Part 5 (2/2)

McLane, the minister at London, wished to come home, and was to be the new secretary of the treasury. Van Buren gladly seized the opportunity.

He would leave the field of political management. Three thousand miles in distance and a month in time away from Was.h.i.+ngton or New York, there could, he thought, be little pretense of personal manoeuvres on his part. He would thus plainly submit his candidacy to popular judgment upon his public career, without interference from himself. He would escape the many embarra.s.sments of every politician upon whom demands are continually made,--demands whose rejection or allowance alike brings offense. The English mission was prominently in the public service, but out of its difficulties; and it was made particularly grateful to him by his success in the recent negotiation over colonial trade. He therefore accepted the post, for which in almost every respect he had extraordinary equipment. He finally left the State Department in June, 1831; and on his departure from Was.h.i.+ngton Jackson conspicuously rode with him out of the city. On August 1, he was formally appointed minister to Great Britain; and in September he arrived in London, accompanied by his son John.

Van Buren found Was.h.i.+ngton Irving presiding over the London legation in McLane's absence as _charge d'affaires_. Irving's appointment to be secretary of legation under McLane had been one of Van Buren's early acts,--a proof, Irving wrote, ”of the odd way in which this mad world is governed, when a secretary of state of a stern republic gives away offices of the kind at the recommendation of a jovial little man of the seas like Jack Nicholson.” But this was jocose. When the appointment was suggested, it was particularly pleasant to Van Buren that this graceful and gentle bit of patronage should be given by so grim a figure as Jackson. Irving had come on from Spain, his ”Columbus” just finished, and his ”Alhambra Tales” ready for writing. His extraordinary popularity in England and his old familiarity with its life made him highly useful to the American minister, as Van Buren himself soon found. It was not the last time that Englishmen respected the republic of the west the more because the respect carried with it an homage to the republic of letters. Irving's was an early one of the appointments which established the agreeable tradition of the American diplomatic and consular service, that literary men should always hold some of its places of honor and profit. When Van Buren arrived, Irving was already weary of his post and had resigned. He remained, however, with the new minister until he too surrendered his office. The two men became warm and lifelong friends.

The day after Van Buren's arrival Irving wrote: ”I have just seen Mr.

Van Buren, and do not wonder you should all be so fond of him. His manners are most amiable and ingratiating; and I have no doubt he will become a favorite at this court.” After an intimacy of several months he wrote: ”The more I see of Mr. Van Buren, the more I feel confirmed in a strong personal regard for him. He is one of the gentlest and most amiable men I have ever met with; with an affectionate disposition that attaches itself to those around him, and wins their kindness in return.”

After a few months of the charming life which an American of distinction finds open to him in London, a life for whose duties and whose pleasures Van Buren was happily fitted,[10] there came to him an extraordinary and enviable delight. He posted through England in an open carriage with the author of the ”Sketch Book” and ”Bracebridge Hall.” From those daintiest sources he had years before got an idea of English country life, and of the festivities of an old-fas.h.i.+oned English Christmas; and now in an exquisite companions.h.i.+p the idea became more nearly clothed with reality than happens with most literary enchantments. After Oxford and Blenheim; after quartering in Stratford at the little inn of the Red Horse, where they ”found the same obliging little landlady that kept it at the time of the visit recorded in the 'Sketch Book';” after Warwick Castle and Kenilworth and Lichfield and Newstead Abbey and Hardwick Castle; after a fortnight at Christmas in Barlborough Hall,--”a complete scene of old English hospitality,” with many of the ancient games and customs then obsolete in other parts of England; after seeing there the ”mummers and morris dancers and glee singers;” after ”great feasting with the boar's-head crowned with holly, the wa.s.sail bowl, the yule-log, snapdragon, etc.;”--after all these delights, inimitably told by his companion, Van Buren returned to London, but not for long. He there enjoyed the halcyon days which the brilliant society of London knew, when George IV. had just left the throne to his undignified but good-hearted and jovial brother; when Louis Philippe had found a bourgeois crown in France and the condescending approval of England; when Wellington was the first of Englishmen; when Prince Talleyrand, his early republicanism and sacrileges not at all forgotten, but forgiven to the prestige of his abilities and the splendid fascinations of his society, was the chief person in diplomatic life; when the Wizard of the North, though broken, and on his last and vain trip to the Mediterranean for health, still lingered in London, one of its grand figures, and sadly recalled to Irving the times when they ”went over the Eildon hills together;” when Rogers was playing Maecenas and Catullus at breakfast-tables of poets and bankers and n.o.blemen. It was amid this serene, s.h.i.+ning, and magical translation from the politics at home that Van Buren received the rude and humiliating news of his rejection by the Senate; for his appointment had been made in recess, and he had left without a confirmation.

One evening in February, 1832, before attending a party at Talleyrand's, Van Buren learned of the rejection, as had all London which knew there was an American minister. He was half ill when the news came; but he seemed imperturbable. Without shrinking he mixed in the splendid throng, gracious and easy, as if he did not know that his official heart would soon cease to beat. Lord Auckland, then president of the board of trade and afterwards governor-general of India, said to him very truly, and more prophetically than he fancied: ”It is an advantage to a public man to be the subject of an outrage.” Levees and drawing-rooms and state dinners were being held in honor of the queen's birthday. After a doubt as to the more decorous course, he kept the tenor of diplomatic life until he ceased to be a minister; and Irving said that, ”to the credit of John Bull,” he ”was universally received with the most marked attention,” and ”treated with more respect and attention than before by the royal family, by the members of the present and the old cabinet, and the different persons of the diplomatic corps.”

On March 22, 1832, he had his audience of leave; two days later he dined with the king at Windsor; and about April 1 left for Holland and a continental trip, this being, so he wrote a committee appointed at an indignation meeting in Tammany Hall, ”the only opportunity” he should probably ever have for the visit.

Van Buren's dispatches from England, now preserved in the archives of the State Department, are not numerous. They were evidently written by a minister who was not very busy in official duties apart from the social and ceremonial life of a diplomat. Some of them are in his own handwriting, whose straggling carelessness is quite out of keeping with the obvious pains which he bestowed upon every subject he touched, even those of seemingly slight consequence. Interspersed with allusions to the northeastern boundary question, and with accounts of his protests against abuses practiced upon American s.h.i.+ps in British ports, and of the spread of the cholera, he gave English political news and even gossip. He discussed the chances of the reform bill, rumors of what the ministry would do, and whether the Duke of Wellington would yield. Van Buren partic.i.p.ated in no important dispute, although before surrendering his post he presented one of the hateful claims which American administrations of both parties had to make in those days. This was the demand for slaves who escaped from the American brig ”Comet,” wrecked in the Bahamas, on her way from the Potomac to New Orleans, and who were declared free by the colonial authorities.

It is safe to believe that Secretary Livingston read the more interesting of these letters at the White House. Van Buren discreetly lightened up some of the diplomatic pages with pa.s.sages very agreeable to Jackson. In describing his presentation to William IV., he told Livingston that the king had formed the highest estimate of Jackson's character, and repeated the royal remark ”that detraction and misrepresentation were the common lot of all public men.” Of the President's message of December, 1831, he wrote that few in England refused to recognize its ability or the ”distinguished talents of the executive by whose advice and labors” the affairs ”of our highly favored country” had been ”conducted to such happy results.”

On July 5, 1832, Van Buren arrived at New York, having several weeks before been nominated for the vice-presidency. He declined a public reception, he said, because, afflicted as New York was with the cholera, festivities would be discordant with the feelings of his friends; and a few days later he was in Was.h.i.+ngton. Congress was in session, debating the tariff bill; and he quickly enough found it true, as he had already believed, that his rejection had been a capital blunder of his enemies.

The rejection occurred on January 25, 1832. Jackson's nomination had gone to the Senate early in December, but the opposition had hesitated at the responsibility for the affront. The debate took place in secret session, but the speeches were promptly made public for their effect on the country. Clay and Webster, the great leaders of the Whigs, and Hayne, the eloquent representative of the Calhoun Democracy, and others, spoke against Van Buren. Clay and Webster based their rejection upon his language in the dispatch to McLane, already quoted. Webster said that he would pardon almost anything where he saw true patriotism and sound American feeling; but he could not forgive the sacrifice of these to party. Van Buren, with sensible and skillful foresight, had frankly admitted that we had been wrong in some of our claims; and Gallatin, it was afterwards shown from his original dispatch to Clay, had expressly said the same thing. But in a bit of buncombe Webster insisted that no American minister must ever admit that his country had been wrong. ”In the presence of foreign courts,” he solemnly said, ”amidst the monarchies of Europe, he is to stand up for his country and his whole country; that no jot nor t.i.ttle of her honor is to suffer in his hands; that he is not to allow others to reproach either his government or his country, and far less is he himself to reproach either; that he is to have no objects in his eye but American objects, and no heart in his bosom but an American heart.” To say all this, Webster declared, was a duty whose performance he wished might be heard ”by every independent freeman in the United States, by the British minister and the British king, and every minister and every crowned head in Europe.” Van Buren's language, Clay said, had been that of an humble va.s.sal to a proud and haughty lord, prostrating and degrading the American eagle before the British lion. These cheap appeals fell perfectly flat. If Van Buren had been open to criticism for the manner in which he pointed out a party change in American administration, the error was, at the worst, committed to preclude a British refusal from finding justification in the offensive att.i.tude previously taken by Adams. In admitting our mistaken ”pretensions,” Van Buren had been entirely right, barring a slight fault in the word, which did not, however, then seem to import the consciousness of wrong which it carries to later ears. Webster and Clay ought to have known that Van Buren's success where all before had failed would make the American people loath to find fault with his phrases. Nor were they at all ready to believe that Jackson's administration toadied to foreign courts. They knew better; they were convinced that no American president had been more resolute towards other nations.

It was also said that Van Buren had introduced the system of driving men from office for political opinions; that he was a New York politician who had brought his art to Was.h.i.+ngton. Marcy, one of the New York senators, defended his State with these words, which afterwards he must have wished to recall: ”It may be, sir, that the politicians of New York are not so fastidious as some gentlemen are as to disclosing the principles on which they act. They boldly preach what they practice.

When they are contending for victory they avow their intention of enjoying the fruits of it. If they are defeated, they expect to retire from office; if they are successful, they claim, as a matter of right, the advantages of success. They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” To this celebrated and execrable defense Van Buren owes much of the later and unjust belief that he was an inveterate ”spoilsman.” It has already been shown how little foundation there is for the charge that he introduced the system of official proscription. Benton truly said that Van Buren's temper and judgment were both against it, and that he gave ample proofs of his forbearance. Webster did not touch upon this objection. Clay made it very subordinate to the secretary's abas.e.m.e.nt before the British lion.

The attack of the Calhoun men was based upon Van Buren's supposed intrigue against their chief, and his breaking up of the cabinet. But people saw then, better indeed than some historians have since seen, that between Calhoun and Van Buren there had been great and radical political divergence far deeper than personal jealousy. To surrender the highest cabinet office, to leave Was.h.i.+ngton and all the places of political management, in order to take a lower office in remote exile from the sources of political power,--these were not believed to be acts of mere trickery, but rather to be parts of a courageous and self-respecting appeal for justice. It seemed a piece of political animosity wantonly to punish a rival with such exquisite humiliation in the eyes of foreigners.

There was a clear majority against confirming Van Buren. But to make his destruction the more signal, and as Calhoun had no opportunity to speak, enough of the majority refrained from voting to enable the Democratic vice-president to give the casting vote for the rejection of this Democratic nominee. Calhoun's motive was obvious enough from his boast in Benton's hearing: ”It will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He will never kick, sir, never kick.” This bit of unaffected nature was refres.h.i.+ng after all the solemnly insincere declarations of grief which had fallen from the opposition senators in performing their duty.

The folly of the rejection was quickly apparent. Benton very well said to Moore, a senator from Alabama who had voted against Van Buren, ”You have broken a minister and elected a vice-president. The people will see nothing in it but a combination of rivals against a compet.i.tor.” The popular verdict was promptly given. Van Buren had already become a candidate to succeed Jackson five years later; he was only a possible candidate for vice-president at the next election. When the rejection was widely known, it was known almost equally well and soon that Van Buren would be the Jacksonian candidate for vice-president. Meetings were held; addresses were voted; the issue was eagerly seized. The Democratic members of the New York legislature early in February, 1832, under an inspiration from Was.h.i.+ngton, addressed to Jackson an expression of their indignation in the stately words which our fathers loved, even when they went dangerously near to bathos. They had freely, they said, surrendered to his call their most distinguished fellow-citizen; when Van Buren had withdrawn from the cabinet they had beheld in Jackson's continual confidence in him irrefragable proof that no combination could close Jackson's eyes to the cause of his country; New York would indeed avenge the indignity thus offered to her favorite son; but they would be unmindful of their duty if they failed to console Jackson with their sympathy in this degradation of the country he loved so well. On February 28, Jackson replied with no less dignity and with skill and force. He was, he said,--and the whole country believed him,--incapable of tarnis.h.i.+ng the pride or dignity of that country whose glory it had been his object to elevate; Van Buren's instructions to McLane had been his instructions; American pretensions which Adams's administration had admitted to be untenable had been resigned; if just American claims were resisted upon the ground of the unjust position taken by his predecessor, then and then only was McLane to point out that there had been a change in the policy and counsels of the government with the change of its officers. Jackson said that he owed it to the late secretary of state and to the American people to declare that Van Buren had no partic.i.p.ation whatever in the occurrences between Calhoun and himself; and that there was no ground for imputing to Van Buren advice to make the removals from office. He had called Van Buren to the state department not more for his acknowledged talents and public services than to meet the general wish and expectation of the Republican party; his signal ability and success in office had fully justified the selection; his own respect for Van Buren's great public and private worth, and his full confidence in his integrity were undiminished. This blast from the unquestioned head of the party prodigiously helped the general movement. The only question was how best to avenge the wrong.

It was suggested that Van Buren should return directly and take a seat in the Senate, which Dudley would willingly surrender to him, and should there meet his slanderers face to face. Some thought that he should have a triumphal entry into New York, without an idea of going into the ”senatorial c.o.c.k-pit” unless he were not to receive the vice-presidency.

Others thought that he should be made governor of New York, an idea shadowed forth in the Albany address to Jackson. As a candidate for that place, he would escape the jealousies of Pennsylvania and perhaps Virginia, and augment the local strength of the party in New York. To this it was replied from Was.h.i.+ngton that they might better cut his throat at once; that if the Republican party could not, under existing circ.u.mstances, make Van Buren vice-president, they need never look to the presidency for him. This was declared to be the unanimous opinion of the cabinet. New York Republicans were begged not to ”lose so glorious an opportunity of strengthening and consolidating the party.” The people at Albany, it was said, were ”mad, ... as if New York can make amends for an insult offered by fourteen States of the Union.”

In this temper the Republican or Democratic convention met at Baltimore on May 21, 1832. It was the first national gathering of the party; and was summoned simply to nominate a vice-president. Jackson's renomination was already made by the sovereign people, which might be justly affronted by the a.s.sembling of a body in apparent doubt whether to obey the popular decree. National conventions were inevitable upon the failure of the congressional caucus in 1824. The system of separate nominations in different States at irregular times was too inconvenient, too inconsistent with unity of action and a central survey of the whole situation. In 1824 its inconvenience had been obvious enough. In 1828 circ.u.mstances had designated both the candidates with perfect certainty; and isolated nominations in different parts of the country were then in no danger of clas.h.i.+ng. It has been recently said that the convention of 1832 was a.s.sembled to force Van Buren's nomination for vice-president.

But it is evident from the letter which Parton prints, written by Lewis to Kendall on May 25, 1831, when the latter was visiting Isaac Hill, the Jacksonian leader in New Hamps.h.i.+re, that the convention was even then proposed by ”the most judicious” friends of the administration. It was suggested as a plan ”of putting a stop to partial nominations” and of ”harmonizing” the party. Barbour, d.i.c.kinson, and McLane were the candidates discussed in this letter; Van Buren was not named. He was about sailing for England; and although an open candidate for the presidential succession after Jackson, he was not then a candidate for the second office. The ascription of the convention to management in his behalf seems purely gratuitous. Upon this early invitation, the New Hamps.h.i.+re Democrats called the convention. One of them opened its session by a brief speech alluding to the favor with which the idea of the convention had met, ”although opposed by the enemies of the Democratic party,” as the Republican party headed by Jackson was now perhaps first definitely called. He said that ”the coming together of representatives of the people from the extremity of the Union would have a tendency to soothe, if not to unite, the jarring interests;” and that the people, after seeing its good effects in conciliating the different and distant sections of the country, would continue the mode of nomination. This natural and sensible motive to strengthen and solidify the party is ample explanation of the convention, without resorting to the rather worn charge brought against so many political movements of the time, that they arose from Jackson's dictatorial desire to throttle the sentiment of his party. In making nominations the convention resolved that each State should have as many votes as it would be ent.i.tled to in the electoral college. To a.s.sure what was deemed a reasonable approach to unanimity, two thirds of the whole number of votes was required for a choice,--a precedent sad enough to Van Buren twelve years later. On the first ballot Van Buren had 208 of the 283 votes. Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky, with a few votes from North Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, were for Philip P. Barbour of Virginia or Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. The motion, nowadays immediately made, that the nomination be unanimous was not offered; but after an adjournment a resolution was adopted that inasmuch as Van Buren had received the votes of two thirds of the delegates, the convention unanimously concur ”in recommending him to the people of the United States for their support.”

