American Lion

by Jon Meacham

  To the north, in the White House, Jackson put on a brave face. “Virginia, except for a few nullifiers and politicians, is true to the core,” he said. But a few nullifiers and politicians could cause much trouble, and at heart Jackson shared Marshall’s view. In letter after letter, the more Jackson scribbled the words “the union shall be preserved,” the more one suspects he felt things might slip out of control. He had given his word, though, and he would keep it: “I will die with the Union.”

  Jackson’s allies responded to South Carolina’s preparations for war with grim humor. Replying to a letter in which his brother, Rufus, had described Calhoun’s vicious table manners, Leonidas Polk wrote: “Your account of Mr. Calhoun as a man of grace at least, is not very favorable.… I suppose, though, while he was wielding his knife and thrusting his fork in such style, he was thinking of the execution which the nullifiers would do with their bayonets and broad swords, and perhaps was practicing. Poor man, I dare say he will stand in need of all the skill he can acquire.”

  AT THE WHITE House, on New Year’s Day 1833, the people of Washington, feeling a frisson of danger from the showdown with South Carolina, swarmed to shake Jackson’s hand. For three hours Jackson and Emily stood at their posts, dutifully greeting the guests. The women of the house currently included Mary McLemore and Mary Coffee, Emily’s nieces, and though Miss McLemore and Emily skirmished a bit, Emily made sure none of it reached Jackson’s ears. Reporting on the comings and goings in the White House, Mary Coffee told her mother that Mary McLemore “was always of a tyrannical disposition [and] always wishes me to yield to her in everything.” And while “I am willing for the sake of peace to do this,” Mary Coffee added, “Aunt [Emily] is not, and always tells her of it, [and] thence ensues a dispute.… I do not exaggerate when I say there is seldom a day passes in perfect harmony.” Emily, however, had learned the lessons of the Eaton wars and did not advertise the domestic conflicts. Mary wrote: “I am very glad that Uncle does not know [about the strife], for I am sure it would make him uneasy and I am certain that he has very few moments of perfect ease.”

  Nonetheless, Emily’s triumph in the previous year’s war was complete. Even the Eatons’ brief return to the capital—he had lost a Senate bid in Tennessee—was anticlimactic. They had had their day, and it had passed, and with its sense of who has power and who does not, Washington took little note of them. Margaret slipped into a brief physical decline, as though the bill for the cumulative stress of the previous four years came due all at once. “She has been quite ill,” Lewis wrote John Overton. “She looks very badly.… I was shocked by her pale, sickly, and emaciated appearance.”

  John Coffee visited Washington for a time and noted that Emily and her young connections, including his own Mary, “seem to enjoy themselves very well—there is a constant stream of visits and revisits. The ladies perform a considerable part in the drama here.” His daughter reveled in the life he was describing. “You must excuse this scrawl for I have been sitting up three or four nights at parties, am very much fatigued and stayed at home tonight because I was too tired to go out,” Mary Coffee wrote to her brother. A few days later, after a White House dinner with some representatives of Indian nations, Mary noted, “I suppose they were very much pleased from their looks, however we cannot always judge of an Indian’s feelings by their looks or white people either, if they are all like the good people of Washington.”

  Like Mary Coffee, Jackson was unsure what lurked behind the masks of the politicians gathered in the capital to debate the South Carolina question. He himself, though, knew what face to show the public no matter what he might be thinking or feeling. As anxious as the early weeks of 1833 were, when Washington Irving called at the White House, Jackson, who knew Irving was in contact with some of the players in South Carolina, showed no fear, no trace of worry, no undue concern—he was placid and commanding. After his conversation with Jackson, Irving “came away with a still warmer feeling towards Old Hickory, who, I swear, is one of the truest old caballeros I have ever known.” “Caballero” is an interesting choice of term, for it suggests a knightly, courtly gentleman—smooth rather than rough, calm rather than angry, calculating rather than raging.

