The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

But all the while the consummate politicians of the Jackson party were reaching and arousing the masses. Long before the opening of the campaign, Amos Kendall, Lewis, Hill, and Blair were cunningly appealing to the interests, the prejudices, and the hero worship of the voters of the cornfield and the village. These forerunners of the modern politician were keenly appreciative of the fact that between 1824 and 1832 a great body of voters, previously proscribed because of their poverty and lack of property, had been newly enfranchised. With the Whigs these were non-existent. The journalistic training of Kendall, Hill, and Blair pointed to the press as the surest way to reach the masses with their propaganda. The old-fashioned politician still affected a contempt for the press, and particularly for the little struggling papers of the country. The genius of Kendall immediately seized upon these, and, long before the campaign began, the sallow, prematurely gray young man of mystery, shut up in his petty office in the Treasury, was busy night and day, and especially at night, preparing articles and editorials laudatory of the Jackson policies, denunciatory of the Opposition, and these, sent to editors all over the country, were printed as their own. Thus the followers of Jackson in every nook and corner of the country were constantly supplied with ammunition in the shape of arguments they could comprehend and assimilate.

The center and soul of the Democratic organization was the office of the “Globe.” Among the papers of national reputation, but two others were supporting Jackson, the “New Hampshire Patriot” of “Ike” Hill, and Van Buren’s organ, the “Albany Argus.” But the “Globe” was equal to the demand upon it. Doubling the number of issues, the ferociously partisan Blair sat in the office writing feverishly, with Kendall gliding in and out with copy. Both possessed a genius for controversy. Both had mastered a style combining literary qualities, attractive to the educated, with the “pep” and “punch” that impressed, interested, delighted, the multitude. Blair dipped his pen in vitriol. In satire and sarcasm he had few equals. He was no parlor warrior, and he struck resounding blows like a boiler-maker. And he wrote in a flowing style that, at times, approached real eloquence. Having the average man in mind, his editorials, filling the greater part of the paper, were concise and brief. When language seemed weak, he resorted to italics. The longer and more sustained argumentative articles were written by the more brilliant Kendall. Through July, August, September, and October he wrote a series of articles on “The Bank and the Veto,” beginning in an argumentative vein, and gradually growing personal until he was devoting one issue to the financial connections between the Bank and Duff Green, another to similar connections of Webb, of the “Courier and Enquirer,” and another to Gales, of the “Intelligencer.”

Infuriated by the gibes, taunts, and attacks, the Whigs charged that the “Globe” was being distributed gratuitously—the business manager replied with an affidavit as to the legitimacy of its circulation.[516] News of the deepest import was crowded out by the exigencies of the campaign, and with the cholera scourge taking a heavy toll of lives in Washington, the only mention of it in the “Globe” was in the official reports of the Board of Health. But there was room for columns of quotations from Democratic papers on the Veto, all striking the exultant key—“The Monster is Destroyed.”

Only the persistent hammering of the Whigs on the unfortunate sentence of the Veto Message caused acute distress in Democratic circles. Webster’s Worcester speech was annoying. Here a sneer, there a gibe in the “Globe,” but sneers and gibes did not quite satisfy the editor, who finally made a laborious effort to explain,[517] and, finding the effort tame, Blair countercharged with the publication of Clay’s bitter anti-Bank speech of 1811 with appropriate comments upon it from the Jacksonian papers of the country.

As the campaign approached the end, Blair stressed the theory that the real fight was between Jackson and the Bank, with Clay a mere pawn in the game. “We see,” he wrote, “the most profligate apostasies invited and applauded—the grossest misrepresentations circulated—the worst forgeries committed—open briberies practiced, and all for what? Not avowedly to elect Henry Clay or William Wirt, but any ‘available candidate’[518]—in other words, any candidate with whom, in the end, the Bank directors can make the best bargain.”[519] And a week later, under the caption, “The Gold,” Blair announces that through private advices “we learn that certain heavy trunks, securely hooped with iron, have arrived at Lexington[520] from the East.”[521] Such was the character of the publicity with which the Jacksonians appealed to the masses of the people.

But the practical minds of the leaders of the Kitchen Cabinet were not content with creating public opinion—they systematically organized and directed it. In every community, no matter how obscure, some Jackson leader, with a genius for organization work, was busy welding the Jackson forces into a solid mass. Here Major Lewis took charge. He anticipated the card-index system of the modern politicians. There was scarcely a county in the country in which he did not know the precise man or men upon whom absolute reliance could be placed. And “Ike” Hill, now a United States Senator, made an extensive organizing tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania in early August.

In both publicity and organization, the greater part of the ability and all the genius was with Jackson.

VI

The Jacksonians depended also to a greater extent than the Opposition on appeals to the people, face to face. A creature of another world, looking down from the skies upon the United States in the late summer and autumn of 1832, would have concluded that its people moved about in enormous processions on horseback, with waving flags, branches and banners. Great meetings were held in groves, addressed by fiery orators, furiously denouncing “The Monster” and the “Corporation” and calling upon the people to “stand by the Hero.” Men left their homes, bade farewell to their families as though enlisting for a war, and rode from one meeting to another for weeks at a time.[522] Nor was this hysterical enthusiasm confined to the more primitive sections of the country. A French traveler sojourning in New York City was profoundly impressed by a Jackson parade there. “It was nearly a mile long,” he wrote. “The Democrats marched in good order to the glare of torches; the banners were more numerous than I have ever seen in any religious festival; all were in transparency on account of the darkness. On some were inscribed the names of Democratic societies, or sections; others bore imprecations against the Bank of the United States. Nick Biddle and Old Nick here figured largely.... From farther than the eye could reach came marching on the Democrats. The procession stopped before the houses of the Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted at the door of the leaders of the opposition to give three, six or nine groans. These scenes belong to history and partake of the grand; they are the episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to posterity.”[523]

And into these amazing demonstrations the campaign glee club, also new to American politics, entered, to play a conspicuous part, with pretty girls, and children gayly dressed, singing round the hickory poles that were raised wherever there were idolaters of Jackson. And so they sang: