by H. W. Brands
The Hill case required months to play out, but the lesson wasn’t lost on the anti-Jacksonians. Daniel Webster, who had predicted New Hampshire’s reaction to the Hill rejection, recognized that though the Constitution specified a separation of powers, democracy could override it. “Were it not for the fear of the outdoor popularity of General Jackson,” the Massachusetts senator wrote, “the Senate would have negatived more than half his nominations.”
Amid the struggle over Jackson’s nominations, another controversy developed, one that overshadowed the nominations and threatened to overwhelm the country as a whole. The South still simmered with discontent over the 1828 tariff, which grew more abominable in southern minds the more they pondered it. Whether the damage to South Carolina was greater than the damage to the other southern states, or whether South Carolinians were simply quicker to take offense, was hard to say. But one thing was certain: Jackson’s birth state possessed the region’s sharpest legal mind, which happened to be joined to an acute sense of propriety regarding the prerogatives of the states vis à vis the central government. Both the mind and the sense—the arguments and the emotion—belonged to John Calhoun, Jackson’s vice president, who had drafted a formal protest against the tariff, one based on first principles of constitutional philosophy and calling into question the meaning of American republicanism.
For a vice president to protest a federal law wasn’t unheard of; Jefferson had done just that in 1798. But such protest was a delicate business. Vice presidents lack both power and standing in matters of legislation: the executive power to veto an obnoxious bill and the political standing to challenge its authors. Moreover, if a vice president’s actions contradict those of the president, he risks career suicide. For this reason Jefferson hadn’t acknowledged his authorship in 1798, and even in 1829 it wasn’t widely known.
From similar causes, Calhoun disguised his authorship of what came to be called the “South Carolina Exposition.” Calhoun denied the authority of Congress to pass tariffs for protection. “It is true that the third section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States authorizes Congress to lay and collect an impost duty,” he said, “but it is granted as a tax power, for the sole purpose of revenue; a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties. The two are incompatible.” Calhoun’s exposition went on to delineate the unequal effect of the tariff on South and North. “We cultivate certain staples for the supply of the general market of the world; and they manufacture almost exclusively for the home market. Their object in the tariff is to keep down foreign competition, in order to obtain a monopoly of the domestic market. The effect on us is to compel us to purchase at a higher price, both what we purchase from them and from others, without receiving a correspondent increase of price for what we sell.”
Yet the differential economics of the tariff was merely a symptom of a larger problem. Democracy was a fine thing, Calhoun asserted, but it wasn’t the last word in politics, or at any rate shouldn’t be. “No government based on the naked principle that the majority ought to govern, however true the maxim in its proper sense and under proper restrictions, ever preserved its liberty, even for a single generation. The history of all has been the same: injustice, violence and anarchy, succeeded by government of one or a few. . . . An unchecked majority is a despotism—and government is free, and will be permanent, in proportion to the number, complexity and efficiency of the checks by which its powers are controlled.”
The most important of these checks limited the central government to those powers specifically delegated by the Constitution. “All others are expressly reserved to the States and the people.” As no man could be a judge in his own case, so the central government could not judge the extent of its powers. But if not the central government, then who? “The right of judging in such cases is an essential attribute of the sovereignty of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself.” This state sovereignty, Calhoun concluded, “clearly implies a veto . . . on the action of the General Government.”
To this last assertion Calhoun’s long document ultimately reduced. The vice president claimed for South Carolina a veto on the actions of the federal government: a right to nullify federal laws as they pertained to the state. Whether the federal government would honor the claim was the question that hung over Washington in the months after Calhoun penned his exposition. “The next two or three years will be of the deepest interest to us and the whole Union,” he predicted.
If the delicacy of Calhoun’s position prevented his open espousal of the nullification cause, Robert Hayne had no such compunctions. Hayne was another South Carolinian, a senator whose constituents expected nothing less than a vigorous defense of the rights of the states. He determined to give it to them. He stalked the tariff issue, intending to leap on it and do it in at first opportunity. But when the tariff failed to appear during the early weeks of the congressional session, he adopted another approach. Daniel Webster, in a discussion of revenues from the sale of federal lands (including those brought to market by Jackson’s treaties with the Creeks and Cherokees), asserted that reliance on federal revenues helped bind the nation together. Hayne responded indignantly. “Sir, let me tell that gentleman that the South repudiates the idea that a pecuniary dependence on the Federal Government is one of the legitimate means of holding the States together. A money interest in the Government is essentially a base interest, and just so far as it operates to bind the feelings of those who are subjected to it to the Government, just so far as it operates in creating sympathies and interests that would not otherwise exist, is it opposed to all the principles of free government, and at war with virtue and patriotism.” But since Webster had raised the issue of money, Hayne pointed out that the South sent far more money to Washington than it received in return.
He turned to the larger question of the nature of the Union. The South, or at least South Carolina, had been charged with innovation in asserting a right to nullify, he said. He rejected the charge, claiming a long lineage for himself, his state, and its doctrines. “The party to which I am proud of having belonged from the very commencement of my political life to the present day, were the democrats of ’98. Anarchists, anti-federalists, revolutionists, I think they were sometimes called. They assumed the name of democratic republicans in 1812, and have retained their name and their principles up to the present hour. True to their political faith, they have always, as a party, been in favor of limitations of power; they have insisted that all powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved, and have been constantly struggling, as they are now struggling, to preserve the rights of the States, and prevent them from being drawn into the vortex, and swallowed up by one great consolidated Government.” The South was said to esteem the Union insufficiently. Hayne replied that it was the North that did so, by pushing the South to the brink of destruction with the abominable tariff and then refusing to hear the South’s pleas. He shuddered at the future. “Good God, has it come to this? . . . Do gentlemen value so lightly the peace and harmony of the country? . . . Do gentlemen estimate the value of the Union at so low a price that they will not even make one effort to bind the States together with cords of affection? . . . If so, let me tell gentlemen the seeds of dissolution are already sown, and our children will reap the bitter fruit.”
Webster was the last man to shrink from rhetorical combat. If anything, Hayne’s challenge made him swell with indignation and self-importance. He took a deep breath and launched into a speech that lasted three hours over two days. He assailed Hayne’s person and his arguments, condemning the South Carolinian’s politics, his reading of the Constitution and history, and especially his willingness to place the Union in jeopardy for a few pennies of an import tax. The Union, Webster said, was infinitely more important than any tariff. “It is to the Union that we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to the Union that we are chiefly indebted fo
r whatever makes us most proud of our country.” The Union hadn’t come easily. It was born of war and the derangements that followed war. But it had proved a benediction to Americans of every section. “It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.” Webster said he couldn’t bear to consider the consequences of nullification, of life beyond the Union.
God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that, on my vision, never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly: Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart: Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!
In due course Webster’s reply to Hayne would become the stuff of patriotic legend, and his peroration would be committed to memory by generations of students of public speaking. Its immediate impact was less, but it did set the stage for the most dramatic words ever uttered by Andrew Jackson as president. For years the followers of Jefferson had celebrated his April 13 birthday with toasts and other affirmations of the founding principles of republicanism. Only the most unreconstructed Federalists—John Marshall and a few others still clinging to life—did not feel obliged to render obeisance to the sage of Monticello. Everyone with political hopes or pretensions made a point of attending his birthday fete.
Jackson planned to attend in the spring of 1830, as did Calhoun. The rift between the president and the vice president had continued to grow, partly from Calhoun’s unwillingness or inability to make his wife act civilly toward Peg Eaton, but increasingly from rumors that he was in league with the nullifiers of South Carolina. Jackson and Calhoun had avoided each other through most of 1829 by the simple expedient of Calhoun’s staying away from Washington, at his plantation in South Carolina. With the Senate in recess the vice president’s single constitutional chore stood in abeyance, giving him ample excuse for absenting himself. But in his absence the Van Burenites worked on Jackson, and their whispers caused the president to doubt Calhoun’s good faith even more.
The whispering worked both ways. Calhoun’s allies hoped to ride his coattails into office and so furnished a constant stream of information and innuendo against Van Buren, against John Eaton, and against Jackson himself. Virgil Maxcy, an old friend of Calhoun’s and an inveterate capital gossip, provided the vice president a detailed description of the quarrels among the Jacksonians as they maneuvered for influence. Duff Green was dissatisfied at not receiving sufficient government contracts, Maxcy said. Green scorned Eaton for making the administration a hostage to his wife, who in Green’s view (and Maxcy’s) didn’t merit such gallantry. William Lewis defended Peg to the president, who refused to listen to reason on the subject. “It is come to this,” Maxcy said, for himself and Green: “that all our glowing anticipations for our country from the integrity, sagacity, and firmness of General Jackson must be extinguished, and we must submit to the melancholy conviction that the United States are governed by the President, the President by the Secretary of War, and the latter by his wife.”
Calhoun eventually returned to Washington, but not before the strain between himself and Jackson was palpable. And as the day of the Jefferson dinner approached, all Washington wondered where it would lead. Calhoun was scheduled to give one of the many toasts that night. In the nineteenth century the art of the toast was highly refined and its able practitioners most admired. To convey a sentiment, summarize a philosophy, impale an opponent—in a dozen words or less—required skill, imagination, and sometimes courage. After the debate between Webster and Hayne, amid the tension afflicting the Jackson administration, the capital thrummed with the possibilities of the evening.
“There was a full assemblage when I arrived,” Thomas Benton recalled, “and I observed gentlemen standing about in clusters in the ante-rooms, and talking with animation on something apparently serious, and which seemed to engross their thoughts. I soon discovered what it was: that it came from the promulgation of the twenty-four regular toasts, which savored of the new doctrine of nullification; and which, acting on some previous misgivings, began to spread the feeling that the dinner was got up to inaugurate that doctrine and to make Mr. Jefferson its father.”
Jackson had learned of the project the day before, from a printed program of the dinner. He read the list of toasters and immediately concluded, as William Lewis remembered, “that the celebration was to be a nullification affair altogether.” Jackson pondered the matter overnight and, the next day, wrote three rejoinders to the nullifiers. He tried them out on Lewis. “He handed them to me and asked me to read them, and tell him which I preferred,” Lewis said. “I ran my eye over them and then handed him the one I liked best. . . . He said he preferred that one himself for the reason that it was shorter and more expressive. He then put that one into his pocket and threw the others into the fire.”
Forewarned and forearmed, the president attended the dinner. He arrived late. Several guests had left in protest of the nullifying sentiments of the organizers of the toasting schedule. “But the company was still numerous, and ardent,” Thomas Benton wrote. Persons not on the program clamored to add their impromptu remarks to those of the chosen two dozen.
The president, however, received the first opportunity to respond. Every eye in the hall turned to the haggard face of the old man; every ear strained to catch the words that might tell his willingness to compromise with the South Carolinians, or his determination to defeat them. Jackson’s voice wasn’t what it had been in younger days. One by one his teeth had fallen out or been pulled, leaving him too few to be able to articulate clearly when he spoke to a large audience. On this occasion his words weren’t loud, but they didn’t have to be. They thrust through the expectant silence and by the force of their determination sent involuntary shudders through all in the room. “Our Federal Union,” he said. “It must be preserved.”
Calhoun was next to speak. How would he answer? Would he embrace the nullifiers and risk an irreversible rupture with the president? Or would he temper his views in the interest of concord in the administration and of his own political future? The vice president was younger than Jackson by fifteen years, and far more presentable. In earlier days he had been one of the handsomest men in South Carolina, and some thought he still was. He prided himself on his facility with words, though he had to agree with friends who told him he occasionally ran on.
The format of the toast constrained him this night, but even so he rambled by comparison with the president. He knew he was in a tight corner, and he needed every word he could get. “The Union,” he said, “next to our liberty the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union.”
Other speakers added their wisdom and temerity, and the event ran hours longer. But the toasts of the president and vice president were the only ones most in attendance remembered. They all knew how Jackson had dealt with mutiny during the War of 1812 and how he had executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for endangering the Union. Some had wondered whether the volcano still smoldered in Jackson’s breast after Rachel’s death. As they walked and rode home that night, nearly all were convinced that it did indeed and that the countr
y might soon witness its effects.
Calhoun’s answer to Jackson sealed his fate with the president. Calhoun was no novice at the game of politics; the simple fact of his holding the vice presidency through the upheaval of Jackson’s election demonstrated a certain virtuosity at political survival. Other things being equal, he might have undermined Van Buren as Van Buren was undermining him. He might have explained away his wife’s actions as the kind of thing women did. But he could never explain away—not to Jackson’s satisfaction—a failure to place the Union above all. Liberty was vital, to be sure. Yet Jackson’s half century of struggle against the British, the Spanish, the Indians, and everyone else who threatened the safety and integrity of the United States had taught him one overriding lesson: that the Union was the only guarantor of American liberty. It was a cliché, but no less true for its triteness, that in union lay strength. Had the Union not held together, it would have fallen victim to Europeans or aboriginal marauders. If it did not hold together now, it still might. The nullifiers dreamed of a world at peace; Jackson lived in a world of struggle. And the struggle never ended.
