As a study of the dark side of political society during this period Mr. Adams's Diary is profoundly interesting. He writes with a charming absence of reserve. If he thinks there is rascality at work, he sets down the names of the knaves and expounds their various villainies of act and motive with delightfully outspoken frankness. All his life he was somewhat prone, it must be confessed, to depreciate the moral characters of others, and to suspect unworthy designs in the methods or ends of those who crossed his path. It was the not unnatural result of his own rigid resolve to be honest. Refraining with the stern conscientiousness, which was in the composition of his Puritan blood, from every act, whether in public or in private life, which seemed to him in the least degree tinged with immorality, he found a sort of compensation for the restraints and discomforts of his own austerity in judging severely the less punctilious world around him. Whatever other faults he had, it is unquestionable that his uprightness was as consistent and unvarying as can be reached by human nature. Yet his temptations were made the greater and the more cruel by the beliefs constantly borne in upon him that his rivals did not accept for their own governance in the contest the same rules by which he was pledged to himself to abide. Jealousy enhanced suspicion, and suspicion in turn pricked jealousy. It is necessary, therefore, to be somewhat upon our guard in accepting his estimates of men and acts at this period; though the broad general impression to be gathered from his treatment of his rivals, even in these confidential pages, is favorable at least to his justice of disposition and honesty of intention.
At the outset Mr. Clay excited Mr. Adams's most lively resentment. The policy which seemed most promising to that gentleman lay in antagonism to the Administration, whereas, in the absence of substantial party issues, there seemed, at least to members of that Administration, to be no proper grounds for such antagonism. When, therefore, Mr. Clay found or devised such grounds, the President and his Cabinet, vexed and harassed by the opposition of so influential a man, not unnaturally attributed his tactics to selfish and, in a political sense, corrupt motives. Thus Mr. Adams stigmatized his opposition to the Florida treaty as prompted by no just objection to its stipulations, but by a malicious wish to bring discredit upon the negotiator. Probably the charge was true, and Mr. Clay's honesty in opposing an admirable treaty can only be vindicated at the expense of his understanding,—an explanation certainly not to be accepted. But when Mr. Adams attributed to the same motive of embarrassing the Administration Mr. Clay's energetic endeavors to force a recognition of the insurgent states of South America, he exaggerated the inimical element in his rival's motives. It was the business of the President and Cabinet, and preëminently of the Secretary of State, to see to it that the country should not move too fast in this very nice and perilous matter of recognizing the independence of rebels. Mr. Adams was the responsible minister, and had to hold the reins; Mr. Clay, outside the official vehicle, cracked the lash probably a little more loudly than he would have done had he been on the coach-box. It may be assumed that in advocating his various motions looking to the appointment of ministers to the new states and to other acts of recognition, he felt his eloquence rather fired than dampened by the thought of how much trouble he was making for Mr. Adams; but that he was at the same time espousing the cause to which he sincerely wished well is probably true. His ardent temper was stirred by this struggle for independence, and his rhetorical nature could not resist the opportunities for fervid and brilliant oratory presented by this struggle for freedom against mediæval despotism. Real convictions were sometimes diluted with rodomontade, and a true feeling was to some extent stimulated by the desire to embarrass a rival.
Entire freedom from prejudice would have been too much to expect from Mr. Adams; but his criticisms of Clay are seldom marked by any serious accusations or really bitter explosions of ill-temper. Early in his term of office he writes that Mr. Clay has "already mounted his South American great horse," and that his "project is that in which John Randolph failed, to control or overthrow the Executive by swaying the House of Representatives." Again he says that "Clay is as rancorously benevolent as John Randolph." The sting of these remarks lay rather in the comparison with Randolph than in their direct allegations. In January, 1819, Adams notes that Clay has "redoubled his rancor against me," and gives himself "free swing to assault me ... both in his public speeches and by secret machinations, without scruple or delicacy." The diarist gloomily adds, that "all public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole Government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals." He was rather inclined to such pessimistic vaticinations; but it must be confessed that he spoke with too much reason on this occasion. In the absence of a sufficient supply of important public questions to absorb the energies of the men in public life, the petty game of personal politics was playing with unusual zeal. As time went on, however, and the South American questions were removed from the arena, Adams's ill-feeling towards Clay became greatly mitigated. Clay's assaults and opposition also gradually dwindled away; go-betweens carried to and fro disclaimers, made by the principals, of personal ill-will towards each other; and before the time of election was actually imminent something as near the entente cordiale was established as could be reasonably expected to exist between competitors very unlike both in moral and mental constitution.[4]
Mr. Adams's unbounded indignation and profound contempt were reserved for Mr. Crawford, partly, it may be suspected by the cynically minded, because Crawford for a long time seemed to be by far the most formidable rival, but partly also because Crawford was in fact unable to resist the temptation to use ignoble means for attaining an end which he coveted too keenly for his own honor. It was only by degrees that Adams began to suspect the underhand methods and malicious practices of Crawford; but as conviction was gradually brought home to him his native tendency towards suspicion was enhanced to an extreme degree. He then came to recognize in Crawford a wholly selfish and scheming politician, who had the baseness to retain his seat in Mr. Monroe's Cabinet with the secret persistent object of giving the most fatal advice in his power. From that time forth he saw in every suggestion made by the Secretary of the Treasury only an insidious intent to lead the Administration, and especially the Department of State, into difficulty, failure, and disrepute. He notes, evidently with perfect belief, that for this purpose Crawford was even covertly busy with the Spanish ambassador to prevent an accommodation of our differences with Spain. "Oh, the windings of the human heart!" he exclaims; "possibly Crawford is not himself conscious of his real motives for this conduct." Even the slender measure of charity involved in this last sentence rapidly evaporated from the poisoned atmosphere of his mind. He mentions that Crawford has killed a man in a duel; that he leaves unanswered a pamphlet "supported by documents" exhibiting him "in the most odious light, as sacrificing every principle to his ambition." Because Calhoun would not support him for the Presidency, Crawford stimulated a series of attacks upon the War Department. He was the "instigator and animating spirit of the whole movement both in Congress and at Richmond against Jackson and the Administration." He was "a worm preying upon the vitals of the Administration in its own body." He "solemnly deposed in a court of justice that which is not true," for the purpose of bringing discredit upon the testimony given by Mr. Adams in the same cause. But Mr. Adams says of this that he cannot bring himself to believe that Crawford has been guilty of wilful falsehood, though convicted of inaccuracy by his own words; for "ambition debauches memory itself." A little later he would have been less merciful. In some vexatious and difficult commercial negotiations which Mr. Adams was conducting with France, Crawford is "afraid of [the result] being too favorable."
To form a just opinion of the man thus unpleasantly sketched is difficult. For nearly eight years Mr. Adams was brought into close and constant relations with him, and as a result formed a very low opinion of his character and by no means a high estimate of his abilities. Even after making a liberal allowance for the prejudice naturally supervening from their rivalry there is left a residuum of condemnation abundantly sufficient to ruin a more vigorous reputation than Crawford has left behind him. Apparently Mr. Calhoun, though a fellow Southerner, thought no better of the ambitious Georgian than did Mr. Adams, to whom one day he remarked that Crawford was "a very singular instance of a man of such character rising to the eminence he now occupies; that there has not been in the history of the Union another man with abilities so ordinary, with services so slender, and so thoroughly corrupt, who had contrived to make himself a candidate for the Presidency." Nor was this a solitary expression of the feelings of the distinguished South Carolinian.
Mr. E. H. Mills, Senator from Massachusetts, and a dispassionate observer, speaks of Crawford with scant favor as "coarse, rough, uneducated, of a pretty strong mind, a great intriguer, and determined to make himself President." He adds: "Adams, Jackson, and Calhoun all think well of each other, and are united at least in one thing,—to wit, a most thorough dread and abhorrence of Crawford."
Yet Crawford was for many years not only never without eager expectations of his own, which narrowly missed realization and might not have missed it had not his health broken down a few months too soon, but he had a large following, strong friends, and an extensive influence. But if he really had great ability he had not the good fortune of an opportunity to show it; and he lives in history rather as a man from whom much was expected than as a man who achieved much. One faculty, however, not of the best, but serviceable, he had in a rare degree: he thoroughly understood all the artifices of politics; he knew how to interest and organize partisans, to obtain newspaper support, and generally to extend and direct his following after that fashion which soon afterward began to be fully developed by the younger school of our public men. He was the avant courier of a bad system, of which the first crude manifestations were received with well-merited disrelish by the worthier among his contemporaries.
