Of the few topics of the address upon which I shall remark, the first is, the accusation brought forward against me, of violating instructions. If the accusation were true, who was the party offended, and to whom I was amenable? If I violated any instructions, they must have been yours, since you only had the right to give them, and to you alone was I responsible. Without allowing hardly time for you to hear of my vote, without waiting to know what your judgment was of my conduct, George Kremer & Co. chose to arraign me before the American public as the violater of instructions which I was bound to obey. If, instead of being, as you are, and I hope always will be, vigilant observers of the conduct of your public agents, jealous of your rights, and competent to protect and defend them, you had been ignorant and culpably confiding, the gratuitous interposition, as your advocate, of the honorable George Kremer, of the ninth congressional district in Pennsylvania, would have merited your most grateful acknowledgments. Even upon that supposition, his arraignment of me would have required for its support one small circumstance, which happens not to exist, and that is, the fact of your having actually instructed me to vote according to his pleasure.
The relations in which I stood to Mr. Adams constitute the next theme of the address, which I shall notice. I am described as having assumed ‘a position of peculiar and decided hostility to the election of Mr. Adams,’ and expressions towards him are attributed to me, which I never used. I am also made responsible for ‘pamphlets and essays of great ability,’ published by my friends in Kentucky in the course of the canvass. The injustice of the principle of holding me thus answerable, may be tested by applying it to the case of general Jackson, in reference to publications issued, for example, from the Columbia Observer. That I was not in favor of the election of Mr. Adams, when the contest was before the people, is most certain. Neither was I in favor of that of Mr. Crawford or general Jackson. That I ever did any thing against Mr. Adams, or either of the other gentlemen, inconsistentwith a fair and honorable competition, I utterly deny. My relations to Mr. Adams have been the subject of much misconception, if not misrepresentation. I have been stated to be under a public pledge to expose some nefarious conduct of that gentleman, during the negotiation at Ghent, which would prove him to be entirely unworthy of public confidence; and that, with the knowledge of his perfidy, I nevertheless voted for him. If these imputations are well founded, I should, indeed, be a fit object of public censure; but if, on the contrary, it shall be found that others, inimical both to him and to me, have substituted their own interested wishes for my public promises, I trust that the indignation, which they would excite, will be turned from me. My letter, addressed to the editors of the Intelligencer, under date of the fifteenth of November, 1822, is made the occasion for ascribing to me the promise and the pledge to make those treasonable disclosures on Mr. Adams. Let that letter speak for itself, and it will be seen how little justice there is for such an assertion. It adverts to the controversy which had arisen between Messrs. Adams and Russell, and then proceeds to state that, ‘in the course of several publications, of which it has been the occasion, and particularly in the appendix to a pamphlet, which had been recently published by the honorable John Quincy Adams, I think there are some errors, no doubt unintentional, both as to matters of fact and matters of opinion, in regard to the transactions at Ghent, relating to the navigation of the Mississippi, and certain liberties claimed by the United States in the fisheries, and to the part which I bore in those transactions. These important interests are now well secured.’ ‘An account, therefore, of what occurred in the negotiation at Ghent, on those two subjects, is not, perhaps, necessary to the present or future security of any of the rights of the nation, and is only interesting as appertaining to its past history. With these impressions, and being extremely unwilling to present myself, at any time, before the public, I had almost resolved to remain silent, and thus expose myself to the inference of an acquiescence in the correctness of all the statements made by both my colleagues; but I have, on more reflection, thought it may be expected of me, and be considered as a duty on my part, to contribute all in my power towards a full and faithful understanding of the transactions referred to. Under this conviction, I will, at some future period, more propitious than the present to calm and dispassionate consideration, and when there can be no misinterpretation of motives, lay before the public a narrative of those transactions, as I understood them.’
From even a careless perusal of that letter, it is apparent, that the only two subjects of the negotiations at Ghent, to which it refers, were the navigation of the Mississippi, and certain fishing liberties; that the errors which I had supposed were committed, applied to both Mr. Russell and Mr. Adams, though more particularlyto the appendix of the latter; that they were unintentional, that they affected myself principally; that I deemed them of no public importance, as connected with the then, or future security of any of the rights of the nation, but only interesting to its past history; that I doubted the necessity of my offering to the public any account of those transactions; and that the narrative which I promised was to be presented at a season of more calm, and when there could be no misinterpretation of motives. Although Mr. Adams believes otherwise, I yet think there are some unintentional errors in the controversial papers between him and Mr. Russell. But I have reserved to myself an exclusive right of judging when I shall execute the promise which I have made, and I shall be neither quickened nor retarded in its performance by the friendly anxieties of any of my opponents.
