The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

In compliance with the request of Comte de Rigny, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Livingston personally delivered to him a copy of the Message, and stressed the point that, under our governmental form, the Message was a consultation between departments of our Government, and was not directed to France. Then shifting to the offensive he added that it was most unfortunate, in view of Serurier’s promise, that there had not been an earlier call of the Chamber. De Rigny seemed to attach the most serious importance to the intimation of bad faith, but the interview was friendly. That evening, at the Austrian Minister’s, Livingston found him all suavity; and the next night a curt note from him announced the withdrawal of Serurier from Washington, and a readiness to give the American diplomat his passports on application![825] He made much of Jackson’s comments on the failure to convene the Chamber when, as a matter of fact, the Chamber was then actually assembled in virtue of a royal ordinance. This, while true, could not have been known to Jackson in those days of slow communication. He only knew the original purpose. But it pleased de Rigny to assume an unexplainable offense, and to announce that “His Majesty has considered it due his own dignity no longer to leave his Minister exposed to hear language so offensive to France.”[826] Resisting an impulse to demand his passports, lest such action seem unnecessarily provocative, Livingston replied in a dignified note that unless de Rigny’s letter was intended as a dismissal, he would await instructions from his own Government.

III

Meanwhile the Whigs were planning to make political capital out of the crisis. The “Intelligencer,” the organ of the Senate Whigs, had assumed an attitude which, as we have seen, had given much comfort to the French enemies of the treaty. “We trust,” it said, “that it will be universally understood, not only at home, but everywhere abroad, that the recommendation of the President is his own act only, and is not likely ... to receive the approbation of the Congress or the people of the United States.” And Blair, in the “Globe,” hotly replied that “if she [France] shall shed American blood in this controversy, and push her injustice to actual war, the responsibility for all the destruction of human lives ... will justly rest upon the heads of the editors of the ‘National Intelligencer.’”[827] The “National Gazette,” another Opposition paper, compromised with the thought that Jackson “did well to present the subject to Congress ... though we would earnestly dissuade Congress from giving him a discretion so important as that of reprisals.” Which, interpreted by Blair, meant that the mercantile class and bankers were interested in French claims, and it would be well to enforce them, “but if the national rights and honor, implicated in a refusal to execute the treaty, should be vindicated by President Jackson, it would add renown to the man whom it was the editors’ business to traduce.”[828]

The first act of the Whigs was to pack the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate with the President’s enemies, three of the five, Clay, Mangum, and Sprague, being virulent foes. “There are certainly not three men in the French Chamber,” wrote Blair, “more anxiously bent on thwarting the measures of General Jackson’s Administration.”[829] Into the hands of these was delivered that portion of the Message dealing with the French affair, and a month later Clay offered his resolution that “it is inexpedient at this time” to grant authority to the President to make reprisals. In presenting his report, Clay made the startling statement that if France was prudent “she will wait to see whether the Message should be seconded by the Congress.” Thus, in the face of a prospective foreign foe, patently in the wrong, the leader of the Whigs attempted to create the impression that Jackson stood alone. This was the cue to the politicians. The Clay report was extravagantly praised. Poindexter, in ecstatic mood, moved that twenty thousand copies be printed for circulation—as propaganda to isolate the President. Calhoun favored “the largest number.” The report had delighted him. “War was at all times to be avoided.”[830] Only two Whigs objected to twenty thousand copies, and these on the ground that the printing of so many would require four months.[831] Hill demanded the yeas and nays, and by a party vote the “largest number” of Clay’s campaign document was ordered. Thus, from the beginning, the divisions in the Senate on an international crisis were along party lines.

