Jackson took the advice in good part, destroyed his declaration of war, and prepared, with the assistance of Forsyth, another, which was submitted to Congress on January 15th. It was an excited body of men that listened that winter day to the reading of the Message that might mean war. But three days before, an acrimonious debate had been precipitated by Benton, charging the partisanship of the Senate with responsibility for the failure of the Fortifications Bill; and only the day before, Webster, in a spirited reply, had attempted to shift responsibility to the Democratic House. John Quincy Adams, enraged at Webster’s reflections upon the House, was meditating his sensational reply. In this atmosphere the Message was read.
After reviewing the controversy up to the hour of the Message, with the declaration that “the spirit of the American people, the dignity of the Legislature, and the firm resolve of their Executive Government forbid” an apology or explanation, he called upon Congress to “sustain Executive exertion in such measures as the case requires.” This included, according to his idea, reprisals, the exclusion of French products and French vessels from American ports. But there was more to be done. Naval preparations of the French intended for our seas had been announced. He knew not the purpose. But, “come what may, the explanation which France demands can never be accorded, and no armament, however powerful and imposing, at a distance or on our coast, will, I trust, deter us from discharging the highduties we owe to our constituents, our national character, and to the world”; and he called upon the Congress “to vindicate the faith of treaties and to promote the general interest of peace, civilization, and improvement.”[859]
Notwithstandingthe seriousness of the crisis the memory of the failure of the Fortifications Bill in the last session would not down. Throughout the spring, summer, and autumn of 1835, the press and politicians were engaged in bitter criminations and recriminations as to the responsibility. It was manifestly the fault of the Senate Whigs, but their harassed leaders bitterly retaliated on the Democratic House, and drew upon their imagination in an effort to place responsibility upon the Jacksonian leaders. A fantastical article, once attributed to Daniel Webster, appeared in the “National Gazette,” charging that Van Buren and John Forsyth had expressed the wish to Cambreleng, the Democratic leader in the House, that the bill should fail, that the calamity might be ascribed to the Whigs of the Senate. The people had been thoroughly outraged at the base prostitution of the Nation’s interest to the pettiness of party politics. During the summer, Blair called attention in the “Globe” to Serurier’s action in sending to Paris with Jackson’s Message the criticism of the “National Intelligencer,” with the comment that the French Minister for Foreign Affairs would do well to read the two together! Paris was assured by Serurier that the Whig paper had “pretty considerable influence,” had “under the presidencies of Madison and Monroe been the official paper,” and “has spoken energetically against the measure” the President had proposed. The President’s sharp reference to the unfortunate situation created by the failure of the bill, in his Message of December,1835, had shown a determination, on the part of that consummate politician, to turn the popular indignation upon the Opposition. However, with the passion of the parties smouldering beneath the surface, there was no open fight until, on January 12th, the pugnacious Benton, speaking on the national defense, reviewed the failure of the Fortifications Bill, and laid the responsibility at the Senate’s door. He closed his biting comments with an effective reference to the approach of the French squadron, sent on the supposition of our helplessness, and the suggestion that the Senate should then act “under the guns of France and under the eyes of Europe.”[860]
That was the call to battle. The irate Webster sprang to his feet to announce that a little later he would be able to exonerate the Senate, and the fiery Leigh of Virginia protested that “the objection to the appropriation was not because of any distrust of the President,” but because of the unconstitutionality of the amendment: this in delicious disregard of the plain record of the debate. But Preston, who followed, exposed the cloven hoof of the partisan animus. If the French fleet was coming, why had the President kept Congress in the dark? Why had he withdrawn our representatives from Paris? Why had we no representative at the Court of England?—an audacious question in view of the refusal by the Whig Senate to confirm either of two excellent appointments to that post. Why assume that the French fleet came with hostile motives? “It may be that this fleet is coming to protect the commerce of France,” he thought. From this it was an easy step to the reiteration of the Whig apologies for and defense of the action of the French Government.[861]
But the last word in defense of the Senate was reserved for Webster, who rose twenty-four hours before the Special Message reached the Senate and while it was being prepared. Itwas a laboriously wrought attempt. The amendment to the Fortifications Bill had been offered at the eleventh hour. The President had not requested the additional appropriation in a Message. No department had recommended it. Nothing of which Congress was cognizant had occurred to justify it. The Senate had passed a resolution “reminding” the House of the bill in the closing hours. The conference report had not been passed upon by the House. And “the bill therefore was lost. It was lost in the House of Representatives. It died there, and there its remains are to be found.” Had not the President announced at one o’clock that he would receive no further communications from the Congress? What right had he to interfere with the time Congress should fix for adjournment?[862]And what constitutional right had Congress to make an appropriation when there was no specification of the precise use to be made of the money? And with true Websterian eloquence he closed with mournful meditations on the encroachments of Jackson upon the Constitution, and the prediction that, unless checked, men, then living, would “write the history of this government, from its commencement to its close.”[863]
That the Jacksonians were not impressed with the danger was shown in the brief reply of Cuthbert of Georgia, that the great danger to Rome was not in the kingly name they feared, but “in the patrician class, a moneyed aristocracy, a combination of their political leaders, seeking to establish an aristocratical government, regardless of the welfare of the people.” But the answer to Webster was not to come from a Democrat, but from a Whig—and that, too, a Whig from Massachusetts, who had been defeated for reëlection to the Presidency by Andrew Jackson!
Therehad long been an undercurrent of hostility between Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams. Webster had gladly left the House during the Adams Administration to escape the necessity of defending the President; and the comments on the great orator, running through the famous “Diary” of Adams, are often sarcastic, usually unfriendly, and seldom fulsome. That this spirit of animus alone should have impelled Adams to make his notable reply—a reply which has been strangely ignored by historians—cannot be reconciled with his character as a public man. The fact that Webster had assailed the House of which Adams was a leading member, and the amendment with which Adams had had something to do, may explain the bitterness of his retort. But no one can read the speeches of Adams on the French controversy without being impressed with the robust Americanism of the man, and his utter impatience with a partisan thought in the presence of a foreign adversary.
The opportunity for Adams’s reply came one week after the Webster speech, six days after the President’s Special Message, and when the international crisis seemed most menacing. The “National Intelligencer” had made an attack upon the House of Representatives, along the line of the Webster speech, and Cambreleng, who had been personally assailed, in resenting the article had said that “more than one member of the House, not only on this side, but on both sides, will vindicate the proceedings of the House in relation to the bill.” Immediately afterwards Adams presented his resolution for an investigation, and launched into one of the most bitter, dramatic, and sensational speeches ever heard in the American Congress. He rose in fighting armor. Scarcely had he begun his attack upon the Senate when he was called to order for mentioning that body; whereupon he jauntily observed that he would “transfer the location ofthe place where these things had happened from the Senate to the office of the ‘National Intelligencer’”—and thus proceeded to the castigation of that journal. In explaining the reasons for the three-million-dollar amendment, he recounted the story of the resolution adopted in the House.
