The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

“Now for the President,” wrote Biddle. “My belief is that the President will veto the bill, though that is not generally known or believed.”[463] And Clay at the same time wrote: “The Bank bill will, I believe, pass the House, and if Jackson is to be believed, he will veto it.”[464] Thus, at this stage, it is evident that Biddle had reconciled himself to Clay’s plan of making the fate of the Bank the issue in the campaign. Among Jackson’s friends there was no doubt as to his intentions. Both McLane and Livingston had warned the banker. Three months before, Hamilton had written a friend that, in the event of its passage, Jackson would promptly veto the measure. “He is open and determined upon this point. I conferred with him yesterday upon the subject. I told him what the Opposition avowed as their motive for pushing the bill at this session. He replied: ‘I will prove to them that I never flinch; that they were mistaken when they expected to act upon me with such considerations.’”[465]

IV

When the bill reached Jackson, he knew that he could not count on the unanimous support of his Cabinet on the veto. Livingston, McLane, and Cass were frankly antagonistic to his purpose, Woodbury was uncertain, while Barry, always acquiescing in his chief’s policies, scarcely counted. Among all the men who sat about the table in the Cabinet room, the only one who heartily sympathized with his intent was Roger Taney. In February, Ingersoll had found him against the Bank, but Livingston then “hoped to convert him”; and while the Bank representative had “found him just now closeted with Kendall,” this was so far from discouraging him that he had not even despaired of Kendall and Lewis, and felt that he had established “a good understanding” with Blair of the “Globe.”[466] On the day the bill reached the White House, Taney was absent from Washington, but he had gone over the ground thoroughly with the President, and had written him a letter setting forth reasons why, in the event of the bill’s passage, it should be vetoed.

On the day of its passage, Martin Van Buren landed in New York, and the following morning he started for the capital. It was midnight when he reached Washington, but, in compliance with a letter from Jackson, which awaited him on landing, he proceeded through the dark streets to the White House where he was instantly ushered into the President’s room. The grim old fighter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, his wretched health clearly denoted in his countenance.[467] But there was the passion of battle in his blood, and it flashed in his eye as he eagerly grasped the hand of his favorite, and, retaining it, poured forth the story of the Bank Bill, and expressed his satisfaction on the arrival of a faithful friend at such a critical juncture. When Van Buren expressed the hope that he would not hesitate to veto the bill, Jackson’s face beamed. “It is the only way,” said the Red Fox, “you can discharge the great duty you owe to the country and yourself.”[468] By Van Buren, the old man’s gratification was easily understood, for he knew of the desertion of the greater part of the Cabinet.

There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called in, albeit sympathizing heartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to one of his biographers[469] the ideas were contributed by Livingston, Benton, Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair, and Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may safely accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was inevitable that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that Taney was summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During the entire time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the capital, with the document open to his inspection, did not have any “direct agency in its construction.”[470] His enemies at the time, however, insisted that he was a party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren arrived at the President’s on Sunday,” a correspondent in Washington wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent to the Senate his veto on the Bank Bill.”[471] That Major Lewis and Blair were called in to assist in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be set down as positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the Senate was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall.

That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of the Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as demagogic because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against the conversion by the rich of governmental agencies to their personal ends, and because of its objections to the foreign stockholders in the Bank of the United States. It was, of course, a campaign document—intended as such. Jackson understood perfectly that the presentation of the memorial for a recharter four years before the expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the presidential election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew that Clay was appealing to wealth and power—he appealed to the people. And his appeal was to the people of the United States.

In this stirring appeal to the prejudices of the people, as well as to their interests, as the Jacksonians saw it, there was but one real blunder, and that in phrasing. In discussing the constitutionality of the Bank, Jackson said: “Each officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.” Upon this was to be predicated the assertion that Jackson had announced a philosophy of chaos, with each petty officer passing upon the constitutionality of laws, and irrespective and in contempt of the Supreme Court. The more conservative friends of the President interpreted the words employed as meaning “that in giving or withholding his assent to the bill for the recharter of the Bank, it was his right and duty to decide the question of its constitutionality for himself, uninfluenced by any opinion or judgment which the Supreme Court had pronounced upon that point, farther than his judgment was satisfied by the reasons it had given for its decision.”[472] But there were other expressions in the Message that must have appeared as little short of appeals to anarchy to the more conservative element. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of Government to their selfish purposes.” “Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the powerful more potent, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.” “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.” “Many of our rich have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.”

Here was a Message striking an entirely new note in American politics, and not without justification. So completely had the country been under the domination of the powerful, politically, financially, and socially, previous to the Jackson régime, that the Message was actually hailed with delight by the followers of Clay.

“As to the veto message,” wrote Biddle, “I am delighted with it. It has all the fury of the unchained panther, biting the bars of his cage. It is really a manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat and Robespierre might have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine; and my hope is that it will contribute to relieve the country from the domination of these miserable people.”[473] The personal organ of Clay, the “Lexington Observer,” commented thus: “It is a mixture of the Demagogue and the Despot, of depravity, desperation and feelings of malice and vengeance partially smothered. It is the type of the detested hypocrite, who, cornered at all points, still cannot abandon entirely his habitual artifice, but at length, finding himself stripped naked, in a tone of defiance says: ‘I am a villain; now do your worst and so will I.’”[474] So little did the Bank and its supporters understand the psychology of the “mob” that it published and circulated thirty thousand copies of the Message at its own expense!

But if the Whigs were pleased with its tone, the Democrats were delighted. Either Blair or Kendall in a fulsome editorial in the “Globe” found it “difficult to describe in adequate language the sublimity of the moral spectacle now presented to the American people in the person of Andrew Jackson,” and that “in this act the glories of the battle-field are eclipsed—it is the crowning chaplet of an immortal fame.” [475]