If injury accrue to any one by the delay in publishing the narrative, the public will not suffer by it. It is already known by the publication of the British and American projets, the protocols, and the correspondence between the respective plenipotentiaries, that the British government made at Ghent a demand of the navigation of the Mississippi, by an article in their projet nearly in the same words as those which were employed in the treaty of 1783; that a majority of the American commissioners was in favor of acceding to that demand, upon the condition that the British government would concede to us the same fishing liberties within their jurisdiction, as were secured to us by the same treaty of 1783; and that both demands were finally abandoned. The fact of these mutual propositions was communicated by me to the American public in a speech which I delivered in the house of representatives, on the twenty-ninth day of January, 1816. Mr. Hopkinson had arraigned the terms of the treaty of peace, and charged upon the war and the administration the loss of the fishing liberties, within the British jurisdiction, which we enjoyed prior to the war. In vindicating, in my reply to him, the course of the government, and the conditions of the peace, I stated:
‘When the British commissioners demanded, in their projet, a renewal to Great Britain of the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, secured by the treaty of 1783, a bare majority of the American commissioners offered to renew it, upon the condition that the liberties in question were renewed to us. I was not one of that majority. I will not trouble the committee with my reasons for being opposed to the offer. A majority of my colleagues, actuated, I believe, by the best motives, made, however, the offer, and it was refused by the British commissioners.’
And what I thought of my colleagues of the majority, appears from the same extract. The spring after the termination of the negotiations at Ghent, I went to London, and entered upon a new and highly important negotiation with two of them, (Messrs. Adams and Gallatin,) which resulted, on the third day of July, 1815, in the commercial convention, which has been since madethe basis of most of our commercial arrangements with foreign powers. Now, if I had discovered at Ghent, as has been asserted, that either of them was false and faithless to his country, would I have voluntarily commenced with them another negotiation? Further: there never has been a period, during our whole acquaintance, that Mr. Adams and I have not exchanged, when we have met, friendly salutations, and the courtesies and hospitalities of social intercourse.
The address proceeds to characterize the support which I gave to Mr. Adams as unnatural. The authors of the address have not stated why it is unnatural, and we are therefore left to conjecture their meaning. Is it because Mr. Adams is from New England, and I am a citizen of the west? If it be unnatural in the western states to support a citizen of New England, it must be equally unnatural in the New England states to support a citizen of the west. And, on the same principle, the New England states ought to be restrained from concurring in the election of a citizen of the southern states, or the southern states from coöperating in the election of a citizen of New England. And, consequently, the support which the last three presidents have derived from New England, and that which the vice-president recently received, has been most unnaturally given. The tendency of such reasoning would be to denationalize us, and to contract every part of the union within the narrow, selfish limits of its own section. It would be still worse; it would lead to the destruction of the union itself. For if it be unnatural in one section to support a citizen in another, the union itself must be unnatural; all our ties, all our glories, all that is animating in the past, all that is bright and cheering in the future, must be unnatural. Happily, such is the admirable texture of our union, that the interests of all its parts are closely interwoven. If there are strong points of affinity between the south and the west, there are interests of not less, if not greater, strength and vigor, binding the west, and the north, and the east.
