The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

And Hugh Lawson White, himself a banker, a statesman, a man of property, and a patriot of impeccable purity, declared that it would give to Jackson a more enduring fame and deeper gratitude than the greatest of his victories in the field.

Both parties were satisfied with the Message.

V

Never in the history of the Republic had feeling been aroused to a more dangerous pitch than during the period of the Bank fight. Senator White, a calm, well-poised man of years, was not at all certain that even he could escape a personal encounter. “Everything here is in a bustle,” he wrote. “Nothing out of which mischief can be made is suffered to slumber. Ill blood is produced by almost every event; and a great disposition is manifested by some to appeal to the trial of battle.... No man can tell when or with whom he is to be involved. I will do all that a prudent man ought to do to avoid difficulties, but should it be my lot to have them forced upon me, my reliance is that Providence will guide me through them safely.”[476]

The debate in the Senate following the Veto Message was significant. The great Field Marshals of the Bank, who had maintained silence until now, appeared upon the scene with impassioned speeches of denunciation and solemn warning. The import of the speeches of Clay and Webster could not have been clearer. They were designed to intimidate the electorate into voting against Jackson by the most gloomy predictions of panic and distress. Webster, who spoke first and made by long odds the most powerful presentation against the Veto, dwelt with funereal melancholy upon the President’s determination to overturn American institutions, basing this absurd theory on the unhappy sentence referred to above.

But the one note he struck in the beginning and pounded to the end was that of intimidation. The country was prosperous and yet there was “an unaccountable disposition to destroy the most useful and most approved institutions of the Government.” Unless Jackson should be defeated at the polls the Bank would fall, and in its fall pull down the pillars of prosperity and involve all in a common ruin. The Bank would have to call in its debts at once. The distress would be especially acute in the States on the Mississippi and its waters—where votes were needed for Clay. There thirty millions of the Bank’s money was out on loans and discounts, and how could this be immediately collected without untold suffering and misery? The great orator, however, evidently afraid that his hints at the election had been too subtle, soon threw off the mask boldly.

“An important election is at hand,” he said, “and the renewal of the Bank Charter is a pending object of great interest, and some excitement. Should not the opinions of men high in office and candidates for reëlection be known on this as on other important questions?” And thence he argued that the life of the Republic, the preservation of the Constitution, the salvation of society from anarchy, and the prosperity of the people, were all inseparably interwoven with the National Bank and the candidacy of Clay. “No old school Federalist,” says Van Buren, “who had grown to man’s estate with views and opinions in regard to the character of the people which that faith seldom failed to inspire, could doubt the efficacy of such an exposition in turning the minds of all classes of the community in the desired direction.”[477]

If the Veto was satisfactory to the Whigs—to the surprise of the Democrats—Webster’s avowed purpose to make it the issue in the campaign was satisfactory to the Democrats—to the equal astonishment of the Whigs. When the great New England orator sat down, Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee, a banker, fluent, logical, and forceful, lost no time in accepting Webster’s “issue.”

“I thank the Senator,” he said, “for the candid avowal, that unless the President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they intend to interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With the same candor I state, that after this declaration, this charter shall never be renewed with my consent.... Sir, if under these circumstances the charter is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and the liberties and prosperity of the people are delivered over to this moneyed institution, to be disposed of at their discretion. Against this I enter my solemn protest.”

Even the most ardent supporters of Clay will hardly point to his speech on the Veto as evidence of his power. Compared with Webster’s or White’s, it was mere froth, lacking in both substance and style, and only notable in its insistence that the failure of the recharter would be fatal to the West, as the continuance of Jackson in office would be subversive of all government.