The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays

by William Graham Sumner

The election of Jackson marks a new era in our political history. A new order of men appeared in the Federal administration. The whole force of local adherents of the new administration, who had worked for it and therefore had claims upon it, streamed to Washington to get their reward. It seems that Jackson was forced by the rapacity of this crowd into the “reformation” of the government. The political customs which had grown up in New York and Pennsylvania were transferred to Washington. Mr. Marcy, in a speech in the Senate, January 24, 1832, on Van Buren’s nomination as minister to England, boldly stated the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils, avowing it as a doctrine which did not seem to him to call for any delicacy on the part of politicians. In fact, to men who had grown up as Mr. Marcy had, habit in this respect must have made that doctrine seem natural and necessary to the political system. The New York politicians had developed an entire code of political morals for all branches and members of the political party machine. They had studied the passions, prejudices, and whims of bodies of men. They had built up an organization in which all the parts were adjusted to support and help one another. The subordinate officers looked up to and sustained the party leaders while carrying the party machinery into every nook and corner of the state, and the party leaders in turn cared for and protected their subordinates. Organization and discipline were insisted upon throughout the party as the first political duty. There is scarcely a phenomenon more interesting to the social philosopher than to observe, under a political system remarkable for its looseness and lack of organization, the social bond returning and vindicating itself in the form of party tyranny, and to observe under a political system where loyalty and allegiance to the Commonwealth are only names, how loyalty and allegiance to party are intensified. It is one of the forms under which the constant peril of the system presents itself, namely, that a part may organize to use the whole for narrow and selfish ends. The idea of the commonwealth is lost and the public arena seems only a scrambling-ground for selfish cliques. In the especial case of the New York factions, this was all intensified by the fact that there were no dignified issues, no real questions of public policy at stake, but only factions of the ins and the outs, struggling for the spoils of office. Naturally enough, the contestants thought that to the victors belong the spoils—otherwise the contest had no sense at all. In this system, now, fidelity to a caucus was professed and enforced. Bolting, or running against a regular nomination, were high crimes which were rarely condoned. On the other hand, the leaders professed the doctrine that a man who surrendered his claims for the good of the party, or who stood by the party, must never be allowed to suffer for it. The same doctrines had been accepted more or less at Washington, but in a feeble and timid way. From this time they grew into firm recognition. Under their operation politics became a trade. The public officer was, of necessity, a politician, and the work by which he lived was not service in his official duty, but political party labor. The tenure of office was so insecure and the pay so meager, that few men of suitable ability could be found who did not think that they could earn their living more easily, pleasantly, and honorably in some other career. Public service gravitated downwards to the hands of those who, under the circumstances, were willing to take it. It presented some great prizes in the form of collectorships, etc., the remuneration for which was in glaring contrast with the salaries of some of the highest and most responsible officers in the government; but, for the most part, the public service fell into the hands of men who were exposed to the temptation to make it pay.

After the general onslaught on the caucus, in 1824, it fell into disuse as a means of nominating state officers, and conventions took its place. At first sight this seemed to be a more complete fulfillment of the democratic idea. The people were to meet and act on their own motion. It was soon found, however, that the only change was in the necessity for higher organization. In the thirties there was indeed a fulfillment of the theory which seems now to have passed away; there was a spontaneity and readiness in assembling and organizing common action which no longer exists; there was a public interest and activity far beyond what is now observable. One is astonished at the slight occasion on which meetings were held, high excitement developed, and energetic action inaugurated. The anti-Masonic movement, from 1826 to 1832, is a good instance. The “Liberty party” (Abolitionists), the “Native Americans,” the “Anti-renters,” all bear witness to a facility of association which certainly does not now exist. It is, however, an indispensable prerequisite to the pure operation of the machinery of caucus and convention. The effort to combine all good men has been talked about from the beginning, but it has always failed on account of the lack of a bond between them as strong as the bond of interest which unites the factions.

During the decade from 1830 to 1840 a whole new set of machinery was created to fit the new arrangements. This consisted in committees, caucuses, and conventions, ramifying down finally into the wards of great cities, and guided and handled by astute and experienced men. Under their control the initiative of “the people” died out. The public saw men elected whom they had never chosen, and measures adopted which they had never desired, and themselves, in short, made the sport of a system which cajoled and flattered while it cheated them. If a governor had been elected by some political trickery a little more flagrant than usual, he was very apt, in his inaugural, to draw a dark picture of the effete monarchies of the Old World, and to congratulate the people on the blessings they enjoyed in being able to choose their own rulers.

This period was full of new energy and turbulent life. Railroads were just beginning to carry on the extension of production which steamboats and canals had begun. Immigration was rapidly increasing. The application of anthracite coal to the arts was working a revolution in them. On every side reigned the greatest activity. Literature and science, which before had had but a meager existence, were coming into life. The public journals, which had formerly been organs of persons and factions, or substitutes for books, now began to be transformed into the modern newspaper. The difficulties and problems presented by all this new life were indeed great, and the tasks of government, as well to discriminate between what belonged to it and what did not, as to do what did belong to it, were great. On the general principles of the Democratic party of the day in regard to the province of government, history has already passed the verdict that they were sound and correct. On the main questions which divided the administration and the opposition, it must pass a verdict in favor of the administration. These issues were not indeed clear and the parties did not, as is generally supposed, take sides upon them definitely. Free trade, so far as it was represented by the compromise tariff, was the result of a coalition between Clay and Calhoun against the administration, after Calhoun’s quarrel with Jackson had led the latter to revoke the understanding in accordance with which Calhoun retired from the contest of 1824 and took the second place. The South was now in the position in which the northeastern states had found themselves at the beginning of the century. The Southerners considered that the tariff of 1828 had subjected their interests to those of another section which held a majority in the general government, and that the Union was being used only as a means of so subjecting them. They seized upon the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, which Jefferson and Madison had drawn when in opposition, as furnishing them a ground of resistance, and threw into the tariff question no less a stake than civil war and disunion. On this issue there were no parties. South Carolina stood alone.

Banks had been political questions in the states and in the general government from the outset. The history of Pennsylvania and New York furnishes some great scandals under this head. From time to time, the methods of banking employed had called down the condemnation of the most conservative and sensible men, and had aroused some less well-balanced of judgment to indiscriminate hostility. Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States sprang from a political motive, and he proposed instead of it a bank on the “credit and revenues of the government”—a proposition too vague to be understood, but which suggested a grand paper-machine, at a time when the Bank of the United States was at its best. This attack rallied to itself at once all the local banks; the great victory of 1832 was not a victory for hard money so much as it was a victory of the state banks over the national bank. The removal of the deposits was a reckless financial step, and the crash of 1837 was its direct result.

The traditional position of the Democratic party on hard money has another source. In 1835 a party sprang up in New York City, as a faction of Tammany, which took the name of the “Equal Rights party,” but which soon received the name of the “Locofoco party” from an incident which occurred at Tammany Hall, and which is significant of the sharpness of party tactics at the time. This party was a radical movement inside of the administration party. It claimed, and justly enough, that it had returned to the Jeffersonian fountain and drawn deeper and purer waters than the Jacksonian Democrats. It demanded equality with a new energy, and in its denunciations of monopolies and banks went very close to the rights of property. It demanded that all charters should be repealable, urgently favored a metallic currency, resisted the application of English precedents in law courts and legislatures, and desired an elective judiciary. It lasted as a separate party only five or six years, and then was cajoled out of existence by superior political tactics; but it was not without reason that the name spread to the whole party, for, laying aside certain extravagances, two or three of its chief features soon came to be adopted by the Democrats.

On the great measures of public policy, therefore, the position of the administration was not clear and thorough, but the tendency was in the right direction, especially when contrasted with the policy urged by the Whigs. In regard to internal improvements, the administration early took up a position which the result fully justified, and in its opposition to the distribution of the surplus revenue its position was unassailable. In its practical administration of the government there is less ground for satisfaction in the retrospect. Besides the general lowering of tone which has been mentioned, there were scandals and abuses which it is not necessary to specify. General Jackson’s first cabinet fell to pieces suddenly, under the effect of a private scandal and of the President’s attempt to coerce the private social tastes of his cabinet, or rather of their wives. He held to the doctrine of popularity, and its natural effect upon a man of his temper, without the sobriety of training and culture, was to stimulate him to lawless self-will. He regarded himself as the chosen representative of the whole people, charged, as such, with peculiar duties over against Congress. The “will of the people” here received a new extension. He found it in himself, and what he found there he did not hesitate to set in opposition to the will of the people as this found expression through their constitutional organs. At the same time the practice of “instructions” marked an extension, on another side, of the general tendency to bring public action closer under the control of changing majorities.

