American Men of Action Part 5

Jackson found his new position exactly suited to his peculiar genius.

His personal recklessness made him the terror of criminals; he possessed the precise qualifications for success before backwoods juries and for personal popularity among the rough people who were his clients, with whom usually might was right. At the end of three or four years, he practically monopolized the law business of the district; and he soon became by far the most popular man in it, despite a hot-headed disposition which made him many enemies, which involved him in numberless quarrels, and which resulted in his fighting at least one duel, in which he killed his opponent and was himself dangerously wounded.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should enter politics, and equally inevitable that he should be successful there. Eight years after his arrival from Carolina, at the age of twenty-nine, he was elected to represent his state in Congress, and covered the eight hundred miles to Philadelphia on horseback. From the House, he was appointed to serve in the Senate, resigned from it to accept an election as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was chosen major-general of the Tennessee militia, and so began that military career which was to have a remarkable culmination.

On the 25th of June, 1812, apprised of the outbreak of the second war with England, Jackson offered to the President his own services and those of the twenty-five hundred militia men of his district.

The offer was at once accepted, and Jackson, getting his troops together, proceeded down the river to New Orleans. But jealousies at headquarters intervened, he was informed that New Orleans was in no present danger, his force was disbanded and left to get back home as best it could. Jackson, wild with rage, pledged his own resources to furnish this transportation, but was afterwards reimbursed by the government.

It was while he was getting his men back home again that Jackson received the nickname of "Old Hickory," which clung to him all the rest of his life, and which was really a good description of him. The story also ill.u.s.trates how it was that his men came to idolize him, and why it was that he appealed so strongly to the common people. Jackson had three good horses, on that weary journey, but instead of riding one of them himself, he loaned all three to sick men who were unable to walk, and himself trudged along at the head of his men.

"The general is tough, isn't he?" one of them remarked, glancing at the tall, st.u.r.dy figure.

"Tough!" echoed another. "I should say he is--as tough as hickory!"

Jackson was lying in bed with a bullet in his shoulder, which he had received in an affray with Jesse Benton, and also, no doubt, nursing his chagrin over his treatment by the War Department, when news came of a great Indian uprising in Alabama. The Creeks had gone on the warpath and had opened proceedings by capturing Fort Mims, at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on August 30, 1813, and ma.s.sacring over five hundred people who had taken refuge there. Alabama was almost abandoned by the whites, and Georgia and Tennessee at once rushed to her relief by voting men and money to put down the Indians.

Jackson forgot wound and chagrin and took the field as soon as he was able to stir. He at once quarrelled with the other officers; but his men believed in him, though lack of food and the expiring of the short term of enlistment created so much insubordination that, on one occasion, he had to use half his army to prevent the other half from marching home.

His energy was remarkable; he pushed forward into the Creek country, cut the Indians to pieces at Horseshoe Bend, and drove the survivors into Florida. At the end of seven months, the war was over, and the Creeks had been so punished that there was never any further need to fear them.

The campaign had another result--it established Jackson's reputation as a fighter, and soon afterwards he was appointed a major-general in the army of the United States, and was given command of the Department of the South. The pendulum had swung the other way, with a vengeance! But Jackson rose magnificently to this increased responsibility. He discovered that the English were in force at Pensacola, which was in Florida and therefore on Spanish territory; but he did not hesitate. He marched against the place with an army of three thousand, stormed the town, captured it, blew up the forts, which the Spaniards hastily surrendered, and so made it untenable as an English base. Perhaps no other exploit of his career was so audacious, or so well carried out.

Pensacola subdued, he hastened to New Orleans, which was in the gravest danger.

