Part of Jackson’s leisure was employed in reading Erskine’s correspondence, although he would have done better had he neglected this customary duty, and had he brought to his diplomacy no more prejudices than such as belonged to his nature and training. His disgust with Erskine only added to his antipathy for Erskine’s objects, methods, and friends.
“My visitors,” he wrote, “are a different set from Erskine’s, I perceive; many of them he says he never saw. Per contra, many of the Democrats who were his intimates never come to me, and I am well pleased and somewhat flattered by the distinction.... Erskine is really a greater fool than I could have thought it possible to be, and it is charity to give him that name.... Now that I have gone through all his correspondence, more than ever am I at a loss to comprehend how he could have been allowed to remain here for the last two years.... To be obliged to wade through such a mass of folly and stupidity, and to observe how our country has been made, through Erskine’s means, the instrument of these people’s cunning, is not the least part of my annoyance. Between them our cause is vilified indeed. The tone which Erskine had accustomed them to use with him, and to use without any notion whatever being taken of it, is another great difficulty I have had to overcome. Every third word was a declaration of war.”
The month passed only too soon for Jackson’s comfort, and October 1, punctual to his word, the President arrived. The next day Erskine had his farewell audience, and October 3 Jackson was officially received. Merry’s experience had not been without advantage to both sides; and Jackson, who seemed to feel more contempt for his own predecessors—Merry and Erskine—than for his American antagonists, accepted everything in good part.
“Madison, the President, is a plain and rather mean-looking little man, of great simplicity of manners, and an inveterate enemy to form and ceremony; so much so that I was officially informed that my introduction to him was to be considered as nothing more than the reception of one gentleman by another, and that no particular dress was to be worn on the occasion,—all which I was very willing to acquiesce in. Accordingly I went in an afternoon frock, and found the President in similar attire. Smith, the Secretary of State, who had walked from his office to join me, had on a pair of dusty boots, and his round hat in his hand. When he had introduced us he retired, and the President then asked me to take a chair. While we were talking, a negro servant brought in some glasses of punch and a seed-cake. The former, as I had been in conference the whole morning, served very agreeably to wet, or whet, my whistle, and still more strongly to contrast this audience with others I had had with most of the sovereigns of Europe.”
Perhaps this passing allusion to previous acquaintance with “most of the sovereigns of Europe” threw a light, somewhat too searching, into the recesses of Jackson’s character. The weakness was pardonable, and not specially unsuited to success in his career, but showed itself in private as a form of self-deception which promised ill for his coming struggle. Madison’s civility quite misled him.
“I do not know,” he wrote October 24, “that I had ever more civility and attention shown me than at a dinner at the President’s yesterday, where I was treated with a distinction not lately accorded to a British minister in this country. A foolish question of precedence, which ever since Merry’s time has been unsettled, and has occasioned some heart-burnings among the ladies, was also decided then by the President departing from his customary indifference to ceremony and etiquette, and taking Elizabeth in to dinner, while I conducted Mrs. Madison.”
Evidently this deference pleased the British minister, who saw nothing behind it but a social triumph for himself and his wife; yet he had already been forced to protest against the ceremonial forms with which Madison studiously surrounded him, and had he read Shakspeare rather than Erskine’s writings, he might have learned from Julius Cæsar the general diplomatic law that “when love begins to sicken and decay, it useth ever an enforced ceremony.” A man of tact would have seen that from the moment Madison became formal he was dangerous. The dinner of October 23 at the White House came at a moment when Jackson had been so carefully handled and so effectually disarmed as to stand at Madison’s mercy; and although he was allowed to please himself by taking Mrs. Madison to dinner, the “mean-looking little man” at the head of the table, was engaged only in thinking by what stroke the British minister’s official life should be most quickly and quietly ended.
Jackson’s interviews with Robert Smith began immediately after the President’s arrival in Washington. The first conversation was reported by the British minister to his Government in language so lifelike, but showing such astonishment on both sides at the attitude of each, as to give it place among the most natural sketches in American diplomatic history. After some fencing on the subject of Erskine’s responsibility, Jackson passed to the subject of his own instructions, and remarked that he was ordered to wait for propositions from the President.
“Here the American minister,” reported Jackson,[91] “exhibited signs of the utmost surprise and disappointment. He seemed to be so little prepared for this close of my conversation that he was some time before he could recollect himself sufficiently to give me any answer at all. Expecting to meet suggestions of a totally different nature, and finding that what he had ready to say to them did not suit the occasion, he seemed to require some time and reflection to new arrange his thoughts. Accordingly a considerable pause in our conversation took place, which at length he broke in upon by saying: ‘Then, sir, you have no proposal to make to us,—no explanation to give? How shall we be able to get rid of the Non-intercourse Act?’”
Robert Smith was a wearisome burden to Madison, and his incompetence made no agreeable object of study; but his apparent bewilderment at Jackson’s audacity was almost as instructive as the sincere astonishment of the Englishman at the effect of his own words. The game of cross-purposes could not be more naturally played. Robert Smith had been requested by Madison to ascertain precisely what Jackson’s instructions were; and both at the first and at a second interview he pressed this point, always trying to discover what Jackson had to offer, while the Englishman always declined to offer anything whatever. Two conversations satisfied the President that Jackson’s hands were fast tied, and that he could open no door of escape. Then Madison gently set the Secretary of State aside, and, as openly as the office of Chief Magistrate permitted, undertook to deal with the British minister.