Notwithstanding General Jackson’s great popularity and influence throughout the country, a large majority of the Senate were opposed to his administration and his measures. This opposition became concentrated and intensified by the President’s removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States, into certain selected State banks. A resolution, strongly condemning this act, had been carried in the Senate, by twenty-eight yeas against eighteen nays, on the 28th of March, 1834, nine months before Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate. This vote may therefore be regarded as a general index of the relative strength of parties in that body when Mr. Buchanan became a member of it. How this great opposition majority became so changed three years afterward, that the friends of General Jackson were able to expunge this resolution from the records of the Senate, will appear hereafter. The leading Senators of the opposition at the commencement of the session, in December, 1834, and distinctly classified as Whigs, were Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Clayton of Delaware, Mr. Ewing of Ohio, and Mr. Frelinghuysen and Mr. Southard of New Jersey.
The most important Democratic or administration Senators were, Messrs. Wright of New York, Benton of Missouri, and Mr. King of Alabama. Calhoun stood apart from both the political parties. He had been chosen Vice-President in 1828 by the same party which then elected General Jackson for the first time, and he then had the same electoral votes, with the exception of seven of the votes of Georgia. He was consequently in the Chair of the Senate in 1830, when the great debate took place between Mr. Webster and Colonel Hayne on the subject of nullification. In 1833, when the South Carolina doctrine of nullification culminated in a threatened resistance to collection of the Federal revenue within her borders, and made it necessary for General Jackson to issue his celebrated proclamation, Mr. Calhoun was elected as a senator in Congress from South Carolina, and he determined to resign the Vice-Presidency. In December, 1832, he took his seat in the Senate. The breach between him and the President, which was caused by the attitude of the latter towards the “Nullifiers,” was understood to be widened by the probability that Mr. Van Buren would be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, to succeed General Jackson in 1837, and by the well-known wish of the latter that Mr. Van Buren should become his successor. The breach between Mr. Calhoun and the President became still farther widened, when the State of South Carolina adopted her famous ordinance for preventing the collection of the Federal revenue within her limits. From General Jackson’s known firmness of character and tendency to severe measures, Mr. Calhoun found himself in some personal danger. Then followed Mr. Clay’s interposition, by means of his compromise tariff, which was designed to ward off an actual collision between the federal executive and the nullifying leaders of South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun was thus saved from personal humiliation, and perhaps from some personal peril. But no real reconciliation took place between him and General Jackson, and he remained in an isolated position in the Senate, a great and powerful debater, vindicating with singular ability, when a proper occasion offered, his peculiar views of the nature of the Constitution, always discharging his duties as a senator with entire purity, but never acting upon any measure as a member of either of the political parties into which the Senate was divided.
Taking the entire composition of the Senate at that period, with the opposing forces of the Democratic and the Whig parties, and with Mr. Calhoun’s intermediate position, there has never been a period in the history of that body, when there was more real power of debate displayed, or when public measures were more thoroughly considered. If Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster towered above the other senators, there were not wanting men who may be said to have approached them in ability; and if Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, on the Whig side, sometimes appeared to give to the opposition a preponderating intellectual force, it was not always a supremacy that could be said to be undisputed by their Democratic opponents, although they did for a long time control the action of the Senate. The country looked on upon these great senatorial contests with predilections which varied, of course, with the political feelings and associations of men; but the President, his measures and his policy, notwithstanding the power of the Senatorial opposition, continued to grow in the popular favor, and to receive constant proofs of the popular support. To some of the principal questions of the time I now turn. The first in which Mr. Buchanan took part, soon after he entered the Senate, related to the conduct of France.
In 1831 a convention was concluded between the United States and the government of King Louis Philippe, by which the latter bound itself to pay to the United States twenty-five millions of francs, for the liquidation of certain claims of American citizens against France, and to be distributed to the claimants by the American Government, as it should determine. The Government of the United States, on its part, engaged to pay to the French government one million five hundred thousand francs, to liquidate the claims, urged by the French government for its citizens, on the United States, and to be distributed by the French government, as it should determine. Each party bound itself to pay its stipulated sum in six annual instalments: those payable by the United States to be deducted from the larger sums payable by France. The first French instalment, $4,166,666.66, became due at the expiration of one year next following the exchange of ratifications. The exchange of ratifications took place February 2d, 1832, and consequently the first French instalment became due on the 3d of February, 1833. A bill of exchange was drawn by the Secretary of the Treasury on the French Minister of Finance, for the amount of the instalment, and sold to the Bank of the United States. Payment was refused at the French Treasury when the bill was presented, for the reason that the Legislative Chambers had made no appropriation to meet the instalment. We have seen that when Mr. Buchanan was in Paris, in the summer of 1833 he held conversations on this matter with the Duc de Broglie and Count Pozzo di Borgo; from which it appears that moderate and rational persons in France then believed that the Chambers would at the next session make the necessary appropriation. In December, 1833, President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, adverted to this subject, and said that he had despatched an envoy to the French government to attend to it, and that he had received from that government assurances that at the next meeting of the Chambers it would be brought forward and satisfactorily disposed of. He added that if he should be disappointed in this hope, the subject would be again brought before Congress, “in such manner as the occasion might require.” The opposition in France regarded this as a menace. The subject was brought before the Chambers several times, but in April, 1834, the appropriation necessary to carry the treaty into effect was refused. The king’s government then sent a national vessel to this country, bearing the king’s assurance that the Chambers should be called together, after the election of new members, as soon as the charter would permit, and that the influence of the executive should be exerted to procure the necessary appropriation, in time to be communicated to the President before the assembling of Congress in December, 1834. The Chambers met on the 31st of July, but this matter was not acted upon, and they were prorogued to the 29th of December. New assurances were given by the French government that at the ensuing session the appropriation should be pressed. In his annual message of December, 1834, the President made severe comments on the course of all branches of the French government, and recommended a law authorizing reprisals on French property, in case the appropriation should not be made at the ensuing session of the Chambers. This was the attitude of the matter when Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate.[[51]]
The Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, at the head of which was Mr. Clay, had made a report against the adoption of the President’s recommendation. On the 14th of January, (1835) on a resolution introduced by Mr. Cuthbert of Georgia, Mr. Buchanan took occasion to say:
In Senate, January 14, 1835.
France had, before the close of the last session of Congress, declared that it was the unanimous determination of the king’s government to appear before the new legislature with its treaty and its bill in hand, and that its intention was to do all that the charter allowed to hasten, as much as possible, the period of the new presentation of the rejected law. The President rested satisfied with this assurance, and, on the faith of it, did not present the subject to Congress. How has France redeemed this pledge? Has that government hastened, as much as possible, the presentation of the rejected law? At the first meeting of the new legislature the law was not presented; and in the face of this engagement, the Chambers were prorogued, not to meet in the autumn, but on the 29th of December, the very latest day which custom had sanctioned. If this assurance had any meaning at all, it was that the Chambers should be convened at least in sufficient time to communicate to the President information that they had assembled, before the meeting of Congress. The President, at the date of the message, was not aware that the Chambers would assemble on the first of the month. No such information had been communicated to him. It now appears that they did assemble on that day. And the only reason that he should vote for the resolution was, that he was willing to wait until the result of their deliberations could be known.
What effect this circumstance might have had on the President’s mind, had he known of its existence, he was not prepared to say. He had no information to give on that subject.
There is a point, sir, said Mr. Buchanan, in the intercourse between nations, at which diplomacy must end, and a nation must either consent to abandon her rights, or assert them by force. After having negotiated for a quarter of a century to obtain a treaty to redress the wrongs of our injured citizens, and after the French Chamber has once deliberately rejected that treaty, will not this point have been reached, should the Chamber again refuse to make the appropriation? If this be so, is it not right, is it not fair, to present the alternative to France? Would she not have just cause to complain if we should not adopt this very course? To inform her frankly and freely that we have arrived at this point, I am solemnly convinced, is the best diplomacy to which we can resort to obtain redress for the wrongs of the injured claimants. France will then have the alternative fairly presented; and it will be for her to decide whether she will involve herself in war with her ancient ally, rather than pay those claims which the Executive branch of her Government have determined to be just by a solemn treaty. Such an attitude on the part of America will do more for the execution of the treaty than any temporizing measures of policy which we can adopt. I never was more clearly impressed with the truth of any proposition.
France, from the language of the President, will have no right to consider this a menace. It is no more than to say, diplomacy has ended, and the treaty must be executed, or we shall, however reluctantly, be compelled to take redress into our own hands. France is a brave and a chivalrous nation; her whole history proves that she is not to be intimidated, even by Europe in arms; but she is wise as well as warlike. To inform her that our rights must be asserted, is to place her in the serious and solemn position of deciding whether she will resist the payment of a just debt by force. Whenever she is convinced that this result is inevitable, the money will be paid; and although I hope I may be mistaken, I believe there will be no payment until she knows we shall assume this attitude. France has never appeared to regard the question in this serious light.