The first Cabinet, which almost immediately put on a drawing-room comedy, went out with a rip-roaring farce, with seconds bearing ominous messages, and with Cabinet officers lying in wait in the shadows, creeping through alleys, brandishing pistols, and in the darkest hours before the dawn lumbering in stage-coaches out of the capital city to escape a shot.
The thoroughly frightened Ingham openly charged that Eaton intended to murder him, and the letters of the former secretaries concerning the “murder conspiracy” added mightily to the amusement of the enemies of the Administration and to the chagrin and disgust of its friends. “Before you receive this,” wrote a Washingtonian to Senator John Forsyth, “you will have seen the disgraceful publications of Eaton and Ingham, which, of course, are the sole topics of conversation here. The rumor was that the President was engaged the day before yesterday in investigating the matter, and I know that he had a magistrate with him taking depositions.”[326] The hilarity of Jackson’s enemies was vividly expressed in a cartoon, entitled “The Rats Leaving a Falling House,” published in Philadelphia, and, with childish delight, Adams records in his diary that “two thousand copies of this print have been sold in Philadelphia this day,” and that the ten thousand copies struck of “will be disposed of within a fortnight.”[327]
Van Buren was sent to the English Court. Eaton was made Governor of Florida and later Minister to Spain, where Mrs. Eaton, in the most dignified Court in Europe, became a brilliant success. Ingham passed from public life. Branch affiliated with the Whigs in 1832 and in 1836, and was made Governor of Florida by Tyler. Berrien became one of the orators and leaders of the Whigs, and one of the founders of the Know-Nothing Party. Thus, after two years of disorganization and domestic turmoil, the Jackson Administration, with a powerful Cabinet, and, for the first time, a definite policy, began to strike its stride. At least two of the new Ministers were to play leading and spectacular parts in the great party battles that were to follow.
It must have been with a sense of ineffable relief that Jackson, seated at the head of the Cabinet table, surveyed the new men with whom he had surrounded himself—a feeling in which the public shared. But as his glance moved about the table it no doubt lingered with greatest confidence and satisfaction upon the three whose very appearance bespoke character, intellectuality, and power. At his right hand the tall figure, with the student’s stoop, the meditative manner, the benevolent expression, which had stood beside him in the stirring days of New Orleans—the scholarly Livingston. Nearby he recognized in the imposing figure with the robust, well-knit frame, the huge head, the bushy brows, the penetrating, fighting blue eyes of Cass, a man of the solidity and strength that he admired and trusted. The one strange figure about the table, destined to prove more nearly a man after his own heart than any other who was to serve him in the Cabinet, was Taney—thin and delicate like Jackson himself, with the student’s stoop of Livingston, but without his calm. Between these three and the others, there was a decided descent, although they were men of ability and reputation.
IV
Edward Livingston was one of the strongest characters of his time, a Nationalist as intense as Webster, who was to pen a document as virile and militant as Webster’s speech for the Union—one of the most brilliant, talented, and polished publicists the Republic has known. This premier of the greatest of democrats, was a thorough aristocrat, tracing his lineage back to the English peerage. Compared with him, the Opposition leaders and even their ladies of the drawing-rooms lamenting the social crudities of the Jacksonians were of mongrel breed. And yet this highest type of aristocrat was, by preference, one of the most ardent of democrats. When, in his thirtieth year, he entered the National House of Representatives from his native city of New York, he had behind him every advantage and before him every opportunity. Distinguishing himself by brilliancy in debate, vigor in attack, when he left Congress his militant leadership of the Jeffersonian party had convinced Hamilton that he had to be destroyed.[328] Jefferson made him district attorney; the people elected him to the mayoralty of New York, and the attempt to serve in both capacities wrought his financial ruin. While personally directing the fight against the yellow fever plague, he was himself stricken, and he recovered only to find that his assistant in the district attorney’s office had squandered $100,000 of the public money on wine and women. Without a moment’s hesitation he conveyed all his property to a trustee for sale, beggared himself completely, and resigned both his offices. The public protested against his abandonment of the mayoralty, and for two months the Governor refused to accept his resignation, but he knew that the path of duty led to the replenishment of his purse. Thus, at thirty-nine, leaving behind him the prestige of his family connections and his own career, he turned toward Louisiana, then the Promised Land, and set forth for New Orleans. There he immediately took high rank in his profession, established a lucrative practice, and soon acquired valuable real estate abutting the river which promised a fortune. The story of how he was deprived of this through the incomprehensible spite of President Jefferson constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of American litigation.[329] But Livingston was sustained by infinite patience, a happy philosophy, and natural buoyancy of temperament, and he soon found other matters to enlist his interest. When Jackson reached New Orleans to defend the town, it was Livingston who aroused the militant spirit of the people with his martial eloquence, and served as the soldier’s aid, translator, and adviser. It was in these days amidst the barking of the English guns that Jackson discovered
in Livingston the man he could trust as a patriot and fighter in two of the bitterest battles of his Presidency.[330] It was soon after this that Livingston began the greatest undertaking of his life—one so far-reaching in its effect on humanity as to carry his name to the thinkers, philosophers, and philanthropists of every land. The “Livingston Code” alone entitles him to a place high on the scroll of humanitarians who have served mankind. Victor Hugo declared that he would be “numbered among the men of this age who have deserved most and best of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham was tremendously impressed. Dr. H. S. Maine, author of the “Ancient Laws,” pronounced him “the first legal genius of modern times.” Villemain, of the Paris Sorbonne, described his work as “a work without example from the hand of any one man.” From the Emperor of Russia and the King of Sweden came autograph letters, from the King of the Netherlands a gold medal and a eulogy, and statesmen and philosophers of Europe vied with kings and emperors in paying homage. The Government of Guatemala, not content with translating his “Code on Reform and Prison Discipline,” and adopting it without the change of a word, bestowed upon a new city and district the name of Livingston. Jefferson wrote: “It will certainly array your name with the sages of antiquity”; Kent and Story, Madison and Marshall joined in the common praise, and he was elected a member of the Institute of France. Such was the prestige he took to Washington, when, in his fifty-ninth year, he again entered the House as a Representative from New Orleans.
He was now an old man, but of unusual vigor, and able to wear out younger men with his long pedestrian jaunts. He loved society and mingled with it freely, unable to escape it if he would because of the social and intellectual brilliance of his wife and the charm and beauty of his daughter. His fame was seemingly secure. His reputation was world-wide. His conversational gifts were of an uncommon order. His friends and social intimates were confined to no party, and embraced the best of both. After a brief period in the House he had entered the Senate where he stood among the foremost. Such was the man Jackson called to the head of his Cabinet—one whose character and career suffer nothing by comparison with those of his most distinguished predecessors, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.