CHAPTER XXIV—THE DOWNFALL OF KING CAUCUS
Marionette madison is withdrawn from the White House boards at the close of his second term. Jefferson, working the machinery from Monticello, replaces him with Marionette Monroe. It is now Aaron begins his war on the system of Congressional nomination—a system which has obtained since the days of Washington. He writes to Alston:
“Our Virginia junta, beginning with Washington, owning Adams, and controlled by Jefferson, having had possession of the Government for twenty-four years, consider the nation their property, and by bawling, ‘Support the administration!’ have so far succeeded in duping the public. The moment is auspicious for a movement which in the end must break down this degrading system. The best citizens all over the country are impatient of the Virginia rule, and the wrongs wrought under it. Its administrations have been weak; offices have been bestowed merely to preserve power, and without a smallest regard for fitness. If, then, there be in the country a man of firmness and decision and standing, it is your duty to hold him up to public view. There is such a man—Andrew Jackson. He is the hero of the late war, and in the first flush of a boundless popularity. Give him a respectable nomination, by a respectable convention drawn from the party at large, and in the teeth of the caucus system—so beloved of scheming Virginians—his final victory is assured. If it does not come to-day, it will come to-morrow; for ‘caucus,’ which is wrong, must go down; and ‘convention,’ which is right, must prevail. Have your legislature pass resolutions condemning the caucus system; in that way you can educate the sentiment of South Carolina, and the country, too. Later, we will take up the business of the convention, and Jackson’s open nomination.”
Aaron writes in similar strain to Major Lewis, Jackson’s neighbor and man of politics in Tennessee. He winds up his letter with this:
“Jackson ought to be admonished to be passive; for the moment he is announced as a candidate, he will be assailed by the Virginia junta with menaces, and those failing, with insidious promises of boons and favors.”
On the back of this anti-caucus, pro-convention letter-writing, that his candidate Jackson may have a proper début, Aaron pulls a Swartwout string, pushes a Van Ness button. At once the obedient Bucktails proffer a dinner in Jackson’s honor. The hero accepts, and comes to town. The town is rent with joy; Bucktail enthusiasm, even in the cider days and nights of Martling, never mounted more wildly high.
Aaron, from his back parlor in the old Jay house, directs the excitement. It is there Jackson finds him.
“I shall not be at the dinner, general,” says Aaron; “but with Van Buren and Davis and Van Ness and Ogden and Rutgers and Swart-wout and the rest, you will find friends and good company about you.”