The Kendall lingering at the capital awaiting an appointment presents an interesting study. It is disappointing to note a certain humility and manner usually associated with the lower order of place-hunters. He was evidently ardent in his pursuit of a position. His inexperience is disclosed in his disgust on finding so many obscure politicians pretending to the distinction of having elected Jackson. And yet, so anxious was he for place, that he was willing to accept one paying an inadequate salary, and he wrote his wife that in that event he might persuade Duff Green to pay him $1000 a year for writing for the “Telegraph.”[343] During the weeks of waiting before the inauguration, he was not a little embarrassed for funds, and yet, under these drab conditions, he did not lack for invitations of a social nature. Meeting General Macomb and finding him “a Jackson man,” he expressed the hope that he might “find him a valuable acquaintance.”[344] Meanwhile he was investigating houses and rents, and concluded to economize by taking a house in Georgetown. “The house I contemplate taking,” he wrote, “is in a charming neighborhood on First Street, near Cox’s Row.”
Receiving his appointment as Fourth Auditor, he dropped from public view. Dinners and parties saw him no more. He immediately assumed the rôle of a recluse. Taking his duties seriously, he uncovered the crimes of his predecessor and sent him to jail. His rules for the conduct of subordinates were such as to merit the approval of business men—rules that the office-holder of those days scarcely understood. After a week in office he wrote his wife: “The labor is very light, and when I am master of the laws under which I act, will consist of little more than looking at accounts and signing my name.” Thus we find him systematizing his work to dedicate the greater portion of his time to the political work of the Administration. “Hamilton,” said Martin Van Buren, a month later, “Kendall is to be an influential man. I wish the President would invite him to dinner, and if you have no objection, as you are so intimate with the General, I wish you would propose to him to invite Kendall to meet us at dinner to-morrow.”[345] The invitation was extended and accepted, and the Red Fox, who had a genius for picking men, was notably attentive to the timid subordinate.
During the five years he held his inferior post, Kendall became more powerful than any Cabinet Minister in the determination of Jacksonian policies. A little later, a contemporary observer of men at the capital described him as “secretive, yet audacious in his political methods, a powerful and ready writer, and the author of many of Jackson’s ablest State papers.”[346] There in his office we may picture him, alone, with pad and pencil, preparing elaborate political war maps, and literature for propaganda, or in earnest conversation with Lewis and other members of the Kitchen Cabinet, forging thunderbolts with which to smite the foe. And it was very soon after he had left this subordinate post that Harriet Martineau was impressed with the uncanny mystery of the “invincible Amos Kendall.”
“I was fortunate enough,” she wrote, “to catch a glimpse of the invincible Amos Kendall, one of the most remarkable men in America. He is supposed to be the moving spring of the Administration; the thinker, the planner, the doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued, the excellence of which prevents them from being attributed to the persons that take the responsibility for them; a correspondence is kept up all over the country, for which no one seems answerable; work is done of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which makes men look about them with superstitious wonder; and the invincible Amos Kendall has the credit for it all. President Jackson’s letters to his Cabinet are said to be Kendall’s; the report on Sunday mails is attributed to Kendall; the letters sent from Washington to remote country newspapers, whence they are collected and published in the ‘Globe’ as demonstrations of public opinion, are pronounced to be written by Kendall; and it is some relief that he now, having the office of Postmaster-General, affords opportunity for open attack upon this twilight personage. He is undoubtedly a great genius. He unites with all his ‘great talents for silence’ a splendid audacity.
“It is clear he could not do the work he does if he went into society like other men. He did, however, one evening.... The moment I went in, intimations reached me from all quarters, amid nods and winks, ‘Kendall is here,’ ‘There he is.’ I saw at once that his plea for seclusion (bad health) is no false one. The extreme sallowness of his complexion, the hair of such perfect whiteness as is rarely seen in a man of middle age, testified to his disease.[347] His countenance does not help the superstitious to throw off their dread of him. He probably does not desire this superstition to melt away, for there is no calculating how much influence is given the Jackson Administration by the universal belief that there is a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of Government, by which everything could be foreseen, and the hardest deeds done. A member of Congress told me this night that he had watched through five sessions for a sight of Kendall, and had never obtained one until now. Kendall was leaning on a chair, his head bent down, and eyes glancing up at a member of Congress with whom he was in earnest conversation, and in a moment he was gone.”[348]
Such was the cleverest, most audacious, and powerful member of the Kitchen Cabinet—a man who made history that historians have written and ascribed to others who merely uttered the words or registered the will of this indomitable journalist and politician.
II
When Jackson left the Hermitage, he was accompanied by Major William B. Lewis, who had been intimately identified with his campaign for the Presidency. This unobtrusive man found lodgment with his chief at Gadsby’s, where he interested himself in analyzing the characters of office-seekers for the guidance of his friend. After walking with Jackson from the hotel to the Capitol, and seeing him inducted into office, he announced his plan to return to the quiet life of Tennessee.
“Why, Major,” exclaimed the astonished Jackson, “you are not going to leave me here alone, after doing more than any other man to bring me here!”
Moved by the sincerity of the appeal, Lewis remained on in Washington through the eight years of the reign, living at the White House, and enjoying a greater personal intimacy with the President than any other politician of the time. Accepting an insignificant auditorship at the Treasury as an excuse for staying on, he interpreted his real function as that of a political bodyguard. He came and went in the President’s private apartments at will. No formalities were interposed between these two strangely different men. No secrets formed a veil. In the midst of the bitter fights against his idol, Lewis moved quietly and uncannily about, gauging sentiment, determining the drift, analyzing men and motives, guarding Jackson against the surprise attack. When the ferocious onslaughts were at their worst in the Senate, Lewis could be found somewhere in the shadows of the chamber watching every movement of the enemy, and critically, if not always wisely, passing judgment upon the strategy of the Administration forces; and when the fight was over, he hastened to the White House, sure to find Jackson sitting up in his room with the picture of Rachel and her Bible on the table before him, awaiting the report.