Penguin History of the United States of America (49 page)

The underlying agreements of the American political élite had at last reasserted themselves. Once the disturbing influence of Hamilton was removed and the intransigence of Britain had finally settled the question of what America’s foreign policy should be, there was very little to quarrel about. So the first blossoming of national party politics was coming to an end by, at latest, the 1816 Presidential election, the last which the Federalists ever contested, for they were overwhelmed. Still, the American people had taken to party warfare with significant eagerness. The journalists of the two factions had proved themselves champions at scurrility and abuse (for example, it was alleged that Jefferson had fathered a large illegitimate family on one of his slaves).
¹¹
The minor politicians of the various states had shown boundless energy and ingenuity in working for each other’s downfall, and some of them were of the opinion that politics was as good a way of getting rich as any other. Ordinary Americans enjoyed the carnival aspect of politics: the speeches, the processions, the banquets, the racecourse excitement; they had also shown that they could be deeply stirred when
they thought that great issues were at stake. The triumph of the Republicans had been due as much to their ability to rouse their fellow-citizens, and to the Federalists’ disdainful reluctance to compete, as to any intrinsic virtue in their cause.

So the lull that followed the collapse of the Federalists did not last for very long. The old Revolutionary elite was disappearing. The Father of his Country had died in 1799; Adams and Jefferson lived on and on (eventually dying on the same day, which by a wonderful coincidence was 4 July 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence) but they held no office. Presidents Madison and Monroe followed Jefferson into complete retirement as they had followed him in the Presidency. Inevitably, new men came to the fore: men without shared memories of the great struggle.

The country itself was changing too rapidly to be managed any longer by the arts of gentlemanly politics. By 1820 there were twenty-two states in the Union, and the population was 9,638,453. Loyalty to individual states, as against the Union, had perhaps waned somewhat; but Americans were becoming increasingly conscious of their identity as inhabitants of the various sections (principally, North, South and West). New economic interests were arising, old systems were decaying; new attitudes to life were forming, and the ideology that may loosely be described as Americanism – democratic, nationalist, capitalist, individualist – was coming to maturity. Inevitably a new sort of politics emerged.

The constitutional system both required and induced such a development. The system of checks and balances perpetually threatened to be too successful: President, courts, Congress and state governments might be so efficient at thwarting each other that nothing, however necessary, could get done. Means of inducing them to co-operate had to be sought, and party discipline, it turned out, was just what was wanted. Another factor was the basic principle of election. American life had been permeated with the elective spirit from its beginnings. Puritans had known no other way of securing their congregations against the horrors of prelacy, and practical settlers had known no other way of ensuring that new laws and infant authorities would be respected. The habit of elections was substantially reinforced by the battles of the 1790s. The same conditions which had necessitated elections in early New England now necessitated them as settlements sprang up in the West; while in the older parts of the country they held it to be an essential part of the American liberty which had been vindicated against King George, that all office-holders, whether state, national or merely local, should be answerable to the people at election time. True, there were many posts under the Constitution (most notably federal judgeships) which were appointive, not electoral; but it was elected officials – the President and the Senators – who made the appointments.

Such patronage increased the importance of Presidential and Senatorial elections, but that importance was already large. While governments exist they will be supposed to do so for the good of the governed, and early
nineteenth-century Americans were clamorous in demanding that their government deliver the goods. Manufacturers in the East demanded higher tariffs for protection against British competition; settlers in the West demanded the protection of the US army against Indians and its help in driving the tribes from their lands; others wanted federal assistance in the building of roads and canals to carry produce to market. All these interests had opponents, of course: voters who wanted the federal government to do little of anything, and nothing that involved direct or indirect taxation (in this they showed themselves the true descendants of the Sons of Liberty). All alike turned to the professional politicians for assistance in winning their ends; and the politicians were very willing to co-operate. For they had noticed that elected offices carried salaries with them; so did appointive ones; judicious exertions could, by these means, keep an honest man solvent for the length of his natural life (for dishonest men, it was soon to emerge, the opportunities were even more glorious). All that was required was to make promises to the voters and then find means either of keeping those promises, or of seeming to do so; or to teach the voters that the art of compromise (with reality and one’s opponents) is the essence of adult politics; or, if all else failed, of persuading them that the promises were broken because of the corrupt and treasonable activity of the opposition. In return, loyal partisans would sustain a man in office, where he could earn a good wage and where he could obtain additional rewards by handing out such jobs as postmaster or government clerk to the deserving. Underlings proved they were deserving by contributing part of their salaries to the war chests of the politicians.

