By way of revenge a duel may be effective if the wrong man does not happen to get shot; but as evidence for intelligent men a bloodier ending than this would have been inconclusive. It so happened, however, that Jackson, altogether contrary to his own purpose, brought conclusive aid to President Adams and Secretary Clay. Whether the General ever had any real faith in the charge can only be surmised. Not improbably he did, for his mental workings were so peculiar in their violence and prejudice that apparently he always sincerely believed all persons who crossed his path to be knaves and villains of the blackest dye. But certain it is that whether he credited the tale or not he soon began to devote himself with all his wonted vigor and pertinacity to its wide dissemination. Whether in so doing he was stupidly believing a lie, or intentionally spreading a known slander, is a problem upon which his friends and biographers have exhausted much ingenuity without reaching any certain result. But sure it is that early in the year 1827 he was so far carried beyond the bounds of prudence as to declare before many persons that he had proof of the corrupt bargain. The assertion was promptly sent to the newspapers by a Mr. Carter Beverly, one of those who heard it made in the presence of several guests at the Hermitage. The name of Mr. Beverly, at first concealed, soon became known, and he was of course compelled to vouch in his principal. General Jackson never deserted his adherents, whether their difficulties were noble or ignoble. He came gallantly to the aid of Mr. Beverly, and in a letter of June 6 declared that early in January, 1825, he had been visited by a "member of Congress of high respectability," who had told him of "a great intrigue going on" of which he ought to be informed. This gentleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr. Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jackson should be elected President, "Mr. Adams would be continued Secretary of State (innuendo, there would be no room for Kentucky); that if I would say, or permit any of my confidential friends to say, that in case I were elected President, Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would put an end to the Presidential contest in one hour. And he was of opinion it was right to fight such intriguers with their own weapons." This scarcely disguised suggestion of bargain and corruption the General said that he repudiated indignantly. Clay at once publicly challenged Jackson to produce some evidence—to name the "respectable" member of Congress who appeared in the very unrespectable light of advising a candidate for the Presidency to emulate the alleged baseness of his opponents. Jackson thereupon uncovered James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. Mr. Buchanan was a friend of the General, and to what point it may have been expected or hoped that his allegiance would carry him in support of his chief in this dire hour of extremity is matter only of inference. Fortunately, however, his fealty does not appear to have led him any great distance from the truth. He yielded to the prevailing desire to pass along the responsibility to some one else so far as to try to bring in a Mr. Markley, who, however, never became more than a dumb figure in the drama in which Buchanan was obliged to remain as the last important character. With obvious reluctance this gentleman then wrote that if General Jackson had placed any such construction as the foregoing upon an interview which had occurred between them, and which he recited at length, then the General had totally misconstrued—as was evident enough—what he, Mr. Buchanan, had said. Indeed, that Jackson could have supposed him to entertain the sentiments imputed to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said, "exceedingly unhappy." In other words, there was no foundation whatsoever for the charge thus traced back to an originator who denied having originated it and said that it was all a mistake. General Jackson was left to be defended from the accusation of deliberate falsehood only by the charitable suggestion that he had been unable to understand a perfectly simple conversation. Apparently Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay ought now to be abundantly satisfied, since not only were they amply vindicated, but their chief vilifier seemed to have been pierced by the point which he had sharpened for them. They had yet, however, to learn what vitality there is in falsehood.
General Jackson and his friends had alone played any active part in this matter. Of these friends Mr. Kremer had written a letter of retraction and apology which he was with difficulty prevented from publishing; Mr. Buchanan had denied all that he had been summoned to prove; a few years later Mr. Beverly wrote and sent to Mr. Clay a contrite letter of regret. General Jackson alone remained for the rest of his life unsilenced, obstinately reiterating a charge disproved by his own witnesses. But worse than all this, accumulations of evidence long and laboriously sought in many quarters have established a tolerably strong probability that advances of precisely the character alleged against Mr. Adams's friends were made to Mr. Clay by the most intimate personal associates of General Jackson. The discussion of this unpleasant suspicion would not, however, be an excusable episode in this short volume. The reader who is curious to pursue the matter further will find all the documentary evidence collected in its original shape in the first volume of Colton's "Life of Clay," accompanied by an argument needlessly elaborate and surcharged with feeling yet in the main sufficiently fair and exhaustive.
