Title: The Reign of Andrew Jackson
Author: Ogg, Frederic Austin, 1878-1951
Language: English
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THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON

A Chronicle of the Frontier in Politics

By

FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG

1919



CONTENTS

   I. JACKSON THE FRONTIERSMAN

  II. THE CREEK WAR AND THE VICTORY OF NEW ORLEANS

 III. THE "CONQUEST" OF FLORIDA

  IV. THE DEATH OF "KING CAUCUS"

   V. THE DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH

  VI. THE "REIGN" BEGINS

 VII. THE WEBSTER-HAYNE DEBATE

VIII. TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION

  IX. THE WAR ON THE UNITED STATES BANK

   X. THE REMOVAL OF THE SOUTHERN INDIANS

  XI. THE JACKSONIAN SUCCESSION

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX



CHAPTER I


JACKSON THE FRONTIERSMAN

Among the thousands of stout-hearted British subjects who decided to
try their fortune in the Western World after the signing of the Peace
of Paris in 1763 was one Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian
of the tenant class, sprung from a family long resident in or near the
quaint town of Carrickfergus, on the northern coast of Ireland, close
by the newer and more progressive city of Belfast.

With Jackson went his wife and two infant sons, a brother-in-law, and
two neighbors with their families, who thus made up a typical
eighteenth-century emigrant group. Arrived at Charleston, the
travelers fitted themselves out for an overland journey, awaited a
stretch of favorable weather, and set off for the Waxhaw settlement,
one hundred and eighty miles to the northwest, where numbers of their
kinsmen and countrymen were already established. There the Jacksons
were received with open arms by the family of a second brother-in-law,
who had migrated a few years earlier and who now had a comfortable log
house and a good-sized clearing.

The settlement lay on the banks of the upper Catawba, near the
junction of that stream with Waxhaw Creek; and as it occupied a
fertile oasis in a vast waste of pine woods, it was for decades
largely cut off from touch with the outside world. The settlement was
situated, too, partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina,
so that in the pre-Revolutionary days many of the inhabitants hardly
knew, or cared to know, in which of the two provinces they dwelt.

Upon their arrival Jackson's friends bought land on the creek and
within the bounds of the settlement. Jackson himself was too poor,
however, to do this, and accordingly took up a claim six miles distant
on another little stream known as Twelve-mile Creek. Here, in the fall
of 1765, he built a small cabin, and during the winter he cleared five
or six acres of ground. The next year he was able to raise enough
corn, vegetables, and pork to keep his little household from want. The
tract thus occupied cannot be positively identified, but it lay in
what is now Union County, North Carolina, a few miles from Monroe, the
county seat.

Then came tragedy of a sort in which frontier history abounds. In the
midst of his efforts to hew out a home and a future for those who were
dear to him the father sickened and died, in March, 1767, at the early
age of twenty-nine, less than two years after his arrival at the
settlement. Tradition says that his death was the result of a rupture
suffered in attempting to move a heavy log, and that it was so sudden
that the distracted wife had no opportunity to seek aid from the
distant neighbors. When at last the news got abroad, sympathy and
assistance were lavished in true frontier fashion. Borne in a rude
farm wagon, the remains were taken to the Waxhaw burying ground and
were interred in a spot which tradition, but tradition only, is able
today to point out.

The widow never returned to the desolated homestead. She and her
little ones were taken into the family of one of her married sisters,
where she spent her few remaining years. On the 15th of March, less
than two weeks after her husband's death, she gave birth to a third
son; and the child was promptly christened Andrew, in memory of the
parent he would never know.

Curiously, the seventh President's birthplace has been a matter of
sharp controversy. There is a tradition that the birth occurred while
the mother was visiting a neighboring family by the name of McKemy;
and Parton, one of Jackson's principal biographers, adduces a good
deal of evidence in support of the story. On the other hand, Jackson
always believed that he was born in the home of the aunt with whom his
bereaved mother took up her residence; and several biographers,
including Bassett, the most recent and the best, accept this
contention. It really matters not at all, save for the circumstance
that if the one view is correct Jackson was born in North Carolina,
while if the other is correct he was born in South Carolina. Both
States have persistently claimed the honor. In the famous proclamation
which he addressed to the South Carolina nullifiers in 1832 Jackson
referred to them as "fellow-citizens of my native state"; in his will
he spoke of himself as a South Carolinian; and in correspondence and
conversation he repeatedly declared that he was born on South Carolina
soil. Jackson was far from infallible, even in matters closely
touching his own career. But the preponderance of evidence on the
point lies decidedly with South Carolina.

No one, at all events, can deny to the Waxhaw settlement an honored
place in American history. There the father of John C. Calhoun first
made his home. There the Revolutionary general, Andrew Pickens, met
and married Rebecca Calhoun. There grew up the eminent North
Carolinian Governor and diplomat, William R. Davie. There William H.
Crawford lived as a boy. And there Jackson dwelt until early manhood.

For the times, young Andrew was well brought up. His mother was a
woman of strong character, who cherished for her last-born the desire
that he should become a Presbyterian clergyman. The uncle with whom he
lived was a serious-minded man who by his industry had won means ample
for the comfortable subsistence of his enlarged household. When he was
old enough, the boy worked for his living, but no harder than the
frontier boys of that day usually worked; and while his advantages
were only such as a backwoods community afforded, they were at least
as great as those of most boys similarly situated, and they were far
superior to those of the youthful Lincoln. Jackson's earlier years,
nevertheless, contained little promise of his future distinction. He
grew up amidst a rough people whose tastes ran strongly to
horse-racing, cockfighting, and heavy drinking, and whose ideal of
excellence found expression in a readiness to fight upon any and all
occasions in defense of what they considered to be their personal
honor. In young Andrew Jackson these characteristics appeared in a
superlative degree. He was mischievous, willful, daring, reckless.
Hardly an escapade took place in the community in which he did not
share; and his sensitiveness and quick temper led him continually into
trouble. In his early teens he swore like a trooper, chewed tobacco
incessantly, acquired a taste for strong drink, and set a pace for
wildness which few of his associates could keep up. He was
passionately fond of running foot races, leaping the bar, jumping,
wrestling, and every sort of sport that partook of the character of
mimic battle--and he never acknowledged defeat. "I could throw him
three times out of four," testifies an old schoolmate, "but he would
never _stay throwed_. He was dead game even then, and never _would_
give up." Another early companion says that of all the boys he had
known Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward.

Of education the boy received only such as was put unavoidably in his
way. It is said that his mother taught him to read before he was five
years old; and he attended several terms in the little low-roofed log
schoolhouse in the Waxhaw settlement. But his formal instruction never
took him beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing, geography,
grammar, and "casting accounts." He was neither studious nor
teachable. As a boy he preferred sport to study, and as a man he chose
to rely on his own fertile ideas rather than to accept guidance from
others. He never learned to write the English language correctly,
although he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. In an age of
bad spellers he achieved distinction from the number of ways in which
he could spell a word within the space of a single page. He could use
no foreign languages; and of the great body of science, literature,
history, and the arts he knew next to nothing. He never acquired a
taste for books, although vanity prompted him to treasure throughout
his public career all correspondence and other documentary materials
that might be of use to future biographers. Indeed, he picked as a
biographer first his military aide, John Reid, and later his close
friend, John H. Eaton, whom he had the satisfaction in 1829 of
appointing Secretary of War.

When the Revolution came, young Andrew was a boy of ten. For a time
the Carolina backwoods did not greatly feel the effect of the change.
But in the spring of 1780 all of the revolutionary troops in South
Carolina were captured at Charleston, and the lands from the sea to
the mountains were left at the mercy of Tarleton's and Rawdon's bands
of redcoats and their Tory supporters. Twice the Waxhaw settlement was
ravaged before the patriots could make a stand. Young Jackson
witnessed two battles in 1780, without taking part in them, and in the
following year he, a brother, and a cousin were taken prisoners in a
skirmish. To the day of his death Jackson bore on his head and hand
the marks of a saber blow administered by a British lieutenant whose
jack boots he refused to polish. When an exchange of prisoners was
made, Mrs. Jackson secured the release of her two boys, but not until
after they had contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died,
but the younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the
third brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning
disaster came when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the
wounded Waxhaw prisoners on the British vessels in Charleston harbor,
fell ill of yellow fever and perished. Small wonder that Andrew
Jackson always hated the British uniform, or that when he sat in the
executive chair an anti-British feeling colored all of his dealings
with foreign nations!

At the age of fourteen, the sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the
Waxhaws found himself alone in the world. The death of his relatives
had made him heir to a portion of his grandfather's estate in
Carrickfergus; but the property was tied up in the hands of an
administrator, and the boy was in effect both penniless and homeless.
The memory of his mother and her teachings was, as he was subsequently
accustomed to say, the only capital with which he started life. To a
natural waywardness and quarrelsomeness had been added a heritage of
bitter memories, and the outlook was not bright.

Upon one thing the youth was determined: he would no longer be a
charge upon his uncle or upon any one else. What to turn to, however,
was not so easy to decide. First he tried the saddler's trade, but
that was too monotonous. Then he undertook school-teaching; that
proved little better. Desirous of a glimpse of the world, he went to
Charleston in the autumn of 1782. There he made the acquaintance of
some people of wealth and fell into habits of life which were beyond
his means. At the race track he bet and swaggered himself into notice;
and when he ran into debt he was lucky enough to free himself by
winning a large wager. But the proceeds of his little inheritance,
which had in the meantime become available, were now entirely used up;
and when in the spring the young spendthrift went back to the Waxhaws,
he had only a fine horse with elegant equipment, a costly pair of
pistols, a gold watch, and a fair wardrobe--in addition to some
familiarity with the usages of fashion--to show for his spent
"fortune."

One other thing which Jackson may have carried back with him from
Charleston was an ambition to become a lawyer. At all events, in the
fall of 1784 he entered the law office of a certain Spruce Macay in
the town of Salisbury, North Carolina; and, after three years of
intermittent study, he was admitted to practice in the courts of the
State. The instruction which he had received was not of a high order,
and all accounts agree that the young man took his tasks lightly and
that he learned but little law. That he fully sustained the reputation
which he had gained in the Waxhaws is indicated by testimony of one of
Macay's fellow townsmen, after Jackson had become famous, to the
effect that the former student had been "the most roaring, rollicking,
game-cocking, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived in
Salisbury."

Upon his admission to the bar the irresponsible young blade hung out
his shingle in Martinsville, Guilford County, North Carolina, and sat
down to wait for clients. He was still less than twenty years old,
without influence, and with only such friends as his irascible
disposition permitted him to make and hold. Naturally business came
slowly, and it became necessary to eke out a living by serving as a
local constable and also by assisting in a mercantile enterprise
carried on by two acquaintances in the town. After a year this
hand-to-mouth existence began to pall. Neither then nor in later life
did Jackson have any real taste or aptitude for law. He was not of a
legal turn of mind, and he was wholly unprepared to suffer the
sacrifices and disappointments which a man of different disposition
would have been willing to undergo in order to win for himself an
established position in his profession. Chagrin in this restless young
man was fast yielding to despair when an alluring field of action
opened for him in the fast-developing country beyond the mountains.

The settlement of white men in that part of North Carolina which lay
west of the Alleghanies had begun a year or two after Jackson's birth.
At first the hardy pioneers found lodgment on the Watauga, Holston,
Nolichucky, and other streams to the east of modern Knoxville. But in
1779 a colony was planted by James Robertson and John Donelson on the
banks of the Cumberland, two hundred miles farther west, and in a
brief time the remoter settlement, known as Nashville, became a Mecca
for homeseeking Carolinians and Virginians. The intervening hill and
forest country abounded in hostile Indians. The settler or trader who
undertook to traverse this region took his life in his hands, and the
settlements themselves were subject to perennial attack.

In 1788, after the collapse of an attempt of the people of the
"Western District" to set up an independent State by the name of
Franklin, the North Carolina Assembly erected the three counties
included in the Cumberland settlement into a superior court district;
and the person selected for judge was a close friend of Jackson, John
McNairy, who also had been a law pupil of Spruce Macay in Salisbury.
McNairy had been in the Tennessee region two years, but at the time of
receiving his judicial appointment he was visiting friends in the
Carolinas. His description of the opportunities awaiting ambitious
young men in the back country influenced a half-dozen acquaintances,
lawyers and others, to make the return trip with him; and among the
number was Jackson. Some went to assume posts which were at McNairy's
disposal, but Jackson went only to see the country.

Assembling at Morganton, on the east side of the mountains, in the
fall of 1788, the party proceeded leisurely to Jonesboro, which,
although as yet only a village of fifty or sixty log houses, was the
metropolis of the eastern Tennessee settlements. There the party was
obliged to wait for a sufficient band of immigrants to assemble before
they could be led by an armed guard with some degree of safety through
the dangerous middle country. As a highway had just been opened
between Jonesboro and Nashville, the travelers were able to cover the
distance in fifteen days. Jackson rode a fine stallion, while a pack
mare carried his worldly effects, consisting of spare clothes,
blankets, half a dozen law books, and small quantities of ammunition,
tea, tobacco, liquor, and salt. For defense he bore a rifle and three
pistols; and in his pocket he carried one hundred and eighty dollars
of the much valued hard money. On the second day of November the
emigrant train made its appearance in Nashville bringing news of much
interest--in particular, that the Federal Constitution had been
ratified by the ninth State, and that the various legislatures were
preparing to choose electors, who would undoubtedly make George
Washington the first President of the Republic.

Less than ten years old, Nashville had now a population of not over
two hundred. But it was the center of a somewhat settled district
extending up and down the Cumberland for a distance of eighty or
ninety miles, and the young visitor from the Waxhaws quickly found it
a promising field for his talents. There was only one lawyer in the
place, and creditors who had been outbid for his services by their
debtors were glad to put their cases in the hands of the newcomer. It
is said that before Jackson had been in the settlement a month he had
issued more than seventy writs to delinquent debtors. When, in 1789,
he was appointed "solicitor," or prosecutor, in Judge McNairy's
jurisdiction with a salary of forty pounds for each court he attended,
his fortune seemed made and he forthwith gave up all thought of
returning to his Carolina home. Instead he took lodgings under the
roof of the widow of John Donelson, and in 1791 he married a daughter
of that doughty frontiersman. Land was still cheap, and with the
proceeds of his fees and salary he purchased a large plantation called
Hunter's Hill, thirteen miles from Nashville, and there he planned to
establish a home which would take rank as one of the finest in the
western country.

The work of a frontier solicitor was diverse and arduous. A turbulent
society needed to be kept in order and the business obligations of a
shifty and quarrelsome people to be enforced. No great knowledge of
law was required, but personal fearlessness, vigor, and
incorruptibility were indispensable. Jackson was just the man for the
business. His physical courage was equaled by his moral strength; he
was passionately devoted to justice; he was diligent and
conscientious; and, as one writer has remarked, bad grammar, incorrect
pronunciation, and violent denunciation did not shock the judges of
that day or divert the mind of juries from the truth. Traveling almost
constantly over the wretched roads and through the dark forests,
dodging Indians, swimming his horse across torrential streams,
sleeping alone in the woods with hand on rifle, threatened by
desperate wrongdoers, Andrew Jackson became the best-known figure in
all western Tennessee and won at this time a great measure of that
public confidence which later became his chief political asset.

Meanwhile the rapid growth of population south of the Ohio River made
necessary new arrangements for purposes of government. In 1790 the
region between the Ohio and the present States of Alabama and
Mississippi, having been turned over to the Nation by its earlier
possessors, was erected into the "Southwest Territory," and in 1791
the northern half became the State of Kentucky. In 1793 the remainder
of the Territory set up a Legislature, and three years later delegates
from the eleven counties met at Knoxville to draw up a new frame of
government with a view to admission to statehood. Jackson was a member
of this convention, and tradition has it that it was he who brought
about the selection of the name Tennessee, an Indian term meaning "The
Great Crooked River," as against Franklin, Washington, and other
proposed designations for the new State. At all events, upon the
admission of the State in 1796, he was chosen as its sole
representative in the lower branch of Congress.

In the late autumn of that year the young lawmaker set out for the
national capital at Philadelphia, and there he arrived, after a
journey of almost eight hundred miles on horseback, just as the
triumphs of the Democrats in the recent presidential election were
being duly celebrated. He had not been chosen as a party man, but it
is altogether probable that his own sympathies and those of most of
his constituents lay with the Jeffersonians; and his appearance on the
floor of Congress was an omen of the fast-rising tide of western
democracy which should never find its ultimate goal until this rough
but honest Tennesseean should himself be borne into the presidential
chair.

Jackson's career in Congress was brief and uneventful. After a year of
service in the House of Representatives he was appointed to fill the
unexpired term of William Blount in the Senate. But this post he
resigned in 1798 in order to devote his energies to his private
affairs. While at Philadelphia he made the acquaintance not only of
John Adams, Jefferson, Randolph, Gallatin, and Burr, but of his future
Secretary of State, Edward Livingston, and of some other persons who
were destined to be closely connected with his later career. But
Jackson was not fitted for a legislative body either by training or by
temperament. He is recorded as speaking in the House only twice and in
the Senate not at all, and he seems to have made no considerable
impression upon his colleagues. Gallatin later described him as "a
tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging
over his face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his
dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough
backwoodsman." And Jefferson is represented as saying of Jackson to
Webster at Monticello in 1824: "His passions are terrible. When I was
president of the Senate he was Senator, and he could never speak on
account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it
repeatedly, and as often choke with rage."

Return to Tennessee meant, however, only a transfer from one branch of
the public service to another, for the ex-Senator was promptly
appointed to a judgeship of the state supreme court at a salary of six
hundred dollars a year. The position he found not uncongenial and he
retained it for six years. Now, as earlier, Jackson's ignorance of law
was somewhat compensated by his common sense, courage, and
impartiality; and while only one of his decisions of this period is
extant, Parton reports that the tradition of fifty years ago
represented them as short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes
ungrammatical, but generally right. The daily life of Jackson as a
frontier judge was hardly less active and exciting than it had been
when he was a prosecuting attorney. There were long and arduous
horseback journeys "on circuit"; ill-tempered persons often
threatened, and sometimes attempted, to deal roughly with the author
of an unfavorable decision; occasionally it was necessary to lay aside
his dignity long enough to lend a hand in capturing or controlling a
desperate character. For example, on arriving once in a settlement
Jackson found that a powerful blacksmith had committed a crime and
that the sheriff dared not arrest him. "Summon me," said the judge;
whereupon he walked down from the bench, found the culprit, led him
into court, and sentenced him.

In 1804 Jackson resigned his judgeship in order to give exclusive
attention again to his private affairs. He had fallen badly into debt,
and his creditors were pressing him hard. One expedient after another
failed, and finally Hunter's Hill had to be given up. He saved enough
from the wreck, however, to purchase a small plantation eight miles
from Nashville; and there, after several years of financial
rehabilitation, he erected the handsome brick house which the country
came subsequently to know as "The Hermitage." In partnership with two
of his wife's relatives, Jackson had opened a store in which, even
while still a member of the highest tribunal of the State, he not
infrequently passed tea and salt and calico over the counter to his
neighbors. In small trading, however, he was not adept, and the store
failed. Nevertheless, from 1804 until 1813 he successfully combined
with planting and the stock-raising business enterprises of a larger
sort, especially slave and horse dealing. His debts paid off, he now
became one of the most prosperous, as he already was one of the most
influential, men of the Cumberland country.

But it was not given to Andrew Jackson to be a mere money-maker or to
dwell in quietness. In 1804 he was denied the governorship of the New
Orleans Territory because he was described to Jefferson as "a man of
violent passions, arbitrary in his disposition, and frequently engaged
in broils and disputes." During the next decade he fully lived up to
this description. He quarreled with Governor John Sevier, and only the
intervention of friends prevented the two from doing each other
violence. He broke off friendly relations with his old patron, Judge
McNairy. In a duel he killed Charles Dickinson, who had spoken
disparagingly of Mrs. Jackson, and he himself suffered a wound which
weakened him for life. He publicly caned one Thomas Swann. In a
rough-and-tumble encounter with Thomas Hart Benton and the latter's
brother Jesse he was shot in the shoulder and one of his antagonists
was stabbed. This list of quarrels, threats, fights, and other violent
outbursts could be extended to an amazing length. "Yes, I had a fight
with Jackson," Senator Benton admitted late in life; "a fellow was
hardly in the fashion then who hadn't."

At the age of forty-five Jackson had not yet found himself. He was
known in his own State as "a successful planter, a breeder and racer
of horses, a swearer of mighty oaths, a faithful ami generous man to
his friends, a chivalrous man to women, a hospitable man at his home,
a desperate and relentless man in personal conflicts, a man who always
did the things he set himself to do." But he had achieved no
nation-wide distinction; he had not wrought out a career; he had made
almost as many enemies as friends, he had cut himself off from
official connections; he had no desire to return to the legal
profession; and he was so dissatisfied with his lot and outlook that
he seriously considered moving to Mississippi in order to make a fresh
start.

One thread, however, still bound him to the public service. From 1802
he had been major general of militia in the eleven counties of western
Tennessee; and notwithstanding the fact that three calls from the
Government during a decade had yielded no real opportunity for action,
he clung both to the office and to the hope for a chance to lead his
"hardy sons of the West" against a foe worthy of their efforts. This
chance came sooner than people expected, and it led in precisely the
direction that Jackson would have chosen--toward the turbulent,
misgoverned Spanish dependency of Florida.



CHAPTER II


THE CREEK WAR AND THE VICTORY OF NEW ORLEANS

Every schoolboy knows and loves the story of the midnight ride of Paul
Revere. But hardly anybody has heard of the twenty-day,
fifteen-hundred-mile ride of "Billy" Phillips, the President's express
courier, who in 1812 carried to the Southwest the news that the people
of the United States had entered upon a second war with their British
kinsmen. William Phillips was a young, lithe Tennesseean whom Senator
Campbell took to Washington in 1811 as secretary. When not more than
sixteen years old he had enjoyed the honor of riding Andrew Jackson's
famous steed, Truxton, in a heat race, for the largest purse ever
heard of west of the mountains, with the proud owner on one side of
the stakes. In Washington he occasionally turned an honest penny by
jockey-riding in the races on the old track of Bladensburg, and
eventually he became one of a squad of ten or twelve expert horsemen
employed by the Government in carrying urgent long-distance messages.

After much hesitation, Congress passed a joint resolution at about
five o'clock on Friday, June 18, 1812, declaring war against Great
Britain. Before sundown the express couriers were dashing swiftly on
their several courses, some toward reluctant New England, some toward
Pennsylvania and New York, some southward, some westward. To Phillips
it fell to carry the momentous news to his own Tennessee country and
thence down the Mississippi to New Orleans. That the task was
undertaken with all due energy is sufficiently attested in a letter
written by a Baptist clergyman at Lexington, North Carolina, to a
friend, who happened to have been one of Jackson's old teachers at the
Waxhaws. "I have to inform you," runs the communication, "that just
now the President's express-rider, Bill Phillips, has tore through
this little place without stopping. He came and went in a cloud of
dust, his horse's tail and his own long hair streaming alike in the
wind as they flew by. But as he passed the tavern stand where some
were gathered he swung his leather wallet by its straps above his head
and shouted--'Here's the Stuff! Wake up! _War! War with England!!
War!!!'_ Then he disappeared in a cloud of dust down the Salisbury
Road like a streak of Greased Lightnin'." Nine days brought the
indefatigable courier past Hillsboro, Salisbury, Morganton, Jonesboro,
and Knoxville to Nashville--a daily average of ninety-five miles over
mountains and through uncleared country. In eleven days more the
President's dispatches were in the hands of Governor Claiborne at New
Orleans.

The joy of the West was unbounded. The frontiersman was always ready
for a fight, and just now he especially wanted a fight with England.
He resented the insults that his country had suffered at the hands of
the English authorities and had little patience with the vacillating
policy so long pursued by Congress and the Madison Administration.
Other grievances came closer home. For two years the West had been
disturbed by Indian wars and intrigues for which the English officers
and agents in Canada were held largely responsible. In 1811 Governor
Harrison of Indiana Territory defeated the Indians at Tippecanoe. But
Tecumseh was even then working among the Creeks, Cherokees, and other
southern tribes with a view to a confederation which should be
powerful enough to put a stop to the sale of land to the advancing
white population. A renewal of the disorders was therefore momentarily
expected. Furthermore, the people of the Southwest were as usual on
bad terms with their Spanish neighbors in Florida and Texas; they
coveted an opportunity for vengeance for wrongs which they had
suffered; and some longed for the conquest of Spanish territory. At
all events, war with England was the more welcome because Spain, as an
ally of that power, was likely to be involved.

Nowhere was the news received with greater enthusiasm than at
Nashville; and by no one with more satisfaction than by Andrew
Jackson. As major general of militia Jackson had for ten years awaited
just such a chance for action. In 1811 he wrote fervently to Harrison
offering to come to his assistance in the Wabash expedition with five
hundred West Tennesseeans, but his services were not needed. At the
close of the year he induced the Governor of his State, William
Blount, to inform the War Department that he could have twenty-five
hundred men "before Quebec within ninety days" if desired. Again he
was refused. But now his opportunity had come. Billy Phillips was
hardly on his way to Natchez before Jackson, Blount, and Benton were
addressing a mass meeting called to "ratify" the declaration of war,
and on the following day a courier started for Washington with a
letter from Jackson tendering the services of twenty-five hundred
Tennesseeans and assuring the President, with better patriotism than
syntax, that wherever it might please him to find a place of duty for
these men he could depend upon them to stay "till they or the last
armed foe expires."

After some delay the offer was accepted. Already the fiery major
general was dreaming of a conquest of Florida. "You burn with
anxiety," ran a proclamation issued to his division in midsummer, "to
learn on what theater your arms will find employment. Then turn your
eyes to the South! Behold in the province of West Florida a territory
whose rivers and harbors are indispensable to the prosperity of the
western, and still more so, to the eastern division of our state....
It is here that an employment adapted to your situation awaits your
courage and your zeal, and while extending in this quarter the
boundaries of the Republic to the Gulf of Mexico, you will experience
a peculiar satisfaction in having conferred a signal benefit on that
section of the Union to which you yourselves immediately belong."

It lay in the cards that Jackson was to be a principal agent in
wresting the Florida, country from the Spaniards; and while there was
at Washington no intention of allowing him to set off post-haste upon
the mission, all of the services which he was called upon to render
during the war converged directly upon that objective. After what
seemed an interminable period of waiting came the first order to move.
Fifteen hundred Tennessee troops were to go to New Orleans, ostensibly
to protect the city against a possible British attack, but mainly to
be quickly available in case an invasion of West Florida should be
decided upon: and Jackson, freshly commissioned major general of
volunteers, was to lead the expedition.

The rendezvous was fixed at Nashville for early December; and when
more than two thousand men, representing almost every family of
influence in the western half of the State, presented themselves,
Governor Blount authorized the whole number to be mustered. On the 7th
of January the hastily equipped detachment started, fourteen hundred
infantrymen going down the ice-clogged Cumberland in flatboats and six
hundred and seventy mounted riflemen proceeding by land. The Governor
sent a letter carrying his blessing. Jackson responded with an
effusive note in which he expressed the hope that "the God of battles
may be with us." Parton says with truth that the heart of western
Tennessee went down the river with the expedition. In a letter to the
Secretary of War Jackson declared that his men had no "constitutional
scruples," but would, if so ordered, plant the American eagle on the
"walls" of Mobile, Pensacola, and St. Augustine.

After five weeks the troops, in high spirits, reassembled at Natchez.
Then came cruel disappointment. From New Orleans Governor James
Wilkinson, doubtless moved by hatred of Jackson quite as much as by
considerations of public policy, ordered the little army to stay where
it was. And on the 15th of March there was placed in the commander's
hands a curt note from the Secretary of War saying that the reasons
for the undertaking had disappeared, and announcing that the corps
under the Tennesseean's command had "ceased to exist."

Jackson flew into a rage--and with more reason than on certain other
occasions. He was sure that there was treachery somewhere; at the
least, it was all a trick to bring a couple of thousand good Tennessee
volunteers within the clutches of Wilkinson's recruiting officers. He
managed to write to the President a temperate letter of protest; but
to Governor Blount and to the troops he unbosomed himself with
characteristic forcefulness of speech. There was nothing to do but
return home. But the irate commander determined to do it in a manner
to impress the country. He kept his force intact, drew rations from
the commissary department at Natchez, and marched back to Nashville
with all the _éclat_ that would have attended a returning conqueror.
When Wilkinson's subordinates refused to pay the cost of transporting
the sick, Jackson pledged his own credit for the purpose, to the
amount of twelve thousand dollars. It was on the trying return march
that his riflemen conferred on him the happy nickname "Old Hickory."

The Secretary of War later sought to appease the irascible major
general by offering a wholly plausible explanation of the sudden
reversal of the Government's policy; and the expenses of the troops on
the return march were fully met out of the national treasury. But
Jackson drew from the experience only gall and wormwood. About the
time when the men reached Natchez, Congress definitely authorized the
President to take possession of Mobile and that part of Florida west
of the Perdido River; and, back once more in the humdrum life of
Nashville, the disappointed officer could only sit idly by while his
pet project was successfully carried out by General Wilkinson, the man
whom, perhaps above all others, he loathed. But other work was
preparing; and, after all, most of Florida was yet to be won.

In the late summer of 1813 the western country was startled by news of
a sudden attack of a band of upwards of a thousand Creeks on Fort
Minis, Alabama, culminating in a massacre in which two hundred and
fifty white men, women, and children lost their lives. It was the most
bloody occurrence of the kind in several decades, and it brought
instantly to a head a situation which Jackson, in common with many
other military men, had long viewed with apprehension.

From time immemorial the broad stretches of hill and valley land
southwards from the winding Tennessee to the Gulf were occupied, or
used as hunting grounds, by the warlike tribes forming the loose-knit
Creek Confederacy. Much of this land was extremely fertile, and most
of it required little labor to prepare it for cultivation.
Consequently after 1800 the influx of white settlers, mainly cotton
raisers, was heavy; and by 1812 the great triangular area between the
Alabama and the Tombigbee, as well as extensive tracts along the upper
Tombigbee and the Mobile, was quite fully occupied. The heart of the
Creek country was the region about the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers,
which join in central Alabama to form the stream which bears the
State's name. But not even this district was immune from encroachment.

The Creeks were not of a sort to submit to the loss of their lands
without a struggle. Though Tecumseh, in 1811, had brought them to the
point of an uprising, his plans were not carried out, and it remained
for the news of hostilities between the United States and Great
Britain to rouse the war spirit afresh. In a short time the entire
Creek country was aflame. Arms and ammunition the Indians obtained
from the Spaniards across the Florida border, and Colonel Edward
Nicholls, now stationed at Pensacola as provisional British Governor,
gave them open encouragement. The danger was understood not only among
the people of the Southwest but in Washington. Before plans of defense
could be carried into effect, however, the war broke out, and the
wretched people who had crowded into the flimsy stockade called by
courtesy Fort Mims were massacred.

