WhenCongress met, Jackson had concluded to postpone his fight on the Bank. Three reasons entered into the decision—the friendliness of his Secretary of the Treasury to the institution, the realization that a majority in Congress favored the recharter, and the fear that a contest during the session would throw the tremendous weight of the Bank’s influence against him in the election. Most of his advisers, including Benton, were anxious to postpone the contest. Just as Biddle had thought that time would operate to the advantage of the institution, Benton was confident that it would work to its detriment, and he wished to strengthen the anti-Bank lines in the Senate and to have Van Buren in the chair when the contest came. McLane’s pronouncedly pro-Bank report had deeply embarrassed the President’s supporters. Creating indignation in some quarters, consternation in others, Jackson hastened to explain it away in a letter to Hamilton; but just how he persuaded himself that the views of the report did “not express any opposition to those entertained by myself,” is not clear.[441]
The Bank supporters had eagerly seized upon the McLane report, and Webb, of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” now deserting the Administration on the Bank question, commented glowingly upon its author and his views. That this was gall and wormwood to Jackson and his intimates is evidentin the correspondence which passed between them. “The article ... was calculated if Blair had replied, to do McLane irreparable injury in a political point of view, because it might have brought him and the President into seeming collision,” wrote Major Lewis to Hamilton.[442]And all this time, McLane, who was one of Hamilton’s correspondents, was frankly admitting to the latter that he had “most earnestly urged Mr. Clay not to attempt to pass a Bank bill at this session, insisting that, if deferred to the next session, he was satisfied that he could, by that time, induce Jackson to approve it”; but that Clay had “persisted in the hope, that if the President approved the bill, he would lose the support of those of his party who had approved his opposition to the Bank, and a vast many others who approved of the State Bank system.” Or, on the other hand, “if the President vetoed the bill, he would lose Pennsylvania and his election.”[443]Thus it is clear enough, that if Jackson could have determined, the Bank would not have been an issue in 1832.
But Clay was pressing Biddle, and the latter devoted the whole of December to feeling his way. “I think they [the Jackson leaders] are desirous to have the Bank question settled by a renewal before the next presidential canvass, with any modifications to free the President from the charge of an entire abandonment of his original opposition,” wrote one who had “seen a letter from the Private Secretary of the President to a gentleman” in Louisville.[444]“Last night I had a long conversation with McLane,” wrote the president of the Washington branch, “and I am authorized by him to say that it is his deliberate opinion and advice that a renewal of the charter ought not to be pressed during the present session, in which I concur most sincerely. The message is as much as you could expect. It shows that the Chief is wavering. If pressed into a corner immediately, neither McLane nor myself will answer for the consequences.”[445]From another correspondent Biddle learned that Barry, Woodbury, and Taney were hostile, being “under the influence of Blair, Lewis, Kendall & Co. who rule our Chief Magistrate”; that Blair had written a slashing attack upon the McLane report, which was only moderated after the Secretary of the Treasury had threatened to resign if the original were published. “I fear you will yet have trouble with our wise governors,” he added.[446]A Virginia Congressman urged reasons for an immediate application. Jackson’s popularity was on the wane, especially in Congress, and his reëlection notwithstanding being certain, he would have more prestige in the next Congress. Calhoun, still Vice-President, would be serviceable among the Bank’s enemies in the South, and McDuffie, a follower of Calhoun, would be chairman of the House Committee to pass upon the application.[447]
“My own belief,” wrote the wily Clay, “is that, if now called upon, he [Jackson] would not negative the bill, but that if he should be reëlected, the event might and probably would be different.” At any rate, all the friends of the Bank with whom Clay had conversed “expect the application to be made.”[448]In corroboration of Clay’s views, Webster wrote that, as a result of conversations, he had been strongly confirmed in his opinion “that it is expedient for the Bank to apply for a renewal of the Charter without delay.”[449]
Confused by such a medley of counsel, Biddle decided to have the situation studied on the ground. Thomas Cadwalader, a trusted Bank agent, could be depended upon to leave party considerations out of his survey, and on Tuesday, the 20th of December, this servitor took up his quarters at Barnard’s Hotel.[450]The next day found him closeted, first with McLane, who warned him of a certain veto, and advisedhim to canvass Congress to ascertain whether the Bank could muster the two thirds necessary to override it. A preliminary survey that day was discouraging, and the evening found the agent again with McLane, who reiterated his plea for a postponement until after the election. On Thursday the agent met McDuffie, who urged an immediate application until “staggered” by what Cadwalader had learned of the probable vote to override the veto. He then advised the Bank to feel its way cautiously. Friday found him dining with Senator Smith, a Democrat, who opposed the agitation of the question that session, since it would mean a Jackson and anti-Jackson vote, and lose the Bank ten votes it could depend upon the next year.[451]It did not take the sagacious agent long to sense the selfish political motives of the Clay leaders. “It is evident,” he wrote Biddle, “that W.’s [Webster’s] opinions are guided, in some degree, by party feelings—as seems to be the case with most of the Clay men.” In John Quincy Adams he found a cooler head, and one in whose judgment he had more confidence. Where Webster had urged that the application be made if “a bare majority in Congress could be mustered,” Adams favored postponement “unless a strong vote can be ascertained.” But, thinking the situation over on Christmas Day, and after another and more favorable canvass of the available votes, he began to lean toward the Clay opinion. In the case of a postponement some of the Bank’s friends would be “luke-warm,” Webster would be “cold or perhaps hostile,” if the Bank bent to the Government influence. After another conference with McLane, he thought he would advise the Bank to start the memorial. In this disposition he was confirmed by a visit on Christmas night from the brother of the Secretary of State, a Whig and a follower of Clay, who brought the solemn assurance that Livingston, McLane, and Cass would prevent the veto. The outcome of it all was that Cadwalader was won over to the Whig plan.[452]The moment the agent returned to Philadelphia, McLane, assuming the chilly dignity of resentment, wrote Biddle, restating his position and curtly declaring that he could not, “as one of the constitutional advisers of the President,” object to the exercise of his veto power.[453]But three days later, Webster, in a reassuring note, wrote that the decision to present the memorial was “exactly right.”[454]
The Whig politicians were determined that the Bank should be dragged into politics, and they had their way. The desire of Biddle to accept compromises proposed by McLane were ruthlessly brushed aside by his political friends. The story of the meeting at which Clay forced the issue is significant and dramatic. McLane had summoned Biddle to Washington and submitted a proposition for a recharter which, he contended, would meet with the approval of the President. After returning to Philadelphia and consulting with his directors, an agreement was reached to accept the compromise. Hurrying back to the capital, Biddle conceived the unhappy notion of first consulting with the political friends of the institution in the Congress, before calling upon McLane. Fatal error!
