The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

If this reference to the declaration of Webster caused the members of the House to catch their breath, the next sentence brought the Democrats to their feet with prolonged cheers and shouts.

“Sir,” Adams continued, “for a man uttering such sentiments there would be but one step more, a natural and an easy one to take, and that would be, with the enemy at the walls of the Capitol, to join him in battering them down.”

With the Whigs dazed, and the Democrats shouting their approval, James K. Polk, in the chair, was forced to hammer vigorously with his gavel before he could restore any semblance of order—and the old man lunged again at Webster’s argument.

“Are we to be told,” he asked, “that this and the other House must not appropriate money unless by recommendation from the Executive? Why, sir, the Executive has told us now that that appropriation was perfectly in accord with his wishes. Yet here the charge is inverted, and unconstitutional conspiracy and man-worship are imputed to this House on account of that appropriation because it was approved and desired by the Executive. Where was the possibility of a recommendation from the Executive; of statements from the departments; of messages between this and the other House, when the resolution of the House had been passed but the day before?...”

And man-worship? Here Adams refused to follow his fellow Whigs in withholding commendation from the patriotism of the President.

“I will appeal to the House to say whether I am a worshiper of the Executive.... Neither the measure of issuing letters of marque and reprisal, nor the measures of commercial interdict or restriction—neither had that House approved; but the House, and, thank God, the people of the country, have done homage to the spirit which had urged to the recommendation, even of those measures which they did not approve. Why must the House be charged with man-worship and unconstitutional conspiracy, because they passed an appropriation of three millions for the defense of the country, at a time when imminent danger of war was urged, as resulting from that very resolution, which, but the night before, passed by a unanimous vote? Because, forsooth, that appropriation had not been asked for by the Executive; and yet because it was approved by the Executive.”

In reviewing the action of both Senate and House on the President’s recommendation, Adams scornfully and contemptuously dismissed the Clay resolution in a few words: “A resolution not only declining to do that which the President had recommended to vindicate the rights and honor of the Nation, but positively determining to do nothing—not even to express a sense of the wrongs which the country was enduring from France.”

“And now, sir,” he continued, “where is all this scaffolding of indignation and horror at the appropriation for specific purposes, for the defense of the country, because, forsooth, it had not been recommended by the Special Message of the Executive? Gone, sir, gone! You shall look for it and you shall not find it. You shall find no more trace of it than, in the tales of the ‘National Intelligencer,’ you shall find of that vote of 217 yeas—which was the real voucher for the purity and patriotism of that appropriation of $3,000,000—denounced to the world by the eloquent orators of the senatorial press as so profligate and corrupt, that an enemy at the gates of this Capitol could not have justified a vote in its favor to arrest his arm, and stay his hand in battering down these walls. You shall find no more trace of it upon the journals of the Senate than you shall find of sensibility to the wrongs which our country was enduring from France.”

The old man eloquent thence passed to the complaint that the Senate was ignorant of the reasons impelling the House to the adoption of the amendment, and tore it to shreds; and then on to the responsibility for the failure of the bill. This, he contended, was due to the very spirit of the Senate—its temper an insult to the President and the House. The Webster motion to adhere, he said, was always considered a “challenge,” and had never before been made at such an early stage of a difference between the Houses. “It was a special disposition,” he said, “to cast odium on the House, a special bravado that induced the Senate thus to draw the sword, and throw away the scabbard—and they adhered.”

Turning then to the willingness of the Senate, when it was too late, to accept an amendment for $800,000 instead of $3,000,000, he continued: