by Jon Meacham
Christmas Day 1834, Emily said, was “very cold and disagreeable.” The tensions with France consumed Jackson and his top men, including Forsyth. They were so busy that Emily dined alone with Mrs. Forsyth on Christmas Eve. While Emily was writing home on this dark Christmas Day, Louis Sérurier was composing a coded message to Paris, writing of war:
If we have war with the U.S., it will be very important to win the first round. This war will not be popular here: southern planters, shipowners, northern navigators … will all be against it. War would bring stupendous prestige, but only for a fleeting moment—acting upon the masses as those who … areled by a rash and adventurous ruler with an iron will.…
To ensure that we win this first round—so important for American public opinion in order to halt the outburst of their juvenile vanity—I would believe it desirable that the Minister of the Navy, at the first serious indication that war is imminent with this republic, arm 4–5 of our best frigates with a crew of our most elite seamen, commanded by officers known for their boldness and their knowledge of the sea … [and] that they should be ordered to look for American frigates and engage them in battle.…
There was one spot of hope: General Lafayette had died during the summer, and the American reaction was warm and widespread. Members of Congress decided to wear black armbands for a month of mourning; John Quincy Adams was asked to give a funeral oration in the House. “Never since Washington’s death has there been such an outpouring of public sympathy,” Sérurier wrote. “Americans have their faults, and I have pointed them out on occasion. However, they are certainly not an ungrateful people, at least in regard to the noble and first foreign champion of their independence.” On New Year’s Eve, Adams rose in the House to pay tribute to Lafayette as a crucial friend of the Republic.
The sentimental warmth of the occasion did not last long. Two weeks later, on Wednesday, January 14, 1835, the king of France recalled Sérurier home to Paris—a vivid diplomatic gesture underscoring the rising hostilities. Sérurier had predicted a harsh French reaction to Jackson’s words, and he was being proved right. “The impression that President Jackson’s message produced here in France is as you foresaw,” Count de Rigny, the French minister of foreign affairs, wrote Sérurier. “The king’s government, obviously, could not counter such an injurious procedure except by an equally dazzling demonstration.” De Rigny had summoned Edward Livingston, the American envoy to Paris, to inform him of the move the night before, and “passports will be at his disposal in case he feels he must leave. Such are the measures that his Majesty has deemed necessary to maintain the dignity of France.”
THE AMERICAN BILL, which was finally presented to the Chamber on Thursday, January 15, 1835, was amended in light of Jackson’s remarks. A new clause said that “all or part” of the 25 million francs could be used “to compensate French citizens for the losses caused by the measures adopted by the U.S.” By the time the bill had made its way through the French legislature, there was an additional requirement before the money would be paid to Washington: the United States, the Duc de Broglie, the current French minister of foreign affairs, wrote on Wednesday, June 17, 1835, must explain “the true meaning and real purport of divers passages inserted by the President in his message at the opening of the last session of Congress, and at which all France … was justly offended.” Jackson, France said, had to offer “new testimony to the good faith of the French government.”
Paris had misjudged Washington—and, for once, Jackson was not alone in his resolve. In the House, John Quincy Adams rallied to his foe’s side.
Sir, this treaty has been ratified on both sides of the ocean; it has received the sign manual of the sovereign of France, through his Imperial Majesty’s principal Minister of State; it has been ratified by the Senate of this republic; it has been sanctioned by Almighty God; and still we are told … that the arrogance of France—nay, sir, not of France, but of her Chamber of Deputies—the insolence of the French Chambers must be submitted to, and we must come down to the lower degradation of reopening negotiations to attain that which has already been acknowledged to be our due! Sir, is this a specimen of your boasted chivalry? Is this an evidence of the existence of that heroic valor which has so often led our arms on to glory and immortality? Reopen negotiations, sir, with France? Do it, and soon you will find your flag insulted, dishonored, and trodden in the dust by the pygmy States of Asia and Africa—by the very banditti of the earth.
Sir Charles Vaughan told London that the French were misreading Jackson. “The President told me that he should consider any concession on his part, at this moment, as compromising the honor of his country.” From the White House, Jackson said the suggestion that he would apologize in writing was absurd—“wholly inadmissible.”
There was also news, Jackson said, “of naval preparations on the part of France destined for our seas.” Congress should consider, then, a trade and shipping embargo against France. America would not be caught off guard. Jackson asked for “large and speedy appropriations for the increase of the Navy and the completion of our coastal defenses,” for, he added, “come what may, the explanation which France demands can never be accorded, and no armament, however powerful and imposing, at a distance or on our coast, will, I trust, deter us from discharging the high duties which we owe to our constituents, our national character, and to the world.”
Things seemed to be at an impasse, with the French nation and Andrew Jackson standing opposite each other, unblinking. But there had been part of a sentence in his December 1835 annual message to Congress that could serve as a face-saving measure for the French. Amid his strident rhetoric, Jackson had said: “The conception that it was my intention to menace or insult the Government of France is … unfounded.…” At this point, Britain, fearing that a war between France and the United States would be pointlessly disruptive, stepped in to play a mediating role, and both sides accepted the offer. On February 8, 1836, Jackson suspended his call for an embargo but reiterated the need for military preparations—just in case.
In these weeks Thomas P. Barton, Livingston’s aide in France, returned to Washington and arrived at the White House to brief Jackson, Van Buren, and Secretary of State Forsyth. In a conversation Barton related to James Parton, Jackson was at once testy but curious. “Tell me, sir, do the French mean to repay that money?” Jackson asked.
“General Jackson, I am sorry to inform you that they do not.”
“There, gentlemen!” Jackson said to Van Buren and Forsyth. “What have I told you all along?” He paused and, Parton reports, “strode up and down the room several times in a state of extreme excitement.” He stopped and asked Barton: “What do they say about it, sir? What excuse do they give?”
“I verily believe, General, that down to a recent period, the French government was trifling with us.”
Jackson jumped up. “Do you hear that, gentlemen? Trifling with us! My very words. I have always said so.”
“I mean by trifling with us,” Barton went on, “that they thought the treaty was a matter of no great importance, and one which was not pressing, and would not be pressed by the United States. It could be attended to this year, or next year—it was of small consequence which.”
Parton then paraphrased the crux of Barton’s explanation: “The exchargé proceeded to say that the popular opposition to the payment of the indemnity had risen to such a height in France that any ministry that should pay it before the President had apologized would not only lose their places but subject themselves to impeachment. There was no man in France who would dare encounter the odium of attempting it. The king would endanger his throne if he should give it his sanction.… The king, the ministry, the capitalists, and all reflecting persons sincerely desired to avoid a collision with the United States, from which France could gain nothing that she desired to gain. But the people were mad; and no one could predict how far the government might be compelled to yield to their fury.”
ACCORDING TO PARTON’S accou
nt, hearing these points helped soothe “the irritation of [Jackson’s] mind.” But why? Though Jackson would endure no insult, as a politician himself, this firsthand account of the popular forces bearing down on Louis Philippe and his government may have helped him see the issue in more measured perspective. It was not that the king was heedlessly courting controversy with the United States, but that the French people had taken it up, and Jackson well knew that the management of public opinion was a complicated business.
The British resolved the matter quickly. France chose to take the conciliatory line of Jackson’s from December as apology enough, and the matter was settled: France would pay its debt. The episode over, Jackson used the occasion to remind Americans that while war did not come this time, it remained an inevitable element in the lives of nations, especially great nations. On Monday, February 22, 1836, in a message to Congress, Jackson quoted George Washington: “There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times, ready for war.”
Andrew Jackson, at least, always was.
CHAPTER 28
THE WRETCHED VICTIM
OF A DREADFUL DELUSION
ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1835, there was a dinner in Washington to celebrate both the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans and the payment of the national debt—a long-sought, and now achieved, goal of Jackson’s. “The national debt is paid!” said Thomas Hart Benton in a toast. “This month of January, 1835, in the 58th year of the republic, Andrew Jackson being President, the national debt is paid! … Gentlemen, my heart is in this double celebration; and I offer you a sentiment, which, coming direct from my own bosom, will find its response in yours: PRESIDENT JACKSON: May the evening of his days be as tranquil and happy for himself as their meridian has been resplendent, glorious, and beneficent for his country.”
Twenty-two days later, Jackson was walking out of the House chamber after a funeral service for Representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina. Emerging from the Rotunda to the porch whose steps led down the East Portico, Jackson was with Levi Woodbury, the secretary of the Treasury, and Mahlon Dickerson, the secretary of the navy, when the president’s eyes met those of a “handsome … well-dressed” young man, an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence.
Armed with two pistols, standing less than ten feet in front of Jackson, Lawrence raised the first gun and fired. The cap exploded but the powder did not light. Realizing the danger, Jackson charged his assailant, brandishing his walking stick. “The explosion of the cap was so loud that many persons thought the pistol had fired,” said Benton. “I heard it at the foot of the steps, far from the place, and a great crowd in between.” Lawrence dropped the gun and produced a second pistol, but it too failed to fire. (In both cases the cap exploded but did not light the powder necessary to discharge the bullet.)
Until that moment, Jackson had thought the assassin “firm and resolved”; now Lawrence “seemed to shrink” as the president pursued the assailant with his cane and a nearby navy lieutenant knocked Lawrence to the ground. (Jackson took no chances. “The President pressed after him until he saw he was secured,” the Globe reported.)
The agitated Jackson was put into a carriage back to the White House. His life may have been saved, in a way, by George Washington and by the weather. In those days there was an empty tomb in the midst of the Rotunda, dug from the floor down to the damp basement, which had been readied for Washington’s remains. The first president’s heirs, however, resisted moving Washington from Mount Vernon to the Capitol, and so the large hole was unfilled, and it moistened the air in the Rotunda. That, added to the mistiness of the day, probably combined to dampen the powder in both guns. “The pistols were examined, and found to be well loaded; and fired afterwards without fail, carrying their bullets true, and driving them through inch boards at thirty feet,” Benton said. The odds of two guns failing to fire during the attack, it was later determined, were 125,000 to one.
