The party battles of the Jackson period

Front matter

THE PARTY BATTLES OF THE JACKSON PERIOD

It is the purpose of the author to deal, more minutely than is possible in a general history or biography, with the brilliant, dramatic, and epochal party battles and the fascinating personalities of the eight years of Andrew Jackson's Administrations. From the foundation of the Republic to the last two years of the Wilson Administration, the Nation has never ^own such party acrimony; nor has there been a period en the contending party organizations have been led by

uch extraordinary politicians and orators. It was, in a large sense, the beginning of party government as we have come to understand it. It was not until the Jacksonian epoch that v became a democracy in fact. The selection of Presidents men passed from the caucus of the politicians in the capital : o the plain people of the factories, fields, and marts. The

Chapter I

The tourist traveling from Philadelphia to Washington in the Thirties anticipated few pleasures and no comforts from the trip that had to be made by coach from Baltimore, over roads intolerably wretched under the best conditions, and all but impassable and not without dangers in inclement weather. The journey from Philadelphia to Baltimore was usually made by boat through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and the entire trip, in winter one of exposure, required the greater part of two days. 1 The fare from Baltimore to Washington was four dollars. Sometimes the ruts in the winter roads would overturn the coach, throwing the passengers into the mire, and occasionally resulting in sprains and broken bones. 2 Later in Jackson's time, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was built, with a branch into Washington, and when the first cars, drawn by horses, reached the country-town capital, the enthusiastic statesmen felt that the problem of transportation had been solved. Urging Butler to accept the attorney -generalship, and stressing the fact that acceptance would not preclude his appearance in personal cases in New York and Albany, Van Buren made much of the fact that "to the former place you will next season be able to

1 Life of Binney, 104.

2 Benton's explanation of the delay of the Bank messenger with the petition for a recharter. Thirty Years' View.

go in fifteen hours, and to the latter in a day and a night." 1 Blair, of the "Globe," boasted after the election of 1832 that "in eight days and nights after the closing of the polls in Ohio, the result was known in the city of Washington from all the organized counties except three." This, he declared, "is an instance of rapid communication from the West unparalleled in this country." 2

The foreigner, expecting a national capital more or less pretentious and compact, was invariably shocked on entering the environs over miserable mud roads, to find only an occasional drab hut or cottage at wide intervals. Usually, until the Capitol attracted his attention, he was wholly unconscious of his arrival at his destination. One of these, who has left a record of his visit, relates that he was "looking from the window of his coach in a sort of brown study, at fields covered with snow," when a fellow passenger startled him with the inquiry as to how he liked Washington.

"I will tell you when I see it," he replied.

"Why, you have been in Washington the last quarter of an hour," was the rejoinder. 3

Another famous visitor "was taken by surprise" on finding herself within the shadow of the hall of the lawmakers, "so sordid are the enclosures and houses on its very verge." 4

But as the coach wound round the Capitol, and swung with a merry clatter into Pennsylvania Avenue, the houses at more frequent intervals and connected shops disclosed the town. With a characteristic "clatter and clamp," 5 with a gay cracking of whips, the coach would splash and rumble up to one of the leading hotels, and the cramped and weary tourist would joyously take leave of the conveyance and seek lodgment within.

1 Van Buren to Butler, Retrospect of Forty Years, by Butler, 39-43.

2 Washington Globe, Nov. 17, 1832.

3 Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 14.

4 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, I, 143. 6 Retrospect of Forty Years, 47.

