But in attacking some of the abuses which had developed out of the tariff of 1833 Benton made a very shrewd and practical speech, without permitting himself to indulge in any such intellectual pranks as accompanied his salt orations. He especially aimed at reducing the drawbacks on sugar, molasses, and one or two other articles. In accordance with our whole clumsy, hap-hazard system of dealing with the tariff we had originally put very high duties on the articles in question, and then had allowed correspondingly heavy drawbacks; and yet, when in 1833, by Clay's famous compromise tariff bill, the duties were reduced to a fractional part of what they had previously been, no parallel reduction was made in the drawbacks, although Benton (supported by Webster) made a vain effort even then, while the compromise bill was on its passage, to have the injustice remedied. As a consequence, the exporters of sugar and rum, instead of drawing back the exact amounts paid into the treasury, drew back several times as much; and the ridiculous result was that certain exporters were paid a naked bounty out of the treasury, and received pay for doing and suffering nothing. In 1839 the drawback paid on the exportation of refined sugar exceeded the amount of revenue derived from imported sugar by over twenty thousand dollars. Benton showed this clearly, by unimpeachable statistics, and went on to prove that in that year the whole amount of the revenue from brown and clayed sugar, plus the above-mentioned twenty thousand dollars, was paid over to twenty-nine sugar refiners; and that these men thus "drew back" from the treasury what they had never put into it. Abuses equally gross existed in relation to various other articles. But in spite of the clear justice of his case Benton was able at first to make but little impression on Congress; and it was some time before matters were straightened out, as all the protective interests felt obliged to make common cause with each other, no matter what evils might be perpetrated by their taking such action.
Towards the close of Van Buren's administration, when he was being assailed on every side, as well for what Jackson as for what he himself had done or left undone, one of the chief accusations brought against him was that he had squandered the public money, and that, since Adams had been ousted from the presidency, the expenses of running the government had increased out of all proportion to what was proper. There was good ground for their complaint, as the waste and peculation in some of the departments had been very great; but Benton, in an elaborate defense of both Jackson and Van Buren, succeeded in showing that at least certain of the accusations were unfounded—although he had to stretch a point or two in trying to make good his claim that the administration was really economical, being reduced to the rather lame expedient of ruling out about two thirds of the expenditures on the ground that they were "extraordinary."
The charge of extravagance was one of the least of the charges urged against the Jacksonian Democrats during the last days of their rule. While they had been in power the character of the public service had deteriorated frightfully, both as regarded its efficiency and infinitely more as regarded its honesty; and under Van Buren the amount of money stolen by the public officers, compared to the amount handed in to the treasury, was greater than ever before or since. For this the Jacksonians were solely and absolutely responsible; they drove out the merit system of making appointments, and introduced the "spoils" system in its place; and under the latter they chose a peculiarly dishonest and incapable set of officers, whose sole recommendation was to be found in the knavish trickery and low cunning that enabled them to manage the ignorant voters who formed the backbone of Jackson's party. The statesmen of the Democracy in after days forgot the good deeds of the Jacksonians; they lost their attachment to the Union, and abandoned their championship of hard money; but they never ceased to cling to the worst legacy their predecessors had left them. The engrafting of the "spoils" system on our government was, of all the results of Jacksonian rule, the one which was most permanent in its effects.
All these causes—the corruption of the public officials, the extravagance of the government, and the widespread distress, which might be regarded as the aftermath of its ruinous financial policy—combined with others that were as little to the discredit of the Jacksonians as they were to the credit of the Whigs, brought about the overthrow of the former. There was much poetic justice in the fact that the presidential election which decided their fate was conducted on as purely irrational principles, and was as merely one of sound and fury, as had been the case in the election twelve years previously, when they came into power. The Whigs, having exhausted their language in denouncing their opponents for nominating a man like Andrew Jackson, proceeded to look about in their own party to find one who should come as near him as possible in all the attributes that had given him so deep a hold on the people; and they succeeded perfectly when they pitched on the old Indian fighter, Harrison. "Tippecanoe" proved quite as effective a war-cry in bringing about the downfall of the Jacksonians as "Old Hickory" had shown itself to be a dozen years previously in raising them up. General Harrison had already shown himself to be a good soldier, and a loyal and honest public servant, although by no means standing in the first rank either as regards war-craft or state-craft; but the mass of his supporters apparently considered the facts, or supposed facts, that he lived in a log-cabin the walls of which were decorated with coon-skins, and that he drank hard cider from a gourd, as being more important than his capacity as a statesman or his past services to the nation.
The Whigs having thus taken a shaft from the Jacksonians' quiver, it was rather amusing to see the latter, in their turn, hold up their hands in horror at the iniquity of what would now be called a "hurrah" canvass; blandly ignoring the fact that it was simply a copy of their own successful proceedings. Says Benton, with amusing gravity: "The class of inducements addressed to the passions and imaginations of the people was such as history blushes to record," a remark that provokes criticism, when it is remembered that Benton had been himself a prominent actor on the Jacksonian side in the campaigns of '28 and '32, when it was exclusively to "the passions and imaginations of the people" that all arguments were addressed.
The Democrats did not long remain out of power; and they kept the control of the governmental policy in their hands pretty steadily until the time of the civil war; nevertheless it is true that with the defeat of Van Buren the Jacksonian Democracy, as such, lost forever its grip on the direction of national affairs. When, under Polk, the Democrats came back, they came under the lead of the very men whom the original Jacksonians had opposed and kept down. With all their faults, Jackson and Benton were strong Union men, and under them their party was a Union party. Calhoun and South Carolina, and the disunionists in the other Southern States were their bitter foes. But the disunion and extreme slavery elements within the Democratic ranks were increasing rapidly all the time; and they had obtained complete and final control when the party reappeared as victors after their defeat in 1840. Until Van Buren's overthrow the nationalists had held the upper hand in shaping Democratic policy; but after that event the leadership of the party passed completely into the hands of the separatists.
The defeat of Van Buren marks an era in more ways than one. During his administration slavery played a less prominent part in politics than did many other matters; this was never so again. His administration was the last in which this question, or the question springing from it, did not overtop and dwarf in importance all others. Again, the presidential election of 1840 was the last into which slavery did not enter as a most important, and in fact as the vital and determining factor. In the contest between Van Buren and Harrison it did not have the least influence upon the result. Moreover, Van Buren was the last Democratic president who ruled over a Union of states; all his successors, up to the time of Lincoln's election, merely held sway over a Union of sections. The spirit of separation had identified itself with the maintenance of slavery, and the South was rapidly uniting into a compact array of states with interests that were hostile to the North on the point most vitally affecting the welfare of the whole country.
No great question involving the existence of slavery was brought before the attention of Congress during Van Buren's term of office; nor was the matter mooted except in the eternal wrangles over receiving the abolitionist petitions. Benton kept silent in these discussions, although voting to receive the petitions. As he grew older he continually grew wiser, and better able to do good legislative work on all subjects; but he was not yet able to realize that the slavery question was one which could not be kept down, and which was bound to force itself into the sphere of national politics. He still insisted that it was only dragged before Congress by a few fanatics at the North, and that in the South it was made the instrument by which designing and unscrupulous men wished to break up the federal republic. His devotion to the Union, ever with him the chief and overmastering thought, made him regard with horror and aversion any man, at the North or at the South, who brought forward a question so fraught with peril to its continuance. He kept trying to delude himself into the belief that the discussion and the danger would alike gradually die away, and the former state of peaceful harmony between the sections, and freedom from disunion excitement, would return.
But the time for such an ending already lay in the past; thereafter the outlook was to grow steadily darker year by year. Slavery lowered like a thunder-storm on the horizon; and though sometimes it might seem for a moment to break away, yet in reality it had reached that stage when, until the final all-engulfing outburst took place, the clouds were bound for evermore to return after the rain.