Mr. Benton says that "no President could have commenced his administration under more unfavorable auspices, or with less expectation of a popular career," than did Mr. Adams. From the first a strong minority in the House of Representatives was hostile to him, and the next election made this a majority. The first indication of the shape which the opposition was to take became visible in the vote in the Senate upon confirming Mr. Clay as Secretary of State. There were fourteen nays against twenty-seven yeas, and an inspection of the list showed that the South was beginning to consolidate more closely than heretofore as a sectional force in politics. The formation of a Southern party distinctly organized in the interests of slavery, already apparent in the unanimity of the Southern Electoral Colleges against Mr. Adams, thus received further illustration; and the skilled eye of the President noted "the rallying of the South and of Southern interests and prejudices to the men of the South." It is possible now to see plainly that Mr. Adams was really the first leader in the long crusade against slavery; it was in opposition to him that the South became a political unit; and a true instinct taught him the trend of Southern politics long before the Northern statesmen apprehended it, perhaps before even any Southern statesman had distinctly formulated it. This new development in the politics of the country soon received further illustration. The first message which Mr. Adams had occasion to send to Congress gave another opportunity to his ill-wishers. Therein he stated that the invitation which had been extended to the United States to be represented at the Congress of Panama had been accepted, and that he should commission ministers to attend the meeting. Neither in matter nor in manner did this proposition contain any just element of offence. It was customary for the Executive to initiate new missions simply by the nomination of envoys to fill them; and in such case the Senate, if it did not think the suggested mission desirable, could simply decline to confirm the nomination upon that ground. An example of this has been already seen in the two nominations of Mr. Adams himself to the Court of Russia in the Presidency of Mr. Madison. But now vehement assaults were made upon the President, alike in the Senate and in the House, on the utterly absurd ground that he had transcended his powers. Incredible, too, as it may seem at this day it was actually maintained that there was no occasion whatsoever for the United States to desire representation at such a gathering. Prolonged and bitter was the opposition which the Administration was compelled to encounter in a measure to which there so obviously ought to have been instant assent if considered solely upon its intrinsic merits, but upon which nevertheless the discussion actually overshadowed all other questions which arose during the session. The President had the good fortune to find the powerful aid of Mr. Webster enlisted in his behalf, and ultimately he prevailed; but it was of ill augury at this early date to see that personal hostility was so widespread and so rancorous that it could make such a prolonged and desperate resistance with only the faintest pretext of right as a basis for its action. Yet a great and fundamental cause of the feeling manifested lay hidden away beneath the surface in the instinctive antipathy of the slaveholders to Mr. Adams and all his thoughts, his ways, and his doings. For into this question of countenancing the Panama Congress, slavery and "the South" entered and imported into a portion of the opposition a certain element of reasonableness and propriety in a political sense. When we see the Southern statesmen banded against President Adams in these debates, as we know the future which was hidden from them, it almost makes us believe that their vindictiveness was justified by an instinctive forecasting of his character and his mission in life, and that without knowing it they already felt the influence of the acts which he was yet to do against them. For the South, without present dread of an abolition movement, yet hated this Panama Congress with a contemptuous loathing not alone because the South American states had freed all slaves within their limits, but because there was actually a fair chance that Hayti would be admitted to representation at the sessions as a sovereign state. That the President of the United States should propose to send white citizens of that country to sit cheek by jowl on terms of official equality with the revolted blacks of Hayti fired the Southern heart with rage inexpressible. The proposition was a further infusion of cement to aid in the Southern consolidation so rapidly going forward, and was substantially the beginning of the sense of personal alienation henceforth to grow steadily more bitter on the part of the slaveholders towards Mr. Adams. Without designing it he had struck the first blow in a fight which was to absorb his energies for the rest of his life.
