And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an organization throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of the “Globe.” If the political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to grasp the potentiality of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was more alert, and, through his agency, the powerful “New York Courier and Enquirer,” edited by James Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to espouse the cause of Clay and “the monster.” That money played a part in the conversion was soon established in a congressional investigation; and when the “National Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed the convert, Blair was able sarcastically to comment on its being “charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty and independence in complying with his bargain with the Bank—and the bold, frank and honorable way in which he unsays all that he has said in favor of the President for the price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479] Thus the editors in 1832 fought with a ferocity never before approached.
From the beginning Amos Kendall realized that the appeal would have to be made to the masses. He therefore conceived the idea of inaugurating the campaign with a more solemn and dignified appeal to the more intellectual element. The result was a carefully prepared campaign document reviewing the work of the first three years of Jackson’s Administration. With a master hand he marshaled the triumphs of the Administration, and marched them—an imposing procession—before the reader. He anticipated and met all attacks. If parasites on the public service had been displaced by friends of Jackson, the new blood had injected new energy into the public offices. Business, long in arrears, had been brought up. Public accounts were more promptly rendered and settled. Scamps had been detected and scourged from office, and peculations to the amount of $280,000 had been uncovered. Economy and increased efficiency had resulted in the saving of hundreds of thousands.
In our foreign relations Kendall found nothing to be desired. Jackson had found Colombian cruisers depredating upon our commerce, and Colombian ports subjecting American cargoes to oppressive duties; he secured indemnities and the reduction of duties and the admission of American vessels to Colombian waters on the same footing as those of Colombia. He found no treaty with Turkey and the waters of the Bosphorus closed to us; he negotiated a treaty and our flag waved in the Bosphorus. He found no treaty with Austria—one was negotiated; a suspended treaty with Mexico—it was put in operation; the indemnity claims against Denmark for spoliation unpressed—he collected $750,000; the British West Indian controversy entangled by unskilled diplomacy—he untangled it with skillful diplomacy, and won a victory for American commerce; the French spoliation claims held in abeyance—and he triumphed there.
This brilliant foreign policy, he continued, had breathed new life into our domestic and foreign commerce, until “a commercial activity scarcely equaled in our history” was enjoyed. The hammers were heard in the shipyards, laborers were employed at high wages, prosperity pervaded every class and section. At Boston alone fifteen vessels were fitting out for trade in the Black Sea.
Despite these achievements Kendall complained that the President’s political foes had devoted their energy and ingenuity to obstruction alone. Congress had refused or delayed the necessary appropriations, denied him the means to maintain a mission to France, refused to confirm the appointment of his Minister to England, trumped up charges of fraud against his friends, resorted to childish investigations, charged the President with sending bullies to attack members of Congress and to spy upon them, and capped the climax of insufferable impudence with resolutions to inquire into the private conversations of the hero of New Orleans.
This campaign document, the first of its kind, was sent broadcast over the country to awaken the indignation of the faithful and to revive and intensify the cry, “Hurrah for Jackson.”[480] And it had the effect intended. The Jacksonians became all the more militant, ready to pounce upon and rend their enemies. Even the courageous Tyler, unfriendly to Jackson, cautioned his daughter in a letter home—“Speak of me always as a Jackson man whenever you are questioned.”[481] With this document in the hands of the intellectual, the Kitchen Cabinet turned with their appeal to the masses on the Bank issue. This speedily became paramount. But Clay and the Whigs were busy with intrigues with groups, and, to understand the remarkable campaign in its ramifications, it is necessary to pause for a peep behind the scenes where Clay may be seen in a light other than that of a man who “would rather be right than President.” We shall find him as willing, in Virginia, to unite with the champions of the Nullification he abhorred, as, in New York, with the party of the Anti-Masons he despised.