If well advised, he would instruct the coachman to drop him at Gadsby's, then the most popular and comfortable hostelry in town, on the Avenue, a short distance from the Capitol. 1 There he would find, not only a clean bed, but excellent service and a lordly hospitality from the host. Gadsby, for his generation, was a genius at his trade. He moved his small army of negro servants with military precision. "Who that ever knew the hospitalities of this gentlemanly and most liberal Boniface," wrote one who enjoyed them, "can ever forget his urbane manner, his careful attention to his guests, his well-ordered house, his fine old wines, and the princely manner in which he could send his bottle of choice Madeira to some old friend or favored guest at the table ? " 2 It was not always, however, that accommodations could be found at Gadsby's, and then the tourist would seek the Indian Queen at the sign of the luridly painted picture of Pocahontas, where he would be met at the curb by Jesse Brown, the landlord. 3 Here, for a dollar and a quarter a day, he could not only find a pleasant room, but a table loaded with decanters of brandy, rum, gin, at short intervals from the head to the foot. If the host of the Indian Queen lacked the lordly elegance of Gadsby, he made up for it in the homely virtues of hospitality. Wearing a large white apron, he met his guests at the door of the dining-room, and then hastened to the head of the table where he personally carved and helped to serve the principal dish. 4 If this, too, was crowded, the tourist would try Fuller's near the White House, 5 where a room would be found for him either in the hotel proper, or in one of the two or three houses adjoining, which had been converted into an annex. 6

Having rested from his journey and removed the stains of travel, if he were a person of some importance, and especially

1 The present site of the National Hotel. 4 Perley's Reminiscences, i, 43.

2 Sargent's Public Men and Events, i, 53-54. 6 Present site of the Willard.

3 On the site of the present Metropolitan. 6 Retrospect of Forty Years, 48.

a foreigner, he would be speedily deluged with the cards of callers anxious to make his sojourn pleasant. Day by day the hotel registers were eagerly scanned for the names of visiting celebrities, for the Washington of the Thirties loved its lions and lionesses. No possible person was ever neglected, and real personages were f£ted, wined, and dined. But not until he set forth to return the calls would he appreciate the Portuguese Minister's description of the capital as " a city of magnificent distances." Inquiring at the hotel how to reach the residences of his callers, he would be not a little puzzled at the nonchalant reply that the coachmen "knew where all the prominent people live." Engaging a coach, he would set forth gayly, in the confident expectation of leaving his card at from thirty to forty houses in the course of the day. A short drive would take him to the end of the macadamized pavement of the Avenue, and thereafter for hours, pitching and plunging, over the ruts and the mud-holes, through miry lanes, and across vacant lots, shaken in body, and sore in spirit, he would find by evening that he had reached six or seven of the forty houses, and was charged by the coachman at a rate " which would keep a chariot and two posters for twice the time in London." 1 In the course of a week he would find that he had spent as much as thirty dollars for coach hire — by odds, the most expensive feature of his Washington sojourn. An English visitor, startled at the cost of travel, contracted with a coachman for services from five o'clock to daylight for twenty dollars, but after having attended five parties on the first evening, the morose driver repudiated his contract, and it was necessary to add five dollars to retain his services. 2 "I should imagine [Washington] to be the very paradise of hackney coachmen," wrote one disgusted visitor. "If these men do not get rich it must be owing to some culpable extravagance, for their vehicles are in continual

1 N. P. Willis, American Scenery, in, 49.

2 Men and Manners in America, 20, note.

demand from the hour of dinner 1 till five in the morning, and long distances and heavy charges are all in their favor." 2

As the visitor drove about the town he found nothing in the physical aspects of the country-town capital to indicate that L 'Enfant ever had a vision or produced a plan for a city beautiful. Because real estate dealers had quarreled over the location of public buildings, the selection of the hill for the Capitol had led to the location of the White House a mile or more to the west, and for three decades the problem of building a compact city between the two had failed. The streets were all unpaved when Jackson w^,s first inaugurated, and only Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the President's Mansion had been rescued from the mire when he left office. Hub-deep in mud in inclement weather, these country roads sent forth great clouds of dust on dry and sunny days. With the exception of the Avenue, not a single street approached compactness, the houses on all other streets being occasionally grouped, but generally widely separated, and in some instances so much so as to suggest country houses with their shade trees and vegetable gardens. 3 "It looks as if it had rained naked buildings upon an open plain, and every man had made a street in reference to his own door," wrote Nathaniel P. Willis, who knew his Washington. 4 Another writer of the day who was impressed with "the houses scattered in straggling groups, three in one quarter, and half a dozen in another," was moved to compassion for "some disconsolate dwelling, the first or last born of a square or crescent, yet in nebulous suffering like an ancient maiden in the mournful solitude of single blessedness." 5 Still another contemporary word painter tells us that even on the Avenue "the buildings were standing with wide spaces between, like the teeth of some superannuated crone." 6

1 Four o'clock. 2 Men and Manners, 20.

8 Frederick Seward's Reminiscences, 17-19. 4 American Scenery, m, 49. 6 Men and Manners, 17. c PuhUc Mm and Events, i, 54.

At the foot of the Capitol, itself beautiful even then, were desolate waste lands being reserved for some ultimate Botanical Gardens, and a few miserable shack-like boarding-houses. 1 "Everybody knows that Washington has a capitol," wrote a satirical English observer, "but the misfortune is that the capitol wants a city. There it stands, reminding you of a general without an army, only surrounded and followed by a parcel of ragged little dirty boys; for such is the appearance of the dirty, straggling, ill-built houses which lie at the foot of it." 2 Where the Smithsonian Institution has long stood were innumerable quagmires reeking with miasma. 3 About the President's Mansion, a few pretentious houses, several still handsome homes after almost a century, had been built, and in this section, and in Georgetown, lived the people of fashion and the diplomats. "The Co't end," it was called. At the four corners of the Mansion of the Presidents stood the plain brick buildings occupied by the State, Treasury, War, and Navy Departments. On Capitol Hill a few good houses had been erected, especially on North A and New Jersey Avenue, South. Other than these, and those west of the White House, there was little but pastures and enclosed fields in the eastern, southeastern, and northeastern sections of the town. 4 East of Fourteenth Street, on the north side, but few houses had been built beyond F Street, and the "country home" of William H. Crawford, at the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Massachusetts Avenue, was still considered as remote from town as on that winter day after his defeat for the Presidency when no callers were expected because of the heavy snow. 5

Looking down upon the little town from the skylight of the Capitol, Harriet Martineau could plainly discern the "seven theoretical avenues," but with the exception of Pennsyl-

1 American Scenery, n, 55. 2 Captain Marryat, A Diary in America, 163.

3 Public Men and Events, i, 55. 4 Public Men and Events, i, 54. 6 Life of Crawford, 183.

vania, all were "bare and forlorn," and the city which has become one of the most beautiful and impressive in the world could then present to the naked eye only "a few mean houses dotted about, the sheds of the navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four villas on the other." 1 With the streets full of ruts, the sidewalks dotted with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown with grass, with cows pasturing on many of the streets now lined with elegant homes, and challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or Jackson, it is not surprising that foreigners, even as late as the Thirties, were moved to imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. The difficulties of locomotion kept the pedestrian's eyes upon the ground, and the inconveniences, in making calls, of crossing ditches and stiles, and walking alternately upon grass and pavement, and striking across fields to reach a street, were more noticeable than the noble trees that lined the avenues. 2 Wretched enough in the daytime, the poorly lighted streets at night were utterly impossible. "As for lights," wrote a contemporary, "if the pedestrian did not provide and carry his own, he was in danger of discovering every mud-hole and sounding its depths." 3 More nearly possible to the fastidious were the narrower streets of Georgetown, with its more imposing and interesting houses, and more select society, where many of the statesmen lived, and not a few of the Government clerks, who rode horseback to the departments in the morning.

Even in the Thirties there were many beautiful drives and walks in the vicinity of Washington, and a few houses that were impressive to even the most critical English visitor. Visible for many miles, and easily seen from the town, loomed the pillared white mansion of Arlington, then the home of George Washington Custis, to which many of the aristocrats of the capital frequently found their way. There, during the

1 Retrospect of Western Travel, i, 160. 2 Ibid., i, 144.

3 Public Men and Events, I, 54.

Jacksonian period, Robert E. Lee, standing in the room, whence, across the river, he could see the Capitol building, was united in marriage to the daughter of the house. 1 Within the city the most imposing mansions were those of John Tayloe, at Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue, designed by Thornton, and even then rich in political and social memories, 2 and the handsome residence of John Van Ness, the work of Latrobe, built at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to make a fit setting for the charm and beauty of Marcia Burns, at the foot of Seventeenth Street, on the banks of the Potomac. From the doorstep the master and his guests could watch the ships from across the sea mooring to the docks of Alexandria, and the merchantmen, bound for the port of Georgetown, laden with the riches of the West Indies.

The tourist in the Washington of the Thirties did not have the opportunity for sight-seeing that means so much to the capital visitor of to-day. Aside from the Capitol and the White House, there were no public buildings of architectural distinction. The churches had "nothing about them to attract attention," and while St. John's on Lafayette Square was then summoning to worship, it did not at that time have the virtue of quaintness or the mellowness of historical memories. A visit to the Patent Office was customarily made, and most tourists found something to interest them in the museum of the State Department, with its portraits of the Indian chiefs who had visited Washington. 3 Occasionally the venturesome would ascend to the skylight of the Capitol to survey the straggling and dreary town from the height. 4 But always there was the dignified and stately white building of the lawmakers and of the Supreme Court,

1 Godfrey T. Vigne, in Six Months in America, thought that "in the distance" Arlington "has the appearance of a superior English country residence."

2 The Octagon House still standing and being preserved by the Institute of American Architects.

3 Men and Manners, 75.

4 Miss Martineau tells of visits to the museum and the skylight, I, 159.

and thither tourists and citizens, men and women, daily found their way for the entertainment that never failed. Surrounded by its terraces, its well-kept lawns, its profusion of shrubbery, the visitor reached the entrance over its "beautifully gravelled walks," 1 and entered the rotunda with its four Trumbull paintings of Revolutionary scenes, to be more impressed with the vacant spaces for four more, and the explanation that " Congress cannot decide on what artist to confer the honor." 2 He would not fail to be delighted with the classic little Senate Chamber, redolent of the genius of Latrobe, and with the ease with which he might ignore the tiny gallery to find a hearty welcome on the floor. If a foreigner, he would be surprised to find a constant stream of fashionable ladies entering the chamber, crowding the Senators, accepting their seats, and attracting attention with their "waving plumes glittering with all the colors of the rainbow, and causing no little bustle." 3 There he would see Van Buren or Calhoun in the chair, and on the floor he would want to have Webster, Clay, Benton, Forsyth, Preston, and Ewing pointed out. And perhaps, like Miss Martineau, he would leave with the impression that he had "seen no assembly of chosen men and no company of the high born, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stoutsouled, full-grown, original men brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse constituencies." 4

Having seen the Senate, he would seek the House of Representatives. Inquiring his way to the Strangers' Gallery from the rotunda, he would be directed to a narrow stairs, and, on ascending, would find himself in a large room of many columns, the work of the architect of the Senate, looking

1 William H. Seward's Autobiography, i, 277. 2 Ibid.

3 Miss Martineau comments severely upon the levity of the women, I, 180.

4 Retrospect of Western Travel, i, 179.

down upon the seats of members arranged in concentric rows. Thence he would look down upon the bald head of the venerable Adams, the anaemic figure of Polk, the handsome form of Binney, and the ludicrous conglomeration of garbs representing the diverse tastes of the tailors of New York and the wilderness. If acquainted with one of the members, the visitor might be invited to the corridor behind the Speaker's desk, fitted with seats and sofas drawn about the fireplace at either end, where members and their guests were wont to lounge and smoke. 1 Having satisfied himself with the chambers of the lawmakers, the visitor would want to see the tribunal of interpretation, said by some to have more power in determining the law of the land than the members of Congress, and to observe the famous Marshall on the Supreme Bench. Descending to the basement of the Capitol, immediately under the Senate, he would be shown into a small plain room with low ceiling, and "a certain cellar-like aspect which is not pleasant," 2 and would probably be a little shocked at the figure of Justice, "a wooden figure with the eyes unfilleted, and grasping the scales like a groceress." 3 On cushioned sofas, on either side of the room, he might, if a favorite orator were making an argument, see gayly dressed ladies — for, like the Senate Chamber, the court was one of the fashionable resorts of the Thirties. But there, he would find dignity and quiet and decorum, in striking contrast with most of the American courts of that generation. 4 If fortunate, he might listen to the reading of a decision by Marshall, and observe Butler, the Attorney-General, "his fingers playing among his papers, his thick black eyes and thin, tremulous lips for once fixed, his small face pale with thought,"

1 Men and Manners, 16. 2 Ibid., 65.

3 Six Months in America, 64.

4 Both Hamilton (Men and Manners) and Vigne, the English barrister (Six Months in America), were shocked at the utter lack of respect for the dignity of American courts, but were impressed with the solemnity and decorum in the Supreme Court.

contrasting with the more composed countenances of Clay and Webster. 1

In the days of Jackson, comparatively few families had a permanent residence in Washington, and to an English visitor the town had the appearance of a watering-place. 2 Many Senators and Representatives considered it so impossible that they left their families at home. 3 Attorney- General Butler at first refused to consider a position in the Cabinet because "Mrs. Butler did not like the idea of bringing her daughters up here." 4 When the wives and daughters did accompany the statesmen to the capital, it was the custom, with such as could afford to maintain an establishment, to take a house. These usually purchased, albeit many of the more desirable residences that could be leased were not for sale. An establishment could be maintained at a surprisingly low cost. Houses "suitable for the purposes of genteel people" could be had for from $50 to $300 a year, and even the large mansions, many of them standing and still occupied by fashionable families after almost a century, could be had for from $500 to $800 a year. 5 The servant problem did not exist, for domestics could be employed in abundance for $4 a month. 6 The Southerners, bringing their slaves with them, or buying them in the slave market at Alexandria, were able to entertain with a lavish display which set the pace socially, and made the Southern dominance easy. Foreigners were impressed, after hearing a senatorial orator rhapsodize in the Senate over the blessings of American liberty, to see him driven from the Capitol after his oration by one of his family slaves. 7 Others, not wishing to be burdened with a house,

1 Retrospect of Western Travel, I, 165. 2 Men and Manners, 21.

3 Senator Tazewell of Virginia was one of these.

4 Van Buren to Butler, Retrospect of Forty Years, 39-43.

5 National Intelligencer, Jan. 30, 1831, advertised a house in Georgetown on Gay Street, "convenient for the accommodation of a genteel family, having all necessary outhouses, stabling, etc.," for $300 a year payable quarterly.

6 Public Men and Events, i, 55

7 Hamilton, in Men and Manners, comments severely upon this incongruity.

lived in the hotels, where other people's slaves waited upon them. In these, too, the cost of living was low, the leading hostelries taking guests at $1.75 a day, $10 a week, or $35 a month. Transients sat down to tables fairly groaning with food, and with decanters of brandy and whiskey at their elbows, free at these prices. The guest, in his room, could order real Madeira for $3 a bottle, sherry, brand}' , and gin for $1.50, and Jamaica rum for $1. The statesman, leaving his hotel quarters for the Senate or the House, could, if he wished, pause at the bar of the hostelry for a toddy of unadulterated liquor and lump sugar for twelve and a half cents. 1 But the greater part of the public men lived in boarding-houses, and the "Intelligencer," the "Globe," and the "Telegraph" filled columns, at the beginning of congressional sessions, with the enticing advertisements of the landladies. Some few of these houses, such as Dawson's, associated with celebrities, live in history, but the majority were small, shabby, and uncomfortable. In these, however, romances sometimes blossomed, and the barmaid of one presided for a time over the establishment of a Cabinet member, and the landlady of another over the household of a Senator who aspired to the Presidency. 2

Out of this life in hotels and boarding-houses, during the Jacksonian period, came the custom of statesmen forming themselves and families into "messes," each "mess" having a table to itself and contracting with the landlady or landlord for a caterer. In this way the lawgivers were socially grouped according to their intellectual and financial standing, and some of these "messes" were famous in their day. Friendships were formed that survived all the vicissitudes of time and political change. One of these, known as the "Woodbury mess," consisted of such a notable coterie of brilliancy and genius as Calhoun, John Randolph, Tazewell, Burges, and

