The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

Meanwhile the Kitchen Cabinet was capitalizing all the intemperate attacks upon Jackson, and Blair was publishing letters in the “Globe” threatening the life of the President if he did not restore the deposits. One of these recited that three young men in New York had been selected to “proceed in the course of the present month to the capital, there to put in execution the design entrusted to their hands.”[711]

III

Such, however, were the side issues of the session. The real fight was waged on Clay’s resolutions to censure, and later on the President’s Protest. Clay opened the debate on the censure resolutions in a three-days speech bristling with extravagant invective—a tremendous philippic, not only against Jackson’s Bank policy, but against his entire presidential career. Intended to serve outside the Senate Chamber in alarming the people, his appeal was to the passions and the fears of the multitude. The central idea of it all was that all power was being concentrated in one man. The constitutional rights of the Senate had been outraged. The public domain was threatened with sacrifice. The Indian tribes had been miserably wronged. Even the tariff was in danger. An “elective monarchy” was all but established. On every hand was depression, suffering, gloom. The power over the purse had been lodged with that over the sword—a combination fatal to free government. The President’s conduct had been lawless. Such, in brief, was the tone and temper of one of the greatest philippics that ever poured from the lips of Clay.[712] As he sank into his seat, Benton instantly began his three-days reply, meeting the attack with a counter-offensive. “Who are these Goths?” he demanded—referring to Clay’s call upon the people to drive the Goths from the Capitol. “They are President Jackson and the Democratic Party—he just elected President over the Senator himself, and the party just been made a majority in the House—all by the votes of the people. It is their act which has placed these Goths in possession of the Capitol to the discomfiture of the Senator and his friends.”

Calhoun followed in a speech of an hour and a half in support of the resolutions, proclaiming the coalition. “The Senator from Kentucky anticipates with confidence,” he said, “that the small party who were denounced at the last session as traitors and disunionists will be found on this trying occasion in the front rank, and manfully resisting the advance of despotic power.” But Calhoun’s intellectual self-respect deterred him from contending that the removal of Duane was an act of Executive usurpation.

Then followed Rives in a manly defense of the Administration which he well knew would force his retirement from the Senate under the instructions of the Virginia Legislature. And then the new orator of the Opposition, William Campbell Preston, entered the lists, attacking Government directors for furnishing the President with a report of the Bank’s activities. The President had no right to ask information, and the directors no right to comply. The galleries were moved to applause, and the Carolinian took his place among the popular orators of the day.[713] Forsyth followed Preston, to be succeeded by Grundy, who was trailed by Frelinghuysen for the resolutions.

Meanwhile Webster was impressively silent. Unwilling longer to make the Bank the football of party politics, he looked disapprovingly upon the war of personalities. He knew that no constructive measure had been proposed, and that Biddle’s frenzied pressure on the people was driving supporters from the institution. He had no heart at this time for an attack on Jackson—recalling the “reciprocal kindnesses” of the last few months.[714] He realized that a senatorial censure and exterior pressure would never drive Jackson to such a recharter measure as had been proposed. And yet, in January, Calhoun was positive that the Administration had been mortally wounded.[715] Preston was exuberantly proclaiming that the removal of the deposits would force a recharter on the Bank’s terms.[716] In February, when the Bank was losing ground with the people and making no congressional converts, Clay was writing to Brooke that “we are gaining, both in public opinion and in number in the House of Representatives.”[717] That Clay was supremely selfish in his relations with the Bank is generally conceded by historians now,[718] and was keenly felt even by Biddle, who preferred a joint resolution ordering the restoration to wasting months in wrangling over a vote of censure. This plan he urged upon Webster, through Horace Binney of the House. But Clay scoffed at the idea. He was more interested in making Jackson obnoxious for party reasons than in serving his friends in Philadelphia, and he actually felt that he was succeeding in his purpose.

At length Webster determined to strike out for himself.

IV

Early in March he came forward with his compromise recharter measure providing a renewal for six years only; for an abandonment of the monopoly features to the end that Congress might, in the meantime, if it saw fit, grant a charter to another company; for the restoration of the deposits only after July 1st; and for the issuance of no note under the $20 denomination. This compromise had been discussed with friends of the Administration, who were ready to support it provided the friends of the Bank would unite upon it. Three days later Webster addressed the Senate on the virtues and purposes of the measure, carefully refraining from personalities or denunciation of the President. The most militant of Jackson’s friends could have found no fault with the orator’s treatment of their idol. Nor did he imitate his party colleagues in an intemperate discussion of the removal. He traced the origin of the distress to Taney’s order; showed the relation between commerce and credit, and between credit and banking, and effectively disposed of Jackson’s fallacy that men who operate on credit are undeserving of consideration. It was only in his affectation of indignation over the charge that the Bank was deliberately contributing to the distress that he departed from the high ground of statesmanship, and played the hypocritical politician. But the Senators listening eagerly to his words did not know of the letter he had written to Biddle predicting that the “disciplining” of the people would result in a renewal of the charter, or that he had urged upon Biddle, through Binney, that he ought to “occasionally ease off, where it is requisite to prevent extreme distress.” No one knew better than he that the Bank not only possessed, but exerted, the power charged by the Administration. This aside, Webster’s was the most dignified, impersonal, and statesmanlike speech of the session.

But the moment he resumed his seat, the schism among the leaders of the Opposition was emphasized when Leigh arose to announce that the Virginia view of the unconstitutionality of the Bank would make it impossible for him to support the bill. Three days later Calhoun criticized the measure as only a temporary expedient, and proposed, instead, a bill of his own providing a recharter for twelve years. The only extensive attack on the Webster compromise, however, was that of the “Cato of the Senate,” Hugh Lawson White, who had not up to that time wholly broken with his old friend in the White House. Respected as a financier, he was always heard with profound respect. He vigorously defended the removal of the deposits on the grounds set forth in Jackson’s Message. His speech was all the more impressive because he had advised against the removal and his letter had been read to the Cabinet. The day before taking the floor, he wrote of his embarrassment, but later developments having changed his opinion, he felt it would be censurable to remain silent.[719]