The overthrow of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba had given England a breathing-s.p.a.ce, and the veteran troops which had been with Wellington in Spain were left free for use against the Americans. A great expedition was at once organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the column which had delivered the fatal blow at Salamanca. A fleet of fifty vessels, manned by the best sailors of England, was got ready, ten thousand men put aboard, and in December, a week after Jackson's arrival at New Orleans, this great fleet anch.o.r.ed off the broad lagoons of the Mississippi delta. Seventeen thousand men, in all, counting the sailors, who could, of course, be employed in land operations; and a mighty equipment of artillery, for which the guns of the fleet could also be used. The few American gunboats were overpowered, and Pakenham proceeded leisurely to land his force for the advance against the city, which it seemed that nothing could save. On December 23d, his advance-guard of two thousand men was but ten miles below New Orleans.

On the afternoon of that very day, the vanguard of Jackson's Tennesseans marched into New Orleans, clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, wearing c.o.o.nskin caps, and carrying on their shoulders the long rifles they knew how to use so well. They had made one of the most remarkable marches in history, in their eagerness to meet the enemy, and Jackson at once hurried them forward for a night attack. It was delivered with the greatest fury, and the British were so roughly handled that they were forced to halt until the main body of the army came up.

When they did advance, they found that Jackson had made good use of the delay. With the first light of the dawn which followed the battle, he had commenced throwing up a rude breastwork, one end resting on the river, the other on a swamp, and by nightfall, it was nearly done. Mud and logs had been used, and bales of cotton, until it formed a fairly strong position. The British were hurrying forward reinforcements, and little did either side suspect that on that very day, at Ghent, thousands of miles away, a treaty of peace had been signed between the United States and England, and that the blood they were about to spill would be spilled uselessly.

In a day or two, the British had got up their artillery, and tried to batter down the breastworks, but without success; then, Pakenham, forgetting Bunker Hill, determined to try a frontal a.s.sault. He had no doubt of victory, for he had three times as many men as Jackson; troops, too, seasoned by victories won over the most renowned marshals of Napoleon. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position infinitely stronger than this rude breastworks; time after time they had charged and carried fortifications, manned by the best soldiers in Europe. What chance, then, had this little force of backwoodsmen, commanded by an ignorant and untrained general? So Pakenham ordered that the a.s.sault should take place on the morning of January 8th.

From the bustle and stir in the British camp, the Americans knew that something unusual was afoot, and long before dawn, the riflemen were awake, had their breakfast, and then took their places behind the mud walls, their rifles ready. At last the sun rose, the fog lifted, and disclosed the splendid and gleaming lines of the British infantry, ready for the advance. As soon as the air was clear, Pakenham gave the word, and the columns moved steadily forward. From the American breastworks not a rifle cracked. Half the distance was covered, three-fourths; and then, as one man, those st.u.r.dy riflemen rose and fired, line upon line.

Under that terrible fire, the British column broke and paused, then surged forward again, almost to the foot of the breastworks. But not a man lived to mount them. No column could stand under such a fire, and the British broke and ran.

Mad with rage, Pakenham rallied his men and placed himself at their head. Again came the word to charge, and again that gleaming column rushed forward, only to be again met by that deadly hail of lead.

Pakenham, mortally wounded, reeled and fell from his saddle, officer after officer was picked off by those unequalled marksmen, the field was covered with dead and dying. Even the British saw, at last, the folly of the movement, and retired sullenly to their lines. For a week they lay there; then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they marched back to their ships and sailed for England. The men who had conquered the conquerors of Europe had themselves met defeat.

The battle had lasted less than half an hour, but the British left behind them no less than twenty-six hundred men--seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, five hundred prisoners. The American loss was eight killed and thirteen wounded.

News of this brilliant victory brought sudden joy to a depressed people, for elsewhere on land the war had been waged disgracefully enough, and Jackson's name was on everyone's lips. His journey to Washington was a kind of triumphal march, and his popularity grew by leaps and bounds.

People journeyed scores of miles to see him, for there was a strange fascination about the rugged old fighter which few could resist, and already his friends were urging him as a candidate for the presidency.

There could be no doubt that he was the people's choice, and at last, in the campaign of 1823, he was formally placed in nomination, his chief opponent being John Quincy Adams, of Ma.s.sachusetts. The result of that contest has already been told. Jackson received more electoral votes than any other candidate, but not enough to elect, and the contest was decided by the House of Representatives. On that occasion, Henry Clay came nearer committing political suicide than ever again in his life, for he threw his influence against Jackson, and lost a portion of his popularity which he never recovered.

Jackson bided his time, and spent the four years following in careful preparation for the next contest. So well did he build his fences that, when the electoral vote was cast, he received the overwhelming majority of 178 votes to 83 for Adams.

Never before had the city of Washington seen such an inauguration as took place on the fourth of March following. It seemed as though the whole population of the country had a.s.sembled there to see the old fighter take the oath of office. Daniel Webster wrote of it, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons came five hundred miles to see General Jackson and really seem to think that our country is rescued from some dreadful danger." As, perhaps, it was.

Jackson began his administration with characteristic vigor. It was he who first put into practice the principle, "To the victors belong the spoils." There was about him no academic courtesy, and he proceeded at once to displace many Federal officeholders and to replace them with his own adherents. The Senate tried for a time to stem the tide, but was forced to give it up. There was no withstanding that fierce and dominant personality. Jackson was more nearly a dictator than any President had ever been before him, or than any will ever be again. His great popularity seemed rather to increase than to diminish, and in 1832, he received no less than 219 electoral votes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JACKSON]

Let us do him justice. Prejudiced and ignorant and wrong-headed as he was, he was a pure patriot, laboring for his country's good. Nothing proves this more strongly than his att.i.tude on the nullification question, in other words, the right of a state to refuse to obey a law of the United States, and to withdraw from the Union, should it so desire. This is not the place to go into the const.i.tutional argument on this question. It is, of course, all but certain that the original thirteen states had no idea, when they ratified the Const.i.tution, that they were entering an alliance from which they would forever be powerless to withdraw; and the right of withdrawal had been a.s.serted in New England more than once. South Carolina was the hot-bed of nullification sentiment, arising partly from the growing anti-slavery feeling at the North, and partly because of the enactment of a tariff law which was felt to be unjust, and on October 25, 1832, the South Carolina legislature pa.s.sed an ordinance a.s.serting that, since the state had entered the Union of its free will, it could withdraw from it at any time and resume the sovereign and independent position which it had held at the close of the Revolution, and that it would do so should there be any attempt to enforce the tariff laws within the state.

Jackson's att.i.tude on this question was already well known. At a banquet celebrating Jefferson's birthday, two years before, at which Calhoun and others had given toasts and made addresses in favor of nullification, Jackson had startled his audience by rising, gla.s.s in hand, and giving the toast, "Our Federal Union--it must be preserved!" That toast had fallen like a bombsh.e.l.l among the ranks of the nullifiers, and had electrified the whole Nation. Since then, he had become a stronger nationalist than ever; besides, he was always ready for a fight, and whenever he saw a head had the true Irishman's impulse to hit it. So he responded to the South Carolina nullification ordinance by sending two men-of-war to Charleston harbor and collecting a force of United States troops along the Carolina border. "I consider the power to annul a law of the United States, a.s.sumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union," he wrote; and when a South Carolina congressman, about to go home, asked the President if he had any commands for his friends in that state, Jackson retorted:

"Yes, I have; please give my compliments to my friends in your state, and say to them that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on, engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."

Whether or not this message was delivered history does not say, but the whole Nation arose in wrath behind its President, state after state denounced nullification and disunion, and the South Carolina ordinance was finally repealed. So the storm pa.s.sed for the moment. It left Jackson more of a popular hero than ever; it was as though he had won another battle of New Orleans. One cannot but wonder what would have happened had he been acting as President, instead of Buchanan, in those trying years after 1856.

He retired from the presidency broken in health and fortune, for however well he took care of the interests of his friends, he was always careless about his own. The last eight years of his life were spent at his Tennessee estate, The Hermitage. The end came in 1845, but his name has remained as a kind of watchword among the common people--a synonym for rugged honesty, and bluff sincerity. His career is, all in all, by far the most remarkable of any man who ever held the high office of President--with one possible exception, that of Abraham Lincoln.

Jackson was one of the most perfect political manipulators and machine-builders this country ever saw, and he had so perfected his machine at the close of his second term that he was able to name as his successor and the heir of his policies, Martin Van Buren, of New York, a man who had been one of Jackson's most valued lieutenants from the first, an astute politician, but not remarkable in any way, nor able to impress himself upon the country. He announced at his inauguration that it was his intention, to tread in the footsteps of his "ill.u.s.trious predecessor," but none for a moment imagined that he was big enough to fill Jackson's shoes. Indeed, Jackson, was by far the most important figure at the inauguration.

Van Buren's term as President witnessed nothing more momentous than the great panic of 1837, which he faced with a calmness and clear-sightedness surprising even to his friends, but which nevertheless a.s.sisted a collection of malcontents, under the leadership of Henry Clay, calling themselves National Republicans or Whigs, to defeat him for re-election. There was really no valid reason why he should have been re-elected; he had little claim, upon the country, but was for the most part, merely a clever politician, the first to attain the presidency. His life had been marked by an orderly advance from local to state, and then to national offices--an advance obtained not because he stood for any great principle, but because he knew how to make friends and build his political fences.

His nomination and election to the presidency was in no sense an accident, as was Taylor's, Pierce's, Hayes's and Garfield's, but was carefully prearranged and thoroughly understood. Yet let us do him the justice to add that his public services were, in some respects, of a high order, and that he was not wholly unworthy of the last great honor paid him. He was a candidate for the nomination in 1844, but was defeated by James K. Polk; and four years later, secured the nomination, but was defeated at the polls by Zachary Taylor. That ended his political career.

In the campaign against him of 1840, the Whigs were fortunate in having for their candidate William Henry Harrison, a man of immense personal popularity, resembling Jackson in that his reputation had been made as an Indian fighter in the West, where he had defeated Tec.u.mseh at the battle of Tippecanoe, and by a successful campaign in the war of 1812.

Since then, he had been living quietly on his farm in Ohio, with no expectation of anything but pa.s.sing his remaining years in quiet, for he was nearly seventy years of age. But Clay, with a sort of prophetic insight, picked him out as the Whig leader, and "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" became the rallying cry of a remarkable campaign, which swept the country from end to end and effectually swamped Van Buren. It was too strenuous for a man as old as Harrison, and he died at the White House within a month of taking the oath of office.

The "Tyler Too" was John Tyler, who had been elected Vice-President, and who a.s.sumed the office of President upon Harrison's death. His accession was little less than a bomb-sh.e.l.l to the party which had nominated him and secured his election. For he was a Virginian, a follower of Calhoun and an ardent pro-slavery man, while the Whigs were first, last and all the time anti-slavery. He had been placed on the ticket with Harrison, who was strongly anti-slavery, in the hope of securing the votes of some disaffected Democrats, but to see him President was the last thing the Whigs desired. The result was that he soon became involved in a bitter quarrel with Clay and the other leaders of the party, which effectually; killed any chance of renomination he may have had. He became the mark for perhaps the most unrestrained abuse ever aimed at a holder of the presidency.

It was largely unmerited, for Tyler was a capable man, had seen service in Congress and as governor of his state; but he was dry and uninspiring, and not big enough for the presidency, into which he could never have come except by accident. His administration was marked by few important events except the annexation of Texas, which will be dealt with more particularly when we come to consider the lives of Sam Houston and the other men who brought the annexation about. He retired to private life at the close of his term, appearing briefly twenty years later as a member of a "congress" which endeavored to prevent the war between the states, and afterwards as a member of the Confederate Congress, in which he served until his death.

