The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

And it was just this queer opinion that Clay was zealously seeking. About the time Webster was appealing to Story for the elucidation of legal points, Clay was writing to former Senator Tazewell at Norfolk, a great constitutional lawyer, inquiring as to whether or not Jackson had transcended his power in dismissing Duane. It must have been with some embarrassment that he read the Virginian’s reply, that to him it was “manifestly absurd to regard the President as responsible for the acts of subordinate agents, and yet to deny him the uncontrolled power of supervising them, and removing them from office whenever they had lost his confidence.”[698] This opinion, however, did not deter some statesmen from advancing the idea that Tazewell had contemptuously rejected.

But the position of Story was accepted, and Clay submitted his resolutions censuring the President, and holding the reasons given by Taney for the removal “unsatisfactory and insufficient.” Thus the decks were cleared for action. The real fight began in the debate that day upon these resolutions, and upon these, and others growing out of them, the verbal battle, which at times threatened to be other than bloodless, raged with intemperate fury for seven months.

II

Never up to that time, nor again for more than a generation, did Congress so completely hold the interest of the country. The great orators of the Opposition never shone with greater luster, and by their impassioned eloquence, and not a little of consummate histrionics, they persuaded their followers, if not themselves, that they were actually fighting the battle of liberty against despotism. The Democrats contended, on the defensive, that Jackson had the right to dismiss Duane, and that Taney had the legal right to order the removal.

It is not surprising that the little city of Washington, with all its interests revolving about the performances at the Capitol, should have poured forth its people daily to pack the galleries and crowd the lobbies. The Senate Chamber became the peacock alley of fashion—they who met at the dinner or the dance the night before mingled there in the day-time. The debate drew many from other sections, and the belles of country places and remote towns helped to crowd the Chamber to suffocation.[699] In the fashionable character of the gallery audiences we catch the hostility of the aristocracy to the President and his party. The distress committees with their petitions were wont to pack the galleries “applauding the speakers against the President—saluting with noise and confusion those who spoke on his side.”[700] Confirmation of such scenes are to be found in the official report of the proceedings.[701] It has been the fashion to refer to the Jacksonians as the “rabble” and the “mob,” and as partaking of the nature of the Jacobins, but throughout the Bank fight the “mob” in the galleries, resorting to the Jacobin methods of hissing and cheering the proceedings on the floor, were largely confined to the enemies of the President.

The debate on the Clay resolutions had scarcely begun when the daily arrival of distress petitions furnished a diversion in the Senate. The memorials were lugubrious recitals of wreck and ruin, and pathetic appeals for the restoration of the deposits. Frequently presented by committees, the bearers repaired to the gallery to give sympathetic ear to the mournful speeches of the Senators to whom their petitions had been entrusted. There was a marked similarity in the petitions, and an even more striking resemblance in the speeches. The burden of both was that the happiness of a prosperous community had been struck down by a tyrant, and that nothing but the restoration of the deposits could end the agony. That the action of such men as Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, in picturing in lurid and exaggerated colors the distress of the moment, and predicting even greater calamities, was calculated to frighten the timid and create panic must have been understood by them. At any rate, these petitions were part of the leaders’ plan.[702] This phase of the fight developed with the presentation of Clay’s resolution to “inquire into the expediency of affording temporary relief to the community from the present pecuniary embarrassments by prolonging the payment of revenue bonds as they fall due.” This resolution opened the way for Clay’s first “distress speech.” And Forsyth, who was something of a cynic in his way, saw no objection to the resolution, provided it were amended by instructing the committee “to inquire into the extent and causes of the alleged distress of the community, and into the propriety of legislative interference to relieve them.” The proposal of the amendment gave Forsyth the opportunity to present the Administration’s opinion of the panic. He had no doubt that there was distress, but it had been greatly exaggerated. “Whence does it arise?” he asked. “From the conflict—the war that the Bank is waging to get the deposits back. The deposits have been removed. The Bank stands still to see what will follow, and it stands still, too, that its power may be felt in every nerve and fiber of the community—and every man shall feel the necessity of the institution.”[703]

Thus the panic speeches began. “There sits Mr. Biddle,” rather stupidly exclaimed one Senator, presenting a petition, “in the presidency of the Bank, as calm as a summer’s morning, with his directors around him, receiving his salary, with everything moving on harmoniously; and has this strike reached him? No, sir. The blow has fallen on the friends of the President and the country.”[704] Thus did one Opposition leader rejoice in the serenity of the Bank and its president in the midst of the distress of his country.

Very early the friends of the Administration took their cue from its enemies, and began to flood the Senate with memorials against the Bank. Thus day by day the proceedings were opened by the reading of petitions, followed by speeches on the “distress,” and replies belittling the panic. Mr. Clay’s heart was wrung by news of the distress in Savannah and Augusta; whereupon Mr. Forsyth rose to deny that there was distress in those cities. “I know the individuals,” he said. “They are highly respectable men—merchants and members of the Bar. They are friends of the Bank of the United States.”[705] A New Jersey Senator, opposed to the Administration, presented conflicting petitions from his State, with the Jackson petitions numerically the stronger. Ah, laughed Forsyth, “from the State of New Jersey we have three cheers for one groan.”[706] When an Opposition Senator presented a petition from Portsmouth with a doleful tale, Senator Isaac Hill killed the effect by explaining the dubious manner in which the signatures had been obtained. And when, a little later, Hill undertook to present a petition of the New Hampshire Legislature against the Bank, Webster moved to lay it on the table. In truth the actions of legislatures were beginning to annoy the panic-breeders. Maine, New York, New Hampshire, and other States had spoken in support of Jackson’s policy. It became necessary to devote more attention to that end of the petition business. “What is doing in your legislature about the deposits?” Clay wrote to his friend, Judge Brooke of Virginia. “We want all aid here on that subject which can be given us from Richmond.”[707] And when the Legislature acted, John Tyler lost all patience with the Governor for not sending the petition on at once. “The resolutions of the legislature have not yet reached me,” he wrote impatiently to Mrs. Tyler, “nor can I conceive what Floyd is after that he does not forward them.”[708] They arrived in time, and Webster did not move to lay them on the table.

Then, with the effect of a bomb exploding among the Bank champions, came the message of Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania, denouncing the Bank for responsibility for the depression. Clay lost no time in denouncing him as a man worshiper, albeit the Governor had previously favored the Bank. Another Bank Senator rushed forward with a resolution “disapproving the vacillating or time-serving policy of the Governor of Pennsylvania,” while Forsyth and others criticized the taste of the proceedings.[709]

Thus the battle of the petitions went merrily on, some spontaneous, most inspired by the Bank agents, while the conflicting memorials were conceived to offset the intended effect. As the weeks extended into months, and the depression began to lift, extraordinary efforts were made to reawaken the country against the “tyrant in the White House.” Webster harangued a crowd in New York City; but the major part of the platform propaganda work was assigned to McDuffie, who better than most men knew how to “ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm”; to Preston, who could arouse men to frenzy or move them to tears; and to Poindexter, who was a veritable fire-eater. These three consummate mob-baiters set forth on a journey that took them to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The orators reached Baltimore on Sunday. But no matter; as a minister of the Gospel piously said, “in revolutionary times there were no Sabbaths,” and the meeting was held. It was on this occasion that McDuffie, with the true spirit of the demagogue, solemnly discussed the “rumor” that Jackson, the tyrant, might attempt to dismiss Congress at the point of the bayonet, and promised that “ten days after the entrance of the soldiers into the Senate Chamber, to send the Senators home, 200,000 volunteers would be in Washington.”[710]