of those authors to let, whose profligacy is the child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall was a tie, and Calhoun cast the deciding vote in his favor.
Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was saved. Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through, and that with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the scale.”[226]Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the friends of Calhoun were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors that their humiliation had been brought about through the secret influence of Van Buren. Even then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was called, was considered the greatest obstacle in the way of the South Carolinian’s progress toward the White House, and it was the evident purpose to send the editors, miserable “press writers” though they were, back to their papers to fight the aspirations of Van Buren. Before the vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that the Van Buren influence was responsible for the fight against him. This aroused the curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus, when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian could return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in Washington in that event.
The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face. It aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors who had so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their reward. It was the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly accepted. It was clear that nothing could be done for Lee, where the vote was unanimous, but Jackson decided to renominate Noah, and we find Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The President this morning renominated Noah. This is a prelude to Hill’s renomination. Your presence, I apprehend, would be immaterial, as the result of any vote upon these subjects would not be varied. Monday is fixed for the consideration of Noah’s case.”[227]On the second attempt, Noah was confirmed, like Kendall, with the casting vote of Calhoun.
But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose sharp retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign. Webb, the editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in his paper the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a printer and was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always the friend of his country and its republican institutions, and when that country, during the late war, was about to be sold by traitors to the enemy; when the war was declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the Hartford Convention meditated the formation of a separate treaty with England, his voice was heard in the Granite State and in the mountains of Vermont, animating the people and arousing them to a just sense of their danger, and the blessings of freedom. He was a thorn in the side of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of the Opposition, he pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and successfully.” Writing from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth entered his protest, a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire Patriot’ did more than any one man known to me to putdown the ‘peace societies’ during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.
It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and that the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that the most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy of New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill and looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it up to the legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and true man, by the unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire Democrats understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the aisle of the Senate that had humiliated and rejected him to take the oath as a Senator of the United States.
Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.
Thedefinite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar quarrel in American history. It furnished Clay with new material for the building of his party. It decisively committed the party of Jackson to the defense of the Union. It eliminated Calhoun from the list of presidential possibilities, dropped the curtain on the South Carolinian that the Nation had known for two decades, and raised it on another with whom the world is well acquainted. It divided his life into two distinct parts. It made Martin Van Buren President.
The Calhoun who was to become one of Clay’s most vituperative and intemperate lieutenants in the fight against the Administration differs as radically from the ambitious politician who had intrigued for the election of Jackson as the Webster of the Great Debate differed from the Webster of the Rockingham Resolutions.
The greatest biographer of the Carolinian[228]fixes the time that he became the personification of the slavery cause as 1830—the date of the quarrel—and says that “up to that time he is, in spite of his uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and nobler order, having many peers and even a considerable number of superiors.” Of the three great figures, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, he was admittedly the strongest intellectually, and the one most unmistakably touched with genius. Nature made him a statesman. Swept into Congress on the wave of patriotic enthusiasm following the attack on the Chesapeake, his audacity, independent thinking, militancy, and genius combined to place him in the very lead of the party of Young America that clamored for the War of 1812. He sounded the first clear official war note in his report on that part of Madison’s Message dealing with our relations with England; and after the delivery of his first war speech one of the leading editors of the day hailed “this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live.”[229]In his haughty assumption of equality with the oldest and most experienced members of the Congress, he suggests the younger Pitt. His war speeches were classics of argumentation, sober, and yet pulsating with patriotic passion. If any sectional thought crossed his mind then, it never touched his tongue. He was a superb Nationalist—one of the most splendid figures of his time. Summoned into Monroe’s Cabinet as Secretary of War, he disclosed a high order of executive as well as legislative ability. Finding the department in confusion, he brought order out of chaos, and established system. A former officer of the great Napoleon was impressed with the resemblance between Calhoun’s plan of army organization and that of the Corsican.[230]Even his friends were agreeably astonished at his aptitude for organzation and general executive duties. And this furthered his presidential plans, and a strong party in the Congress perfected plans to advance him to the White House on the expiration of Monroe’s term.
It is not now fashionable to think of him as a designing and ambitious politician, but one of his biographers has commented on his tendency to stoop “to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which is lurking in the corner of his heart, and on the other side to break off all social intercourse with old and highly respected associates, merelybecause others whose services he wished to secure might not like these connections.”[231]And yet, despite his efforts, his candidacy appears to have made no impression upon the country. Among the publicists he was strong; but the people were not impressed. He was the original “young man’s candidate,” but this weakened him among the older and more important leaders. “His age, or rather his youth,” wrote one,[232]“at the present moment is a formidable objection to his elevation to the chair.” Nevertheless, placing his reliance on the younger element, he pushed on. Even in Massachusetts he was charged with having “newspapers set up” to support him.[233]Certain it is that Webster favored his election as long as it seemed possible of achievement, and when failure there seemed certain, the greatest of his future rivals earnestly urged his election to the Vice-Presidency.[234]To the latter position he was elected through a combination of the friends of Adams and Jackson.
