Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on the ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and his offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was described as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American institutions. The hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that several Senators who had been shocked at this offense had regaled drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs. Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s being a proper “lady in waiting” for the President’s wife since “birds of a feather flock together.”[225] The real reason for his rejection was that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition by his telling paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his rejection, two Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the news, and the old man made the comment in his diary that night that Hill “was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me, in the country.”
Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City, appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to have tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One important and memorable service to the Nation should have made him immune from the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as consul to Tunis with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an annual tribute to Algiers for the privilege of navigating the Mediterranean, and Noah, the journalist, had denounced the practice and declared that the money could be better spent in the building of warships. He succeeded on his Algerian mission in ransoming American prisoners who were being held in slavery, but such was the bigotry of the time that, after his work was done, he was recalled on the flimsy pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in Tunis. At the time he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished by his public service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had written his “Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He deserves his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But he had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the bigoted members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.
The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of the nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the time, served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury, rooting out old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his predecessor, but he had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for Jackson, and that was quite enough. Adams himself was deeply interested in his humiliation. In the midst of the campaign he had been consulted by Clay touching upon “testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate of Kentucky intended to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt bargaining with me”; and, on Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes the editor as “one of those authors to let, whose profligacy is the child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall was a tie, and Calhoun cast the deciding vote in his favor.
Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was saved. Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through, and that with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the scale.”[226] Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the friends of Calhoun were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors that their humiliation had been brought about through the secret influence of Van Buren. Even then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was called, was considered the greatest obstacle in the way of the South Carolinian’s progress toward the White House, and it was the evident purpose to send the editors, miserable “press writers” though they were, back to their papers to fight the aspirations of Van Buren. Before the vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that the Van Buren influence was responsible for the fight against him. This aroused the curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus, when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian could return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in Washington in that event.
The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face. It aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors who had so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their reward. It was the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly accepted. It was clear that nothing could be done for Lee, where the vote was unanimous, but Jackson decided to renominate Noah, and we find Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The President this morning renominated Noah. This is a prelude to Hill’s renomination. Your presence, I apprehend, would be immaterial, as the result of any vote upon these subjects would not be varied. Monday is fixed for the consideration of Noah’s case.”[227] On the second attempt, Noah was confirmed, like Kendall, with the casting vote of Calhoun.
But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose sharp retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign. Webb, the editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in his paper the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a printer and was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always the friend of his country and its republican institutions, and when that country, during the late war, was about to be sold by traitors to the enemy; when the war was declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the Hartford Convention meditated the formation of a separate treaty with England, his voice was heard in the Granite State and in the mountains of Vermont, animating the people and arousing them to a just sense of their danger, and the blessings of freedom. He was a thorn in the side of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of the Opposition, he pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and successfully.” Writing from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth entered his protest, a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire Patriot’ did more than any one man known to me to put down the ‘peace societies’ during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.
It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and that the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that the most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy of New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill and looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it up to the legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and true man, by the unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire Democrats understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the aisle of the Senate that had humiliated and rejected him to take the oath as a Senator of the United States.
Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.