Van Buren’s election was a triumph of the caucus and convention, which had now been reduced to scarcely less exactitude of action than the old congressional caucus. Van Buren, however, showed more principle than had been expected from his reputation. He had to bear all the blame for the evil fruits resulting from the mistakes made during the last eight years. Moving with the radical or Locofoco tendency, he attempted to sever bank and state by the independent treasury, and in so doing he lost the support of the “Bank Democrats.” This, together with the natural political revulsion after a financial crisis, lost him his re-election.

The Whig party was rich in able men, which makes it the more astonishing that one cannot find, in their political doctrines, a sound policy of government. The national bank may still be regarded as an open question, and favoring the bank was not favoring inconvertible paper money; but their policy of high tariff for protection, of internal improvements, and of distribution of the surplus revenue, has been calamitous so far as it has been tried. They also present the same lack of political sagacity which we have remarked in the Federalists, whose successors in general they were. They oscillated between principle and expediency in such a way as to get the advantages of neither; and they abandoned their best men for available men at just such times as to throw away all their advantages. The campaign of 1840 presents a pitiful story. There are features in it which are almost tragic. An opportunity for success offering, a man was chosen who had no marks of eminence and no ability for the position. His selection bears witness to an anxious search for a military hero. It resulted in finding one whose glory had to be exhumed from the doubtful tradition of a border Indian war. The campaign was marked by the introduction of mass meetings and systematic stump-speaking, and by the erection of “log-cabins,” which generally served as barrooms for the assembled crowd, so that many a man who went to a drunkard’s grave twenty or thirty years ago dated his ruin from the “hard-cider campaign.” After the election it proved that hungry Whigs could imitate the Democrats of 1829 in their clamor for office, and, if anything, better the instruction. The President’s death was charged partly to worry and fatigue. It left Mr. Tyler President, and the question then arose what Mr. Tyler was—a question to which the convention at Harrisburg, fatigued with the choice between Clay and Harrison, had not given much attention. It was found that he was such that the Whig victory turned to ashes. No bank was possible, no distribution was possible, and only a tariff which was lame and feeble from the Whig point of view. The cabinet resigned, leaving Mr. Webster alone at his post. In vain, like a true statesman, he urged the Whigs to rule with Mr. Tyler, since they had got him and could not get rid of him or get anybody else. Like a true statesman, again, he remained at his post, in spite of misrepresentation, until he could finish the English treaty, and it was another feature of the story that he lost position with his party by so doing. The system did not allow Mr. Webster the highest reward of a statesman, to plan and mold measures so as to impress himself on the history of his country. It allowed him only the work of reducing to a minimum the harm which other people’s measures were likely to do. In the circumstances of the time war with England was imminent, and there was good reason for fear if the negotiation were to fall into the hands of the men whom Mr. Tyler was gathering about him. The Whigs were broken and discouraged, and as their discipline had always been far looser than that of their adversaries, they seemed threatened with disintegration. The other party, however, was divided by local issues and broken into factions. Its discipline had suffered injury, and its old leaders had lost their fire while new ones had not arisen to take their places. The western states were growing into a size and influence in the confederation which made it impossible for two or three of the old states to control national politics any longer.

In this state of things the southern leaders came forward to give impetus and direction to the national administration. They had, what the southern politicians always had, leisure for conference. They had also character and social position, and a code of honor which enabled them to rely on one another without any especial bond of interest other than the general one. They had such a bond, common and complete, in their stake in slavery. They could count, without doubt or danger, on support throughout their entire section. They had a fixed program also, which was an immense advantage for entering on the control of a mass of men under no especial impetus. They had besides their traditional alliance with the Democrats of the North—an alliance which always was unnatural and illogical, and which now turned to the perversion of that party. They prepared their principles, doctrines, and constitutional theories to fit their plans.