Andrew Jackson (71 page)

W
ebster was the last man to shrink from rhetorical combat. If anything, Hayne’s challenge made him swell with indignation and self-importance. He took a deep breath and launched into a speech that lasted three hours over two days. He assailed Hayne’s person and his arguments, condemning the South Carolinian’s politics, his reading of the Constitution and history, and especially his willingness to place the Union in jeopardy for a few pennies of an import tax. The Union, Webster said, was infinitely more important than any tariff. “It is to the Union that we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to the Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.” The Union hadn’t come easily. It was born of war and the derangements that followed war. But it had proved a benediction to Americans of every section. “It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.” Webster said he couldn’t bear to consider the consequences of nullification, of life beyond the Union.

God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that, on my vision, never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly: Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart: Liberty
and
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

I
n due course Webster’s reply to Hayne would become the stuff of patriotic legend, and his peroration would be committed to memory by generations of students of public speaking. Its immediate impact was less, but it did set the stage for the most dramatic words ever uttered by Andrew Jackson as president. For years the followers of Jefferson had celebrated his April 13 birthday with toasts and other affirmations of the founding principles of republicanism. Only the most unreconstructed Federalists—John Marshall and a few others still clinging to life—did not feel obliged to render obeisance to the sage of Monticello. Everyone with political hopes or pretensions made a point of attending his birthday fete.

Jackson planned to attend in the spring of 1830, as did Calhoun. The rift between the president and the vice president had continued to grow, partly from Calhoun’s unwillingness or inability to make his wife act civilly toward Peg Eaton, but increasingly from rumors that he was in league with the nullifiers of South Carolina. Jackson and Calhoun had avoided each other through most of 1829 by the simple expedient of Calhoun’s staying away from Washington, at his plantation in South Carolina. With the Senate in recess the vice president’s single constitutional chore stood in abeyance, giving him ample excuse for absenting himself. But in his absence the Van Burenites worked on Jackson, and their whispers caused the president to doubt Calhoun’s good faith even more.

The whispering worked both ways. Calhoun’s allies hoped to ride his coattails into office and so furnished a constant stream of information and innuendo against Van Buren, against John Eaton, and against Jackson himself. Virgil Maxcy, an old friend of Calhoun’s and an inveterate capital gossip, provided the vice president a detailed description of the quarrels among the Jacksonians as they maneuvered for influence. Duff Green was dissatisfied at not receiving sufficient government contracts, Maxcy said. Green scorned Eaton for making the administration a hostage to his wife, who in Green’s view (and Maxcy’s) didn’t merit such gallantry. William Lewis defended Peg to the president, who refused to listen to reason on the subject. “It is come to this,” Maxcy said, for himself and Green: “that all our glowing anticipations for our country from the integrity, sagacity, and firmness of General Jackson must be extinguished, and we must submit to the melancholy conviction that the United States are governed by the President, the President by the Secretary of War, and the latter by his wife.”

Calhoun eventually returned to Washington, but not before the strain between himself and Jackson was palpable. And as the day of the Jefferson dinner approached, all Washington wondered where it would lead. Calhoun was scheduled to give one of the many toasts that night. In the nineteenth century the art of the toast was highly refined and its able practitioners most admired. To convey a sentiment, summarize a philosophy, impale an opponent—in a dozen words or less—required skill, imagination, and sometimes courage. After the debate between Webster and Hayne, amid the tension afflicting the Jackson administration, the capital thrummed with the possibilities of the evening.

“There was a full assemblage when I arrived,” Thomas Benton recalled, “and I observed gentlemen standing about in clusters in the ante-rooms, and talking with animation on something apparently serious, and which seemed to engross their thoughts. I soon discovered what it was: that it came from the promulgation of the twenty-four regular toasts, which savored of the new doctrine of nullification; and which, acting on some previous misgivings, began to spread the feeling that the dinner was got up to inaugurate that doctrine and to make Mr. Jefferson its father.”

Jackson had learned of the project the day before, from a printed program of the dinner. He read the list of toasters and immediately concluded, as William Lewis remembered, “that the celebration was to be a nullification affair altogether.” Jackson pondered the matter overnight and, the next day, wrote three rejoinders to the nullifiers. He tried them out on Lewis. “He handed them to me and asked me to read them, and tell him which I preferred,” Lewis said. “I ran my eye over them and then handed him the one I liked best. . . . He said he preferred that one himself for the reason that it was shorter and more expressive. He then put that one into his pocket and threw the others into the fire.”

Forewarned and forearmed, the president attended the dinner. He arrived late. Several guests had left in protest of the nullifying sentiments of the organizers of the toasting schedule. “But the company was still numerous, and ardent,” Thomas Benton wrote. Persons not on the program clamored to add their impromptu remarks to those of the chosen two dozen.

The president, however, received the first opportunity to respond. Every eye in the hall turned to the haggard face of the old man; every ear strained to catch the words that might tell his willingness to compromise with the South Carolinians, or his determination to defeat them. Jackson’s voice wasn’t what it had been in younger days. One by one his teeth had fallen out or been pulled, leaving him too few to be able to articulate clearly when he spoke to a large audience. On this occasion his words weren’t loud, but they didn’t have to be. They thrust through the expectant silence and by the force of their determination sent involuntary shudders through all in the room. “Our Federal Union,” he said. “It
must
be preserved.”

C
alhoun was next to speak. How would he answer? Would he embrace the nullifiers and risk an irreversible rupture with the president? Or would he temper his views in the interest of concord in the administration and of his own political future? The vice president was younger than Jackson by fifteen years, and far more presentable. In earlier days he had been one of the handsomest men in South Carolina, and some thought he still was. He prided himself on his facility with words, though he had to agree with friends who told him he occasionally ran on.