“In all the debates in the ‘National Intelligencer,’”he said, “there is no more trace of such a resolution having passed the House than if it had never existed; no more trace than can be found on the journal of the Senate of what they would do for the defense of the country, or to insist on the execution of the treaty of July. But in the debate in the ‘National Intelligencer,’ I find a prodigious display of eloquence against the constitutionality of the section appropriating $3,000,000 for the defense of the country, because it had not been recommended by the Executive.”
The House was instantly in an uproar, and Adams was again called to order for his reference to the Senate. The old man stood listening calmly to the excited observations of some of his colleagues, and was finally permitted to proceed.
“Observe, sir,” he continued, “the terms, the object, and the conditions of that appropriation. It was to be expended, in whole or in part, under the direction of the President of the United States—the executive head of the Nation, sworn to the faithful execution of the laws; sworn especially, and entrusted with the superintendence of all the defenses of the country against the ravages of a foreign invader; it was to be expended for the military and naval service, including fortifications and ordnance and increase of the navy. These, sir, the natural and appropriate instruments of defense against a foreign foe, were the sole and exclusive objects of the appropriation. Not one dollar of it could have been applied by him to any other purposes without making himself liable to impeachment; not by that House of Representatives, but by us, their successors, fresh from the constituent body, the people; yet before the same Senate for his judges, a majorityof whom were surely not of his friends; not one dollar of it could have been expended without giving a public account of it to the representatives of the people and to the Nation. Nor was this all. Thus confined to specific objects, it was to be expended, not unconditionally, but only in the event that it should be rendered necessary for the defense of the country prior to the then next session of Congress—an interval of nine months—during which no other provision could have been made to defend your soil from sudden invasion, or to protect your commerce floating upon every sea from a sweep of a royal ordinance of France.
“And this is the appropriation, following close upon that unanimous vote of 217 members of the House, that the execution of the Treaty of 1831 should be maintained and insisted upon. This is the appropriation so tainted with man-worship, so corrupt, so unconstitutional, that the indignant and patriotic eloquence of the ‘National Intelligencer’ would sooner see a foreign foe battering down the walls of the Capitol than agree to it.”
If this reference to the declaration of Webster caused the members of the House to catch their breath, the next sentence brought the Democrats to their feet with prolonged cheers and shouts.
“Sir,” Adams continued, “for a man uttering such sentiments there would be but one step more, a natural and an easy one to take, and that would be, with the enemy at the walls of the Capitol, to join him in battering them down.”
With the Whigs dazed, and the Democrats shouting their approval, James K. Polk, in the chair, was forced to hammer vigorously with his gavel before he could restore any semblance of order—and the old man lunged again at Webster’s argument.
“Are we to be told,” he asked, “that this and the other House must not appropriate money unless by recommendation from the Executive? Why, sir, the Executive has toldus now that that appropriation was perfectly in accord with his wishes. Yet here the charge is inverted, and unconstitutional conspiracy and man-worship are imputed to this House on account of that appropriation because it was approved and desired by the Executive. Where was the possibility of a recommendation from the Executive; of statements from the departments; of messages between this and the other House, when the resolution of the House had been passed but the day before?...”
And man-worship? Here Adams refused to follow his fellow Whigs in withholding commendation from the patriotism of the President.
“I will appeal to the House to say whether I am a worshiper of the Executive.... Neither the measure of issuing letters of marque and reprisal, nor the measures of commercial interdict or restriction—neither had that House approved; but the House, and, thank God, the people of the country, have done homage to the spirit which had urged to the recommendation, even of those measures which they did not approve. Why must the House be charged with man-worship and unconstitutional conspiracy, because they passed an appropriation of three millions for the defense of the country, at a time when imminent danger of war was urged, as resulting from that very resolution, which, but the night before, passed by a unanimous vote? Because, forsooth, that appropriation had not been asked for by the Executive; and yet because it was approved by the Executive.”
In reviewing the action of both Senate and House on the President’s recommendation, Adams scornfully and contemptuously dismissed the Clay resolution in a few words: “A resolution not only declining to do that which the President had recommended to vindicate the rights and honor of the Nation, but positively determining to do nothing—not even to express a sense of the wrongs which the country was enduring from France.”
“And now, sir,” he continued, “where is all this scaffolding of indignation and horror at the appropriation for specific purposes, for the defense of the country, because, forsooth, it had not been recommended by the Special Message of the Executive? Gone, sir, gone! You shall look for it and you shall not find it. You shall find no more trace of it than, in the tales of the ‘National Intelligencer,’ you shall find of that vote of 217 yeas—which was the real voucher for the purity and patriotism of that appropriation of $3,000,000—denounced to the world by the eloquent orators of the senatorial press as so profligate and corrupt, that an enemy at the gates of this Capitol could not have justified a vote in its favor to arrest his arm, and stay his hand in battering down these walls. You shall find no more trace of it upon the journals of the Senate than you shall find of sensibility to the wrongs which our country was enduring from France.”
The old man eloquent thence passed to the complaint that the Senate was ignorant of the reasons impelling the House to the adoption of the amendment, and tore it to shreds; and then on to the responsibility for the failure of the bill. This, he contended, was due to the very spirit of the Senate—its temper an insult to the President and the House. The Webster motion to adhere, he said, was always considered a “challenge,” and had never before been made at such an early stage of a difference between the Houses. “It was a special disposition,” he said, “to cast odium on the House, a special bravado that induced the Senate thus to draw the sword, and throw away the scabbard—and they adhered.”
