Thomas Hart Benton Part 2

Until 1828 the prominent political chiefs of the nation had either been its presidents, or had been in the cabinets of these presidents. But after Jackson's time they were in the Senate, and it was on this body that public attention was concentrated. Jackson's cabinet itself showed such a falling off, when compared with the cabinets of any of his predecessors, as to justify the caustic criticism that, when he took office, there came in "the millennium of the minnows." In the Senate, on the contrary, there were never before or since so many men of commanding intellect and powers. Calhoun had been elected as vice-president on the Jacksonian ticket, and was thus, in 1829, presiding over the body of which he soon became an active member; Webster and Clay were already taking their positions as the leaders of the great National Republican, or, as it was afterwards called, Whig party.

When the rupture between Calhoun and the Jacksonian Democrats, and the resignation of the former from the vice-presidency took place, three parties developed in the United States Senate. One was composed of the Jacksonian Democrats, with Benton at their head; one was made up of the little band of Nullifiers, led by Calhoun; and the third included the rather loose array of the Whigs, under Clay and Webster. The feeling of the Jacksonians towards Calhoun and the Nullifiers and towards Clay and the Clay Whigs were largely those of personal animosity; but they had very little of this sentiment towards Webster and his a.s.sociates, their differences with them being on questions of party principle, or else proceeding from merely sectional causes.

CHAPTER V.

THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS.

During both Jackson's presidential terms he and his adherents were engaged in two great struggles; that with the Nullifiers, and that with the Bank. Although these struggles were in part synchronous, it will be easier to discuss each by itself.

The nullification movement in South Carolina, during the latter part of the third and early part of the fourth decades in the present century, had nothing to do, except in the most distant way, with slavery. Its immediate cause was the high tariff; remotely it sprang from the same feelings which produced the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798.

Certain of the Slave States, including those which raised hemp, indigo, and sugar, were high-tariff states; indeed, it was not till towards the close of the presidency of Monroe that there had been much sectional feeling over the policy of protection. Originally, while we were a purely agricultural and mercantile people, free trade was the only economic policy which occurred to us as possible to be followed, the first tariff bill being pa.s.sed in 1816. South Carolina then was inclined to favor the system, Calhoun himself supporting the bill, and, his subsequent denials to the contrary notwithstanding, distinctly advocating the policy of protection to native industries; while Ma.s.sachusetts then and afterwards stoutly opposed its introduction, as hostile to her interests. However, the bill was pa.s.sed, and Ma.s.sachusetts had to submit to its operation. After 1816 new tariff laws were enacted about every four years, and soon the coast Slave States, except Louisiana, realized that their working was hurtful to the interests of the planters. New England also changed her att.i.tude; and when the protective tariff bill of 1828 came up, its opponents and supporters were sharply divided by sectional lines. But these lines were not such as would have divided the states on the question of slavery.

The Northeast and Northwest alike favored the measure, as also did all the Southern States west of the Alleghanies, and Louisiana. It was therefore pa.s.sed by an overwhelming vote, against the solid opposition of the belt of Southern coast states stretching from Virginia to Mississippi, and including these two.

The states that felt themselves harmed by the tariff did something more than record their disapproval by the votes of their representatives in Congress. They nearly all, through their legislatures, entered emphatic protests against its adoption, as being most harmful to them and dangerous to the Union; and some accompanied their protests with threats as to what would be done if the obnoxious laws should be enforced. They certainly had grounds for discontent. In 1828 the tariff, whether it benefited the country as a whole or not, unquestionably harmed the South; and in a federal Union it is most unwise to pa.s.s laws which shall benefit one part of the community to the hurt of another part, when the latter receives no compensation. The truculent and unyielding att.i.tude of the extreme protectionists was irritating in the extreme; for cooler men than the South Carolinians might well have been exasperated at such an utterance as that of Henry Clay, when he stated that for the sake of the "American system"--by which t.i.tle he was fond of styling a doctrine already ancient in mediaeval times--he would "defy the South, the president and the devil."

On the other hand, both the good and the evil effects of the tariff were greatly exaggerated. Some harm to the planter states was doubtless caused by it; but their falling back, as compared with the North, in the race for prosperity, was doubtless caused much more by the presence of slavery, as Dallas, of Pennsylvania, pointed out in the course of some very temperate and moderate remarks in the Senate. Clay's a.s.sertions as to what the tariff had done for the West were equally ill-founded, as Benton showed in a good speech, wherein he described picturesquely enough the industries and general condition of his portion of the country, and a.s.serted with truth that its revived prosperity was due to its own resources, entirely independent of federal aid or legislation. He said: "I do not think we are indebted to the high tariff for our fertile lands and our navigable rivers; and I am certain we are indebted to these blessings for the prosperity we enjoy." "In all that comes from the soil the people of the West are rich. They have an abundant supply of food for man and beast, and a large surplus to send abroad. They have the comfortable living which industry creates for itself in a rich soil, but beyond this they are poor.... They have no roads paved or macadamized; no ca.n.a.ls or aqueducts; no bridges of stone across the innumerable streams; no edifices dedicated to eternity; no schools for the fine arts; not a public library for which an ordinary scholar would not apologize." Then he went on to speak of the commerce of the West and its exports, "the marching myriads of living animals annually taking their departure from the heart of the West, defiling through the gorges of the c.u.mberland, the Alleghany, and the Appalachian mountains, or traversing the plains of the South, diverging as they march, ... and the flying steamboats and the fleets of floating arks, loaded with the products of the forest, the farm, and the pasture, following the courses of our n.o.ble rivers, and bearing their freights to the great city" of New Orleans.

Unfortunately Benton would interlard even his best speeches with theories of economics often more or less crude, and, still worse, with a series of cla.s.sic quotations and allusions; for he was grievously afflicted with the rage for cheap pseudo-cla.s.sicism that Jefferson and his school had borrowed from the French revolutionists. Nor could he resist the temptation to drag in allusions to some favorite hobby. The repeal of the salt-tax was an especial favorite of his. He was perfectly right in attacking the tax, and deserves the greatest credit for the persistency which finally won him the victory. But his a.s.sociates, unless of a humorous turn of mind, must have found his allusions to it rather tiresome, as when, apropos of the commerce of the Mississippi, and without any possible excuse for speaking of the iniquity of taxing salt, he suddenly alluded to New Orleans as "that great city which revives upon the banks of the Mississippi the name of the greatest of the emperors[2] that ever reigned upon the banks of the Tiber, and who eclipsed the glory of his own heroic exploits by giving an order to his legions never to levy a contribution of salt upon a Roman citizen!"

[2: Aurelian.]

It must be admitted that the tariff did some harm to the South, and that it was natural for the latter to feel resentment at the way in which it worked. But it must also be remembered that no law can be pa.s.sed which does not distribute its benefits more or less unequally, and which does not, in all probability, work harm in some cases. Moreover, the South was estopped from complaining of one section being harmed by a law that benefited, or was supposed to benefit, the country at large, by her position in regard to the famous embargo and non-intervention acts.

These inflicted infinitely more damage and loss in New England than any tariff law could inflict on South Carolina, and, moreover, were put into execution on account of a quarrel with England forced on by the West and South contrary to the desire of the East. Yet the Southerners were fierce in their denunciations of such of the Federalists as went to the extreme in opposition to them. Even in 1816 Ma.s.sachusetts had been obliged to submit with good grace to the workings of a tariff which she deemed hostile to her interests, and which many Southerners then advocated. Certainly, even if the new tariff laws were ill-advised, unjust, and unequal in their working, yet they did not, in the most remote degree, justify any effort to break up the Union; especially the South had no business to complain when she herself had joined in laying heavier burdens on the shoulders of New England.

Complain she did, however; and soon added threats to complaints, and was evidently ready to add acts to threats. Georgia, at first, took the lead in denunciation; but South Carolina soon surpa.s.sed her, and finally went to the length of advocating and preparing for separation from the Union; a step that produced a revulsion of feeling even among her fellow anti-tariff states. The South Carolinian statesmen now proclaimed the doctrine of nullification,--that is, proclaimed that if any state deemed a federal law improper, it could proceed to declare that law null and void so far as its own territory was concerned,--and, as a corollary, that it had the right forcibly to prevent execution of this void law within its borders. This was proclaimed, not as an exercise of the right of revolution, which, in the last resort, belongs, of course, to every community and cla.s.s, but as a const.i.tutional privilege. Jefferson was quoted as the father of the idea, and the Kentucky resolutions of 1798-99, which he drew, were cited as the precedent for the South Carolinian action. In both these last a.s.sertions the Nullifiers were correct. Jefferson was the father of nullification, and therefore of secession. He used the word "nullify" in the original draft which he supplied to the Kentucky legislature, and though that body struck it out of the resolutions which they pa.s.sed in 1798, they inserted it in those of the following year. This was done mainly as an unscrupulous party move on Jefferson's part, and when his side came into power he became a firm upholder of the Union; and, being const.i.tutionally unable to put a proper value on truthfulness, he even denied that his resolutions could be construed to favor nullification--though they could by no possibility be construed to mean anything else.

At this time it is not necessary to discuss nullification as a const.i.tutional dogma; it is an absurdity too great to demand serious refutation. The United States has the same right to protect itself from death by nullification, secession, or rebellion, that a man has to protect himself from death by a.s.sa.s.sination. Calhoun's hair-splitting and metaphysical disquisitions on the const.i.tutionality of nullification have now little more practical interest than have the extraordinary arguments and discussions of the school-men of the Middle Ages.

But at the time they were of vital interest, for they were words which it was known South Carolina was prepared to back up by deeds. Calhoun was vice-president, the second officer in the federal government, and yet also the avowed leader of the most bitter disunionists. His state supported him by an overwhelming majority, although even within its own borders there was an able opposition, headed by the gallant and loyal family of the Draytons,--the same family that afterwards furnished the captain of Farragut's flag-s.h.i.+p, the glorious old Hartford. There was a strong sentiment in the other Southern States in his favor; the public men of South Carolina made speech after speech goading him on to take even more advanced ground.

In Was.h.i.+ngton the current at first seemed to be all setting in favor of the Nullifiers; they even counted on Jackson's support, as he was a Southerner and a states'-rights man. But he was also a strong Unionist, and, moreover, at this time, felt very bitterly towards Calhoun, with whom he had just had a split, and had in consequence remodeled his cabinet, thrusting out all Calhoun's supporters, and adopting Van Buren as his political heir,--the position which it was. .h.i.therto supposed the great Carolina separatist occupied.

The first man to take up the gauntlet the Nullifiers had thrown down was Webster, in his famous reply to Hayne. He, of course, voiced the sentiment of the Whigs, and especially of the Northeast, where the high tariff was regarded with peculiar favor, where the Union feeling was strong, and where there was a certain antagonism felt towards the South.

The Jacksonian Democrats, whose strength lay in the West, had not yet spoken. They were, for the most part, neither ultra protectionists nor absolute free-traders; Jackson's early presidential utterances had given offense to the South by not condemning all high-tariff legislation, but at the same time had declared in favor of a much more moderate degree of protection than suited the Whigs. Only a few weeks after Webster's speech Jackson's chance came, and he declared himself in unmistakable terms. It was on the occasion of the Jefferson birthday banquet, April 13, 1830. An effort was then being made to have Jefferson's birthday celebrated annually; and the Nullifiers, rightly claiming him as their first and chief apostle, attempted to turn this particular feast into a demonstration in favor of nullification. Most of the speakers present were actively or pa.s.sively in favor of the movement, and the toasts proposed strongly savored of the new doctrine. But Jackson, Benton, and a number of other Union men were in attendance also, and when it came to Jackson's turn he electrified the audience by proposing: "Our federal Union; it must be preserved." Calhoun at once answered with: "The Union; next to our liberty the most dear; may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union." The issue between the president and the vice-president was now complete, and the Jacksonian Democracy was squarely committed against nullification. Jackson had risen to the occasion as only a strong and a great man could rise, and his few, telling words, finely contrasting at every point with Calhoun's utterances, rang throughout the whole country, and will last as long as our government. One result, at least, the Nullifiers accomplished,--they completely put an end to the Jefferson birthday celebrations.

The South Carolinians had no intention of flinching from the contest which they had provoked, even when they saw that the North and West were united against them, and though the tide began to set the same way in their sister states of the South; North Carolina, among the latter, being the first and most p.r.o.nounced in her support of the president and denunciation of the Nullifiers. The men of the Palmetto State have always ranked high for hotheaded courage, and they soon showed that they had wills as fiery as that of Jackson himself. Yet in the latter they had met an antagonist well worthy of any foeman's steel. In declining an invitation to be present at Charleston, on July 4, 1831, the president again defined most clearly his position in favor of the Union, and his words had an especial significance because he let it be seen that he was fully determined to back them up by force if necessary. But his letter only had the effect of inflaming still more the minds of the South Carolinians. The prime cause of irritation, the tariff, still remained; and in 1832, Clay, having entered the Senate after a long retirement from politics, put the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to their anger by procuring the pa.s.sage of a new tariff bill, which left the planter states almost as badly off as did the law of 1828. Jackson signed this, although not believing that it went far enough in the reduction of duties.

In the presidential election of 1832, Jackson defeated Clay by an enormous majority; Van Buren was elected vice-president, there being thus a Northern man on the ticket. South Carolina declined to take part in the election, throwing away her vote. Again, it must be kept in mind that the slave question did not shape, or, indeed, enter into this contest at all, directly, although beginning to be present in the background as a source of irritation. In 1832 there was ten-fold more feeling in the North against Masonry, and secret societies generally, than there was against slavery.

Benton threw himself in, heart and soul, with the Union party, acting as Jackson's right-hand man throughout the contest with South Carolina, and showing an even more resolute and unflinching front than Old Hickory himself. No better or trustier ally than the Missouri statesman, in a hard fight for a principle, could be desired. He was intensely national in all his habits of thought; he took a deep, personal pride in all his country,--North, South, East, and West. He had been very loath to believe that any movement hostile to the Union was really on foot; but once thoroughly convinced of it he chose his own line of action without an instant's hesitation.

A fortnight after the presidential election South Carolina pa.s.sed her ordinance of nullification, directed against the tariff laws generally, and against those of 1828 and 1832 in particular. The ordinance was to take effect on February 1st; and if meantime the federal government should make any attempt to enforce the laws, the fact of such attempt was to end the continuance of South Carolina in the Union.

Jackson promptly issued a proclamation against nullification, composed jointly by himself and the great Louisiana jurist and statesman, Livingston. It is one of the ablest, as well as one of the most important, of all American state papers. It is hard to see how any American can read it now without feeling his veins thrill. Some claim it as being mainly the work of Jackson, others as that of Livingston; it is great honor for either to have had a hand in its production.

In his annual message the president merely referred, in pa.s.sing, to the Nullifiers, expressing his opinion that the action in reducing the duties, which the extinction of the public debt would permit and require, would put an end to the proceedings. As matters grew more threatening, however, South Carolina making every preparation for war and apparently not being conciliated in the least by the evident desire in Congress to meet her more than half-way on the tariff question, Jackson sent a special message to both houses. He had already sent General Scott to Charleston, and had begun the concentration of certain military and naval forces in or near the state boundaries. He now asked Congress to pa.s.s a measure to enable him to deal better with possible resistance to the laws. South Carolina having complained of the oppressed condition in which she found herself, owing to the working of the tariff, Jackson, in his message, with some humor, quoted in reply the last Thanksgiving proclamation of her governor, wherein he dilated upon the state's unexampled prosperity and happiness.

It must always be kept in mind in describing the att.i.tude of the Jacksonian Democrats towards the Nullifiers that they were all along, especially in the West, hostile to a very high tariff. Jackson and Benton had always favored a much lower tariff than that established in 1828 and hardly changed in 1832. It was no change of front on their part now to advocate a reduction of duties. Jackson and Benton both felt that there was much ground for South Carolina's original complaint, although as strongly opposed to her nullification att.i.tude as any Northerner.

Most of the Southern senators and representatives, though opposed to nullification, were almost equally hostile to the high tariff; and very many others were at heart in sympathy with nullification itself. The intensely national and anti-separatist tone of Jackson's declaration,--a doc.u.ment that might well have come from Was.h.i.+ngton or Lincoln, and that would have reflected high honor on either,--though warmly approved by Benton, was very repugnant to many of the Southern Democrats, and was too much even for certain of the Whigs. In fact, it reads like the utterance of some great Federalist or Republican leader. The feeling in Congress, as a whole, was as strong against the tariff as it was against nullification; and Jackson had to take this into account, all the more because not only was he in some degree of the same way of thinking, but also many of his followers entertained the sentiment even more earnestly.

Calhoun introduced a series of nullification resolutions into the Senate, and defended them strongly in the prolonged const.i.tutional debate that followed. South Carolina meanwhile put off the date at which her decrees were to take effect, so that she might see what Congress would do. Beyond question, Jackson's firmness, and the way in which he was backed up by Benton, Webster, and their followers, was having some effect. He had openly avowed his intention, if matters went too far, of hanging Calhoun "higher than Haman." He unquestionably meant to imprison him, as well as the other South Carolina leaders, the instant that state came into actual collision with the Union; and to the end of his life regretted, and with reason, that he had not done so without waiting for an overt act of resistance. Some historians have treated this as if it were an idle threat; but such it certainly was not.

Jackson undoubtedly fully meant what he said, and would have acted promptly had the provocation occurred, and, moreover, he would have been sustained by the country. He was not the man to weigh minutely what would and what would not fall just on one side or the other of the line defining treason; nor was it the time for too scrupulous adherence to precise wording. Had a collision occurred, neither Calhoun nor his colleague would ever have been permitted to leave Was.h.i.+ngton; and brave though they were, the fact unquestionably had much influence with them.

Webster was now acting heartily with Benton. He introduced a set of resolutions which showed that in the matters both of the tariff and of nullification his position was much the same as was that of the Missourian. Unfortunately Congress, as a whole, was by no means so stiff-kneed. A certain number of Whigs followed Webster, and a certain number of Democrats clung to Benton; but most Southerners were very reluctant to allow pressure to be brought to bear on South Carolina, and many Northerners were as willing to compromise as Henry Clay himself. In accordance with Jackson's recommendations two bills were introduced: one the so-called "Force bill," to allow the president to take steps to defend the federal authority in the event of actual collision; and the other a moderate, and, on the whole, proper tariff bill, to reduce protective duties. Both were introduced by administration supporters.

Benton and Webster warmly sustained the "Force bill," which was bitterly attacked by the Nullifiers and by most of the Southerners, who really hardly knew what stand to take, the leading opponent being Tyler of Virginia, whose disunion att.i.tude was almost as clearly marked as that of Calhoun himself. The measure was eminently just, and was precisely what the crisis demanded; and the Senate finally pa.s.sed it and sent it to the House.

All this time an obstinate struggle was going on over the tariff bill.

Calhoun and his sympathizers were beginning to see that there was real danger ahead, alike to themselves, their const.i.tuents, and their principles, if they followed unswervingly the course they had laid down; and the weak-kneed brethren on the other side, headed by Clay, were becoming even more uneasy. Calhoun wished to avert collision with the federal government; Clay was quite as anxious to avoid an outbreak in the South and to save what he could of the protective system, which was evidently doomed. Calhoun was willing to sacrifice some of his const.i.tutional theories in regard to protection; Clay was ready greatly to reduce protection itself. Each, of them, but especially Clay, was prepared to s.h.i.+ft his stand somewhat from that of abstract moral right to that of expediency. Benton and Webster were too resolute and determined in their hostility to any form of yielding to South Carolina's insolent defiance to admit any hope of getting them to accept a compromise; but the majority of the members were known to be only too ready to jump at any half-way measure which would patch up the affair for the present, no matter what the sacrifice of principle or how great the risk incurred for the future. Accordingly, Clay and Calhoun met and agreed on a curious bill, in reality recognizing the protective system, but making a great although gradual reduction of duties; and Clay introduced this as a "compromise measure." It was subst.i.tuted in the House for the administration tariff bill, was pa.s.sed and sent to the Senate. It gave South Carolina much, but not all, that she demanded.

Her representatives announced themselves satisfied, and supported it, together with all their Southern sympathizers. Webster and Benton fought it stoutly to the last, but it was pa.s.sed by a great majority; a few Northerners followed Webster, and Benton received fair support from his Missouri colleagues and the Maryland senators; the other senators, Whigs and Democrats alike, voted for the measure. Many of the Southerners were imbued with separatist principles, although not yet to the extent that Calhoun was; others, though Union men, did not possess the unflinching will and stern strength of character that enabled Benton to stand out against any section of the country, even his own, if it was wrong. Silas Wright, of New York, a typical Northern "dough-face" politician, gave exact expression to the "dough-face" sentiment, which induced Northern members to vote for the compromise, when he stated that he was unalterably opposed to the principle of the bill, but that on account of the att.i.tude of South Carolina, and of the extreme desire which he had to remove all cause of discontent in that state, and in order to enable her again to become an affectionate member of the Union, he would vote for what was satisfactory to her, although repugnant to himself.

Wright, Marcy, and their successors in New York politics, almost up to the present day, certainly carried cringing subserviency to the South to a pitch that was fairly sublime.

The "Force bill" and the compromise tariff bill pa.s.sed both houses nearly simultaneously, and were sent up to the president, who signed both on the same day. His signing the compromise bill was a piece of weakness out of keeping with his whole character, and especially out of keeping with his previous course towards the Nullifiers. The position a.s.sumed by Benton and Webster, that South Carolina should be made to submit first and should have the justice of her claims examined into afterwards, was unquestionably the only proper att.i.tude.

Benton wrote:--

My objections to this bill, and to its mode of being pa.s.sed, were deep and abiding, and went far beyond its own obnoxious provisions, and all the transient and temporary considerations connected with it.... A compromise made with a state in arms is a capitulation to that state.... The injury was great then, and a permanent evil example. It remitted the government to the condition of the old confederation, acting upon sovereignties instead of individuals. It violated the feature of our Union which discriminated it from all confederacies that ever existed, and which was wisely and patriotically put into the Const.i.tution to save it from the fate which had attended all confederacies, ancient and modern.... The framers of our Const.i.tution established a Union instead of a League--to be sovereign and independent within its sphere, acting upon persons through its own laws and courts, instead of acting on communities through persuasion or force. The effect of this compromise legislation was to destroy this great feature of our Union--to bring the general and state governments into conflict--and to subst.i.tute a sovereign state for an offending individual as often as a state chose to make the cause of that individual her own.

Not only was Benton's interpretation of the Const.i.tution sound, and one that by the course of events has now come to be universally accepted, but his criticisms on the wisdom of the compromise bill were perfectly just. Had the Anti-Nullifiers stood firm, the Nullifiers would probably have given way, and if not, would certainly have been crushed. Against a solid North and West, with a divided South, even her own people not being unanimous, and with Jackson as chief executive, South Carolina could not have made even a respectable resistance. A salutary lesson then might very possibly have saved infinite trouble and bloodshed thereafter. But in Jackson's case it must be remembered that, so far as his acts depended purely upon his own will and judgment, no fault can be found with him; he erred only in ratifying a compromise agreed to by the vast majority of the representatives of the people in both houses of Congress.

The battle did not result in a decisive victory for either side. This was shown by the very fact that each party insisted that it had won a signal triumph. Calhoun and Clay afterwards quarreled in the senate chamber as to which had given up the more in the compromise. South Carolina had declared, first, that the tariff was unconst.i.tutional, and therefore to be opposed upon principle; second, that it worked injustice to her interests, and must be abolished forthwith; thirdly, that, if it were not so abolished, she would a.s.sert her power to nullify a federal law, and, if necessary, would secede from the Union. When her representatives agreed to the compromise bill, they abandoned the first point; the second was decided largely in her favor, though protection was not by any means entirely given up; the third she was allowed to insist upon with impunity, although the other side, by pa.s.sing the "Force bill," showed that in case matters did proceed to extremities they were prepared to act upon the opposite conviction. Still, she gained most of that for which she contended, and the victory, as a whole, rested with her. Calhoun's purposes seem to have been, in the main, pure; but few criminals have worked as much harm to their country as he did. The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in pa.s.sing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally.

Without doubt, the honors of the nullification dispute were borne off by Benton and Webster. The latter's reply to Hayne is, perhaps, the greatest single speech of the nineteenth century, and he deserves the highest credit for the stubbornness with which he stood by his colors to the last. There never was any question of Webster's courage; on the occasions when he changed front he was actuated by self-interest and ambition, not by timidity. Usually he appears as an advocate rather than an earnest believer in the cause he represents; but when it came to be a question of the Union, he felt what he said with the whole strength of his nature.

An even greater meed of praise attaches to Benton for the unswerving fidelity which he showed to the Union in this crisis. Webster was a high-tariff man, and was backed up by all the sectional antipathies of the Northeast in his opposition to the Nullifiers; Benton, on the contrary, was a believer in a low tariff, or in one for revenue merely, and his sectional antipathies were the other way. Yet, even when deserted by his chief, and when he was opposed to every senator from south of the Potomac and the Ohio, he did not flinch for a moment from his att.i.tude of aggressive loyalty to the national Union. He had a singularly strong and upright character; this country has never had a statesman more fearlessly true to his convictions, when great questions were at stake, no matter what might be the cost to himself, or the pressure from outside,--even when, as happened later, his own state was against him. Intellectually he cannot for a moment be compared to the great Ma.s.sachusetts senator; but morally he towers much higher.

Yet, while praising Jackson and Benton for their behavior towards South Carolina, we cannot forget that but a couple of years previously they had not raised their voices even in the mildest rebuke of Georgia for conduct which, though not nearly so bad in degree as that of South Carolina, was of much the same kind. Towards the close of Adams's term, Georgia had bid defiance to the mandates of the Supreme Court, and proceeded to settle the Indian question within her borders without regard to the authority of the United States, and these matters were still unsettled when Jackson became president. Unfortunately he let his personal feelings bias him; and, as he took the Western and Georgian view of the Indian question, and, moreover, hated the Supreme Court because it was largely Federalist in its composition, he declined to interfere. David Crockett, himself a Union man and a nationalist to the backbone, rated Jackson savagely, and with justice, for the inconsistency of his conduct in the two cases, accusing him of having, by his harmful leniency to Georgia, encouraged South Carolina to act as she did, and ridiculing him because, while he smiled at the deeds of the one state, when the like acts were done by the other, "he took up the rod of correction and shook it over her".