CHAPTER XI
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY
The Whigs in 1840 completely overthrew the Democrats, and for the first time elected a president and held the majority in both houses of Congress. Yet, as it turned out, all that they really accomplished was to elect a president without a party, for Harrison died when he had hardly more than sat in the presidential chair, and was succeeded by the vice-president, Tyler of Virginia.
Harrison was a true Whig; he was, when nominated, a prominent member of the Whig party, although of course not to be compared with its great leader, Henry Clay, or with its most mighty intellectual chief and champion in the Northeast, Daniel Webster, whose mutual rivalry had done much to make his nomination possible. Tyler, however, could hardly be called a Whig at all; on the contrary, he belonged rightfully in the ranks of those extreme Democrats who were farthest removed from the Whig standard, and who were as much displeased with the Union sentiments of the Jacksonians as they were with the personal tyranny of Jackson himself. He was properly nothing but a dissatisfied Democrat, who hated the Jacksonians, and had been nominated only because the Whig politicians wished to strengthen their ticket and insure its election by bidding for the votes of the discontented in the ranks of their foes. Now a chance stroke of death put the presidency in the hands of one who represented this, the smallest, element in the coalition that overthrew Van Buren.
The principles of the Whigs were hazily outlined at the best, and the party was never a very creditable organization; indeed, throughout its career, it could be most easily defined as the opposition to the Democracy. It was a free constructionist party, believing in giving a liberal interpretation to the doctrines of the Constitution; otherwise, its principles were purely economic, as it favored a high tariff, internal improvements, a bank, and kindred schemes; and its leaders, however they might quarrel among themselves, agreed thoroughly in their devout hatred of Jackson and all his works.
It was on this last point only that Tyler came in. His principles had originally been ultra-Democratic. He had been an extreme strict constructionist, had belonged to that wing of the Democracy which inclined more and more towards separation, and had thus, on several grounds, found himself opposed to Jackson, Benton, and their followers. Indeed, he went into opposition to his original party for reasons akin to those that influenced Calhoun; and Seward's famous remark about the "ill-starred coalition between Whigs and Nullifiers" might with certain changes have been applied to the presidential election of 1840 quite as well as to the senatorial struggles to which it had reference.
Tyler, however, had little else in common with Calhoun, and least of all his intellect. He has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness. Owing to the nicely-divided condition of parties, and to the sheer accident which threw him into a position of such prominence that it allowed him to hold the balance of power between them, he was enabled to turn politics completely topsy-turvy; but his chief mental and moral attributes were peevishness, fretful obstinacy, inconsistency, incapacity to make up his own mind, and the ability to quibble indefinitely over the most microscopic and hair-splitting plays upon words, together with an inordinate vanity that so blinded him to all outside feeling as to make him really think that he stood a chance to be renominated for the presidency.
The Whigs, especially in the Senate, under Henry Clay, prepared at once to push through various measures that should undo the work of the Jacksonians. Clay was boastfully and domineeringly sure of the necessity of applying to actual governmental work the economic theories that formed the chief stock in trade of his party. But it was precisely on these economic theories that Tyler split off from the Whigs. The result was that very shortly the real leader of the dominant party, backed by almost all his fellow party men in both houses of Congress, was at daggers drawn with the nominal Whig president, who in his turn was supported only by a "corporal's guard" of followers in the House of Representatives, by all the office-holders whom fear of removal reduced to obsequious subserviency, and by a knot of obscure politicians who used him for their own ends, and worked alternately on his vanity and on his fears. The Democrats, led by Benton, played out their own game, and were the only parties to the three-cornered fight who came out of it with profit. The details now offer rather dry reading, as the economic theories of all the contestants were more or less crude, the results of the conflict indecisive, and the effects upon our history ephemeral.