Turning then to the willingness of the Senate, when it was too late, to accept an amendment for $800,000 instead of $3,000,000, he continued:
“Thus, sir, this horrible conspiracy against the Constitution melted down to a mere question of dollars and cents.” And when this agreement was reached by the Senate, the House was dead—the hour of midnight having passed. Hedid not himself believe that a Congress died at midnight, but others did, and they were conscientious. And the Senate, knowing of that situation, had the insolence to adopt its resolution of reminder and send it to the House. “But to complete the true character of that message we must inquire at what time it was sent. It was sent at two o’clock in the morning; it was sent at a time when it was known, both in the House and the Senate, that no quorum was to be found. When that message was delivered, I must confess, if ever a feeling of shame and indignation had filled my bosom, it was at that moment. I felt it was an insult to the immediate representatives of the people; and if it had been sent at a moment when the House existed, with the power to resent unprovoked insult, I verily believe, that, imitating the example of our Congress in a somewhat similar case during the Revolutionary War, I should have moved that a message be sent by two members of the House to cast the Senate message on their floor, and tell them it was not the custom of the House to receive insolent messages.”[864]
Thus did Adams the Whig stand forth as the special champion of the President and the Democratic House, and tear the Webster sophistry to tatters; thus did he serve notice that, outside the more selfish politicians of the Whig Opposition, the Nation applauded the spirit of Jackson and was prepared to follow him against any foreign foe. The speech was the sensation of the day, and Adams was never forgiven. Henry A. Wise, the brilliant Virginia Whig, followed in a remarkable medley of gossipy charges against his colleagues, but his effort was so novel in its irregularities that it destroyed itself—and the fight over the loss of the Fortifications Bill is told in the speeches of Webster and Adams. The Whigs pursued the latter with their resentment to the polls in the autumn of that year, and he was able to record, after theelection, that he was “reëlected to the next Congress without formal opposition, but almost without Whig votes.” And looking back at the end of the year, and recording his impressions, he referred to his reply to Webster with evident relish. “It demolished the speech of Webster,” he wrote, “drove him from the field, and whipped him and his party into the rank and file of the Nation in the quarrel with the French King.”[865]It did something more; it disclosed the fact that the Whig leaders, in their hate of Jackson, approached perilously near disloyalty to their country. If Jackson won his fight, it was after battling against, not only the Government of France, but against the party Opposition at home. And fighting this double battle, he won.
Adamsspoke on January 21, 1836, while Congress was considering the recommendations of the Special Message. Alphonse Pageot, and his wife and son, Andrew Jackson, were in New York awaiting passage back to France; and two days after the French Chargé left New York, Charles Bankhead, the British Chargé d’Affaires at Washington, acting on instructions from his Government, offered the mediation of England in the settlement of the Franco-American dispute, in a letter to Forsyth. Jackson and his Secretary of State took six days to deliberate on the proposal before giving a formal answer. The note, signed, and no doubt prepared by Forsyth, is a strong and polished review of the controversy, a reiteration of Livingston’s contention that no nation has the right to attempt an interference with the “consultation” of the departments of the American Government, and an explicit reservation that the American Government would not make the explanation or apology prescribed by the Government of France. There is no single sign of weakening, absolutely nothing new in the way of a concession, andonly a repetition of the Livingston notes to the Duc de Broglie.
Twelve days later, Bankhead informed Forsyth of the success of the mediation. “The French Government,” he wrote, “has stated ... that the frank and honorable manner in which the President has, in his recent Message, expressed himself in regard to the points of difference between the Governments of France and the United States, has removed those difficulties, upon the score of national honor, which have hitherto stood in the way of the prompt execution by France of the treaty.”[866]This was a complete reversal. The President had “expressed himself on the points of difference” through Livingston, in conversation, and through notes to both de Rigny and de Broglie, and he had expressed himself to them precisely as in “his recent Message.” And it was after he had thus expressed himself that France had insisted that an explanation or apology prescribed by her should be made as a condition to the execution of the treaty. Jackson added nothing; France accepted what she had scornfully refused before, and the triumph of Jackson was complete. On May 10th Jackson was able to inform Congress that France had paid the four installments due. Thus, after the failures of the Administrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams to get a settlement with France, Jackson had negotiated a treaty within two years of his first inauguration, and had enforced the observance of the treaty almost a year before the expiration of his last term.
The theory of some historians that Jackson, in his dealings with foreign nations, was lacking in finesse and success, is manifestly colored by blind prejudice. The prestige of the Nation abroad was never so high as after his stern insistence that a treaty with the United States could no more be disregarded than one with any of the European Powers. John Fiske touched the real significance of the result of the controversy when he wrote that “the days when foreign powers could safely insult us were evidently gone by.”[867]And the same historian discloses the necessity for the position assumed by Jackson. “In foreign affairs,” he writes, “Jackson’s Administration won great credit through its enforcement of the French spoliation claims. European nations which had claims for damages against France on account of spoliations committed by French cruisers during the Napoleonic wars, had no difficulty after the Peace of 1815 in obtaining payment; but the claims of the United States had been superciliously neglected.”[868]And so pronounced a partisan as John W. Foster, Secretary of State under the second Harrison, has recorded the deliberate judgment that “in its foreign relations his Administration maintained a dignified and creditable attitude.”[869]
The Whig leaders in the Senate and the press, the Clays and Websters and the Gales, had permitted their bitterness against Jackson to lead them to the verge of disloyalty to country, and the indignant protest of Adams was a true reflection of the popular opinion. The clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet were not slow to see the opportunity again to picture Jackson as the patriotic hero, for the second time leading his people in a fight against a foreign adversary.
Fromthe adjournment of Congress in March, 1835, until it convened in December, the political leaders concerned themselves with presidential politics, and the struggle for position was desperate and unscrupulous. From the hour in the first year of his first Administration, when Jackson, fearful of an early death, wrote his celebrated letter to Judge Overton expressing a preference for Van Buren, the latter had been looked upon as the crown prince. From that hour the master political manipulators surrounding Jackson made no move not intended to advance the “magician” toward the goal of his ambition. In the summer of 1833 Major Lewis was disturbed over the prospective candidacy of Justice McLean,[870]but it failed to materialize, and, within a year after the Major’s trepidation, the White House circle realized that the most serious challenge to the plans for the succession would come from Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee, considered a renegade from the Jackson camp. The close attachment of the President and the Senator from his State had perceptibly cooled in less than a year after the inauguration. The latter was of a proud and sensitive temperament, and the growing intimacy of his old friend with the new school of practical politicians was enough to estrange him. Had he hoped in the beginning to become the legatee of Jackson, we should have a plausible explanation of his bitter resentment of the President’s failure to observe his one-term pledge. We only know that he drifted, first into the position of an independent supporter of the Administration, and later into one of frankhostility. His imagination began early to play pranks with his judgment. He began to seek evidence of slights. In all the new school of Jacksonian leaders he saw enemies. He carefully scrutinized the “Globe” for discriminations against him. That there was no conscious effort on the part of the paper to ignore him is shown in the action of Blair, on learning that the Senator was offended. In a cordial letter he assured the suspicious Senator that he felt “the most perfect consciousness” that he had “done nothing to offend—certainly not intentionally,” and begged him to “frankly state the offense that it may be righted.” The curt, ungracious reply of White was overlooked and an appeal made for a personal interview, but the response was so repellent that further attempts at a reconciliation were abandoned. There is some justification for the conclusion that White had early determined upon a quarrel with the view to placing himself at the head of the opposition wing of the Democratic Party. In 1833 the Opposition began to claim him as its own when he supported Calhoun’s bill on Executive patronage in a powerful speech, and joined Clay in opposing the Administration plan in the Nullification fight.
It is not surprising that under these conditions the small faction of the Democratic Party should have turned to him as the logical man to pit against the pretensions of Van Buren. The former was a Southerner, the latter a Northerner, and the slavery controversy had become acute. The fact that White was a Tennesseean was expected to embarrass and handicap Jackson in his support of the New Yorker. To the Whigs he not only presented the best prospect for a schism in the party in power, but for a time the leaders actually considered the wisdom of making him their own candidate. Clay was fearful that his candidacy would fail to infuse among the Whigs “the spirit and zeal necessary to insure success,” but thought he might, as an independent candidate, “obtain the undivided support of the South andSouth-West,” and thus throw the contest into the House and defeat Van Buren.[871]Thus all the elements were present to make his disaffection probable. Hurt by what he conceived to be Jackson’s ingratitude, jealous of the new friends that haunted the White House, importuned by the anti-Administration Democrats, and cleverly encouraged by the Whigs, he was gradually pushed into the attitude of a candidate. To all of these, the gossips of the day, malignant as always, added a new reason, which they insisted was the predominant one—the ambition of his wife.[872]
Just before he decided upon the plunge, the Whigs had been assiduous in their cultivation of him, and ardent in their expressions of sympathy because of the harsh treatment accorded him by his old friend in the White House. One of the most persistent of the tempters was Clay’s intimate and reflector, R. P. Letcher, Representative from Kentucky, who had maintained the most constant social relations with the Whites during the preceding winter, ingratiating himself into the old man’s confidence, and frequently enjoying the hospitality of his home. The hollow mockery of Letcher’s attachment appeared in a letter to a friend, written a little later, in which he galloped over the gossip of the capital, and announced that “Judge White is on the track running gaily, and won’t come off; and if he would, his wife wouldn’t let him.”[873]A more suspicious man than the Tennessee Senator might have found, in this, evidence of treachery and duplicity. The slur on Mrs. White was resented by Blair, in a stinging editorial in the “Globe,” but his excoriation of Letcher does not appear to have given White a more favorable impression of the editor.[874]The intimation regarding Mrs. White was basely false, the slur wholly unjustified.
By the spring of 1834, White had announced his candidacyand the gage of battle was thus thrown down to Jackson in Tennessee, which became the battle-ground. In the autumn of that year, while on a visit to the Hermitage, Jackson, on learning of the partiality of many for the Senator, had entered into a warm defense of his favorite, ridiculed the prospects of White outside his own State, and, in more conciliatory mood, proposed the nomination of the Tennesseean for Vice-President with a view to the succession on the expiration of Van Buren’s term. Learning of these interviews, White wrote to James K. Polk, knowing his intimacy with the President, inquiring as to his information on the presidential position, but the only satisfaction he received was a warning to give no credence to any such gossip unless from an unquestionable source.[875]But if Polk was not then familiar with Jackson’s uncompromising hostility to White’s aspirations, he was not to remain long in doubt. It was the plan of the Jackson organization in Tennessee, led by Polk and Felix Grundy, to simulate sympathy with the Senator’s ambition, and persuasively lead him into the shambles of the Baltimore Convention. But when he refused to go passively to the slaughter, and a meeting of the Tennessee congressional delegation was called in the interest of his candidacy, Polk and Grundy refused to attend, threw off the mask, and declared open war. Thus the fight was extended into the congressional elections in Tennessee in the summer of 1835, with Polk assuming the leadership of the Administration forces, taking the stump in opposition to White’s candidacy, and throwing the weight of his Nashville paper into the scale. Henceforth Polk’s attitude was courageous. He would be glad to see a son of Tennessee elevated to the Presidency if it could be done in regulation manner by the Democratic Party, but he would not countenance any attempt to divide the party in the interest of the Whigs. The National Democracy favored Van Buren, and it was the duty of Tennessee not to separate from the party in the Nation.
The elections resulted in the triumph of White’s followers, with casualties among Jackson’s congressional followers, but Polk was triumphantly reëlected, and he redoubled his efforts. At a series of banquets he denounced the attempt of Democrats to create a schism in the face of the common enemy. But immediately afterwards the Legislature, through the adoption of resolutions, formally nominated White for the Presidency.
Althoughthe fame of Hugh Lawson White has been obscured by the years, he was familiarly known to his generation as “the Cato of the Senate.” Without sparkle or magnetism, the purity of his character, the soundness of his common sense, his fidelity to duty, and assiduous application commanded respect if not admiration. His senatorial speeches were noteworthy because of their temperate tone—rare in his generation. Clarity and strength characterized his every utterance. If his speeches lacked eloquence, they smacked of statesmanship and substance. No member of the Senate more impressively looked the part. Tall, slender, and well-proportioned, with a broad forehead and deep-set, serious, penetrating blue eyes, he was the embodiment of senatorial dignity. With long gray hair, brushed back from his forehead, and curling at some length on his shoulders, he appeared the patriarch. In repose, he was sad and stern. Because of the rarity and thoroughness of his speeches, he commanded the respect and confidence of his colleagues. He looked upon his duties with the solemnity of the Roman Senator of the noblest period of the Roman Republic. Always heard with attention, he was attentive to others, and he was frequently the one listener to an uninteresting speech. Even in familiar conversation, he rarely jested outside the domestic circle, and, while an interesting and instructive conversationalist about his own fireside, he was apt to betaciturn and retiring in company. Had fate ordained that he should have reached the Presidency, he would have made a safe, conventional Executive, and he would be remembered as a pure, patriotic public servant. Such was the man who was to give Jackson, in the election of his successor, his only uneasy hours.
Theconcern of the Jackson organization over White’s candidacy may be read in the persistency of Blair’s vigorous denunciations in the “Washington Globe.” Beginning in the early spring and continuing throughout the summer, the Administration organ teemed with attacks on the Tennessee Senator and his most ardent champion, John Bell, Speaker of the House of Representatives. The ill-advised announcement of White’s followers that his candidacy was intended to destroy the landmarks of party gave the editor his cue. “This artifice,” wrote Blair, “has been so frequently attempted, and in vain, by those seeking to divide and destroy the Republican [Democratic] Party in this country, that we would have supposed the design would not have been confessed on the part of those supporting the interests of a man, who, up to the age of sixty, at least has made it his boast to support his party firmly, as the only means of maintaining his principles. But he now seeks office at the hands of the Opposition, and like all new solicitors for the favor of Federalism, becomes a no-party man.”[876]The fact that White had voted with the Whigs on the Fortifications Bill was made the text of many discourses on the questionable character of his patriotism; his connection with Calhoun offered the opportunity to picture him as a half-disguised friend of Nullification. The encouragement given his candidacy by the Whig leaders was interpreted as a desertion of the house of his friends to do the work of the enemy. Tying him up tightlywith the Whigs and the Nullifiers, attacking the no-party idea as a wooden horse of Troy in which discredited Federalism planned to reënter the Capitol, Blair smote the Tennesseean hip and thigh throughout the summer.
But scarcely less offensive to the “Globe” than White was John Bell, and the determination of the organization to prevent his reëlection to the Speakership was evident in the systematic attacks upon his record. Beginning in May, and continuing through the summer, there was scarcely an issue of the “Globe” that did not deal with some phase of Bell’s alleged perfidy, in a special article.[877]The virulent hostility to Bell, of the Kitchen Cabinet, was not due in whole to his relations with the candidacy of White. Following his election over Polk to the Speakership, Duff Green, in the “Telegraph,” ascribed Polk’s defeat to his support by the Kitchen Cabinet, and described “Kendall, Blair, and Lewis parading the lobby” in attempts to drum up votes for their favorite. This had been bluntly denied by Blair, who insisted that he had spoken to no one on the Speakership, and that Lewis was “known to have been inclined to Mr. Bell’s election.”[878]But the charge in the “Telegraph” had been accepted by many and the pride of the Jackson leaders had been aroused. The White candidacy, Bell’s espousal of it, and Polk’s determined stand against it, made it imperative that Bell should be retired in the interest of Polk.
Meanwhile the Baltimore Convention assembled on May 20, 1835—an assembly that no more deserves the popular reproach of being a convention of office-holders than the average convention of the dominant party ever since. The absence of delegates from South Carolina and Illinois wastolerable to the Jacksonians, but the failure of Tennessee to appear, notwithstanding the personal importunities of the President, was painfully embarrassing. That had to be corrected. A comparatively unknown Tennesseean, E. Rucker, was found in the city, and literally pushed into the convention to cast the unauthorized vote of Tennessee—and thus the word “Ruckerize” was added to the vocabulary of practical politicians. The polished Andrew Stevenson, who had resigned the Speakership to accept the diplomatic post in London, only to share the fate of Van Buren, was called upon to deliver the “keynote” address in the capacity of chairman. But this honor, bestowed upon the Virginians, was more than neutralized by New York’s desertion of her Virginia allies in the nomination of the vice-presidential candidate.
Never had the Old Dominion been dominated by a more powerful machine than that led by Judge Spencer Roane, a man of great intellectual force, who had been favored by Jefferson for the Chief Justiceship. He had a powerful colleague in his cousin, Thomas Ritchie, the forceful editor of the “Richmond Enquirer.” Stevenson was an important member of the clique, and no one was closer to its leader than the scholarly Senator William C. Rives, who had, as Jackson’s first Minister to France, negotiated the indemnity settlement. The Virginians had early pledged themselves to the political fortunes of Van Buren. The alliance of the two States, Virginia and New York, was one of the significant facts in the politics of the day. Never doubting the loyalty of their ally, Roane and his organization determined to dictate the nomination of Rives for the Vice-Presidency with a view to the succession. It was not until the eve of the convention that the Virginians learned, to their dismay, that the New Yorkers had other plans. Almost incredulous, chagrined, disturbed, Ritchie hastened to write Rives of the new developments. He had heard that “some of our strongest friends in Washington” were looking with favor on Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. Van Buren’s preference was a mystery. However, Ritchie had been pressing Rives’s claims and had written letters, not only to delegates, but to “a gentleman in Washington, who can, if he thinks fit, exercise a sort of potential voice.” But unhappily for the Virginians, Lewis, Kendall, Blair, Silas Wright, and Hill were opportunists, with their eyes upon the West, in view of the candidacy of both Harrison and White. It was clear to them that expediency demanded the nomination of a Westerner for the Vice-Presidency. The stubborn, and now thoroughly outraged, Virginians refused to acquiesce in the reasoning of the Kitchen Cabinet, and Rives went down before the first of the “steam rollers” that have become so commonplace in national conventions.[879]Thoroughly disgusted by what they conceived to be a betrayal, the Virginia organization declared open war on Johnson, and Van Buren was much perturbed. But that wily diplomat, assisted by Silas Wright, immediately took personal charge of the work of conciliation, writing numerous letters to Rives and Ritchie, and the storm was stilled for the time when Van Buren made a journey to Castle Hill, the country home of the defeated candidate, where the fatted calf was killed and the leaders of the Roane organization were invited to participate in the feast and to accept the apologies and pledges of the presidential nominee.
Meanwhilethe Whigs were in a quandary as to what to do, with their greatest popular leader, noting a tendency to set him aside, spending the summer at Ashland in bitterness of soul. In a letter written in July he had unbosomed himself to a friend, with the confession that he had thought it probable that his party would again turn to him, but had noted a tendency to “discourage the use of my name.” In Ohio,where he was popular, the Legislature had discredited his possible candidacy by its endorsement of Justice McLean. In the spirit of an Achilles sulking in his tent, he discussed the various names canvassed, pointing out their weaknesses. White would be intolerable as a Whig candidate because “he has been throughout a supporter of the Jackson Administration and holds no principle, except in the matter of patronage, as to public measures, in common with the Whigs.” While he thought Webster’s attainments greatly superior to those of any other candidate, “it is to be regretted that a general persuasion seems to exist that he stands no chance.” Harrison was damned with the faint praise that he “could easier obtain the vote of Kentucky than any other candidate named.” The only rift in the clouds that he could see was in the nomination of three candidates, with White as one of the three, to draw off the Democratic strength in the South and portions of the West, and the defeat of Van Buren by thus throwing the contest into the House.[880]That this plan was uppermost in the minds of the Whigs is shown in a letter to Clay from James Barbour of Virginia, in August. Because of the slavery question, he thought White the strongest candidate to be pressed against Van Buren in Virginia. Webster was out of the question. McLean, not even considered. Harrison, after White, would make the strongest appeal. “It seems to me,” he continued, “that we have no prospect of excluding Van Buren but by the plan you suggest, of selecting two candidates who will be the strongest in their respective sections. White, I apprehend, for the South, Webster for the East, North and West, or whomsoever Pennsylvania prefers.”[881]Thus, in the correspondence of the Whig leaders, we have the proof that White was intrigued into the race by the Whigs with the view to furthering their own interest, and not his.
