Volume I Part 27 (1/2)

In New York, Van Buren's party took his rejection as the friends of DeWitt Clinton had taken his removal as ca.n.a.l commissioner.

Indignation meetings were held and addresses voted. In stately words and high-sounding sentences, the Legislature addressed the President, promising to avenge the indignity offered to their most distinguished fellow citizen; to which Jackson replied with equal warmth and skill, a.s.suming entire responsibility for the instructions given the American minister at London and for removals from office; and acquitting the Secretary of State of all partic.i.p.ation in the occurrences between himself and Calhoun. He had called Van Buren to the State Department, the President said, to meet the general wish of the Republican party, and his signal success had not only justified his selection, but his public services had in nowise diminished confidence in his integrity and great ability. This blare of trumpets set the State on fire; and various plans were proposed for wiping out the insult of the Senate.

Some suggested Dudley's resignation and Van Buren's re-election, that he might meet his slanderers face to face; others thought he should be made governor; but the majority, guided by the wishes of the Cabinet, and the expression of friends in other States, insisted that his nomination as Vice President would strengthen the ticket and open the way to the Presidency in 1836.

When, therefore, the Democratic national convention met at Baltimore, in May, 1832, only one name was seriously considered for Vice President. Van Buren had opponents in P.P. Barbour of Virginia and Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, but his friends had the convention. On the first ballot, he received two hundred and sixty votes out of three hundred and twenty-six. Barbour had forty, Johnson twenty-six.

Delegates understood that they must vote for Van Buren or quarrel with Jackson.

Van Buren returned from London on July 5. New York was filled with a mult.i.tude to welcome him back. At a great dinner, ardent devotion, tempered by decorum, showed the loyalty of old neighbours, in whose midst he had lived, and over whom he had practically reigned for nearly a quarter of a century. Instead of killing him, the Senate's rejection had swung open a wider door for his entrance to the highest office in the gift of the people.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

FORMATION OF THE WHIG PARTY

1831-1834

The campaign of 1832 seemed to be without an issue, save Van Buren's rejection as Minister to Great Britain, and Jackson's wholesale removals from office. Yet it was a period of great unrest. The debate of Webster and Hayne had revealed two sharply defined views separating the North and the South; and, although the compromise tariff act of 1832, supported by all parties, and approved by the President, had temporarily removed the question of Protection from the realm of discussion, the decided stand in favour of a State's power to annul an act of Congress had made a profound impression in the North. Under these circ.u.mstances, it was deemed advisable to organise a Clay party, and, to this end, a state convention of National Republicans, a.s.sembled in Albany in June, 1831, selected delegates to a convention, held in Baltimore in December, which unanimously nominated Henry Clay for President. The Anti-Masons, who had previously nominated William Wirt, of Maryland, and were in practical accord with the National Republicans on all questions relating to federal authority, agreed to join them, if necessary, to sustain these principles.

A new issue, however, brought them together with great suddenness.

Though the charter of the United States Bank did not expire until 1836, the subject of its continuance had occupied public attention ever since President Jackson, in his first inaugural address, raised the question of its const.i.tutionality; and when Congress convened, in December, 1831, the bank applied for an extension of its charter.

Louis McLane, then secretary of the treasury, advised the president of the bank that Jackson would approve its charter, if certain specified modifications were accepted. These changes proved entirely satisfactory to the bank; but Webster and Clay declared that the subject had a.s.sumed aspects too decided in the public mind and in Congress, to render any compromise or change of front expedient or desirable. Later in the session, the bill for the bank's recharter pa.s.sed both branches of Congress. Then came the President's veto. The act and the veto amounted to an appeal to the people, and in an instant the country was on fire.

Under these conditions, the anti-masonic state convention, confident of the support of all elements opposed to the re-election of Andrew Jackson, met at Utica on June 21, 1832. Albert H. Tracy of Buffalo became its chairman. After he had warmed the delegates into enthusiastic applause by his happy and cogent reasons for the success of the party, Francis Granger was unanimously renominated for governor, with Samuel Stevens for lieutenant-governor. The convention also announced an electoral ticket, equally divided between Anti-Masons and National Republicans, headed by James Kent[275] and John C. Spencer. In the following month, the National Republicans adopted the anti-masonic state and electoral tickets. It looked like a queer combination, a ”Siamese twin party” it was derisively called, in which somebody was to be cheated. But the embarra.s.sment, if any existed, seems to have been fairly overcome by Thurlow Weed, who patiently traversed the State harmonising conflicting opinions in the interest of local nominations.

[Footnote 275: ”Chancellor Kent's bitter, narrow, and unintelligent politics were in singular contrast with his extraordinary legal equipment and his professional and literary accomplishments.”--Edward M. Shepard, _Life of Martin Van Buren_, p. 246.]

Meantime, the Van Buren leaders proceeded with rare caution. There had been some alarming defections, notably the secession of the New York _Courier and Enquirer_, now edited by James Watson Webb, and the refusal of Erastus Root longer to follow the Jackson standard. Samuel Young had also been out of humour. Young declared for Clay in 1824, and had inclined to Adams in 1828. It was in his heart also to rally to the support of Clay in 1832. But, looking cautiously to the future, he could not see his way to renounce old a.s.sociates altogether; and so, as evidence of his return, he published an able paper in defence of the President's veto. There is no indication, however, that Erastus Root was penitent. He had been playing a double game too long, and although his old a.s.sociates treated him well, electing him speaker of the a.s.sembly in 1827, 1828, and again in 1830, he could not overlook their failure to make him governor. Finally, after accepting a nomination to Congress, his speeches indicated that he was done forever with the party of Jackson.

The Republican convention, which met at Herkimer, in September, 1832, nominated William L. Marcy for governor. Marcy had reluctantly left the Supreme Court in 1831; and he did not now take kindly to giving up the United States Senate, since the veto message had made success in the State doubly doubtful. But no other candidate excited any interest. Enos T. Throop had been practically ridiculed into retirement. He was nicknamed ”Small-light,” and the longer he served the smaller and the more unpopular he became. If we may accept the judgment of contemporaries, he lacked all the engaging qualities that usually characterise a public official, and possessed all the faults which exaggerate limited ability.

Marcy had both tact and ability, but his opposition to the Chenango ca.n.a.l weakened him in that section of the State. The Chenango project had been a thorn in the Regency's side ever since Francis Granger, in 1827, forced a bill for its construction through the a.s.sembly, changing Chenango from a reliable Jackson county to a Granger stronghold; but Van Buren now took up the matter, a.s.suring the people that the next Legislature should pa.s.s a law for the construction of the ca.n.a.l, and to bind the contract Edward P. Livingston, with his family pride and lack of gifts, was unceremoniously set aside as lieutenant-governor for John Tracy of Chenango. This bargain, however, did not relieve Marcy's distress. He still had little confidence in his success. ”I have looked critically over the State,” he wrote Jesse Hoyt on the first day of October, ”and have come to the conclusion that probably we shall be beaten. The United States Bank is in the field, and I can not but fear the effect of fifty or one hundred thousand dollars expended in conducting the election in such a city as New York.”

This was a good enough excuse, perhaps, to give Hoyt. But Marcy's despair was due more to the merciless ridicule of Thurlow Weed's pen than to the bank's money. Marcy had thoughtlessly included, in one of his bills for court expenses, an item of fifty cents paid for mending his pantaloons; and the editor of the _Evening Journal_, in his inimitable way, made the ”Marcy pantaloons” and the ”Marcy patch” so ridiculous that the slightest reference to it in any company raised immoderate laughter at the expense of the candidate for governor. At Rochester, the Anti-Masons suspended at the top of a long pole a huge pair of black trousers, with a white patch on the seat, bearing the figure 50 in red paint. Reference to the unfortunate item often came upon him suddenly. ”Now, ladies and gentlemen,” shouted the driver of a stage-coach on which Marcy had taken pa.s.sage, ”hold on tight, for this hole is as large as the one in the Governor's breeches.” All this was telling hard upon Marcy's spirits and the party's confidence.

Jesse Hoyt wrote him that something must be done to silence the absurd cry; but the candidate was without remedy. ”The law provided for the payment of the judge's expenses,” he said, ”and while on this business some work was done on pantaloons for which the tailor charged fifty cents. It was entered on the account, and went into the comptroller's hands without a particle of reflection as to how it would appear in print.” There was no suggestion of dishonesty. Weed was too skilful to raise a point that might be open to discussion, but he kept the whole State in laughter at the candidate's expense. Marcy felt so keenly the ridiculous position in which his patched pantaloons put him that, although he usually relished jokes on himself, ”the patch” was a distressing subject long after he had been thrice elected governor.

The Granger forces had, however, something more influential to overcome than a ”Marcy patch.” Very early in the campaign it dawned upon the bankers of the State that, if the United States Bank went out of business, government deposits would come to them; and from that moment every jobber, speculator and money borrower, as well as every bank officer and director, rejoiced in the veto. The prejudices of the people, always easily excited against moneyed corporations, had already turned against the ”monster monopoly,” with its exclusive privileges for ”endangering the liberties of the country,” and now the banks joined them in their crusade. In other words, the Jackson party was sustained by banks and the opponents of banks, by men of means and men without means, by the rich and the poor. It was a great combination, and it resulted in the overwhelming triumph of Marcy and the Jackson electoral ticket.[276]

[Footnote 276: ”On one important question, Mr. Weed and I were antipodes. Believing that a currency in part of paper, kept at par with specie, and current in every part of our country, was indispensable, I was a zealous advocate of a National Bank; which he as heartily detested, believing that its supporters would always be identified in the popular mind with aristocracy, monopoly, exclusive privileges, etc. He attempted, more than once, to overbear my convictions on this point, or at least preclude their utterance, but was at length brought apparently to comprehend that this was a point on which we must agree to differ.”--Horace Greeley, _Recollections of a Busy Life_, p. 314.]

The western anti-masonic counties gave their usual majorities for Francis Granger, but New York City and the districts bordering the Hudson, with several interior counties, wiped them out and left the Jackson candidate ten thousand ahead.[277]

[Footnote 277: William L. Marcy, 166,410; Francis Granger, 156,672.

_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

This second defeat of Francis Granger had a depressing influence upon his party. It had been a contest of giants. Webster's great speeches in support of the United States Bank were accepted as triumphant answers to the arguments of the veto message, but nothing seemed capable of breaking the solid Jackson majorities in the eastern and southern counties; and, upon the a.s.sembling of the Legislature, in January, 1833, signs of disintegration were apparent among the Anti-Masons. Albert H. Tracy, despairing of success, began accepting interviews with Martin Van Buren, who sought to break anti-Masonry by conciliating its leaders. It was the voice of the tempter. Tracy listened and then became a missionary, inducing John Birdsall and other members of the Legislature to join him. Tracy had been an acknowledged leader. He was older, richer, and of larger experience than most of his a.s.sociates, and, in appealing to him, Van Buren exhibited the rare tact that characterised his political methods. But the Senator from Buffalo could not do what Van Buren wanted him to do; he could not win Seward or capture the _Evening Journal_. ”We had both been accustomed for years,” says Thurlow Weed, ”to allow Tracy to do our political thinking, rarely differing from him in opinion, and never doubting his fidelity. On this occasion, however, we could not see things from his standpoint, and, greatly to his annoyance, we determined to adhere to our principles.”[278]

[Footnote 278: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 421. Seward, in his _Autobiography_, says of Tracy, p. 166: ”Albert H. Tracy is ... a man of original genius, of great and varied literary acquirements, of refined tastes, and high and honourable principles. He seems the most eloquent, I might almost say the only eloquent man in the Senate. He is plainly clothed and unostentatious. Winning in his address and gifted in conversation, you would fall naturally into the habit of telling him all your weaknesses, and giving him unintentionally your whole confidence. He is undoubtedly very ambitious; though he protests, and doubtless half the time believes, that dyspepsia has humbled all his ambition, and broken the vaultings of his spirit. I doubt not that, dyspepsia taken into the account, he will be one of the great men of the nation.”]

It must be admitted that many reasons existed well calculated to influence Tracy's action. William Wirt had carried only Vermont, and Henry Clay had received but forty-nine out of two hundred and sixty-five electoral votes. Anti-Masonry had plainly run its course.