2 Peggy Eaton and Mrs. Hugh Lawson White.

Verplanck. About the table many celebrated measures were conceived and the strategy of many a fight was planned. 1 According to the law of the "mess" a member might invite a guest only with the consent of all the others, and it was understood that a failure to get unanimous consent should not be resented. Occasionally the guests were permitted to contribute something to the usual outlay. Daniel Webster was glad enough to pay his way on such occasions. The venerable Adams, who had a comfortable home on F Street 2 and was not considered a notably social animal, delighted to join his most interesting colleagues at the boarding-house or hotel table. "I dined with John C. Calhoun at Dawson's," he recorded. "Mr. Preston, the other Senator from South Carolina, and his wife were there, and Mangum, Southard, Sprague of Maine. Company sat late at table and the conversation was chiefly upon politics. The company was, at this time, adversaries of the present Administration — most of them were adversaries to the last." 3 Three days later: "Dined with Benj. Gorham and Edward Everett. Calhoun, Preston, Clay, and others were there." 4 The next evening: "Dined with Colonel Robert B. Campbell of S.C. at his lodgings at Gadsby's"; thirty people, including Calhoun and Preston, in attendance. 5

It was inevitable that in a little city of twenty thousand, consisting in part of the cleverest men and women in the Republic, and devoted wholly to politics and society, celebrated sojourners should be feted and lionized. Foreigners visiting America in the Thirties, and recording their impressions, have all paid tribute to the hospitality and brilliance of the capital, as compared with other and larger cities. The most famous of the visitors was Harriet Martineau, who arrived in the summer of 1834, in her thirty-second year, and

1 Retrospect of Forty Years, 59.

2 Near Fourteenth Street on the north side of the street.

3 Adams's Memoirs, March 8, 1834.

in the full flush of her literary fame. Introduced to the President and the Senate leaders by the British Minister, it was the rumor at the time that six hundred people called upon her the day after her arrival. 1 "The drollest part of the whole," wrote a lady of fashion, "is that these crowds, at least in Washington, go to see the lion and nothing else. I have not met with an individual, except Mrs. Sea ton and her mother, 2 who have read any of her works, or know for what she is celebrated. Our most fashionable exclusive, 3 Mrs. Tayloe, said she intended to call, and asked what were the novels she had written, and if they were pretty. The gentlemen laugh at a woman's writing on political economy. Not one of them has the least idea of her work." 4 But the fluency of the lioness captivated the men. Among her constant visitors were Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Preston, and Justice Story. When she entered the Senate Chamber or the Supreme Court room, the leading men of the Nation left their seats to pay her homage. Calhoun's "mess" gave her a dinner. Clay insisted that at Lexington she should occupy his house at Ashland, and that she should be the guest of his daughter in New Orleans. Calhoun assured her triumph in Charleston through letters to his friends. "No stranger except Lafayette ever received such universal and marked testimonies of regard," wrote a sympathetic observer of her reception. 5 When Thomas Hamilton, the English writer, author of "Men and Manners in America," reached Washington, a member of Congress escorted him, uninvited, to a ball on the evening of his arrival, with the assurance that the "in-

1 Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, who recorded it in First Forty Years of American Society, Jan. 12, 1835, thought it exaggerated.

2 Mrs. Seaton, wife of the editor of the Intelligencer.

3 Mrs. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe lived in the house still standing on Lafayette Square, known in recent years as "The Little White House." She was a famous hostess. President W. H. Harrison contracted the cold that killed him while walking through the slush from the White House to the Tayloes' to offer a diplomatic post to the master of the house.

4 First Forty Years, 356. 6 Ibid., 368.

trusion would be welcome." After passing "through a formidable array of introductions to distinguished persons, and after four hours of almost unbroken conversation, much of which could not be carried on without considerable expenditure of thought," the weary tourist, at three o'clock in the morning, rejoiced to find himself "stretched in a comfortable bed at Gadsby's." 1 The experiences of Hamilton and Miss Martineau were not exceptional.