The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

IV

While the President-elect was holding his conferences, with the mysterious Major Lewis going in and out at Gadsby’s and playing with the destinies of men, and the streets were seething with an incongruous crowd shouting their “Hurrah for Jackson,” Jackson was remaining coldly aloof from the occupant of the White House. He had carried to Washington a bitter resentment against Adams and his personal lieutenants, because of the dastardly attacks upon the woman then buried at the Hermitage. He made no call of courtesy, and Adams was stung to the quick. Especially painful to the old Puritan was the thought that he had been considered capable of a vulgar assault upon the good name of a woman. After much struggling with his pride, he made the first advance by sending a messenger to Jackson to inform him that the White House would be ready for his occupancy on the 4th of March. “He brought me the answer,” Adams records, “that the General cordially thanked him, and hoped that I would put myself to no inconvenience to quit the house, but to remain in it as long as I pleased, even for a month.”[142] A few days later, Adams sent his messenger to say that his packing might require two or three days beyond the 3d, and Jackson replied that he did not wish to put him to the slightest inconvenience, “but that Mr. Calhoun had suggested that there might be danger of the excessive crowds breaking down the rooms at Gadsby’s, and the General had concluded, if it would be perfectly convenient to us, to receive his company at the President’s house after the inauguration on Wednesday next.” Whereupon Adams “concluded at all events to leave the house on Tuesday.”[143] Thus the closing days of his Administration must have been bitter, indeed, to the proud old Puritan of the White House. Deliberately ignored by his successor, tortured by the thought of the treachery of McLean and others, the co-workers of his régime, depressed, embittered, or in hiding, he appears to have been utterly forgotten by the society of the capital as well as by the general public. Justice Story observing his isolation was moved to write in bitterness to a friend that he had never “felt so forcibly the emptiness of public honors and public favor.” Certainly no generous sympathy was felt for him by his triumphant foes. When, on the last Sunday before the inauguration, the pastor of the President’s church unhappily selected for his text, “What will ye do on the solemn day?” one of Jackson’s courtiers, who had attended the services, hurried back to Gadsby’s, and the company assembled there went into gales of laughter, and agreed that it would be, for some, a “solemn day.”

That day was heralded by the thunder of cannon—a day of warmth and sunshine. All roads led to the Capitol, and from an early hour the thoroughfares were thronged with the eager, enthusiastic, motley crowd, rejoicing audibly in the event. Down the Avenue the good-natured mob fought its way, the splendid Barronet and the stately coaches splashed by the wagons and the carts, women and children in exquisite finery crowded by women and children in home-spun and rags, statesmen jostled by uncouth frontiersmen, the laborer brushing inconsiderately, and perhaps a little arrogantly, against the banker—for it was the People’s Day. When, at eleven o’clock, the aristocratic Mrs. Smith set forth with her company, she found the Avenue one living mass, flowing sluggishly eastward, with every terrace and portico and balcony packed, and with all the windows of the Capitol crowded, some to observe the approach on the west, and others to witness the ceremony on the east. When the mob caught sight of Jackson and his party walking from Gadsby’s in democratic fashion, it pressed in upon him, impeding his approach, but seeming in nowise to challenge his displeasure, for he alone of his party walked with bared head. The spectators on the south terrace thrilled to the scene—an American king going to his coronation, acclaimed and accompanied by the plain people. The ceremonies over, he fought his way to his waiting horse—and down the Avenue he rode, followed by the most picturesque cortège that ever trailed a conqueror—gentlemen of society and backwoodsmen, scholars and the illiterate, white and black, the old hobbling on crutches and canes and children clinging to their mothers’ gowns, walking and riding in carriages and wagons and carts—following to the People’s House.

There the unwieldy mob, in carnival mood, hundreds only accustomed to the rough life of the frontier, stormed the mansion, fighting, scrambling, elbowing, scratching. Waiters appearing with refreshments were rushed by the uncouth guests, resulting in the crash of glass and china. Men in heavy boots, covered with the mud of the unpaved streets, sprang upon the chairs and sofas to get a better view of the hero of the hour.[144] Women fainted, some were seen with bloody noses, and Jackson was saved from being crushed only by the action of some gentlemen in making a barrier of their bodies. After this the old soldier beat a hasty retreat through the back way to the south, and sought relief at Gadsby’s.[145] “I never saw such a mixture,” wrote Justice Story. “The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” And Mrs. Smith writing of her experience said: “The noisy and disorderly rabble ... brought to my mind descriptions I have read of the mobs in the Tuileries and at Versailles.”

And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the dethroned President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered his horse, and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the city “through F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until he reached a road leading to the Porters’—reminded of the passing of his power by the neglect of the people.[146]

Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the day—tormented by bitter regrets.

V

Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were to cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the capital gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who had betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale dismissals of postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings against those officials who had participated in politics he would be forced to include in the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well as those who had been faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment nonplussed, sat puffing at his pipe, then arose, and, after walking up and down the room several times, stopped abruptly before his obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr. McLean, will you accept a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”—and that McLean instantly accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent, who says that on the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a reception at the home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was intimate, had just described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr. McLean has been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly Jacksonian way.

It is reasonable to assume that during the brief moments he walked the floor puffing his pipe, he determined upon McLean’s successor. One week before his inauguration, he had given James A. Hamilton a list of applicants for office with the request for an opinion and report, and among these was the application of William T. Barry of Kentucky for a place on the Supreme Bench. The applications had been returned to him with the recommendation that the Kentuckian be appointed. He was known to Jackson as an “organization man.” It was probably the matter of a moment, for one of the President’s quick decision, to make the exchange—McLean for the Bench, Barry for the Cabinet.[149] His efforts to soothe the injured feelings of Senator Tazewell, whose heart had been set on the portfolio of State, were not so successful. After the disappointed statesman had refused the War Department, some of the Jackson tacticians conceived the idea of offering him the mission to London, and for a few days the Virginian seemed tempted. But one week after the inauguration, he wrote the President that domestic reasons precluded an acceptance. Keenly disappointed and concerned, Jackson, after a consultation with one of his advisers,[150] wrote a personal note to Tazewell requesting him to call at the White House. It is not incomprehensible that in his angry mood the proud Southerner should have resented the earnest importunity of the direct Jackson, and he left the President with the statement to McLean that he had not liked the General’s manner in looking him through and through and telling him he must go. He had looked upon it as a military order, and considered the matter at rest. This opened the way, however, for the recognition of Van Buren’s friend, Louis McLane, whose ruffled feelings were smoothed by the appointment to the English Court. But within a week two of Jackson’s party friends and supporters, McLean and Tazewell, had been alienated and were ripe for the seduction of the Opposition.

Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn opposition to the Administration. As early as the first of January it was evident that “the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in the Senate and thereby to control the President.”[151] During the first few weeks of the new Administration the iron sank deep into the souls of the dispossessed office-holders and their friends. It was manifest that there was something more than a new master in the White House—that a régime had passed, a dynasty had fallen. Previous Presidents had entered office with the good wishes of most of their political opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that the dispossessed had steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning to find fault on general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to wreck the Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the Whig drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.” All the members of the new official family were ridiculed with the exception of Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound politician,” was “not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic and vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on the pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the conduct of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for place, and to reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153]