I
Callers at the Hermitage about the first of October were surprised to find Jackson’s thoughts remote from the election. Instead of a jubilant politician, they found an old man frothing with fury over the news from South Carolina that the Nullifiers had won a majority of seats in the Legislature and were arranging for an early summoning of a Nullification Convention. His indignation was so intense that his friends were shocked at the ferocity of his mood. The crisis had not crept upon him unaware. With keen, far-seeing eyes he had watched its advance, hoping that something would intervene to divert his native State from its mad course, but determined, if the issue came, to crush it with an iron hand. His hatred of Calhoun had, by this time, become an obsession, and when he threatened to “hang every leader ... of that infatuated people, sir, by martial law, irrespective of his name, or political or social position,” there was no doubt as to whom he referred.[534] Taking no further interest in the election, he put the campaign behind him and hastened to the capital. Blair, the politician always, hurried to the White House with some papers relating to the election. After a hasty and perfunctory glance, Jackson returned them to the editor, with a “Thank you, sir,” and launched into a denunciation of the Nullifiers. The date set for the Nullification Convention had just reached him. Even Blair, accustomed to his fits of temper, was startled. He was in the presence of a Jackson he had never seen or known before. “The lines in his face were hard drawn, his tones were full of wrath and resentment.... Any one would have thought he was planning another great battle.”[535] Even the announcement of victory at the polls scarcely interested him. Blair and Kendall called with a table showing the electoral vote. Glancing at it indifferently for a moment, his face brightened. “The best thing about this, gentlemen, is that it strengthens my hands in this trouble.” Such was the spirit with which Andrew Jackson faced the gravest crisis the Nation had yet known.
Beginning with an intensely nationalistic spirit,[536] South Carolina commenced to veer about with the tariff of 1816, and every succeeding tariff measure had been a provocation. Two years before Jackson’s inauguration, the “Brutus” articles on the “Usurpations of the Federal Government,” eloquent, fiery, defiant of the “Monster of the North,” had created a profound impression, commanding the adherence of McDuffie, the Mirabeau of the disaffected, Hamilton, Preston, and Chancellor William Harper, described by Houston as “scarcely inferior to Calhoun as an exponent of meta-physical doctrines.”[537] The principles of “Brutus” only awaited the authoritative sanction of Calhoun to place upon them the stamp of the State’s approval.
The tariff of 1828 was the last straw, and sedition was openly talked by the greater part of the South Carolina congressional delegation at the home of Senator Hayne. One week later, Calhoun, at his home at Fort Hill, finished his “Exposition,” enunciating the principles of Nullification, which the committee of seven of the State Legislature presented as its own. During the summer, politicians made numerous pilgrimages to Fort Hill for conferences, but not the scratch of a pen remains to indicate the character of the discussions. Calhoun was still “under cover.” He was about to enter upon his second term in the Vice-Presidency, and his friends were looking forward to the Presidency in 1832. The world was to wait awhile for the openly avowed views of the Master.
With the publication of the “Exposition,” the battle royal began, Cavalier against Cavalier, the Union cause brilliantly led by the elegant Joel R. Poinsett. In the early stages of the fight the Nullifiers did not scruple to represent Jackson as friendly to their cause. “I had supposed,” wrote Jackson, in reply to a letter from Poinsett, “that every one acquainted with me knew that I was opposed to the Nullifying doctrine, and my toast at the Jefferson dinner was sufficient evidence of that fact.”[538] Having no reason, after that, to doubt Jackson’s position, the Unionists invited Jackson to attend one of their public dinners, and he sent a letter settling beyond all possibility of dispute his position on Nullification. The Nullifiers, dining at a rival banquet, and learning of the reading of the Jackson letter, reminded the writer that “old Waxhaw still stands where Jackson left it, and the old stock of ’76 has not run out.” After that the drama hurried to a climax. The tariff of 1832 was but oil on the flames. The fight was carried to the polls and Nullification won by a majority of 6000 out of 40,000 votes cast.
The most portentous feature of the campaign was the appearance in August of Calhoun’s famous letter to Hamilton, decisively accepting as his own, and urging upon his people, the doctrine of Nullification. It was intended and timed to serve the purposes of the campaign. Unhappily Calhoun must ever remain more or less a steel engraving. His private life was carefully screened. Jefferson prowling among the brickmasons at the University, Jackson with his clay pipe on the veranda of the Hermitage, Webster among his cattle at Marshfield, Clay meditating speeches under the trees at Ashland, are possible of contact by future generations, but Calhoun at Fort Hill seems hopelessly remote and cannot be visualized. He stalks upon the stage, a dramatic and impressive figure, and plays his public part, but no one is admitted to the dressing-room. Thus all we know of the occasion of the preparation of the famous letter, which became the Magna Carta of the Nullifiers, is told in the letter itself.[539] The events of that summer and early autumn were intimately known to Jackson as he walked the grounds of the Hermitage, and lingered mournfully about the tomb of his beloved Rachel. In the spring of 1830 the brilliant Poinsett, fresh from his mission to Mexico, had been shocked, on his return to the drawing-rooms of Charleston, to find sedition poured with the tea, and had hurried to Washington to be closeted with Jackson at the White House. Before he emerged, he had been designated by the President as his personal ambassador in South Carolina,[540] and after calling upon Adams, in retirement, to tell him of his hopes and fears,[541] he made all haste home to combat, inch by inch, the growing madness, and prepared, if need be, to die with a musket in his hands. During the intervening three years his confidential reports had kept Jackson in close touch with all the movements of the enemy, and the grim old warrior, reëntering the White House on his return from Tennessee, entertained no illusions as to what he faced.
Three days after Jackson reached Washington, the South Carolina Legislature fixed November 3d as the date for the Nullification Convention. Silently, but sternly, soldier-wise, the President was clearing the decks for action. The day he left the Hermitage the Collector of Customs in Charleston received instructions as to his course; on reaching the capital, the commander in charge of troops there was warned of possible attempts to seize the forts; to his apprehensive friends he was sending reassuring messages. “I am well advised as to the views and proceedings of the leading Nullifiers,” he wrote Hamilton on November 2d. “We are wide awake here. The Union will be preserved; rest assured of that.”[542] Five days later, Cass was ordering additional troops to Fort Moultrie, and Jackson was dispatching a secret emissary to Charleston, with instructions to communicate with Poinsett, and to report upon the conditions of the forts and the lengths to which the Nullifiers might go.[543] The day preceding the meeting of the Nullification Convention, Cass ordered General Scott to Charleston, with minute instructions.[544] With Scott hurrying to South Carolina, the convention met, the Nullification Ordinance was passed, and February 1st was set as the day for it to go into operation. Three days after the convention adjourned, the Legislature met and passed laws to put the ordinance into effect. The Unionist Convention immediately met, denounced Nullification, and began to organize their forces for a possible armed conflict.
Meanwhile Scott had performed his mission with a discretion and sound judgment which called forth the commendation of Jackson.[545] Five days before Congress met, five thousand stand of muskets with equipment had been ordered to Castle Pinckney, and a sloop of war with smaller vessels were on their way to Charleston Harbor.[546] “The Union must be preserved, and its laws duly executed, but BY PROPER MEANS,” wrote the President to Poinsett.
Thus, in this real crisis, the “law,” the “Constitution,” and “public opinion” were uppermost in the mind of the man generally described as reckless in the use of power. Long after the event, but while the contest was still on, he wrote to Poinsett of his regret at the failure of the Unionist Convention to memorialize Congress “to extend to you the guarantees of the Constitution, of a republican form of government, stating the actual despotism which now controls the State.” This, he explained, “would have placed your situation before the whole nation, and filled the heart of every true lover of his country and its liberties with indignation.”[547] While at work on his Proclamation, he wrote Hamilton in New York, urging that public opinion assert itself in an unmistakable manner. “The crisis must be, and AS FAR AS MY CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL POWERS AUTHORIZE, will be, met with energy and firmness. Hence the propriety of the public voice being heard;—and it ought now to be spoken in a voice of thunder.”[548] Thus, when the gavel fell on the opening of the Congress, Jackson had the situation well in hand, had perfected his plans for vigorous action within the limits of the Constitution and the laws, but still hoped, through the pressure of public opinion and the returning good sense of the Carolinians, it would be unnecessary to resort to force.