Clay began by a heated revival of one of Jackson's worst ideas, namely, that when the people elect a president they thereby mark with the seal of their approval any and every measure with which that favored mortal or his advisers may consider themselves identified, and indorse all his and their previous actions. He at once declared that the people had shown, by the size of Harrison's majority, that they demanded the repeal of the independent treasury act, and the passage of various other laws in accordance with some of his own favorite hobbies, two out of three voters, as a matter of fact, probably never having given a second thought to any of them. Accordingly he proceeded to introduce a whole batch of bills, which he alleged that it was only yielding due respect to the spirit of Democracy to pass forthwith.
Benton, however, even outdid Clay in paying homage to what he was pleased to call the "democratic idea." At this time he speaks of the last session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress as being "barren of measures, and necessarily so, as being the last of an administration superseded by the popular voice and soon to expire; and therefore restricted by a sense of propriety, during the brief remainder of its existence, to the details of business and the routine of service." According to this theory an interregnum of some sixteen weeks would intervene between the terms of service of every two presidents. He also speaks of Tyler as having, when the legislature of Virginia disapproved of a course he wished to follow, resigned his seat "in obedience to the democratic principle," which, according to his views, thus completely nullified the section of the Constitution providing for a six years' term of service in the Senate. In truth Benton, like most other Jacksonian and Jeffersonian leaders, became both foolish and illogical when he began to talk of the bundle of vague abstractions, which he knew collectively as the "democratic principle." Although not so bad as many of his school he had yet gradually worked himself up to a belief that it was almost impious to pay anything but servile heed to the "will of the majority;" and was quite unconscious that to surrender one's own manhood and judgment to a belief in the divine right of kings was only one degree more ignoble, and was not a shadow more logical, and but little more defensible, than it was blindly to deify a majority—not of the whole people, but merely of a small fraction consisting of those who happened to be of a certain sex, to have reached a certain age, to belong to a certain race, and to fulfill some other conditions. In fact there is no natural or divine law in the matter at all; how large a portion of the population should be trusted with the control of the government is a question of expediency merely. In any purely native American community manhood suffrage works infinitely better than would any other system of government, and throughout our country at large, in spite of the large number of ignorant foreign-born or colored voters, it is probably preferable as it stands to any modification of it; but there is no more "natural right" why a white man over twenty-one should vote than there is why a negro woman under eighteen should not. "Civil rights" and "personal freedom" are not terms that necessarily imply the right to vote. People make mistakes when governing themselves, exactly as they make mistakes when governing others; all that can be said is, that in the former case their self-interest is on the side of good government, whereas in the latter it always may be, and often must be, the reverse; so that, when any people reaches a certain stage of mental development and of capacity to take care of its own concerns, it is far better that it should itself take the reins. The distinctive features of the American system are its guarantees of personal independence and individual freedom; that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each man his right to live as he chooses and to regulate his own private affairs as he wishes, without being interfered with or tyrannized over by an individual, or by an oligarchic minority, or by a democratic majority; while, when the interests of the whole community are at stake, it is found best in the long run to let them be managed in accordance with the wishes of the majority of those presumably concerned.
Clay's flourish of trumpets foreboded trouble and disturbance to the Jacksonian camp. At last he stood at the head of a party controlling both branches of the legislative body, and devoted to his behests; and, if a little doubtful about the president, he still believed he could frighten him into doing as he was bid. He had long been in the minority, and had seen his foes ride roughshod over all he most believed in; and now he prepared to pay them back in their own coin and to leave a heavy balance on his side of the reckoning. Nor could any Jacksonian have shown himself more domineering and influenced by a more insolent disregard for the rights of others than Clay did in his hour of triumph. On the other side, Benton braced himself with dogged determination for the struggle; for he was one of those men who fight a losing or a winning battle with equal resolution.
Tyler's first message to Congress read like a pretty good Whig document. It did not display any especial signs of his former strict construction theories, and gave little hope to the Democrats. The leader of the latter, indeed, Benton, commented upon both it and its author with rather grandiloquent severity, on account of its latitudinarian bias, and of its recommendation of a bank of some sort. However, the ink with which the message was written could hardly have been dry before the president's mind began to change. He himself probably had very little idea what he intended to do, and so contrived to give the Whigs the impression that he would act in accordance with their wishes; but the leaven had already begun working in his mind, and, not having much to work on, soon changed it so completely that he was willing practically to eat his own words.
Shortly after Tyler had sent in his message outlining what legislation he deemed proper, he being by virtue of his position the nominal and titular leader of the Whigs, Clay, who was their real and very positive chief, and who was, moreover, determined to assert his chieftainship, in his turn laid down a programme for his party to follow, introducing a series of resolutions declaring it necessary to pass a bill to repeal the sub-treasury act, another to establish a bank, another to distribute the proceeds of the public land sales, and one or two more, to which was afterwards added a bankruptcy measure.
The sub-treasury bill was first taken up and promptly passed and signed. Benton, of course, led the hopeless fight against it, making a long and elaborate speech, insisting that the finances were in excellent shape, as they were, showing the advantages of hard money, and denouncing the bill on account of the extreme suddenness with which it took effect, and because it made no provision for any substitute. He also alluded caustically to the curious and anomalous bank bill, which was then being patched up by the Whig leaders so as to get it into some such shape that the president would sign it.
The other three important measures, that is, the bank, distribution, and bankruptcy bills, were all passed nearly together; as Benton pointed out, they were got through only by a species of bargain and sale, the chief supporters of each agreeing to support the other, so as to get their own pet measure through. "All must go together or fall together. This is the decree out of doors. When the sun dips below the horizon a private congress is held; the fate of the measures is decided; a bundle is tied together; and while one goes ahead as a bait, another is held back as a rod."
The bankruptcy bill went through and was signed. It was urged by all the large debtor class, whose ranks had been filled to overflowing by the years of wild speculation and general bank suspension and insolvency. These debtors were quite numerous enough to constitute an important factor in politics, but Benton disregarded them nevertheless, and fought the bill as stoutly as he did its companions, alleging that it was a gross outrage on honesty and on the rights of property, and was not a bankrupt law at all, but practically an insolvent law for the abolition of debts at the will of the debtor. He pointed out grave and numerous defects of detail, and gave an exhaustive abstract of bankruptcy legislation in general; the speech gave evidence of the tireless industry and wide range of learning for which Benton was preëminently distinguished.
The third bill to be taken up and passed was that providing for the distribution of the public lands revenue, and thus indirectly for assuming the debts of the states. Tyler, in his message, had characteristically stated that, though it would be wholly unconstitutional for the federal government to assume the debts of the states, yet it would be highly proper for it to give the latter money wherewith to pay them. Clay had always been an enthusiastic advocate of a distribution bill; and accordingly one was now passed and signed with the least possible delay. It was an absolutely indefensible measure. The treasury was empty, and loan and tax bills were pending at the very moment, in order to supply money for the actual running of the government. As Benton pointed out, Congress had been called together (a special session having been summoned by Harrison before his death) to raise revenue, and the first thing done was to squander it. The distribution took place when the treasury reports showed a deficit of sixteen millions of dollars. The bill was pushed through mainly by the states which had repudiated their debts in whole or in part; and as these debts were largely owed abroad, many prominent foreign banking-houses and individuals took an active part in lobbying for the bill. Benton was emphatically right in his opposition to the measure, but he was very wrong in some of the grounds he took. Thus he inveighed vigorously against the foreign capitalists who had come to help push the bill through Congress; but he did not have anything to say against the scoundrelly dishonesty displayed by certain states towards their creditors, which had forced these capitalists into the endeavor to protect themselves. He also incidentally condemned the original assumption by the national government of the debts of the states, at the time of the formation of the Constitution, which was an absolute necessity; and his constitutional views throughout seem rather strained. But he was right beyond cavil on the main point. It was criminal folly to give the states the impression that they would be allowed to create debts over which Congress could have no control, yet which Congress in the end would give them the money to pay. To reward a state for repudiating a debt by giving her the wherewithal to pay it was a direct and unequivocal encouragement of dishonesty. In every respect the bill was wholly improper; and Benton's attitude towards it and towards similar schemes was incomparably better than the position of Clay, Webster, and the other Whigs.