On the day Livingston received the curt note from de Rigny, Clay, in opening the discussion of his resolution, threw out the suggestion twice that France might make the appropriation conditional on an “explanation” from the President of the United States. He felt sure that France would understand that Congress did not share the President’s views. The Democratic members of the committee, in a minority report, differed from the majority in explaining the reason for finding it “inexpedient” to grant authority—the fact that the Chamber had been called a month earlier than anticipated. The only vigorous attack on the majority report, and the sole unapologetic American speech, was that of Buchanan, who, better than any other member of the Senate, understood the conditions in Paris. He called for an unqualified assertion of our determination to demand the observance of the treaty. “I hope I may be mistaken,” he concluded, “but I believe it never will be paid before.”[832] The brief debate, heard by the fashion of the capital packed in the galleries, was conducted with decorum, but quite discernible beneath the surface one may read the party feeling which even an international crisis could not obliterate. The Clay resolution was adopted. The “National Intelligencer,” now finding its way regularly to Paris, expressed the hope that “with this unquestionable proof of the pacific temper of the Senate ... it will now be understood at home and abroad that there is no morbid appetite for war among the grave and considerate portion of the American people.”

Several weeks were to intervene before the House took action. Meanwhile in Paris, Livingston, in seclusion, prepared his masterful and spirited formal reply to the impudent note of the French Minister. He loftily rebuked him for referring to the President as “General Jackson” in official language, firmly reiterated and proved the charge of broken faith in the matter of the Serurier pledge, and pitilessly exposed the hypocrisy of the complaint that Jackson had misrepresented, purposely, regarding the time of the calling of the Chamber. Had not de Rigny himself informed him that it was constitutionally impossible to call the session earlier when protest had been made as to the date? And yet it had been called. When a copy of this note reached Forsyth, he summoned Van Buren and the two repaired to the White House, where it was read and warmly approved.[833] By this time Jackson was in no mood to compromise or conciliate. Forsyth instructed Livingston that, if the French Chamber again rejected the appropriation bill, a frigate was to be immediately sent to convey him home. Ten days after these instructions were written, Serurier was recalled, and Forsyth, in refusing an audience, coolly informed him that he was “ready to receive in writing any communication the Minister of France desires to have made to the Government of the United States.”[834]

Meanwhile the French papers reaching the United States were noisily militant. War-clouds lowered. James A. Hamilton tendered his services to Jackson for duty “civil or military, at home or abroad.”[835] Major Lewis, gravely concerned because of his daughter’s marriage to M. Pageot of the French Legation, hastened to reassure Hamilton with extracts from personal letters from governmental officials in Paris—and thus threw an interesting side-light on the romance and tragedy of international marriages, for these letters had been translated, for the benefit of Jackson, in the French Legation by Madame Pageot, the wife of the First Secretary![836]

IV

Under these ominous conditions, with offers of military service pouring into the White House, with the French Minister on the ocean en route to Paris, and with additional letters in the diplomatic duel before it, the House of Representatives began its discussion of the crisis. With the majority report and resolutions declaring against further negotiations and in favor of contingent preparations, the House was immediately engaged in an animated and acrimonious discussion indicative of the excitement of the times. Edward Everett, the pacifist of the session, offered a substitute coupling a declaration of adherence to the treaty with a request for the renewal of negotiations. Adams, in ugly temper, threw out the hint that it appeared that “the supporters of the Administration were the only ones to be heard upon the subject.” With some feeling, Cambreleng, in charge for the Administration, assured the former President that he was ready to enter upon a free accommodation of differences that a united front might be presented to the Nation’s adversary. This little storm cleared the atmosphere, and on the next day when the debate began in earnest it was wholesomely free from purely partisan rancor. Then it was that Adams explained his dissent from the phrasing. He objected to the assertion that negotiations should be discontinued. “The only alternative compatible with the honor of nations is war,” he said. If a continuance of the negotiations failed, he was ready for the “hazard of war.” He realized that “the interest and honor of the Nation” were at stake. The pledge of France had been given, and the sole question was “whether we shall suffer the nation that made this treaty to violate it.” We could not afford to compromise to the extent of a penny.

“What will be the consequences,” demanded the fiery old man eloquent, “if you give it up? Why, every nation will consider itself at liberty to sport with all treaties that are made with us.”