CHAPTER LXXIII.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1832.
General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren were the candidates, on one side; Mr. Clay and Mr. John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, on the other, and the result of no election had ever been looked to with more solicitude. It was a question of systems and of measures, and tried in the persons of men who stood out boldly and unequivocally in the representation of their respective sides. Renewal of the national bank charter, continuance of the high protective policy, distribution of the public land money, internal improvement by the federal government, removal of the Indians, interference between Georgia and the Cherokees, and the whole American system were staked on the issue, represented on one side by Mr. Clay and Mr. Sergeant, and opposed, on the other, by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. The defeat of Mr. Clay, and the consequent condemnation of his measures, was complete and overwhelming. He received but forty-nine votes out of a totality of two hundred and eighty-eight! And this result is not to be attributed, as done by Mons. de Tocqueville, to military fame. General Jackson was now a tried statesman, and great issues were made in his person, and discussed in every form of speech and writing, and in every forum, State, and federal—from the halls of Congress to township meetings—and his success was not only triumphant but progressive. His vote was a large increase upon the preceding one of 1828, as that itself had been upon the previous one of 1824. The result was hailed with general satisfaction, as settling questions of national disturbance, and leaving a clear field, as it was hoped, for future temperate and useful legislation. The vice-presidential election, also, had a point and a lesson in it. Besides concurring with General Jackson in his systems of policy, Mr. Van Buren had, in his own person, questions which concerned himself, and which went to his character as a fair and honorable man. He had been rejected by the Senate as minister to the court of Great Britain, under circumstances to give éclat to the rejection, being then at his post; and on accusations of prostituting official station to party intrigue and elevation, and humbling his country before Great Britain to obtain as a favor what was due as a right. He had also been accused of breaking up friendship between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun, for the purpose of getting a rival out of the way—contriving for that purpose the dissolution of the cabinet, the resuscitation of the buried question of the punishment of General Jackson in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, and a system of intrigues to destroy Mr. Calhoun—all brought forward imposingly in senatorial and Congress debates, in pamphlets and periodicals, and in every variety of speech and of newspaper publication; and all with the avowed purpose of showing him unworthy to be elected Vice-President. Yet, he was elected—and triumphantly—receiving the same vote with General Jackson, except that of Pennsylvania, which went to one of her own citizens, Mr. William Wilkins, then senator in Congress, and afterwards Minister to Russia, and Secretary of War. Another circumstance attended this election, of ominous character, and deriving emphasis from the state of the times. South Carolina refused to vote in it; that is to say, voted with neither party, and threw away her vote upon citizens who were not candidates, and who received no vote but her own; namely, Governor John Floyd of Virginia, and Mr. Henry Lee of Massachusetts: a dereliction not to be accounted for upon any intelligible or consistent reason, seeing that the rival candidates held the opposite sides of the system of which the State complained, and that the success of one was to be its overthrow; of the other, to be its confirmation. This circumstance, coupled with the nullification attitude which the State had assumed, gave significance to this separation from the other States in the matter of the election: a separation too marked not to be noted, and interpreted by current events too clearly to be misunderstood. Another circumstance attended this election, of a nature not of itself to command commemoration, but worthy to be remembered for the lesson it reads to all political parties founded upon one idea, and especially when that idea has nothing political in it; it was the anti-masonic vote of the State of Vermont, for Mr. Wirt, late United States Attorney-General, for President; and for Mr. Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. The cause of that vote was this: some years before, a citizen of New-York, one Mr. Morgan, a member of the Freemason fraternity, had disappeared, under circumstances which induced the belief that he had been secretly put to death, by order of the society, for divulging their secret. A great popular ferment grew out of this belief, spreading into neighboring States, with an outcry against all masons, and all secret societies, and a demand for their suppression. Politicians embarked on this current; turned it into the field of elections, and made it potent in governing many. After obtaining dominion over so many local and State elections, "anti-masonry," as the new enthusiasm was called, aspired to higher game, undertook to govern presidential candidates, subjecting them to interrogatories upon the point of their masonic faith; and eventually set up candidates of their own for these two high offices. The trial was made in the persons of Messrs. Wirt and Ellmaker, and resulted in giving them seven votes—the vote of Vermont alone—and, in showing the weakness of the party, and its consequent inutility as a political machine. The rest is soon told. Anti-masonry soon ceased to have a distinctive existence; died out, and, in its death, left a lesson to all political parties founded in one idea—especially when that idea has nothing political in it.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON AFTER HIS SECOND ELECTION.
This must have been an occasion of great and honest exultation to General Jackson—a re-election after a four years' trial of his administration, over an opposition so formidable, and after having assumed responsibilities so vast, and by a majority so triumphant—and his message directed to the same members, who, four months before, had been denouncing his measures, and consigning himself to popular condemnation. He doubtless enjoyed a feeling of elation when drawing up that message, and had a right to the enjoyment; but no symptom of that feeling appeared in the message itself, which, abstaining from all reference to the election, wholly confined itself to business topics, and in the subdued style of a business paper. Of the foreign relations he was able to give a good, and therefore, a brief account; and proceeding quickly to our domestic affairs gave to each head of these concerns a succinct consideration. The state of the finances, and the public debt, claimed his first attention. The receipts from the customs were stated at twenty-eight millions of dollars—from the lands at two millions—the payments on account of the public debt at eighteen millions;—and the balance remaining to be paid at seven millions—to which the current income would be more than adequate notwithstanding an estimated reduction of three or four millions from the customs in consequence of reduced duties at the preceding session. He closed this head with the following view of the success of his administration in extinguishing a national debt, and his congratulations to Congress on the auspicious and rare event:
"I cannot too cordially congratulate Congress and my fellow-citizens on the near approach of that memorable and happy event, the extinction of the public debt of this great and free nation. Faithful to the wise and patriotic policy marked out by the legislation of the country for this object, the present administration has devoted to it all the means which a flourishing commerce has supplied, and a prudent economy preserved, for the public treasury. Within the four years for which the people have confided the executive power to my charge, fifty-eight millions of dollars will have been applied to the payment of the public debt. That this has been accomplished without stinting the expenditures for all other proper objects, will be seen by referring to the liberal provision made, during the same period, for the support and increase of our means of maritime and military defence, for internal improvements of a national character, for the removal and preservation of the Indians and, lastly, for the gallant veterans of the Revolution."
To the gratifying fact of the extinction of the debt, General Jackson wished to add the substantial benefit of release from the burthens which it imposed—an object desirable in itself, and to all the States, and particularly to those of the South, greatly dissatisfied with the burthens of the tariff, and with the large expenditures which took place in other quarters of the Union. Sixteen millions of dollars, he stated to be the outlay of the federal government for all objects exclusive of the public debt; so that ten millions might be subject to reduction: and this to be effected so as to retain a protecting duty in favor of the articles essential to our defence and comfort in time of war. On this point he said: