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ible evidence of the revolution that had taken place. Never before had so many of the plain people been seen at any one time in Washington. Ere the end of February, the keepers of hotels, taverns, boarding-houses, lodgings, were turning applicants away, or finding accommodations for them on the floors of tap-rooms and hallways.*

To the mass of men thus herded in Washington and waiting with impatience for the fourth of March, the question of the hour was, To whom will Jackson give seats in the Cabinet? To Van Buren, lately inaugurated Governor of New York, was assigned by common rumor the Secretaryship of State; to S. D. Ingham, of Pennsylvania, the Treasury; to John H. Eaton, of Kentucky, the War Department; to John Branch, of North Carolina, the Navy; to John McPherson Berrien, of Georgia, the Attorney-Generalship; and to John McLean, of Ohio, the Post-Office, which he

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Register of Debates in Congress, vol. v, 1828-'29, p. 350.

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then held and administered with signal success. objection was made that such a Cabinet would be weak, that, save Van Buren, there was not a strong man in it, those close to Jackson answered that he did not intend to be advised by his secretaries, that he would pursue an independent course, and that he would have a privy council composed of Van Buren, Calhoun, and McLean. When this assurance failed to satisfy the malcontents, another rumor was set afloat, and McLean was said to have been selected for Secretary of War,† in order that he might become a member of the Cabinet, which up to that time no Postmaster-General had been, and add strength to a body no political leader respected. That such a change was really considered may well be believed, for, when the list of secretaries was made public in the Telegraph, the official Jackson newspaper of Washington, it was found to agree in every respect with that announced before, save that McLean was made a member of the Cabinet, a dignity which every succeeding Postmaster-General has since held.

With the announcement of the names of the Cabinet officers the scramble for office grew fiercer and fiercer. For the first time since 1801 a great political revolution had taken place, a real change in the Administration had come about, and certain reforms long promised and demanded must be carried out. But, as Jefferson had stated a generation before, when the will of the nation called for a change in the Administration, there must be a change of administrators, and never before had the will of the nation in this respect been so 'clearly and emphatically expressed. At the head of the Cabinet, moreover, and in high favor with Jackson, was a man whose whole political training had been gained in the corrupt school of New York, a man who had raised himself from the humblest to the highest office in that State by a steady adherence to the maxim that the laborer is worthy of his hire, that political office is the just

* United States Gazette, February 23, 1829.

+ Ibid., February 27, 1829.

The Telegraph, February 26, 1829; United States Gazette, February 29,

reward for political service, and that service must be not only partisan but personal. It would be the height of injustice, however, to attribute to Jackson, or Van Buren, or any other one man the widespread proscription which now began. The people, not the leaders, were to blame. They were proud of their country, their form of government, their political institutions. They believed firmly and sincerely that these institutions were in danger; that the election of Adams had been secured, in open defiance of their wishes, by a corrupt bargain, and that the men in power were hostile to the great principle that in our country the people shall rule. After four years of ceaseless agitation the people had triumphed; their day had come, and it is folly to suppose that they would be content to see power remain in the hands of men who had worked for the leaders they had overthrown, or had remained passive spectators of a struggle they had so earnestly carried on. He who was not with them was against them, and had Jackson been as resolutely bent on nonpartisan administration as was John Quincy Adams, they would have swept him aside as they did his predecessor. In the course of events the time had come for a departure from old-time methods, and, whatever may be thought of the character of that change, it had to be made. No leader in our country can debase the people. He is exactly what the will of the people enable him to be, and the moment he ceases to execute that will he ceases to be a leader. As we look back on those days the wonder is, not that so many were turned out of office, but that so many were suffered to remain.

The first indication of what was to come was given by the Senate, which from the day the election of Jackson was assured held back the confirmation of every nomination to office made by Adams.* The next was the work of

"After General Jackson was known to be elected, and before his term of office began, many important offices became vacant by the usual causes of death and resignation. Mr. Adams, of course, nominated persons to fill these vacant offices. But a majority of the Senate was composed of the friends of General Jackson, and instead of acting on these nominations, and filling the various offices with ordinary promptitude, the nominations were postponed to a day beyond the

1829.

INAUGURATION DAY.

523

the House and Senate when each took away the public printing from Gales and Seaton, proprietors of the National Intelligencer, and gave it to Duff Green, proprietor of the Telegraph. The Intelligencer was accused of having published the scandalous libel on Mrs. Jackson, and its owners were now, in the eyes of the people, justly punished. The charge was false,* but it mattered not, for the place was wanted as a reward for political service. Nor was this without precedent, for we are informed by Adams that when he took his seat in the United States Senate in 1803 he was visited by Mr. Samuel Allyne Otis, who had been the secretary of that body since 1789; that he was told that Otis had been notified that if he wished to remain secretary he must give the Senate printing to William Duane, editor of the Aurora, and that he was asked what was best to do. The advice given is not stated, but Otis held his office, and Duane printed the Senate documents for many years.

Well knowing what was to come, the seekers of office looked forward with high hopes to the fourth of March. The ceremonies which attended the inauguration were of the simplest kind. No parade, no music, none of the pomp and show of a military chieftain, it was proudly said, marred the day. At ten the officers and soldiers, having assembled at Brown's, marched to Gadsby's and delivered an address. At half-past eleven the President-elect, on foot, uncovered, preceded by the Central Committee of the District of Columbia, surrounded on the right hand and the left by gigs, wood wagons, vehicles of every sort crowded with women eager to be near the chief, and followed by the officers of his suite, worthies of the Revolution, and hundreds of strangers without distinction of rank, "and influenced by no other order than that which their own feelings dictated," walked to the Capitol, made his way to the Senate chamber, and at noon and on the east portico, in the presence of an immense assemblage of his fellow-citizens,

4th of March for the purpose, openly avowed, of giving the patronage of the appointments to the President who was then coming into office." Works of Daniel Webster, vol. i, p. 359.

* National Intelligencer, February 16 and 23, 1829.

was sworn into office by John Marshall, Chief-Justice of the United States. "The scene," says a spectator, "was a most beautiful and inspiring spectacle. The building, noble in its size, with its richly sculptured capitals and cornices, and the fine group in the pediment; the massy columns (one for each State in the Union); the far-spreading wings and terraces; the grounds and gates, with the crowd of carriages without; the line of soldiers in the park; the towering flight of steps, covered with members of Congress, officers of the army, foreign ministers, ladies dressed in all the varying hues of fashion; the President; the crowd of heads and the innumerable eyes bent on one spot, all taken together presented to the outward eye an assemblage of images never to be forgotten." *

The customary address occupied but a few minutes in delivery, and ranks with the briefest in our history. The new President pledged himself to keep peace and cultivate friendship with foreign nations; administer the laws with a strict regard to the limitations put on the Executive powers; respect the rights of the States, and not confound the powers they had reserved with those they had granted to the Confederacy; pursue a just and liberal policy toward the Indians; and never forget what the recent demonstration of public sentiment had inscribed on the list of Executive duties in characters too legible to be overlookedthe task of reform. He would seek to correct the abuses that had brought the patronage of the Government into conflict with freedom of elections, disturbed the rightful course of appointments, and placed power in unfaithful or unfit hands.

The speech delivered, a cable that had been stretched across the steps was torn away, and with a wild shout the crowd surged up to grasp the hand of the people's President. It was with difficulty that Jackson could make his way to a horse, mount it, and, preceded, surrounded, and followed by a dense mass of human beings, start for the White House. One who was present declares that "the President was lit

* American Daily Advertiser, March 11, 1829.

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