The Age of Jackson
by
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
VII
BEGINNINGS OF THE BANK WAR
In 1836 the charter of the Second Bank of the United States
was to expire. This institution was not in the later sense a national bank. It
was a banking corporation, located in Philadelphia, privately controlled, but
possessing unique and profitable relations with the government. To its capital
of thirty-five million dollars, the government had subscribed one fifth. It
served as repository of the public funds, which it could use for its own banking
purposes without payment of interest. I could issue bank notes up to the
physical ability of the president and cashier to sign them; after 1827 it
evaded this limitation by the invention of "branch drafts," which
looked and circulated like notes but were actually bills of exchange. The Bank
was not to be taxed by the states and no similar institution was to be chartered
by Congress. In return for these privileges the Bank paid a bonus of one and a
half million dollars, transferred public funds and made public payments without
charge, and allowed the government to appoint five out of the twenty-five
directors. The Secretary of the Treasury could remove the government deposits
provided he laid the reasons before Congress.
1
Even advocates of the Bank conceded that
this charter bestowed too much power. That staunch conservative Husk Niles,
writing in the heat of the fight for renewal, declared he ³would not have the
present bank rechartered, with its present power for the reason that the bank
has more power than we would grant to any set of men, unless responsible to the
people² (though he ultimately supported the Bank). Nathan Appleton, who had
tried vainly to modify the charter in 1832, wrote carefully but emphatically in
1841: ³A great central power, independent of the general or state governments,
is an anomaly in our system. Such a power over the currency is the most
tremendous which can be established. Without the assurance that it will be
managed by men, free from the common imperfections of human nature, we are safer
without it.²
There could be no question about the reality of the Bankıs
power. It enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the currency and practically complete
control over credit and the price level. Biddleıs own testimony disclosed its
extent:-
Q.3. Has the bank at any time oppressed any of the State banks?
A. Never. There are very few banks which might not have been
destroyed
by an exertion of the powers of the bank.
None have ever been injured.
To radical Democrats like Taney, Biddleıs tone implied that he thought himself
entitled to credit for his forbearance. ³It is this power concentrated in the
hands of a few individuals,² Taney declared, ³exercised in secret and unseen
although constantly felt- irresponsible and above the control of the people or
the Government for the 20 years of its charter, that is sufficient to awaken any
man in the country if the danger is brought distinctly to his view.²
There could be no question either about the Bankıs
pretensions to complete independence of popular control. Biddle brooked no
opposition from within, and the government representatives sat through the
directorsı meetings baffled and indignant. ³I never saw such a Board of directors,²
raged Henry D. Gilpin, ³-it is a misuse of terms of directed. We know
absolutely nothing. There is no consultation, no exchanges of sentiments, no
production of correspondence, but merely a rapid, superficial, general
statement, or a reference to a Committee which will probably never report.² He
added, ³we are perfect cyphers.²
Biddle not only suppressed all internal dissent
but insisted flatly that the Bank was not accountable to the government or the
people. In 1824 the president of the Washington branch had written Biddle, 1824
the president of the Washington branch had written Biddle, ³Asthere are other
interests to be attended to [besides those of the Bank], especially that of the
Government =, I have deemed it proper to see and consult with the President, ³
Biddle hotly replied, ³Ifyou think that there are other interests to be
attended to besides those with which you are charged by the administration of
the bank, we deem it right to correct what is a total misapprehension . . . .
The moment this appointment [of the five government directors] takes place the
Executive has completely fulfilled its functions. The entire responsibility is
thence forward in the directors, and no officer of the Government, from the
President downwards, has the least right, the least authority, the least
pretence, for interference in the concerns of the bank . . . . This invocation
of the Government, therefore . . is totally inconsistent with the temper
and spirit which belong to the officers of the bank, who should regard only the
rights of the bank and the instructions of those who govern it, and who should
be at all times prepared to execute the orders of the board, in direct
opposition, to the personal interests and wishes of the President and every
officer of the Government.²
In Biddleıs eyes the Bank was thus an independent
corporation, on a level with the state, and not responsible to it except as the
narrowest interpretation of the charter compelled. Biddle tried to strengthen
this position by flourishing a theory that the Bank was beyond political good or
evil, but Alexander Hamilton had written with far more candor that ³such a bank
is not a mere matter of private property, but a political machine of the
greatest importance to the State.² The Second Bank of the United States was, in
fact, as Hamilton had intended such a bank should be, the keystone in the
alliance between the government and the business community.
2
Though
conservative Jeffersonians, led by Madison and Gallatin, had come to accept
Hamiltonıs Bank as necessary, John Taylorıs dialectics and Randolphıs
invective kept anti-Bank feeling alive, and men in the old radical tradition
remained profoundly convinced of the evil of paper money. Jacksonıs hard-,money
views prompted his opposition to the Tennessee relief system in 1820. ³every
one that knows me,² as he told Polk in 1833, ³does know, that I have been
always opposed to the U. States Bank, nay all Banks.² Benton, from talks with
Macon and Randolph and his observations of the collapse of the paper system in
1819, similarly concluded that the only safe-guard against future disaster lay
in restricting the systemı and that, to this end, the government should deal
only in gold and silver, thus withdrawing support from the issues of privately
owned banks. Van Buren, Cambreleng, Taney and Polk more or less shared
these views.
The ordinary follower of Jackson in the West also regarded the
Bank with strong latent antagonism, but for very different reasons. Its policy
in 1819 of recalling specie and checking the note issue of especially, the
Relief War kept resentments alive. But this anti-Bank feeling owed little to
reasoned distrust of paper money or to a Jeffersonian desire for specie. As a
debtor section the West naturally preferred cheap money; and Kentucky, for
example, which most vociferously opposed the United States Bank, also resorted
most ardently to wildcat banking of its own. The crux of the Kentucky fight
against the Bank was not the paper system, but outside control: the Bankıs sin
lay not in circulating paper money itself, but in restraining its
circulation by Kentucky banks. Almost nowhere, apart from doctrinaires like
Jackson and Benton, did Westerners object to state banks under local control.
Indeed during the eighteen-twenties, even the Philadelphia
Bank to a considerable degree overcame the Western prejudices against it. 8 In
Tennessee, for example, until 1829 ³both [Governor William] Carroll and
the legislature favored federal as well as state banks. nor does anything in the
history of the state indicate that there was any general feeling against such
institutions before Jackson became President²
Caleb Atwater a lusty Jackson man from Ohio and something of a professional
Westerner, expressed a widespread feeling when he wrote in 1831, ³ Refuse
to re-charter the bank, and Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis,
Nashville, and New Orleans, will be crushed at one blow.² Even Frank Blairıs
first large-scale blast against the Bank in the Argus of Western America after
Jacksonıs election did not come until December 23, 1829, many months after
Eastern groups had begun to agitate the question. This editorial- actually
prefaced by an anti-Bank quote from a Van Buren paper in New York- appealed to
the Kentucky fear of Eastern control; and all through 1830 the Argus continued
to focus on the power and privileges of the Bank and the consequent peril to the
Commonwealth Bank of Kentucky, never on the general implications of the
paper system.
Some writers have talked of frontier life as if it bred traits
of ³individualism² and equality which made Westerners mystically opposed to
banks. Actually, like all other groups in the he population, Westerners favored
banks when they thought they could profit by them and fought them when they
thought others were profiting at their expense. The Western enthusiasm for an
assault on the Bank came, not from an intuitive democratic Weltschmerz born in
the American forest, nor from a Jeffersonian dislike of banks, but from a
farmer-debtor desire to throw off restraints on the local issue of paper
money.
Similar objections to control from Philadelphia ranged many
Easterners against the Bank. State institutions hoped, by falling heir to the
government deposits, to enlarge their banking capita, at no expense to
themselves. Special grievances multiplied the motives. The state banks of New
York, for example, envied the United States Bank because its loan operations
were not restricted by Van Burenıs safety fund system. New York City had long
resented the choice of Philadelphia as the nationıs financial capital. Thus in
a fight against the Bank Jackson could expect the backing of a decent minority
of the local banking interests.
But there was still another and more reliable source of
support. In March, 1829, after the grim depression winter, a group of
Philadelphia workingmen, under the very shadow of the Bank, called a meeting ³opposed
to the chartering of any more new banks.² The hard times were blamed upon the
³too great extension of paper credit,² and the gathering concluded by
appointing a committee, ³without confining ourselves to the working classes,²
to draw up a report on the banking system, The committee, which was dominated by
intellectuals. included two leading economists, William M. Gouge. editor of the
Philadelphia Gazette, and Condy Raguet, editor of the Free Trade
Advocate, as well as William Duane, the famous old Jeffersonian journalist,
his son William J. Duane, a lawyer, Roberts Vaux, the philanthropist, Reuben M.
Whitney, a disgruntled businessman and former director of the Bank, and William
English and James Ronaldson, two trade-union leaders. A week later the committee
pronounced its verdict on the paper system:-
That banks are useful as offices of deposit and transfer, we
readily admit; but we cannot see
that the benefits they confer in this way are so great as to compensate for the
evils they produce, in laying the foundation of artificial inequality
of wealth, and, thereby, of artificial inequality of power If the
present system of banking and paper money be extended and perpetuated, the great
body of the working people must
give over all hopes of ever
acquiring
any property.
This view was spreading rapidly through the Middle and
Northern states of the East in the late eighteen-twenties. The working class was
no more affected by an instinctive antipathy toward banking than the
backwoodsmen beyond the Alleghenies; but they never enjoyed the Western
opportunity of having banks under their own control. Their opposition, instead
of remaining fitful and capricious, began slowly to harden into formal
anti-banking principle. Their bitter collective experience with paper money
brought them to the same doctrines which Jackson and Benton gained from the
Jeffersonian inheritance.
3
The war against the Bank thus
enlisted the enthusiastic support of two basically antagonistic groups: on the
one hand, debtor interests of the West and local banking interests of the East;
on the other, Eastern workingmen and champions of the radical Jeffersonian
tradition. The essential incompatibility between cheap money and hard could be
somewhat concealed in the clamor of the crusade. Yet that incompatibility
remained, and it came to represent increasingly a difference between the Western
and Eastern wings of the party, as the state banking group gradually abandoned
the Jackson ranks. It was, indeed, a new form of the distinction between Western
and Eastern readings of ³equality.² The West, in its quest for political
democracy and home rule, did not object to paper money under local control.
while the submerged classes of the East, seeking economic democracy, fought the
whole banking swindle, as it seemed to them, root and branch.
The administration took care not to offend its cheap-money
adherents by openly avowing hard-money ideas. Yet, the drift was unmistakable,
and it rendered ineffective some of Jacksonıs Western followers for whom the
battle was being pressed on lines they could not understand. Richard M Johnson,
for example, a staunch relief man and ancient foe of the Bank, served on the
House committee which investigated the Bank in 1832; but he could take no real
part in a hearing dominated by Cambrelengıs hard-money views, and, though he
signed Cambrelengıs report, he confessed later that he had not asked a question
or looked at a Bank book. In general, the Western politicians, torn between the
hard-money leanings of the White House and the cheap-money preferences of the
folks back home, tended to pursue an erratic course.
Only the intellectuals, who did not have to think about
re-election, effected a quick adjustment. Amos Kendall, who had been originally
a hard-money man, perhaps from his Eastern upbringing, found no difficulty in
reverting to his earlier opinions. Frank Blair also rapidly shifted his ground
after coming to Washington. These were not basic reversals of position,. Their
allegiance, after all, had been primarily to a social class, not to a set of
financial theories. The experience of the Kentucky relief system taught that
salvation was not to be bought so cheaply: however much inflation might
temporarily benefit a frontier state with a large debtor element, it was at best
a risky expedient, imposed by political necessity; it never could serve as the
basis of a national economic policy. Kendall and Blair, liberated from their
local obligations, naturally turned to hard-money ideas as affording the only
permanent solutions for the financial problems in favor of the non-business
classes.
Thomas Hart Benton had long awaited the opportunity to fight
for this solution. In the eighteen-twenties, when he fumed about the paper
system, Nathaniel Macon would remark that it was useless to attempt reform
unless the administration was with you. Now, at last, the administration secured
to be with him. Jacksonıs first message had expressed grave doubts about the
constitutionality and expediency of the Bank. In 1830 the President continued to
make ominous allusions to the subject of recharter. But the administration
position was still not clear. Jacksonıs views were widely regarded as the
expressions of private prejudice, not of party policy. Few people interpreted
the Maysville veto as opening a campaign which might end by involving the Bank.
Even now, the Bank was confidently conducting backstairs negotiations with
Secretary McLane to work out a formula for recharter, and it had inspired an
effective press campaign to counteract Jacksonıs pronouncements. Benton,
watching impatiently, concluded that someone (who else but Benton?) would have
to set forth the hard-money case.
He tried several times to get the floor in the Senate, but the
friends of the Bank succeeded always in silencing him by parliamentary technicalities.
Finally, on February 2, 1831 he outmaneuvered the opposition and launched his
comprehensive indictment:-
First: Mr. President, I object to the renewal of the charter
because I look upon the bank as an institution too great and
powerful
to be tolerated in a Government of free and equal laws....
Secondly, I object because its tendencies are dangerous and
pernicious to the Government and
the people It tends to aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich
richer, and ...the poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and pauper Thirdly. I
object on account of the exclusive privileges, and
anti-republican monopoly, which it gives to the stockholders.
And his own policy? ³Gold and silver is the best currency for a republic,² he
thundered; ³it suits the men of middle property and the working people best;
and if I was going to establish a working manıs party, it should be on
the basis of hard money; a hard money party against a paper party.² The words
reverberated through the hall ³a hard money party against a paper party²-as
Mr. Webster of Massachusetts hastily rose to call for a vote which defeated
Bentonıs resolution against recharter.
But the words also reverberated through the country. The Globe
speedily reprinted the speech, the party press took it up, and pamphlets
carried it through the land, to be read excitedly by oil lamp and candlelight,
talked over heatedly in taverns and around fireplaces, on steamboats and
stagecoaches, along the crooked ways of Boston and the busy streets of New York
and on isolated farms in New Hampshire, Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Arkansas.
Nathaniel Macon red it with deep pleasure in North Carolina. ³You deserve the
thanks of every man, who lives by the sweat of is face,² he told Benton, adding
with sturdy candor, ³ I observe some bad grammar, -you must pardon my
freedom.²
4
Nicholas Biddle, in his fine offices
on Chestnut Street, was disturbed by much more than Bentonıs grammar. This
able, suave and cosmopolitan Philadelphian was only thirty-seven when he became
president of the Bank in 1823. He had been known mainly as a literary man- and
early training which instilled a weakness for writing public letters that would
often prove embarrassing. One English traveler pronounced him ³the most perfect
specimen of an American gentleman that I had yet seen² and commended his ³exemption
from national characteristics.²
As head of the Bank , he inclined to pursue an active policy;
but up to 1830 all his ventures had succeeded, he had taken no unnecessary risks
(except perhaps for the ³branch draft² device), and his judgment was
universally respected. Yet, for all his ability, he suffered from a fatal
self-confidence, a disposition to underrate his opponents and a lack of
political imagination. He sought now to make a deal with the administration,
while working on public opinion by newspaper articles, loans to editors and
personal contacts. But his ultimate reliance was on two of the nationıs giants,
Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
Henry Clay was the beloved politician of the day. He was tall
and a little stooped, with a sandy complexion, gray, twinkling eyes, and a
sardonic and somewhat sensual mouth, cut straight across the face. In
conversation he was swift and sparkling, full of anecdote and swearing freely.
Reclining lazily on a sofa, surrounded by friends, snuffbox in hand, he would
talk on for hours with a long, drawling intonation and significant taps on the
snuffbox as he cracked his jokes. John Quincy Adams called him only
half-educated, but added, ³His public and private, are loose, but he has all
the virtues indispensable to a popular man.²
Brilliant, reckless, fascinating, indolent, Clay was
irresistibly attractive. Exhilarated by his sense of personal power, he loved to
dominate his human environment everywhere, in Congress and at party councils, at
dinner and in conversation; but he was not meanly ambitious. If he possessed few
settled principles and small analytical curiosity, he had broad an exciting
visions, which took the place of ideas.
It was these rapt visions which made him so thrilling an
orator. His rich and musical voice could make drama out of a motion for
adjournment, and Clay took care that it ordinarily had much more to occupy
itself with. His brilliance of gesture- the sharp nods of the head, the stamp of
the foot, the pointed finger, open palm, the tight-clenched fist-made the
emotion visible as well as audible. He carried all, not by logic, not by
knowledge, but by storm, by charm and courage and fire. His rhetoric was often
tasteless and inflated, his matter often inconsequential. ³The time is fast
approaching,² someone remarked in 1843, ³when the wonder will be as great, how
his speeches could have been so thrilling, as it now is, how Mr. Burkeıs could
have been so dull.² Yet he transfixed the American imagination as few public
figures ever have. The country may not have trusted him, but it loved him.
Daniel Webster lacked precisely that talent for stirring the
popular imagination. He was an awe-inspiring figure, solid as granite, with
strong shoulders and an iron frame. His dark, craggy head was unforgettable;
strangers always recognized the jet-black hair, the jutting brow, the large
smoldering eyes, and the ³mastiff-mouth,² as Carlyle saw it, ³accurately
closed.² Yet, he inclined to be taciturn in public, except when he worked up,
with the aid of brandy, a heavy geniality for social purposes. He loved his
comfort too much: liquor and rest, duck-shooting at Marshfield and adulation in
Boston. His intellectual ability was great, but he used it only under the spur
of booming voice, and he would shake the world. Then he was, as Emerson
remembered him, ³the great cannon loaded to the lips.² But when inspiration
lagged he became simply pompous.
The nation never gave its heart to Webster. The merchants of
Boston did, along with a share of their purses, and also the speculators of Wall
Street and rich men everywhere. But the plain man did not much respond to,
except for a few Yankee farmers in New Hampshire, who liked to hobnob with
statesmen. ³He gives the idea of great power,² said one English observer, ³but
does not inspire abandon.ı² The people, who trusted Jackson and loved Clay,
could neither trust nor love Webster. He never won the people simply because he
never gave himself to the, He had, as Francis Lieber said, ³no instinct for the
massive movements.²
Clay fought for Biddle and his Bank because it fitted in with
his superb vision of America, but Webster fought for it in great part because it
was a dependable source of private revenue. ³I believe my retainer has not been
renewed or refreshed as usual,² he wrote at one point when the Bank had
its back to the wall. ³If it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be
continued, it may be well to send me the usual retainers.² How could Daniel
Webster expect the American people to follow him through hell and high water
when he would not lead unless someone mad up a purse for him?
