The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

On the opening day of the Congress the great Carolinian was not in his Senate seat, to which he had been immediately elected on his resignation from the Vice-Presidency, but public interest centered in it, nevertheless. The Jackson Message was awaited with keen anxiety. In its recommendation of a reduction of the tariff was easily recognized a conciliatory gesture toward the South Carolinians. Even his discussion of the crisis was temperate and unprovocative. No one listening to the Message could have had the slightest notion of what was taking place at that very hour in Jackson’s workroom in the White House.

Even before the Congress met, Edward Livingston was at work preparing the Proclamation which was to thrill the country like a bugle blast, perpetuate the memory of Jackson, and reflect glory on himself. It was no mere accident which led to the selection of the Secretary of State for this task. His views on the integrity and perpetuity of the Union were intimately known to his chief; and it was a duty upon which Livingston could enter with all his heart. But the first draft of the Proclamation was written by Jackson in a frenzy of composition, so hurriedly that he scattered the pages over the table to let them dry. The general tenor of the document was therefore his. If the wording was Livingston’s, the document breathed the soul of Andrew Jackson. During the period of its preparation, Jackson was in constant touch. He was thinking of nothing else. Thus, on the day his Message was read to Congress, the iron man was meditating his appeal to public opinion. It was almost midnight. In his room in the southeast corner of the mansion, he sat before the fireplace smoking his pipe—thinking. Bitter as he was against Calhoun and the leaders whom he felt had seduced the people of his native State, he felt an affection for the confused masses who had been deluded; and, while prepared, if need be, to strike with the military arm of the Government, he passionately hoped that this would not become necessary. Going over to the table on which always stood the picture of his Rachel, and the Bible to which she had been devoted, he wrote a conclusion to the Proclamation in the nature of a touching appeal to the patriotic memories of the South Carolinians. Then he wrote to Livingston: “I submit the above as the conclusion of the Proclamation for your amendment and revision. Let it receive your best flight of eloquence, to strike to the heart, and speak to the feelings of my deluded countrymen of South Carolina.”

Three days later, the night again found Jackson obsessed with the preparation of the Proclamation. Livingston, in his writing, was sending it as he proceeded to the White House, where Major Donelson, the private secretary, was engaged in copying it for the printer. At four o’clock in the afternoon the Secretary of State had sent a number of sheets, and Donelson had finished copying and was waiting for more. Jackson was impatient of the delay. The Message having gone forth, he thought it important that it should be followed immediately by the Proclamation for the effect on South Carolina. Again he wrote to Livingston explaining the reason for his anxiety. The Secretary would therefore please send over at once, “sealed, by the bearer,” such sheets as were completed, and the harassed Livingston complied. Under these conditions of pressure the immortal document was written.[549]

On the day Jackson gave this Proclamation to the Nation he made his last appeal. A letter written to Poinsett that day discloses a determination to move sternly and unhesitatingly to what he conceived to be his solemn duty. This letter breathed the spirit of the battle-field. The act of the Nullifiers was sheer treason. He had been assured that he would be sustained by Congress. “I will meet it [treason] at the threshold, and have the leaders arrested and arraigned for treason,” he wrote. He was only waiting for the Acts of the Legislature “to make a communication to Congress, ask the means necessary to carry my Proclamation into complete effect, and by an exemplary punishment of those leaders for treason so unprovoked, put down this rebellion, and strengthen our Government both at home and abroad.” The Unionists of South Carolina need not fear. In forty days he could have 50,000 men in the State, in forty more another 50,000. “How impotent,” he wrote, “the threats of resistance with only a population of 250,000 whites, and nearly double that in blacks, with our ships in the port to aid in the execution of the laws!”[550]

Thus hoping that necessity would not compel him to send armed forces, determined to meet the issue, however, as it might present itself, careful to observe all the constitutional and legal limitations of his power, enraged to fury against the leaders and eager to lay his hands on Calhoun, he gave the country the Proclamation which instantly wiped out party lines with most, and rallied the patriotic forces of the Union to his support.

III

At the time of the writing of the Proclamation, Andrew Jackson was sixty-six, and Edward Livingston sixty-nine years old, but it breathes the fire, the passion, the enthusiasm, and the eloquence of impetuous youth. As an oration, it was to be treasured as a masterpiece; as a public document, it has taken its place alongside the Emancipation Proclamation as one of the greatest pronouncements of American history. Its publication appealed to the Unionists of the country like a charge on the battle-field. To no one did it give keener pleasure than to Webster, who read it in New Jersey on his way to the capital. In Philadelphia he met Clay, and a friend of the latter explained Clay’s plan of concessions to the Nullifiers through a new tariff of gradual reductions. The martial call of Jackson aroused the fighting blood within Webster, and Clay’s game of politics repelled him. He hastened to Washington determined to give his best blows for Jackson and the Administration.[551]

John Marshall, in gloomy mood, found in the Proclamation the elixir for his pessimism.[552] Justice Story, despite his deep-seated prejudice, could not withhold his commendation, coupled with an expression of strange surprise. “The President’s Proclamation is excellent,” he wrote, “and contains the true principles of the Constitution; but will he stand to it? Will he not surrender all to the guidance of Virginia?”[553]

Adams described it as a “blister plaster.”[554] Among all his long-time political opponents, Clay alone withheld enthusiastic commendation, with the comment that, “although there are some good things in it, there are some entirely too ultra for me.” In truth, the man who would “rather be right than President” seized eagerly upon the President’s patriotic position to curry favor with the extreme State-Rights men of the South.