Such evil forebodings as might too easily be drawn from the course of this debate were soon and amply fulfilled. The opposition increased rapidly until when Congress came together in December, 1827, it had attained overshadowing proportions. Not only was a member of that party elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, but a decided majority of both Houses of Congress was arrayed against the Administration—"a state of things which had never before occurred under the Government of the United States." All the committees too were composed of four opposition and only three Administration members. With more exciting issues this relationship of the executive and legislative departments might have resulted in dangerous collisions; but in this season of political quietude it only made the position of the President extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Van Buren soon became recognized as the formidable leader and organizer of the Jackson forces. His capacity as a political strategist was so far in advance of that of any other man of those times that it might have secured success even had he been encountered by tactics similar to his own. But since on the contrary he had only to meet straightforward simplicity, it was soon apparent that he would have everything his own way. It was disciplined troops against the militia of honest merchants and farmers; and the result was not to be doubted. Mr. Adams and his friends were fond of comparing Van Buren with Aaron Burr, though predicting that he would be too shrewd to repeat Burr's blunders. From the beginning they declined to meet with his own weapons a man whom they so contemned. It was about this time that a new nomenclature of parties was introduced into our politics. The administrationists called themselves National Republicans, a name which in a few years was changed for that of Whigs, while the opposition or Jacksonians were known as Democrats, a title which has been ever since retained by the same party.
The story of Mr. Adams's Administration will detain the historian, and even the biographer, only a very short time. Not an event occurred during those four years which appears of any especial moment. Our foreign relations were all pacific; and no grave crisis or great issue was developed in domestic affairs. It was a period of tranquillity, in which the nation advanced rapidly in prosperity. For many years dulness had reigned in business, but returning activity was encouraged by the policy of the new Government, and upon all sides various industries became active and thriving. So far as the rule of Mr. Adams was marked by any distinguishing characteristic, it was by a care for the material welfare of the people. More commercial treaties were negotiated during his Administration than in the thirty-six years preceding his inauguration. He was a strenuous advocate of internal improvements, and happily the condition of the national finances enabled the Government to embark in enterprises of this kind. He suggested many more than were undertaken, but not perhaps more than it would have been quite possible to carry out. He was always chary of making a show of himself before the people for the sake of gaining popularity. When invited to attend the annual exhibition of the Maryland Agricultural Society, shortly after his inauguration, he declined, and wrote in his Diary: "To gratify this wish I must give four days of my time, no trifle of expense, and set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibition at all the cattle-shows throughout the Union." Other gatherings would prefer equally reasonable demands, in responding to which "some duty must be neglected." But the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was an event sufficiently momentous and national in its character to justify the President's attendance. He was requested in the presence of a great concourse of people to dig the first shovelful of earth and to make a brief address. The speech-making was easy; but when the digging was to be done he encountered some unexpected obstacle and the soil did not yield to his repeated efforts. Not to be defeated, however, he stripped off his coat, went to work in earnest with the spade and raised the earth successfully. Naturally such readiness was hailed with loud applause and pleased the great crowd who saw it. But in Mr. Adams's career it was an exceptional occurrence that enabled him to conciliate a momentary popularity; it was seldom that he enjoyed or used an opportunity of gaining the cheap admiration or shallow friendship of the multitude.
At least one moral to be drawn from the story of Mr. Adams's Presidency perhaps deserves rather to be called an immoral, and certainly furnishes unwelcome support to those persons who believe that conscientiousness is out of place in politics. It has been said that no sooner was General Jackson fairly defeated than he was again before the people as a candidate for the next election. An opposition to the new Administration was in process of formation actually before there had been time for that Administration to declare, much less to carry out, any policy or even any measure. The opposition was therefore not one of principle; it was not dislike of anything done or to be done; it did not pretend to have a purpose of saving the people from blunders or of offering them greater advantages. It was simply an opposition, or more properly an hostility, to the President and his Cabinet, and was conducted by persons who wished in as short a time as possible themselves to control and fill those positions. The sole ground upon which these opponents stood was, that they would rather have General Jackson at the head of affairs than Mr. Adams. The issue was purely personal; it was so when the opposition first developed, and it remained so until that opposition triumphed.
