Nothing could have been more pleasing to the political managers of the Administration. Before the galleries, packed to hear the eye-witnesses, the two Whigs began to appear more and more as quarrelsome, pistol-toting bullies taking advantage of their position to browbeat and intimidate an unprotected witness. The Democratic press, under the inspiration of Blair and Kendall, devoted columns to the evidence, and sentiment was turned against the Whig leaders until they began to complain that they, and not Whitney, were apparently at the bar. “Sir,” Wise declared, “it is I who am on trial and not Reuben M. Whitney. I have no doubt of the contrivance to make this issue before the country.... I wish to know, sir, if there are not other officers of the Government who have issued the order that the power of this House, and the Executive power of the country, are both to be brought to bear upon two humble and inexperienced members of the House. Sir, I have felt it.”
The affair had now worked around to the distinct advantage of the Administration, and Wise and Peyton, and not Jackson, were in distress. The psychological hour had struck to end the farce. The motion to dismiss Whitney was made and carried, and when the name of Wise was called, he solemnly rose:
“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I shall not vote until I ascertain whether I am discharged from prosecution or not.”
As the smiling House offered no information, his name is not recorded among those voting. Thus the one offensive against Jackson, launched by his enemies on the eve of his relinquishment of power, ended in a riproaring farce.
II
In the Senate the offensive was taken by Jackson’s supporters when Benton served notice that he would demand a vote on his motion to expunge the vote of censure from the records. Much water had passed over the dam since the persistent Missourian had first offered his resolution. With the aid of the Kitchen Cabinet, he had made it a national issue. The fight had been carried into the States of the Senators who had voted for the censure, and, in numerous instances, the offending member had either been defeated for reëlection, or the legislature had been prevailed upon to instruct him to vote to expunge. One of the opponents of the Benton resolution had died and been succeeded by a Jackson sympathizer. Through defeat, or resignations forced by instructions from legislatures, enemies had given place to friends from Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, and Virginia. New Senators, friends of Jackson, had entered from the new States of Arkansas and Michigan. A private poll convinced Benton that the triumph was at hand, all the sweeter because coming on the eve of Jackson’s retirement. The day after Christmas he reintroduced his original resolution, and on January 12th supported it in a speech laudatory of Jackson—a pæan of anticipated triumph. The old man, always a trifle pompous and stilted in his style, was never more so, but in his most extravagant praise he unquestionably spoke the language of his heart. Beginning by recalling the discouraging circumstances under which he first offered his resolution, he gloatingly declared that the Opposition had become “more and more odious to the public mind and musters now but a slender phalanx of friends.” The people had been passing on the censure; had passed upon it in the triumph of Van Buren, who had publicly proclaimed his adherence to the plans of Benton. He would not rehash the constitutional arguments. The debate had ended and the verdict had been rendered, but the occasion called for some reference to the achievements and triumphs of the Administration. Then he hastily sketched its battles, claiming in the aftermath of each the vindication of events—the destruction of the Bank, the removal of the deposits, the triumphant termination of the controversy with the French.
“And now, sir,” he concluded, as we may imagine with his chest thrown out, “I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed upon myself. Solitary and alone, and amidst the taunts and jeers of my opponents, I put this ball in motion. The people have taken it up and rolled it forward, and I am no longer anything but a unit in the vast mass which now propels it. In the name of that mass, I speak. I demand the execution of the edict of the people; I demand the expurgation of that sentence which the voice of a few Senators and the power of their confederate, the Bank of the United States, has caused to be placed upon the journal of the Senate, and which the voice of millions of freemen has ordered to be expunged from it.”
Thus spoke the champion of Jackson in the tones and manner of a conqueror. As he resumed his seat, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky rose to protest against the “party desecration” of the record, and after a few words from Senator Dana, who favored the expunging record, the Senate adjourned. On the following day some of the great orators of the Opposition were put forward to oppose the resolution.
We are told by an eye-witness that the eloquent Preston “spoke in a strain of eloquence inspired by his feelings of great aversion.”[930] If Benton was theatrical, as has been justly charged by historians, the Whigs were even more so, as we shall see. Beginning with great solemnity, and describing his shock and sorrow, Preston proceeded:
“Execution is demanded—aye, sir, the executioners are here with ready hands. Exercise your function, gentlemen.... The axe is in your hand—perform that which is so loudly called for. Execution, sir, of what, of whom? Is the axe aimed at men who voted for the resolution you are about to expunge? Is it us you strike at? If so, ... in God’s name let the blow come, and as the fatal edge fell upon my neck, I would declare with honest sincerity that I would rather be the criminal of 1834 than the executioner of 1837.” More: the names of the Senators refusing to expunge would in the future “be familiar as household words” and be “taught to children as the names of Washington and Adams and Hancock and Lee and Lafayette are now taught to our children.”