Present me to my friend Mr. Kremer, and believe me,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Andrew Jackson.
In the spring of 1827, Mr. Carter Beverley, of Virginia, was on a visit to General Jackson at the “Hermitage.” The conversation turned on the incidents which preceded the election of Mr. Adams, and General Jackson gave some account of his interview with Mr. Buchanan in December, 1824, speaking of Mr. Buchanan, however, not by name, but as “a leading member of Congress.” Mr. Beverley wrote an account of this conversation to a friend in North Carolina, who published his letter. Mr. Beverley afterward wrote to General Jackson, saying that his letter was not intended for publication, but asking if its statements were correct. General Jackson, without seeing Mr. Beverley’s published letter, then wrote an answer to Mr. Beverley, which was published, and in which he stated that “a leading member of Congress” had, as the agent or confidential friend of Mr. Clay, proposed to him to engage to make Mr. Clay Secretary of State, and that he emphatically declined to do so. Subsequently, in another publication, General Jackson gave the name of Mr. Buchanan as the member who had thus approached him. The public was thus (in 1827) electrified by a statement, coming from General Jackson himself, that Mr. Clay, who had been charged with purchasing his appointment by Mr. Adams as Secretary of State, by his promise to make Mr. Adams President, had attempted, through Mr. Buchanan, to negotiate the same kind of corrupt bargain with General Jackson, on the like promise to make General Jackson President. It is very easy to see how this mistake first arose in the General’s mind. Recollecting the information which Mr. Buchanan had given him of the over-zealous and imprudent conversation of Mr. Markley, who was a known partisan of Mr. Clay,—information which Mr. Buchanan assigned as a reason why the General should disavow the rumor that he had promised to appoint Mr. Adams Secretary,—General Jackson had evidently come to misunderstand the object of Mr. Buchanan in mentioning what Mr. Markley had said. It must be remembered that at this time (1827) there was an angry and excited controversy going on, respecting the supposed bargain between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams; that Mr. Clay was publishing, and that General Jackson was publishing; that General Jackson undoubtedly believed that there had been an improper understanding between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, and it was very natural for him to take up the idea that Mr. Buchanan, by mentioning what Mr. Markley had said, stood ready, as a friend of Mr. Clay, to propose and carry out a similar bargain with himself. Apart from Mr. Buchanan’s denial, there seems to be an intrinsic improbability that one who had been an earnest supporter of General Jackson in the popular election, and who feared that even a rumor of his intended appointment of Mr. Adams would injure the General in the House of Representatives, and who knew that it would greatly injure him in Pennsylvania, if it were not contradicted, should have exerted himself to get from the General a promise to make Mr. Clay Secretary of State. Promises, or rumors of promises, in regard to this appointment, were the very things which Mr. Buchanan was interested to prevent. It was very unfortunate that General Jackson did not afterwards and always see, that the mention by Mr. Buchanan of Mr. Markley’s wishes, was intended to present to his (the General’s) mind the importance of his denial of the rumor that he had said he would appoint Mr. Adams. In all that scene of intrigue—and apart from any thing said or done by the principal persons concerned in that great struggle, there was intrigue—General Jackson acted with the rigid integrity that belonged to his character. Mr. Buchanan acted with no less integrity. He wished to prevent General Jackson’s cause from being injured in the House and in the country, by unfounded rumors with which the heated atmosphere of Washington was filled; and he could have had no motive for seeking to make Mr. Clay Secretary of State, at the expense of exposing General Jackson to the same kind of rumor in regard to Mr. Clay which he was anxious to counteract in regard to Mr. Adams.
After the publication of General Jackson’s letter to Mr. Beverley, Mr. Buchanan wrote to a friend as follows:
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. INGHAM.]
Lancaster, July 12, 1827.
Dear Sir:—
I received yours yesterday evening, and hasten to give it an immediate answer. With you, I regret the publication of General Jackson’s letter to Mr. Beverley. It may do harm, but cannot do good. The conversation which I held with the General will not sustain his letter, although it may furnish a sufficient reason for his apprehensions. My single purpose was to ascertain from him whether he had ever declared he would appoint Mr. Adams Secretary of State in case he were elected President. As to the propriety and policy of propounding this question to him, I had reflected much, and had taken the advice of a distinguished Jackson man, then high in office in Pennsylvania. I had no doubt at the time that my question, if answered at all, would be answered in the negative; but I wished it to come from himself that he stood uncommitted upon this subject.
In my interview with the General (which, by the way, was in the street), I stated the particulars of a conversation between Philip S. Markley and myself, as one reason why he should answer the question which I had propounded. Out of my repetition of this conversation the mistake must have arisen. This conversation would be one link in the chain of testimony, but of itself it is altogether incomplete.