“Fear not; there shall come a cleansing of the Augean stables! Our cause cannot fail! That veto of the Bank charter is a broad confession of the incompetency of the Administration, and shows him (the General) unfit to carry on the business of government. I think we are authorized to confidently anticipate his defeat.”
Now when the candidates of the Democratic party are about to be named, Statesman Calhoun foresees that he himself will be ignored, and ex-Cabineteer Van Buren supplant him, nominationally, for the place of Vice-President.
To save his chagrin, and on the principle that when one is about to be thrown out it is wise to go out, he resigns from his vice-presidential perch, lays down the Senate gavel, and returns to his home-state of South Carolina. Once there, following the Kentucky example of Machiavelli Clay, he sees to it that his own Legislature returns him to Washington as a Senator.
Statesman Calhoun abandons hope of making his appearance as a White House candidate in the campaign at hand. What then? He is of middle years, and can wait. He will lie back and watch the struggle between the General and Machiavelli Clay. Let victory fall where it may, he, Statesman Calhoun, will prepare himself for his own sure triumph in the conflict four years away. Which demonstrates that, while his judgment is crippled, his ambition stands as tall and as straight as a mountain pine.
The tickets are brought to the field—the General against Machiavelli Clay, with ex-Cabineteer Van Buren, and a Whig obscurity named Sargent running for second place. The issue presents the alternative—the General or the Bank, humanity in a death-hug with Money.
Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle have no fears; for they are gold-blind and can see nothing beyond themselves. They are given a rude awakening. The people speak; and when the sound of that speaking dies out, the General has overwhelmed Machiavelli Clay with two hundred and nineteen electoral votes against the latter's sixty-nine. Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle and the Bank go down, while the General—ever the conqueror and never once the conquered—sweeps back to the presidency. Also ex-Cabineteer Van Buren is made Vice-President, as aforetime resolved upon by the General and Wizard Lewis, and from that Senate eminence, so lately vacated by Statesman Calhoun, will wield the gavel over togaed discussion.
The General, President the second time, picks up the reins, settles himself upon the box, and proceeds to drive his governmental times after this wise. He kills out what few sparks of life still animate the Biddle Bank. He removes the Creeks and Cherokees from Florida and Georgia, and thereby guarantees the scalp on many an innocent head. He throws open the public lands for settlement at nominal figures. He fosters a gold currency and discourages paper.
He pays off the last splinter of the national debt, and offers to the wondering eyes of history the spectacle of a country that doesn't owe a dollar. He makes commercial treaties with every tribe of Europe. Finally, he compels France to pay five millions in gold for outrages long ago committed upon the sailors of America.
The last is not brought about without some show of force. France, at the General's demand, falls into a white heat of rage and froths for instant war. The General takes France at her warlike word, notifies Congress, and orders his fleet into the Mediterranean, the flagship Constitution in the van.
The cool vigor of the move sets France gasping. She consults England across the Channel, and is privily assured that whipping a Yankee eighty-gun ship is a feat so difficult of marine accomplishment that, like the blossoming of the century plant, it would be foolish to look for it oftener than once in one hundred years. It is England's impression, whispered in the Frankish ear, that it will be cheaper to pay the five millions. Whereupon, France breaks into diplomatic smiles, assures the General that her late war-rage was mere humor and her froth a jest. And pays.