Part 4 (1/2)

The most pressing question was the personnel of the Cabinet. Upon only one appointment was Jackson fully determined when he reached Was.h.i.+ngton: Van Buren was to be Secretary of State. The ”little magician” had been influential in turning New York from Crawford to Jackson; he had resigned his seat in the Senate and run for the governors.h.i.+p with a view to uniting the party for Jackson's benefit; he was the cleverest politician and, next to Calhoun, the ablest man, in the Democratic ranks. When offered the chief place in the Cabinet he promptly accepted. Edward Livingston was given his choice of the remaining positions, but preferred to accept an election to the Senate. With due regard for personal susceptibilities and sectional interests, the list was then completed. A Pennsylvania Congressman Samuel D. Ingham, became Secretary of the Treasury; Senator John H.

Eaton was made Secretary of War; a Calhoun supporter from North Carolina, John Branch, was given the Navy portfolio; Senator John M.

Berrien of Georgia became Attorney-General; and William T. Barry of Kentucky was appointed Postmaster-General, after the inc.u.mbent, John McLean, refused to accept the policy of a clean slate in the department. The appointments were kept secret until one week before the inauguration, when they were announced in the party organ at the capital, Duff Green's _United States Telegraph_.

Everywhere the list caused consternation. Van Buren's was the only name of distinction in it; and only one of the appointees had had experience in the administration of national affairs. Hamilton p.r.o.nounced the group ”the most unintellectual Cabinet we ever had.”

Van Buren doubted whether he ought to have accepted a seat in such company. A crowning expression of dissatisfaction came from the Tennessee delegation in Congress, which formally protested against the appointment of Eaton. But the President-elect was not to be swayed.

His ideas of administrative efficiency were not highly developed, and he believed that his Cabinet would prove equal to all demands made upon it. Not the least of its virtues in his eyes was the fact that, although nearly evenly divided between his own followers and the friends of Calhoun, it contained not one person who was not an uncompromising anti-Clay man.

Meanwhile a motley army of office seekers, personal friends, and sightseers--to the number of ten or fifteen thousand--poured into Was.h.i.+ngton to see the old regime of Virginia, New York, and Ma.s.sachusetts go out and the new regime of the people come in. ”A monstrous crowd of people,” wrote Webster on Inauguration Day, ”is in the city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger.” Another observer, who was also not a Jacksonian, wrote[7]:

”No one who was in Was.h.i.+ngton at the time of General Jackson's inauguration is likely to forget that period to the day of his death.

To us, who had witnessed the quiet and orderly period of the Adams Administration, it seemed as if half the nation had rushed at once into the capital. It was like the inundation of the northern barbarians into Rome, save that the tumultuous tide came in from a different point of the compa.s.s. The West and the South seemed to have precipitated themselves upon the North and overwhelmed it....

”Strange faces filled every public place, and every face seemed to bear defiance on its brow. It appeared to me that every Jackson editor in the country was on the spot. They swarmed, especially in the lobbies of the House, an expectant host, a sort of Praetorian band, which, having borne in upon their s.h.i.+elds their idolized leader, claimed the reward of the hard-fought contest.”

The 4th of March dawned clear and balmy. ”By ten o'clock,” says an eye-witness, ”the Avenue was crowded with carriages of every description, from the splendid baronet and coach, down to wagons and carts, filled with women and children, some in finery and some in rags, for it was the People's president.” The great square which now separates the Capitol and the Library of Congress was in Jackson's day shut in by a picket fence. This enclosure was filled with people--”a vast agitated sea”--while in all directions the slopes of Capitol Hill were thickly occupied. At noon watchers on the west portico, looking down Pennsylvania Avenue, saw a group of gentlemen issue from the Indian Queen and thread its way slowly up the hill. All wore their hats except one tall, dignified, white-haired figure in the middle, who was quickly recognized as Jackson. Pa.s.sing through the building, the party, reinforced by Chief Justice Marshall and certain other dignitaries, emerged upon the east portico, amid the deafening cheers of the spectators. The President-elect bowed gravely, and, stepping forward to a small cloth-covered table, read in a low voice the inaugural address; the aged Chief Justice, ”whose life was a protest against the political views of the Jackson party,” administered the oath of office; and the ceremony was brought to a close in the customary manner by the new Executive kissing the Bible. Francis Scott Key, watching the scene from one of the gates, was moved to exclaim: ”It is beautiful, it is sublime.”

Thus far the people had been sufficiently impressed by the dignity of the occasion to keep their places and preserve a reasonable silence.

But when the executive party started to withdraw, men, women, and children rushed past the police and scrambled up the steps in a wild effort to reach their adored leader and grasp his hand. Disheveled and panting, the President finally reached a gate at which his horse was in waiting; and, mounting with difficulty, he set off for the White House, followed by a promiscuous mult.i.tude, ”countrymen, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and unmounted, boys, women, and children, black and white.”

The late President had no part in the day's proceedings. On arriving in Was.h.i.+ngton, Jackson had refused to make the usual call of the incoming upon the outgoing Executive, mainly because he held Adams responsible for the news paper virulence which had caused Mrs. Jackson such distress and had possibly shortened her life. Deserted by all save his most intimate friends, the New Englander faced the last hours of his Administration in bitterness. His diary bears ample evidence of his ill-humor and chagrin. On the 3d of March he took up his residence on Meridian Hill, near the western limits of the city; and thence he did not venture until the festivities of the ensuing day were ended.

No amount of effort on the part of mediators ever availed to bring about a reconciliation between him and his successor.

According to custom, the inaugural program came to an end with a reception at the White House; and arrangements were made to entertain a large number of guests. Police control, however, proved wholly inadequate, and when the throng that followed the President up the Avenue reached the executive grounds it engulfed the mansion and poured in by windows as well as doors, until the reception rooms were packed to suffocation. Other guests, bidden and unbidden--”statesmen and stable-boys, fine ladies and washerwomen, white people and blacks”--continued for hours to besiege the doors. ”I never saw such a mixture,” records Judge Story; ”the reign of King Mob seemed triumphant. I was glad to escape from the scene as soon as possible.”

The President, too, after being jostled for an hour, very willingly made his way by a side entrance to the street and thence to his hotel.

A profusion of refreshments, including barrels of orange punch, had been provided; and an attempt to serve the guests led to a veritable saturnalia. Waiters emerging from doors with loaded trays were borne to the floor by the crush; china and gla.s.sware were smashed; gallons of punch were spilled on the carpets; in their eagerness to be served men in muddy boots leaped upon damask-covered chairs, overturned tables, and brushed bric-a-brac from mantles and walls. ”It would have done Mr. Wilberforce's heart good,” writes a cynical observer, ”to have seen a stout black wench eating in this free country a jelly with a gold spoon at the President's House.” Only when some thoughtful person directed that tubs of punch be placed here and there on the lawn was the congestion indoors relieved. When it was all over, the White House resembled a pigsty. ”Several thousand dollars' worth of broken china and cut gla.s.s and many bleeding noses attested the fierceness of the struggle.” It was the people's day, and it was of no avail for fastidious Adamsites to lift their eyebrows in ridicule or scorn.

Those in whom the establishment of the new order aroused keenest apprehension were the officeholders. A favorite theme of the Jackson forces during the late campaign was the abuses of the patronage, and the General came into office fully convinced that an overhauling of the civil service would be one of the greatest contributions that he could make to his country's welfare. Even if he had been less sure of this than he was, the pressure which office seekers and their friends brought to bear upon him would have been irresistible. Four-fifths of the people who flocked to Was.h.i.+ngton at inauguration time were seekers after office for themselves or their friends, and from every county and town the country over came pleas of service rendered and claims for reward. But Jackson needed little urging. He thought, and rightly, that many of the inc.u.mbents had grown lax in the performance of their duties, if indeed they had ever been anything else, and that fresh blood was needed in the government employ. He believed that short terms and rapid rotation made for alertness and efficiency. He felt that one man had as much right to public office as another, and he was so unacquainted with the tasks of administration as to suppose all honest citizens equally capable of serving their fellowmen in public station. As for the grievances of persons removed, his view was that ”no individual wrong is done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.”

Shortly after the election Major Lewis wrote to a friend that the General was ”resolved on making a pretty clean sweep of the departments.” It is expected, he added, that ”he will cleanse the Augean stables, and I feel pretty confident that he will not disappoint the popular expectation in this particular.” If a complete overturn was ever really contemplated, the plan was not followed up; and it is more than possible that it was Van Buren who marked off the limits beyond which it would not be expedient to go. None the less, Jackson's removals far exceeded those made by his predecessors.

Speaking broadly, the power of removal had never yet been exercised in the Federal Government with offensive partizans.h.i.+p. Even under Jefferson, when the holders of half of the offices were changed in the s.p.a.ce of four years, there were few removals for political reasons.

No sooner was Jackson in office, however, than wholesale proscription began. The ax fell in every department and bureau, and cut off chiefs and clerks with equal lack of mercy. Age and experience counted rather against a man than in his favor, and rarely was any reason given for removal other than that some one else wanted the place. When Congress met, in December, it was estimated that a thousand persons had been ousted; and during the first year of the Administration the number is said to have reached two thousand. The Post-Office Department and the Customs Service were purged with special severity. The sole principle on which the new appointees were selected was loyalty to Jackson.

Practically all were inexperienced, most were incompetent, and several proved dishonest.

”There has been,” wrote the President in his journal a few weeks after the inauguration, ”a great noise made about removals.” Protest arose not only from the proscribed and their friends, but from the Adams-Clay forces generally, and even from some of the more moderate Jacksonians. ”Were it not for the outdoor popularity of General Jackson,” wrote Webster, ”the Senate would have negatived more than half his nominations.” As it was, many were rejected; and some of the worst were, under pressure, withdrawn. On the general principle the President held his ground. ”It is rotation in office,” he again and again a.s.serted in all honesty, ”that will perpetuate our liberty,” and from this conviction no amount of argument or painful experience could shake him. After 1830 one hears less about the subject, but only because the novelty and glamor of the new regime had worn off.

Jackson was not the author of the spoils system. The device of using the offices as rewards for political service had long been familiar in the state and local governments, notably in New York. What Jackson and his friends did was simply to carry over the spoils principle into the National Government. No more unfortunate step was ever taken by an American President; the task of undoing the mischief has been long and laborious. Yet the spoils system was probably an inevitable feature of the new rule of the people; at all events, it was accepted by all parties and sanctioned by public sentiment for more than half a century.

Like Philip II of Spain, who worked twelve hours a day at the business of being a King, Jackson took the duties of his exalted post very seriously. No man had ever accused him of laxness in public office, civil or military; on the contrary, his superiors commonly considered themselves fortunate if they could induce or compel him to keep his energies within reasonable bounds. As President he was not without distressing shortcomings. He was self-willed, prejudiced, credulous, petulant. But he was honest, and he was industrious. No President ever kept a closer watch upon Congress to see that the rights of the executive were not invaded or the will of the people thwarted; and his vigilance was rewarded, not only by his success in vindicating the independence of the executive in a conflict whose effects are felt to this day, but by the very respectable amount of legislation which he contrived to obtain in the furtherance of what he believed to be the public welfare. When a rebellious Congress took the bit in its teeth, he never hesitated to crack the whip over its head. Sometimes the pressure was applied indirectly, but with none the less effect. One of the first acts of the Senate to arouse strong feelings in the White House was the rejection of the nomination of Isaac Hill to be Second Comptroller of the Treasury. A New Hamps.h.i.+re senators.h.i.+p soon falling vacant, the President deftly brought about the election of Hill to the position; and many a gala hour he had in later days as Lewis and other witnesses described the chagrin of the senators at being obliged to accept as one of their colleagues a man whom they had adjudged unfit for a less important office.

Much thought had been bestowed upon the composition of the Cabinet, and some of the President's warmest supporters urged that he should make use of the group as a council of state, after the manner of his predecessors. Jackson's purposes, however, ran in a different direction. He had been on intimate terms with fewer than half of the members, and he saw no reason why these men, some of whom were primarily the friends of Calhoun, should be allowed to supplant old confidants like Lewis. Let them, he reasoned, go about their appointed tasks as heads of the administrative departments, while he looked for counsel whithersoever he desired. Hence the official Cabinet fell into the background, and after a few weeks the practice of holding meetings was dropped.

As advisers on party affairs and on matters of general policy the President drew about himself a heterogeneous group of men which the public-labeled the ”Kitchen Cabinet.” Included in the number were the two members of the regular Cabinet in whom Jackson had implicit confidence, Van Buren and Eaton. Isaac Hill was a member. Amos Kendall, a New Englander who had lately edited a Jackson paper in Kentucky, and who now found his reward in the fourth auditors.h.i.+p of the Treasury, was another. William B. Lewis, prevailed upon by Jackson to accept another auditors.h.i.+p along with Kendall, rather than to follow out his original intention to return to his Tennessee plantation, was not only in the Kitchen Cabinet but was also a member of the President's household. Duff Green, editor of the _Telegraph_, and A. J. Donelson, the President's nephew and secretary, were included in the group; as was also Francis P. Blair after, in 1830, he became editor of the new administration organ, the _Globe_. It was the popular impression that the influence of these men, especially of Lewis and Kendall, was very great--that, indeed, they virtually ruled the country. There was some truth in the supposition. In matters upon which his mind was not fully made up, Jackson was easily swayed; and his most intimate ”Kitchen” advisers were adepts at playing upon his likes and dislikes. He, however, always resented the insinuation that he was not his own master, and all testimony goes to show that when he was once resolved upon a given course his friends were just as powerless to stop him as were his enemies.

The Jacksonians were carried into office on a great wave of popular enthusiasm, an for the time being all the powers of government were theirs. None the less, their position was imperiled almost from the beginning by a breach within the administration ranks. Calhoun had contented himself with reelection to the vice presidency in 1828 on the understanding that, after Jackson should have had one term, the road to the White House would be left clear for himself. Probably Jackson, when elected, fully expected Calhoun to be his successor.

Before long, however, the South Carolinian was given ground for apprehension. Men began to talk about a second term for Jackson, and the White House gave no indication of disapproval. Even more disconcerting was the large place taken in the new regime by Van Buren. The ”little magician” held the chief post in the Cabinet; he was in the confidence of the President as Calhoun was not; there were multiplying indications that he was aiming at the presidency; and if he were to enter the race he would be hard to beat, for by general admission he was the country's most astute politician. With every month that pa.s.sed the Vice President's star was in graver danger of eclipse.