The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Thus, within a few weeks after the assumption of the leadership by Clay, we find Jackson’s favorite humiliated by the rejection of his nomination; another wantonly insulted by the questioning of his personal integrity; a movement launched to blacken the Administration through an investigation of its most vulnerable department; and a plan conceived for the consummation of an unholy alliance of incongruous elements.

V

Meanwhile Clay, devoted to the protective tariff policy, anxious to save it from crucifixion by consent, and with a political eye on the political effect of his championship in Pennsylvania, without which he thought Jackson’s reëlection impossible, had been busy formulating a new tariff which was to create more party clashes.

Within a month after Congress met, he called a meeting of the friends of the protective tariff to determine plans for party action. The then existing “tariff of abominations”[396] was doomed by public opinion. Two months before he wrote a friend acknowledging a revision inevitable, and announcing plans for one not compromising to the protective principle.[397] The conference called by Clay met at the home of Edward Everett, Representative from Boston, with the presidential nominee himself presiding. He summoned his friends, not to consult, but to take orders. He disclosed his plan—a repeal of all duties on tea, coffee, spices, indigo, and similar articles, and thereby reduce the revenue as much as seven millions that year without interfering with the prevailing duties that had been imposed for protective purposes. Jackson intended to destroy the protective system through the accumulation of revenue. It was the duty of its friends to save it through the reductions proposed.

If we may accept Adams as a faithful reporter, Clay’s manner was “exceedingly peremptory and dogmatical.” Various questions, indicative of doubt, were asked. Everett, mindful of the ominous protest of the South, thought the plan might be interpreted as “setting the South at defiance.” Adams, who had a mind of his own, reported that the Committee on Manufactures in the House, of which he was chairman, was “already committed upon the principle that the reduction of the duties should be prospective, and not to commence until after the extinguishment of the public debt”; and he suggested that the Clay plan would be, not only “a defiance of the South, but of the President and the Administration.” The spirit of Clay is well disclosed in his none too gracious reply that “to preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American System, he would defy the South, the President, and the Devil; that if the Committee on Manufactures had committed themselves ... they had given a very foolish and improvident pledge; and that there was no necessity for the payment of the debt by the 4th of March, 1833.”

This led to some debate between the former President and his premier, with Adams insisting that Jackson’s desire to extinguish the debt should be “indulged and not opposed,” and that the President’s idea “would take greatly with the people.” This view piqued and mortified Clay, who had found all the party leaders in the conference becomingly obsequious with the exception of Adams. That Adams was equally disgusted we may gather from his description of Clay’s manner as “super-presidential,” and from the following entry in his journal: “Clay’s motives are obvious. He sees, that next November, at the choice of presidential electors, the great and irresistible electioneering cry will be the extinguishment of the public debt. By instant repeal of the duties he wants to withdraw seven or eight millions from the Treasury and make it impossible to extinguish it by the 3rd of March, 1833. It is an electioneering movement, and this was the secret of these movements, as well as of the desperate efforts to take the whole business of the reduction of the tariff into his own hands.”[398] The Democratic opinion that Clay was partly actuated by a petty partisan desire to deprive the Administration of the credit for wiping out the national debt, corroborated as it is by Adams, is plausible enough. At the same time, it was manifestly Clay’s purpose to rally the protected industries to his standard in the presidential campaign.

Meanwhile the lobbyists of the protected interests, flocking to the capital, crowded the rotunda every morning, mixing with the statesmen. Here, at the time, was the Republic in miniature—lobbyists, statesmen, correspondents, and plebeians mingling in a common arena, with the visiting tourists ranged about to view the celebrities in their moments of conversational unbending.[399] Clay made the presentation of his plan the opportunity for his first political speech of his campaign. The Senate was crowded to hear him. It was not enough that he should acknowledge the approach of the extinguishment of the public debt, and base his argument for the reduction of duties upon that fact. The possibility of the passing of the debt during the Administration of Jackson was clearly annoying, and he attempted, laboriously, and at considerable length, to deprive it of any credit. The plan of the Administration to reduce no duties on unprotected articles previous to March, 1833, and to make a gradual and prospective reduction on protected articles, he denounced as a scheme to “destroy the protecting system by a slow but certain poison.” There was nothing remarkable in his first speech except its affectation of modesty, and his reference to old age and declining power.

But he was soon to find the incentive for his greatest speech upon the tariff. Hayne attacked the protective system with all the vigor and venom of a Nullificationist in the making; and Clay replied in the brilliant fighting protectionist speech which ranks as one of the masterful efforts of his life, and was to be used as a textbook for the advocates of the system for fifty years. Read even to-day, after the lapse of almost a century, it has a familiar sound, and transmits its pulsations from the printed page as though the reader felt the heartbeat of the orator.

Among the Southerners in the Senate, this speech created the greatest excitement and the gravest forebodings, with John Tyler assailing both the principle of protection and the method of framing bills under the principle. But the most significant note struck by Tyler was the warning that the continuance of the protective policy would inevitably lead to the disruption of the Union. The speeches of both Clay and Tyler were sent broadcast over the country. That of the former delighted protectionists and impressed all. Harrison Gray Otis wrote enthusiastically from Boston, but both James Madison and James Barbour gently questioned the taste of the partisan attack on Albert Gallatin as a “foreigner.”[400] Highly complimentary letters were received by Tyler from John Marshall and James Madison, both of whom favored the reduction of the tariff.[401]

And throughout it all, Clay found himself unable to maneuver Jackson or his friends into a position of opposition to the system. Amos Kendall and Blair had their hopes tied to another issue. They had no thought of sacrificing the electoral vote of the Keystone State. The leaders of the Senate opposition to the tariff were Hayne and Tyler, neither of whom was longer considered as in the confidence of the President. Clay’s speech, widely distributed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, proved him a champion of the system, but nothing occurred in the Senate to prove Jackson an enemy. This was the situation when the real battle was transferred to the House of Representatives.