Clay secured the Whig nomination for himself, in the campaign of 1844, and his opponent on the Democratic ticket was James Knox Polk, a native of North Carolina, but afterwards removing to Tennessee. He had been a member of Congress for fourteen years, and governor of Tennessee for three, and was a consistent exponent of Democratic principles. Two great questions were before the country: the annexation of Texas and the right to Oregon. Polk was for the immediate annexation of Texas and for the acquisition of Oregon up to 54 40" north lat.i.tude, regardless of Great Britain's claims, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" became one of the battle-cries of the campaign. Clay, inveterate trimmer and compromiser that he was, professed to be for the annexation of Texas, provided it could be accomplished without war with Mexico, which was arrant nonsense, since Mexico had given notice that she would consider annexation an act of war. The result of Clay's att.i.tude, and of a widespread distrust of his policies, was that Polk was elected by a large majority.

His administration was destined to be a brilliant one, for Texas was at once annexed, and the brief war with Mexico which followed, one of the most successful ever waged by any country, carried the southwestern boundary of the United States to the Rio Grande, and added New Mexico and California to the national domain, while a treaty with England secured for the country the present great state of Oregon, although here Polk receded from his position and accepted a compromise which confined Oregon below the forty-ninth parallel. But even this was something of a triumph. With that triumph, the name of Marcus Whitman is most closely a.s.sociated, through a brilliant but rather useless feat of his, of which we shall speak later on. Polk seems to have been an able and conscientious man, without any pretensions to genius--just a good, average man, like any one of ten thousand other Americans. He refused a renomination because of ill-health, and died soon after retiring from office.

The Democratic party had by this time become hopelessly disrupted over the slavery question, which had become more and more acute. The great strength of the state rights party had always been in the South, and southern statesmen had always opposed any aggression on the part of the national government. The North, on the other hand, had always leaned more or less toward a strong centralization of power. So it followed that while the Democratic party was paramount in the South, its opponents, by whatever name known, found their main strength in the North.

Yet, even in the North, there was a strong Democratic element, and, but for the intrusion of the slavery question, the party would have controlled the government for many years to come. But the North was gradually coming to feel that the slavery question was more important than the more abstract one of national aggression; the more so since, by insisting upon the enforcement of such measures as the Fugitive Slave Law, the South was, as it were, keeping open and bleeding a wound which might to some extent have healed. In 1848 the split came, and the Democratic party put two candidates in the field, Lewis Ca.s.s for the South, and Martin Van Buren for the North.

The Whig Party, taking advantage of the knowledge gained in previous campaigns, looked around for a famous general, and managed to agree upon Zachary Taylor, who had made an exceedingly brilliant record in the war with Mexico. He was sixty-five years old at the time, a st.u.r.dy giant of a man, reared on the frontier, hardened by years of Indian warfare, whose nickname of "Old Rough and Ready" was not a bad description. He caught the popular fancy, for he possessed those qualities which appeal to the plain people, and this, a.s.sisted by the division in the ranks of his opponents, won him a majority of the electoral votes.

He took the oath of office on March 4, 1849, but, after sixteen months of troubled administration, died suddenly on July 9, 1850.

Millard Fillmore, who had been elected Vice-President, at once took the oath of office as chief executive. He was a New York man, a lawyer, had been a member of Congress, and, as Vice-President, had presided over the bitter slavery debates in the Senate. His sympathies were supposed to be anti-slavery, yet he signed the Fugitive Slave Law, when it was placed before him, much to the chagrin of many people who had voted for him. He signed his own political death-warrant at the same time, for, at the Whig National Convention in 1852, he was defeated for the nomination for President, after a long struggle, by General Winfield Scott, another veteran of the Mexican war. Four years later, Fillmore, having managed to regain, the confidence of his party, secured the Whig nomination unanimously, but was defeated at the polls, and spent the remaining years of his life quietly at his home in Buffalo.

Against General Scott, the Democrats nominated Franklin Scott Pierce, the nomination being in the nature of an accident, though Pierce was in every way a worthy candidate. His family record begins with his father, Benjamin Pierce, who, as a lad of seventeen, stirred by the tidings of the fight at Lexington, left his home in Chelmsford, musket on shoulder, to join the patriot army before Boston. He settled in New Hampshire after the Revolution, and his son Franklin was born there in 1804. He followed the usual course of lawyer, congressman and senator, and served throughout the war with Mexico, rising to the rank of brigadier-general, and securing a reputation second only to that of Scott and Taylor.

At the Democratic convention of 1852, Pierce was not a candidate for the nomination, and did not know that any one intended to mention his name, or even thought of him in that connection. But the convention was unable to agree on a candidate, and on the fourth day and thirty-third ballot, some delegate cast his vote for General Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. The name attracted attention, Pierce's career had been distinguished and above reproach, other delegates voted for him, until, on the forty-ninth ballot, he was declared the unanimous choice of the convention. His election was overwhelming, as he carried twenty-seven states out of thirty-one.

Once in the presidential chair, however, this popularity gradually slipped away from him. He found himself in an impossible position, between two fires, for the slavery question was dividing the country more and more and there seemed no possible way to reconcile the warring sections. Pierce, perhaps, made the mistake of trying to placate both, instead of taking his stand firmly with one or the other; and the consequence was that at the convention of 1856, he received a few votes from courtesy, but was never seriously in the running, which resulted in the nomination of James Buchanan. Pierce returned to his home in New Hampshire, to find his friends and neighbors estranged from him by his supposed pro-slavery views, which had yet not been radical enough to win him the friendship of the South; but time changed all that, and his last years were spent in honored and opulent retirement.

James Buchanan was, like Andrew Jackson, of Scotch-Irish descent, but there the resemblance between the two ended, for Buchanan had little of Jackson's tremendous positiveness and strength of character. His disposition was always to compromise, while Jackson's was to fight. Now compromise is often a very admirable thing, but where it shows itself to be impossible and leaves fighting the only resource, the wise man puts all thought of it behind him and prepares for battle. Which is precisely what Buchanan did not do. He had been a lawyer and congressman, minister to Russia, senator, secretary of state and minister to England, and so had the widest possible political acquaintanceship; he was a man of somewhat unusual culture; but, alas! he found that something more than culture was needed to guide him in the troublous times amid which he fell. I have often thought that Buchanan's greatest handicap was his wide friendship, which often made it almost impossible to say no, however much he may have wished to do so. An unknown backwoodsman, like Andrew Jackson, with no favors to return and no friendships to be remembered, could have acted far more effectively.

Buchanan's opponent for the presidency was John C. Fremont, and there was a great stir and bustle among the people who were supposed to support him, but Buchanan won easily, and at once found himself in the midst of the most perplexing difficulties. Kansas was in a state of civil war; two days after his inauguration the Supreme Court handed down the famous Dred Scott decision, declaring the right of any slave-holder to take his slaves as property into any territory; while the young Republican party was siding openly with the abolitionists, and, a very firebrand in a powder-house, in 1859, John Brown seized Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and attempted to start a slave insurrection. Now a slave insurrection was the one thing which the South feared more than any other--it was the terror which was ever present. And so John Brown's mad attempt excited a degree of hysteria almost unbelievable.

Small wonder that Buchanan was soon at his wits' ends. His sympathies were with the slave-holders; he doubted his right to coerce a seceding state; his friendships were largely with southern statesmen--and yet, to his credit be it stated, on January 8, 1860, after secession had become a thing a.s.sured, he seems suddenly to have seen his duty clearly, and in a special message, declared his intention to collect the revenues and protect public property in all the states, and to use force if necessary. Taken all in all, his att.i.tude in those trying days was a creditable one--as creditable as could be expected from any average man.