In the House, Biddle could count on aid almost as formidable.
John Quincy Adams, the ex-President, had come out of retirement to defend the
American System in this moment of its peril. Adams, as Emerson noted, was no
gentleman of the old school, ³but a bruiser an old roué who cannot live on
slops but must have sulfuric acid in his tea!² He loved the rough-and-tumble of
debate and neither asked quarter nor gave any. Sometimes he would lash himself
into a rage, his body swaying with anger, his voice breaking, and the top of his
head, usually white as alabaster, flushing a passionate red. Old age made him
majestic and terrifying, with that bald and noble head, the cracked voice, the
heavy figure clad in a faded frock coat. ³Alone, unspoken to, unconsulted,
never consulting with others, he sits apart, wrapped in his reveries,²
reported a Washington correspondent in 1837, ³ looks enfeebled, but yet he is
never tired; worn out, but ever ready for combat; melancholy, but let a witty
thing fall from any member, and that old manıs face is wreathed in smiles.²
Adamsıs protégé, Edward Everett, the great rhetorician,
could also be relied on to embellish Biddleıs case with splendid exordiums and
perorations; and George McDuffie, an experienced politician from South Carolina,
was entrusted with the actual charge of the bill in the House. To strengthen the
Bank forces, Biddle induced Horace Binney, the noted Philadelphia lawyer, to run
for Congress. Binney had served as Bank lobbyist in Washington in the spring of
1832, and the next year took his seat as legislator.
In Clay, Webster, Adams, Everett, McDuffie and Binney, Biddle
had a team whose personal following, abilities and oratory promised to overwhelm
the best efforts of the administration. As the skirmishes began, he might be
pardoned if he failed to regard Jackson, Benton and the Kitchen Cabinet as
constituting a serious threat.
5
In the spring of 1830 a House
committee, directed by George McDuffie, had brought in a report clearing the
Bank of the charges made by Jackson in his first message to Congress. Jackson
returned to the subject in more detail in his second message, and Bentonıs
speech in 1831 thrust the question vigorously to the fore.
Biddle would have much preferred to keep the Bank out of
politics altogether. His one interest was in renewing the charter. this he would
do wit Jacksonıs help, if possible; with Clayıs if necessary. Thus, during
1830 and 1831 he carefully explored the chances of winning over the President.
The active co-operation of McLane and Livingston and the evident division in
Jacksonıs party raised Biddleıs hopes. The President, in the meantime, while
saying quietly that his views had not changed, allowed McLane to recommend
recharter in his Treasury report and barely mentioned the Bank question in his
message of 1831.
But for all his amiability Jackson remained unyielding, while
the Ban Buten group seemed irrevocably hostile. Henry Clay, fearful lest so good
an issue slip through his fingers, kept pressing Biddle to let him make
recharter a party question. Biddle hesitated, considered, stalled, watched the
National Republican convention nominate Clay, with John Sergeant, a lawyer for
the Bank, as running mate, read the party address denouncing Jacksonıs views on
the Bank-and on January 9, 1832, petitions for recharter were presented in each
House of Congress.
Benton, certain that the Bank could carry Congress, realized
that the administrationıs only hope lay in postponement. Accordingly he had a
good many obstructionist amendments prepared for the Senate, and in the House he
set in motion plans for an investigating committee. Late in February, A.S.
Clayton of Georgia moved the appointment of such a committee, defending the
proposal from unexpectedly hot attacks by reading from hasty notes provided by
Benton, twisting the paper around his finger so that no one would recognize the
handwriting.
The Bank forces could hardly refuse this request without
raising strange suspicions. Yet, they first resisted it, then tried to keep it
in their own hands, then tried to restrict its scope- overruling McDuffie who
understood perfectly the futility of these tactics- with the result that by the
time the committee was appointed the Bank had lost considerable prestige though
the country. McDuffie, John Quincy Adams and J.G. Watmough, Biddleıs vestpocket
representative, served on the committee as friends of the Bank, with Cambreleng,
Clayton, Richard M. Johnson and Francis Thomas of Maryland as opponents. After
six weeks in Philadelphia, examining records and questioning witnesses, it
issued three reports: a majority report against the Bank, and two minority
dissents, one by Adams.
In May the fight began in earnest. Biddle had already sent an
advance guard of crack lobbyists. but, with the crucial struggle about to start,
he took personal command. By now he was growing drunk with power. When Nathan
Appleton, Massachusetts mill owner and member of the House, proposed the charter
be modified, Biddle scorned the suggestion, and Clay interceded with Appleton,
begging him to vote for the measure as it stood. ³Should Jackson veto it.²
exclaimed Clay with an oath, ³I shall veto him!²
On June 11 the bill passed the Senate, 28-20, and on July 3 it
passed the House, 107-85. When Biddle made a smiling appearance on the floor
after the passage, members crowded round to shake his hand. A riotous party in
his lodgings celebrated the victory late into the night.
JESSIE BENTON knew
she must keep still and not fidget or squirm, even when General Jackson twisted
his fingers too tightly in her curls. The old man, who loved children liked to
have Benton bring his enchanting daughter to the White House. Jessie, clinging
to her fatherıs hand, trying to match his strides, would climb
breathlessly up the long stairs to the upper room where, with sunshine flooding
in through tall south windows, they would find the General in his big rocking
chair close to the roaring wood fire. The child instinctively responded to the
lonely old manıs desire for ³a bright unconscious affectionate little life
near him,² and would sit by his side while his hand rested on her head.
Sometimes, in the heat of discussion, his long bony fingers took a grip that
made Jessie look at her father but give no other sign. Soon Benton would
contrive to send her off to play with the children of Andrew Jackson Donelson,
the Presidentıs private secretary. Then the talk would resume. In the latter
days of 1831 the discussions grew particularly long and tense.
VIII VETO
1
Jacksonıs rim calm during that
year cloaked no basic wavering of purpose. With characteristic political tact he
presented an irresolute and amenable face to the worlds in order to hold the
party together. Benton and Kendall were in his confidence, but very few other.
His apparent moderation deceived not only Biddle but many of the Bankıs
enemies. James . Hamilton considered making a hurried trip to London to discuss
Jacksonıs vacillations with Van Buren; and William Dunlap, the artist, voiced
the misgivings of many liberals in his remark to Fenimore Cooper that
Jackson had² proved weaker than could have been anticipated; yet those who hold
under him will hold to him and strive to hold him up.²
In particular, Jacksonıs cabinet misinterpreted his pose.
McLane, Livingston and Taney were all convinced that compromise was possible,
greatly to the relief of the two and the despair of the third. Taney was coming
to believe that he stood alone in the cabinet and almost in the country in
opposing recharter. In the meantime, the Bankıs alacrity in opening new offices
and making long-term loans, though its charter was soon to expire, seemed ³conclusive
evidence of its determination to fasten itself by means of its money so firmly
on the country that it will be impossible to shake it off without producing
the most severe and extensive public suffering. - And this very attempt,² he
cried, ³calls for prompt resistance- for future resistance will be in vain if
the charter is renewed.²
But who would lead the resistance? He watched the debates drag
on and the votes pile up through the spring of 1832 with mounting apprehension.
In the late spring, having to attend the Maryland court of Appeals, he
decided to prepare a memorandum, setting forth his conviction that recharter
should be vetoed. He finished it the night before his departure and notified the
President that the opinion would be delivered as soon as the bill was passed.
On July 3 Jackson received the bill. Hearing the news, Martin
Van Buren, just back from England, went straight on to Washington, arriving
at midnight. The General, still awake, stretched on a sickbed, pale and haggard
and propped up by pillows, grasped his friendıs hand. Passing his other hand
though his snow-white hair, he said firmly but without passion, ³The bank, Mr.
Van Buren, is truing to kill me, but I will kill it!²
A day or two later, Taney, busy in Annapolis, received
word to hurry back to Washington. He found the President out of bed and
eager for action, He had read Taneyıs memorandum with emphatic agreement and
then had heard the arguments of the rest of the cabinet. While disapproving the
bill, they wanted him to place his rejection on grounds which would allow the
question to be reopened in the future. Jackson, unwilling to compromise, then
turned to Amos Kendall for a first draft of the veto message. Andrew J.
Donelson was now revising Kendallıs draft in the room across the hall. would
Taney help ? The lean, determined face of the Attorney General expressed no
reservations.
It took three days to finish the document. The first day Taney
and Donelson worked alone, except for Jackson and Ralph Earl, an artist who
lived at the White House and used this room as a studio, painting away,
oblivious of the tense consultations, the hasty scribbles, the words crossed
out, the phrases laboriously worked over, the notes torn up and discarded. On
the second day Levi Woodbury, having decided to change his stand, made an
unabashed appearance and assisted till the job was done, Jackson meanwhile
passed in and out of the room, listening to the different parts, weighing the
various suggestions and directing what should be inserted or altered.
2
The message, dated July
10, burst like a thunderclap over the nation. Its core was ringing statement of
Jacksonıs belief in the essential rights of the common man. ³It is to be
regretted, that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to
their selfish purposes, ³ Jackson declared. ³Distinctions in society will
always exist under just government. Equality of talents, of education , or of
wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full
enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy,
and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the
laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial
distinctions to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble
members of society- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers- who have neither
the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to
complain of the injustice of their Government.²
But the case against the Bank could not rest simply on
generalities. Jacksonıs real opposition, of course, and that of Benton, Taney
and Kendall arose from their hard-money views. Yet, a great part of their
backing came from cheap- money men. Thus powerful hard-money arguments- the
economic argument that the paper system caused periodic depression, and the
social argument that it built up an aristocracy- were unavailable because they
were as fatal to the debtor and state banking positions as to the Bank
itself.
The veto message was brilliantly successful in meeting this
dilemma. It diverted attention from the basic contradiction by its passages of
resounding and demagogic language; it played down the strictly economic
analysis; and it particularly sought to lull Western fears by dwelling on the
hardships worked by the long arm of the Bank in the Mississippi Valley. Its main
emphasis fell, first, on the case against the Bank as unconstitutional, and then
on the political argument that the Bank represented too great a centralization
of power under private control. The stress on the ³great evils to our country
and its institutions [which] might flow from such a concentration of power in
the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people² sounded good to the state
banks and to the West, both of which had chafed long enough at the ascendancy of
Chestnut Street. The message thus thrust to the foreground the issues on which
all enemies of the Bank could unite, while the special aims of the hard-money
school remained safely under cover.
The distinction between ³the humble members of society² and
³the rich and powerful² drew quick reactions from both classes. The common man
through the land responded enthusiastically to his leaderıs appeal. ³The
veto words well everywhere,² Jackson could report from the Hermitage in August;
³it has put down the Bank instead of prostrating me.²
But men who believed that the political power of the business
community should increase with its wealth were deeply alarmed. When Jackson
said, ³It is not conceivable how the present stockholders can have any claim to
the special favor of the Government,² did he mean that the common man had the
same rights as the rich and well born to control of the state? The Bank of the
United States, according to the plan of Hamilton, would serve as the
indispensable make-weight for property against the sway of numbers. Did not the
veto message attack the very premises of Federalism, rejecting its axioms,
destroying its keystone and rallying the groups in society bent on its
annihilation?
No wonder Nicholas Biddle roared to Henry Clay, ³It has all
the fury of a chained panther. biting the bars of his cage. It is really a
manifesto of anarchy, such as Marat or Robespierre might have issued to the mob
of the Faubourg St. Antoine.² Or, as Alexander H. Everett wrote in Bostonıs
conservative daily, the Advertiser, ³For the first time, perhaps,
in the history of civilized communities, the Chief Magistrate of a great nation
is found appealing to the worst passions of the uninformed part of the
people, and endeavoring to stir up the poor against the rich.² Webster, rising
gravely in the Senate, summed up the indictment: ³It manifestly seeks to
influence the poor against the rich. It wantonly attacks whole classes of the
people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and resentments
of other classes. It is a State paper which finds no topic too exciting for its
use, no passion too inflammable for its address and its solicitation.² For
Webster, as for Jackson, it was becoming a battle between antagonistic
philosophies of government: one declaring, like Webster at the Massachusetts
convention, that property should control the state; the other denying that
property had a superior claim to governmental privileges and benefits.
3
The
veto struck consternation through some parts of the Democratic party. The summer
and fall of 1832 saw a hasty recasting of party lines. In Boston, the
ex-Federalist silk-stocking Democrats scurried back to their natural political
allegiances, even at the cost of associating once again with John Quincy Adams.
In New York, conservative politicians like G.C. Verplanck and businessmen
like Moses H. Grinnell abandoned the radicals. Almost every city had its meeting
of ³original Jackson men² to disown the administration and renounce its works.
Two thirds of the press, largely perhaps because of
advertising pressure, supported the Bank. Even such a theoretically unpolitical
family magazine as the Saturday Evening Post had opinions which led the Washington
Globe to denounce it, in terms which would appeal to later generations, for
conveying ³its stealthy political influence into the bosom of such families as
avoided the contests of politics. Biddle also hired such august journals as
Robert Walshıs American Quarterly Review to print pro-Bank articles.
A part of the business community stuck by Jackson. Some
merchants opposed the concentration of power in the Bank. Some distrusted
Biddle. Some hoped the Bank would be replaced by a Democratic Bank of the United
States in which they might hold stock. Some were investors of officers in state
banks with an eye on the government deposits. But they made up a small part of
the whole. ³Since landing in America,² noted young Tocqueville, ³I have
practically acquired proof that all the enlightened classes are opposed to
General Jackson.²
As the day of election drew near, the universal debate went on
with increasing acrimony, from the shacks of Maine fishermen to the
parlors of Philadelphia the plantations of Alabama. An epidemic of cholera swept
though the North in the first months of summer. ³If it could only carry off
Jackson and a few other of our politicians by trade,² wrote Henry C. Carey,
Philadelphia publisher and economist, ³I would submit to all the inconveniences
of it for a month or tow.² The din of politics, filling the cabin of a ship
bound for America, wearied a charming British actress: ³Oh, hang General
Jackson!² cried Fanny Kemble.
August gave way to September, September to October, and the
clamor grew increasingly furious. Jackson men paraded the streets in the glare
of torches,m singing campaign songs, carrying hickory poles, gathering around
huge bonfires blazing high into the night. Late in October, Horace Binney
solemnly told a Philadelphia audience that ³the preservation of the
Constitution itself² depends on the defeat of Jackson, congratulation them that
the right of a free election could still be exercised with safety.² How long it
will continue so, or how long the enjoyment of it will be of any value to you,
are questions upon which the short remainder of the present year will probably
furnish materials for a decisive judgment.² Fanny Kemble, resting in
Philadelphia after her successes in Washington (where she had dazzled Chief
Justice Marshall and Justice Story as well as Frank Blair of the Globe) was
assured by her friends that Henry Clay, ³the leader of the aristocratic party,²
was already certain of election.
But the people had not spoken. Soon their time came: ³The
news from the voting States,² Rufus Choate wrote to Edward Everett ³blows over
us like a great cold storm.² The results rolled in: Jackson, 219, Clay 49, John
Floyd, 11, William Wirt, 7. The bitterness with which conservatism faced the
future flared up briefly in a post-election editorial in Joseph T. Buckinghamıs
Boston Courier. ³Yet there is one comfort left: God has promised that
the days of the wicked shall be short; the wicked is old and feeble, and he may
die before he can be elected. It is the duty of every good Christian to pray to
our Maker to have pity on us.
4
Mr. McDuffie was addressing the House.
He stammered, he shouted and screamed, he banged his desk and stamped the floor
. The crowded galleries listened with fascination.
Sir, [ a thump on desk upon a quire of paper heavy enough to
echo over the whole hall] sir,
South Carolina is oppressed, [a thump.] A tyrant majority sucks her life blood
from her, [ a dreadful thump]. Yes, sir, [a pause] yes, sir, a tyrant [a thump]
majority unappeased, [arms aloft] unappeasable, [horrid
scream] has persecuted and persecutes us, [a stamp on
the floor.] We appeal to them, [low and quick,] but we
appeal in vain, [loud and quick.] We turn to our brethren of the north, [low
with a shaking of the head] and pray them to protect us, [a
thump] but we t-u-r-n in v-a-i-n, [prolonged and a thump.] They heap coals
of fire in our heads, [with
immense rapidity] - they give us burden on burden; they tax us more and
more[very rapid, slam-bang, slam-a hideous noise] We turn to our brethren of the
south, [ slow with a solemn, thoughtful air.] We work with them; we fight with
them; we vote with them; we petition with them; [common voice and manner] but
the tyrant majority has no ears, no eyes, no form,
[quick] deaf, [long pause] sightless, [pause] inexorable, [slow, slow.]
Despairing, [a thump] we resort to the rights [a pause] which God [a pause] and
nature has given us, [thump, thump], thump]
They listened to more than just the ferocity of McDuffie:
behind his hot periods raged the anger of a whole state, and behind his violent
gesticulations stood the cold, consecrated figure of Calhoun, no longer Vice-
President, now Senator from South Carolina. In July, 1832, Jackson had signed a
new tariff bill, lowering the duties but leaving them still clearly protective.
South Carolina, unsatisfied, prepared to object. The complex abstractions of the
Exposition of 1828 were now seen to be tipped with steel, and nullification
marched out of the study into the battlefield. Late in November, a state
convention declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 void within the state after
February 1, 1833.
Jackson met the South Carolina ordinance with a ringing
proclamation on the nature of the Union, drawn up in large part by Edward
Livingston. As the crisis approached, a ³force bill,² authorizing the
President to use force to execute the laws, was introduced in the Senate. At the
same time, however, the President acted to abate the actual grievance by
furthering a compromise on the tariff. Late in December friends of Van Buren
sponsored a much lower tariff bill into the House. Henry Clay, aware of the
nationıs peril but reluctant to enhance Van Burenıs prestige or to reduce
rates unduly, countered with a somewhat more protectionist compromise. By some
parliamentary sleight-of-hand the Clay bill replaced the first bill in the
House; and it also quickly passed the Senate with the support of Calhoun, who
thought higher duties a small price to pay for the pleasure of thwarting Ban
Buren and the administration.
With compromise achieved, South Carolina now rescinded the
ordinance nullifying the tariff, but, to score a final victory for its logic, it
passed another, nullifying the now unnecessary force bill. This was a hollow
triumph, for the episode had shown that in practice nullification was
indistinguishable from rebellion and would call down the force of the
government. Though nullification had paid its way this time, everyone knew
it never would again.
By his masterly statesmanship Jackson had maintained the
supremacy of the Union. But, in so doing, he had committed himself to doctrines
on the nature of the Union which frightened the State-rights fundamentalists
among his supporters. The spectacle of Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams
defending Jackson in Congress, and of Justice Story remarking that he and
Marshall had become the President's ³warmest supporters,² deepened
Jeffersonian misgiving. Van Buren, ever cautious, was gravely concerned. C.C.
Cambeleng objected to ³the metaphysics of the Montesquieu of the Cabinet² as
he labeled Livingston, but consoled himself that ³happily the mass of the the
people sleep over such parts of it and dwell only on those which make them think
and feel like men.² Benton was without enthusiasm. Many years later, after guns
had boomed over Sumter, Taney declared that he had not seen the proclamation
until it was in print and that he disapproved some of its principles. Young
Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., of Massachusetts asked the essential question: could
Jeffersonians ³endure from any other man the profession of the same sentiments
which they received with acclamation from General Jackson? Would these Doctrines
be as safe in any other hands as they are in his?ı
Yet only a few politicians and intellectuals worried about
constitutional hairsplitting. The mass of the people, as Cambreleng observed,
slept over such passages while responding unreservedly to the central appeal-
the preservation of the Union. Party lines faded as men who had cursed Jackson a
few months before now rushed to praise him. ³It is amusing to witness the
unanimity of public opinion at this moment,² commented the popular novelist,
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, ³- to hear the old sober standard anti Jackson men,
who thoıt the republic was lost if he were reelected say well: I really
believe it is all for the best that Jackson is is president.ı² It would not be
the last time that conservatism, scared by national crisis, would shelter itself
gratefully behind the vigorous leadership of a Democratic President it had
previously denounced.
Jackson became for the moment the countryıs hero. It was
whispered that even Daniel Webster, dissatisfied with a junior partnership in
the opposition, would join the administration. Webster himself was reported to
regard Jacksonıs anti-Bank attitude as the only obstacle- which led Louis
McLane to remark, ³I consider this only the last qualm of a frail lady who
notwithstanding, finally falls into the arms of the seducer.² But why, in any
case, should Jackson not forget the Bank? As McLane added, ³If he devote the
remainder of his term to tranquilize the public mind, he will go into retirement
with greater fame than any other man in our history.²
But these calculations omitted General Jackson, who cared less
for his popularity than for his program. Early in December, Amos Kendall mad one
of his rare public speeches to the Central Hickory Club. ³In all civilized as
well as barbarous countries,² he declared, ³a few rich and intelligent men
have built up Nobility systems; by which, under some name, and by some
contrivance, the few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many.² These
ruling classes, he said, have had many names- kings, lords, priests,
fundholders, but all ³are founded on deception, and maintained by power. The
people are persuaded to permit their introduction, under the plea of public good
and public necessity. As soon as they are firmly established, they turn upon the
people, tax and control them by the influence of monopolies, the declamation of
priest craft and government-craft, and in the last resort by military fore.²
Was America immune form this universal pattern? ³The United States,ı said
Kendall ominously, ³have their young Nobility System. Its head is the
Bank of the United States; its right arm, a protecting Tariff and Manufacturing
Monopolies; its left, growing State debts and States incorporations.² The
friends of Daniel Webster might well ponder these quiet words.
5
Jacksonıs
re-election and the popular acclaim following the nullification crisis only
reinforced the administrationıs resolve to press the offensive against the
American ³Nobility System.² The first necessity was to destroy its ³head,²
the Bank. But the charter still had well over three years to run. The Bank was
still backed by the National Republican party, most of the press and many
leading citizens. And the custody of the government deposits, the radicals
feared, provided the Bank with campaign funds for recharter. Generous loans
subsidies and retainers, strategically distributed, might substantially change
public opinion before 1836. Moreover, the government deposits, by enabling the
Bank to take most of the specie out of circulation in exchange for its bank
notes, might place Biddle in a position, just before the election of 1836, to
create a financial panic and insure the success of Bank candidates and the
recharter of the Bank.
The solution lay in withdrawing the deposits. This would
cripple the Bankıs attempt to convulse the money market and probably provoke it
into an all-out fight against the only man who could whip it, thus foreclosing
the issue once and for all. Jackson seems to have decided on this course shortly
after his re-election. It was his own plan, ³conceived by him,² as Benton
later wrote, ³carried out by him, defended by him, and its fate dependent upon
him.² Taney, Kendall and Blair actively supported him while Barry added his
crumbling influence. Benton, vastly pleased, for some reason played little
part in working out the details. Woodbury remained inscrutable, with McLane,
Livingston and Cass all hostile.
McLane and Biddle, indeed, went quickly to work to forestall
the President. A special Treasury investigator reported early in 1833 that the
Banks was sound, and in March the House upheld a majority report of the ways and
Means Committee declaring the funds perfectly safe in the Bankıs custody. These
incidents only confirmed the radicalsı conviction of the extent of Biddleıs
power.
The campaign for removal slowed down in May and June, during
the Presidentıs trip to New York and New England. No overt act had yet
destroyed his almost universal popularity and the tour proved a long triumphal
procession, marked by the thunder of cannon, the cheering of crowds, pompous
reception committees and interminable banquets. General Jackson, though
tormented by a throbbing pain in his side and the bleeding of his lungs,
remained resolute and erect through it all.
