The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Thus, on the evening of September 1, 1829, a unique conference was held at the White House, when Jackson confronted the two clergymen, in the presence of witnesses, and forced them to admit that they had no evidence. One of the worst charges had been that a certain physician, conveniently dead, had said that Mrs. Eaton had undergone a premature accouchement when her husband had been more than a year at sea—the date fixed as 1821. When confronted by the fact that the first husband had not gone to sea until 1824, the clergyman lightly changed the date to conform. This disgusted and enraged Jackson. Because he cross-examined the gentlemen of the cloth regarding a matter affecting the reputation of a woman, some historians have been resentful of his severity.[292] The purpose was to convince the members of the Cabinet, who were present, that their ladies were working a grave injustice upon the wife of a colleague in refusing her social intercourse. But far from satisfying the women, the discomfiture of the minister and the utter collapse of the case only embittered them the more against her. The minister was placed in a painful position, dubbed by the irrepressible “Ike” Hill as “the chaplain of the conspiracy,” and described by Mrs. Smith[293] as having been “rendered incapable of attending to his ministerial duties to such a degree as to produce great dissatisfaction in his congregation.”

Meanwhile months had gone by and Mrs. Eaton was still snubbed. Mrs. Calhoun, a thorough aristocrat, had positively refused to call. Mrs. Ingham, whose own reputation was not unquestioned, took her cue from Mrs. Calhoun. Branch tells us that when, in May, his wife and daughters joined him in Washington, they found Mrs. Eaton “excluded from society,” and that he “did not deem it their duty to endeavor to control or counteract the decision of the ladies of Washington.”[294] Miss Berrien had accepted the verdict of the women, and her father was openly expressing his admiration for “the heroic virtues of John Branch for hazarding his place rather than permit his wife and daughters to associate with the wife of John H. Eaton.”[295] Parties were given and Mrs. Eaton was not invited; at public receptions she was snubbed.

This was all meat and drink to Adams, who recorded in his diary, after some scandal gossip with Mrs. Rush: “I told Mrs. Rush that this struggle was likely to terminate in a party division of Caps and Hats.” It is this suggestion as to party divisions which imposes upon the historian the necessity of dwelling upon this strange petticoat squabble. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, when Martin Van Buren appeared at social functions with the pretty Peggy on his arm, he made himself President of the United States.

When the Red Fox arrived in Washington and noted the passionate determination of the iron man at the White House to force a social recognition of Mrs. Eaton, he could not have been unmindful of his advantage. He was a widower. No wife or daughters were with him to be compromised. His biographer[296] makes the point that he called upon the accused woman in response to common instincts of decency, and that his failure to have done so would have amounted to a striking public condemnation. But he did something more than merely call upon her—he became an active and aggressive partisan of her cause, and by so doing endeared himself to Jackson. Common decency did not demand that he feature her at his dinners and receptions, or enter into an agreement with two unmarried members of the diplomatic corps to do likewise.[297] It is impossible to account for this extraordinary partisanship on any other grounds than his desire to curry special favor with the President. His conduct and activities became the subject of jests and quips. “It is asserted that if Mr. Van Buren persists in visiting her [Mrs. Eaton], our ladies will not go to his house,” wrote one of the stubborn dames.[298] With the ladies of the Cabinet giving large parties, the wife of Eaton was omitted from the invitation lists, and Van Buren countered with dinners and dances at the British and Russian Legations at which Mrs. Eaton was treated with marked distinction. But even here “cotillion after cotillion dissolved into its original elements when she was placed at its head.”[299] At the Russian Legation, Madame Huygens, wife of the Dutch Minister, on finding that her seat was beside Mrs. Eaton at the table, haughtily took her husband’s arm and stalked impressively from the room. Because of this affront, Jackson was prone to make it an international incident by demanding the recall of the Minister, but Van Buren’s sense of humor intervened. In sheer delight Adams wrote: “Mr. Vaughan ... gave a ball last night which was opened by Mr. Bankhead, the Secretary of the British Legation, and Mrs. Eaton; and Mr. Van Buren has issued cards also for a ball which is to be given in honor of the same lady. I confine myself to the Russian and Turkish war.”[300] In the late summer of 1829 the effect of the struggle upon both Jackson and Van Buren was apparent. The President, disgusted, worn, and sick at heart, was confiding to his correspondents his partiality for the calm of the Hermitage. And Adams, riding about the environs, and encountering Van Buren, similarly taking the air, spitefully wrote: “His pale and haggard looks show it is already a reward of mortification. If it should prove, as there is every probability that it will, a reward of treachery, it will be but his desert.”[301]

When the winter came and the social season opened, the contest naturally intensified. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien gave large parties from which Mrs. Eaton was excluded, while “on the other hand the President made her doubly conspicuous by an over display of notice.”[302] At one of the President’s drawing-rooms she was surrounded by a crowd eager to please the host, but Mrs. Donelson, mistress of the White House, held aloof. This rebellion under his own roof caused the aged President the deepest pain. Adams records a melodramatic appeal by Van Buren to Mrs. Donelson, which was highly colored by the ardent Pepys, but such an appeal was made.[303] The effect of the fight was disastrous to the Administration. The members of the Cabinet were speedily involved by their wives, and for a time Eaton and Branch did not speak. It was at this juncture that Jackson determined to intervene, and “to bring them to speaking terms.”[304] His intermediary for the purpose, Colonel Richard M. Johnson,[305] was not a Talleyrand, and his lack of tact in his talks with Branch, Berrien, and Ingham made matters all the worse. When the relations of the Cabinet members became threatening, Jackson demanded that they meet and reach a basis for official intercourse at least. The meeting was held at the home of Berrien, attended by Branch, Eaton, and Barry. The negotiations were conducted with dignity and decorum, Branch satisfactorily explained invitations to the ministers who had accused Eaton’s wife, and the two shook hands as a token of reconciliation.[306] Meanwhile Congress was in session. All attempts to hold Cabinet meetings had long been abandoned. The lines were drawn tightly. The slights and indignities to Mrs. Eaton had become all but intolerable. And much was being heard of the alleged frailty and indiscretions of Mrs. Ingham—stories that seem to have been well known at the time, but to have been given renewed currency by Eaton.[307]

