by H. W. Brands
But Jackson’s supporters wouldn’t let him tend his farm in peace. “The subject of the next President has, as you will perceive, been agitated in our papers,” James Gadsden wrote from Washington. “Crawford’s friends are intriguing deeply and in some quarters with success.” Gadsden shared Jackson’s opinion of Crawford. “To elevate him to the Presidential chair will produce a chain of evils and entail a series of misfortunes on our country that will require a century to remedy.” The current alternative to the secretary of the Treasury, at least in the thinking of most Washington observers, was the secretary of state. Gadsden wasn’t hopeful. “Mr. Adams’ friends are not so active, and even the quarter from whence he should expect support appear lukewarm.” New Yorkers were touting their governor, De Witt Clinton—vainly, Gadsden judged. “Mr. Clinton stands no chance; excepting his immediate party, he is execrated by a large majority of the community.”
Gadsden was reporting in this letter, yet he was also inquiring. “I know not your opinions as to who should be the next President, but believe you agree with me as to the total unfitness as to a certain aspiring personage”—that is, Crawford. “If in this case you deem me worthy of your confidence, you will give me your views on the subject. You will appreciate my motives on this request: The good of our country requires that all honest men, who are in favour of a settled policy for the administration of our government, characterised by honest independence and a freedom from intrigue, should unite in elevating to the Presidency the man who will be governed accordingly.” Gadsden suggested no candidate for Jackson’s endorsement, but he reiterated that the man with the current advantage was definitely not what America needed. “Mr. Crawford is and has even been a most dangerous and unsettled politician.”
Gadsden knew Jackson well enough to understand his former commander’s psychology. Jackson could be formidable in support of a person or cause, but he was absolutely ferocious in opposition to something or especially someone. As subsequent letters and actions showed, Gadsden wanted Jackson to enter the race. Like many—probably most—others who had served under Jackson, he thought Jackson would make a better president than the scamps, scoundrels, and incompetents who currently held the seats of power in Washington. He admired Jackson’s integrity and devotion to the public good. And he realized that the way to get Jackson into the race was to suggest that if he stayed out, Crawford would win.
At this point—November 1821—few people took a Jackson candidacy seriously. Loyalists like Edward Livingston had been praising him since the Battle of New Orleans. And opponents like Crawford and Clay were worried enough to set backfires against him. But no one like Jackson had ever been elected, or even nominated for the presidency. George Washington was the model Jackson’s supporters cited: the hero soldier who led his country through war to the promised land of peace and independence. But Washington was far more than a soldier. He was the most eminent citizen of the most populous state and had been at the forefront of national politics since before the Revolution. As president of the constitutional convention of 1787, Washington oversaw the creation of the federal government under which he was then elected. The other presidents had all been insiders, groomed by their years of service to their predecessors. Since Jefferson, they had all been secretaries of state.
There were reasons for this political habit. In an age when news traveled slowly, and people still more so, a national reputation generally took years to cultivate. And it was most easily cultivated through the existing institutions of government. The men who came to the national capital from the several states got to know one another and to know those who held executive office. They formed impressions of one another and took those impressions home to their states, where their acquaintances in the state legislatures chose the electors who actually chose the president.
In part because of this personalized form of politics, political parties had come to play a very large role in the filtering of candidates. Indeed, since the self-destruction of the Federalists, the Republican party had essentially dictated the choice of president. Did James Monroe command support among the people at large? No one knew or much cared. He had the support of leading Republicans, which was all that mattered for twice becoming president.
Moreover, the Republican leadership was construed in a specific way: as the Republican caucus in Congress. Republicans in the states might be consulted, but they had no formal role in the winnowing process. To gain the nomination required the support of the Republicans in Washington.
Yet in the early 1820s there were signs of change. Westerners had never liked the clubbiness of the caucus system, which had the effect—and the intent—of keeping an eastern hold on the federal government. As the population moved west, more western states entered the Union, with the result that western views had to be taken into account. And the western states typically entered with fewer restrictions on voting than the eastern states imposed. Several endorsed the idea that voters—rather than the state legislatures—should choose the electors who chose the president. The result was that for the first time a westerner, and a man popular with the people even if not beloved of the party, might become president.
If Jackson dreamed of the presidency at this time, he kept his dreams to himself. He didn’t tell Rachel, who liked having her husband home and certainly would have objected. He didn’t tell Gadsden or various other correspondents, who would have spread the word quickly. Quite possibly he had no such dreams. He had little reason to think he was especially qualified for the presidency. His brief career in elective politics—as representative and senator from Tennessee—had convinced him that most of what Congress did was a waste of time. He might have fancied himself a capable commander in chief, but there was no war and none threatened, effectively eliminating most of that part of the president’s job. For the rest of what presidents did—the distribution of patronage, dealing with Congress, administering the government—he had neither patience nor expertise.
In fact, by all evidence he did not want to be president. For habitual politicians, the presidency was a natural goal, the top rung on the ladder of ambition. But for a soldier, a general used to giving orders and having them obeyed—or seeing the disobedient imprisoned or executed—the presidency wasn’t such an obvious prize. Presidents couldn’t order Congress around, and they couldn’t have recalcitrant civil servants shot. The pay was good, but the expenses of the office ate up the salary and more. Jackson had just got the Hermitage into shape; to leave it for four years or eight would require redoing all the work he had done—except that he would be that much older.
The age question raised the health issue. Jackson didn’t expect to live a great deal longer. His family history argued against it, as did his personal medical history. He didn’t know what made him sick; no one did. But people with such varied and serious ailments as afflicted him rarely lived to an old age. He counted himself lucky to have reached fifty-four. If he were still a gambling man, he wouldn’t have bet on reaching sixty. Could he justify devoting his last years to public life, instead of to Rachel and the boys? Could he risk running down the Hermitage, which was the only inheritance he would leave her or them?
These weren’t easy questions. But there was one answer that fit them all, if only he could be persuaded to see things from a particular perspective. If the presidency could be cast as a duty rather than chiefly an honor, then it became, paradoxically, more attractive to him. The old soldier in Jackson couldn’t help answering a call to duty. He had risked his life and broken his health defending America and the ideas of liberty and self-government on which it rested. If he could be persuaded that American liberty and self-government were under threat from ignoble and scheming politicians—as they had been under threat from the British and Spanish and Indians—then he would have no choice but to make himself available.
Maybe Gadsden and Jackson’s other supporters calculatingly employed the duty argument against him. More likely they simply believed it themselves. In politics perhaps
more than in most other arenas of human endeavor, interests and convictions tend to coincide. Whether convictions produce interests, or interests convictions, differs from person to person. But whatever their genesis, convictions and interests almost invariably end up pointing in the same direction. Those who can’t master the coincidence don’t succeed in politics, and they leave the game to those who can.
During most of the three years from the autumn of 1821 to the autumn of 1824, Jackson’s supporters strove to convince him that the fate of the nation hung on his foiling the schemes of Crawford and Clay. Jackson didn’t require much convincing that Crawford, especially, had to be stopped. “As to William Crawford,” Jackson told Gadsden in December 1821, “I would support the Devil first.” The following May he told James Bronaugh, another strong supporter at Washington, “I believe the welfare of our country in a great measure depends on thwarting the views of those who wish to bring William H. Crawford into the Presidential chair.”
But from this belief to the conclusion that he had to do the thwarting was a larger step and required more time. Jackson initially hoped that Adams or Calhoun would block Crawford. “You know my private opinion of Mr. Adams’ talents, virtue, and integrity,” he told Gadsden. “I think him a man of the first rate mind of any in America as a civilian and a scholar, and I have never doubted of his attachment to our republican Government.” The only potential candidate who impressed Jackson as much as Adams did was Calhoun. “I have always believed Mr. Calhoun to be a highminded and honourable man, possessing independence and virtue,” Jackson told a correspondent who had detected a trend toward the South Carolinian. “It affords me great pleasure to hear that Mr. Calhoun’s popularity is growing.” Jackson preferred Calhoun but would be happy with Adams. “The nation will be well governed either by Mr. Calhoun or Mr. Adams,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s partisans in Washington didn’t contradict his judgment of Adams and Calhoun, but they did question the electability of either man. “It appears to be the general opinion here,” James Bronaugh said, “that Mr. Adams cannot succeed in opposition to a Southern man”—such as Crawford of Georgia. “He can not get the vote of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Kentucky.” Calhoun seemed the better bet to stop Crawford. “It has therefore been determined by those anxious to prevent the election of Crawford to bring forward Mr. Calhoun, who, it is believed, will unite not only the Southern and Western interest, but likewise the North.” Yet the attention Calhoun received caused Crawford’s allies to direct their sapping operations against the South Carolinian, and Calhoun began sliding back down the hill of viability.
The problem the anti-Crawfordites confronted was that the Treasury secretary had mastered the art of Washington politics. As keeper of the nation’s purse, he was rumored to be channeling federal funds to favored members of Congress. The rumor may or may not have been true, but no one doubted that Crawford understood how to reward friends and punish enemies. If the presidential nomination came from the Republican caucus in Congress, Crawford was almost guaranteed to win.
His opponents felt compelled to discover, or create, an alternate path to the presidency. Restive Republicans in the states, seeking a larger role for themselves, suggested that if state legislators could choose presidential electors, they ought to be able to propose candidates. And if politicians in the states could propose candidates, there was no reason to restrict themselves to Washington insiders.
In the summer of 1822 a group of Tennessee lawmakers told Jackson they intended to nominate him for the presidency. The announcement didn’t come as a surprise, as hints of the move had preceded it. Yet Jackson understood that his response to this first feeler could have large implications for what followed, and he drafted his answer with care. He noted that he hadn’t brought this question upon himself. “I am silent, but the papers are not,” he told Richard Call, who would relate his message to the Tennessee legislators. “The voice of the people, I am told, would bring me to the Presidential chair, and it is probable some of the legislatures may bring my name before the public. . . . I have long since determined to be perfectly silent. I never have been a candidate for office; I never will. The people have a right to call for any man’s services in a republican government, and when they do, it is the duty of the individual to yield his services to that call.”
The pro-Jackson forces required no more encouragement. Tennessee’s Republicans met in caucus in late July and early August and unanimously endorsed Jackson for president. Among the state senators who supported Jackson was Sam Houston, recovered—albeit not completely—from the wounds he suffered at Horseshoe Bend and now a rising force in Tennessee politics. Houston remembered Jackson fondly and more than ever as a second father. Jackson’s resolve struck Houston as the quintessence of character, perhaps because Houston’s own resolve was sometimes lacking. He observed Jackson’s rise from afar, but by the early 1820s he had determined that Jackson was the model for everything he wanted to be.
And he made himself Jackson’s champion. “On this day a resolution has passed the Senate (unanimously) recommending you as a person the most worthy and suitable to be the next President of our Union,” Houston wrote Jackson from Murfreesboro, where the Tennessee lawmakers were meeting. “The expression cannot be esteemed by you anything less than a gratified and honorable expression of the feelings of your fellow citizens.” There was no time to waste. “The crisis requires that something should be done! The canker worms have been (already too long) gnawing at the very core and vitals of our Government.” The people called their hero to service once more.
You are now before the eyes of the nation. . . . You have been your country’s Great Sentinel, at a time when her watchmen had been caught slumbering on post, her capital had been reduced to ashes. You have been her faithful guardian, her well tried servant! . . . Will not the nation look to you again? Will it not regard your interests, when they are connected with your country’s welfare? There will be no caucus at the next Congress. The next President will be the “People’s choice.” . . . You have friends throughout America; each has his sphere, and each will feel and act.
Jackson praised Houston as “a noble minded fellow,” which he was, after his own fashion. He possessed substantial political gifts, including a charisma that, though utterly different from Jackson’s austere, even frightening version, approached Old Hickory’s for effect on the people Houston met. And Houston was devoted to the public interest, as he understood it. But he was also ambitious for higher office, and it didn’t hurt his chances to associate himself with the hero of New Orleans and with what was becoming a popular insurgency against the professionals who controlled the Republican party in Washington.
Jackson watched from Nashville as the insurgency took shape, yet did little to encourage it. “I have received many letters from every quarter of the United States on this subject,” he wrote Andrew Donelson in August 1822. “I have answered none, nor do I intend to answer any. I shall leave the people to adopt such course as they may think proper, and elect whom they choose to fill the Presidential chair, without any influence of mine exercised by me.” As always, Jackson placed his faith in the people. “If left free to decide for themselves, uninfluenced by congressional caucuses, I have no doubt but they will make a happy choice.” But if not, the choice could be disastrous. “If they should permit themselves to be dictated to by a congressional caucus, then as great a scoundrel as William H. Crawford might be elevated to the executive chair.”
Andrew Donelson was a member of Jackson’s family, a foster son; to him Jackson spoke more candidly and confidentially than to his political associates. Accordingly he was as sincere as he could be when he said, regarding the presidency, “Believe me, dear Andrew, that I never had a wish to be elevated to that station. . . . My sole ambition is to pass to my grave in retirement. . . . I am perfectly at ease, regardless of how the people may decide, having but one wish, that that decision may prove beneficial to their own happiness. I am fast
going out of life, but my fervent prayers are that our republican government may be perpetual. And the people alone, by their virtue and independent exercise of their free suffrage, can make it perpetual.”
Jackson stuck to this position as the groundswell in his favor grew. A Pennsylvania supporter wrote him in February 1823 with news that a meeting at Harrisburg had unanimously nominated him for president. This group had no legal or political standing except that it consisted of ordinary voters—which to Jackson was reason enough to answer the letter with respect and gratitude. The writer inquired whether Jackson would allow his name to be put forward for president. Jackson’s answer was polished by now. “My undeviating rule of conduct through life, and which I have and shall ever deem as congenial with the true Republican principles of our government, has been neither to seek or decline public invitations to office.” Supporters spoke of the presidency as Jackson’s reward for accomplishments in the military; Jackson modestly demurred. “For the services which I may have rendered and which I have, it is hoped, proved in a degree beneficial to my country, I have nothing to ask. They are richly repaid with the confidence and good opinion of the virtuous and well deserving part of the community. I have only essayed to discharge a debt which every man owes his country when his rights are invaded; and if twelve years exposure to fatigue and numerous privations can warrant the expression, I may venture to assert that my portion of public service has been performed.” Yet the loyal soldier could never ignore the call of duty. “The office of Chief Magistrate of the Union is one of great responsibility. As it should not be sought by any individual of the Republic, so it cannot with propriety be declined when offered by those who have the power of selection.”
