Rise of the New West, 1819-1829

by Frederick Jackson Turner

The president who rejected these favorite instruments of political success was unable to find compensation in personal popularity or the graces of manner. Cold and repellent, he leaned backward in his desire to do the right, and alienated men by his testy and uncompromising reception of advances. And yet there never was a president more in need of conciliating, for already the forces of the opposition were forming. Even before his election he had been warned that the price of his victory would be an organized opposition to the measures of the administration, [Footnote: Ibid., 476, 481, 495, 506, 510.] and that Calhoun and his friends in South Carolina and Pennsylvania would be the leaders. [Footnote: Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1899, II., 230, 231; Calhoun, Works, III., 51; Sargent, Public Men and Events, I., 106, 109.]

The union of the opposition forces into a party was perfected slowly, for between Crawford, Jackson, and Calhoun there had been sharp rivalry. Virginia by no means relished the idea of the promotion of the military hero; and in New York Jackson had been sustained by Clinton in 1824 against Crawford, the candidate of Van Buren. The Senate ratification of the nomination of Clay (March 7, 1825) foreshadowed the alliance of southern interests with those of Pennsylvania; [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 525, VII., 69.] but only fourteen votes, including that of Jackson, were mustered against him, while among the twenty-seven who ratified the nomination was Van Buren. By the opening of the nineteenth Congress, in December, 1825, however, the situation might well have convinced Adams of the need of caution. Taylor, the administration candidate for speaker, was elected by a majority of only five against his opponents' combined vote, and, in the Senate, Calhoun appointed committees unfriendly to the president.

Nevertheless, in his first annual message [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 299.] Adams challenged his critics by avowing the boldest doctrines of loose construction. The tide of sentiment in favor of internal improvements was so strong [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 348.] that, to insure its complete success, it would have been necessary only for the executive to cease to interpose the checks which Monroe had placed upon this movement. Prudence would have dictated to a president anxious to enlarge his following the avoidance of irritating utterances upon this point. But Adams characteristically threw away his opportunity, choosing rather to make extreme proposals which he realized had slight chance of success, and to state broad principles of national power.

In this respect he went even further than Clay approved. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VII., 59, 61-63.] Defining the object of civil government as the improvement of the condition of those over whom it is established, not only did he urge the construction of roads and canals, but, in his enlarged view of internal improvements, he included the establishment of a national university, the support of observatories, "light-houses of the skies," and the exploration of the interior of the United States and of the northwest coast. Appealing to the example of European nations, as well as of various states of the Union, he urged Congress to pass laws for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the "encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." "Were we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority?" Such a profession of faith as this sounded strangely in the ears of Americans, respectful of their constituents and accustomed to regard government as a necessary evil. At a stroke, Adams had destroyed his fair prospects of winning the support of Virginia, and, what is more, he had aroused the fears of the whole slave-holding section.

At the beginning of 1824 the legislature of Ohio passed a resolution in favor of the emancipation and colonization of the adult children of slaves, and was supported by the legislatures of at least six northern states, including Pennsylvania, while the proposal was attacked by all the states of the lower south. [Footnote: Ames, State Docs. on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. II (with citations); McMaster, United States, V., 204.] This followed soon after the excitement aroused by an attempted Negro insurrection in Charleston, [Footnote: McMaster, United States, V., 199; Atlantic Monthly, VII., 728.] in 1822, and from the fears aroused by this plot the south had not yet recovered. Already Governor Wilson, of South Carolina, was sounding the alarm in a message [Footnote: December 1, 1824. Ames, State Docs. on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 13; Niles' Register, XXVII., 263, 292.] denouncing the Ohio proposition, and declaring that there would be more "glory in forming a rampart with our bodies on the confines of our territory than to be the victims of a successful rebellion or the slaves of a great consolidated government." Governor Troup, of Georgia, stirred by the same proposition, and especially by a resolution which Senator King, of New York, submitted (February 18, 1825) for the use of the funds arising from the public lands to aid in emancipating and removing the slaves, warned his constituents that very soon "the United States government, discarding the mask, will openly lend itself to a combination of fanatics for the destruction of everything valuable in the southern country"; and he entreated the legislature, "having exhausted the argument, to stand by its arms." [Footnote: Ames, State Docs. on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 17; House Exec. Docs., 19 Cong., 2 Sess., IV., No. 59, pp. 69, 70.] While Georgia was in this frame of mind, the administration, as we shall see, [Footnote: Chap, xviii., below.] completed the breach by refusing to permit the survey of the Indian lands by the state, and thus forced the followers of Crawford in Georgia to unite with their former opponents in South Carolina.