As he rode through the streets of New York on a fragrant
summer morning , a boy in the crowd turned devoted eyes on the President. The
fine old man, with his weatherbeaten face, snow-white hair and penetrating eyes,
waving his big-brimmed beaver hat gravely the throng, formed a picture fixed
indelibly in the mind of young Walter Whitman. (From such experiences, endlessly
mulled, meditated, distilled, sinking deep into the reflexes of consciousness,
and rising again to liberate language for the new spaciousness of democratic
living, there would emerge Walt Whitman, free and unconquerable, poet and seer
of democracy.) Jackson carried Manhattan by storm. Philip Hone, poorly
ex-auctioneer, pillar of New Yorkıs parvenu society, commented ruefully the the
President was ³certainly the most popular man we have ever know. Washington was
not so much so . . . He has a kind expression for each- the same to all,
no doubt, but each thinks it intended for himself. His manners are certainly
good and he makes the most of them ... Adams is the wisest man, the best
scholar, the most accomplished statesman but Jackson has most tact. So huzza for
Jackson!²
So huzza for Jackson, and on to New England, ancient
stronghold of Federalism, and to Boston citadel of Mr.Webster- everywhere, huzza
for Jackson! At the Massachusetts border the General was greeted by young Josiah
Quincy, a relative of ex-President Adams, bred on Boston notions of Jackson, and
to his dismay appointed official escort for the President, But a single day
converted Mr. Quincy: this Tennessean was no ignorant savage, but ³a knightly
personage,² a man worthy to be President, in fact, even worthy of a
Harvard degree. The elder Josiah Quincy, president of the college, called a
sudden meeting of the overseers of that very purpose. Thus Jackson, his health
growing steadily worse, found himself a Doctor of Laws (a courtesy which
infuriated John Quincy Adams). Dr. Jackson moved on , to Charlestown, Lynn and
up the North Shore. Outside Salem the dim figure of Nathaniel Hawthorne, watched
eagerly through the falling dusk for a glimpse of the old her. That night,
Jackson was prostrated by a hemorrhage of his lungs, but the next day he
continued indomitably toward New Hampshire. At Concord he finally collapsed and
was hurried back to Washington.
In the meantime the transfer of Livingston to the French
ministry and of McLane to the State Department had created a vacancy in the
Treasury for which McLane proposed William J. Duane, the Philadelphia lawyer who
had signed the anti-Bank report of the working-menıs meeting in March, 1829.
Jackson approved, and Duane took office on June 1. This appointment raised fresh
difficulties. Though Duane could hardly have been much surprised on learning
Jacksonıs sentiments about removal, he played an equivocal part neither
accepting nor opposing the Presidentıs views, but stalling and obstructing.
Kendall and Reuben M. Whitney, another veteran of the working,enıs meeting in
1829, were working out the details of a system of deposit in selected state
banks, and Duane finally agreed to resign if, after Kendallıs report, he still
found himself unable to take the desired action.
July, as usual, was unbearable in Washington. Jackson, sick
and weary, prepared to go to Ripraps in Virginia for a rest. Where, in this
moment of loneliness, stood the Vice-President? Van Buren, at first had opposed
immediate removal. The imminence of 1836, and his role as heir-apparent, had
probably intensified his natural caution. Sometime in the spring, during a
heated discussion with Van Buren, Amos Kendall, rising from his seat in
excitement, warned that a Bank Victory in 1836 was certain unless it were
stripped of the power it gained form managing the public money: ³ I can live
under a corrupt despotism, as well as another man, by keeping out of its way,
which I shall certainly do.² Impressed by Kendallıs vehemence, Van Buren
changed his attitude, though he never allowed himself to become identified with
the measure. His own private council, the Albany Regency, was divided,
Silas Wright favoring delay, while A.C. Flagg and John A. Dix supported the
President. During August and September Van Buren traveled around New York, first
to Saratoga, then, with Washington Irving, taking a four-week tour of the Dutch
settlements on Long Island and the North River, always one step ahead of the
Washington mail. For once he was living up to his reputation.
Frank Blair accompanied Jackson to the seaside, where the two
households spent a pleasant month, the invigorating salt air restoring Jacksonıs
appetite and improving his health. Letters bombarded the President, pleading
with him not to disturb the deposits. What seemed an organized campaign only
strengthened his purpose: ³Mr. Blair, Providence may change me but it is not in
the power of man to do it.² In spare moments, he shaped= his note into a
militant and uncompromising document. Returned to the White House late in
August, he resolved to end the matter before Congress convened.
On September 10 he presented Kendallıs report on the state
banks to the cabinet. Taney and Woodbury backed the proposal to discontinue
placing funds with the Bank on October 1, while McLane, Cass and Duane
vigorously opposed it. Duaneıs assent as Secretary of the Treasury was
necessary for the action. By September 14 Jackson, having tortuously overcome
his scruples against discharging persons who disagreed with him, suggested to
Duane that he resign; perhaps he might be named Minister to Russia. Duane
refused. The next day Jackson handed Taney for revision the fiery paper he had
dictated at Ripraps. On the eighteenth he read this paper to the cabinet. Two
days later the Globe announced the plan to cease deposits in the Bank
after October 1. Duane continued in frightened obstinacy, agreeing to the
removal of neither the deposits nor himself. ³He is either the weakest mortal,
or the most strange composition I have ever met with,² Jackson wrote in
exasperation. The next five days exhausted even the Presidentıs patience. He
dismissed Duane and appointed Taney to the place.
He now faced the threatened resignations of McLane and Cass. A
friend of the Secretary of War told Blair that Cass would remain if a paragraph
in the Presidentıs statement would exempt him form responsibility. Jackson
amused at the suggestion that Cass might be held responsible, said, ³ I am very
willing to let the public know that I take the whole responsibility,² and
conceded the point. The amended message went off to the Globe for
publication, and the next morning Blair took Taney the proofs. Taney, black
cigar in mouth and feet on table, listened as Andrew J. Donelson read the
message aloud. ³How under heaven did that get in?² exclaimed Taney on hearing
the inserted passage. When Blair explained, Taney observed, ³This has served
Cass and McLane; but for it they would have gone out and have been ruined- as it
is, they well remain and do us much mischief.: The radical Jacksonians exulted
at the removal. ³This is the crown.²