  Four days after this meeting, Jackson’s campaign to resolve rather than inflame the crisis took legislative form. In the House, New York congressman Gulian C. Verplanck, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, introduced the administration’s tariff reform bill—a key element if there was to be a peaceable settlement of the crisis. That Jackson was moving to make the most immediate cause of the trouble disappear, all while threatening to use force, suggests a cool political sense beneath his heated professions of inflexibility.

  At the White House the same week, the Supreme Court justices gathered to dine with Jackson. It was a convivial evening. The power of the proclamation to South Carolina had dispelled, for the moment, the tensions produced by the Cherokee cases. Mary Coffee was unexpectedly charmed by John Marshall. “If you were to see him without knowing who it was, you would hardly notice him,” she wrote her brother. “Apart from his dress, there is nothing striking in his appearance, a tall, raw-boned man, small head, all of his features very small, a remarkably low forehead for a man but a very fine eye, a small, black, restless, penetrating eye. He dresses in the old style shorts and knee buckles. He is very agreeable in conversation, very lively, will talk to the ladies upon every light subject but never upon any other description of subjects in mixed company, which shows his good sense, I think.” Justice Story, Mary said, “appears to be of a very cheerful, jovial disposition, very much of a beau in the company of ladies.”

  STORY HAD REASON to be cheerful. He had been horrified by the prospect of the “reign of King Mob” at the White House four years before, but was now charmed, Story wrote his wife, when “the President specially invited me to drink a glass of wine with him.” Story and Marshall had long opposed Jackson’s more vehement states’ rights views, but, Story told his wife, “what is more remarkable since his last proclamation and messages [is] the Chief Justice and myself have become his warmest supporters and shall continue so just as long as he maintains the principles contained in them.” So the anger over the clashes of the past evaporated in the glow of the White House.

  Calhoun was feeling confident, if a bit wounded. Arriving in the city fresh from his marathon day elucidating nullification in Raleigh, Calhoun checked in to Brown’s Hotel. His pride was hurt: Livingston had not bothered to reply to Calhoun’s vice presidential resignation letter. From his lodgings Calhoun sent a follow-up note, asking Livingston “to inform me by the bearer whether it has been received.” Courtesies aside, Calhoun thought things were going his way. Between Jackson’s states’ rights annual message and the nationalist proclamation, the White House seemed to be pleasing neither side, and the states were still in flux. “Our cause is doing well,” Calhoun wrote a friend in South Carolina on Thursday, January 10, 1833. “Let our people go on; be firm and prudent; give no pretext for force, and I feel confident of a peaceable and glorious triumph for our cause and the state.”

  CHAPTER 19

  WE ARE THREATENED

  TO HAVE OUR THROATS CUT

  JACKSON WAS IN a difficult position. He needed concessions from the manufacturing states on a lower tariff and from the South (not only South Carolina but the rest of the region, too) on simply the existence of a tariff, even at reduced rates. It was evident from the nullifiers’ preparations and from Poinsett’s fears that passions in South Carolina could lead to violence, and once shoving or shooting began, it was impossible to predict where it might end. Jackson did not yet know, he told Van Buren, “whether some of the eastern states may not secede or nullify, if the tariff is reduced. I have to look at both ends of the union to preserve it.”

  One thing was clear to Jackson’s foes: between the expanded veto power and his huge personal popularity, he was amassing so much power that they chose to believe the Constitution in jeopardy. “There is
nothing certain but that the will of Andrew Jackson is to govern; and that will fluctuates with the change of every pen which gives expression to it,” Clay said bitterly. Calhoun painted an even starker portrait, writing to Samuel Ingham: “The people will never again choose another Chief Magistrate. The executive power will perpetuate itself.”

  The delicacy of Jackson’s task in this bleak winter is illuminated by a conversation he had at the White House with Silas Wright, Jr., a New York politician in town to begin a Senate term. Jackson wanted New York firmly and unmistakably in his camp, but thus far the state legislature had failed to condemn nullification. Van Buren apparently saw no advantage in rushing to his president’s side, either personally (the vice president-elect remained in New York in these tense weeks) or politically (he worried that the proclamation would cost him votes in the 1836 campaign). Van Buren sent Wright to the White House on Sunday, January 13, with a letter for Jackson.

  For half an hour, however, Jackson focused entirely on Wright. The news, Jackson said, was bad, and it was going to get worse. “I learned from him that instead of a diminution of the probabilities of force at Charleston those probabilities had been constantly increasing,” Wright told Van Buren. Jackson warned that the rebels were “holding regular drills of the squads in the night” and fumed that Hamilton had allowed the American flag to be flown upside down—a symbol of distress—aboard a boat he rode into Augusta, Georgia. “For this indignity to the flag of the country, she ought to have been instantly sunk, no matter who owned or commanded her,” Jackson told Wright. It was a dark report.

  Jackson’s winter campaign entered a critical new phase on Wednesday, January 16, 1833. Already lobbying to cut the tariff and thus remove the proximate cause of the crisis, he also wanted clear authority to strike if it came to that. What the administration called the Force Bill (Southerners denounced it as the Bloody Bill) authorized the president to move the collection of federal revenue to ships off the coast of Charleston or to temporary customs houses at Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney—installations under federal control. The bill also specifically gave the president the power to direct the military and the state militias to carry out federal law. There was no escaping the central truth of the proposal: that a president was asking Congress to explicitly give him the power to use military strength against Americans within American borders. If he could not solve things peaceably, he would then have the option of doing so forcibly. He ruled nothing out.

  IN THE SENATE, Felix Grundy of Tennessee introduced the measure, along with a copy of the Nullification Proclamation. Calhoun was not yet in the chamber when Grundy spoke. The new senator from South Carolina entered and sat down as the documents themselves were being read aloud. He instantly decided “that it ought not to pass without a blow; and I accordingly struck it.” Enthralled by his own theory, guided in part by his contempt for Jackson, convinced of his own rectitude and vision, Calhoun spoke passionately. South Carolina, he said, had joined the Union “with the understanding that a state, in the last resort, has a right to judge of the expediency of resistance to oppression or secession from the Union. And for so doing it is that we are threatened to have our throats cut, and those of our wives and children.”

  As the words tumbled out of his mouth, Calhoun realized he should stop. “No—I go too far,” he said. “I did not intend to use language so strong. The Chief Magistrate ha[s] not yet recommended so desperate a remedy.” Still, he raised the prospect of an armed Jacksonian dictatorship. “Military despotism,” Calhoun said—not a divided union—was “the greatest danger” facing America. Perhaps, Calhoun added, he should not speak with such “warmth,” which he knew was “unbecoming.” But he could not help it. In Washington, at least, the rhetorical bloodshed had begun.

  CALHOUN’S FRIENDS ASSURED him that the speech had had “great effect on the Audience and the Senate.” The White House’s allies streamed out of the chamber and rushed to reassure Jackson that Calhoun’s opening shots had fallen short. They apparently emphasized style, criticizing Calhoun for his feverish delivery. “Mr. Calhoun let off a little of his ire against me today in the Senate, but was so agitated and confused that he made quite a failure,” Jackson told Poinsett after hearing accounts of the speech. On substantive grounds, though, the Calhoun argument that a Jackson presidency could lead to military despotism and curtailed civil liberties had a good deal of resonance. Jackson had been facing such charges since the controversy over martial law in New Orleans two decades before, and he had heard Clay repeatedly make such a case.

  Asking for an endorsement of executive power to exert force against the states was no small thing, and the Southern states—even the ones with no brief for nullification—were anxious. Jackson’s words to Poinsett about Calhoun’s alleged “failure” in the Senate, then, were more hopeful than realistic.

  Late that night, on the hushed household floor of the White House, Jackson was too troubled to sleep. To save the South he had to cut the tariff, but if he cut it too much, Jackson fretted, he could alienate the North, which might begin to find new virtue in the idea of nullification. In securing the power to put down rebellion he could drive more moderate Southerners into South Carolina’s camp. Yet if he did not seek the authority and things came to blows, he might stand accused of acting illegally if he did not have permission from Congress to enforce the customs laws.

  In the darkness, his only solace was the memory of Rachel. He had sat up deep in the night in many battlefield tents before, his soldiers asleep, his mind racing, and now he was doing so again. Writing Poinsett, Jackson yearned for information. “Give me the earliest intelligence of the first armed force that appears in the field to sustain the ordinance [of nullification]—the first act of treason committed.”

  Poinsett did not think it would be long. “The Nullifiers are extremely active and do keep up the excitement in an extraordinary manner,” Poinsett told Jackson. “They drill and exercise their men without intermission.” On Friday, January 18, Hayne urged James Henry Hammond to prepare for “protracted warfare.” Meanwhile, Poinsett said, “revolutionists in North Carolina and especially Georgia” were offering the nullifiers help. “I expect the next move will be secession,” he added on Sunday, January 20. Jackson was still unwilling to strike the first blow. “The nullifiers in your state have placed themselves thus far in the wrong,” Jackson said. “They must be kept there”—for as long as they were at fault and could not cast themselves as victims of armed federal force, the moral advantage remained with Jackson and with the Union.

  Clay saw Jackson’s political dilemma: “He has marked out two victims—South Carolina and the tariff—and the only question with him is which shall be first immolated.” The manufacturing states did not want the tariff cut, the agrarian states were worried about creeping nationalism, and no one was enamored of the idea of giving the president the powers in the measure. The Calhoun newspaper, the Telegraph, worried that the Force Bill “arms the executive with the entire naval and military force of the country,” which in turn would transform Jackson into a “military dictator.” Even a senator friendly to Jackson, William R. King of Alabama, disliked putting “the whole military power of the Government at the discretion of the President. I can never consent, however great my confidence in the executive, to clothe any mortal man with such tremendous and unlimited powers.”

  Such reactions were more emotional than rational. Much of the Force Bill concerned details about collecting the federal tariffs in Charleston in the event of insurrection. The section of the proposed legislation involving the president’s military authority was less revolutionary than many believed. Two existing laws—one from 1795, the other from 1807—gave Jackson all the technical power he needed both to call out state militias and to use federal troops to enforce federal law. (All he had to do was first issue a proclamation warning the rebels to disperse.) What Jackson was asking for—and herein lay part of his political genius—was congressional endorsement of force in this insta
nce. By proposing the Force Bill, Jackson was implying that he needed it to act, which he did not—which in turn meant that he had placed himself in the best possible political position. If Congress passed the bill, then he had the might of the national government behind him; if it did not, he could do one of two things: either choose not to act, citing the will of Congress, or fall back on the older laws and strike anyway.

  IT WAS GOOD politics, giving Jackson what the best politicians manage to create: options. His foes in Washington engaged the debate on the terms Jackson had set, which gave the White House an advantage in the crisis, for the arguments were taking place within boundaries it had drawn.

  As January ended, it was clear that the battle would be between Washington and South Carolina. After flirting with Calhoun and the nullifiers, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina decided to let South Carolina stand alone. Mississippi’s ultimate decision was representative of the rest of the South’s: “We detest the tariff, but we will hold to the Union,” a correspondent from Mississippi wrote to Andrew Donelson on Sunday, January 6, 1833—which was, really, the best Jackson could hope for. Under Governor Floyd, Virginia weighed its options but finally backed down.

  It was probably a good thing for Floyd that the state decided to cast its lot with Jackson rather than with Calhoun. On Thursday, January 24, 1833, a weary Jackson told Poinsett: “Even if the Governor of Virginia should have the folly to attempt to prevent the militia from marching through his state to put the faction in South Carolina down and place himself at the head of an armed force for such a wicked purpose, I would arrest him at the head of his troops and hand him over to the civil authority for trial.”