PART III
1834 to the End
CHAPTER 25
WORD OF THE insult from Paris, in the form of dispatches from Edward Livingston, arrived aboard the Liverpool in early May 1834. As Jackson and McLane absorbed the news, Louis Sérurier, France’s minister in Washington, struggled to figure out what to do. He had promised the Americans resolution, but was now the representative of a government that had chosen to ignore, at least for the moment, its obligations to the United States. Thinking of “the President’s fiery character, his cruel disappointment, and his own personal political situation at the moment”—the censure vote was six weeks old—Sérurier called on McLane at the State Department.
“I was informed that the President and the Secretary of State had received the dispatches … that the President was incensed, and that they were talking about a message to Congress on the following Monday concerning our legislature’s decision,” Sérurier wrote Paris on Sunday, May 11, 1834. “It would no longer be discussed on a purely monetary basis, but would be treated as a question of national honor and injured pride.”
The moment evoked uncomfortable memories. Europe and America had been here before. Jackson’s reaction “is what I feared the most,” Sérurier added, “as I recall that in treating the question on the same basis in 1812, Mr. Madison brought about Congress’ declaration of war on England.” Could it happen again?
Separately, a friend of Jackson’s—unnamed in Sérurier’s correspondence—came to see the Frenchman and echoed McLane’s analysis. The president, the friend said, “was deeply irritated at the unexpected turn of events.” But it was less the money, the friend said, than the motives behind the vote. “He told me that, for the President, the latest vote of the French legislature indicated that … the treaty was violated—a glaring refusal to make amends—and for him, personally, the pressing duty to protect his fellow citizens against an insulting refusal of justice” was now before him. Though Sérurier tried to explain that the decision was driven by internal French politics, not a desire to embarrass the United States, he found his caller unmoved. “But this will have serious consequences, replied my visitor, and the President, with all the calm that his astonishment allows him to muster, is now deliberating over what should be his duty to his country.”
McLane made the same point to Sérurier. The French decision, McLane said, “had hit the President like a thunderbolt and … he was still dizzy from it.” Sérurier’s day only got worse. As he arrived home, he noticed a horseman stopping at his door. It was Henry Clay, in a fury. In the space of a few hours, the worst of American political enemies, Jackson and Clay, seemed united on one thing: France had wronged the United States, and France would retreat—or else.
“Well, he said to me, so you want war,” Sérurier wrote of Clay’s remarks to him. “This is a case for war if anything is. You will have it if you persevere. We are a proud people, M. Sérurier. You ought to know that. We do not deserve to be insulted and scorned, and there is contempt for us in your Chamber’s vote.”
CLAY’S REMARKS, SÉRURIER told the Kentucky senator, were not the kind of thing one says to one’s friends. Perhaps, replied Clay, but Paris had put the two nations in dangerous territory. “You are the last people on earth, replied Mr. Clay, as he shook my hand, that I would want to go to war with, but honor admits no distinctions between one’s adversaries.”
The two continued their conversation that evening at the Clays’. Sérurier pleaded with Clay to help him moderate the war of words before things went too far. The Americans did not have a monopoly on pride, and should Washington overreact to the French vote, Paris might have no choice but to respond harshly, and matters could escalate even further. “Above all, Mr. Clay, avoid threats,” Sérurier said. “There is nothing to be gained by this kind of language, and it would cut any negotiations short.”
Clay closed the exchange on a gentle but far from conclusive note. “I promise you that, together with my friends, we will do everything we can to avoid all warlike proposals, and I hope that I may succeed.”
Nine days after Sérurier’s encounters with Clay, the Frenchman made his first visit to the White House since the news of the Chamber’s adjournment. “It was a tricky situation,” Sérurier wrote. He was prepared for any eventuality. He would be patient, and “had decided to counter any anger or threats with cold respect.” But Jackson was not yet ready to strike, and Sérurier reported that “I didn’t have to use any of my defensive weapons.” Everything was correct—painfully so, to Sérurier, who knew the calm could not last.
“The President was very cold, but very polite, and spoke little to me, and only in generalities,” Sérurier said. “He made no reference to the treaty. During the half-hour I spent in his living room, his attitude was one of great dignity … but the explosion is only just being delayed.” A month later, on June 20, 1834, Sérurier and his wife visited the White House to, as Sérurier put it, “take the political temperature.” Jackson was again kind, and “his circle of friends seemed struck by this”—a small detail suggesting that Jackson was saying and thinking quite unkind things about the French when the minister was not in the room. Speaking with subtlety, Jackson told Sérurier, “I have always loved France, and it would only be with the deepest sorrow that I would have to change my feelings.” But he would, as always, do what he had to do.