Chapter III: Washington to Lincoln (2)

Never before had the city of Washington seen such an inauguration as took place on the fourth of March following. It seemed as though the whole population of the country had assembled there to see the old fighter take the oath of office. Daniel Webster wrote of it, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons came five hundred miles to see General Jackson and really seem to think that our country is rescued from some dreadful danger." As, perhaps, it was.

Jackson began his administration with characteristic vigor. It was he who first put into practice the principle, "To the victors belong the spoils." There was about him no academic courtesy, and he proceeded at once to displace many Federal officeholders and to replace them with his own adherents. The Senate tried for a time to stem the tide, but was forced to give it up. There was no withstanding that fierce and dominant personality. Jackson was more nearly a dictator than any President had ever been before him, or than any will ever be again. His great popularity seemed rather to increase than to diminish, and in 1832, he received no less than 219 electoral votes.

Let us do him justice. Prejudiced and ignorant and wrong-headed as he was, he was a pure patriot, laboring for his country's good. Nothing proves this more strongly than his attitude on the nullification question, in other words, the right of a state to refuse to obey a law of the United States, and to withdraw from the Union, should it so desire. This is not the place to go into the constitutional argument on this question. It is, of course, all but certain that the original thirteen states had no idea, when they ratified the Constitution, that they were entering an alliance from which they would forever be powerless to withdraw; and the right of withdrawal had been asserted in New England more than once. South Carolina was the hot-bed of nullification sentiment, arising partly from the growing anti-slavery feeling at the North, and partly because of the enactment of a tariff law which was felt to be unjust, and on October 25, 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed an ordinance asserting that, since the state had entered the Union of its free will, it could withdraw from it at any time and resume the sovereign and independent position which it had held at the close of the Revolution, and that it would do so should there be any attempt to enforce the tariff laws within the state.

Jackson's attitude on this question was already well known. At a banquet celebrating Jefferson's birthday, two years before, at which Calhoun and others had given toasts and made addresses in favor of nullification, Jackson had startled his audience by rising, glass in hand, and giving the toast, "Our Federal Union--it must be preserved!" That toast had fallen like a bombshell among the ranks of the nullifiers, and had electrified the whole Nation. Since then, he had become a stronger nationalist than ever; besides, he was always ready for a fight, and whenever he saw a head had the true Irishman's impulse to hit it. So he responded to the South Carolina nullification ordinance by sending two men-of-war to Charleston harbor and collecting a force of United States troops along the Carolina border. "I consider the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union," he wrote; and when a South Carolina congressman, about to go home, asked the President if he had any commands for his friends in that state, Jackson retorted:

"Yes, I have; please give my compliments to my friends in your state, and say to them that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on, engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."

Whether or not this message was delivered history does not say, but the whole Nation arose in wrath behind its President, state after state denounced nullification and disunion, and the South Carolina ordinance was finally repealed. So the storm passed for the moment. It left Jackson more of a popular hero than ever; it was as though he had won another battle of New Orleans. One cannot but wonder what would have happened had he been acting as President, instead of Buchanan, in those trying years after 1856.

He retired from the presidency broken in health and fortune, for however well he took care of the interests of his friends, he was always careless about his own. The last eight years of his life were spent at his Tennessee estate, The Hermitage. The end came in 1845, but his name has remained as a kind of watchword among the common people--a synonym for rugged honesty, and bluff sincerity. His career is, all in all, by far the most remarkable of any man who ever held the high office of President--with one possible exception, that of Abraham Lincoln.

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Jackson was one of the most perfect political manipulators and machine-builders this country ever saw, and he had so perfected his machine at the close of his second term that he was able to name as his successor and the heir of his policies, Martin Van Buren, of New York, a man who had been one of Jackson's most valued lieutenants from the first, an astute politician, but not remarkable in any way, nor able to impress himself upon the country. He announced at his inauguration that it was his intention, to tread in the footsteps of his "illustrious predecessor," but none for a moment imagined that he was big enough to fill Jackson's shoes. Indeed, Jackson, was by far the most important figure at the inauguration.

Van Buren's term as President witnessed nothing more momentous than the great panic of 1837, which he faced with a calmness and clear-sightedness surprising even to his friends, but which nevertheless assisted a collection of malcontents, under the leadership of Henry Clay, calling themselves National Republicans or Whigs, to defeat him for re-election. There was really no valid reason why he should have been re-elected; he had little claim, upon the country, but was for the most part, merely a clever politician, the first to attain the presidency. His life had been marked by an orderly advance from local to state, and then to national offices--an advance obtained not because he stood for any great principle, but because he knew how to make friends and build his political fences.