This was the politics of patronage, of the so-called spoils system, of the lobby
¹²
and the special interest. It is familiar, in one form or another, to everyone who has grown up in a Western democracy, and so need hardly be explained further. The principle of favours given for favours received provides the staple of Atlantic politics. It does not make up the whole of the system. American voters, at least as much as European ones, can be decisively affected in their behaviour by great events; and they may have loyalties or interests which transcend the petty concerns of day-to-day living. Politicians are not mere greedy automata. The best and ablest among them cherish their self-respect; they feel the need to legitimize their personal ambitions by linking them to great causes. So American politics have always presented a complex and fascinating web of immediate personal
and economic interests, national, sectional, class or racial rivalries, and individual careers – comical, tragical, heroical or villainous – on the largest scale.

These generalizations will take on more meaning if we look at the transformation of American politics that occurred in the 1820s and 1830s. For those decades saw the emergence of the classical pattern of the American party system, as a result of the combined activities of great statesmen, ordinary politicians and the mass of the American people.

The great statesmen had their eyes fixed on the highest offices of all: on governorships, senatorships, overseas ministries, Cabinet posts and above all on the Presidency. Such leaders were few, and they dominated the national scene for thirty years, forming a new elite to succeed the Revolutionary one. Their personal agreements and disagreements were not unlike those of the earlier day: at some time every one of them collaborated with every other one, and every one of them quarrelled with every other one. (The exception to this rule was the permanent enmity between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.) When they were neither quarrelling nor electioneering they went to each other’s dinner-parties. But whereas the Revolutionary generation had been, in principle, united, the new men were, in principle, divided into two groups: on the one hand, followers of Andrew Jackson (Martin Van Buren, Thomas Hart Benton, James Knox Polk); on the other, his rivals (John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster).

Had the system been essentially a matter of personalities, like the Jefferson-Hamilton rivalry, it would not have survived the death or retirement of its leaders. Instead, it proved to be the most stable feature of America’s political history, next to the Constitution, and today’s major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, evolved from the Jacksonians and anti-Jacksonians of 1830. To understand this evolution, it is necessary to look at the American social structure and the great issues of the period, as well as the ambitions of individuals.

The rise of the party system was an intricate, slow process that began even before the War of 1812, perhaps when Jefferson settled that his successor should be nominated by the Congressional ‘caucus’ of the Republican party. Then there arose the War Hawks, Clay and Calhoun. Both were successful young lawyers (most American politicians have had legal training) who linked their ambitions to the particular interests of their states. They were not much alike otherwise, for Clay was an abounding, smiling extrovert, while Calhoun was a stern intellectual – somebody said that he looked as if he had never been born. They were bound to be rivals, since both wanted the Presidency; in the course of their long careers they would also, not infrequently, be partners; in 1812 their common patriotic stance brought them great prestige. Even more prestige was won by General Jackson. Towns and counties were named after every prominent American as settlement spread westward but songs were made about Jackson:

I s’pose you’ve read it in the prints

How Pakenham attempted

To make Old Hickory
JACKSON
wince,

But soon his scheme repented;

For we with rifles ready cocked,

Thought such occasion lucky,

And soon around the general flock’d

The Hunters of Kentucky!