No platform was adopted. A committee was appointed after the nomination to draft an address; but after a night's work they reported that, although ”agreeing fully in the principles and sentiments which they believe ought to be embodied in an address of this description, if such an address were to be made,” it still seemed better to them that the convention recommend the several delegations ”to make such explanations by address, report, or otherwise to their respective const.i.tuents of the objects, proceedings, and result of the meeting as they may deem expedient.” This was a franker intimation than those to which we are now used, that the battle was to be fought in each State upon the issue best suited to its local sentiments; and was ent.i.tled to quite as much respect as meaningless plat.i.tudes adopted lest one State or another be offended at something explicit. Jackson's firm and successful foreign policy, his opposition to internal improvements by the federal government, his strong stand against nullification, his opposition to the United States Bank,--for from the battle over the re-charter, precipitated by Clay early in 1832 to embarra.s.s Jackson, the latter had not shrunk,--and above all Jackson himself, these were the real planks of the platform. But the party wanted the votes of Pennsylvania Jacksonians who believed in the Bank and of western Jacksonians who wished federal aid for roads and ca.n.a.ls. The great tariff debate was then going on in Congress; and the subject seemed full of danger. The election was like the usual English canva.s.s on a parliamentary dissolution. The country was merely asked without specifications: Do you on the whole like Jackson's administration?

There is no real ground for the supposition that intrigue or coercion was necessary to procure Van Buren's nomination. It was dictated by the simplest and plainest political considerations. Calhoun was in opposition. After Jackson, Van Buren was clearly the most distinguished and the ablest member of the administration party; he had rendered it services of the highest order; he was very popular in the most important State of New York; he was abroad, suffering from what Irving at the time truly called ”a very short-sighted and mean-spirited act of hostility.”

The affront had aroused a general feeling which would enable Van Buren to strengthen the ticket. In his department had been performed the most s.h.i.+ning achievements of the administration. To the politicians about Jackson, and very shrewd men they were, Van Buren's succession to Jackson promised a firmer, abler continuance of the administration than that of any other public man. Could he indeed have stayed minister to England, he would have continued a figure of the first distinction, free from local and temporary animosities and embarra.s.sments. From that post he might perhaps, as did a later Democratic statesman, most easily have ascended to the presidency; the vice-presidency would have been unnecessary to the final promotion. But after the tremendous affront dealt him by Calhoun and Clay, his tame return to private life would seem fatal. He must reenter public life. And no reentry, it was plain, could be so striking as a popular election to the second station in the land, nominal though it was, and in taking it to displace the very enemy who had been finally responsible for the wrong done him.

A month after his return Van Buren formally accepted the nomination. The committee of the convention had a.s.sured him that if the great Republican party continued faithful to its principles, there was every reason to congratulate him and their ill.u.s.trious president that there was in reserve for his wounded feelings a just and certain reparation. Van Buren said in reply that previous to his departure from the United States his name had been frequently mentioned for the vice-presidency; but that he had uniformly declared himself altogether unwilling to be considered a candidate, and that to his friends, when opportunity offered, he had given the grounds of his unwillingness. All this was strictly true. He had become a candidate for the presidential succession; and honorable absence as minister to England secured a better preparation than presence as vice-president amidst the difficulties and suspicions of Was.h.i.+ngton. But his position, he added, had since that period been essentially changed by the circ.u.mstance to which the committee had referred, and to which, with some excess of modesty he said, rather than to any superior fitness on his part, he was bound to ascribe his nomination. He gratefully received this spontaneous expression of confidence and friends.h.i.+p from the delegated democracy of the Union. He declared it to be fortunate for the country that its public affairs were under the direction of one who had an early and inflexible devotion to republican principles and a moral courage which distinguished him from all others. In the conviction, he said, that on a faithful adherence to these principles depended the stability and value of our confederated system, he humbly hoped lay his motive, rather than any other, for accepting the nomination. This rather clumsy affectation of humility would have been more disagreeable had it not been closely a.s.sociated with firm and manly expressions, and because it was so common a formality in the political vernacular of the day. In treating the people as the sovereign, there were adopted the sort of rhetorical extravagances used by attendants upon monarchs.

