American Lion

by Jon Meacham

  On the evening of the wedding party for Andrew Jackson, Jr., it was announced that, in a break from custom, the secretary of state would precede the foreign diplomatic corps, followed by the rest of the Cabinet. The Treasury secretary disliked the innovation—it seemed to demote him—and told Andrew Donelson so before the walk in to dinner. “The argument was carried on some time,” Mrs. Smith said, and McLane won the point. Then the foreign ministers weighed in, upset at being behind the Cabinet, and Donelson told Jackson of the counteroffensive from his other guests. With tact, Jackson said, “Well, I will lead the Bride, it is a family fête,—and we will waive all difficulties.”

  Relating the gossip in a letter, Mrs. Smith said: “Now, trifling as this affair will appear, it may have serious political consequences. The President and the foreign ministers are dissatisfied with the Secretary of the Treasury, and the poor man is not of a temper to conciliate dissatisfactions—and then too, the Secretary of State will resent the resistance made to the honor designed him by the President, and the ill will thus engendered between the two first members of the Cabinet will doubtless influence their deliberations. And the President himself never yet could bear opposition.”

  Signaling that she understood the political climate in which the social maneuvers were taking place, Mrs. Smith added: “The Bank question has been another point of controversy, so much so … a member of Congress told a friend of ours, he should not be surprised at another blow up.” It had, after all, happened before. “Mrs. Eaton’s affair, at the beginning, was but a spark, but what a conflagration it did cause,” she said.

  MRS. SMITH HAD personal reasons to look forward to a bonfire. She had hopes that Jackson would be bound for Tennessee after the election. Meanwhile, she liked the look of the new season. Chattering away in a letter, she said she and her husband had “several new neighbors. How we shall like them time must determine. An Empress, an ex-Minister’s widow and Mrs. Secretary McLane are among those nearest to us. Madame Iturbide, the former Empress of Mexico, is close to us. We could, were we so inclined, almost shake hands from our back windows.”

  While Mrs. Smith soaked up the imperial, ex-imperial, and ministerial glamor, her friends Lucretia and Henry Clay arrived back in the city as winter set in. Clay was returning as senator from Kentucky. Despite a heavy snowstorm, a determined Mrs. Smith braved the ice to call on Lucretia, who could be mistress of the White House in a year’s time. Mrs. Smith “hastened to welcome her back and sat the whole of a long morning with her,” but found her a sadder woman than she remembered. That was understandable: one Clay son was currently battling drink, and another had been committed to “the Lunatic Asylum of Kentucky” in 1831. The former, Mrs. Smith remarked, was “irreclaimably dissipated, the other insane and confined in a hospital.”

  Still, Senator Clay was buoyed by the coming combat. He readied for his return to Capitol Hill and, as 1832 wore on, for his return to presidential politics as Jackson’s chief rival in November. Washington Irving, who had come home to America from England, spent some time with Clay and found him in good form. “He tells me he has improved greatly in health since he was dismissed from office, and finds that it is good for man as well as beast to be turned out occasionally to grass. Certainly official life in Washington must be harassing and dismal in the extreme.” It was, but politics was Clay’s natural métier, and Mrs. Smith was confident for her returning friend. “Mr. Clay is borne up by the undying spirit of ambition—he looks well and animated, and will be this winter in his very element—in the very vortex of political warfare,” she said. “With his unrivaled and surpassing talents, his winning and irresistibly attractive manners, what is it he cannot do? We shall see, but I shall think it strange if he does not succeed in all his aims.”

  The view from the White House, not surprisingly, was rather different. “Politics are waxing warmer every day,” Andrew Donelson wrote his brother-in-law Stockley in early 1832. “Every engine is at work to batter down the reputation and popularity of Uncle, but as far as I can perceive he is gaining new strength in the affection and love of the people.”

  CHAPTER 14

  NOW LET HIM ENFORCE IT

  IN HIS OFFICE at the State Department on Wednesday, March 28, 1832, Edward Livingston issued a revealing directive to American diplomats around the globe. From Rio to Saint Petersburg, envoys were instructed to ask foreign governments to change long-standing protocol in the usual form of address in letters between nations. Though the order affected only six words, it represented a dramatic shift in Jackson’s Washington in the opening months of 1832. “It is observed that official communications from foreign powers intended for the Executive of the United States, have been usually addressed to the President and Congress of the United States,” Livingston wrote. Such a convention was fine in the pre-1787 days of the Articles of Confederation, but now, Livingston said, “its inaccuracy is apparent—the whole executive power, particularly that of foreign intercourse, being vested in the President. You will, therefore, address a note to the Minister for Foreign Affairs apprising him that all communications made directly to the head of our executive government should be addressed ‘To the President of the United States of America,’ without any other addition.”

  Dropping the House and the Senate from diplomatic correspondence was ceremonial but telling. Jackson was consolidating presidential power, and the fight at hand was against the Bank, a struggle in which Jackson appealed to the people for support on the grounds that he—more than Congress, more than the courts, more than anything or anyone else—represented them.

  Mrs. Smith had been on to something when she speculated about the possibility of Louis McLane turning into trouble for Jackson. The larger cause was the Bank; McLane believed the institution should be reformed, not abolished, and was open about his views. A former congressman who had chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, McLane was, his Cabinet colleague Roger Taney said, “an ambitious man; loved power, and aspired to the Presidency, which he confidently expected to reach.” McLane’s time as minister to England had confirmed his longtime support of the Bank—he had, Taney said, a “close intimacy with Mr. Biddle and with Barings in England”—and he came to the Treasury in late 1831 with a plan to save the Bank and accomplish much else besides. Linking most of the questions of the day, McLane proposed to pay off the national debt as Jackson had long planned, sell the government’s stock in the Bank, sell the federal lands to the states, and modify the tariff—then, in future years, recharter a reformed Bank. The political price for the scheme: McLane wanted Jackson to remain largely silent on the Bank issue in the annual presidential message so that McLane could use the occasion of the Treasury secretary’s annual report to discuss his broad proposals—including the Bank’s ultimate recharter. When Jackson agreed, McLane believed he had carried the day on all fronts and rescued the Bank.

  It seemed a reasonable surmise. At a meeting convened in Jackson’s office so that the Cabinet could listen as Andrew Donelson read a draft of Jackson’s annual message aloud, the language about the Bank was so mild that it “startled” Roger Taney, who believed the phrasing suggested Jackson “would now defer to the representatives of the people and abide by the decision of Congress”—even though the president opposed recharter. As best Taney could recall it, the original wording about the Bank was:

  Having conscientiously discharged a constitutional duty I deem it proper without a more particular reference to the subject to leave it to the investigation of an enlightened people and their representatives.

  New to the circle and nervous—he recalled that he was “comparatively a stranger to General Jackson”—Taney nevertheless felt he should speak up. He knew it would annoy McLane, and possibly anger Jackson. The natural tendency in a meeting like the one taking place in Jackson’s office, especially when it is a meeting of politicians, men who make a business of the art of appearing agreeable, is to nod one’s head, not shake it, to murmur affirmation, not mount counterattacks. “The
duty of making this objection I felt to be an unpleasant one,” Taney said. Yet he made it.

  McLane rose to defend the paragraph, which he had written, as it was. No one else in the office came to Taney’s side as McLane “objected strongly to any alteration.” The other secretaries were either silent or backed McLane. “The discussion continued for some time,” Taney said, and soon “the President was worried and desired it to end.” McLane outranked Taney, and Jackson saw no reason to contradict McLane in open session. Jackson “always listened reluctantly to any criticism upon the language of a paper prepared under his directions,” Taney said, “and he seemed to apprehend that the writer might feel mortified if it was determined that he had imputed to him opinions he did not entertain—or failed to execute the instructions under which the paper was written.” It was clear “from the earnestness and tenacity with which Mr. McLane defended this paragraph” that “he himself had prepared it.… The President I am sure was the more unwilling to make alterations because he saw that Mr. McLane would be dissatisfied and perhaps a little hurt if the paper was materially changed.”

  After some back-and-forth at the long table in front of the fireplace, McLane, it seemed, had won. “He was an accomplished diplomatist, and exercised as much diplomacy in Washington to carry his measures as he would at a foreign court,” Taney said. “He had great tact, and always knew whether he should address himself to the patriotism, the magnanimity, the pride, the vanity, the hopes or the fears of the person on whom he wished to operate. And he thus always had a clique about him wherever he was in power over whose opinions he exercised a controlling influence.”

  Jackson tended to elude those who tried to control him. As Taney saw it, McLane’s “mistake was in underrating the strength and independence of the President’s mind; and the extent of his information. He expected to manage him.… He evidently believed that he would be able to change [Jackson’s] opinions, and induce him to assent to the continuance of the charter with some slight and unimportant modification, as a salve to the President’s consistency.”

  Relieved by the apparent failure of Taney’s bid to change the wording, McLane—and, at a distance, Biddle—believed the battle won. Yet Jackson’s bureaucratic support in the Cabinet meeting did not mean he agreed with McLane’s fundamental argument that the Bank should go on. It meant only that Jackson was, depending on one’s point of view, either a courteous leader or a cleverly deceptive one, for Taney was soon in Andrew Donelson’s office for a private chat with the president. Jackson thought Taney had made a sound case against the wording of the message. Now, quietly and without involving McLane, Jackson made changes to the text and wanted to know Taney’s thoughts. The new passage read:

  Having conscientiously discharged a constitutional duty I deem it proper on this occasion without a more particular reference to the views of the subject then expressed to leave it for the present to the investigation of an enlightened people and their representatives.

  It was hardly a clarion call, but by Taney and Jackson’s estimation it was better, and gave Jackson room to maneuver. Few read it that way on publication, though, and many believed, as McLane did, that Jackson would allow the Bank to survive.

  Biddle thought he saw an opening, and decided to apply for recharter in January 1832—challenging Jackson (never a good idea) to sign it, thus securing the Bank, or to veto it and invite defeat at the polls. Clay and Webster privately pressed for this course, and, like Calhoun, Biddle became enamored of his own logic and convinced himself that the world would see things as he did and do things as he would. He thought he could box Jackson in on the Bank’s terms. Using almost exactly the same words he used to describe McLane, Taney said Biddle was “an ambitious man, full of vanity, and loved power. He believed that by bringing the weight and influence of the Bank into the approaching election he could defeat General Jackson, and he wished political aspirants to see that he had defeated him—He led the Bank therefore into the political arena determined to show its strength in political contests.”

  It was a terrible mistake. “If General Jackson does not kill the bank, the bank will kill him,” the ancient John Randolph of Roanoke wrote to Edward Livingston. Jackson used the same metaphor. “The Bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me,” Jackson said to his friend in July, “but I will kill it.” By 1832 the conflict over the Bank had become a struggle for power, and it was always risky to bet against Jackson in such a struggle. Still, Biddle pressed for recharter, believing he would defeat the president in Congress or, failing that, in the general election.

  FOR THE PRESIDENT, the first half of 1832 was also a time of physical suffering, marital maneuvering, and financial fretting. In addition to fighting the flu, Jackson finally had the bullet he had carried in his left arm since the brawl with the Bentons removed. It was a brief, painful operation. Unflinching, Jackson had only his walking stick for solace; he gripped it as the doctor prepared to slice open the arm. “Go ahead,” Jackson said. The doctor made the cut, and the old slug popped out, falling to the floor.

  Around this time—it was January—Mary Eastin was planning her wedding to Captain William B. Finch of the U.S. Navy. An older man, Finch, Andrew Donelson told the Coffee family, was “very clever and highly respectable.” The wedding was set for Valentine’s Day. Jackson had long loved Mary quite as much as he loved Emily—sometimes finding the more easygoing Mary more approachable—and arranged to pay for a White House ceremony. They would use the East Room, as they had for Mary Rachel’s baptism. All was set—and then Lucius Polk, a cousin of James K. Polk’s, arrived in Washington from his home in Maury County, in middle Tennessee. He had heard of the impending marriage and had apparently been harboring an unspoken love for Mary for several years; emboldened by the imminent threat of losing her forever, young Polk made his case. Again the second floor of the White House became turbulent as Mary found herself choosing between Finch and Polk. It was evidently a difficult decision, for on Saturday, April 7, about three months after her engagement to Finch had become public, Jackson could only say that he thought Mary had settled on Polk. “I believe I may say that Miss Mary Eastin will be married on Tuesday evening next to Mr. Lucius Polk,” Jackson wrote Coffee. “The guests are all invited and I trust that it will take place.”

  Money was also a concern. He had paid for Andrew junior’s wedding and now Mary Eastin’s, and he was short of cash. Discussing a land deal on Jackson’s behalf the previous fall, Andrew junior said: “We farmers generally are greatly pressed for money, owing to the depressed state of our cotton market, upon which, you will know, we have to place our sole dependence. My Father cannot command the means conveniently. His expenses here and at home are very heavy.”

  Still, Mary Eastin’s romantic drama gave him some passing relief from what Andrew Jackson, Jr., called the “quite warm” politics of the moment—the press of negotiations over the Cherokees, the Bank, the tariff, and, beginning the week Mary and Polk were finally married, the outbreak of the Black Hawk War.

  IT WAS PERHAPS inevitable that some Indian warriors would strike back amid, and after, removal. In April 1832, Black Hawk, a Sac whose people, along with the Foxes, had been forcibly removed from their lands near the Rock River in Illinois, came back across the Mississippi River to hunt, only to find white squatters in the way. Misled into believing that there would be British and fellow Indian support, Black Hawk and his band were essentially alone, facing hostile Illinois militia on the eastern side of the Mississippi. (Abraham Lincoln served in the Black Hawk War, but later said the only blood he shed was from mosquitoes.) On Tuesday, May 15, 1832, after a ceremonial feast of boiled dog with representatives of other Great Lakes tribes, Black Hawk sent emissaries to arrange a parley with the white soldiers. But the militiamen seem to have had a good deal to drink, and while accounts are confused, it appears clear that they, not Black Hawk’s warriors, shed first blood. Forty of Black Hawk’s men then crushed the Illinois militia, killing twelve (only three Sacs died, and they
had been among those seeking a parley). Hearing the reports, Jackson ordered Winfield Scott into action, putting the general in command of a thousand federal troops.

  Slowed by a deadly outbreak of cholera among his men, Scott did not make it to the front until after the war was over. Landing at Fort Gratiot, north of Detroit, some of Scott’s soldiers, in terror from watching the sick die on board, escaped to the forests, only to die on the run; their corpses, it was said, were eaten by wolves and wild hogs. Along the Mississippi, the Black Hawk War basically ended with the Battle of Bad Axe on Thursday, August 2, 1832, where hundreds of Indians, including women and children, were killed, many of them drowning as they tried to escape across the river.

  JACKSON’S SWIFT RESPONSE to the bloodshed in Illinois in May 1832 was in contrast to his reaction to a new Supreme Court decision—this one supporting the Cherokees against the incursions of the state of Georgia. The year before, in 1831, John Marshall had flinched from forcing the issue of Indian sovereignty in Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia. In March 1832, just before Jackson intervened in the Black Hawk War, Marshall and the Court ruled in a second case that had come to them from Georgia. Two Christian missionaries had been arrested on the Cherokee lands after the state had passed its anti-Cherokee laws prohibiting unlicensed whites from living on Cherokee lands. The missionaries, Samuel Worcester and Elihu Butler, were convicted by a Georgia court and jailed. Their sentence was four years at hard labor.