Both the bankrupt bill and the distribution bill were repealed very shortly; the latter before it had time to take effect. This was an emphatic indorsement by the public of Benton's views, and a humiliating rebuke to the Whig authors of the measures. Indeed, the whole legislation of the session was almost absolutely fruitless in its results.
One feature of the struggle was an attempt by Clay, promptly and successfully resisted by Benton and Calhoun, to institute the hour limit for speeches in the Senate. There was a good deal of excuse for Clay's motion. The House could cut off debate by the previous question, which the Senate could not, and nevertheless had found it necessary to establish the hour limit in addition. Of course it is highly undesirable that there should not be proper freedom of debate in Congress; but it is quite as hurtful to allow a minority to exercise their privileges improperly. The previous question is often abused and used tyrannically; but on the whole it is a most invaluable aid to legislation. Benton, however, waxed hot and wrathful over the proposed change in the Senate rules. He, with Calhoun and their followers, had been consuming an immense amount of time in speech-making against the Whig measures, and in offering amendments; not with any hopes of bettering the bills, but for outside effect, and to annoy their opponents. He gives an amusingly naive account of their course of action, and the reasons for it, substantially as follows:—
The Democratic senators acted upon a system, and with a thorough organization and a perfect understanding. Being a minority, and able to do nothing, they became assailants, and attacked incessantly; not by formal orations against the whole body of a measure, but by sudden, short, and pungent speeches directed against the vulnerable parts, and pointed by proffered amendments. Amendments were continually offered—a great number being prepared every night and placed in suitable hands for use the next day—always commendably calculated to expose an evil and to present a remedy. Near forty propositions of amendment were offered to the first fiscal agent bill alone—the yeas and nays were taken upon them seven and thirty times. All the other prominent bills—distribution, bankrupt, fiscal corporation, new tariff act, called revenue—were served the same way; every proposed amendment made an issue. There were but twenty-two of us, but every one was a speaker and effective. The "Globe" newspaper was a powerful ally, setting out all we did to the best advantage in strong editorials, and carrying out our speeches, fresh and hot, to the people; and we felt victorious in the midst of unbroken defeats.
It is no wonder that such rank filibustering, coupled with the exasperating self-complacency of its originators, should have excited in Whig bosoms every desperate emotion short of homicidal mania.
Clay, to cut off such useless talk, gave notice that he would move to have the time for debate for each individual restricted; remarking very truthfully that he did not believe the people at large would complain of the abridgment of speeches in Congress. But the Democratic senators, all rather fond of windy orations, fairly foamed at the mouth at what they affected to deem such an infringement of their liberties; and actually took the inexcusable resolution of bidding defiance to the rule if it was adopted, and refusing to obey it, no matter what degree of violence their conduct might bring about,—a resolution that was wholly unpardonable. Benton was selected to voice their views upon the matter, which he did in a long, and not very wise speech; while Calhoun was quite as emphatic in his threats of what would happen if attempt should be made to enforce the proposed rule. Clay was always much bolder in opening a campaign than in carrying it through; and when it came to putting his words into deeds, he wholly lacked the nerve which would have enabled him to contend with two such men as the senators from Missouri and South Carolina. Had he possessed a temperament like that of either of his opponents, he would have gone on and have simply forced acquiescence; for any legislative body can certainly enforce what rules it may choose to make as to the conduct of its own members in addressing it; but his courage failed him, and he withdrew from the contest, leaving the victory with Democrats.