I received your letter of the 15th ultimo on Tuesday last. Your address to the public also reached me upon the same day, in the Cincinnati Advertiser. This communication made it necessary for me to publish in detail the conversation which I held with you concerning the Presidential election on the 30th December, 1824. I shall enclose to you in this letter that part of the Lancaster Journal containing it. I regret, beyond expression, that you believed me to be an emissary from Mr. Clay, since some time before the first Harrisburg convention which nominated you, I have ever been your ardent, decided, and, perhaps without vanity I may say, your efficient friend. Every person in this part of the State of Pennsylvania is well acquainted with the fact. It is, therefore, to me a matter of the deepest regret that you should have supposed me to be the “friend of Mr. Clay.” Had I ever entertained a suspicion that such was your belief, I should have immediately corrected your impression.
I shall annex to this letter a copy of that which I wrote to Duff Green, on the 16th of October last. The person whom I consulted in Pennsylvania was the present Judge Rogers of the Supreme Court—then the Secretary of State of this Commonwealth.
The friends of the Administration are making great efforts in Pennsylvania. We have been busily engaged during the summer in counteracting them. Success has, I think, hitherto attended our efforts. I do not fear the vote of the State, although it is believed every member of the State administration, except General Bernard, is hostile to your election. Your security will be in the gratitude and in the hearts of the people.
Please to present my best respects to Mrs. Jackson, and believe me to be, very respectfully, your friend,
James Buchanan.
This subject of Mr. Buchanan’s connection with the Presidential election of 1824–5, and its incidents, passed out of the public mind, after the publication of the letters which I have quoted. But it was again revived when Mr. Buchanan became a candidate for the Presidency in 1856. All that it is needful to say here is, that for nearly three years after the election of 1824–5, no impression seems to have existed in the mind of General Jackson that Mr. Buchanan’s interview with him in December, 1824, had any purpose but that which Mr. Buchanan has described; but that in 1827, General Jackson, in the heat of the renewed controversies about the supposed bargain between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, took up the erroneous idea that Mr. Buchanan could, if he were to declare the truth, make it apparent that Mr. Clay or his friends had attempted to effect the same kind of bargain with General Jackson, which attempt was indignantly repelled. A candid examination of the facts is all that is needful to convince any one that the General was in error in 1827, and that he was equally in error at a much later period. When he became President, and for a long time thereafter, his confidence in Mr. Buchanan was manifested in so many ways that one is led to believe that his view in 1827 of Mr. Buchanan’s conduct in the matter of the Presidential election of 1824–5 was an exceptional idiosyncrasy, resulting from the excitement which his mind always felt in regard to that event, and which was strongly renewed in him in 1827.
It will be necessary to advert to this subject again, because, when Mr. Buchanan was a candidate for the Presidency in 1856, the whole story was revived by persons who were unfriendly to him, and who then made use of a private letter which was extracted from General Jackson in 1845, in a somewhat artful manner, when he was laboring under a mortal illness. But an account of this political intrigue belongs to the period when it was set on foot.
CHAPTER IV.
1825–1826.
BITTER OPPOSITION TO THE ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS—BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF THE REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS—THE PANAMA MISSION—INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO SLAVERY.
The circumstances attending the election of Mr. Adams led to the formation of a most powerful opposition to his administration, as soon as he was inaugurated. The friends of General Jackson, a numerous and compact body of public men, representing a much larger number of the people of the Union than the friends of Mr. Adams could be said to represent, felt that he had been unfairly deprived of the votes of States in the House of Representatives which should have been given to him. Especially was this the case, they said, in regard to the State of Kentucky, whose Legislature had plainly indicated the wish of a majority of her people that her vote in the House should be given to General Jackson; and when it was announced that Mr. Adams, who had received the unanimous electoral vote of only six States, had obtained the votes of thirteen States in the House, while General Jackson had obtained but seven, and when Mr. Clay had been appointed by Mr. Adams Secretary of State, there was a bitterness of feeling among the supporters of General Jackson, which evinced at once a fixed determination to elect him President at the end of the ensuing four years.