The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Never had the Old Dominion been dominated by a more powerful machine than that led by Judge Spencer Roane, a man of great intellectual force, who had been favored by Jefferson for the Chief Justiceship. He had a powerful colleague in his cousin, Thomas Ritchie, the forceful editor of the “Richmond Enquirer.” Stevenson was an important member of the clique, and no one was closer to its leader than the scholarly Senator William C. Rives, who had, as Jackson’s first Minister to France, negotiated the indemnity settlement. The Virginians had early pledged themselves to the political fortunes of Van Buren. The alliance of the two States, Virginia and New York, was one of the significant facts in the politics of the day. Never doubting the loyalty of their ally, Roane and his organization determined to dictate the nomination of Rives for the Vice-Presidency with a view to the succession. It was not until the eve of the convention that the Virginians learned, to their dismay, that the New Yorkers had other plans. Almost incredulous, chagrined, disturbed, Ritchie hastened to write Rives of the new developments. He had heard that “some of our strongest friends in Washington” were looking with favor on Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. Van Buren’s preference was a mystery. However, Ritchie had been pressing Rives’s claims and had written letters, not only to delegates, but to “a gentleman in Washington, who can, if he thinks fit, exercise a sort of potential voice.” But unhappily for the Virginians, Lewis, Kendall, Blair, Silas Wright, and Hill were opportunists, with their eyes upon the West, in view of the candidacy of both Harrison and White. It was clear to them that expediency demanded the nomination of a Westerner for the Vice-Presidency. The stubborn, and now thoroughly outraged, Virginians refused to acquiesce in the reasoning of the Kitchen Cabinet, and Rives went down before the first of the “steam rollers” that have become so commonplace in national conventions.[879] Thoroughly disgusted by what they conceived to be a betrayal, the Virginia organization declared open war on Johnson, and Van Buren was much perturbed. But that wily diplomat, assisted by Silas Wright, immediately took personal charge of the work of conciliation, writing numerous letters to Rives and Ritchie, and the storm was stilled for the time when Van Buren made a journey to Castle Hill, the country home of the defeated candidate, where the fatted calf was killed and the leaders of the Roane organization were invited to participate in the feast and to accept the apologies and pledges of the presidential nominee.

IV

Meanwhile the Whigs were in a quandary as to what to do, with their greatest popular leader, noting a tendency to set him aside, spending the summer at Ashland in bitterness of soul. In a letter written in July he had unbosomed himself to a friend, with the confession that he had thought it probable that his party would again turn to him, but had noted a tendency to “discourage the use of my name.” In Ohio, where he was popular, the Legislature had discredited his possible candidacy by its endorsement of Justice McLean. In the spirit of an Achilles sulking in his tent, he discussed the various names canvassed, pointing out their weaknesses. White would be intolerable as a Whig candidate because “he has been throughout a supporter of the Jackson Administration and holds no principle, except in the matter of patronage, as to public measures, in common with the Whigs.” While he thought Webster’s attainments greatly superior to those of any other candidate, “it is to be regretted that a general persuasion seems to exist that he stands no chance.” Harrison was damned with the faint praise that he “could easier obtain the vote of Kentucky than any other candidate named.” The only rift in the clouds that he could see was in the nomination of three candidates, with White as one of the three, to draw off the Democratic strength in the South and portions of the West, and the defeat of Van Buren by thus throwing the contest into the House.[880] That this plan was uppermost in the minds of the Whigs is shown in a letter to Clay from James Barbour of Virginia, in August. Because of the slavery question, he thought White the strongest candidate to be pressed against Van Buren in Virginia. Webster was out of the question. McLean, not even considered. Harrison, after White, would make the strongest appeal. “It seems to me,” he continued, “that we have no prospect of excluding Van Buren but by the plan you suggest, of selecting two candidates who will be the strongest in their respective sections. White, I apprehend, for the South, Webster for the East, North and West, or whomsoever Pennsylvania prefers.”[881] Thus, in the correspondence of the Whig leaders, we have the proof that White was intrigued into the race by the Whigs with the view to furthering their own interest, and not his.

By September, Clay, having met Harrison in Cincinnati, and finding him “respectful and cordial,” was more cordial toward his candidacy, although he preferred any choice Pennsylvania might announce. The Rhode Island and Connecticut elections had shown that “it is in vain to look even to New England for the support of Mr. Webster.”[882] Out of this confusion of counsels, Harrison ultimately emerged with the general support of the Whigs, but, like the Democrats, the Whigs were to be embarrassed by a double tail to their ticket. With the popular sentiment favoring Tyler, the politicians, with their eyes on the Anti-Masons, nominated Granger. It was the contention of contemporaries that Clay, who had engineered the move against Tyler, feared that the concentration of the Whigs on some strong candidate for the Vice-Presidency might result in his election with Van Buren, because of the dissatisfaction of the Virginia Whigs with Johnson; and that a Whig Vice-President, under a Democratic President, would become a formidable rival for the presidential nomination in 1840.[883] Both Tyler and Granger, however, remained in the field, thus dividing the vote in the election.

