1831

by Louis P. Masur

  The attorney general under James Monroe, Wirt was one of the most distinguished lawyers in the nation. Earlier in the year, he had defended a judge in a Senate impeachment trial and had argued before the Supreme Court the case of the Cherokee Indians, who claimed to be an independent nation free from the laws of Georgia. When the nomination came, Wirt was in the midst of a personal crisis, still mourning the death of his daughter from scarlet fever. “The charm of life is gone,” he conceded in March. If running for president did not reinvigorate him, it did provide him with a field for action. In his letter of acceptance, he acknowledged surprise that he had been chosen, ratified the principles of the party, and confessed something that not everyone knew: he had been a Mason. Wirt said he had always regarded Masonry as “nothing more than a social and charitable club,” and only recently had come to be persuaded that it was a “political engine … at war with the fundamental principles of the social compact.” If anything, public confession and conversion made him that much more appealing, and his candidacy went forward.37

  Wirt’s nomination received mixed reviews in the party press. “His conversion to anti-masonry was remarkably sudden,” snorted the New York Evening Post (a pro-Jackson paper), “almost coeval with his nomination to the Presidency.” Another editor accused the Anti-Masons of hypocrisy and “sinister motives.” National Republicans denounced Wirt as ambitious and unscrupulous and joked that Anti-Masons offered him the nomination only after trying everybody else, including Justices John McLean and John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Richard Rush. But the New Jersey Journal of Commerce (an anti-Jackson paper) thought Wirt had “all the talents and all the qualifications necessary to make a splendid President.” Wirt knew the price he would pay for running: “I shall be laughed out, abused, slandered.” But he also knew who he was. “I am perfectly aware,” he told his friend Salmon Chase (who would seek the Republican nomination for president in 1860), “that I have none of the captivating arts and manners of professional seekers of popularity. I do not desire them. I shall not change my manners; they are a part of my nature. If the people choose to take me as I am—well. If not, they will only leave me where I have preferred to be, enjoying the independence of private life.”38

  Wirt had only two years to enjoy that life; he died in 1834. In the election of 1832, he garnered fewer than thirty thousand votes, winning only Vermont and its seven electoral votes. For the most part, the Anti-Masonic moment had passed. Some denounced Anti-Masonry along with Masonry: “I renounce Anti-Masonry,” proclaimed one writer, “because anti-masons are doing precisely what they condemn in the Masonic fraternity: namely, attempting to engross power and office.” One Mason associated Anti-Masonry with a leveling spirit loose in the land, and he urged caution: “A strong and deep-moving excitement is, at this time, shaking the whole earth; and, in a fearful paroxysm, is madly grasping at us. In either hemisphere are observable the strife of passion, and the thirst for aggrandizement and power, as well as the struggle for freedom and the searching for light. We see systems, institutions, and governments, honored and made venerable by time, and, to human view, fixed and changeless as the sun, in a moment swept away by the tide of popular power.” Most voters silently agreed with one working-class advocate who thought it absurd to believe that “all evils which afflict human nature are of masonic origin.” “To attempt to establish a political creed upon Anti-Masonry,” he reasoned, was “like turning a sugar loaf upside down and expecting it to stand on the smaller end.” “Twenty years hence,” he predicted, “the citizens of these States will have half forgotten that there ever was such a thing in the world of politics as an Anti-masonic excitement.”39

  Seward left the convention realistic about Wirt’s chances and the fate of Anti-Masonry. On the steamboat to New York, an accident occurred that moved him to deeper reflections than politics. A man fell overboard. “There was a fearful moment of uncertainty as to who it might be,” confided Seward to his wife. “If every passenger on board the boat thought and felt as I did, he thought only of that person, nearest and dearest to himself, who was among the passengers. Tedious minutes elapsed until it was known. I cannot describe to you the intense, painful anxiety that bound in silence all the crowd, which looked upon the man, as he seemed to stand erect in the water, waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the boats to approach him. What a possession is human life, to be exposed to such hazards; and what must have been the solicitude of that poor mortal, while the boats were getting toward him! And yet, had he sunk beneath the waves, to rise no more, what would it have been but hastening for a few days, or months, or years, a catastrophe which is inevitable; and how very soon would the surface of human society, momentarily agitated by the event like the face of the waters disturbed by his struggle, have become smooth and borne no trace of the commotion!”40

  Seward returned home safely and watched as the National Republicans, following the example of the Anti-Masonic Party, held a convention in Baltimore on December 12 and nominated Henry Clay for president. The smooth-talking, slaveholding Kentuckian had served in the House from 1811 to 1825, and as secretary of state under Adams. One traveler described him as “tall and thin, with a weather-beaten complexion, [and] small gray eyes.” Elected to the Senate in November, Clay had been implored to stand with the Anti-Masons. A fusion of Anti-Masons and National Republicans seemed undefeatable against a wobbly Jackson administration. But Clay refused to make any public statement on the issue. “I tell them,” he said, “that Masonry or Anti-Masonry has, legitimately, in my opinion, nothing to do with politics.” Clay recognized that with Anti-Masonic support, which would deliver New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, he would secure the presidency, and he recognized that the two parties agreed on “every thing the general Government can or ought to do.” They differed only on Masonry, but that difference was enough. Clay, seeing himself as planet rather than satellite, felt “we ought to draw them to us, instead of being drawn to them.”

  The National Republican convention concluded with an address to the people of the United States. In reviewing Jackson’s administration, delegates proclaimed, “The political history of the Union for the last three years exhibits a series of measures plainly dictated … by blind cupidity or vindictive party spirit, marked throughout by a disregard for good policy, justice, and every high and generous sentiment, and terminating in a dissolution of the Cabinet, under circumstances more scandalous than any of the kind to be met within the annals of the civilized world.” Citizens from every region should vote against Jackson because of his “inconsistent and vacillating” positions. How, for example, wondered the Republicans, could the president “be regarded at the North and West as the friend of the Tariff and Internal Improvements when the only recommendation at the South is the anticipation that he is the person through whose agency the whole system is to be prostrated?” A year earlier, voters were reminded, Jackson had vetoed as unconstitutional the Maysville Road Bill, which would have provided funds for construction of a highway in Kentucky, Clay’s home state. Jackson had also pledged himself against the Bank of the United States, “this great and beneficial institution,” six years before the issue of renewal was even to emerge before Congress. If the president was re-elected, warned National Republicans, “it may be considered certain that the Bank will be abolished.” Jackson’s behavior as president seemed so tyrannical that, by 1834, the National Republicans renamed themselves the Whigs, after the English party that had traditionally opposed the excesses of the monarchy.41

  In addressing such issues as the tariff, internal improvements, and the Bank, the convention identified a cluster of policies at the core of the National Republican belief system, policies they believed would carry them to the White House. A pro-Clay cartoon depicted the candidate as playing a card game against his leading political opponents. His hand of three aces, which features the economic policies advocated by Clay, defeats William Wirt’s Anti-Masonic card, John C. Calhoun’s hidden hand of nullificati
on and antitariff, and Andrew Jackson’s three kings of intrigue, corruption, and imbecility. At stake is the presidency of the United States. Supporters heralded Clay as the father of the “American system,” a shorthand name for those measures endorsed by the party. Protective tariffs, National Republicans claimed, supported domestic industry against foreign imports; investments in roads, canals, and, most recently, railroads created a transportation infrastructure that promoted commerce; a national bank provided a uniform currency and regulated credit. As a consequence of these measures, all sections of the nation had prospered, and the United States had emerged as an international power.

  8. “A Political Game of Brag” (Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society)

  The system, Clay believed, sustained both slaveholding and non-slaveholding states; as if to bolster his point, he even argued against introducing any schemes of gradual emancipation in Kentucky. Clay’s first oration before the Twenty-second Congress, delivered over several days in February 1832, defended the economic principles on which he had staked his career: “This transformation of the condition of the country from gloom and distress to brightness and prosperity, had been mainly the work of American legislation, fostering American industry … . There is scarcely any interest, scarcely a vocation in society, which is not embraced by the beneficence of this system.” The American system, he asserted, benefited not just a single state or a region but “the whole Union.”42

  By invoking the Union, Clay echoed the sentiments of another leading national republican, Daniel Webster, who was elected to the House from Massachusetts in 1822 and the Senate in 1827. Webster had gained fame as a lawyer and orator; when he was firing at full throttle, one observer noted, “his power is majestic, irresistible.” On January 26, 1830, he reached the capstone of his career. A Senate debate with Robert Hayne of South Carolina had started over the sale of public lands and ended with a discussion of the tariff, slavery, states’ rights, and the nature of the Union itself. The Constitution, he argued, was not created by the states but “made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.” Webster concluded with a paean to American nationalism: “When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as ‘What is all this worth?’ nor those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards’; but everywhere, spread all over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,—Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”43

  The speech made Webster a hero among National Republicans and a household name throughout the nation; its echoes would sound in an address delivered at Gettysburg more than three decades later. Always ambitious, the senator considered a run for the presidency. He thought it increasingly possible that Jackson would not be re-elected and believed the prospect of electing Clay “not promising.” And although Anti-Masonic sentiment was gaining, Anti-Masonry as a political party did not offer “a principle broad enough to save the Country.” The key, he felt, was to unite the Anti-Masons and National Republicans behind a candidate who, in the election of 1832, could secure New York and Pennsylvania. Webster undoubtedly thought of himself as that candidate, and his performance at a public dinner in New York on March 24 served to test political waters.44