Hardly had the heap of ruins, ghastly with human bodies, ceased to
smolder before fleet riders were spreading the news in Georgia, in
Louisiana, and in Tennessee. A shudder swept the country. Every
exposed community expected to be attacked next. The people's demand
for vengeance was overmastering, and from north, west, and east
volunteer armies were soon on the march. Tennessee sent two quotas,
one from the eastern counties under General John Cocke, the other from
the western under Andrew Jackson. When the news of the disaster on the
Mobile reached Nashville, Jackson was lying helpless from wounds
received in his fight with the Bentons. But he issued the necessary
orders from his bed and let it be known with customary vigor that he,
the senior major general, and no one else, would lead the expedition;
and though three weeks later he started off with his arm tightly
bandaged to his side and a shoulder so sore that it could not bear the
pressure of an epaulette, lead the expedition he did.

About the middle of October the emaciated but, dogged commander
brought his forces together, 2700 strong, at Huntsville and began
cutting his way across the mountains toward the principal Creek
settlements. His plan was to fall suddenly upon these settlements,
strike terror into the inhabitants, and force a peace on terms that
would guarantee the safety of the frontier populations. Supplies were
slow to arrive, and Jackson fumed and stormed. He quarreled
desperately, too, with Cocke, whom he unjustly blamed for
mismanagement. But at last he was able to emerge on the banks of the
Coosa and build a stockade, Fort Strother, to serve as a base for the
campaign.

During the months that followed, the intrepid leader was compelled to
fight two foes--his insubordinate militiamen and the Creeks. His
command consisted partly of militia and partly of volunteers,
including many men who had first enlisted for the expedition down the
Mississippi. Starvation and disease caused loud murmurings, and after
one or two minor victories had been won the militiamen took it into
their heads to go back home. Jackson drew up the volunteers across the
mutineers' path and drove them back to the camp. Then the volunteers
started off, and the militia had to be used to bring them back! At one
time the furious general faced a mutinous band single-handed and,
swearing that he would shoot the first man who stirred, awed the
recalcitrants into obedience. On another occasion he had a youth who
had been guilty of insubordination shot before the whole army as an
object lesson. At last it became apparent that nothing could be done
with such troops, and the volunteers--such of them as had not already
slipped away--were allowed to go home. Governor Blount advised that
the whole undertaking be given up. But Jackson wrote him a letter that
brought a flush of shame to his cheek, and in a short time fresh
forces by the hundreds, with ample supplies, were on the way to Fort
Strother. Among the newcomers was a lank, angular-featured
frontiersman who answered to the name of Sam Houston.

After having been reduced for a short period to one hundred men,
Jackson by early spring had an army of five thousand, including a
regiment of regulars, and found it once more possible to act. The
enemy decided to make its stand at a spot called by the Indians
Tohopeka, by the whites Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa. Here a
thousand warriors, with many women and children, took refuge behind
breastworks which they believed impregnable, and here, in late March,
Jackson attacked with a force of three thousand men. No quarter was
asked and none given, on either side, and the battle quickly became a
butchery. Driven by fire from a thicket of dry brush in which they
took refuge, the Creek warriors were shot down or bayoneted by the
hundreds; those who plunged into the river for safety were killed as
they swam. Scarcely a hundred survived. Among the number was a youth
who could speak a little English, and whose broken leg one of the
surgeons undertook to treat. Three stalwart riflemen were required to
hold the patient. "Lie still, my boy, they will save your life," said
Jackson encouragingly, as he came upon the scene. "No good," replied
the disconsolate victim. "No good. Cure um now, kill um again!"

The victory practically ended the war. Many of the "Red Sticks," as
the Creek braves were called, fled beyond the Florida border; but
many--among them the astute half-breed Weathersford, who had ordered
the assault on Fort Mims--came in and surrendered. Fort Jackson, built
in the river fork, became an outpost of American sovereignty in the
very heart of the Creek district. "The fiends of the Tallapoosa,"
declared the victorious commander in his farewell address to his men,
"will no longer murder our women and children, or disturb the quiet of
our borders."

Jackson returned to Tennessee to find himself the most popular man in
the State. Nashville gave him the first of what was destined to be a
long series of tumultuous receptions; and within a month the news came
that William Henry Harrison had resigned his commission and that
Jackson had been appointed a major general in the army of the United
States, with command in the southwestern district, including Mobile
and New Orleans. "Thus did the frontier soldier, who eighteen months
earlier had not commanded an expedition or a detachment, come to
occupy the highest rank in the army of his country. No other man in
that country's service since the Revolution has risen to the top quite
so quickly."[1]

By his appointment Jackson became the eventual successor of General
Wilkinson, with headquarters at New Orleans. His first move, however,
v as to pay a visit to Mobile; and on his way thither, in August,
1814, he paused in the Creek country to garner the fruits of his late
victory. A council of the surviving chiefs was assembled and a treaty
was presented, with a demand that it be signed forthwith. The terms
took the Indians aback, but argument was useless. The whites were
granted full rights to maintain military posts and roads and to
navigate the rivers in the Creek lands; the Creeks had to promise to
stop trading with British and Spanish posts; and they were made to
cede to the United States all the lands which their people had claimed
west and southeast of the Coosa River--more than half of their ancient
territories. Thus was the glory of the Creek nation brought to an end.

Meanwhile the war with Great Britain was entering a new and
threatening phase. No notable successes had been achieved on land, and
repeated attempts to reduce Canada had signally failed. On the Great
Lakes and the high seas the navy had won glory, but only a handful of
privateers was left to keep up the fight. The collapse of Napoleon's
power had brought a lull in Europe, and the British were free to
concentrate their energies as never before on the conflict in America.
The effects were promptly seen in the campaign which led to the
capture of Washington and the burning of the Federal Capitol in
August, 1814. They were equally manifest in a well-laid plan for a
great assault on the country's southern borders and on the great
Mississippi Valley beyond.

The last-mentioned project meant that, after two years of immunity,
the Southwest had become a main theater of the war. There was plenty
of warning of what was coming, for the British squadron intended for
the attack began assembling in the West Indies before the close of
summer. No one knew, however, where or when the blow would fall. To
Jackson the first necessity seemed to be to make sure of the defenses
of Mobile. For a time, at all events, he believed that the attack
would be made there, rather than at New Orleans; and an attempt of a
British naval force in September to destroy Fort Bowyer, at the
entrance to Mobile Bay, confirmed his opinion.

But the chief attraction of Mobile for the General was its proximity
to Florida. In July he had written to Washington asking permission to
occupy Pensacola. Months passed without a reply. Temptation to action
grew; and when, in October, three thousand Tennessee troops arrived
under one of the subordinate officers in the recent Creek War, longer
hesitation seemed a sign of weakness. Jackson therefore led his forces
against the Spanish stronghold, now in British hands, and quickly
forced its surrender. His men blew up one of the two forts, and the
British blew up the other. Within a week the work was done and the
General, well pleased with his exploit, was back at Mobile.

There he found awaiting him, in reply to his July letter, an order
from the new Secretary of War, James Monroe, forbidding him to touch
Pensacola. No great harm was done, for the invaded territory was no
longer neutral soil, and the task of soothing the ruffled feelings of
the Spanish court did not prove difficult.

As the autumn wore on, signs multiplied that the first British
objective in the South was to be New Orleans, and no efforts were
spared by the authorities at Washington to arouse the Southwest to its
danger and to stimulate an outpouring of troops sufficient to repel
any force that might be landed at the mouth of the Mississippi. On the
21st of November, Jackson set out for the menaced city. Five days
later a fleet of fifty vessels, carrying ten thousand veteran British
troops under command of Generals Pakenham and Gibbs, started from
Jamaica for what was expected to be an easy conquest. On the 10th of
December the hostile armada cast anchor off the Louisiana coast. Two
weeks later some two thousand redcoats emerged from Lake Borgne,
within six or seven miles of New Orleans, when the approach to the
city on that side was as yet unguarded by a gun or a man or an
entrenchment.

That the "impossible" was now accomplished was due mainly to Jackson,
although credit must not be withheld from a dozen energetic
subordinate officers nor from the thousands of patriots who made up
the rank and file of the hastily gathered forces of defense. Men from
Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee--all
contributed to one of the most remarkable military achievements in our
history; although when the fight was over it was found that hundreds
were still as unarmed as when they arrived upon the scene.

A preliminary clash, in a dense fog, on the second evening before
Christmas served to inspire each army with a wholesome respect for the
other. The British decided to postpone further action until their
entire force could be brought up, and this gave Jackson just the time
he needed to assemble his own scattered divisions, select lines, of
defense, and throw up breastworks. By the end of the first week of
January both sides were ready for the test.

The British army was a splendid body of seven thousand trained
soldiers, seamen, and marines.

There were regiments which had helped Wellington to win Talavera,
Salamanca, and Victoria, and within a few short months some of these
same regiments were to stand in that thin red line which Ney and
Napoleon's guard could never break. Their general, Pakenham,
Wellington's brother-in-law, was a distinguished pupil of his
illustrious kinsman. Could frontiersmen who had never fought together
before, who had never seen the face of a civilized foe, withstand the
conquerors of Napoleon? But two branches of the same stubborn race
were represented on that little watery plain. The soldiers trained to
serve the strongest will in the Old World were face to face with the
rough and ready yeomanry embattled for defense by the one man of the
new world whose soul had most iron in it. It was Salamanca against
Tohopeka, discipline against individual alertness, the Briton of the
little Isle against the Briton of the wastes and wilds. But there was
one great difference. Wellington, "the Iron Duke," was not there; "Old
Hickory" was everywhere along the American lines.[2]

Behind their battery-studded parapets the Americans waited for the
British to make an assault. This the invaders did, five thousand
strong, on January 8, 1815. The fighting was hard, but the main attack
failed at every point. Three British major generals, including
Pakenham, were killed early in the action, and the total British loss
exceeded two thousand. The American loss was but seventy-one. The
shattered foe fell back, lay inactive for ten days, and then quietly
withdrew as they had come. Though Jackson was not noted for piety, he
always believed that his success on this occasion was the work of
Providence. "Heaven, to be sure," he wrote to Monroe, "has interposed
most wonderfully in our behalf, and I am filled with gratitude when I
look back to what we have escaped."

By curious irony, the victory had no bearing upon the formal results
of the war. A treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent two weeks
before, and the news of the pacification and of the exploit at New
Orleans reached the distracted President at almost the same time. But
who shall say that the battle was not one of the most momentous in
American history? It compensated for a score of humiliations suffered
by the country in the preceding years. It revived the people's
drooping pride and put new energy into the nation's dealings with its
rivals, contributing more than any other single event to make this war
indeed a "second war of independence." "Now," declared Henry Clay when
the news reached him in Paris, "I can go to England without
mortification." Finally, the battle brought Andrew Jackson into his
own as the idol and incarnation of the West, and set the western
democracy decisively forward as a force to be reckoned with in
national affairs.



CHAPTER III


THE "CONQUEST" OF FLORIDA

The victory at New Orleans made Jackson not only the most popular man
in the United States but a figure of international interest.
"Napoleon, returning from Elba to eke out the Hundred Days and add the
name Waterloo to history, paused now and then a moment to study
Jackson at New Orleans. The Duke of Wellington, chosen by assembled
Europe to meet the crisis, could find time even at Brussels to call
for 'all available information on the abortive expedition against
Louisiana.'"[3]

While his countrymen were sounding his praises, the General, however,
fell into a controversy with the authorities and people of New Orleans
which lent a drab aspect to the closing scene of an otherwise
brilliant drama. One of his first acts upon arriving in the
defenseless city had been to declare martial law; and under the decree
the daily life of the inhabitants had been rigorously circumscribed,
citizens had been pressed into military service, men under suspicion
had been locked up, and large quantities of cotton and other supplies
had been seized for the soldiers' use. When Pakenham's army was
defeated, people expected an immediate return to normal conditions.
Jackson, however, proposed to take no chances. Neither the sailing of
the British fleet nor the receipt of the news of peace from Admiral
Cochrane influenced him to relax his vigilance, and only after
official instructions came from Washington in the middle of March was
the ban lifted.

Meanwhile a violent quarrel had broken out between the commander and
the civil authorities, who naturally wished to resume their accustomed
functions. Finding that the Creoles were systematically evading
service by registering as French citizens, Jackson abruptly ordered
all such people from the city; and he was responsible for numerous
other arbitrary acts. Protests were lodged, and some people threatened
judicial proceedings. But they might have saved their breath. Jackson
was not the man to argue matters of the kind. A leading Creole who
published an especially pointed protest was clapped into prison, and
when the Federal district judge, Hall, issued a writ of _habeas
corpus_ in his behalf, Jackson had him also shut up.

As soon as he was liberated, the irate judge summoned Jackson into
court to show why he should not be held in contempt. Beyond a blanket
vindication of his acts, the General would not plead. "I will not
answer interrogatories," he declared. "I may have erred, but my
motives cannot be misinterpreted." The judge thereupon imposed a fine
of one thousand dollars, the only question being, he declared,
"whether the Law should bend to the General or the General to the
Law." Jackson accepted the sentence with equanimity, and to a group of
admirers who drew him in a carriage from the court room to one of the
leading coffeehouses, he expressed lofty sentiments on the obligation
of citizens of every rank to obey the laws and uphold the courts.
Twenty-nine years afterwards Congress voted reimbursement to the full
amount of the fine with interest.

For three weeks after the arrival of the treaty of peace Jackson
lingered at New Orleans, haggling by day with the contractors and
merchants whose cotton, blankets, and bacon were yet to be paid for,
and enjoying in the evening the festivities planned in his honor by
grateful citizens. His pleasure in the gala affairs of the time was
doubled by the presence of his wife, who one day arrived quite
unexpectedly in the company of some Tennessee friends. Mrs. Jackson
was a typical frontier planter's wife--kind-hearted, sincere,
benevolent, thrifty, pious, but unlettered and wholly innocent of
polished manners. In all her forty-eight years she had never seen a
city more pretentious than Nashville. She was, moreover, stout and
florid, and it may be supposed that in her rustic garb she was a
somewhat conspicuous figure among the fashionable ladies of New
Orleans society.

But the wife of Jackson's accomplished friend and future Secretary of
State, Edward Livingston, fitted her out with fashionable clothes and
tactfully instructed her in the niceties of etiquette, and ere long
she was able to demean herself, if not without a betrayal of her
unfamiliarity with the environment, at all events to the complete
satisfaction of the General. The latter's devotion to his wife was a
matter of much comment. "Debonair as he had been in his association
with the Creole belles, he never missed an opportunity to demonstrate
that he considered the short, stout, beaming matron at his side the
perfection of her sex and far and away the most charming woman in the
world."[4] "Aunt Rachel," as she was known throughout western
Tennessee, lived to see the hero of New Orleans elected President, but
not to share with him the honors of the position. "I have sometimes
thought," said Thomas Hart Benton, "that General Jackson might have
been a more equable tenant of the White House than he was had she been
spared to share it with him. At all events, she was the only human
being on earth who ever possessed the power to swerve his mighty will
or soothe his fierce temper."

Shortly before their departure the Jacksons were guests of honor at a
grand ball at the Academy. The upper floor was arranged for dancing
and the lower for supper, and the entire building was aglow with
flowers, colored lamps, and transparencies. As the evening wore on and
the dances of polite society had their due turn, the General finally
avowed that he and his bonny wife would show the proud city folk what
_real_ dancing was. A somewhat cynical observer--a certain Nolte, whom
Jackson had just forced to his own terms in a settlement for war
supplies--records his impression as follows: "After supper we were
treated to a most delicious _pas de deux_ by the conqueror and his
spouse. To see these two figures, the General, a long haggard man,
with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Générale, a short fat
dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to
the wild melody of _Possum up de Gum Tree_, and endeavoring to make a
spring into the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a
spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished." But
Jackson was only less proud of his accomplishments as a dancer than as
a fighter, and it was the part of discretion for a man of Nolte's
critical turn to keep a straight face on this occasion.

In early April the General and his wife started homeward, the latter
bearing as a parting gift from the women of New Orleans the somewhat
gaudy set of topaz jewelry which she wears in her most familiar
portrait. The trip was a continuous ovation, and at Nashville a series
of festivities wound up with a banquet attended by the most
distinguished soldiers and citizens of Tennessee and presided over by
the Governor of the State. Other cities gave dinners, and legislatures
voted swords and addresses. A period of rest at the Hermitage was
interrupted in the autumn of 1815 by a horseback trip to Washington
which involved a succession of dinners and receptions. But after a few
months the much fêted soldier was back at Nashville, ready, as he
said, to "resume the cultivation of that friendly intercourse with my
friends and neighbors which has heretofore constituted so great a
portion of my happiness."

After Jackson had talked over his actions at New Orleans with both the
President and the Secretary of War, he had received, as he says, "a
chart blank," approving his "whole proceedings"; so he had nothing
further to worry about on that score. The national army had been
reorganized on a peace footing, in two divisions, each under command
of a major general. The northern division fell to Jacob Brown of New
York, the hero of Lundy's Lane; the southern fell to Jackson, with
headquarters at Nashville.

Jackson was the last man to suppose that warfare in the southern half
of the United States was a thing of the past. He knew that the late
contest had left the southern Indians restless and that the existing
treaties were likely to be repudiated at any moment. Florida was still
in the hands of the Spaniards, and he had never a doubt that some day
this territory would have to be conquered and annexed. Moreover
Jackson believed for some years after 1815, according to General
Eaton, that Great Britain would again make war on the United States,
using Florida as a base. At all events, it can have caused the General
no surprise--or regret--to be called again into active service on the
Florida border before the close of 1817.

The hold of the Spaniards upon Florida had been so far weakened by the
War of 1812 that after the restoration of peace they occupied only
three important points--Pensacola, St. Marks, and St. Augustine. The
rest of the territory became a No Man's Land, an ideal resort for
desperate adventurers of every race and description. There was a
considerable Indian population, consisting mainly of Seminoles, a
tribe belonging to the Creek Confederacy, together with other Creeks
who had fled across the border to escape the vengeance of Jackson at
Tohopeka. All were bitterly hostile to the United States. There were
Spanish freebooters, Irish roustabouts, Scotch free lances, and
runaway slaves--a nondescript lot, and all ready for any undertaking
that promised excitement, revenge, or booty. Furthermore there were
some British soldiers who had remained on their own responsibility
after the troops were withdrawn. The leading spirit among these was
Colonel Edward Nicholls, who had already made himself obnoxious to the
United States by his conduct at Pensacola.

At the close of the war Nicholls and his men built a fort on the
Apalachicola, fifteen miles from the Gulf, and began again to collect
and organize fugitive slaves, Indians, and adventurers of every sort,
whom they employed on raids into the territory of the United States
and in attacks upon its inhabitants. The Creeks were falsely informed
that in the Treaty of Ghent the United States had promised to give up
all lands taken from them during the late war, and they were thus
incited to rise in vindication of their alleged rights. What Nicholls
was aiming at came out when, in company with several chieftains, he
returned to England to ask for an alliance between the "mother
country" and his buccaneer state. He met no encouragement, however,
and in reply to an American protest the British Government repudiated
his arts. His rôle was nevertheless promptly taken up by a misguided
Scotch trader, Alexander Arbuthnot, and the reign of lawlessness
continued.

After all, it was Spain's business to keep order on the frontier; and
the United States waited a year and a half for the Madrid Government
to give evidence of intent to do so. But, as nothing but vain promises
were forthcoming, some American troops engaged in building a fort on
the Apalachicola, just north of the boundary line, marched down the
river in July, 1816, bombarded Nicholls's Negro Fort, blew up its
magazine, and practically exterminated the Negro and Indian garrison.
A menace to the slave property of southern Georgia was thus removed,
but the bigger problem remained. The Seminoles were restive; the
refugee Creeks kept up their forays across the border; and the rich
lands acquired by the Treaty of Fort Jackson were fast filling with
white settlers who clamored for protection. Though the Monroe
Administration had opened negotiations for the cession of the whole
Florida country to the United States, progress was slow and the
outcome doubtful.

Matters came to a head in the closing weeks of 1817. General Gaines,
who was in command on the Florida border, had tried repeatedly to get
an interview with the principal "Red Stick" chieftain, but all of his
overtures had been repulsed. Finally he sent a detachment of soldiers
to conduct the dignitary and his warriors from their village at
Fowltown, on the American side of the line, to a designated parley
ground. In no mood for negotiation, the chief ordered his followers to
fire on the visitors; whereupon the latter seized and destroyed the
village.

The fight at Fowltown may be regarded as the beginning of the Seminole
War. General Gaines was directed to begin operations against the
Indians and to pursue them if necessary into East Florida; but before
he could carry out his orders, Jackson was put in personal command of
the forces acting against the Indians and was instructed to
concentrate all of the troops in his department at Fort Scott and to
obtain from the Governors of Georgia and Tennessee such other
assistance as he should need.

Jackson received his orders at the Hermitage. Governor Blount was
absent from Nashville, but the eager commander went ahead raising
troops on his own responsibility. Nothing was so certain to whet his
appetite for action as the prospect of a war in Florida. Not only did
his instructions authorize him to pursue the enemy, under certain
conditions, into Spanish territory, but from the first he himself
conceived of the enterprise as decidedly more than a punitive
expedition. The United States wanted Florida and was at the moment
trying to induce Spain to give it up.

Here was the chance to take it regardless of Spain, "Let it be
signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea)," wrote the
Major General to the President, "that the possession of the Floridas
would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be
accomplished."

This "Rhea letter" became the innocent source of one of the most
famous controversies in American history. Jackson supposed that the
communication had been promptly delivered to Monroe, and that his plan
for the conquest of Florida had the full, if secret, approval of the
Administration. Instructions from the Secretary of War, Calhoun,
seemed susceptible of no other interpretation; besides, the conqueror
subsequently maintained that he received through Rhea the assurance
that he coveted. Monroe, however, later denied flatly that he had
given any orders of the kind. Indeed he said that through a peculiar
combination of circumstances he had not even read Jackson's letter
until long after the Florida campaign was ended. Each man, no doubt,
thought he was telling the truth, and historians will probably always
differ upon the merits of the case. The one thing that is perfectly
certain is that Jackson, when he carried his troops into Florida in
1818, believed that the Government expected him to prepare the
territory for permanent American occupation.

In early March, Jackson was at Fort Scott, on the Georgia frontier,
with about two thousand men. Though he expected other forces, Jackson
found that scarcity of rations made it inadvisable to wait for them,
and he therefore marched his army on as rapidly as possible down the
soggy bank of the Apalachicola, past the ruins of Negro Fort, into
Florida, where he found in readiness the provisions which had been
sent forward by way of Mobile. Turning eastward, Jackson bore down
upon the Spanish settlement of St. Marks, where it was rumored that
the hostile natives had assembled in considerable numbers. A small
fleet of gunboats from Mobile and New Orleans was ordered to move
along the coast and intercept any fugitives, "white, red, or black."
Upwards of two thousand friendly Indians joined the land expedition,
and the invasion became from a military standpoint a sheer farce. The
Seminoles were utterly unprepared for war, and their villages were
taken possession of, one by one, without opposition. At St. Marks the
Indians fled precipitately, and the little Spanish garrison, after a
glimpse of the investing force, asked only that receipts be given for
the movable property confiscated. The Seminole War was over almost
before it was begun.

But Jackson was not in Florida simply to quell the Seminoles. He was
there to vindicate the honor and establish the sovereignty of the
United States. Hence there was further work for him to do. The British
instigators of lawlessness were to be apprehended; the surviving
evidences of Spanish authority were to be obliterated. Both objects
Jackson attained with characteristic speed and thoroughness. At St.
Marks he made Arbuthnot a prisoner; at Suwanee he captured another
meddler by the name of Ambrister; and after a court-martial he hanged
one and shot the other in the presence of the chieftains whom these
men had deceived into thinking that Great Britain stood ready to come
to the red man's relief. Two Indian chiefs who were considered
ringleaders he likewise executed. Then, leaving St. Marks in the
possession of two hundred troops, Jackson advanced upon Pensacola, the
main seat of Spanish authority in the colony.

From the Governor, Don José Callava, now came a dignified note of
protest; but the invader's only reply was an announcement of his
purpose to take possession of the town, on the ground that its
population had encouraged the Indians and given them supplies. On May
24, 1818, the American forces and their allies marched in, unopposed,
and the commander coolly apprised Callava that he would "assume the
government until the transaction can be amicably adjusted by the two
governments." "If, contrary to my hopes," responded the Spanish
dignitary, "Your Excellency should persist in your intention to occupy
this fortress, which I am resolved to defend to the last extremity, I
shall repel force by force; and he who resists aggression can never be
considered an aggressor. God preserve Your Excellency many years." To
which Jackson replied that "resistance would be a wanton sacrifice of
blood," and that he could not but remark on the Governor's
inconsistency in presuming himself capable of repelling an army which
had conquered Indian tribes admittedly too powerful for the Spaniards
to control.

When the Americans approached the fort in which Callava had taken
refuge, they were received with a volley which they answered, as
Jackson tells us, with "a nine-pound piece and five eight-inch
howitzers." The Spaniards, whose only purpose was to make a decent
show of defending the place, then ran up the white flag and were
allowed to march out with the honors of war. The victor sent the
Governor and soldiery off to Havana, installed a United States
collector of customs, stationed a United States garrison in the fort,
and on the following day set out on his way to Tennessee.

In a five months' campaign Jackson had established peace on the
border, had broken the power of the hostile Indians, and had
substantially conquered Florida. Not a white man in his army had been
killed in battle, and not even the most extravagant eulogist could
aver that the war had been a great military triumph. None the less,
the people--especially in the West and South--were intensely pleased.
Life in the frontier regions would now be safer; and the acquisition
of the coveted Florida country was brought appreciably nearer. The
popular sentiment on the latter subject found characteristic
expression in a toast at a banquet given at Nashville in honor of the
returning conqueror: "Pensacola--Spanish perfidy and Indian barbarity
rendered its capture necessary. May our Government never surrender it
from the fear of war!"

It was easy enough for Jackson to "take" Florida and for the people to
rejoice in the exploit. To defend or explain away the irregular
features of the act was, however, quite a different matter; and that
was the task which fell to the authorities at Washington. "The
territory of a friendly power had been invaded, its officers deposed,
its towns and fortresses taken possession of; two citizens of another
friendly and powerful nation had been executed in scandalously summary
fashion, upon suspicion rather than evidence." The Spanish Minister,
Onis, wrathfully protested to the Secretary of State and demanded that
Jackson be punished; while from London Rush quoted Castlereagh as
saying that English feeling was so wrought up that war could be
produced by the raising of a finger.

Monroe and his Cabinet were therefore given many anxious days and
sleepless nights. They wanted to buy Florida, not conquer it. They had
entertained no thought of authorizing the things that Jackson had
done. They recognized that the Tennesseean's crude notions of
international law could not be upheld in dealings with proud European
States. Yet it was borne in upon them from every side that the nation
approved what had been done; and the politically ambitious might well
think twice before casting any slur upon the acts of the people's
hero. Moreover the irascibility of the conqueror himself was known and
feared. Calhoun, the Secretary of War, who was specially annoyed
because his instructions had not been followed, favored a public
censure. On the other hand, John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State,
took the ground that everything that Jackson had done was "defensive
and incident to his main duty to crush the Seminoles." The
Administration finally reached the decision to surrender the posts but
otherwise to back up the General, in the hope of convincing Spain of
the futility of trying longer to hold Florida. Monroe explained the
necessities of the situation to Jackson as tactfully as he could,
leaving him under the impression--which was corrected only in
1830--that Crawford, rather than Calhoun, was the member of the
Cabinet who had held out against him.

But the controversy spread beyond the Cabinet circle. During the
winter of 1818-19 Congress took it up, and a determined effort was
made to carry a vote of censure. The debate in the House--with
galleries crowded to suffocation, we are informed by the _National
Intelligencer_--lasted four weeks and was notable for bringing Clay
for the first time publicly into opposition to the Tenneseean. The
resolutions containing the censure were voted down, however, by a
majority of almost two to one. In the Senate a select committee, after
a laborious investigation, brought in an unfavorable report, but no
further action was taken.

When the discussion in Congress was at its height, Jackson himself
appeared in Washington. Certain friends at the capital, fearing that
his outbursts of temper would prejudice his case, urged him to remain
at home, but others assured him that his presence was needed. To his
neighbor, Major Lewis, Jackson confided: "A lot of d---d rascals, with
Clay at their head--and maybe with Adams in the rear-guard--are
setting up a conspiracy against me. I'm going there to see it out with
them."

Until vindicated by the House vote, he remained quietly in his hotel.
After that he felt free to pay and receive calls, attend dinners, and
accept the tokens of regard which were showered upon him. It was now
that he paid his first visit to a number of the larger eastern cities.
Philadelphia fêted him four days. In New York the freedom of the city
was presented by the mayor on a delicately inscribed parchment
enclosed in a gold box, and Tammany gave a great dinner at which the
leading guest, to the dismay of the young Van Buren and other
supporters of Crawford, toasted DeWitt Clinton, the leader of the
opposing Republican faction. At Baltimore there was a dinner, and the
city council asked the visitor to sit for a picture by Peale for the
adornment of the council room. Here the General was handed a copy of
the Senate committee's report, abounding in strictures on his Seminole
campaign. Hastening back to Washington, he filled the air with
threats, and was narrowly prevented from personally assaulting a
member of the investigating committee. When, however, it appeared that
the report was to be allowed to repose for all time on the table,
Jackson's indignation cooled, and soon he was on his way back to
Tennessee. With him went the news that Adams and Onis had signed a
treaty of "amity, settlements, and limits," whereby for a
consideration of five million dollars the sovereignty of all Florida
was transferred to the United States. This treaty, as Jackson viewed
it, was the crowning vindication of the acts which had been called in
question; and public sentiment agreed with him.

Dilatory tactics on the part of the Madrid Government delayed the
actual transfer of the territory more than two years. After having
twice refused, Jackson at length accepted the governorship of Florida,
and in the early summer of 1821 he set out, by way of New Orleans, for
his new post. Mrs. Jackson went with him, although she had no liking
for either the territory or its people. On the morning of the 17th of
July the formal transfer took place. A procession was formed,
consisting of such American soldiers as were on the spot. A ship's
band briskly played _The Star Spangled Banner_ and the new Governor
rode proudly at the fore as the procession moved along Main Street to
the government house, where ex-Governor Callava with his staff was in
waiting. The Spanish flag was hauled down, the American was run up,
the keys were handed over, and the remaining members of the garrison
were sent off to the vessels which on the morrow were to bear them on
their way to Cuba. Only Callava and a few other officials and
merchants stayed behind to close up matters of public and private
business.

Jackson's governorship was brief and stormy. In the first place, he
had no taste for administrative routine, and he found no such
opportunity as he had hoped for to confer favors upon his friends. "I
am sure our stay here will not be long," wrote Mrs. Jackson to a
brother in early August. "This office does not suit my husband....
There never was a man more disappointed than he has been. He has not
the power to appoint one of his friends." In the second place, the new
Governor's status was wholly anomalous, since Congress had extended to
the territory only the revenue and anti-slave-trade laws, leaving
Jackson to exercise in other matters the rather vague powers of the
captain general of Cuba and of the Spanish governors of the Floridas.
And in the third place, before his first twenty-four hours were up,
the new executive fell into a desperate quarrel with his predecessor,
a man of sufficiently similar temperament to make the contest a source
of sport for the gods.

