CHAPTER 19
JACKSON WAS IN a difficult position. He needed concessions from the manufacturing states on a lower tariff and from the South (not only South Carolina but the rest of the region, too) on simply the existence of a tariff, even at reduced rates. It was evident from the nullifiers’ preparations and from Poinsett’s fears that passions in South Carolina could lead to violence, and once shoving or shooting began, it was impossible to predict where it might end. Jackson did not yet know, he told Van Buren, “whether some of the eastern states may not secede or nullify, if the tariff is reduced. I have to look at both ends of the union to preserve it.”
One thing was clear to Jackson’s foes: between the expanded veto power and his huge personal popularity, he was amassing so much power that they chose to believe the Constitution in jeopardy. “There is nothing certain but that the will of Andrew Jackson is to govern; and that will fluctuates with the change of every pen which gives expression to it,” Clay said bitterly. Calhoun painted an even starker portrait, writing to Samuel Ingham: “The people will never again choose another Chief Magistrate. The executive power will perpetuate itself.”
The delicacy of Jackson’s task in this bleak winter is illuminated by a conversation he had at the White House with Silas Wright, Jr., a New York politician in town to begin a Senate term. Jackson wanted New York firmly and unmistakably in his camp, but thus far the state legislature had failed to condemn nullification. Van Buren apparently saw no advantage in rushing to his president’s side, either personally (the vice president-elect remained in New York in these tense weeks) or politically (he worried that the proclamation would cost him votes in the 1836 campaign). Van Buren sent Wright to the White House on Sunday, January 13, with a letter for Jackson.
For half an hour, however, Jackson focused entirely on Wright. The news, Jackson said, was bad, and it was going to get worse. “I learned from him that instead of a diminution of the probabilities of force at Charleston those probabilities had been constantly increasing,” Wright told Van Buren. Jackson warned that the rebels were “holding regular drills of the squads in the night” and fumed that Hamilton had allowed the American flag to be flown upside down—a symbol of distress—aboard a boat he rode into Augusta, Georgia. “For this indignity to the flag of the country, she ought to have been instantly sunk, no matter who owned or commanded her,” Jackson told Wright. It was a dark report.
Jackson’s winter campaign entered a critical new phase on Wednesday, January 16, 1833. Already lobbying to cut the tariff and thus remove the proximate cause of the crisis, he also wanted clear authority to strike if it came to that. What the administration called the Force Bill (Southerners denounced it as the Bloody Bill) authorized the president to move the collection of federal revenue to ships off the coast of Charleston or to temporary customs houses at Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney—installations under federal control. The bill also specifically gave the president the power to direct the military and the state militias to carry out federal law. There was no escaping the central truth of the proposal: that a president was asking Congress to explicitly give him the power to use military strength against Americans within American borders. If he could not solve things peaceably, he would then have the option of doing so forcibly. He ruled nothing out.
IN THE SENATE, Felix Grundy of Tennessee introduced the measure, along with a copy of the Nullification Proclamation. Calhoun was not yet in the chamber when Grundy spoke. The new senator from South Carolina entered and sat down as the documents themselves were being read aloud. He instantly decided “that it ought not to pass without a blow; and I accordingly struck it.” Enthralled by his own theory, guided in part by his contempt for Jackson, convinced of his own rectitude and vision, Calhoun spoke passionately. South Carolina, he said, had joined the Union “with the understanding that a state, in the last resort, has a right to judge of the expediency of resistance to oppression or secession from the Union. And for so doing it is that we are threatened to have our throats cut, and those of our wives and children.”
As the words tumbled out of his mouth, Calhoun realized he should stop. “No—I go too far,” he said. “I did not intend to use language so strong. The Chief Magistrate ha[s] not yet recommended so desperate a remedy.” Still, he raised the prospect of an armed Jacksonian dictatorship. “Military despotism,” Calhoun said—not a divided union—was “the greatest danger” facing America. Perhaps, Calhoun added, he should not speak with such “warmth,” which he knew was “unbecoming.” But he could not help it. In Washington, at least, the rhetorical bloodshed had begun.
CALHOUN’S FRIENDS ASSURED him that the speech had had “great effect on the Audience and the Senate.” The White House’s allies streamed out of the chamber and rushed to reassure Jackson that Calhoun’s opening shots had fallen short. They apparently emphasized style, criticizing Calhoun for his feverish delivery. “Mr. Calhoun let off a little of his ire against me today in the Senate, but was so agitated and confused that he made quite a failure,” Jackson told Poinsett after hearing accounts of the speech. On substantive grounds, though, the Calhoun argument that a Jackson presidency could lead to military despotism and curtailed civil liberties had a good deal of resonance. Jackson had been facing such charges since the controversy over martial law in New Orleans two decades before, and he had heard Clay repeatedly make such a case.
Asking for an endorsement of executive power to exert force against the states was no small thing, and the Southern states—even the ones with no brief for nullification—were anxious. Jackson’s words to Poinsett about Calhoun’s alleged “failure” in the Senate, then, were more hopeful than realistic.
Late that night, on the hushed household floor of the White House, Jackson was too troubled to sleep. To save the South he had to cut the tariff, but if he cut it too much, Jackson fretted, he could alienate the North, which might begin to find new virtue in the idea of nullification. In securing the power to put down rebellion he could drive more moderate Southerners into South Carolina’s camp. Yet if he did not seek the authority and things came to blows, he might stand accused of acting illegally if he did not have permission from Congress to enforce the customs laws.
In the darkness, his only solace was the memory of Rachel. He had sat up deep in the night in many battlefield tents before, his soldiers asleep, his mind racing, and now he was doing so again. Writing Poinsett, Jackson yearned for information. “Give me the earliest intelligence of the first armed force that appears in the field to sustain the ordinance [of nullification]—the first act of treason committed.”
Poinsett did not think it would be long. “The Nullifiers are extremely active and do keep up the excitement in an extraordinary manner,” Poinsett told Jackson. “They drill and exercise their men without intermission.” On Friday, January 18, Hayne urged James Henry Hammond to prepare for “protracted warfare.” Meanwhile, Poinsett said, “revolutionists in North Carolina and especially Georgia” were offering the nullifiers help. “I expect the next move will be secession,” he added on Sunday, January 20. Jackson was still unwilling to strike the first blow. “The nullifiers in your state have placed themselves thus far in the wrong,” Jackson said. “They must be kept there”—for as long as they were at fault and could not cast themselves as victims of armed federal force, the moral advantage remained with Jackson and with the Union.
Clay saw Jackson’s political dilemma: “He has marked out two victims—South Carolina and the tariff—and the only question with him is which shall be first immolated.” The manufacturing states did not want the tariff cut, the agrarian states were worried about creeping nationalism, and no one was enamored of the idea of giving the president the powers in the measure. The Calhoun newspaper, the Telegraph, worried that the Force Bill “arms the executive with the entire naval and military force of the country,” which in turn would transform Jackson into a “military dictator.” Even a senator friendly to Jackson, William R. King of Alabama, disliked putting “the whole military power of the Government at the discretion of the President. I can never consent, however great my confidence in the executive, to clothe any mortal man with such tremendous and unlimited powers.”
Such reactions were more emotional than rational. Much of the Force Bill concerned details about collecting the federal tariffs in Charleston in the event of insurrection. The section of the proposed legislation involving the president’s military authority was less revolutionary than many believed. Two existing laws—one from 1795, the other from 1807—gave Jackson all the technical power he needed both to call out state militias and to use federal troops to enforce federal law. (All he had to do was first issue a proclamation warning the rebels to disperse.) What Jackson was asking for—and herein lay part of his political genius—was congressional endorsement of force in this instance. By proposing the Force Bill, Jackson was implying that he needed it to act, which he did not—which in turn meant that he had placed himself in the best possible political position. If Congress passed the bill, then he had the might of the national government behind him; if it did not, he could do one of two things: either choose not to act, citing the will of Congress, or fall back on the older laws and strike anyway.
IT WAS GOOD politics, giving Jackson what the best politicians manage to create: options. His foes in Washington engaged the debate on the terms Jackson had set, which gave the White House an advantage in the crisis, for the arguments were taking place within boundaries it had drawn.
As January ended, it was clear that the battle would be between Washington and South Carolina. After flirting with Calhoun and the nullifiers, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina decided to let South Carolina stand alone. Mississippi’s ultimate decision was representative of the rest of the South’s: “We detest the tariff, but we will hold to the Union,” a correspondent from Mississippi wrote to Andrew Donelson on Sunday, January 6, 1833—which was, really, the best Jackson could hope for. Under Governor Floyd, Virginia weighed its options but finally backed down.
It was probably a good thing for Floyd that the state decided to cast its lot with Jackson rather than with Calhoun. On Thursday, January 24, 1833, a weary Jackson told Poinsett: “Even if the Governor of Virginia should have the folly to attempt to prevent the militia from marching through his state to put the faction in South Carolina down and place himself at the head of an armed force for such a wicked purpose, I would arrest him at the head of his troops and hand him over to the civil authority for trial.”
Strong words, and Jackson knew that if things came to such a pass it would mean civil war. “It is very late and my eyes grow dim,” he told Poinsett. “Keep me well advised, and constantly.” There was much to monitor. “I understand that Governor Hayne is making every preparation for warlike measure,” Washington Irving wrote the next day. “I hope and trust that this will all turn out a game of brag.”
On Thursday, January 31, South Carolina held a day of fasting to pray for the success of its cause. It was cloudy and cool in Columbia, where the Reverend Thomas Goulding, a Presbyterian clergyman, preached a sermon Samuel Cram Jackson thought “rather a slim affair,” but outside the pulpit things were moving: “All went to the Methodists to see the military parade their companies of volunteers.”
IN WASHINGTON, THE weather was clear as the congressional debate over nullification began. Fanny Kemble, the British actress, was in the capital to perform and left a diary of the city. “We walked up to the Capitol,” Kemble wrote. “The day was most beautifully bright and sunny, and the mass of white building, with its terraces and columns, stood out in fine relief against the cloudless blue sky.”
The women of the city, as was their custom, flooded into the House and Senate chambers. In the Senate, spectators climbed the narrow steps and walked through the door to the gallery, past a sign saying:
GENTLEMEN WILL BE PLEASED NOT TO PLACE
THEIR FEET ON THE BOARD IN FRONT OF THE GALLERY,
AS THE DIRT FROM THEM FALLS UPON SENATORS HEADS.
According to John Coffee, who was in Washington, gentlemen were having a difficult time getting anywhere near the action, let alone close enough to put their feet up. The women, Coffee said, “fill the legislative halls when it is understood that some lofty spirit is to speak, so that it is very difficult for the members to retain their seats or a backwoodsman to be allowed to stand near the door and look in.”
No one knew what to expect. “I can give you no definitive opinion as to what will be done here,” Clay wrote to his son from Washington on Thursday, January 3, 1833. “There is a general feeling of great instability in the present state of things. The Union is not believed to be free from danger whatever course may be pursued.” True to his nature, though, Clay was pursuing a course of compromise, looking for a middle ground before it was too late.
Friday, February 1, 1833, was the first deadline, the date South Carolina had announced it would suspend the collection of the federal tariff, possibly leading to violence. From Washington, Calhoun urged the state to hold off for a bit. “To take issue now would be to play into the hands of the administration,” Calhoun said. “I feel confident we want time only to ensure victory. The cause is a great one; greater than that of the Revolution.” The nullifiers agreed. They would wait to see what Congress, and Jackson, would do. The first deadline thus passed quietly. “The famous dayfixed for the operation of one ‘Ordinance,’ ” Samuel Cram Jackson wrote in his diary on February 1, “but all is calm—no bloodshed—a beautiful day.”
CLAY HAD BEEN at work on a compromise tariff since the middle of December, and spoke in the Senate to make the case for reform on Tuesday, February 12, 1833. Fix the tariff, and foil nullification. Foil nullification, and undercut the Force Bill. Undercut the Force Bill, and check Jackson.
Praising “that great principle of compromise and concession which lies at the bottom of our institutions,” Clay was able to do what Jackson could not, for Jackson, though privately working for resolution, stood by his public position, which was one of implacability. South Carolina, Clay said, should be treated with respect, not contempt, so long as she gave up nullification in exchange for the lower tariff.
“If there be any who want civil war, who want to see the blood of any portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them,” Clay said. “I wish to see war of no kind; but, above all, I do not desire to see civil war.… God alone knows where such a war would end.”
Subtly alluding to the impression that Jackson was intent on punishing the state in general and Calhoun in particular, Clay urged the Senate to rise above animosity. South Carolina, he said, “has been with us before, when her ancestors mingled in the throng of battle, and as I hope our posterity will mingle with hers, for ages and centuries to come, in the united defense of liberty, and for the honor and glory of the Union, I do not wish to see her degraded or defaced as a member of this confederacy.”
Clay might think Jackson heavy-handed, but the president was deftly maneuvering behind the scenes. Reassuring Poinsett that the Unionists would not be abandoned, Jackson nevertheless asserted again and again that the nullifiers would have to make the first move. “Notwithstanding all their tyranny and blustering conduct, until some act of force is committed or there is an assemblage of an armed force by the orders of your Governor … to resist the execution of the laws of the United States, the Executive of the United States has no legal and constitutional power to order the militia into the field to suppress it, and not then, until his proclamation commanding the insurgents to disperse has been issued,” Jackson wrote on February 7. Be firm, Jackson said, but know, too, that there was hope. “The tariff will be reduced to the wants of the government, if not at this session of Congress, certainly at the next,” he told Poinsett—a sign that Jackson believed a compromise was not only possible but likely.
The prospects for a peaceful resolution were rising, but Calhoun thought Jackson was another Macbeth who dreamed of “the image of a Crown.” Over two days, February 15 and 16, he held the floor of the Senate, making the case for state sovereignty and against the Force Bill. The argument meant everything to him.
THE FORCE BILL, Calhoun said, was “a question of self-preservation” to South Carolina. If it passed and if Jackson used its powers, “it will be resisted, at every hazard—even that of death itself,” Calhoun said. “Death is not the greatest calamity: there are others still more terrible to the free and brave, and among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives in defense of the State, and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary! It never can be, unless this government is resolved to bring the question to extremity, when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty—to die nobly.”
It was a classic Calhoun performance. “Mr. Calhoun is not a fine looking man, so far from it he looks more like his Satanic Majesty when he gets into one of his violent passions (as he always does when he speaks himself or hears any one of the opposite side),” Mary Coffee wrote, “with clenched fists, teeth grinning from ear to ear, and his great white eyes.… Poor creature, I am sorry for him when he is not in a passion, for then he has a very melancholy expression.” Clay could find Calhoun more than a little tiresome, even self-dramatic. Calhoun, Clay said, seemed “careworn, with furrowed brow, haggard and intensely gazing, looking as if he were dissecting the last abstraction which sprung from the metaphysician’s brain, and muttering to himself, in half-uttered tones, ‘This is indeed a real crisis.’ ”
When Calhoun was done, Webster, who favored the Force Bill, rose. “The people of the United States are one people,” he said. “They are one in making war, and one in making peace; they are one in regulating commerce, and one in laying duties of imposts. The very end and purpose of the Constitution was to make them one people in these particulars; and it has effectually accomplished its object.”
The next day, Sunday, February 17, Jackson wrote Poinsett: “The bill granting the powers asked will pass into law. Mr. Webster replied to Mr. Calhoun yesterday, and, it is said, demolished him. It is believed by more than one that Mr. C. is in a state of dementation—his speech was a perfect failure; and Mr. Webster handled him as a child.”
“WELL, CLAY, THESE are fine fellows,” Delaware senator John Clayton remarked, gesturing toward Calhoun and his followers. “It won’t do to let old Jackson hang them. We must save them.” What emerged was the Compromise of 1833, in which there was tariff reform for the South (though with higher rates over a longer period of time than many Southerners would have liked), a Force Bill for the nationalists, and distribution of public land revenues for the West (Jackson pocket vetoed this last measure). Clay’s tariff bill very gradually lowered duties over the next decade. This was, in Clay’s words, the olive branch to the sword of the Force Bill.
The debate had provided Calhoun, Webster, and Clay an enormous stage, and they jousted with skill and verve. In telling the story of nullification, many historians have understandably portrayed Clay as the hero of the piece—“the Great Compromiser” at work. Even his enemies saw him in this light. John Randolph of Roanoke, a Southerner who had long opposed Clay, recognized the significance of Clay’s achievement in reconciling the conflicting interests. “Help me up,” said the dying Randolph as Clay spoke one day. “I have come here to hear that voice.” Webster is depicted as the thundering defender of Union, Calhoun as the tortured advocate for the states. When he makes an appearance, Jackson is sometimes painted the way his contemporary enemies (mistakenly) thought of him—as a trigger-happy warrior raging against Calhoun in the White House, eager to march south and fight.
It takes nothing away from Clay’s justified renown as a statesman to say that Jackson has not always been given his due for his own conduct in the crisis. Far from being a warmonger, Jackson was the first player in the drama to propose reforming the tariff; the Verplanck bill came from Treasury Secretary McLane, with Jackson’s approval.
Had Jackson been truly unwilling to compromise, he would have found the means to use military force against South Carolina. He held back only when he chose to hold back, and struck only when he chose to strike. He had an intuitive sense of timing that served him well, and this capacity to find the right moment for action never served America better than it did in the winter of 1832–33.
Operating on two levels, Jackson projected an image of strength while looking for a way out. In the White House, Jackson summoned senators to urge this maneuver and that device as the tariff bill made its way through Congress. Even at his most hawkish, Jackson was clear that he would resort to violence only after the South Carolinians did, not before. “I beg of you not to be disturbed by any thing you hear from the alarmists at this place,” he wrote Van Buren, adding: “Be assured that I have and will act with all … forbearance.”
Jackson sought the preservation of the Union, not personal vengeance; a powerful presidency, not a military dictatorship. He achieved that on Saturday, March 2, 1833, when he signed both the compromise tariff and the Force Bill into law. “We have beat the Nullifiers and things are quiet for a time—I verily thought we should have had a struggle and a short civil war, and was prepared once more to take the field,” Joel Poinsett wrote a friend on Monday, March 25, 1833. “I was exceedingly indignant with these Radicals and rather desired to put them down with a strong arm.… I have fought the good fight manfully and zealously, and now I am laying out grounds and making a garden.”
Poinsett was not alone in seeking ways to recover his strength. The toll of the season, and of the congressional session, had been heavy, and Henry Clay crashed with what he called “the most violent cold I ever had.”
JACKSON WAS, AS ever, vigilant yet optimistic. “Keep me constantly advised of matters relating to the conduct or movements of the nullifiers,” he wrote Poinsett on Wednesday, March 6, “and all will be well, and the federal union preserved.” Two months afterward, on Wednesday, May 1, 1833, Jackson observed in a letter that “the tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.” Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment.