Chapter III: The Red Terror and the White

I

Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of his political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The “spoils system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political parties, thus frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of the exigencies of a new political era.

For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and indefinite; and if the politics of the young Republic had not been drifting toward personal government, it had been partaking of the nature of government by cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy Adams had made the definite division of the people into political parties inevitable--these parties standing for well-defined, antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught the drift and had cleverly organized a party standing for principles and policies, rather than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one of the outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration, who had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in 1828 something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in support of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the organization of a party pledged to internal improvements and a protective tariff.

The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as we have known them for almost a century.

It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the intellectuals, alone, determined the governmental personnel. Men went into training for the Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a matter of course, from the Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to the chief magistracy. An office-holding class, feeling itself secure in a life tenure, had grown up.

As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs. Thus they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration, rejoicing in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too many pressing claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering upon their reward. Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior, awaiting the opportunity, at Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had been fairly mobbed by ardent partisans of his cause, demanding the expulsion of the enemy and the appointment of his supporters to office. The Jackson press had been particularly insistent upon this point. Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had early announced that he naturally assumed that the office-holders who had actively campaigned for Adams would make way for the victors. This same feeling had spread into every community in the country. Isaac Hill, writing in the “New Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the election, had sounded the onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177] And soon after reaching Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at Gadsby’s, the New England editor had written joyously to a friend: “You may say to all our anxious Adamsites that THE BARNACLES WILL BE SCRAPED CLEAN OFF THE SHIP OF STATE. Most of them have grown so large and stick so tight that the scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”

Before Jackson’s entry into the White House, the scenes in and about Gadsby’s were scarcely less than scandalous. A great perspiring mob swarmed in the streets in front, crowded the tap-room, jostled its way in the halls, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Major Lewis, it demanded and secured admission to the President’s private apartment. All admitted themselves responsible for Jackson’s election. Amos Kendall, encountering a pompous stranger on the Avenue, was invited to look upon the man who had “delivered Pennsylvania.”[178] James A. Hamilton, who was close to Jackson in the early days of the Administration, was importuned by an Indianian, who had taken the electoral vote of the State to the Capitol, to intercede on his behalf for the Register’s office at Crawfordsville, or the Marshalship. This typical office-seeker had “calculated to remain a few weeks ... hoping that some of these violent Adams men may receive their walking papers.” He carried letters of recommendation from all the Democratic members of the State Legislature “for any office I can ask.” But, in view of the brisk competition, would not Hamilton kindly recall that he had received letters from the Hoosier bearing on the campaign, and personally testify to the important part he had played?[179] Others depended upon the length of their petitions, and two applicants from Pennsylvania, for the same office, had signers so numerous that the number had to be estimated by the length of the sheets.[180]

Meanwhile there is no question but that Jackson was eager to serve his friends, if not to punish his enemies. From the moment of his election, he had entertained no illusions as to the character of the opposition his Administration would encounter. It was an open secret that his enemies, long before the inauguration, had begun to organize for the discrediting of his Administration. He was familiar with the bitterness of Clay. And, with the determination to make his Administration a success, from his point of view, he turned his attention to preparations for the fight. His military training told him that it was fatal to enter a campaign with traitors in the camp. The disloyalty from which Adams had suffered had not been lost upon him.[181] And he had fixed convictions as to political organization. “To give effect to any principles,” he said, “you must avail yourself of the physical force of an organized body of men. This is true alike in war, politics, or religion. You cannot organize men in effective bodies without giving them a reason for it. And when the organization is once made, you cannot keep it together unless you hold constantly before its members why they are organized.”[182] Thus party politics, in the modern sense, began with Jackson, and the spoils system grew out of the exigencies of party politics. Vicious though it may be, it is significant of its appeal to the rank and file of party workers, upon whom party success depends, that politicians of all parties, including Lincoln, have adopted it without shame.

It does not appear that Jackson was greatly influenced in his course by his advisers, of either his constitutional or Kitchen Cabinet. Van Buren, who has been wrongfully accused of so many things, and among others, of having been the dominating influence as to the spoils system, heard of the plan for sweeping changes with grave misgivings. “If the General makes one removal at this time,” he said in a letter to Hamilton written from Albany, “he must go on. So far as depends on me, my course would be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal character have since arisen to make the appointment in any case improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would pause.” This, from the head of his official family.

And the most intimate of his advisers, of the Kitchen Cabinet, Major Lewis, is reported to have written to the President: “In relation to the principle of rotation in office, I embrace this occasion to enter my solemn protest against it; not on account of my office, but because I hold it to be fraught with the greatest mischief to the country. If ever it should be carried out _in extenso_, the days of this Republic will, in my opinion, be numbered; for whenever the impression shall become general that the Government is only valuable on account of its offices, the great and paramount interests of the country will be lost sight of, and the Government itself ultimately destroyed.” With the possible exception of Eaton, who was a practical politician in the modern sense, and Van Buren, to the extent just indicated, none of the members of the Cabinet were spoilsmen at heart; and Amos Kendall, the genius of the Kitchen Cabinet, would unquestionably have preferred to be spared the pain of turning men out of office. To be sure, the jovial but vindictive Duff Green, who spent much time at the elbow of Jackson in the early months of the Administration, was insistent upon the punishment of enemies, but the responsibility for the adoption of the policy rests upon the President himself.

And the result was that the spring and summer months of 1829 were filled with the clamor of importunate pleas, not unmixed with threats and curses, from the office-seekers. In many instances the wives and daughters of the applicants fluttered down upon Washington to reënforce the husband and the father.[183] One of the General’s most ardent supporters left the capital two days after the inauguration bitterly denouncing him for his failure to appoint the irate one to a position not then vacant.[184] Cabinet officers were harassed, bombarded, followed from their offices to their homes and back again, until several of them confessed that life had become a burden, and they were forced to close their doors to applicants until a late hour in the afternoon to find time for the transaction of public business.[185] Such aspirants as were not upon the ground in person were either represented by friends who were, or they peppered the members of the Cabinet with letters. One peculiarly offensive candidate for the collectorship of customs in New York wrote to an equally disreputable friend: “No damn rascal who made use of an office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in and General Jackson out of power is entitled to the least leniency save that of hanging. Whether or not I shall get anything in the general scramble for plunder remains to be seen, but I rather guess I shall. I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend that you push like the devil if you expect anything from that quarter.”[186] And in the letter from Ingham to the seeker of “plunder” we have abundant evidence that the advice was accepted: “These [his duties] cannot be postponed; and I do assure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four with all diligence. The appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors of the late Administration that they suffered many important public interests to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do.”[187] The same man, having written an insolent letter to Van Buren, was sharply rebuked by him. “Here I am,” wrote the Secretary of State, “engaged in the most intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible.”[188]

Nor was this clamor for office confined to the more important positions--it reached down to the most menial places, to those of the gardener, the janitor, and messenger. Worse still--men in position to serve were even appealed to for place by members of their immediate families. Thus we find Amos Kendall writing to his wife: “I had thought before of trying to get some place for your father, but I cannot do anything until I am myself appointed. I hope in a year or two, and perhaps sooner, to find some situation that will enable him to live near us, and comfortably.”[189]

Meanwhile the clerks in Washington lived in a state of terror. Men who had long worked in harmony, and on terms of intimacy, were afraid to talk to one another. Every one suddenly assumed the aspect of a spy and an informer. “All the subordinate officers of the Government, and even the clerks are full of tremblings and anxiety,” wrote one woman to a correspondent. “To add to this general gloom, we have horrible weather, snowstorm after snowstorm, the river frozen up and the poor suffering.”[190] The majority of the subordinates and clerks, many the ne’er-do-wells of distinguished families, assuming that they were assured of a life position, had lived up to, and beyond, their meager incomes, and suddenly found themselves unfit for other employment and confronted with dismissal.[191] And slowly, but surely, the dismissals came, leaving many in desperate straits, without sufficient funds to reach their homes, and unfit to earn a livelihood if they did. Some were driven to desperation. One dismissed employee of the Custom House in Boston went “in a transport of grief” to Ingham with a plea to be informed of the cause of his dismissal, only to be told that offices were not hereditary.[192] One clerk in the War Department cut his throat from ear to ear; another in the State Department went stark mad. But all appeals for sympathy were met by the proscriptionists with the stern reminder: “The exclusive party who were never known to tolerate any political opponent raise and reiterate the cry of persecution and proscription at every removal that takes place. They have provoked retaliation by the most profligate and abandoned course of electioneering; the most unheard-of calumny and abuse was heaped upon the candidate of the people; he was called by every epithet that could designate crime, and the amiable partner of his bosom was dragged before the people as worse than a convicted felon. What sympathy do men of such a party deserve when complaining that the places which they have abused are given to others?”[193]

A dark picture--and yet only darker than similar pictures in years to follow because, in 1829, the policy was new and caught the office-holders unprepared. So gloomy has the picture been painted that the student of the times is prepared to learn of a general massacre of the placemen. There was no such massacre--no such massacre as followed the election of Lincoln. One is prepared to hear that all the enemies of Jackson were driven from office, but, as a matter of fact, the majority of the Federal office-holders during his régime were unmolested. This could not be said of Roosevelt’s Administration, nor of Cleveland’s. The exact number of removals during the first year of Jackson’s Administration cannot be determined with precision. Schouler,[194] while making no attempt definitely to fix the number, says that “some have placed the number as high as two thousand.” In view of the evidence of contemporaries available, it does seem that a fairly accurate idea should be obtained. It is interesting to observe in this connection that while Jackson’s enemies were dealing in sweeping generalities, his defenders were furnishing figures.

And among the defenders none is more reliable than Thomas H. Benton, whose veracity or personal honesty has never been impeached or questioned, and he tells us[195] that there were whole classes of office-holders that were not molested; that those whose functions were of a judicial nature were not disturbed, and that in the departments at Washington a majority remained opposed to Jackson through his two Administrations. More important still--he tells us that Jackson not only left a majority of his enemies in office, but that in some instances he actually reappointed personal and political enemies where they were “especially efficient officers.” And he lays stress upon the point that where men, who had bitterly fought Jackson in the election, were not reappointed, a hue and cry was raised that they had been denied a right. Corroborating this, we have the evidence of Amos Kendall,[196] who wrote, after the Administration had been in power a year and a half: “He [Jackson] is charged with having turned out of office all who were opposed to him, when a majority of the office-holders in Washington are known to be in favor of his rivals. In that city the removals have been but one seventh of those in office, and most of them for bad conduct and character. In the Post-Office Department, toward which have been directed the heaviest complaints, the removals have been only about one sixteenth; in the whole Government, one eleventh.” And to the evidence of both Benton and Kendall, either one of whom would have been incapable of deliberate falsehood, we may add the less reliable, because more prejudiced, evidence of Isaac Hill, given in a public speech at Concord in the late summer of 1829. “It is worthy of observation,” he said, “that at least two thirds of the offices of profit at the seat of the National Government, after the removals thus far made, are still held by persons who were opposed to the election of General Jackson.”[197] A more detailed study of the removals actually made show that, while there were 8600 post-offices in 1829, less than 800 postmasters were removed, and these, largely, in the more important centers, leaving 7800 undisturbed.

One of the most serious charges against Jackson in connection with these removals is that he practiced duplicity, reassuring a trembling office-holder one day only to remove him, without warning, on the next; and this story is based upon what the officer in charge of Indian affairs under Adams declares to have been his personal experience. According to his story, Eaton, his superior officer, suggested that he should see the President to meet some charges that had been made against him; that on visiting Jackson he had made a solemn denial, satisfied the President, and been presented by him to the members of his household; that on the next day a gentleman entered the Indian Office, and, after looking around, explained that the place had been offered him by the President that morning, but that he did not intend to accept; that the position was afterwards offered to others, and that the dismissal finally reached him in Philadelphia while there on official business. This places Jackson in a sinister light; but our commissioner adds, that one close to the Administration said: “Why, sir, everybody knows your qualifications for the place, but General Jackson has been long satisfied that you are not in harmony with his views in regard to the Indians.”[198] This raises the question whether a President chosen by the people is entitled to his own governmental policies or should be forced to accept such as may be handed to him by subordinates who received their appointments by preference, and not from the hands of the people. That this removal was the President’s own idea may be gathered from the fact that Eaton, Secretary of War, under whom Indian affairs came, was not in favor of the dismissal.

It is worth recording that Van Buren kept his department comparatively free from the spoils idea. But even the most intense partisan of Jackson will be hard pressed to find any proper reason for the spiteful recall of William Henry Harrison from Bogota, where he had just presented his credentials as United States Minister to Colombia. This recall was opposed very earnestly by Postmaster-General Barry, who frankly said to the President:

“If you had seen him as I did on the Thames, you would, I think, let him alone.”

“You may be right, Barry,” Jackson replied. “I reckon you are. But thank God I didn’t see him there.”[199]

Dark though the picture is from the viewpoint of the civil service reformer, there is another possible point of view. All the officials dismissed from places were not high-minded, conscientious public servants, for among them were numerous criminals. The dismissal of Tobias Watkins, an Adams appointee and a personal friend of the former President, to make place for Amos Kendall, was the occasion for a great outburst of indignation from the Opposition. Within a month the product of the spoils system had discovered frauds on the part of the “martyr” to the amount of more than $7000, and an arrest followed. He was convicted and served his time in prison. Nor was that of Watkins an isolated case. Thus the collector at Buffalo[200] had procured false receipts for money never paid and was given credit at the Treasury; the collector at Key West[201] had permitted an unlawful trade between Cuba and Florida; the collector at Bath, Maine,[202] was dismissed for personally using $56,315 of the public funds; the collector at Portsmouth[203] was shown to have engaged in smuggling; the collector at St. Marks[204] was shown to have been plundering live-oak from the public lands; the collector at Petersburg[205] had used $24,857 of the public money; the collector at Perth Amboy[206] had made false returns, appropriated to his own use $88,000 of the public money, and fled to Canada; the collector at Elizabeth City, North Carolina,[207] had converted $32,791 to his personal use and joined the other “martyr” to the spoils system on Canadian soil.[208] In brief, the introduction of the spoils system had resulted, in eighteen months, in the uncovering of peculations in the Treasury Department alone of more than $280,000 by men whose dismissal from office had called forth the unmeasured denunciation of Jackson’s enemies, and it is manifestly unfair to withhold these facts while placing emphasis upon the “dismissal of collector to make way for Jackson’s henchmen.”

Thus, throughout the spring and summer of 1829, the President and his Cabinet were bored, harassed, and tortured with importunities for place, denounced as ingrates because they left any of the enemies in office, and damned by the enemy for every dismissal that was made.

II

The spring and summer was the time of the Red Terror.

The White Terror of retaliation began with the meeting of the hostile Senate in December.

The enemies of Jackson sought the earliest possible opportunity to denounce the wholesale dismissals, and the brilliant orators of the Opposition in the House made intemperate attacks, while in the Senate Webster spoke against the policy of proscription, without, however, adopting the absurd position that the President did not possess the constitutional power.[209] The early part of the session was given over to denunciations of the removals, and to a frankly hostile scrutiny, on the part of the Senate, of all nominations requiring confirmation. It foreshadowed the bitter party battles of the next eight years by rejecting the nominations of some of Jackson’s most ardent supporters in the campaign, and by taking the ridiculous position that journalists should be excluded from appointive office. This proscription, or massacre of the editors, was aimed at men, comparatively new to public life, who were speedily to develop into the most brilliant and sagacious of the Jacksonian leaders. Long and acrimonious executive sessions became the rule of the Senate. In some instances, action upon nominations was postponed for months under provocative circumstances that were not lost upon the fighting figure at the other end of the Avenue. The charge was made that a number of the President’s nominees were “vicious characters.” It was in the early days of this session that a comparatively new Senator, elected upon the supposition that he would support the President and his policies, and destined to be the only member of the Senate to realize personally upon that body’s venomous hostility to the Administration, stepped forth to organize and direct the fight against the confirmation of nominees in whom the President was deeply interested. John Tyler led the first onslaught on the Administration.

