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 UNlVKRsiiY 
 OF 
 
 

DEFENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE WHIGS. 
 
 VJ.Y A 
 
 
 MEMBER OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 C L i F F-S T 
 
 1844. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, bj 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 n the Clerk s Office of the Southern District of New- York. 
 
ttf 
 
 1 
 
 TO THE 
 
 ,. .: . o. * *"* 
 
 "WHIGS, OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, 
 < \ *. 
 
 WHO t SE FIDELITY TO THEIR TRUST, 
 
 x,., t \l,fft*^ ^ ** 
 
 DILIGENCE IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THE MOST 
 ARDUOUS DUTIES, 
 
 AND FIRMNESS THROUGH A PERIOD OF UNEXAMPLED 
 TRIAL AND DISAPPOINTMENT, 
 
 HAVE WON THEM THE APPLAUSE OF A 
 PATRIOTIC PEOPLE, 
 
 THIS DEFENCE 
 
 IN TESTIMONY OF THE ESTEEM OF 
 
 THEIR COMRADE. 
 
 October 25, 1843. 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 THE WHIG PARTY : 
 
 ITS ORIGIN, ITS CONSTANCY, ITS SUCCESS. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. What is Proposed .9 
 
 II. Basis of Parties. Friends of the Executive. 
 Friends of the Legislature. Prerogative and 
 Privilege 12 
 
 III. American Whigs. The Madisonian Platform . 17 
 
 IV. An Ancient Grudge . ,.* . .24 
 
 V. First Instalment 
 VI. Second Instalment. Uprising of the Whigs 
 VII. Democracy in Federal Leading Strings . 
 VIII. Doubtfulness of the Whig Principles 
 
 IX. The Conservative Element . 
 
 X. Contest of 1840 
 
 33 
 36 
 43 
 
 48 
 52 
 63 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 THE WHIG PARTY : 
 
 ITS DISAPPOINTMENT, ITS RETRIBUTION, ITS HOPES. 
 
 I. The Extra Session. A Bank Bill. A Scruple and 
 
 a Compromise . . . V . . .75 
 II. Tylerism 90 
 
 III. Programme of the Twelfth of June. A Shuttlecock 101 
 
 IV. Dismissal of the Cabinet. The Cheats of Scapin . 110 
 V. Aspiration and Inspiration. The Manifesto . .117 
 
 VI. The Manifesto. Daniel Webster . . . .123 
 
 VII. Justice to John Tyler . . . . .... . 128 
 
 VIII. The Twenty-seventh Congress . . . .136 
 
 IX. The New Democracy. The Dictator. The Array 
 
 of 1844 . . ,- 14 
 
 M5 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS, 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 THE WHIG PARTY : 
 
 ITS ORIGIN, ITS CONSTANCY, ITS SUCCESS. 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHAT IS PROPOSED. 
 
 IN the struggles of political parties it generally 
 occurs that the purposes of the contestants are mis 
 represented in important particulars or misunder 
 stood. 
 
 The Whig party, during the last fourteen years 
 reckoning from the 4th of March, 1829 has been 
 misrepresented or misunderstood more than usual 
 ly falls-to the lot of parties. My endeavor, in what 
 follows, will be to set this matter right. 
 
 No party ever arose in any country with juster 
 aims or more patriotic effort, than the Whig Party 
 of the United States, It fought the battle of Free 
 dom in the Revolution : it has never faltered in its 
 duty since. From the beginning of our national 
 existence to this day, by whatever name it has 
 been called, it has been the consistent, faithful as- 
 sertor of the principles of free government. 
 
 Through twelve years of continued defeats, du 
 ring which time a power in this nation, unfriendly 
 to popular liberty, was growing every day more 
 formidable, and the Executive, usurping the name 
 of the Representative of the Democracy, was busi 
 ly assailing the bulwarks which were built up to 
 guard the rights of the People the Whig party, 
 overpowered by numbers, proscribed, for the mo** 
 
10 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 part, from all share in the administration of affairs, 
 still faithfully maintained its post and fought for 
 Popular Privilege, with the same devotion that it 
 fought in the gloomiest days of the War of Inde 
 pendence. 
 
 Its constancy and fidelity won it the victory of 
 1840. 
 
 The fruits of that victory were shown in the zeal 
 with which the Whigs made haste to redeem every 
 pledge they had given. How the full benefit of 
 that redemption of pledges was wrested from the 
 people ; how it has fallen out that the victory has 
 not been of as permanent and extensive good as 
 the country had a right to expect ; how it is that 
 power has lapsed again into the hands from which 
 it was rescued, is a problem that may be solved by 
 recurring to the history of every cause that has 
 been betrayed by its leader. Some explanation of 
 this disaster will occupy a portion of the pages 
 which ensue. 
 
 Against open foes the Whigs have no complaint 
 to make. They meet these on the field of contest 
 forewarned, forearmed ; prepared for the strife and 
 its incidents. But they have felt a touching grief 
 in the destiny which has admonished them to arm 
 against perfidy in their own camp , against an en 
 emy nursed in their own bosom. The saying is 
 old, but it has a melancholy appropriateness to 
 their misfortune There is a deeper anguish in the 
 wound when the arrow that inflicts it is feathered 
 from our own wing. 
 
 The Whigs have ever striven for the accomplish 
 ment of a great good to the country. It is not 
 true, as their adversaries have attempted to make 
 the world believe, that the hope of office or the 
 chance of favor was the motive to their exertions. 
 So long a war were but a weary road to prefer 
 ment which might be so cheaply got, at any time, 
 by turning recreant to the cause. Your office hunt 
 er has no great patience in a settled minority. Nev- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 11 
 
 er was there, in truth, presented a spectacle of 
 greater constancy under defeat, or of victory so 
 little sullied by selfish aims. We had our camp fol 
 lowers, it is true, thickening somewhat in our ranks 
 as the day of our success drew nigh. These might 
 have been seen importunately stripping the dead. 
 But at the first sign of a reverse they left us, and 
 now compose the main body of that forlorn and 
 anxious troop that call themselves the friends of the 
 Administration. 
 
 It may be accounted an element of strength in 
 the Whig organization, that these have been win 
 nowed from the ranks to which they never brought 
 true hearts, and to whose lofty purpose they have 
 ever been ungenial. Experience has taught us to 
 beware of all clamorous expectants of place.. The 
 lesson will not be lost. 
 
 In the antagonism of honest opinion there is 
 abundant space for the embodiment of parties. 
 Such division as springs from this source is a fair 
 and useful topic for discussion. My aim is partly 
 to comment upon the history of opinions which 
 have grown up in the country regarding the con 
 duct of public affairs. I wish to show that those 
 entertained by the Whigs have been genuine and 
 eminently patriotic. I do not deny that the opin 
 ions of our adversaries have been, in great part, 
 genuine and patriotic. There are many opinions, 
 however, set forth by our opponents and carried 
 into the administration of the government, which 
 are not entitled to this commendation : many, be 
 sides, that, whether honest or not, are intrinsically 
 wrong and productive of great mischiefs in Our 
 Republic : many that have been dictated by selfish 
 schemes and propagated to advance the interests 
 of individuals and classes, to the detriment of the 
 large community of the people. My design is also 
 to point these out. 
 
12 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 II. 
 
 BASIS OF PARTIES. FRIENDS OF THE EXECUTIVE. 
 
 FRIENDS OF THE LEGISLATURE. PREROGATIVE AND 
 
 PRIVILEGE. 
 
 WE may discern in the progress of all Representa 
 tive Government professing to be established on the 
 basis of popular freedom, two parties fundamentally 
 distinguished from each other by their views as to the 
 nature of delegated power. These parties are more 
 or less developed at different epochs, as the events of 
 the day have furnished them excitement. 
 
 In English history they have sometimes been de 
 nominated the Court Party and the Country Party, but 
 more generally by the names of Tories and Whigs. 
 
 The Court Party is chiefly distinguished as the 
 friends of the Executive Power. 
 
 The Country Party, without being classed in the 
 category of actual enemies to that Power, are noted 
 for their distrust of it. 
 
 This is a division of parties which naturally grows 
 out of the constitution of the public mind, and is as 
 much native to our Republican government as to the 
 Monarchy of Great Britain. 
 
 All experience has taught us that the possessor of 
 the authority and patronage of magistracy may find it 
 convenient to employ these resources for the advance 
 ment of himself or his friends. A knowledge of this 
 seduces many to become the champions and apologists 
 of the Executive in every country. There are design 
 ing men, there are corrupt men, poor men, or idle men, 
 who hope to find, in the good will of the ruling magis 
 trate, the means of promoting their schemes or of add 
 ing to their comforts : they become, therefore, his de 
 pendents both in opinion and conduct. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 13 
 
 There are others, quite honest, who conscientiously 
 believe that a Strong Executive is absolutely necessary 
 to maintain order in the State. For this reason they 
 also take sides with the Executive. 
 
 These two descriptions of men combine to enlist a 
 large support amongst the people in favor of the ad 
 ministrative arm of the government. 
 
 Their opponents, fearing this administrative arm, and 
 believing that the safety of free institutions is best se 
 cured by watching and restraining the Executive, dis 
 dain to seek its favor by any act of adulation or by 
 any relaxation of their distrust. These naturally put 
 great faith in the National Legislature. They see in 
 the Executive the fountain of political honors, rank,, 
 emolument, consideration with the world : that it is 
 prone to be selfish, ambitious, crafty : that it has a 
 motive to reward subserviency : that in dispensing the 
 offices necessary to conduct government, it may so 
 dispense them as to gratify those who defend and ap 
 plaud it : that it may convert public servants into po 
 litical minions : that it may work in secret and corrupt 
 enterprises, and gloss them over with pretences of pub 
 lic good. In all these attributes and propensities of 
 Executive power they find strong motive to regard it 
 with jealousy. 
 
 On the other hand, they see in the Legislature none 
 of these attributes. Public Liberty is very seldom 
 damaged by the activity of a Representative Legisla 
 ture j though it is just to say that history is not with 
 out its example of a wicked phrensy in this law-making 
 power. Such example, happily, is rare. In the main, 
 not from the active purpose of Legislative bodies has 
 Liberty sustained hurt : but from their tardiness some 
 times, from their dissensions sometimes, and from their 
 omissions, mischief has arisen. The imperfection of 
 the Legislature is in its occasional failure, whether 
 from ignorance, division or sloth, to do what the public 
 good requires; very seldom in corrupt action or de 
 liberate wickedness of object. It has no personal am 
 bition, vanity or selfishness, because, in fact, it has no 
 
 B 
 
14 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 person, but is an aggregate of many persons, and these 
 of many minds. Neither has it patronage to gratify a 
 love of making dependents. Two or three hundred 
 representatives may make bad laws, or fail to make 
 good ones, but they have scant motive to flatter any 
 man s pride, stimulate any man s usurpation. The 
 usurper always begins by turning the Legislature out 
 of doors, knowing that whilst they are free he is not. 
 
 Their special duty is to become acquainted with the 
 condition of the body politic : to inquire into what is 
 done in every department : to inspect every public ser 
 vant : to look into every corner and crevice of public 
 service and learn what is doing there ; and then to re 
 port all that they have seen, heard, learned. What 
 they find out of place it is their duty to set in place ; 
 what knavery they suspect, to proclaim ; what they 
 discover to be weak, to make strong. 
 
 To this end they are called, and are, the Grand 
 Inquest of the nation ; are clothed with all power to 
 inquire and report; are empowered to make laws to 
 remedy what is defective, repeal what is hurtful, pun 
 ish what is delinquent. Thus free Legislation is built 
 upon free Inquiry. 
 
 Upon these grounds of favor towards Executive and 
 Legislative Power have parties divided ever since men 
 have practised a representative government. 
 
 The people have taken part sometimes with the one, 
 sometimes with the other ; generally as their passions 
 have been more or less skilfully excited by the one or 
 the other. 
 
 In the days of Charles the First the great body of 
 the English people went with the Parliament, and 
 stood up for Privilege against Prerogative. A turn of 
 the wheel of fortune exhibited them, in a few years 
 afterward, applauding Cromwell for silencing the 
 voice of a free representation, and justifying his as 
 sumption of prerogatives more dangerous than those 
 for which Charles had suffered. At the Restoration, 
 the Executive Power found its chief support in the 
 popular advocacy ; and it was not long after this, that 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 15 
 
 the great champions of Privilege against Prerogative, 
 Russell and Sidney, suffered on the scaffold, almost 
 unwept by the millions of Englishmen whose descend 
 ants now turn to that scaffold as to the very altar of 
 Liberty. 
 
 Looking, therefore, to the strength which these par 
 ties, Court and Country, as I have called them, 
 have gained from time to time, and from their nature 
 are apt to gain, it may be said of them that that strength 
 depends in great measure upon the intelligence, and 
 talent to propagate their doctrines, in the political lead 
 ers who give tone to public opinion ; and that they 
 who, from supineness or from incapacity, are content 
 to give themselves little trouble with their political 
 sentiments, and to take them at second hand, will still, 
 as heretofore, find themselves ranged on the side of 
 Prerogative or Privilege, will belong to the Court or 
 Country party, will be Whigs or Tories, according to 
 the accidents of the day, or as they may be practised 
 upon by the craft of those who have an interest in giv 
 ing a particular ply to the floating public opinion of the 
 time. Let this reflection admonish us, that every citi 
 zen of a free government should study public affairs 
 for himself, think and determine for himself. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688, famous in British history 
 for the overthrow of the Stuarts and the introduction 
 of the House of Brunswick to the throne, gave a prom 
 inent distinction to this division of parties. The Whigs 
 of the reign of William the Third and of Queen Anne 
 are notable, above all other things, for their jealousy 
 of Executive and their faith in Legislative Power. 
 They have done more to establish British Liberty, and 
 by deduction from that, more to establish American 
 Liberty, than any other political organization of mod 
 ern times. I need not recount their struggles to clip 
 the wings of Prerogative and enlarge the limits of 
 Privilege, which give so much interest to the Parlia 
 mentary history of that time. The principle of speci 
 fic annual appropriation ; the restraint of members of 
 Parliament against holding office, under the crown ; the 
 
16 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 triennial Parliament and annual meeting ; the regulation 
 of trials for treason ; the protection of the liberty of the 
 Press, among many other improvements of the prac 
 tice and principles of the British Constitution, bear 
 witness to the enlightened estimate of human happi 
 ness arid due appreciation of rational freedom made in 
 that day by the Whigs. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that these men reached at 
 once the most perfect arrangement of the sureties for 
 civil liberty. But with great sagacity they announced 
 the fundamental doctrines upon which that liberty has 
 been subsequently built up. They were in a perpetual 
 struggle to wrest from Prerogative what they deemed 
 unsafe appendages to Executive power, and to strength 
 en Parliament with all the faculties requisite to render 
 it a vigilant and effective guardian of popular rights. 
 The Tories labored, on the other side, to impress the 
 nation with the belief that Government could only be 
 healthfully administered by a hand strong enough to 
 overbear and repress what was deemed the licentious 
 ness of the people and their representatives. 
 
 The Whig party succeeded not in preserving their 
 ascendency in the councils of the nation but in stamp 
 ing their principles upon the British Constitution. 
 Through many reverses and mischances they won 
 success. Often baffled and turned back, always mis 
 represented or misunderstood, frequently derided and 
 reviled, and but seldom in the actual administration of 
 affairs- still the progress of their principles was on 
 ward, and they had the satisfaction to see the cause 
 of human liberty gradually intrenching itself behind 
 the bulwarks they had erected : even to witness this 
 consummation at the moments when party rage and 
 the fanaticism of political zeal excluded them from all 
 share in the management of government a noble 
 homage to the wisdom and fidelity of their labors ! 
 
 Not without hostility from the people, in whose be 
 half they had so long and faithfully toiled, was this 
 conquest achieved. It is one degree of virtue to pur 
 sue, with steady sagacity, good ends, when all the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 17 
 
 means are at hand and the mass of mankind look on, 
 approve, and assist : it is a still higher degree of vir 
 tue to persevere in a good work, when means are 
 scant and they who should be allies and partners in 
 the endeavor, are indifferent spectators : far nobler 
 than this to persevere when the beneficiaries of our 
 toil are open opponents or vindictive foes. History is 
 full of instruction and admonition to the great commu 
 nity of every nation, how deep is the stake of human 
 happiness dependent upon a just conviction by the 
 people, 
 
 First, Of what is true liberty, and 
 
 Second, Of what are the real aims and personal ob 
 jects of those who climb to the head of a party. 
 
 III. 
 
 AMERICAN WHIGS. THE MADISONIAN PLATFORM. 
 
 OUR own Revolution of 1776, which a careful stu 
 dent of political history may trace to that of 4688, 
 brought to view the same division of parties. We had 
 our Tories and Whigs, our friends of Prerogative and 
 our friends of Privilege. Again the battle was fought 
 and won by the Whigs. 
 
 The war of the Revolution was waged against the 
 encroachments of Executive Power. Witness that 
 beadroll of complaints set forth in the Manifesto of 
 Congress declaring our Independence : 
 
 " He has refused his assent to laws the most whole 
 some and necessary for the public good. 
 
 " He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of 
 immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended 
 in their operation until his assent should be obtained ; 
 and when so suspended he has utterly neglected to at 
 tend to them. 
 
 B2 
 
18 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 " He has refused to pass other laws for the accom 
 modation of large districts of people, unless those peo 
 ple would relinquish the right of representation in the 
 Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable 
 to tyrants only. 
 
 " He has called together Legislative bodies at places 
 unusual, uncomfortable and distant from the depository 
 of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing 
 them into compliance with his measures. 
 
 " He has dissolved Representative houses repeated 
 ly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on 
 the rights of the people. 
 
 " He has refused for a long time after such dissolu 
 tions to cause others to be elected, whereby the Le 
 gislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have re 
 turned to the people at large for their exercise, the 
 state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to the dan 
 gers of invasion from without and convulsions within." 
 
 " He has obstructed the administration of justice by 
 refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary 
 powers." 
 
 " He has erected a multitude of new offices, and 
 sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people 
 and eat out our substance. 
 
 "He has kept among us in times of peace standing 
 armies without the consent of our Legislatures." 
 
 These, and others of the like character, are the griev 
 ances for which the Whigs took up arms. The pur 
 pose of that war was to rid the nation of this domineer 
 ing Executive, and secure to themselves a free Legis 
 lature. 
 
 Before separation or independence entered the 
 thoughts of our people, the contest stood substantially 
 upon the same ground, the Privilege of a Representa 
 tive Legislature against the Executite Prerogative. It 
 was in fact a revival of the old quarrel of Parliament 
 with the Stuarts on the question of loans, benevolences 
 and ship money. 
 
 Many men of the colonies in that day, whom we 
 must admit to have been honest and attached to the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 19 
 
 country, did not concur in this general zeal against 
 Executive Encroachment. Many, besides, who held 
 office under the crown, or who hoped for office under 
 the crown, saw no danger to public liberty in the re 
 straints put upon domestic legislation. They who 
 hold office and they who expect it, will always be the 
 last in any country to see danger in the Executive 
 power. 
 
 These opponents to the Revolution principles were 
 the Tories of that day. They were vanquished by the 
 Whigs. 
 
 When the war came to an end, it may be said there 
 was but one party in the country. The Whig princi 
 ple was established and all resistance to it was with 
 drawn. The next task of those who had conducted 
 the war, was to erect a form of government which 
 should embody the political doctrines of the Revolu 
 tion. Every man then desired to see a government so 
 constructed as to secure the faculty of administering to 
 the happiness of the people with the least possible 
 hazard from Executive power. 
 
 The first general conception of a guarantee against 
 oppression, and upon which there was no division of 
 opinion, was in a strong Representative Legislature. 
 
 As to the amount of power which might be confided 
 to an Executive upon that point all the old jealousy 
 was awakened. In all the embarrassments growing 
 out of the old Confederation, this fear of the Executive 
 ever stood in the way of change. In all the discus 
 sions upon the formation of the Constitution of 1787, 
 this fear of the Executive was the chief stumbling 
 block. I will not stop to indicate the points of these 
 discussions. They are common history. 
 
 There were enlightened patriots of that epoch upon 
 both sides of the question. No longer divided in opin 
 ion as Whig and Tory, they were, nevertheless, as 
 friends of a popular Representative Republic, divided 
 in opinion as to the quantum of power which it was 
 safe to trust even to an Elective Republican Magis 
 trate. 
 
20 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 It is impossible that men could be more honest or 
 more in earnest than these. Then, there was a ques 
 tion of the conflict between Federal and State power ; 
 a question which is not yet settled, though fast 
 growing to be so. 
 
 Naturally some men s minds incline towards Prerog 
 ative, from an idea that the popular impulses require 
 to be checked by a strong hand. A powerful party 
 grew up in the nation upon this opinion. The same 
 habit of thinking which made men friendly to the Fed 
 eral, as distinguished from the State power, inclined 
 their minds to the fancy of a strong Executive ; and 
 thus it came that the Federalists were, to a certain 
 extent, identified with the supporters of the Executive 
 power. 
 
 Then again, naturally, and by complexion of charac 
 ter, many men run into extremes in regard to the re 
 moving of all restraints upon popular action ; and they 
 fall into mischievous conclusions in that direction of 
 opinion. The French Revolution, whose fires were 
 discernible, even within this remote horizon of ours, 
 witnessed some of these extremes and taught them to 
 our citizens. 
 
 Thus a contest arose of ultraisms in our political 
 schools ; and, for years, the harmony of public admin 
 istration was disturbed, and sometimes embittered by 
 the strife of parties, which having, in the main, no oth 
 er than patriotic aims, maintained their antagonist po 
 sitions without material injury to any interest in the 
 State. In fact, being nearly balanced in power and 
 equally distinguished in talent, they promoted that de 
 gree of watchfulness of each other which, with good 
 reason, has been said to be a surety for the healthful 
 administration of affairs. 
 
 In this strife the active politicians, only, took a deep 
 interest. The great body of the nation felt secure in 
 the conviction that the public liberty was in good hands. 
 Some flatterers of the administration, some incumbents 
 and many expectants of office were, doubtless, active, 
 as such persons always are, to give the greatest degree 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 21 
 
 of significancy to the opinions of their party. On the 
 other hand, some demagogues, seeking favor from the 
 great body of electors, and lauding the people in that 
 fulsome phrase which only demagogues will utter, and 
 which is never employed by a man who has a true re 
 spect for the good sense of his fellow-citizens on 
 their side strove, by like devices, to exalt the value of 
 party opinion. Each of these fomented division ; ex 
 aggerated the weight of their political influence ; mag 
 nified frivolous distinctions ; engendered, no doubt, 
 much useless hatred. 
 
 But in the midst of this strife, looking on, not anx 
 iously caring for the issue, but still watchful of events, 
 was a large mass of substantial citizens, deeply impli 
 cated in all that concerned the prosperity of the coun 
 try ; men having inheritances of good name to support ; 
 having close alliance with all that constituted the 
 . strength, the wealth, the labor, the success, the glory 
 of their country ; the men employed in the business of 
 this nation, and who hoped to hand it over to their chil 
 dren as something to be proud of all these stood by, 
 caring something, perhaps, for the ascendency of the 
 parties of the day, but caring more that the generation 
 to which they belonged should in no jot detract from 
 or impair those sacred principles of human right and 
 civil liberty which had been won by their ancestors in 
 1688, and still more securely knit together and con 
 firmed by their ancestors of 1776. 
 
 Thus, in no visible array or manifest organization, 
 but unembodied and comparatively in repose, the Whigs 
 of this Union remained spectators of events, content to 
 take such various interest in public measures as the 
 passing questions of the time might excite, yet but lit 
 tle inclined to party agitation as long as the fundament 
 al Whig principle was likely to sustain no detriment 
 in the conduct of those at the head of affairs. 
 
 Such was the state of the nation toward the close 
 of Mr. Madison s administration. There had been tur 
 bulent feeling before this, because political opinion had 
 been passing through an exciting transition, from the 
 
22 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 date of the election of Mr. Jefferson to the close of 
 the war, and many hot ferments had been engendered. 
 The calm and philosophic temper of Mr. Madison, the 
 purity of his character, the sincerity of his patriotism, 
 and the sagacity of his intellect had inspired universal 
 trust, except, perhaps, in a few Federalists, in whose 
 minds an ancient grudge yet rankled. With this ex 
 ception, a balmy peace reigned throughout our political 
 world. The extremes of Federalism had been tem 
 pered with an infusion of democratic flavor ; the ex 
 tremes of Democracy had been melted in an amalgam 
 of Federalism. Both were the better for it. Above 
 all, the Constitution was settled ; its Whig basis 
 strengthened ; and many men thought that, from that 
 day, it was a book interpreted and certain. Truly, I 
 think that the Constitution of the United States, as ex 
 pounded and practised by Marshall and Madison, is the 
 very Constitution of our forefathers ! I desire no far 
 ther commentary : from that day forth it has been to 
 me an article of faith : my creed therein is written. 
 
 This was the glory of Mr. Madison s administration, 
 that it made peace between parties ; that it established 
 the true import of our fundamental law ; and that it 
 marked out the administrative policy of this people, 
 both in their outward relations and in their domestic 
 affairs. The Madisonian basis of the American gov 
 ernment and policy may be regarded as one establish 
 ed by the almost universal consent of the country. It 
 was wise, being the product of careful thought and just 
 consideration of the temper and aims of our people : it 
 was likely to be permanent, because it grew out of a 
 calm and dispassionate state of public feeling, auspi 
 cious to durable settlements. An experience of twelve 
 years, from 1816 to 1829, has proved it to be eminent 
 ly calculated to advance the comfort, the prosperity, 
 and the strength of the people. 
 
 First. It settled the construction and practice of the 
 Constitution on the foundation of the Whig doctrines : 
 this construction and practice was chiefly manifested 
 in the high respect and confidence of the nation in the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 23 
 
 Legislative Power, and the scrupulous adherence of 
 the Executive to its orbit. 
 
 Second. It settled the policy of the Government. 
 Witness these measures : 
 
 It regulated the Currency by the control of a Na 
 tional Bank, and, through this instrumentality, check 
 ed and finally removed the mischief of excessive State 
 Banking. 
 
 T It protected the Domestic Industry of our people, by 
 the establishment of a Tariff of Duties specially direct 
 ed to that object. / 
 
 It promoted Internal Improvements in the nation, by 
 giving the aid of government to useful enterprises 
 which were beyond the capacity of individual States ; 
 a policy which, if it had not been since abandoned, 
 would have .saved the country that load of State debt 
 which has become of late almost equally our misfor 
 tune and our disgrace. 
 
 It enlarged the sphere of our Commerce and Navi 
 gation, by tendering to foreign nations reciprocal privi 
 leges of trade restricted within certain limits denned in 
 the legislation of 1815, and in the Convention of Lon 
 don of that year. 
 
 It devised the plan for paying off the public debt. 
 
 It placed the public expenditures upon the footing 
 of a strict economy. 
 
 It discountenanced and subdued all attempts to con 
 nect office with the means of political influence ; and 
 left the public servant free from that odious inquisition 
 into his opinions which has since made him either the 
 victim or the confederate of spies and informers. 
 
 In short, its whole scheme of administration was 
 national, American, liberal and honorable. It infused 
 that sentiment into the mind of the people, and ren 
 dered them, everywhere, throughout all classes, honor 
 able, high-minded, and patriotic. 
 
 This was the inheritance to which Mr. Monroe, and, 
 in due succession, Mr. Adams succeeded. They con 
 scientiously adhered to this truly republican, equal and 
 beneficent system of administration. The consequence 
 
24 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 was a progressive increase in every element of nation 
 al happiness. Under the working of this system the 
 nation gradually arose to a state of unexampled vigor. 
 The havoc of the war was slowly but surely repaired. 
 The currency, from a state of extraordinary derange 
 ment, was brought into singular purity. Manufactures 
 and the mechanic arts were rapidly trained from a fee 
 ble infancy to a robustness almost incredible. Com 
 merce and navigation were increased ; the war debt 
 was paid ; and that series of internal improvements be 
 gun which, however they may have involved those 
 who constructed them in debt, are worth more to this 
 Union than ten times the cost expended upon them. 
 They are w.orks from which the National Treasury 
 should never have been withheld : they are works 
 which now belong more to the people of the United 
 States than to the States in whose borders they lie, 
 and for which the People of the Union are equitably 
 and honorably the true debtors : they are works 
 which, by a policy as cruel as it was unstatesmanlike, 
 were ever committed to the unassisted enterprise of 
 the States. 
 
 This is the outline of the Whig doctrine in reference 
 to the fundamental characteristics of our government, 
 and also of its policy. 
 
 The Whigs stand emphatically upon the Madisonian 
 platform. 
 
 IV. 
 
 AN ANCIENT GRUDGE. 
 
 BUT for a very notable intrigue, the political re 
 pose which distinguished the era of Mr. Monroe s 
 administration might have continued to this day. 
 
 There were many men who had grown tired of 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 25 
 
 waiting for change through that long sixteen years 
 of Virginia domination personated in the Presiden 
 cies of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison. There 
 were, besides these, the overthrown Federalists, 
 whose hope deferred, through these same sixteen 
 years, had made them sick at heart. Not the wis 
 dom of such of their leading measures as the dem 
 ocratic administration had adopted ; not the patri 
 otic and gallant part many of them had taken in 
 the war ; not their acknowledged abilities and brill 
 iant services in legislative halls, had propitiated 
 the absolute hatred of their name, which, in cer 
 tain political sections of the country, still kept 
 them under the popular ban and excluded them 
 from office. The triumph of the war seemed only 
 to have sealed their fate and given them over to 
 a rigorous proscription. The nomination of Mr. 
 Monroe to the succession was a token of another 
 eight years prolongation of their penance. Many 
 fell off and joined the other side ; many melted 
 away into neutrals ; many stood their ground, 
 watchful as lynxes, and "feeding fat their ancient 
 grudge" with the thoughts of a day of retribution, 
 when the democracy should be coupled like hounds 
 and the leash be held in their hands. Verily, they 
 have watched to some purpose ! 
 
 A rally was proposed, in 1815, to prevent the 
 nomination of Mr. Monroe : a rally of all who were 
 weary of Virginia Presidents, and of all who were 
 weary of Democratic Presidents. The rally point 
 was to be Andrew Jackson , the man who suggest 
 ed it was Aaron .Burr. Hear some words from his 
 letter to Governor Alston, November 20, 1815 : 
 
 "A certain junto of actual and factitious Vir 
 ginians having had possession of the Government 
 for twentyfour years, consider the United States 
 as their property." 
 
 " One of their principal arts, and which has been 
 systematically taught by ^Jefferson, is that of pro 
 moting State dissensions not between Republican 
 
26 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS* 
 
 and Federal ; that would do them no good but 
 schisms in the Republican party." " Let not this 
 disgraceful domination continue." 
 
 " The moment is extremely auspicious for break 
 ing down this degrading system. The best citi 
 zens of our country acknowledge the feebleness 
 of our administration. I " If then there be a man 
 in the United States of firmness and decision, and 
 having standing enough to afford even a hope of 
 success, it is your duty to hold him up to public 
 view THAT MAN is ANDREW JACKSON. Nothing is 
 wanting but a respectable nomination, made before 
 the proclamation of the Virginian canvass, and 
 Jackson s success is inevitable." 
 
 " One consideration inclines me to hesitate about 
 the policy of a present nomination. It is this 
 that Jackson ought first to be admonished to be 
 passive : for the moment he shall be announced as 
 a candidate he will be assailed by the Virginia 
 junto, with menaces and with assiduous promises 
 of boons and favors. There is danger that Jack 
 son might be wrought upon by such practices. If 
 an open nomination be made an express should be 
 instantly sent to him." 
 
 " If you should have any confidential friend 
 among the members of Congress from your State, 
 charge him to caution Jackson against the perfid 
 ious caresses with which he will be overwhelmed 
 at Washington." 
 
 These are disjointed fragments of Aaron Burr s 
 letter of 1815. They are at the fountain head of 
 the new order of American politics. 
 
 This was the first movement of the anti-Jeffer- 
 sonians to find a leader make a new dynasty. 
 
 With the anti-Jeffersonians, that portion of the 
 Federalists who were still militant, combined. 
 General Jackson was applied to : a secret negoti 
 ation was set on foot. How far he acquiesced 
 may be gathered from, his subsequent conduct. 
 This is certain, the pear was not ripe in 1815. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 27 
 
 The Virginia junto triumphed, and Mr. Monroe, 
 odious to the anti-Jeffersonians and odious to the 
 militant Federalists, obtained the nomination. And 
 so came eight years more of probation to the ex 
 pectants. 
 
 General Jackson, from that hour, was the can 
 didate of these combined forces. His position 
 was peculiar. He had no conspicuous antagonism 
 to any of the parties. His political opinions were 
 believed to be of a liberal Whig cast. In regard 
 to measures he was, in a great degree, uncommit 
 ted. Personally, he was known to be firm , he 
 was undoubtedly patriotic ; and he was reputed to 
 be frank, open, and honest. With Burr, with Mr. 
 Van Buren and the Federalists he had opposed 
 Mr. Madison s second election not for the reasons 
 which governed Burr, Van Buren and the Federal 
 ists, but because he preferred Mr. Monroe as the 
 better man in the crisis. This opposition was one 
 ground of his favor with the Federalists. His let 
 ter to Mr. Monroe, January 6, 1817, is very note 
 worthy on this point. Read this extract from it : 
 
 "I have once upon a time been denounced as a 
 Federalist. You will smile when I name the cause. 
 When your country put up your name in opposi 
 tion to Mr. Madison I was one of those who gave 
 you the preference, and for reason that, in the 
 event of war, which was then probable, you would 
 steer the vessel of state with more energy. That 
 Mr. Madison was one of the best of men and a great 
 civilian I always thought ; but I always believed 
 that the mind of a philosopher could not dwell on 
 blood and carnage with any composure ; of course 
 that he was not fitted for a stormy sea." 
 
 General Jackson concurred with Mr. Madison s 
 political views as a civilian. These views were 
 Federal in many important points that is to say, 
 on the question of a National Bank, on Internal im 
 provements, on the Protective policy. So far, 
 
28 DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 again, General Jackson and the Federalists were 
 in harmony. 
 
 He was a soldier ; at that time greeted with 
 lavish honors by all sections of the country, by 
 all classes of society, by all political parties. He 
 was, therefore, tolerant and full of good feeling to 
 all men ] and especially kind to all those of the 
 Federal party who had sustained the war, and who 
 had gone into the ranks. The idea of proscribing 
 a good soldier or a soldier s friend from the con 
 fidence of the administration, because he was a 
 Federalist, was particularly abhorrent to General 
 Jackson. This sentiment is expressed in strong 
 language in the letter to Mr. Monroe quoted above, 
 and the General there, in accordance with this 
 sentiment, advises the President to dismiss party 
 considerations and call a distinguished Federalist 
 of the war into his cabinet. 
 
 This temper formed another bond of amity and 
 relationship with the Federalists. 
 
 Now, with a man so endowed, so circumstanced, 
 it was obvious that the Federalists might redeem 
 their lost honors and even win the absolute su 
 premacy in affairs. Such of them, therefore, as 
 coveted office, entered heartily into the plan, and 
 General Jackson was thus dedicated by them to the 
 contest of 1824. 
 
 It is said that his letter to Mr. Monroe, Novem 
 ber 12th, 1816, was, in fact, written for him by a 
 distinguished Federalist of that day. By whom 
 soever written, the sentiment it utters is worthy 
 of a great man, and General Jackson s adoption of 
 it does him honor. 
 
 " Everything" he says to the President elect, 
 who was then just preparing to open his adminis 
 tration " depends upon the selection of your min 
 istry. In every selection party and party feelings 
 should be avoided. Now is the time to extermi 
 nate that monster called party spirit. By select 
 ing characters most conspicuous for their probity, 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 29 
 
 virtue, capacity and firmness, without any regard 
 to party, you will go far to, if not entirely, eradi 
 cate those feelings which on former occasions 
 threw so many obstacles in tl\e way of govern 
 ment, and perhaps have the pleasure and honor of 
 uniting a people heretofore politically divided. 
 The Chief Magistrate of a great and powerful na 
 tion should never indulge in party feelings. His 
 conduct should be liberal and disinterested, always 
 bearing in mind that he acts for the whole and not 
 for a part of the community. By this course you 
 will exalt the national character, and acquire for 
 yourself a name imperishable as monumental mar 
 ble. Consult no party in your choice 5 pursue the 
 dictates of that unerring judgment which has so 
 long and so often benefited our country and ren 
 dered conspicuous its rulers. These are the sen 
 timents of a friend ; they are the feelings, if I know 
 my own heart, of an undissembled patriot." 
 
 This letter shows the state of feeling into which 
 the negotiation for a Presidential candidate had at 
 that time brought the mind of General Jackson. 
 
 With the exception of the small clique in whom 
 the nomination originated and their confidants, this 
 movement was a profound secret, and the name of 
 Jackson, as a candidate, was kept out of hearing 
 until the proper moment to make its announcement 
 effective. In due season it was brought out. It 
 had the aid of all the customary machinery by 
 which volunteer nominations are coerced, and im 
 promptu effusions of public feeling are prepared. 
 There was first a biography written by one in the 
 secret, and then those zephyr whispers which pre 
 cede the dawn. Then the gradual dawn itself: a 
 faint streak on the horizon, a flush, a strengthening 
 twilight, a broad and golden aurora, and then the 
 God of Day himself, " rejoicing as a strong man to 
 
 run a race." 
 
 The other candidates were Adams and Clay, 
 Crawford and Calhoun. 
 
 C2 
 
30 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 Neither Adams, Clay, nor Crawford had many 
 hopes to indulge of support from the Federal party. 
 They had not wooed the Federalists : and " the old 
 grudge," if it alighted upon one head more heavily 
 than upon another, was upon the head of Henry 
 Clay. He, at least, had never courted the Federal 
 party : had very seldom spared it. To Calhoun 
 and Jackson that party directed its chief favor. 
 
 Every one remembers the sudden collapse of 
 Mr. Calhoun s pretensions in 1823, and thereupon 
 the amalgamated ticket of Jackson for the Presi 
 dency and Calhoun for the Vice-Presidency. To 
 that standard, straightway, rallied the whole body 
 of that class of Federalists who desired to become 
 political characters and who stood within that cat 
 egory of Jackson s favor of having been friendly to 
 the war. There was another class of Federalists 
 in the country, whose leaders Jackson had declared 
 to Mr. Monroe he would have hupg under the 2d 
 section of the articles of war. These, of course, 
 did not come under the new banner. 
 
 So much for the political men of that day. There 
 were, besides, a vast multitude of private citizens, 
 Federalists of the old school, who, seeking nothing 
 for themselves, having no eye to public employ 
 ment, and anxious only to preserve the harmony 
 and prosperity of the country, took sides with the 
 various candidates, under the influence of their own 
 personal estimate of the fitness of the men to con 
 duct the affairs of the nation. 
 
 Now, it is worthy of observation in all this stir 
 of the public mind, and it is mainly to present 
 this remark that I have hastily glanced at the char 
 acter of this presidential contest that, from be 
 ginning to end, the movement was one that rested 
 solely upon questions of personal predilection, and 
 in nowise involved any question of constitutional 
 doctrine or system of political measures. All 
 stood, at that day, upon the Madisonian Platform ; 
 none more distinctly upon it than General Jackson. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 31 
 
 Whether for Adams or Clay, for Crawford or 
 Jackson, the country hoped to see the measures 
 and the doctrine of Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe 
 left unchanged j not only left unchanged, but pro 
 moted, continued, made permanent by all Legisla 
 tive and ministerial concurrence. I will not say 
 this desire was universal, because we had some 
 few abstractions then such as we have many now : 
 there were quips and quillets then, and fancies in 
 some quarters ; but the broad, good, common 
 sense of the nation spoke from the tongue of a 
 huge majority in favor of the Madisonian system. 
 Thus it was that through that contest the Whig 
 spirit of the nation was* still unernbodied : not un- 
 existent, for it lived as vividly then as at any era. 
 But there being no apprehension of assault upon it, 
 no motive to give it an array, no occasion for it to 
 utter its voice, it dwelt in its private homes, and 
 amongst our household gods, as a guardian genius 
 which was not to become outwardly visible until 
 the country s invocation should conjure it up to the 
 stern duty of defence. Thus, too, it fell out that 
 multitudes of Whigs gathered to the support of 
 Jackson and Calhoun, confiding implicitly in the 
 conviction that, in the character of General Jack 
 son, they had every guarantee that the purity and 
 the predominance of our free institutions would be 
 preserved. 
 
 There were many warnings against this confi 
 dence. Those who knew General Jackson best af 
 firmed that there was danger in his temper, in his 
 unskilfulness and incapacity for civil station, in his 
 personal partisan habits, in his stern self-will nur 
 sed in camps and hardened by the universal spirit 
 of assentation that filled his atmosphere of com 
 mand. That his deficiencies would necessarily ren 
 der him dependent upon those who had the craft 
 to guide him, and that there was danger, as Burr, 
 who was well acquainted with him, expressed it 
 he " might be wrought upon." 
 
32 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 To all such forewarnings little heed was given. 
 They rather stirred the friends of Jackson to a 
 greater trust in him, because much calumny was 
 detected and exposed in the revilings of political 
 adversaries. And naturally, thereupon, these warn 
 ings were attributed as in part they were j.ustly 
 so attributed to political malice, or were set down 
 to rivalry. 
 
 General Jackson s defeat in the House of Repre 
 sentatives in 1825, brought a new element to his 
 support. The public ear was filled with stories of 
 intrigues behind the curtain ; and as the truth could 
 not be come at, for truth in such matters is nev 
 er found until what may be- called posthumous his 
 tory clears it up the people solved the problem 
 of the defeat by a political postulate, which, wheth 
 er right or wrong, and that is yet a question of 
 debate was altogether sufficient to elect General 
 Jackson four years afterward, by a large majority. 
 That postulate was that the House of Representa 
 tives, when put to the decision of the Presidency 
 between three or more candidates, should choose 
 him who had the greatest number of popular votes. 
 In other words, that the choice should fall on the 
 plurality candidate : which postulate, if it be true, 
 would seem to make the ceremony of a vote in the 
 House of Representatives, a mere ceremony. 
 
 However, so it was, and General Jackson be 
 came President on the 4th of March. 1829. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 33 
 
 V. 
 
 FIRST INSTALMENT. 
 
 I AM not so confident as to affirm that if no secret 
 movement had been made, in 1815, to bring out Gen 
 eral Jackson against Mr. Monroe, by the anti-Jefferso- 
 nians and the grudge-bearing Federalists, General 
 Jackson would not have been ultimately nominated, 
 and perhaps elected. On that point I am not con 
 cerned to speculate. But I do remark that that secret 
 movement brought him within the attraction of influ 
 ences to which the country is indebted for the larger 
 share of its recent sufferings. 
 
 Burr selected Jackson to break down the Jeffersoni- 
 an dynasty. The Federalists selected him partly for 
 that purpose, but chiefly because he was known to 
 possess an ardent wish to see the old party lines de 
 stroyed and the Federalists of the War brought into 
 the view of government. They knew that his popu 
 larity, won by great military achievements, might be 
 made a sure card with the majority of the nation. It was 
 a brilliant piece of pyrotechny, which it was only ne 
 cessary to touch at the right season to produce one of 
 the most dazzling displays that the country had ever 
 beheld. But great judgment was necessary to find 
 that right season. Obviously it was not in 1815, when 
 Monroe, an old soldier of the Revolution, was in the 
 field.. That was another piece of pyrotechny, which 
 stood in case to be let off first. The interval of Mr. 
 Monroe s eight years was employed in preparation for 
 the impromptu of 1823. In that interval the letters I 
 have heretofore quoted were written, and published in 
 the newspapers : not written by General Jackson 
 rumor has always said but written from him. Writ 
 ten by those who enjoyed his confidence, and who felt 
 an interest in presenting his tolerant opinions in party 
 matters before the world, and adopted by him as true 
 
34 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 exponents of his own sentiments, which at that time, 
 doubtless, they were. 
 
 These letters drew especially th Federal eye upon 
 him, and carried, in the end, a large number of the 
 subtlest, the skilfulest, and the most aspiring members 
 of that party into close communion with him. 
 
 Now mark the grouping around General Jackson in 
 the canvass of 1824. On one side of him, sitting close 
 
 f O 
 
 to his ear, an active, astute, keen-sighted, highly ed 
 ucated bevy of politicians, with a long hatred of 
 the Democratic rule festering at their hearts, with a 
 heavy score of notched revenges filed in their memory, 
 with wrath to plan, and talents to do any amount of 
 mischief on their enemies ; these sitting there favor 
 ed and confidential advisers of that strenuous man, 
 whose power only needed skilful direction to render it 
 overwhelming. On the other side of him, a host of 
 young officers and companions in arms, who had shared 
 in his battles, and had become identified with his for 
 tunes : many of them needy, all ambitious, covetous 
 of distinction, subservient to his will, alert, brave, rest 
 less, full of capability, and ready by all means, by 
 persuasion, by influence, by bustle, and by brawl, to 
 propagate his ascendency wherever it might be ques 
 tioned. Then all below him, filling a huge space, that 
 mass of men whose numbers cannot be counted, who, 
 in every country, are the flatterers of military renown, 
 and who cannot conceive any duty to the State, or any 
 contribution of service, as worthy to be compared with 
 military duty and service : that great mass, stirred by 
 patriotic impulse, but ever most apt to fall into the ex 
 treme of an excessive admiration of heroical achieve 
 ment, permitting that sentiment to preclude all doubt 
 of other capability, silence all distrust, refuse a hearing 
 to all invocation of inquiry. I need only say, Andrew 
 Jackson was, at this time, rampant on more than ten 
 thousand sign-posts. What heraldry affords such a 
 blazon 1 What record of a popular apotheosis like 
 this ? What was needed to bring this sentiment, so 
 painted on the sign-post, into mighty and resistless ac- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 35 
 
 tion but a nomination, a canvass, some flowing rhet 
 oric on the stump, some artful shedding of printer s 
 ink? 
 
 These were the surroundings of General Jackson 
 in the canvass of 1824. In addition to these were 
 many quiet, thoughtful citizens a very large number 
 who had great faith in his peculiar honesty of pur 
 pose, in his love of country, in his judgment of manly 
 men. 
 
 When the time came this mass was put in motion. 
 That it failed in 1824 was no fatal omen. The pear 
 still was not ripe. The combination, even then, was 
 the strongest that was in the field. The disappoint 
 ment of 1824 only whetted the edge of appetite. The 
 belligerent Federalist thenceforth became more bel 
 ligerent. The gentlemen of the "bilbo and buff" be 
 gan anew " to stride, swear, and swagger ;" and the 
 great multitude raised one loud and long shout of ex 
 hortation to another trial. That trial was successful ; 
 much to the delight of certain of the old Federal party : 
 much to the delight of the officers of 1814, now grow 
 ing gray, and of those of the Seminole war, still young ; 
 and much to the delight of all those who look to the 
 sign-posts no very bad standard of judgment for a 
 true record of public worth. 
 
 General Jackson could not but feel, in 1829, that he 
 owed a great debt of gratitude to the Federalists. 
 They took care that he should not forget it. They 
 crowded round him in the first moments of his suc 
 cess ; took possession of his ear ; told him who was 
 who, and what was what ; insinuated themselves into 
 his confidence, and, finally, became inducted in the 
 choicest offices of the government, ejach according to 
 his quality and pretensions, from the chief cabinet sta 
 tion down to the chief tide-waiter in the custom-house 
 new tenants in strange places! And thus did it 
 come to pass that, after thirty years, these captives of 
 Babylon were restored to their ancient seats. This 
 was the payment of the first instalment of " the an 
 cient grudge." 
 
36 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS, 
 
 VI. 
 
 SECOND INSTALMENT. UPRISING OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 THE payment of the second instalment was a differ 
 ent thing. The first was the giving of alms a few 
 crusts to a few sturdy beggars. The second was an 
 incubation of curses. Wo worth the day that saw 
 the alighting of that Federal Vengeance upon this 
 land! 
 
 General Jackson had come to the Presidency in 
 masquerade. The people had known him as a sol 
 dier, frank and bold. As a civilian, as a statesman, 
 they knew not much of him, except that he had shown 
 himself in the Senate a friend to the Whig measures, 
 internal improvements, and Tariff, and no enemy to a 
 National Bank, In all other points of qualification 
 they took him upon inference from the capacity he had 
 displayed in war, and from the direct representation 
 made of himself in the sundry letters to Mr. Monroe 
 and others, and such documents as had been put forth 
 under his name ; all which letters and other presenta 
 tions of himself were, at that time, believed to be genu 
 ine. They were not genuine, but, on the contrary, 
 simulated. 
 
 Now, General Jackson, in the beginning of this 
 Presidential movement, was truly honest in his esti 
 mate of himself, and expressed a natural surprise that _ 
 he should be thought a suitable man to be made Chief 
 Magistrate ; and, truly, this diffidence of his in that 
 day, is the most genuine proof of his fitness to be 
 President which may be remarked in the history of 
 the event. If that sentiment had not grown weaker, 
 and in the end come to be entirely obliterated, he 
 might have been all that the Country expected of him, 
 an earnest, faithful and wise Magistrate. 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 37 
 
 But as the .time came round, and imprpbabilities 
 were changed into probabilities, and every day gave 
 him new proofs that his chances and hopes were 
 strengthening toward certainties, he submitted him 
 self more and more to that guidance the policy of 
 which was to conceal and misrepresent him. There 
 was a cordon sanitaire drawn around him, or a cordon 
 taciturne rather. He was in quarantine ; and all that 
 came to him, and all that went from him, came and 
 went through an official : as to all true exhibition of 
 himself, he was a man forbid. Others wrote for him, 
 spoke for him, acted for him. It was a candidacy in 
 commission, vicarious, and seeming what it was not. 
 
 General Jackson was not an educated man. He 
 knew little of principles of government, especially of 
 free government. But he was a shrewd man, with 
 strong natural sagacity, of a domineering temper, of 
 resistless will, and like Sir Anthony Absolute, "no 
 one more easily led when he had his own way." His 
 fortune in this Presidential canvass presented him a 
 visible profit from dissimulation, and he became the 
 most cunning and effective dissembler of these modern 
 days. 
 
 There sat, all this time, < ; squat by his ear," that 
 toad of Federal Vengeance whispering the payment 
 of its debt in such instalments as time should bring. 
 What leprous distilment of ancient hate was poured 
 into that ear, we shall read in the annals of ten years 
 of such mischief as this land has never before felt. 
 
 The Inaugural was a fair and honest paper, modest, 
 patriotic, expressing sound Whig doctrine. 
 
 "I shall keep in view the limitations of Executive 
 power : 
 
 " I shall not confound State powers with those grant 
 ed to the Confederacy : 
 
 " I shall promote a strict and faithful economy : 
 
 " By a proper selection of the subjects of impost, the 
 interests of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures 
 shall be equally favored exception being made for 
 
 D 
 
38 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 the peculiar encouragement of products that may be 
 found essential to our national independence : 
 
 " I will be friendly to internal improvement and the 
 diffusion of knowledge, as far as they can be promoted 
 by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government : 
 
 " I will give heed to the correction of those abuses 
 which have brought the patronage of the Federal Gov 
 ernment into conflict with the freedom of elections." 
 
 There is a summary of the Inaugural. 
 
 Here, in this first utterance of General Jackson s 
 administration, was the old Whig jealousy of Execu 
 tive power soothed and conciliated. 
 
 Now, read the Message to Congress that followed 
 this paper 8th of December, 1829. 
 
 See what promises there of curtailing Executive 
 power. First, the proposition to limit the President 
 to a single term : then, the old Place Bill of William 
 and Mary, the Whig measure of 1692, brought to 
 view by General Jackson himself, in the recommenda 
 tion to restrain the President from appointing members 
 of Congress to office. Then, a solemn abjuration of 
 all doubtful powers, and a reference of all doubtful 
 questions to the people. Then, rigid accountability 
 of public officers and punishment of all defaulters, and 
 dispensing with all useless offices. 
 
 So much as to doctrine. 
 
 As for measures, 
 
 First, A Tariff that should place our own manufac 
 tures in fair competition with those of other countries. 
 
 Second, The distribution of surplus revenue for " the 
 improvement of inland navigation and the construction 
 of highways in the several States." 
 
 Third, A National Bank founded on the credit and 
 revenues of the government. 
 
 These were the first enunciations of the Jackson ad 
 ministration, the published chart of its voyage. Add 
 to this formula that famous declaration in the message 
 of December, 1832 " It seems to me to be our true 
 policy that the public lands shall cease, as soon as prac 
 ticable, to be a source of revenue" and what remains 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 39 
 
 behind this sum of doctrine and measures to make up 
 the epitome of Whig principles ? 
 
 This was Whig Jacksonism in the innocent days 
 and youthful prime of that fearful administration. What 
 wonder that, in 1829, the country was quiet and full 
 of joyful anticipation ! 
 
 The odor of these promises had scarcely faded 
 from the breath that uttered them, before a most disas 
 trous change came over all things. I doubt if his 
 tory furnishes a stronger testimony to the instability 
 of human hopes than in this very instance of General 
 Jackson s promises and performance. Never was the 
 faith plighted in wooing more slighted in wedlock ; nev 
 er was husband more unlike lover than the faith plight 
 ed by Jackson seeking office was slighted by Jackson 
 holding office ; than the hero of Orleans firmly seated 
 in the Presidential chair was unlike the same hero 
 when clambering to it. 
 
 Straightway we had loud and peremptory assertion 
 of Prerogative against Privilege : not made with qual 
 ification and modest reserve of conditions ; but made 
 in boldest amplitude of claim. 
 
 Straightway we had the kingly Veto hurled, like 
 Jove s thunderbolts, against all contumacious law-ma 
 kers, representatives, dissenting people. 
 
 We had unblushing exercise of all doubtful powers 
 that in any time before, or by any political party, had 
 ever been called doubtful. 
 
 We had defiance, vituperation, reproof of the Legis 
 lative Power, as an insolent meddler with the royal 
 prerogatives claimed for the President. 
 
 We had contempt for all highest judicial decision on 
 the import of laws, and proclamation that all laws shall 
 henceforth be executed as " I understand them" or 
 not executed, if I shall judge them unconstitutional, at 
 my sovereign pleasure. 
 
 We had that notorious pretension " I am the Ex 
 ecutive all officers are my officers and responsible to 
 me only, and not to you, the Legislature ; I have 
 commanded them not to answer you, but me." 
 
40 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 We had that very ominous and significant claim? 
 11 the President is the direct representative of the Amer 
 ican people" and the corollary from it, that the repre 
 sentative of the whole people was not to be molested, 
 inquired after, impertinently inspected by the repre 
 sentatives of fragments of the people, 
 
 Has any one forgotten Napoleon s interview with 
 the Deputies when he came from Leipsic in 1813? 
 " You are not the representatives of the People, you 
 are only representatives of the Individual Departments. 
 But you seek in your address to draw a distinction be 
 tween the Sovereign and the People. I, I am the 
 only real Representative of the People." 
 
 We had that old Whig measure of 1692, the Place 
 Bill, as it was called in that day General Jackson 
 himself having revived and recommended it in his 
 message, as we said, we had this measure thrown to 
 the winds, and members of Congress appointed to of 
 fice in greater numbers than had ever been practised 
 before by any President : by all former Presidents 
 put together, perhaps. 
 
 We had announcement of the President for a second 
 term, and strenuous effort to obtain it by all manner of 
 bringing of Patronage into conflict with the freedom 
 of election. 
 
 We had organized party action against another old 
 Whig measure, famous in English history, in the strug 
 gle of Privilege against Prerogative the bill to disa 
 ble officeholders from active interference in elections, 
 which was introduced into the Senate by the Whigs, 
 and most diligently opposed by the Administration. 
 
 Then, we had pocketing of bills when majorities 
 of two thirds were ready to pass them in spite of the 
 Veto. 
 
 We had Removals of Deposites when Congress had 
 resolved they should not be removed ; and denial of 
 the right of Congress to take the Treasure from the 
 control of the Executive ; hand that held the sword, 
 claiming to hold the purse. 
 
 We had, consequent on this usurpation, Removals 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 41 
 
 of High Officers of the Treasury and Cabinet, because 
 they would not do what Congress told them they must 
 not do. 
 
 We had blind and infuriated demolition of the Bank, 
 for the sake of a " better currency !" We had the 
 building up of some half thousand paper-breeding, high- 
 pressure, thimble-rig Banks, strown from Passama- 
 quoddy to Opelousas, flinging their windy missiles over 
 the land, " thick as autumnal leaves in Valiombrosa :" 
 this too for the sake of a a better currency !" These 
 half thousand, with each a President, a Cashier, a doz 
 en or so Directors, a dozen or so Clerks ; every presi 
 dent, cashier, director, and clerk having a cousin at 
 least ; and then a most commendable Seventh Ward 
 Bank spirit of. compliance ! with many new mouths 
 to be fed, with many millions of new speculations to be 
 fostered, with many millions of old insolvencies to be 
 patched up ; with the Treasury recommendation be 
 sides, in the foreground " accommodate the People 
 with the Public funds :" All this, too, we had for the 
 sake of a " better currency !" Which better currency, 
 of course, it brought us ! ! And, hard upon all this, we 
 had Specie Circulars and Hard Money. And then 
 came most pathetical winding up of all this queer his 
 tory, in sanctimonious sermons leveled against the 
 wicked Whigs as Rag Barons, and patrons of the abom 
 inable abomination of Paper Money ! 
 
 We had war against the Tariff ; war against Inter 
 nal Improvements by the Federal Government ; and 
 most fatherly advice to the States to spare not in ma 
 king all manner of improvements themselves ; which 
 advice the States, being most loyal and in good hands 
 for the most part, thankfully received and obeyed to 
 the letter. 
 
 We had war on the scheme to take the Public Lands 
 " as soon as practicable" away from the revenue of the 
 Government and to give them to the States to whom 
 as, in old time, all confessed, they belonged, and for 
 whom, it was a common opinion which neither party 
 was once bold enough to deny, they were held in 
 D2 
 
42 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 trust. On this an active and unsparing war : a war 
 to the extent of pocketing usque ad loculum with 
 supererogatory veto besides. 
 
 And then, for Economy and Retrenchment; for 
 strict accountability of Officers, and condign punish 
 ment of Defaulters what in the vocabulary of the 
 English tongue is the reverse of all this, have we not 
 had! 
 
 Why should I recall that sad history which furnish 
 es the particulars of this long catalogue of broken 
 promises ? The visible scars of commerce, agricul 
 ture and manufactures are yet vivid memorials of these 
 broken promises. 
 
 I have brought these incidents to view for no idle 
 purpose. It is to show that the career of General 
 Jackson s administration revived every cause of con 
 test which had ever embodied the Whigs in past times. 
 It exhibited in terrible proportions that old phantom of 
 Prerogative shaking his dart against Privilege a 
 phantom first, and then a Devil against which every 
 Whig antipathy that resided in an American bosom 
 was sworn to do eternal battle. 
 
 Who instigated these wayward freaks of authority ? 
 There were cunning Greeks that had entered the cita 
 del in the Horse s belly, and who taught the people of 
 our Troy to worship the Horse-God himself? The 
 Grudge was in the full progress of satisfaction. The 
 second instalment was a paying. 
 
 The year 1830 witnessed the new embodiment of 
 the Whigs. From that day the rally bears date. 
 Thousands and tens of thousands of Whigs hastened 
 from the quiet of their long retirement, to raise again 
 their honored banner to the breeze, and to seek the 
 fellowship of a new war in behalf of Privilege against 
 Prerogative. Speedily they grew to be a mighty host. 
 Assuming their ancient name, renouncing all other, 
 they planted themselves in robust opposition to that 
 Executive, which, misadvised by treacherous friends 
 and intoxicated by its almost immeasurable popularity, 
 had dared to revive the old quarrel had dared to set 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 43 
 
 itself above that cherished Legislative power upon 
 which our Whig forefathers had reposed as the surest 
 defender of Free Government. 
 
 Sudden invasion by a foreign foe could scarcely 
 have given more alacrity to their rising, or stimulated 
 the Whigs into more rapid array, than was witnessed 
 in this glorious impulse of patriotism. Eternal honor 
 to the men who reared the Whig banner of 1830! 
 How many standing, until then, on terms of friendship 
 with Jackson nay, of admiration even having chance 
 and opportunity, if such had been their wish, to gather 
 preferment and official emolument from him how 
 many of these parted from him, then, forthwith for 
 ever ? Was there ever such falling off of bold and 
 honest men from the train and following of a conqueror 
 before ? In the very midst of his triumphs and palmi 
 est day of his power, they left him : left him, not to 
 indulge in the inglorious ease of neutrals, but to con 
 tend against him awd his overwhelming and impetuous 
 partisans on every field. They left him, resolved un 
 ceasingly to strive in the unequarconflict, until the ob 
 sequious fervor of the times should be sobered into a 
 cooler mood, and the genuine American spirit of jeal 
 ous Liberty should, as inevitably it would, rise again 
 in the breasts of the nation to sway and direct the pub 
 lic judgment. 
 
 The embodied Whigs of 1830 bided their time, and 
 found it in the memorable contest of 1840. 
 
 VII. 
 
 DEMOCRACY IN FEDERAL LEADING STRINGS. 
 
 THE Federalists, as a party, have been charged with 
 leaning to a too strong organization of the Executive. 
 In regard to many Federalists that charge is untrue. 
 
44 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 In regard to the grudge-bearing Federalists it is almost 
 universally true. These men in old time affected fears 
 of the permanency of our system from the predomi 
 nance of popular power ; in other phrase, from the 
 power of the Legislature. They were, according to 
 our scale of things, friends of Prerogative as against 
 Privilege : were our Tories ; adverse to our Whigs. 
 
 Their long, compelled abstinence from share in gov 
 ernment affairs whetted the edge of these opinions in 
 dislike of Legislative Supremacy : the more so, as the 
 Legislature, for a long period, was under the control 
 of their opponents. 
 
 When General Jackson raised that long embargo 
 which had been laid upon their hopes, and opened the 
 gates to their admission, they rushed tumultuously into 
 his antechamber ; filled his closet, eager and starv 
 ing men, with hearts in nowise softened by the weary 
 training of their adversity ; with inordinate craving for 
 Power and Place ; with inveterate purpose to counsel 
 their patron to high Prerogative Doctrine. 
 