II
After the fashion of the old school politician of his day, Clay relied upon intrigue, upon the cultivation of groups with special interests and grievances. During the winter in Congress he had devoted himself to the consolidation of business and the ultra-conservative elements behind his candidacy. The bitterness of the contest was foreshadowed in the spring when Blair announced the publication of an extra weekly issue of the “Globe”; and in August, Duff Green made a similar announcement as to the “Telegraph.” While Clay planned to win on the Bank issue, he very early began a furious flirtation with the Nullifiers and the Anti-Masons, thus injecting side issues that the Jacksonians were quick to accept. In April, Clay was writing a Virginia friend[482] of a possible coalition with the Nullification forces in three or four Southern States where extreme State-Rights views were prevalent. Governor Floyd of Virginia, destined to receive the electoral vote of the South Carolina Nullifiers, and for a time alienated from Clay, was making overtures for a conciliation. Duff Green, a messenger in Calhoun’s livery, had made a remarkable proposition. The purport of this proposition was that Calhoun’s friends would present his name for the Presidency if assured of three or four of the Southern States; that about August he would be announced as a candidate; that if arrangements could be made with Clay to place no electoral ticket in the field in Virginia, and to throw the support of his friends to Calhoun, the latter could carry the Old Dominion; that carrying Virginia, he would have a fair chance of carrying North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, with a fighting chance in Alabama and Mississippi; and, accomplishing that, he could defeat the reëlection of Jackson, and force the determination of the issue upon the House of Representatives where Clay would no doubt be elected to the satisfaction of Calhoun. The wily editor made it clear to Clay that he was to have no ticket in the States mentioned, and should actively coöperate with Calhoun in Virginia.
And Clay was not shocked! But he had not “assumed that Calhoun had much political capital anywhere outside South Carolina,” and doubted the practicability of abandoning a ticket in Virginia because of the imputations that would follow. And yet, if Calhoun could, by any chance, carry three or four of the Southern States, it was a consummation devoutly to be wished. “Let me hear from you, my dear friend, upon this matter,” he wrote, “and particularly your views as to the strength of the party of Mr. Calhoun in Virginia. Has it not relapsed into Jacksonism? Can it be brought forth again in its original force to the support of Mr. Calhoun? Suppose Mr. Calhoun is not put forth as a candidate, what course, generally, will his friends in Virginia pursue? Could our friends be prevailed upon to unite upon a ticket favorable to Mr. Calhoun? Or, in the event of no ticket being put up, would they not divide between Jackson and Calhoun, the larger part probably going to Jackson?”[483] The pet plan of the Calhoun conspirators failed, and in August, Duff Green set forth on a tour of investigation into New York and Pennsylvania, returning to Washington encouraged in the conviction that the defeat of Jackson could be accomplished through the unification of all the hostile elements against him. In announcing the campaign extras of the “Telegraph”—could he by chance have visited the marble bank building in Philadelphia?—he declared that “we believe that our duty requires us to demonstrate that General Jackson ought not to be reëlected.” There was no mistaking the meaning of this move, and the Jacksonians were instantly on their toes. Under the caption, “Consummation of the Coalition,” Blair vigorously denounced it in the “Globe.” “If Mr. Clay were elected,” he wrote, “Mr. Calhoun is well aware that it would instantly establish the Southern League, which is looked to by him as his only hope of ever attaining political power. This is the basis of the coalition between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun. It is like that of Octavius and Anthony which severed the Roman empire.”[484]
That Blair had not misinterpreted was immediately evident in the response of the Whig press. The influential Pleasants, of the “Richmond Whig,” warmly commended Green’s action and promised, “on the part of the ‘Telegraph,’ a luminous exposé of the misrule of Jacksonism.” “Ah,” wrote Blair, “the ‘Richmond Whig’ upon the appearance of Duff Green’s proposals for a joint opposition leaps into its embrace.”[485] And from that moment the “Globe” kept before its readers constantly the Calhoun heresy and the coalition with the Whigs. Early in September he began to discuss pointedly the Nullification meetings in South Carolina addressed by “Mr. Calhoun’s leading partisans,” warning that the sinister doctrine was “subversive of the Union,” and that “by forcing a clash between the Government and South Carolina, Calhoun hopes to arouse the sympathy of the entire South.” And he continued with a prescience that is now startling: “The Vice-President, as his prospect closes upon the elevated honors of the Federal Government, is exerting all his influence to place South Carolina in a position which shall compel the other Southern States to unite in a new system, or confederacy, which may open new views to his ambition.”[486]