Under no circumstances can it be more excusable for an elective magistrate to seek personal good will towards himself than when his rival seeks to supplant him simply on the basis of enjoying a greater measure of such good will. Had any important question of policy been dividing the people, it would have been easy for a man of less moral courage and independence than belonged to Mr. Adams to select the side which he thought right, and to await the outcome at least with constancy. But the only real question raised was this: will Mr. Adams or General Jackson—two individuals representing as yet no antagonistic policies—be preferred by the greater number of voters in 1829? If, however, there was no great apparent issue open between these two men, at least there was a very wide difference between their characters, a point of some consequence in a wholly personal competition. It is easy enough now to see how this gaping difference displayed itself from the beginning, and how the advantage for winning was throughout wholly on the side of Jackson. The course to be pursued by Mr. Adams in order to insure victory was obvious enough; being simply to secure the largest following and most efficient support possible. The arts by which these objects were to be attained were not obscure nor beyond his power. If he wished a second term, as beyond question he did, two methods were of certain utility. He should make the support of his Administration a source of profit to the supporters; and he should conciliate good will by every means that offered. To the former end what more efficient means could be devised than a body of office-holders owing their positions to his appointment and likely to have the same term of office as himself? His neglect to create such a corps of stanch supporters cannot be explained on the ground that so plain a scheme of perpetuating power had not then been devised in the Republic. Mr. Jefferson had practised it, to an extent which now seems moderate, but which had been sufficiently extensive to deprive any successor of the honor of novelty in originating it. The times were ripe for it, and the nation would not have revolted at it, as was made apparent when General Jackson, succeeding Mr. Adams, at once carried out the system with a thoroughness that has never been surpassed, and with a success in achieving results so great that almost no politician has since failed to have recourse to the same practice. Suggestions and temptations, neither of which were wanting, were however alike thrown away upon Mr. Adams. Friendship or hostility to the President were the only two matters which were sure to have no effect whatsoever upon the fate of an incumbent or an aspirant. Scarcely any removals were made during his Administration, and every one of the few was based solely upon a proved unfitness of the official. As a consequence very few new appointments were made, and in every instance the appointee was, or was believed to be, the fittest man without regard to his political bias. This entire elimination of the question of party allegiance from every department of the public service was not a specious protestation, but an undeniable fact at which friends grumbled bitterly, and upon which foes counted often with an ungenerous but always with an implicit reliance. It was well known, for example, that in the Customs Department there were many more avowed opponents than supporters of the Administration. What was to be thought, the latter angrily asked, of a president who refused to make any distinction between the sheep and the goats? But while Mr. Adams, unmoved by argument, anger, or entreaty, thus alienated many and discouraged all, every one was made acquainted with the antipodal principles of his rival. The consequence was inevitable; many abandoned Adams from sheer irritation; multitudes became cool and indifferent concerning him; the great number of those whose political faith was so weak as to be at the ready command of their own interests, or the interests of a friend or relative, yielded to a pressure against which no counteracting force was employed. In a word, no one who had not a strong and independent personal conviction in behalf of Mr. Adams found the slightest inducement to belong to his party. It did not require much political sagacity to see that in quiet times, with no great issue visibly at stake, a following thus composed could not include a majority of the nation. It is true that in fact there was opening an issue as great as has ever been presented to the American people,—an issue between government conducted with a sole view to efficiency and honesty and government conducted very largely, if not exclusively, with a view to individual and party ascendency. The new system afterward inaugurated by General Jackson, directly opposite to that of Mr. Adams and presenting a contrast to it as wide as is to be found in history, makes this fact glaringly plain to us. But during the years of Mr. Adams's Administration it was dimly perceived only by a few. Only one side of the shield had then been shown. The people did not appreciate that Adams and Jackson were representatives of two conflicting principles of administration which went to the very basis of our system of government. Had the issue been as apparent and as well understood then as it is now, in retrospect, the decision of the nation might have been different. But unfortunately the voters only beheld two individuals pitted against each other for the popular suffrage, of whom one, a brilliant soldier, would stand by and reward his friends, and the other, an uninteresting civilian, ignored all distinction between friend and foe.