  Before 250 guests, the commercial and mercantile elite of New York, Webster spoke for an hour and a half. Once again, he defended the Constitution and the nation. He praised Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, the authors of The Federalist Papers, and he credited the principles of the American system for New York’s emergence “as the commercial capital, not only of all the United States, but of the whole continent:” Webster anointed America a place of “refuge for the distressed and the persecuted of other nations.” But he warned that the nation “can stand trial, it can stand assault, it can stand adversity, it can stand every thing, but the marring of its own beauty, and the weakening of its own strength. It can stand every thing but the effects of our own rashness and our own folly. It can stand every thing but disorganization, disunion, and nullification.”45

  One attendee, former Mayor Philip Hone, called the speech “patriotic, fervent, eloquent, imbued with no party violence, purely American; it was our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.” Clearly, there was support for Webster, but, despite success in New York, his presidential maneuverings sputtered. Fearful of alienating Clay, he aborted plans to travel west to Ohio. He keenly wished the opposition to Jackson could agree on a candidate, and he sensed that a change in administration could “be done by us as a Union Party.” But something about Webster provoked suspicion. A friend compared him to a “thunder storm in July.” When not animated by debate, his deeply set eyes, “full, dark, and penetrating,” made his expression “cold and forbidding.” The New York Mirror reported in the fall that if you met him “in some solitary place” at dark you would not know if he were “a demi-god or a devil.” Webster ultimately stood loyal to Clay, and the candidate of the National Republicans went forth with a campaign motto provided by the senator from Massachusetts: “Clay, Liberty and Union.” Webster knew they would fail; he returned to Washington at the end of the year believing that “Mr. Wirt’s nomination has secured Genl. Jackson’s reelection.”46

  National Republicans and Democrats differed fundamentally from one another, and in 1831 the issues that divided them threatened to eclipse the republic. The core distinction between the parties could be expressed simply. Even the English visitor Thomas Hamilton could parse it: a National Republican “is disposed to regard the United States as one and indivisible, and the authority of the United government as paramount to every other jurisdiction. The Democrat considers the Union as a piece of mosaic, tasselated with stones of different colours, curiously put together, but possessing no other principles of cohesion than that of mutual convenience.” For the one, the “United States” was singular. For the other, it was plural. Throughout the year, fissures between parties and within parties deepened, and it seemed as if none of the history of the nation since its founding had established any common ground. Writing in October, Webster reflected on what had already taken place and anticipated that “every thing is to be attacked … . Every thing is to be debated, as if nothing had ever been settled.” “We live in an age of revolution,” observed Clay. “There is a vague apprehension in the mind of the people,” reported another senator as the year began, “that som[e] great misfortune is impending over the Country.”47

  ANDREW JACKSON’S ADMINISTRATION

  Fault lines ran everywhere, and an especially active one cut through the White House. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was the first candidate not from Massachusetts or Virginia to become president. He entered office in 1829 furious at the National Republicans who had stolen the previous election. (Jackson had the plurality of electoral votes and the popular vote, but the House gave the election to Adams, who received Clay’s support.) The death of his wife, Rachel, in December 1828 left the president-elect bereft, and he never forgave the opposition for attacking her virtue during the campaign. (Rachel was married when she met Jackson, and accusations of adultery flew.) He had fought a duel in 1806 to protect her honor and carried a bullet in his chest for the rest of his life; he would wage battle again to protect her memory.

  Jackson was the people’s favorite, a military hero who presented himself as a common man, a self-made man. That he also had a reputation as a “roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racin
g, card playing, mischievous fellow” did not hurt among the people who flocked to the White House whenever given the chance. At a levee held in the spring of 1831, a visitor marveled at the diversity of the crowd: “The numerical majority of the company seemed of the class of tradesmen or farmers, respectable men, fresh from the plough or the counter, who, accompanied by their wives and daughters, came forth to greet their President … . There were tailors from the board, and judges from the bench; lawyers who opened their mouths at one bar, and the tapster who closed them at another; in short, every trade, craft, calling, and profession … . There were sooty artificers, evidently fresh from the forge or the workshop; and one individual … who, wherever he passed, left marks of contact on the garments of the company.”

  Aged sixty-four, Jackson endured the gala as best he could. He stood in one of the rear apartments paying “one of the severest penalties of greatness; compelled to talk when he had nothing to say, and shake hands with men whose very appearance suggested the precaution of a glove … . He bore himself well and gracefully. His countenance expressed perfect good-humour; and his manner to the ladies was so full of well-bred gallantry, that having … the great majority of the fair sex on his side, the chance of his being unseated at the next election must be very small.”