Jackson was prepared to believe the worst of any Spaniard, and his
relations with Callava grew steadily more strained until finally, with
a view to obtaining possession of certain deeds and other legal
papers, he had the irate dignitary shut up overnight in the calaboose.
Then he fell upon the judge of the Western District of Florida for
issuing a writ of habeas _corpus_ in the Spaniard's behalf; and all
parties--Jackson, Callava, and the judge--swamped the wearied
officials at Washington with "statements" and "exhibitions" setting
forth in lurid phraseology their respective views upon the questions
involved. Callava finally carried his complaints to the capital in
person and stirred the Spanish Minister to a fresh bombardment of the
White House. Monroe's Cabinet spent three days discussing the subject,
without coming to a decision. Many were in honest doubt as to the
principles of law involved; some were fearful of the political effects
of any stand they might take; all were inexpressibly relieved when,
late in the year, word came that "Don Andrew Jackson" had resigned the
governorship and was proposing to retire to private life at the
Hermitage.



CHAPTER IV


THE DEATH OF "KING CAUCUS"

On a bracing November afternoon in 1821 Jackson rode up with his
family to the Hermitage free for the first time in thirty-two years
from all responsibility of civil and military office. He was now
fifty-four years old and much broken by exposure and disease; the
prospect of spending the remainder of his days among his hospitable
neighbors on the banks of the Cumberland yielded deep satisfaction.
The home-loving Mrs. Jackson, too, earnestly desired that he should
not again be drawn into the swirl of public life. "I do hope," she
wrote plaintively to a niece soon after her return to the Hermitage,
"they will leave Mr. Jackson alone. He is not a well man and never
will be unless they allow him to rest. He has done his share for the
country. How little time has he had to himself or for his own
interests in the thirty years of our wedded life in all that time he
has not spent one-fourth of his days under his own roof. The rest of
the time away, traveling, holding court, or at the capital of the
country, or in camp, or fighting its battles, or treating with the
Indians; mercy knows what not."

The intent to retire was honest enough but not so easy to carry out.
The conqueror of the Creeks and Seminoles belonged not merely to
Tennessee but to the entire Southwest; the victor of New Orleans
belonged to the Nation. Already there was talk--"talk everlastingly,"
Mrs. Jackson tells us in the letter just quoted--of making the hero
President. Jackson, furthermore, was not the type of man to sit idly
by while great scenes were enacted on the political stage. When he
returned from Florida, he faced the future with the weary vision of a
sick man. Rest and reviving strength, however, put the old vim into
his words and acts. In two years he was a second time taking a seat in
the United States Senate, in three he was contesting for the
presidency, and in seven he was moving into the White House.

The glimpses which one gets of the General's surroundings and habits
during his brief interval of repose create a pleasing impression.
Following the winding turnpike westward from Nashville a distance of
nine or ten miles and rumbling across the old wooden bridge over Stone
River, a visitor would find himself at Hermitage Farm. The estate
contained at that time somewhat more than a thousand acres, of which
four hundred were under cultivation and the remainder luxuriant
forest. Negro cabins stood here and there, and in one corner was a
little brick church which the proprietor had built for the solace of
his wife. In the center of a well-kept lawn, flanked with cedars and
oaks, stood the family mansion, the Hermitage, whose construction had
been begun at the close of the Seminole War in 1819. The building was
of brick, two stories high, with a double wooden piazza in both front
and rear. The rooms were small and simply furnished, the chief
adornment being portraits of the General and his friends, though later
was added the familiar painting of Mrs. Jackson. Lavasseur, who as
private secretary of La Fayette visited the place in 1825, was greatly
surprised to find a person of Jackson's renown living in a structure
which in France would hardly suffice for the porter's lodge at the
château of a man of similar standing. But western Tennessee afforded
nothing finer, and Jackson considered himself palatially housed.

Life on the Hermitage estate had its full share of the charm of the
old South. After breakfasting at eight or nine, the proprietor spent
the day riding over his broad acres, giving instructions to his
workmen, keeping up his accounts, chatting with neighbors and
passers-by, and devouring the newspapers with a zeal born of
unremitting interest in public affairs. After the evening meal the
family gathered on the cool piazza in summer, or around the blazing
hearth of the great living room in winter, and spent the hours until
the early bedtime in telling stories, discussing local and national
happenings, or listening to the news of distant localities as retailed
by the casual visitor. The hospitality of the Jackson home was
proverbial. The General's army friends came often to see him.
Political leaders and advisers flocked to the place. Clergymen of all
denominations were received with special warmth by Mrs. Jackson.
Eastern men of distinction, when traveling to the West, came to pay
their respects. No foreigner who penetrated as far as the Mississippi
Valley would think of returning to his native land without calling
upon the picturesque figure at the Hermitage.

Chief among visitors from abroad was La Fayette. The two men met in
Washington in 1824 and formed an instant attachment for each other.
The great French patriot was greeted at Nashville the following year
with a public reception and banquet at which Jackson, as the first
citizen of the State, did the honors. Afterwards he spent some days in
the Jackson home, and one can imagine the avidity with which the two
men discussed the American and French revolutions, Napoleon, and the
late New Orleans campaign.

Jackson was first and last a democrat. He never lost touch with the
commonest people. Nevertheless there was always something of the grand
manner about him. On formal and ceremonial occasions he bore himself
with becoming dignity and even grace; in dress he was, as a rule,
punctilious. During his years at the Hermitage he was accustomed to
ride about in a carriage drawn by four spirited iron-gray horses,
attended by servants in blue livery with brass buttons, glazed hats,
and silver bands. "A very big man, sir," declared an old hotel waiter
to the visiting biographer Parton long afterwards. "We had many big
men, sir, in Nashville at that time, but General Jackson was the
biggest man of them all. I knew the General, sir; but he always had so
many people around him when he came to town that it was not often I
could get a chance to say anything to him."

The question as to who first proposed Jackson for the presidency will
probably never be answered. The victory at New Orleans evidently
brought the idea into many minds. As the campaign of 1816 was
beginning, Aaron Burr wrote to his son-in-law that, if the country
wanted a President of firmness and decision, "that man is Andrew
Jackson." Not apparently until 1821 was the suggestion put forward in
such a way as to lead Jackson himself to take note of it. Even then he
scoffed at it. To a friend who assured him that he was not "safe from
the presidency" in 1824, he replied: "I really hope you don't think
that I am d---- fool enough to believe that. No sir; I may be pretty
well satisfied with myself in some things, but am not vain enough for
that." On another occasion he declared: "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."

It really mattered little what the General himself thought. His
Tennessee friends had conceived the idea that he could be elected, and
already they were at work to realize this vision. One of the most
active was John H. Eaton, who had lately written the hero's biography
down to the return from New Orleans. Another of his friends was
Governor Blount. John Rhea, Felix Grundy, and half a dozen more
helped. But the man who really made Jackson President was his near
neighbor and his inseparable companion of later years, William B.
Lewis.

In a day of astute politicians Major Lewis was one of the cleverest.
He knew Jackson more intimately than did any other man and could sway
him readily to his purposes in all matters upon which the General's
mind was not absolutely made up. He had a wide acquaintance over the
country; he was possessed of ample means and leisure; he was an adept
at pulling judiciously laid and well-concealed political wires; he
fully understood the ideas, aspirations, and feelings of the classes
whose support was necessary to the success of his plans. In the
present juncture he worked on two main lines: first, to arouse
Jackson's own State to a feverish enthusiasm for the candidacy of its
"favorite son," and, second, to start apparently spontaneous Jackson
movements in various sections of the country, in such a manner that
their cumulative effect would be to create an impression of a
nation-wide and irresistible demand for the victor of New Orleans as a
candidate.

Tennessee was easily stirred. That the General merited the highest
honor within the gift of the people required no argument among his
fellow citizens. The first open steps were taken in January, 1822,
when the _Gazette_ and other Nashville papers sounded the clarion
call. The response was overwhelming; and when Jackson himself, in
reply to a letter from Grundy, diplomatically declared that he would
"neither seek nor shun" the presidency, his candidacy was regarded as
an established fact. On the 20th of July, the Legislature of the State
placed him formally in nomination. Meanwhile Lewis had gone to North
Carolina to work up sentiment there, and by the close of the year
assurances of support were coming in satisfactorily. From being
skeptical or at best indifferent, Jackson himself had come to share
the enthusiasm of his assiduous friends.

The Jackson managers banked from the first upon two main assets: one
was the exceptional popularity of their candidate, especially in the
South and West; the other was a political situation so muddled that at
the coming election it might be made to yield almost any result. For
upwards of a generation the presidency and vice presidency had been at
the disposal of a working alliance of Virginia and New York,
buttressed by such support as was needed from other controllable
States. Virginia regularly got the presidency, New York (except at the
time of the Clinton defection of 1812) the vice presidency. After the
second election of Monroe, in 1820, however, there were multiplying
signs that this affiliation of interests had reached the end of its
tether. In the first place, the Virginia dynasty had run out; at all
events Virginia had no candidate to offer and was preparing to turn
its support to a Georgian of Virginian birth, William H. Crawford. In
the second place, party lines had totally disappeared, and the
unifying and stabilizing influences of party names and affiliations
could not be counted on to keep down the number of independent
candidacies. Already, indeed, by the end of 1822 there were a
half-dozen avowed candidates, three of whom had seats at Monroe's
Cabinet table. Each was the representative of a section or of a
distinct interest, rather than of a party, and no one was likely to
feel under any compulsion to withdraw from the race at a preliminary
stage.

New England offered John Quincy Adams. She did so with reluctance, for
the old Federalist elements had never forgiven him for his desertion
to the Republican camp in the days of the embargo, while the back
country democracy had always looked upon him as an alien. But he was
the section's only available man--indeed, the only promising candidate
from any Northern State. His frigid manner was against him. But he had
had a long and honorable diplomatic career; he was winning new
distinction as Secretary of State; and he could expect to profit both
by the feeling that the North was entitled to the presidency and by
the fact that he was the only candidate from a non-slave State.

Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, was the heir apparent of the
Virginia dynasty. Formerly this would have meant a clear road to the
White House. Even now it was supposed to be a tremendous asset; and
notwithstanding the Georgian's personal unpopularity in most parts of
the country, his advantages as the "regular candidate," coupled with
the long and careful campaign carried on in his behalf, were expected
by many keen observers to pull him through.

A third candidate within the Cabinet circle was Calhoun, Secretary of
War. Like Crawford, he could expect to reach the presidency only by
winning the support of one or more of the greater Northern States. For
a while he had hopes of Pennsylvania. When it appeared that he had
nothing to look for in this direction, he resigned himself to the
conclusion that, since he was yet hardly forty years of age, his time
had not yet come.

For the first time, the West now put forward candidates--two of them,
Clay and Jackson. Clay was a Kentuckian, of Virginian birth and
breeding, in whom were mingled the leading characteristics of both his
native and his adopted section. He was "impetuous, wilful,
high-spirited, daring, jealous, but, withal, a lovable man." For a
decade he had been the most conspicuous figure in the national House
of Representatives. He had raised the speakership to a high level of
importance and through its power had fashioned a set of issues,
reflective of western and middle-state ideas, upon which the politics
of the country turned for more than a quarter of a century. As
befitted a "great conciliator," he had admirers in every corner of the
land. Whether his strength could be sufficiently massed to yield
electoral results remained to be discovered.

But what of Jackson? If, as one writer has said, Clay was one of the
favorites of the West, Jackson was the West itself. "While Clay was
able to voice, with statesmanlike ability, the demand for economic
legislation to promote her interests, and while he exercised an
extraordinary fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence,
he never became the hero of the great masses of the West; he appealed
rather to the more intelligent--to the men of business and of
property."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the
contentious, self-confident, nationalistic democracy of the interior.
He could make no claim to statesmanship. He had held no important
legislative or administrative position in his State, and his brief
career in Congress was entirely without distinction. He was a man of
action, not a theorist, and his views on public questions were, even
as late as 1820, not clear cut or widely known. In a general way he
represented the school of Randolph and Monroe, rather than that of
Jefferson and Madison. He was a moderate protectionist, because he
believed that domestic manufactures would make the United States
independent of European countries in time of war. On the Bank and
internal improvements his mind was not made up, although he was
inclined to regard both as unconstitutional.

Jackson's attitude toward the leading political personalities of the
time left no room for doubt. He supported Monroe in 1816 and in 1820
and continued on friendly terms with him notwithstanding the
President's failure on certain occasions to follow his advice. Among
the new contenders for the presidency the one he disliked most was
Crawford. "As to Wm. H. Crawford," he wrote to a friend in 1821, "you
know my opinion. I would support the Devil first." Clay, also, he
disliked--partly out of recollection of the Kentuckian's censorious
attitude during the Seminole debates, partly because of the natural
rivalry between the two men for the favor of the western people. Clay
fully reciprocated by refusing to believe that "killing 2,500
Englishmen at New Orleans" qualified Jackson for the "various
difficult and complicated duties of the chief magistracy." Toward
Adams, Jackson was not ill disposed; before he decided to permit his
own name to be used, he said that he would give his support in 1824 to
the New Englander--unless one other person should be brought forward.
That person was Calhoun, for whom, among all the candidates of the
day, he thus far had the warmest regard.

Among so many aspirants--and not all have been mentioned--how should
the people make up their minds? In earlier days the party caucuses in
Congress would have eliminated various candidates, and the voters
would have found themselves called upon to make a choice between
probably but two opponents. The caucus was an informal, voluntary
gathering of the party members in the two houses to canvass the
political situation and decide upon the men to be supported by the
rank and file of the party for the presidency and vice presidency. In
the lack of other nominating machinery it served a useful purpose, and
nominations had been commonly made in this manner from 1796 onwards.
There were obvious objections to the plan--chiefly that the authority
exercised was assumed rather than delegated--and, as the campaign of
1824 approached, opposition flared up in a very impressive manner.

Crawford, as the "regular" candidate, wanted a caucus, and his
adherents supported him in the wish. But all his rivals were opposed
to it, partly because they felt that they could not gain a caucus
nomination, partly because their followers generally objected to the
system. "King Caucus" became the target of general criticism.
Newspapers, except those for Crawford, denounced the old system;
legislatures passed resolutions against it; public meetings condemned
it; ponderous pamphlets were hurled at it; the campaigns of Jackson
and Clay, in particular, found their keynote in hostility toward it.
Failing to perceive that under the changed circumstances a caucus
nomination might become a liability rather than an asset, the Crawford
element pushed its plans, and on February 14, 1824, a caucus--destined
to be the last of the kind in the country--was duly held. It proved a
fiasco, for it was attended by only sixty-six persons. Crawford was
"recommended to the people of the United States" by an almost
unanimous vote, but the only effect was to infuse fresh energy into
the campaigns of his leading competitors. "The caucus," wrote Daniel
Webster to his brother Ezekiel, "has hurt nobody but its friends."

For the first time in eight years the country witnessed a real
presidential contest. The campaign, none the less, was one in which
the candidates themselves took but little active part. The days of
"swinging around the circle" had not yet dawned in our national
politics, nor had even those of the "front-porch" campaign. Adams made
no effort either to be nominated or to be elected, retaining
throughout the contest that austere reserve in public manner which
contrasted so singularly with his amiability and good humor in private
life. Jackson remained quietly at the Hermitage, replying to
correspondents and acknowledging expressions of support, but leaving
to his managers the work of winning the voters. Clay, whose oratorical
gifts would have made him an invincible twentieth century campaigner,
contented himself with a few interviews and speeches. The candidate
who normally would have taken most active personal part in the
campaign was Crawford. But in August, 1823--six months before the
caucus nomination--he was stricken with paralysis and rendered
speechless, almost blind, and practically helpless. For months he
hovered between life and death in a "mansion" on the outskirts of
Washington, while his friends labored to conceal the seriousness of
his condition and to keep his canvass going. Gradually he rallied; but
his powerful frame was shattered, and even when the caucus discharged
its appointed task of nominating him, the politicians were
cold-heartedly speculating upon who would receive the "old republican"
support if he should die. He recovered and lived ten years; but his
chances of the presidency were much diminished by his ill fortune. "He
had fallen with his face toward the goal, with his eyes and his heart
fixed upon it."

As the canvass progressed, Jackson steadily gained. His election to
the United States Senate, in the autumn of 1823, over a stanch
supporter of Crawford showed that his own State was acting in good
faith when it proposed him for the higher position. Clever propaganda
turned Pennsylvania "Jackson mad"; whereupon Calhoun, with an eye to
the future, sought an alliance with his competitor. The upshot was
that a convention held at Harrisburg in March, 1824, nominated Jackson
almost unanimously and named Calhoun for the vice presidency.
Hostility to the caucus became also a great asset. Tariff, internal
improvements, and foreign policy were discussed in the campaign, but
the real issue was the manner of selecting the President. Should he
continue to be chosen by a combination of Congressmen, or should the
people take matters into their own hands? Impatience with the caucus
system showed itself in numerous nominations of Clay, Adams, and
Jackson by sundry state conventions, legislatures, and other more or
less official bodies. The supporters of Jackson, in particular, made
"down with the caucus" their rallying cry and found it tremendously
effective. In the earlier stages of the campaign the politicians,
aside from Lewis and his coworkers, were unwilling to believe that
Jackson could be elected. Later, however, they were forced to
acknowledge his strength, and at the end the fight was really between
Jackson and the field, rather than between Crawford and the field as
had been anticipated.

At the beginning of November, Jackson, accompanied by his wife and
traveling in a handsome coach drawn by four of the finest Hermitage
thoroughbreds, set out for Washington. Hostile scribblers lost no time
in contrasting this display of grandeur with the republican simplicity
of Jefferson, who rode from Monticello to the capital on the back of a
plantation nag without pedigree. But Jackson was not perturbed. At
various points on the road he received returns from the elections, and
when after four or five weeks the equipage drew up in the capital
Jackson knew the general result. Calhoun had been elected vice
president with little opposition. But no one of the presidential
candidates had obtained an electoral majority, and the task of
choosing among the highest three would, under the terms of the
Constitution, devolve upon the House of Representatives. When, by the
middle of December, the returns were all in, it was found that Jackson
would have 99 votes in the electoral college, Adams 84, Crawford 41,
and Clay 37.

The country awaited the 9th of February--the day of the official
count--with great interest. Clay was, of course, eliminated. Crawford
likewise, by reason of his poor showing and the precarious state of
his health, could not expect to do more than hold his own. The contest
had narrowed to Jackson and Adams, with Clay holding the balance.
There were twenty-four States in the Union; the successful candidate
must command the votes of thirteen.

The choice that Clay now had to make was distasteful, although not
really difficult. Jackson had obtained a substantial plurality of the
electoral votes; he probably had a plurality of the popular vote,
although in the six States in which the electors were chosen by the
Legislature the popular vote could not be computed; the Legislature of
Clay's own State called upon the Congressmen from the State to give
the Tenneseean its support. But Clay had felt very bitterly about the
candidacy of "this military chieftain." Furthermore, he knew that if
Jackson were to be elected, the country would not be disposed to take
his successor from the West. Besides, Calhoun had put himself in line
for the Jacksonian succession. On the other hand, Clay was not without
grievances against Adams. The New Englander had captured the coveted
Secretaryship of State in Monroe's Cabinet; he had taken no pains to
conceal his dislike of the Kentucky "gamester in politics"; his
foreign policy had been the target of many of Clay's keenest
oratorical thrusts. But the country would be safe in his hands; and a
popular westerner might well hope to become his successor. The
decision in favor of Adams was reached with little delay and was
confided to intimates almost two months before the House balloted.
Though Clay's choice did not insure the election of Adams, it made
that outcome extremely probable.

As the weeks passed, the situation became more tense. All the
principals in the drama were at the capital--Adams as Secretary of
State, Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury, Clay as Speaker of the
House, Jackson as Senator--and the city was filled with followers who
busied themselves in proposing combinations and making promises which,
for the greater part, could not be traced to the candidates
themselves. O'Neil's Tavern--graced by the vivacious "Peggy," who, as
Mrs. John H. Eaton, was later to upset the equilibrium of the Jackson
Administration--and other favorite lodging houses were the scenes of
midnight conferences, intimate conversations, and mysterious comings
and goings which kept their oldest and most sophisticated frequenters
on the alert. "_Incedo super ignes_--I walk over fires," confided the
straitlaced Adams to his diary, and not without reason. A group of
Clay's friends came to the New Englander's room to urge in somewhat
veiled language that their chief be promised, in return for his
support, a place in the Cabinet. A Missouri representative who held
the balance of power in his delegation plainly offered to swing the
State for Adams if the latter would agree to retain a brother on the
federal bench and be "reasonable" in the matter of patronage.

By the last week of January it was rather generally understood that
Clay's strength would be thrown to Adams. Up to this time the Jackson
men had refused to believe that such a thing could happen. But
evidence had been piled mountain-high; adherents of both allies were
openly boasting of the arrangements that had been made. The
Jacksonians were furious, and the air was filled with recriminations.
On January 28, 1825, an anonymous letter in the _Columbian Observer_
of Philadelphia made the direct charge that the agents of Clay had
offered the Kentuckian's support to both Jackson and Adams in return
for an appointment as Secretary of State, and that, while the friends
of Jackson would not descend to "such mean barter and sale," a bargain
with the Adams forces had been duly closed. Clay's rage was
ungovernable. Through the columns of the _National Intelligencer_ he
pronounced his unknown antagonist "a base and infamous calumniator, a
dastard and a liar," called upon him to "unveil himself," and declared
that he would hold him responsible "to all the laws which govern and
regulate men of honor."

Two days later an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman by the name of
George Kremer tendered his respects to "the Honorable H. Clay," avowed
his authorship of the communication in question, offered to prove the
truth of his charges, and closed sententiously by affirming that as a
representative of the people he would "not fear to 'cry aloud and
spare not' when their rights and privileges are at stake." The matter
was serious, but official Washington could hardly repress a smile.
Kremer was a thoroughly honest but grossly illiterate rustic busybody
who thus far had attracted the capital's attention mainly by reason of
his curiously cut leopard-skin overcoat. The real author of the charge
seems to have been James Buchanan, and Kremer was simple-minded and
credulous enough to be made the catspaw in the business. Clay was
taken aback. Kremer significantly made no reference to the "code of
honor"; and since a duel with such a personage would be an absurdity,
Clay substituted a request that the House make an immediate
investigation of the charges. A committee of seven was appointed. But
when it summoned Kremer to give his testimony, he refused to appear,
on the ground--which in the present instance was a mere pretext--that
the House had no jurisdiction over the conduct of its members outside
the chamber.

The truth of the matter is that Kremer was only a tool in the hands of
the Jackson managers. He admitted privately to members of the
committee that he did not write the letter in the _Observer_, and it
was plain enough that he did not understand its purport. His promise
to substantiate its contents was made in a moment of surprise, because
somebody had neglected to coach him on the point.

Finding that it could make no headway, the committee reported the
fact, on the 9th of February, and the investigation was dropped. This
was precisely what the Jackson managers wanted. Whatever happened,
Jackson would be the gainer. "If Clay transferred his following to
Adams, the charge would gain credence with the masses; if he were not
made Secretary of State, it would be alleged that honest George Kremer
(an ardent Jacksonian) had exposed the bargain and prevented its
consummation."[6]

Was this charge of a "corrupt bargain" well founded? For a generation
every public man had views on that subject for which he was ready to
fight; mid-century and later historians came to conclusions of the
most contradictory nature. The pros and cons are too complicated to be
presented here, but certain things are fairly clear. In two elaborate
speeches Clay marshaled evidence that before leaving Kentucky he
decided to support Adams in preference to Jackson and Crawford. This
evidence did not convince the Jacksonians; but it could hardly have
been expected to do so, and nowadays it looks to be unimpeachable. It
is certain that the friends of Clay approached the Adams managers with
a view to a working agreement involving the Secretaryship of State;
but it is equally clear that the Jackson and Crawford men solicited
Clay's support "by even more unblushing offers of political reward
than those alleged against Adams." Finally it is known that Adams gave
some explicit preëlection pledges, and that by doing so he drew some
votes; but on the subject of an alliance with Clay he is not known to
have gone further than to say to a delegation of Clay supporters that
if elected by western votes he would naturally look to the West for
much of the support which his Administration would need. At noon, on
the 9th of February, the Senate and House met in joint session to
witness the count of the electoral vote. Spectators packed the
galleries and overflowed into every available space. The first acts
were of a purely formal nature. Then the envelopes were opened; the
votes were counted; Calhoun was declared elected to the vice
presidency; and it was announced that no candidate for the presidency
had received a majority. Then the senators withdrew, and the
representatives addressed themselves to the task which the
Constitution devolved upon them. The members of each delegation took
their seats together; the vote of each State was placed in a separate
box on a table; and Daniel Webster and John Randolph, acting as
tellers, opened the boxes and tabulated the results. No one expected
the first ballot to be decisive; indeed the friends of Crawford, who
were present in large numbers, were pinning their hopes to the
possibility that after repeated ballotings the House would break the
deadlock between Jackson and Adams by turning to their candidate. A
hush fell upon the expectant assemblage as Webster rose to announce
the result; and seasoned politicians could hardly trust their ears
when they heard: Adams, thirteen votes; Jackson, seven; Crawford,
four. An eleventh-hour change of mind by a New York representative had
thrown the vote of that State into the Adams column and had thereby
assured the triumph of the New Englander.

That evening Jackson and Adams came face to face at a presidential
levee, Jackson with a lady on his right arm. Each man hesitated an
instant, and spectators wondered what was going to happen. But those
who were looking for a sensation were disappointed. Reaching out his
long arm, the General said in his most cordial manner: "How do you do,
Mr. Adams? I give you my left hand, for the right, as you see, is
devoted to the fair; I hope you are very well, sir." The reply came in
clear but icy tones: "Very well, sir; I hope General Jackson is well."
It is the testimony of an unprejudiced observer that of the two, the
defeated Tenneseean bore himself more graciously than the victorious
New Englander.

Two days later Adams, following a conference with Monroe, invited upon
his head the fires of heaven by announcing that he had decided to
appoint Clay Secretary of State, "considering it due to his talents
and services to the western section of the United States, whence he
comes, and to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations."



CHAPTER V


THE DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH

Monroe's Administration drew to a close in a mellow sunset of popular
approval. But no prophetic genius was required to foresee that clouds
of discontent and controversy would hang heavy about the head of his
successor. Adams certainly did not expect it to be otherwise.
"Prospects are flattering for the immediate issue," he recorded in his
diary shortly before the election, "but the fearful condition of them
is that success would open to a far severer trial than defeat." The
darkest forebodings were more than realized. No one of our chief
executives, except possibly Andrew Johnson, was ever the target of
more relentless and vindictive attacks.

Adams was, in the first place, a minority President. Jackson's popular
vote was probably larger; his electoral vote was certainly so; and the
vote in the House of Representatives was at the last moment swung to
Adams only by certain unexpected and more or less accidental
developments. By thus receiving his office at the hands of a branch of
Congress, in competition with a candidate who had a wider popular
support, the New Englander fell heir to all the indignation that had
been aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially against
the selection of a President by Congressmen.

There was, in addition, the charge of a "corrupt bargain." It mattered
not greatly whether the accusation was true or not. The people widely
accepted it as true, and the Administration had to bear the stigma.
"The coalition of Blifil and Black George, of the Puritan and the
black-leg," John Randolph called the new alliance; and while Clay
sought to vindicate his honor in a duel with the author of the phrase,
nothing that he or Adams could do or say was able to overcome the
effect upon the public mind created by the cold fact that when the
Clay men turned their support to Adams their leader was forthwith made
Secretary of State.

A further source of difficulty in the situation was the temperament of
Adams himself. There was no abler, more honest, or more patriotic man
in public life; yet in the presidency he was, especially at this
juncture of affairs, a misfit. He was cold and reserved when every
consideration called for cordiality; he was petulant when tolerance
and good humor were the qualities most needful. He could neither
arouse enthusiasm nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at
mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership
requisite to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts
of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated
support. In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of
scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of
old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The
people did not understand him, but they felt instinctively that he was
not one of themselves; and, therefore, they cast him out." Nobody had
ever called him "Old Hickory" or any other name indicative of popular
endearment.

Clay's appointment as Secretary of State was thoroughly typical of the
independent, unyielding attitude of the new Administration. Adams had
not the slightest sympathy with the idea of rotation in public
position: such a policy, he said, would make government "a perpetual
and unremitting scramble for office." He announced that there would be
no removals except such as complaint showed to be for the good of the
service, and only twelve removals took place during his entire term.
The spoilsmen argued and fumed. The editor of an administration
newspaper warmly told the President that in consequence of his policy
he would himself be removed as soon as the term for which he had been
elected had expired. But entreaties and threats were alike of no
avail. Even Clay could not get the removal of a naval officer guilty
of unbecoming conduct. In his zeal for nonpartizanship Adams fairly
leaned backwards, with the result that incompetents were shielded and
the offices were left in the hands of men who, in a very large number
of cases, were openly hostile to the President and to his policies.

"Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my
predecessors," wrote Adams in his first message to Congress, "I am
deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener
in need of your indulgence." In the principles and measures which he
urged upon the legislative branch, none the less, he showed small
regard for moderation or expediency. He defined the object of
government to be the improvement of the condition of the people, and
he refused to recognize in the federal Constitution restrictions which
would prevent the national authorities from fulfilling this function
in the highest degree. He urged not only the building of roads and
canals but the establishment of a national university, the support of
observatories, "the light-houses of the skies," and the exploration of
the interior and of the far northwestern parts of the country. He
advocated heavy protective duties on goods imported from abroad, and
asked Congress to pass laws not alone for the betterment of
agriculture, manufactures, and trade but for the "encouragement of the
mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and
the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." He thought
that the public lands should be sold at the highest prices they would
bring and that the money should be used by the Government to promote
the general welfare. He had no doubt of either the power or the duty
of the Government to maintain a national bank.

Since the War of 1812 the Republicans, with whom Adams had been
numbered, had inclined strongly toward a liberal construction of the
Constitution, but none had gone to the limits marked out in this
program. Besides, a strong reaction was now setting in. The
President's recommendations were received in some quarters with
astonishment, in some rather with amusement. Nowhere were they
regarded, in their entirety, with favor. Even Clay--spokesman of
nationalism though he was--could not follow his chief in his
untrammeled flights. Men still widely believed that, the National
Government ought to spend money freely on highways, canals, and other
improvements. But by his bold avowals Adams characteristically threw
away support for both himself and his cause; and the era of federal
initiative and management was thus hastened toward its close.