JACKSON SEEMED TO calm down during the ride to the White House. Later that day Van Buren found him holding one of Emily and Andrew’s children on his lap and talking with Winfield Scott as though nothing exceptional had happened that morning.
Quietly, however, he was seeing enemies everywhere. Though Lawrence appeared to be insane (occasionally claiming to be the king of England, he had tried to kill his sister and had threatened others), Jackson believed Lawrence was an agent of his political foes. When Harriet Martineau visited the White House shortly after the incident, she mentioned the “insane attempt” to the president, who rebuked her. “He protested, in the presence of many strangers, that there was no insanity in the case,” Martineau said. “I was silent, of course. He protested that there was a plot, and that the man was a tool.… It was painful to hear a chief ruler publicly trying to persuade a foreigner that any of his constituents hated him to the death; and I took the liberty of changing the subject as soon as I could.”
Jackson’s men blamed the president’s opponents for the attack. Lawrence—“taciturn and unwilling to talk,” observers recalled—was reported to have haunted the Capitol in recent years. “Whether Lawrence has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has prevailed during the last two sessions in the Senate—whether he has become infatuated with the chimeras which have troubled the brains of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the President as a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus … we know not,” the Globe said. But it was possible, the paper added, that “the infatuated man fancied he had reasons to become his country’s avenger.”
Jackson was even blunter and more conspiratorial. “Someone told me that you [said] on your way home that it must have been the work of a hired assassin,” a friend remarked to Jackson that afternoon at the White House.
“Yes, sir,” Jackson replied. “You know I always say what I think. I did say I thought it was the act of a hired assassin, and I still think so—employed by Mr. Poindexter—he would have attempted it himself long ago if he had had the courage.” Others had reportedly heard Jackson say the same thing at the Capitol itself: “This man has been hired by that damned rascal Poindexter to assassinate me.”
That Jackson’s suspicions instantly settled on Mississippi senator George Poindexter illustrates how deeply the president felt about the things closest to him. Poindexter had supported nullification, backed the Bank, attacked the removal of the deposits, and become a rival of Van Buren’s. Even in Jackson’s Washington, though, for a president to accuse a senator of trying to have him murdered was remarkable. Nathaniel Niles, a diplomat who was at the White House with Jackson after the attack, thought it disturbing for the president “to name any person, especially one holding a high and honorable post in the government, as the author of this base attempt against his life.… The President may have private enemies like any other man but it must not be believed that mere party hostility can lead to such results—if it be so it is all over with us—our system cannot be preserved, nor, indeed, is it worth preserving.”
PROFESSING INNOCENCE, SENATOR Poindexter demanded an investigation. Three weeks after the incident, Senators John Tyler and Silas Wright, Jr., two members of a five-man select committee, called on Jackson at the White House. There the president shared two affidavits alleging that Lawrence had been seen visiting Poindexter’s house in Washington. One was from a blacksmith who did work for the White House, the other from a man who had loaned money to Poindexter. Their stories did not survive scrutiny. The blacksmith appeared to have some hopes of being given work on the new Treasury Department fence, and, the committee found, “has become of late years idle and intemperate, and when under the influence of liquor, which is almost continual, he is talkative and noisy, and … unable to discriminate objects with accuracy.” The Senate dismissed th
e allegations against Poindexter.
Questioned afterward by two physicians seeking to determine whether he was insane, Lawrence said that he had often attended the tempestuous congressional debates of 1833–34 but denied that the vitriolic exchanges had driven him to the attack. In the end, Lawrence was found to be mad. “Hallucination of mind was evident; and the wretched victim of a dreadful delusion was afterwards treated as insane, and never brought to trial,” Benton recalled. “But the circumstance made a deep impression upon the public feeling, and irresistibly carried many minds to the belief in a superintending Providence, manifested in the extraordinary case of two pistols in succession—so well loaded, so coolly handled, and which afterwards fired with such readiness, force, and precision—missing fire, each in its turn, when leveled eight feet at the President’s heart.”
Deprived of solid evidence of a broader plot against the president, Blair and the Globe settled for blaming anti-Jackson Senate speeches for the attack. Because of the assaults of men like Calhoun, the Globe asserted, Lawrence, a “sullen and deep-brooding fanatic” who was “violent in his expressions of hostility to the Administration of the President,” took up arms. “Is it … a strained inference that this malignant partisan might have been fired to commit the deed by the violent denunciations fulminated against the President?” It was no strain for Jackson, or for his men.
CHAPTER 29
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE
TO BE A SLAVE?
IN THE SUMMER of 1835, Andrew Donelson, cheered by word that his cotton crop in Nashville was good, was in the market for new slaves. On the Fourth of July, Andrew told Stockley that he was “waiting for an inspection of some Negroes in Va.,” which went well enough that he “bought two boys” three weeks later. Before he could get them to Tennessee, however, Andrew had vexing news to report: “One of the boys I took … was accidentally drowned the other day: which I regret very much as I cannot replace him.”
