Rise of the New West, 1819-1829

by Frederick Jackson Turner

For eight years President Monroe had administered the executive department of the federal government-years that have been called the "Era of Good Feeling." The reader who has followed the evidences of factional controversy among the rival presidential candidates in the cabinet, and noted the wide-spread distress following the panic of 1819, the growing sectional jealousies, the first skirmishes in the slavery struggle, and the clamor of a democracy eager to assert its control and profoundly distrustful of the reigning political powers, will question the reality of this good feeling. On the other hand, in spite of temporary reverses, the nation as a whole was bounding with vigor in these years of peace after war; and if in truth party was not dead, and a golden age had not yet been given to the American people, at least the heat of formal party contest had been for a time allayed. The bitterness of political warfare in the four years which we are next to consider might well make the administration of the last of the Virginia dynasty seem peaceful and happy by contrast.

Monroe's presidential career descended to a close in a mellow sunset of personal approval, despite the angry clouds that gathered on the horizon. He had grown in wisdom by his experiences, and, although not a genius, he had shown himself able, by patient and dispassionate investigation, to reach judgments of greater value than those of more brilliant but less safe statesmen. Candor, fair- mindedness, and magnanimity were attributed to him even by those who were engaged in bitter rivalry for the office which he now laid down. He was not rapid or inflexible in his decisions between the conflicting views of his official family; but in the last resort he chose between policies, accepted responsibility, and steered the ship of state between the shoals and reefs that underlay the apparently placid sea of the "Era of Good Feeling." How useful were his services in these transitional years appeared as soon as John Quincy Adams grasped, with incautious hands, the helm which Monroe relinquished.[Footnote: On Monroe's personal traits, see Adams, Memoirs, IV., 240 et passim; J. Q. Adams, Eulogy on the Life and Character of James Monroe; Schouler, United States, IV., 201-207.] "Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors," wrote President Adams, in his first annual message, "I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence." In his reply to the notification of his election by the House, after adverting to the fact that one of his competitors had received a larger minority of the electoral vote than his own, he declared that, if his refusal of the office would enable the people authoritatively to express their choice, he should not hesitate to decline; [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 293.] he believed that perhaps two-thirds of the people were adverse to the result of the election.[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VII., 98; cf. ibid., VI., 481.] In truth, the position of the new president was a delicate one, and he was destined neither to obtain the indulgence asked nor the popular ratification which he craved. By receiving his office from the hands of the House of Representatives in competition with a candidate who had a larger electoral vote, he fell heir to the popular opposition which had been aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially against the selection of the president by the congressional caucus. More than this, it was charged that Clay's support was the result of a corrupt bargain, by which the Kentucky leader was promised the office of secretary of state. This accusation was first publicly made by an obscure Pennsylvania member, George Kremer, who, in an unsigned communication to a newspaper, when Clay's decision to vote for Adams was first given out, reported that overtures were said to have been made by the friends of Adams to the friends of Clay, offering him the appointment of secretary of state for his aid to elect Adams; and that the friends of Clay gave this information to the friends of Jackson, hinting that for the same price they would close with the Tennesseean. When these overtures, said the writer, were rejected, Clay transferred his interest to Adams. [Footnote: Niles' Register, XXVII., 353.]

Stung to the quick, Clay rushed into print with a denunciation of the writer as a dastard and a liar, and held him responsible to the laws which govern men of honor. [Footnote: Ibid., 355.] In reply to this evident invitation to a duel, Kremer avowed his authorship and his readiness to prove his charges. If Clay had known the identity of his traducer, he would hardly have summoned him to the field of honor, for Kremer was a well-meaning but credulous and thick-headed rustic noted solely for his leopard-skin overcoat. The speaker, therefore, abandoned his first idea, and asked of the House an investigation of the charges, which Kremer reiterated his readiness to prove. But when the investigating committee was ready to take testimony, the Pennsylvania congressman refused to appear. He was, in fact, the tool of Jackson's managers, who greatly preferred to let the scandal go unprobed by Congress. If Clay transferred his following to Adams, the charge would gain credence with the masses; if he were not made secretary of state, it would be alleged that honest George Kremer had exposed the bargain and prevented its consummation. In vain, in two successive and elaborate addresses, [Footnote: Address of 1825 and of 1827, in Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), V., 299, 341.] did Clay marshal evidence that, before he left Kentucky, he had determined to vote for Adams in preference to Crawford or Jackson, and that there was no proof of Kremer's charge. [Footnote: Clay, Address to the Public (1827), 52; ibid., Works (Colton's ed.), IV., 109; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 4.] In vain was evidence produced to show that friends of Jackson [Footnote: Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), I., chaps. xvi., xvii.; Parton, Jackson, III., 56, 110-116.] and Crawford [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 464, 513, VII., 91.] solicited Clay's support by even more unblushing offers of political reward than those alleged against Adams. To the end of his career, the charge remained a stumbling-block to Clay's ambitions, and the more he denounced and summoned witnesses [Footnote: See, for example, testimony of congressmen, Niles' Register, XXVIII., 69, 133, 134, 203; Address of David Trimble (1828).] the more the scandal did its poisonous work.