It was at this juncture that Van Buren, riding with Jackson, proposed the acceptance of his resignation. Meditating the step for some time he had been unable to muster the courage to broach the subject. For four days the President and his Secretary of State rode the Tenallytown road earnestly debating the propriety of the plan, and on the fourth day, just as they reached their turning-point at the Tenallytown Gate, Jackson gave a reluctant consent and suggested the British Mission. But the grim old warrior was loath to part with his one strong friend in the Cabinet, and early the next morning he summoned Van Buren to the White House, and in great agitation, and with significance, explained anew that it was his custom to release from association with him any man who felt that he ought to go. Thoroughly alarmed, Van Buren, with emotion, withdrew all he had said, and announced a willingness to retain his post until dismissed. Deeply touched, Jackson proposed another discussion on their afternoon ride. It was that afternoon that it was agreed to call others into the conference; and the next night Van Buren had as dinner guests Jackson, Barry, Eaton, and Major Lewis. Finally Eaton agreed to follow with his resignation. Would Peggy consent, asked the tactful Fox. Her husband thought she would. The next night the five met at dinner again, with Eaton reporting his wife’s acquiescence in the plans. But when, a few days later, Jackson and Van Buren, out for a stroll, stopped at the Eaton house, their reception from the mistress was so cold and formal that the Secretary commented upon it, and Jackson shrugged his shoulders in silence. But the die was cast. The plan was made. Van Buren and Eaton would resign, thus paving the way for the resignation of the Calhoun followers, and a reorganization of the Cabinet—with the Calhoun influence entirely eliminated.[308]

II

The decision made, the old President must have felt a sense of ineffable relief. His Cabinet had been a failure and he realized it. His dissatisfaction with a majority of its members was not due entirely to their hostility to Mrs. Eaton. The fight against the National Bank was in its incipiency and he looked upon Ingham as a tool of the Bank; the Nullification doctrine was being promulgated and he considered Berrien a Nullifier—and in both surmises he was right. He thought Branch pompous, incompetent, and subservient to petticoat rule. And we may be sure that whether or not the Cabinet was to be reorganized in the interest of Van Buren, the relations of all three toward the Carolinian entered into his decision to rid himself of them. There is evidence that he quite early determined to displace Berrien, but nothing of record to indicate the cause. In the man selected for his place, however, we have ample justification for the suspicion that the Red Fox had poisoned his mind against his Attorney-General. It was on the suggestion of Van Buren, very soon after the formation of the Cabinet in 1829, that the Attorney-Generalship was offered to Louis McLane, who, in disgust, had retired to Wilmington for the practice of his profession, with the inducement that he would later be transferred to the Supreme Bench on the death of the rapidly failing Justice Duval. Before breakfast one morning, after a hard ride over the wretched mud roads, Hamilton, the lieutenant of Van Buren, arrived at the McLane home with the proposal, which was accepted. Nothing, however, was done—another mystery that died with Jackson and his Secretary of State.[309]

But the coast was now clear. A strong workable Cabinet after Jackson’s own heart could be created. The manner in which he went about ridding himself of the undesirable members of the old Cabinet is graphically illustrated in the account left by Branch.[310] It is easy to visualize the scene in the President’s room, whither he has summoned Branch to inform him of the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton. There is a “solemn pause.” The Secretary, sensing the intent, smiles, and suggests that the grim one is not “acting in a character nature intended him for”; that he is not a diplomatist, and should speak frankly. Whereupon Jackson, “with great apparent kindness,” explains his purpose, points to a commission as Governor of Florida upon the table, and announces that it will be a pleasure to fill in the name of the visitor. Branch haughtily declares that he had “not supported him for the sake of office,” and soon retires. Returning to his office, Branch prepares and sends in his resignation courteously, but not omitting to mention that the action was taken in response to the President’s wish. Whereupon Jackson, splitting hairs, writes a protest against the statement that his correspondent’s resignation had been asked. “I did not,” he writes, “as to yourself, express a wish that you would retire.” But since the Cabinet had come in “harmoniously and as a unit,” and two were voluntarily retiring, it had become “indispensable” to reorganize completely the official household “to guard against misrepresentation.” More correspondence follows, ending with a gracious acceptance of the resignation, coupled with an expression of appreciation of the “integrity and zeal” with which the Secretary of the Navy had discharged his duties.[311]

Ingham made the President’s task easy with a brief note of resignation, and passed permanently from public life.[312] But Berrien was loath to go. In discussing the situation with friends, he made no secret of his desire to retain his post, but on learning that Jackson had no such notion, he withdrew in a friendly and dignified letter.[313]