On October 4, 1832, Van Buren, upon an interrogation by a committee of a meeting at Shocco Springs, North Carolina, wrote a letter upon the tariff. He said that he believed ”the establishment of commercial regulations with a view to the encouragement of domestic products to be within the const.i.tutional power of Congress.” But as to what should be the character of the tariff he indulged in the generalities of a man who has opinions which he does not think it wise or timely to exhibit. He did not wish to see the power of Congress exercised with ”oppressive inequality” or ”for the advantage of one section of the Union at the expense of another.” The approaching extinguishment of the national debt presented an opportunity for a ”more equitable adjustment of the tariff,” an opportunity already embraced in the tariff of 1832, whose spirit as ”a conciliatory measure” he trusted would be cherished by all who preferred public to private interests. These vague expressions would have fitted either a revenue reformer or an extreme protectionist. Both disbelieved, or said they did, in oppression and inequality. With a bit of irony, perhaps unconscious, he added that he had been thus ”explicit”

in the statement of his sentiments that there might not be room for misapprehension of his views. He did, however, in the letter approve ”a reduction of the revenue to the wants of the government,” and ”a preference in encouragement given to such manufactures as are essential to the national defense, and its extension to others in proportion as they are adapted to our country and of which the raw material is produced by ourselves.” The last phrase probably hinted at Van Buren's position. He believed in strictly limiting protective duties, although he had voted for the tariff of 1828. But he told Benton that he cast this vote in obedience to the ”_demos krateo_” principle, that is, because his State required it. He again spoke strongly against the policy of internal improvements, and the ”scrambles and combinations in Congress” unavoidably resulting from them. He was ”unreservedly opposed”

to a renewal of the charter of the Bank, and equally opposed to nullification, which involved, he believed, the ”certain destruction of the confederacy.”

A few days later he wrote to a committee of ”democratic-republican young men” in New York of the peculiar hatred and contumely visited upon him.

Invectives against other men, he said, were at times suspended; but he had never enjoyed a moment's respite since his first entrance into public life. Many distinguished public men had, he added, been seriously injured by favors from the press; but there was scarcely an instance in which the objects of its obloquy had not been raised in public estimation in exact proportion to the intensity and duration of the abuse.

Both the letter from the Baltimore convention and Van Buren's reply alluded to ”diversity of sentiments and interests,” disagreements ”as to measures and men” among the Republicans. The secession of Calhoun and the bitter hostility of his friends seriously weakened the party. But against this was to be set the Anti-Masonic movement which drew far more largely from Jackson's opponents than from his supporters, for Jackson was a Mason of a high degree. This strange agitation had now spread beyond New York, and secured the support of really able men. Judge McLean of the Supreme Court desired the Anti-Masonic nomination; William Wirt, the famous and accomplished Virginian, accepted it. John Quincy Adams would probably have accepted it, had it been tendered him. He wrote in his diary: ”The dissolution of the Masonic inst.i.tution in the United States I believe to be really more important to us and our posterity than the question whether Mr. Clay or General Jackson shall be the president.” In New York the National Republicans or Whigs, with the eager and silly leaning of minority parties to political absurdities or vagaries, united with the Anti-Masons, among whom William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed had become influential. In 1830 they had supported Francis Granger, the Anti-Masonic candidate for governor. In 1832 the Anti-Masons in New York nominated an electoral ticket headed by Chancellor Kent, whose bitter, narrow, and unintelligent politics were in singular contrast with his extraordinary legal equipment and his professional and literary accomplishments, and by John C. Spencer, lately in charge of the prosecution of Morgan's abductors. If the ticket were successful, its votes were to go to Wirt or Clay, whichever they might serve to elect. Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania was the Anti-Masonic candidate for vice-president. In December, 1831, Clay had been nominated for president with the loud enthusiasm which politicians often mistake for widespread conviction. John Sergeant of Pennsylvania was the candidate for vice-president. The Whig Convention made the Bank re-charter the issue. The very ably conducted Young Men's National Republican Convention, held at Was.h.i.+ngton in May, 1832, gave Clay a n.o.ble greeting, made pilgrimage to the tomb of Was.h.i.+ngton there to seal their solemn promises, and adopted a clear and brief platform for protection, for internal improvements by the federal government, for the binding force upon the coordinate branches of the government of the Supreme Court's opinions as to const.i.tutional questions, not only in special cases formally adjudged, but upon general principles, and against the manner in which the West Indian trade had been recovered.

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