After all, it was Adams who gave the charge immortality. Even if he had appreciated the power of public feeling he would not have hesitated. If the accusation was a challenge to the spirited Kentuckian, it was a call to duty to the Puritan. Two days after his election, Adams, asking Monroe's advice about the composition of the cabinet, announced that he had already determined to appoint Clay secretary of state, "considering it due," said he, "to his talents and services to the western section of the Union, whence he comes, and to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 508.] Clay spoke lightly of the threatened opposition as a mere temporary ebullition of disappointment at the issue of the election, [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 509.] and after a short interval accepted the appointment. [Footnote: For his reasons, see Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), IV., 114, 192.]

Up to this time Jackson had kept his temper remarkably; but now that Adams had called to the department of state the man who made him president, the man who justified his choice by the statement that Jackson was a "military chieftain," the great deep of his wrath was stirred. Clay seemed to him the "Judas of the West," and he wrote a letter, probably for publication, passionately defending the disinterestedness of his military services, calling attention to the fact that Clay had never yet risked himself for his country, and soothing himself in defeat by this consolation: "No midnight taper burnt by me; no secret conclaves were held; no cabals entered into to persuade any one to a violation of pledges given or of instructions received. By me no plans were concerted to impair the pure principles of our republican institutions, nor to prostrate that fundamental maxim, which maintains the supremacy of the people's will." [Footnote: Niles' Register, XXVIII., 20; Parton, Jackson, III., 77.]

On his way back to Tennessee, he spread broadcast in conversation his conviction that "honest George Kremer" had exposed a corrupt bargain between Clay and Adams, [Footnote: Parton, Jackson, III., 107.] and to this belief he stuck through the rest of his life, appealing, when his witnesses failed him, to the stubborn fact of Clay's appointment. [Footnote: Parton, Jackson, III., 110-116.] In October, 1825, Tennessee renominated Jackson, who accepted, and resigned his seat in the Senate, accompanying his action with a plea for a constitutional amendment rendering congressmen ineligible to office during their term of service and for two years thereafter, except in cases of judicial appointment. The purpose was evidently to wage a new campaign to give effect to "the will of the people." [Footnote: Ibid., III., 95; Niles' Register, XXIX., 155.]

Although he realized that an organized opposition would be formed, Adams sought to give a non-partisan character to his administration. [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 295-297.] In spite of the low opinion expressed in his diary for the honesty and political rectitude of the secretary of the treasury, he asked him to retain his office, but Crawford refused. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 506, 508.] Ascertaining that Gallatin would also decline the place, [Footnote: Ibid., Life of Gallatin, 607; Gallatin, Writings, II., 301.] he appointed Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, then serving as minister to England. Jackson's friends made it clear that he would take unkindly the offer of the department of war, and Adams gave that office to James Barbour, of Virginia. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 510; cf. ibid., 450.] He retained Southard, of New Jersey, as secretary of the navy, William Wirt, of Virginia, as attorney-general, and McLean, of Ohio, as postmaster-general. The latter selection proved peculiarly unfortunate, since it gave the influence and the patronage of the post-office to the friends of Jackson. For the mission to England, he first selected Clinton, and after his refusal he persuaded Rufus King to take the post. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 523.] Since King's acceptance of the senatorship at the hands of the Van Buren element in New York, he had been less a representative of the Federalists than in his earlier days; but the appointment met in some measure the obligations which Adams owed to supporters in that party.

Far from organizing party machinery and using the federal office- holders as a political engine, he rigidly refused to introduce rotation in office at the expiration of the term of the incumbent—a principle which "would make the Government a perpetual and unintermitting scramble for office." [Footnote: Ibid., 521.] He determined to renominate every person against whom there was no complaint which would have warranted his removal. By this choice he not only retained many outworn and superfluous officers and thus fostered a bureaucratic feeling, [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 76- 78.] but he also furnished to his enemies local managers of the opposition, for these office-holders were, in general, appointees of Crawford, in his own interest, or of McLean, in the interest of Calhoun and Jackson.

So rigidly did Adams interpret his duty in the matter that only twelve removals altogether were made during his term. [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 72.] He even retained the surveyor of the port of Philadelphia, whose negligence had occasioned the loss of large sums of money to the government and whose subordinates were hostile to Adams. Under such conditions, the friends of the administration had to contend not only against their enemies, but against the Adams administration itself, which left its power in the hands of its enemies to be wielded against its friends. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VII., 163.] Binns, the editor of one of the leading administration papers, in an interview was informed that the president did not intend to make any removals. "I bowed respectfully," said the editor, "assuring the president that I had no doubt the consequence would be that he himself would be removed so soon as the term for which he had been elected had expired. This intimation gave the president no concern." [Footnote: Parton, Jackson, III., 92; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 154.]

Another illustration of his tenacity in this matter, even in opposition to the wishes of Henry Clay, was his refusal to remove a naval officer at New Orleans who had made preparations for a public demonstration to insult a member of Congress who had assisted in electing Adams. Clay believed that the administration "should avoid, on the one hand, political persecution, and, on the other, an appearance of pusillanimity." But the president refused to remove a man for an intention not carried into effect, and particularly because he could frame no general policy applicable to this case which would not result in a clean sweep. Four-fifths of the custom officers throughout the Union, he thought, were opposed to his election. To depart in one case from the rule which he had laid down against removals would be to expose himself to demands from all parts of the country. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 546.]