Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership (32 page)

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Authors: Conrad Black

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12. THE UNION AND SLAVERY
 
Battle lines were being drawn, but Jackson was playing a subtle and discreet game. He was a large slaveholder, and for his defense of New Orleans and seizure of Florida, his heavy-handed policy toward the Indians, and his respect for states’ rights in public works matters, he had great popularity in the South. He was the incarnation of the frontiersman and had followed the settler’s path and extended the country westward. And yet, as a nationalist who had finessed the tariff issue and emerged as a fierce defender of the Union, he was not necessarily unpopular in the North. He devised a policy that would serve the Union well and vitally. Jackson would guarantee slavery in the South and Southwest and resist any impeachment of it, and promote its westward expansion; and he would enforce the primacy and inviolability of the Union.
In the South, he would be the man who would make the Union work for the South and would be that region’s unconquerable champion of the institution of slavery. In other regions, he was the guarantor of the Union; he would maintain the integrity of the United States at any cost. The North would tolerate slavery where it existed and in adjacent places to be settled, but not in the North, and the Union would survive. The South would accept the assurance of slavery where it existed and to the west of that, and would accept the Union. Jackson laid down this policy and enforced and bequeathed it. It was not a permanent arrangement, but it bought a vital 30 years, in which the Unionists became very much stronger than the slaveholders. This was a strategy of national self-preservation, geared to the inexorable economic and demographic rise and preeminence of the free states. It is not clear that Jackson thought beyond the co-preservation of the Union and of slavery, but tempered by the talents at compromise of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, his rejection of nullification and of abolitionism was used by a generation of American public life as a shield behind which the numerical, economic, and moral strength of the free states came vastly to exceed those of the slave states.
The subject of internal improvements (public works) was a vexatious aspect of the same debate. Jackson’s position that such interstate projects, or internationally significant versions such as the improvement of ports and harbors, were legitimate. But with the veto of the Maysville project, a highway entirely within the state of Kentucky, on May 27, 1830, Jackson sent a message to all sides: he was in favor of such projects where they really were matters involving more than one state, but not otherwise, and was for the division of available funds for redistribution to the states for selection of their own preferred objectives. This too, was a clever policy, as the North was concerned about federal aid to large projects, which Jackson supported; and the South was concerned with incursions from the federal government in local matters, which Jackson opposed.
The break between the president and the vice president would ramify into many fields. One of the sparks that set the long-accumulating tinder alight was the revelation to Jackson that Calhoun, as secretary of war in 1818, had favored censuring and punishing Jackson for his conduct in Florida. There was an acerbic exchange of correspondence between the two men, and all communication ended, with Jackson determined to be rid of Calhoun. The sly Van Buren (known as “The Red Fox of Kinderhook,” referring to his hair-color, cunning, and place of residence), who had ingratiated himself quite profoundly with Jackson by oiling his New York political machine for the president, though formerly an ally of Calhoun’s in presenting the Tariff of Abominations in an unsuccessful effort to embarrass President Adams, was now President Jackson’s chief henchman in the purge of Calhoun. The ancient Florida quarrel just exacerbated the crisis caused by Calhoun’s effort to reduce the Union to a periodic consultation with half of the states to see if they would accept the application of laws passed by what had been for 40 years the legislature of America.
A third ingredient in the boiling atmosphere was the attempted boycott of Secretary of War John Eaton’s wife, Peggy O’Neal, a former barmaid. Mrs. Calhoun and other cabinet secretaries’ wives refused contact with Mrs. Eaton, and when this absurd matter was raised at a cabinet meeting by Jackson, the only person who supported him was Van Buren, an egalitarian and a bachelor. To facilitate the house-cleaning, Van Buren and Eaton tendered their resignations, and Jackson sent Van Buren to London, eliminated the social problem with Eaton’s wife by naming Eaton governor of Florida, sacked the rest to purge any influence of Calhoun, partly merged the kitchen and real cabinets, and added some stronger members. Calhoun blocked the confirmation of Van Buren to the London post, casting the deciding vote himself, in a brazenly provoking desertion of the administration, and Van Buren soon returned. The distinguished jurist and barrister and mayor of New York and codifier of the laws of Louisiana, Edward Livingston, went to State; the former minister to London, Louis McLane, took the Treasury; General Lewis Cass took over the War Department; Senator Levi Woodbury became secretary of the navy Amos Kendall soon became postmaster general; and the most durable and powerful of all except Jackson himself, Roger B. Taney, became attorney general. This swept the Calhoun elements out, and Calhoun’s days as vice president were also numbered. Jackson strengthened his government and gave notice that he was not only fierce and belligerent, as had been well-known for 25 years, but also a skillful political infighter, such as had not been seen in the White House since the reign of the last general-in-residence. There was none of the philosophical stoicism of Jefferson or John Quincy Adams, the ambivalence of Madison or Monroe, or the rather self-defeating querulousness of John Adams. Jackson was a crafty, fanatical, and deadly opponent.
The firmness of Jackson’s policy was its own reward; exalted though Britain was in the world, even its most powerful statesmen did not wish to cross swords with Old Hickory, as Jackson’s followers called him. Lord Palmerston, who virtually invented gunboat diplomacy, and was not above threatening war on any state, and conducted several in a very long career that included 19 years in the junior but influential post of secretary at war, three years as home secretary, 16 years as foreign secretary, and nine years as prime minister, actively wished to avoid a tangle with Jackson, whom he knew would be like a porcupine and would make any test of strength not worth the trouble. Palmerston “always respected a powerful opponent and the references in his correspondence to General Jackson . . . show that here was a man not to be trifled with.”
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The administration negotiated a very satisfactory reopening of complete trading access through the West Indian ports, a long-running grievance resolved. Jackson also resolved claims for damage to American shipping against France, going back to 1815. In 1834, the French being in arrears, Jackson asked the Congress for reprisals against France, which then approved an installment under the reparation agreement, conditional on Jackson’s apology for slights against France. This was an inexplicable French reversion to the insolence of the Genet and XYZ affairs. Jackson replied that “The honor of my country shall never be stained by an apology from me for the statement of truth and the performance of duty.” Jackson fired off ukases all day and sat on the terrace on temperate evenings, as he had for decades with his beloved but now deceased wife Rachel, both smoking large-bowled pipes and speaking softly of their happy but terribly eventful and tumultuous life together.
Jackson’s policy toward Indians was also rather repressive, and was based on removing all Indians to west of the Mississippi, chiefly to free up land for more slaves baling cotton in the South. To this end, over 250,000 Indians were transported west, and many thousands died of illnesses contracted on the voyage. Treaties with Indians were routinely violated, especially when gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, and the Supreme Court overruled the state’s expropriation of the gold-yielding property. Jackson allegedly said: “The chief justice [Marshall] has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Armed resistance to forced movement by the Sac and Fox Indians led to the Black Hawk War in 1832, but the resistance was futile. Jackson’s enthusiasm for slavery and shabby treatment of the Indians are two great failings of his character and administration, though, again, they helped get the Union through a vital and vulnerable period.
The Nat Turner slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, August 13 to 23, 1831, killed 57 whites and over 100 blacks, and led to the execution of 20 slaves and the deterioration of slave-holding conditions throughout the South, restricting the movements of slaves, reducing their education levels, and making emancipation of individual slaves more difficult. There was great agitation in the South to prevent the dissemination of abolitionist propaganda through the mails. Jackson, ever faithful to his formula of safety for slavery in the South but no secession, proposed a bill banning such literature from the mails. Robert Hayne’s successor as governor of South Carolina, George McDuffie, in a splendid local flourish, demanded the death penalty for such offenders, “without benefit of clergy.”
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The following year, the New England Anti-Slavery League was founded by William Lloyd Garrison, and there were similar organizations elsewhere in the North, as the entrenchment of positions on the issue on each side deepened slowly and ominously.
13. JACKSON’S SECOND TERM: NULLIFICATION AND THE NATIONAL BANK
 
