Andrew Jackson (86 page)

Harrison undeceived them. The cause of death was pneumonia, but ardent Democrats read deeper meaning into his demise. “His temperament could not stand the weighty honors and the weighty functions devolved upon him,” Blair told Jackson. Harrison had campaigned as a man of the people but couldn’t hold the pose. “His pampered vanity added to the tension of the other passions which strained all his faculties beyond their capabilities, and at last every thing gave way at once.”

Harrison’s death changed the political equation dramatically. There was some doubt as to what John Tyler, the vice president, inherited upon Harrison’s death. Was Tyler now
president
or merely
acting
president? The Constitution said that the “powers and duties” of the presidency should “devolve on the Vice President,” but not that the vice president should become president. It soon grew apparent, however, that the technical question was less important than the political one (which was why the technical question was allowed to linger till 1967, when the Twenty-fifth Amendment explicitly declared that upon the death of the president, “the Vice President shall become President”). Whether or not Tyler was actually president, he had almost no political legitimacy. He was the creature of the Whig leadership in Congress and evidently at their mercy.

But to the amazement of nearly everyone, especially the Whig leadership, Tyler soon began acting like a real president—and something like a Democrat. He vetoed a new bank bill that Henry Clay pushed through Congress. “It will do Old Hickory’s heart good when he hears of the veto,” a Jacksonian in Washington remarked. Another declared, speaking of Tyler’s blunt veto message, “He has found one of old Jackson’s pens.”

Jackson was indeed pleased that Tyler had done the right thing regarding the bank, but it didn’t change his view of the Whigs, whom he continued to consider a “clique who has got into power by deluding the people by the grossest slanders, corruptions, and vilest idolatry of coons and hard cider.” And he continued to believe that the man most likely to deliver the country from Whiggism was Martin Van Buren. This was by no means a universal opinion among the Democrats at this juncture. Van Buren had lost once, and many in the party feared he would lose again. John Calhoun was making a quiet comeback, telling the Democrats that the South was their natural home. Jackson was skeptical—more of Calhoun than of his argument—but even he was willing to lower his guard in the interest of what he considered the greater good. “I am happy to learn that Mr. Calhoun is got right,” he told Blair. “God send that he may continue so. . . . If Mr. Calhoun remains firm, I am sure I will not throw the least shade over him. To err is human, to forgive divine.” But Jackson wasn’t putting any faith in his old rival. “I have no confidence in Mr. Calhoun,” he told Van Buren, in whom he
did
have confidence. Of Van Buren he said, looking toward the 1844 nomination, “He is the strongest man that can be presented. If brought out, he will be triumphantly elected, and that by a larger majority than any other president has attained.”

B
ut fate, with the help of Sam Houston, intervened. The Democrats condemned the Whigs for corruption in the 1840 election and sniped at Clay and the party’s leadership on the bank, the tariff, and other issues dear to Whig hearts. But as the election of 1844 approached, the unresolved question of Texas crowded to the fore. That it did so revealed, among other things, an undiscovered aptitude for diplomacy in Jackson’s prodigal son.

Houston had intended all along for Texas to become part of the United States. Most of his fellow Texans shared his desire and required only an invitation from the American government to join their political destinies to that of the country from which the great majority of them sprang. But the antislavery forces in the United States, led by John Quincy Adams, refused to countenance annexation, with the result that the most Jackson could offer, in the final days of his administration, was diplomatic recognition of the Texas republic.

Houston accepted the offer, on behalf of his fellow Texans, and during the next several years kept in touch with his now retired mentor. Writing as one soldier-president to another, he applauded Jackson’s abiding faith in the people and expressed thanks for what he had learned at Jackson’s knee. “To you, General, I find myself vastly indebted for many principles which I have never abandoned throughout life. One is a holy love of country, and a willingness to make every sacrifice to its honour and safety; next, a sacred regard for its Constitution and laws, with an eternal hostility and opposition to all banks.”

