The State banks had proved destructive to the public interest; with no power to restrain their issues except that imposed by their charters and the honesty of their officers—a frail security for the public, as experience had attested. The example of Washington was pleaded by the advocates of the bank. At the very outset it had been opposed for want of constitutionality. Washington had doubted it, and submitted the question to two of his Cabinet—Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton. They were divided in opinion—Mr. Jefferson opposing, and Mr. Hamilton sustaining the constitutionality of the measure. The opinion and argument of Hamilton prevailed, and the act creating a bank received the Executive approval.
It answered admirably the object of its creation, and the Republican party (then in embryo) acquiesced. Indeed, at this time, there could scarcely be said to be a party separate from the Government. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jefferson were the leaders of the parties which divided the people upon the adoption of the Constitution, and these parties, though at this time inchoate, were concreting about these two wonderful men. Upon the renewal of the charter of the United States Bank, during the Administration of Mr. Madison, the Republican party again mooted its constitutionality; but its undisputed usefulness had won for it immense popularity, and there were many who, though acting with the Republicans, were willing (as Washington had approved it, and the Supreme Court had pronounced it constitutional) to view the question as settled, and vote to renew the charter.
It was subsequent to the veto of Mr. Madison (when he had reconsidered his action, and recommended the re-chartering of the bank,) that debates ensued, in which the question was exhausted. In these debates, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Clay, Felix Grundy, William B. Giles, and Mr. Calhoun led. They were continued through several sessions, up to 1816, when they ultimated in the chartering of the last bank of the United States. This charter expired during the Administration of General Jackson, and by him the bank was finally crushed.
Three great measures constituted what was then termed the American System—the United States Bank, a protective tariff, and internal improvements within the States by the General Government. An opposition to this party was formed at the very outset of the Adams Administration. This opposition denied the constitutional power of Congress to create or sustain either.
The South, at the commencement of this opposition, was almost alone. The North was a unit in its support of the Administration, because its policy was vital to her interests. The West, influenced by Mr. Clay, was greatly in the majority in its support. The Southern opposition seemed almost hopeless; and to this cause may, in a great degree, be ascribed the bringing forth to public view the transcendent abilities of the young men aspiring for fame in Georgia, and in the South generally. McDuffie, Hamilton, Holmes, and Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina; Colquitt, Cobb, Toombs, Stephens, Johnson, Nesbit, and John P. King, of Georgia; Wise, Bocock, Hunter, Summers, Rives, and others of Virginia; Mangum, Badger, and Graham, of North Carolina; Bell, Foster, Peyton, Nicholson, and James K. Polk, of Tennessee; King and Lewis, of Alabama; Porter, Johnston, White, and Barrow, of Louisiana; Ashley, Johnson, and Sevier, of Arkansas; Chase, Pugh, Pendleton, and Lytell, of Ohio; and Douglas, Trumbull, and Lincoln, of Illinois, were all men of sterling talent, and were about equally divided in political sentiment. Kentucky had Tom and Humphrey Marshall, Crittenden, Menifer, Letcher, Breckinridge, and Preston.
General Jackson was now the avowed candidate of the States-rights party, which soon after assumed the name of Democratic, and his political principles and great personal popularity were not only dividing the West, but the Middle States, and even those of New England.
During the entire administration of Adams, there was a majority in Congress supporting his policy. It was then and there that the great battle for supremacy was fought. Berrien and Forsyth, from Georgia, in the Senate; McDuffie and Preston, from South Carolina; Cass, from Michigan, and Van Buren and Silas Wright, from New York—all giants in intellect. But there were Webster and John Davis, from Massachusetts, George Evans, from Maine, and others of minor powers, but yet great men. Between these great minds the conflict was stupendous. Every means were put into requisition to sustain the Administration and its policy, but all were unavailing—General Jackson was elected by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Clay was immediately returned by Kentucky to the Senate, and organized an opposition upon the policy of the late Administration, led on by himself and Webster. The memory of those days, and the men who made them memorable, flits vividly before me; but I am not writing a history, and can attempt no order, but shall write on as these memories of men and events shall seem to me most interesting in their character to the general reader.
General Jackson was one of those rare creations of nature which appear at long intervals, to astonish and delight mankind. It seems to be settled in the public mind that he was born in South Carolina; but there is no certainty of the fact. His early life was very obscure, and he himself was uncertain of his birth-place, though he believed it was South Carolina. He remembered the removal of his family from South Carolina, and many of the incidents of the war of the Revolution transpiring there; but more especially those occurring in North Carolina, to which the family removed. Judge Alexander Porter, of Louisiana, was an Irishman, and from the neighborhood where were born and reared the parents of Jackson. His own father was brutally executed at Vinegar Hill, by sentence of a drum-head court martial, in 1798, and his family proscribed by the British Government. With his uncle, the Rowans, the Jacksons, and some others, he emigrated to America, and settled at Nashville, Tennessee. The Jacksons were of the same family, and distantly connected with General Jackson. Great intimacy existed between this family and General Jackson for many years.
Judge Porter, of whom I shall hereafter have something to say, visited Europe a short time before his death, and made diligent search into the history of the Jackson family, without ascertaining anything positively: he learned enough to satisfy his own mind that Andrew Jackson was born in Ireland, and brought to the United States by his parents when only two years old. This was also the opinion of Thomas Crutcher, who came with General Jackson to Nashville, and it was also the opinion of Dr. Boyd McNary and his elder brother, Judge McNary, who believed he was four years older than he supposed himself to be.
The McNarys came with him from North Carolina. On the trip a difficulty occurred between Boyd McNary and Jackson, which never was reconciled—both dying in extreme old age. Boyd McNary stopped at Lexington and read medicine, forming there the acquaintance of Mr. Clay and Felix Grundy. The intimacy which sprang up between Clay and McNary was as ardent and imperishable as the hatred between himself and Jackson, enduring until death. Jackson was enterprising and eminently self-reliant; in all matters pertaining to himself, he was his own counsellor; he advised with no man; cool and quick in thought, he seemed to leap to conclusions, and never went back from them. An anecdote relative to his parting from his mother in his outset in life, illustrates this as prominent in the attributes of his nature at that time. The writer heard him narrate this after his return from Washington, when his last term in the Presidential office had expired.