 I will not say that all who came, or were called, to 
 General Jackson in those days, came with these pas 
 sions or strove to imbue him with these opinions. 
 There were some honorable exceptions : men of con 
 science, of high order of intellect, of ardent patriotism, 
 of sound Whig views among them. Such men grad 
 ually fell off as the imposture of the new era opened 
 upon them. They even expostulated with the Chief, 
 and sought to moderate his excess : fell into personal 
 dissension with him and his more influential advisers. 
 To their discretion, perhaps, we may attribute the self- 
 denial and liberal tone of some of the earlier messages 
 of the administration. Finding the President s policy 
 ungenial, they fell off rapidly. Not one remained to 
 witness the end of his term. The others stayed behind, 
 faithful to their fixed resolve to take all office that could 
 be got, and to flatter the Executive into every danger 
 ous extreme of power which the popularity of the Chief 
 might bear. They were marvelously successful. Their 
 success is a living record of their diligence. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 45 
 
 While they filled the mind of the President wkh 
 pretensions more than monarchical, they amused the 
 people with promises more than Democratic. Autoc 
 racy in substance was varnished over with a transpa 
 rent wash of Jacobinism in profession. Ready tools 
 were at hand to mould public opinion into whatever 
 shape best suited their views : dextrous and subserv 
 ient men who were hired for a price. Whatever came 
 from headquarters came ostentatiously as from the in 
 fallible Democratic Oracle. Under these influences, 
 the administration of General Jackson, professing to be 
 Ultra Democratic, became imperceptibly, but speedily, 
 almost regal in its power taking the admiring and too 
 confident country at unawares. 
 
 Every militant Federalist by which I mean, espe 
 cially, those of " The Grudge" straightway got. into 
 office. Scarcely one escaped reward. Their name 
 was Legion. They became popular declaimers on 
 the peculiar virtues of Democracy, and took the stump 
 the noisiest and most authentic of Democrats : lent 
 their aid to tke organization of " The Party :" were 
 leaders of County, District, and Town meetings ; 
 chairmen of the Committee ; chief paragraphists ; 
 chief movers of resolutions ; chief contrivers of what 
 soever canvass ; and at last after some useless blush- 
 ings and awkward displays of coyness chief denoun 
 cers of all opponents of the General as Federalists, 
 Blue Lights Hartford Conventionists ! when the 
 smoke of this feu dejoie cleared away, the older Dem 
 ocrats rubbed their eyes, and found the best offices ev 
 erywhere in the hands of these abler Democrats ! 
 
 It was a singular sight to behold. Not less singu 
 lar was it to see how docile, how passive under their 
 new leaders, became the good-natured Old Democracy 
 such at least as wore the Jackson colors : gentle 
 " an it were any sucking dove." 
 
 I think the elder Adams made some such remark as 
 this at least to this import, for I do not remember his 
 words, and would rather express it in my own : When 
 a Federalist, toward the decline of life, turns Jacobin, 
 
46 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 for the sake of preferment, we shall have occasion to 
 note two things : First, a more adroit and effective 
 demagogueism than may be developed in any other 
 species of demagogue whatever : Second, we shall 
 find a man who is very soon thereafter to have a high 
 place, both in rank and emolument, as a Democrat ; 
 who will jostle many honest and simple Democrats 
 out of the way ; and who will afford the best conceiv 
 able specimen of that natural character which is made 
 up by the meeting of both ends an aristocratic Loco- 
 foco. This last clause Mr. Adams would undoubtedly 
 have added, if Locofocoisrn had been invented in his 
 day. But at that time Lucifer .had not got so up in the 
 world had not made such matches. 
 
 By such teachers and teachings, Ge-neral Jackson 
 a most apt and willing scholar became, of all Presi 
 dents, the most distinguished as a High Prerogative 
 President : of all Presidents, the only one who had 
 systematically endeavored to invade and humble the 
 Legislative department of the government. 
 
 Is it to be marveled that when hi$ administration 
 became so imperial in its doctrine ; when the great 
 multitude of his supporters fell into such blind tolera 
 tion of him and his pretended Executive rights ; when 
 such trenchant blows were dealt at the old Represent 
 ative Legislative Privilege the Privilege of the Peo 
 ple ; when the Journal of the Senate was blotted at his 
 bidding, and proceedings expunged from the record, by 
 an act scarcely less arbitrary than that of James of 
 England, who tore away the offensive leaf from the 
 Journal of the Commons with his own hand ; when 
 the odious Veto was conjured up from its dead sleep, 
 or, from an exanimate body, was made a living, mis 
 chievous thing ; when numbers of the people had sunk 
 into such pliant partisans as to strike against their own 
 rights ; when, with all our present experience, such 
 wretched cant could be preached and endured, as that 
 the Veto was an invaluable" Conservative Principle to 
 save the people against themselves, against their own 
 folly and incapacity, to save them by interposing the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 47 
 
 will and command of a Chief against their, the Peo 
 ple s own will and command, as matured and uttered 
 through their own chosen organs, their Representa 
 tives : Is it to be marveled, when such things were 
 witnessed, such things heard and vindicated on the 
 public rostrum, in the Senate House, read in the Press, 
 and applauded for political wisdom by supple Legisla 
 tors and congregated hosts of obsequious worshippers 
 that the sturdy old Whig Spirit of 1776 should again 
 kindle its fire on every hill and in every valley where 
 a friend of freedom had ever pitched his tent ? 
 
 Grievously has the nation expiated the idolatry 
 which persuaded them to endure these innovations 
 upon the principles in which our Republican govern 
 ment was established : is even yet expiating it. What 
 tribulation, and disaster have fallen to our lot ? With 
 God s bounty thrown lavish over our land ; with all 
 needful resource of happiness and strength ; with 
 brave, strong men fit for all service ; with an upright 
 and intelligent yeomanry such, as a better have 
 never, been bred on any soil what has been our 
 doom 1 Let any man calmly tell it over. Poverty, 
 debt, bankruptcy, official default, faction, discourage 
 ment in all kind of labor, obstruction of the channels 
 of industry, suspected faith, repudiation Dorrism 
 what evil in the magazine of evils is left behind ? All 
 this in the bosom of a frugal, honest, thrifty, Christian 
 country ! Fatal mischance of unwise government ! 
 
 Truly has that looked-for day of evil retribution 
 come, when " the Democracy " have been coupled like 
 hounds and the leash held in Federal hands ! day 
 long prayed for, now enjoyed by many. 
 
48 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DOUBTFULNESS OF THE WHIG- PRINCIPLES. 
 
 IT was a poor device of the enemy to complain, in 
 1840, that the Whigs were a party without principles. 
 Their principles are written in that long history of 
 which I have made but a brief abstract. Every man 
 in this nation, who had given his mind to public affairs, 
 was aware that the Whig party was reorganized in 
 1830, as in 1776 it was organized, to resist Executive 
 encroachment. All men have not fully weighed the 
 import of those public transactions to which I have al 
 luded, and taken them to heart as the American herit 
 ors of Anglo-Saxon liberty should : else there would 
 have been a universal flocking of all true Republicans 
 to the Whig standard. No candid and sincere lover 
 of rational, republican liberty* I affirm, can contemplate 
 the encroachments of Executive power, which we have 
 witnessed in the last twelve years, without a resolute 
 revolt in his heart against that whole system of politi 
 cal domination by which these encroachments have 
 been compassed. That there was not such universal 
 revolt may be set down to the artful engendering and 
 skilful control of faction whereby men s passions have 
 mastered their judgments. 
 
 It was a shrewd device of the enemy, in 1840, to 
 strive to compel the Whigs to put the issue of that con 
 flict upon this or that single measure of legislation : to 
 drive them off the broad platform of the great funda 
 mental Whig doctrine the assertion of the Represent 
 ative Privilege against the Executive Prerogative 
 and crowd them upon the narrow stage of one ques 
 tion of the day a Bank. 
 
 The Whig party were embodied with two grand 
 aims. 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 49 
 
 The first, and immeasurably the greatest, was that 
 which we have presented, namely, the reassertion of 
 the fundamental doctrine of the Revolution of 1776 : 
 the protection of this nation and its posterity against 
 the imperious claims and mischievous precedents made 
 and established by General Jackson and his partisans, 
 to the enlargement of Executive and the diminution of 
 Legislative power. 
 
 To this end, the Whigs contended, 
 
 For the single Presidential term : 
 
 For the Reduction of Patronage : 
 
 For the Separation of the Purse and Sword : 
 
 For the rigid supervision of all Executive officers 
 by Congress : 
 
 For free Legislative debate and Legislative com 
 ment on the conduct of all public officers : 
 
 For the non-interference of Government officers in 
 the elections ; and 
 
 For the modification of the Veto Power. 
 
 These were all pervading, paramount questions. 
 The Whigs of the Union were united upon them to a 
 man. They had battled for them, in and out of 
 Congress, ever since 1830. The whole nation under 
 stood how these questions were identified with the 
 Whig party. No man wanted a manifesto in 1840 to 
 apprize him that these were fundamental, essential and 
 absorbing questions in the Whig movement. They 
 had been proclaimed through every organ of Whig sen 
 timent, in every form of iteration, for ten years. In 
 importance, they were infinitely above every question 
 of mere policy. They were organic, belonging to the 
 structure of the government. They concerned our pos 
 terity as well as the present generation. They be 
 longed to the perpetuation of free Republican govern 
 ment, and the handing down of our institutions to our 
 children as we received them from our fathers. 
 
 The second aim of the Whig embodiment was to 
 relieve the country from the evils of bad legislation 
 with which it had been afflicted by the party in power. 
 
 This was a purpose involving ordinary measures of 
 E 
 
50 DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 legislation : a purpose of policy, of expediency, de 
 pending, in great degree, upon the incidents and occa 
 sions of the day ; and subject to be influenced in some 
 degree by local and temporary views. 
 
 In this field, although a great and surprising ap 
 proach to unanimity prevailed among the Whig party, 
 considering the different impressions of sectional in 
 terest natural to so broad a surface as that covered by 
 the States of the Union yet entire consent of opinion, 
 in reference to all measures of relief, never was ex 
 pected. Nor was it asserted to exist. The leading 
 measures proposed arid advocated were, 
 
 A Protective Tariff, 
 
 Distribution of the proceeds of the Public Lands, 
 
 Improvement of the face of the country by Roads 
 and Canals, 
 
 Regulation of the Currency through a National 
 Bank and 
 
 Reduction of the Public Expenses. 
 
 On these measures, it may be affirmed, nine tenths 
 of the Whig party were unanimous. In regard to 
 some of them, a small number, it is true, were found 
 dissenting. 
 
 It is well known that the prejudices of Southern 
 opinion upon the Tariff question, which equally pre 
 vailed among the Whigs and their opponents, had en 
 listed a portion of the Southern Whigs against the Pro 
 tective System, and, as connected with it, the question 
 of the Distribution. 
 
 A still smaller division of the Whigs have opposed 
 a National Bank. 
 
 It may be a question for metaphysicians to divert 
 themselves with, to what extent are these small dis 
 senting fragments of the Whig party entitled to be 
 called Whigs but it will never be one of doubt, 
 while those fragments concur in the great and pri 
 mary object of Whig organization, that their attach 
 ment to the Whig party is worthy of the praise of an 
 exalted patriotism, the more exalted as it consents to 
 waive and forego its wishes in regard to the compara- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 51 
 
 tively minor questions of policy, for the sake of the 
 graver and more enduring principles of free govern 
 ment which it finds in jeopardy. 
 
 These divisions of opinion among the Whigs were 
 never secret, nor desired to be made secret. There .- 
 can be no better proof of the integrity of a party than 
 such tokens of its independence as are afforded by the 
 frank and open avowal of dissent where unanimity 
 does not exist. Such dissent presents no other ques 
 tion than this Is the dissenting point of sufficient pre 
 ponderance to overweigh other motives to concur ? If 
 not, the concurrence may be sincere and effective. It 
 has been so in the contest ever since 1830. All 
 through that contest the Whigs have had occasion to 
 feel that, in the brotherhood of their Southern friends, 
 they have derived all the aid and comfort to their cause 
 which a generous gallantry and the purest love of coun 
 try could bestow. 
 
 Could it be said that the Whig party had no princi 
 ples because it did not choose to cast the issue of its 
 great contest upon these minor questions, wherein 
 some dissent existed, rather than upon those broad 
 doctrines where all were united ? Was it not, as I 
 have said, an ingenious stratagem of the enemy, when 
 he sought to drive us into the narrow fold of these 
 questions of expediency, while we stood already be 
 hind the bulwarks of high political rights ? Should we 
 not have been laughed at as shallow simpletons if we 
 had crept into such a gull trap ? 
 
 As we did not choose to hearken for advice to the 
 enemy and make him the issue he desired, does not 
 every one remember how assiduously he set about 
 making it for us ? Was there a forum in 1840, a bar 
 room, a cart tail, a stump rostrum, was there a con 
 venticle of quidnuncs, a street meeting, or a country 
 gathering of our opponents in the whole canvass nay, 
 was there any such in any previous time of the ten years 
 before, that the burden of the charge against the Whigs 
 was not that their great purpose was to establish a 
 Bank, make a protective Tariff and distribute the pro- 
 
52 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 ceeds of the lands ? Such universal consent of opin 
 ion as to the Whig designs, surely furnished no -excuse 
 to those who made the accusation, that we had left 
 them in the dark as to our principles or measures. 
 
 For our principles and measures we gave them an 
 open history of ten years active labour. In that his 
 tory, written on every page of our public journals and 
 proclaimed in the trumpet notes of the most eloquent 
 men of the land, they might read and did read, better 
 than in any manifesto, what we aimed at and what we 
 meant to fight for. It is the sheer hypocrisy of your 
 scurvy politician to affect not to see what was so easy 
 to be seen : so much intended and contrived to be 
 seen. And miserable cant was it, in that day of 1840, 
 to complain that the Whig army came into the field 
 bannerless and objectless, or having no written motto 
 on their banner and no avowed object in their war. 
 
 Our principles then, as now, were known at every 
 fireside in the Union. 
 
 Is it necessary we should make Proclamation now, 
 of what we fight for in Forty-Four ? 
 
 Does any man want to know what the Whigs are 
 aiming at ? 
 
 In earnest? 
 
 I opine not. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE ELEMENT. 
 
 THE Veto Power has. grown, in the last twelve 
 years, to be a most formidable and overtopping branch 
 of the Presidential Prerogative. It is, in the late prac 
 tice of the Executive, dangerously dispropordoned to 
 the other powers of the Constitution. It is what the 
 authors of our government never designed it should be : 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 53 
 
 what indeed they fought against and would not toler 
 ate in the British -Crown while we were yet colonies. 
 The oppressive exercise of the Veto, as I have hereto 
 fore said, was a chief cause of the Revolution. In the 
 latitude claimed for it it is unrepublican, and especially 
 offensive to the scheme of free government as under 
 stood and maintained by the Whigs. The modifica 
 tion of this power has consequently become a distin 
 guished purpose in the Whig action. 
 
 It is true it was not unadvisedly introduced into our 
 Constitution. There was reflection and debate upon it. 
 
 Our fathers of the Revolution were not altogether 
 disenthralled from the formulas of the Old World. The 
 marvel is that they were even so free from them. The 
 Veto, copied from the British Constitution, was found 
 in all the Colonial Settlements, as a power reserved to 
 the Crown. The men of the Revolution thought they 
 were making great advances when they were erecting 
 an analogous free government in Independent Ameri 
 ca ; building it upon a democratic basis and retaining 
 as much of the English form as they held to be com 
 patible with that basis. The English Veto had not 
 been exercised for a hundred years. What had they 
 to fear in trusting it to a Republican President ? Still, 
 there were many sturdy and wise Republicans who 
 feared. 
 
 Let us see what we can gather from the scant rec 
 ord of the debate on this topic : 
 
 It seems Dr. Franklin was opposed to the power al 
 together. So was George Mason : so Roger Sherman, 
 Pierce Butler and Gunning Bedford. James Wilson 
 and Alexander Hamilton were in favor of an absolute 
 Veto. Elbridge Gerry and James Madison were for 
 the Veto with a qualification subject to be overruled 
 by a vote of two thirds of each House. 
 
 Colonel Hamilton thought " there was no danger of 
 such a power being too much exercised." He said 
 " the King of England had not exerted his negative 
 since the Revolution" (1688). 
 
 " Mr. Sherman was against enabling any one man 
 E 2 
 
54 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 to stop the will of the whole. No one man could be 
 found so far above all the rest in wisdom." 
 
 " Mr. Madison supposed that if a proper proportion 
 of each branch should be required to overrule the ob 
 jections of the Executive it would answer the same 
 purpose as an absolute negative. It would rarely, if 
 ever, happen that the Executive, constituted as ours is 
 proposed to be, would have firmness enough to resist 
 the Legislature unless backed by a certain part of the 
 body itself. The King of Great Britain, with all his 
 splendid attributes, would not be able to withstand the 
 unanimous and eager wishes of both Houses of Par 
 liament. To give such a prerogative would certainly 
 be obnoxious to the temper of this Country its pres 
 ent temper at least." 
 
 These are from Mr. Madison s notes. They are 
 meager enough. .- 
 
 Hamilton was an advocate of high Prerogative. He 
 professed to fear the Legislature, and charged it with 
 a tendency to encroach upon the Executive. Now 
 hear him, speaking of the Veto, in that number of 
 The Federalist which is given to this subject. " The 
 superior weight and influence of a legislative body in 
 a free government, and the hazard of the Executive in 
 a trial of strength with that body, afford a satisfactory 
 security that the negative would generally be employed 
 with great caution ; and that in its exercise there would 
 oftener be room for a charge of timidity than rashness," 
 
 " If a magistrate so powerful and so well fortified as 
 a British monarch would have scruples about the exer 
 cise of the power under consideration, how much great 
 er caution may be reasonably expected in a President 
 of the United States clothed for the short period of four 
 years with the Executive authority of a Government 
 wholly and purely Republican !" 
 
 " It is evident there would be greater danger of his 
 not using his power when necessary, than of his using 
 it too often or too much." 
 
 These were early views of the Veto Power. Is it 
 not obvious that these original defenders of the power 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 55 
 
 had but an inadequate perception of the uses to which 
 the Veto has come latterly to be applied ? The Rev 
 olutionary Presidents the men who were cotempora- 
 ry with the beginning of this Government, understood 
 and used the power as it was intended sparingly and 
 with abundance of caution. How have our latter day 
 Presidents used it ? Not sparingly and with caution, 
 as an extraordinary power : but most frequently, and 
 as a familiar and ordinary power. It has been, of late, 
 often applied to bills which were passed upon most 
 mature deliberation : it has been applied to bills which 
 presented no questions of doubtful constitutionality, 
 which threatened no invasion of Executive rights : it 
 has been made a mere instrument of Party Domination : 
 " the extreme medicine" of the Constitution to use 
 Mr. Buchanan s phrase has come to be its daily bread. 
 
 1 dwell on these matters because the Whig party 
 have been slow to quarrel with the qualified negative 
 of the President. They would not now quarrel with 
 it, if it had been exercised in conformity with the orig 
 inal design of its adoption. 
 
 In theory it was justified as a rare remedy against 
 a rare evil. It was supposed that an occasion might 
 sometimes arise in which a bill improvidently, and too 
 hastily, passed might require revision ; that new facts 
 might come to light, or be known to the President, which 
 were not known to the Legislature while the bill was 
 under consideration ; that perchance, even, in the un- 
 ruliness of some legislative orgasm the manifest rights 
 of the Executive might be assailed: these and such 
 cases as these, it was conceived, might present and 
 justify a necessity in the President s sending the bill 
 back for reconsideration by a vote of two thirds. Ab 
 solute veto was, in nowise, to be endured. The 
 abuse of this rarely-to-be-exerted power, it was believ 
 ed, was sufficiently guarded against by the right of 
 impeachment. 
 
 Short-sighted views were these, as all men must 
 confess who contemplate what the Veto has grown to 
 be in the late practice of the Executive. 
 
56 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 To judge what it has grown to be in practice, we 
 ask attention to two topics : 
 
 First, That this Government has become practically 
 and inevitably a government of political party Ascend 
 ency. 
 
 By some law of political gravitation, as yet unex 
 plored, parties invariably settle into an approximate 
 equilibrium ; so near to an actual equilibrium as to 
 leave but small preponderance on either side of the 
 scale. Such a thing as a fixed, durable majority of 
 two thirds of a House of Representatives and Senate, 
 on any party question, may be deemed so improbable 
 as to be cast out of the computation of expected events. 
 Very far short of this is the average majority of any 
 House of Representatives and Senate of our times. 
 
 I know no instance of it, except that of the Land 
 Bill and of the Specie Circular, and these, we know, 
 were not, at the time of their passage, party questions, 
 although they grew to be so afterward. Two thirds 
 of both Houses, I may say therefore, in no case of par 
 ty difference, may be expected to concur. Which be 
 ing true, the Veto of the President under our Constitu 
 tion, is, on all such questions, in effect, an Absolute 
 Veto. No submission is it of such measure for recon 
 sideration. It is the ordering back of such measure 
 to an idle ceremony of rejection the same being vir 
 tually dead before such idle ceremony is practised. 
 
 Second, That the inducements and instigations to 
 the exhibition of this Executive Prerogative will be, 
 nine cases out often, mere party inducements and in 
 stigations. A President and his party having fallen 
 into a minority in Congress, present the chief category 
 in which the Veto will be exercised. So long, there 
 fore, as the party of the President amounts to more 
 than one third of each House, he and they can use the 
 Veto to carry their measures, or prevent the majority 
 from having what they desire. This is the ordinary 
 case, indeed the only contingency in which the Veto 
 has been used since 1830, except the case of the 
 Land Bill, and of the Repeal of the Specie Circular. 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 57 
 
 Now, as it requires two thirds of the Senate to main 
 tain an impeachment, or, in other words, as one Sena 
 tor, above one third of that body, can prevent a suc 
 cessful impeachment, it is quite evident that whatso 
 ever a minority in Congress, scantily numbering more 
 than one third of each House, may counsel in regard 
 to the exercise of the Veto, that they may save the 
 President harmless in doing if impeachment should 
 follow his offence. From all which it follows that, in 
 the cases proposed, the Veto is practically absolute, 
 and altogether unchecked by any power of impeach 
 ment. 
 
 If there be two hundred members in the House, 
 standing one hundred and ten on one side of a ques 
 tion, and ninety on the other, nay, if they stand any 
 thing less than one hundred and thirty-three on the ma 
 jority side, or any thing more than sixty-six on the mi 
 nority side, then the Veto on the bill, the subject mat 
 ter of debate, is absolute. Reconsideration, in such 
 case, is a barren form : the Minority rules the Majori 
 ty by mere frustration by faction ; and the will of the 
 people, in this a professing popular, Republican gov 
 ernment, is restrained and forbidden by a faction hav 
 ing the President at its head. And for this abuse im 
 peachment is but an empty threat. 
 
 The President at the head of a faction, in so far as 
 the Veto is concerned, in so far as legislation is con 
 cerned, is king more of a king than the Monarch of 
 England or of France, since neither of these monarchs 
 dare hazard the Veto where our President makes it his 
 daily staff. 
 
 If the Veto be necessary to protect the Executive, 
 as some say, against, the usurpation of the Legislature, 
 then there is no good reason why it should not be ab 
 solute and not qualified. For if the Executive must 
 needs be protected against the Legislature, there is as 
 good cause to protect it against two thirds as against 
 one man less than two thirds. If the Legislative body 
 be inclined to intrude upon the President, that inclina 
 tion may be on one side of the House as well as the 
 
58 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 other, and the argument would be that he should be 
 armed against their combination. 
 
 If it be proper that the President should be the pow 
 er in this Government to arrest all laws he deems un 
 constitutional to which I by no means assent, but on 
 the contrary utterly repel then he should have that 
 power against the whole Congress, and not only against 
 a portion of Congress ; since his wisdom is quite as 
 clear in opposition to one as in opposition to the other. 
 If one hundred and thirty-two, out of the two hundred 
 supposed by us, say a law is constitutional, and the 
 President says nay then his nay takes effect. If one 
 hundred and thirty-three say so, his nay is nugatory : 
 the hundred and thirty-three reaffirm and the law 
 stands. If the constitutionality of laws may not rest 
 with the Judiciary, why should it rest with the one 
 hundred and thirty-third man ? If it should rest with 
 the President, why should the one hundred and thirty- 
 third man take it away from him ? These are preg 
 nant questions. 
 
 So too of his Prerogative his Executive rights. 
 If there be good reason for the Veto at all to defend 
 these rights, there is no good reason for the qualifica 
 tion. If there be good reason for the qualification, 
 there is none for the Veto. 
 
 A right in the President to send a measure, for good 
 cause shown, back to the Legislative body for recon 
 sideration, there is nothing to be said against. It is 
 no more than giving the President an opportunity to 
 make a written speech on the subject of the bill : to 
 suggest, perhaps, new facts ; throw out new lights ; to 
 remonstrate, it may be ; at the least, to give the na 
 tion his views on matters of moment to the public good. 
 This is but a respectful deference to the station of the 
 Chief Magistrate, salutary, and, for all purposes of de 
 fence of his prerogative, of correction of improvident 
 legislation, of announcement of constitutional opinion, 
 as effective and remedial as that harsh negative which 
 but provokes unwholesome revolt in the public feel 
 ing and leads to discord : more effective and reme- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 59 
 
 dial than this harsh negative, because temperate per 
 suasion from the Chief Magistrate is, in all countries, 
 worth more than compulsion on the opinions of the 
 people. 
 
 Reconsideration, sought in this way, ought to be or 
 dinary legislative reconsideration ; as in all other cases 
 where bills are deliberated upon a second time, with 
 this addition only, as has been proposed, That when 
 the President sends the bill back it should require a 
 majority of the whole body counting absent members 
 and places vacant to pass it again. The President s 
 objection should be deemed of sufficient weight to en- 
 tide it to stand, unless overruled by a majority of Con 
 gress. 
 
 So far we may safely go. Farther we may not 
 safely go, as our most modern Congressional history 
 has abundantly shown us. 
 
 Manifestly, such arguments as these later times have 
 afforded us, and which I have unfolded here, did not 
 occur to the authors of the Constitution when they dis 
 coursed upon the innocence of the Veto. These did 
 not occur, because in those days it was not imagined 
 that the President of the United States would ever de 
 grade his station by uniting with a faction to overthrow 
 a law. 
 
 Yet such has experience shown the Veto to be. It 
 has been applied by General Jackson to sundry Inter 
 nal Improvement bills : it has been applied to the 
 Bank Bill, to the Harbour Bill, the Light House Bill, 
 and to others. Its effect has been anticipated by a 
 Removal of the Deposites, in the face of a resolution 
 of Congress adverse to the removal, and a significant 
 threat to negative any bill for their restoration. It has 
 been superseded and its results produced, in the case 
 of the Land Bill and the Repeal of the famous Specie 
 Circular, by suffering the adjournment to occur with 
 out the Presidential signature. 
 
 In these cases of the Veto it was not pretended that 
 the legislation was hasty or indeliberate : that new 
 facts had come to the knowledge of the President; 
 
60 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 that any encroachment was meditated upon the rights 
 of the Executive. They were naked party questions, 
 the President and his party being in the minority in 
 both Houses. They were not sent back to Congress 
 in any honest hope of a reconsideration. It was known 
 they could have no reconsideration and passage by a 
 majority of two thirds, the President s party being 
 more than one third. They were sent back simply to 
 be rejected by the minority ; this being the only mode 
 by which a President and the minority could disap 
 point the adverse majority in their measures. Not 
 even did this avail to the Land Bill and the Repeal of 
 the Specie Circular. For on these, more than two 
 thirds had voted affirmatively. If the President had 
 truly desired reconsideration of these, as the Constitu 
 tion presumes, he could have been gratified. But such 
 reconsideration, he knew, would have resulted in the 
 passage of the bills. By no means wishing this, and 
 the Constitution providing no veto which should be ef 
 fectual, in such case, to defeat the will of the majority, 
 the President had recourse to a new device to that end, 
 and found it in laying up the bills in his desk until af 
 ter the adjournment that adjournment occurring with 
 in the ten days allowed him by the Constitution. In 
 the common phrase, he pocketed these bills which he 
 could not veto, and so triumphed again over the Leg 
 islature. 
 
 These acts, perpetrated by a man of less popularity 
 than General Jackson, might, and most probably would, 
 have led to serious consequences. In his case they 
 led to bonfires, n.ew glorifications, fresh acts of worship, 
 fresh excitements of the obsequious spirit of Vassal- 
 ship throughout the whole host of men who sometimes 
 call themselves Democrats, and, both since and before 
 this memorable piece of servility, have been accus 
 tomed to boast of their Republican virtue and their 
 love of Constitutional Liberty. 
 
 Truly, no true Whig was found among these glorifi- 
 ers ! It would have crimsoned his honest brow and 
 shamed his honest heart if, on any accidental impulse, 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 61 
 
 he could have been seen congregating with others 
 around a bonfire kindled to illustrate the glory of any 
 man who had thus desecrated the principles of 1776. 
 Rather would such flagrant usurpation call back to his 
 memory the sacred resistance of his ancestors, and ad 
 monish him to hasten into the ranks of the friends of 
 free government which were drawing into array every 
 where within the circumference of the Union. 
 
 It is now found out by those who dare not censure 
 aught that Andrew Jackson has ever done, that this 
 perversion of a power which the Constitution, though 
 granting it in the letter, never designed to grant in the 
 spirit in which it has been practiced, is a great Con 
 servative Element in Free Government. 
 An intrepid piece of flattery, this ! 
 To guard Republican institutions we must create a 
 Party Despot ! To conserve Democracy we must arm 
 a self-willed Autocrat with power to silence the only 
 democratic portion of the Government, the Legisla 
 tive Power! To show that the people are capable of 
 self-government, we provide them a master who shall 
 say " This I consent you may do : - that, I do not 
 consent !" To show what wisdom there is in popular 
 suffrage, we disallow its organs to speak, unless they 
 have first found out what is palatable to the Chief ! 
 
 Verily, as we have said before, " the Democracy" 
 have been coupled like hounds, and the leash is held 
 in the hands of a master ! 
 
 A Conservative Element ! The Veto leaves the 
 law as it was before, say the flatterers of him who so 
 magisterially used the power. It only prevents change. 
 It conserves the old order of things. 
 
 Truly ! Is it so 1 If the yearly appropriation bill 
 is vetoed, what is conserved ? The old order of things ? 
 No. The objects to be preserved by the appropriation 
 perish. The navy crumbles. The army is disband 
 ed. The fortifications fall down. The Courts are 
 closed. 
 
 A law abolishing a War establishment is Vetoed. 
 In such case, what is conserved ? An army that, per- 
 
 F 
 
62 DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 chance, may be ready and willing to help that same 
 Veto to a little more vitality. 
 
 A Tariff law expires by limitation, as happened in 
 1842 : the bill to revive it is negatived. What does 
 Conservative Element in this strait ? Leaves In 
 dustry to perish ; leaves Revenue in decay ; leaves 
 Debt to grow apace ; leaves Commerce, leaves Agri 
 culture, leaves Manufactures in ruins. A rare Con 
 servative Element ! How long shall charlatans and 
 hypocrites abuse the generous ear and confiding heart 
 of our America ! 
 
 This same Veto power, I affirm, has grown to be a 
 great nuisance. To it, we may trace, distinctly enough, 
 some very conspicuous griefs. To the Veto of the 
 Bank, that revelry of State banking which made the 
 promises of paper money thick " as notes in the sun 
 beam" " false as dicers oaths :" to the frustration of 
 the Land Bill by laying it by, and by the Veto of it af 
 terward, we trace the surplus revenue, the distribution 
 of that surplus, the gorging of all the channels of trade 
 with plethora of speculation, the universal downfall of 
 credit. 
 
 Somewhat significant these mischiefs on this coun 
 try of ours ! especially being come of such parentage 
 as that Conservative Element, which certain politicians 
 of these days laud so much. 
 
 This Veto has arisen from one man s Egotism. I 
 hold no man s Egotism to be Conservative in this Gov 
 ernment. In the name of rational, Republican Liber 
 ty, let us have done with all Egotism of Presidents ! 
 
 The One Man Power has crept forth a bastard 
 changeling from the cradle of the Constitution. Scotch 
 it as a snake. 
 
 How naturally party madness sanctifies error ! This 
 same Veto, being a fiery whip to chastise the Democ 
 racy, has grown to be a symbol and a badge of fealty 
 with that same now craven, crest-fallen, once proud 
 and indomitable Democracy. No P. P. " clerk of this 
 Parish," accustomed to swell his puny dimensions in 
 presence of his choristers, being, by some freak of 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 63 
 
 fortune, lifted up into a fussy, frothy Mayor of a Cor 
 poration, but must play off upon his Board of Alder 
 men his little Veto, aping the Great Veto, and must 
 show up the Conservative Element of his yeasty wis 
 dom, as more orthodox and Dogberryish, more " sensi 
 ble and desertless," than the United Wisdom of their 
 Worships in conclave. " This Pump at the corner 
 shall not have a new sucker. By virtue of Conserv 
 ative Element I forbid it. Let the said Pump hence 
 forth be conserved suckerless !" 
 
 Hero of New-Orleans, into what dismal depth of 
 sublime inanity hast thou not plunged us ! Our Pump 
 at the corner, out of thy Egotism, goes without a suck 
 er ! Our Mayor, tickled by the fancy of thy Preroga 
 tive, will not sign the bill. Amazing Mayor, how cun 
 ningly hast thou made the cup of thy popularity to 
 overflow ! 
 
 Have the Councils the courage to take this matter in 
 hand, and save us our Pump and Charter ? By no 
 means, if they be of the true stripe. Your good Dem 
 ocrat of these days bows to Conservative Element. He 
 affirms that Dogberry was set up to save the people 
 against themselves. A pill to prevent surfeit of Free 
 dom. 
 
 While such whimsies are in the brains of the De 
 mocracy, the reform will cost us a struggle. But we 
 will have it. 
 
 x. 
 
 CONTEST OF 1840. 
 
 WHATEVER may be said about the contest of 1840, 
 no one believes that it was not conducted by the 
 Whigs upon the advocacy of great principles, in 
 teresting both to the organization and policy of 
 
64 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 / this Government. That man has great hardihood 
 in his contempt for the sentiment of the people, 
 and great contempt for the people themselves who, 
 after the experiences of 1840, affirms that the mul 
 titudes of American citizens, whose votes made 
 that famous majority of 1840, were stirred up to 
 this great impulse by no estimate of patriotic duty, 
 but only by the noise and pageantry of music and 
 processions. Republican government has a slen 
 der guarantee in the minds of the men who think 
 and affirm thus. Popular wisdom is a paltry mat 
 ter in their reckoning ! There are men in this Re 
 public, and always have been men in it, who are 
 accustomed so to deride the manifested opinion of 
 the majority to deride it whenever manifested 
 against their own computations of personal or par 
 ty advantage : but these men are, by no means, 
 Democrats in truth, whatever they may be in pro 
 fession : by no means friends of free Representa 
 tive Government. They contemn the people and 
 abhor the people s impulses. Yet this was the 
 case of most of the party leaders of that party 
 which was defeated in 1840 ; was the case with 
 many clamorous followers of those leaders. Here 
 in we may see some very visible workings of the 
 leaven which leavened the administration of Gen 
 eral Jackson. These reproofs against a majority, 
 and revilings of popular judgment, are but the out- 
 bubbling of that peccant matter wherewith the dom 
 inant party of 1828 was inoculated, and with which 
 the remnant of that party is still diseased. 
 
 In the selection of the candidates of 1840 the 
 Whig party have found a great calamity and a great 
 disappointment. A calamity in the death of him 
 they chose for President ; a disappointment in him 
 they made Vice-President. 
 
 I will not say how these disasters came upon us 
 or how they might have been avoided. It is pue 
 rile to complain when the event is without remedy. 
 
 It is a difficult thing in a popular government, 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 65 
 
 the very life of which consists in free thought and 
 many opinions, to give to a great citizen, one who 
 is great for his ability, for his integrity, and great 
 for his useful service the prominency and support 
 to which he is entitled. A long life of public duty 
 makes friends ; it also makes enemies, and men 
 sometimes grow too prominent by their merits. 
 In such case it is apt to occur that the asperity of 
 opponents becomes unduly sharpened against the 
 man highest in the applause of his friends ; and 
 that asperity turns busily to the labor of detraction 
 so as greatly to influence public feeling against him. 
 This was the estimate which many made, when 
 the question of our candidates for 1840 was in agi 
 tation, to the disadvantage of the man whom nine 
 Whigs out of ten desired to see set up for the 
 Presidency. We had a man in those days whose 
 name alone was a proclamation of the whole Whig 
 creed. It is useless to ask why the Convention at 
 Harrisburo- did not nominate him. Whether there 
 
 O 
 
 was an evil eye resting on his greatness ; whether 
 some men feared the too great embitterment of the 
 adversary party against him ; whether a candidate 
 of more bland and conciliatory popularity were 
 safest in the emergency, are topics I am not called 
 on to discuss : it is enough, that for reasons, good 
 or bad, he was passed by. Many judicious men, 
 multitudes of warm-heated Whigs, regretted it. 
 One man, it is said, in the Convention, shed tears 
 over it. 
 
 General William Henry Harrison was selected. 
 A great and venerable name ! If disappointment 
 could find compensation in any alternative, here it 
 was entitled to expect it. The mild virtue and 
 stainless life of the chief; the grateful service of 
 youth, manhood, prime and old age, in camp and 
 council, lavished for his country , the benevolence 
 and genial charity of his temper j his open hand 
 and open heart ; his honest and eager love of his 
 native land 5 his prodigal and even thriftless affec- 
 
 F2 
 
66 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 tion for humanity all these made up a sum of com 
 pensation which speedily wiped away all disap 
 pointment and subdued all regret. None so for 
 ward to allay this regret as that man upon whom 
 all early expectation rested : he was the first to 
 express his content in the nomination, and to 
 pledge his faith to the contest. 
 
 And so it fell out that General Harrison was 
 made the Whig candidate of 1840, for the Presi 
 dency. 
 
 Why John Tyler, was made the candidate for 
 the Vice-Presidency, let those answer who did it! 
 
 So far as they were acquainted with him, they 
 have a heavy reckoning to make to the country. 
 So far as total ignorance of the true character of 
 the man, of his capacity, of his faith, temper, af 
 fections, of his political or personal opinions, of 
 any thing genuine belonging to him so far as ig 
 norance of all these may excuse the Whig party 
 in giving him their confidence, they may be excu 
 sed : no farther. I acknowledge, for my own part, 
 a grievous delinquency. 
 
 I suppose it may be said, with entire truth, in 
 respect to the mass of the Whigs, that, for the 
 most part, they knew very little of Mr. Tyler and 
 his opinions; that they cared less, never con 
 templating the event of his succession : that, as he 
 professed to be the friend of their friend, Mr. Clay ; 
 was anxious for his nomination, they had no 
 doubt that he was a Whig, and would do the duty 
 of a Whig whatever might betide : that as he had 
 been on the Whig ticket for the Vice-Presidency 
 once before, and came to Harrisburg as a member 
 of the Whig Convention, he thereby proclaimed 
 himself to be a Whig, and could, without dishon 
 or, be nothing else : especially that he could not 
 be a secret enemy to the Whigs and harbor an 
 undivulged purpose in his mind to betray them, if 
 ever they should trust him. 
 
 I have no better account to give of this selec- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 67 
 
 tion, deplorable, disastrous, as it has been. Would 
 to God that all record of it might be forever effa 
 ced from our annals ! 
 
 The battle of 1840 was fought and won. The 
 Whig party came into power high in hopes, frank 
 in promise, deeply in earnest to do every thing for 
 the renovation of the decayed prosperity of the 
 country. 
 
 The defeated party, in retiring from power, did 
 every thing they could to embarrass their success 
 ors. They had drained the Treasury ; they had 
 created a debt ; they left large amounts due in 
 various branches of service without provision. 
 They had exhausted all reserved funds of govern 
 ment. They saw the duties on the lowest verge 
 of the Compromise of 1833, and made no effort to 
 supply the deficiency this was certain to produce. 
 They had issued large amounts of paper money to 
 be redeemed during the year, these issues being, 
 in fact, but the renewal of old debts and they had 
 created no fund for their redemption. Trade was 
 in decay, industry Was overthrown, credit was gone. 
 " It seemed" as an eloquent member of the House 
 of Representatives said u matters having become 
 so inextricably bad, as if the party had got itself 
 beaten on purpose" 
 
 Upon this wreck of affairs the Whigs had to be 
 gin their great labor. 
 
 General Harrison summoned around him a cabi 
 net distinguished for its ability, distinguished for 
 its possession of the confidence of the Whig party. 
 The Executive, thus organized, called to their aid 
 the Legislature, who were ordered to convene at 
 the earliest moment. 
 
 One month after the installation, the Whigs were 
 struck mute by the death of the President : event 
 all unlocked for, unprovided against ; sorrowful on 
 many accounts, but most calamitous for its first 
 and greatest consequence the exaltation of him 
 whom the accidents of the Harrisburg Convention 
 
68 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 had brought upon the ticket for the Vice-Presi 
 dency. 
 
 In the universal outbreak of the national grief 
 every one seemed to wake up suddenly to the in 
 quiry, Who and what is John Tyler 1 , 
 
 He made speedy answer for himself. " You have 
 but exchanged one Whig for another." These 
 words were among his first utterances at Wash 
 ington : even at the funeral of Harrison. 
 
 The only point upon which any anxiety for Mr. 
 Tyler s Whig principles was supposed to have a 
 foundation, was upon the question of the Bank. In 
 the Senate of the United States he had made a mit 
 igated opposition to the Bank : an opposition con 
 sisting of one part scruple and three parts praise. 
 He had spoken there in terms of warm commenda 
 tion of the Bank, and especially of the beneficence 
 of its exchanges. U I should as soon complain oi 
 the ocean for furnishing facilities of intercommu 
 nication between distant nations, as to complain 
 of any other agent employed in furnishing similar 
 facilities to the exchanges of the country." A 
 strong figure! Then again "If the Constitution 
 authorized its creation, no man, with the experi 
 ence of the past, could well doubt the propriety of 
 a well-regulated and well-guarded bank." 
 
 These were opinions spoken in the Senate in 
 1834. The public were reminded of them in this 
 juncture, when men were so anxious to know what 
 would be the course of Mr. Tyler on this Whig 
 question. 
 
 In the midst of this anxious concern, the Vice- 
 President, now having come to the head of the 
 Government, put forth an address to the people. 
 It is very significant in reference to the prevailing 
 doubts. " The public interest demands that if any 
 war has existed between the Government and the 
 Currency it shall cease." " I shall promptly give 
 my sanction to any constitutional measure which, 
 originating in Congress, shall have for its object 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 69 
 
 the restoration of a sound circulating medium, so 
 essentially necessary to give confidence in all the 
 transactions of life, to secure to industry its just 
 and adequate rewards, and to re-establish the pub 
 lic prosperity. In deciding upon the adaptation 
 of any such measure to the end proposed, as well 
 as its conformity to the Constitution, I shall resort 
 to the fathers of the Great Republican School for 
 advice and instruction, to be drawn from their 
 sage views of our system of Government and the 
 light of their ever-glorious example." 
 
 He had said, in private, to several friends, that 
 his opinion on the constitutionality of a Bank had 
 undergone a change. Indeed, we may infer as 
 much as this from a letter written by him to the 
 Henrico Committee, during the Canvass of 1840. 
 " There is not in the Constitution any express grant 
 of power for such purpose, and it could never be 
 constitutional to exercise that power save in the 
 event the powers granted to Congress could not be 
 carried into effect without resorting to such an in 
 stitution." He had before admitted what we have 
 quoted from his speech in 1834 " no man, with 
 the experience of the past, could well doubt the 
 
 ariety of a well-regulated and well-guarded 
 ." It is obvious that in 1840, with these opin 
 ions, he was very near his conversion to a Bank : 
 three parts out of four, he was for it certainly. 
 
 But what did he mean by referring, in his Inau 
 gural Address, to " the Ever-Glorious Example" 
 of the Fathers of the Republican School 1 Mr. 
 Madison was conspicuous among these fathers ; 
 was one of the chief authors of the Constitution ; 
 was ever its strongest champion ; had, for a long 
 time, opposed a bank as unconstitutional ; had 
 become convinced, by the experience of a de 
 ranged currency, that a bank was " a necessary 
 and proper" instrument toward the accomplish 
 ment of the powers conferred by the Constitution; 
 acknowledged the constitutionality to be a ques- 
 
70 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 tion definitively settled by precedent; upon these 
 convictions had renounced his old objections, and 
 signed a bill for establishing such an institution. 
 
 What did Mr. Tyler mean by referring to this 
 example 1 Was it not very pregnant of meaning 1 
 He had already declared that he thought the Bank 
 useful : he had even affirmed that, with our past 
 experience, no one could doubt " the propriety" 
 of a well-regulated bank. He had thus arrived at 
 the conclusion that it was " proper" at least. His 
 only constitutional doubt rested on " the neces 
 sity." He told the Henrico Committee that the 
 power to create a bank not being " express" in the 
 Constitution, " it could never be constitutional to 
 exercise that power, save in the event" &c. Then, 
 it is clear he could conceive a case in which it 
 might be constitutional. Add to these the expres 
 sions contained in the Inaugural Address, and it is 
 quite apparent that the mind of Mr. Tyler was in 
 a state of transition at least, on this topic. Nay, 
 that he had absolutely changed, as he told several. 
 By way of breaking this change to the public and 
 of preparing old acquaintances against surprise at 
 his advocating a Bank , he made this reference to 
 " the Ever-Glorious Example." If he did not de 
 sign it to give countenance to his change, why did 
 he allude to that example at all! If he could, by 
 no means, agree to sign a bank bill, why did he 
 not then say so ! The whole Whig press through 
 out the Union, after that Inaugural Address, pro 
 claimed him as " safe" upon the Bank question; 
 the Madisonian, the Herald his peculiar organs 
 so proclaimed him. Why did he not deny it, and 
 say he was misapprehended! 
 
 This was the only Whig question upon which 
 any concern was felt in regard to Mr. Tyler s 
 opinions. Upon every thing else his most intimate 
 and confidential friends vouched for him to the 
 world. Mr. Gushing, who may speak in this rela 
 tion for Mr. Tyler, said, in a letter at the close of 
 
 i 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 71 
 
 the Extra Session, that " of thirty-one Whig meas 
 ures" the President disapproved of but one. "In 
 respect to all but one of these measures" these 
 are his words " there was perfect concord of ac 
 tion on the part of the two Houses of Congress 
 and the President. Concerning one of them, he 
 and they differed." 
 
 Indeed, in regard to the strong, characteristic 
 doctrines and measures of the Whig party, Mr. 
 Tyler may be said to have been lavish of profes 
 sion. 
 
 As to " the single term" of the Presidency, he 
 had written a letter and drunk a toast in which we 
 may find even a savor of self-glorification at be 
 ing the first to denounce the evil of a second term, 
 on the score of the danger of allowing the incum 
 bent of the Presidency to employ his power and 
 patronage to secure an election. No one was 
 more zealous for the distribution of the proceeds 
 of the public lands than Mr. Tyler. No one more 
 kindly disposed to protect the Industry of the 
 country. 
 
 Then, as to the honest and moderate use of the 
 Executive Patronage who had ever gone farther I 
 He even professed to desire that Congress should 
 impose restraints on the power of removal by the 
 President. Mark the wise humility and virtuous 
 self-denial breathed, on this point, in the Inau 
 gural. " The unrestrained power exerted by a 
 selfishly ambitious man, in order either to perpet 
 uate his authority or to hand it over to some fa 
 vorite as his successor, may lead to the employ 
 ment of all the means within his control to accom 
 plish his object. The right to remove from office, 
 while subjected to no just restraint, is inevitably 
 destined to produce a spirit of crouching servility 
 with the official corps which, in order to uphold 
 the hand that feeds them, would lead to direct and 
 active interference in the elections both state and 
 federal, thereby subjecting 1 the course of State Leg- 
 
72 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 islation to the dictation of the Chief Executive of 
 ficer, and making the will of that officer absolute 
 and supreme. I will, at a proper time, invoke the 
 action of Congress upon this subject." 
 
 Then again 
 
 " I will remove no incumbent from office who has 
 faithfully and honestly acquitted himself of the 
 duties of his office, except in such cases where 
 such officer has been guilty of an active partisan 
 ship, or by secret means, the less manly and there 
 fore the more objectionable, has given his official 
 influence to the purposes of party, thereby bring 
 ing the patronage of the government into conflict 
 with the freedom of elections. Freedom of opin 
 ion will be tolerated, the full enjoyment of the 
 right of suffrage will be maintained as the birth 
 right of every American citizen." 
 
 Breathing such sentiments as these, so full of 
 amiability and assentation so yielding in old opin 
 ions, so complaisant in all Whig doctrine, so hum 
 ble, so gracious and so wreathed in smiles, came 
 John Tyler to the accidental fortune of the Presi 
 dency of the United States. It has been charged 
 against the Whigs that they have not redeemed 
 their promises to the country. Why have they 
 not redeemed them] 
 
 That remains to be told. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS, 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 THE WHIG PARTY : 
 
 ITS DISAPPOINTMENT, ITS RETRIBUTION, ITS HOPES. 
 
 G 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE EXTRA SESSION. A BANK BILL. A SCRUPLE AND 
 
 A COMPROMISE. 
 
 WITH a bright sun breaking above the gloom of 
 Harrison s death, and gilding the hopes of all who ex 
 pected happier days through the efficacy of a Whig 
 Legislature, Congress met, on the last day of May, 
 1841, in Extra Session. 
 
 Mr. Tyler was, apparently, in the best mood to 
 gratify the anticipations of that great party who had 
 raised him to what he was, and who were sincerely 
 disposed to be his friends. 
 
 Never was there a man brought into an exalted sta 
 tion with so little effort on his part, or with an easier 
 fortune before him. His course lay over a summer 
 sea, with favoring winds to fill his sails : a prosperous 
 voyage was before him, pleasure on its track and fame 
 at the end had he but the wit to see it. 
 
 His message was auspicious : it was full of promise. 
 The Currency, he proposed to regulate by a " Fiscal 
 Agent." " Upon such an agent depends, in an emi 
 nent degree, the establishment of a currency of uni 
 form value." So far, well. This fiscal agent must 
 not be a Sub-Treasury : it must not be constituted of 
 State Banks : both of these have met " unqualified 
 condemnation" from the people. And as to a Na 
 tional Bank even although one had been chartered 
 
76 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 by a vote of both Houses, this, " a regard to truth " re 
 quires me to say " has also been condemned by the 
 popular voice." What in such case is it best to do ? 
 " To you, then, who bave come more directly from the 
 body of our common constituents, I submit the entire 
 question, as best qualified to give a full exposition of their 
 wishes and opinions. I shall be ready to concur with you 
 in the adoption of such system as you may propose, 
 reserving to myself the ultimate power of rejecting any 
 measure which may, in my view of it, conflict with 
 the Constitution, or otherwise jeopard the prosperity 
 of the country a power which I could not part with, 
 even if I would : but which I will not believe any act 
 of yours will call into requisition" 
 
 Mr. Tyler when he wrote this, knew that a Bank 
 would be one of the most prominent topics in the de 
 liberations of the Whigs at that session : as far as he 
 had control over the subject, intended it should be so : 
 recommended deliberation on that point. 
 
 Was it designed that we should gather from these 
 expressions of the Message that he would agree to no 
 Bank ? or rather on the other hand, a hope and belief 
 that such a Bank would be agreed to, as would not 
 " call into requisition" his Veto ? 
 
 Then came a hint or foreshadowing, of some sig 
 nificance in the interpretation of his wishes. It re 
 gards the Distribution of the proceeds of the Public 
 Lands : " Whether such distribution should be made, 
 directly to the States, in the proceeds of the sales, or 
 in the form of profits by virtue of the operations of any 
 Fiscal Agency, having these proceeds as its basis, should 
 such measure be contemplated by Congress, would well 
 deserve its consideration" 
 
 What did he propose should be understood by this 
 hypothetic intimation ? Clearly, I understand it as no 
 less than a suggestion of the possibility the proba 
 bility of its being found most expedient to constitute 
 a Bank in such manner as to incorporate into the capi 
 tal " the proceeds of the sales " which suggestion, in 
 fact, was afterward made by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury and advised by him. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS.- 77 
 
 Could we infer that Mr. Tyler would veto a Bank 
 on such a basis ? If not, then we may conclude he 
 deemed such a Bank not unconstitutional. If such 
 not unconstitutional, might not one also be constituted 
 without " the proceeds," which would be held equally 
 free of objection ? It is very evident he was not, at 
 this time, against every kind of a National Bank. 
 
 It would seem as if the Presidential mind had al 
 ready gone through its transition, and now rested upon 
 " The Ever-Glorious Example." 
 
 But the President, in truth, had a scheme of his 
 own. He was not only friendly to a Bank, but some 
 what covetous of the renown of being the author and 
 founder of one. We have evidence that he had several 
 schemes. He had been studying the matter. What 
 the Abbe Sieyes was said to be in the article of Con 
 stitutions, at the first dawning -of the French Revolu 
 tion, we have reason to suspect Mr. Tyler was, in the 
 article of Banks that is, a projector in this line, with 
 pigeon holes full of them, ready made. With more or 
 less certainty, we trace to him conceptions of three 
 different kinds : First, a Bank after the old fashion, as 
 regards faculties, with a somewhat whimsical abstrac 
 tion concerning the assent of States : Second, a Bank 
 stripped of power of discount and limited to exchange ; 
 and Third, a Bank of indefinite character founded on 
 the Proceeds of the Sales of the P.ublic Lands. 
 
 But very distinctly do we find him, first and in pref 
 erence to all other plans, friendly to a Bank with every 
 Money power that any Bank of the United States ever 
 possessed : as potent as any for the peculiar mischief 
 ascribed by politicians to " The Monster ;" and varying 
 from the old models mainly in the practically insignifi 
 cant feature of the location of Branches with the con 
 sent only of the States in which they were placed ; a 
 feature which Mr. Webster described as a " merely 
 theoretic difficulty attended with no practical disad 
 vantages." 
 
 Very distinctly do we find proof of this, as I propose 
 to show. 
 
 G2 
 
78 DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 I have hinted before, that the President had two 
 special organs of his opinions. One was the avowed 
 official paper of the Administration, the Madisonian. 
 This paper was conducted by an obsequious friend : it 
 was supported, in great part, by government favor : the 
 editorial matter was altogether responsive to the Pres 
 ident s suggestions ; was even inspected and revised 
 before publication, whenever it was thought necessary, 
 by the President or some of his family. 
 
 The other was a less official but not a less genuine 
 organ. It was, moreover, personal to the President 
 having little to say for his cabinet much often to say 
 against them : a back-stair confidant, and therefore 
 much more authentic on the topic of the influences 
 that belonged to that region. It told secrets where 
 there was a purpose in having such divulged. It could 
 be repudiated when a hit failed or did mischief: ac 
 knowledged, when the hit took effect. It was, in short, 
 that kind of organ which history shows us to be both 
 common and useful in the affairs of great men. This 
 organ, was found in the correspondent of the New- 
 York Herald, a familiar Scapin about the President s 
 household. He was the collector of gossip, and hab 
 erdasher of the wit of the White House ; a regular 
 frequenter of the garden and of the levees, where he 
 made notes for frivolous flatteries, and described the 
 Court Paragons, never forgetting the President him 
 self, in mawkish bombast ; and said ill-natured things 
 of such as fell not within the category of Court favor. 
 He was purveyor-general to the domestic vanities. It 
 was his vocation to pick up and sift all the current 
 glorifications of Mr. Tyler and his household, which 
 were dropped by the way side, or which were laid in 
 the path of this assiduous functionary, on purpose to 
 be picked up, by those who had some personal mo 
 tive to flatter. The zeal and ability with which he 
 performed these offices, made him a favorite, and, in. 
 various by-ways, gave him access to many State se 
 crets ; whereby he had a knack of predicting the 
 President s opinions and meditated acts, with wonder- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 79 
 
 ful precision, before they were made known through 
 any other channel. His letter was always an infalli 
 ble index to the coming message. If any one is anx 
 ious to learn what was concocted in the White House, 
 during the Extra Session, or desires to know how the 
 President lived, what were his habits, what he 
 thought, said and did, or how he t looked let him re 
 sort to the correspondence of the Herald ! 
 
 These are the two organs whose testimony I find 
 occasion, in the first place, to employ. I have other 
 witnesses graver but not more authentic. 
 
 Letter- writer Scapin, as early as April 20th, which 
 was only a fortnight after Mr. Tyler made his Inaugu 
 ral .Address not quite a fortnight and full forty days 
 before the Extra Session, blurts out very indiscreet 
 ly, we must say now a piece of intelligence regard 
 ing the Bank. It would, doubtless, have cost him his 
 place if the President had then foreseen how very 
 deep was the faith of the nation in his known abhor 
 rence of a Bank, and how shockingly ungrateful the 
 Democracy have become in refusing to trust one so 
 distinguished for this aversion. 
 
 I quote this intelligence in Scapin s own words. 
 
 " A letter has been received from Mr. Rives, in which 
 he expresses his decided approbation of the tone and 
 doctrines of President Tyler s address to the people, 
 and pledges himself, unequivocally, to the support of 
 the principles of Mr. Tyler and his administration. 
 This is regarded as decisive of the charter of a Nation 
 al Bank. Mr. Rives 1 s vote renders such a result certain. 
 The Message is to be confined to a full exposition of 
 the affairs of the nation, the situation of the Treasury, 
 the state of the currency, foreign relations, and such 
 other topics as are ordinarily discussed in papers of 
 the kind., without suggesting any specific plan or any 
 measures for the relief of the people. All this is to be 
 left to Congress. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 
 
 HAS NEARLY COMPLETED HIS PROJET FOR A BANK, but 
 
 its features have not yet transpired." 
 
 There is what was known at Washington six weeks 
 
80 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 before the meeting of Congress : namely, Mr. Ewing 
 was then preparing a Bank bill : Mr. Rives s approba 
 tion of the Inaugural was held decisive of his vote in 
 favor of the bill in the Senate. 
 
 At the opening of the Extra Session the President s 
 Message was accompanied by the Report of the Secre 
 tary of the Treasury. This paper earnestly recom 
 mended the establishment of a Bank. It adds " If 
 such an institution can be so conceived in principle 
 and guarded in its details as to remove all scruples 
 touching the question of constitutional power, and thus 
 avoid the objections which have been urged against 
 those heretofore created by Congress, it will, in the 
 opinion of the undersigned, produce the happiest re 
 sults, and confer lasting and important benefits on the 
 country." 
 
 The Bank was thus brought distinctly to the consid 
 eration of Congress both by the President and the Sec 
 retary. 
 
 The President was desirous that Congress should 
 call on the Secretary to report a plan for a bank. He 
 expressed this wish to more than one member immedi 
 ately upon the opening of the session : in fact, invited 
 the call. Mr. Wise, his confidential friend, introduced 
 a resolution to this end into the House on the 3d of 
 June. Mr. Clay did the same thing in the Senate on 
 the 7th. 
 
 On the 12th of June the Secretary, Mr. Ewing, 
 made his report, and with it a bill for the incorporation 
 of " The Fiscal Bank of the United States." 
 
 The bill is represented by the Secretary, as crea 
 ting an institution, " in the general plan and frame" of 
 which " he has endeavored to free it from the consti 
 tutional objections which have been urged against those 
 heretofore created by Congress." 
 
 This plan, accordingly, differs from the former 
 Banks in two essential characteristics, both of which, 
 it was understood, were introduced upon Mr. Tyler s 
 suggestion and in deference to his peculiar views of 
 the Constitution. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 81 
 
 First, It proposes a Bank to be incorporated in the 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 Second, It was to have the power to establish 
 Branches only with the assent of the States. 
 
 Many provisions were made to guard against the 
 abuses which were known or alleged to have crept into 
 the former banks. 
 
 In all other respects, in amount of capital, in priv 
 ilege of discount and exchange, of faculty to create pa 
 per money, of influence over the commerce and wealth 
 of the country ; in all that concerns that hideous Money- 
 Power which has frightened so many anxious patriots 
 from their propriety j in all means of doing good and 
 harm incident to a Bank ; of " monopoly of brokerage ;" 
 of making " the rich richer and the poor poorer," so 
 far as such things ever have been in past days ; in 
 brief, as regards all and every slang objection which 
 the political cant of ten years has heaped up in the 
 magazine of anti-Bank missiles, this Bank was, in 
 every essential limb and feature, the same veritable 
 monster which the oracles have said had broken down 
 public liberty and undone the nation ; the identical 
 Dragon Redivivus which our blessed St. George of the 
 Hermitage had erewhile made 
 
 " An example to all Dragons." 
 
 There it was restored ; with the same bristling crest, 
 and horrid claws and fiery eye. Differing only from 
 its former guise, in that its abode was changed to the 
 District of Columbia, and that it might not set its se 
 ductive paw upon a State without that State s consent. 
 As this Dragon was endued with some of the virtues 
 of the siren, all men know what feeble defence might 
 be found in the self-denying virtues of a sovereign 
 State. 
 
 Was this Mr. Tyler s Bank? 
 
 It came from his cabinet minister. It had been on 
 the anvil for more than six weeks. The report ac 
 companying it recognised his hint touching the Public 
 Lands. It was produced upon a call made at his sug- 
 
82 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 gestion. In its two chief characteristics Incorpora 
 tion in the District, and Assent of States it was not 
 the scheme of any member of the Cabinet ; certainly, 
 not of Mr. Ewing who prepared the bill. 
 Was it Mr. Tyler s Bank ? 
 
 If it was, what are we to say of that importunate 
 claim now made for him as the very democrat of dem 
 ocrats uncompromising strict constructionist, ultra- 
 Defender of the Anti-Bank Faith in this even out- 
 Jeffersoning Jefferson ; predestined and heroic dis 
 penser of the Veto ; whom all men knew from the fa 
 mous import of his opinions, from the tenor of his 
 whole life and conversation, must crush with his dead 
 liest veto such an enormity as a Bank, at its very birth : 
 was expected to do this was elected to do it could 
 do no other than this and preserve his reputation of 
 fidelity ? For the doing of which deed, eternal and 
 immeasurable democratic gratitude is claimed as but a 
 small return small, in comparison with this brilliant 
 service, even though it reach to the glorification of him, 
 with another term and instalment as Chief of the pe 
 culiar Anti-Bank Democracy postponing Van Buren, 
 Calhoun, Cass, Buchanan and Johnson as but milk 
 sops and carpet-knights in the war against the Mon 
 ster What are we to say of this claim ? 
 We ask, then, again, somewhat anxiously 
 Was this thing of Mr. E wing s, the President s 
 Bank? 
 
 We shall see. 
 
 Tuesday, 15th of June, I find published in the Mad- 
 isonian, the Secretary s report and bill, concerning 
 which, editorially that paper remarks, " This plan is 
 substantially the same, except in a few particulars, as 
 that shadowed forth in this paper last week. We riot 
 only have no doubt of its having the approbation of a 
 majority of the heads of Departments, as remarked by 
 a city contemporary, but we can confidently state that it 
 has, in its general features, received the approbation of 
 the President, which is the more important since his 
 concurrence is absolutely necessary to its passage." 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 83 
 
 Then again on Thursday, 24th of June. 
 