No one who knew Jackson and his political managers expected them to
accept the anomalous electoral results of 1825 as expressing the real
will of the nation, and it was a foregone conclusion not only that the
General would again be a candidate, but that the campaign of 1828
would at once begin. The defeated Senator remained in Washington long
enough to present himself at the White House on Inauguration Day and
felicitate his successful rival. Then he set out on the long journey
homeward. Every town through Pennsylvania and along the Ohio turned
out _en masse_ to greet him, and at Nashville he was given a
prodigious reception. To friends and traveling companions he talked
constantly about the election, leaving no doubt of his conviction that
he had been defeated by intrigue. To a sympathetic group of passengers
traveling down the Ohio with him on board the _General Neville_ he
declared emphatically that, if he had been willing to make the same
promises and offers to Clay that Adams had made, he would that minute
be in the presidential chair. If he should yet attain that dignity, he
added significantly, he would do it "with clean hands." It is reported
that as he spoke there was in his eye the fire of determination, such
as his soldiers had seen there as he strode up and down the
breastworks at New Orleans.

To this point Jackson had sought the presidency rather at the
instigation of his friends than because of personal desire for the
office. Now all was changed. The people had expressed their preference
for him, and their will had been thwarted. Henceforth he was moved by
an inflexible purpose to vindicate both his own right to the position
and the right of his fellow citizens to choose their chief executive
without hindrance. In this determination he was warmly backed up by
his neighbors and advisers, and the machinery for a long, systematic,
and resistless campaign was speedily put into running order. One group
of managers took charge in Washington. Another set to work in New
York. A third undertook to keep Pennsylvania in line. A fourth began
to consolidate support in the South. At the capital the _United States
Telegraph_, edited by Duff Green of Missouri, was established as a
Jackson organ, and throughout the country friendly journals were set
the task of keeping up an incessant fire upon the Administration and
of holding the Jackson men together. Local committees were organized;
pamphlets and handbills were put into circulation; receptions and
public dinners were exploited, whenever possible, in the interest of
the cause. First, last, and always, Jackson's candidacy was put
forward as the hope and opportunity of the plain people as against the
politicians.

In October the Tennessee Legislature again placed its favorite
formally in nomination, and a few days later the candidate resigned
his seat in the Senate in order to be more advantageously situated for
carrying on his campaign. For more than a year he remained quietly at
the Hermitage, dividing his attention between his blooded horses and
dogs and his political interests. Lewis stayed at his side, partly to
restrain him from outbreaks of temper or other acts that might injure
his interests, partly to serve as an intermediary between him and the
Washington manipulators.

Before Adams had been in the White House six months the country was
divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or
administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were
many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the
self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him
its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the
Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the
feeling of the South Carolinian's friends that they, and not Jackson's
friends, should lead in the coming campaign. After a good deal of
hesitation the supporters of Crawford came over also. Van Buren
coquetted with the Adams forces for a year, and the old-line
Republicans, strong in the Jeffersonian faith, brought themselves to
the support of the Tenneseean with difficulty; but eventually both
northern and southern wings of the Crawford contingent alined
themselves against the Administration. The decision of Van Buren
brought into the Jackson ranks a past master in party management, "the
cleverest politician in a State in which the sort of politics that is
concerned with the securing of elections rather than fighting for
principles had grown into a science and an art." By 1826 the Jackson
forces were welded into a substantial party, although for a long time
their principles involved little more than hostility to Adams and
enthusiasm for Jackson, and they bore no other designation than
Jackson men.

The elements that were left to support the Administration were the
followers of Adams and Clay. These eventually drew together under the
name of National Republicans. Their strength, however, was limited,
for Adams could make no appeal to the masses, even in New England;
while Clay, by contributing to Jackson's defeat, had forfeited much of
the popularity that would otherwise have been his.

If the story of Adams's Administration could be told in detail, it
would be one long record of rancorous warfare between the President
and the Jacksonian opposition in Congress. Adams, on the one hand,
held inflexibly to his course, advocating policies and recommending
measures which he knew had not the remotest chance of adoption; and,
on the other hand, the opposition--which in the last two years of the
Administration controlled the Senate as well as the House of
Representatives--balked at no act that would humiliate the President
and make capital for its western idol. At the outset the Jacksonians
tried to hold up the confirmation of Clay. It fell furiously, and
quite without discrimination, upon the President's great scheme of
national improvements, professing to see in it evidence of an
insatiable desire for "concentration." In the discussion of a proposed
amendment to the Constitution providing for direct election of the
President by the people it was constantly assumed and frequently
stated that Adams had no moral right to the position which he
occupied. The President's decision to send delegates to the Panama
Congress of 1826 raised a storm of acrimonious debate and brought the
Administration's enemies into closer unison. To cap the climax, Adams
was solemnly charged with abuse of the federal patronage, and in the
Senate six bills for the remedy of the President's pernicious
practices were brought in by Benton in a single batch! Adams was able
and honest, but he got no credit from his opponents for these
qualities. He, in turn, displayed little magnanimity; and in refusing
to shape his policies and methods to meet the conditions under which
he had to work, he fell short of the highest statesmanship.

As election year approached, it became clear that the people would at
last have an opportunity to make a direct choice between Adams and
Jackson. Each candidate was formally nominated by sundry legislatures
and other bodies; no one so much as suggested nomination by
congressional caucus. In the early months of 1828 the campaign rapidly
rose to an extraordinary level of vigor and public interest. Each
party group became bitter and personal in its attacks upon the other;
in our entire political history there have been not more than two or
three campaigns so smirched with vituperation and abuse. The Jackson
papers and stump speakers laid great stress on Adams's aristocratic
temperament, denounced his policies as President, and exploited the
"corrupt bargain" charge with all possible ingenuity.

On the other hand, the Adams-Clay forces dragged forth in long array
Jackson's quarrels, duels, and rough-and-tumble encounters to prove
that he was not fit to be President; they distributed handbills
decorated with coffins bearing the names of the candidate's victims;
they cited scores of actions, from the execution of mutinous
militiamen in the Creek War to the quarrel with Callava, to show his
arbitrary disposition; and they strove in a most malicious manner to
undermine his popularity by breaking down his personal reputation, and
even that of his wife and of his mother. It has been said that "the
reader of old newspaper files and pamphlet collections of the Adamsite
persuasion, in the absence of other knowledge, would gather that
Jackson was a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cock-fighter, a
brawler, a drunkard, and withal a murderer of the most cruel and
blood-thirsty description." Issues--tariff, internal improvements,
foreign policy, slavery--receded into the background; the campaign
became for all practical purposes a personal contest between the
Tennessee soldier and the two statesmen whom he accused of bargain and
corruption. "Hurrah for Jackson!" was the beginning and end of the
creed of the masses bent on the Tenneseean's election.

Jackson never wearied of saying that he was "no politician." He was,
none the less, one of the most forceful and successful politicians
that the country has known. He was fortunate in being able to
personify a cause which was grounded deeply in the feelings and
opinions of the people, and also in being able to command the services
of a large group of tireless and skillful national and local managers.
He was willing to leave to these managers the infinite details of his
campaign. But he kept in close touch with them and their subordinates,
and upon occasion he did not hesitate to take personal command. In
politics, as in war, he was imperious; persons not willing to support
him with all their might, and without question or quibble, he
preferred to see on the other side. Throughout the campaign his
opponents hoped, and his friends feared, that he would commit some
deed of anger that would ruin his chances of election. The temptation
was strong, especially when the circumstances of his marriage were
dragged into the controversy. But while he chafed inwardly, and
sometimes expressed himself with more force than elegance in the
presence of his friends, he maintained an outward calm and dignity.
His bitterest feeling was reserved for Clay, who was known to be the
chief inspirer of the National Republicans' mud-slinging campaign. But
he felt that Adams had it in his power to put a stop to the slanders
that were set in circulation, had he cared to do so.

As the campaign drew to a close, circumstances pointed with increasing
sureness to the triumph of the Jackson forces. Adams, foreseeing the
end, found solace in harsh and sometimes picturesque entries in his
diary. A group of opposition Congressmen he pronounced "skunks of
party slander." Calhoun he described as "stimulated to frenzy by
success, flattery, and premature advancement; governed by no steady
principle, but sagacious to seize upon every prevailing popular breeze
to swell his own sails." Clay, likewise, became petulant and gloomy.
In the last two months of the canvass Jackson ordered a general
onslaught upon Kentucky, and when finally it was affirmed that the
State had been "carried out from under" its accustomed master, Clay
knew only too well that the boast was true. To Adams's assurances that
after four years of Jackson the country would gladly turn to the
Kentuckian, the latter could only reply that there would, indeed, be a
reaction, but that before another President would be taken from the
West he would be too old; and it was with difficulty that Adams
persuaded him not to retire immediately from the Cabinet.

The results of the contest fully bore out the apprehensions of the
Administration. Jackson received nearly 140,000 more popular votes
than Adams and carried every State south of the Potomac and west of
the Alleghanies. He carried Pennsylvania also by a vote of two to one
and divided about equally with his opponent the votes of New York and
Maryland. Only New England held fast for Adams. As one writer has
facetiously remarked, "It took a New England conscience to hold a
follower in line for the New England candidate." The total electoral
vote was 178 for Jackson and 83 for Adams. Calhoun was easily
reelected to the vice presidency. Both branches of Congress remained
under the control of Jackson's partizans.

Months before the election, congratulatory messages began to pour into
the Hermitage. Some came from old friends and disinterested
well-wishers, many from prospective seekers of office or of other
favors. Influential people in the East, and especially at the capital,
hastened to express their desire to be of service to the Jacksons in
the new life to which they were about to be called. In the list one
notes with interest the names of General Thomas Cadwalader of
Philadelphia, salaried lobbyist for the United States Bank, and
Senator Robert Y. Hayne, the future South Carolina nullifier.

Returns sufficiently complete to leave no doubt of Jackson's election
reached the Hermitage on the 9th of December. That afternoon, Lewis,
Carroll, and a few other members of the "general headquarters staff"
gathered at the Jackson home to review the situation and look over the
bulky correspondence that had come in. "General Jackson," reports
Lewis, "showed no elation. In fact, he had for some time considered
his election certain, the only question in his mind being the extent
of the majority. When he finished looking over the summary by States,
his only remark was that Isaac Hill, considering the odds against him,
had done wonders in New Hampshire!"

When, two weeks later, the final returns were received, leading
Tenneseeans decided to give a reception, banquet, and ball which would
outshine any social occasion in the annals of the Southwest. Just as
arrangements were completed, however, Mrs. Jackson, who had long been
in failing health, suffered an attack of heart trouble; and at the
very hour when the General was to have been received, amid all the
trappings of civil and military splendor, with the huzzas of his
neighbors, friends, and admirers, he was sitting tearless, speechless,
and almost expressionless by the corpse of his life companion. Long
after the beloved one had been laid to rest in the Hermitage garden
amid the rosebushes she had planted, the President-elect continued as
one benumbed. He never gave up the idea that his wife had been killed
by worry over the attacks made upon him and upon her by the Adams
newspapers--that, as he expressed it, she was "murdered by slanders
that pierced her heart." Only under continued prodding from Lewis and
other friends did he recall himself to his great task and set about
preparing for the arduous winter journey to Washington, composing his
inaugural address, selecting his Cabinet, and laying plans for the
reorganization of the federal Civil Service on lines already
definitely in his mind.



CHAPTER VI


THE "REIGN" BEGINS

Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828 was correctly described
by Senator Benton as "a triumph of democratic principle, and an
assertion of the people's right to govern themselves." Jefferson in
his day was a candidate of the masses, and his triumph over John Adams
in 1800 was received with great public acclaim. Yet the Virginian was
at best an aristocratic sort of democrat; he was never in the fullest
sense a man of the people. Neither Madison nor Monroe inspired
enthusiasm, and for John Quincy Adams even New Englanders voted, as
Ezekiel Webster confessed, from a cold sense of duty. Jackson was, as
no President before him, the choice of the masses. His popular vote in
1824 revealed not only his personal popularity but the growing power
of the democratic elements in the nation, and his defeat in the House
of Representatives only strengthened his own and the people's
determination to be finally victorious. The untrained, self-willed,
passionate frontier soldier came to power in 1828 as the standard
bearer of a mighty democratic uprising which was destined before it
ran its course to break down oligarchical party organizations, to
liberalize state and local governments, and to turn the stream of
national politics into wholly new channels. It was futile for men of
the old school to protest and to prophesy misfortune for the country
under its new rulers. The people had spoken, and this time the
people's will was not to be denied.

Still haggard from his recent personal loss, the President-elect set
out for Washington, at the middle of January, 1829. With him went his
nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, who was to be his private secretary;
Mrs. Donelson, who was to preside over the executive mansion; an
accomplished niece of Mrs. Jackson, who was to be of social
assistance; an artist by the name of Earl, who resided at the White
House throughout Jackson's two Administrations, engaged continually in
painting portraits of the General; and, finally, the faithful Major
Lewis, whose intention was merely to attend the inauguration and then
return to his plantation. The puffing little steamboat on which the
party traveled down the Cumberland and up the Ohio was saluted and
cheered a hundred times a day; at Louisville, Cincinnati, and
Pittsburgh there were great outpourings of demonstrative citizens.
Duff Green, one of the party managers, proposed that a great cavalcade
should meet the victor at Pittsburgh and escort him by relays to the
capital. On Van Buren's advice the plan was abandoned. But as the
party passed along the National Road toward its destination it was
accorded an ovation which left nothing to be desired as an evidence of
the public favor.

Arrived in Washington, on the 11th of February--the day on which the
electoral votes were counted in the Senate--Jackson and his friends
found temporary lodgings at the Indian Queen Tavern, commonly known as
"the Wigwam." During the next three weeks the old inn was the scene of
unwonted activity. Office seekers besieged it morning, noon, and
night; politicians came to ask favors or give advice; exponents of
every sort of cause watched for opportunities to obtain promises of
presidential support; scores of the curious came with no other purpose
than to see what a backwoods President looked like. "The city is full
of speculation and speculators," wrote Daniel Webster to his
sister-in-law a few days after Jackson's arrival; "a great multitude,
too many to be fed without a miracle, are already in the city, hungry
for office. Especially, I learn that the typographical corps is
assembled in great force. From New Hampshire, our friend Hill; from
Boston, Mr. Greene ... and from everywhere else somebody else. So many
friends ready to advise, and whose advice is so disinterested, make
somewhat of a numerous council about the President-elect; and, if
report be true, it is a council which only makes that darker which was
dark enough before."

To all, Jackson was accessible. But he was not communicative, and up
to Inauguration Day people were left to speculate not only upon the
truth of the rumor that there was to be a "full sweep" in the offices
but upon the new Administration's attitude on public questions in
general. Even Isaac Hill, a warm friend and supporter, was obliged to
write to an acquaintance four days before the inauguration that
Jackson had little to say about the future, "except in a general way."
The men with whom the Executive-elect was daily closeted were Major
Lewis and Senators Eaton and White. Van Buren would have been of the
number, had not his recently assumed duties as Governor kept him at
Albany. He was ably represented, however, by James A. Hamilton, a son
of Alexander Hamilton, to whose correspondence we owe most of what we
know about the laying of the plans for the new Administration.

The most pressing question was the personnel of the Cabinet. Upon only
one appointment was Jackson fully determined when he reached
Washington: Van Buren was to be Secretary of State. The "little
magician" had been influential in turning New York from Crawford to
Jackson; he had resigned his seat in the Senate and run for the
governorship with a view to uniting the party for Jackson's benefit;
he was the cleverest politician and, next to Calhoun, the ablest man,
in the Democratic ranks. When offered the chief place in the Cabinet
he promptly accepted. Edward Livingston was given his choice of the
remaining positions, but preferred to accept an election to the
Senate. With due regard for personal susceptibilities and sectional
interests, the list was then completed. A Pennsylvania Congressman
Samuel D. Ingham, became Secretary of the Treasury; Senator John H.
Eaton was made Secretary of War; a Calhoun supporter from North
Carolina, John Branch, was given the Navy portfolio; Senator John M.
Berrien of Georgia became Attorney-General; and William T. Barry of
Kentucky was appointed Postmaster-General, after the incumbent, John
McLean, refused to accept the policy of a clean slate in the
department. The appointments were kept secret until one week before
the inauguration, when they were announced in the party organ at the
capital, Duff Green's _United States Telegraph_.

Everywhere the list caused consternation. Van Buren's was the only
name of distinction in it; and only one of the appointees had had
experience in the administration of national affairs. Hamilton
pronounced the group "the most unintellectual Cabinet we ever had."
Van Buren doubted whether he ought to have accepted a seat in such
company. A crowning expression of dissatisfaction came from the
Tennessee delegation in Congress, which formally protested against the
appointment of Eaton. But the President-elect was not to be swayed.
His ideas of administrative efficiency were not highly developed, and
he believed that his Cabinet would prove equal to all demands made
upon it. Not the least of its virtues in his eyes was the fact that,
although nearly evenly divided between his own followers and the
friends of Calhoun, it contained not one person who was not an
uncompromising anti-Clay man.

Meanwhile a motley army of office seekers, personal friends, and
sightseers--to the number of ten or fifteen thousand--poured into
Washington to see the old regime of Virginia, New York, and
Massachusetts go out and the new regime of the people come in. "A
monstrous crowd of people," wrote Webster on Inauguration Day, "is in
the city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come five
hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think
that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." Another
observer, who was also not a Jacksonian, wrote[7]:

"No one who was in Washington at the time of General Jackson's
inauguration is likely to forget that period to the day of his death.
To us, who had witnessed the quiet and orderly period of the Adams
Administration, it seemed as if half the nation had rushed at once
into the capital. It was like the inundation of the northern
barbarians into Rome, save that the tumultuous tide came in from a
different point of the compass. The West and the South seemed to have
precipitated themselves upon the North and overwhelmed it....

"Strange faces filled every public place, and every face seemed to bear
defiance on its brow. It appeared to me that every Jackson editor in
the country was on the spot. They swarmed, especially in the lobbies
of the House, an expectant host, a sort of Praetorian band, which,
having borne in upon their shields their idolized leader, claimed the
reward of the hard-fought contest."

The 4th of March dawned clear and balmy. "By ten o'clock," says an
eye-witness, "the Avenue was crowded with carriages of every
description, from the splendid baronet and coach, down to wagons and
carts, filled with women and children, some in finery and some in
rags, for it was the People's president." The great square which now
separates the Capitol and the Library of Congress was in Jackson's day
shut in by a picket fence. This enclosure was filled with people--"a
vast agitated sea"--while in all directions the slopes of Capitol Hill
were thickly occupied. At noon watchers on the west portico, looking
down Pennsylvania Avenue, saw a group of gentlemen issue from the
Indian Queen and thread its way slowly up the hill. All wore their
hats except one tall, dignified, white-haired figure in the middle,
who was quickly recognized as Jackson. Passing through the building,
the party, reinforced by Chief Justice Marshall and certain other
dignitaries, emerged upon the east portico, amid the deafening cheers
of the spectators. The President-elect bowed gravely, and, stepping
forward to a small cloth-covered table, read in a low voice the
inaugural address; the aged Chief Justice, "whose life was a protest
against the political views of the Jackson party," administered the
oath of office; and the ceremony was brought to a close in the
customary manner by the new Executive kissing the Bible. Francis Scott
Key, watching the scene from one of the gates, was moved to exclaim:
"It is beautiful, it is sublime."

Thus far the people had been sufficiently impressed by the dignity of
the occasion to keep their places and preserve a reasonable silence.
But when the executive party started to withdraw, men, women, and
children rushed past the police and scrambled up the steps in a wild
effort to reach their adored leader and grasp his hand. Disheveled and
panting, the President finally reached a gate at which his horse was
in waiting; and, mounting with difficulty, he set off for the White
House, followed by a promiscuous multitude, "countrymen, farmers,
gentlemen, mounted and unmounted, boys, women, and children, black and
white."

The late President had no part in the day's proceedings. On arriving
in Washington, Jackson had refused to make the usual call of the
incoming upon the outgoing Executive, mainly because he held Adams
responsible for the news paper virulence which had caused Mrs. Jackson
such distress and had possibly shortened her life. Deserted by all
save his most intimate friends, the New Englander faced the last hours
of his Administration in bitterness. His diary bears ample evidence of
his ill-humor and chagrin. On the 3d of March he took up his residence
on Meridian Hill, near the western limits of the city; and thence he
did not venture until the festivities of the ensuing day were ended.
No amount of effort on the part of mediators ever availed to bring
about a reconciliation between him and his successor.

According to custom, the inaugural program came to an end with a
reception at the White House; and arrangements were made to entertain
a large number of guests. Police control, however, proved wholly
inadequate, and when the throng that followed the President up the
Avenue reached the executive grounds it engulfed the mansion and
poured in by windows as well as doors, until the reception rooms were
packed to suffocation. Other guests, bidden and unbidden--"statesmen
and stable-boys, fine ladies and washerwomen, white people and
blacks"--continued for hours to besiege the doors. "I never saw such a
mixture," records Judge Story; "the reign of King Mob seemed
triumphant. I was glad to escape from the scene as soon as possible."
The President, too, after being jostled for an hour, very willingly
made his way by a side entrance to the street and thence to his hotel.

A profusion of refreshments, including barrels of orange punch, had
been provided; and an attempt to serve the guests led to a veritable
saturnalia. Waiters emerging from doors with loaded trays were borne
to the floor by the crush; china and glassware were smashed; gallons
of punch were spilled on the carpets; in their eagerness to be served
men in muddy boots leaped upon damask-covered chairs, overturned
tables, and brushed bric-à-brac from mantles and walls. "It would have
done Mr. Wilberforce's heart good," writes a cynical observer, "to
have seen a stout black wench eating in this free country a jelly with
a gold spoon at the President's House." Only when some thoughtful
person directed that tubs of punch be placed here and there on the
lawn was the congestion indoors relieved. When it was all over, the
White House resembled a pigsty. "Several thousand dollars' worth of
broken china and cut glass and many bleeding noses attested the
fierceness of the struggle." It was the people's day, and it was of no
avail for fastidious Adamsites to lift their eyebrows in ridicule or
scorn.

Those in whom the establishment of the new order aroused keenest
apprehension were the officeholders. A favorite theme of the Jackson
forces during the late campaign was the abuses of the patronage, and
the General came into office fully convinced that an overhauling of
the civil service would be one of the greatest contributions that he
could make to his country's welfare. Even if he had been less sure of
this than he was, the pressure which office seekers and their friends
brought to bear upon him would have been irresistible. Four-fifths of
the people who flocked to Washington at inauguration time were seekers
after office for themselves or their friends, and from every county
and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims
for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly,
that many of the incumbents had grown lax in the performance of their
duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh
blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short
terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt
that one man had as much right to public office as another, and he was
so unacquainted with the tasks of administration as to suppose all
honest citizens equally capable of serving their fellowmen in public
station. As for the grievances of persons removed, his view was that
"no individual wrong is done by removal, since neither appointment to
nor continuance in office is a matter of right."

Shortly after the election Major Lewis wrote to a friend that the
General was "resolved on making a pretty clean sweep of the
departments." It is expected, he added, that "he will cleanse the
Augean stables, and I feel pretty confident that he will not
disappoint the popular expectation in this particular." If a complete
overturn was ever really contemplated, the plan was not followed up;
and it is more than possible that it was Van Buren who marked off the
limits beyond which it would not be expedient to go. None the less,
Jackson's removals far exceeded those made by his predecessors.
Speaking broadly, the power of removal had never yet been exercised in
the Federal Government with offensive partizanship. Even under
Jefferson, when the holders of half of the offices were changed in the
space of four years, there were few removals for political reasons.

No sooner was Jackson in office, however, than wholesale proscription
began. The ax fell in every department and bureau, and cut off chiefs
and clerks with equal lack of mercy. Age and experience counted rather
against a man than in his favor, and rarely was any reason given for
removal other than that some one else wanted the place. When Congress
met, in December, it was estimated that a thousand persons had been
ousted; and during the first year of the Administration the number is
said to have reached two thousand. The Post-Office Department and the
Customs Service were purged with special severity. The sole principle
on which the new appointees were selected was loyalty to Jackson.
Practically all were inexperienced, most were incompetent, and several
proved dishonest.

"There has been," wrote the President in his journal a few weeks after
the inauguration, "a great noise made about removals." Protest arose
not only from the proscribed and their friends, but from the
Adams-Clay forces generally, and even from some of the more moderate
Jacksonians. "Were it not for the outdoor popularity of General
Jackson," wrote Webster, "the Senate would have negatived more than
half his nominations." As it was, many were rejected; and some of the
worst were, under pressure, withdrawn. On the general principle the
President held his ground. "It is rotation in office," he again and
again asserted in all honesty, "that will perpetuate our liberty," and
from this conviction no amount of argument or painful experience could
shake him. After 1830 one hears less about the subject, but only
because the novelty and glamor of the new regime had worn off.

Jackson was not the author of the spoils system. The device of using
the offices as rewards for political service had long been familiar in
the state and local governments, notably in New York. What Jackson and
his friends did was simply to carry over the spoils principle into the
National Government. No more unfortunate step was ever taken by an
American President; the task of undoing the mischief has been long and
laborious. Yet the spoils system was probably an inevitable feature of
the new rule of the people; at all events, it was accepted by all
parties and sanctioned by public sentiment for more than half a
century.

Like Philip II of Spain, who worked twelve hours a day at the business
of being a King, Jackson took the duties of his exalted post very
seriously. No man had ever accused him of laxness in public office,
civil or military; on the contrary, his superiors commonly considered
themselves fortunate if they could induce or compel him to keep his
energies within reasonable bounds. As President he was not without
distressing shortcomings. He was self-willed, prejudiced, credulous,
petulant. But he was honest, and he was industrious. No President ever
kept a closer watch upon Congress to see that the rights of the
executive were not invaded or the will of the people thwarted; and his
vigilance was rewarded, not only by his success in vindicating the
independence of the executive in a conflict whose effects are felt to
this day, but by the very respectable amount of legislation which he
contrived to obtain in the furtherance of what he believed to be the
public welfare. When a rebellious Congress took the bit in its teeth,
he never hesitated to crack the whip over its head. Sometimes the
pressure was applied indirectly, but with none the less effect. One of
the first acts of the Senate to arouse strong feelings in the White
House was the rejection of the nomination of Isaac Hill to be Second
Comptroller of the Treasury. A New Hampshire senatorship soon falling
vacant, the President deftly brought about the election of Hill to the
position; and many a gala hour he had in later days as Lewis and other
witnesses described the chagrin of the senators at being obliged to
accept as one of their colleagues a man whom they had adjudged unfit
for a less important office.

Much thought had been bestowed upon the composition of the Cabinet,
and some of the President's warmest supporters urged that he should
make use of the group as a council of state, after the manner of his
predecessors. Jackson's purposes, however, ran in a different
direction. He had been on intimate terms with fewer than half of the
members, and he saw no reason why these men, some of whom were
primarily the friends of Calhoun, should be allowed to supplant old
confidants like Lewis. Let them, he reasoned, go about their appointed
tasks as heads of the administrative departments, while he looked for
counsel whithersoever he desired. Hence the official Cabinet fell into
the background, and after a few weeks the practice of holding meetings
was dropped.

As advisers on party affairs and on matters of general policy the
President drew about himself a heterogeneous group of men which the
public-labeled the "Kitchen Cabinet." Included in the number were the
two members of the regular Cabinet in whom Jackson had implicit
confidence, Van Buren and Eaton. Isaac Hill was a member. Amos
Kendall, a New Englander who had lately edited a Jackson paper in
Kentucky, and who now found his reward in the fourth auditorship of
the Treasury, was another. William B. Lewis, prevailed upon by Jackson
to accept another auditorship along with Kendall, rather than to
follow out his original intention to return to his Tennessee
plantation, was not only in the Kitchen Cabinet but was also a member
of the President's household. Duff Green, editor of the _Telegraph_,
and A. J. Donelson, the President's nephew and secretary, were
included in the group; as was also Francis P. Blair after, in 1830, he
became editor of the new administration organ, the _Globe_. It was the
popular impression that the influence of these men, especially of
Lewis and Kendall, was very great--that, indeed, they virtually ruled
the country. There was some truth in the supposition. In matters upon
which his mind was not fully made up, Jackson was easily swayed; and
his most intimate "Kitchen" advisers were adepts at playing upon his
likes and dislikes. He, however, always resented the insinuation that
he was not his own master, and all testimony goes to show that when he
was once resolved upon a given course his friends were just as
powerless to stop him as were his enemies.

The Jacksonians were carried into office on a great wave of popular
enthusiasm, an for the time being all the powers of government were
theirs. None the less, their position was imperiled almost from the
beginning by a breach within the administration ranks. Calhoun had
contented himself with reelection to the vice presidency in 1828 on
the understanding that, after Jackson should have had one term, the
road to the White House would be left clear for himself. Probably
Jackson, when elected, fully expected Calhoun to be his successor.
Before long, however, the South Carolinian was given ground for
apprehension. Men began to talk about a second term for Jackson, and
the White House gave no indication of disapproval. Even more
disconcerting was the large place taken in the new regime by Van
Buren. The "little magician" held the chief post in the Cabinet; he
was in the confidence of the President as Calhoun was not; there were
multiplying indications that he was aiming at the presidency; and if
he were to enter the race he would be hard to beat, for by general
admission he was the country's most astute politician. With every
month that passed the Vice President's star was in graver danger of
eclipse.

Several curious circumstances worked together to widen the breach
between the Calhoun and Van Buren elements and at the same time to
bring the President definitely into the ranks of the New Yorker's
supporters. One was the controversy over the social status of "Peggy"
Eaton. Peggy was the daughter of a tavern keeper, William O'Neil, at
whose hostelry both Jackson and Eaton had lived when they were
senators. Her first husband, a purser in the navy, committed suicide
at sea; and Washington gossips said that he was driven to the act by
chagrin caused by his wife's misconduct, both before and after her
marriage. On the eve of Jackson's inauguration the widow became Mrs.
Eaton, and certain disagreeable rumors connecting the names of the two
were confirmed in the public mind. When Eaton was made Secretary of
War, society shrugged its shoulders and wondered what sort of figure
"Peg O'Neil" would cut in Cabinet circles. The question was soon
answered. At the first official functions Mrs. Eaton was received with
studied neglect by the wives of the other Cabinet officers; and all
refused either to call on her or to receive her in their homes.

Jackson was furious. It was enough for him that Mrs. Jackson had
thought well of the suspected woman, and all his gallantry rose in her
defense. Professing to regard the attitude of the protesters as
nothing less than an affront to his Administration, he called upon the
men of the Cabinet, and upon the Vice President, to remonstrate with
their wives in Mrs. Eaton's behalf. But if any such remonstrances were
made, nothing came of them. "For once in his life, Andrew Jackson was
defeated. Creeks and Spaniards and Redcoats he could conquer, but the
ladies of Washington never surrendered, and Peggy Eaton though her
affairs became a national question, never got into Washington
society."[8] The political effect of the episode was considerable. Van
Buren was a widower, and, having no family to object, he showed Mrs.
Eaton all possible courtesy. On the other hand, Mrs. Calhoun was the
leader of those who refused Mrs. Eaton recognition. Jackson was not
slow to note these facts, and his opinion of Van Buren steadily rose,
while he set down Calhoun as an obdurate member of the "conspiracy."