The format of the toast constrained him this night, but even so he rambled by comparison with the president. He knew he was in a tight corner, and he needed every word he could get. “The Union,” he said, “next to our liberty the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union.”

Other speakers added their wisdom and temerity, and the event ran hours longer. But the toasts of the president and vice president were the only ones most in attendance remembered. They all knew how Jackson had dealt with mutiny during the War of 1812 and how he had executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for endangering the Union. Some had wondered whether the volcano still smoldered in Jackson’s breast after Rachel’s death. As they walked and rode home that night, nearly all were convinced that it did indeed and that the country might soon witness its effects.

C
alhoun’s answer to Jackson sealed his fate with the president. Calhoun was no novice at the game of politics; the simple fact of his holding the vice presidency through the upheaval of Jackson’s election demonstrated a certain virtuosity at political survival. Other things being equal, he might have undermined Van Buren as Van Buren was undermining him. He might have explained away his wife’s actions as the kind of thing women did. But he could never explain away—not to Jackson’s satisfaction—a failure to place the Union above all. Liberty was vital, to be sure. Yet Jackson’s half century of struggle against the British, the Spanish, the Indians, and everyone else who threatened the safety and integrity of the United States had taught him one overriding lesson: that the Union was the only guarantor of American liberty. It was a cliché, but no less true for its triteness, that in union lay strength. Had the Union not held together, it would have fallen victim to Europeans or aboriginal marauders. If it did not hold together now, it still might. The nullifiers dreamed of a world at peace; Jackson lived in a world of struggle. And the struggle never ended.

A few weeks after the memorable dinner, Jackson wrote Calhoun a letter on an entirely different subject. The occasion for the letter was a message to Jackson from William Crawford, of all people, raising questions about Calhoun’s behavior during the Seminole War. Jackson hadn’t forgiven Crawford for what he considered Crawford’s past sins, but at this point he considered him harmless, and potentially useful in building a case against Calhoun. “The submission, you will perceive, is authorised by the writer,” Jackson explained in forwarding to Calhoun the Crawford letter. “The statements and facts it presents, being so different from what I had heretofore understood to be correct, require that it should be brought to your consideration.” He invited Calhoun to explain the discrepancies.

The vice president responded curtly. “I cannot repress the expression of my indignation,” he told Jackson, while adding snidely, “I must express my gratification that the secret and mysterious attempts which have been made by false insinuations for political purpose for years to injure my character, are at length brought to light.” He said he would answer Jackson’s request for explanation “as soon as my leisure may permit.”

Calhoun was still angry two weeks later. “However high my respect is for your personal character and the exalted station which you occupy,” he wrote Jackson, “I cannot recognize the right on your part to call in question my conduct. . . . I acted on that occasion in the discharge of a high official duty, and under responsibility to my conscience and my country only.” All the same, he devoted a long letter to justifying his actions during the Seminole War and impugning the integrity of his critics.

He was wasting his breath. Jackson didn’t want the truth in the Seminole affair. He knew what
he
had done, and could live with that. What
Calhoun
had done mattered, at this point, only to the degree it gave Jackson plausible grounds for rendering the vice president a pariah, for reasons that transcended the Seminole War. Calhoun’s past position on Florida was nothing next to his current position on the Union.
This
was the danger, and why he had to be cast into the outer darkness.

N
or was Calhoun the only one who had to go. Certain members of the cabinet, while not exactly nullifiers, were wobbly on issues Jackson considered vital to reforming the government. Treasury Secretary Ingham urged the president to move slowly against the Bank of the United States. “It must be admitted to be a field of experiment, in which no certain results can be calculated upon,” Ingham explained. Attorney General Berrien was no bolder. “Whenever that subject shall be presented to the legislative body,” Berrien said, “it will without doubt create a strong sensation.” Ingham and Berrien, with Navy Secretary Branch, were generally accounted allies of Calhoun, and Jackson didn’t want them around while he isolated the vice president. Anyway, he bridled at stories in the opposition press—which these days included Duff Green’s
Telegraph
—that he dare not offend Ingham and the others, who had backing among groups whose support Jackson was thought to require. “The combination and coalition believed they had got me in the trap set for me, and that I could not extricate myself,” Jackson wrote to Andrew Donelson. “My cabinet was divided, and I could not, nay durst not, remove those who had become the favorites of the Virginia senators, because they were also the favorites of Pennsylvania, and covered by the wand of Calhoun, who with Duff Green thought they could raise up and destroy empires, or make and unmake presidents at will.” To John Coffee he commented, “How little do they know me.”

As much to prove the smug reckoners wrong as to jettison the dead weight of his useless advisers, Jackson did something no president had ever done (and none would ever do more dramatically): he overthrew the whole cabinet. He didn’t
fire
Ingham and the others, partly because there was some question regarding a president’s authority to remove cabinet officers without the consent of the same body that had to approve their appointment—the Senate—but also because he didn’t wish to bruise political feelings any more than necessary. (Andrew Johnson would be impeached over the removal issue.) Instead he accomplished his purpose by an artfulness few suspected in the old soldier. He asked John Eaton and Martin Van Buren to resign, the former on suggestions that he might return to the Senate, the latter to take a post as minister to England, with the vice presidency awaiting his return from London. With Eaton and Van Buren, the most ardent loyalists in the cabinet, setting the example, Ingham and the others required only modest nudges to be persuaded to submit their resignations as well. Jackson accomplished his palace coup near the end of the legislative session, a timing that provided the finishing touch. The Senate wouldn’t be ready to receive nominations for replacements till the following year, allowing tempers to cool before Jackson had to put new names forward. “I have changed my cabinet, and strengthened my administration thereby,” he told Coffee in the denouement. “What a contrast!!”