“Who is that presidential candidate to whom you refer?”
“Sir, he is your friend and my friend. Who, but Andrew Jackson? Since New Orleans, it is bound to be he.”
“Andrew Jackson!” exclaims Van Ness. “But, sir, the Congressional caucus at Washington will never consider him. You know the power of Jefferson—he will hold that caucus in the hollow of his hand. It is he who will name Madison’s successor; and, after those street-corner speeches and his friendship for you in Richmond, it can never be Andrew Jackson.”
“I know the Jefferson power,” returns Aaron; “none knows it better. At the head of his Virginia junta he has controlled the country for years. He will control it four years more, perchance eight. Our war upon him and his caucus methods must begin at once. And our candidate should be, and shall be, Andrew Jackson.”
“Whom will Jefferson select to follow Madison?”
“Monroe, sir; he will put forward Monroe.”
“Monroe!” repeats Van Ness. “Has he force?—brains? Some one spoke of him as a soldier.”
“Soldier!” observes Aaron, his lip curling. “Sir, Monroe never commanded so much as a platoon—never was fit to command one. He acted as aide to Lord Stirling, who was a sot, not a soldier. Monroe’s whole duty was to fill his lordship’s tankard, and hear with admiration his drunken lordship’s long tales about himself. As a lawyer, Monroe is below mediocrity. He never rose to the honor of trying a cause wherein so much as one hundred pounds was at stake. He is dull, stupid, illiterate, pusillanimous, hypocritical, and therefore a character suited to the wants of Jefferson and his Virginia coterie. As a man, he is everything that Jackson isn’t and nothing that he is.”
Van Ness and his brother Bucktails do the bidding of Aaron blindly. On every chance they shout for Jackson. Aaron writes “Jackson” letters to all whom, far or near, he calls his friends. Also the better to have New York in political hand, he demands—through Tammany—of Governor Tompkins and Mayor Rad-cliff that every Clinton, every Schuyler, every Livingston, as well as any who has the taint of Federalism about him be relegated to private life. In town as well as country, he sweeps the New York official situation free of opposition.
The Bucktails are in full sway. Aaron privily coaches young Van Buren, who is suave and dexterous, and for politeness almost the urbane peer of Aaron himself, in what local party diplomacies are required, and sends him forward as the apparent controlling spirit of Tammany Hall. What Jefferson is doing with Monroe in Virginia, Aaron duplicates with the compliant Van Buren in New York.