His hostility to Jackson and Jacksonian methods was first manifested in his support of the resolutions censuring the General for his course in Florida. There is no doubt that at this time he had formed a deep-seated prejudice against the military hero. “We are engaged with Jackson and the President,” he wrote home at the time. “I do not hesitate to say that the constitutional powers of the House of Representatives have been violated in the capture and detention of Pensacola and the Barancas; that Jackson overstepped his orders; and that the President has improperly approved his proceedings, and that the whole are culpable.”[212] But there was a more powerful and less personal reason for his enmity to the Jackson Administration, which developed during this period. He had already become a sectionalist. Like Calhoun in later life, and Webster in 1820, he began to sense a struggle between the sections over the balance of power. Thus early he commenced to question the permanency of the Union. In the Missouri fight, in a strong speech against the restriction of slavery, he alone, among all participating on his side, advanced the proposition that the Congress possessed no constitutional power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the Territories.[213] We find him writing[214] that “men talk of the dissolution of the Union with perfect nonchalance and indifference.” When, in his thirty-first year, he voluntarily retired to private life to retrieve his fortunes, he had made an impression so profound that it was predicted that he would rise to high station.[215]

When in 1827 he became a candidate for the Senate against the brilliant and vitriolic John Randolph of Roanoke, we find the elements working that were to ripen him for the break with the Jackson Administration, and for association with Clay’s party of incongruities and nondescripts. After the inauguration of Adams, he had written Clay commending his action in throwing his support to the Puritan, assuring him of his contempt for the “bargain” story, and unnecessarily adding a fling at Jackson: “I do not believe that the sober and reflecting people of Virginia would have been so far dazzled by military renown as to have conferred their suffrage upon a mere soldier—one acknowledged on every hand to be of little value as a civilian.”[216] When Randolph so viciously attacked Adams and Clay on the “bargain” story, Tyler became his most uncompromising foe. In some manner his letter to Clay found its way into the newspapers, resulting in much feeling, letter-writing, charges and counter-charges and journalizing, and the supporters of Tyler interpreted the use of the letter as an attempt to coerce him into support of Jackson in 1828. If such was the purpose, it failed. He was elected without having pledged himself, and at a complimentary dinner after his election, he referred to Jackson in a sneering fashion.

And now we begin to understand the underlying causes that took Tyler and other Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Whig ranks during the Jackson period. On reaching Washington in December, 1827, we find him writing to a correspondent: “My hopes are increased from the following fact ... that in the nature of things, General Jackson must surround himself by a Cabinet composed of men advocating, to a great extent, the doctrines so dear to us. Pass them in review before you—Clinton, Van Buren, Tazewell, Cheves, Macon, P. P. Barbour, men who, in the main, concur with us in sentiment. Furthermore, General Jackson will have to encounter a strong opposition. He will require an active support at our hands. Should he abuse Virginia by setting at nought her political sentiments, he will find her at the head of the opposition, and he will probably experience the fate of J. Q. A.”[217] The Cabinet, when announced, does not seem to have satisfied him, albeit Van Buren, of whose views on slavery extension he appears to have been misinformed, was a member. The presence of Berrien and Branch ought, perhaps, to have reassured him, but they were a minority, and they did not satisfy Calhoun, of whom they were devoted disciples.

Thus, from the very beginning of the Jackson régime, Tyler was suspicious, and ripe for the Opposition. In the spoils system he found a pretext for dissatisfaction, and he proceeded to develop this into a rather petty persecution. It would be a mistake to underrate the effect of his opposition. He was highly respected by his colleagues. His dignity, courtliness, urbanity, and ease gave him a certain social prestige. He was an interesting and likable companion, and his polished conversation had impelled an English novelist[218] to describe it as superior to that of any one he had met in America. His appearance was not against him. Tall and slender, of patrician mould, his Roman nose, firm mouth, broad and lofty brow, and honest blue eyes combined to give him a distinction that marked him in an assembly. He was not a mere professional politician of a type to be developed later in the Republic. His letters to his daughter[219] concerning her studies, on poetry, fiction, and history, denote a discriminating student and lover of literature. It was this occasional detachment from the political world which made it possible for him, during the famous debate on the Foot Resolution, to entertain himself in the Senate Chamber in the reading of Moore’s “Life of Byron.” We shall now observe him launch the White Terror against the Red.

III

Among the nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220] Strangely enough, this seems to have rather affronted the somewhat ponderous dignity of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it has made an ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even Schouler[221] is distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the list. Whether the fact that they were mere editors was enough to make them “infamous characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the strange antipathy to a class long conceded to be among the most influential of any nation is probably to be found in the fact that until this time the lawyers were conceded a monopoly in public station. There was a reason for Jackson’s change of policy, and it grew out of the organization of party and the democratization of government. Unlike his predecessors, he had not depended for support, nor did he expect to look exclusively for support to the professional politicians and the wealthy. As a candidate his appeal had been—for the first time in American history—to the people. As a President he proposed to look to the same quarter. With the people actually established as the ultimate power in the State, according to the theory of American institutions, he was not unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people with his case. He was the first President fully to appreciate the power of the press. He could see no reason why men capable of presenting and popularizing a policy or principle should be excluded from the privilege of helping put it in operation.

In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of the press, but he had found champions—men of capacity and talent, who had fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The assumption that all these men were bribed by the promise of place would be a violent one indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent to the Senate were men who had long been attached to the cause that Jackson personified. Some had more recently allied themselves with the cause, but in every instance there was a sound reason for the change of front, and in these cases it does not appear that they had met the President in the campaign or had any expectations.

And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of their capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had speedily uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor who was not a “press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the penitentiary. The Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to the State worthy of reward. While there can be no doubt that the partisan enemies of Jackson were delighted at the opportunity personally to affront him, and while it is certain that Clay’s friends were anxious to punish one, and Adams’s friends to humiliate another, the actual conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the editors originated with John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator Tazewell of Virginia—who was still smarting under his defeat in the contest with Van Buren for the secretaryship of State.

The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M. Noah, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.

Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E. Lee and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with Jackson at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers ever penned in this country.”[222] One who saw him there at the time has recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his half-brother, Robert E. Lee, but rather ugly in face—a mouth without a line of the bow of Diana about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic, but rather meaty, and, if we may use the word, ‘blood meaty’; but he was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever listened to.”[223] He had served in the Virginia House of Delegates with Tyler, and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes Tyler, “I regarded him as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and of a high order of talent.”[224] But this did not operate in his favor. He had assisted in the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have been mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of his rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards protested that he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation, and had expressed his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more aggravated additions to the charge under which he labored.”