He had become the supreme living national hero, taking the place left vacant by Washington. A young country, whose incessant bragging ill-concealed its acute inferiority complex, badly needed such a man. His emergence did not bode well for other people’s ambitions.

More significant still was the impact of the war on the politics of New York. That state had been changing rapidly since independence. The ancient dominance of its great landed families was challenged, and the challengers marched under the banner of Thomas Jefferson. Adopting the Republican name and creed, they stoutly attacked the oligarchical governmental machinery which was the key to the ascendancy of the old families: the Livingstons, Clintons and Van Rensselaers. Another rising young lawyer, Martin Van Buren (1782 – 1862), whose family had been clients of the Van Rensselaers, now succeeded in pinning the charge of treason, or at any rate of lack of patriotism, on the aristocrats, because they opposed the war. Van Buren was an unlikely demagogue, being always quietly urbane and amiable and faultlessly dressed; but he was an intelligent and tireless political organizer (he was nicknamed the Little Magician) and with such a cry there was no resisting him. By 1820 he and his friends dominated New York state politics, and were to continue to do so for the next eighteen years.

They were a new phenomenon, and recognized as such. Their cohesion, and their success in controlling the government of New York in Albany, the state capital, earned them the nickname of the Albany Regency. Their followers, they said, were quite safe if they faced the enemy, but ‘the first man we see
step to the rear, we cut down
.’ The purpose of elections was to win public office; party unity was the means to victory; any who voted wrong would be denied all share in the rewards. For, as William E. Marcy, a leading Regent, proclaimed, ‘To the victor belong the spoils’
¹³
– thus giving its name to the spoils system which was to dominate American politics until the twentieth century. Under this system every election in which power changed hands, whether local, state or national, was followed
by the dismissal of all office-holders of the wrong stripe and their replacement by adherents of the new administration. Some security for civil servants was provided by the possibility that the party which had appointed them would win re-election, and they toiled earnestly to bring about such a happy outcome; but basically their situation was unenviable. William Crawford, an ambitious Georgian who was President Monroe’s Secretary of the Treasury, in 1820 put through Congress the first Tenure of Office Act, which gave the President and the Senate the power to re-appoint to every office in the gift of the United States government (except judgeships) every four years – that is to say, after each Presidential election. This law was justified by a principle much beloved of the Jeffersonians – the ‘rotation of office’, according to which government jobs ought to be passed around as often as possible so that there could not emerge an official aristocracy, holding government jobs for life and possibly passing them on to its children. In practice the Act undermined the civil service and sharpened the appetites of office-seekers, of whom there was soon to be a permanent horde; it enhanced the power of the Senate and diminished that of the President. As a result it soon came about that after every Presidential inauguration the new executive was besieged by office-seekers and had to spend weeks of valuable time pondering the political advantages and disadvantages of appointing Robinsons or Smiths to the hundreds of posts that Joneses and Browns wanted. Even when he had made his nominations, they had to go before the Senate, where horse-trading among the Senators (‘You vote for my man and I’ll vote for yours’) ensured that the final decision would be theirs, not his. By the late nineteenth century, indeed, the power of appointment had largely passed out of the President’s hands: Benjamin Harrison (President 1889 – 93) complained (not quite truthfully) that he had not himself chosen a single one of his Cabinet officers. Benjamin’s grandfather, William Henry Harrison (President 1841), is unique in having been hounded to death by office-seekers (he caught pleurisy while delivering a long inaugural address in freezing weather, and could not find a single room in the White House where he could recuperate unmolested), just as President Garfield (1881) is unique in having been shot by a disappointed aspirant; even if unique, neither episode can be called a satisfactory advertisement for the system. Worst of all, the quadrennial scramble could distract attention from really urgent affairs of state: thus in the vital weeks between his inauguration and the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 Abraham Lincoln had to spend at least as much time worrying about appointments as about the impending Civil War.