The excitement over the Proclamation found Calhoun remote from the turmoil and in the midst of his family at Fort Hill. There he lingered to enjoy the Christmas festivities, and the day following he started to Washington to take his place in the Senate. There was much drama in this winter journey to the capital. One of his biographers has compared it to “that of Luther to attend the diet of Worms.”[570] The public was convinced of the temper of Jackson and realized the possibilities when the lion in him was aroused. To some Calhoun’s journey suggested a death march. Looked upon as the prime mover, the instigator, the leader of the seditious movement, many thought that he would be arrested on the charge of treason before he crossed the Virginia border. Interest in his progress was intense, and even among those who abhorred the new doctrine there was no little sympathy for the grim, impeccably pure statesman who had the courage to beard the lion in his den. New Year’s Day found him at Raleigh, where he rested. Here crowds gathered to welcome, or merely to observe him, and a public dinner was offered him by his admirers. This he politely declined. There was something of grandeur in the dignity of his demeanor. As he proceeded from town to town, his approach was announced and elaborate preparations were made for his reception, for both North Carolina and Virginia were devoted to State Rights, and not a few of their citizens sympathized with the Carolina doctrine, and looked upon secession as an inevitable result of the crisis. Unlike the case of Burr, nothing personally sinister clung to him. His worst enemies conceded his honesty, and this was in his favor. Mrs. Bayard Smith, echoing the sentiment of the Washington drawing-rooms, found herself wondering, on Christmas Day, if all the “high soarings” of “one of the noblest and most generous spirits” were to end “in disappointment or humiliation or in blood.”[571] That this friendly atmosphere, through which he moved, was reassuring to Calhoun, we may assume from his letter to his son on reaching the capital. Here he found “things better than anticipated” and that it was beginning to be “felt that we must succeed.”
On the day he took the oath and his seat in the Senate, the little semi-circular chamber was crowded with friends and foes, drawn by the dramatic features of the situation. Tall, erect, his face sternly set, his iron-gray hair brushed back, he walked into the chamber over which he had presided, slowly and with a deliberation which seemed as studied as that of an actor upon the stage. When he took his seat, some Senators hastened to clasp his hand, but it was noticed that others, who had formerly been friendly, held back, deterred perhaps by the frown of the White House. At length the great scene—the taking of the oath. This he did in a reverential manner, and his voice was serious and solemn when he swore to support the Constitution which Jackson contended he had flagrantly violated.[572] The leader of Nullification was in his seat.
V
The day after Calhoun started on his journey to the capital, the Verplanck Tariff Bill, sanctioned by the Administration, was introduced in the House. This measure, it was thought, might go a long way toward preventing any accession to the ranks of the Nullifiers in that it went far toward meeting the objections to the revenue laws. It was a rather radical measure, providing for the immediate reduction of numerous duties, with further reductions a year later. The protection forces rallied at once for its defeat. Through all the parliamentary devices of delay, Jackson, keenly watching developments through the reports of Lewis and Donelson, was convinced that the Nullifiers were as much interested in its defeat as the protectionists. An “insulting and irritating speech” of Wilde of Georgia he thought “instigated by the Nullies, who wish no accommodation of the tariff.”[573] Long before it could be brought to a vote, it had been hammered beyond recognition by amendments and Jackson had lost interest in the reduction of the tariff, rather preferring first to whip Nullification without any preliminary concessions.
Meanwhile Jackson was awaiting developments before submitting his Message to Congress asking additional powers to put down the heresy. Through the latter part of December and the early part of January, Hayne was making open preparations for an armed resistance. Poinsett, reporting constantly, had abandoned hope of “putting down Nullification by moral force,” and hoped that the “vain blustering of these mad-men” would not influence Congress on the tariff, as “such a concession would confirm the power and popularity of the Nullifiers.”[574] He was anxious for the contest. “Is not raising, embodying, and marching men to oppose the laws of the United States an overt act of treason?” he wrote the Unionist Congressman from Charleston, who still hoped that the crisis could be passed without recourse to the Federal army.[575] Thus, early in January, Poinsett was anxious to have Federal troops sent into the State, while other Unionists still held back. In this controversy Jackson agreed with the conservatives that the Unionists of the State should first have an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to handle the situation.
On January 16th, Archer’s promise to McDuffie was fulfilled, when Jackson laid all the facts relative to the crisis before Congress with a request for authority to abolish or alter certain ports of entry, and to use the army to protect the officers in the discharge of their duties. He also asked for the revival of the sixth section of the Act of March 3, 1815, and for a provision for the removal to the United States Circuit Court, without copy of the record, of any suit brought in the State courts against any individual for an act performed under the laws of the United States. A grim touch was added in the request for authorization for marshals to make provision for keeping prisoners.
Very late on the night of the day the Message was submitted, Jackson, worn out and wretched from a bad cold, sat in his room writing to Poinsett. The Message had been read. Calhoun, “agitated and confused,” had “let off a little of his ire” against the President, and John Forsyth had replied “with great dignity and firmness.” That night it seemed to Jackson that Calhoun had been placed “between Scylla and Charybdis,” and was “reckless.” The uncertainty of negotiations had passed, and the hour for action—the happy hour for Jackson—had struck. The conferences with Drayton were over. Poinsett, at the front, was now the man of the hour. The moment the Nullifiers were “in hostile array,” this fact was to be certified to Jackson by the attorney for the district, or the judge, and he would “forthwith order the leaders arrested and prosecuted.” And he added in his note to Poinsett: “We will strike at the head and demolish the monster Nullification and secession at the threshold by the power of the law.”[576]
Thus, that night, the fingers of Andrew Jackson were itching for the throat of John C. Calhoun.
Five days later, Senator Wilkins, of the Judiciary Committee, presented the famous “Force Bill,” and one of the most violent debates in history began. On the following day, Calhoun submitted a set of resolutions setting forth his views of the constitutional question involved, in the hope of thereby directing the debate into that channel. But the Senate was in no temper for such a discussion and pushed forward to the debate on the main and pressing question. The Calhoun resolutions were speedily tabled. Wilkins led off in the debate, and others followed, one on the heels of the other, until at length John Tyler took the floor to deliver the speech which, after that of Calhoun, was the most forceful attack to be made upon the measure. Reading his speech to-day one wonders how the Republic outlived the Jackson Administrations. Dire calamity was predicted as a result of his every action. He saw Carolinians again driven “into the morasses where Marion and Sumter found refuge,” with their cities and towns leveled to the dust, and their daughters clothed in mourning, with “helpless orphans” made of their “rising sons.” But, he continued, “I will not despair. Rome had her Curtius, Sparta her Leonidas, and Athens her band of devoted patriots; and shall it be said that the American Senate contains not one man who will step forward to rescue his country in this, her moment of peril? Although that man may never wear an earthly crown or sway an earthly scepter, eternal fame shall weave an evergreen around his brow, and his name shall rank with the proudest patriots of the proudest climes.”
With the closing sentence, Tyler turned significantly to Henry Clay, who sat an interested spectator. Throughout this memorable debate he was to remain mute. The great orator and party leader was making sympathetic gestures to the extreme State-Rights men of the South. Even at this time, and knowing Tyler’s views, he was writing to his friend, Francis Brooke: “Will he [Tyler] be reëlected? We feel here some solicitude on that point, being convinced that under all circumstances, he would be far preferable to any person that could be sent.”[577] And such was his partisan hate of Jackson that the second leader of the party Opposition, John M. Clayton, in speaking in support of the Force Bill, could not refrain from an exhibition of boorishness and bigotry in coupling his advocacy of the Jackson measure with a sneer at Jackson.