Claude G. Bowers

“ The pretty daughter of a popular tavern-keeper, whose old-fashioned house was a favorite with statesmen and their wives, she had developed into womanhood under the eyes of men famous in the State. Here Jackson lived during his senatorial service, and grew fond of the vivacious child he often held on his knee. With the education a doting father lavished upon her, and with her intimate contact with men of ability and women of refinement, she found herself, on the threshold of life, the intellectual peer of the best of her sex. ”

“ No period in American political history is so susceptible to dramatization. There is grim tragedy in the baffled ambitions of Calhoun and Clay; romance in the rise of Kendall and the fall of Mrs. Eaton; rich comedy, when viewed behind the scenes, in the lugubrious procession of “distress petitioners” trained to tears by the art of Clay and the money of Biddle; and rollicking farce in the early morning flight of a dismissed Cabinet minister, to escape the apprehended chastisement of an erstwhile colleague whose wife’s good name had been assailed. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The man of his own choice had been elected to succeed him, and the hated censure of the Senate had been expunged by the order of the people. Few Presidents have ever departed from the scene of their power with more for which to be grateful and less to regret.
But the old man had run his race and been surfeited with the sweets of personal triumphs, and was eager to return to the calm of his beloved Hermitage, among his old and cherished friends and faithful slaves, and near to the tomb of his idolized Rachel. ”

“ III The most militant of the Kitchen Cabinet was Isaac Hill, whose name was anathema to the Federalists of New England. A poor boy educated in a printshop, slight and lame, hurling picturesque phrases and bitter reproaches at the powerful enemy, excoriating it with his satire and sarcasm, and slashing it with the keen blade of his wit, it is not surprising that the impression handed down by the Intellectuals of the Opposition is unfavorable. ”

“ Nowhere were the Democrats so intense as in Philadelphia, where, on election day, the warring partisans exchanged shots, the headquarters of the Whigs was sacked and burned by a mob which drove back the firemen that attempted to quench the flames. A number of houses were completely reduced to ashes. Such was the panic of Nicholas Biddle that the day before the election he sent his wife and children into the country, filled his house with armed men, and prepared for a siege. The Bank building bristled with the bayonets and muskets of guards. ”

“ From the time of the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was afloat in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to place himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State Rights men. The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner conspiracy. And Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife. It was something more than a toast—it was a presidential proclamation. ”

“ We rescue our own names, characters, and honor from all participation in this matter; and whatever the wayward character of the times, the headlong and plunging spirit of party devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that we have not, as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true republican principles, and a sacred regard for the Constitution, in that State whose soil was drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of the Revolution. ”

“ The minister’s life was in danger. It required supreme courage for a Maryland lawyer in that slave-holding community to stand between the abolitionist and the popular clamor against him, and Taney stepped from the professional ranks to plead his cause, not perfunctorily, but with a passionate defiance worthy of the highest traditions of his profession. He made his defense on no less grounds than “the rights of conscience and the freedom of speech.” And he spoke on slavery even as Garrison or Lincoln might have spoken. ”

“ THE DRAMATIC BATTLE OF 1832 I The campaign 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. ”

“ New Senators, friends of Jackson, had entered from the new States of Arkansas and Michigan. A private poll convinced Benton that the triumph was at hand, all the sweeter because coming on the eve of Jackson’s retirement. The day after Christmas he reintroduced his original resolution, and on January 12th supported it in a speech laudatory of Jackson—a pæan of anticipated triumph. The old man, always a trifle pompous and stilted in his style, was never more so, but in his most extravagant praise he unquestionably spoke the language of his heart. ”

“ The triumph of the Jacksonians over the Clays, the Websters, and the Calhouns was due, in large measure, to their development of the first great practical politicians—that much-depreciated company sneeringly referred to as the Kitchen Cabinet, to whom all politicians since have paid the tribute of imitation.
With the appearance of Democracy in action came some evils that have persisted through the succeeding years—the penalties of the rule of the people. Demagogy then reared its head and licked its tongue. Class consciousness and hatreds were awakened. ”

“ The drama of party politics, with its motives of love, hate, and vaulting ambition—such is the unidealized story of the epochal period when the iron will of the physically feeble Jackson dominated the life of the Nation, and colored the politics of the Republic for a century. ”

“ Just whom he would censure was not made clear, but he did refer to the previous declaration of Jackson that he was responsible for the Executive departments. “Does any one doubt the turpitude of the Post-Office?” asked Preston. “When hardly the age of man, it is found steeped in corruption the most foul, the most melancholy. If the President is responsible, and the officers acted improperly, is this the house to present the subject? And shall we stand by without saying or doing anything in regard to the present state of things in that department?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are to have an interesting and arduous session. Everything is to be attacked. An array is preparing much more formidable than has ever yet assaulted what we think the leading and important public interests. Not only the tariff, but the Constitution itself, in its elemental and fundamental provisions, will be assailed with talent, vigor, and union. Everything is to be debated as if nothing had ever been settled. ”

“ The proposal of the amendment gave Forsyth the opportunity to present the Administration’s opinion of the panic. He had no doubt that there was distress, but it had been greatly exaggerated. “Whence does it arise?” he asked. “From the conflict—the war that the Bank is waging to get the deposits back. The deposits have been removed. The Bank stands still to see what will follow, and it stands still, too, that its power may be felt in every nerve and fiber of the community—and every man shall feel the necessity of the institution.” ”

“ With the streets full of ruts, the sidewalks dotted with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown with grass, with cows pasturing on many of the streets now lined with elegant homes, and challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or Jackson, it is not surprising that foreigners, even as late as the Thirties, were moved to imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. ”

“ Instantly the gage of battle was thrown down in the consideration of the nomination of Van Buren as Minister to England. A pettier piece of party politics is scarcely found in the history of the Senate. Among all the Opposition Senators, there were probably none who doubted his capacity or questioned his integrity. With the Calhoun faction it was personal spite; with Clay, Webster, and Clayton it was partisan spleen. Six months before, Van Buren had ridden out of Washington with Jackson by his side, and had sailed for England. In London he was at once received into the most brilliant society. ”

“ Through all the intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of the exigencies of a new political era. ”

“ The Whigs of England had fought the battles of the people against the usurpations of the throne, and the Whigs of America were fighting the usurpations of Jackson. The Constitution against anarchy, the people against the Power—such was the fight of Nicholas Biddle, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun against Jackson. ”

“ The first reaction to defeat from the followers of the Adams Administration was toward laughter, levity, extravagant manifestation of cynical gayety, with an all too noticeable thawing of the frigidity of White House ceremonies. The dying régime put on its best bib and tucker in a hectic and hysterical demonstration of social hilarity. ”

“ The “hurrah for Jackson” which shocked the sedate, unaccustomed to such noisy acclaim of a presidential aspirant, and disgusted the “best people,” was music to the ears of these modern politicians, who had carefully calculated upon the strength of the “mob.” Their confidence was not misplaced. The result was an upheaval. Adams, Clay, Federalism, the Virginia Dynasty, the Secretarial Succession, were brushed aside by the rush of the cheering masses bearing their hero to the White House. ”

“ Myriads of dependents and partisans, scattered all over the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud to the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the Government during the last eight years like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm.... What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When, disabled from age any longer to hold the scepter of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite, what more does he want? ”

“ The political effect of the fight was to be felt throughout the period of the generation then living. The Secessionists and Nullifiers paraded, with much flapping of banners, out of the Democratic Party, to be joyously and effusively welcomed by Henry Clay into the Opposition. During the remainder of Jackson’s Administration, the most bitter and persistent of his foes were to be men, once Democrats, who had left the party because Jackson was prepared to preserve the Union with the sword. ”

“ He had the graciousness of the Southern aristocrat of the old school, and was devoted to the social standards and customs of his section. Strongly attached to his home and family, having the poet’s love of the artistic, he surrounded himself with beauty, and his home at Enfield was a comfortable and stately mansion surrounded by a smooth lawn, in the midst of gardens, orchards, and shade trees. His political career and the course of the Jackson Administration were to be greatly influenced by his devotion to his wife and daughters, and to his social ideals. ”

“ If no secret conspiracy has prompted the perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and that hearing despotism and every horrible mischief threatened to the Republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the necessary consequence of the President’s measures, it may be that the infatuated man fancied that he had reason to become his country’s avenger. ”

“ We could not afford to compromise to the extent of a penny.
“What will be the consequences,” demanded the fiery old man eloquent, “if you give it up? Why, every nation will consider itself at liberty to sport with all treaties that are made with us.”
And then Adams startled the Democrats, and broke with the Whigs, in his reference to Jackson. “Whatever may be said of the imprudence of that recommendation,” he exclaimed, “the opinion of mankind will ever be that it was high-spirited and lofty, and such as became the individual from whom it emanated. ”