Even in North Carolina, where there had been a considerable sentiment in favor of Adams, [Footnote: Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 79, 88, 106.] the conviction grew strong that, under such a loose construction of the Constitution as that which his message advocated, the abolition of slavery might be effected. The venerable Senator Macon, to whom Adams had at one time looked as a possible candidate for the vice- presidency, believed that the spirit of emancipation was stronger than that for internal improvements; and that the president's loose- construction doctrine would render it possible for Congress to free every slave. [Footnote: Ibid., 76, 106, 107.] One of the senators of South Carolina, desirous of supporting the administration in opposition to the Calhoun faction, begged Adams to include in his message some passage reassuring the south in the matter of slavery, but he received a chilling reply. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VII., 57.] The speaker, Taylor, already obnoxious because of his previous championship of the proposed exclusion of slavery from Missouri, aroused the wrath of the south by presenting to the House a memorial from a "crazy Frenchman," who invited Congress to destroy all the states which should refuse to free their slaves. [Footnote: Ibid., 103.] In short, there was a wide-spread though absolutely unfounded fear that the administration favored emancipation, and that the doctrines avowed in the message of the president gave full constitutional pretext for such action.

On the other hand, the opposition was in no agreement on principles. [Footnote: Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, p. 79.] It was dangerous for the south to marshal its forces on an issue which might alienate the support of Pennsylvania. Much more safely could the enemies of the president press the charge that the favorite of the people had been deprived of his rights by a corrupt political intrigue. Consequently, a flood of proposed amendments to the Constitution poured upon both branches of Congress day after day, demanding the abolition of the choice of president by the House of Representatives and the exclusion of members of Congress from appointment to executive office during their term of service. [Footnote: Ames, Amendments to the Const., in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1896, II., 21, 106, 339, 343.]

These measures were championed by McDuffie, Benton, and other friends of Calhoun and Jackson. Although they were undoubtedly called out in part by a sincere desire to effect a change in a system which was regarded as dangerous, they also served admirably the purpose of popular agitation. In pursuance of the same policy, a report proposing restrictions upon the executive patronage was made in the Senate (1826) by a committee which included Benton and Van Buren. This was accompanied by six bills, transferring a large share of the patronage from the president to the congressmen, and proposing the repeal of the four-year tenure of office act. [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 73; McMaster, United States, V., 432.] Six thousand copies of this report were printed for distribution, and the Puritan president, so scrupulous in the matter of the civil service that he disgusted his own followers, found himself bitterly attacked throughout the country as a corrupt manipulator of patronage.

The first fully organized opposition, however, was effected in the debates over Adams's proposal to send delegates to the Panama Congress, for here was a topic that permitted combined attack under many flags. In the spring of 1825 the ministers of Mexico and Colombia sounded Clay to ascertain whether the United States would welcome an invitation to a congress [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 531, 536, 542; International Am. Conference, Reports, etc., IV., "The Congress of 1826 at Panama," 23.] initiated by Bolivar, with the design of consolidating the Spanish-American policy, though at first the United States had not been included among the states invited. [Footnote: International Am. Conference, Reports, etc., IV., "The Congress of 1826 at Panama," 155.] Clay was predisposed to accept the overture, for he saw in the congress an opportunity to complete the American system, which he had long advocated and which appealed strongly to his idealistic view of the destiny of the new republics. [Footnote: See chap, xi., above.] But Adams was skeptical of the future of these new nations, and, as for an American system, he had once (1820) declared that we had one already, "we constituted the whole of it; there is no community of interests or of principles between North and South America." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 176; cf. Am. Hist. Rev., XII., 113.]

Adams had learned something from Clay in the mean time, however, and his own share in announcing the Monroe Doctrine inclined him to favor the idea of such a congress, under careful restrictions, to safeguard our neutrality and independence. So the inquiries were met in a friendly spirit, and formal invitations were received from Mexico, Colombia, and Central America in the fall of 1825, defining more clearly the purposes of the congress and the mode of procedure. [Footnote: International Am. Conference, Report, IV., 24-34.] The explanations still left much to be desired, and it may be doubted whether the president would have accepted the invitation had not Clay's zeal influenced his decision.