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

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СКАЧАТЬ in the mean time, sole occupant of the whole country. This was all that she could ask, and all that we could grant, even if we actually intended to give up the country.

      I was a member of the Senate when this renewed convention was sent in for ratification, and opposed it with all the zeal and ability of which I was master: but in vain. The weight of the administration, the indifference of many to a remote object, the desire to put off a difficulty, and the delusive argument that we could terminate it at any time – (a consolation so captivating to gentle temperaments) – were too strong for reason and fact; and I was left in a small minority on the question of ratification. But I did not limit myself to opposition to the treaty. I proposed, as well as opposed; and digested my opinions into three resolves; and had them spread on the executive journal, and made part of our parliamentary history for future reference.

      The resolves were: 1. "That it is not expedient for the United States and Great Britain to treat further in relation to their claims on the northwest coast of America, on the basis of a joint occupation by their respective citizens. 2. That it is expedient that the joint-occupation article in the convention of 1818 be allowed to expire upon its own limitation. 3. That it is expedient for the government of the United States to continue to treat with His Britannic Majesty in relation to said claims, on the basis of a separation of interests, and the establishment of a permanent boundary between their dominions westward of the Rocky Mountains, in the shortest possible time." These resolves were not voted upon; but the negative vote on the ratification of the convention showed what the vote would have been if it had been taken. That negative vote was – Messrs. Benton, Thomas W. Cobb of Georgia, Eaton of Tennessee, Ellis of Mississippi, Johnson of Kentucky, Kane of Illinois, and Rowan of Kentucky – in all 7. Eighteen years afterwards, and when we had got to the cry of "inevitable war," I had the gratification to see the whole Senate, all Congress, and all the United States, occupy the same ground in relation to this joint occupation on which only seven senators stood at the time the convention for it was ratified.

      CHAPTER XXXVIII.

      PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1828, AND FURTHER ERRORS OF MONS. DE TOCQUEVILLE

      General Jackson and Mr. Adams were the candidates; – with the latter, Mr. Clay (his Secretary of State), so intimately associated in the public mind, on account of the circumstances of the previous presidential election in the House of Representatives, that their names and interests were inseparable during the canvass. General Jackson was elected, having received 178 electoral votes to 83 received by Mr. Adams. Mr. Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, was the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of Mr. Adams, and received an equal vote with that gentleman: Mr. Calhoun was the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket with General Jackson, and received a slightly less vote – the deficiency being in Georgia, where the friends of Mr. Crawford still resented his believed connection with the "A. B. plot." In the previous election, he had been neutral between General Jackson and Mr. Adams; but was now decided on the part of the General, and received the same vote every where, except in Georgia. In this election there was a circumstance to be known and remembered. Mr. Adams and Mr. Rush were both from the non-slaveholding – General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun from the slaveholding States, and both large slave owners themselves – and both received a large vote (73 each) in the free States – and of which at least forty were indispensable to their election. There was no jealousy, or hostile, or aggressive spirit in the North at that time against the South!

      The election of General Jackson was a triumph of democratic principle, and an assertion of the people's right to govern themselves. That principle had been violated in the presidential election in the House of Representatives in the session of 1824-'25; and the sanction, or rebuke, of that violation was a leading question in the whole canvass. It was also a triumph over the high protective policy, and the federal internal improvement policy, and the latitudinous construction of the constitution; and of the democracy over the federalists, then called national republicans; and was the re-establishment of parties on principle, according to the landmarks of the early ages of the government. For although Mr. Adams had received confidence and office from Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, and had classed with the democratic party during the fusion of parties in the "era of good feeling," yet he had previously been federal; and in the re-establishment of old party lines which began to take place after the election of Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives, his affinities, and policy, became those of his former party: and as a party, with many individual exceptions, they became his supporters and his strength. General Jackson, on the contrary, had always been democratic, so classing when he was a senator in Congress under the administration of the first Mr. Adams, and when party lines were most straightly drawn, and upon principle: and as such now receiving the support of men and States which took their political position at that time, and had maintained it ever since – Mr. Macon and Mr. Randolph, for example, and the States of Virginia and Pennsylvania. And here it becomes my duty to notice an error, or a congeries of errors, of Mons. de Tocqueville, in relation to the causes of General Jackson's election; and which he finds exclusively in the glare of a military fame resulting from "a very ordinary achievement, only to be remembered where battles are rare." He says:

      "General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to the head of their government, is a man of a violent temper and mediocre talents. No one circumstance in the whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a free people; and, indeed, the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to the Presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained twenty years ago, under the walls of New Orleans; – a victory which, however, was a very ordinary achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where battles are rare." – (Chapter 17.)

      This may pass for American history, in Europe and in a foreign language, and even finds abettors here to make it American history in the United States, with a preface and notes to enforce and commend it: but America will find historians of her own to do justice to the national, and to individual character. In the mean time I have some knowledge of General Jackson, and the American people, and the two presidential elections with which they honored the General; and will oppose it, that is, my knowledge, to the flippant and shallow statements of Mons. de Tocqueville. "A man of violent temper." I ought to know something about that – contemporaries will understand the allusion – and I can say that General Jackson had a good temper, kind and hospitable to every body, and a feeling of protection in it for the whole human race, and especially the weaker and humbler part of it. He had few quarrels on his own account; and probably the very ones of which Mons. de Tocqueville had heard were accidental, against his will, and for the succor of friends. "Mediocre talent, and no capacity to govern a free people." In the first place, free people are not governed by any man, but by laws. But to understand the phrase as perhaps intended, that he had no capacity for civil administration, let the condition of the country at the respective periods when he took up, and when he laid down the administration, answer. He found the country in domestic distress – pecuniary distress – and the national and state legislation invoked by leading politicians to relieve it by empirical remedies; – tariffs, to relieve one part of the community by taxing the other; – internal improvement, to distribute pubic money; – a national bank, to cure the paper money evils of which it was the author; – the public lands the pillage of broken bank paper; – depreciated currency and ruined exchanges; – a million and a half of "unavailable funds" in the treasury; – a large public debt; – the public money the prey of banks; – no gold in the country – only twenty millions of dollars in silver, and that in banks which refused, when they pleased, to pay it down in redemption of their own notes, or even to render back to depositors. Stay laws, stop laws, replevin laws, baseless paper, the resource in half the States to save the debtor from his creditor; and national bankrupt laws from Congress, and local insolvent laws, in the States, the demand of every session. Indian tribes occupying a half, or a quarter of the area of southern States, and unsettled questions of wrong and insult, with half the powers of Europe. Such was the state of the country when General Jackson became President: what was it when he left the Presidency? Protective tariffs, and federal internal improvement discarded; the national СКАЧАТЬ