Perley's Reminiscences Part 3

Edward Everett, who was a member of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation in the House, had won early fame as a popular preacher of the gospel, as a professor at Harvard College, and as the editor of the _North American Review_. Placed by his marriage above want, he became noted for his profound learning and persuasive eloquence.

At times he was almost electrical in his utterances; his reasoning was logical and luminous, and his remarks always gave evidence of careful study. As a politician Mr. Everett was not successful.

The personification of self-discipline and dignity, he was too much like an intellectual icicle to find favor with the ma.s.ses, and he was deficient in courage when any bold step was to be taken.

George McDuffie, who represented the Edgefield District of South Carolina, had been taken from labor in a blacksmith's shop by Mr.

Calhoun and became the grateful champion of his patron in the House.

He was a spare, grim-looking man, who was an admirer of Milton, and who was never known to jest or to smile. As a debater he had few equals in the House, but he failed when, during the discussion of the Panama Mission question, he opened his batteries upon Mr.

Webster. The "expounder of the Const.i.tution" retorted with great force, reminding the gentleman from South Carolina that noisy declamation was not logic, and that he should not apply coa.r.s.e epithets to the President, who could not reply to them. Mr. Webster then went on to say that he would furnish the gentleman from South Carolina with high authority on the point to which he had objected, and quoted from a speech by Mr. Calhoun which effectively extinguished Mr. McDuffie.

Tristram Burgess, of Rhode Island, who had a snowy head and a Roman nose, was called "the bald eagle of the House." Although under fifty years of age, his white hair and bent form gave him a patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with heavy or light arms, a battle-axe or a spear. The champion of the North, he divided the South and thrashed and slashed as did old Horatius, when with his good sword he stood upon the bridge and with his single arm defended Rome.

George Kremer, of Pennsylvania, was probably the most unpopular man in the House. An anonymous letter had appeared just before the election of President [Adams] by the Representatives denouncing an "unholy coalition" between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, by which the support of the friends of the latter had been transferred to the former, "as the planter does his negroes, or the farmer his team and horses." Mr. Clay at once published a card, over his signature, in which he called the writer "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." Mr. Kremer replied, admitting that he had written the letter, but in such a manner that his political friends were ashamed of his cowardice, while the admirers of Mr. Clay were very indignant--the more so as they suspected that Mr. James Buchanan had instigated the letter.

Mr. Henry W. Dwight, of Ma.s.sachusetts, a good specimen of "a sound mind in a sound body," gave great attention to the appropriation bills, and secured liberal sums for carrying on the various departments of the Government. His most formidable antagonist was a self-styled reformer and physical giant, Mr. Thomas Chilton, of Kentucky, who had been at one period of his life a Baptist preacher.

He declared on the floor in debate that he was pledged to his const.i.tuents to endeavor to retrench the expenses of the General Government, to diminish the army and navy, to abridge the number of civil and diplomatic officials, and, above all, to cut down the pay of Congressmen. He made speeches in support of all these "reforms," but did not succeed in securing the discharge of a soldier, a sailor, a diplomatist, or a clerk, neither did he reduce the appropriations one single cent. The erratic Mr. David Crockett was then a member of the House, but had not attracted public attention, although the Jackson men were angry because he, one of Old Hickory's officers in the Creek War, was a devoted adherent of Henry Clay for the Presidency. One of his colleagues in the Tennessee delegation was Mr. James K. Polk, a rigid and uncompromising Presbyterian, a political disciple of Macon, and a man of incorruptible honesty.

Prominent among the Representatives from the State of New York were Messrs. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, members of the legal profession, who were statesmen rather than politicians. Mr.

George C. Washington, of Maryland, was the great-nephew of "the Father of his country," and had inherited a portion of the library at Mount Vernon, which he subsequently sold to the Boston Athenaeum.

Messrs. Elisha Whittlesey and Samuel Vinton, Representatives from Ohio, were afterwards for many years officers of the Federal Government and residents at Washington. Mr. Jonathan Hunt, of Vermont, a lawyer of ability, and one of the companions chosen by Mr. Webster, was the father of that gifted artist, William Morris Hunt, whose recent death was so generally regretted. Mr. Silas Wright, of New York, was then attracting attention in the Democratic party, of which he became a great leader, and which would have elected him President had he not shortened his life by intemperance.

He was a solid, square-built man, with an impa.s.sive, ruddy face.

He claimed to be a good farmer, but no orator, yet he was noted for the compactness of his logic, which was unenlivened by a figure of speech or a flight of fancy.

The Supreme Court then sat in the room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Capitol, now occupied as a law library. It has an arched ceiling supported by ma.s.sive pillars that obstruct the view, and is very badly ventilated. But it is rich in traditions of hair-powder, queues, ruffled shirts, knee-breeches, and buckles. Up to that time no Justice had ever sat upon the bench in trousers, nor had any lawyer ventured to plead in boots or wearing whiskers. Their Honors, the Chief Justice and the a.s.sociate Justices, wearing silk judicial robes, were treated with the most profound respect. When Mr. Clay stopped, one day, in an argument, and advancing to the bench, took a pinch of snuff from Judge Washington's box, saying, "I perceive that your Honor sticks to the Scotch," and then proceeded with his case, it excited astonishment and admiration. "Sir," said Mr. Justice Story, in relating the circ.u.mstance to a friends, "I do not believe there is a man in the United States who could have done that but Mr. Clay."

Chief Justice John Marshall, who had then presided in the Supreme Court for more than a quarter of a century, was one of the last survivors of those officers of the Revolutionary Army who had entered into civil service. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a small head and bright black eyes. He used to wear an unbrushed long- skirted black coat, a badly fitting waistcoat, and knee-breeches, a voluminous white cambric cravat, generally soiled, and black worsted stockings, with low shoes and silver buckles. When upward of seventy years of age he still relished the pleasures of the quoit club or the whist table, and to the last his right hand never forgot its cunning with the billiard cue.

Nor did the Chief Justice ever lose his relish for a joke, even at his own expense. In the Law Library one day he fell from a step- ladder, bruising himself severely and scattering an armful of books in all directions. An attendant, full of alarm, ran to a.s.sist him, but his Honor drily remarked, "That time I was completely floored."

Bushrod Washington, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court by President John Adams, was by inheritance the owner of Mount Vernon, where his remains now lie, near those of his ill.u.s.trious uncle, George Washington. He was a small, insignificant-looking man, deprived of the sight of one eye by excessive study, negligent of dress, and an immoderate snuff-taker. He was a rigid disciplinarian and a great stickler for etiquette, and on one occasion he sat for sixteen hours without leaving the bench. He was also a man of rare humor.

Christmas was the popular holiday season at Washington sixty years ago, the descendants of the Maryland Catholics joining the descendants of the Virginia Episcopalians in celebrating the advent of their Lord. The colored people enjoyed the festive season, and there was scarcely a house in Washington in which there was not a well- filled punch bowl. In some antique silver bowls was "Daniel Webster punch," made of Medford rum, brandy, champagne, arrack, menschino, strong green tea, lemon juice, and sugar; in other less expensive bowls was found a cheaper concoction. But punch abounded everywhere, and the bibulous found Washington a rosy place, where jocund mirth and joyful recklessness went arm in arm to flout vile melancholy, and kick, with ardent fervor, dull care out of the window. Christmas carols were sung in the streets by the young colored people, and yule logs were burned in the old houses where the fireplaces had not been bricked up.

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With great respect I am yrs. v. truly. [?]

H. Clay HENRY CLAY, born in Virginia, April 12th, 1777; United States Senator from Kentucky, 1806-1807, and again 1810-1811; Representative from Kentucky, 1811-1814; negotiator of the treaty of Ghent, 1815; Representative in Congress, 1815-1820, and 1823-1825; Secretary of State under President Adams, 1825-1829; United States Senator from Kentucky, 1831-1842, and 1844, until he died at Washington City, June 29th, 1852.

CHAPTER VI.

THE POLITICAL MACHINE.

As the time for another Presidential election approached, the friends of General Jackson commenced active operations in his behalf. The prime mover in the campaign was General John Henry Eaton, then a Senator from Tennessee. He had published in 1818 a brief life of the hero of New Orleans, which he enlarged in 1824 and published with the t.i.tle, "The Life of Andrew Jackson, Major- General in the Service of the United States, comprising a History of the War in the South from the Commencement of the Creek Campaign to the Termination of Hostilities Before New Orleans." The facts in it were obtained from General Jackson and his wife, but every incident of his life calculated to injure him in the public estimation was carefully suppressed. It was, however, the recognized text- book for Democratic editors and stump speakers, and although entirely unreliable, it has formed the basis for the lives of General Jackson since published.

President Adams enjoined neutrality upon his friends but some of them, acting with Democrats who were opposed to the election of General Jackson, had published and circulated, as an offset to General Eaton's book, a thick pamphlet ent.i.tled, "Reminiscences; or, an Extract from the Catalogue of General Jackson's Youthful Indiscretions, between the Age of Twenty-three and Sixty," which contained an account of Jackson's fights, brawls, affrays, and duels, numbered from one to fourteen. Broadsides, bordered with wood-cuts of coffins, and known as "coffin hand-bills," narrated the summary and unjust execution as deserters of a number of militiamen in the Florida campaign whose legal term of service had expired. Another handbill gave the account of General Jackson's marriage to Mrs. Robards before she had been legally divorced from her husband.

General Jackson's friends also had printed and circulated large editions of campaign songs, the favorite being "The Hunters of Kentucky," which commenced:

"You've heard, I s'pose of New Orleans, 'Tis famed for youth and beauty, There're girls of every hue, it seems, From snowy white to sooty, Now Packenham had made his brags, If he that day was lucky, He'd have those girls and cotton-bags In spite of old Kentucky.

But Jackson, he was wide awake, And was not scared at trifles, For well he knew Kentucky's boys, With their death-dealing rifles.

He led them down to cypress swamp, The ground was low and mucky, There stood John Bull in martial pomp, And here stood old Kentucky.

"Oh! Kentucky, the hunters of Kentucky!"

After a political campaign of unprecedented bitterness, General Jackson was elected, receiving one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes against eighty-three cast for John Quincy Adams, and so a new chapter was commenced in the social as well as the political chronicles of the National Capital. Those who had known the Presidential successors of Washington as educated and cultivated gentlemen, well versed in the courtesies of private life and of ceremonious statesmanship, saw them succeeded by a military chieftain, whose life had been "a battle and a march," thickly studded with personal difficulties and duels; who had given repeated evidences of his disregard of the laws when they stood in the way of his imperious will; and who, when a United States Senator, had displayed no ability as a legislator. His election was notoriously the work of Martin Van Buren, inspired by Aaron Burr, and with his inauguration was initiated a sordidly selfish political system entirely at variance with the broad views of Washington and of Hamilton.

It was a.s.sumed that every citizen had his price; that neither virtue nor genius was proof against clever although selfish corruption; that political honestly was a farce; and that the only way of governing those knaves who elbowed their way up through the ma.s.ses was to rule them by cunning more acute than their own and knavery more subtle and calculating than theirs.

Before leaving his rural home in Tennessee, General Jackson had been afflicted by the sudden death of his wife. "Aunt Rachel," as Mrs. Jackson was called by her husband's personal friends, had accompanied him to Washington when he was there as a Senator from Tennessee. She was a short, stout, unattractive, and uneducated woman, though greatly endeared to General Jackson. While he had been in the army she had carefully managed his plantation, his slaves, and his money matters, and her devotion to him knew no bounds. Her happiness was centered in his, and it was her chief desire to smoke her corn-cob pipe in peace at his side. When told that he had been elected President of the United States, she replied, "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake I am glad of it, but for myself I am not." A few weeks later she was arrayed for the grave in a white satin costume which she had provided herself with to wear at the White House. After her funeral her sorrow-stricken husband came to Washington with a stern determination to punish those who had maligned her during the preceding campaign. Having been told that President Adams had sanctioned the publication of the slanders, he did not call at the White House, in accordance with the usage, but paid daily visits to old friends in the War Department. Mr. Adams, stung by this neglect, determined not to play the part of the conquered leader of the inauguration, and quietly removed to the house of Commodore Porter, in the suburbs, on the morning of the 3d of March.

The weather on the 4th of March, 1829, was serene and mild, and at an early hour Pennsylvania Avenue, then unpaved, with a double row of poplar trees along its centre, was filled with crowds of people, many of whom had journeyed immense distances on foot. The officials at Washington, who were friends of Mr. Adams, had agreed not to partic.i.p.ate in the inaugural ceremonies, and the only uniformed company of light infantry, commanded by Colonel Seaton, of the _National Intelligencer_, had declined to offer its services as an escort. A number of old Revolutionary officers, however, had hastily organized themselves, and waited on General Jackson to solicit the honor of forming his escort to the Capitol, an offer which was cordially accepted. The General rode in an open carriage which had been placed at his disposal, and was surrounded by these gallant veterans. The a.s.sembled thousands cheered l.u.s.tily as their favorite pa.s.sed along, every face radiant with defiant joy, and every voice shouting "Hurrah for Jackson!"

After the installation of John C. Calhoun as Vice-President in the Senate Chamber, the a.s.sembled dignitaries moved in procession through the rotunda to the east front of the Capitol. As the tall figure of the President-elect came out upon the portico and ascended the platform, uplifted hats and handkerchiefs waved a welcome, and shouts of "Hurrah for Jackson!" rent the air. Looking around for a moment into ten thousand upturned and exultant human faces, the President-elect removed his hat, took the ma.n.u.script of his address from his pocket, and read it with great dignity. When he had finished, Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath, and as the President, bending over the sacred Book, touched it with his lips, there arose such a shout as was never before heard in Washington, followed by the thunder of cannons, from two light batteries near by, echoed by the cannon at the Navy Yard and at the a.r.s.enal. The crowd surged toward the platform, and had it not been that a ship's cable had been stretched across the portico steps would have captured their beloved leader. As it was, he shook hands with hundreds, and it was with some difficulty that he could be escorted back to his carriage and along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Meanwhile Mr. Adams, who had refused to partic.i.p.ate in the pageant, was taking his usual const.i.tutional horseback exercise when the thunders of the cannon reached his ears and notified him that he was again a private citizen.

The broad sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue were again packed as the procession returned from the Capitol. "I never saw such a crowd," wrote Daniel Webster to a friend. "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." Hunters of Kentucky and Indian fighters of Tennessee, with st.u.r.dy frontiersmen from the Northwest, were mingled in the throng with the more cultured dwellers on the Atlantic slope.

On their arrival at the White House, the motley crowd clamored for refreshments and soon drained the barrels of punch, which had been prepared, in drinking to the health of the new Chief Magistrate.

A great deal of china and gla.s.sware was broken, and the East Room was filled with a noisy mob. At one time General Jackson, who had retreated until he stood with his back against the wall, was protected by a number of his friends, who formed a living barrier about him. Such a scene had never before been witnessed at the White House, and the aristocratic old Federalists saw, to their disgust, men whose boots were covered with the red mud of the unpaved streets standing on the damask satin-covered chairs to get a sight at the President of their choice.

Late in the afternoon President Jackson sat down to dinner with Vice-President Calhoun and a party of his personal friends, the central dish on the table being a sirloin from a prize ox, sent to him by John Merkle, a butcher of Franklin Market, New York. Before retiring that night, the President wrote to the donor: "Permit me, sir, to a.s.sure you of the gratification which I felt in being enabled to place on my table so fine a specimen of your market, and to offer you my sincere thanks for so acceptable a token of your regard for my character." This was the commencement of a series of presents which poured in on General Jackson during the eight years of his administration.

The Democratic journalists of the country were also well represented at the inauguration, attracted by this semi-official declaration in the _Telegraph_: "We know not what line of policy General Jackson will adopt. We take it for granted, however, that he will reward his friends and punish his enemies."

The leader of this editorial phalanx was Amos Kendall, a native of Dunstable, Ma.s.sachusetts, who had by pluck and industry acquired an education and migrated westward in search of fame and fortune.

Accident made him an inmate of Henry Clay's house and the tutor of his children; but many months had not elapsed before the two became political foes, and Kendall, who had become the conductor of a Democratic newspaper, triumphed, bringing to Washington the official vote of Kentucky for Andrew Jackson. He found at the National metropolis other Democratic editors, who, like himself, had labored to bring about the political revolution, and they used to meet daily in the house of a preacher-politician, Rev. Obadiah B. Brown, who had strongly advocated Jackson's election. Mr. Brown, who was a stout, robust man, with a great fund of anecdotes, was a clerk in the Post Office department during the week, while on Sundays he performed his ministerial duties in the Baptist Church.

Organizing under the lead of Amos Kendall, whose lieutenants were the brilliant but vindictive Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire; the scholarly Nathaniel Greene, of Ma.s.sachusetts; the conservative Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; the jovial Major Mordecai M. Noah, of New York, and the energetic Dabney S. Carr, of Maryland, the allied editors claimed their rewards. They were not to be appeased by sops of Government advertising, or by the appointment of publisher of the laws of the United States in the respective States, but they demanded some of the most lucrative public offices in their share of the spoils. No sooner did General Jackson reach Washington then they made a systematic attack upon him, introducing and praising one another, and reciprocally magnifying their faithful services during the canva.s.s so successfully ended. The result was that soon after the inauguration nearly fifty of those editors who had advocated his election were appointed to official Federal positions as rewards for political services rendered.

Up to that time the national elections in the United States had not been mere contests for the possession of Federal offices--there was victory and there was defeat; but the quadrennial encounters affected only the heads of departments, and the results were matters of comparative indifference to the subordinate official drudges whose families depended on their pay for meat and bread. A few of these department clerks were Revolutionary worthies; others had followed the Federal Government from New York or Philadelphia; all had expected to hold their positions for life. Some of these desk- slaves had originally been Federalists, others Democrats; and while there was always an Alexander Hamilton in every family of the one set, there was as invariably a Thomas Jefferson in every family of the other set. But no subordinate clerk had ever been troubled on account of his political faith by a change of the Administration, and the sons generally succeeded their fathers when they died or resigned. Ordinarily, these clerks were good penmen and skillful accountants, toiling industriously eight hours every week day without dreaming of demanding a month's vacation in the summer, or insisting upon their right to go to their homes to vote in the fall. National politics was to them a matter of profound indifference until, after the inauguration of General Jackson, hundreds of them found themselves decapitated by the Democratic guillotine, without qualifications for any other employment had the limited trade of Washington afforded any. Many of them were left in a pitiable condition, but when the _Telegraph_ was asked what these men could do to ward off starvation, the insolent reply was, "Root, hog, or die!" Some of the new political brooms swept clean, and made a great show of reform, notably Amos Kendall, who was appointed Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, and who soon after exulted over the discovery of a defalcation of a few hundred dollars in the accounts of his predecessor, Dr. Tobias Watkins.

Postmaster-General McLean, of Ohio, who had been avowedly a Jackson man while he was a member of Mr. Adams' Administration, rebelled against the removal of several of his most efficient subordinates, because of their political action during the preceding Presidential campaign. At last he flatly told General Jackson that if he must remove those postmasters who had taken an active part in politics, he should impartially turn out those who had worked to secure the election of General Jackson, as well as those who had labored to re-elect Mr. Adams. To his General Jackson at first made no reply, but rose from his seat, puffing away at his pipe; and after walking up and down the floor two or three times, he stopped in front of his rebellious Postmaster-General, and said, "Mr. McLean, will you accept a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court?" The judicial position thus tendered was accepted with thanks, and the Post-Office Department was placed under the direction of Major Barry, who was invited to take a seat in the Cabinet (never occupied by his predecessors), and who not only made the desired removals and appointments, but soon plunged the finances of the Department into a chaotic state of disorder.

Prominent among those "Jackson men" who received lucrative mail contracts from Postmaster-General Barry, was "Land Admiral" Reeside, an appellation he owed to the executive ability which he had displayed in organizing mail routes between distant cities. He was a very tall man, well formed, with florid complexion, red hair, and side whiskers. Very obligingly, he once had a horse belonging to a Senator taken from Pittsburg to Washington tied behind a stage, because the owner had affixed his "frank" to the animal's halter.

He was the first mail contractor who ran his stages between Philadelphia and the West, by night as well as by day, and Mr.

Joseph R. Chandler, of the United States _Gazette_, said that "the Admiral could leave Philadelphia on a six-horse coach with a hot johnny-cake in his pocket and reach Pittsburg before it could grow cold." He used to ridicule the locomotives when they were first introduced, and offer to bet a thousand dollars that no man could build a machine that would drag a stage from Washington to Baltimore quicker than his favorite team of iron-grays.

Mail robberies were not uncommon in those days, although the crime was punishable with imprisonment or death. One day one of Reeside's coaches was stopped near Philadelphia by three armed men, who ordered the nine pa.s.sengers to alight and stand in a line. One of the robbers then mounted guard, while the other two made the terrified pa.s.sengers deliver up their money and watches, and then rifled the mail bags. They were soon afterward arrested, tried, convicted, and one was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary, while the other two were condemned to be hung. Fortunately for one of the culprits, named Wilson, he had some years previously, at a horse-race near Nashville, Tennessee, privately advised General Jackson to withdraw his bets on a horse which he was backing, as the jockey had been ordered to lose the race. The General was very thankful for this information, which enabled him to escape a heavy loss, and he promised his informant that he would befriend him whenever an opportunity should offer. When reminded of this promise, after Wilson had been sentenced to be hanged, Jackson promptly commuted the sentence to ten years imprisonment in the penitentiary.

When Admiral Reeside was carrying the mails between New York and Washington, there arose a formidable organization in opposition to the Sunday mail service. The members of several religious denominations were prominent in their demonstrations, and in Philadelphia, chains, secured by padlocks, were stretched across the streets on Sundays to prevent the pa.s.sage of the mail-coaches.

The subject was taken up by politicians, and finally came before the House of Representatives, where it was referred to the Committee on Post-Roads, of which Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was then the chairman. The Rev. Obadiah B. Brown, who had meanwhile been promoted in the Post-office Department, wrote a report on the subject for Colonel Johnson, which gave "the killer of Tec.u.mseh"

an extended reputation, and was the first step toward his election as Vice-President, a few years later.

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J. C. Calhoun JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN was born in South Carolina, March 18th, 1782: was a Representative in Congress, 1811-1817; Secretary of War, 1817- 1825; Vice-President, 1825-1832; United States Senator, 1833-1843; Secretary of State, 1844-1845; United States Senator from 1845 until his death at Washington City, March 31st, 1850.

CHAPTER VII.

THE KITCHEN CABINET.

When the Twenty-first Congress a.s.sembled, on the 7th of December, 1829, General Jackson sent in his first annual message, which naturally attracted some attention. Meeting his old and intimate friend, General Armstrong, the next day, the President said, "Well, Bob, what do the people say of my message?" "They say," replied General Armstrong, "that it is first-rate, but n.o.body believes that you wrote it." "Well," good-naturedly replied Old Hickory, "don't I deserve just as much credit for picking out the man who could write it?" Although the words of this and of the subsequent messages were not General Jackson's, the ideas were, and he always insisted on having them clearly expressed. It was in his first message, by the way, that he invited the attention of Congress to the fact that the charter of the United States bank would expire in 1836, and a.s.serted that it had "failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." This was the beginning of that fierce political contest which resulted in the triumph of General Jackson and the overthrow of the United States Bank.