Throughout the winter of 1829-30 the Calhoun and Van Buren factions
kept up a contest which daily became more acrimonious and open.
Already the clique around the President had secretly decided that in
1832 he must run again, with Van Buren as a mate, and that the New
Yorker should be the presidential candidate in 1836. Though irritated
by the Vice President's conduct in the Eaton affair and in other
matters, Jackson threw over the understanding of 1828 with reluctance.
Even when, on the last day of 1829, his friends, alarmed by the state
of his health, persuaded him to write a letter to a Tennessee judge
warmly commending Van Buren and expressing grave doubts about the
South Carolinian--a statement which, in the event of worst fears being
realized, would be of the utmost value to the Van Buren men--he was
unwilling to go the full length of an open break.

But Lewis and his coworkers were craftily laying the train of powder
that would lead to an explosion, and in the spring of 1830 they were
ready to apply the match. When the President had been worked up to the
right stage of suspicion, it was suddenly made known to him that it
was Calhoun, not Crawford, who in Monroe's Cabinet circle in 1818 had
urged that the conqueror of Florida be censured for his bold deeds.
This had the full effect desired. Jackson made a peremptory demand
upon the Vice President for an explanation of his perfidy. Calhoun
responded in a letter which explained and explained, yet got nowhere.
Whereupon Jackson replied in a haughty communication, manifestly
prepared by the men who were engineering the whole business, declaring
the former Secretary guilty of the most reprehensible duplicity and
severing all relations with him. This meant the end of Calhoun's
hopes, at all events for the present. He could never be President
while Jackson's influence lasted. Van Buren had won; and the
embittered South Carolinian could only turn for solace to the
nullification movement, in which he was already deeply engulfed.

Pursuing their plans to the final stroke, the Administration managers
forced a reconstruction of the Cabinet, and all of Calhoun's
supporters were displaced. Louis McLane of Delaware became Secretary
of the Treasury; Lewis Cass of Michigan, Secretary of War; Levi
Woodbury of New Hampshire, Secretary of the Navy; and Roger B. Taney
of Maryland, Attorney-General. Van Buren also retired, in conformity
with Jackson's announced intention not to have any one in the Cabinet
who was a candidate for the succession; and Edward Livingston,
Jackson's old Louisiana friend, became Secretary of State.

It was decided that a fitting post for a successor while awaiting his
turn--particularly for one who was not popular--would be the
ministership to Great Britain; and Van Buren duly traveled to London
to take up the duties of this position. But when the appointment was
submitted to the Senate, Calhoun's friends adroitly managed matters so
that the Vice President should have the satisfaction of preventing
confirmation by his casting vote. "It will kill him, sir, kill him
dead," declared the vengeful South Carolinian to a doubting friend.
"He will never kick, sir, never kick." But no greater tactical error
could have been committed. Benton showed the keener insight when he
informed the jubilant Calhoun men that they had "broken a minister,"
only to elect a Vice President.



CHAPTER VII


THE WEBSTER-HAYNE DEBATE

The United States came out of her second war with Great Britain a
proud and fearless nation, though her record was not, on its face,
glorious. She went to war shockingly unprepared; the people were of
divided opinion, and one great section was in open revolt; the
military leaders were without distinction; the soldiery was poorly
trained and equipped; finances were disordered; the operations on land
were mostly failures; and the privateers, which achieved wonders in
the early stages of the contest, were driven to cover long before the
close; for the restoration of peace the nation had to thank England's
war weariness far more than her own successes; and the Treaty of Ghent
did not so much as mention impressment, captures, or any of the other
matters mainly at issue when the war was begun. Peace, however,
brought gratitude, enthusiasm, optimism. Defeats were quickly
forgotten; and Jackson's victory at New Orleans atoned for the
humiliations of years. After all, the contest had been victorious in
its larger outcome, for the new world conditions were such as to
insure that the claims and practices which had troubled the relations
of the United States and Great Britain would never be revived. The
carpings of critics were drowned in the public rejoicings. The
Hartford Convention dissolved unwept and unsung. Flushed with pride
and confidence, the country entered upon a new and richer epoch.

The dominant tone of this dawning period was nationalism. The nation
was to be made great and rich and free; sectional interests and
ambitions were to be merged in the greater national purpose. Congress
voiced the sentiment of the day by freely laying tariffs to protect
newly risen manufactures, by appropriating money for "internal
improvements," by establishing a second United States Bank, and by
giving full support to the annexation of territory for the adjustment
of border difficulties and the extension of the country to its natural
frontiers.

Under the leadership of John Marshall, the Supreme Court handed down
an imposing series of decisions restricting the powers of the States
and throwing open the floodgates for the expansion of national
functions and activities. Statesmen of all sections put the nation
first in their plans and policies as they had not always done in
earlier days. John C. Calhoun was destined shortly to take rank as the
greatest of sectionalists. Nevertheless, between 1815 and 1820 he
voted for protective tariffs, brought in a great bill for internal
improvements, and won from John Quincy Adams praise for being "above
all sectional...prejudices more than any other statesman of this
union" with whom he "had ever acted."

The differences between the nationalist and state rights schools were,
however, deep-rooted--altogether too fundamental to be obliterated by
even the nationalizing swing of the war period; and in a brief time
the old controversy of Hamilton and Jefferson was renewed on the
former lines. The pull of political tradition and of sectional
interest was too strong to be resisted. In the commercial and
industrial East tradition and interest supported, in general, the
doctrine of broad national powers; and the same was true of the West
and Northwest. The South, however, inclined to limited national
powers, large functions for the States, and such a construction of the
Constitution as would give the benefit of the doubt in all cases to
the States.

The political theory current south of the Potomac and the Ohio made of
state rights a fetish. Yet the powerful sectional reaction which set
in after 1820 against the nationalizing tendency had as its main
impetus the injustice which the Southern people felt had been done to
them through the use of the nation's larger powers. They objected to
the protective tariff as a device which not only brought the South no
benefit but interfered with its markets and raised the cost of certain
of its staple supplies. They opposed internal improvements at national
expense because of their consolidating tendency, and because few of
the projects carried out were of large advantage to the Southern
people. They regarded the National Bank as at best useless; and they
resisted federal legislation imposing restrictions on slavery as
prejudicial to vested rights in the "peculiar institution."

After 1820 the pendulum swung rapidly back toward particularism. State
rights sentiment was freely expressed by men, both Southern and
Northern, whose views commanded respect; and in more than one
State--notably in Ohio and Georgia--bold actions proclaimed this
sentiment to be no mere matter of academic opinion. Ohio in 1819
forcibly collected a tax on the United States Bank in defiance of the
Supreme Court's decision in the case of M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland; and
in 1821 her Legislature reaffirmed the doctrines of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and persisted in resistance, even after the
Supreme Court had rendered a decision[9] specifically against the
position which the State had taken. Judge Roane of Virginia, in a
series of articles in the _Richmond Enquirer_, argued that the Federal
Union was a compact among the States and that the nationalistic
reasoning of his fellow Virginian, Marshall, in the foregoing
decisions was false; and Jefferson heartily endorsed his views. In
Cohens _vs._ Virginia, in 1821, the Supreme Court held that it had
appellate jurisdiction in a case decided by a state court where the
Constitution and laws of the United States were involved, even though
a State was a party; whereupon the Virginia House of Delegates
declared that the State's lawyers had been right in their contention
that final construction of the Constitution lay with the courts of the
States. Jefferson, also, gave this assertion his support, and
denounced the centralizing tendencies of the Judiciary, "which,
working like gravity without any intermission, is to press us at last
into one consolidated mass."

In 1825 Jefferson actually proposed that the Virginia Legislature
should pass a set of resolutions pronouncing null and void the whole
body of federal laws on the subject of internal improvements. The
Georgia Legislature, aroused by growing antislavery activities in the
North, declared in 1827 that the remedy lay in "a firm and determined
union of the people and the States of the South" against interference
with the institutions of that section of the country. Already Georgia
had placed herself in an attitude of resistance to the Federal
Government upon the rights of the Indians within her borders, and
within the next decade she repeatedly nullified decisions of the
federal courts on this subject. In 1828 the South Carolina Legislature
adopted a series of eight resolutions denouncing the lately enacted
"tariff of abominations," and a report, originally drafted by Calhoun
and commonly known as _The South Carolina Exposition_, in which were
to be found all of the essentials of the constitutional argument
underlying the nullification movement of 1832.

When Jackson went into the White House, the country was therefore
fairly buzzing with discussions of constitutional questions. What was
the true character of the Constitution and of the Union established
under it? Were the States sovereign? Who should determine the limits
of state and federal powers? What remedy had a State against
unconstitutional measures of the National Government? Who should say
when an act was unconstitutional?

The South, in particular, was in an irritable frame of mind.
Agriculture was in a state of depression; manufacturing was not
developing as had been expected; the steadily mounting tariffs were
working economic disadvantage; the triumph of members of Congress and
of the Supreme Court who favored a loose construction of the
Constitution indicated that there would be no end of acts and
decisions contrary to what the South regarded as her own interests.
Some apprehensive people looked to Jackson for reassurance. But his
first message to Congress assumed that the tariff would continue as it
was, and, indeed, gave no promise of relief in any direction.

It was at this juncture that the whole controversy flared up
unexpectedly in one of the greatest debates ever heard on the floor of
our Congress or in the legislative halls of any country. On December
29, 1829, Senator Samuel A. Foote of Connecticut offered an
innocent-looking resolution proposing a temporary restriction of the
sale of public lands to such lands as had already been placed on the
market. The suggestion was immediately resented by western members,
who professed to see in it a desire to check the drain of eastern
population to the West; and upon the reconvening of Congress following
the Christmas recess Senator Benton of Missouri voiced in no uncertain
terms the indignation of his State and section. The discussion might
easily have led to nothing more than the laying of the resolution on
the table; and in that event we should never have heard of it. But it
happened that one of the senators from South Carolina, Robert Y.
Hayne, saw in the situation what he took to be a chance to deliver a
telling blow for his own discontented section. On the 19th of January
he got the floor, and at the fag-end of a long day he held his
colleagues' attention for an hour.

The thing that Hayne had in mind to do primarily was to draw the West
to the side of the South, in common opposition to the East. He
therefore vigorously attacked the Foote resolution, agreeing with
Benton that it was an expression of Eastern jealousy and that its
adoption would greatly retard the development of the West. He laid
much stress upon the common interests of the Western and Southern
people and openly invited the one to an alliance with the other. He
deprecated the tendencies of the Federal Government to consolidation
and declared himself "opposed, in any shape, to all unnecessary
extension of the powers or the influence of the Legislature or
Executive of the Union over the States, or the people of the States."
Throughout the speech ran side by side the twin ideas of strict
construction and state rights; in every sentence breathed the protest
of South Carolina against the protective tariff.

Just as the South Carolinian began speaking, a shadow darkened the
doorway of the Senate chamber, and Daniel Webster stepped casually
inside. The Massachusetts member was at the time absorbed in the
preparation of certain cases that were coming up before the Supreme
Court, and he had given little attention either to Foote's resolution
or to the debate upon it. What he now heard, however, quickly drove
Carver's Lessee _vs._ John Jacob Astor quite out of his mind.
Aspersions were being cast upon his beloved New England; the
Constitution was under attack; the Union itself was being called in
question. Webster's decision was instantaneous: Hayne must be
answered--and answered while his arguments were still hot.

"Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked," the New
Englander subsequently explained at a public dinner in New York, "I
raised my voice in its favor, I must confess, with no preparation or
previous intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest
from a sense of duty. It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination,
not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its
suggestions. I felt it to be a contest for the integrity of the
Constitution, and I was ready to enter into it, not thinking, or
caring, personally, how I came out." In a speech characterized by
Henry Cabot Lodge as "one of the most effective retorts, one of the
strongest pieces of destructive criticism, ever uttered in the
Senate," Webster now defended his section against the charges of
selfishness, jealousy, and snobbishness that had been brought against
it, and urged that the Senate and the people be made to hear no more
utterances, such as those of Hayne, tending "to bring the Union into
discussion, as a mere question of present and temporary expediency."

The debate was now fairly started, and the word quickly went round
that a battle of the giants was impending. Each foeman was worthy of
the other's steel. Hayne was representative of all that was proudest
and best in the South Carolina of his day. "Nature had lavished on
him," says Benton, "all the gifts which lead to eminence in public,
and to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned,
graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both
intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected;
his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he
was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit
parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of
thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in
opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reëlected,
he was known as the South's ablest and boldest spokesman in the upper
chamber.

Webster was an equally fitting representative of rugged New England.
Born nine years earlier than Hayne, he struggled up from a boyhood of
physical frailty and poverty to an honored place at the Boston bar,
and in 1812, at the age of thirty, was elected to Congress. To the
Senate he brought, in 1827, qualities that gave him at once a
preeminent position. His massive head, beetling brow, flashing eye,
and stately carriage attracted instant attention wherever he went. His
physical impressiveness was matched by lofty traits of character and
by extraordinary powers of intellect; and by 1830 he had acquired a
reputation for forensic ability and legal acumen which were second to
none.

When, therefore, on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his
_First Reply_, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his
_Second Reply_--probably the greatest effort in the history of
American legislative oratory--the little chamber then used by the
Senate, but nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a
spectacle fairly to be described as historic. Every senator who could
possibly be present answered at roll call. Here were Webster's more
notable fellow New Englanders--John Holmes of Maine, Levi Woodbury of
New Hampshire, Horatio Seymour of Vermont. There were Mahlon Dickerson
and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and John M. Clayton of
Delaware. Here, John Tyler of Virginia, John Forsyth of Georgia,
William R. King of Alabama; there, Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy of
Tennessee, and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. From the President's
chair Hayne's distinguished fellow South Carolinian, Calhoun, looked
down upon the assemblage with emotions which he vainly strove to
conceal.

During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from
adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the
senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate
galleries. Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in
the morning every available inch of space was instantly filled with
interested and excited spectators. So great was the pressure that all
rules governing the admission of the public were waived. On the day of
Webster's greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the
members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the
long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of
Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance
was so scant that no business could be transacted.

Hayne's speech--begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of
January--was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines
of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever
fallen upon the ear of Congress. It was no mere piece of abstract
argumentation. Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and
he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and
Webster himself of complicity in "bargain and corruption." Thrusting
and parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved
even the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval. The
nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able
to measure up with so keen an antagonist. Webster sat staring into
space, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.

The debate reached a climax in Webster's powerful _Second Reply_, on
the 26th and 27th of January. Everything was favorable for a
magnificent effort: the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital,
the speaker was in the prime of his matchless powers. On the desk
before the New Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper
pages of notes. He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the
labors of a single evening made possible. But it may be doubted
whether any forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly
prepared for, because Webster _lived_ his speech before he spoke it.
The origins of the Federal Union, the theories and applications of the
Constitution, the history and bearings of nullification--these were
matters with which years of study, observation, professional activity,
and association with men had made him absolutely familiar. If any
living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster
was the man to do it.

Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by
this speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the
Southern charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the
time are more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the
oration to a close: "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of
Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for
yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart....
There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and
there they will remain forever." If this had been all, the speech
would have been only a spirited defense of the good name of a section
and would hardly have gained immortality. It was the Union, however,
that most needed defense; and for that service the orator reserved his
grandest efforts.

From the opening of the discussion Webster's object had been to "force
from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of
what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the
Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and
fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working
scheme."[10] In the Southerner's _First Reply_ Webster found the
statement that he wanted; he now proceeded to demolish it. Many pages
of print would be required to reproduce, even in substance, the
arguments which he employed. Yet the fundamentals are so simple that
they can be stated in a dozen lines. Sovereignty, under our form of
government, resides in the people of the United States. The exercise
of the powers of sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the
National Government and partly to the state Governments. This division
of functions is made in the federal Constitution. If differences
arise, as they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the
decision rests--not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had
said--but with the federal courts, which were established in part for
that very purpose. No State has a right to "nullify" a federal law; if
one State has this right, all must have it, and the result can only be
conflicts that would plunge the Government into chaos and the people
ultimately into war. If the Constitution is not what the people want,
they can amend it; but as long as it stands, the Constitution and all
lawful government under it must be obeyed.

The incomparably eloquent peroration penetrated to the heart of the
whole matter. The logic of nullification was disunion. Fine theories
might be spun and dazzling phrases made to convince men otherwise, but
the hard fact would remain. Hayne, Calhoun, and their like were
playing with fire. Already they were boldly weighing "the chances of
preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be
broken asunder"; already they were hanging over the precipice of
disunion, to see whether they could "fathom the depth of the abyss
below." The last powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a
glorification of the Union:

"While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects
spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not
to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that
curtain may not rise.... When my eyes shall be turned to behold for
the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds,
or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and
lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic,
now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced,
its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe
erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto
no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those
other words of delusion and folly 'Liberty first and Union afterward';
but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing
on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land,
and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear
to every American heart--'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable!'"

Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the
Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the
zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded
nothing. Each State, he still maintained, is "an independent
sovereignty"; the Union is based upon a compact; and every party to
the compact has a right to interpret for itself the terms of the
agreement by which all are bound together. In a short, crisp speech,
traversing the main ground which he had already gone over.

Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers involved in this
argument; and the debate was over. The Foote resolution, long since
forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four months and was then
tabled. Webster went back to his cases; the politicians turned again
to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of congressional business was
resumed; and popular interest drifted to other things.

Both sides were well satisfied with the presentation of their views.
Certainly neither was converted to the position of the other. The
debate served, however, to set before the country with greater
clearness than ever before the two great systems of constitutional
interpretation that were struggling for mastery, and large numbers of
men whose ideas had been hazy were now led to adopt thoughtfully
either the one body of opinions or the other. The country was not yet
ready to follow the controversy to the end which Webster clearly
foresaw--civil war. But each side treasured its vitalized and enriched
arguments for use in a more strenuous day.

Advantage in the great discussion lay partly with Hayne and partly
with his brilliant antagonist. On the whole, the facts of history were
on the side of Hayne. Webster attempted to argue from the intent of
the framers of the Constitution and from early opinion concerning the
nature of the Union; but a careful appraisal of the evidence hardly
bears out his contentions. On economic matters also, notably the
operation of the protective tariff, he trod uncertain ground. He
realized this fact and as far as possible kept clear of economic
discussion. The South had real grievances, and Webster was well enough
aware that they could not be argued out of existence.

On the other hand, the Northerner was vastly superior to his opponent
in his handling of the theoretical issues of constitutional law; and
in his exposition of the practical difficulties that would attend the
operation of the principle of nullification he employed a fund of
argument that was simply unanswerable. The logic of the larger phases
of the situation lay, too, with him. If the Union for which he pleaded
was not the Union which the Fathers intended to establish or even that
which actually existed in the days of Washington and the elder Adams,
it was at all events the Union in which, by the close of the fourth
decade under the Constitution, a majority of the people of the United
States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew
Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's
arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they
put into popular convictions that until then were vague and
inarticulate--convictions which, as has been well said, "went on
broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a
force sufficient to sustain the North and enable her to triumph in the
terrible struggle which resulted in the preservation of national
life." It was the _Second Reply_ to Hayne which, more than any other
single event or utterance between 1789 and 1860, "compacted the States
into a nation."



CHAPTER VIII


TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION

It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate
chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the
great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and
permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction
of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his
State--and, for aught one could tell, his section--was about to put
into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming
controversy.

South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In
the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly
Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the
Virginian's leadership was never fully accepted, and even before the
Republican party had elsewhere submitted to the inevitable
nationalization the South Carolina membership was openly arrayed on
the side of a protective tariff, the National Bank, and internal
improvements. Calhoun and Cheves were for years among the most ardent
exponents of broad constitutional construction; Hayne himself was
elected to the Senate in 1822 as a nationalist, and over another
candidate whose chief handicap was that he had proposed that his State
secede rather than submit to the Missouri Compromise.

After 1824 sentiment rapidly shifted. The cause appeared to be the
tariff; but in reality deeper forces were at work. South Carolina was
an agricultural State devoted almost exclusively to the raising of
cotton and rice. Soil and climate made her such, and the "peculiar
institution" confirmed what Nature already had decreed. But the
planters were now beginning to feel keenly the competition of the new
cotton lands of the Gulf plains. As production increased, the price of
cotton fell. "In 1816," writes Professor Turner, "the average price of
middling uplands...was nearly thirty cents, and South Carolina's
leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the
South saw in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was
fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the South Carolinians denounced
the tariff as unconstitutional."[11]

Men of the Clay-Adams school argued that the tariff stimulated
industry, doubled the profits of agriculture, augmented wealth, and
hence promoted the well-being of the nation as a whole. The Southern
planter was never able to discover in the protective system any real
advantage for himself, but as long as the tariffs were moderate he was
influenced by nationalistic sentiment to accept them. The demand for
protection on the part of the Northern manufacturers seemed, however,
insatiable. An act of 1824 raised the duties on cotton and woolen
goods. A measure of 1827 which applied to woolens the ruinous
principle already applied to cottons was passed by the House and was
laid on the table in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice
President Calhoun. The climax was reached in the Tariff Act of 1828,
which the Southerners themselves loaded with objectionable provisions
in the vain hope of making it so abominable that even New England
congressmen would vote against it.

A few years of such legislation sufficed to rouse the South to a deep
feeling of grievance. It was no longer a question of reasonable
concession to the general national good. A vast artificial economic
system had been set up, whose benefits accrued to the North and whose
burdens fell disproportionately upon the South. The tone and temper of
the manufacturing sections and of the agricultural West gave no
promise of a change of policy. The obvious conclusion was that the
planting interests must find some means of bringing pressure to bear
for their own relief.

The means which they found was nullification; and it fell to South
Carolina, whose people were most ardent in their resentment of
anything that looked like discrimination, to put the remedy to the
test. The Legislature of this State had made an early beginning by
denouncing the tariff of 1824 as unconstitutional. In 1827 Robert J.
Turnbull, one of the abler political leaders, published under the
title of _The Crisis_ a series of essays in which he boldly proclaimed
nullification as the remedy. In the following summer Calhoun put the
nullification doctrine into its first systematic form in a paper--the
so-called _Exposition_--which for some time was known to the public
only as the report of a committee of the Legislature.

By 1829 the State was sharply divided into two parties, the
nationalists and the nullifiers. All were agreed that the protective
system was iniquitous and that it must be broken down. The difference
was merely as to method. The nationalists favored working through the
customary channels of legislative reform; the nullifiers urged that
the State interpose its authority to prevent the enforcement of the
objectionable laws. For a time the leaders wavered. But the swing of
public sentiment in the direction of nullification was rapid and
overwhelming, and one by one the representatives in Congress and other
men of prominence fell into line. Hayne and McDuffie were among the
first to give it their support; and Calhoun, while he was for a time
held back by his political aspirations and by his obligations as Vice
President, came gradually to feel that his political future would be
worth little unless he had the support of his own State.

As the election of 1828 approached, the hope of the discontented
forces centered in Jackson. They did not overlook the fact that his
record was that of a moderate protectionist. But the same was true of
many South Carolinians and Georgians, and it seemed not at all
impossible that, as a Southern man and a cotton planter, he should
undergo a change of heart no less decisive than that which Hayne and
Calhoun had experienced. Efforts to draw him out, however, proved not
very successful. Lewis saw to it that Jackson's utterances while yet
he was a candidate were safely colorless; and the single mention of
the tariff contained in the inaugural address was susceptible of the
most varied interpretations. The annual message of 1829 indicated
opposition to protection; on the other hand, the presidential message
of the next year not only asserted the full power of Congress to levy
protective duties but declared the abandonment of protection "neither
to be expected or desired." Gradually the antiprotectionist leaders
were made to see that the tariff was not a subject upon which the
President felt keenly, and that therefore it was useless to look to
him for effective support.

Even the adroit efforts which were made to get from the incoming
executive expressions that could be interpreted as endorsements of
nullification were successfully fended off. For some months the
President gave no outward sign of his disapproval. With more than his
usual deliberateness, Jackson studied the situation, awaiting the
right moment to speak out with the maximum of effect.

The occasion finally came on April 13, 1830, at a banquet held in
Washington in celebration of Jefferson's birthday. The Virginia patron
of democracy had been dead four years, and Jackson had become, more
truly than any other man, his successor. Jacksonian democracy was,
however, something very different from Jeffersonian, and never was the
contrast more evident than on this fateful evening. During the earlier
part of the festivities a series of prearranged toasts, accompanied by
short speeches, put before the assemblage the Jeffersonian teachings
in a light highly favorable--doubtless unwarrantably so--to the ultra
state rights theory. Then followed a number of volunteer toasts. The
President was, of course, accorded the honor of proposing the
first--and this gave Jackson his chance. Rising in his place and
drawing himself up to his full height, he raised his right hand,
looked straight at Calhoun and, amid breathless silence, exclaimed in
that crisp, harsh tone that had so often been heard above the crashing
of many rifles: "Our Union! It must be preserved!"

An account of the scene which is given by Isaac Hill, a member of the
Kitchen Cabinet and an eyewitness, is interesting:

A proclamation of martial law in South Carolina and an order to arrest
Calhoun where he sat could not have come with more blinding,
staggering force. All hilarity ceased. The President, without adding
one word in the way of speech, lifted up his glass as a notice that
the toast was to be quaffed standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. His
glass so trembled in his hand that a little of the amber fluid
trickled down the side. Jackson stood silent and impassive. There was
no response to the toast. Calhoun waited until all sat down. Then he
slowly and with hesitating accent offered the second volunteer toast:
"The Union! Next to Our Liberty Most Dear!" Then, after a minute's
hesitation, and in a way that left doubt as to whether he intended it
for part of the toast or for the preface to a speech, he added: "May
we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights
of the States and by distributing equally the benefit and burden of
the Union."

The nullifiers had carefully planned the evening's proceedings with a
purpose to strengthen their cause with the country. They had not
reckoned on the President, and the dash of cold water which he had
administered caused them more anguish than any opposition that they
had yet encountered. The banquet broke up earlier than had been
expected, and the diners went off by twos and threes in eager
discussion of the scene that they had witnessed. Some were livid with
rage; some shook their heads in fear of civil war; but most rejoiced
in the splendid exhibition of executive dignity and patriotic fervor
which the President had given. Subsequently it transpired that Jackson
had acted on no mere impulse and that his course had been carefully
planned in consultation with Van Buren and other advisers.

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1830 both the State Rights and
Union parties in South Carolina worked feverishly to perfect their
organizations. The issue that both were making ready to meet was
nothing less than the election of a convention to nullify the tariff
laws. Those upholding nullification lost no opportunity to consolidate
their forces, and by the close of the year these were clearly in the
majority, although the unionist element contained many of the ablest
and most respected men in the State. Calhoun directed the nullifier
campaign, though he did not throw off all disguises until the summer
of the following year.

Though Jackson made no further public declarations, the views which he
expressed in private were usually not slow to reach the public ear. In
a letter to a committee of the Union party in response to an
invitation to attend a Fourth of July dinner the President intimated
that force might properly be employed if nullification should be
attempted. And to a South Carolina Congressman who was setting off on
a trip home he said: "Tell them [the nullifiers] from me that they can
talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts' content.
But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the
United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on
to the first tree I can find." When Hayne heard of this threat he
expressed in Benton's hearing a doubt as to whether the President
would really hang anybody. "I tell you, Hayne," the Missourian
replied, "when Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to
look for the ropes."

Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice
President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become
its avowed leader. Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make.
Above all things he wanted to be President. He was not the author of
nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late
how much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was
shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be
bettered by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy.
Circumstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually
into the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement. The
tide of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the
breach with Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western
democracy; and his resentment of Van Buren's rise to favor prompted
words and acts which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian.
His party's enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for
reëlection in 1832 and of "Little Van" as a candidate for the vice
presidency--and, by all tokens, for the presidency four years
later--was the last straw. Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back
into the role of an extremist, sectional leader. There was no need of
further concealment; and in midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous
_Address to the People of South Carolina_, and this restatement of the
_Exposition_ of 1828 now became the avowed platform of the
nullification party. The _Fort Hill Letter_ of August 28, 1832,
addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and clearer presentation
of the same body of doctrine.

Matters were at last brought to a head by a new piece of tariff
legislation which was passed in 1832 not to appease South Carolina but
to take advantage of a comfortable state of affairs that had arisen in
the national treasury. The public lands were again selling well, and
the late tariff laws were yielding lavishly. The national debt was
dwindling to the point of disappearance, and the country had more
money than it could use. Jackson therefore called upon Congress to
revise the tariff system so as to reduce the revenue, and in the
session of 1831-32 several bills to that end were brought forward. The
scale of duties finally embodied in the Act of July 14, 1832,
corrected many of the anomalies of the Act of 1828, but it cut off
some millions of revenue without making any substantial change in the
protective system. Virginia and North Carolina voted heavily for the
bill, but South Carolina and Georgia as vigorously opposed it; and the
nullifiers refused to see in it any concession to the tariff
principles for which they stood. "I no longer consider the question
one of free trade," wrote Calhoun when the passage of the bill was
assured, "but of consolidation." In an address to their constituents
the South Carolina delegation in Congress declared that "protection
must now be regarded as the settled policy of the country," that "all
hope from Congress is irrevocably gone," and that it was for the
people to decide "whether the rights and liberties which you received
as a precious inheritance from an illustrious ancestry shall be tamely
surrendered without a struggle, or transmitted undiminished to your
posterity."

In the disaffected State events now moved rapidly. The elections of
the early autumn were carried by the nullifiers, and the new
Legislature, acting on the recommendation of Governor Hamilton,
promptly called a state convention to consider whether the "federal
compact" had been violated and what remedy should be adopted. The 162
delegates who gathered at Columbia on the 19th of November were,
socially and politically, the elite of the State: Hamiltons, Haynes,
Pinckneys, Butlers--almost all of the great families of a State of
great families were represented. From the outset the convention was
practically of one mind; and an ordinance of nullification drawn up by
a committee of twenty-one was adopted within five days by a vote of
136 to 26.

The tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were declared "null, void, and no
law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens." None of
the duties in question were to be permitted to be collected in the
State after February 1, 1833. Appeals to the federal courts for
enforcement of the invalidated acts were forbidden, and all
officeholders, except members of the Legislature, were required to
take an oath to uphold the ordinance. Calhoun had laboriously argued
that nullification did not mean disunion. But his contention was not
sustained by the words of the ordinance, which stated unequivocally
that the people of the State would not "submit to the application
of force on the part of the federal Government to reduce this
State to obedience." Should force be used, the ordinance boldly
declared--indeed, should _any_ action contrary to the will of the
people be taken to execute the measures declared void--such efforts
would be regarded as "inconsistent with the longer continuance of
South Carolina in the Union," and "the people of this State" would
"thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to
maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the
other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate
Government, and to do all other acts and things which sovereign and
independent States may of right do."