By September, Clay, having met Harrison in Cincinnati,and finding him “respectful and cordial,” was more cordial toward his candidacy, although he preferred any choice Pennsylvania might announce. The Rhode Island and Connecticut elections had shown that “it is in vain to look even to New England for the support of Mr. Webster.”[882]Out of this confusion of counsels, Harrison ultimately emerged with the general support of the Whigs, but, like the Democrats, the Whigs were to be embarrassed by a double tail to their ticket. With the popular sentiment favoring Tyler, the politicians, with their eyes on the Anti-Masons, nominated Granger. It was the contention of contemporaries that Clay, who had engineered the move against Tyler, feared that the concentration of the Whigs on some strong candidate for the Vice-Presidency might result in his election with Van Buren, because of the dissatisfaction of the Virginia Whigs with Johnson; and that a Whig Vice-President, under a Democratic President, would become a formidable rival for the presidential nomination in 1840.[883]Both Tyler and Granger, however, remained in the field, thus dividing the vote in the election.
The Massachusetts Whigs, nothing daunted by the turn of affairs, remained faithful to Webster, who was placed in the field; and in South Carolina, where Calhoun’s followers made a point of separating themselves from all parties and all other States, Senator Willie P. Mangum was nominated. Thus, in the campaign of 1836 there were five candidates, with the Democrats united behind Van Buren, and the Opposition dividing its strength between Harrison, White, Webster, and Mangum. Nothing could have been more to the liking of the Democracy. It entered the campaign in solid ranks except in Tennessee, where even the magic name of Jackson was unable to prevent a schism which was to result in the humiliation of the venerable chief.
Duringthe summer of 1835 the militant methods of the Abolitionists forced the slavery question to the front to the embarrassment of the politicians and the candidates. The Nation was still on edge because of the anti-slavery and anti-abolition riots of the year before, when George Thompson, the Abolition firebrand from England, arrived in America with exhortations to the Northerners to end slavery at once. The South was outraged, the North, shocked. Coincident with Thompson’s mad crusade, the American Anti-Slavery Society, having collected a large sum of money for the purpose, began to circularize the country, and especially the South, with literature calculated to arouse the slaves to insurrection.[884]The defense of the abolitionists was that the literature was sent to the whites alone; but much of it fell into the hands of the blacks, and excitement reached fever heat. In Philadelphia a pouch of these tracts was confiscated by a mob, and sunk in the Delaware River. In Charleston the mail was searched for them, and three thousand citizens assembled at night to witness their destruction in a bonfire. Mass meetings were held in all the larger Northern cities to denounce the desperate enterprise of the abolitionists, and in Boston the citizens packed Faneuil Hall to hear Harrison Gray Otis denounce them in a spirited address. When Thompson, in one of his inflammatory speeches, proposed that the slaves should arise and cut their masters’ throats, the bitterness in the North was as pronounced as in the South, and after Garrison had narrowly escaped the rope through the intercession of the Mayor of Boston, whom he had scathingly attacked in his paper, the English orator went into hiding until he could be spirited out of the country. The most important effect of this miserable blunder of the abolitionists was to forcethe slavery question into politics, and from that hour on, the slave-owners of the South became dominant in the politics of the Republic.
It is certain that Jackson, like all other responsible leaders, abhorred these appeals to the slaves to rise and cut their masters’ throats. The burden of dealing with an important phase of the problem, the transmission of such matter through the mail, fell upon the Administration, and in the absence of any law to prevent it. But when the postmasters of New York and Charleston wrote Postmaster-General Kendall for instructions, that astute politician replied that the United States should not carry such matter in the mail; and, acting upon the hint, the postmasters threw all such matter out with the tacit consent of the Government.
The Opposition, however, planned to turn the hatred of the abolitionists against Van Buren, who was hostile to the extension of slavery. Writing to Clay in the late summer of 1835, Senator Barbour rejoiced in the injection of the slavery question as certain to injure the Democratic nominee.[885]The close political associates of Van Buren were keenly alive to the danger, and John Forsyth wrote him that unless something should be done in New York he “should not be at all surprised at a decisive movement to establish a Southern Confederacy,” and suggested that “a portion of the Magician’s skill is required in this matter ... and the sooner you set the imps to work the better.”[886]Whether the wily politician “set the imps to work” we do not know, but within a month of the writing of the letter the New York postmaster publicly announced that he would refuse to forward the objectionable literature. This was given the widest publicity; so, too, the letter of Amos Kendall accepting and endorsing the action of the New York official. And about the same time, whether due to the Van Buren “imps” or not, one of thegreatest meetings ever held in New York was held in the park to denounce the methods of the abolitionists. Nothing was done by Van Buren personally, in a public way, to divorce himself from all sympathy with the abolition movement.
The Whig nominee, determined publicly to repudiate the abolition methods, found an opportunity at a dinner in his honor at Vincennes, Indiana, in a speech intended as a friendly gesture to the slave-holding States, and for the cultivation of such of those in Virginia as were prone to associate Van Buren with the abolition sentiment in portions of New York.[887]The position of White was as clearly fixed on slavery as that of Calhoun, and we shall observe a little later how the latter sought to place Van Buren in a position hostile to Southern interests.
MeanwhileVan Buren serenely went his way, undisturbed by the storm, and in the best of humor. Soon after the Baltimore Convention, the most unconventional campaign biography ever published in America was issued by a Philadelphia publishing house and given an extensive circulation. The present generation scarcely realizes that there were two Davy Crocketts—the man of the woods and the fight, and the less admirable creature who made a rather sorry figure in the Congress. It was the latter who was persuaded to write a part, and to father all, of this scurrilous biography of Van Buren, although it is generally accepted that Hugh Lawson White, the man of ponderous dignity and lofty ideals, was the man behind this questionable literary venture.[888]The personal references to Van Buren are crudely and coarsely offensive throughout.
