Chapter XII

THE HARRISON-TYLER TROUPE; HOW IT PLAYED.

1841–1845.

General Harrison’s Death and Life-Insurance Companies.—Whig Bank-Bills
with no Tyler Bodies to suit them.—A Good Flint which required a
first-rate Gun, Stock, Breech, and Barrel, to suit it.—Definition of
Crabs, etc.—The Ashburton Treaty.—The Bankrupt Act, and whom it
helped.—Misfortunes and Fortunes.—Mr. Calhoun’s Texas
Trick.—Diplomatic Magic-Lanterns exposed.—Roman-like Garments with
Carthaginian Spots.—Florida our Stocking Heel; how darned.—Yarns about
it.—Iron Railings as State Corsets.—How the Florida Keys might be
usefully employed.

At the time General Harrison was called from the clerkship of the County Court of Hamilton County, Ohio, to preside at the People’s High Assizes at Washington, he lived at North Bend, a very different crook from that of his predecessor. He was sixty-eight years of age, and in feeble health; yet so seldom do people die in desirable offices, that any life-insurance company would have taken his life in a policy at the lowest premium.

April 4, 1841, however, he died. Of course John Tyler, the Vice-President, did not. To the subsequent regret of his party he lived on—a plane of his own, quite apart from the platform upon which he was placed by them, and bisected by a Virginia ecliptic so oblique that it rarely touched anything or anybody. Mr. Clay and the Whigs tried hard and long to shape a bank bill to his amphibious tastes; but as they could not find a body, neck, or feet to suit the bill, they abandoned the study of natural history as illustrated by Mr. Tyler. A bank—some bank—he seemed desirous to have; because he entertained a profound conviction that a bank was a good place to put a counter in. Like the gentleman who possessed a first-rate flint, and wished a gunsmith just to fit a good breech, lock, stock, and barrel to it, the acting President seemed anxious, in his interviews with the Congressional banksmiths, to have them fit a good bank, vaults, specie, and circulation, to his admirable counter.

As Cuvier objected to the definition of a crab given by the French Academy, namely, “that it was a small red fish which walks backwards,” as “wanting three things to make it correct: first, that the crab was not a fish; second, that it was not red; and third, that it did not walk backwards”: so the leaders of the party which elected him found equal fault with Mr. Tyler as defining in his own person the name of Whig on three grounds: first, that he was not a Whig in principle; second, nor in theory; third, nor in practice.

The original Cabinet members all resigned, except Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, who remained to complete in July, 1842, with Lord Ashburton, a treaty to disentangle our northeastern boundary lines and fish lines from the hard knots into which they were running.

A Bankrupt Act was thrown out by Congress in 1841, as planks for traders shipwrecked by the tidal waves which followed the earthquake of 1837; but the principal benefit of the act resulted in throwing the stranded fortunes to the official wreckers, called assignees in bankruptcy, who secured most of the stuff cast upon the shore. In two years this barbarous wrecking business was stopped by the repeal of the law.

The principal event of Mr. Tyler’s term was the successful trick, shown off in 1845 to the American people, by Mr. Calhoun, the new Secretary of State, by which they were led into the belief that Texas was about to pass under an English protectorate. Stimulating the national antipathies and cupidities, he asked Congress, through Mr. Tyler, to secure the slave empire on the Rio Grande. The dark-lantern exhibition was successful. Congress passed alternate resolutions, one opening negotiations with Mexico for the impracticable cession of Texas, the other providing for its practical annexation. These little State deceits, covered at the time with solemn diplomatic care, seem very pitiful when historically exposed in their pasteboard cheapness and tinselled falsity. The Roman-like virtue of Mr. Calhoun was picked out with Carthaginian spots, and his white state toga shot with colored figures, that will not stand the sun. While he would have scorned with his whole nature any individual fraud for the personal gain of a fortune, he was, like so many other politicians, neither above nor below being more than sharp at a party bargain.

The day before Mr. Tyler went out, Florida came into the Union. She is the heel of the American stocking,—very much darned and always in need of mending. Yarns orange-colored, lemon-hued, and palm-tinted show in the abundant patching. She has been thus far like certain small country places, which scorn fences and paint, ready to borrow money on any security required, and are always foreclosed at some point by mortgages which hurt no one in the neighborhood. Iron railing may stimulate her pride and corset up her untidy ways. She wears the keys at her girdle, but as yet has forgotten to lock up her small politicians and let out her too closely kept products.