The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

The depression of the Federalists, the New Englanders, and the Opposition generally, was correspondingly great. A professional observer,[252] writing of the event in later years, tells us that “the immediate impression from the speech was most assuredly disheartening to the cause Mr. Webster upheld.” And Henry Cabot Lodge accepts the statement that “men of the North and of New England could be known in Washington in those days by their indignant and dejected looks and downcast eyes.”[253]

The day Webster began his reply was the coldest of the winter, a biting wind filling the streets with clouds of dust, and Margaret Bayard Smith, sitting before a blazing fire, and free from the interruption of callers because “almost every one is thronging to the Capitol to hear Mr. Webster reply to Colonel Hayne’s attack on him and his party,” wrote regretfully of the growing tendency of women to monopolize the seats both in the gallery and upon the floor.[254] The reader is too familiar with that splendid oration to justify, for our purposes, any analysis or extended reference to the substance. His replies to Hayne’s attacks on the war policy of the Federalists, and upon his own inconsistencies, while clever, were not, in truth, convincing answers, and it was upon these points that the Jackson Senators were centering their attention. Thus it is not remarkable that the full import of his speech was momentarily lost upon the heated partisans. Even Benton, refusing to believe that the Union was in danger, or in any way involved in the debate, did not care for Webster’s peroration, finding the sentiment nobly and oratorically expressed, “but too elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in the presence of a great calamity—of which calamity I saw no sign.”[255] To Benton, the debate was a party combat and nothing more. Nor is there anything in the notes recorded by Adams to indicate that he was impressed with the Webster speech except as a defense of Federalism.[256] The party issue had, for the moment, obscured all else. If in Charleston, the home of Hayne, Webster became the idol of the old Federalists, and of the Democratic mechanics, Hayne won the affectionate admiration of the merchants of Boston, who had his speech printed on satin for presentation to him.[257] The Democratic members of the Legislature of Maine, thinking only of the denunciation of Federalism, ordered two thousand copies published and distributed as “a fearless unanswerable defense of the Democracy of New England”—showing that the Nullification feature was overlooked in the party contest involved. Some contemporaries thought the battle a draw.

And Jackson? Parton tells us that Major Lewis, who had been stationed in the Senate during the debate, on returning from the Capitol after hearing Webster, found Jackson up and eager for news. On being told that the New England orator had made a powerful speech and demolished “our friend Hayne,” the old man replied that he “expected it.”[258] A few days later the full import of Hayne’s speech must have dawned upon Jackson and his political intimates, and there is significance in the powerful speech delivered a little later in the debate by Edward Livingston, Senator from Louisiana, intimate friend of the President, who was destined to enter the Cabinet and to frame Jackson’s immortal challenge to Nullification. After the speeches of Webster and Hayne, that of Livingston stands out as the greatest made during the prolonged discussion. He attempted again to center the fire on Federalism, and in so doing brilliantly defended the Union against Nullification, and vigorously defended the Jacksonian policies against the attacks to which they had been subjected during the remarkable debate. If the personal views of Jackson and the Administration are to be sought in any of the senatorial speeches, they will be found, not in the speech of Hayne, but in that of Livingston, which, for that reason, is entitled to more consideration from historians than it has received. We shall now see that within two months Jackson was to find a way to say the last word in the Great Debate of 1830.

IV

For some reason the Nullifiers miscalculated the stern old patriot of the While House. Perhaps it was his opposition to the tariff; possibly his South Carolina nativity—whatever the cause, the extreme State Rights party claimed him as its own. It is scarcely probable that, previous to the Webster-Hayne debate, Jackson had ever given any serious consideration to the danger of disunion, and most probable that the views advanced by Hayne in the Nullification part of his speech first impressed him with the fact that a sinister doctrine, brilliantly advanced and powerfully supported, was preparing to challenge the authority of the Nation. But he had kept his own counsels. He may have discussed the danger with Livingston or Van Buren, but no public announcement of his position had escaped him up to the time of the Jefferson dinner in the April following the Great Debate. This dinner, if is now reasonable to conclude, had been arranged with a definite object in view—to create the impression that, in a contest, the President would be friendly to the doctrine of Calhoun and Hayne. The significance of the selection of Jefferson’s birthday as the occasion was not lost upon the President or his Secretary of State. It was the first formal observance of the great Virginian’s natal day, and among the leaders in the preparations were some “with whom the Virginia principles of ’98 had, until quite recently, been in very bad odor.”[259] It was clear to the Red Fox that the intent was “to use the Virginia model as a mask or stalking horse, rather than as an armor of defense.” The plan, as it developed, was to undertake, through various toasts and their responses, to associate this doctrine with Jeffersonian Democracy. Of the twenty-four toasts, practically every one bore upon this subject. The President, Vice-President Calhoun, the Cabinet were to be guests.

It was a subscription dinner, and outside the conspirators in charge the purchasers of tickets had no other thought than that it was intended solely as a tribute to the memory of the sage of Monticello.

Talking it over with Van Buren, Jackson soon convinced himself as to the motive of the conspirators. By prearrangement, Van Buren met Jackson at the White House, in the presence only of Major Donelson, the President’s secretary, to determine upon the attitude to be taken and the toasts to be proposed. While the Nullifiers were jubilating over the promised participation of the President, he was locked in with his Secretary of State deliberating on the wisdom of showing by his toast his familiarity with the purpose of the conspirators, and his determination to preserve the Union at all hazards. The conferees decided upon that aggressive course, and the toasts were framed accordingly.

“Thus armed,” wrote Van Buren years later, “we repaired to the dinner with feelings on the part of the Chief akin to those which would have animated his breast if the scene of this preliminary skirmish in defense of the Union had been the field of battle instead of the festive board.”[260] When Benton arrived that night, he found a full assemblage, with the guests scattered about in groups excitedly examining the list of toasts, and discussing their significance. The congressional delegation from Pennsylvania, on scenting the conspiracy, left the hall before the dinner began. Many others, not caring to associate themselves with such a movement, retired, thus depriving themselves of a triumph. But many remained, among them four members of the Cabinet, Van Buren, Eaton, Branch, and Barry. During the toasts, which were so numerous and lengthy that they required eleven columns in the “National Telegraph,” Jackson sat stern and impassive, betraying nothing of his intention. At length, the regular toasts given, the volunteer toasts were called for, and Jackson rose. As he did so, Van Buren, who was short in stature, stood on his chair to observe the effect better.[261] Straightening himself to his full height, and fixing Calhoun with his penetrating eye, he paused a moment, and then, following the hush, proposed the most dramatic and historical toast in American history:

“Our Federal Union: It must and shall be preserved.”[262]

There was no possible misunderstanding of the meaning. From the time of the delivery of the Webster speech the value of the Union had been discussed with a disconcerting freedom of expression. The rumor was afloat in the capital that Calhoun had sinister designs, and proposed to place himself at the head of a disloyal movement of the extreme State Rights men. The toasts of the evening had told their tale of the dinner conspiracy. And Jackson’s brief, meaningful sentence cut like a knife. It was something more than a toast—it was a presidential proclamation.