CHAPTER VI.

JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE BANK.

If the struggle with the Nullifiers showed Benton at his best, in the conflict with the Bank he exhibited certain qualities which hardly place him in so favorable a light. Jackson's attack upon the Bank was a move undertaken mainly on his own responsibility, and one which, at first, most of his prominent friends were alarmed to see him undertake. Benton alone supported him from the beginning. Captain and lieutenant alike intensely appreciated the joy of battle; they cared for a fight because it was a fight, and the certainty of a struggle, such as would have daunted weaker or more timid men, simply offered to them an additional inducement to follow out the course they had planned. Benton's thorough-going support was invaluable to Jackson. The president sorely needed a friend in the Senate who would uphold him through thick and thin, and who yet commanded the respect of all his opponents by his strength, ability, and courage. To be sure, Benton's knowledge of financial economics was not always profound; but, on the other hand, a thorough mastery of the laws of finance would have been, in this fight, a very serious disadvantage to any champion of Jackson.

The rights and wrongs of this matter have been worn threadbare in countless discussions. For much of the hostility of Jackson and Benton towards the Bank, there were excellent grounds; but many of their actions were wholly indefensible and very harmful in their results to the country. An a.s.sault upon what Benton called "the money power" is apt to be popular in a democratic republic, partly on account of the vague fear with which the poorer and more ignorant voters regard a powerful inst.i.tution, whose working they do not understand, and partly on account of the jealousy they feel towards those who are better off than themselves. When these feelings are appealed to by men who are intensely in earnest, and who are themselves convinced of the justice and wisdom of their course, they become very formidable factors in any political contest.

The struggle first became important when the question of the re-charter of the Bank was raised, towards the end of Jackson's first term, the present charter still having three years to run. This charter had in it many grave faults; and there might well be a question as to whether it should be renewed. The Bank itself, beyond doubt, possessed enormous power; too much power for its own or outsiders' good. Its president, Biddle, was a man of some ability, but conceited to the last degree, untruthful, and to a certain extent unscrupulous in the use he made of the political influence of the great moneyed inst.i.tution over which he presided. Some of the financial theories on which he managed the Bank were wrong; yet, on the whole, it was well conducted, and under its care the monetary condition of the country was quiet and good, infinitely better than it had been before, or than, under the auspices of the Jacksonian Democracy, it afterwards became.

The two great reasons for Jackson's success throughout his political career were to be found in the strength of the feeling in his favor among the poorer and least educated cla.s.ses of voters, and in the ardent support given him by the low politicians, who, by playing on his prejudices and pa.s.sions, moulded him to their wishes, and who organized and perfected in their own and his interests a great political machine, founded on the "spoils system"; and both the Jacksonian rank and file and the Jacksonian politicians soon agreed heartily in their opposition to the Bank. Jackson and Benton opposed it for the same reasons that the bulk of their followers did; that is to say, partly from honest and ignorant prejudice and partly from a well-founded feeling of distrust as to some of its actions. The ma.s.s of their fellow party-leaders and henchmen a.s.sailed it with the cry that it was exerting its influence to debauch politics, while at the same time they really sought to use it as a power in politics on their own side.

Jackson, in his first annual message in 1829, had hinted that he was opposed to the re-charter of the Bank, then a question of the future and not to arise for four or five years. At the same time he had called in question the const.i.tutionality and expediency of the Bank's existence, and had criticised as vicious its currency system. The matter of const.i.tutionality had been already decided by the Supreme Court, the proper tribunal, and was, and had been for years, an accepted fact; it was an absurdity to call it in question. As regards the matter of expediency, certainly the Jacksonians failed signally to put anything better in its place. Yet it was undeniable that there were grave defects in the currency system.