It is the more easy to believe that Adams's distrust of Crawford was a sincere conviction, when we consider his behavior towards another dangerous rival, General Jackson. In view of the new phase which the relationship between these two men was soon to take on, Adams's hearty championship of Jackson for several years prior to 1825 deserves mention. The Secretary stood gallantly by the General at a crisis in Jackson's life when he greatly needed such strong official backing, and in an hour of extreme need Adams alone in the Cabinet of Monroe lent an assistance which Jackson afterwards too readily forgot. Seldom has a government been brought by the undue zeal of its servants into a quandary more perplexing than that into which the reckless military hero brought the Administration of President Monroe. Turned loose in the regions of Florida, checked only by an uncertain and disputed boundary line running through half-explored forests, confronted by a hated foe whose strength he could well afford to despise, General Jackson, in a war properly waged only against Indians, ran a wild and lawless, but very vigorous and effective, career in Spanish possessions. He hung a couple of British subjects with as scant trial and meagre shrift as if he had been a mediæval free-lance; he marched upon Spanish towns and peremptorily forced the blue-blooded commanders to capitulate in the most humiliating manner; afterwards, when the Spanish territory had become American, in his civil capacity as Governor, he flung the Spanish Commissioner into jail. He treated instructions, laws, and established usages as teasing cobwebs which any spirited public servant was in duty bound to break; then he quietly stated his willingness to let the country take the benefit of his irregular proceedings and make him the scapegoat or martyr if such should be needed. How to treat this too successful chieftain was no simple problem. He had done what he ought not to have done, yet everybody in the country was heartily glad that he had done it. He ought not to have hung Arbuthnot and Ambrister, nor to have seized Pensacola, nor later on to have imprisoned Callava; yet the general efficiency of his procedure fully accorded with the secret disposition of the country. It was, however, not easy to establish the propriety of his trenchant doings upon any acknowledged principles of law, and during the long period through which these disturbing feats extended, Jackson was left in painful solitude by those who felt obliged to judge his actions by rule rather than by sympathy. The President was concerned lest his Administration should be brought into indefensible embarrassment; Calhoun was personally displeased because the instructions issued from his department had been exceeded; Crawford eagerly sought to make the most of such admirable opportunities for destroying the prestige of one who might grow into a dangerous rival; Clay, who hated a military hero, indulged in a series of fierce denunciations in the House of Representatives; Mr. Adams alone stood gallantly by the man who had dared to take vigorous measures upon his own sole responsibility. His career touched a kindred chord in Adams's own independent and courageous character, and perhaps for the only time in his life the Secretary of State became almost sophistical in the arguments by which he endeavored to sustain the impetuous warrior against an adverse Cabinet. The authority given to Jackson to cross the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the Indian enemy was justified as being only defensive warfare; then "all the rest," argued Adams, "even to the order for taking the Fort of Barrancas by storm, was incidental, deriving its character from the object, which was not hostility to Spain, but the termination of the Indian war." Through long and anxious sessions Adams stood fast in opposing "the unanimous opinions" of the President, Crawford, Calhoun, and Wirt. Their policy seemed to him a little ignoble and wholly blundering, because, he said, "it is weakness and a confession of weakness. The disclaimer of power in the Executive is of dangerous example and of evil consequences. There is injustice to the officer in disavowing him, when in principle he is strictly justifiable." This behavior upon Mr. Adams's part was the more generous and disinterested because the earlier among these doings of Jackson incensed Don Onis extremely and were near bringing about the entire disruption of that important negotiation with Spain upon which Mr. Adams had so much at stake. But few civilians have had a stronger dash of the fighting element than had Mr. Adams, and this impelled him irresistibly to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jackson in such an emergency, regardless of possible consequences to himself. He preferred to insist that the hanging of Arbuthnot and Ambrister was according to the laws of war and to maintain that position in the teeth of Stratford Canning rather than to disavow it and render apology and reparation. So three years later when Jackson was again in trouble by reason of his arrest of Callava, he still found a stanch advocate in Adams, who, having made an argument for the defence which would have done credit to a subtle-minded barrister, concluded by adopting the sentiment of Hume concerning the execution of Don Pantaleon de Sa by Oliver Cromwell,—if the laws of nations had been violated, "it was by a signal act of justice deserving universal approbation." Later still, on January 8, 1824, being the anniversary of the victory of New Orleans, as if to make a conspicuous declaration of his opinions in favor of Jackson, Mr. Adams gave a great ball in his honor, "at which about one thousand persons attended."[5]
He was in favor of offering to the General the position of minister to Mexico; and before Jackson had developed into a rival of himself for the Presidency, he exerted himself to secure the Vice-Presidency for him. Thus by argument and by influence in the Cabinet, in many a private interview, and in the world of society, also by wise counsel when occasion offered, Mr. Adams for many years made himself the noteworthy and indeed the only powerful friend of General Jackson. Nor up to the last moment, and when Jackson had become his most dangerous competitor, is there any derogatory passage concerning him in the Diary.