Before I close this address, it is my duty, which I proceed to perform with great regret, on account of the occasion which calls for it, to invite your attention to a letter, addressed by general Jackson to Mr. Swartwout, on the twenty-third day of February last. The names of both the general and myself had been before the American public for its highest office. We had both been unsuccessful. The unfortunate have usually some sympathy for each other. For myself, I claim no merit for the cheerful acquiescence which I have given in a result by which I was excluded from the house. I have believed that the decision by the constituted authorities, in favor of others, has been founded upon a conviction of the superiority of their pretensions. It has been my habit, when an election is once decided, to forget, as soon as possible, all the irritating circumstances which attended the precedingcanvass. If one be successful, he should be content with his success. If he have lost it, railing will do no good. I never gave general Jackson nor his friends any reason to believe that I would, in any contingency, support him. He had, as I thought, no public claim, and, I will now add, no personal claims, if these ought to be ever considered, to my support. No one, therefore, ought to have been disappointed or chagrined that I did not vote for him, no more than I was neither surprised nor disappointed that he did not, on a more recent occasion, feel it to be his duty to vote for me. After commenting upon a particular phrase used in my letter to judge Brooke, a calm reconsideration of which will, I think, satisfy any person that it was not employed in an offensive sense, if indeed it have an offensive sense, the general, in his letter to Mr. Swartwout, proceeds to remark: ‘No one beheld me seeking, through art or management, to entice any representative in congress from a conscientious responsibility of his own, or the wishes of his constituents. No midnight taper burnt by me; no secret conclaves were held, nor cabals entered into to persuade any one to a violation of pledges given, or of instructions received. By me no plans were concerted to impair the pure principles of our republican institutions, nor to prostrate that fundamental maxim which maintains the supremacy of the people’s will. On the contrary, having never in any manner, before the people or congress, interfered in the slightest degree with the question, my conscience stands void of offence, and will go quietly with me, regardless of the insinuations of those who, through management, may seek an influence not sanctioned by integrity and merit.’ I am not aware that this defence of himself was rendered necessary by any charges brought forward against the general. Certainly I never made any such charges against him. I will not suppose that, in the passage cited, he intended to impute to me the misconduct which he describes, and yet, taking the whole context of his letter together, and coupling it with Mr. Kremer’s address, it cannot be disguised that others may suppose he intended to refer to me. I am quite sure that, if he did, he could not have formed those unfavorable opinions of me upon any personal observation of my conduct made by himself; for a supposition that they were founded upon his own knowledge, would imply that my lodgings and my person had been subjected to a system of espionage wholly incompatible with the open, manly, and honorable conduct of a gallant soldier. If he designed any insinuations against me, I must believe that he made them upon the information of others, of whom I can only say that they have deceived his credulity, and are entirely unworthy of all credit. I entered into no cabals; I held no secret conclaves; I enticed no man to violate pledges given or instructions received. The members from Ohio, and from the other western states, with whom I voted, were all of them as competent as I was to form an opinion on the pending election. TheMcArthurs and the Metcalfs, and the other gentlemen from the west, (some of whom have, if I have not, bravely ‘made an effort to repel an invading foe,’) are as incapable of dishonor as any men breathing; as disinterested, as unambitious, as exclusively devoted to the best interests of their country. It was quite as likely that I should be influenced by them, as that I could control their votes. Our object was not to impair, but to preserve from all danger, the purity of our republican institutions. And how I prostrated the maxim which maintains the supremacy of the people’s will, I am entirely at a loss to comprehend. The illusions of the general’s imagination deceive him. The people of the United States had never decided the election in his favor. If the people had willed his election, he would have been elected. It was because they had not willed his election, nor that of any other candidate, that the duty of making a choice devolved on the house of representatives. The general remarks:
‘Mr. Clay has never yet risked himself for his country. He has never sacrificed his repose, nor made an effort to repel an invading foe; of course his conscience assured him it was altogether wrong in any other man to lead his countrymen to battle and victory.’
The logic of this conclusion is not very striking. General Jackson fights better than he reasons. When have I failed to concur in awarding appropriate honors to those who, on the sea or on the land, have sustained the glory of our arms, if I could not always approve of the acts of some of them? It is true, that it has been my misfortune never to have repelled an invading foe, nor to have led my countrymen to victory. If I had, I should have left to others to proclaim and appreciate the deed. The general’s destiny and mine have led us in different directions. In the civil employments of my country, to which I have been confined, I regret that the little service which I have been able to render it falls far short of my wishes. But why this denunciation of those who have not repelled an invading foe, or led our armies to victory? At the very moment when he is inveighing against an objection to his election to the presidency, founded upon the exclusive military nature of his merits, does he not perceive that he is establishing its validity by proscribing every man who has not successfully fought the public enemy; and that, by such a general proscription, and the requirement of successful military service as the only condition of civil preferment, the inevitable effect would be the ultimate establishment of a military government?