Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

by Thomas Hart Benton

"Now he would suppose a man called to be President of the United States. It mattered not whether he was elected, or whether the office devolved upon him by contingencies contemplated in the constitution. He was President. What, then, was his first duty? To consider how to discharge his functions. He (Mr. C.) thought the President was bound to look around at the facts, and see by what circumstances he was supported. Gentlemen might talk of treason; much had been said on that subject; but the question for the individual who might happen to be President to consider was, How is the government to be carried out? By whose aid? He (Mr. Cushing) would say to that party now having the majority (and whom, on account of that circumstance, it was more important he should address), that if they gave him no aid, it was his duty to seek aid from their adversaries. If the whigs continue to blockade the wheels of the government, he trusted that the democrats would be patriotic enough to carry it on."

Up to this point Mr. Cushing had addressed himself to the whigs to come to the support of Mr. Tyler: despairing of success there he now turned to the democracy. This open attempt to turn from one party to the other, and to take whichever he could get, turned upon him a storm of ridicule and reproach. Mr. Thompson, of Indiana, said:

"The gentleman seemed to have assumed the character of auctioneer for this bankrupt administration, and he took it that the gentleman would be entitled to a good part of its effects. This was the first time in the history of any civilized country that a government had, through the person of its acknowledged leader—a man doing most of its speaking, and much of its thinking—stalked into a representative assembly, and openly put up the administration in the common market to the highest bidder."

But Mr. Cushing did not limit himself to seductive appliances in turning to the democracy for support to Mr. Tyler: he dealt out denunciation to them also, and menaced them with the fate of the shattered whig party if they did not come to the rescue. On this Mr. Thompson remarked:

"The gentleman also told the minority that they would be dashed to pieces, like their predecessors, unless they came into the measures of the President; but it yet remained to be seen whether he would get a bid. Judging from the expression of opinion by the leading organ of the democratic party, he (Mr. T.) was inclined to think that no bid would be offered by a portion of that party. He thought, from givings-out, in various quarters, that the President would ultimately have to resort to this 'constitutional fact,' to defend himself against a large portion even of that party. Indeed, it was doubtful whether there would be bidders from either side."

Mr. Cushing had said that there were persons connected with the administration who would yet be heard of for the Presidency, and seemed to present that contingency also as a reason why support should be given it. To this intimation Mr. Thompson made an indignant reply:

"He recollected well—though he was very young at the time, and not prepared to take part in the political discussions of the day—that, during the administration of the distinguished and venerable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] there arose in this country a party, who, upon the bare supposition (which was dispelled on an examination of the facts)—upon the bare suspicion that there was what was called a bargain, intrigue, and management between the then head of the administration, and another distinguished citizen who was a member of his cabinet, made it a subject of the most bitter and vindictive denunciation. Yet, notwithstanding that this part of our history was still fresh in the recollection of the gentleman from Massachusetts—when we see, in this age of republican liberty, a gentleman descended from a line of illustrious Revolutionary ancestry—coming, too, almost from the very Cradle of Liberty, and acting as the organ of the administration on this floor—boldly, shamelessly, and unblushingly offering the spoils of office as a consideration for party support, we may well have cause for alarm. How many clerkships were there in Philadelphia to be disposed of in this manner? From the collector down to the lowest tide-waiter, the power of appointment was to be directed for the purpose of operating on the coming presidential contest. Who, now, would charge the whig party with shaping their measures with a view to the elevation of a particular individual, after hearing the bold and open avowal from the gentleman that the present administration would shape their measures for the purpose of operating on the coming contest? But (said Mr. T.) there was something exceedingly ridiculous in the idea of the administration party—and such a party, too!—coming into the Representative hall, and telling its members that it had the power to dispose of the various candidates for the Presidency at its pleasure, and controlling the votes of nearly three millions of freemen by means of its veto power, and the power of appointment and removal."

Mr. Cushing had belonged to the federal party, since called whig, up to the time that he joined Mr. Tyler, and had been all that time a fierce assailant of the democratic party: the energy with which he now attacked that party, and the warmth with which he wooed the other, brought on him many reproaches, some rough and cutting—some tender and deprecatory; as this from Mr. Thompson:

"The gentleman exulted in the fate of the whig party, and told them with much satisfaction that their party was destroyed. Now, let him ask the gentleman, in the utmost sincerity of his heart, whether he did not feel some little mortification and regret when he saw the banner under which he had so often rallied trailing in the dust, and trampled under the feet of those against whom he had fought for so many years?"

Foremost of the whigs in zeal and activity, Mr. Cushing, as one of the most prominent men of the party, was appointed when the presidential vote of 1840 was counted in the House, as one of the committee of two to wait upon General Harrison and formally make known to him his election. In two months afterwards General Harrison died—Mr. Tyler became President and quit the whigs: Mr. Cushing quit at the same time; and not content with quitting, threw all the obloquy upon them which, for fifteen years, he had lavished upon the democracy; and in quitting the whigs he reversed his conduct in all the measures of his life, and without giving a reason for the change in a single instance. Mr. Garret Davis summed up these changes in a scathing peroration, from which some extracts are here given: