ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

He arrived in New-York the 2d day of December, when the result of the Presidential election was still in doubt, and hastened on to Washington.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

THE Presidential election of 1824 was the legitimate result of the preceding แ era of good feelings." In that contest there was not one political principle involved. In no State in the Union, Delaware alone excepted, did the people pretend to keep up their old party organization. The word federalist was not heard in political circles; it was a mark of rudeness to attach that epithet to any gentleman; the measures it represented had long since been exploded; the word itself, as calling up unpleasant reminiscences, had grown obsolete; and every body professed to belong to the great republican family. It was suspected there were many federalists in disguise, and that their profession of republicanism was merely a lip service; but no one could point them out, or identify them by their political acts. The party had been dissolved, the federalists themselves admitted; but they contended that it had only been dissolved by the republicans embracing their doctrines. And it is very true that all the leading measures of Congress were of a federal stamp, and that they were bottomed on principles of the most latitudinous kind; the very same that Hamilton used in defending his obnoxious schemes, that brought such discredit on the name of federalism. It was impossible to draw a line of distinction between men, or to set up any standard by which to judge their opinions. Old measures and the divisions they occasioned had passed away; new measures, under entirely new and variant circumstances, had been brought forward; but they involved the same principles of interpretation, and required the same line of argument in their defence, as the old ones: but men did not divide upon them as they had done heretofore. Those who professed to abhor the doctrines of Hamilton, when applied to the schemes of

his day, now embraced them as the only means of defending and sustaining their own measures. A change of circumstances was thought to justify a change of political principle. In Hamilton's day, and down to 1811, a national bank was unconstitutional; but now, in the estimation of republicans, it had become "necessary and proper," and therefore constitutional. Those who came into power with Mr. Jefferson, professing hostility to a national bank, and who refused in 1811 to re-charter the old one, established in 1816 a similar institution. The latitudinous construction of the Constitution by the Adams administration in 1798-99, and the odious measures based thereon, such as the alien and sedition laws, constituted the principal objection to that administration, and were the main cause of its overthrow; and the substitution of a party professing the contrary doctrines a party that professed to interpret the Constitution literally, and that would exercise no power that had not been specifically given by some express grant in the Charter. This party pursued their principles for some years, and furnished a model of a plain, just, and economical government; but in 1816, while nominally in power, they elected their President, and for eight years seemed to control the measures of his administration; and yet those measures, as we have abundantly seen, were founded on the same principles that had been so loudly condemned and unequivocally repudiated under the Adams dynasty so easily are men deceived by names and appearances; so hard is it to follow a rigid rule of abstinence, when appetite and opportunity invite to indulgence.

A respectable minority, with John Randolph at the head, invariably opposed the consolidating measures of the times; demonstrated their identity with the exploded doctrines of federalism, and warned the people of the dangerous consequences; but it was a sort of Cassandra voice, that nobody heeded: it seemed impossible to restore the old landmarks, and to convince the people that they had gone backwards, and fallen into the old paths they had once abandoned. All were exexpecting some special advantage from the legislation of the day; the hopes of profit had stifled the remonstrances of truth; and the popular leaders were constantly dazzling the imaginations of the people with some magnificent scheme, by which they hoped to gain renown for themselves, and to fasten to their fortunes by the ties of a common interest some class or section of the community. The presidential candidates

were all committed, or in some way identified with those schemes. Mr. Adams, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Crawford, were members of the cabinet; but they had not been slow in expressing themselves on all occasions, and had given unequivocal evidence of their devotion to those broad doctrines that swept away the barriers of the Constitution, and made it a convenient instrument to sanction whatever might be deemed for the time being to be necessary and proper.

Mr. Clay, as the leader in the House of Representatives, had been their most ardent, active, and eloquent champion. His position gave him the advantage of the initiative in all popular measures, and he never failed to identify himself with them by some bold and eloquent discourse. Not content with sweeping away the barriers within the narrow horizon of domestic politics, he embraced in the wide scope of his philanthropic regard all the oppressed and struggling nations of the earth; and, turning a deaf ear to the warning of the father of his country, he hastened to speak a word of encouragement, and to stretch out an arm of help without regard to the consequences to his own country. His ambition for public display, his thirst for present and personal applause, his frank and manly character, his sanguine temperament, and bold imagination, with a quick, comprehensive, yet undisciplined mind, made him just the character to be led off by any popular theme that might promise distinction and popularity-just the man to follow with undoubting faith the shining ignis fatuus of the hour, and to be dazzled by it and deceived.

General Jackson had not been in political life, and possessed great military renown; this gave him an advantage over his competitors: but he was not known to differ materially from them in his political opinions. There were no public acts to commit him; but all his correspondence and conversations, so far as they were made known to the public, proved that at that time he had no clear conception of the principles that divided the old federal and republican parties, and that he was equally devoted to those new measures which had done so much to bring back in disguise the ascendency of federal doctrines.

In this state of things the partisans of each of the candidates for the presidency sought to impress on the public mind the idea that their friend was par excellence the true republican candidate. But it was impossible to persuade the people to this belief, when there

was no political principle dividing them-no platform of doctrine on which they were called to stand, so as to be separated and distinguished from those around them. The consequence was, the whole country was divided into sectional and personal factions. The West and Southwest voted for a western and southwestern man; NewYork and New England voted for a New England man; while the Southern and Middle States were divided between a northern, a southern, and a western man. There was no principle to bring the discordant sections together, and to cause them to sacrifice their friend on the altar of the public good; there was no such public good-nothing in the whole controversy that would justify any such immolation. What advantage had Mr. Adams over Mr. Clay, or Mr. Crawford, or General Jackson? or what advantage had either of these over him, so as to induce the friends of one to surrender him that they might thereby secure the success of the other? It was not publicly pretended that one was sounder in his political opinions than the other; and they all stood on their own personal merits as having done some service to the country and to the republican cause. The friends of Mr. Crawford endeavored to gain an advantage for him by procuring a "regular nomination," according to the usages of the party. It had been usual for a convention, or, as it was called, a caucus, of republican members at the proper time to assemble together, and to designate some suitable person for the presidency on whom the people might concentrate their votes, so as to prevent the triumph of those principles which they regarded as so obnoxious: so long as federalism continued in organized opposition, this concentration was the only means of securing the ascendency to the republican party. But federalism had long ceased to exist as an opposing force. This party machinery, therefore, in the absence of those higher motives of combination, could only be made to subserve the purposes of faction, and to give an undue advantage where none was deserved.

The friends of Mr. Crawford, however, being mostly from Vir ginia and New-York, and considering themselves as the true standards of republican orthodoxy, persisted in their course, notwithstanding a formidable opposition, and called together their convention the 14th of February, 1824. Out of two hundred and sixty-one members of Congress, only sixty-four attended the meeting in person, and two by proxy. The two proxies and sixty-two members present

voted for Mr. Crawford. Of the sixty-two votes, one-half were from New-York and Virginia. This convention did not exceed one-fourth of the members of Congress, and was composed entirely of the friends of one only of the candidates-there was no comparison of opinionsno sacrifices of personal preferences and mutual concessions for the good of a common cause. Under such circumstances, it is obvious that the meeting could make no pretensions to nationality, not even to a full and fair party organization. Yet it was proclaimed as "the regular nomination" according to the usages of the party, and the republicans called on to sustain it as such. In Virginia, the people gave it their support, because Mr. Crawford was their choice under all circumstances. But in New-York it met with a very different fate. Mr. Crawford was not a favorite with the people of New-York, though her delegation voted for him in the caucus of 1816 in opposition to Mr. Monroe, and came near defeating by their skilful and secret management the only person seriously spoken of by the people. Finding that the "regular nomination," according to party usage, which carried such a potent spell with it heretofore, had lost its influence, and that if the people were left to themselves, Mr. Crawford was certain of defeat, his friends took refuge in the legis lature, and determined to gain their point by keeping the election from the people. Up to this time the electors of President and Vice-President had been nominated by the legislature. The people now determined to take the election in their own hands. A bill to that effect passed the lower House with only four dissenting voices, such was the unanimity on the subject; but it was defeated in the Senate, where there were a majority of Mr. Crawford's friends. So great was the excitement in the State, that the Governor called an extrasession of the legislature to execute the will of the people. But the Senate again defeated the bill, and the Assembly adjourned without doing any thing. All this was done in the name of liberty. The majority of the Senate assumed to be the only true exponents of republicanism, and Mr. Crawford as its only true representative, and in order to carry their measures, committed great violence on their own principles. But even the legislature would not sustain this violent effort to force the State to cast her vote for one she did not prefer.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »