The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

In appointing his successor, Jackson turned to John Forsyth, whose services as Administration floor leader in the Senate had been of immense value, and whose urbanity, wisdom, conservatism, diplomatic experience, fitted him for the post better than any of his Jacksonian predecessors. To the place left vacant by Taney, he transferred Mr. Woodbury, and to the navy he appointed Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, a gentleman of extensive public experience as a Senator for sixteen years. Just previous to his appointment, he had declined the Russian Mission. This was the only Cabinet upheaval of Jackson’s time which had not been accompanied with much bitterness, with charges and countercharges.

Thus, with affairs in Washington in capable hands, with victory in the Bank fight on his side, with the delights of the Hermitage just beyond, the iron man set forth in high spirits and with no regrets or fears. The Biddle threat of more “discipline” for the people during the summer and autumn, because of the failure of Congress to recharter the Bank, had not disturbed him so much as it had alarmed the Whigs. Those in Boston met the threat with a counter-threat of denunciation, and those in New York warned Biddle that more distress would certainly prove disastrous to the Whigs in the fall elections. Biddle deeply resented the criticism of the Whigs, who, under the leadership of Clay, had practically blackmailed him into using the Bank’s power against the Democrats. When those of Boston warned that more discipline of the people might “even create a necessity for the Whigs, in self-defense, to separate themselves entirely” from his institution, he wrote in defiant mood to the president of his Boston branch that “if ... any political party or association desires to separate itself from the Bank—be it so.” He had not read the letter to the board of directors lest the members favorable to the Democrats might use it to the disadvantage of the Whigs.[762] But he was to find that his frown had lost its force. Another Whig from New York wrote of much dissatisfaction in that city and State among the Bank’s friends and “those of influence in the Whig Party—and sure I am that it is increasing every day.” The feeling was prevalent, encouraged by the views of Albert Gallatin, that the Bank could have relieved the distress had it so desired. And Alexander Hamilton, the brother of Jackson’s friend, and son of the father of the National Bank, wrote a little later to a correspondent that “it has been found expedient to abandon the Bank in our political pilgrimage.” He found that “the people are now familiarly acquainted with the immense power of a national bank and apprehend all kinds of terrible consequences from its exercise.”[763] Thus, instead of more “discipline,” the Bank found it possible to take steps, which, according to Catterall, justified Jackson, the following December, in saying in his Message that “the Bank ... announced its ability and readiness to abandon the system of unparalleled curtailment ... and to extend its accommodations to the community.”

Just, as in 1832, when floating down the Ohio on his last visit to the Hermitage during the presidential campaign, Andrew Jackson was at peace with himself and the world. But his friends had given orders to take nothing for granted and to open the fighting along the whole line. They had a twofold purpose—to hold the line in Congress, and to defeat, wherever possible, any senatorial enemies who were candidates for reëlection. Blair, of the “Globe,” began to issue special editions and to send them broadcast all over the country.

The fight, as it was waged in New York, Virginia, and Mississippi, will suffice to illustrate the general character and method of the campaign. In all three States the Bank was the issue. Even the most hopeful of the Whigs entertained no illusions as to Pennsylvania, where the most powerful financial and commercial interests were arrayed with the Bank. The two parties in the Empire State were mobilized, organized on a military footing, and ready and eager for the fray.[764] The elections in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were held in October, a month before those in New York, and the first shock to the Whigs came in the returns from these two States. That Pennsylvania, the home of Biddle, Sergeant, and Duane, should have gone against the Bank and for Jackson, was not disappointing, for little had been expected there. But much was expected in New Jersey. There the issue was distinct. The two Senators from that State had voted with the Bank on the deposits question. The Legislature had adopted resolutions commendatory of Jackson’s actions, and in his Protest the fighting President had not scrupled to quote these resolutions to prove that the Senators had deliberately misrepresented their people. Senator Frelinghuysen, in commenting upon these instructions, had boasted that he and his colleague had “dared to meet the frowns of their constituents,” and would not “bow the knee to these instructions.”[765] Now he was before the people for reëlection, and the issue was plain. The people’s verdict was unmistakable. The little State swept into the Jackson column with a substantial majority, and Frelinghuysen was retired.

Goaded by the sting of the New Jersey defeat, the New York Whigs redoubled their efforts. “The Whigs are raising liberty poles in all the wards,” wrote Hone. “I went to one of these ceremonies yesterday at the corner of the Bowery and Hester Street. The pole, a hundred feet high, with a splendid cap and gilt vane with suitable devices, was escorted by a procession of good men and true.”[766] Thus, if the “mob” could make the welkin ring at Democratic meetings, the more aristocratic Whigs could sally forth from their counting-rooms and libraries to rub shoulders with the common herd at Hester Street and the Bowery and shout approval of the raising of a pole. But all was in vain. By nine o’clock on the evening of the first day, Hone and his fellow Whigs realized that “enough was known to satisfy us to our hearts’ content that we are beaten—badly beaten; worse than the least sanguine of us expected.”[767] The jubilant Democrats, however, were determined that the Whig leaders should not feel utterly deserted, and a crowd of them surged before Hone’s house with hisses and catcalls which kept him awake all night. The Lord Holland of the American Whigs, who was sick at the time, was inclined to resent it, but the next evening he found consolation in dining with Webster who “was in a vein to be exceedingly pleasant.”[768]

Such was the intensity of feeling and the bitterness of the struggle that enthusiastic partisans partook of the nature of mobs in the larger centers. Nowhere were the Democrats so intense as in Philadelphia, where, on election day, the warring partisans exchanged shots, the headquarters of the Whigs was sacked and burned by a mob which drove back the firemen that attempted to quench the flames. A number of houses were completely reduced to ashes. Such was the panic of Nicholas Biddle that the day before the election he sent his wife and children into the country, filled his house with armed men, and prepared for a siege. The Bank building bristled with the bayonets and muskets of guards. But when the gray dawn came, the one-time financial dictator found that none of his property had been molested. It was blow enough to him to learn that the Whigs, the country over, had gone down before the popular uprising.

But the bitterest fight was waged in Virginia, where the situation was mixed to the point of chaos. The State was anti-Bank, but it was anti-Jackson. Opposed to the Bank, it had been equally opposed to the removal of the deposits. The feeling in Richmond was so inflamed that only personal respect for Ritchie saved the “Enquirer” from mob violence, for the courageous editor stuck to his guns and tried to divert attention to the Bank itself. Administration papers were established throughout the State with instructions to follow the lead of his pen. The Virginia plan was twofold: to make the most of the unpopularity of Leigh, who was again a candidate for the Senate, and to divide and distract the Whigs by playing Clay against Calhoun. Nowhere did the Democrats appreciate, as they did in Virginia, the impossible nature of the Whig combination, and they dwelt upon its inconsistencies from the beginning. Clay announced that he was not a candidate for the presidential nomination in 1836. “But Mr. Clay knows not himself,” wrote Ritchie. “But ambition does not burn so intensely in his bosom as it does in the heart of another leader of the Senate (Mr. Calhoun). If recent signs do not deceive us, this extraordinary man (extraordinary every way for the vigor of his mind, the variety of his principles, and the intensity of his ambition) will soon take the field, with feeble hopes of winning the votes of the South, as well as the support of the Bank. Then we shall see under which king the various members of the opposition will range themselves.”[769] This irrepressible conflict of Whig ambitions and interests was played upon by the Democratic press of Virginia all through the summer and autumn of 1834.

But the immediate purpose of the Virginia Democrats was to humiliate Leigh, who was unpopular with the masses because of his bitter fight in the Constitutional Convention against the extension of the suffrage. And he was as strongly with the Bank as Virginia was against it. A house-to-house canvass was made, and in districts where a majority were found against him it was proposed to evoke the right of instructions to Assemblymen. The plan succeeded to the extent of disclosing a majority hostile to the reëlection of Leigh, but the Whigs, who carried the State, succeeded after a bitter struggle in returning him through a flagrant disregard of the expressed will of the constituencies. The battle was thus but half lost. The Democrats were supplied with ammunition they were to use with deadly effect, and within little more than a year they were to drive the two anti-Jackson Senators of Virginia into private life. Ritchie began the next year’s battle without delay. The “Enquirer” was flooded with resolutions and letters protesting the election of Leigh over the instructions of the majority of the people.[770]

In Mississippi the Jacksonians determined to prevent the reëlection of Senator Poindexter, long the idol of the Mississippi Democracy, who had turned upon Jackson with a virulence scarcely equaled by any old-line Federalist, and cast his lot with Clay. With the adjournment of Congress, the Mississippi Senator hastened home, where the enemies of the Administration had planned a series of banquets at which he was to denounce the President and vindicate himself. The Whigs were with him. The Democrats, delighted with a slashing and brilliant assault on Poindexter by Robert J. Walker, put that able publicist in the field, and within a week he was engaged in one of the most spectacular canvasses Mississippi had ever known, firing enormous open-air meetings of frenzied Jacksonians. The outcome was the election of Walker—a victory sweet to Jackson, for it was the vanquished who had sponsored the resolution attacking his Protest.[771] And the triumph was all the sweeter from the fact that, while Poindexter had supported the Nullifiers, Walker had taken the lead against them in Mississippi, on the platform, and through the press.

Thus the elections of 1834 were more than pleasing to Jackson and his party. Two of his strongest senatorial opponents had lost their seats as a result of their opposition, and Leigh had been saved only by a disreputable betrayal of the people. In the Senate the Administration was strengthened; and in the House the Democratic majority was reduced but eight votes, leaving it a clear majority of 46 out of 242 members.