The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Thus, burning all bridges as far as the Nullifiers were concerned, the Jacksonian leaders, in the interest of the President, concentrated on capitalizing their connection with the Whigs and the Bank. When Whig and Bank papers warmly recommended the “Telegraph” to the patronage of the Clay supporters, Blair gave the recommendation publicity, with the suggestion that “that paper is the open advocate of Calhoun and Nullification.” Thus he forced the coalition into the open. “Are not the Bank party turning to the Nullifiers?” he asked. “If not, why do they circulate the extra of Duff Green which is devoted to Nullification?”[487] Thus, by boldly repudiating and defying the Nullification element and Calhoun, the Jackson leaders more than neutralized any benefit that Clay and the Whigs might receive from their sympathy and support.

III

But more important to Clay than the attitude of the Nullifiers was that of the Anti-Masons. Strangely enough, he had, at first, looked upon the growing movement, not only with complacency, but with approval. After the failure of the new party in New York in 1830, he had written to a friend: “If they had been successful they would probably have brought out an Anti-Masonic candidate for President. Still, if I had been in New York, I should have given my suffrage to Granger.[488] I will not trouble you with the reasons.”[489] In the same letter, however, he expresses the opinion that such strength as the proscriptive party might muster would ultimately go to the Whigs, in general, and himself in particular, because “it is in conformity with the general nature of minorities,” when they have no candidate of their own, to support the strongest opposition party. Then, too, they were protectionists, had been abused by Van Buren’s organization in New York, “and General Jackson has, as they think, persecuted them.” At any rate, wrote the intriguing politician, “there is no occasion for our friends to attack them.”

But a new light broke for Clay when, in the spring of 1831, the Anti-Masons called a national convention, to meet two months before the Whigs’. His close friends became apprehensive. The sounding of the Anti-Masons disclosed no Clay sentiment. Quite the contrary. Much distressed at this revelation, one of the leaders of the movement urged him to exert his well-known powers of conciliation.[490] By the latter part of June he had concluded that the new party might not prove so advantageous after all. Writing to his bosom friend, Francis Brooke, he found that “Anti-Masonry seems to be the only difficulty now in the way of success, both in Pennsylvania and New York.”[491] By the middle of July he was convinced that “it would be politic to leave the Jackson party exclusively to abuse the Antis.”[492] A few days later he had concluded that “the policy of the Antis is to force us to their support,” and that “ours should be to win them to ours.”[493]

As the time for the convention approached, the Antis were split on Clay, a small portion wishing the nomination of one who would later withdraw in his favor, but the majority hoping for the nomination of one who would be acceptable to the Whigs in their convention two months later. The problem was finally solved by the nomination of William Wirt.

That this brilliant man would have scorned the honor on any other theory than that his nomination would be acceptable to both the Whigs and Clay, with whom he had served in the Cabinet, and for whom he entertained an affection, is shown in his correspondence.[494] But, while resting at Ashland and still ignorant of the convention’s action, Clay was writing to Brooke that “if the alternative is between Andrew Jackson and an Anti-Masonic candidate with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I should be embarrassed in the choice.”[495]

In the interval between the two conventions, the Anti-Masons clung desperately to the hope that Clay would do violence to his dominating, domineering disposition by sacrificing himself. He was an intimate friend of Wirt’s. Their views on fundamentals were alike. With Wirt elected, Clay would be the power behind the throne. With a divided opposition, Jackson’s election would be inevitable, and Clay hated him with a consuming hate. For identical reasons the Whigs hoped that, on the nomination of Clay, Wirt would retire in his favor. As the Whig convention approached, Wirt abandoned all hope of his own nomination. “There seems to be no doubt of Mr. Clay’s nomination in the convention next week,” he wrote to Judge Carr. “So be it. In a personal point of view I shall feel that I have made a lucky escape.”[496] After the nomination of Clay, it was the ardent wish of Wirt to withdraw. His intimations to his party’s leaders only brought the assurance that were the party dissolved there “were not enough Clay men among them to touch New York or Pennsylvania, nor consequently to elect Mr. Clay,” and he was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that “there [was] no more chance for Mr. Clay with the Anti-Masons than for the Pope of Rome.”[497] But the absurdity of his situation annoyed him, and he was soon wishing for “a little villa in Florida, or somewhere else, to retire to, and beguile the painful hours, as Cicero did, in writing essays.”

If he remained in the field, it was because Henry Clay preferred it. The relations of the ostensible rivals were close and confidential throughout the campaign. Clay feared that Wirt’s withdrawal would be ascribed to his influence, and would intensify the Anti-Masonic feeling against him. Then, again, the Whig board of strategy planned to deprive Jackson of the electoral vote of New York and Pennsylvania through an ingenious combination of the two opposition parties in those States. In New York the proscriptive party, meeting first, endorsed its national nominees, and nominated leaders of their own for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. With great cunning they selected an electoral ticket, including Chancellor Kent, an idolater of Clay. The Whigs followed, and accepted the Anti-Masonic ticket, and thus the Opposition was consolidated in the Empire State. There was no mystery as to the intent in regard to the State ticket—it was to have the united support of both parties. The weakness, with the public, was the absence of any indication as to the intended disposal of the electoral vote. The plan of the conspirators was to throw the electoral votes to Wirt provided there was a possibility of his election, or no possibility of the election of either Wirt or Clay; and for Clay in the event Wirt could not win and the Whig nominee could with the electoral vote of New York.[498] The plan met with the hearty approval of Clay, who entertained high hopes of its success in depriving Jackson of the electoral vote upon which his election depended.[499] Thus, before the campaign had fairly started, the politicians of these two parties were working in close coöperation with a complete understanding, while the rank and file of both parties were left entirely in the dark. Wirt, with no faith in the coalition, was doing nothing to advance his candidacy.[500] Thus the nominee of one party was secretly planning to deliver the prize to the man his own party had repudiated. Not only did he write no letters to advance his party’s cause, but he “refused to answer whenever such answers could be interpreted as canvassing for office.”[501]

Meanwhile the Jacksonians were merely amused at these intrigues of the old school politicians. The secret of their strength, here as always, was in their daring. Not only did they ignore the Anti-Masons and refuse to conciliate them, but they cast them off as completely as they had the Nullifiers. The highest member of the Masonic order in America was at the head of Jackson’s Cabinet, and John Quincy Adams gave the utmost publicity to the fact by addressing his attacks on Masonry to Edward Livingston. Jackson himself sought and found an opportunity to go on record against the prescriptive hysteria. In this manner the Jacksonian managers rallied the Masons to their banner, and they held in their hands the ammunition with which to blow to atoms the plan of the coalition leaders to deliver the rank and file of the enemies of Masonry to Clay.

Early in October Blair published in the “Globe,” without comment, Clay’s manly letter to some Anti-Masons in Indiana refusing to be drawn into sectarian quarrels. “If a President of the United States ... were to employ his official power to sustain, or to abolish, or to advance the interest of Masonry or Anti-Masonry,” he had written, “it would be an act of usurpation and tyranny.”[502] That was enough. The Democratic press of the country, taking the cue from the “Globe,” reproduced the letter, and thus the rank and file of the party everywhere was strengthened in its determination not to support its author.