 " The Richmond Enquirer is growing exceedingly 
 impudent, and on some points recently has shown it 
 self mendacious. In his last paper the editor has 
 scribbled a long editorial in ridicule of the Treasury 
 plan of a Fiscal Agent, affecting at the same time to 
 be the organ, the adviser and the dictator of the Pres 
 ident, while he charges a want of veracity and a want 
 of dignity upon his cabinet. He even intimates that the 
 Madisonian falsifies the views of the President, and un 
 dertakes to deny that the President approves of l the 
 general features of the Treasury plan ! Was impu 
 dence and vanity the like of this ever equalled in an 
 opposition print ?" 
 
 About this time Scapin writes a letter which throws 
 some light on the matter. 
 
 June 21, he says, 
 
 " Mr. Clay s projet for a bank was read in the Sen 
 ate to-day. The important point of difference between 
 the President and Mr. Clay is in regard to the compul 
 sory establishment of branches in the States. The 
 opinion alluded to yesterday that Mr. Clay will not 
 press his peculiar views to the extent of jeoparding the 
 establishment of a Fiscal Agent is gaining ground, and 
 the impression now is that the prominent measures of 
 the party will prevail at the Extra Session." 
 
 These are a few, selected from many testimonies, 
 to the same import, furnished by the newspaper de 
 positaries of the President s confidence. 
 
 The highest testimony of all which we could give 
 upon this point, the most unquestionable in the view 
 of the nation, would be the published letters of the 
 Cabinet officers who resigned. These letters are full 
 and unequivocal, and supply the best material for his 
 tory, as the evidence of honorable and approved men. 
 But these newspaper fragments are chiefly valuable as 
 contemporary announcements by intimates of the Pres 
 ident made while matters were in progress, while 
 there was no motive to misrepresent, and before any 
 one had foreseen the disastrous conclusion. 
 
84 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 Enemies have maligned the letters of the retiring 
 Cabinet officers as being ex parte, against the Presi 
 dent. There are, however, high testimonies that are 
 not ex parte in this sense but all the stronger for be 
 ing ex parte on the other side ; zealous party friends 
 of the President. 
 
 Mr. Gushing is one of these. In his letter to his 
 constituents, .September 27th, 1841, written in defence 
 of the President, he puts the case somewhat thus : 
 There were two courses for Congress to pursue : either 
 to pass a Bank bill of their own, without consulting 
 the President, or to ask the President for a bill and 
 pass that. He argues, in effect, that if Congress had 
 done the first, and the President had vetoed their bill, 
 they could not have reasonably complained ; or if they 
 had done the second, asked for a bill and passed it, 
 they would not have found occasion to complain. 
 
 He then adds 
 
 " Congress saw fit to adopt neither of these courses, 
 that is, neither passing a bill of its own, nor accepting 
 one from the President. And hence its failure to incor 
 porate a Fiscal Bank" 
 
 Mr. Wise is another of these witnesses. He also 
 wrote a letter after the Extra Session, November 5th, 
 and published it. " Who," he asks in that letter 
 " according to all party usages, ought to have been re 
 garded as the true exponents and representatives of 
 the Whig party ? Undoubtedly its President, elected 
 by the party, and the Cabinet chosen or continued by 
 him. Their joint councils ought to have been taken 
 as the embodied will of those they represented. What 
 did they do 1 It is well understood that they had come 
 to a compromise upon the vexed question of a Fiscal 
 Agent. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Ewing 
 himself, proposed a plan which he recommended to 
 Congress as one which would conduct our finances and 
 commerce, equalize exchanges, regulate currency and 
 avoid all constitutional difficulties. This was the very 
 desideratum, if it was what he described it to be, and 
 this was emphatically by a Whig administration rec- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 85 
 
 ommendation\ from the proper department, said to be 
 acquiesced in by the President, and it was called for by 
 both Houses of Congress.- It was justly regarded as 
 the Whig measure of the jirst moment, arid would, as 
 such, have been met and treated, doubtless, by the Op 
 position or Van Buren party." 
 
 Upon this same point, highest of all, we have the 
 testimony of Mr. Webster. It was given to the world 
 in that unhappy Fanueil Hall speech of his. 
 
 " At the Special Session Mr. Ewing proposed a plan 
 for a National Bank. // received the approbation of 
 every member of the Cabinet, as the only plan which 
 would be likely to succeed, considering the opinions of 
 the individual whom we had all agreed to put in the sec 
 ond place in the Government. It was the part of wis 
 dom not to see how much of a case we could make 
 out against the President, but how we could get on as 
 well as we might, with the President. Mr. Swing s bill 
 did not allow the establishment of branches without 
 the consent of the States, I have no idea myself that 
 there is a constitutional necessity for this restriction. 
 I never had any such idea, but I could see no great 
 difference that it could make. It was merely a theo 
 retic difficulty, attended with no practical disadvanta 
 ges that I could see." 
 
 Now, here is a brief of evidence from Scapin, of 
 the Kitchen, up to Daniel Webster, all strong to the 
 same point, the paternity, namely, of what is gener 
 ally known as E wing s bill, in the President. 
 
 What is the corollary from this ? That Mr. Tyler 
 was, as late as the 12th of June, 1841, the friend and 
 advocate of a Bank of the United States. 
 
 No one imagined, at that time, that he would ever 
 deny this. It was no secret. He communicated his 
 wish to have a Bank to many members. He was 
 thought to be particularly tenacious about his Bank. 
 The Whig party so understood him and so relied upon, 
 him ; shaped their course with reference to this reli 
 ance. 
 
 Mr. E wing s report and bill were referred in the 
 H 
 
86 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 Senate to the Select Committee on the Fiscal Agent, 
 of which Mr. Clay was Chairman. That Committee 
 reported on the 21st of June. 
 
 In all essential features the bill reported to the Sen 
 ate by Mr. Clay is the same as that of the President, 
 with one exception. That exception regards the es 
 tablishment of Branches. 
 
 The Bank, in this plan, as in the other, was to be 
 situated in the District of Columbia : It was to have 
 the same capital of Thirty Millions with a provision 
 for future increase, if Congress should think it advisa 
 ble, to Fifty Millions ! 
 
 It provided for a Government subscription of Ten 
 Millions instead of the President s Six ; and it dis 
 pensed with the Fourth Instalment of the Surplus 
 Revenue, amounting to upward of Nine Millions 
 which the President s bill proposed to make part of the 
 Capital : 
 
 It allowed dividends as high as Seven per cent. : the 
 other restricted them to Six : 
 
 It gave nine paid Directors, and required a majority 
 to transact business : The Executive scheme proposed 
 seven paid directors and three a quorum for business. 
 It was somewhat more stringent in its regulations than 
 the Bill of the Executive : among other particulars in 
 these : 
 
 It forbade the appointment of any member of Con 
 gress, or of a State Legislature, or officer,.or Contractor 
 of the Federal or State Governments, as a Director in 
 the Bank or its Branches : 
 
 It forbade all discounting within the District of Co 
 lumbia, or loans, except to the Government : 
 
 It gave additional powers to facilitate free examina 
 tion of the Bank by the Secretary of the Treasury : 
 
 It added restrictions to the use, and guards against 
 the abuse, of Proxies : 
 
 It forbade the officers from borrowing money or ob 
 taining discounts from the Bank, or contracting debts 
 with it : 
 
 In these and sundry other particulars, the Senate 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 87 
 
 Bill was more guarded and restrained than the Execu 
 tive Bill. 
 
 These diversities between the two schemes mainly 
 respect the efficiency of the proposed institution : They 
 did not touch any debatable question of Constitutional 
 power. 
 
 Such a question of Constitutional power, and the 
 only one, was presented in the clause relating to the 
 establishment of branches. In all other points the 
 bills are the same in principle, and, with very little 
 variation, coincident in detail almost identical in 
 phraseology. 
 
 On this point of establishment of Branches the 
 16th Fundamental rule in each Bill the Senate plan 
 differed from that of the Executive, to the following 
 extent : 
 
 The Executive Bill authorized the corporation to 
 establish a Branch, for Discount and Deposit, in any 
 State whose Legislature should give its assent to such 
 an act; such Branch being once established, not to be 
 withdrawn without the assent of Congress : or, in 
 stead of establishing such office, the directors were 
 authorized, from time to time, to employ any individual 
 agent, or bank, with the approbation of the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, at any place, to transact the busi 
 ness of the Bank, other than for the purposes of dis 
 count. 
 
 The Senate Bill, first, made it obligatory upon the 
 Corporation to establish an office of Discount and De 
 posit, in any State in which two thousand shares 
 should have been subscribed, whenever, upon the ap 
 plication of the Legislature of such State, Congress 
 should require the same : second, the directors were 
 authorized to establish such offices in any State or 
 Territory, whenever they should think it expedient, 
 without the assent of the Legislature : third, or, in 
 stead of establishing such offices to employ an agent 
 or bank to be approved by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, at any place, to transact the business of 
 the Bank, other than for the purposes of discount. 
 
88 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 This latter clause being to the same effect as that in 
 the Executive Bill. 
 
 There is a view of the two provisions. It will be 
 seen how very narrow was the difference between Mr. 
 Tyler s proposition and Mr. Clay s : a difference, so 
 far as Constitutional power was concerned, that rested 
 upon the naked alternative, of 
 
 Branches to be established originally with the as 
 sent of the States, and that assent, once given, to be 
 irrevocable ; or Branches to be established when 
 and where found convenient, without that original as 
 sent. 
 
 The President maintained, in justification of the 
 principle inserted in his bill, that although he could 
 find power in the Constitution to establish a Bank, he 
 could find none to establish a Branch : That to get 
 this absent power, it was necessary that Congress 
 should apply to each State for a grant of it. This ar 
 gument, in deference to the President, we must call 
 u Strict Construction !" 
 
 Mr. Clay, on the other hand, held, that if the Con 
 stitution did not give the power to establish a Branch, 
 no assent of a State could give it ; and, therefore, that 
 it was unconstitutional to attempt to derive power from 
 the assent of a State. This argument we may pre 
 sume was deemed " Broad Construction !" 
 
 Mr. Tyler, the Strict Constructionist, thought an 
 unconstitutional Branch might be made Constitutional 
 by the assent of a State : 
 
 Mr. Clay, the Latitudinarian, could find no power in 
 the Constitution to ask assent as the foundation of a 
 right. 
 
 Strange livery, this poor serving man, Construction, 
 has got into! But there is the whole Question. 
 Even upon such a rock as this has our skilful Palinu- 
 rus steered his cock-boat. 
 
 Upon this logic, a division of opinion arose in Con 
 gress : not as to which of these positions was the 
 sound one. I believe there was not a man in either 
 House who honestly and sincerely held with the Presi- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 89 
 
 dent. Not one. But the question which now divided 
 Congress was Cannot the President be gratified as 
 to this crotchet of his regarding the Assent of the 
 States 1 Cannot Congress, if it finds motive to do so, 
 as a matter of expediency merely, waive and forego its 
 right to establish a branch, and ordain that that right 
 shall not be exercised except in such case as when a 
 State may express a wish for a Branch ? 
 
 Upon this point, there was a very general, perhaps 
 unanimous, concurrence of the Whig party in the af 
 firmative. Is it expedient to establish such a prece 
 dent ? May it not be used, hereafter, to the prejudice 
 of good Legislation ? On this point there was less 
 unanimity. Some members were strongly opposed. 
 Then it was suggested that the power might be 
 waived, with a protestation. I know not how many 
 suggestions were made. There was certainly great 
 solicitude to comply with the President s wish, if pos 
 sible. 
 
 The difficulty was, at last, thought to be settled by 
 a Compromise ; a Compromise to which it was re 
 ported the President had agreed. Whether he had or 
 not, I am unable to say. It was believed so, at least 5 
 and more especially, as The Madisonian broached the 
 idea and advocated a settlement, much in the terms of 
 this now brought forward. 
 
 This Compromise was sufficiently ridiculous. There 
 was great repugnance to it through the Whig ranks. 
 But it was finally agreed to, because the majority 
 thought the President wished it. Nothing but that 
 could have got it a dozen votes. 
 
 The whole controversy rested on a foundation so 
 exceedingly frivolous this crotchet of the Assent of 
 States that no new frivolity in the progress of it ex 
 cited surprise. 
 
 The Compromise was this 
 
 The Directors to have power to establish a branch 
 with the assent of the State, and, when established, not 
 to be withdrawn without the consent of Congress : 
 Provided, first, That the power to establish a Branch 
 
 H2 
 
90 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 shall be unrestrained, in respect to any State which 
 shall not, at the first Session of its Legislature, after 
 the passage of the Charter, express its Dissent ; in de 
 fect of which, Assent shall be presumed: And Provi 
 ded, second, That whenever Congress shall deem it 
 " necessary and proper" to the execution of powers 
 granted by the Constitution, to establish a Branch in 
 any State, then Congress may require the Directors 
 to establish such Branch. 
 
 This Compromise being thus arranged in conformity, 
 as it was supposed, with the President s views, it was 
 incorporated in the Bill, and the Whigs then hastened 
 to pass it, hoping that they had thereby allayed the 
 prickings of Mr. Tyler s sensitive and too prurient 
 conscience. 
 
 The Bill was not agreed to without a smile, in 
 fact, the whole affair had a dash of the comic in it. 
 
 The Whig party having got through this their First 
 Trial happily as they thought congratulated them 
 selves upon having so clear-sighted and practical an 
 Abstractionist at the head of affairs. 
 
 II. 
 
 TYLERISM. 
 
 I WILL do Mr. Tyler the justice to say that I have 
 no reason to suppose he ever gave any distinct prom 
 ise to accept the Compromise, although such a belief 
 was prevalent. His demeanor, at this time, became 
 very diplomatic. Speculations were afloat, would he 
 veto the bill, or would he sign it ? The Herald posi 
 tively announced a Veto. The Madisonian, of June 
 29th, had proposed and advocated a Compromise, as we 
 have said, of very much the same import with that 
 which was adopted: Now that the bill was passed, 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 91 
 
 it assumed another tone and rather ominously hinted 
 at a Veto. The greatest anxiety prevailed among the 
 Whigs to avoid this catastrophe. The President was 
 well aware of this anxiety, but gave no intimations of 
 what he would do. From day to day he encouraged 
 hopes quite as vividly as he excited fears. He either 
 was or seemed to be greatly agitated by the question. 
 The Bill was passed on the 6th of August ; he kept it 
 until the 16th. During this interval his house was 
 filled with visiters from the ranks of the opposition : 
 they took possession of his ear ; became his intimate 
 advisers. What advice they gave we may conjecture. 
 He Effected to complain that the Whigs kept aloof 
 from him ; and when, learning this, they hastened to 
 disabuse his mind of that impression and sought com 
 munion with him. they were not only coldly received, 
 but reproved by his intimates for their importunity. 
 
 Thinking it their duty to do every thing in their pow 
 er to avert the threatened veto, they waited upon him 
 in delegations, to apprize him of the feeling which was 
 likely to arise in the country upon this act. One dele 
 gation in particular, of great respectability the Whigs 
 representing Ohio, called upon him on Friday even 
 ing the 13th of August. They told him frankly what 
 they feared. Assured him of the earnest desire of the 
 party to preserve harmony and good will toward the 
 President : represented to him the deep concern of the 
 nation in the Bank question. He protested his own 
 intense feeling upon the subject: spoke apparently 
 with frankness of the difficulties he felt in regard to 
 certain points in the compromise section : suggested 
 an amendment which would render this section ac 
 ceptable to him : declared his entire freedom from all 
 prejudice or extrinsic influence in regard to the meas 
 ure : wept ; promised to pray for guidance and then 
 asked, by way of remonstrance, " Why did you not 
 send me E wing s bill ?" 
 
 " Would you sign that bill ?" inquired one of the 
 delegation. 
 
 " I would" was the reply. 
 
92 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 Such was the interview as described by those who 
 witnessed it. The Ohio members left his apartment 
 fully possessed with the opinion that the President 
 was sincerely desirous to have a Bank such as his 
 cabinet minister had reported. Although they had 
 reason to expect a veto of the pending bill, they be 
 lieved that all difficulty would be removed by adopting 
 the President s plan as it came from the Secretary. 
 This opinion they infused into the Whigs of Con 
 gress ; and the hopes of a favorable settlement began 
 to brigliten. 
 
 Thicte days after this interview Monday, August 
 16th Mr. Tyler sent the bill back to the Senate with 
 his Veto Message. 
 
 So far as this act signified his dissent from the Sen 
 ate bill, it surprised nobody. The recent reports, es 
 pecially that from the Ohio delegation, had prepared 
 Congress to expect it. But the substance of the Mes 
 sage, and the grounds upon which it placed the Veto, 
 greatly surprised everybody excepting those only 
 who were in the secret. 
 
 The Message presents four objections to the Bill. 
 
 First, That it is an attempt to create a Bank to op 
 erate per se over the Union, arid therefore unconsti 
 tutional. 
 
 Second, That it is a Bank of Discount, and there 
 fore unconstitutional.* 
 
 Third, That it was not a Bank exclusively confined 
 to the power of dealing in Exchanges, which would 
 be constitutional and eminently useful, if conducted on 
 the plan of the Exchange operations of the old Bank.f 
 
 * " I have not been able to satisfy myself that the establishment by 
 this Government of a Bank of Discount, in the ordinary acceptation 
 of that term, was a necessary means, or one demanded by propriety, 
 to execute those powers. What can the local discounts of the Bank 
 have to do with the collecting, safe-keeping and disbursing of the 
 Revenue ?" Veto Message. 
 
 f " For several years after the establishment of that institution 
 (the old Bank) it dealt almost exclusively in local discounts ; and, du 
 ring that period, the country was, for the most part, disappointed in 
 the consequences anticipated from its incorporation." " It had, up to 
 that period, dealt to but a very small extent in Exchanges either for 
 eign or domestic, and as late as 1823 its operations in that line 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 93 
 
 Fourth, That the Assent of States toward estab 
 lishing Branches was not sufficiently secured. 
 
 The first three of these objections apply as forcibly 
 to the President s own bill as to that from the Senate. 
 
 If the latter is a bill to operate per se, so was the 
 former, that is, if there be any intelligible meaning 
 in these words, which I by no means assert, for I have 
 never seen any man who could define exactly what 
 the President meant by a Bank to operate per se. But 
 whatever hidden significance there may be in this mys 
 tical phrase, we may assume that it applies as much to 
 one scheme as to the other. 
 
 The President s bank was more distinctly a Bank of 
 Local discount than the Senate Bank. For the latter 
 absolutely forbade discounting in the District, which 
 the other allowed. The discount power was as large 
 in the President s plan as in the old Bank. 
 
 Then as to dealing in Exchange, Mr. Tyler s plan 
 encouraged it no more than the other, but left this fac 
 ulty pretty much where it was in the former Charter. 
 
 The Fourth objection is peculiar to the Senate Bill. 
 Yet here the difference hangs by a cobweb. 
 
 Mr. Tyler had agreed, by the terms of his own bill, 
 that a State which once consented to a branch, should 
 not have power to revoke that consent. He objects to 
 the compromise because it raises an implied assent 
 when a State does not dissent at the first meeting of 
 
 amounted to a little more than seven millions per annum. A very 
 rapid augmentation soon after occurred, and in 1833 its dealings in 
 the Exchanges amounted to upward of one hundred millions, inclu 
 ding the sales of its own draughts. The currency of the country be 
 came sound, and the negotiations in the Exchanges were carried on 
 at the lowest possible rates. The circulation was increased to more 
 than $22,000,000, and the notes of the Bank were regarded as equal 
 to specie all over the country : thus showing, almost conclusively, 
 that it was the capacity to deal in Exchanges and not in local discounts 
 which furnished these facilities and advantages. It may be remarked, 
 too, that, notwithstanding the immense transactions of the Bank in 
 the purchase of Exchange, the losses sustained were merely nominal, 
 while in the line of discounts the suspended debt was enormous and 
 proved most disastrous to the Bank and the Country. Its power of 
 Local Discount, in fact, proved to be a fruitful source of favoritism 
 and corruption, alike destructive of the public morals and the general 
 weal" Veto Message. 
 
94 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 its Legislature after the passage of the Charter ; upon 
 which, he argues that this inference of assent might 
 in some cases be contrary to the known fact or avowed 
 wish of the State. Well ; it is standing on a small 
 scruple when we place the constitutional power of 
 Congress on such an abstraction as discriminates be 
 tween a power to establish a Branch in a State with 
 out asking consent, and a power to continue a Branch 
 after the State desires its removal. 
 
 But I have no wish to argue points or chop logic 
 with a President of the United States ; and less with 
 Mr. Tyler than with any President that ever lived. 
 
 I recount these proceedings only to show how com 
 pletely this Message bewildered the Whig party. It 
 came like a snow-storm in summer. After all that the 
 President had said to the Ohio members, and to sundry 
 others ; after the opening Message ; after the Madi- 
 sonian and the Herald ; after the report and commend 
 ation of E wing s bill; after all these, it seems he 
 could not go for discounts ! 
 
 The Whig members, upon hearing the result of the 
 Ohio delegation conference, had taken heart and part 
 ly resolved, in order to conciliate and to avoid all future 
 difference, to report the Treasury bill and pass it. In- 
 perfect good faith and honesty of purpose this idea was 
 entertained by the great majority of the Whigs. But 
 here was the Message giving a flat repulse to any hope 
 from that proceeding. 
 
 In the midst of these perplexities and doubts a most 
 strange fact comes to light, and with it another ray of 
 hope. 
 
 A member of the Ohio delegation who had visited 
 the President on Friday the 13th, had occasion to visit 
 him again on Monday the 16th just after the Veto 
 Message had been despatched to the Capitol. 
 
 The President said to him, " I am glad to meet you 
 again. 1 wanted to see one of your delegation. When, 
 on Friday evening, I told you I would sign E wing s 
 bill, if it were sent to me, I HAD NOT READ IT. I wish 
 to recall what I said. I could not sign that. If you 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 95 
 
 will examine the Message I have sent to-day, you will 
 find shadowed forth a much better bank there, one 
 
 THAT HAS BEEN LONG ENDEARED TO ME." 
 
 I do not pretend to give the very words, except in 
 the two remarkable declarations printed in capitals : I 
 give the substance and words both as reported, in no 
 unfriendly spirit to the President, immediately after the 
 event, reported in a friendly spirit rather, that farther 
 concession for the sake of harmony might be made. 
 
 The fact that Mr. Tyler had not read Mr. E wing s 
 bill, was a new thunder-stroke in the atmosphere of the 
 Capitol. 
 
 That he did not know that that bill embraced a pow 
 er of Local Discount ! This, after all that had hap 
 pened ! It had been in preparation ever since the 20th 
 of April. It had been called for at the request of the 
 President. It had been reported and officially printed 
 in the Documents of Congress and in every newspa 
 per over the land, for upward of two months. The 
 subject had been in debate nearly all that time. It had 
 been the topic of deliberation, with a view to compro 
 mise, for the last month. The compromise principle was 
 submitted as a conciliatory proposition between this 
 bill and that of the Senate. " This bill was the Pres 
 ident s bill " said Mr. Gushing. " The President and 
 his Cabinet had adopted it as a compromise of the vex 
 ed question," said Mr. Wise. " It received the ap 
 probation of every member of the Cabinet," said Mr. 
 Webster. And yet Mr. Tyler, the observed of all ob 
 servers, whose interest in this bill and the questions 
 it presented was deeper than that of any man in Amer 
 ica he had not read it ! 
 
 The Whigs, of course, heard this with a lively esti 
 mate both of the sincerity and ability of him whom they 
 had set up to rule over this nation, and again congratu 
 lated themselves upon the fellowship of so wise and 
 vigilant a statesman. 
 
 A hope yet remained. He had "shadowed out" a 
 plan in his Message : a plan " long-endeared to him." 
 - What was this ? The Message was examined, and 
 
96 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 it occurred at once to every one, upon reading his com 
 mendation of the Exchange operations of the Old Bank, 
 that the plan shadowed forth in that document the 
 " long-endeared" plan was a bank to be constructed 
 with reference to such dealing in Exchanges as were 
 described to be so beneficial to the Country in the Old 
 Bank, and which should be disabled from dealing in 
 local discounts. 
 
 To make sure of the President s concurrence in this 
 matter, two gentlemen of the highest standing in Con 
 gress, Mr. Berrien of the Senate and Mr. Sergeant 
 of the House, were deputed by the Whigs to ascer 
 tain from him precisely what kind of a bill he would 
 feel himself authorized to approve. 
 
 They executed their commission with great fidelity : 
 had an interview with the President ; learned from him 
 that he was in favour of a fiscal agent divested of the 
 discounting power and limited to dealing in bills of 
 Exchange other than those drawn by a citizen of one 
 State upon another citizen of the same State. A bill 
 was prepared in conformity with these suggestions. It 
 was submitted to Mr. Webster and by him to the Pres 
 ident : was approved, sent to the House of Represent 
 atives : reported there and passed.* 
 
 * This whole incident is so singular that it is best to give the ac 
 count of it furnished by the actors themselves. 
 
 Mr. Berrien and Mr. Sergeant being called upon to make a state 
 ment on this subject, the following papers were furnished. They 
 were published in the National Intelligencer on the 7th June, 1842. 
 
 " When the bill for the establishment of a fiscal agent, which had 
 been reported by Mr. Clay, had been returned with the Veto of the 
 President, I was requested to unite with Mr. Sergeant in preparing 
 and reporting a bill to establish a Bank on the basis of tbe projet sub 
 mitted to the Senate by Mr. Ewing, or such other bill as we believed 
 could become a law. The alternative authority was given expressly 
 with a view to enable us to ascertain, with more precision than was 
 found in the Veto Message, in what particular form the President 
 would feel authorized to approve such a bill ; and the whole power 
 was conferred and received in a spirit of conciliation to the Execu 
 tive, and from an earnest desire on the part of the majority in Con 
 gress to co-operate with the President in the adoption of some fiscal 
 agent which should meet the wishes and the wants of the Country. 
 Mr. Sergeant and 1 waited on the President, and, at my request, Mr. 
 W. C. Dawson accompanied us. 
 
 * It is not proposed to detail the particulars of the conversation at 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 97 
 
 When this measure was first proposed, and before it 
 was passed in the House, the President expressed 
 
 this interview, unless it shall be desired by some one who has the 
 authority of the President for asking it. It suffices to state the re 
 sult. The President, referring to his Veto Message, expressed him 
 self in favor of a fiscal agent divested of the discounting power, and 
 limited to dealing in bills of Exchange other than those drawn by one 
 citizen of a State upon another citizen of the same State. He de 
 clared his determination to confer with his cabinet on the question, 
 whether the assent of the States ought to be required in the estab 
 lishment of the agencies to be employed by the Corporation, and also- 
 as to the propriety of holding with us that informal communication,, 
 promising to inform us of the result by a note to be sent in the course 
 of the day. In the course of the same day Mr. Webster came to the 
 Capitol, with instructions, as he stated, to communicate to me ver 
 bally the determination of the President, he (the President) believing 
 that that mode of communication would be equally acceptable with 
 the written one that had been promised. He proceeded to state that 
 the President would approve a bill for the establishment of a fiscal 
 agency limited to dealing in foreign bills of Exchange. And to the 
 question whether he would require that the assent of the States 
 should be obtained for the establishment of the agencies to be em 
 ployed by the Corporation, he answered that he would not. He sug 
 gested the expediency of changing the name of the Corporation, which 
 was acquiesced in : and by an arrangement then made with Mr. Web 
 ster, 1 received Mr. Ewing and Mr. Sergeant at my lodgings at five 
 o clock of the same afternoon. The details of the bill, subsequently 
 introduced by Mr. Sergeant, were then and there agreed upon, in con 
 formity with the views of the President, as communicated to me by 
 Mr. Webster and repeated by Mr. Ewing : and in reply to the ques 
 tion also proposed to Mr. Ewing, whether the President would re 
 quire the assent of the States to the establishment of the agencies, 
 he, Mr. Ewing, likewise replied in the negative. The sketch thus 
 arranged was committed to Mr. Sergeant, who prepared from it the 
 bill which he subsequently introduced in the House of Representa 
 tives, a copy of which was, as I understood from Mr. Sergeant, before 
 introducing it, sent to Mr. Webster to be by him submitted to the 
 President. This was the same bill which subsequently passed both 
 Houses of Congress, and which was returned by the President with 
 his second Veto. 
 
 "J. MACPHERSON BERRIEN." 
 
 Memorandum by Mr. Sergeant. 
 
 " In compliance with a request to testify what I know of the mat 
 ter embraced in the above statement by Judge Berrien, I have care 
 fully examined the same and concur with him in every part of it, ex 
 cepting only that which details the conversation he had with Mr. 
 "Webster. The rest is personally known to me ; but not having been 
 present at the interview between Judge Berrien and Mr. Webster, I 
 cannot speak of it from any knowledge of my own. I well remem 
 ber, however, that Judge Berrien told me of what had passed, very 
 soon after he had seen Mr. Webster (I think on the same day) in sub 
 stance as he had reduced it to writing : so that I never had a doubt,. 
 
98 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 great satisfaction at so happy an arrangement, and is 
 said to have declared to a member of the House, in the 
 most earnest and emphatic manner, that the passage 
 of the bill, which, he added, ought to be accomplished 
 without delay would lay him under the greatest obli 
 gations. 
 
 The interview of Messrs. Berrien and Sergeant 
 with the President was on the 18th of August. The 
 g.ill was prepared on the 19th and submitted to the 
 President and approved by him. It was then returned 
 to Mr. Sergeant, who, on Friday the 20th, introduced 
 it into the House as an amendment to a bill then pend 
 ing in Committee of the Whole. On Monday the 23d, 
 at 4 o clock, it was taken out of committee and passed, 
 without the alteration of a word from the original re 
 port, by a vote of 125 to 94. 
 
 Every one now supposed all difficulties in regard to 
 the Fiscal Agency question were at an end. The 
 bill was passed in the Senate, without amendment, on 
 Friday the 3d of September. 
 
 In six days afterward Thursday the 9th it was 
 returned to the House of Representatives with a Veto ! 
 This bill, the " long-endeared" progeny of the Pres 
 ident s own fancy, met its end from the President s 
 own veto ! 
 
 The Message which accompanied the return of the 
 bill is altogether the most extraordinary paper that ever 
 
 and have not, of its correctness. This conviction is confirmed by 
 -conversations between Mr. Webster and myself, which took place af 
 ter the meeting with Mr. Ewing referred to by Judge Berrien, and 
 before I moved the proposed bill in the House of Representatives. 
 These conversations were brief, but they were by appointment and 
 ;not casual ; were earnest and to the point, so that I do not think 
 there was any error in my understanding of them at the time, nor in 
 my recollection since. 
 
 " I desire farther to say, as I can do with unhesitating confidence, 
 that my sole object in the whole proceeding, and, I believe, the object 
 generally of those who took part in it, was, by a candid ascertainment 
 -and comparison of individual views and mutual explanations, fairly 
 obtained in perfect good faith, to endeavor to conciliate opinion and 
 -agree upon a measure which could become a law and meet the public 
 exigency. So far as I know or believe, there was no other purpose 
 whatever. JOHN SERGEANT. 
 
 " Philadelphia. Nov. 2. 1841." 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 99 
 
 came from an Executive of this nation. It repeats 
 again and again the jargon of a Bank to operate per se. 
 He cannot go for a Bank to operate per se. He said 
 so in his former Veto : this is a Bank to operate per 
 se Ergo, he cannot go for it. Then comes a dash 
 of rigmarole about " the moral and religious obligations 
 of Conscience and the Constitution," the sanctity of 
 his oath, and such like. Then a descant on the " great 
 conservative principle" of the Veto, " without the exer 
 cise of which, on important occasions, a mere repre 
 sentative majority might urge the government in its leg 
 islation beyond the limits fixed by its framers" which 
 freak of a mere representative majority, he, Mr. Tyler, 
 will, by no means, permit. He must be rather harsh 
 in this matter "or commit an act of gross moral turpi 
 tude" His duty is " to guard the fundamental will of 
 the people themselves from infraction by a majority in 
 Congress" 
 
 Then, what sort of a corporation is this ? It is to 
 operate per se. It is National, although it is to be es 
 tablished in the District. You may see it is national, 
 because it has to perform certain duties for the Gov 
 ernment. He is not the man to be deceived by such 
 a cunning evasion as incorporating it in the District ! 
 Then, decidedly it operates per se over the Union: 
 that can by no means be tolerated. Even if it were a 
 District Bank, can you give a District Bank general 
 or national powers ? " Who can indulge the idea that 
 this Government can rightfully, by making a State 
 Bank its fiscal agent, invest it with the absolute and 
 unqualified powers conferred by this bill ?" 
 
 And now, as to these bills of Exchange what are 
 they? They may be unlimited as to time they may 
 be renewable they may be made to answer the pur 
 poses of mere accommodation. In fact this thing of Ex 
 change is no better than local discounts : local dis 
 counts in disguise ! I cannot go for any Exchange 
 which takes off anything from the amount of the bill. 
 That s discount, and discount is unconstitutional my 
 utter abomination : Talk not to me of discounts ! As 
 
100 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS, 
 
 to forbidding persons residing in the same State from 
 drawing bills on each other, which you have put into 
 this charter, what s the value of it as long as bills may 
 be drawn in Philadelphia on Cambden, Cincinnati on 
 Newport ? Another objection ; there is no limit set 
 to the rate of Exchange. And then again, this thing 
 which you pretend to call a National Bank, might ac 
 tually grow so powerful as to be able even to control 
 the State Banks, which " would either have to continue 
 with their doors closed, or exist at the mercy of this 
 National Monopoly of Brokerage !" There is the clo 
 ven foot of the " Old Monster" as bad as ever I And 
 again, worse than all, being determined to set my 
 face against that unconstitutional enormity of local dis 
 count I remark, " That while the District of Colum 
 bia is made the seat of the principal Bank, its citizens 
 are excluded from ail participation in any benefit it 
 might afford, by a positive prohibition on the Bank from 
 all discounting within the District" A doubly monstrous 
 monster ! 
 
 All this parade of objurgation winds up dolefully 
 with a long-drawn sigh for " the anxious solicitude" he 
 feels " to meet the wishes of Congress in the adoption 
 of a Fiscal Agent ;" a regret in behalf of his unsatis 
 fied conscience ; and a whining remonstrance, and 
 prayer for farther time to collect his thoughts, which 
 have been, ever since " the death of my lamented pred 
 ecessor," so " wholly occupied in an anxious attempt 
 to conform my action to the Legislative will." Con 
 gress has surely had glory enough without setting this 
 chaplet upon its brow ! s The two Houses have dis 
 tinguished themselves by the performance of an im- 
 mcnse mass oflabor^ and have passed many laws which, 
 I trust, will prove highly beneficial to the interests of 
 the country, and fully answer its just expectations. It 
 has been my good fortune and pleasure to concur with 
 them in all measures except this. And why should our 
 difference on this alone, be pushed to extremes ?" 
 
 With such " skimble-skamble stuff" as this, did he 
 seek to cover his desertion of his post as a Whig, and 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 101 
 
 to protect his march into the camp of the enemy : to 
 hide his conscious shame from the multitude who were 
 standing by as witnesses to his defection. 
 
 He, himself the author of that original idea of a 
 Bank in the District intrusted with the national duty 
 of a Fiscal Agent ; he, the author of the Bank of Lo 
 cal Discount; he, the author of this Bank of Ex 
 change, with all its provisions as it stood, originator, 
 supervisor and approver of this identical scheme, un 
 changed in letter or syllable as it came from his hand 
 pours forth such wretched driveling before the whole 
 American people : so coolly abandoning what he had 
 professed and promised ; so deliberately taking back 
 all that he had so ostentatiously put forward ; with 
 such pitiful appeal for commiseration forsaking his 
 pledge ; with such affected martyr-meekness violating 
 his faith ! That he could write such a Message send 
 it to the Legislative Hall where American citizens 
 were congregated give it to the world of the Ameri 
 can people and hope to be believed forgiven ! 
 
 III. 
 
 PROGRAMME OF THE TWELFTH OF JUNE. A SHUTTLE 
 COCK. 
 
 WHAT was the real secret of these vetoes 1 Was 
 it conscience 1 Was it political fidelity 1 Was it 
 deference to the just expectations of the people I 
 
 Mr. Gushing in his letter to his constituents, 
 heretofore quoted, said it was conscience politi 
 cal fidelity consistency of principle. " He con 
 scientiously disapproved those bills" says Mr. 
 Gushing : " in what he has done, he has but acted 
 in accordance with the long-avowed, well-known, 
 and persevering opinions of his whole life." That 
 
 12 
 
102 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS, 
 
 is Mr. Cushing s apology. What a Jack-a-Lantern 
 tramp this gentleman has had, in order to keep pace 
 with the Presidents rambles! Hear him, in that 
 same letter. a It was known generally, and it was 
 known particularly to those members of Congress 
 who, by their experience and political position, 
 had the best opportunity and the greatest induce 
 ments to obtain a clear understanding of the facts 
 in this respect, that .the President of the United 
 States had strong and fixed convictions concerning 
 a National Bank :" Here manifestly Mr. Gushing 
 plunges into his first quagmire: Strong and fixed 
 convictions ! " that it was his anxious wish, so 
 far as his conscientious opinions would permit, to 
 conform his action in this matter to the wishes of 
 Congress" most obviously another quagmire : 
 Congress was seeking to conform to his wish : 
 thought they had ascertained it from himself: had 
 his own Presidential word for it : " that, accord 
 ingly, he had reflected much and counseled with 
 his constitutional advisers on the subject, and that 
 among other conclusions, to which he arrived, was 
 this Either no Discounts, or, if discounts, then 
 assent of States. The President never lost sight 
 of the fundamental idea originally in his mind , 
 either no discounts, or if discounts, assent of 
 States." 
 
 There is Mr. Cushing s solution most logically 
 put. The Jack a Lantern has left him a full fath 
 om deep in the fen. 
 
 Does it solve the riddle of Mr. Tyler s vagaries, 
 in this Bank matter, to throw it into such a dash 
 ing syllogism 1 
 
 Mark these conclusions: 
 
 The President s " strong and fixed convictions," 
 " his long-avowed, well-known, persevering and 
 conscientious opinions" were, 
 
 First, That it is constitutional and expedient to 
 establish a Bank in the District of Columbia, with 
 all the faculty necessary to a Government Bank. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 103 
 
 Second, That it is constitutional and proper to 
 make this a Bank of discount, provided the assent 
 of States be required for the establishment of the 
 Branches : and 
 
 Third, That if that assent be not required, then 
 it is constitutional and proper to establish a Bank 
 to deal in Exchange without a power of Local Dis 
 count. 
 
 These are Mr. Tyler s opinions respecting a 
 Bank, as vouched for by his confidential friend and 
 champion, Mr. Gushing. Possibly enough, at one 
 instant, they were so. Before his first Veto they 
 were broader still. After his first Veto they were 
 narrowed to this. After his second Veto, what 
 were his opinions 1 Let any man read that Veto 
 Message and say if Mr. Tyler on the 9th of Sep 
 tember was in favor of a Bank in the District ; 
 was in favor of a Bank of Discount ; was in favor 
 of a Bank of Exchange : whatever he might have 
 been on the 16th of August, on the 1st of June. 
 
 I ask again What was the real secret of these 
 Vetoes 1 
 
 When the President came to Washington in 
 April, 1841, in the youthful prime and ardent hopes 
 of his new-fledged power I believe he came with 
 a hearty spirit of thankfulness to those who had 
 brought him to this extraordinary fortune, and with 
 an honest thought of evincing that thankfulness by 
 a full, fair and manly furtherance of the great ob 
 jects which had embodied the Whig party. In the 
 glow of this feeling he made that proclamation 
 "you have only lost one Whig to gain another." 
 In the glow of this feeling he wrote and published 
 his Inaugural Address, so full of promise promise 
 that he really then intended to keep. In this ge 
 nial and auspicious mood reappointed the Harrison 
 Cabinet : felt that there was no duty upon him as 
 a magistrate more sacred than that of hearty and 
 zealous co-operation with the Whigs ; upon him, 
 as a man, more touching his personal honor, than 
 
104 DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 
 
 to comport himself toward the Whigs with un 
 questionable good faith. These, let us have the 
 charity to believe, were his ruling emotions. 
 
 When the Message for Congress was prepared 
 these better influences still prevailed still prevail 
 ed in the first four or five days of the session. 
 
 But when men gathered round him ; when asso 
 ciations and cliques began to plot and speak out, 
 when the opposition found they had a man to nat 
 ter j when others found they had a man to lead, 
 the demeanor of the President was remarked to 
 have undergone a change. 
 
 There were many in Washington who saw, with 
 inexpressible sorrow, that the President began to 
 grow ambitious and to look to the prospect of an 
 other term. Whether this were an original con 
 ception of his own, or whether it were infused into 
 his mind by others, it is not my purpose to inquire 
 but it was lamentably apparent that that idea had 
 taken possession of his thoughts. He has denied 
 it ; and, as proof, has appealed to the fact that, 
 in preparing his Second Veto Message, he proposed 
 to introduce a declaration that he would not be a 
 candidate. Whether, on the 9th of September, his 
 conduct had become so equivocal as to make it 
 necessary to resort to this device of denial of his 
 ambitious hopes, is a point of little significance. 
 It certainly is suspicious enough to find Mr. John 
 Tyler, at any period, under a necessity of making 
 proclamation that he is not a candidate for "a sec 
 ond term." What put " such toys of desperation" 
 in his mind 1 
 
 I say it is significant enough, that Mr. John Ty 
 ler should have got himself into such suspicion, as 
 to make it necessary for him to explain that he 
 did not seek " a second term." For, on this Sec 
 ond Term question, Mr. Tyler was something of 
 a Knight Errant. He claimed to be one of the 
 first men in the nation to denounce it : wrote a 
 letter against it, which has been often quoted j 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 105 
 
 drank a toast which ran in this wise " Pilgrim 
 Presidents and Traveling Cabinets, the fruitful 
 offspring of the Second Presidential Term : One 
 Term and no Re-election : the best interests of the 
 country demand it. Will not the popular suffrage 
 sustain it in 1840 1" Indited some pungent essays 
 in the Richmond paper on this point, if rumor 
 does him justice. He was a Knight Errant, there 
 fore, as we say, and had broken a lance in this 
 cause was somewhat Quixotic upon it. There 
 must have been pregnant matter in his conscience 
 which could whisper to him Say to the world, 
 when you put your Veto on a Bank, you will not 
 be a candidate : even in so incongruous a way 
 and on so odd an occasion as this, say so. Truly, 
 the man who, in his category, should be reduced 
 to the strait of certifying, in such wise, that all his 
 original Quixotism in favor of " a single term" 
 was indeed genuine, and not a mere falsehood, 
 such a man has brought himself into a necessity 
 for better vouchers than his own word! Why is 
 he a candidate now NOW, after all this zeal of de 
 nial I Has he exemplified in his own experience 
 that all his arguments against " a second term" are 
 futile 1 Has he found out that the incumbent of 
 the Presidency has no inclination or motive to use 
 his patronage and influence to make him friends 
 for an election? or that these things are not so 
 corrupt as he fancied 1 or, being corrupt, that 
 they are none the worse for that 1 
 
 Mr. Tyler s conduct can be reconciled to no 
 theory but this, that he had set his thoughts upon 
 a second term. The incidents of the day all point 
 ed to it. His express declaration to Mr. Botts con 
 firmed it. 
 
 It was very evident that, as a Whig, he could 
 hope for no success in this enterprise. The strong 
 antipathy of the Whigs was arrayed against a sec 
 ond term: it had been written on their banner. 
 It was not against a second election, but against .a 
 
106 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 second term, whether the first were by election or 
 by accident that they had taken their stand. They 
 went against the principle, as tending to corrup 
 tion, the principle of a President de facto being 
 under inducements to electioneer for another pe 
 riod of incumbency in office. This applied to a 
 Vice-President accidentally elevated, as well as to 
 a President elected. Mr. Tyler knew this, and 
 knew that from the Whigs he could expect nothing 
 farther, even if he had been the worthiest and best 
 beloved in their ranks. Therefore, he meditated 
 desertion from the Whigs. 
 
 Having come to this point, he cast about him to 
 make some fair and plausible show of pretext for 
 the deed. He was told " Quarrel with Mr. Clay, 
 the peculiar favorite, friend, leader of the Whigs: 
 denounce him as a Dictator : charge the Whigs 
 with Caucus Domination : and, above all things, 
 Veto a Bank ! in this Veto you will gain two great 
 helps the Democracy will call you Deliverer the 
 Abstractionists will call you High Priest ; A Third 
 Party will grow on these foundations which shall 
 be numbered as the leaves of the forest. Head, 
 Chief, Oracle of this third party, the Presidency 
 and all its glories will be yours for another, and 
 perhaps another term." 
 
 This advice was taken. Mr. Clay was forthwith 
 denounced as the Dictator denounced even before 
 Congress had well set about the work of the ses 
 sion 5 long before Mr. Clay had opportunity to dic 
 tate an amendment even to a single measure. 
 
 Here I invoke Scapin again. 
 
 The New-York Herald of June 12th presents the 
 affairs at Washington in this position 
 
 " 1st. From demonstrations in the House it may 
 be safely assumed that there is in that body a ma 
 jority in favor of some sort of a National Bank, 
 of at least thirty votes. 
 
 " 2d. In the Senate a similar majority of, at least, 
 three, and probably five. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 107 
 
 " 3d. Mr. Clay has the entire control of both Hous 
 es, and his influence has predominated in the or 
 ganization of all the important committees. 
 
 " 4th. There is a most thorough and cordial un 
 derstanding between Mr. Webster and the Presi 
 dent. This is a curious fact, and grows out of the 
 political history and present position of each. 
 
 "5th. Mr. Tyler and Mr. Clay must quarrel. 
 Mr. Clay is overbearing to an extraordinary degree, 
 and the President will not submit to his dictation much 
 longer. 
 
 " 6th. If the influence of Mr. Clay shall carry 
 through Congress a bank charter, conflicting at all 
 with the President s constitutional notions, it will 
 be vetoed by John Tyler beyond a doubt : and this act 
 will at once break down both the great parties, Whig 
 and Locofoco reorganize the masses anew produce 
 an extraordinary excitement throughout the country, 
 and probably carry John Tyler into the next Presiden 
 cy, by an overwhelming force, and place Daniel Web 
 ster in the line of succession" 
 
 This was the announcement of the Government 
 paper, in the City of New-York, on the 12th of 
 June, 1841, within the first fortnight of the session, 
 before Mr. Ewing s bill was reported to Congress, 
 and before any business of moment had been brought 
 to the view of either House ! 
 
 Making allowance for the time necessary to pre 
 pare and transmit these views from Washington 
 to New-York, scarce a week from the commence 
 ment of the session could have elapsed before this 
 proclamation was made of Mr. Clay s disposition 
 to play the dictator. During that week both Houses 
 had adjourned from the 3d to the 7th with a view 
 to organization. Nothing had been done : appa 
 rently, nothing but good feeling and pleasant anti 
 cipation prevailed. 
 
 This paper is very noteworthy for two charac 
 teristics : the singular accuracy with which it sets 
 forth the President s aspirations and the means by 
 
108 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 which he hoped to accomplish them 5 and the fore 
 shadowing it gives of the precontrived plan by 
 which Mr. Clay was to be vituperated and shorn of 
 his influence. The charge against Mr. Clay of dic 
 tating to the President, or manifesting an overbear 
 ing demeanor toward him or toward any one else, 
 here, in the first week of his appearance at Wash 
 ington under the new administration, is sufficiently 
 absurd upon the mere statement of it. The other 
 charge against him of controlling the two Houses, 
 through the organization of the Committees, is 
 childishly false, as any one may see who will ex 
 amine these committees : as every one at Wash 
 ington knew. 
 
 This paper, however, is a most ominous presig- 
 nification of the coming events. 
 
 Can we read such an announcement as this this 
 laying off, in advance, a quarrel between the Pres 
 ident and Mr. Clay; this prophecy of the Veto ; 
 this foredooming of both parties to dissolution; 
 this strange prestige of Mr. Webster s fate; this 
 reckoning upon the future popularity of John Ty 
 ler, and this prediction of his candidacy for another 
 term 1 Can we read these remarkable paragraphs, 
 published so early as the 12th of June, 1841; in a 
 journal, the chosen champion of the administration, 
 its flatterer and organ in New- York can we read 
 these and fail to see in them the casting of a horo 
 scope by an astrologer who consulted his hopes 
 rather than his stars 1 
 
 The files of the Herald furnish innumerable 
 proofs, from this time forth, of the effort at the 
 White House to spread abroad the hopes and fears 
 raised by this programme of political action. The 
 effort was so far successful that, from that day, 
 all who were disposed to flatter the President spoke 
 of Mr. Clay as " The Dictator." Nothing was un 
 derstood to be more agreeable to the Presidential 
 ear than to hear that word. 
 
 The Veto was a more difficult point to carry. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 109* 
 
 The President stood so committed on the Bank; 
 had given such notoriety to his ambition to estab 
 lish a Bank, that he lacked the courage to come 
 boldly up to this flagrant tergiversation. He wa 
 vered, faltered, writhed to escape. Then, like a 
 man drawn two ways by tugs of supposed interest 
 and real remorse, he fell to equivocation : paltered 
 with both sides. It was lamentable to see a hu 
 man being so tossed by opposing forces lamenta 
 ble to witness the reverberations of such a shuttle 
 cock. 
 
 In the alternate visits which he received, from* 
 persons of varying opinions on this bank question^, 
 each came away with a fixed conviction that the 
 President would sign the bill, or veto, according 
 to the hopes of the visiter. The last comer always 
 seemed to have him. To Mr. Smith he protests 
 his inclination to sign : " If the Bill had only this 
 out, and that in, he would certainly sign. In re 
 gard to the Exchange Bank, what could be so 
 agreeable to him, as to sign that bill!" To Mr. 
 Brown, he declares " he will certainly Veto, that 
 or any bill." 
 
 "We will prepare the bill to suit yourself: it 
 shall be entirely as you wish it. We will give you 
 the Exchange Bank in your own words" say those 
 who come from the Whigs. 
 
 " That Exchange Bank has been long endeared 
 to me," replies the President. "Pass that; you 
 can do it in three days I will be under eternal ob 
 ligations to you. Change the name : call it Fiscal 
 Corporation. I will sign it cheerfully." 
 
 " Remember !" ejaculates the other side, in a 
 sepulchral voice " Veto a Bank, or surrender all 
 hope of future glory. Eemember !" 
 
 " Alas, I have promised to sign" groaned the 
 unhappy man. " To this bill I am deeply pledged.. 
 How can I escape 1 Spare me this!" 
 
 "Pledged ! are you not pledged to the glorious 
 certainty of another term 1 Were you not born to 
 
 K 
 
110 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 redeem the land! Can you hesitate when such 
 brilliant hopes beckon you onward 1 Be a man, 
 and Veto." 
 
 " It is my own bill there are witnesses against 
 
 me." 
 
 " Outface your witnesses denounce the Bill : 
 or look for no favor from the Democracy look 
 for no third party look for " 
 
 " If I had not proposed the plan if I had not 
 seen the bill if I had not approved it" again sigh 
 ed the President. 
 
 " Can you find no quirp, no quillet 1 you, an old 
 politician ! Where are all your abstractions 1 Take 
 courage. Veto the Bill. Jackson rose upon a Veto; 
 his name will make it popular. So Veto the bill, 
 no matter what shape it take !" 
 
 These counsels these hopes these terrors pre 
 vailed, and the Veto came at last though well-nigh 
 lost from faintheartedness. 
 
 The quarrel with Mr. Clay being now well hatch 
 ed; Mr. Clay himself successfully denounced as 
 " The Dictator ;" the Veto being secured, the 
 prosperous actors in this little drama had nothing 
 left to do, but to lie by and wait patiently for that 
 promised surging storm which was to wreck both 
 of the old parties, and on whose friendly billows 
 the ambitious Shuttlecock of the day was to be 
 wafted to his predicted popularity. To a certain 
 ty, it has come ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^DISMISSAL OF THE CABINET. THE CHEATS OF SCAPIN. 
 
 THE next movement was to quarrel with the Cabi 
 net. It was very clear that the great game of the pro 
 gramme of the 12th of June could not be played out, in 
 friendly association with the Harrison Cabinet. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. Ill 
 
 That Cabinet consisted of the picked men of the 
 Whig party, and was looked upon as the living per 
 sonation of Whig principles. It possessed the most 
 commanding talent. It was distinguished for its lofty 
 bearing, its honorable frankness and fidelity, and for its 
 thorough rightmindedness in the doctrines and aims 
 of the party to which it belonged. No sinister object 
 could be accomplished while that Cabinet had sway. 
 
 Mr. Tyler had not the courage to attack it openly. 
 On the contrary, to the last, he affected to entertain 
 the most friendly sentiments toward it : marveled 
 even that any member of it could find motive to re 
 sign. 
 
 His Veto Message of the 9th of September, whines, 
 as I have said, on the topic of his Whig attachments. 
 " It has been my good fortune and pleasure to concur 
 with Congress in all measures except this. Why should 
 our difference in this alone be pushed to extremes ? It 
 is my anxious desire that it should not be. May we 
 not now pause until a more favorable time when, with 
 the most anxious hope that the Executive and Con 
 gress may cordially unite, some measure of finance 
 may be deliberately adopted promotive of the good of 
 our common country ?" This, on the 9th of Septem 
 ber, 1841. Here is a profession of fellowship. On 
 the 13th of September Mr. Webster said, "I have 
 seen no sufficient reasons for the dissolution of the 
 late Cabinet by the voluntary act of its own members." 
 
 It is quite apparent that Mr. Tyler wished to repre 
 sent himself to the country as holding the defensive : 
 that the dissolution of the Whig Cabinet was not of 
 his seeking : that he was for harmony and union. 
 
 Now, it is a fact well known, notwithstanding these 
 professions, that Mr. Tyler had been at work to form 
 a new Cabinet : to get rid of the old. 
 
 In the first place, he held no such free communica 
 tion with his Cabinet on these delicate questions of the 
 Veto, as a friendly President would hold with officers 
 so confidentially connected with the administration. 
 They were taunted with this in the public papers. 
 
112 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS . 
 
 On the 10th of August the Herald letter has the fol 
 lowing. 
 
 " The impression is gaining ground that there must 
 be an entire recomposition of the Cabinet in the event 
 of a Veto. Every member, it is understood, lent him 
 self to the views of Mr. Clay, and encouraged the sub 
 terfuge which is facetiously called a compromise, and 
 no one of them, therefore, can sustain the President in 
 a Veto. Is it not obvious, then, that there must be a 
 dissolution ? Up to this morning not one of his con 
 stitutional advisers was apprized of the President s de 
 termination about the Bank Bill. It is apparent, there 
 fore, that there is no cordial understanding between 
 the Executive and his ministry, and a change must 
 come of course." 
 
 From this time forward this correspondence is full 
 of hints of the President s dislike of his cabinet. Their 
 successors are frequently named several of them in 
 accordance with the subsequent appointments. 
 
 On the 6th of September a letter singularly imper 
 tinent is published. As if impatient that the Cabinet 
 had continued insensible to these hints so long, Scapin 
 writes in terms of insolent insult. 
 
 I make more extracts from this letter than others 
 because, though coming from the back stairs, it is very 
 notable as the language of a familiar at the White 
 House. 
 
 " The Bank Bill will be returned on Wednesday or 
 Thursday, with a Veto Message to the House of Rep 
 resentatives where the bill originated. The Clay men 
 have held a caucus arid decided that it will be best to 
 receive the Message without any particular demonstra 
 tions of hostility to the President. Their animosity 
 has cooled down to a calculation of chances. They 
 think it wiser to receive the Message with some def 
 erence to the character and position of the President, 
 by which course of proceeding it is hoped a dissolution 
 of the Cabinet may be prevented. In this way they pro 
 pose respectively to return to their constituents, and, 
 by a common movement, arouse the people against 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 113 
 
 Mr. Tyler, while they are still in league with the Cabi 
 net. They are to return to the siege in the shape of 
 indignation meetings, newspaper denunciation, and oth 
 er affiliated hostile movements, extending all over the 
 country, while in the interval of a calm of a few weeks, 
 it is hoped the President will, in his great good nature, 
 confide the keys of the fortress to their allies and his 
 secret enemies. 
 
 " Were the Clay men to denounce the President just 
 now, it might lead to an immediate breaking up of the 
 Cabinet, and these magnanimous gentlemen might lose 
 all future chance of getting offices. The Cabinet, one 
 a# 1 all, are hard at work to allay all open evidences 
 of a rupture, and counseling their friends to go home 
 and raise the standard of revolt there, while their own 
 efforts are directed to undermine and circumvent the 
 President here. This is their game. Who would have 
 believed that high-minded and honorable men, for such 
 members of the Cabinet ought to be, would thus concert 
 a system of party movement, by which to destroy the very 
 man at whose will they hold their offices, and who is con 
 stitutionally responsible for all their official acts ? What 
 treachery ! What ingratitude ! Why do they not act 
 like men, and, at once, give in their resignations, and 
 suffer the President to bring to his aid such men as he 
 has confidence in ? Nothing can exceed the industry 
 of the President. He rises early and retires late. 
 Every hour of the day is devoted to his duties. He is 
 compelled to look over papers and decide on a great 
 mass of matters that would be handed over for the ac 
 tion of the Secretaries if they were men really his friends ; 
 but he knows full well the secret objects the leading mem 
 bers of his Cabinet have in view, and, of course, he is 
 constrained to do almost every thing himself. There is 
 a total absence of all energy in every branch of the 
 Government. The cause of all this is obvious. The 
 President and his Cabinet are mutually mistrustful of 
 each other, there is, there can be, no cordial, confiding 
 co-operation between them. The Cabinet are playing the 
 game of the President s enemies, and desire nothing so 
 
 K2 
 
114 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 much as his defeat and dishonor. As the thing works 
 now, the President is forced to play into Mr. Clay s or 
 Mr. Webster s hands. The Cabinet know that the Pres 
 ident feels this to be his position, and yet they do not, 
 wiU not resign. Look at the dictatorial tone arid lan 
 guage of the Richmond Whig, the Boston Atlas, the 
 Wall-street press papers that have always defended 
 Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay these are the papers 
 which are the most bitter and the most insolent in their 
 attacks upon Mr. Tyler and his friends. Who can 
 doubt that these papers are prompted to the course they 
 pursue ~by Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay 1 Mr. Clay is 
 pretty open he likes a fair fight, but Mr. Webster, who 
 is every inch a coward, stabs the President through 
 friends whom he affects to disavow. Add to this an in 
 ordinate love for the honor and emolument of station, 
 and a desire to pervert their official influence to the 
 purposes of selfish aggrandizement hereafter, and you 
 have an explanation of the anomalous circumstance of 
 men of reputation and character holding on to office, 
 while it involves personal degradation, and indicates both 
 a total want of self-respect and what is due to the Pres 
 ident of the United States." 
 
 No idle, chattering gossip was this of floating scan 
 dal, or licentious coinage of quidnuncs of the capital. 
 It was a voice from the innermost chambers of the 
 President s household. It tells of his early rising and 
 late lying down, his private labors and his secret 
 cares, the silent griefs of his soul. Nor was it cur- 
 Tent rumor and daily news, such as fill the pages of 
 unprivileged correspondents ; but it is the earnest, 
 sorrowful defence of the President against the pressure 
 of an annoyance which rests upon his heart the com 
 panionship, namely, of men who were in his way. 
 It is the President himself speaking through this unof 
 ficial and irresponsible organ more authentically than 
 he spoke in levees or state papers. It is a direct stren 
 uous effort to enlist public sympathy in his behalf 
 against a Cabinet he could not manfully look in the 
 face. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 115 
 
 The author of this letter was a familiar and daily 
 inmate under the President s roof, of free and unques 
 tioned access at all times ; having the entry of the pri 
 vate door ; a frequenter of the President s board and 
 family circle, and sharing the confidences denied to 
 other men. The journal, too, in which this was pub 
 lished, was the President s special favorite the only 
 defender he had out of the City of Washington ; -by 
 his orders the recipient of government emolument and 
 patronage ; daily placed upon his table and read, for 
 its flatteries arid advocacies, with eager interest. The 
 officers of the Cabinet were well aware of this ; 
 could not but meet this paper whenever they went to 
 the President s house. Here was this letter and oth 
 ers of a kindred stamp : here was the author of the 
 letter unrebuked, not only unrebuked but fostered, 
 cultivated, notorious to all Washington for his terms of 
 favor with the household. This letter especially un 
 rebuked unchallenged, uncontradicted. How could 
 they remain, after this, in the Cabinet? as gentlemen 
 as honorable men, how could they maintain farther 
 association with the man who committed his cause to 
 a presumptuous underling that dare thus libel them ? 
 I protest, I think this letter alone would have justified 
 a rupture. Such an insult could not be offered by an 
 honorable President to honorable Secretaries. It has 
 no parallel in our past history I hope will never find 
 one in our future. 
 
 Mr. Webster, however, thought there was no reason 
 for the resignation of the Secretaries. Well that is 
 a matter of taste I am not disposed to dispute it with 
 him. If I were Daniel Webster, I think I should have 
 resigned. Mr. Webster was deceived. He thought, 
 at least, there was no distrust of him. Manifestly on 
 the 12th of June his resignation was not in the pro 
 gramme. Even now we have his own word for it 
 notwithstanding all that had passed, as late as the 13th 
 of September he had every confidence that the Presi 
 dent would co-operate with the Whigs " in overcom 
 ing all difficulties/ " It is to the union of the Whig 
 
116 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 party" said he in his letter " by which I mean the 
 whole Party, the Whig President, the Whig Congress, 
 and the Whig people, that I look for a realization of 
 our wishes." 
 
 Mr. Webster was deceived, at least, in this. 
 
 Some of the members of the Cabinet were astute 
 enough to see that the President desired to get rid of 
 them, before this time. They resolved, at all hazards, 
 to resign. Every sentiment which could move honor 
 able men revolted at the idea of holding a confidential 
 relation where there was no confidence. They were 
 persuaded by friends to wait a little. It was a current 
 opinion at that day that the Cabinet ought to wait to be 
 turned out. That they should not by a voluntary act 
 abandon their posts. Many thought otherwise. The 
 majority of the Cabinet themselves thought otherwise. 
 They delayed but a few days after that letter of the 
 6th. The Veto came on the 9th, and the pitiful moan 
 for farther time and harmony. 
 
 On Saturday the llth, the whole Cabinet, except 
 Mr. Webster, resigned. Not because John Tyler ve 
 toed a bank ; but because he deceived those who trust 
 ed him. 
 
 On Monday Mr. Tyler had a new Cabinet ready at 
 his hand : the very men the Herald had announced, 
 almost a month before. 
 
 What astonishing fertility of resource ! exclaimed 
 the flatterers of the President. What wonderful read 
 iness in selecting men ! What self-possession what 
 promptitude, what decision ! ejaculated the Madiso- 
 nian. A new cabinet in twenty-four hours ! Napole 
 on at the Bridge of Arcole ! 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 117 
 
 V. 
 
