[Facsimile] J. C. Calhoun JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN was born in South Carolina, March 18th, 1782: was a Representative in Congress, 1811-1817; Secretary of War, 1817- 1825; Vice-President, 1825-1832; United States Senator, 1833-1843; Secretary of State, 1844-1845; United States Senator from 1845 until his death at Washington City, March 31st, 1850.
CHAPTER VII. THE KITCHEN CABINET.
When the Twenty-first Congress assembled, on the 7th of December, 1829, General Jackson sent in his first annual message, which naturally attracted some attention. Meeting his old and intimate friend, General Armstrong, the next day, the President said, "Well, Bob, what do the people say of my message?" "They say," replied General Armstrong, "that it is first-rate, but nobody believes that you wrote it." "Well," good-naturedly replied Old Hickory, "don't I deserve just as much credit for picking out the man who could write it?" Although the words of this and of the subsequent messages were not General Jackson's, the ideas were, and he always insisted on having them clearly expressed. It was in his first message, by the way, that he invited the attention of Congress to the fact that the charter of the United States bank would expire in 1836, and asserted that it had "failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." This was the beginning of that fierce political contest which resulted in the triumph of General Jackson and the overthrow of the United States Bank.
General Jackson rarely left the White House, where he passed the greater portion of his time in his office in the second story, smoking a corn-cob pipe with a long reed stem. He was at the commencement of his Presidential term sixty-two years of age, tall, spare, with a high forehead, from which his gray hair was brushed back, a decisive nose, searching, keen eyes, and, when good-natured, an almost childlike expression about his mouth. A self-reliant, prejudiced, and often very irascible old man, it was a very difficult task to manage him. Some of his Cabinet advisers made it a point to be always with him, to prevent others from ingratiating themselves into his good will, and they were thus chronicled in a ballad of the time:
"King Andrew had five trusty 'squires,
Whom he held his bid to do;
He also had three pilot-fish,
To give the sharks their cue.
There was Mat and Lou and Jack and Lev,
And Roger, of Taney hue,
And Blair, the book,
And Kendall, chief cook,
And Isaac, surnamed the true."
Mat. Van Buren was Secretary of State, Lou. McLane Secretary of the Treasury, John Branch was Secretary of the Navy, Lev. Woodbury was his successor, and Roger B. Taney was Attorney-General. Blair, Kendall, and Isaac Hill were also known as "the kitchen cabinet."
The confidential advisers of General Jackson lost no time in establishing a daily newspaper which would speak his sentiments and sound a key-note for the guidance of his followers. The Washington Globe was accordingly started on an immense paying basis, as it had the name of every Federal office-holder whose salary exceeded one thousand dollars on its subscription list. The paper was sent them, and in due time the bill for a year. If a remittance was made, well and good; if payment was refused, the delinquent was told informally that he could pay his subscription to the Globe, or be replaced by some one else who would pay it. It was owned and edited by Blair & Rives, Rives attending to the business department of the establishment. Mr. Blair had been the partner of Amos Kendall in the publication of the Frankfort Argus, and they had both deserted Henry Clay when they enlisted in the movement which gave the electoral vote of Kentucky to General Jackson, and joined in the cry of "bargain and corruption" raised against their former friend. It is related that the first interview between Clay and Blair after this desertion was a very awkward one for the latter, who felt that he had behaved shabbily. Clay had ridden over on horseback from Lexington to Frankfort, in the winter season, on legal business, and on alighting from his horse at the tavern door he found himself confronting Blair, who was just leaving the house. "How do you do, Mr. Blair?" inquired the great commoner, in his silvery tones and blandest manner, at the same time extending his hand. Blair mechanically took the tendered hand, but was evidently nonplussed, and at length said, with an evident effort, "Pretty well, I thank you, sir. How did you find the roads from Lexington to here?" "The roads are very bad, Mr. Blair," graciously replied Clay, "very bad; and I wish, sir, that you would mend your ways."
Mr. Blair made it a rule to defend in the columns of the Globe the acts of Jackson's Administration, right or wrong, and he waged merciless warfare against those who opposed them. When Colonel William R. King, of Alabama, once begged him to soften an attack upon an erring Democrat, Mr. Blair replied, "No! let it tear his heart out." With all his political insolence, however, he possessed remarkable kindness, and a more indulgent father was never known in Washington.
The Washington papers, up to this time, contained very little of what has since been known as local news. A parade, an inauguration, or the funeral of a distinguished person would receive brief mention, but the pleasant gossip of the day was entirely ignored. It was then necessary for the correspondent of a paper in a northern city to mail his letter at the post-office before twelve o'clock at night to insure its departure by the early morning's mail northward. Letters written to New York did not, consequently, appear until the second day after they were written, while those sent to Boston rarely appeared before the fourth day. The people then were better posted as to what transpired at the Nation's Capital than they are now, when dispatches can be sent in a few moments at any time of day or night.
Mrs. Anne Royall began an enterprise in personal literature. She managed to secure an old Ramage printing-press and a font of battered long-primer type, with which, aided by runaway apprentices and tramping journeymen printers, she published, on Capitol Hill, for several years, a small weekly sheet called the Huntress. Every person of any distinction who visited Washington received a call from Mrs. Royall, and if they subscribed for the Huntress they were described in the next number in a complimentary manner, but if they declined she abused them without mercy. When young she was a short, plump, and not bad-looking woman, but as she advanced in years her flesh disappeared, and her nose seemed to increase in size; but her piercing black eyes lost none of their fire, while her tongue wagged more abusively when her temper was roused. John Quincy Adams described her as going about "like a virago-errant in enchanted armor, redeeming herself from the cramps of indigence by the notoriety of her eccentricities and the forced currency they gave to her publications."