In accordance with the instructions of the convention, the Legislature
forthwith reassembled to pass the measures deemed necessary to enforce
the ordinance. A replevin act provided for the recovery of goods
seized or detained for payment of duty; the use of military force,
including volunteers, to "repel invasion" was authorized; and
provision was made for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Throughout
the State a martial tone resounded. Threats of secession and war were
heard on every side. Nightly meetings were held and demonstrations
were organized. Blue cockades with a palmetto button in the center
became the most popular of ornaments. Medals were struck bearing the
inscription: "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern
Confederacy." The Legislature, reassembling in December, elected Hayne
as Governor and chose Calhoun--who now resigned the vice
presidency--to take the vacant seat in the Senate. In his first
message to the Legislature Webster's former antagonist declared his
purpose to carry into full effect the nullification ordinance and the
legislation supplementary to it, and expressed confidence that, if the
sacred soil of the State should be "polluted by the footsteps of an
invader," no one of her sons would be found "raising a parricidal arm
against our common mother."

Thus the proud commonwealth was panoplied for a contest of wits, and
perchance of arms, with the nation. Could it hope to win? South
Carolina had a case which had been forcibly and plausibly presented.
It could count on a deep reluctance of men in every part of the
country to see the nation fall into actual domestic combat. There
were, however, a dozen reasons why victory could not reasonably be
looked for. One would have been enough--the presence of Andrew Jackson
in the White House.

Through federal officers and the leaders of the Union party Jackson
kept himself fully informed upon the situation, and six weeks before
the nullification convention was called he began preparations to meet
all eventualities. The naval authorities at Norfolk were directed to
be in readiness to dispatch a squadron to Charleston; the commanders
of the forts in Charleston Harbor were ordered to double their
vigilance and to defend their posts against any persons whatsoever;
troops were ordered from Fortress Monroe; and General Scott was sent
to take full command and to strengthen the defenses as he found
necessary. The South Carolinians were to be allowed to talk, and even
to adopt "ordinances," to their hearts' content. But the moment they
stepped across the line of disobedience to the laws of the United
States they were to be made to feel the weight of the nation's
restraining hand.

"The duty of the Executive is a plain one," wrote the President to
Joel R. Poinsett, a prominent South Carolina unionist; "the laws will
be executed and the United States preserved by all the constitutional
and legal means he is invested with." When the situation bore its most
serious aspect Jackson received a call from Sam Dale, who had been one
of his dispatch bearers at the Battle of New Orleans. "General Dale,"
exclaimed the President during the conversation, "if this thing goes
on, our country will be like a bag of meal with both ends open. Pick
it up in the middle or endwise, and it will run out. I must tie the
bag and save the country." "Dale," he exclaimed again later, "they are
trying me here; you will witness it; but, by the God of heaven, I will
uphold the laws." "I understood him to be referring to nullification
again," related Dale in his account of the interview, "and I expressed
the hope that things would go right." "They shall go right, sir," the
President fairly shouted, shattering his pipe on the table by way of
further emphasis.

When Jackson heard that the convention at Columbia had taken the step
expected of it, he made the following entry in his diary: "South
Carolina has passed her ordinance of nullification and secession. As
soon as it can be had in authentic form, meet it with a proclamation."
The proclamation was issued December 10, 1832. Parton relates that the
President wrote the first draft of this proclamation under such a glow
of feeling that he was obliged "to scatter the written pages all over
the table to let them dry," and that the document was afterwards
revised by his scholarly Secretary of State, Edward Livingston. With
Jackson supplying the ideas and spirit and Livingston the literary
form, the result was the ablest and most impressive state paper of the
period. It categorically denied the right of a State either to annul a
federal law or to secede from the Union. It admitted that the laws
complained of operated unequally but took the position that this must
be true of all revenue measures. It expressed the inflexible
determination of the Administration to repress and punish every form
of resistance to federal authority. Deep argument, solemn warning, and
fervent entreaty were skillfully combined. But the most powerful
effect was likely to be that produced by the President's flaming
denial--set in bold type in the contemporary prints--of the
Hayne-Calhoun creed: "I consider the power to annul a law of the
United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence
of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the
Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every
principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object
for which it was formed."

Throughout the North this vindication of national dignity and power
struck a responsive chord, and for once even the Adams and Clay men
found themselves in hearty agreement with the President. Bostonians
gathered in Faneuil Hall and New Yorkers in a great meeting in the
Park to shower encomiums upon the proclamation and upon its author.
The nullifiers did not at once recoil from the blow. The South
Carolina Legislature called upon Governor Hayne officially to warn
"the good people of this State against the attempt of the President of
the United States to seduce them from their allegiance"; and the
resulting counterblast, in the form of a proclamation made public on
the 20th of December, was as vigorous as the liveliest "fire-eater"
could have wished. The Governor declared that the State would maintain
its sovereignty or be "buried beneath its ruins."

The date of the expected crisis--February 1, 1833, when the
nullification ordinance was to take effect--was now near at hand, and
on both sides preparations were pushed. During the interval, however,
the tide turned decidedly against the nullifiers. A call for a general
convention of the States "to determine and consider ... questions of
disputed power" served only to draw out strong expressions of
disapproval of the South Carolina program, showing that it could not
expect even moral support from outside. On the 16th of January Jackson
asked Congress for authority to alter or abolish certain ports of
entry, to use force to execute the revenue laws, and to try in the
federal courts cases that might arise from the present emergency. Five
days later a bill on these lines--popularly denominated the "Force
Bill"--was introduced; and while many men who had no sympathy with
nullification drew back from a plan involving the coercion of a State,
it was soon settled that some sort of measure for strengthening the
President's hand would be passed.

Meanwhile a way of escape from the whole difficulty was unexpectedly
opened. The friends of Van Buren began to fear that the disagreement
of North and South upon the tariff question would cost their favorite
the united support of the party in 1836. Accordingly they set on foot
a movement in Congress to bring about a moderate reduction of the
prevailing rates; and it was of course their hope that the nullifiers
would be induced to recede altogether from the position which they had
taken. Through Verplanck of New York, the Ways and Means Committee of
the House brought in a measure reducing the duties, within two years,
to about half the existing rates. Jackson approved the plan, although
personally he had little to do with it.

But though the Verplanck Bill could not muster sufficient support to
become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it
brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time.
Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together
in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the
enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the
new tariff debates should be known. The failure of the Verplanck
measure, however, left matters where they were, and civil war in South
Carolina again loomed ominously.

In this juncture patriots of all parties turned to the one man whose
leadership seemed indispensable in tariff legislation--the "great
pacificator," Henry Clay, who after two years in private life had just
taken his seat in the Senate. Clay was no friend of Jackson or of Van
Buren, and it required much sacrifice of personal feeling to lend his
services to a program whose political benefits would almost certainly
accrue to his rivals. Finally, however, he yielded and on the 12th of
February he rose in the Senate and offered a compromise measure
proposing that on all articles which paid more than twenty per cent
the amount in excess of that rate should be reduced by stages until in
1842 it would entirely disappear.

Stormy debates followed on both the Compromise Tariff and the Force
Bill, but before the session closed on the 4th of March both were on
the statute book. When, therefore, the South Carolina convention, in
accordance with an earlier proclamation of Governor Hamilton,
reassembled on the 11th of March, the wind had been taken out of the
nullifiers' sails; the laws which they had "nullified" had been
repealed, and there was nothing for the convention to do but to
rescind the late ordinance and the legislative measures supplementary
to it. There was a chance, however, for one final fling. By a vote of
132 to 19 the convention soberly adopted an ordinance nullifying the
Force Bill and calling on the Legislature to pass laws to prevent the
execution of that measure--which, indeed, nobody was now proposing to
execute.

So the tempest passed. Both sides claimed victory, and with some show
of reason. So far as was possible without an actual test of strength,
the authority of the Federal Government had been vindicated and its
dignity maintained; the constitutional doctrines of Webster acquired a
new sanction; the fundamental point was enforced that a law--that
every law--enacted by Congress must be obeyed until repealed or until
set aside by the courts as unconstitutional. On the other hand, the
nullifiers had brought about the repeal of the laws to which they
objected and had been largely instrumental in turning the tariff
policy of the country for some decades into a new channel. Moreover
they expressed no regret for their acts and in no degree renounced the
views upon which those acts had been based. They submitted to the
authority of the United States, but on terms fixed by themselves. And,
what is more, they supplied practically every constitutional and
political argument to be used by their sons in 1860 to justify
secession.



CHAPTER IX


THE WAR ON THE UNITED STATES BANK

"Nothing lacks now to complete the love-feast," wrote Isaac Hill
sardonically to Thomas H. Benton after the collapse of nullification,
"but for Jackson and Webster to solemnize the coalition [in support of
the Union] with a few mint-juleps! I think I could arrange it, if
assured of the coöperation of yourself and Blair on our side, and
Jerry Mason and Nick Biddle on theirs. But never fear, my friend. This
mixing of oil and water is only the temporary shake-up of
Nullification. Wait till Jackson gets at the Bank again, and then the
scalping-knives will glisten once more."

The South Carolina controversy had indeed brought Jacksonians and
anti-Jacksonians together. But once the tension was relaxed, there
began the conflict of interests which the New Hampshire editor had
predicted. Men fell again into their customary political
relationships; issues that for the moment had been pushed into the
background--internal improvements, public land policy, distribution of
surplus revenue, and above all the Bank--were revived in full vigor.
Now, indeed, the President entered upon the greatest task to which he
had yet put his hand. To curb nullification was a worthy achievement.
But, after all, Congress and an essentially united nation had stood
firmly behind the Executive at every stage of that performance. To
destroy the United States Bank was a different matter, for this
institution had the full support of one of the two great parties in
which the people of the country were now grouped; Jackson's own party
was by no means a unit in opposing it; and the prestige and influence
of the Bank were such as to enable it to make a powerful fight against
any attempts to annihilate it.

The second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 for twenty
years, with a capital of thirty-five million dollars, one-fifth of
which had been subscribed by the Government. For some time it was not
notably successful, partly because of bad management but mainly
because of the disturbance of business which the panic of 1819 had
produced. Furthermore, its power over local banks and over the
currency system made it unpopular in the West and South, and certain
States sought to cripple it by taxing out of existence the several
branches which the board of directors voted to establish. In two
notable decisions--M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland in 1819 and Osborn _vs._
United States Bank in 1824--the Supreme Court saved the institution by
denying the power of a State to impose taxation of the sort and by
asserting unequivocally the right of Congress to enact the legislation
upon which the Bank rested. And after Nicholas Biddle, a Philadelphia
lawyer-diplomat, succeeded Langdon Cheves as president of the Bank in
1823 an era of great prosperity set in.

The forces of opposition were never reconciled; indeed, every evidence
of the increasing strength of the Bank roused them to fresh hostility.
The verdict of the Supreme Court in support of the constitutionality
of the Act of 1816 carried conviction to few people who were not
already convinced. The restraints which the Bank imposed upon the
dubious operations of the southern and western banks were vigorously
resented. The Bank was regarded as a great financial monopoly, an
"octopus," and Biddle as an autocrat bent only on dominating the
entire banking and currency system of the country.

On Jackson's attitude toward the Bank before he became President we
have little direct information. But it is sufficiently clear that
eventually he came to share the hostile views of his Tennessee friends
and neighbors. In 1817 he refused to sign a memorial "got up by the
aristocracy of Nashville" for the establishment of a branch in that
town. When, ten years later, such a branch was installed, General
Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, agent of the Bank, visited the town
to supervise the arrangements and became very friendly with the "lord
of the Hermitage." But correspondence of succeeding years, though
filled with insinuating cordiality, failed to bring out any expression
of goodwill toward the institution such as the agent manifestly
coveted.

Jackson seems to have carried to Washington in 1829 a deep distrust of
the Bank, and he was disposed to speak out boldly against it in his
inaugural address. But he was persuaded by his friends that this would
be ill-advised, and he therefore made no mention of the subject. Yet
he made no effort to conceal his attitude, for he wrote to Biddle a
few months after the inauguration that he did not believe that
Congress had power to charter a bank outside of the District of
Columbia, that he did not dislike the United States Bank more than
other banks, but that ever since he had read the history of the South
Sea Bubble he had been afraid of banks. After this confession the
writer hardly needed to confess that he was "no economist, no
financier."

Most of the officers of the "mother bank" at Philadelphia and of the
branches were anti-Jackson men, and Jackson's friends put the idea
into his mind that the Bank had used its influence against him in the
late campaign. Specific charges of partizanship were brought against
Jeremiah Mason, president of the branch at Portsmouth, New Hampshire;
and although an investigation showed the accusation to be groundless,
Biddle's heated defense of the branch had no effect save to rouse the
Jacksonians to a firmer determination to compass the downfall of the
Bank.

Biddle labored manfully to stem the tide. He tried to improve his
personal relations with the President, and he even allowed Jackson men
to gain control of several of the western branches. The effort,
however, was in vain. When he thought the situation right, Biddle
brought forward a plan for a new charter which received the assent of
most of the members of the official Cabinet, as well as that of some
of the "Kitchen" group. But Jackson met the proposal with his
unshakable constitutional objections and, to Biddle's deep
disappointment, advanced in his first annual message to the formal,
public assault. The Bank's charter, he reminded Congress, would expire
in 1836; request for a new charter would probably soon be forthcoming;
the matter could not receive too early attention from the legislative
branch. "Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law
creating this bank," declared the President, "are well questioned by a
large portion of our fellow-citizens; and it must be admitted by all
that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and
sound currency." The first part of the statement was true, but the
second was distinctly unfair. The Bank, to be sure, had not
established "a uniform and sound" currency. But it had accomplished
much toward that end and was practically the only agency that was
wielding any influence in that direction. The truth is that the more
efficient the Bank proved in this task the less popular it became
among those elements of the people from which Jackson mainly drew his
strength.

Nothing came of the President's admonition except committee reports in
the two Houses, both favorable to the Bank; in fact, the Senate report
was copied almost verbatim from a statement supplied by Biddle. A year
later Jackson returned to the subject, this time with an alternative
plan for a national bank to be organized as a branch of the Treasury
and hence to have "no means to operate on the hopes, fears, or
interests of large masses of the community." In a set of autograph
notes from which the second message was prepared the existing Bank was
declared not only unconstitutional but dangerous to liberty, "because
through its officers, loans, and participation in politics it could
build up or pull down parties or men, because it created a monopoly of
the money power, because much of the stock was owned by foreigners,
because it would always support him who supported it, and because it
weakened the state and strengthened the general government." Congress
paid no attention to either criticisms or recommendations, and the
supporters of the Bank took fresh heart.

When Congress again met, in December, 1831, a presidential election
was impending and everybody was wondering what part the bank question
would play. Most Democrats were of the opinion that the subject should
be kept in the background. After all, the present bank charter had
more than four years to run, and there seemed to be no reason for
injecting so thorny an issue into the campaign. With a view to keeping
the bank authorities quiet, two members of the reconstructed Cabinet,
Livingston and McLane, entered into a _modus vivendi_ with Biddle
under which the Administration agreed not to push the issue until
after the election. In his annual report as Secretary of the Treasury,
McLane actually made an argument for rechartering the Bank; and in his
message of the 6th of December the President said that, while he still
held "the opinions heretofore expressed in relation to the Bank as at
present organized," he would "leave it for the present to the
investigation of an enlightened people and their representatives." He
had been persuaded that his own plan for a Bank, suggested a year
earlier, was not feasible.

Biddle now made a supreme mistake. Misled in some degree
unquestionably by the optimistic McLane, he got the idea that Jackson
was weakening, that the Democrats were afraid to take a stand on the
subject until after the election, and that now was the strategic time
to strike for a new charter. In this belief he was further encouraged
by Clay, Webster, and other leading anti-Administration men, as well
as by McDuffie, a Calhoun supporter and chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee of the House. There was small doubt that a bill for a new
charter could be carried in both branches of Congress. Jackson must
either sign it, argued Biddle's advisers, or run grave risk of losing
Pennsylvania and other commercial States whose support was necessary
to his election. On the other hand, Biddle was repeatedly warned that
an act for a new charter would be vetoed. He chose to press the issue
and on January 9, 1832, the formal application of the Bank for a
renewal of its charter was presented to Congress, and within a few
weeks bills to recharter were reported in both Houses.

Realizing that defeat or even a slender victory in Congress would be
fatal, the Bank flooded Washington with lobbyists, and Biddle himself
appeared upon the scene to lead the fight. The measure was carried by
safe majorities--in the Senate, on the 11th of June, by a vote of 28
to 20, and in the House on the 3d of July, by a vote of 107 to 86. To
the dismay of the bank forces, although it ought not to have been to
their surprise.

Jackson was as good as his word. On the 10th of July the bill was
vetoed. The veto message as transmitted to the Senate was probably
written by Taney, but the ideas were Jackson's--ideas which, so far as
they relate to finance and banking operations, have been properly
characterized as "in the main beneath contempt." The message, however,
was intended as a campaign document, and as such it showed great
ingenuity. It attacked the Bank as a monopoly, a "hydra of
corruption," and an instrumentality of federal encroachment on the
rights of the States, and in a score of ways appealed to the popular
distrust of capitalistic institutions. The message acquired
importance, too, from the President's extraordinary claim to the right
of judging both the constitutionality and the expediency of proposed
legislation, independently of Congress and the Courts.

The veto plunged the Senate into days of acrid debate. Clay pronounced
Jackson's construction of the veto power "irreconcilable with the
genius of representative government." Webster declared that
responsibility for the ruin of the Bank and for the disasters that
might follow would have to be borne by the President alone. Benton and
other prominent members, however, painted Jackson as the savior of his
country; and the second vote of 22 to 19 yielded a narrower majority
for the bill than the first had done. Thus the measure perished.

The bank men received the veto with equanimity. They professed to
believe that the balderdash in which the message abounded would make
converts for their side; they even printed thirty thousand copies of
the document for circulation. Events, however, did not sustain their
optimism. In the ensuing campaign the Bank became, by its own choice,
the leading issue. The National Republicans, whose nominee was Clay,
defended the institution and attacked the veto; the Jacksonians
reiterated on the stump every charge and argument that their leader
had taught them. The verdict was decisive. Jackson received 219 and
Clay 49 electoral votes.

The President was unquestionably right in interpreting his triumph as
an endorsement of the veto, and he naturally felt that the question
was settled. The officers and friends of the Bank still hoped,
however, to snatch victory from defeat. They had no expectation of
converting Jackson or of carrying a charter measure at an early date.
But they foresaw that to wind up the business of the Bank in 1836 it
would be necessary to call in loans and to withdraw a vast amount of
currency from circulation, with the result of a general disturbance,
if not a severe crippling, of business. This, they thought, would
bring about an eleventh-hour measure giving the Bank a new lease of
life.

Jackson, too, realized that a sudden termination of the activities of
the Bank would derange business and produce distress, and that under
these circumstances a charter might be wrung from Congress in spite of
a veto. But he had no intention of allowing matters to come to such a
pass.

His plan was rather to cut off by degrees the activities of the Bank,
until at last they could be suspended altogether without a shock. The
most obvious means of doing this was to withdraw the heavy deposits
made by the Government; and to this course the President fully
committed himself as soon as the results of the election were known.
He was impelled, further, by the conviction--notwithstanding
unimpeachable evidence to the contrary--that the Bank was insolvent,
and by his indignation at the refusal of Biddle and his associates to
accept the electoral verdict as final. "Biddle shan't have the public
money to break down the public administration with. It's settled. My
mind's made up." So the President declared to Blair early in 1833. And
no one could have any reasonable doubt that decisive action would
follow threat.

It was not, however, all plain sailing. Under the terms of the charter
of 1816 public funds were to be deposited in the Bank and its branches
unless the Secretary of the Treasury should direct that they be placed
elsewhere; and such deposits elsewhere, together with actual
withdrawals, were to be reported to Congress, with reasons for such
action. McLane, the Secretary of the Treasury, was friendly toward the
Bank and could not be expected to give the necessary orders for
removal. This meant that the first step was to get a new head for the
Treasury. But McLane was too influential a man to be summarily
dismissed. Hence it was arranged that Livingston should become
Minister to France and that McLane should succeed him as Secretary of
State.

The choice of the new Secretary of the Treasury would have been a
clever stroke if things had worked out as Jackson expected. The
appointee was William J. Duane, son of the editor of the Aurora, which
had long been the most popular and influential newspaper in
Pennsylvania. This State was the seat of the "mother bank" and,
although a Jackson stronghold, a cordial supporter of the proscribed
institution; so that it was well worth while to forestall criticism in
that quarter, so far as might be, by having the order for removal
issued by a Pennsylvanian. Duane, however, accepted the post rather
because he coveted office than because he supported the policy of
removal, and when the test came Jackson found to his chagrin that he
still had a Secretary who would not take the desired action. There was
nothing to do but procure another; and this time he made no mistake.
Duane, weakly protesting, was dismissed, and Roger B. Taney, the
Attorney-General, was appointed in his stead. "I am fully prepared to
go with you firmly through this business," Jackson was assured by the
new Secretary, "and to meet all its consequences."

The way was now clear, and an order was issued requiring all treasury
receipts after October 1, 1833, to be deposited in the Girard Bank of
Philadelphia and twenty-two other designated state banks. Deposits in
the United States Bank and its branches were not immediately
"removed"; they were left, rather, to be withdrawn as the money was
actually needed. Nevertheless there considerable disturbance of
business, and deputation after deputation came to the White House to
ask that Taney's order be rescinded. Jackson, however, was sure that
most of the trouble was caused by Biddle and his associates, and to
all these appeals he remained absolutely deaf. After a time he refused
so much as to see the petitioners. In his message of the 3d of
December he assumed full responsibility for the removals, defending
his course mainly on the ground that the Bank had been "actively
engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public
officers by means of its money."

From this point the question became entirely one of politics. The Bank
itself was doomed. On the one side, the National Republicans united in
the position that the Administration had been entirely in the wrong,
and that the welfare of the country demanded a great fiscal
institution of the character of the Bank. On the other side, the
Democrats, deriving, indeed, a new degree of unity from the
controversy on this issue, upheld the President's every word and act.
"You may continue," said Benton to his fellow partizans in the Senate,
"to be for a bank and for Jackson, but you cannot be for this Bank and
Jackson." Firmly allied with the Bank interests, the National
Republicans resolved to bring all possible discomfiture upon the
Administration.

The House of Representatives was controlled by the Democrats, and
little could be accomplished there. But the Senate contained not only
the three ablest anti-Jacksonians of the day--Clay, Webster,
Calhoun--but an absolute majority of anti-Administration men; and
there the attack was launched. On December 26, 1833, Clay introduced
two resolutions declaring that in the removal of the deposits the
President had "assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred
by the Constitution and laws but in derogation of both," and
pronouncing Taney's statement of reasons "unsatisfactory and
insufficient." After a stormy debate, both resolutions in slightly
amended form were carried by substantial majorities.

Jackson was not in the habit of meekly swallowing censure, and on the
15th of April he sent to the Senate a formal protest, characterizing
the action of the body as "unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary
to its spirit and to several of its express provisions," and
"subversive of that distribution of the powers of government which it
has ordained and established." Aside from a general defense of his
course, the chief point that the President made was that the
Constitution provided a procedure in cases of this kind, namely
impeachment, which alone could be properly resorted to if the
legislative branch desired to bring charges against the Executive. The
Senate was asked respectfully to spread the protest on its records.
This, however, it refused to do. On the contrary, it voted that the
right of protest could not be recognized; and it found additional
satisfaction in negativing an unusual number of the President's
nominations.

Throughout the remainder of his second Administration Jackson
maintained his hold upon the country and kept firm control in the
lower branch of Congress. Until very near the end, the Senate,
however, continued hostile. During the debate on the protest Benton
served notice that he would introduce, at each succeeding session, a
motion to expunge the resolution of censure. Such a motion was made in
1835, and again in 1836, without result. But at last, in January,
1837, after a debate lasting thirteen hours, the Senate adopted, by a
vote of 24 to 19, a resolution meeting the Jacksonian demand.

The manuscript journal of the session of 1833-1834 was brought into
the Senate, and the secretary, in obedience to the resolution, drew
black lines around the resolution of censure, and wrote across the
face thereof, "in strong letters," the words: "Expunged by order of
the Senate, this sixteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord
1837." Many members withdrew rather than witness the proceeding; but a
crowded gallery looked on, while Benton strengthened his supporters by
providing "an ample supply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef,
pickles, wines, and cups of hot coffee" in a near-by committee-room.
Jackson gave a dinner to the "ex-pungers" and their wives, and placed
Benton at the head of the table. That the action of the Senate was
unconstitutional interested no one save the lawyers, for the Bank was
dead. Jackson was vindicated, and the people were enthroned.[12]

The struggle thus brought to a triumphant close was one of the
severest in American political history. In 1836 the Bank obtained a
charter from Pennsylvania, under the name of the Bank of the United
States of Pennsylvania, and all connection between it and the Federal
Government ceased. The institution and the controversies centering
about it left, however, a deep impress upon the financial and
political history of our fifth and sixth decades. It was the bank
issue, more than anything else, that consolidated the new political
parties of the period. It was that issue that proved most conclusively
the hold of Jackson upon public opinion. And it was the destruction of
the Bank that capped the mid-century reaction against the rampant
nationalism of the decade succeeding the War of 1812. The Bank itself
had been well managed, sound, and of great service to the country. But
it had also showed strong monopolistic tendencies, and as a powerful
capitalistic organization it ran counter to the principles and
prejudices which formed the very warp and woof of Jacksonian
democracy.

For more than a decade after the Bank was destroyed the United States
had a troubled financial history. The payment of the last dollar of
the national debt in 1834 gave point to a suggestion which Clay had
repeatedly offered that, as a means of avoiding an embarrassing
surplus, the proceeds of the sales of public lands should be
distributed according to population among the States. One bill on this
subject was killed by a veto in 1832, but another was finally approved
in 1836. Before distribution could be carried far, however, the
country was overtaken by the panic of 1837; and never again was there
a surplus to distribute. For seven years the funds of the Government
continued to be kept in state banks, until, in 1840, President Van
Buren prevailed upon Congress to pass a measure setting up an
independent treasury system, thereby realizing the ultimate purpose of
the Jacksonians to divorce the Government from banks of every sort.
When the Whigs came into power in 1841, they promptly abolished the
independent Treasury with a view to resurrecting the United States
Bank. Tyler's vetoes, however, frustrated their designs, and it
remained for the Democrats in 1846 to revive the independent Treasury
and to organize it substantially as it operates today.



CHAPTER X


THE REMOVAL OF THE SOUTHERN INDIANS

It was not by chance that the Jacksonian period made large
contribution to the working out of the ultimate relations of the red
man with his white rival and conqueror. Jackson was himself an old
frontier soldier, who never doubted that it was part of the natural
order of things that conflict between the two peoples should go on
until the weaker was dispossessed or exterminated. The era was one in
which the West guided public policy; and it was the West that was
chiefly interested in further circumscribing Indian lands, trade, and
influence. In Jackson's day, too, the people ruled; and it was the
adventurous, pushing, land-hungry common folk who decreed that the red
man had lingered long enough in the Middle West and must now move on.

The pressure of the white population upon the Indian lands was felt
both in the Northwest and in the Southwest; but the pressure was
unevenly applied in the two sections. North of the Ohio there was
simply one great glacier-like advance of the white settlers, driving
westward before it practically all of the natives who did not perish
in the successive attempts to roll back the wave of conquest upon the
Alleghanies. The redskins were pushed from Ohio into Indiana, from
Indiana into Illinois, from Illinois and Wisconsin into Iowa and
Minnesota; the few tribal fragments which by treaty arrangement
remained behind formed only insignificant "islands" in the midst of
the fast-growing flood of white population.

In the South the great streams of migration were those that flowed
down the Ohio, filling the back lands on each side, and thence down
the Mississippi to its mouth. Hence, instead of pressing the natives
steadily backward from a single direction, as in the North, the whites
hemmed them in on east, west, and north; while to the southward the
Gulf presented a relentless barrier. Powerful and populous tribes were
left high and dry in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama--peoples who in
their day of necessity could hope to find new homes only by long
migrations past the settled river districts that lay upon their
western frontiers.

Of these encircled tribes, four were of chief importance: the Creeks,
the Cherokees, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws. In 1825 the Creeks
numbered twenty thousand, and held between five and six million acres
of land in western Georgia and eastern Alabama. The Cherokees numbered
about nine thousand and had even greater areas, mainly in northwestern
Georgia, but to some extent also in northeastern Alabama and
southeastern Tennessee. The Choctaws, numbering twenty-one thousand,
and the Chickasaws, numbering thirty-six hundred, together held
upwards of sixteen million acres in Mississippi--approximately the
northern half of the State--and a million and a quarter acres in
western Alabama. The four peoples thus numbered fifty-three thousand
souls, and held ancestral lands aggregating over thirty-three million
acres, or nearly the combined area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Furthermore, they were no longer savages. The Creeks were the lowest
in civilization; but even they had become more settled and less
warlike since their chastisement by Jackson in 1814. The Choctaws and
Chickasaws lived in frame houses, cultivated large stretches of land,
operated workshops and mills, maintained crude but orderly
governments, and were gradually accepting Christianity. Most advanced
of all were the Cherokees. As one writer has described them, they "had
horses and cattle, goats, sheep, and swine. They raised maize, cotton,
tobacco, wheat, oats, and potatoes, and traded with their products to
New Orleans. They had gardens, and apple and peach orchards. They had
built roads, and they kept inns for travelers. They manufactured
cotton and wool.... One of their number had invented an alphabet for
their language. They had a civil government, imitated from that of the
United States." Under these improved conditions all of the tribes were
growing in numbers and acquiring vested rights which it would be
increasingly difficult to deny or to disregard.

A good while before Jackson entered the White House the future of
these large, settled, and prosperous groups of red men began to
trouble the people of Georgia, Alabama, and other Southern States. The
Indians made but little use of the major part of their land; vast
tracts lay untrodden save by hunters. Naturally, as the white
population grew and the lands open for settlement became scarcer and
poorer, the rich tribal holdings were looked upon with covetous eyes.
In the decade following the War of 1812, when cotton cultivation was
spreading rapidly over the southern interior, the demand that they be
thrown open for occupation to white settlers became almost
irresistible.

Three things, obviously, could happen. The tribes could be allowed to
retain permanently their great domains, while the white population
flowed in around them; or the lands could be opened to the whites
under terms looking to a peaceful intermingling of the two peoples; or
the tribes could be induced or compelled to move _en masse_ to new
homes beyond the Mississippi. The third plan was the only one ever
considered by most people to be feasible, although it offered great
difficulties and was carried out only after many delays.

The State which felt the situation most keenly was Georgia, partly
because there an older and denser population pressed more eagerly for
new lands, partly--it must be admitted--because lands obtained by
cession were, under the practice of that State, distributed among the
people by lottery. The first move in this direction was to dispossess
the Creeks. As far back as 1802, when Georgia made her final cession
of western lands to United States, the latter agreed to extinguish the
Indian title to lands within the State whenever it could be done
"peaceably and on reasonable terms." This pledge the Georgians never
allowed the federal authorities to forget. After 1815 several large
tracts were liberated. But by that date the State wanted unbroken
jurisdiction over all of the territory within her limits, and her
complaints of laxness on the part of the Federal Government in
bringing this about became no less frequent than vigorous.

