With sentiments of regard, I remain your friend,
James Buchanan.
CHAPTER XVI.
1841–1842.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT HARRISON—BREACH BETWEEN PRESIDENT TYLER AND THE WHIGS—TYLER’S VETOES—BUCHANAN’S REPLY TO CLAY ON THE VETO POWER—HIS OPPOSITION TO THE BANKRUPT ACT OF 1841.
Rarely has a party in a constitutional government come into power with apparently a better prospect of doing good to their country, and retaining their hold upon it, than did the Whigs under President Harrison. This worthy man, who was by no means a statesman of the first or even of the second order, was a person of fair intelligence, of entire honesty of character, and was moderately well taught in the principles of the Constitution. Almost his first act, after his election, was to tender the chief place in his cabinet to Mr. Webster. This was done with the concurrence of Mr. Clay, whom it suited to remain in the Senate, as its leader, and who expected to carry a new national bank, as a remedy for the existing disordered condition of the currency.
But General Harrison died on the day which completed the first month of his official term.[[64]] His successor, John Tyler, of Virginia, had been chosen as Vice President, with very little attention to his political opinions on the part of those who selected him for that position, or of those who voted for him. When he assumed the duties of the Presidency, he requested the members of General Harrison’s cabinet to remain in office. They were all of that political school which regarded a national bank of some kind as a necessity, and held it to be an instrument of Government which Congress might constitutionally create.[[65]] President Harrison and his official advisers had deemed it necessary to convene an extra session of Congress; and his proclamation had summoned it for the 31st of May. When that day arrived, it began to be remembered that Mr. Tyler had theretofore been among those who denied the power of Congress to establish a national bank, and that as a Senator he had voted against one. Here, then, the long-cherished policy of the leading Whigs, which they claimed had been affirmed by the people in the late election, was in peril of encountering the opposition of the President. In July, a bill for a bank, with power to establish offices of discount and deposit in the several States, either with or without their consent, was passed by both Houses and sent to the President. He returned it on the 16th of August, with his objections, from which it appeared that he held such a bank to be unconstitutional. In the Senate, Mr. Clay made a bitter attack upon the President; the Whigs in the House of Representatives burst into a fury of indignation. But the Whig majority was not large enough to pass the bill over the President’s “veto.” A new bill to create a “Fiscal Corporation of the United States” was brought in. In the mean time the President was denounced in the press by persons who stood in close relations with Mr. Clay, as a man faithless to the party which had made him Vice President. In the debate on the new bill, Mr. Clay again assailed the President with great violence, expecting by that means to prevent a second “veto.” Mr. Tyler remained firm to his own convictions; the second “veto” came; an irreparable breach between the Whigs and the President ensued; four of the members of the cabinet appointed by President Harrison resigned their places, without previous conference with Mr. Webster, who remained in office.[[66]] Thus within six months after the death of General Harrison, the Whigs lost the power of shaping the financial legislation of the country, which their triumphant success in the late election appeared to have given them.
Mr. Buchanan, if not now the leader of the opposition in the Senate, was one of its most prominent debaters. It has already been said that he was not an orator, in the highest sense of that term. But in all the polemics of debate he was exceedingly efficient. He could mingle logic with humor; and although in discussions which were largely occupied with party topics and with grave constitutional questions, he was not sparing in his thrusts, there was a gentleman-like manner in his wielding of the rapier, as well as force in handling the weightier weapon of argument. On both of the bills which were prepared with a good deal of design to encounter the anticipated opposition of Mr. Tyler, and the last of which was almost avowedly gotten up as a means of “heading him off” from a union with the democratic opposition, Mr. Buchanan spoke at the extra session with remarkable energy and effect. His most elaborate speech on the first bill was delivered on the 7th of July. It related partly to the old question of the constitutional power of Congress to create a national bank of any kind; and in the course of this discussion he treated the topic of the binding authority of the Supreme Court of the United States, in reference to the legislative department, with new and forcible illustrations, contending that upon any new bank, Senators were bound to follow their conscientious convictions. The residue of the speech was a severe criticism upon the details of the bill, which he contended would establish a dangerous connection between a moneyed institution and the executive of the United States, far worse than that which had existed in the case of either of the former banks. Such a speech was well calculated to produce a strong impression at once upon the mind of the President before whom the bill was likely to come, and upon the country. Mr. Buchanan looked forward to the time when all question about a national bank, as a fiscal agent of the Government in the collection and disbursement of its revenues, would be at an end, and the “Independent Treasury” system would be resorted to as the substitute.[[67]]
Upon the second bill he spoke on the 2d of September, in reply to Mr. Clay. This scheme of a “Fiscal Corporation of the United States,” which was to have the power of dealing in bills of exchange drawn between different States, or on foreign countries, but was not to be allowed to discount promissory notes, was assailed by Mr. Buchanan with great vigor. His speech placed the advocates of the bill in a somewhat ridiculous position, for it did not appear whether they concurred in founding it on the power to regulate commerce, or on the power to collect and disburse the public revenue: and in the practical operation of the scheme, he made it very plain that it would become a mere “kite-flying” machine. Mr. Clay thought that Mr. Buchanan did not succeed in “attempts at wit.” Buchanan retorted that this was true, and that his opponent as rarely succeeded in argument. An impartial reader would now say that Buchanan had the argument on his side, and a very respectable share of what was certainly a telling species of humor, if it was not wit. His description of the heterogeneous political materials that made up the famous “Harrisburg Convention,”—the body which nominated Harrison and Tyler, with such an entire disregard of the opinions of the candidates that it became afterwards a disputed question whether they were “bank” or “anti-bank” men,—was not an unhappy hit.[[68]]
Under the advice of Mr. Webster, the Whigs postponed the subject of a bank to the next regular session of Congress. But some important measures were passed at the extra session, and approved by the President, among which was a Bankrupt Act. Mr. Buchanan opposed it in the following speech, delivered on the 24th of July, 1841:
The question being on the passage of the bill—