"Hurrah for Jackson!" had been the rallying cry of the campaign, and the answer to every campaign argument against him, some of them true, many of them false. Those who had worked to bring him in felt sure that they were to be rewarded, and they flocked to Washington for the inauguration in such throngs as the capital had never before seen. General Jackson's own progress from Tennessee to the seat of government was one prolonged triumph. Shouting crowds of delighted partisans were at every steamboat landing. On the day of the inauguration the streets were so blocked that the procession which accompanied the President-elect could hardly make its way to the Capitol. The ceremonies took place on the eastern portico of the building, in the presence of a vast multitude of men from every part of the country, who could not repress their joy at the prospect that "the rights of the people" were at last restored to them.

XIII

THE "OLD HERO" RE-ELECTED

THERE will always be two opinions concerning the character of Andrew Jackson and of his administration, -as to the fitness of the man for the position of President, as to the worthiness of the motives which actuated his official conduct, as to his influence upon the political morals of his country. His administration was a period of turmoil, and, whether he was right or wrong, he caused it. Another man than he would have taken the view that the good name of the government was of greater concern to him as its chief than that of any man- or woman; and would not have deemed it in accordance with a dignified and high-minded conduct of public affairs that the smallest to say nothing of the greatest-governmental questions should be involved with the question whether or not a certain woman, however unjustly accused, should be received in the society of the capital. Another man than he would not have sought a quarrel with the officer with whom he had been associated on the national ticket, on account of an opinion by that officer ten years before, in the privacy of a cabinet council, upon one of his Jackson's acts. These two incidents, the attempt to force the unwilling wives of his cabinet officers to associate with Mrs. Eaton, and the breach with Mr. Calhoun which was apparently planned deliberately by the President and Mr. Van Buren, are striking examples of the change that came over the government when Mr. Adams went out and General Jackson came in. They were both characteristic of the new régime; neither would have been possible under the old.

The change was broad as well as deep. It began with the reign of terror among the office-holders. Yet the upheaval of the civil service effected by Jackson was the most logical and consistent change that was introduced at this time. There had been no reason for the rejection of Mr. Adams and the election of General Jackson, save a personal preference for

Jackson. If that was a good reason for substituting one President for another, it was surely sufficient to justify "rotation" in the minor offices, rotating out those who did not, and rotating in those who did, approve and assist in making the greater substitution. No President before Jackson had so good reason as he to regard his elevation as a personal triumph, or to assume that the whole responsibility of government was intrusted to him. That fact may explain why he felt justified in displaying anger when the Senate exercised its constitutional right to reject his nominations; why he adopted a dictatorial tone toward Congress; why he discarded the old custom of consulting the members of his cabinet on momentous public questions, and sought the advice of a coterie of politicians, his devoted slaves, who were derisively styled the "kitchen cabinet."

He was conscious of no scruples in violating rules which he himself had laid down for the conduct of others. In the letter in which he resigned his seat in the Senate, in 1825, he put more stress upon the importance of rendering the executive independent of Congress than upon anything else. This lesson came to him from the appointment of Mr. Clay, a member of the House of Representatives, to a cabinet office, by Mr. Adams. He urged, and argued at length in favor of, an amendment to the Constitution, "rendering any member of Congress ineligible to office under the general government during the term for which he was elected, and for two years thereafter." Yet when he made up his own cabinet he took four of its six members from Congress. A morbid suspicion of others; a combativeness of disposition that led him to see causes of quarrel where none existed, and to take up the quarrels of others in the intervals of his own; and a total lack of that sense of proportion which might have informed him what was and what was not worth fighting about; - this combination of personal qualities in the President had the effect of making his administration as turbulent a period as has been known in our history, and one on which those who enjoy a quiet life can never dwell with pleasure.

It would be uncandid not to add that most of those who have not studied the history of the time, and many of those who have studied it, take a radically different view of the matter from that which is here presented. To them Jackson is a man who rescued the country from great constitutional

errors the doctrines of his immediate predecessor; who attacked and destroyed the "Monster," the Bank of the United States; who instituted a great reform when he made a clean sweep of the office-holders, and filled their places with "true Republicans;" whose policy was, to use the words of one of his stanchest admirers, Mr. Benton, "to simplify and purify the workings of the government, and to carry it back to the times of Mr. Jefferson to promote its economy and efficiency, and to maintain the rights of the people and of the States in its administration." That he was the sturdiest and most faithful of friends to those whom he liked and who were true to him, is attested by his zeal in doing favors for them at the sacrifice of his own dignity. Moreover, his masterful, overbearing character did not prevent it might perhaps have been the cause of a personal popularity that outlasted his administration and his life, and is perpetuated in a Jackson cult to this day. To his conduct in one emergency, nullification in South Carolina, none will give more unqualified and unstinted praise than those who regard the period of his administration as one of national demoralization.

Undoubtedly he was the man for his time. He had not the support of those who regarded government as a serious business, to be conducted from high motives and with calmness and decorum. But those people were a minority. His adoption of the principle first formulated by Marcy, that "to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy," was applauded and approved. He degraded national politics to the level of a game wherein the shrewdest and the strongest, rather than the best and the wisest, were to come off the victors; yet he merely extended the operation of a principle that had long been dominant in the affairs of the great States of New York and Pennsylvania, and gave to a great majority of the people of the country a government of a sort which they preferred to that which had preceded it. Thus he attracted more than he repelled; he pleased more of the men of his generation than he offended; and when the appeal was made to the voters of the country to pass judgment upon his doings, a compact, enthusiastic body of his supporters confronted a disorganized and discordant opposition.

General Jackson, in his first message to Congress, December 8, 1829, expressed the opinion that "it would seem advisable to limit the service of the chief magistrate to a single term of

either four or six years."1 Three months afterward, in March, 1830, Major W. B. Lewis, one of the "kitchen cabinet," wrote to a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, urging the importance of the reëlection of General Jackson in 1832. He enclosed a draft of a letter, addressed to the President, begging him to stand for reëlection, to be signed by the members of the legislature. It was signed by sixty-eight members, and sent to the general. Although he thought the liberties of the people would be safer if a President did not seek reëlection, he evidently did not fear that those liberties would be endangered by his own reëlection; for he acceded tacitly to the abovementioned spontaneous demand.

66

Few of the measures of the period between 1829 and 1832 had a direct bearing upon the question of the presidential succession; for that was already settled. But they did have a great part in bringing about a division of the people into parties, and in determining which of these parties should be successful. General Jackson made the question of internal improvements one of leading importance by his veto of the Maysville-road bill, in May, 1830. He thus attached to the party of which he was the chief, all those who, in this particular, favored a strict construction" of the Constitution. He took the part of Georgia and Alabama in their effort to possess themselves of the lands owned by the Creek and Cherokee Indians, and thereby gave encouragement to the Georgia nullifiers, which he afterward more than neutralized by his courageous and patriotic action against South Carolina nullification. Jackson's attitude on the question of the disposition of the public lands made him popular in the western States; although a disagreement between the two Houses of Congress prevented definite action.

The tariff of 1828, styled by its opponents a "tariff of abominations," had been passed amid great excitement during the last year of Adams's administration, but was by no means an administration measure. It was most bitterly denounced at the South, and caused the first steps toward nullification in South Carolina. The defiance of the national authority by that State became most serious when the tariff act of 1832 was

1 He repeated this recommendation, in conjunction with one for an amendment of the Constitution providing for an election of President by the people, in the five succeeding annual messages.