John Fiske

“ Perhaps no incident in Putnam's career is so often quoted as his share in the wolf-hunt, ending in his descending into the dark, narrow cave, shooting his enemy at short range, and dragging her forth in triumph. It was the one picturesque event in his life previous to 1755, when Connecticut was called upon for 1,000 men to defend the northern approaches to New York against the anticipated French invasion. ”

“ The advantage of such a measure was very doubtful; it was damaging ourselves in the hope of damaging the enemy. The greatest damage fell upon the maritime states of New England, and there the vials of federalist wrath were poured forth with terrible fury upon Mr. Jefferson and the embargo. But the full measure of their ferocity was reserved for Mr. Adams, who had actually been a member of the committee that reported the bill, and had given it his most earnest support. All the choicest epithets of abuse were showered upon him; few men in our history have been more fiercely berated and reviled. ”

“ In the election South Carolina voted for candidates of her own — John Floyd, of Virginia, and Henry Lee, of Massachusetts. There were 219 electoral votes for Jackson, 49 for Clay, 11 for Floyd, and 7 for Wirt. Jackson interpreted this overwhelming victory as a popular condemnation of the bank and approval of all his actions as president. The enthusiastic applause from all quarters which now greeted his rebuke of the nullifiers served still further to strengthen his belief in himself as a “saviour of society” and champion of “the people.” ”

“ Webster's power as an orator. Of all the occasions of his life, this encounter with the doctrine of nullification on its first bold announcement in the senate was certainly the greatest, and the speech was equal to the occasion. It struck a chord in the heart of the American people which had not ceased to vibrate when the crisis came thirty years later. It gave articulate expression to a sentiment of loyalty to the Union that went on growing until the American citizen was as prompt to fight for the Union as the Mussulman for his prophet or the cavalier for his king. ”

“ Nevertheless, no American can regret that the battle was fought. The insolence and rapacity of Great Britain had richly deserved such castigation. Moreover, if she once gained a foothold in the Mississippi valley, it might have taken an armed force to dislodge her in spite of the treaty, for in the matter of the western frontier posts after 1783 she had by no means acted in good faith. Jackson's victory decided that henceforth the Mississippi valley belonged indisputably to the people of the United States. ”

“ Mr. Calhoun's answer, 26 Feb., was perhaps the most powerful speech he ever delivered, and Mr. Webster did not reply to it at length. The burden of the discussion was what the American people really did when they adopted the Federal constitution. Did they simply create a league between sovereign states, or did they create a national government, which operates immediately upon individuals, and, without superseding the state governments, stands superior to them, and claims a prior allegiance from all citizens? ”

“ Webster believed that the extension of slavery would have been given its limit, that the north would, by reason of its free labor, increase in preponderance over the south, and that by and by the institution of slavery, hemmed in and denied further expansion, would die a natural death. ”

“ Nothing was left for New England but to conform herself to the will of others. Nothing was left to her but to consider that the government had fixed and determined its own policy; and that policy was protection.” In other words, the tariff policy adopted at Washington, while threatening the commercial interests of New England, had favored the investment of capital in manufactures there, and it was not becoming in a representative of New England to take part in disturbing the new arrangement of things. ”

“ In point of fact, Lee's military experience, as sketched above, had been scarcely more extensive than Washington's. Such little reputation as he had in Europe was not that of a soldier, but of an unscrupulous political pamphleteer. Yet if he had been the hero of a dozen great battles, if he had rescued Portugal from the Spaniard and Poland from the Turk, he could not nave claimed or obtained more deference in this country than he did. ”

“ To this it was easily answered that in any case our electoral college, which was one of the most deliberately framed devices of the constitution, gives but a very indirect and partial expression of the “will of the people”; and furthermore, if Benton's argument was sound, why should the constitution have provided for an election by congress, instead of allowing a simple plurality in the college to decide the election? The extravagance of Benton's objection, coming from so able a source, is an index to the bitter disappointment of Jackson's followers. ”

“ In later life he could not remember when he learned to read. As a child his thirst for knowledge was insatiable; he read every book that came within reach, and conned his favorite authors until their sentences were in great part stored in his memory. In May, 1796, he was sent to Exeter academy, where he made rapid progress with his studies, but was so overcome by shyness that he found it impossible to stand up and “speak pieces” before his school-mates. In spite of this timidity, some of his natural gifts as an orator had already begun to show themselves. ”

“ Webster never indulged in mere rhetorical flights; his sentences, simple in structure and weighted with meaning, went straight to the mark, and his arguments were so skilfully framed that while his most learned and critical hearers were impressed with a sense of their conclusiveness, no man of ordinary intelligence could fail to understand them. To these high qualifications of the orator was added such a physical presence as but few men have been endowed with. ”

“ This tariff of 1828 soon furnished an occasion for the display of Mr. Webster's strong Federalist spirit in a way that was most serviceable for his country and has earned for him undying fame as an orator and statesman. It led to the distinct announcement of the principles of nullification by the public men of South Carolina, with Mr. Calhoun at their head. During President Jackson's first term the question as to nullification seemed to occupy everybody's thoughts and had a way of intruding upon the discussion of all other questions. ”

“ Adams was in no sense a popular favorite. His manners were stiff and disagreeable; he told the truth bluntly, whether it hurt or not; and he never took pains to conciliate any one. The best of men in his domestic circle, outside of it he had few warm friends, but he seemed to have a talent for making enemies. When Edward Everett asked him if he was “determined to do nothing with a view to promote his future election to the presidency as the successor of Mr. Monroe,” he replied that he “should do absolutely nothing,” and from this resolution he never swerved. ”