Jackson had been renominated to the presidency without opposition by what was now officially called the Democratic Party, and having purged Calhoun, he secured the nomination for vice president of his friend and protégé Martin Van Buren. The National Republicans held a convention in Baltimore and nominated Henry Clay for president and John Sergeant of Pennsylvania for vice president. There was also an Anti-Masonic Party. The main campaign issue was Jackson’s declared opposition to the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States. Jackson and Van Buren won easily, as they were the party of effective Unionism, and Jackson represented the Bank of the U.S. as an elitist and exploitive enterprise operated by corrupt plutocrats friendly with Clay. Jackson had about 55 percent of the vote and 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay.
Although Calhoun had helped generate the nullification controversy with his co-sponsorship of the Tariff of Abominations, this fed the nullification argument, and Jackson advocated a reduction of some tariffs sensitive to South Carolina in 1832, to reduce frictions. But the nullification party won the South Carolina elections in October 1832. Calhoun had stopped acting through surrogates and overtly championed nullification in a number of speeches and letters, dressing it up in relatively plausible constitutional argument. A South Carolina state convention was called for November 19. The convention was largely boycotted by South Carolina’s Unionists, and adopted a nullification ordinance, which declared the 1828 and 1832 tariffs nullified and forbade their collection in the state; required a state loyalty oath for all state employees except members of the legislature; forbade appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of any matter arising from the ordinance; and stated that any use of force by the federal government against a state would be grounds for secession. The convention then voted to authorize and pay for a force of military resistance; this was taking matters to the verge of insurrection, and with the wrong president. Jackson ordered the war secretary to put the federal forts in Charleston Harbor on alert and put General Winfield Scott in command of all federal forces in South Carolina. About 8,000 South Carolina Unionists volunteered for the federal militia to suppress the nullifiers if necessary. For good measure, Jackson told a congressman that “If one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.” When South Carolina senator Robert Hayne expressed skepticism to Senator Thomas Hart Benton that Jackson would follow through, Benton replied: “When Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to look for role.”
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(Benton had been Jackson’s aide at New Orleans, with the rank of colonel, and then represented his interests in Washington. They quarreled and Benton shot and wounded Jackson in a frontier brawl, though they were later reconciled. Among Benton’s several famous sayings was: “I don’t quarrel, but I fight, sir; and when I fight, a funeral follows.” He and Jackson were birds of a feather, but he renounced slavery in later years, and thus was denied a sixth term as U.S. senator from Missouri.)
In his message to the Congress on December 4, 1832, Jackson recommended further downward revision of the tariff, and in his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina six days later (drafted by Livingston and a very substantial state paper), Jackson described nullification as a “practical absurdity” and reaffirmed the supremacy of a sovereign and indivisible federal government. No state could disobey federal law and none could leave the Union, and any attempt to do so “by armed force is treason.” Calhoun resigned as vice president a couple of months before the end of his term, on December 28, having already been reelected to the U.S. Senate replacing Hayne, who had just been elected governor of South Carolina. South Carolina called for a general convention of other states in solidarity, but was rebuffed. On January 16, 1833, Jackson sent Congress his Force Bill, authorizing the collection of tariff duties in South Carolina by the U.S. Army if necessary, though what was actually foreseen was offshore collection, which would have made armed clashes less likely.
Daniel Webster again led the Unionist forces in debate, against Calhoun, and it was a memorable single-warrior combat, though Webster had the better of the argument and was the ne plus ultra of American political orators of the time. Henry Clay, exercising again his great talent for conciliating the apparently irreconcilable, introduced a compromise tariff. Both Jackson’s Force Bill and Clay’s tariff passed and both were signed into law by Jackson on March 2, 1833, two days before he was reinaugurated. Six weeks before, South Carolina, supposedly in response to Clay’s approaching tariff bill, but certainly not without awareness of Jackson’s aroused threats, suspended its nullification ordinance, and rescinded it when the tariff was enacted, but also purported to nullify the Force Bill.

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