The Senate compromised on ten thousand copies, and a rather dull debate, in which the Bank question was revived, resulted. The bills proposed by the Whig committee passed the Whig Senate to be promptly rejected in the Democratic House. These measures merely served as pegs on which to hang further denunciations of Jackson and his policies.
And the Democrats countered with an enthusiastic banquet in celebration of the wiping-out of the national debt for the first time in history. This had been one of Jackson’s ambitions—a consummation Clay had determined should not come before the presidential election of 1832. But it could not be prevented; and while the Whigs were expanding on extravagance and the crowded public crib, the Jacksonians were pointing to the extinguishment of the public debt as an answer to the attacks. Benton, who presided as toastmaster at the banquet, was in flamboyant mood.
“The national debt is paid,” he said. “This month of January, 1835, in the fifty-eighth year of the Republic, Andrew Jackson being President, the national debt is paid, and the apparition, so long unseen on earth—a great nation without a national debt—stands revealed to the astonished vision of a wondering world. Gentlemen, my heart is in this double celebration, and I offer you a sentiment, which, coming directly from my own bosom, will find its response in yours: President Jackson: may the evening of his days be as tranquil and as happy for himself as their meridian has been resplendent, glorious, and beneficent for his country.”
Such was the partisan madness of this short session that a resolution, offered and urged by Preston, the Whig, for the purchase of some pictures for “the President’s house,” was promptly voted down, and Preston’s efforts to have the vote reconsidered were unavailing. It was into this madhouse of partisan rancor that the French crisis, threatening war, involving the world prestige of the Republic, had been thrown by Jackson; and we shall now note how nearly partisanship came to compromising and weakening the Nation in the face of a foreign antagonist.
CHAPTER XIV
WHIG DISLOYALTY IN FRENCH CRISIS
I
The most important battle of the short session of 1834-35 was waged over Jackson’s determination to compel France to observe her obligations under the treaty signed in Paris and Washington in July, 1831. After futile efforts by the four preceding Administrations to bring France to the payment of an indemnity for losses to American vessels during the Napoleonic wars, Jackson succeeded in negotiating a treaty in which France stipulated to pay the United States five millions in six annual installments, and we agreed to the reduction of duties on French wines. We immediately conformed to our agreement, but the French manifested no such respect for their obligations. Several sessions of the French Chamber failed to make appropriations for the payments, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of Washington. Thoroughly vexed at the contemptuous indifference of Paris, Jackson withdrew Livingston from the State Department, and sent him to the French Court to insist upon the discharge of the treaty obligations. Before the crisis came, he had summoned to his side as Secretary of State the courtly and able John Forsyth, concerning whom the American people know all too little. In view of the tendency to picture the Jackson of the French crisis as a bull in a china shop, it is worth while to consider the characters of the men who were, at this time, his advisers in foreign affairs. The character of Livingston has been described.
In the Washington of the Thirties no public man was more generally respected and admired for ability and elegance of manner than the new Secretary of State. This courtliness