“ A stronger contrast to them than Jackson afforded cannot well be imagined. A man with less training in statesmanship would have been hard to find. In his defects he represented average humanity, while his excellencies were such as the most illiterate citizen could appreciate. In such a man the ploughboy and the blacksmith could feel that in some essential respects they had for president one of their own sort. ”

“ In the first part of his speech Mr. Webster replied to the aspersions upon himself and New England; in the second part he attacked with weighty argument and keen-edged sarcasm the doctrine of nullification. He did not undertake to deny the right of revolution as a last resort in cases with which legal and constitutional methods are found inadequate to deal; but he assailed the theory of the constitution maintained by Calhoun and his followers, according to which nullification was a right, the exercise of which was compatible with loyal adherence to the constitution. ”

“ Webster wished especially to avoid. The ruling purpose of his life was to do what he. could to prevent the outbreak of a conflict that might end in the disruption of the Union; and it may well have seemed that there was more safety in sustaining the Whig party in electing its candidate by the aid of southern votes than in helping into life a new party that should be purely sectional. At the same time, this cautious policy necessarily involved an amount of concession to southern demands far greater than the rapidly growing anti-slavery sentiment in the northern states would tolerate. ”

“ He supported the policy of recognizing the independence of the revolted colonies of Spanish America, and he was the principal author of what is known as the “Monroe Doctrine,” that the American continent is no longer open to colonization by European powers. His official report on weights and measures showed remarkable scientific knowledge. Toward the close of Monroe's first term came up the first great political question growing out of the purchase of Louisiana: Should Missouri be admitted to the union as a slave-state, and should slavery be allowed or prohibited in the vast territory beyond? ”

“ There has been a great deal of controversy as to who commanded the American troops at Bunker Hill, and there is apparently no reason why the controversy should not be kept up, as long as the question is at bottom one of rivalry between Connecticut and Massachusetts. The difficulty in settling it points to the true conclusion, that the work of that battle was largely the work of distinct bodies of men hardly organized as yet into an army. ”

“ While the 1st Continental congress was in session at Philadelphia, Lee was present in that city and was ready with his advice and opinions. He set himself up for a military genius, and there was no campaign in modern European history which he could not expound and criticise with the air of a man who had exhausted the subject. The American leaders, ill acquainted with military science and flattered by the prospect of securing the aid of a great European soldier, were naturally ready to take him at his own valuation ”

“ During the late war British officers and adventurers, acting on their own responsibility upon this neutral soil, committed many acts which their government would never have sanctioned. They stirred up Indians and negroes to commit atrocities on the United States frontier. The Spanish government was at that time engaged in warfare with its revolted colonies in South America, and the coasts of Florida became a haunt for contraband traders, privateers, and filibusters. One adventurer would announce his intention to make Florida a free republic ”

“ Independence in politics has always been characteristic of the Adams family, and in none has this been more strongly marked than in John Quincy Adams. His first serious difference with the federalist party was occasioned by his qualified approval of Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana, a measure that was bitterly opposed and fiercely censured by nearly all the federalists, because it was feared it would add too much strength to the south. ”

“ Webster argued that the charter of Dartmouth college created a private corporation for administering a charity; that in the administration of such uses the trustees have a recognized right of property; that the grant of such a charter is a contract between the sovereign power and the grantees, and descends to their successors; and that, therefore, the act of the New Hampshire legislature, in taking away the government from one board of trustees and conferring it upon another, was a violation of contract. ”

“ As an advocate of the policy of a national bank, a protective tariff, and internal improvements, Mr. Webster's natural place was by the side of Mr. Clay in the Whig party, which was now in the process of formation. He was also at one with both the northern and the southern sections of the Whig party in opposition to what Mr. Benton called the “demos krateo” principle, according to which the president, in order to carry out the “will of the people,” might feel himself authorized to override the constitutional limitations upon his power. ”

“ There is a sense in which all American statesmen may be said to be intellectually the descendants and disciples either of Jefferson or of Hamilton, and as a representative follower of Hamilton, Mr. Webster was sure to be drawn rather toward Clay than toward Jackson. The course of industrial events in New England was such as to involve changes of opinion in that part of the country, which were soon reflected in a complete reversal of Mr. Webster's attitude toward the tariff. ”

“ Arriving in Paris, he found his father busy with the negotiation of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, and was immediately set to work as secretary, and aided in drafting the papers that “dispersed all possible doubt of the independence of his country.” In 1785, when his father was appointed minister to England, he decided not to stay with him in London, but to return at once to Massachusetts in order to complete his education at Harvard college. For an American career he believed an American education to be best fitted. ”

“ Questions of foreign rather than of domestic policy then furnished the burning subjects of contention in the United States. Our neutral commerce on the high seas, which had risen to very considerable proportions, was plundered in turn by England and by France, until its very existence was threatened. In May, 1806, the British government declared the northern coast of Europe, from Brest to the mouth of the Elbe, to be blockaded. By the Russian proclamation of 1780, which was then accepted by all civilized nations except Great Britain, such paper blockades were illegal ”

“ To mention the charge to Jackson, whose course in Florida had been severely censured by Clay, was enough to make him believe it; and he did so to his dying day.
It is not likely that the use made of this “grievance” had much to do with Jackson's victory in 1828. The causes at work lay far deeper. The population west of the Alleghanies was now beginning to count for much in politics. Jackson was our first western president, and his election marks the rise of that section of our country. The democratic tendency was moreover a growing one. ”

“ Jackson cast ridicule upon the idea. “Do they suppose,” said he, “that I am such a d—d fool as to think myself fit for president of the United States? No, sir, I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way, but I am not fit to be president.” Such is the anecdote told by H. M. Brackenridge, who was Jackson's secretary in Florida. In 1821 the general felt old and weak, and had made up his mind to spend his remaining days in peace on his farm. Of personal ambition, as ordinarily understood, Jackson had much less than many other men. ”