And now we find the presidential fever consuming him. He becomes the practical, scheming, not overly scrupulous politician—a rôle he is not popularly supposed to have ever filled. From the very beginning he set to work to undermine the Administration of his chief. His apologists explain that when the “bargain” story was advanced, he was forced to choose between the two factions that had combined to elect him, and preferred to go with the Jackson forces.[235]Whatever his motive, he entered into no half-hearted opposition. This notable activity against Adams and in favor of Jackson has been ascribed to a presumptive premonition that the latter was certain to reach the Presidency, and, in view of Jackson’s assurance that he would be satisfied with one term, Calhoun calculated that the defeat of Adams would shorten his periodof waiting by four years.[236]So ardently was he panting for the Presidency at this time that he summoned his friends to assist in the establishment of a paper, impatiently brushed aside the objections as to cost, and calling Duff Green to the editorship of the “National Telegraph,” created the most powerful party organ that had existed in this country up to that time.[237]Less than a year after Adams’s inauguration, Calhoun was actively organizing for his defeat. We find him inviting a Philadelphian to his chamber in the Capitol to urge him to coöperate with the Opposition party on the ground that “because of the manner in which it came into power it must be defeated at all hazards, regardless of its measures.”[238]This insistence on the defeat of the Administration, “regardless of its measures,” was the reasoning of an ambitious politician, none too scrupulous, in a pinch, in his methods. The rest is known—how Calhoun threw his influence to Jackson in 1828, and was reflected to the Vice-Presidency with the hero of the Hermitage. Close students of the period are now convinced that preliminary to this alliance an agreement had been made that Calhoun was to succeed to the Presidency after four years.
At this time he was in the full maturity of his wonderful power, and the future must have seemed secure. Quincy, who saw him about this time, found him “a striking looking man, with thick black hair brushed back defiantly,” and he comments on Calhoun’s policy of cultivating and fascinating all young men visiting the National capital.[239]The world is too familiar with the tragic features of the great Carolinian to require a description. The rugged carving, the low broad brow, the spare frame almost amounting to attenuation, the penetrating gaze of the “glorious pair of yellow-brown shining eyes,” the bushy brows and the sunken sockets—Calhoun looked unlike any other man in history.[240]He was a commanding figure at the time of the quarrel which was to change the entire course of his life, and to alter his political character.
Wehave seen that Calhoun was annoyed with Jackson over matters of patronage, but the development of the quarrel to the breaking point is to be traced in the story of a debate and two dinners.
While it has not been customary to attach any party significance to the Webster-Hayne debate, it was conducted along party lines and was a party battle. To such a seasoned observer of parliamentary fights as Thomas H. Benton, it was little more than a party skirmish.[241]Even Webster, at the time, evidently looked upon Hayne’s assault upon him as political in its character. Some time before he had sent Senator White of Florida to Calhoun to warn him that by permitting his friends to attack New England, he was playing into the hands of Van Buren, who would capture New England States that would otherwise go to the South Carolinian. And Calhoun, no less alive to the political significance of the promised fight, had, according to White’s story to Adams, been impressed. “He said Calhoun seemed to be considerably at a loss what to do,” wrote Adams at the time; “that he did not know what things were coming to; that he had no feeling of unfriendliness to me, and would by now have visited me but for fear of being misrepresented; that if I had consulted him four years ago, and not have appointed Clay Secretary of State, I should now have been President of the United States.”[242]This purported warning of Webster to Calhoun isgiven color by the former’s action during his great speech, in turning his fine black eyes upon the latter, in the chair, while quoting:
“A barren sceptre in their gripeThence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,No son of their’s succeeding”
“A barren sceptre in their gripeThence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,No son of their’s succeeding”
“A barren sceptre in their gripeThence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,No son of their’s succeeding”
—a prophecy said to have caused Calhoun to “change expression and show some agitation.”[243]
Whether the attack on Webster and New England was conceived for the purpose of serving a party or sectional end, the records show that the Administration leaders who participated in the debate, Grundy, White, and Livingston, followed the Webster-Hayne exchange with elaborate indictments of New England Federalism, and John Forsyth, the real floor leader of the Administration, while contributing little to the discussion, was notably busy upon the floor. That the party phase was uppermost in the minds of the politicians and the press immediately following the verbal duel of the giants may be deduced from the nature of the press comments. One paper, having a correspondent at the capital, summed up the result: “The opposition party generally contend that Mr. Webster overthrew Mr. Hayne; while, on the other hand, the result is triumphantly hailed by the friends of the Administration as a decisive victory over the eastern giant.”[244]And in keeping with the theory that the mass attack on New England Federalism was to capture that section for the Administration,[245]we find the speech of Hayne being extensively circulated over the New England States. There can be no doubt that Webster literally dragged in the really great issue of the Union, that Hayne was forced to accept that diversion, and by so doing gave to the debate its immortal character. Jackson was delighted with Hayne’s firstspeech, and interested in the second, but on a more mature consideration Webster’s glowing defense of the Union went home to the old patriot at the White House. It is because of the effect of the debate upon Jackson’s Administration, and not merely because it occurred during his Presidency, that we cannot dismiss it as remote from the party politics of the time.
It should be borne in mind that the Daniel Webster who emerged from the debate was not the same public character who had entered it. By that epochal utterance he obliterated the one vulnerable point in his career—for the Daniel Webster of 1829 was vulnerable. He entered politics in New Hampshire as a Federalist—“liberal Federalist,” to use the phrase of his biographer.[246]Notwithstanding this “liberality,” he was to become considerably smirched by party loyalty during the war with England. This war was the occasion for his first public utterance, when, on July 4, 1812, he bitterly denounced the war with true Federalistic fervor at Portsmouth. This speech, printed and circulated for propaganda purposes against the war, ran into two editions, and led to his selection as a delegate to the notorious Rockingham County mass meeting. Here it fell to him to prepare the address known to history as the “Rockingham Memorial” to which the advocates of the sinister doctrine of Nullification pointed approvingly up to the Civil War. The notoriety of this document resulted in his election to Congress, where his record was everything it should not have been.
His first move was to heckle the President by calling upon him for information as to the time and manner of the repeal of the French decrees—which was in line with his previous denunciation of France. The enemies of the War of 1812 were bitter against the French, just as the enemies of the World War, over a century later, were bitter against the English. And while his country was at war with a powerfulfoe, he voted against taxes necessary for the waging of it; fought the compulsory draft of men for the miserable little army on the ground that the States alone had the right to resort to conscription; and even threatened the dissolution of the Union with the suggestion that “it would be the solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their authority over their own State militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power.” He stubbornly resisted the attempt to extend martial law to all citizens suspected of treason; actually declaimed against the bill to encourage enlistments; opposed the war policy of the war Administration and urged a defensive warfare. And, of course, he intemperately denounced the embargo.
This course made him by long odds the most conspicuous Federalist in the House, and while he opposed the Hartford Convention, he does not appear to have looked upon it as seditious or treasonable, and as late as 1820, in his Boston speech, utterly ignored by his biographers, he practically proclaimed the right of secession. In brief, throughout the second war against England he was found just on the safe side of the line of sedition. His position at the time was notorious, and Isaac Hill, in the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was openly accusing him of trying to dissolve the Union and to array the North against the South.
Thus, the Webster that Hayne assailed had skeletons in his closet. His reputation as an orator was greater than that of any living American. Behind him was his Plymouth Oration which had rivaled Washington Irving as a best seller;[247]his Dartmouth College plea, which had moved John Marshall to tears; his Bunker Hill Address, which had been read with avidity in England and translated into French; and his plea for Greek independence, which had been read all over the world. Such was the Daniel Webster who was challenged by Hayne—or the Democrats—or the Administration.
Robert Y. Hayne was a knight of Southern chivalry, who in youth, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, had studied oratory as an art, from his first boyhood triumph moving with dash and audacity to his destiny, and at thirty-two entered the Senate of the United States.[248]His reputation as an orator previous to the great debate promised that the contest would not be one-sided. His character as man and publicist commanded universal respect and even the affection of political friend and foe alike.[249]And he entered the contest with one distinct advantage over his adversary: there were skeletons in Webster’s closet; there were none in Hayne’s.
Thereis no doubt but that on the day Hayne opened his attack, he was in fine fettle. Never had the Senate Chamber presented a more inspiring scene. Before him, with folded arms, sat the most coveted prey in the covey of the Opposition. From the Vice-President’s chair, Calhoun, the god of his idolatry, encouraged him with the compliment of a happy expression. About him were grouped the prominent “Jackson Senators” ready to encourage him with their approving smiles.[250]There was a gallant and confident air in the orator as he “dashed into the debate like a Mameluke cavalry upon a charge.”[251]In a moment he was in the full swing of his eloquence, and, as he poured forth his sarcasm, and marshaled his facts against the Federalism of New England, and threw wide the door revealing the Webster skeletons in the closet, the realization was borne to all that they were listening to one of the most effective speeches ever heard in the Senate.The Democrats were jubilant—the enemy concerned—Webster was a mask, as unresponsive as the sphinx. The blows at Federalism—at New England—at Webster, fell like the hammer on an anvil. The speaker’s deadly parallel on Webster and his tariff record was a superb piece of clever oratory. His analysis of New England Federalism in the War of 1812 was a stinging indictment—it was a conviction and a sentence.
The Democrats and Jackson Senators were naturally delighted. This was a political speech that Hayne was making, and he was crucifying Federalism and parading the closet skeletons of its greatest living champion, and shaming the section that refused to be converted to the new faith. And when the orator fell into the trap cleverly prepared for him by Webster, and, ostentatiously encouraged by Calhoun with numerous notes of suggestions sent by the pages from the chair, entered upon his exposition of the theory of Nullification, it is improbable that the delighted Jackson Senators caught the full significance of the departure. Duff Green, in the “National Telegraph,” the Calhoun organ, then supporting the Administration, was in a frenzy of delight. Andrew Jackson, who had kept in close touch with the debate, sending Major Lewis daily to the Senate Chamber, and was immensely pleased with the political or party features of the speech, wrote the orator a cordial letter of congratulation.
The depression of the Federalists, the New Englanders, and the Opposition generally, was correspondingly great. A professional observer,[252]writing of the event in later years, tells us that “the immediate impression from the speech was most assuredly disheartening to the cause Mr. Webster upheld.” And Henry Cabot Lodge accepts the statement that “men of the North and of New England could be known in Washington in those days by their indignant and dejected looks and downcast eyes.”[253]
The day Webster began his reply was the coldest of the winter, a biting wind filling the streets with clouds of dust, and Margaret Bayard Smith, sitting before a blazing fire, and free from the interruption of callers because “almost every one is thronging to the Capitol to hear Mr. Webster reply to Colonel Hayne’s attack on him and his party,” wrote regretfully of the growing tendency of women to monopolize the seats both in the gallery and upon the floor.[254]The reader is too familiar with that splendid oration to justify, for our purposes, any analysis or extended reference to the substance. His replies to Hayne’s attacks on the war policy of the Federalists, and upon his own inconsistencies, while clever, were not, in truth, convincing answers, and it was upon these points that the Jackson Senators were centering their attention. Thus it is not remarkable that the full import of his speech was momentarily lost upon the heated partisans. Even Benton, refusing to believe that the Union was in danger, or in any way involved in the debate, did not care for Webster’s peroration, finding the sentiment nobly and oratorically expressed, “but too elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in the presence of a great calamity—of which calamity I saw no sign.”[255]To Benton, the debate was a party combat and nothing more. Nor is there anything in the notes recorded by Adams to indicate that he was impressed with the Webster speech except as a defense of Federalism.[256]The party issue had, for the moment, obscured all else. If in Charleston, the home of Hayne, Webster became the idol of the old Federalists, and of the Democratic mechanics, Hayne won the affectionate admiration of the merchants of Boston, who had his speechprinted on satin for presentation to him.[257]The Democratic members of the Legislature of Maine, thinking only of the denunciation of Federalism, ordered two thousand copies published and distributed as “a fearless unanswerable defense of the Democracy of New England”—showing that the Nullification feature was overlooked in the party contest involved. Some contemporaries thought the battle a draw.
And Jackson? Parton tells us that Major Lewis, who had been stationed in the Senate during the debate, on returning from the Capitol after hearing Webster, found Jackson up and eager for news. On being told that the New England orator had made a powerful speech and demolished “our friend Hayne,” the old man replied that he “expected it.”[258]A few days later the full import of Hayne’s speech must have dawned upon Jackson and his political intimates, and there is significance in the powerful speech delivered a little later in the debate by Edward Livingston, Senator from Louisiana, intimate friend of the President, who was destined to enter the Cabinet and to frame Jackson’s immortal challenge to Nullification. After the speeches of Webster and Hayne, that of Livingston stands out as the greatest made during the prolonged discussion. He attempted again to center the fire on Federalism, and in so doing brilliantly defended the Union against Nullification, and vigorously defended the Jacksonian policies against the attacks to which they had been subjected during the remarkable debate. If the personal views of Jackson and the Administration are to be sought in any of the senatorial speeches, they will be found, not in the speech of Hayne, but in that of Livingston, which, for that reason, is entitled to more consideration from historians than it has received. We shall now see that within two months Jackson was to find a way to say the last word in the Great Debate of 1830.
Forsome reason the Nullifiers miscalculated the stern old patriot of the While House. Perhaps it was his opposition to the tariff; possibly his South Carolina nativity—whatever the cause, the extreme State Rights party claimed him as its own. It is scarcely probable that, previous to the Webster-Hayne debate, Jackson had ever given any serious consideration to the danger of disunion, and most probable that the views advanced by Hayne in the Nullification part of his speech first impressed him with the fact that a sinister doctrine, brilliantly advanced and powerfully supported, was preparing to challenge the authority of the Nation. But he had kept his own counsels. He may have discussed the danger with Livingston or Van Buren, but no public announcement of his position had escaped him up to the time of the Jefferson dinner in the April following the Great Debate. This dinner, if is now reasonable to conclude, had been arranged with a definite object in view—to create the impression that, in a contest, the President would be friendly to the doctrine of Calhoun and Hayne. The significance of the selection of Jefferson’s birthday as the occasion was not lost upon the President or his Secretary of State. It was the first formal observance of the great Virginian’s natal day, and among the leaders in the preparations were some “with whom the Virginia principles of ’98 had, until quite recently, been in very bad odor.”[259]It was clear to the Red Fox that the intent was “to use the Virginia model as a mask or stalking horse, rather than as an armor of defense.” The plan, as it developed, was to undertake, through various toasts and their responses, to associate this doctrine with Jeffersonian Democracy. Of the twenty-four toasts, practically every one bore upon this subject. The President, Vice-President Calhoun, the Cabinet were to be guests.
It was a subscription dinner, and outside the conspirators in charge the purchasers of tickets had no other thought than that it was intended solely as a tribute to the memory of the sage of Monticello.
Talking it over with Van Buren, Jackson soon convinced himself as to the motive of the conspirators. By prearrangement, Van Buren met Jackson at the White House, in the presence only of Major Donelson, the President’s secretary, to determine upon the attitude to be taken and the toasts to be proposed. While the Nullifiers were jubilating over the promised participation of the President, he was locked in with his Secretary of State deliberating on the wisdom of showing by his toast his familiarity with the purpose of the conspirators, and his determination to preserve the Union at all hazards. The conferees decided upon that aggressive course, and the toasts were framed accordingly.
“Thus armed,” wrote Van Buren years later, “we repaired to the dinner with feelings on the part of the Chief akin to those which would have animated his breast if the scene of this preliminary skirmish in defense of the Union had been the field of battle instead of the festive board.”[260]When Benton arrived that night, he found a full assemblage, with the guests scattered about in groups excitedly examining the list of toasts, and discussing their significance. The congressional delegation from Pennsylvania, on scenting the conspiracy, left the hall before the dinner began. Many others, not caring to associate themselves with such a movement, retired, thus depriving themselves of a triumph. But many remained, among them four members of the Cabinet, Van Buren, Eaton, Branch, and Barry. During the toasts, which were so numerous and lengthy that they required eleven columns in the “National Telegraph,” Jackson sat stern and impassive, betraying nothing of his intention. At length, the regular toasts given, the volunteer toasts were called for,and Jackson rose. As he did so, Van Buren, who was short in stature, stood on his chair to observe the effect better.[261]Straightening himself to his full height, and fixing Calhoun with his penetrating eye, he paused a moment, and then, following the hush, proposed the most dramatic and historical toast in American history:
“Our Federal Union: It must and shall be preserved.”[262]
There was no possible misunderstanding of the meaning. From the time of the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was afloat in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to place himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State Rights men. The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner conspiracy. And Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife. It was something more than a toast—it was a presidential proclamation.
Without a word more, Jackson lifted his glass as a sign that the toast was to be drunk standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. “His glass trembled in his hand and a little of the amber fluid trickled down the side.”[263]There was no response. Jackson stood there, silent and impassive—clearly the master of the situation. All hilarity had gone. Jackson left his place, and, going to the far end of the room, engaged Benton in conversation, but not upon the subject of the dinner.
When all were seated, Calhoun, who had remained standing, slowly and hesitatingly proposed:
“The Union: next to our liberty, the most dear.”
Then, after a pause of half a minute, he proceeded in such a fashion as to leave doubt as to whether the concluding sentence was a part of the toast, or a brief speech:
“May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and by distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.”
Within five minutes after Calhoun had resumed his seat, the company of more than a hundred had dwindled to thirty—men fled from the room as from the scene of a battle.
The story of that Jacksonian toast spread over the country, justifying, as Benton admits he then realized, the peroration of Webster’s speech, and proclaiming to the people the existence of a conspiracy against the Union, and the determination of Jackson to preserve it at all cost. That toast made history. It marked the definite beginning of the history-making quarrel of Jackson and Calhoun, and the beginning of the exodus from the Democratic or Jacksonian party of the Nullifiers and Disunionists, who were to be warmly welcomed by Clay into the party he was about to create to wage war on the Jackson Administration.
Anotherdinner was to complete the break of Calhoun and Jackson.
In the spring of 1830, President Jackson gave a dinner at the White House in honor of former President Monroe. During the evening, while the President and his predecessor were engaged in animated conversation concerning the days when the latter was in the White House and the former in the field in Florida, Tench Ringgold, marshal of the District, turned to Major Lewis with the observation that Calhounhad been an enemy of the President in relation to his Florida campaign. It was not, however, a revelation to Lewis at the time.
During Jackson’s first successful fight for the Presidency, the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans was celebrated, with Jackson as the guest of honor. James A. Hamilton had participated in the celebration as the representative of the Tammany Society of New York; and, joining the Jackson party at the Hermitage, had accompanied it to New Orleans. During the conversationen route, there was some discussion of the charges that had been made against Jackson in the presidential contest of four years before relative to his conduct in the Seminole War, and the assertion had been made that Crawford, a member of Monroe’s Cabinet, had urged his arrest. It was expected that a similar attack would be made in the campaign then beginning. Learning that Hamilton expected to return by way of Georgia, Major Lewis requested him to visit Crawford, then living in retirement there, and ascertain just what had occurred in the Cabinet meeting. The motive of Lewis was to arm himself, if possible, to repel the attack, and to effect a reconciliation between Jackson and the Georgian. Finding on his arrival in Georgia that to reach the home of Crawford he would be forced to go seventy miles out of his way, Hamilton requested John Forsyth to ascertain from Crawford “whether the propriety or necessity for arresting or trying General Jackson was ever presented as a question for the deliberation of Mr. Monroe’s Cabinet.”[264]Passing through Washington on his way home, Hamilton spent two days in the same house with Calhoun, and frankly made inquiry of him also. The latter answered with an emphatic negative. The impression Hamilton received from the conversation was that Calhoun had been favorable to Jackson and Crawford hostile. On reaching New York he wrote Major Lewis of his inability to see Crawford and of his conversation with Calhoun. The reply of the Major shows conclusively that, up to this time, there was not the slightest suspicion that Calhoun had been unfriendly to Jackson, and the sole impression made upon Lewis by Hamilton’s letter was that, since the subject of arresting or reprimanding Jackson had not been broached in the Cabinet, a grave injustice had been done the Georgian which ought to be righted. Soon afterwards, Hamilton heard from Forsyth to the effect that Crawford informed him that in a meeting of the Cabinet Calhoun had urged the propriety of arresting and trying Jackson.[265]Very soon after the receipt of Forsyth’s amazing letter, Hamilton received a note from Calhoun, suggesting the impropriety of disclosures as to Cabinet proceedings and asking that no use be made of his name. Realizing now the serious possibilities of a complete airing of the old controversy, Hamilton filed Forsyth’s letter away and mentioned it to no one. For eighteen months this letter was undisturbed. Then, in the autumn of 1829, when Major Lewis was his guest in his New York home, some evil spirit impelled Hamilton to show the letter to Jackson’s intimate who dwelt with him in the White House. Lewis made no disclosure until after the Monroe dinner. In the meanwhile, as we have seen, the relations between Jackson and Calhoun had become strained, and the Major convinced himself that, since the fight was inevitable, his idol should be furnished with all available ammunition. In telling him of Ringgold’s statement at the dinner, Lewis added that it was supported by the revelations of the Forsyth letter, and Jackson demanded the fatal note.
On learning of Jackson’s demand, Forsyth took the precaution first to send a copy of his letter to Hamilton to Crawford for verification in writing, or for such corrections as the facts might necessitate. The reply, with a minor correction,together with the Forsyth letter to Hamilton, were thereupon turned over to Jackson.
The effect on the President was to infuriate him. Setting his jaws, he wrote a sharp note to Calhoun demanding an explanation. This was the beginning of one of the most acrimonious controversies in American politics.
WithCrawford as the witness against Calhoun, it is essential to turn for a moment to the career of this remarkable and singularly unfortunate statesman. No student of the period, not poisoned by the prejudices and jealousies of Adams, who filled the pages of his diary with grotesque caricatures of his rivals, can escape the conclusion that William H. Crawford was one of the purest and ablest statesmen of his day. At the time he entered the Senate, in his thirty-fifth year, he was a splendid figure—handsome, virile, magnetic, independent in thought, and audacious in action. He was the great war leader in the Senate, as was Calhoun in the House. He had made the most profound impression on the business men of the Nation of any publicist since Hamilton by his fight for strict governmental economy, for the scrutinizing of all expenditures, and by his championship of the National Bank in a brilliant and exhaustive speech in reply to Clay. After two years as Minister to France, Madison called him into his Cabinet to unravel the hopeless tangle in the War Department. He served as adviser to Madison during the remainder of his Administration, continued as the official adviser of Monroe through the eight years of his Presidency, and was urged by Adams to continue in a similar capacity under him. He was soon transferred from the War Department to the Treasury, where he served for nine years to the complete satisfaction of the business men of the Republic.
Even as early as the close of the Madison Administration, a powerful element, opposed to the precedent which pointedto Monroe for the succession, centered on Crawford. Numerous newspapers strongly urged his election, offers of support poured in upon him, and had he at that time entered actively into the plans of his friends, there is every reason to believe he would have been chosen. When the Congress convened, the majority favored his candidacy. The caucus was postponed. The Administration put forth its utmost, exertions for Monroe. Crawford remained inactive. And when he definitely put his claims aside, a number of his friends refused to participate in the caucus, in which, notwithstanding his own lack of interest and the prestige of the Administration, Monroe was barely nominated by a vote of 65 to 54 for Crawford.
The Cabinet of Monroe was so constituted as to make it a house divided three ways against itself. Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford were all members, all were presidential candidates, and none had a clearer right to aspire to the succession than the one who had lacked only twelve votes of the nomination in 1816. The three-cornered fight began in earnest as early as 1821. With Adams, Crawford’s relations were far from friendly, as we may judge from the numerous vindictive comments in the former’s diary. Between Crawford and Jackson no love was lost, and we find the Georgian writing to a correspondent of Jackson’s “depravity and vindictiveness.”[266]But Calhoun was to prove the most unscrupulous and hostile of his foes.
It was not unknown to Crawford that Calhoun had earnestly sought the alienation of his supporters at the time of Monroe’s election. And, as the election of 1824 approached, Calhoun’s personal organ at the capital became intemperate in its attacks upon him. But the climax, involving Calhoun, was reached in the spring of 1824, when the “A. B.” papers appeared in Calhoun journals, followed by a formal charge in the House of Representatives, filed by Ninian Edwardsof Illinois, alleging irregularities and misconduct in office against the Secretary of the Treasury. Here we have the issue direct between Calhoun, seldom accused of being an unscrupulous intriguer, and Crawford, against whom history has lodged the charge. The connection between Calhoun and the attack appears clear enough. Edwards was Calhoun’s friend. The paper that published the “A. B.” papers was Calhoun’s paper and was edited by a clerk in Calhoun’s office.
Immediately after making the charges, Edwards was appointed Minister to Mexico—on the recommendation of Adams, Secretary of State. During the two weeks previous to Edwards’s departure for his post, Calhoun made almost daily visits to his room in a lodging-house, spending from one to two hours with him on each occasion.[267]Nor does Adams, judger of men and motives, appear entirely free from complicity in view of his efforts to dissuade Monroe from summoning Edwards back to Washington to testify in the investigation ordered by the House on the demand of Crawford. The investigation disclosed that Edwards was a liar, and the committee, including Webster, Livingston, and Randolph, unanimously reported that “nothing has been proved to impeach the integrity of the Secretary of the Treasury or to bring into doubt the general correctness and ability of his administration of the public finances.”