His nomination and election to the presidency was in no sense an accident, as was Taylor's, Pierce's, Hayes's and Garfield's, but was carefully prearranged and thoroughly understood. Yet let us do him the justice to add that his public services were, in some respects, of a high order, and that he was not wholly unworthy of the last great honor paid him. He was a candidate for the nomination in 1844, but was defeated by James K. Polk; and four years later, secured the nomination, but was defeated at the polls by Zachary Taylor. That ended his political career.

In the campaign against him of 1840, the Whigs were fortunate in having for their candidate William Henry Harrison, a man of immense personal popularity, resembling Jackson in that his reputation had been made as an Indian fighter in the West, where he had defeated Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe, and by a successful campaign in the war of 1812. Since then, he had been living quietly on his farm in Ohio, with no expectation of anything but passing his remaining years in quiet, for he was nearly seventy years of age. But Clay, with a sort of prophetic insight, picked him out as the Whig leader, and "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" became the rallying cry of a remarkable campaign, which swept the country from end to end and effectually swamped Van Buren. It was too strenuous for a man as old as Harrison, and he died at the White House within a month of taking the oath of office.

The "Tyler Too" was John Tyler, who had been elected Vice-President, and who assumed the office of President upon Harrison's death. His accession was little less than a bomb-shell to the party which had nominated him and secured his election. For he was a Virginian, a follower of Calhoun and an ardent pro-slavery man, while the Whigs were first, last and all the time anti-slavery. He had been placed on the ticket with Harrison, who was strongly anti-slavery, in the hope of securing the votes of some disaffected Democrats, but to see him President was the last thing the Whigs desired. The result was that he soon became involved in a bitter quarrel with Clay and the other leaders of the party, which effectually; killed any chance of renomination he may have had. He became the mark for perhaps the most unrestrained abuse ever aimed at a holder of the presidency.

It was largely unmerited, for Tyler was a capable man, had seen service in Congress and as governor of his state; but he was dry and uninspiring, and not big enough for the presidency, into which he could never have come except by accident. His administration was marked by few important events except the annexation of Texas, which will be dealt with more particularly when we come to consider the lives of Sam Houston and the other men who brought the annexation about. He retired to private life at the close of his term, appearing briefly twenty years later as a member of a "congress" which endeavored to prevent the war between the states, and afterwards as a member of the Confederate Congress, in which he served until his death.

Clay secured the Whig nomination for himself, in the campaign of 1844, and his opponent on the Democratic ticket was James Knox Polk, a native of North Carolina, but afterwards removing to Tennessee. He had been a member of Congress for fourteen years, and governor of Tennessee for three, and was a consistent exponent of Democratic principles. Two great questions were before the country: the annexation of Texas and the right to Oregon. Polk was for the immediate annexation of Texas and for the acquisition of Oregon up to 54° 40" north latitude, regardless of Great Britain's claims, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" became one of the battle-cries of the campaign. Clay, inveterate trimmer and compromiser that he was, professed to be for the annexation of Texas, provided it could be accomplished without war with Mexico, which was arrant nonsense, since Mexico had given notice that she would consider annexation an act of war. The result of Clay's attitude, and of a widespread distrust of his policies, was that Polk was elected by a large majority.

His administration was destined to be a brilliant one, for Texas was at once annexed, and the brief war with Mexico which followed, one of the most successful ever waged by any country, carried the southwestern boundary of the United States to the Rio Grande, and added New Mexico and California to the national domain, while a treaty with England secured for the country the present great state of Oregon, although here Polk receded from his position and accepted a compromise which confined Oregon below the forty-ninth parallel. But even this was something of a triumph. With that triumph, the name of Marcus Whitman is most closely associated, through a brilliant but rather useless feat of his, of which we shall speak later on. Polk seems to have been an able and conscientious man, without any pretensions to genius--just a good, average man, like any one of ten thousand other Americans. He refused a renomination because of ill-health, and died soon after retiring from office.

The Democratic party had by this time become hopelessly disrupted over the slavery question, which had become more and more acute. The great strength of the state rights party had always been in the South, and southern statesmen had always opposed any aggression on the part of the national government. The North, on the other hand, had always leaned more or less toward a strong centralization of power. So it followed that while the Democratic party was paramount in the South, its opponents, by whatever name known, found their main strength in the North.

Yet, even in the North, there was a strong Democratic element, and, but for the intrusion of the slavery question, the party would have controlled the government for many years to come. But the North was gradually coming to feel that the slavery question was more important than the more abstract one of national aggression; the more so since, by insisting upon the enforcement of such measures as the Fugitive Slave Law, the South was, as it were, keeping open and bleeding a wound which might to some extent have healed. In 1848 the split came, and the Democratic party put two candidates in the field, Lewis Cass for the South, and Martin Van Buren for the North.

The Whig Party, taking advantage of the knowledge gained in previous campaigns, looked around for a famous general, and managed to agree upon Zachary Taylor, who had made an exceedingly brilliant record in the war with Mexico. He was sixty-five years old at the time, a sturdy giant of a man, reared on the frontier, hardened by years of Indian warfare, whose nickname of "Old Rough and Ready" was not a bad description. He caught the popular fancy, for he possessed those qualities which appeal to the plain people, and this, assisted by the division in the ranks of his opponents, won him a majority of the electoral votes. He took the oath of office on March 4, 1849, but, after sixteen months of troubled administration, died suddenly on July 9, 1850.

Millard Fillmore, who had been elected Vice-President, at once took the oath of office as chief executive. He was a New York man, a lawyer, had been a member of Congress, and, as Vice-President, had presided over the bitter slavery debates in the Senate. His sympathies were supposed to be anti-slavery, yet he signed the Fugitive Slave Law, when it was placed before him, much to the chagrin of many people who had voted for him. He signed his own political death-warrant at the same time, for, at the Whig National Convention in 1852, he was defeated for the nomination for President, after a long struggle, by General Winfield Scott, another veteran of the Mexican war. Four years later, Fillmore, having managed to regain, the confidence of his party, secured the Whig nomination unanimously, but was defeated at the polls, and spent the remaining years of his life quietly at his home in Buffalo.

Against General Scott, the Democrats nominated Franklin Scott Pierce, the nomination being in the nature of an accident, though Pierce was in every way a worthy candidate. His family record begins with his father, Benjamin Pierce, who, as a lad of seventeen, stirred by the tidings of the fight at Lexington, left his home in Chelmsford, musket on shoulder, to join the patriot army before Boston. He settled in New Hampshire after the Revolution, and his son Franklin was born there in 1804. He followed the usual course of lawyer, congressman and senator, and served throughout the war with Mexico, rising to the rank of brigadier-general, and securing a reputation second only to that of Scott and Taylor.

At the Democratic convention of 1852, Pierce was not a candidate for the nomination, and did not know that any one intended to mention his name, or even thought of him in that connection. But the convention was unable to agree on a candidate, and on the fourth day and thirty-third ballot, some delegate cast his vote for General Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. The name attracted attention, Pierce's career had been distinguished and above reproach, other delegates voted for him, until, on the forty-ninth ballot, he was declared the unanimous choice of the convention. His election was overwhelming, as he carried twenty-seven states out of thirty-one.

Once in the presidential chair, however, this popularity gradually slipped away from him. He found himself in an impossible position, between two fires, for the slavery question was dividing the country more and more and there seemed no possible way to reconcile the warring sections. Pierce, perhaps, made the mistake of trying to placate both, instead of taking his stand firmly with one or the other; and the consequence was that at the convention of 1856, he received a few votes from courtesy, but was never seriously in the running, which resulted in the nomination of James Buchanan. Pierce returned to his home in New Hampshire, to find his friends and neighbors estranged from him by his supposed pro-slavery views, which had yet not been radical enough to win him the friendship of the South; but time changed all that, and his last years were spent in honored and opulent retirement.

James Buchanan was, like Andrew Jackson, of Scotch-Irish descent, but there the resemblance between the two ended, for Buchanan had little of Jackson's tremendous positiveness and strength of character. His disposition was always to compromise, while Jackson's was to fight. Now compromise is often a very admirable thing, but where it shows itself to be impossible and leaves fighting the only resource, the wise man puts all thought of it behind him and prepares for battle. Which is precisely what Buchanan did not do. He had been a lawyer and congressman, minister to Russia, senator, secretary of state and minister to England, and so had the widest possible political acquaintanceship; he was a man of somewhat unusual culture; but, alas! he found that something more than culture was needed to guide him in the troublous times amid which he fell. I have often thought that Buchanan's greatest handicap was his wide friendship, which often made it almost impossible to say no, however much he may have wished to do so. An unknown backwoodsman, like Andrew Jackson, with no favors to return and no friendships to be remembered, could have acted far more effectively.

Buchanan's opponent for the presidency was John C. Frémont, and there was a great stir and bustle among the people who were supposed to support him, but Buchanan won easily, and at once found himself in the midst of the most perplexing difficulties. Kansas was in a state of civil war; two days after his inauguration the Supreme Court handed down the famous Dred Scott decision, declaring the right of any slave-holder to take his slaves as property into any territory; while the young Republican party was siding openly with the abolitionists, and, a very firebrand in a powder-house, in 1859, John Brown seized Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and attempted to start a slave insurrection. Now a slave insurrection was the one thing which the South feared more than any other--it was the terror which was ever present. And so John Brown's mad attempt excited a degree of hysteria almost unbelievable.

Small wonder that Buchanan was soon at his wits' ends. His sympathies were with the slave-holders; he doubted his right to coerce a seceding state; his friendships were largely with southern statesmen--and yet, to his credit be it stated, on January 8, 1860, after secession had become a thing assured, he seems suddenly to have seen his duty clearly, and in a special message, declared his intention to collect the revenues and protect public property in all the states, and to use force if necessary. Taken all in all, his attitude in those trying days was a creditable one--as creditable as could be expected from any average man. What the time needed was a genius, and fortunately one rose to the occasion. Buchanan, harried and despondent, must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when he surrendered the helm to the man who had been chosen to succeed him--the man, by some extraordinary chance, in all the land best fitted to steer the ship of state to safety--the man who was to be the dominant figure of the century in American history.

SUMMARY

WASHINGTON, GEORGE. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22 (old style, February 11), 1732; sent on a mission to the French beyond the Alleghenies, 1753-54; appointed lieutenant-colonel, 1754; defeated by the French at Fort Necessity, July 3, 1754; aide-de-camp to Braddock, 1755; commanded on the frontier, 1755-57; led the advance-guard for the reduction of Fort Duquesne, 1758; married Martha Custis, January 9, 1759; delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-75; appointed commander-in-chief of the continental forces, June 15, 1775; assumed command of the army, July 3, 1775; compelled evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776; defeated at battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776; defeated at White Plains, October 28, 1776; surprised the British at Trenton, December 26, 1776; won the battle of Princeton, January, 1777; defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; at Valley Forge, during the winter of 1777-78; won the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778; captured Yorktown and the army of Cornwallis, October 19, 1781; resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, December 23, 1783; president of the Constitutional Convention, 1787; unanimously elected President of the United States, January, 1789; inaugurated at New York, April 30, 1789; unanimously re-elected, 1793; issued farewell address to the people, September, 1796; retired to Mount Vernon, March, 1797; died there, December 14, 1799.

ADAMS, JOHN. Born at Braintree, now Quincy, Massachusetts, October 30, 1735; graduated at Harvard, 1755; studied law, took a leading part in opposing Stamp Act, was counsel for the British soldiers charged with murder in connection with the "Boston massacre" in 1770, and became a leader of the patriot party; member of Revolutionary Congress of Massachusetts, 1774; delegate to first and second Continental Congress, 1774-75; commissioner to France, 1777; negotiated treaties with the Netherlands, Great Britain and Prussia, 1782-83; minister to London, 1785-88; Federal Vice-President, 1789-97; President, 1797-1801; defeated for re-election and retired to Quincy, 1801; died there, July 4, 1886.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. Born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743; member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-75, and 1776-78, and of the Continental Congress, 1775-76; drafted Declaration of Independence, 1776; governor of Virginia, 1779-81; member of Congress, 1783-84; minister to France, 1784-89; secretary of state, 1789-93; Vice-President, 1797-1801; President, 1801-09; died at Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia, July 4, 1826.

MADISON, JAMES. Born at Port Conway, Virginia, March 16, 1751; graduated at Princeton, 1771; delegate to Congress, 1780-83, and to the Constitutional Convention, 1787; member of Congress, 1789-97; secretary of state, 1801-09; President, 1809-1817; died at Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia, June 28, 1836.

MONROE, JAMES. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, April 28, 1758; member of Virginia assembly, 1782; member of Congress, 1783-86; United States senator, 1790-94; minister to France, 1794-96; governor of Virginia, 1799-1802; minister to Great Britain, 1803-07; secretary of state, 1811-17; President, 1817-25, an administration, known as "the era of good feeling"; died at New York City, July 4, 1831.

ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY. Born at Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767; graduated at Harvard, 1788; admitted to the bar, 1791; minister to the Netherlands, 1794-97; and to Prussia, 1797-1801; United States senator, 1803-08; minister to Russia, 1809-14; minister to England, 1815-17; secretary of state, 1817-25; President, 1825-29; member of Congress, 1831-48; died at Washington, February 23, 1848.

JACKSON, ANDREW. Born at the Waxham settlement, North Carolina (?), March 15, 1767; member of Congress, 1796-97; United States senator, 1797-98; justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1798-1804; defeated the Creeks at Talladega, 1813, and at Horseshoe Bend, 1814; captured Pensacola from the English, 1814; won the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815; commanded against the Seminoles, 1817-18; governor of Florida, 1821; United States senator, 1823-25; defeated for President by J.Q. Adams, 1824; President, 1829-37; died at the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, June 8, 1845.

VAN BUREN, MARTIN. Born at Kinderhook, New York, December 5, 1782; admitted to the bar, 1803; entered New York State Senate, 1812; United States senator, 1821-28; governor of New York, 1828-29; secretary of state, 1829-31; Vice-President, 1833-37; President, 1837-41; defeated for President, 1840, 1844, 1848; died at Kinderhook, July 24, 1862.

HARRISON, WILLIAM HENRY. Born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Virginia, February 9, 1773; governor of Indiana Territory, 1801-13; won victory of Tippecanoe, 1811, and of the Thames, 1813; member of Congress, 1816-19; United States senator, 1825-28; minister to Colombia, 1828-29; defeated for Presidency, 1836; elected President in the "log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign, 1840; inaugurated, March 4, 1841; died at Washington, April 4, 1841.

TYLER, JOHN. Born at Greenway, Charles City County, Virginia, March 29, 1790; admitted to the bar, 1809; member of Virginia legislature, 1811-16; member of Congress, 1816-21; governor of Virginia, 1825-27; United States senator, 1827-36; elected Vice-President, 1840, and succeeded to Presidency on the death of General Harrison, April 4, 1841; president of the peace convention of 1861, favored secession and served as member of the Confederate provisional Congress; died at Richmond, Virginia, January 18, 1862.

POLK, JAMES KNOX. Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, November 2, 1795; admitted to the bar, 1820; member of Congress, 1825-39; speaker of the House of Representatives, 1835-39; governor of Tennessee, 1839-41; President, 1845-49; died at Nashville, Tennessee, June 15, 1849.

TAYLOR, ZACHARY. Born in Orange County, Virginia, September 24, 1784; entered the army as first lieutenant, 1808; served in War of 1812, attaining rank of major; served in Black Hawk's war, 1832, with rank of colonel; defeated Seminole Indians, 1837; commander-in-chief of Florida, 1838; took command of the army in Texas, 1845; won battle of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, and that of Reseca de la Palma, May 9, 1846; captured Matamoras, May 18, and Monterey, September 24, 1846; defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847; appointed major-general, June 29, 1846; elected President, 1848; inaugurated, March 4, 1849; died at Washington, July 9, 1850.

FILLMORE, MILLARD. Born at Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, January 7, 1800; admitted to the bar, 1823; member of New York State legislature, 1829-31; member of Congress, 1833-35, 1837-43; elected Vice-President, 1848, and succeeded to presidency on the death of Taylor, July 9, 1850; died at Buffalo, New York, March 8, 1874.

PIERCE, FRANKLIN. Born at Hillsborough, New Hampshire, November 23, 1804; member of Congress, 1833-37; United States senator, 1837-42; served with distinction in Mexican war; President, 1853-57; died at Concord, New Hampshire, October 8, 1869.

BUCHANAN, JAMES. Born at Stony Batter, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, April 22, 1791; member of Congress, 1821-31; minister to Russia, 1831-33; United States senator, 1833-45; secretary of state, 1845-49; minister to Great Britain, 1853-56; President, 1857-61; died at Wheatland, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 1, 1868.

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