Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ the late presidential election, and that I had communicated to you unequivocally, before the 15th of December, 1824, my determination to vote for Mr. Adams and not for General Jackson. Presuming that the publication was with your authority, I cannot deny the expression of proper acknowledgments for the sense of justice which has prompted you to render this voluntary and faithful testimony."

      This letter, of which I now have the original, was dated at Washington City, December 6th, 1827 – that is to say, in the very heat and middle of the canvass in which Mr. Adams was beaten by General Jackson, and when the testimony could be of most service to him. It went the rounds of the papers, and was quoted and relied upon in debates in Congress, greatly to the dissatisfaction of many of my own party. There was no mistake in the date, or the fact. I left Washington the 15th of December, on a visit to my father-in-law, Colonel James McDowell, of Rockbridge county, Virginia, where Mrs. Benton then was; and it was before I left Washington that I learned from Mr. Clay himself that his intention was to support Mr. Adams. I told this at that time to Colonel McDowell, and any friends that chanced to be present, and gave it to the public in a letter which was copied into many newspapers, and is preserved in Niles' Register. I told it as my belief to Mr. Jefferson on Christmas evening of the same year, when returning to Washington and making a call on that illustrious man at his seat, Monticello; and believing then that Mr. Adams would be elected, and, from the necessity of the case, would have to make up a mixed cabinet, I expressed that belief to Mr. Jefferson, using the term, familiar in English history, of "broad bottomed;" and asked him how it would do? He answered, "Not at all – would never succeed – would ruin all engaged in it." Mr. Clay told his intentions to others of his friends from an early period, but as they remained his friends, their testimony was but little heeded. Even my own, in the violence of party, and from my relationship to Mrs. Clay, seemed to have but little effect. The imputation of "bargain" stuck, and doubtless had an influence in the election. In fact, the circumstances of the whole affair – previous antagonism between the parties, actual support in the election, and acceptance of high office, made up a case against Messrs. Adams and Clay which it was hardly safe for public men to create and to brave, however strong in their own consciousness of integrity. Still, the great objection to the election of Mr. Adams was in the violation of the principle demos krateo; and in the question which it raised of the capacity of the demos to choose a safe President for themselves. A letter which I wrote to the representative from Missouri, before he gave the vote of the State to Mr. Adams, and which was published immediately afterwards, placed the objection upon this high ground; and upon it the battle was mainly fought, and won. It was a victory of principle, and should not be disparaged by the admission of an unfounded and subordinate cause.

      This presidential election of 1824 is remarkable under another aspect – as having put an end to the practice of caucus nominations for the Presidency by members of Congress. This mode of concentrating public opinion began to be practised as the eminent men of the Revolution, to whom public opinion awarded a preference, were passing away, and when new men, of more equal pretensions, were coming upon the stage. It was tried several times with success and general approbation, public sentiment having been followed, and not led, by the caucus. It was attempted in 1824, and failed, the friends of Mr. Crawford only attending – others not attending, not from any repugnance to the practice, as their previous conduct had shown, but because it was known that Mr. Crawford had the largest number of friends in Congress, and would assuredly receive the nomination. All the rest, therefore, refused to go into it: all joined in opposing the "caucus candidate," as Mr. Crawford was called; all united in painting the intrigue and corruption of these caucus nominations, and the anomaly of members of Congress joining in them. By their joint efforts they succeeded, and justly in the fact though not in the motive, in rendering these Congress caucus nominations odious to the people, and broke them down. They were dropped, and a different mode of concentrating public opinion was adopted – that of party nominations by conventions of delegates from the States. This worked well at first, the will of the people being strictly obeyed by the delegates, and the majority making the nomination. But it quickly degenerated, and became obnoxious to all the objections to Congress caucus nominations, and many others besides. Members of Congress still attended them, either as delegates or as lobby managers. Persons attended as delegates who had no constituency. Delegates attended upon equivocal appointments. Double sets of delegates sometimes came from the State, and either were admitted or repulsed, as suited the views of the majority. Proxies were invented. Many delegates attended with the sole view of establishing a claim for office, and voted accordingly. The two-thirds rule was invented, to enable the minority to control the majority; and the whole proceeding became anomalous and irresponsible, and subversive of the will of the people, leaving them no more control over the nomination than the subjects of kings have over the birth of the child which is born to rule over them. King Caucus is as potent as any other king in this respect; for whoever gets the nomination – no matter how effected – becomes the candidate of the party, from the necessity of union against the opposite party, and from the indisposition of the great States to go into the House of Representatives to be balanced by the small ones. This is the mode of making Presidents, practised by both parties now. It is the virtual election! and thus the election of the President and Vice-President of the United States has passed – not only from the college of electors to which the constitution confided it, and from the people to whom the practice under the constitution gave it, and from the House of Representatives which the constitution provided as ultimate arbiter – but has gone to an anomalous, irresponsible body, unknown to law or constitution, unknown to the early ages of our government, and of which a large proportion of the members composing it, and a much larger proportion of interlopers attending it, have no other view either in attending or in promoting the nomination of any particular man, than to get one elected who will enable them to eat out of the public crib – who will give them a key to the public crib.

      The evil is destructive to the rights and sovereignty of the people, and to the purity of elections. The remedy is in the application of the democratic principle – the people to vote direct for President and Vice-President; and a second election to be held immediately between the two highest, if no one has a majority of the whole number on the first trial. But this would require an amendment of the constitution, not to be effected but by a concurrence of two thirds of each house of Congress, and the sanction of three fourths of the States – a consummation to which the strength of the people has not yet been equal, but of which there is no reason to despair. The great parliamentary reform in Great Britain was only carried after forty years of continued, annual, persevering exertion. Our constitutional reform, in this point of the presidential election, may require but a few years; in the meanwhile I am for the people to select, as well as elect, their candidates, and for a reference to the House to choose one out of three presented by the people, instead of a caucus nomination of whom it pleased. The House of Representatives is no longer the small and dangerous electoral college that it once was. Instead of thirteen States we now have thirty-one; instead of sixty-five representatives, we have now above two hundred. Responsibility in the House is now well established, and political ruin, and personal humiliation, attend the violation of the will of the State. No man could be elected now, or endeavor to be elected (after the experience of 1800 and 1824), who is not at the head of the list, and the choice of a majority of the Union. The lesson of those times would deter imitation, and the democratic principle would again crush all that were instrumental in thwarting the public will. There is no longer the former danger from the House of Representatives, nor any thing in it to justify a previous resort to such assemblages as our national conventions have got to be. The House is legal and responsible, which the convention is not, with a better chance for integrity, as having been actually elected by the people; and more restrained by position, by public opinion, and a clause in the constitution from the acceptance of office from the man they elect. It is the constitutional umpire; and until the constitution is amended, I am for acting upon it as it is.

      CHAPTER XX.

      THE OCCUPATION OF THE COLUMBIA

      This subject had begun to make a lodgment in the public mind, and I brought a bill into the Senate to enable the President to possess and retain the country. The joint occupation treaty of 1818 was drawing to a close, СКАЧАТЬ