It is important to pause to contemplate Tyler’s character and career, because he typifies those Democrats who were so soon to enter into coöperation with the Whigs in opposition, and because history has been unjust in underestimating both his capacity and courage. We shall find him pursuing Jackson throughout the greater part of his Presidency, and paying the penalty to the people with a manliness which found little emulation among men to whom history has been more gracious.

John Tyler was the scion of a family distinguished in law and in politics. His father was a fine Revolutionary figure, and one of the first lawyers in Virginia. He inherited his father’s ability, predilections, and prejudices. Within three months after his admission to the bar, he was employed in every important case in the county, and when, at the age of twenty-seven, he abandoned his practice to enter Congress, his income was $2000 a year, which was $1300 more than Webster’s at the same age.[210] On reaching Washington, he was cordially welcomed by the Madisons into the White House circle. He was fond of the society of the President’s house, disliked the French cooking, but found consolation in the excellent champagne of which he was very fond.[211] He found Clay, with whom he was to be associated in the fights against Jackson, in the Speaker’s chair, and fell under the spell of his fascination. It was then, too, that he formed his intense admiration for Calhoun.

His hostility to Jackson and Jacksonian methods was first manifested in his support of the resolutions censuring the General for his course in Florida. There is no doubt that at this time he had formed a deep-seated prejudice against the military hero. “We are engaged with Jackson and the President,” he wrote home at the time. “I do not hesitate to say that the constitutional powers of the House of Representatives have been violated in the capture and detention of Pensacola and the Barancas; that Jackson overstepped his orders; and that the President has improperly approved his proceedings, and that the whole are culpable.”[212] But there was a more powerful and less personal reason for his enmity to the Jackson Administration, which developed during this period. He had already become a sectionalist. Like Calhoun in later life, and Webster in 1820, he began to sense a struggle between the sections over the balance of power. Thus early he commenced to question the permanency of the Union. In the Missouri fight, in a strong speech against the restriction of slavery, he alone, among all participating on his side, advanced the proposition that the Congress possessed no constitutional power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the Territories.[213] We find him writing[214] that “men talk of the dissolution of the Union with perfect nonchalance and indifference.” When, in his thirty-first year, he voluntarily retired to private life to retrieve his fortunes, he had made an impression so profound that it was predicted that he would rise to high station.[215]

When in 1827 he became a candidate for the Senate against the brilliant and vitriolic John Randolph of Roanoke, we find the elements working that were to ripen him for the break with the Jackson Administration, and for association with Clay’s party of incongruities and nondescripts. After the inauguration of Adams, he had written Clay commending his action in throwing his support to the Puritan, assuring him of his contempt for the “bargain” story, and unnecessarily adding a fling at Jackson: “I do not believe that the sober and reflecting people of Virginia would have been so far dazzled by military renown as to have conferred their suffrage upon a mere soldier--one acknowledged on every hand to be of little value as a civilian.”[216] When Randolph so viciously attacked Adams and Clay on the “bargain” story, Tyler became his most uncompromising foe. In some manner his letter to Clay found its way into the newspapers, resulting in much feeling, letter-writing, charges and counter-charges and journalizing, and the supporters of Tyler interpreted the use of the letter as an attempt to coerce him into support of Jackson in 1828. If such was the purpose, it failed. He was elected without having pledged himself, and at a complimentary dinner after his election, he referred to Jackson in a sneering fashion.

And now we begin to understand the underlying causes that took Tyler and other Southern Democrats out of the party and into the Whig ranks during the Jackson period. On reaching Washington in December, 1827, we find him writing to a correspondent: “My hopes are increased from the following fact ... that in the nature of things, General Jackson must surround himself by a Cabinet composed of men advocating, to a great extent, the doctrines so dear to us. Pass them in review before you--Clinton, Van Buren, Tazewell, Cheves, Macon, P. P. Barbour, men who, in the main, concur with us in sentiment. Furthermore, General Jackson will have to encounter a strong opposition. He will require an active support at our hands. Should he abuse Virginia by setting at nought her political sentiments, he will find her at the head of the opposition, and he will probably experience the fate of J. Q. A.”[217] The Cabinet, when announced, does not seem to have satisfied him, albeit Van Buren, of whose views on slavery extension he appears to have been misinformed, was a member. The presence of Berrien and Branch ought, perhaps, to have reassured him, but they were a minority, and they did not satisfy Calhoun, of whom they were devoted disciples.

Thus, from the very beginning of the Jackson régime, Tyler was suspicious, and ripe for the Opposition. In the spoils system he found a pretext for dissatisfaction, and he proceeded to develop this into a rather petty persecution. It would be a mistake to underrate the effect of his opposition. He was highly respected by his colleagues. His dignity, courtliness, urbanity, and ease gave him a certain social prestige. He was an interesting and likable companion, and his polished conversation had impelled an English novelist[218] to describe it as superior to that of any one he had met in America. His appearance was not against him. Tall and slender, of patrician mould, his Roman nose, firm mouth, broad and lofty brow, and honest blue eyes combined to give him a distinction that marked him in an assembly. He was not a mere professional politician of a type to be developed later in the Republic. His letters to his daughter[219] concerning her studies, on poetry, fiction, and history, denote a discriminating student and lover of literature. It was this occasional detachment from the political world which made it possible for him, during the famous debate on the Foot Resolution, to entertain himself in the Senate Chamber in the reading of Moore’s “Life of Byron.” We shall now observe him launch the White Terror against the Red.

III

Among the nominations, mostly for comparatively minor positions, sent to the Senate by Jackson were those of a “batch of editors.”[220] Strangely enough, this seems to have rather affronted the somewhat ponderous dignity of that body. So strongly did it then impress the Senate that it has made an ugly impression upon a number of historians. Even Schouler[221] is distressed to find so many mere “press writers” on the list. Whether the fact that they were mere editors was enough to make them “infamous characters,” we are left to conjecture. The secret of the strange antipathy to a class long conceded to be among the most influential of any nation is probably to be found in the fact that until this time the lawyers were conceded a monopoly in public station. There was a reason for Jackson’s change of policy, and it grew out of the organization of party and the democratization of government. Unlike his predecessors, he had not depended for support, nor did he expect to look exclusively for support to the professional politicians and the wealthy. As a candidate his appeal had been--for the first time in American history--to the people. As a President he proposed to look to the same quarter. With the people actually established as the ultimate power in the State, according to the theory of American institutions, he was not unmindful of the necessity of reaching the people with his case. He was the first President fully to appreciate the power of the press. He could see no reason why men capable of presenting and popularizing a policy or principle should be excluded from the privilege of helping put it in operation.

In the campaign of 1828 he had been opposed by the greater portion of the press, but he had found champions--men of capacity and talent, who had fought the good fight for him, and not without effect. The assumption that all these men were bribed by the promise of place would be a violent one indeed. And the “batch of editors” whose names he sent to the Senate were men who had long been attached to the cause that Jackson personified. Some had more recently allied themselves with the cause, but in every instance there was a sound reason for the change of front, and in these cases it does not appear that they had met the President in the campaign or had any expectations.

And these men, having received recess appointments, were at their posts or on their way. Those already at their posts had given ample proof of their capacity. One, against whom considerable bitterness was felt, had speedily uncovered the peculations of a highly respectable predecessor who was not a “press writer,” and that gentleman was languishing in the penitentiary. The Senate, apparently, did not consider this a service to the State worthy of reward. While there can be no doubt that the partisan enemies of Jackson were delighted at the opportunity personally to affront him, and while it is certain that Clay’s friends were anxious to punish one, and Adams’s friends to humiliate another, the actual conspiracy to defeat the confirmation of the editors originated with John Tyler, in close coöperation with Senator Tazewell of Virginia--who was still smarting under his defeat in the contest with Van Buren for the secretaryship of State.

