The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Thus, with the panic at its flood, with Benton moving to the front of the Administration forces, and with Clay’s oratorical battery strengthened, it is time to look in upon the Senate.

CHAPTER XII
THE BATTLE OF THE GODS

I

From the moment Congress convened, it was evident that the session was to witness the most bitter party battle ever waged. This was inevitable because of the realignments of the previous session, and the spirit of the Bank. The coalition between Clay and Calhoun gave the Opposition a clear majority in the Senate. It was common gossip four days after Congress was called to order that “the understanding between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun” gave the Opposition all the numerical advantage.[691] This was thoroughly understood by Jackson, Taney, Kendall, and Blair, and all public papers regarding the removal of the deposits were accordingly framed as appeals to the people, rather than to the bodies to which they were addressed. The Presidential Message, in touching upon this topic, was a campaign document and a challenge. Taney’s forceful report submitting reasons for the removal was a defiance, and a clarion call to the people in the corn rows, the villages, and the factories. Thus Jackson and his friends forced the fighting from the beginning.

Clay led the onslaught with a resolution calling upon Taney for a report on the new depositories. “I want to inquire where the Treasury of the United States is,” he explained ironically. The bristling Benton instantly moved a reference to committee. The Secretary of the Treasury had “charged the Bank distinctly with interfering with the purity of elections, with corrupting and subsidizing the press, with dishonoring its own paper and that of its branches,” and these “charges of great criminality” should be investigated. Affecting to ignore Benton, Clay followed with another resolution calling upon the President to say whether the Paper, “alleged” to have been read to the Cabinet, was genuine, and if so, to lay a copy before the Senate. This was a stupid tactical blunder, and John Forsyth, with his suave courtesy, which was not always as innocent as it seemed, inquired the purpose of the “unusual” call. Clay’s reply was a quibble. The Paper had been published as having been read by the President, and even promulgated through the press, and he, for one, refused to assume that it was genuine.

“If I understand the gentleman from Kentucky,” pressed the courtly Forsyth, “he admits that with the intercourse between the President and his Cabinet we have nothing to do.”

“I make no admission,” snapped Clay.

It was then that Forsyth revealed the theory on which the Administration forces were to proceed. Why could not Clay indicate the purpose which impelled him? he asked. Was it for the purpose of impeachment? Then the call should have originated in the House, not the Senate. “When the President should be brought to our bar, and put on trial for his violation of the Constitution, that paper would be produced in support of the charge,” he continued. But why should the Senate call for it? It was accessible for all purposes of argument. He could understand the resolution only “as a desire to prompt the other House to proceedings by impeachment, and to condemn the President in advance.” But after Clay had reiterated the absurd explanation that he merely sought authentic verification of the genuineness of the Paper, the resolution was adopted.[692] The response of Jackson was immediately made in a dignified and unanswerable note of refusal. “As well might I be required to detail to the Senate the free and private conversations I have held with those officers on any subject relating to their duties,” he said.[693] It was a sharp rebuke, richly merited, and left Clay in an unenviable position.

The next brush came in the prompt rejection by the Senate of the nominations of the Government directors who had furnished the report on which Jackson had based his charge of wrongdoing. The moment their names were sent to the Senate, Biddle began to deluge his senatorial friends with demands for their rejection. “They are unfit to be there [on the board],” he wrote Webster; “unfit to associate with the other members.”[694] In the Bank circles they were denounced as “spies,” and thus, in response to the demand of Biddle, they were rejected. Such was the intimacy of the relation between the party of the Opposition and the Bank of the United States. The sinister nature of this relationship is painfully illustrated in the case of Daniel Webster, who, two weeks after the opening of the session, had written Biddle of his rejection of a professional employment against the Bank, with the bald suggestion that “I believe my retainer has not been renewed or refreshed as usual,” and that “if it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be continued, it may be well to send me the usual retainers.”[695]

Thus the first days of the session were passed in maneuvering for position, with frequent incidents of a petty nature indicative of the rancorous party spirit of the times. Having observed the unobtrusive figure of Major Lewis, that most consummate of politicians and presidential reporters, moving about the floor of the House, Richard Henry Wilde, poet and politician, Nullifier and Whig, framed a resolution to exclude him, but it was defeated.[696] Meanwhile Clay was busy mapping his campaign, preparing the resolutions on which he proposed to make the issue. The Opposition leaders were clearly embarrassed in determining their course of action. Webster appealed to Justice Story, the scholarly associate of John Marshall, for an opinion on the legal phases; and writing from Cambridge that great jurist would not advise that the deposits could not be legally withdrawn unless danger to their security was involved, but he advanced the theory on which the Bank champions acted—that the Secretary of the Treasury did not become custodian of the funds by virtue of his position in the Cabinet, but held them as a “personal trust, and as much so as if confided to the Chief Justice of the United States.” Thus he furnished the Opposition with the opinion it required. The President had no right to interfere; more—if he did interfere, and the Secretary submitted against his own judgment, he violated his trust; and the State banks had no proper authority to take over the deposits.[697] Unhappily, the learned jurist failed to take the next necessary step, and conclude that the President had no power to remove a Secretary of the Treasury.