 ASPIRATION AND INSPIRATION. THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 THE conduct of Mr. Tyler would seem to be inex 
 plicable by any rule of estimate of human actions. 
 Such laborious wandering out of the way, such intre 
 pidity of indirection, such an " extravagant and erring 
 spirit," such unprofitable perverseness, how shall we 
 account for them ? 
 
 Very conclusive is it to us that the fancies which 
 took possession of his mind were not the ordinary 
 whimsies which sometimes beguile weak men from 
 the plain career of duty but some hallucination 
 rather, that found peculiar sustenance in the Presi 
 dent s temperament ; that fed upon that Malvolio 
 Vanity of his, and derived vigor from that immoderate 
 intoxication of unexpected power which had shaken 
 the balance of his judgment. 
 
 To speak of what has passed as " weak, vacillating 
 and faithless," is almost to use the phrase of amiable 
 apology : such language sounds like palliation of some 
 lamentable madness, which the kindness of friends 
 would conceal even from themselves, by imputing the 
 conduct that suggests it, to some less shocking though 
 more depraved weakness of nature or infirmity of tem 
 per. 
 
 There were two letters published just after the Extra 
 Session which may throw some light on this extraor 
 dinary phenomenon. They are letters from members 
 of the House of Representatives ; friends of the Presi- 
 dent,--one of them a special friend; both gentlemen 
 of high repute ; worthy of all belief; in a situation to 
 know ; and eminently capable of inspiring an interest 
 in what they say. These are Mr. Wise and Mr. In- 
 gersoll. The first gentleman representing what was 
 
118 DEFENCE OF THE WHIG3. 
 
 called the Guard, consisting of six members of Con 
 gress distinguished for their support of Mr. Tyler : the 
 second a prominent leader of the Locofocos. 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll s letter is remarkable for a scrap of 
 history which it supplies, and for a hint of the source 
 of the President s action which it suggests. Both 
 are sufficiently curious. 
 
 "Mr. Tyler" says this authority, "is an instru 
 ment of overruling Providence, often marvelously 
 snatching this Republic from apparent jeopardy, to 
 rescue it from the calamities of the late overwrought 
 extraordinary session. The chapter of strange acci 
 dents conducting him to the Chief Magistracy is said 
 to nerve him with a sort of religious belief that he is des 
 tined, through higher power, to wonderful instrumentality. 
 Uncompromising champion of the radical politics of the 
 Virginia Platform, he stood erect upon it, almost alone, 
 environed by party adherents opposed to his principles, 
 confronting party opponents sympathizing with those 
 principles: fearlessly sustained by a small sect of 
 inflexible politicians, unjustly stigmatized as a cabal or 
 kitchen cabinet, counteracting an official, ministry with 
 out the President s predilections, if not their antago 
 nists ; in fact, the cabinet of another, most of whom 
 have just departed this political life after six months 
 of a fitful ephemeral existence."* 
 
 Mr. Wise s letter contains a suggestion of the same 
 import as the above. Manifestly this idea was afloat 
 in the Presidential atmosphere. Had it not its spell ? 
 There is something very notable in this shadowing of 
 high influences on the conduct of Mr. Tyler. 
 
 Mr. Wise seems to find evidence in the strange ele 
 vation of the late Vice-President, of something more 
 than ordinary human vicissitude : almost imputes 
 blasphemy and Atheism to those who regard it as an 
 ordinary human event, or believe it to have come from 
 less than a special interposition af Heaven. 
 
 " Providence placed in power a Constitutional Re- 
 
 * This letter is dated Washington, Sept. 13, 1841. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 119 
 
 publican," says Mr. Wise.* " He is called His Ac- 
 cidency by those who could not make a President by 
 design ; and by this scoffing title the Dictatorship 
 seems to deny a Great First Cause whose Providence 
 overrules human events and the destiny of nations, 
 and to ascribe the death of the lamented Harrison and 
 the succession of the second choice of the people to a 
 blind chance." " This is not the first time that the 
 stone rejected of the builders has become the chief of the 
 corner" 
 
 I shudder when I read these words and think of the 
 comparison to which they point. Could such an idea 
 have got possession of the President s imagination ? 
 Then, as to the President s friends the Guard : " I 
 thought that the Guard around the Constitution might 
 be less than a Corporal s in Congress, but I knew well 
 that politicians were not the people, and that it would 
 prove a host of freedom and a host of God 1 in the 
 country." 
 
 This letter ends in the same strain. 
 
 " The true sovereigns are true to themselves, and 
 there is an Overruling Providence as in our fathers 
 days, and there will be forever, to protect the liberties 
 and reanimate the hopes of the People in this God- 
 favored land. I give you, then, my cordial congratu 
 lations, one and all ; and, as a perpetual sentiment for 
 all Constitutional Republicans, I reverently propose to 
 you God and the People" 
 
 I will make no comment on this letter farther than 
 to express my hope arid my belief that it was the in 
 considerate effusion of a heated and disturbed period, 
 when men s minds were too much agitated by passing 
 events to allow the due measuring of phrases. This 
 much I say for the sake of the good-will I bear to the 
 author, who is commended to the Whigs by the memory 
 of many valiant blows struck in their cause in past 
 days. I have not forgotten them. 
 
 These letters are significant as they point t the pe- 
 
 * Letter to John B. Coles and others, Nov. 5, 1841. 
 
120 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 culiar conceit which may, perhaps, furnish a key to 
 Mr. Tyler s eccentricities. Mohammed took many 
 liberties on the score of his divine mission, which 
 even he, doubtless, would have regarded as very un 
 becoming extravagances in a mere every-day caliph. 
 Caliph Tyler may have thought his freaks altogether 
 selon les regies, upon the same reckoning. Nothing 
 short of some such potent influence as this, may satis 
 factorily account for the strange things we have wit 
 nessed. 
 
 The result of this career of the President, during 
 the Extra Session, was the resignation of the Cabinet, 
 as we have before said. 
 
 I do not speak for the members of the Cabinet: I 
 have no warrant from any gentleman, at that day con 
 nected with the administration, for what I say but I 
 speak what was well known in Washington at the time, 
 that, at least, as regards a portion of the Cabinet, the 
 resignation was reluctantly delayed. It was delayed 
 in deference to the advice of those who still hoped that 
 affairs miorht take some unforeseen turn favorable to 
 
 o 
 
 harmony. They resigned, however, at last, as they 
 have stated in their own published letters, wherein they 
 have given a history of the events to which they were 
 witnesses, not because the President differed from 
 them on the question of a Bank. They threw up their 
 places because he had forfeited his word, treated them 
 unworthily, and had manifested his hostility to the 
 principles and pledges of the party with whom they 
 were associated, to which he professed to belong, and 
 who had given to him all the consideration and impor 
 tance incident to his station. 
 
 It is wholly untrue grossly and signally false 
 that the rupture with the President was occasioned by 
 umbrage taken at his dissent from a Bank. 
 
 It was, in no degree, to be assigned to that simple 
 act. The Whigs, doubtless, would have felt greatly 
 chagrined and mortified at the use of the Veto on such 
 a subject. They had hoped, in the election of Gener 
 al Harrison arid Mr. Tyler, that they had put an end 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 121 
 
 to the hazard of that odious exercise of Presidential 
 prerogative which had become doubly odious in Gen 
 eral Jackson s hands. They would, therefore, natu 
 rally enough, have felt some annoyance at such an ex 
 hibition of this prerogative by an administration of their 
 own making. They would, very probably, have aba 
 ted much of their respect for the judgment and capaci 
 ty of Mr. Tyler, upon the promulgation of a doctrine 
 so absurd as that conceit of his regarding the Assent 
 of States. All this they might have felt, and would 
 certainly have greatly deplored. They might have ac 
 knowledged they had mistaken the qualities and fit 
 ness of Mr. Tyler for his post : but they would not 
 have quarreled with him ; even have censured him, 
 for an honest exercise of a conscientious conviction of 
 duty had such been his conviction. 
 
 If he had frankly said that, on this point of the Bank, 
 he felt constrained to differ : if he had manfully told 
 those around him, arid who had an interest in the suc 
 cess of his administration, what he could not do, or 
 what he could do ; and, above all things, had kept his 
 word: had demeaned himself as an upright, sincere, 
 arid earnest magistrate in his high place ; had not 
 treasured up against himself such a store of broken 
 promises ; had not so trifled with the capable and hon 
 orable men around him ; had not thrown himself into 
 such suspicious associations ; had not so vibrated be 
 tween his will to desert and his fear of the event ; had 
 not so concealed himself from those who had a right 
 to know his sentiments, and so disclosed himself to 
 those who had no right to his confidence he might 
 have put his Veto upon a Bank he might have asked 
 and obtained delay he might have disappointed all 
 that eager hope which prevailed in the country for the 
 settlement of the currency hope that he had himself 
 raised in his Inaugural Address and in his first Mes 
 sage and yet there would have been no -rupture, no 
 resignation, no repulse of the President by the majori 
 ty of Congress. 
 
 Never was there a party placed in such a difficulty 
 L 
 
122 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 before, who showed so earnest a spirit of toleration, 
 concession and surrender of personal feeling as the 
 Whigs of Congress on this occasion. His Bank, as 
 it came from the Treasury, was, by no means, to their 
 liking. They did not like to surrender the broad prin 
 ciple of placing this institution wherever they thought 
 the public interest might suggest : in deference to the 
 President they agreed to the District of Columbia. 
 The application to the States for the power to establish 
 branches, under any modification of it, was against all 
 their preconceived notions of Constitutional right : in 
 deference to the President they consented to the com 
 promise : were even willing to take the bill as report 
 ed by Mr. Ewing. They readily and cheerfully con 
 curred with the President in his plan of the Exchange 
 Bank, even to the frivolous point of changing the name, 
 and hastened, with the greatest alacrity, to pass it, 
 when they thought it would meet his view. They 
 carried their concession to the utmost verge of compli 
 ance in every item compatible with the one great pur 
 pose the chief purpose of the session in the estimate 
 of the nation the arrangement of the momentous ques 
 tion of the Currency. All was unavailing ; and they 
 saw all fail in a secret intrigue of the President to 
 break up the Whig organization, and, upon its ruins, to 
 lift himself to the Chief Magistracy for a second term. 
 Feeling this deeply, sorrowing over the event, and 
 indignant at the unworthy evasions and miserable throes 
 of a selfish ambition which they had detected, they 
 could not but disavow all connection with him and his 
 fortunes. They met together in the last moments of 
 the session such as were at the seat of government, 
 for many had set out for their homes and published 
 their Manifesto, by which they proclaimed to the na 
 tion that, from that day forth, all political alliance be 
 tween them and John Tyler was at an end : that from 
 that day " those who brought the President into power 
 could no longer, in any manner or degree, be justly 
 held responsible or blamed for the administration of 
 the Executive branch of the Government." At the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 123 
 
 same time acknowledging it to be " the duty of the 
 Whigs, in and out of Congress, to give to his official 
 acts and measures fair and full consideration, approv 
 ing them and co-operating in their support where they 
 could, and differing from and opposing any of them 
 only from a high sense of public duty." 
 
 There were, it is true, a few Whigs of Congress, 
 who, although concurring in the sentiment of reproba 
 tion of the President, felt some reluctance against join 
 ing in this public proclamation. The large majority, 
 however, eagerly adopted the measure, as no less due 
 to their own sense of responsibility to the country, 
 than it was to the justification and support of the retir 
 ing Cabinet. 
 
 Subsequent events have more than vindicated the 
 truth, the justice and the policy of the Manifesto. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE MANIFESTO. DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 THE Manifesto was a plain, direct paper that 
 spoke right out, stating the case of the Whigs fully 
 to the country. It told what they had done at the 
 Extra Session : what they had failed to do, and 
 why. It disclosed their observation of the past 
 conduct of Mr. Tyler, and their apprehension of 
 his future ; the withdrawal of his confidence from 
 the Whigs, his affinity with their enemies; and it 
 announced their entire separation from him. It 
 proclaimed the principles upon which the Whigs 
 would continue, as in past times, to maintain their 
 organization. At the head of these it placed 
 
 " The reduction of the Executive power, by a 
 farther limitation of the Veto, so as to secure obe 
 dience to the public will, as that shall be expressed 
 
124 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 by the immediate Eepresentatives of the People 
 and the States, with no other contro.l than that 
 which is indispensable to arrest hasty or unconsti 
 tutional Legislation." 
 
 Here was the old war of Privilege and Preroga 
 tive revived by the Whigs, against a Chief Ma 
 gistrate whom they had lifted into Power ! Sad 
 and bitter fruit of the indiscretion of 1839, which 
 committed so just a cause to so unfit a leader! 
 Strong pledge to the nation of the sincere and 
 faithful attachment of the Wihgs to the great prin 
 ciples upon which they were originally imbodied ! 
 
 The Veto had become distinguished in a previ 
 ous administration for its power of mischief. Mr. 
 Tyler has given it a new character ; he has made 
 it ridiculous. 
 
 The Manifesto had the full concurrence and ac 
 tual participation of from sixty to eighty Whig 
 members being nearly all who were at the seat 
 of Government when it was adopted. With few 
 exceptions, it has received the approbation of ev 
 ery Whig member of the 27th Congress. 
 . Whatever doubts may have been felt by any at 
 the time of its promulgation, as to the expediency 
 of making it, those doubts quickly vanished before 
 the rapidly-succeeding developments of the Tyler 
 administration. We have been surfeited with proofs 
 of the eminent propriety of that paper. 
 
 The only doubt which influenced any member on 
 this subject, at the date of the Manifesto, had re 
 spect to the position which Mr. Webster occupied 
 in the Cabinet. If he had retired with his col 
 leagues, the concurrence in the Manifesto would 
 have been unanimous. Whatever modicum of 
 strength Mr. Tyler retained with any portion of 
 the Whig party in the United States, is due to the 
 name and influence of Daniel Webster. 
 
 It is -not my purpose to censure the Secretary ; 
 even to complain of what he thought it right for him 
 to do in that emergency. I am not willing to re- 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 125 
 
 t 
 
 nounce a Whig whose life is so crowned with no 
 ble services to the State as the Great Man of Mas 
 sachusetts. But I could wish that his remaining 
 in the Cabinet had been accompanied with such ex 
 planation as his case admitted : at least, that it 
 had been accompanied by no censure expressed or 
 implied against his compeers. 
 
 There were, undoubtedly, strong public motives 
 to excuse, if not to justify, his temporary mainte 
 nance of his post. 
 
 The situation of the country, as regards our re 
 lations with England, was very critical. Mr. Tyler, 
 and those who were called his peculiar friends, had 
 adopted a tone of exasperation toward England, 
 that was well calculated to defeat a reasonable hope 
 of amicable arrangement of existing difficulties 
 with that nation. The debates of Congress, on the 
 part of these friends, were characterized by an ef 
 fort to create an artificial sentiment of hostility 
 against that power, at a time when, from the real 
 motives to a quarrel, great judgment and discre 
 tion were requisite to save the country from the 
 calamities of war. It was apparent to all who 
 closely observed the temper of the Executive and 
 his allies, that Mr. Tyler counted on making popu 
 larity by a war; a measure at all times capable of 
 enlisting a certain amount of administration sup 
 port in the country. The President hoped to prop 
 his sickly acceptation with the people, or, to speak 
 in phrase more germain to his estimate of himself, 
 to augment his already boundless influence, by 
 a measure which should flatter the glory-seeking 
 spirit of the nation in furnishing it an occasion for 
 martial broils. 
 
 So heady, pernicious and reckless a temper as 
 this, very cogently , suggested to Mr. Webster, 
 doubtless, the duty of not abandoning his watch. 
 The incapacity of the Administration at a moment 
 so critical ; not only its incapacity, but the fatal 
 T)ly of its mind toward an incalculable mischief, 
 
 L2 
 
126 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 may be regarded as presenting a patriotic invocation 
 to one so conscious of his power as the Secretary, 
 to stand his ground and save his country from the 
 rash folly that threatened it. 
 
 I give Mr. Webster full credit for a due appreci 
 ation of this sentiment. This impression soon be 
 came common ; and the Secretary, it may be said, 
 was excused, justified, applauded even, for the sac 
 rifice of personal ease he was supposed to make in 
 holding alliance with the Tyler Cabinet until the 
 ratifications of the Treaty of Washington were ex 
 changed. 
 
 In view of this, the Whigs were reconciled to 
 bear the loss they had sustained, in another aspect, 
 from Mr. Webster s refusal to move with his col 
 leagues. 
 
 At this point my vindication stops. Every Whig 
 saw with sorrow that, when the ratification of the 
 Treaty was complete, Mr. Webster did not resign. 
 With inexpressible pain, every Whig in the land 
 read or heard the speech in FaneuilHall: saw Mr. 
 Webster go back contentedly to his post : witness-, 
 ed his consent to the glorification of John Tyler, 
 in conceding to him the honor of having accom 
 plished that happy pacification of two great powers 
 whose collision would have been long deplored as 
 one of the most signal misfortunes in the history 
 of either. Glory to John Tyler the Pacificator! 
 to him who had stimulated every passion of dis 
 content that could embarrass the negotiation : to 
 him who had suffered to pass without rebuke the 
 conduct of the minister at Paris, in attempting to 
 embroil the two countries through a most unwar 
 ranted interference in the settlement of the Quin 
 tuple Treaty not only to pass without rebuke, but 
 to meet his approval : to him who has been distin 
 guished, both through his own direct action, and 
 through the officiousness of his son, encouraged 
 by him, for an undignified intermeddling in the 
 domestic affairs of the very nation whose diificul- 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 127 
 
 ties he presumes to believe he settled! Glory 
 to him for the Treaty of Washington ! And that 
 Mr. Webster is willing to certify to his share of 
 the glory ! Mr. Webster, whose chief justifica 
 tion for remaining in the Cabinet was that he 
 might counteract and disarm the vanity that could 
 mar, and which, in no contingency, could make 
 what was good! Who has not seen this with 
 sorrow ! 
 
 If the Fanueil Hall speech had been what the 
 Whigs of the nation hoped it would be , what those 
 who invited Mr. Webster to that Hall desired it 
 might be ; what all the true friends of Mr. Webster 
 thought it could only be he would not now have 
 to complain that his attachment to the Whig party 
 was drawn into question. 
 
 Still, the Whigs will pardon much to Daniel 
 Webster: more than to most other men. They 
 will pardon much for the sake of his past history : 
 a history full of glorious remembrances, redolent 
 with the odor of Constitutional Liberty. They 
 will not easily be driven to forget that, in the weary 
 days of their adversity, his firm foot was planted 
 upon their ramparts, nor withdrawn as long as dan 
 ger threatened : that in the murky night when the 
 enemy was creeping toward our Citadel, he stood 
 faithfully upon guard, with a constancy that u out- 
 watched the Bear :" that in the assault his voice 
 of exhortation rang like a clarion : that in the me 
 lee his stalwart form rode on the tide of battle 
 where the heaviest blows were struck 5 and wheth 
 er the issue were defeat or victory they were ever 
 accustomed to find him at hand ready to console 
 or applaud. While such recollections cluster 
 around his name, the Whigs will forgive much to 
 Coeur de Lion forget much. 
 
 They know his dogged, moody temper; his in 
 tractable self-will ; his fretful waywardness. They 
 have often seen these scowling on his broad brow, 
 and flashing in the awakened fire of his eye : seen. 
 
128 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 them often, not without a sigh. But they know 
 that his faults are not the faults of a temper which 
 deals in dissimulation or meditates over schemes 
 of treachery : the faults, rather, of a mind that will 
 not brook delay, which has not trained itself to pa 
 tience, which thinks of its hopes " not wisely, but 
 too well." 
 
 They will yet pardon much to Daniel Webster. 
 
 VII. 
 
 JUSTICE TO JOHN TYLER. 
 
 FROM the date of the Manifesto we have but little 
 concern to speak of Mr. Tyler. His career, from that 
 period, has been a persevering retrograde upon the 
 path of his duty. It is marked by flagrant dereliction 
 of faith to his formerly-professed principles, and by 
 successive compliances to an enemy whom no excess 
 of infidelity has yet been able to win. 
 
 He who dwelt in such pitiful accents, in his last 
 Veto Message, upon the cordiality with which he had 
 sanctioned all the Whig measures but one, has sys 
 tematically devoted himself, ever since the close of the 
 Extra Session, to the wretched endeavor of breaking 
 up the party who made him what he is, and of concil 
 iating those who opposed his election, by the surren 
 der of those measures, and with them of every pledge 
 upon which he came into power. 
 
 His friends, with his concurrence, at the next ses 
 sion of Congress, presented in his behalf two schemes 
 for regulating the currency. The one was a National 
 Bank, to be solely owned and conducted by the Gov 
 ernment ; the other was the exploded Sub-Treasury 
 system. He who had shown such sensitive constitu 
 tional scruple against a Bank which, for forty years, 
 
DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 129 
 
 had received the sanction of every authority in this 
 government, suddenly, in the depths of his perplexity, 
 became the patron of the only true " Monster" this na 
 tion has ever seen a Bank of Exchange, a Bank of 
 Discount, a Bank per se, belonging alone to the Gov 
 ernment, without the vestige of a pretext of its being 
 either " necessary or proper." A scheme which could 
 not gain one poor vote in either House to do it honor. 
 He who had been so emphatic in denouncing the Sub- 
 Treasury, suddenly, in the depths of his perplexity, 
 was willing that his friends should stake his hopes 
 upon this same measure disguised with a few extra 
 faculties of dealing in exchange. And between these 
 projects, wide as the poles asunder, lying on the ex- 
 tremest verge of the circle of ultra political opinions, 
 the President vibrated like a pendulum, driven by op 
 posing hands, as if in sport to show how light a touch 
 could sway the motions of such a toy. 
 
 He who had made the Distribution of the proceeds 
 of the public lands a cardinal measure in his Message ; 
 who was even willing to bind them up in a Bank 
 capital ; who had witnessed, at the Extra Session, the 
 unhappy restriction, which necessity compelled the 
 Whigs to submit to, in the limitation put upon that dis 
 tribution by the Anti-Tariff party, witnessed it, we 
 must suppose, with regret, if his professions in favor 
 of the distribution were to be believed now, at the 
 second session, applied his veto to prevent the repeal 
 of the restriction.* 
 
 * The purport of the restriction introduced into the Land Bill was 
 that the distribution should not take effect if the duties were raised 
 above twenty per cent. This limitation was forced upon the bill by 
 its enemies, aided by the vote of a few Southern Whigs opposed to 
 the Tariff. The bill was taken, with this restriction, by the Whigs 
 at large, rather than lose it; with a determination, on their part, ex 
 pressed in debate, to repeal the limitation whenever they had the 
 power. The argument was that the same vote which could raise 
 the Tariff above twenty per cent, would be sufficient to repeal the 
 restriction. It was regarded as a device of the enemy, and submitted 
 to only under the compulsion of circumstances. Mr. Tyler, who had 
 recommended the Distribution as an act of Justice to the States, for 
 whom, he affirmed, the Government was but a Trustee (see his 
 Message June, 1841), had originally as little expectation of the re- 
 
130 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 He who had professed to be friendly to a Protective 
 Tariff, now refused his assent to a bill which was de 
 signed merely to continue the existing duties for one 
 month, in order that time might be obtained to mature 
 a permanent bill upon the subject: this for no better 
 motive, that we can ascribe to it, than to furnish a 
 proof of his complacency to a party who have shown 
 as little respect for him as they have shown of favor 
 to the Tariff or the Distribution. 
 
 He who had so ostentatiously inveighed against the 
 corrupt use of Executive Patronage ; who had uttered 
 such an emphatic censure against the sin of office 
 holders intermeddling in the political field ; who had 
 even enacted the farce of issuing a special circular of 
 warning, from the State department, against ail offend 
 ers in such wise : who had invoked Congress to take 
 this matter in hand and put some qualification on the 
 removal of officers* he it was who subsequently 
 drove Jonathan Roberts from the collectorship of Phil 
 adelphia, because he would not remove some twenty 
 
 striction, and, before his desertion, would have had as little relish for 
 it, as any Whig in Congress. After his desertion, he recommended 
 the Repeal of the Distribution, March 25, 1842, upon the ground that 
 when he prepared his Message for the Extra Session, he urged the 
 Distribution in view of an anticipated Surplus Revenue! A Surplus 
 Revenue anticipated in June, 1841 ! In fact, one of the arguments of 
 his Message was that the Distribution would be a saving to the Gov 
 ernment to the full amount, in relieving it from sundry " appropria 
 tions to domestic objects." 
 
 * The following passage occurs in his Message of December, 1842 
 "I feel it my duty to bring under your consideration a practice 
 which has grown up in the administration of the Government, and 
 which 1 am deeply convinced ought to be corrected. I allude to the 
 exercise of the power which usage, rather than reason, has invested 
 in the President of removing incumbents from office in order to sub 
 stitute others more in favor with the dominant party. , My own con 
 duct, in this respect, has been governed by a conscientious purpose 
 to exercise the removing power only in cases of unfaithfulness or in 
 ability, or in those in which its exercise appeared necessary, in order 
 to discountenance and suppress that spirit of active partisanship on 
 the part of holders of office, which not only withdraws them from 
 the steady and impartial discharge of their official duties, but exerts 
 an undue and injurious influence over elections and degrades the 
 character of the Government itself, inasmuch as it exhibits the 
 Chief Magistrate as using a party, through his agents, to the secret 
 plots or open workings of political parties." 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 131 
 
 or more of the subordinates in the Custom House un 
 der his charge, for no better reason than that they 
 were suspected of being Whigs, and place in their sta 
 tions as many supple minions of the Executive. In 
 following up the same corrupt purpose, he removed 
 Gen. Van Rensselaer from the Post Office at Albany, 
 and, subsequently, many of the most approved, effect 
 ive arid honorable officers of the Government from sta 
 tions of high trust, to make way for that wretched crew 
 of parasites who render to his vanity a coarse and ac 
 ceptable flattery, by their assiduous conversancy with 
 all the low schemes of political traffic which may sus 
 tain the absurd hope he ventures to indulge of a second 
 term. 
 
 I pass by the countless freaks which his inane am 
 bition, in other ways, has encouraged him to practice 
 upon the forbearance of the nation : his seditious at 
 tempt to foment discord by the extraordinary and un 
 constitutional measure of recording, in the State De 
 partment, his objections to the single district clauses 
 of the Apportionment Bill, the wisest and most equi 
 table enactments of the Twenty-seventh Congress : 
 his Protest against the Proceedings of the House of 
 Representatives on his Veto of the Tariff Bill : his re 
 fusal to impart information in reference to the Chero 
 kee frauds, upon the requisition of Congress : I pass 
 these and other caprices not less conspicuous, and 
 consign them, without comment, to that judgment 
 which they have received from all intelligent men. 
 My purpose is not to follow Mr. Tyler beyond the 
 confines of those delinquencies which have prevented 
 the Whig party from redeeming the promises of 1840. 
 I have no desire to pursue him in that devious flight 
 which carried him at last to the bosom of his old ad 
 versaries, and from which he has been buffeted away, 
 with the contumely that ever awaits a leader in com 
 mand who is insensible to the peculiar disgrace of de 
 serting his colors in the moment of trial. 
 
 There is poetical justice in his fate. He has fallen 
 the victim to his own easy virtue. They who first 
 
132 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 seduced him have affected to cast him off, as tainted, 
 spoiled of name and fame alas ! 
 
 " Too soon made happy and too late made wise !" 
 
 He now remains an object not less avoided by the 
 friends he has deceived, than by the enemies upon 
 whom he fawned. Not even his preposterous imagi 
 nations of power and influence " of popularity second 
 only to that of Washington," as his flatterers were 
 wont to say not even these supply him now with one 
 residuary hope or topic of consolation. The fly upon 
 the wheel, that, but yesterday, deemed its swift revo 
 lution the product of his impulse, finds to-day his utter 
 want of weight to turn it. He who was but lately the 
 Merry Andrew of the farce, and took to himself all the 
 applause which other actors on the stage had won ; 
 who was so practiced in harlequinade and found so 
 much to exalt his self-esteem in the rapidity, if not the 
 dexterity of his changes, he has come to the convic 
 tion how lamentably forlorn a puppet President may 
 be, whose demerits are unvarnished with the skill to 
 render Official Power respectable even to that small 
 troop who feed upon its favors. The office-holders 
 themselves are deserting him ! That conscience, 
 which was the first instrument of his jugglery, now 
 haunts him like a fiend upon his path : he can advance 
 to no friendly shelter, and yet he dares not turn back, 
 or look behind : 
 
 " Like one who on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 And having once turned round walks on 
 And turns no more his head, 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread." 
 
 I should not have dwelt so much upon the topics 
 presented in the history of that brief interval between 
 the accession of Mr. Tyler to the Presidency and the 
 date of the Manifesto, if it were not that this history 
 became important in answer to the question Why 
 have the Whigs failed to perform all their promises ? 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 133 
 
 why have they not rescued the country from the 
 tyranny of the Veto ? why not secured the Legisla 
 tive Privilege against the encroachment of Executive 
 Prerogative ? why not established the single term ; 
 restrained the corrupt use of Patronage ; settled the 
 question of the Currency ; distributed the proceeds of 
 the Public Lands ? 
 
 These questions are answered in the review I have 
 given. But for them the administration of Mr. Tyler 
 might have been passed over as a blank as a Paren 
 thesis, to use the phrase of a speaker in the House. 
 It has no significance in the nation. It furnishes no 
 precedent : it will never be remembered as an exam 
 ple. It is the holy day of the Abbot of Unreason with 
 its thousand follies, its mummeries and morrice- 
 dances. We shall never have the like of it again. 
 
 After all, it is not without instruction. We require 
 a beacon to show us what to shun, as well as a guide 
 to teach us what to pursue. In this point of view, Mr. 
 Tyler s administration will have a place in history. It 
 will teach the people never again to neglect the ques 
 tion of the Vice-Presidency. It may even warn them 
 against placing incompetent men in any public station. 
 If it does so, then the administration of Mr. Tyler may 
 be considered a benefaction. Thus we find a moral in 
 so great an evil as this. 
 
 His few partisans in the nation are clamorous in de 
 manding Justice to John Tyler. Justice, assuredly, 
 he will obtain from the pen of History. 
 
 It will represent him as a President accidentally 
 brought into power, who, while the sudden honors of 
 his station were yet new, manifested a heart full of 
 gratitude to his friends and replete with good resolu 
 tions to serve the great public interests which had 
 combined to place him where he was. It will de 
 scribe him as vainglorious, weak and accessible to 
 any extravagance of flattery ; of a jealousy quickly 
 provoked by the ascendency of superior minds, and 
 nervously sensitive against the suspicion of being un 
 der their influence. That, from the fear of such an 
 
 M 
 
134 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 imputation, he had thrown himself into evil associa 
 tions, and surrounded himself with private, irresponsi 
 ble counselors who, neither by station nor capacity, 
 were entitled to give him advice, and who fatally drove 
 him into an open rupture with those whom it should 
 have been his pride to call his friends. 
 
 Variable and infirm of purpose, he will be exhibited 
 as ever halting between opposite opinions. Anxious 
 to impress the world with a reputation for inflexibility, 
 he will be shown to be, in fact, without a judgment of 
 his own, and resolute only in avoiding that obvious 
 road which, with least embarrassment to himself and 
 least difficulty in the selection, it was his plainest 
 duty to pursue. It will be truly said of him that it 
 cost him more trouble to find the wrong way, than 
 ordinarily perplexes other men to discern the right. 
 That, in seeking excuses to differ from his friends and 
 gratify his enemies, he was perpetually shifting from 
 on-e awkward and difficult device to another, without 
 the least attention even to the appearance of consist 
 ency, until he succeeded, at length, in alienating from 
 his society every man whose support he should have 
 desired ; at the same time imbittering the separation 
 with an unhappy distrust of his fidelity to those prin 
 ciples to which he was bound by plighted honor. 
 That while he was ever changing his ground, conce 
 ding, retracting, affirming, denying, his concessions 
 were made without sincerity, his retractions without 
 excuse, and his conduct in all disfthguished for its 
 want of dignity. That, with a fair though moderate 
 reputation for capacity, before he came to the Presi 
 dency, he lost this in the first few months of his ser 
 vice ; disappointed the hopes of his friends ; raised 
 his enemies from the despondency of recent defeat 
 into the highest tone of exultation, and diffused through 
 all ranks of the community an opinion of his want of 
 fitness for the high station to which he had been called. 
 That emphatically the accident of an accident, without 
 popularity, without a mind to conceive or a heart to 
 execute great undertakings, he had chosen a position 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 135 
 
 of intense responsibility and universal observation, and 
 committed himself to a hazard which even the wisest 
 and boldest might contemplate with apprehension. 
 
 I do not say he has intentionally done all the mis 
 chief which has resulted from his course. I am not 
 willing to impute to him such depravity. He is said 
 to be, in private life, amiable, hospitable and courteous : 
 but he is not the first man known to history who has 
 presented the anomaly of blameless private life, ex 
 hibiting, on the stage of public affairs, a want of po 
 litical integrity. Perhaps he may be relieved from 
 some of the imputed excess of this delinquency, by 
 ascribing his errors somewhat to a want of judgment, 
 to an exorbitant vanity, and to the influence of bad ad 
 vice : That he lacked the quality of attaching to him 
 such friends as were indispensable to his position, and 
 therefore had none of that kind. It is the calamity 
 of high place that it stands most in need of that coun 
 sel which it is most apt to repel. 
 
 We may say of this President what Milton has said 
 of another unhappy ruler, whose melancholy fate fur 
 nishes the most awful example on record of the danger 
 in a Chief Magistrate violating his promises to the peo 
 ple, " that, for the most part, he followed the worser 
 counsels, and, almost always, of the worser men." 
 
 I do not profess to know who were his advisers. I 
 only know that those whom public duty had placed 
 around him, and who were eminently worthy of all 
 trust, did not enjoy his confidence. While the press 
 was full of annunciations, in advance, of his intentions, 
 his Cabinet was generally ignorant of his views, or re 
 markably deceived in regard to them, on the greatest 
 measure brought to the notice of his administration. 
 
 In the vain hope, it is believed, of raising up a third 
 party, he came into direct collision with a majority of 
 the nation ; and, by his conduct, heightened the common 
 feeling of disappointment into the stronger emotion of 
 indignation, provoked, in those who elected him, by a 
 doubt which every one felt it painful to utter. The re 
 sult was that irrevocable renunciation of him proclaim 
 ed in The Manifesto. 
 
136 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS. 
 
 DURING the Extra Session, until that period when 
 it became the President s cue, in the play he had pro 
 posed to himself, to break with the Whigs, the ad 
 ministration organ was full of commendation of the ac 
 tivity with which Congress was answering t-he expec 
 tations of the Country.* 
 
 At the next session, a different game was found ne 
 cessary. A systematic and incessant vituperation of 
 the proceedings of Congress became a conspicuous de 
 vice in the tactics of the Administration. The Legis 
 lature was daily assailed with every species of slan 
 der. No effort was spared to lessen it in the esteem 
 of the nation. Detraction and falsehood did their worst 
 to spread abroad an opinion that the majority of the 
 Representatives of the people were faithless to their 
 duty, because they could not receive their lesson from 
 the Executive ; because they could not obey the dic 
 tation of a power that had already abandoned its trust 
 and forfeited all claim to their confidence. They were 
 charged with a factious spirit, when they stood firm in 
 their endeavor to redeem the pledges they had given 
 to the nation ; and were aspersed with the accusation 
 of being engaged in " President making," when they re 
 fused to co-operate in the absurd and frivolous scheme 
 of glorifying John Tyler with a view to a second term. 
 For this contumacy war was waged against the ma 
 jority of both Houses by the Executive and his allies. 
 
 The most preposterous and odious claims of Presi 
 dential prerogative, such as the country had witness 
 ed in the worst days of the Jackson administration 
 
 * "The House of Representatives is nobly responding to the pop 
 ular voice. "Madisonian, July 22, 1841. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 137 
 
 were revived : new claims, even, added. The Legis 
 lature was assailed directly by the President himself, 
 as trifling with the public welfare and misspending its 
 time over " petty schemes of hatred or ambition" in 
 stead of devoting it to " measures designed for general 
 relief."* 
 
 The reproof of Congress, thus beginning with the 
 President, was echoed from every servile press in his 
 interest. It was repeated by every obsequious flatter 
 er who had a motive to prove his fealty to the dispenser 
 of government patronage. It became the theme of the 
 thousand daily tirades by which the minions of the Ex 
 ecutive throughout the land, lent their assistance to de 
 grade the Representative body in the view of the peo 
 ple, and, in its degradation, to assail the representative 
 principle itself. This, because the majority of Con 
 gress could not agree to receive their bills from the 
 hand of the President, their opinions from his sugges 
 tion ! 
 
 The President, indeed, in no ambiguous terms, as 
 serted the right to initiate acts of Legislation, and as 
 sumed to rebuke Congress for disregarding his rec 
 ommendations ; made a display of what he had pro 
 mulgated as his views, what he would assent to and 
 what he would not j and claimed, in emphatic language, 
 to be an integral, co-ordinate branch of the Legisla 
 ture, affirming that the Constitution had given him, " for 
 wise purposes, an active agency in all Legislation."! 
 
 I have no purpose to say more than I have al 
 ready said, on the right of a President of the United 
 States to control the action of the law-making power ; 
 nor to comment upon either the propriety or the digni 
 ty of his animadversions in private letters, prepared for 
 publication, or in any other manner, official or unof 
 ficial, against the members of the Legislative body for 
 what transpires in the Legislative Halls. Much less 
 am I inclined to expatiate upon that claim which pur- 
 
 * Letter of John Tyler to Joseph Graham, June 4, 1842. 
 t See his letter to Messrs. Harris and others of Philadelphia, 
 July 2, 1842. 
 
 M2 
 
138 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 ports to make him a part of the Legislature, and to 
 confer upon him the right to " an active agency" in its 
 proceedings. These claims, after the signal denun 
 ciation which they have received from the master 
 minds of the nation ; after the stern judgment pro 
 nounced against them by the people ; after the con 
 tempt with which they have been treated by Congress, 
 need no farther sentence of condemnation. I dismiss 
 them with the remark that they are utterly repugnant 
 to all Whig doctrine, at least: abhorrent to all Whig 
 practice : renounced and repelled as assumptions hos 
 tile not only to the principles of our government, but 
 of all free representative government. They cannot 
 subsist with the notion of an independent Legislature ; 
 are incompatible with the spirit of that elemental prin 
 ciple of Parliamentary Privilege which secures every 
 representative from being questioned for what is utter 
 ed in debate. They are made in the tone and the tem 
 per of those pretensions of the Stuarts in English his- 
 tory, which brought about that famous recalcitration of 
 the patriots of England who first defined and estab 
 lished the Liberty of Parliament, originated the Whig 
 party, and won the triumph of 1688. 
 
 The old political adversaries of the Whigs, finding 
 in these clamors against Congress, something that 
 might be turned to account for themselves, joined in 
 the scheme of vituperation : did all in their power to 
 embarrass the proceedings of the majority, to foment 
 the President s quarrel, to stimulate his vanity toward 
 new aggressions, and to spread complaint among the 
 people. They, the pretended Democracy of the na 
 tion, faithful to their original instincts, were busy to 
 second and encourage the laudable design of the Ex 
 ecutive in trenching upon and denouncing the popular 
 Privilege as it existed in the independence of the Leg 
 islature ! Truly, they were again on their old track i 
 
 Many good persons, at last, were brought to believe 
 that Congress was actually chargeable with the sins 
 which its original calumniator had laid at its door. 
 This pertinacity of ceaseless imputation, which iu 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 139 
 
 general seldom fails to secure some degree of credence 
 to any calumny, wrought upon the belief of many cred 
 ulous minds who were not naturally unfriendly to the 
 Whigs. The whole responsibility for whatever was 
 charged against Congress, of course, fell upon the ma 
 jority. The minority, by joining in the aspersion, 
 went scot free <not only scot free, but found it a 
 weapon to wound their adversaries. They played 
 their part with great dexterity on the floor of Congress ; 
 uttered many pitiful, sanctimonious exclamations of 
 horror at the sin of wasting the precious time, and still 
 more precious money of the people, in the unpardona 
 ble enterprise of President making, in the shocking 
 neglect of Presidential advice, in the contumacious 
 censure of Executive usurpation ! They affected to 
 find another topic of invective in the rules which the 
 majority had adopted for the despatch of business ; 
 rules without which, amid these ceaseless efforts to 
 impede the course of legislation, the majority could 
 have done nothing. That golden " hour rule" espe 
 cially, the greatest improvement of our day, almost 
 the essential condition upon which a numerous House 
 of Representatives is rendered a practical body was 
 denounced with singular virulence and spleen, as a gag 
 upon the constitutional freedom of debate. The peo 
 ple were said to be deprived of grave, fundamental 
 rights, because the " weak, washy, everlasting flood" 
 of parliamentary egotism was pent up within the con 
 fines which good sense, for the most part, vdluntarily 
 prescribes to itself. It is pleasant to perceive that, 
 notwithstanding all the exaggerations which party el 
 oquence has indulged against this rule, the country 
 has failed to be convinced that the restraint it has 
 placed upon the vice of overtalking in Congress is not 
 founded upon a wise experience. The querulous dec 
 lamation of its opponents has found no sympathetic 
 answer among the people ; and we may venture to 
 foretell that this " hour rule" of the Twenty-seventh 
 Congress will be preserved as long as the prurient ap 
 petite of inane discourse shall be reckoned among the 
 
140 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 maladies of our Logocracy : it will be valued for the 
 equal rights which it confers upon the effective busi 
 ness man of Congress and the importunate and active 
 babbler who finds enjoyment in listening to the inces 
 sant cataract of his own voice. 
 
 Notwithstanding all that was said, and, at one time, 
 partially believed, to -the detriment of the Twenty- 
 seventh Congress, it is singularly true, that, from the 
 commencement of the Government down to the pres 
 ent day, there has never been assembled a National 
 Legislature whose assiduity, within the appropriate 
 range of its business, has been entitled to higher praise ; 
 none which has wrought more effectively ; done so 
 much. In the face of every impediment which a hos 
 tile Executive and a talented, mischief-making opposi 
 tion could throw in its way, it has accomplished great 
 and permanent good to the Country. It came to its 
 task at a period when the public affairs were in a state 
 of unexampled adversity shattered and disjointed by 
 a long system of improvidence : it found not only an 
 empty treasury, but the sources of revenue shut up ; 
 and a determined and fierce spirit of opposition arrayed 
 against any attempt to open them : it found the people 
 laboring under the pressure of an almost universal 
 bankruptcy: it found peculation and abuse in every 
 department of public administration : it found the re 
 sults of a thriftless prodigality in a heavy national 
 debt, disguised and aggravated by issues of irredeema 
 ble government paper. Even under the most auspi 
 cious circumstances of harmonious co-operation frorn 
 an able and faithful Executive, with every thing from 
 that source to aid and nothing to embarrass, the diffi 
 culties of its position would have been such as the 
 steadiest nerve and most skilful experience might have 
 shrunk from without disgrace ; but the darkness of its 
 hour was increased by that extraordinary mischance 
 which cast upon it an Executive without the will to 
 assist, without the ability to do good, with nothing to 
 distinguish it, in fact, but its perverse power and pur 
 pose to do eviL 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 141 
 
 It was in the midst of such embarrassments that the 
 Twenty-seventh Congress set about its work. With a 
 constancy of patriotic effort never surpassed in our his 
 tory, it maintained its faith through every trial, stead 
 fastly pursued its aims with a most intelligent sense 
 of its duty, and brought back the country to as high 
 and palmy a state of prosperity as the faculties with 
 which it was invested under the Constitution and not 
 wrested from it by the Executive, allowed. If it failed 
 to accomplish all that it desired and had proposed, the 
 fault of this failure is not to be found either in its want 
 of skill to plan or of labor to accomplish. The record 
 of what was undone after the Legislature had done its 
 work, and of what was frustrated after it was prepared, 
 will supply a sufficiently plain account of that failure. 
 
 The enormous expenditure of the preceding admin 
 istration has been reduced to little more than half its 
 average annual amount ; gross abuses, which had here 
 tofore grown up under the neglect or connivance of 
 former Legislatures, have been fully explored and di 
 vulged ; peculation and fraud have been arrested ; the 
 revenues have been restored ; collisions with foreign 
 powers guarded against in future ; bankruptcy has 
 been released from its deadly burden, and thousands 
 of useful citizens have been recalled to active enter 
 prise ; commerce has been put under every protection 
 of law and restored to its ancient vigor ; mechanical 
 industry has been sent back, cheerful and happy, to its 
 deserted field ; agriculture, the foundation of the great 
 mass of national wealth, has been encouraged to a re 
 newed labor, by the gift of a thriving and prosperous 
 market at home ; the great and invaluable principle of 
 a District Representation the safest and best guaran 
 tee which our government can offer of its faith to main 
 tain the most precious right of Republican government, 
 the protection, namely, of the minority by giving them 
 their proper voice in the National Council, has been 
 secured, as far as the Twenty-seventh Congress could 
 secure it by law. All these have been accomplished. 
 If the currency has not been settled ; if the States 
 
142 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 have been deprived of their just inheritance in the pub 
 lic lands ; if the district principle has not been effect 
 ually established, let the nation ask of Mr. Tyler and 
 his new Democratic allies why these measures have 
 not been secured. 
 
 What was achieved will long be remembered to the 
 honor of the Whig ascendency. The labors of the 
 Twenty-seventh Congress will not be lost. For years 
 to come the investigations, reports, plans and proposi 
 tions of that Congress will furnish sure guides and 
 aids to beneficent legislation in all the great depart 
 ments of the public interest. 
 
 It has been one of the subjects of outcry raised 
 against that Congress by its enemies, that it strove to 
 carry its points by a Caucus : that it was under the 
 domination of a Caucus dictatorship. 
 
 The point of this accusation is neither more nor less 
 than that the Whigs met together for the purpose of ad 
 justing their measures, before they presented them in 
 the ordinary forms of legislation. This, in regard to 
 many important measures, is true. It is not true, per 
 haps, as fully as it ought to have been. Under any 
 circumstances, it is but a wise and useful practice for 
 those having tbe responsibility and the control of legis 
 lation, to meet frequently together with a view to suc 
 cessful and efficient action. But in the peculiar posi 
 tion of the Whigs of the Twenty-seventh Congress ; 
 with all the difficulties of the public affairs before 
 them ; holding such relations as they held to the Ex 
 ecutive ; opposed, as they were, by a dexterous party 
 who had no principle of conduct but opposition to all 
 and every Whig measure, if this duty of consultation 
 had been avoided or neglected by the majority, they 
 would have been justly liable to whatever censure 
 might attach to their want of success. They would 
 have been regardless of their most obvious duty to the 
 country. 
 
 As a ground of serious accusation, this attempt to 
 excite hostility is merely ridiculous, and has therefore 
 failed of its aim. It is worthy of notice only, from the 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 143 
 
 stress laid upon it by the President, and by his new- 
 Democratic friends, while the latter had a motive to 
 flatter him. We may regard it as an abortive attempt 
 to create a false odium, by the trick of an imputation 
 which really had nothing odious in it, but which, in 
 accordance with the estimate of the intelligence of the 
 people, familiar to the new-fangled, counterfeit De 
 mocracy of late days, it was conceived very practi 
 cable to impose upon the public credulity as a heinous 
 offence. No party has ever practiced the Caucus dis 
 cipline under more truly exceptionable conditions than 
 those purists themselves : no party has ever carried it 
 to the same length of denunciation against individual 
 dissent and of proscription. While the Whigs of the 
 Twenty-seventh Congress resorted to private consulta 
 tion to mature their course of proceeding, with a view 
 to the attainment of the greatest good to the country, 
 in the alleviation of the public distress, their adversa 
 ries were no less diligently assembled in frequent cau 
 cus, to devise plans to thwart, obstruct and destroy. 
 The malignant joy with which they contemplated each 
 n-ew embarrassment that arose ; with which they 
 cheered on the President to every act of obstruction ; 
 with which they lent their aid to defeat every valuable 
 measure ; and with which they lifted up the loud voice 
 of exultation upon the accomplishment of any signal 
 mischief, or the discomfiture of any signal good, will 
 long be remembered against them in the future politi 
 cal contests of the people, and will swell the measure 
 of retribution against them in that day of reckoning 
 which is certainly at hand. 
 Again, we bide our time. 
 
144 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 IX 
 
 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. THE DICTATOR. THE ARRAY 
 
 OF 1844. 
 
 I HAVE heretofore descanted, somewhat at large, 
 upon the character and aims of the two great par 
 ties which divide the nation. The Whigs, I have 
 shown, from their first organization up to the pres 
 ent moment, as standing upon the foundation of 
 well-defined and well-understood principles of the 
 deepest import both in the structure of our gov 
 ernment and in the course of its administration. 
 Their opponents those who now call themselves 
 the Democracy I have presented as a party com 
 pacted, so far as regards either their principles or 
 their measures, of incongruous fragments, exhibit 
 ing the most opposite and heterogeneous views, 
 and associated only upon personal predilections and 
 interests : That this party was, in fact, originally 
 organized upon the popularity of General Jackson ; 
 was compo&ed of Federalists and Democrats, 
 Federalists making war against the old Democratic 
 ascendency 5 Democrats renouncing the ancient 
 landmarks of the party, and prepared to sanction 
 any amount of Federal infusion into the policy of 
 the administration : That, combined of these ele 
 ments, it adopted and promulgated every variety 
 of political sentiment which had ever been devel 
 oped in the country. It pretended to no consist 
 ency of doctrine, but invariably studied the humor 
 of the day, and espoused and discarded the most 
 opposite and conflicting opinions, without even 
 thinking it worth while to offer an excuse for its 
 singular aberrations. It has alternately, during the 
 term of its existence, advocated and rejected every 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 145 
 
 great measure of policy which has been agitated 
 in the public councils. In the beginning of its 
 career, it proposed the Single term, a national Gov 
 ernment Bank, a protective Tariff, the distribution 
 of the Surplus revenue, t-he surrender of the Public 
 Lands, the limitation of Executive Patronage. In 
 its progress it renounced every one of these meas 
 ures. It has come, at last, to present the union 
 of the most extraordinary political elements any 
 country ever witnessed. They who were the au 
 thors of the Force Bill and the Proclamation are 
 now ready to take for their President the Chief of 
 Nullification, he whom it was the object of the 
 Force Bill and the Proclamation to reward with a 
 halter ; whom many of them were even anxious 
 to visit with that distinction. They who were 
 willing to sever the Union rather than submit to a 
 protective Tariff, are now ready to abide the de 
 cree of a Convention which shall endeavor to 
 place the Chief Magistracy in the hands of him who 
 voted for the Tariff of 1828. They who supported 
 General Jackson s recommendation in favor of a 
 National Bank founded on the Revenues of the 
 Government, claim the honors of supreme domin 
 ion upon their constitutional antipathy to a Bank 
 in any form whatever. They who denounced the 
 Sub-Treasury as " disorganizing and revolution 
 ary," now commend it as a second Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 It were useless to go through the catalogue. 
 No imaginable freak of political ambidexterity that 
 may be alleged, would more than excite a smile 
 from a party which has not such intrepidity of dis 
 simulation as to talk of its consistency. They 
 who could consent to be driven into the fold and 
 there unresistingly to await the lot which should 
 consign them to the portion of Mr. Calhoun or 
 Mr. Van Buren, just as the legerdemain of a cau 
 cus of politicians should dispose of them, are sure 
 ly proof against all raillery on their political virtue. 
 
146 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 The party was personal merely. Springing out 
 of the renown of a Great Chief, and living by his 
 will and on his breath, it will come to its dissolution 
 even before he who founded it shall pay the debt 
 of nature. As long as his influence was rife, it pos 
 sessed the vigor which belonged to his character. 
 As that influence wanes, in retirement and with ad 
 vancing years that find subjects more congenial 
 than the mean game of worldly ambition, the party 
 gradually becomes shorn of its strength; hastens 
 to that inevitable doom to which discord and rival 
 hate have, in all ages, consigned parties and com 
 munities that have " no other principle of cohesion 
 than the hope of plunder." Not all the glory that 
 encircled Charlemagne and his Paladins could save 
 the dominion to his envious and quarrelsome suc 
 cessors. That most notable disaster of Fontenay, 
 where, say the historians, perished the whole 
 force which had so often turned back the tide of 
 Saxon war occurred in the second reign after the 
 emperor. It was the fatal result of an embroilment 
 between three brothers, grandsons of the Western 
 Caesar, brawling for the empire. The vast domain 
 of Charlemagne sunk into a petty province. The 
 story is not without its moral. Another Fontenay 
 is at hand. 
 
 The gravest charge which we have now to make 
 against this strange Democracy is the supple sup 
 port they have given to the present administration ; 
 an administration they have lured to its ruin. 
 They have extracted from it all the patronage it is 
 able to bestow. As the price of this compliance, 
 they gave it prompt encouragement in the worst 
 acts of its malice against the Whigs ; affected to 
 applaud it for its treachery and to praise it for its 
 vices. They have, through such means, succeed 
 ed in incorporating that administration in their 
 party ; have made themselves responsible for its 
 misdemeanors. They must answer this responsi 
 bility to the country. They would, now, " cast it, 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 147 
 
 like a worthless weed, away," hoping in this tardy 
 repudiation to escape the censure of their illicit 
 intercourse. They may assume to deny it farther 
 participation in their favors, now that it has no 
 thing more to grant. But it is too late. They 
 will not be allowed to shake off the connection 
 merely because it ceases to be profitable. They 
 have taken Mr. Tyler " for better," they must 
 also hold to him "for worse," and abide the cen 
 sure of the nation, not only for the mischief they 
 have helped to do, but for having made an impure 
 alliance for the sake of gain ; for the hypocrisy 
 and libertinism that have marked their whole ca 
 reer of seduction. 
 
 As to Mr. Tyler, our quarrel with him has lost 
 all its significance in his feebleness. But as to the 
 New Democracy, our motives to contest are even 
 whetted and rendered more keen by the injury 
 they have sought to inflict upon us, in tampering 
 with the President s weakness, inflaming his hate 
 and encouraging his apostacy, conduct less pur 
 sued from any hope of benefit to them, than from 
 a meditated design of evil to our cause. In this 
 we have strong motive to renewed hostility, the 
 effect of which will be felt when we take the field. 
 The country, if we ar.e not deceived, will resent 
 this recklessness to the public welfare, and will not 
 hold a party excused whose zeal to destroy had led 
 it to forget its more obvious duty of preserving 
 what is good. 
 
 Our quarrel, therefore, is with Locofocoism, 
 not with Mr. Tyler. If we had no other griefs to 
 complain of than his desertion ; if no enemy but 
 him, we should congratulate ourselves upon the 
 riddance of a man who never had the faculty to do 
 us service, and whose alienation was to be ac 
 counted but a fortunate event. We should mere 
 ly have preserved silence. 
 
 But we pay our adversaries the compliment to 
 say, that, as yet, their organization, their numbers, 
 
148 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 their purposes, their means of warfare, more than 
 these, the assiduity and the craft of their misrep 
 resentations, furnish cogent argument why we 
 should make our case understood ; furnish the 
 most authoritative reasons why we should write 
 and publish A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 The time is nearly come when we shall raise our 
 banner in another Presidential contest. We shall 
 take care that there be no mistake in our men. In 
 part, it may be said, we have already taken care 
 of that. The Whigs, with one consent; with a 
 unanimity, almost without parallel in history, have 
 turned their eyes to one man in this nation who 
 will, assuredly, if Providence spares him for the 
 contest, be the Leader of our Host. Even he The 
 Dictator, the great Champion of Constitutional 
 right, the personation of every public Virtue, 
 genuine image of the Whig Sentiment THE MAN 
 OF THE UNION, HENRY CLAY, will lead our Host. 
 To him the hand of the general Whig Party points, 
 as to our Cynosure : Hand guided by the Heart of 
 every Whig of the Land. 
 
 Our adversaries, in reproach, call him THE DIC 
 TATOR. We take the word, and will turn their re 
 proach to honor. Happy is it for that nation that 
 holds within its confines one man, in whose sagaci 
 ty and pure purpose there is such pervading faith 
 that his counsel shall acquire the authority of a 
 dictate ; toward whom such general trust abounds, 
 that the volunteer public deference shall receive 
 his advice as a parental command ! Glorious re 
 ward of stainless patriotism ! Happy homage to 
 Wisdom and Virtue ! Dictator, such as this, the 
 Country once had but once. 
 
 What more enviable chaplet can be woven for 
 man s brow than such a testimony 1 That Henry 
 Clay, a private tiller of the soil ; unostentatious 
 citizen ; with no official power ; all the power of 
 the Executive government, the Gift-giving power 
 arrayed against him ; simply attired in his own 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 149 
 
 virtues, illustrated only by his deeds should thus 
 sway the affections of the Republic, thus move 
 " the wilderness of free minds !" What richer me 
 morial of a patriot s worth than this! 
 
 Would, that our fortunate Commonwealth may 
 never find other Dictator than such as he ! had 
 never found other! 
 
 Illustrious living inheritance is ours in such a 
 man. Auspicious is it for the Whig party that with 
 such prompt and generous accord, we fix our 
 thoughts upon him. That of the thousands wor 
 thy, none may stand in rivalry with him, worthiest 
 of all. 
 
 It were a small labor to write his vindication 
 against the calumnies of enemies. They but prove 
 how much he is loved, how much feared. If noth 
 ing were said against him, his fame would want 
 one testimonial to his eminent worth. It would 
 leave him under the suspicion of a tame mediocri 
 ty which, less than of any man in this Union, is his. 
 Standing, as he does, before the world, an imper 
 sonation of the principles of the Whig party, he 
 shares with them the enmity of many foes: per 
 haps, it would be more just to say, opposition of ad 
 versaries, rather than enmity ; for there is admit 
 ted to be a frank and generous gallantry in his na 
 ture which, for the most part, disarms political hos 
 tility of personal ill-will, and extorts from those who 
 are arrayed in adverse ranks, a liberal confession of 
 respect ; even nurses a secret wish, arid indeed 
 often prompts the open expression of it, that, par 
 ty difference aside, his companionship were theirs. 
 
 Still he has foes, foes to his fame and name. 
 We must look for these, chiefly, in the purlieus of 
 the White House. There, his great ^sin would 
 seem to be, that he could not surrender his con 
 victions of duty at the footstool of power. If he 
 could have consented to offer the incense of flat 
 tery there, and joined with those who sought to 
 break up the Whig party for the sake of elevating 
 
 N2 
 
150 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 themselves, we should, perhaps, have heard noth 
 ing of a Dictatorship; but only praises to the man 
 whose flexible conscience could have been turned 
 to such proiitable account. 
 
 Mr. Clay presents, as guardian of his faith, the 
 glory of a life of eminent desert desert dearer to 
 him than all renown. In this, the evening of his 
 days, he looks back from an eminence, far more 
 exalted than any official station, upon a brilliant 
 career of usefulness to his country, rendered more 
 brilliant by great talents guided by the utmost pu 
 rity of motive and consistency of purpose to the 
 promotion of national happiness. In that retro 
 spect he finds only ever fresh incentives to perse 
 vere in the course he has pursued. His life is an 
 epic of grand achievements which have never been 
 tarnished by servility of opinion to any man how 
 ever distinguished. Few could have meditated 
 such an insult to his fame as to expect that he 
 would forfeit his title to this praise for the sake of 
 conciliating the favor or averting the malevolence 
 of John Tyler. 
 
 His offence is that he misapprehended the char 
 acter of the man whom the Constitution has in 
 trusted with the Veto, and deemed it impossible 
 that the President could do that whrch the public 
 welfare, the public opinion and his own declara 
 tions had authorized the country to believe he 
 would not do. It is that he preferred to adhere to 
 his faith rather than bend to the purpose of a ver 
 satile Chief Magistrate whom no man could believe 
 because no man could find him twice in the same 
 opinion j who, in the intoxication of sudden prefer 
 ment, fancied himself clothed with a heavenly mis 
 sion, of which the chief purpose, as far as we can 
 gather it from his acts, was to disband and discard 
 his first friends and prolong his unhappy power, 
 through the aid of new combinations which were 
 not possible consistently with any theory of fideli 
 ty to the trust implied in his election. 
 
DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 151 
 
 For these offences, chiefly, has Mr. Clay been 
 denounced. The denunciation will scarcely ruffle 
 the serenity of his temper. He yet survives, tran 
 quil in the privacy of Ashland, where each hour of 
 his life brings him more content than a whole cen 
 tury of the mawkish sycophancy which trails after 
 the King of Shreds and Patches in the White 
 House. 
 
 Among all other classes of political adversaries 
 Mr. Clay is treated as a generous opponent. No 
 one imputes to him concealment of opinion, eva 
 sion of the full responsibility of his position, or 
 ambiguity in relation to any public measure. There 
 needs no proclamation to announce the exact issue 
 put in controversy, when Mr. Clay s name is in 
 scribed upon our flag. In those letters will be read 
 the whole Whig formula of doctrine. Go back to 
 1816 and follow his ample history up from that 
 day, then say if he has retracted one sentiment 
 of public duty, renounced one matured opinion of 
 what is necessary to the public good. While the 
 tide of changing events has swept the most con 
 spicuous of his adversaries along its heady current 
 into every latitude of doctrine, it has swept by him, 
 fast anchored on the rock of his political faith, and 
 finds him, to-day, the same champion of popular 
 right that it found him when he stood by Mr. Mad 
 ison the sturdiest of his supports. They call him 
 a Federalist. Even the ancient Priests of that 
 Faith, now refulgent in the robes of the New De 
 mocracy, brand him with that epithet, as the most 
 poignant opprobrium they can heap upon his name. 
 We may truly say, Mr. Clay s democracy is not of 
 the complexion which they profess. But it is the 
 democracy of him they hated most when living, 
 they most affect to praise when dead, the De 
 mocracy of Madison. Such is the Democracy of 
 the Whigs. 
 
 It is an unprofitable contention which dwells 
 merely upon names. We may permit our oppo- 
 
152 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 nents to assume what disguise, in this sort, may 
 best answer the stratagem of their war. We look 
 to things rather than to this bawble of a name. In 
 the hope to secure a fundamental good to present 
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 extravagance of Executive authority, pushed, as by 
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 of Presidents or the faction of Parties, we resume 
 our array and throw ourselves upon the arbitrament 
 of the Nation. Contending for these, and for a 
 system of measures long proclaimed and thorough 
 ly understood, we desire to be known by that ap 
 pellation which is historically associated with our 
 aims, and which is illustrious in the annals of Con 
 stitutional Liberty, on both shores of the Atlantic, 
 as indicating the friends of PRIVILEGE in opposition 
 to the friends of PREROGATIVE. Such are the Whigs 
 who are now gathering for the strife of 
 
 1844. 
 
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