The era of good feeling which followed the war of 1812, and which exhausted the high, benign spirit infused into public affairs by Mr. Jefferson, could not be expected to call forth satirical pictures of remarkable quality. The irruption of the positive and uncontrollable Jackson into politics made amends. Once more the mind of the country was astir, and again nearly the whole of the educated class was arrayed against the masses of the people. The two political parties in every country, call them by whatever disguising names we may, are the Rich and the Poor. The rich are naturally inclined to use their power to give their own class an advantage; the poor naturally object; and this is the underlying, ever-operating cause of political strife in all countries that enjoy a degree of freedom; and this is the reason why, in times of political crisis, the instructed class is frequently in the wrong. Interest and pride blind its judgment. In Jackson's day the distinction between the right and the wrong politics was not so clear as in Jefferson's time; but it was, upon the whole, the same struggle disguised and degraded by personal ambitions and antipathies. It certainly called forth as many parodies, burlesques, caricatures, and lampoons as any similar strife since the invention of politics. The coffin handbills repeated the device employed after the Boston massacre of 1774 in order to keep it in memory that General Jackson had ordered six militiamen to be shot for desertion. The hickory poles that pierced the sky at so many cross-roads were a retort to these, admitting but eulogizing the hardness of the man. The sudden breakup of the cabinet in 1831 called forth a caricature which dear Mrs. Trollope described as "the only tolerable one she ever saw in the country." It represented the President seated in his room trying hard to detain one of four escaping rats by putting his foot on its tail. The rat thus held wore the familiar countenance of the Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren, who had been requested to remain till his successor had arrived. It was this picture that gave occasion for one of John Van Buren's noted sayings that were once a circulating medium in the lawyers' offices of New York. "When will your father be in New York?" asked some one. The reply was, "When the President takes off his foot."
The Brains of the Tammany Ring. (Harper's Weekly, October 21st, 1871.)
Then we have Van Buren as a baby in the arms of General Jackson, receiving pap from a spoon in the general's hand; Jackson and Clay as jockeys riding a race toward the Presidential house, Clay ahead; Jackson receiving a crown from Van Buren and a sceptre from the devil; Jackson, Benton, Blair, Kendall, and others, in the guise of robbers, directing a great battering-ram at the front door of the United States Bank; Jackson, as Don Quixote, breaking a very slender lance against one of the marble pillars of the same edifice; Jackson and Louis Philippe as pugilists in a ring, the king having just received a blow that makes his crown topple over his face.
"What are the Wild Waves saying?" (Harper's Weekly, July 9th, 1870.)
Burlesque processions were also much in vogue in 1832 during the weeks preceding the Presidential election. To the oratory of Webster, Preston, Hoffman, and Everett, the Democracy replied by massive hickory poles, fifty feet long, drawn by eight, twelve, or sixteen horses, and ridden by as many young Democrats as could get astride of the emblematic log, waving flags and shouting, "Hurra for Jackson!" Live eagles were borne aloft upon poles, banners were carried exhibiting Nicholas Biddle as Old Nick, and endless ranks of Democrats marched past, each Democrat wearing in his hat a sprig of the sacred tree. And again the cultured orators were wrong, and the untutored Democrats were substantially in the right. Ambition and interest prevented those brilliant men from seeing that in putting down the bank, as in other measures of his stormy administration, the worst that could be truly said of General Jackson was that he did right things in a wrong way. The "shin-plaster" caricature given on the following page is itself a record of the bad consequences that followed his violent method in the matter of the bank. The inflation of 1835 produced the wild land speculation of 1836, which ended in the woful collapse of 1837, the year of bankruptcy and "shin-plaster."
To this period belongs the picture, given on a previous page, which caricatures the old militia system by presenting at one view many of the possible mishaps of training-day. The receipt which John Adams gave for making a free commonwealth enumerated four ingredients—town meetings, training-days, town schools, and ministers. But in the time of Jackson the old militia system had been outgrown, and it was laughed out of existence. Most of the faces in this picture were intended to be portraits.