“He is about fifty years old,” he wrote, “and notwithstanding his baldness, which reaches all around and halfdown his head, like a white pitch plaster, leaving a few white floating locks, he is only three years older than I am. His face is a good deal shriveled, and he looks sorry, not for anything he has gained, but what he may lose.”[889]In describing his subject’s mental operations, he found that “his mind beats round, like a tame bear tied to a stake, in a little circle, hardly bigger than the circumference of the head in which it is placed, seeking no other object than to convert the Government into an instrument to serve himself or his office-holding friends.”[890]
In explaining Van Buren’s rise, the hero of young Texas proceeded: “He has become a great man without any reason for it, and so have I. He has been nominated for President without the least pretensions; and so have I. But here the similarity stops. From his cradle he was on the non-committal tribe. I never was. He had always two ways to do a thing; I never had but one. He was generally half bent; I tried to be as straight as a gun barrel. He could not bear his rise; I never minded mine. He forgot all his old associates because they were poor folks; I stuck to the people that made me.”[891]
And in a superb bit of demagogy, Crockett described Van Buren as traveling through the country in an English coach with “English servants dressed in uniform—I think they call it livery”; refusing to mix “with the sons of the little tavern-keepers,” forgetting “his old companions and friends in the humbler walks of life”; eating “in a room by himself,” and carrying himself “so stiff in his gait and prim in his dress, that he was what the English call a Dandy.” The reader was assured that “when he enters the Senate Chamber in the morning, he struts and swaggers like a crow in a gutter,” that he “is laced up in corsets such as women in town wear, and if possible tighter than the best of them.” Indeed, Crockett found it “difficult to tell from his personalappearance whether he was a man or a woman.”[892]The Eaton scandal was salaciously served anew, the fight between Jackson and Benton was described in detail, and, unfortunately for his candidate for President, a chapter was devoted to a hot defense of White on the Bank and on the Fortifications Bill.
The book, now happily forgotten, is only interesting and historically important in indicating the tone of the political contests of the time, and the scurrility of the attacks on Van Buren in the campaign. If the Little Magician enjoyed the queer concoction, it was not without the realization of its possibility for doing harm. At any rate, a little later, another and a friendly biography by Holland was published, seriously reviewing Van Buren’s public career. While not written in bad taste, it aroused the ire of John Quincy Adams who took the time to read it. “A mere partisan electioneering work,” he wrote in his diary. “Van Buren’s personal character bears, however, a stronger resemblance to that of Mr. Madison than to that of Mr. Jefferson. These are both remarkable for their extreme caution in avoiding and averting personal collisions. Van Buren, like the Sosie of Molière’s ‘Amphitryon,’ is ‘l’ami de tout le monde.’ This is perhaps the secret of his great success in public life, and especially against the competitors with whom he is now struggling for the last step on the ladder of his ambition—Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. They, indeed, are left upon the field for dead; and men of straw, Hugh L. White, William Henry Harrison, and Daniel Webster, are thrust forward in their places. Neither of these has a principle to lean upon.”[893]
If these intrigues and attacks disturbed Van Buren in the least, he gave no sign. During a ten-day sojourn in New York in October, Philip Hone, who vainly sought an open date to entertain him at dinner, found “his outward appearance like the unruffled surface of the majestic riverwhich covers rocks and whirlpools, but shows no marks of the agitation beneath.”[894]In this same good temper, he faced the ordeal of presiding over the Senate, dominated by his political foes, in the long session preceding the election. We shall here find him threading his way among pitfalls provided by his enemies with such skill as to conceal all effort.
Thehalls of Congress in the session of December, 1835, were used as the hustings, and there, largely, the presidential battle was fought. The first blow was struck by the Jacksonians in the election of Polk to the Speakership, over Bell. The latter was a man of much capacity, considered by Van Buren as the intellectual superior of White, and he had been elected to the Speakership, on the resignation of Stevenson, through a combination of the Whigs and anti-Administration Democrats. In seeking a reconciliation with the Jacksonians, he had hinted at a desire for a confidential conference with Van Buren, and the two were finally invited to dine with a mutual friend. Unhappily for Bell, a severe toothache, real or diplomatic, forced the candidate of the Jacksonian Democracy to retire the moment the ladies left the table. When a few days later the two found themselves together on the speakers’ rostrum on the occasion of the delivery of Adams’s oration on Lafayette, Bell had attempted to discuss the differences of the factions, but the canny Red Fox “put a civil end to the conversation with a few general remarks in regard to the duty the friends of Judge White owed” to the party, and soon afterward the Tennessee Senator had entered the field, and Bell was forced to espouse his cause.[895]Thus the course of history may have been changed by the toothache of a politician. At any rate, it was enough, to the Jacksonian leaders, to know that Polk had risked hispopularity and future by taking the offensive in favor of Van Buren, and he was rewarded with the Speakership.
The Whigs instantly accepted the challenge by bitterly opposing the confirmation of Roger B. Taney as Chief Justice of the United States. No one questioned his professional ability or his eminent fitness for a high judicial position. Bitterly hostile as he was to Jackson’s Bank policy, John Marshall had recognized Taney’s qualifications for the bench when the President had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to elevate his former Secretary of the Treasury to that tribunal. At that time the venerable Chief Justice had quietly interested himself in his successor’s behalf, and among the papers of Senator Leigh, still in possession of the family, is the brief but significant note from Marshall: “If you have not made up your mind on the nomination of Mr. Taney, I have received some information in his favor which I would wish to communicate.”[896]But after Marshall’s death and Taney’s appointment, the Whig and pro-Bank politicians attempted to array all the late jurist’s friends and admirers against the confirmation by picturing Jackson as not only hostile to the trend of his decisions, but to the perpetuation of his memory. The “Richmond Whig” announced that “he [Jackson] thinks undue honors have been rendered to the memory of General Marshall, and predicts that the attempt to build a monument to his memory in Washington will fail.” This was a willful perversion of a comment actually made to the editor of the “Southern Literary Messenger” at Rip Raps, that, in view of Jackson’s inability to interest Congress in an appropriation for a monument to Washington, he was afraid that it would be impossible to build one to Marshall.[897]But the idea of the fighting Secretary of the Treasury in the seat of Marshall was maddening to the Whig leaders, andthe nomination was attacked with intemperance and even scurrility by both Webster and Clay, and it was not until in March, three months after the nomination was sent to the Senate, that it was confirmed.
But the appearance of resolutions from legislatures, instructing Whig and pro-Bank Senators to vote to expunge the resolution of censure against Jackson, was the most bitter pill of all. Not only did it further embitter the Whigs against the Administration, but it put them at loggerheads with each other. This was especially true of the Whig Senators from Virginia, Tyler and Leigh, who took opposite views as to the inviolability of instructions. Throughout his entire career, Tyler had stoutly insisted upon the right of the people, speaking through their legislatures, to instruct their representatives in the Senate. This position had been adopted by the Virginia Whigs, and accepted by the people of the State. Because of this, Leigh now sat in the Senate, in the seat from which Rives had been instructed. But when a resolution was introduced in the Virginia Assembly, instructing the Senators from that State to vote to expunge, the Whigs began to divide on the question of compliance in the event of its adoption. There was never any question as to the attitude of John Tyler. Pilloried in history as a second-rate politician and a weakling, it is impossible to study his career without being impressed with his consistency, which was all too rare in his generation, and the unfaltering courage with which he lived up to his principles, regardless of the effect upon his personal fortunes. But Leigh, who owed his seat in the Senate to the principle of instructions, was made of less heroic clay. With the encouragement of Virginians, including Judge Brooke, who always reflected the views of Henry Clay, he began to hedge. Senator Barbour, another of Clay’s intimates, urged upon Tyler sophisticated reasons for ignoring the instructions.[898]When the resolutions were adopted inthe lower branch of the legislature, the pressure of the Whigs to ignore them met with a gracious yielding on the part of Leigh, and the unscrupulous partisans were able to concentrate their efforts on Tyler. Such was the logic of party bigotry in 1836 that the Maryland Legislature, which had nominated Tyler for the Vice-Presidency, threatened to rescind the nomination if he complied with the instructions, and the future President, the truckling, tricky politician of historical caricature, expressed his disgust in a letter to his son: “These incidents look almost like a political romance in these days when everything is surrendered for office.... Give me the assurance that history will do me justice ... and I will go to my grave in peace.”[899]When the resolution was passed by both branches, and certified to the two Senators, Tyler, without a moment’s hesitation, resigned in a dignified letter to Van Buren, and retired to private life. Leigh ignored the instructions and retained his seat, but resigned in July. This contradiction sadly crippled the Whigs in Virginia; and when, during the spring, a dinner was given the two Senators by their fellow partisans, and Tyler was lauded for his act, the spicy Thomas Ritchie, of the “Richmond Enquirer,” insisted that two of the toasts were:
“John Tyler: Honor to him, because he could not, with honor, retain his seat.”
“Senator Leigh: Honor to him, because he could not, with honor, relinquish his seat.”
Thus Tyler passed from the ranks of the Opposition in the Senate, and William C. Rives, the friend of Jackson and Van Buren, vindicated by events, returned to strengthen the forces of the Administration.
The attitude of Ewing of Ohio toward similar resolutions by the legislature of his State was that of Leigh.[900]
All these manifestations of popular approval of the Administration, and dissatisfaction with the Whigs and their allies in the Senate, tended to infuriate the Opposition which found itself helpless before the tide. In Tennessee, however, the Administration was unable to secure instructions aimed at White, and the attempt merely furnished the opportunity for laudatory speeches on the Tennessee Senator, and bitter denunciations of the proposal to expunge. This defeat in Tennessee was the only hopeful sign that reached the Whigs in Washington.[901]
The greater part of the congressional session was devoted to some phase of the abolition agitation, and Calhoun bent all his efforts toward arraying the North and South against each other. He seemed determined to have it that the Northern people were in sympathy with the methods and purposes of the radical followers of Garrison. The mobs that had all but lynched Garrison, and forced the friends of Thompson to spirit him away, were Northern mobs. If the obnoxious literature had been burned by the people of Charleston, it had been thrown into the river by the people of Philadelphia and denounced by the people of Boston. No Northern statesman or politician had raised a voice in defense of the abolitionists, and most of them vied with Calhoun in their denunciation of them. But when, on January 7th, an abolition petition was presented, and Calhoun moved that it be not received and supported his motion in an intemperate speech, some of the most pronounced pro-slavery Senators took alarm. The great Nullifier declared that an irrepressible fight had been forced and should be met. “We must meet the enemy on the frontier—on the question of receiving,” he said. “We must secure that important pass—it is our Thermopylæ. The power of resistance, by the universal law, is on the exterior. Break through the shell, penetrate the crust, and there is no resistance within.” When, four dayslater, Buchanan presented a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and moved that it be received and rejected, Calhoun demanded that the question be put first on receiving, and a debate was precipitated which dragged along for weary weeks, ending in the defeat of Calhoun’s plan.
During the period of these intermittent discussions, the “Telegraph,” reflector of Calhoun, teemed with articles bitterly attacking, not so much the abolitionists as the North. This determination to treat the Northerners as enemies of Southern institutions was so apparent that a number of pro-slavery Southern Senators were moved to protest and to criticism of the Southern leader. Whether he was actuated, that early, by a desire to lay the foundation for a Southern Confederacy, or merely used this method to create feeling in the Southern States against the candidacy of Van Buren, can never be determined. But the Democrats supporting Van Buren had no doubt that the latter was the dominating motive. The sharp-tongued Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, in a fierce assault on Calhoun’s position, directly charged that the “Telegraph” had been exerting itself from the time of the Nullification movement to drive a wedge between the sections, and warned Calhoun that the agitation he was forcing on Congress played directly into the hands of the abolitionists. But the latter had determined upon his course, and appeared not only willing, but anxious, actually to break with the friends of the South among the Northerners in Congress.
If he expected, however, in his fight against receiving the petitions, to prove Van Buren hostile to the interest of the South, he failed. The ten votes he mustered were recruited from both parties. Five were Whigs,[902]three were Democrats supporting the Administration,[903]and two were against theAdministration and hostile to Van Buren.[904]Thus, with the exception of three Senators, all the supporters of Van Buren and the Administration voted to receive the petitions. The vote of White was unquestionably political, intended to strengthen his candidacy among the pro-slavery radicals of the Southern States.
But Calhoun was not discouraged. His political motive was more apparent in the battle over his bill to regulate the transmission of the mails, and exclude therefrom all abolition literature intended for the slave-holding States. We have noted the excitement of the preceding summer, and the attitude of Kendall. In his Message at the opening of Congress, Jackson had recommended the enactment of such a law “as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.” Calhoun had eagerly seized upon this recommendation to move its reference to a special committee, instead of to the regularly organized Committee on Post-Offices. Buchanan opposed the suggestion on the ground that the unusual course would tend to increase the excitement of the people.[905]Grundy of Tennessee held that the very fact that the majority of the Committee on Post-Offices came from a section not directly interested would give more weight to its recommendations.[906]King of Alabama took advantage of Calhoun’s queer disclaimer of a political motive to insinuate its existence, and favored the regular course for the reasons advanced by Buchanan.[907]Leigh supported Calhoun’s plan on the fantastic ground that since the obnoxious mail could not be excluded by the existing post-office regulations, the Committee on Post-Offices was clearly not the proper body.[908]But it was left to Preston of South Carolina to explain bluntly the motive of Calhoun. Since the South was especially interested, the committee should be composed of Senators from the slave-holding States. The Senate good-naturedly consented to Calhoun’s plan, and a special committee was named with Calhoun as chairman.