The Massachusetts Whigs, nothing daunted by the turn of affairs, remained faithful to Webster, who was placed in the field; and in South Carolina, where Calhoun’s followers made a point of separating themselves from all parties and all other States, Senator Willie P. Mangum was nominated. Thus, in the campaign of 1836 there were five candidates, with the Democrats united behind Van Buren, and the Opposition dividing its strength between Harrison, White, Webster, and Mangum. Nothing could have been more to the liking of the Democracy. It entered the campaign in solid ranks except in Tennessee, where even the magic name of Jackson was unable to prevent a schism which was to result in the humiliation of the venerable chief.

V

During the summer of 1835 the militant methods of the Abolitionists forced the slavery question to the front to the embarrassment of the politicians and the candidates. The Nation was still on edge because of the anti-slavery and anti-abolition riots of the year before, when George Thompson, the Abolition firebrand from England, arrived in America with exhortations to the Northerners to end slavery at once. The South was outraged, the North, shocked. Coincident with Thompson’s mad crusade, the American Anti-Slavery Society, having collected a large sum of money for the purpose, began to circularize the country, and especially the South, with literature calculated to arouse the slaves to insurrection.[884] The defense of the abolitionists was that the literature was sent to the whites alone; but much of it fell into the hands of the blacks, and excitement reached fever heat. In Philadelphia a pouch of these tracts was confiscated by a mob, and sunk in the Delaware River. In Charleston the mail was searched for them, and three thousand citizens assembled at night to witness their destruction in a bonfire. Mass meetings were held in all the larger Northern cities to denounce the desperate enterprise of the abolitionists, and in Boston the citizens packed Faneuil Hall to hear Harrison Gray Otis denounce them in a spirited address. When Thompson, in one of his inflammatory speeches, proposed that the slaves should arise and cut their masters’ throats, the bitterness in the North was as pronounced as in the South, and after Garrison had narrowly escaped the rope through the intercession of the Mayor of Boston, whom he had scathingly attacked in his paper, the English orator went into hiding until he could be spirited out of the country. The most important effect of this miserable blunder of the abolitionists was to force the slavery question into politics, and from that hour on, the slave-owners of the South became dominant in the politics of the Republic.

It is certain that Jackson, like all other responsible leaders, abhorred these appeals to the slaves to rise and cut their masters’ throats. The burden of dealing with an important phase of the problem, the transmission of such matter through the mail, fell upon the Administration, and in the absence of any law to prevent it. But when the postmasters of New York and Charleston wrote Postmaster-General Kendall for instructions, that astute politician replied that the United States should not carry such matter in the mail; and, acting upon the hint, the postmasters threw all such matter out with the tacit consent of the Government.

The Opposition, however, planned to turn the hatred of the abolitionists against Van Buren, who was hostile to the extension of slavery. Writing to Clay in the late summer of 1835, Senator Barbour rejoiced in the injection of the slavery question as certain to injure the Democratic nominee.[885] The close political associates of Van Buren were keenly alive to the danger, and John Forsyth wrote him that unless something should be done in New York he “should not be at all surprised at a decisive movement to establish a Southern Confederacy,” and suggested that “a portion of the Magician’s skill is required in this matter ... and the sooner you set the imps to work the better.”[886] Whether the wily politician “set the imps to work” we do not know, but within a month of the writing of the letter the New York postmaster publicly announced that he would refuse to forward the objectionable literature. This was given the widest publicity; so, too, the letter of Amos Kendall accepting and endorsing the action of the New York official. And about the same time, whether due to the Van Buren “imps” or not, one of the greatest meetings ever held in New York was held in the park to denounce the methods of the abolitionists. Nothing was done by Van Buren personally, in a public way, to divorce himself from all sympathy with the abolition movement.

The Whig nominee, determined publicly to repudiate the abolition methods, found an opportunity at a dinner in his honor at Vincennes, Indiana, in a speech intended as a friendly gesture to the slave-holding States, and for the cultivation of such of those in Virginia as were prone to associate Van Buren with the abolition sentiment in portions of New York.[887] The position of White was as clearly fixed on slavery as that of Calhoun, and we shall observe a little later how the latter sought to place Van Buren in a position hostile to Southern interests.