What Houston left hanging was
which
country and constitution he loved: Texas and the Texan or the United States and the American? The ambiguity was deliberate, for Houston was engaged in a delicate double game. Some of his Texas compatriots had grown enamored of independence, to the point of envisioning a western empire for Texas that would have made Aaron Burr blush and would have blocked the westward expansion of the United States. As president of the Texas republic, and one who wanted the votes of its enfranchised inhabitants, Houston couldn’t well bad-mouth its prospects. But precisely because he
was
the president of Texas he knew how tenuous those prospects were. The finances of the republic were a wreck, the butt of many bad jokes. Crime, both organized and opportunistic, made life and property insecure. The borders of Texas were impossible to defend. Indians threatened the northwest, while Mexico, unreconciled to Texas independence, sent armies across the Rio Grande that twice recaptured San Antonio. Houston knew Texas needed help. He preferred that such help come from the United States, but he would take it where he could find it.

This was what he told Jackson, in terms he knew would get the old man’s attention. Houston said he still desired the annexation of Texas to the Union. A marriage of the two republics would benefit both. Unfortunately, certain persons and groups within the United States—Houston didn’t mention Adams by name, but with Jackson he didn’t have to—had caused many Texans to conclude that they weren’t wanted by the Union. Necessity, therefore, required Texas to contemplate indefinite independence. The outlook wasn’t wholly grim. With the West on its doorstep, Texas could expand the way the United States had expanded. And it could anticipate the support of European powers eager to cultivate an alternative supplier of cotton and a counterweight to American ambitions. Houston didn’t specify Britain in this letter, but Jackson had no difficulty discerning what Houston meant when he said that should Texas be rejected by the United States again, “she would seek some other friend.”

Jackson responded just as Houston guessed he would. Jackson was still bitter at Adams—“that arch enemy,” he called him—for thwarting annexation eight years earlier. He was determined not to be thwarted again. “We must regain Texas,
peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must
,” he told William Lewis. It was intolerable that Britain might elbow her way in where America had declined to go, on account of the scruples of such as Adams. For Jackson, the threat from Texas was the same as the threat from Florida had been: that the British would use Texas, as they had used Florida, to mount attacks on American territory. The United States might have to fight the Battle of New Orleans all over again. “Great Britain, forming a treaty with Texas . . . could have an army of 40,000 men organised and fully equipped, declare war and take possession of Memphis and Baton Rouge before we could raise and organise an army to meet them, possess herself of New Orleans, and reduce all our fortifications, and having command of the ocean, could keep the country a long time. . . . It would cost oceans of blood and millions of money to regain it.”

Houston’s letter convinced Jackson to mobilize the Democratic party behind annexation. By the early 1840s the Texas question had become linked in the minds of many American expansionists to that of Oregon. Army expeditions led by such officers as John C. Frémont, the son-in-law of Thomas Benton, had carved a trail to Oregon, and thousands of emigrants were packing their lives and goods into covered wagons and streaming across the plains and mountains to the Willamette Valley. Title to Oregon remained in doubt, with Britain and the United States sharing a joint occupancy under a treaty originally negotiated by Adams. American expansionists demanded that the doubt be erased and Oregon made exclusively American.

Jackson was among these. And, even more than most expansionists, on account of his history with Britain, he linked Oregon and Texas in his vision of America’s destiny. The twin questions of Oregon and Texas, he told Francis Blair after receiving Houston’s letter, were “all important to the security and the future peace and prosperity of our Union.” American patriots must do their duty. “I hope there are a sufficient number of pure American democrats to carry into effect the annexation of Texas and extending our laws over Oregon. No temporising policy, or all is lost.” To William Lewis, his liaison to Democrats in Congress, Jackson said, “I hope this golden moment will be seized to regain Texas, or Texas may from necessity be compelled to throw herself into the arms of Great Britain, who will endeavour to unite Oregon with Texas, which would cost us more blood and treasure to relieve us from the dilemma than we have spent in gaining our independence and our last war with Great Britain.”

Regarding Texas in particular, decisive action was crucial, as Houston’s letter had made plain. Jackson acknowledged the risks to the United States from annexation. Mexico would deem it an act of war and might call on Britain for support. But the dangers wouldn’t diminish from hesitation or delay. Texas offered a treaty. “I say, for one, ratify the treaty, and take all the consequences. . . . Houston and the people of Texas are now united in favour of annexation. The next President of Texas may not be so. British influence may reach him, and what can be now got from Texas, freely and peaceably, may evade our grasp.”

I
n a letter to William Lewis at this time, Jackson wrote, “I am now suffering much, and have been for several days. A severe and continued pain in my side, shortness of breath. . . . I have wrote this with great labour.”

The recuperation of his first retirement years had given way to a broad decline. The old annoyances became debilities, and new ones added to his physical and emotional cost of living. “My eyesight has failed me much,” he wrote at the end of a letter to Van Buren. “I am apt therefore to make repetitions. You will therefore please overlook them. I now write with great difficulty from that cause.” To Amos Kendall he explained, “I have been brought low with a severe attack of chills and fevers, added to my other afflictions, which has left me with a painful shortness of breath, which disables me from taking necessary exercise.” Yet he still experienced good days. “I am like a taper, which when nearly exhausted will have sometimes the appearance of going out, but will blaze up again for a time.”

More than ever he thought about Rachel, and seeing her again. He knew to a moral certainty that she was in heaven, and though he had no such confidence that
he
merited heaven, he worried as little about his salvation as he worried about most else. His conscience was as clear as it had always been. He wouldn’t have said this made him a saint; on the contrary, he knew he was as sinful as the next man. But he believed that God gave credit for trying, and by his own lights he had generally done what he thought was the honest and upright thing to do. He had trouble sleeping, but it was his body, not his soul, that kept him awake.

He resigned his fate to God and his estate to his family. As the candle burned short, he drafted his will. Andrew Jr. would get the Hermitage and most of its slaves. Andrew’s wife, Sarah, would receive in her own name several house servants, “as a memento of her uniform attention to me and kindness on all occasions, and particularly when worn down with sickness, pain, and debility. She has been more than a daughter to me.” Andrew and Sarah’s sons, Andrew and Samuel, would each receive a slave boy for companion and life servant. Years earlier the state of Tennessee had awarded Jackson a ceremonial sword, which would go to Andrew Donelson, “with this injunction, that he fail not to use it when necessary in support and protection of our glorious Union, and for the protection of the constitutional rights of our beloved country should they be assailed by foreign enemies or domestic traitors.” He wished he could have done more for Donelson and other relatives and friends. But he was prevented by “the great change in my worldly affairs of late.” After his and Andrew’s various debts were paid, little besides the Hermitage would remain.

T
he health of John Quincy Adams was better than that of Jackson, though they were the same age. The more challenging climate of New England probably had something to do with the difference. Parasites and pathogens found it as unattractive as many people did, and, lacking the provisions for protection against cold that humans could devise, and missing the determination that came with the Puritan faith, they ceded the region to such homo sapiens as insisted on making it their home. Of course, Adams’s advantage over Jackson in health also had something to do with his avoidance of dueling and gun fights and his spending America’s wars in the drawing rooms of diplomacy rather than the mountains, forests, and swamps of the frontier.

Yet if Adams’s state of body was better than Jackson’s, his state of mind was worse. With each passing year he grew more convinced that the republic had taken a grave wrong turn at the end of his presidency. Quality counted for nothing in this age of democracy; popularity counted for all. If popularity had reflected honest accomplishment in the realm of public affairs, it might not have been a terrible guide to the selection of public officials. But it rarely did. It rather reflected the fortunes of war and the ability to fool ordinary people into thinking that what they wanted was what they needed. Democracy begot demagoguery, and both begot bad government.