There is ample justification for the conclusion that Calhoun was directly implicated in an unscrupulous attempt to blacken the reputation of a rival, and that Adams shared with him in the earnest desire that the investigation should be postponed until after the presidential election.
In the early stages of the contest everything indicated Crawford’s triumph. Then Tragedy intervened. As a result of the administering of lobelia by an unskilled physician, Crawford suffered a stroke. For a time he lost both sight andthe power of speech. His nervous system was shattered. He lost the use of his lower limbs. But such is the pull of an overshadowing ambition that even in this plight he refused to withdraw from the race. The Opposition press was not above exaggerating his condition. And at such a time the caucus was held. The galleries were packed, but the attendance on the floor was slight. Out of the 261 members, only 68 were present, the friends of Calhoun, Adams, Clay, and Jackson having reached an agreement not to enter the caucus. Thus the contest was thrown into the House, where Clay went over to Adams and elected him.
There are few more poignant pictures associated with the failure of lofty political ambitions than that in the country home of the Georgian where he sat with his family about the blazing fire, awaiting the news from the Capitol.[268]His reputation had been dishonestly assailed, his health was broken, his fortune was gone, and, after having almost touched the Presidency, he calmly awaited the final word of failure. The daughters, who adored him, in their efforts to soften the expected blow, told him of their joyous dreams of a return to “Woodlawn,” the Georgia country home, where all could be much happier. When the expected messenger arrived and announced the election of Adams, the defeated statesman, without a change of tone or countenance, merely remarked that he thought it would be Jackson. The next day a letter from the new President urged him to continue in the Cabinet, Jackson called, “frank, courteous, and almost cordial,” and a little later Thomas Jefferson wrote his frank regrets.[269]And thus, having declined the Adams invitation, after a remarkable career in the service of his country, William H. Crawford, poorer than the day he entered public life, and physically a wreck, returned to “Woodlawn” in its magnificentoak forest, with its charming, winding driveways, with its peach and apple blossoms, and its gardens and its shrubbery. And here under an ancient oak he was to sit for many evenings with his children and his friends. That he sometimes thought over the lost hope, we may be sure; that he often associated it with Calhoun, there can be no doubt.
Thefirst act of Jackson’s, on being told of Calhoun’s hostility in the Monroe Cabinet, was to call for a copy of Crawford’s letter to Forsyth, and to enclose it in a letter to the Vice-President, expressing his surprise and asking for his version. The next development in the controversy came in the form of a long letter from Calhoun, practically admitting the charge, and elaborately condemning and damning Crawford for the betrayal of a Cabinet secret. This reply was delivered to Jackson on a Sunday on his way to church, and he wrote a brief and significant answer on his return to the White House on the same day. The closing words sealed the doom of Calhoun as far as the Presidency was concerned. “In your and Mr. Crawford’s dispute I have no interest whatever,” he wrote. “But it may become necessary for me hereafter, when I shall have more leisure and the documents at hand, to notice the historical facts and references in your communication—which will give a very different view to the subject. Understanding you now, no further communication with you on this subject is necessary.”
About this time he sent Calhoun’s letter to Van Buren, who refused to read it, explaining that he would be accused of fomenting the trouble and preferred to know nothing about it. When the messenger returned to Jackson with the comment of his Secretary of State, he replied, “I reckon Van is right. I dare say they will try to throw the blame on him.”[270]
And of course Van Buren was right. After many conferences on the subject with Calhoun, Adams recorded in his diary that “Calhoun is under the firm persuasion that the author of this combustion is Martin Van Buren, who has used the agency of James A. Hamilton in producing it, and that Hamilton, as well as Forsyth, had been a go-between to and from Nashville.”[271]The denial of Van Buren at the time was discounted by the anxiety of Hamilton, after talking with Forsyth in Georgia, to have Crawford’s statement in writing. Nothing, however, could have been more effective in eliminating Calhoun from the presidential race.
That he appreciated his predicament and fought desperately to extricate himself is shown in various ways. Wirt declared, at the time, that “he has blasted his prospects of future advancement,” and Adams described him as a “drowning man.” But the most conclusive evidence of Calhoun’s desperate efforts is to be found in the numerous notations in Adams’s journal. The first entry is to the effect that he had “received a letter from John C. Calhoun ... relating to his personal controversy with President Jackson and William H. Crawford. He questions me concerning the letter of Gen. Jackson to Mr. Monroe which Crawford alleges to have been produced at the Cabinet meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for copies, if I think proper to give them, of Crawford’s letter to me, which I received last summer, and of my answer.” It is characteristic that the only comment of Adams is an impartial damnation of the trio, Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, and especially of the Carolinian for his “icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with me, solely from terror of Jackson.” But the day following, we find Adams delving into his diary of 1818. “I thought it advisable,” he writes, “to have extracts from it made of all those parts relating to the Seminole War and the Cabinet meetings concerning it. As the copy must be made by anentirely confidential hand, my wife undertakes the task.”[272]A little later[273]we find a Mr. Crowninshield applying to him on behalf of Mr. Crawford for a written verification of the Cabinet incident. And four days after that we have Calhoun writing again “requesting statements of the conduct of Mr. Crawford in the deliberations of the Cabinet upon the Seminole War.”[274]The same day Wirt[275]informs Adams that he has received a similar note from the Georgian, and asks for a conference.
That night Adams went to Wirt’s lodgings on Capitol Hill and found him in bed and asleep. He was awakened, however, by a fellow lodger, and a four-hour conference followed, with Adams reading the former Attorney-General the letter from Crawford and the answer sent, and also from the Adams diary of May to August, 1818.
It seems that Adams was not prompt in complying with Calhoun’s request, and a third letter reached him pressing him for a statement of Crawford’s conduct and opinions expressed at the Cabinet consultation on the Seminole War, causing the former President to comment sourly in his diary that he would give no letter until he had seen all the correspondence, and knew precisely the points in dispute.[276]There appears to have been little disposition on the part of Calhoun to meet this requirement, for Adams notes that he had received from Calhoun “an extract” from Crawford’s letter to Forsyth, but not all the correspondence.[277]On the next day, the Carolinian, who was evidently devoting himself feverishly and exclusively to the hopeless attempt to save himself, sent “a further extract from the Crawford letter.”[278]The unpleasant old Puritan, thoroughly enjoying the torture of the fighting politicians, calmly awaited all the correspondence, and thus a week later we learn from the diary that “Mr. Martin took me aside and delivered to me a letter from Vice-President Calhoun with a bundle of papers, being the correspondence ...,” and that the messenger “said that Mr. Calhoun wished to have the papers returned to him to-morrow morning.”[279]
On the following day Wirt, having moved to Gadsby’s, was there informed by Adams that he had received the correspondence, but “that Mr. Calhoun had withheld two important papers; one, the letter from General Jackson to Mr. Monroe of Jan. 6, 1818, and the other, Crawford’s last letter to Calhoun, which, he sent me word, he had returned to Crawford.”[280]A few days later a Dr. Hunt called upon Adams, “more full of politics and personalities than of physic,” with the announcement that “Mr. Calhoun’s pamphlet is to be published to-morrow morning.”[281]
To Adams the issue was clear—a battle between Calhoun and Van Buren for the Presidency. The next day this pamphlet, bearing the elaborate title, “Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, President and Vice-President of the United States, on the Subject of the Course of the latter in the deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe on the Occurrences in the Seminole War,” was published at midnight by Duff Green in the “National Telegraph.” “In my walk about the Capitol Square,” writes Adams, “I met E. Everett, R. G. Amory, E. Wyer, and Matthew L. Davis, all of whom, with the exception of Wyer, spoke of the pamphlet. I received a copy of it under cover from Mr. Calhoun himself.”[282]
Then the war opened in earnest. The “Telegraph” favorably commented upon the pamphlet, and the “Globe” unfavorably. Adams found that “the effect of Mr. Calhoun’s pamphlet is yet scarcely perceptible in Congress, still less upon public opinion,” and that, while the Administration was at war with itself, “the stream of popularity runs almost as strongly in its favor as ever.”[283]Not content with the pamphlet alone, the “National Telegraph” followed it with Crawford’s letter to Calhoun, and another of Forsyth’s, and Adams observed with interest that “in all this correspondence Van Buren is not seen; but James A. Hamilton, intimately connected with him, is a busy intermeddler throughout.”[284]This notation was in line with the gossip of the capital at the time of the controversy.
A little more than a week after the appearance of the pamphlet, Calhoun published his correspondence with Hamilton in the “Telegraph,” and Duff Green, in the same issue, editorially charged Van Buren with responsibility for the rumpus. And this was met on the following day by the latter in a letter to the paper positively denying any interest in the controversy, or any knowledge of Hamilton’s correspondence with Forsyth or Calhoun. Green responded by writing Van Buren down as a liar.[285]Thus the controversy raged, drawing politicians, one after another, into the fight. But in this fearsome medley of charges and counter-charges one fact stood out—that Calhoun had misrepresented his conduct in the Monroe Cabinet to Jackson, and, on being betrayed by Crawford, had incurred the deadly enmity of the President. As far as Jackson was concerned in the public controversy, the matter rested with Calhoun’s initial letter of admission that he had opposed Jackson’s course in the war. He prepared an elaborate statement of the facts for the purposes of history, turned it over to the editor of the “Globe,” who became his literary executor, and he, in turn, permitted Kendall to study it whenhe was planning a biography of the President.[286]But of all this the public knew nothing.
The inevitable storm had broken. Van Buren, suavely in the background, was clearly the beneficiary, Calhoun just as clearly the victim. After this the great Carolinian lost interest in the Presidency, all concern with party, and henceforth, with occasional attacks on Jackson, concentrated on sectionalism and slavery. His disaffection was to carry with it that of his more ardent supporters, and thus in scarcely more than a year Calhoun, Tyler, Tazewell, and the men who looked to them for guidance, passed from the Administration camp to join the Opposition. And the incident had one immediate effect—inseparable from it—the disruption of the Cabinet with the eradication of the last vestige of Calhoun influence from all the executive branches of the Government.