All of this was done not without strong protest from other people besides the Indians. Some who objected did so for political effect. When Clay and Calhoun, for example, thundered in the Senate against the removal treaties, they were merely seeking to discredit the Administration; both held views on Indian policy which were substantially the same as Jackson’s. But there was also objection on humanitarian grounds; and the Society of Friends and other religious bodies engaged in converting and educating the southern tribes used all possible influence to defeat the plan of removal. On the whole, however, the country approved what was being done. People felt that the further presence of large, organized bodies of natives in the midst of a rapidly growing white population, and of tribes setting themselves up as quasi-independent nations within the bounds of the States, was an anomaly that could not last; and they considered that, distressing as were many features of the removals, both white man and red man would ultimately be better off.
[CHAPTER XI]
THE JACKSONIAN SUCCESSION
“Oh, hang General Jackson,” exclaimed Fanny Kemble one day, after dinner, in the cabin of the ship that brought her, in the summer of 1832, to the United States. Even before she set foot on our shores, the brilliant English actress was tired of the din of politics and bored by the incessant repetition of the President’s name. Subsequently she was presented at the White House and had an opportunity to form her own opinion of the “monarch” whose name and deeds were on everybody’s lips; and the impression was by no means unfavorable. “Very tall and thin he was,” says her journal, “but erect and dignified; a good specimen of a fine old, well-battered soldier; his manners perfectly simple and quiet, and, therefore, very good.”
Small wonder that the name of Jackson was heard wherever men and women congregated in 1832! Something more than half of the people of the country were at the moment trying to elect the General to a second term as President, and something less than half were putting forth their best efforts to prevent such a “calamity.” Three years of Jacksonian rule had seen the civil service revolutionized, the Cabinet banished from its traditional place in the governmental system, and the conduct of the executive branch given a wholly new character and bent. Internal improvements had been checked by the Maysville Road veto. The United States Bank had been given a blow, through another veto, which sent it staggering. Political fortunes had been made and unmade by a wave of the President’s hand. The first attempt of a State to put the stability of the Union to the test had brought the Chief Executive dramatically into the rôle of defender of the nation’s dignity and perpetuity. No previous President had so frequently challenged the attention of the public; none had kept himself more continuously in the forefront of political controversy.
Frail health and close application to official duties prevented Jackson from traveling extensively during his eight years in the White House. He saw the Hermitage but once in this time, and on but one occasion did he venture far from the capital. This was in the summer of 1833, when he toured the Middle States and New England northward as far as Concord, New Hampshire. Accompanied by Van Buren, Lewis Cass, Levi Woodbury, and other men of prominence, the President set off from Washington in early June. At Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and intervening cities the party was received with all possible demonstrations of regard. Processions moved through crowded streets; artillery thundered salutes; banquet followed banquet; the enthusiasm of the masses was unrestrained. At New York the furnishings of the hotel suite occupied by the President were eventually auctioned off as mementoes of the occasion.
New England was, in the main, enemy country. None the less, the President was received there with unstinted goodwill. Edward Everett said that only two other men had ever been welcomed in Boston as Jackson was. They were Washington and La Fayette. The President’s determined stand against nullification was fresh in mind, and the people, regardless of party, were not slow to express their appreciation. Their cordiality was fully reciprocated. “He is amazingly tickled with the Yankees,” reports a fellow traveler more noted for veracity than for elegance of speech, “and the more he sees on ’em, the better he likes ’em. ‘No nullification here,’ says he. ‘No,’ says I, ‘General; Mr. Calhoun would stand no more chance down east than a stumped-tail bull in fly time.’”
To the infinite disgust of John Quincy Adams, Harvard University conferred upon the distinguished visitor the honorary degree of doctor of laws. In the course of the ceremony one of the seniors delivered, in Latin, a salutatory concluding with the words: “Harvard welcomes Jackson the President. She embraces Jackson the Patriot.” “A splendid compliment, sir, a splendid compliment,” declared the honored guest after Woodbury had translated the phrases for his benefit; “but why talk about so live a thing as patriotism in a dead language?” At the close of the exercises the students filed past the President and were introduced to him, each greeting him, “to the infinite edification and amusement of the grizzly old warrior,” by his new title Doctor Jackson. The wits of the opposition lost no opportunity to poke fun at the President’s accession to the brotherhood of scholars. As he was closing a speech some days later an auditor called out, “You must give them a little Latin, Doctor.” In nowise abashed, the President solemnly doffed his hat again, stepped to the front of the platform, and resumed: “E pluribus unum, my friends, sine qua non!”
Life at the White House, as one writer has remarked, lost under Jackson something of the good form of the Virginia régime, but it lost nothing of the air of domesticity. Throughout the two Administrations the mistress of the mansion was Mrs. Andrew Jackson Donelson, wife of the President’s secretary and in every respect a very capable woman. Of formality there was little or none. Major Lewis was a member of the presidential household, and other intimates—Van Buren, Kendall, Blair, Hill—dropped in at anytime, “before breakfast, or in the evening, as inclination prompted.” The President was always accessible to callers, whether or not their business was important. Yet he found much time, especially in the evenings, for the enjoyment of his long reed pipe with red clay bowl, in the intimacy of the White House living room, with perhaps a Cabinet officer to read dispatches or other state papers to him in a corner, while the ladies sewed and chatted and half a dozen children played about the room.