Near the close of his Administration President Monroe sent two
commissioners to procure a general cession; and at Indian Spring a
treaty was concluded in which the Creeks ceded practically all of
their lands between the Flint and the Chattahoochee rivers. The Senate
ratified the treaty, and the Georgians were elated. But investigation
showed that the Creeks who stood behind the agreement represented only
an insignificant fraction of the nation, and President Adams refused
to allow Troup, the irate Georgian Governor, to proceed with the
intended occupation until further negotiations should have taken
place. Stormy exchanges of views followed, in the course of which the
Governor more than once reminded Adams that Georgia was "sovereign on
her own soil." But in 1826 and 1827 treaties were obtained finally
extinguishing Creek titles in the State. Land west of the Mississippi
was promised to all Creeks who would go there.

The problem of the Cherokees was more difficult. By a series of
treaties beginning in 1785 the United States had recognized this
people as a nation, capable of making peace and war, of owning the
lands within its boundaries, and of governing and punishing its own
citizens by its own laws. At the close of Jefferson's second
Administration the tribe seriously considered moving west of the
Mississippi, and shortly after the War of 1812 most of the northern
members resident in Tennessee took the long-deferred step. The refusal
of the Georgia members to go with the Tenneseeans disappointed the
land-hungry whites, and from that time the authorities of the State
labored incessantly both to break down the notion that the Cherokees
were a "nation" to be dealt with through diplomatic channels, and to
extend over them, in effect, the full sovereignty of the State. In
December, 1828, the Legislature took the bold step of enacting that
all white persons in the Cherokee territory should be subject to the
laws of Georgia; that after June 1, 1830, all Indians resident in this
territory should be subject to such laws as might be prescribed for
them by the State; and that after this date all laws made by the
Cherokee Government should be null and void.

When Jackson became President he found on his desk a vigorous protest
against this drastic piece of legislation. But appeal to him was
useless. He was on record as believing, in common with most
southwesterners, that Georgia had a rightful jurisdiction over her
Indian lands; and his Secretary of War, Eaton, was instructed to say
to the Cherokee representatives that their people would be expected
either to yield to Georgia's authority or to remove beyond the
Mississippi. In his first annual message, on December 8, 1829, the
President set forth the principles that guided him from first to last
in dealing with the Indian problem. It would be greatly to the
interest of the Indians themselves, he said, to remove to the ample
lands that would be set apart for them permanently in the West, where
each tribe could have its own home and its own government, subject to
no control by the United States except for the maintenance of peace on
the frontier and among the tribes. Forcible removal was not to be
contemplated; that would be cruel and unjust. But every effort was to
be made to bring about a voluntary migration. One thing was to be
clearly understood: any tribe or group that chose to remain in Georgia
must submit to the laws of the State and yield its claim to all land
which had not been improved. The President was not indifferent to the
well-being of the red men; but he refused to recognize the Cherokees
as a "nation" having "rights" as against either Georgia or the United
States. A few weeks after the message was received Congress passed a
bill creating an Indian reservation beyond the Mississippi and
appropriating five hundred thousand dollars to aid in the removal of
such Indians as should choose to accept the offer of the Government.

The outlook for the Cherokees was now dark. Both the executive and
legislative branches of the Federal Government were committed to a
policy which offered only the alternatives of removal or subjection;
and, thus encouraged, the Georgia Legislature voted to proceed with
the extension of the full authority of the State over both the
Cherokees and the Creeks after June 1, 1830. To make matters worse,
the discovery of gold in the northeastern corner of the State in 1829
brought down upon the Cherokee lands a horde of scrambling, lawless
fortune seekers, numbered already in 1830 by the thousand. None the
less, the Cherokee opposition stiffened. The Indian legislative
council voted that all who accepted lands beyond the Mississippi and
settled on them should forfeit their tribal membership, that those who
sold their individual property to emigrate should be flogged, and that
those who voted to sell a part or all of the tribal possessions should
be put to death.

One resource remained to be exhausted in defense of the Indian claims;
this was the courts. But here again things went unfavorably. After
many delays a test case, Cherokee Nation vs. State of Georgia, was
placed upon the docket of the Supreme Court. The bill set forth the
plaintiff to be "the Cherokee Nation of Indians, a foreign State, not
owning allegiance to the United States, nor to any State of this
union, nor to any prince, potentate, or State other than their own,"
and it asked that the Court declare null the Georgia Acts of 1828 and
1829 and enjoin the Georgia officials from interfering with Cherokee
lands, mines, and other property, or with the persons of Cherokees on
account of anything done by them within the Cherokee territory. The
Indians were represented before the Court by two attorneys, one of
them being William Wirt; Georgia employed no counsel. The opinion of
the Court as announced at the January term, 1831, by Chief Justice
Marshall was that while the Cherokee nation was a State and had
uniformly been dealt with as such by the Federal Government since
1789, it was not a "foreign State" within the meaning of the
Constitution, and therefore was not entitled to sue in that character
in the courts of the United States. "If it be true," the decision
concluded, "that wrongs have been inflicted and that still greater are
to be apprehended, this is not the tribunal which can redress the past
or prevent the future. The motion for an injunction is denied."

The case was thus thrown out of court. Yet the Cherokees were
recognized as a "domestic, dependent" nation, and there was nothing in
the decision to indicate that the extension of the laws of Georgia
over them was valid and constitutional. Indeed, in a second case that
came up shortly, Worcester _vs._ State of Georgia, the Court strongly
backed up the Indians' contention. Worcester was a Presbyterian
missionary who was imprisoned for violation of a Georgia statute
forbidding white persons to reside in the Cherokee territory without a
license. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and in the
decision of March 10, 1832, Marshall affirmed the status of the
Cherokees as a "nation" within whose territory "the laws of Georgia
can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to
enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity
with treaties and with the acts of Congress." The statute was
accordingly declared to be unconstitutional and Worcester was ordered
to be discharged.

This ought to have been enough to protect the Cherokees in their
rights. But it was not, and for two reasons: the contempt of Georgia
for the Court's opinions, and the refusal of Jackson to restrain the
State in its headstrong course. Already the state authorities had
refused to take notice of a writ of error to the Supreme Court sued
out in December, 1830, in behalf of a condemned Cherokee, Corn Tassel,
and had permitted the execution of the unfortunate redskin. The state
court now refused to issue a writ of _habeas corpus_ in behalf of
Worcester, and the prisoner was held--precisely as if the law under
which he was convicted had been pronounced constitutional--until he
was pardoned by the Governor a year later.

This action on the part of the State was, of course, nothing less than
nullification. Yet Jackson did not lift a finger. "John Marshall has
made his decision," he is reported to have said; "now let him enforce
it." The South Carolinians were quick to seize upon the
inconsistencies of the situation. Nullification in their State was
apparently one thing; in Georgia, quite another. The very fact,
however, that the Georgians had successfully defied the federal
Supreme Court did much to encourage their neighbors in a course of
similar boldness. Jackson's leniency toward Georgia has never been
wholly explained. He was undoubtedly influenced by his sympathy with
the purpose of the State to establish its jurisdiction over all lands
within its borders. Furthermore he cherished an antipathy for Marshall
which even led him to refuse in 1835 to attend a memorial meeting in
the great jurist's honor. But these considerations do not wholly cover
the case. All that the historian can say is that the President chose
to take notice of the threats and acts of South Carolina and to ignore
the threats and acts of Georgia, without ever being troubled by the
inconsistency of his course. His political career affords many such
illustrations of the arbitrary and even erratic character of his mind.

Meanwhile the great Indian migration was setting in. Emulating the
example of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi extended their laws over
all of the Indian lands within their boundaries; and in all parts of
the South the red folk--some of them joyously, but most of them
sorrowfully--prepared to take up their long journey. In 1832 the
Creeks yielded to the United States all of their remaining lands east
of the Mississippi. By the spring of 1833 the Choctaws and Chickasaws
had done the same thing and were on their way westward. Only the
Cherokees remained, and in his message of December 3, 1833, Jackson
reiterated his earlier arguments for their removal. Realizing that
further resistance was useless, a portion of the tribe signified its
readiness to go. The remainder, however, held out, and it was only at
the close of 1835 that the long-desired treaty of cession could be
secured. All Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi were now
relinquished to the United States, which agreed to pay five million
dollars for them, to provide an adequate home in the new Indian
Territory created by Congress during the preceding year, and to bear
all the costs of removing the tribe thither.

It was not alone the South, however, that witnessed widespread
displacements of Indian populations in the Jacksonian period. How the
Black Hawk War of 1832 grew out of, and in turn led to, removals in
the remoter Northwest has been related in another volume in this
series.[13] And, in almost every western State, surviving Indian
titles were rapidly extinguished. Between 1829 and 1837 ninety-four
Indian treaties, most of them providing for transfers of territory,
were concluded; and before Jackson went out of office he was able to
report to Congress that, "with the exception of two small bands living
in Ohio and Indiana, not exceeding fifteen hundred persons, and of the
Cherokees, all of the tribes on the east side of the Mississippi, and
extending from Lake Michigan to Florida, have entered into engagements
which will lead to their transplantation." With little delay the
Cherokees, too, were added to this list, although a group of
irreconcilables resisted until 1838, when they were forcibly ejected
by a contingent of United States troops under General Winfield Scott.

All of this was done not without strong protest from other people
besides the Indians. Some who objected did so for political effect.
When Clay and Calhoun, for example, thundered in the Senate against
the removal treaties, they were merely seeking to discredit the
Administration; both held views on Indian policy which were
substantially the same as Jackson's. But there was also objection on
humanitarian grounds; and the Society of Friends and other religious
bodies engaged in converting and educating the southern tribes used
all possible influence to defeat the plan of removal. On the whole,
however, the country approved what was being done. People felt that
the further presence of large, organized bodies of natives in the
midst of a rapidly growing white population, and of tribes setting
themselves up as quasi-independent nations within the bounds of the
States, was an anomaly that could not last; and they considered that,
distressing as were many features of the removals, both white man and
red man would ultimately be better off.



CHAPTER XI


THE JACKSONIAN SUCCESSION

"Oh, hang General Jackson," exclaimed Fanny Kemble one day, after
dinner, in the cabin of the ship that brought her, in the summer of
1832, to the United States. Even before she set foot on our shores,
the brilliant English actress was tired of the din of politics and
bored by the incessant repetition of the President's name.
Subsequently she was presented at the White House and had an
opportunity to form her own opinion of the "monarch" whose name and
deeds were on everybody's lips; and the impression was by no means
unfavorable. "Very tall and thin he was," says her journal, "but erect
and dignified; a good specimen of a fine old, well-battered soldier;
his manners perfectly simple and quiet, and, therefore, very good."

Small wonder that the name of Jackson was heard wherever men and women
congregated in 1832! Something more than half of the people of the
country were at the moment trying to elect the General to a second
term as President, and something less than half were putting forth
their best efforts to prevent such a "calamity." Three years of
Jacksonian rule had seen the civil service revolutionized, the Cabinet
banished from its traditional place in the governmental system, and
the conduct of the executive branch given a wholly new character and
bent. Internal improvements had been checked by the Maysville Road
veto. The United States Bank had been given a blow, through another
veto, which sent it staggering. Political fortunes had been made and
unmade by a wave of the President's hand. The first attempt of a State
to put the stability of the Union to the test had brought the Chief
Executive dramatically into the role of defender of the nation's
dignity and perpetuity. No previous President had so frequently
challenged the attention of the public; none had kept himself more
continuously in the forefront of political controversy.

Frail health and close application to official duties prevented
Jackson from traveling extensively during his eight years in the White
House. He saw the Hermitage but once in this time, and on but one
occasion did he venture far from the capital. This was in the summer
of 1833, when he toured the Middle States and New England northward as
far as Concord, New Hampshire. Accompanied by Van Buren, Lewis Cass,
Levi Woodbury, and other men of prominence, the President set off from
Washington in early June. At Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and
intervening cities the party was received with all possible
demonstrations of regard. Processions moved through crowded streets;
artillery thundered salutes; banquet followed banquet; the enthusiasm
of the masses was unrestrained. At New York the furnishings of the
hotel suite occupied by the President were eventually auctioned off as
mementoes of the occasion.

New England was, in the main, enemy country. None the less, the
President was received there with unstinted goodwill. Edward Everett
said that only two other men had ever been welcomed in Boston as
Jackson was. They were Washington and La Fayette. The President's
determined stand against nullification was fresh in mind, and the
people, regardless of party, were not slow to express their
appreciation. Their cordiality was fully reciprocated. "He is
amazingly tickled with the Yankees," reports a fellow traveler more
noted for veracity than for elegance of speech, "and the more he sees
on 'em, the better he likes 'em. 'No nullification here,' says he.
'No,' says I, 'General; Mr. Calhoun would stand no more chance down
east than a stumped-tail bull in fly time.'"

To the infinite disgust of John Quincy Adams, Harvard University
conferred upon the distinguished visitor the honorary degree of doctor
of laws. In the course of the ceremony one of the seniors delivered,
in Latin, a salutatory concluding with the words: "Harvard welcomes
Jackson the President. She embraces Jackson the Patriot." "A splendid
compliment, sir, a splendid compliment," declared the honored guest
after Woodbury had translated the phrases for his benefit; "but why
talk about so live a thing as patriotism in a dead language?" At the
close of the exercises the students filed past the President and were
introduced to him, each greeting him, "to the infinite edification and
amusement of the grizzly old warrior," by his new title _Doctor_
Jackson. The wits of the opposition lost no opportunity to poke fun at
the President's accession to the brotherhood of scholars. As he was
closing a speech some days later an auditor called out, "You must give
them a little Latin, _Doctor_." In nowise abashed, the President
solemnly doffed his hat again, stepped to the front of the platform,
and resumed: "_E pluribus unum_, my friends, _sine qua non_!"

Life at the White House, as one writer has remarked, lost under
Jackson something of the good form of the Virginia regime, but it lost
nothing of the air of domesticity. Throughout the two Administrations
the mistress of the mansion was Mrs. Andrew Jackson Donelson, wife of
the President's secretary and in every respect a very capable woman.
Of formality there was little or none. Major Lewis was a member of the
presidential household, and other intimates--Van Buren, Kendall,
Blair, Hill--dropped in at anytime, "before breakfast, or in the
evening, as inclination prompted." The President was always accessible
to callers, whether or not their business was important. Yet he found
much time, especially in the evenings, for the enjoyment of his long
reed pipe with red clay bowl, in the intimacy of the White House
living room, with perhaps a Cabinet officer to read dispatches or
other state papers to him in a corner, while the ladies sewed and
chatted and half a dozen children played about the room.

Social affairs there were, of course. But they were simple enough to
please the most ardent Jeffersonian--much too simple to please people
accustomed to somewhat rigorous etiquette. Thus George Bancroft, who
had the reputation of being one of Washington's most punctilious
gentlemen, thought well of Jackson's character but very poorly of his
levees. In describing a White House reception which he attended in
1831, he wrote:

"The old man stood in the center of a little circle, about large enough
for a cotillion, and shook hands with everybody that offered. The
number of ladies who attended was small; nor were they brilliant. But
to compensate for it there was a throng of apprentices, boys of all
ages, men not civilized enough to walk about the room with their hats
off; the vilest promiscuous medley that ever was congregated in a
decent house; many of the lowest gathering round the doors, pouncing
with avidity upon the wine and refreshments, tearing the cake with the
ravenous keenness of intense hunger; starvelings, and fellows with
dirty faces and dirty manners; all the refuse that Washington could
turn forth from its workshops and stables."

The "people" still ruled. Yet it was only the public receptions that
presented such scenes of disorder. The dinners which the President
occasionally gave were well appointed. A Philadelphia gentleman who
was once invited to the White House with two or three friends
testifies that "the dinner was very neat and served in excellent
taste, while the wines were of the choicest qualities. The President
himself dined on the simplest fare: bread, milk, and vegetables."

Jackson was never a rich man, and throughout his stay in the White
House he found it no easy matter to make ends meet. He entertained his
personal friends and official guests royally. He lavished hospitality
upon the general public, sometimes spending as much as a thousand or
fifteen hundred dollars on a single levee. He drew a sharp line
between personal and public expenditures, and met out of his own
pocket outlays that under administrations both before and after were
charged to the public account. He loaned many thousands of dollars, in
small amounts, to needy friends, to old comrades in arms, and
especially to widows and orphans of his soldiery and of his political
supporters; and a large proportion of these debts he not only never
collected but actually forgot. Receipts from the Hermitage farm during
his years of absence were small, and fire in 1834 made necessary a
rebuilding of the family residence at considerable cost. The upshot
was that when, in 1837, the General was preparing to leave Washington,
he had to scrape together every available dollar in cash, and in
addition pledge the cotton crop of his plantation six months ahead for
a loan of six thousand dollars, in order to pay the bills outstanding
against him in the capital.

Meanwhile the country came to the election of 1836. From the time of
Van Buren's withdrawal from the Cabinet in 1831 to become, with
Jackson's full approval, a candidate for the vice presidency, there
never was doubt that the New Yorker would be the Democratic
presidential nominee in 1836, or that his election would mean a
continuation, in most respects, of the Jacksonian regime. Never did a
President more clearly pick his successor. There was, of course, some
protest within the party. Van Buren was not popular, and it required
all of the personal and official influence that the President could
bring to bear, backed up by judicious use of the patronage, to carry
his program through. At that, his own State rebelled and, through a
resolution of the Legislature, put itself behind the candidacy of
Senator Hugh L. White. The bold actions of his second Administration,
defiant alike of precedent and opposition, had alienated many of the
President's more intelligent and conservative followers. Yet the
allegiance of the masses was unshaken; and when the Democratic
convention assembled at Baltimore in May, 1835,--a year and a half
before the election--the nomination of Van Buren was secured without a
dissenting vote. There was no need to adopt a platform; everybody
understood that Jackson's policies were the platform, and that Jackson
himself was as truly before the electorate as if he had been a
candidate for a third term. In his letter of acceptance Van Buren met
all expectations by declaring his purpose "to tread generally in the
footsteps of President Jackson."

The anti-Administration forces entered the campaign with no flattering
prospects. Since 1832 their opposition to "executive usurpation" had
won for them a new party name, "Whig." But neither their opposition
nor any other circumstance had given them party solidarity. National
Republicans, anti-Masons, converted Jacksonians, state rights
men--upon what broad and constructive platform could they hope to
unite? They had no lack of able presidential aspirants. There was
Clay, the National Republican candidate in 1832; there was Webster, of
whom Jackson once said that he would never be President because he was
"too far east, knows too much, and is too honest"; and there were
lesser lights, such as Judge John McLean. But, again, how could the
many discordant groups be rallied to the support of any single leader?

Jackson predicted in 1834 that his opponents would nominate William
Henry Harrison, because "they have got to take up a soldier; they have
tried orators enough." The prophecy was a shrewd one, and in 1840 it
was fulfilled to the letter. Upon the present occasion, however, the
leaders decided to place no single nominee in the field, but rather to
bring forward a number of candidates who could be expected to develop
local strength and so to split the vote as to throw the final choice
into the House of Representatives. This seemed the only hope of
circumventing Van Buren's election. Four sectional candidates entered
the race: Webster was backed by New England; the Northwest united on
Harrison; the Southwest joined the Tennessee revolters in support of
White; Ohio had her own candidate in the person of McLean.

The plan was ingenious, but it did not work. Van Buren received 170
electoral votes against 124 in spite of his opponents. He carried
fifteen of the twenty-six States, including four in New England.
Harrison received 73 votes, White 26 (including those of Tennessee),
and Webster 14. South Carolina refused to support any of the
candidates on either side and threw away her votes on W.P. Mangum of
North Carolina. The Democrats kept control of both branches of
Congress.

Victory, therefore, rested with the Jacksonians--which means with
Jackson himself. The Democrats would have control of both the
executive and legislative branches of the Government for some years to
come; the Bank would not soon be re-chartered; the veto power would
remain intact; federal expenditure upon internal improvements had been
curbed, and the "American system" had been checked; the national debt
was discharged and revenue was superabundant; Jackson could look back
over the record of his Administrations with pride and forward to the
rule of "Little Van" with satisfaction. "When I review the arduous
administration through which I have passed," declared the President
soon after the results of the election were made known, "the
formidable opposition, to its very close, of the combined talents,
wealth, and power of the whole aristocracy of the United States, aided
as it is by the moneyed monopolies of the whole country with their
corrupting influence, with which we had to contend, I am truly
thankful to my God for this happy result."

Congress met on the 5th of December for the closing session of the
Administration. The note of victory pervaded the President's message.
Yet there was one more triumph to be won: the resolution of censure
voted by the Senate in 1834 was still officially on the record book.
Now it was that Benton finally procured the passage of his expunging
resolution, although not until both branches of Congress had been
dragged into controversy more personal and acrid, if possible, than
any in the past eight years. The action taken was probably
unconstitutional. But Jackson's "honor" was vindicated, and that was
all that he and his friends saw, or cared to see, in the proceeding.
As early as 1831 the President conceived the idea of issuing a
farewell address to the people upon the eve of his retirement; and a
few weeks before the election of Van Buren he sent to Taney a list of
subjects which he proposed to touch upon in the document, requesting
him to "throw on paper" his ideas concerning them. The address was
issued on March 4, 1837, and followed closely the copy subsequently
found in Taney's hand writing in the Jackson manuscripts. Its contents
were thoroughly commonplace, being indeed hardly more than a resume of
the eight annual messages; and it might well have been dismissed as
the amiable musings of a garrulous old man. But nothing associated
with the name of Jackson ever failed to stir controversy. The Whigs
ridiculed the egotism which underlay the palpable imitation of
Washington. "Happily," said the New York _American_, "it is the last
humbug which the mischievous popularity of this illiterate, violent,
vain, and iron-willed soldier can impose upon a confiding and
credulous people." The Democrats, however, lauded the address, praised
the wisdom and sincerity of its author, and laid away among their most
valued mementoes the white satin copies which admiring friends
scattered broadcast over the country.

Showered with evidences of undiminished popularity, the General came
down to his last day in office. One enthusiast sent him a light wagon
made entirely of hickory sticks with the bark upon them. Another
presented a phaeton made of wood taken from the old frigate
_Constitution_. A third capped the climax by forwarding from New York
a cheese four feet in diameter, two feet thick, and weighing fourteen
hundred pounds--twice as large, the _Globe_ fondly pointed out, as the
cheese presented to Jefferson under similar circumstances a quarter of
a century earlier. From all parts of the country came callers, singly
and in delegations, to pay their respects and to assure the outgoing
Chief of their goodwill and admiration. March 4,1837, was a raw,
disagreeable day. But Jackson, pale and racked by disease, rode with
his chosen successor to the place where he had himself assumed office
eight years before, and sat uncovered while the oath was administered
and the inaugural delivered. The suave, elegantly dressed Van Buren
was politely applauded as the new Chief to whom respect was due. But
it was the tall, haggard, white-haired soldier-politician who had put
Van Buren where he was who awoke the spontaneous enthusiasm of the
crowds.

Three days after the inauguration Jackson started for the Hermitage.
His trip became a series of ovations, and he was obliged several times
to pause for rest. At last he reached Nashville, where once again, as
in the old days of the Indian wars, he was received with an acclaim
deeply tinged by personal friendship and neighborly pride. A great
banquet in his honor was presided over by James K. Polk, now Speaker
of the national House of Representatives; and the orators vied one
with another in extolling his virtues and depicting his services to
the country. Then Jackson went on to the homestead whose seclusion he
coveted.

No one knew better than the ex-President himself that his course was
almost run. He was seventy years of age and seldom free from pain for
an hour. He considered himself, moreover, a poor man--mainly, it
appears, because he went back to Tennessee owing ten thousand dollars
and with only ninety dollars in his pockets. He was, however, only
"land poor," for his plantation of twenty-six hundred acres was rich
and valuable, and he had a hundred and forty slaves--"servants" he
always called them--besides large numbers of horses and cattle. A year
or two of thrifty supervision brought his lands and herds back to
liberal yields; his debts were soon paid off; and notwithstanding
heavy outlays for his adopted son, whose investments invariably turned
out badly, he was soon able to put aside all anxiety over pecuniary
matters.

Established again in his old home, surrounded by congenial relatives
and friends, respected by neighbors without regard to politics, and
visited from time to time by notable foreigners and Americans, Jackson
found much of satisfaction in his declining years. For a time he fully
lived up to the promise made to Benton and Blair that he would keep
clear of politics. His interest in the fortunes of his party, however,
was not diminished by his retirement from public life. He corresponded
freely with Van Buren, whose policies he in most respects approved;
and as the campaign of 1840 approached the "old war-horse began once
more to sniff the battle from afar." Admitting to his friends that the
situation looked "a little dubious," he exerted himself powerfully to
bring about the reelection of the New Yorker. He wrote a letter
belittling the military qualities of the Whig candidate, thereby
probably doing the Democratic cause more harm than good; and finally,
to avert the humiliation of a Whig victory in Tennessee, he "took the
stump" and denounced the enemy up and down through all western
Tennessee and southern Kentucky. But "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" was
too much for him; the Whig candidates carried both Tennessee and
Kentucky and won the nation-wide contest by 234 to 60 electoral votes.

The old warrior took the defeat--_his_ defeat, he always regarded
it--philosophically, and at once began to lay plans for a recovery of
Democratic supremacy in 1844. For another quadrennium his hand was on
the party throttle. When men speculated as to whether Van Buren,
General Cass, General Butler, or Senator Benton would be the standard
bearer in 1844, they always asked what Jackson's edict on the subject
would be; and the final selection of James K. Polk, while not fully
dictated by the ex-President, was the result of a compromise in which
his advice played a prominent part. Though past seventy-seven and
hardly able to sign his name, Jackson threw himself into the campaign
and undoubtedly contributed to the election of his fellow-Tenneseean.
His satisfaction with the outcome and with the annexation of Texas
which quickly followed found expression in a barbecue attended by all
the Democrats of the neighborhood and by some of note from a distance.
"We have restored the Government to sound principles," declared the
host in a brief, faltering speech from the Hermitage portico, "and
extended the area of our institutions to the Rio Grande. Now for
Oregon and Fifty-four-forty."

Oregon--although not to fifty-four forty--was soon to be duly made
American soil. But Jackson did not live to witness the event. Early in
1845 his health began to fail rapidly and on the very day of Polk's
inauguration he was at the point of death. Rallying, he struggled
manfully for three months against the combined effects of consumption,
dropsy, and dysentery. But on Sunday, the 8th of June, the end came.
In accordance with a pledge which he had given his wife years before,
he had become a communicant of the Presbyterian church; and his last
words to the friends about his bedside were messages of Christian
cheer. After two days the body was laid to rest in the Hermitage
garden, beside the grave of the companion whose loss he had never
ceased to mourn with all the feeling of which his great nature was
capable. The authorities at the national capital ordered public honors
to be paid to the ex-President, and gatherings in all parts of the
country listened with much show of feeling to appropriate eulogies.

"General Jackson," said Daniel Webster to Thurlow Weed in 1837, "is an
honest and upright man. He does what he thinks is right, and does it
with all his might. He has a violent temper, which leads him often to
hasty conclusions. It also causes him to view as personal to himself
the public acts of other men. For this reason there is great
difference between Jackson angry and Jackson in good humor. When he is
calm, his judgment is good; when angry, it is usually bad.... His
patriotism is no more to be questioned than that of Washington. He is
the greatest General we have and, except Washington, the greatest we
ever had."

To this characterization of Andrew Jackson by his greatest American
contemporary it is impossible to make noteworthy addition. His was a
character of striking contradictions. His personal virtues were
honesty, bravery, open-heartedness, chivalry toward women,
hospitality, steadfastness. His personal faults were irascibility,
egotism, stubbornness, vindictiveness, and intolerance of the opinions
of others. He was not a statesman; yet some of the highest qualities
of statesmanship were in him. He had a perception of the public will
which has rarely been surpassed; and in most, if not all, of the great
issues of his time he had a grasp of the right end of the question.

The country came to the belief that the National Bank should not be
revived. It accepted and perpetuated Van Buren's independent treasury
plan. The annexation of Texas, which Jackson strongly favored, became
an accomplished fact with the approval of a majority of the people.
The moderated protective tariff to which Jackson inclined was kept up
until the Civil War. The removal of the Indians to reservations beyond
the Mississippi fell in with the views of the public upon that subject
and inaugurated an Indian policy which was closely adhered to for more
than half a century. In his vindication of executive independence
Jackson broke new ground, crudely enough it is true; yet, whatever the
merits of his ideas at the moment, they reshaped men's conception of
the presidency and helped make that office the power that it is today.
The strong stand taken against nullification clarified popular opinion
upon the nature of the Union and lent new and powerful support to
national vigor and dignity.

Over against these achievements must be placed the introduction of the
Spoils System, which debauched the Civil Service and did the country
lasting harm; yet Jackson only responded to public opinion which held
"rotation in office to be the cardinal principle of democracy." It
needed a half-century of experience to convince the American people of
this fallacy and to place the national Civil Service beyond the reach
of spoilsmen. Even now public opinion is slow to realize that
efficiency in office can be secured only by experience and relative
permanence.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


The events of the period covered in this volume are described with
some fullness in all of the general American histories. Of these, two
are especially noteworthy for literary quality and other elements of
popular interest: Woodrow Wilson's _History of the American People_, 5
vols. (1902), and John B. McMaster's _History of the People of the
United States_, 8 vols. (1883-1913). The Jacksonian epoch is treated
in Wilson's fourth volume and in McMaster's fifth and sixth volumes.
On similar lines, but with more emphasis on political and
constitutional matters, is James Schouler's _History of the United
States under the Constitution_, 7 vols. (1880-1913), vols. III-IV. One
seeking a scholarly view of the period, in an adequate literary
setting, can hardly do better, however, than to read Frederick J.
Turner's _Rise of the New West_ (1906) and William MacDonald's
_Jacksonian Democracy_ (1906). These are volumes XIV and XV in _The
American Nation_, edited by Albert B. Hart.

Biographies are numerous and in a number of instances excellent. Of
lives of Jackson, upwards of a dozen have been published. The most
recent and in every respect the best is John S. Bassett's _Life of
Andrew Jackson_, 2 vols. (1911). This work is based throughout on the
sources; its literary quality is above the average and it appraises
Jackson and his times in an unimpeachable spirit of fairness. Within
very limited space, William G. Brown's _Andrew Jackson_ (1900) tells
the story of Jackson admirably; and a good biography, marred only by a
lack of sympathy and by occasional inaccuracy in details, is William
G. Sumner's _Andrew Jackson_ (rev. ed., 1899). Of older biographies,
the most important is James Parton's _Life of Andrew Jackson_, 3 vols.
(1861). This work is sketchy, full of irrelevant or unimportant
matter, and uncritical; but for a half-century it was the repository
from which historians and biographers chiefly drew in dealing with
Jackson's epoch. John H. Eaton's _Life of Andrew Jackson_ (1842)
describes Jackson's earlier career, mainly on the military side; but
it never rises above the level of a campaign document.

Among biographies of Jackson's contemporaries may be mentioned George
T. Curtis, _Life of Daniel Webster_, 2 vols. (1870); Henry C. Lodge,
_Daniel Webster_ (1883); John B. McMaster, _Daniel Webster_ (1902);
Frederic A. Ogg, _Daniel Webster_ (1914); Carl Schurz, _Henry Clay_, 2
vols. (1887); Gaillard Hunt, _John C. Calhoun_ (1908); William M.
Meigs, _The Life of John Caldwell Calhoun_, 2 vols. (1917); John T.
Morse, _John Quincy Adams_ (1882); Edward M. Shepard, _Martin Van
Buren_ (1888); Theodore Roosevelt, _Thomas Hart Benton_ (1888); and
Theodore D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (1909).

On many topics the reader will do well to go to monographs or other
special works. Thus Jackson's policy of removals from public office is
presented with good perspective in Carl R. Fish, _The Civil Service
and the Patronage_ (Harvard Historical Studies, xi, 1905). The history
of the bank controversy is best told in Ralph C. H. Catterall, _The
Second Bank of the United States_ (1903); and interesting chapters in
the country's financial history are presented in Edward G. Bourne,
_History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837_ (1885), and David Kinley,
_The History, Organization, and Influence of the Independent Treasury
of the United States_ (1893). On the tariff one should consult Frank
W. Taussig, _Tariff History of the United States_ (6th ed., 1914) and
Edward Stanwood, _American Tariff Controversies_, 2 vols. (1903).
Similarly illuminating studies of nullification are David F. Houston,
_Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina_ (Harvard
Historical Studies, in, 1896) and Ulrich B. Phillips, _Georgia and
State Rights_ (American Historical Association Reports, 1901, II).

Aside from newspapers, and from collections of public documents of
private correspondence, which cannot be enumerated here, the source
materials for the period fall into two main classes: books of
autobiography and reminiscence, and the writings of travelers. Most
conspicuous in the first group is Thomas H. Benton, _Thirty Years'
View; or, a History of the Working of the American Government for
Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850_, 2 vols. (1854). Benton was an active
member of the Senate throughout the Jacksonian period, and his book
gives an interesting and valuable first-hand account of the public
affairs of the time. Amos Kendall's _Autobiography_ (1872) is,
unfortunately, hardly more than a collection of papers and scattered
memoranda. Nathan Sargent's _Public Men and Events, 1817-1853_, 2
vols. (1875), consists of chatty sketches, with an anti-Jackson slant.
Other books of contemporary reminiscence are Lyman Beecher's
_Autobiography_, 2 vols. (1863-65); Robert Mayo's _Political Sketches
of Eight Years in Washington_ (1839); and S.C. Goodrich's
_Recollections of a Lifetime_, 2 vols. (1856). The one monumental
diary is John Quincy Adams, _Memoirs; Comprising Portions of his Diary
from 1795 to 1848_ (ed. by Charles F. Adams, 12 vols., 1874-77). All
things considered, there is no more important nonofficial source for
the period.

In Jackson's day the United States was visited by an extraordinary
number of Europeans who forthwith wrote books descriptive of what they
had seen. Two of the most interesting--although the least
flattering--of these works are Charles Dickens's _American Notes for
General Circulation_ (1842, and many reprints) and Mrs. Frances E.
Trollope's _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ (1832). Two very
readable and generally sympathetic English accounts are Frances A.
Kemble's _Journal, 1832-1833_, 2 vols. (1835) and Harriet Martineau's
_Society in America_, 3 vols. (2d ed., 1837). The principal French
work of the sort is M. Chevalier, _Society, Manners, and Politics in
the United States_ (Eng. trans, from 3d French ed., 1839). Political
conditions in the country are described in Alexis de Tocqueville,
_Democracy in America_ (Eng. trans, by Reeve in 2 vols., 1862), and
the economic situation is set forth in detail in James S. Buckingham,
_America, Historical, Statistical and Descriptive_, 2 vols. (1841),
and _The Slave States of America_, 2 vols. (1842).


NOTES

[1: Bassett, _The Life of Andrew Jackson_, vol. I, p. 123.]

[2: Brown, _Andrew Jackson_, pp. 75-76.]

[3: Buell, _History of Andrew Jackson_, vol. n, pp. 94-95.]

[4: Buell, _History of Andrew Jackson_, vol. II, p. 97.]

[5: Turner, _Rise of the New West_, p. 188.]

[6: Turner, _Rise of the New West_, p. 268.]

[7: Parton, _Life of Andrew Jackson_, vol. III, p. 168.]

[8: Brown, _Andrew Jackson_, p. 127.]

[9: Osborn _vs._ Bank of the United States.]

[10: MacDonald, _Jacksonian Democracy_, p. 98.]

[11: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, p. 325.]

[12: MacDonald. Jacksonian Democracy, p. 239.]

[13: See _The Old Northwest_, by Frederic Austin Ogg (in _The
Chronicles of America_).]



INDEX

Adams, John, Jackson makes acquaintance of, 17.

Adams, J.Q., Secretary of State, and Jackson's Florida expedition,
     62, 63, 64.
  candidate for presidency, 76-77, 82-83, 84, 86, 87, 88-93.
  and Jackson, 80, 93-94, 108, 122, 220.
  diary quoted, 88, 109.
  "corrupt bargain," 89-92, 96.
  elected, 93.
  as President, 95-100, 104-106.
  personal characteristics, 96-97.
  abolishes patronage, 97-98.
  and internal improvements, 99, 100, 105.
  candidate for reelection (1828), 106, 109-110.
  no enthusiasm for, 113.
  on Calhoun, 139.
  and Indian question, 206.
  biography, 238.

Alabama, Indians in, 202, 203, 204, 214.

Ambrister, Robert, 58.

_American_, New York, quoted, 229.

Apalachicola River,
  Nicholls builds fort on, 53.
  Jackson's army marches down, 57.

Arbuthnot, Alexander, 53, 58.

_Aurora_, Pennsylvania newspaper, 193.

Baltimore,
  welcomes Jackson, 64, 219.
  Democratic convention at (1835), 225.

Bancroft, George, quoted, 222.

Bank, United States,
  Jackson's attitude toward, 79, 184-88.
  Adams and, 99.
  established, 138, 182.
  and the South, 140.
  war on, 181-200.
  Congress supports, 187.
  Jackson plans reorganization of, 187.
  bill to recharter, 189-91.
  bill vetoed, 190, 218.
  as political issue, 191.
  believed insolvent by Jackson, 192-93.
  removal of deposits, 193-95.
  senate censures Jackson for removal, 196-98.
  Whigs try to resurrect (1841), 200.
  bibliography, 239.

Barry, W.T., Postmaster-General, 118.

Bassett, J.S.,
  biographer of Jackson, cited, 4, 238.
  quoted, 37.

Benton, Jesse, Jackson encounters, 21, 33.

Benton, T.H., 26, 149, 232, 233.
  Jackson fights with, 21, 33.
  quoted, 49, 113, 167.
  introduces bills against Adams, 105.
  on Van Buren's defeat as minister, 136.
  on Foote's resolution, 144.
  on Hayne, 147.
  and United States Bank question, 190-91, 195.
  and censure of Jackson, 197.
  biography, 238.

Berrien, J.M., Attorney-General, 118.

Biddle, Nicholas, President of United States Bank, 183, 184, 185-86,
     187, 188, 189, 192, 195.

Black Hawk War, 215.

Blair, F.P., editor of the _Globe_, 130, 193, 221, 232.

Blount, William, 17.
  Governor of Tennessee, 26, 28, 30, 35, 55, 74.

Borgne, Lake, British army at, 40.

Boston,
  endorses Jackson's proclamation to South Carolina, 176.
  welcomes President Jackson, 219.

Bowyer, Fort, British attempt to destroy, 39.

Branch, John, Secretary of Navy, 118.

Brown, Jacob, of New York, 51.

Buchanan, James, author of "corrupt bargain," 90.

Burr, Aaron,
  Jackson makes acquaintance of, 17.
  opinion of Jackson, 73.

Butler, General, 233.

Cabinet, Jackson's, 117-18, 129-130, 135-36, 193-94, 218.
  Kitchen, 130-31.

Cadwalader, General Thomas, 110, 184.

Calhoun, J.C., father makes home at Waxhaw, 5.
  Secretary of War, and Jackson's Florida expedition, 56, 62, 135.
  aspirant for presidency, 77-78, 87, 103, 131.
  Jackson's attitude toward, 80.
  candidate for vice presidency, 84.
  elected, 85.
  described by Adams, 109.
  re-elected to vice presidency, 110.
  Eaton controversy, 132-134.
  against Van Buren, 134.
  sectionalist, 139.
  at Hayne-Webster debate, 149.
  change in political ideas, 159.
  _Exposition_, 161, 168.
  and nullification, 161, 162, 164-65, 166, 167-68, 171, 172.
  seeks support of South Carolina, 162.
  _Address to the People of South Carolina_, 168.
  _Fort Hill Letter_, 168.
  and tariff, 169.
  resigns vice presidency, 172.
  in Senate, 172, 196.
  on Indian policy, 216.
  bibliography, 238.

Calhoun, Mrs. J.C., 134.

Calhoun, Rebecca, marries Andrew Pickens, 5.

Callava, José, Governor of Florida, 58-59, 65, 66, 67.

Campbell, G.W., Senator from Tennessee, 23.

Carrickfergus (Ireland), home of Jackson's father, 1, 9.

Carroll, William, 111.

Cass, Lewis, Secretary of War, 136.
  accompanies Jackson to New England, 219.
  possible candidate for presidency, 233.

Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Lord Viscount, quoted, 61.

Caucus as nominating device, 81-82, 84.

Charleston (S.C.),
  Andrew Jackson's father arrives at, 1.
  Jackson in, 9-10.
  preparations against, 173.
  nullifiers meet at, 178.

Cherokee Indians, number, 203.
  location, 203.
  civilization, 204.
  and Georgia, 207-13.
  treaty with, 214.
  remainder removed from the East, 215.

Cherokee Nation _vs._ State of Georgia, 210-11.

Cheves, Langdon,
  exponent of broad constitutional construction, 159.
  President of United States Bank, 183.

Chickasaw Indians,
  number, 203.
  location, 203.
  civilization, 203-204.
  removed, 214.

Choctaw Indians,
  number, 203.
  location, 203.
  civilization, 203-204.
  removed, 214.

Cincinnati greets Jackson, 115.

Civil service, Adams and, 97-98.
  bibliography, 239.
  _see also_ Spoils System.

Claiborne, W.C.C., Governor-General and Intendant of Louisiana, 25.

Clay, Henry,
  quoted, 43.
  and Jackson's Florida expedition, 62, 63.
  candidate for presidency (1824), 78, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88.
  and Jackson, 80.
  "corrupt bargain," 89-92, 96.
  Secretary of State, 94, 97, 105.
  and nationalism, 100.
  loses hope of presidency, 109.
  Compromise Tariff, 179.
  and United States Bank, 189, 196.
  on veto power, 190.
  nominee of National Republican party (1832), 191, 225.
  on disposal of proceeds from public lands, 199.
  on removal of Indians, 215-16.

Clayton, J.M., of Delaware, 148.

Clinton, DeWitt, toasted at Tammany dinner, 64.

Cochrane, Sir Alexander Inglis, Admiral, sends news of peace to
    Jackson, 46.

Cocke, General John, 33, 34.

Cohens _vs._ Virginia, 141.

Columbia (S.C.), ordinance of nullification drawn up at, 170-71, 174.

_Columbian Observer_ of Philadelphia, 89, 90.

Concord (N.H.), Jackson goes to, 219.

Congress, question of Jackson's Florida expedition, 62-63.
  and Adams, 104-05.
  nationalistic laws, 138.
  Webster-Hayne debate, 145-57.
  Force Bill, 177, 179, 180.
  Verplanck Bill, 178.
  and United States Bank, 187, 189-91, 196.
  Senate censures Jackson, 196-98, 228.
  Senate ratifies Indian treaty, 206.
  creates Indian reservation, 209.

Constitution, Adams for liberal construction, 99.
  amendment proposed, 105.
  questions in 1828, 143.
  Webster-Hayne debate, 145-57.

Corn Tassel, Cherokee executed in Georgia, 212.

Cotton, influence of price on sentiment of South Carolina, 159.

Crawford, W.H., at Waxhaw settlement, 5.
  and Jackson, 62, 80.
  supported by Van Buren, 64.
  candidate for presidency, 76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 86.
  health fails, 83-84.
  supporters ally themselves to Jackson, 103.

Creek Indians, and Tecumseh, 25.
  massacre at Fort Mims, 31, 32.
  outbreak in South, 32-36, 52, 54-55.
  treaty with, 37-38.
  number, 203.
  location, 203.
  civilization, 203.
  dispossessed, 205-07, 214.
  _see also_ Creek War, Seminole War.

Creek War, 32-38.

Cumberland River, Jackson's army down the, 28.

Dale, Sam, and Jackson, 174.

Davie, W.R., Governor of North Carolina, 5.

Democratic party, and United States Bank, 195.
  convention (1835), 225.

Dickerson, Mahlon, of New Jersey, 148.

Dickinson, Charles, killed in duel by Jackson, 21.

Donelson, A.J., nephew and private secretary of Jackson, 114, 130.

Donelson, Mrs. A.J., mistress of White House, 114, 221.

Donelson, John,
  helps found Nashville, 12.
  Jackson marries daughter of, 15.

Duane, W.J., Secretary of Treasury, 193-94.

Earl, R.E.W., artist engaged in painting portraits of Jackson, 114.

Eaton, J.H.,
  and Jackson, 7-8, 52, 73, 116, 130.
  Secretary of War, 8, 117, 118, 208.

Eaton, Mrs. J.H., 88, 132-34.

Elections, Presidential, of 1824, 82-93,95-96.
  manner of selecting President an issue of 1824, 84.
  "corrupt bargain," 89-92, 96.
  proposed amendment to Constitution providing direct, 105.
  campaign of 1828,106-10.
  of 1832, 187, 191.
  of 1836, 226-27.
  of 1840, 232.
  of 1844, 233.

England, frontiersman's attitude toward, 25.
  _see also_ War of 1812.

Everett, Edward, cited, 219.

Finance,
  national debt paid, 199.
  Government funds in state banks, 199.
  independent treasury system, 199-200, 235.
  _see also_ Bank, United States. Tariff.

Florida and Jackson, 22, 27-28, 30-31, 39-40, 51-61.
  Southwest longs for conquest of, 26.
  encourages Indian uprising, 32.
  Spain and, 52, 53, 55-56, 61.
  controversy over Jackson's expedition, 61-64.
  United States treaty with Spain, 64.

Foote, S.A., of Connecticut, 144.

Force Bill, 177, 179.
  nullified by South Carolina convention, 180.

Forsyth, John, of Georgia, 149.

Fowltown, fight at, 54, 55.

Franklin, "Western District" tries to set up State of, 12.

Frelinghuysen, Theodore, of New Jersey, 148.

Friends, Society of, protest removal of Indians, 216.

Gaines, General E.P., 54, 55.

Gallatin, Albert,
  Jackson makes acquaintance of, 17.
  describes Jackson, 18.

_Gazette_, Nashville, 75.

General Neville (river boat), Jackson travels down Ohio on, 101.

Georgia,
  and state rights, 142.
  and tariff, 169.
  Indians of, 202, 203, 204, 205 et seq.
  nullification, 213.

Ghent, Treaty of, 43, 53,137.

Gibbs, General, 40.

Girard Bank of Philadelphia, treasury receipts to be deposited in,
    194.

_Globe_, administration organ, 130, 230.

Green, Duff,
  party manager for Jackson, 115.
  edits _United States Telegraph_, 118.
  in Kitchen Cabinet, 130.

Grundy, Felix, of Tennessee, 74, 75, 149.

Hall, D.A., Federal district judge in New Orleans, 47.

Hamilton J.A., 117, 118.

Hamilton, James, Governor of South Carolina, 168, 170, 179.

Harrisburg (Penn.), nominating convention at, 84.

Harrison, W.H.,
  Governor of Indiana, at Tippecanoe, 25.
  Jackson offers aid to, 26.
  resigns commission, 37.
  candidate for presidency, 226-27.

Hartford Convention, 138.

Harvard University confers degree on Jackson, 220.

Havana, Jackson sends Spaniards to, 60.

Hayne, R.Y., 110, 167.
  speech in Congress, 144-45.
  debate with Webster, 145-57.
  personal characteristics, 147.
  change in political ideas, 159, 163.
  and nullification, 162, 176.
  elected Governor of South Carolina, 172.
  biography, 239.

Hermitage, The, Jackson's home, 19-20, 50, 55, 67, 68-72, 102-103,
    218, 223, 231, 233, 234.

Hill, Isaac, 111, 116, 221.
  Senate rejects nomination of, 129.
  in Kitchen Cabinet, 130.
  quoted, 164-65, 181.

Holmes, John, of Maine, 148.

Horseshoe Bend, battle with Creeks at, 35.

Houston, Sam, 35.

Hunter's Hill, Jackson's plantation near Nashville, 15, 19.

Huntsville (Ala.), Jackson brings forces together at, 33.

Indian Queen Tavern (the Wigwam), 115, 120.

Indian Territory created (1834), 214.

Indians, 142.
  hostility near Nashville, 12.
  Creek War, 32-38.
  Seminole War, 54-58.
  removal of, 201-16, 236.
  _see also_ names of tribes.

Ingham, S.D., Secretary of Treasury, 117.

Internal improvements, 138.
  Jackson on, 79.
  issue in 1824, 84.
  Adams and, 99, 100, 105.
  South opposes, 140.
  South Carolina and, 159.
  Maysville Road veto, 218.

Jackson, Andrew, father of the President, 1-3.

Jackson, Andrew,
  birth (1767), 3-4.
  birthplace, 4-5.
  early life, 5 _et seq_.
  personal characteristics, 6, 7, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20-21, 213, 217,
    234-35.
  education, 7, 10.
  in the Revolution, 8-9.
  attitude toward British, 9.
  business enterprises, 9-10, 19-20.
  in Charleston, 9-10.
  admitted to bar, 11.
  goes to Tennessee, 13-14.
  as "solicitor" in Nashville, 14-16.
  marriage, 15.
  represents Tennessee in Congress, 16-17.
  in Senate, 17-18, 69.
  as judge in Tennessee, 18-19.
  quarrels, 20-21.
  in War of 1812, 26 _et seq_.
  nicknamed "Old Hickory," 30:
  in Creek War, 33-38.
  at New Orleans, 40-43, 45-50.
  popularity, 45, 50, 63-64, 115, 210, 229-30.
  in Seminole War, and Florida expedition, 55-61.
  controversy about Florida expedition, 61-64.
  as Governor of Florida, 64-67.
  life at the Hermitage, 68-72, 102-03.
  candidate for presidency (1824), 73 _et seq_., 95.
  and tariff, 79, 143, 162-63, 169, 235-36.
  and Adams, 80, 93-94, 108, 122, 220.
  and Crawford, 80.
  and Clay, 80.
  and Calhoun, 80, 134-35.
  candidate for presidency (1828), 100 _et seq_.
  resigns from Senate, 102.
  as a politician, 107-08.
  election, 109-10.
  journey to Washington, 114-15.
  as President-elect, 115-19.
  Cabinet, 117-18, 129-30, 135-36, 193-194, 218.
  inauguration, 119-124.
  and Spoils System, 124-127, 236.
  and Congress, 128.
  Kitchen Cabinet, 130-31.
  Eaton controversy, 132-34.
  toast to the Union, 164-66.
  and nullification, 167, 173-77.
  candidate for reelection (1832), 168, 218.
  proclamation to South Carolina (1832), 175-176.
  Force Bill, 177, 179, 180.
  and United States Bank, 182, 184 _et seq_., 218.
  censured by Senate, 196-98, 228.
  and Indian policy, 208-09, 214-16.
  and Georgia, 213.
  journeys to New England, 219.
  Harvard confers degree on, 220.
  life at White House, 221-23.
  his finances, 223-24.
  political influence, 224-28.
  farewell address, 228-29.
  return to Nashville, 230.
  last years, 231-34.
  death (1845), 234.
  Webster's characterization of, 234-35.
  achievements, 235-36.
  bibliography, 237-38.

Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, mother of the President, 3-4, 5, 8-9.

Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, wife of the President, 48-50, 65, 71, 122.
  quoted, 65-66, 68-69.
  death, 111-12.

Jackson, Fort, 36.
  Treaty of, 54.

Jamaica, British from, 40.

Jefferson, Thomas, Jackson makes acquaintance of, 17.
  on Jackson, 18.
  candidate of the masses, 113.
  and State rights, 139, 141-42, 164.

Jonesboro (Tenn.), Jackson's traveling party at, 13.

Kemble, Fanny, and Jackson, 217.

Kendall, Amos, 221.
  in Kitchen Cabinet, 130.

Kentucky made a State (1791), 16.

Key, F.S., at Jackson's inauguration, 121.

King, W.R., of Alabama, 149.

Kitchen Cabinet, 130-31.

Knoxville (Tenn.), 25.
  convention at, 16.

Kremer, George, and "corrupt bargain," 89-91.

La Fayette, Marquis de, 219.
  and Jackson, 71-72.

Lavasseur, secretary to La Fayette, 70.

Lewis, Major W.B., 63, 125, 129, 134-35.
  campaign manager for Jackson, 74, 75, 85, 103, 111, 112, 163.
  accompanies Jackson to Washington, 114, 116, 221.
  in Kitchen Cabinet, 130.

Livingston, Edward, 48.
  Jackson makes acquaintance of, 17.
  declines place in cabinet, 117.
  Secretary of State, 136.
  and proclamation to South Carolina, 175.
  and United States Bank, 188.
  minister to France, 193.

Lodge, H.C., quoted, 146.

Louisville greets Jackson, 115.

Macay, Spruce, lawyer with whom Jackson studied, 10, 12.

M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland (1819), 141, 183.

MacDonald, William, _Jacksonian Democracy_, quoted, 152.

McDuffie, George, 162, 189.

McKemy family at whose home Jackson is said to have been born, 4.

McLane, Louis, Secretary of Treasury, 136.
  and United States Bank, 188, 193.

McLean, John, Postmaster-General, 118.
  candidate for presidency, 226.

McNairy, John, 12-13, 14, 21.

Mangum, W.P., of North Carolina, 227.

Marshall, John, Chief-Justice,
  at Jackson's inauguration, 120, 121.
  and State rights, 138,141.
  on Cherokee nation, 211.
  and Jackson, 213.

Martinsville (N.C.), Jackson practices law at, 11.

Mason, Jeremiah, branch bank president, 185.

Maysville Road veto, 218.

Mims, Fort (Ala.), massacre at, 31, 32, 36.

Mississippi and Indians, 214.

Mississippi Valley, British plan assault on, 38.

Missouri Compromise, 159.

Mobile,
  Jackson and, 29, 37, 39, 57.
  Congress authorizes taking of, 30.

Monroe, Fortress, 173.

Monroe, James, Secretary of War, 40.
  Jackson writes to, 13.
  and Jackson's Florida expedition, 56, 61, 62, 67.
  Jackson supports, 80.
  Adams confers with, 94.
  popular approval of, 95.
  and Indian question, 206.

Monticello, home of Jefferson, 18.

Morganton (N.C.), 25.
  Jackson joins traveling party at, 13.

Nashville (Tenn.),
  founded, 12.
  Jackson goes to, 13-14.
  in 1789, 14.
  Phillips reaches, 25.
  Jackson's army assembles at, 28.
  entertains Jackson, 37, 101.
  Jackson in, 51, 230.

Natchez (Miss.), Jackson's troops in, 29, 30.

_National Intelligencer_, 62, 89.

National Republican party, 104, 108.
  defends United States Bank, 191, 195.
  joins Whigs, 225.

Negro Fort, Nicholas's, 53, 54, 57.

New England receives President Jackson, 219-20.

New Orleans, news of War of 1812 reaches, 25.
  Jackson and, 28, 37, 39, 40-43, 45-50.
  gunboats sent from, 57.

New Orleans Territory, Jackson denied governorship of, 20.

New York (State) controls vice presidency, 75-76.

New York City,
  fêtes Jackson, 63, 219.
  and nullification, 176.

Nicholls, Colonel Edward, 32, 52-53.

Nolte describes Jackson and his wife, 49-50.

North Carolina,
  claims to be Jackson's birthplace, 4.
  and tariff, 169.

Nullification, 161-80, 236.
  and Jefferson, 142.
  Georgia and, 142, 213.
  _South Carolina Exposition_, 142.
  Hayne on, 150.
  Webster on, 151, 152-53.
  Calhoun and, 161, 162, 164-165, 166, 167-68, 171, 172.
  Turnbull's _Crisis_, 161.
  Calhoun's _Exposition_, 161.
  Jackson and, 167, 173-77, 219.
  South Carolina's ordinance of, 170-171, 179-80.
  Force Bill, 177, 179, 180.
  Compromise Tariff, 178-79.
  bibliography, 239.

Ohio on State rights, 141.

O'Neil, "Peggy," _see_ Eaton, Mrs. J.H.

O'Neil's Tavern, 87-88.

Onis, Luis de, Spanish Minister, 61, 64.

Oregon, Jackson desires extension in, 233.

Osborn _vs._ United States Bank (1824), 183.

Pakenham, General Sir Edward, 40, 42.

Panama Congress (1826), 105.

Parton, James, biographer of Jackson, 238.
  cited, 4, 18-19, 29, 72, 175.

Peale, picture of Jackson by, 64.

Pennsylvania, 193-94.
  grants Bank charter, 198.

Pensacola, Jackson and, 29, 39, 40, 58.
  Nicholls at, 32.
  Spanish in, 52.
  toast to, 60.

Philadelphia, national capital, 17.
  fêtes Jackson, 63, 219.

Phillips, William, "Billy," courier, 23, 24-25, 26.

Pickens, Andrew, at Waxhaw settlement, 5.

Pittsburgh greets Jackson, 115.

Poinsett, J.R., of South Carolina, 174.

Political parties, no party lines in 1822, 76.
  _see also_ Democratic, National Republican, Republican, Whig.

Polk, J.K., 230, 233.

Public lands,
  Adams and, 99.
  Foote's resolution (1829), 144-145, 155.
  sale of, 169, 199.

Randolph, John, 17, 93, 96.

"Red Sticks," name for Creek braves, 36, 54.

Reid, John, biographer of Jackson, 7.

Republican party,
  and Constitution, 99.
  supports Jackson, 103.

Rhea, John, 56, 74.

"Rhea letter," 56.

_Richmond Enquirer_, 141.

Roane, Judge, of Virginia, 141.

Robertson, James, helps found Nashville, 12.

Rush, Richard, cited, 61.

St. Augustine,
  Jackson and, 29.
  Spaniards in, 52.

St. Marks,
  Spaniards in, 52.
  Jackson and, 57, 58.

Salisbury (N.C.), 25.
  Jackson studies law at, 10-11.

Scott, General Winfield, 173, 215.

Scott, Fort, 55, 57.

Seminole Indians, 52.

Seminole War, 54-58.

Sevier, John, Governor of Tennessee, 20.

Seymour, Horatio, of Vermont, 148.

Slavery, South resists federal legislation on, 140.

South, The,
  on State rights, 139-140, 143.
  and United States Bank, 140.
  and tariff, 160-61.
  _see also_ names of States.

South Carolina,
  claims to be birthplace of Jackson, 4.
  and tariff, 142, 145, 159, 166.
  _see also_ Nullification.

_South Carolina Exposition_, 142.

"Southwest Territory," 16.

Spain,
  and Florida, 52, 53, 55-56.
  treaty with, 64.
  _see also_ Florida.

Spoils System, Jackson and, 124-27, 236.

State rights, 139-40.
  Hayne on, 150, 154.
  Webster on, 152.
  _see also_ Nullification.

Story, Judge Joseph, quoted, 123.

Strother, Fort, 34, 35.

Supreme Court,
  on State rights, 138-39.
  on United States Bank, 183.
  on Indian rights, 210-12.
  Georgia defies, 212,-213.

Suwanee (Fla.), Jackson at, 58.

Swann, Thomas, Jackson and, 21.

Tammany entertains Jackson, 63.

Taney, R.B.,
  Attorney-General, 136.
  writes for Jackson, 190, 228.
  Secretary of Treasury, 194, 196.

Tariff, 84, 158 _et seq_.
  Jackson and, 79, 143, 162-63, 169, 235-36.
  Adams and, 99.
  Calhoun votes for protection, 139.
  South opposes protective, 140, 142, 143, 159-60.
  woolens bill (1827), 160.
  Act of 1824, 160, 161.
  Act of 1828, 160, 169, 170.
  Act of 1832, 169, 170.
  Force Bill, 177, 179, 180.
  Verplanck Bill, 178.
  Compromise Tariff, 179.
  bibliography, 239.
  _see also_ Nullification.

Tecumseh works among Southern Indians, 25-26.

Tennessee,
  admitted as State (1798), 16.
  meaning of name, 16.
  Legislature favors Jackson's nomination, 102.
  Indians, 202.

Texas, Jackson favors annexation, 235.

Tippecanoe, Battle of, 25.

Tohopeka, battle at, 35.

Troup, G.M., Governor of Georgia, 206.

Turnbull, R.J., _The Crisis_, 161.

Turner, F.J., _The Rise of the New West_, quoted, 159-60.

Twelve-mile Creek, Jackson's father settles on, 2.

Tyler, John,
  President, 148.
  Bank vetoes, 200.

Union County (N.C.), Jackson's father settles in, 3.

_United States Telegraph_, of Washington, Jackson organ, 102,
    118, 130.

Van Buren, Martin, 63, 115, 219, 221, 232, 233.
  supports Jackson, 103-04.
  Governor of New York, 116-17.
  Secretary of State, 117, 118.
  in Kitchen Cabinet, 130.
  aims at presidency, 132-34, 135.
  in Eaton controversy, 133-34.
  appointment as minister to Great Britain not ratified, 136.
  advises Jackson, 166.
  candidate for vice presidency, 168, 224.
  sets up independent treasury system, 200.
  candidate for presidency, 224-25.
  election, 226-27.
  inauguration, 230.
  biography, 238.

Verplanck, J.C., of New York, tariff bill, 178.

Virginia,
  controls presidency, 75-76.
  and State rights, 141-142.
  and tariff, 169.

War of 1812, 24 _et seq_., 52, 99, 137-38.

Washington, George, 14, 219.

Washington,
  captured, 38.
  Jackson journeys to, 50-51, 85, 114-15.

Waxhaw settlement, Jackson family at, 2.
  notable people from, 5.
  in the Revolution, 8

Weathersford, Creek half-breed, 36

Webster, Daniel, 18, 93, 189, 196.
  quoted, 115-16, 127.
  constitutional debate (1830), 145-57.
  life and characteristics, 147-148.
  Jackson's estimate of, 225-26.
  on Jackson, 234-35.
  bibliography, 238.

Webster, Ezekiel, 113.

West, The,
  and War of 1812, 25.
  and Indian policy, 201 _et seq_.

"Western District" tries to set up State, 12

Whig party, 225.
  tries to resurrect United States Bank, 200.

White, H.L.,
  of Tennessee, 116, 149.
  candidate for presidency, 224, 226, 227.

Wilkinson, General James, 29, 31, 37.

Wirt, William, 210.

Woodbury, Levi, Secretary of Navy, 136, 148, 219.

Worcester _vs_. State of Georgia, 211-12.





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