It was not alone in the refusal to use patronage that Mr. Adams's rigid conscientiousness showed itself. He was equally obstinate in declining ever to stretch a point however slightly in order to win the favor of any body of the people whether large or small. He was warned that his extensive schemes for internal improvement would alienate especially the important State of Virginia. He could not of course be expected to change his policy out of respect to Virginian prejudices; but he was advised to mitigate his expression of that policy, and to some extent it was open to him to do so. But he would not; his utterances went the full length of his opinions, and he persistently urged upon Congress many plans which he approved, but which he could not have the faintest hopes of seeing adopted. The consequence was that he displeased Virginia. He notes the fact in the Diary in the tone of one who endures persecution for righteousness' sake, and who means to be very stubborn in his righteousness. Again it was suggested to him to embody in one of his messages "something soothing for South Carolina." But there stood upon the statute books of South Carolina an unconstitutional law which had greatly embarrassed the national government, and which that rebellious little State with characteristic contumaciousness would not repeal. Under such circumstances, said Mr. Adams, I have no "soothing" words for South Carolina.
It was not alone by what he did and by what he would not do that Mr. Adams toiled to insure the election of General Jackson far more sedulously and efficiently than did the General himself or any of his partisans. In most cases it was probably the manner quite as much as the act which made Mr. Adams unpopular. In his anxiety to be upright he was undoubtedly prone to be needlessly disagreeable. His uncompromising temper put on an ungracious aspect. His conscientiousness wore the appearance of offensiveness. The Puritanism in his character was strongly tinged with that old New England notion that whatever is disagreeable is probably right, and that a painful refusal would lose half its merit in being expressed courteously; that a right action should never be done in a pleasing way; not only that no pill should be sugar-coated, but that the bitterest ingredient should be placed on the outside. In repudiating attractive vices the Puritans had rejected also those amenities which might have decently concealed or even mildly decorated the forbidding angularities of a naked Virtue which certainly did not imitate the form of any goddess who had ever before attracted followers. Mr. Adams was a complete and thorough Puritan, wonderfully little modified by times and circumstances. The ordinary arts of propitiation would have appeared to him only a feeble and diluted form of dishonesty; while suavity and graciousness of demeanor would have seemed as unbecoming to this rigid official as love-making or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused by his acts; that he should never soothe disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him with the ardor of personal devotion. His party was composed of those who had sufficient intelligence to appreciate his integrity and sufficient honesty to admire it. These persons respected him, and when election day came they would vote for him; but they did not canvass zealously in his behalf, nor do such service for him as a very different kind of feeling induced the Jackson men to do for their candidate.[7] The fervid laborers in politics left Mr. Adams alone in his chilling respectability, and went over to a camp where all scruples were consumed in the glowing heat of a campaign conducted upon the single and simple principle of securing victory.
Mr. Adams's relations with the members of his Cabinet were friendly throughout his term. Men of their character and ability, brought into daily contact with him, could not fail to appreciate and admire the purity of his motives and the patriotism of his conduct; nor was he wanting in a measure of consideration and deference towards them perhaps somewhat greater than might have been expected from him, sometimes even carried to the point of yielding his opinion in matters of consequence. It was his wish that the unity of the body should remain unbroken during his four years of office, and the wish was very nearly realized. Unfortunately, however, in his last year it became necessary for him to fill the mission to England, and Governor Barbour was extremely anxious for the place. It was already apparent that the coming election was likely to result in the succession of Jackson, and Mr. Adams notes that Barbour's extreme desire to receive the appointment was due to his wish to find a good harbor ere the approaching storm should burst. The remark was made without anger, in the tone of a man who had seen enough of the world not to expect too much from any of his fellow men; and the appointment was made, somewhat to the chagrin of Webster and Rush, either one of whom would have gladly accepted it. The vacancy thus caused, the only one which arose during his term, was filled by General Peter B. Porter, a gentleman whom Mr. Adams selected not as his own choice, but out of respect to the wishes of the Cabinet, and in order to "terminate the Administration in harmony with itself." The only seriously unpleasant occurrence was the treachery of Postmaster-General McLean, who saw fit to profess extreme devotion to Mr. Adams while secretly aiding General Jackson. His perfidy was not undetected, and great pressure was brought to bear on the President to remove him. Mr. Adams, however, refused to do so, and McLean had the satisfaction of stepping from his post under Mr. Adams into a judgeship conferred by General Jackson, having shown his impartiality and judicial turn of mind, it is to be supposed, by declaring his warm allegiance to each master in turn.