The editors who thus fell under the haughty displeasure of the Senate were Major Henry Lee, James B. Gardner, Moses Dawson, Mordecai M. Noah, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill.

Charges of a personal nature were made against Lee, who had been appointed consul-general to Algiers. He was a half-brother of Robert E. Lee and a man of brilliant parts. During the campaign he had lived with Jackson at the Hermitage “writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers ever penned in this country.”[222] One who saw him there at the time has recorded his impressions. “He was not handsome, as his half-brother, Robert E. Lee, but rather ugly in face--a mouth without a line of the bow of Diana about it, and nose, not clean-cut and classic, but rather meaty, and, if we may use the word, ‘blood meaty’; but he was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever listened to.”[223] He had served in the Virginia House of Delegates with Tyler, and had been a college mate. “Moreover,” writes Tyler, “I regarded him as a man of considerable intellectual attainments and of a high order of talent.”[224] But this did not operate in his favor. He had assisted in the writing of Jackson’s inaugural address, and is said to have been mostly responsible for its literary form. The fact that his morals were not considered impeccable was sufficient as a pretext, and the news of his rejection reached him in Paris, where he died. Tyler afterwards protested that he had found it painful to vote against his confirmation, and had expressed his opinion of Lee’s “innocence of certain more aggravated additions to the charge under which he labored.”

Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” was easily slaughtered on the ground that during the campaign he had “slandered Mrs. Adams.” In addition to the publication of his paper, the most vigorous and clever Jacksonian organ in New England, he conducted a publishing house, and his offense lay in having published a book in which Mrs. Adams was described as an “English woman” with little sympathy for American institutions. The hollowness of this excuse is evident in the fact that several Senators who had been shocked at this offense had regaled drawing-rooms with jokes of Mrs. Jackson’s pipe, and on Mrs. Eaton’s being a proper “lady in waiting” for the President’s wife since “birds of a feather flock together.”[225] The real reason for his rejection was that he had incurred the bitter enmity of the Opposition by his telling paragraphs during the campaign. Immediately after his rejection, two Senators hastened to the home of John Quincy Adams with the news, and the old man made the comment in his diary that night that Hill “was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot,’ one of the most slanderous newspapers against the late Administration, and particularly against me, in the country.”

Mordecai M. Noah, editor of the “National Advocate” of New York City, appointed surveyor and inspector of the port of New York, appears to have tickled the risibles of the Senators of the Opposition, though his distinguished career entitles him to the respect of posterity. One important and memorable service to the Nation should have made him immune from the common hate. Sixteen years before he had been sent as consul to Tunis with a special mission to Algiers. We had been paying an annual tribute to Algiers for the privilege of navigating the Mediterranean, and Noah, the journalist, had denounced the practice and declared that the money could be better spent in the building of warships. He succeeded on his Algerian mission in ransoming American prisoners who were being held in slavery, but such was the bigotry of the time that, after his work was done, he was recalled on the flimsy pretense that his Jewish religion was impossible in Tunis. At the time he was honored by Jackson, he was not only distinguished by his public service, but because of his journalistic genius, and he had written his “Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.” He deserves his place in Morais’s “Eminent Israelites of the 19th Century.” But he had rendered valuable service to Jackson in the campaign, and the bigoted members of the Senate rejected him with much hilarity.

The first setback the Opposition received came in the consideration of the nomination of Amos Kendall, of the “Kentucky Argus.” He had, at the time, served for months with marked ability as auditor of the Treasury, rooting out old and vicious practices, uncovering the crimes of his predecessor, but he had left the camp of Clay to do yeoman service for Jackson, and that was quite enough. Adams himself was deeply interested in his humiliation. In the midst of the campaign he had been consulted by Clay touching upon “testimony given by Amos Kendall before the Senate of Kentucky intended to support charges against Mr. Clay of corrupt bargaining with me”; and, on Clay’s representation, no doubt, describes the editor as “one of those authors to let, whose profligacy is the child of his poverty.” But the vote on Kendall was a tie, and Calhoun cast the deciding vote in his favor.

Tyler was delighted with his work. “On Monday we took the printers in hand,” he wrote. “Kendall was saved by the casting vote of the Vice President.... Hendricks [Indiana], who was supported by the last Administration, was induced to vote for him and in that way he was saved. Out of those presented to the Senate, but two squeezed through, and that with the whole power of the Government here thrown in the scale.”[226] Kendall tells an interesting story which shows that the friends of Calhoun were quietly at work to convince the rejected editors that their humiliation had been brought about through the secret influence of Van Buren. Even then the Little Magician, as Van Buren was called, was considered the greatest obstacle in the way of the South Carolinian’s progress toward the White House, and it was the evident purpose to send the editors, miserable “press writers” though they were, back to their papers to fight the aspirations of Van Buren. Before the vote was taken on Kendall, he was approached by Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” Calhoun’s organ, and assured that the Van Buren influence was responsible for the fight against him. This aroused the curiosity of the clever Kendall, who “had never heard of such influence,” and he instantly surmised the meaning of the message. Thus, when Green, predicting his rejection, suggested that the Kentuckian could return to the “Argus,” the latter replied that he would remain in Washington in that event.

The effect of these rejections on Jackson was like a slap in the face. It aroused all the lion in his nature. He had grown fond of the editors who had so vigorously fought his battles, and his heart was set on their reward. It was the Senate’s first challenge, and it was instantly accepted. It was clear that nothing could be done for Lee, where the vote was unanimous, but Jackson decided to renominate Noah, and we find Tyler writing to Tazewell: “The President this morning renominated Noah. This is a prelude to Hill’s renomination. Your presence, I apprehend, would be immaterial, as the result of any vote upon these subjects would not be varied. Monday is fixed for the consideration of Noah’s case.”[227] On the second attempt, Noah was confirmed, like Kendall, with the casting vote of Calhoun.

But the President had other plans for his favorite, Hill, over whose sharp retorts the General had so heartily chuckled during the campaign. Webb, the editor of the “Courier and Enquirer” of New York, denounced in his paper the Senate’s rejection of Hill. “Isaac Hill,” he wrote, “is a printer and was the editor of the ‘New Hampshire Patriot.’ He was always the friend of his country and its republican institutions, and when that country, during the late war, was about to be sold by traitors to the enemy; when the war was declared wicked and unjustifiable, and the Hartford Convention meditated the formation of a separate treaty with England, his voice was heard in the Granite State and in the mountains of Vermont, animating the people and arousing them to a just sense of their danger, and the blessings of freedom. He was a thorn in the side of the Tories, and though living in the hotbed of the Opposition, he pursued his course fearlessly, independently, and successfully.” Writing from Jefferson Barracks, General Henry Leavenworth entered his protest, a non-partisan one: “Isaac Hill with his ‘New Hampshire Patriot’ did more than any one man known to me to put down the ‘peace societies’ during the war,” he wrote, and he described enlistments under him following Hill’s patriotic exhortations.

It is more than probable that these protests were not uninspired, and that the fine Italian hand of Amos Kendall, who had already become the managerial genius of the Administration, was in them. Certain it is that the most effective move was that of Kendall in writing to the Democracy of New Hampshire that the President “has entire confidence in Mr. Hill and looks upon his rejection as a blow aimed at himself,” and putting it up to the legislature to “wipe away the stigma cast upon this just and true man, by the unjust and cruel vote of the Senate.” The New Hampshire Democrats understood, and a little later Isaac Hill walked down the aisle of the Senate that had humiliated and rejected him to take the oath as a Senator of the United States.

Thus the Senate’s fight against Jackson began at the earliest possible moment. Clay had begun his denunciations of the Administration before it was three weeks old; and the Senate sought an opportunity personally to affront the President before he had announced a policy or a programme.