An historical political conference was called. There, of course, was Nicholas Biddle, financial American autocrat of his time, elegant, suave, polished to scintillation, a lover of literature, a brilliant conversationalist, with a graceful epistolary style, which was as dangerous to him as loquacity to a diplomat. He had been schooled in tact while serving as the Secretary of the American Legation at Paris under Monroe. Clever, unscrupulous, practicing diplomacy where
N. Biddle
straightforward methods would have served better, he had assiduously cultivated public men until he had created a bipartisan Bank party in both branches of the Congress. In his Philadelphia home the great men of his day partook of his hospitality. Before Jackson reached the Presidency, the president of the Bank of the United States was in better position to foresee the proceedings of Congress than the responsible Chief Executive of the people. Instead of concealing his power, he loved to flaunt it in the face of authority. “Emperor Nicholas” smiled and bowed blandly to his title.
And there, of course, was Clay, leader of his party, the greatest genius in the Senate, seemingly destined to the presidential dignity, and for years one of Biddle’s most trusted friends and advisers. He had been on the pay-roll of the Bank as its counsel in Kentucky and Ohio.
There, too, was John Sergeant, there by right as chief counsel of the Bank, but there, too, by right, as Clay’s running mate in the election, for he had been nominated for Vice-President.
And there sat Webster, upon whose eloquence and wisdom the Bank had learned to lean. But he sat there that day, less as the champion of the Bank than as a partisan supporter of Clay and Sergeant.
The compromise proposition was submitted by Biddle, and, after some pretense at discussion, it was vetoed by Clay and Webster, on the ground that “the question of a recharter had progressed too far to render any compromise or change of front expedient.”[455]
A little nonplussed, Biddle and Sergeant retired for further consideration, and returned to the conference with the politicians in the evening still convinced that the McLane compromise should be accepted. And it was then that Clay and Webster, by assuming an injured air, literally blackmailed their Philadelphia friends into the acceptance of their plan,asserting their ability at the time to carry the charter through in the face of a veto, but significantly adding that they would no longer be responsible for anything that might occur “if in the heat of the contest the Bank, abandoning its reliable friends, should strike hands with its foe.”[456]Thus it was neither Jackson nor Biddle that forced the Bank into the campaign of 1832, but Henry Clay, thinking solely in terms of politics and self-interest, as he saw them.
Thewinter roads between Philadelphia and Washington were ribbons of mud, cut across by frozen streams. A stagecoach, bumping and splattering through the mire, struck an obstruction, turned over, and General Cadwalader, with the Bank’s memorial in his pocket, arose from the wreck with an injured shoulder that was to delay its presentation to the Congress. But three weeks after the conference in Washington it was delivered into the hands of its friends.
In the Senate it was presented by a Democrat, George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania, acting under strict instructions from the Legislature of his State, but very much against his personal judgment. In the House it was entrusted to one who could act with greater spirit, because of venomous hostility to Jackson—the vehement and picturesque McDuffie.
On the motion of Dallas, a select committee was chosen in the Senate to consider the memorial, composed of four friends of the Bank and one enemy. In the House, the fighting began at once. Instead of requesting a select committee, McDuffie asked a reference to his own Committee on Ways and Means—packed with friends of the Bank. This was good tactics. Andrew Stevenson, Speaker of the House, and a Jacksonian Democrat, could clearly not be entrusted with the selection of a special committee. An animated debate followed, and the McDuffie motion prevailed by a narrowmargin of ten votes. But that was not to be the end of the matter—not so long as there was a Jackson in the White House, a Benton in the Senate, and a Kendall on the side lines. The plan of parliamentary warfare was devised by the master parliamentarian from Missouri. It contemplated numerous amendments and elaborate discussion in the Senate; and in the House, an investigation into the condition and methods of the Bank. Benton immediately furnished a new member of the House, Clayton, with an indictment in many counts, some justifiable, and others having nothing more substantial than gossip behind them. But even these served. The debate was brisk. James K. Polk led for the Administration in the strongest speech of his congressional career; and McDuffie, sincerely believing in the purity of the Bank, and fearing the effect of opposition to an investigation, making only a perfunctory objection. At the time it was presented, Biddle was relying for information on Charles Jared Ingersoll, who had been sent to Washington in an attempt to conciliate Jackson, and was in constant communication with Livingston and McLane. It is significant of Jackson’s methods that his Secretary of State authorized Ingersoll to inform Biddle that the President had nothing to do with the resolution, wished to end the matter that session, and would sign a rechartering measure if satisfactorily framed.[457]But the easy capitulation of McDuffie in permitting the passage of the resolution caused poignant distress in Bank circles. Ingersoll concluded that the Carolinian preferred to have the tariff debate precede that on the Bank.[458]
Thus the investigation was ordered. The apologists for the Bank among historians persist in the fallacy that its enemies had no expectation of finding anything wrong. This is a remarkable conclusion. Benton thoroughly expected it. The son of Alexander Hamilton had no doubt of it.[459]Jacksonwas serious about it. “The affairs of the Bank I anticipated to be precisely such as you have intimated,” he wrote to Hamilton. “When fully disclosed, and the branches looked into it will be seen that its corrupting influence has been extended everywhere that could add to its strength and secure its recharter. I wish it may not have extended its influence over too many members of Congress.”[460]
The committee of investigation submitted three reports. The majority report charged usury, the issuance of branch bank notes as currency, the selling of coin, loans to editors, brokers, and members of Congress, donations to roads and canals, the construction of houses to rent and sell, and the sale of stock obtained from the Government through special acts of Congress. The minority report, and that of Adams, who reported separately, were laudatory of the institution. Nothing was proved. Campaign material was furnished, and nothing more.
In the midst of the fighting, on May 30th, Nicholas Biddle moved upon the capital and took personal charge of his forces. He entertained at dinners at Barnard’s. He daily repaired to the Capitol to meet emergencies. He conferred freely with Livingston and McLane, hoping through them to conciliate the President. So positive was he that the investigation, by proving nothing, had disarmed hostility, that he wrote expansively, on his arrival, of his willingness to consider with Jackson such modifications as would satisfy the President.[461]In less than a week he was disillusioned of the idea of an easy triumph. “It has been a week of hard work, anxiety and alternating hopes and fears,” he wrote Cadwalader, “but I think that we may now rely with confidence in a favorable result.”[462]All through June the battle raged in the Senate, and it was not until July 3d that the “Emperor Nicholas” was able to write of the passage of the bill by that body, and to “congratulate our friends most cordially upon their most satisfactory results.” The victory was achieved by a vote of 28 to 20, with Dallas, Wilkins, and Poindexter, among the Democrats, voting for the bill. In the House, the Bank won by a vote of 106 to 84.
“Now for the President,” wrote Biddle. “My belief is that the President will veto the bill, though that is not generally known or believed.”[463]And Clay at the same time wrote: “The Bank bill will, I believe, pass the House, and if Jackson is to be believed, he will veto it.”[464]Thus, at this stage, it is evident that Biddle had reconciled himself to Clay’s plan of making the fate of the Bank the issue in the campaign. Among Jackson’s friends there was no doubt as to his intentions. Both McLane and Livingston had warned the banker. Three months before, Hamilton had written a friend that, in the event of its passage, Jackson would promptly veto the measure. “He is open and determined upon this point. I conferred with him yesterday upon the subject. I told him what the Opposition avowed as their motive for pushing the bill at this session. He replied: ‘I will prove to them that I never flinch; that they were mistaken when they expected to act upon me with such considerations.’”[465]
Whenthe bill reached Jackson, he knew that he could not count on the unanimous support of his Cabinet on the veto. Livingston, McLane, and Cass were frankly antagonistic to his purpose, Woodbury was uncertain, while Barry, always acquiescing in his chief’s policies, scarcely counted. Among all the men who sat about the table in the Cabinet room, the only one who heartily sympathized with his intent was RogerTaney. In February, Ingersoll had found him against the Bank, but Livingston then “hoped to convert him”; and while the Bank representative had “found him just now closeted with Kendall,” this was so far from discouraging him that he had not even despaired of Kendall and Lewis, and felt that he had established “a good understanding” with Blair of the “Globe.”[466]On the day the bill reached the White House, Taney was absent from Washington, but he had gone over the ground thoroughly with the President, and had written him a letter setting forth reasons why, in the event of the bill’s passage, it should be vetoed.
On the day of its passage, Martin Van Buren landed in New York, and the following morning he started for the capital. It was midnight when he reached Washington, but, in compliance with a letter from Jackson, which awaited him on landing, he proceeded through the dark streets to the White House where he was instantly ushered into the President’s room. The grim old fighter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, his wretched health clearly denoted in his countenance.[467]But there was the passion of battle in his blood, and it flashed in his eye as he eagerly grasped the hand of his favorite, and, retaining it, poured forth the story of the Bank Bill, and expressed his satisfaction on the arrival of a faithful friend at such a critical juncture. When Van Buren expressed the hope that he would not hesitate to veto the bill, Jackson’s face beamed. “It is the only way,” said the Red Fox, “you can discharge the great duty you owe to the country and yourself.”[468]By Van Buren, the old man’s gratification was easily understood, for he knew of the desertion of the greater part of the Cabinet.
There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called in, albeit sympathizingheartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to one of his biographers[469]the ideas were contributed by Livingston, Benton, Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair, and Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may safely accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was inevitable that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that Taney was summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During the entire time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the capital, with the document open to his inspection, did not have any “direct agency in its construction.”[470]His enemies at the time, however, insisted that he was a party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren arrived at the President’s on Sunday,” a correspondent in Washington wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent to the Senate his veto on the Bank Bill.”[471]That Major Lewis and Blair were called in to assist in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be set down as positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the Senate was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall.
That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of the Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as demagogic because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against the conversion by the rich of governmental agencies to their personal ends, and because of its objections to the foreign stockholders in the Bank of the United States. It was, of course, a campaign document—intended as such. Jackson understood perfectly that the presentation of the memorial for a recharter four years before the expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the presidential election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew that Clay was appealing towealth and power—he appealed to the people. And his appeal was to the people of the United States.
In this stirring appeal to the prejudices of the people, as well as to their interests, as the Jacksonians saw it, there was but one real blunder, and that in phrasing. In discussing the constitutionality of the Bank, Jackson said: “Each officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.” Upon this was to be predicated the assertion that Jackson had announced a philosophy of chaos, with each petty officer passing upon the constitutionality of laws, and irrespective and in contempt of the Supreme Court. The more conservative friends of the President interpreted the words employed as meaning “that in giving or withholding his assent to the bill for the recharter of the Bank, it was his right and duty to decide the question of its constitutionality for himself, uninfluenced by any opinion or judgment which the Supreme Court had pronounced upon that point, farther than his judgment was satisfied by the reasons it had given for its decision.”[472]But there were other expressions in the Message that must have appeared as little short of appeals to anarchy to the more conservative element. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of Government to their selfish purposes.” “Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the powerful more potent, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.” “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.” “Many of our rich havenot been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.”
Here was a Message striking an entirely new note in American politics, and not without justification. So completely had the country been under the domination of the powerful, politically, financially, and socially, previous to the Jackson régime, that the Message was actually hailed with delight by the followers of Clay.
“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has all the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It is really a manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that it will contribute to relieve the country from the domination of these miserable people.”[473]The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington Observer,” commented thus: “It is a mixture of the Demagogue and the Despot, of depravity, desperation and feelings of malice and vengeance partially smothered. It is the type of the detested hypocrite, who, cornered at all points, still cannot abandon entirely his habitual artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked, in a tone of defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will I.’”[474]So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology of the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the Message at its own expense!
But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe” found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of the moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person of Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the battle-field are eclipsed—it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal fame.”[475]
And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man of property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would give to Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the greatest of his victories in the field.
Both parties were satisfied with the Message.
Neverin the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White, a calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he could escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he wrote. “Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to slumber. Ill blood is produced by almost every event; and a great disposition is manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle.... No man can tell when or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all that a prudent man ought to do to avoid difficulties, but should it be my lot to have them forced upon me, my reliance is that Providence will guide me through them safely.”[476]
The debate in the Senate following the Veto Message was significant. The great Field Marshals of the Bank, who had maintained silence until now, appeared upon the scene with impassioned speeches of denunciation and solemn warning. The import of the speeches of Clay and Webster could not have been clearer. They were designed to intimidate the electorate into voting against Jackson by the most gloomy predictions of panic and distress. Webster, who spoke first and made by long odds the most powerful presentation against the Veto, dwelt with funereal melancholy upon the President’s determination to overturn American institutions, basing this absurd theory on the unhappy sentence referred to above.
But the one note he struck in the beginning and pounded to the end was that of intimidation. The country was prosperous and yet there was “an unaccountable disposition to destroy the most useful and most approved institutions of the Government.” Unless Jackson should be defeated at the polls the Bank would fall, and in its fall pull down the pillars of prosperity and involve all in a common ruin. The Bank would have to call in its debts at once. The distress would be especially acute in the States on the Mississippi and its waters—where votes were needed for Clay. There thirty millions of the Bank’s money was out on loans and discounts, and how could this be immediately collected without untold suffering and misery? The great orator, however, evidently afraid that his hints at the election had been too subtle, soon threw off the mask boldly.
“An important election is at hand,” he said, “and the renewal of the Bank Charter is a pending object of great interest, and some excitement. Should not the opinions of men high in office and candidates for reëlection be known on this as on other important questions?” And thence he argued that the life of the Republic, the preservation of the Constitution, the salvation of society from anarchy, and the prosperity of the people, were all inseparably interwoven with the National Bank and the candidacy of Clay. “No old school Federalist,” says Van Buren, “who had grown to man’s estate with views and opinions in regard to the character of the people which that faith seldom failed to inspire, could doubt the efficacy of such an exposition in turning the minds of all classes of the community in the desired direction.”[477]
If the Veto was satisfactory to the Whigs—to the surprise of the Democrats—Webster’s avowed purpose to make it the issue in the campaign was satisfactory to the Democrats—to the equal astonishment of the Whigs. Whenthe great New England orator sat down, Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee, a banker, fluent, logical, and forceful, lost no time in accepting Webster’s “issue.”
“I thank the Senator,” he said, “for the candid avowal, that unless the President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they intend to interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With the same candor I state, that after this declaration, this charter shall never be renewed with my consent.... Sir, if under these circumstances the charter is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and the liberties and prosperity of the people are delivered over to this moneyed institution, to be disposed of at their discretion. Against this I enter my solemn protest.”
Even the most ardent supporters of Clay will hardly point to his speech on the Veto as evidence of his power. Compared with Webster’s or White’s, it was mere froth, lacking in both substance and style, and only notable in its insistence that the failure of the recharter would be fatal to the West, as the continuance of Jackson in office would be subversive of all government.
The reply of Benton was characteristic in its slashing style, its exhaustive appeal to facts and figures, and chiefly important as a campaign argument in its elaborate discussion of the relations of the Bank with the Western States. Not to be outdone in dire predictions, he insisted that the triumph of the Bank would mean the end of free institutions; that “no individual could stand in the States against the power of the Bank, and the Bank flushed with the victory over the conqueror of the conquerors of Bonaparte”; that “an oligarchy would be immediately established, and that oligarchy, in a few generations, would ripen into a monarchy.” He realized that all nations must ultimately perish. “Rome had her Pharsalia and Greece her Chæronea, and this Republic, more illustrious in her birth, was entitled to a death as glorious as theirs.” He would not have her “die by poison” or “perish in corruption,” but “a field of arms and glory should be her end.”
And he, too, eagerly accepted the challenge of Webster: “Why debate the Bank question now, and not before?” he asked. “With what object do they speak? Sir, thispost factodebate is not for the Senate, nor the President, nor to alter the fate of the Bank Bill. It is to arouse the officers of the Bank—to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the people—to bring out its streams of corrupting influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the polls to vote against Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this; but we have not been left without an avowal. The Senator from Massachusetts commenced his speech by showing that Jackson must be put down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the Bank and a new charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at the presidential election. The object of this debate is then known, confessed, declared, avowed; the Bank is in the field; enlisted for the war; a battering ram—the catapulta, not of the Romans but of the National Republicans [Whigs]; not to beat down the walls of hostile cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down the rights of the people; to destroy a patriot and a hero; to command the elections and to elect a Bank President.”
Thus the politicians sounded the keynotes of the two parties in the approaching campaign in the country.
The debate was not to end without its serio-comedy. Benton had criticized Clay for lack of decent courtesy to the President, and when he resumed his seat, Clay arose to question the Missourian’s qualification to pass on decent courtesy, and to revive the story that Benton had once said that should Jackson ever reach the Presidency, Senators “would have to legislate with pistols and dirks.” Benton excitedly denied it. The lie was passed. The angry statesmen were called to order and forced to apologize to the Senate, andthus the Whig nominee for the Presidency closed the debate in a none too dignified fashion.
The necessary two thirds to override the veto could not be mustered, and Clay left Washington on the adjournment of Congress, July 16th, happy in the knowledge that “something had turned up” that would force the Bank and all its resources and influence to battle with a personal motive for his election.
And Jackson and his friends were jubilant.
Thus ended one of the longest and most bitter sessions the American Congress had ever known, “fierce in the beginning, and becoming more furious to the end.”[478]
Thecampaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have come to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the politicians were under the compulsion of cultivating and conciliating, not factions and groups, but the masses of the people. The day of Democracy had dawned, with all that means of good and evil. And in this struggle for the suffrage of the masses, Clay had unwittingly intrigued the Jacksonians into the advantage. Accustomed for years to relying solely on the wealthy and the influential, the great Whig leaders signally failed to appreciate that the very elements they had rallied to their support would tend to alienate the mechanics of the cities, the farmers of the plains, the pioneers struggling with poverty on the fringe of the forest. Thurlow Weed, who was one of the few practical Whig politicians, saw it, but he was then comparatively obscure. The clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet instantly sensed the opportunity and grasped it. A great moneyed institution, never popular with the masses, was seeking the humiliation of the most popular of Presidents. The most fortunate of that day were responding to the call of the Bank. The first battle at the polls between the “soul-less corporation” and the “sons of toil” was on. For the first time in a presidential election the demagogue appeared with his appeals to class prejudice and class hate, and all the demagogy was not on the part of the Jacksonians. If these sought to arouse the masses against the prosperous, the prosperous, with gibes about the “mob,” were quite as busy in prejudicing the classes against the masses.
And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an organization throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of the “Globe.” If the political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to grasp the potentiality of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was more alert, and, through his agency, the powerful “New York Courier and Enquirer,” edited by James Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to espouse the cause of Clay and “the monster.” That money played a part in the conversion was soon established in a congressional investigation; and when the “National Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed the convert, Blair was able sarcastically to comment on its being “charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty and independence in complying with his bargain with the Bank—and the bold, frank and honorable way in which he unsays all that he has said in favor of the President for the price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479]Thus the editors in 1832 fought with a ferocity never before approached.
From the beginning Amos Kendall realized that the appeal would have to be made to the masses. He therefore conceived the idea of inaugurating the campaign with a more solemn and dignified appeal to the more intellectual element. The result was a carefully prepared campaign document reviewing the work of the first three years of Jackson’s Administration. With a master hand he marshaled the triumphs of the Administration, and marched them—an imposing procession—before the reader. He anticipated and met all attacks. If parasites on the public service had been displaced by friends of Jackson, the new blood had injected new energy into the public offices. Business, long in arrears, had been brought up. Public accounts were more promptly rendered and settled. Scamps had been detected and scourged fromoffice, and peculations to the amount of $280,000 had been uncovered. Economy and increased efficiency had resulted in the saving of hundreds of thousands.
In our foreign relations Kendall found nothing to be desired. Jackson had found Colombian cruisers depredating upon our commerce, and Colombian ports subjecting American cargoes to oppressive duties; he secured indemnities and the reduction of duties and the admission of American vessels to Colombian waters on the same footing as those of Colombia. He found no treaty with Turkey and the waters of the Bosphorus closed to us; he negotiated a treaty and our flag waved in the Bosphorus. He found no treaty with Austria—one was negotiated; a suspended treaty with Mexico—it was put in operation; the indemnity claims against Denmark for spoliation unpressed—he collected $750,000; the British West Indian controversy entangled by unskilled diplomacy—he untangled it with skillful diplomacy, and won a victory for American commerce; the French spoliation claims held in abeyance—and he triumphed there.
This brilliant foreign policy, he continued, had breathed new life into our domestic and foreign commerce, until “a commercial activity scarcely equaled in our history” was enjoyed. The hammers were heard in the shipyards, laborers were employed at high wages, prosperity pervaded every class and section. At Boston alone fifteen vessels were fitting out for trade in the Black Sea.
Despite these achievements Kendall complained that the President’s political foes had devoted their energy and ingenuity to obstruction alone. Congress had refused or delayed the necessary appropriations, denied him the means to maintain a mission to France, refused to confirm the appointment of his Minister to England, trumped up charges of fraud against his friends, resorted to childish investigations, charged the President with sending bullies to attack members of Congress and to spy upon them, and capped theclimax of insufferable impudence with resolutions to inquire into the private conversations of the hero of New Orleans.
This campaign document, the first of its kind, was sent broadcast over the country to awaken the indignation of the faithful and to revive and intensify the cry, “Hurrah for Jackson.”[480]And it had the effect intended. The Jacksonians became all the more militant, ready to pounce upon and rend their enemies. Even the courageous Tyler, unfriendly to Jackson, cautioned his daughter in a letter home—“Speak of me always as a Jackson man whenever you are questioned.”[481]With this document in the hands of the intellectual, the Kitchen Cabinet turned with their appeal to the masses on the Bank issue. This speedily became paramount. But Clay and the Whigs were busy with intrigues with groups, and, to understand the remarkable campaign in its ramifications, it is necessary to pause for a peep behind the scenes where Clay may be seen in a light other than that of a man who “would rather be right than President.” We shall find him as willing, in Virginia, to unite with the champions of the Nullification he abhorred, as, in New York, with the party of the Anti-Masons he despised.
Afterthe fashion of the old school politician of his day, Clay relied upon intrigue, upon the cultivation of groups with special interests and grievances. During the winter in Congress he had devoted himself to the consolidation of business and the ultra-conservative elements behind his candidacy. The bitterness of the contest was foreshadowed in the spring when Blair announced the publication of an extra weekly issue of the “Globe”; and in August, Duff Green made a similar announcement as to the “Telegraph.” While Clay planned to win on the Bank issue, he very early began afurious flirtation with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, thus injecting side issues that the Jacksonians were quick to accept. In April, Clay was writing a Virginia friend[482]of a possible coalition with the Nullification forces in three or four Southern States where extreme State-Rights views were prevalent. Governor Floyd of Virginia, destined to receive the electoral vote of the South Carolina Nullifiers, and for a time alienated from Clay, was making overtures for a conciliation. Duff Green, a messenger in Calhoun’s livery, had made a remarkable proposition. The purport of this proposition was that Calhoun’s friends would present his name for the Presidency if assured of three or four of the Southern States; that about August he would be announced as a candidate; that if arrangements could be made with Clay to place no electoral ticket in the field in Virginia, and to throw the support of his friends to Calhoun, the latter could carry the Old Dominion; that carrying Virginia, he would have a fair chance of carrying North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, with a fighting chance in Alabama and Mississippi; and, accomplishing that, he could defeat the reëlection of Jackson, and force the determination of the issue upon the House of Representatives where Clay would no doubt be elected to the satisfaction of Calhoun. The wily editor made it clear to Clay that he was to have no ticket in the States mentioned, and should actively coöperate with Calhoun in Virginia.
And Clay was not shocked! But he had not “assumed that Calhoun had much political capital anywhere outside South Carolina,” and doubted the practicability of abandoning a ticket in Virginia because of the imputations that would follow. And yet, if Calhoun could, by any chance, carry three or four of the Southern States, it was a consummation devoutly to be wished. “Let me hear from you, my dear friend, upon this matter,” he wrote, “and particularlyyour views as to the strength of the party of Mr. Calhoun in Virginia. Has it not relapsed into Jacksonism? Can it be brought forth again in its original force to the support of Mr. Calhoun? Suppose Mr. Calhoun is not put forth as a candidate, what course, generally, will his friends in Virginia pursue? Could our friends be prevailed upon to unite upon a ticket favorable to Mr. Calhoun? Or, in the event of no ticket being put up, would they not divide between Jackson and Calhoun, the larger part probably going to Jackson?”[483]The pet plan of the Calhoun conspirators failed, and in August, Duff Green set forth on a tour of investigation into New York and Pennsylvania, returning to Washington encouraged in the conviction that the defeat of Jackson could be accomplished through the unification of all the hostile elements against him. In announcing the campaign extras of the “Telegraph”—could he by chance have visited the marble bank building in Philadelphia?—he declared that “we believe that our duty requires us to demonstrate that General Jackson ought not to be reëlected.” There was no mistaking the meaning of this move, and the Jacksonians were instantly on their toes. Under the caption, “Consummation of the Coalition,” Blair vigorously denounced it in the “Globe.” “If Mr. Clay were elected,” he wrote, “Mr. Calhoun is well aware that it would instantly establish the Southern League, which is looked to by him as his only hope of ever attaining political power. This is the basis of the coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. It is like that of Octavius and Anthony which severed the Roman empire.”[484]
That Blair had not misinterpreted was immediately evident in the response of the Whig press. The influential Pleasants, of the “Richmond Whig,” warmly commended Green’s action and promised, “on the part of the ‘Telegraph,’ a luminous exposé of the misrule of Jacksonism.” “Ah,” wrote Blair, “the ‘Richmond Whig’ upon the appearance of Duff Green’s proposals for a joint opposition leaps into its embrace.”[485]And from that moment the “Globe” kept before its readers constantly the Calhoun heresy and the coalition with the Whigs. Early in September he began to discuss pointedly the Nullification meetings in South Carolina addressed by “Mr. Calhoun’s leading partisans,” warning that the sinister doctrine was “subversive of the Union,” and that “by forcing a clash between the Government and South Carolina, Calhoun hopes to arouse the sympathy of the entire South.” And he continued with a prescience that is now startling: “The Vice-President, as his prospect closes upon the elevated honors of the Federal Government, is exerting all his influence to place South Carolina in a position which shall compel the other Southern States to unite in a new system, or confederacy, which may open new views to his ambition.”[486]
Thus, burning all bridges as far as the Nullifiers were concerned, the Jacksonian leaders, in the interest of the President, concentrated on capitalizing their connection with the Whigs and the Bank. When Whig and Bank papers warmly recommended the “Telegraph” to the patronage of the Clay supporters, Blair gave the recommendation publicity, with the suggestion that “that paper is the open advocate of Calhoun and Nullification.” Thus he forced the coalition into the open. “Are not the Bank party turning to the Nullifiers?” he asked. “If not, why do they circulate the extra of Duff Green which is devoted to Nullification?”[487]Thus, by boldly repudiating and defying the Nullification element and Calhoun, the Jackson leaders more than neutralized any benefit that Clay and the Whigs might receive from their sympathy and support.
Butmore important to Clay than the attitude of the Nullifiers was that of the Anti-Masons. Strangely enough, he had, at first, looked upon the growing movement, not only with complacency, but with approval. After the failure of the new party in New York in 1830, he had written to a friend: “If they had been successful they would probably have brought out an Anti-Masonic candidate for President. Still, if I had been in New York, I should have given my suffrage to Granger.[488]I will not trouble you with the reasons.”[489]In the same letter, however, he expresses the opinion that such strength as the proscriptive party might muster would ultimately go to the Whigs, in general, and himself in particular, because “it is in conformity with the general nature of minorities,” when they have no candidate of their own, to support the strongest opposition party. Then, too, they were protectionists, had been abused by Van Buren’s organization in New York, “and General Jackson has, as they think, persecuted them.” At any rate, wrote the intriguing politician, “there is no occasion for our friends to attack them.”
But a new light broke for Clay when, in the spring of 1831, the Anti-Masons called a national convention, to meet two months before the Whigs’. His close friends became apprehensive. The sounding of the Anti-Masons disclosed no Clay sentiment. Quite the contrary. Much distressed at this revelation, one of the leaders of the movement urged him to exert his well-known powers of conciliation.[490]By the latter part of June he had concluded that the new party might not prove so advantageous after all. Writing to his bosom friend, Francis Brooke, he found that “Anti-Masonry seems to be the only difficulty now in the way of success, bothin Pennsylvania and New York.”[491]By the middle of July he was convinced that “it would be politic to leave the Jackson party exclusively to abuse the Antis.”[492]A few days later he had concluded that “the policy of the Antis is to force us to their support,” and that “ours should be to win them to ours.”[493]
As the time for the convention approached, the Antis were split on Clay, a small portion wishing the nomination of one who would later withdraw in his favor, but the majority hoping for the nomination of one who would be acceptable to the Whigs in their convention two months later. The problem was finally solved by the nomination of William Wirt.
That this brilliant man would have scorned the honor on any other theory than that his nomination would be acceptable to both the Whigs and Clay, with whom he had served in the Cabinet, and for whom he entertained an affection, is shown in his correspondence.[494]But, while resting at Ashland and still ignorant of the convention’s action, Clay was writing to Brooke that “if the alternative is between Andrew Jackson and an Anti-Masonic candidate with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I should be embarrassed in the choice.”[495]
In the interval between the two conventions, the Anti-Masons clung desperately to the hope that Clay would do violence to his dominating, domineering disposition by sacrificing himself. He was an intimate friend of Wirt’s. Their views on fundamentals were alike. With Wirt elected, Clay would be the power behind the throne. With a divided opposition, Jackson’s election would be inevitable, and Clay hated him with a consuming hate. For identical reasons the Whigs hoped that, on the nomination of Clay, Wirt would retire in his favor. As the Whig convention approached, Wirt abandoned all hope of his own nomination. “There seemsto be no doubt of Mr. Clay’s nomination in the convention next week,” he wrote to Judge Carr. “So be it. In a personal point of view I shall feel that I have made a lucky escape.”[496]After the nomination of Clay, it was the ardent wish of Wirt to withdraw. His intimations to his party’s leaders only brought the assurance that were the party dissolved there “were not enough Clay men among them to touch New York or Pennsylvania, nor consequently to elect Mr. Clay,” and he was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that “there [was] no more chance for Mr. Clay with the Anti-Masons than for the Pope of Rome.”[497]But the absurdity of his situation annoyed him, and he was soon wishing for “a little villa in Florida, or somewhere else, to retire to, and beguile the painful hours, as Cicero did, in writing essays.”
If he remained in the field, it was because Henry Clay preferred it. The relations of the ostensible rivals were close and confidential throughout the campaign. Clay feared that Wirt’s withdrawal would be ascribed to his influence, and would intensify the Anti-Masonic feeling against him. Then, again, the Whig board of strategy planned to deprive Jackson of the electoral vote of New York and Pennsylvania through an ingenious combination of the two opposition parties in those States. In New York the proscriptive party, meeting first, endorsed its national nominees, and nominated leaders of their own for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. With great cunning they selected an electoral ticket, including Chancellor Kent, an idolater of Clay. The Whigs followed, and accepted the Anti-Masonic ticket, and thus the Opposition was consolidated in the Empire State. There was no mystery as to the intent in regard to the State ticket—it was to have the united support of both parties. The weakness, with the public, was the absence of any indication as to the intended disposal of the electoral vote. The plan of the conspirators was to throw the electoral votes to Wirt provided there was a possibility of his election, or no possibility of the election of either Wirt or Clay; and for Clay in the event Wirt could not win and the Whig nominee could with the electoral vote of New York.[498]The plan met with the hearty approval of Clay, who entertained high hopes of its success in depriving Jackson of the electoral vote upon which his election depended.[499]Thus, before the campaign had fairly started, the politicians of these two parties were working in close coöperation with a complete understanding, while the rank and file of both parties were left entirely in the dark. Wirt, with no faith in the coalition, was doing nothing to advance his candidacy.[500]Thus the nominee of one party was secretly planning to deliver the prize to the man his own party had repudiated. Not only did he write no letters to advance his party’s cause, but he “refused to answer whenever such answers could be interpreted as canvassing for office.”[501]
Meanwhile the Jacksonians were merely amused at these intrigues of the old school politicians. The secret of their strength, here as always, was in their daring. Not only did they ignore the Anti-Masons and refuse to conciliate them, but they cast them off as completely as they had the Nullifiers. The highest member of the Masonic order in America was at the head of Jackson’s Cabinet, and John Quincy Adams gave the utmost publicity to the fact by addressing his attacks on Masonry to Edward Livingston. Jackson himself sought and found an opportunity to go on record against the prescriptive hysteria. In this manner the Jacksonian managers rallied the Masons to their banner, and they held in their hands the ammunition with which to blow to atoms the plan of the coalition leaders to deliver the rank and file of the enemies of Masonry to Clay.
Early in October Blair published in the “Globe,” withoutcomment, Clay’s manly letter to some Anti-Masons in Indiana refusing to be drawn into sectarian quarrels. “If a President of the United States ... were to employ his official power to sustain, or to abolish, or to advance the interest of Masonry or Anti-Masonry,” he had written, “it would be an act of usurpation and tyranny.”[502]That was enough. The Democratic press of the country, taking the cue from the “Globe,” reproduced the letter, and thus the rank and file of the party everywhere was strengthened in its determination not to support its author.
While Clay was intriguing with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, the Democrats were audaciously denouncing both, and were gaining rather than losing by their temerity.
Therewas but one issue—and that the Bank. Clay had made it the issue with the officers of the institution and their allied business interests; the clever leaders of the Jackson forces made it an issue with the masses of the people, who had always looked with suspicion and dislike upon the powerful financial institution.[503]And then, perhaps, the “Emperor Nicholas” bitterly regretted having yielded to the blandishments of Clay. If he had not considered the cost in money to the institution when he yielded, Clay understood it as well as Webster. They knew that a fight against the “weak old man,” as they foolishly called Jackson, would be “no holiday affair.” Satisfied of the support of the business element, they had calculated the cost of reaching the people generally—and they had the work of Biddle cut out for him.[504]And almost immediately, Biddle was as deeply involved as Clay himself.
The campaign plans of the two parties differed, since their special appeals were to different elements. The Clay menrelied on the distribution, with Bank money, of the printed speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, of tracts and pamphlets. These, falling into the hands of the masses, were thrown aside. They were sympathetically perused by the bankers, merchants, manufacturers, preachers, professors, and lawyers who were in no need of conversion.[505]The Bank made desperate efforts to win to its support the press of the larger cities and towns. It was notoriously willing to prove its appreciation of such support with the coin of the realm.[506]That Webb’s paper had been won over with Bank money was common knowledge after the congressional investigation, and Amos Kendall, in the “Globe,” charged that the “Evening Post” had been “approached,” and that the “Standard” of Philadelphia had been offered five hundred dollars and a new set of type, and the inducement had been increased by five hundred dollars two days later.
Thoroughly frightened, Biddle spent lavishly for the printing and distribution of speeches and articles. Mailing the president of the Kentucky Bank[507]Webster’s speech on the Veto, and an article reviewing the Message, he instructed that these, “as well as Mr. Clay’s & Mr. Ewing’s speeches on the same subject,” be “printed and dispersed.”[508]More than $80,000—an enormous sum for those days—was spent by the Bank under the head of “stationery and printing” during the period of the campaign. Thousands of friendly newspapers were bought in bulk and scattered broadcast, and Blair announced the discovery that “about four bushels of the ‘Extra Telegraph’ is sent to New York to a single individual for distribution.”[509]An analysis of Benton’s speech and a reply was printed in pamphlet form, and thousands flooded the country and burdened the mails.
But more sinister still was the appearance, for the firsttime in American politics, of the weapons of intimidation and coercion. In New Orleans a bank commenced discounting four months’ paper at eight per centum—“because of the veto.” An advertisement appeared in a Cincinnati paper offering $2.50 per hundred for pork if Clay should be elected, $1.50 if Jackson won—a bribe of one dollar a head on each hundred pounds of pork. From Brownsville, Pennsylvania, went forth the disturbing report that “a large manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and others have given notice to do so,” and that “not a single steam boat will be built this season at Wheeling, Pittsburg or Louisville.” From Baltimore: “A great many mechanics are thrown out of employment by the stoppage of building. The prospect ahead is that we shall have a very distressing winter.” And so the work went on, with the Bank and its political champions holding the sword of Damocles over the heads of the masses who dared to vote for Jackson.[510]Jackson was held before the conservative and timid as rash, dangerous, destructive. Webster’s State convention speech at Worcester, expanding on the unfortunate sentence from the Veto Message as to the finality of Supreme Court decisions, was given general circulation. Even the brilliant Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” lived in constant terror of some rash act of Jackson’s that would wreck the country.[511]
For the benefit of the ardent Jacksonians who disliked and distrusted Van Buren, the nominee for Vice-President, the Whig and Bank press gravely quoted some mysterious “Philadelphian” to whom Jackson had said, “with his own lips,” that a reëlection would satisfy him as a vindication, and that he would resign and go home, leaving Van Buren in the Presidency. Even the “National Intelligencer” referred to the rumor as “the disclosure of an important fact ... going to confirm our own impressions.” And Blair had been forced to notice and denounce the story with the comment that “wehad always thought Simpson the most depraved of all the miscreants purchased by the Bank, but certainly now Gales[512]deserves to be put below him.”[513]Earlier in the campaign the Whigs had attempted to serve the same purpose by circulating alarming reports regarding Jackson’s health. And Blair, in denouncing this canard, announced that the President “receives from 50 to 100 persons daily, is incessantly engaged in the despatch of the duties of his office, and joins regularly at table his large dinner parties of from 40 to 50 persons twice a week.”[514]
For the benefit of the preachers, teachers, and moral forces, the old stories of Jackson’s bloodthirstiness were revived, apropos of the attack by Sam Houston on a member of Congress. At first the President had merely instigated the assault—and then the imaginative Whig scribes worked out a bloodcurdling, circumstantial story. After the brutal attack, the swaggering Houston had met Postmaster-General Barry at the theater, and the two had talked it over at the theater bar, and, after being congratulated by the Cabinet member, he had called on Jackson and been heartily commended for his act.
Thus the Whigs used every weapon that came into their hands—money, subsidized and bought papers, the hostility to Masonry, the hate of the Nullifiers, the fear of Van Buren, intimidation, coercion, and slander. And something comparatively new to politics—the cartoon—soon became a feature of the fight. Here the Democrats were at a disadvantage, and the pictorial editorials that have come down to us are largely anti-Jackson. Here we find the President pictured as a raving maniac, as Don Quixote tilting at the pillars of the splendid marble bank building in Philadelphia, as a burglar attempting to force the bank doors with a battering ram, while the most popular cartoon among the friends ofClay pictured Jackson receiving a crown from Van Buren and a scepter from the Devil.[515]