CHAPTER 27
BY AUGUST, EMILY was in Nashville, and, a decade into their marriage, she and Andrew turned their attention to the construction of the first home of their own: a splendid brick house to be named Poplar Grove. It was to be built about a mile from the Hermitage, designed by Joseph Reiff and William Hume (John Coffee had weighed in on the design as well). The proximity to Jackson’s own seat was both a sign of their mutual affection and a suggestion that after the White House, Donelson, who had now been at Jackson’s side for nearly a dozen years, would remain an essential member of the circle. As the house was being built, Emily managed the details, rearranging the windows when she found they were in the wrong places and ordering that the fireplaces be widened. She kept a crate of her china close at hand, in the cellar of the Hermitage, awaiting the day it could be moved down to a finished Poplar Grove.
That china was very nearly a casualty of calamity in the second week of October, when fire broke out at the Hermitage, destroying a good deal of Jackson’s beloved house. The fire began in the chimney, and a northwest wind spread the flames across the roof. It was an accident, and Sarah Yorke Jackson, who had been out riding, had returned to the house; Andrew junior was on the farm. “Oh, had I been there, it might have been prevented,” he wrote. “The cursed Negroes were all so stupid and confused that nothing could be done until some white one came to their relief.” In fact, the slaves who were on hand were critical in saving what they could. In Stockley Donelson’s account of the episode to Jackson, Sarah “acted with firmness and gave every necessary direction to save the furniture.”
Sarah and Andrew junior were distraught, but Jackson was stoic. God, he wrote to his son, had given him “the means to build it, and he has the right to destroy it, and blessed be his name. Tell Sarah [to] cease to mourn its loss. I will have it rebuilt.” In Rachel’s memory he would not move the house or rebuild elsewhere on the farm. “Was it not on the site selected by my dear departed wife I would build it higher up the hill, but I will have it repaired.”
He gave orders about construction and moving ahead, but he was mildly depressed about the loss of furniture, papers, and other mementos. His life had been spent in pursuit of domestic order, and now fate had intervened. In the White House, writing to his son, his mind drifted to the probable loss of some of the bright things of life. “I suppose all the wines in the cellar have been destroyed, with Mrs. Donelson’s box of china,” he wrote with a touch of gloom. (The china was fine.) “Give me as accurate an account of the loss of furniture as you can at as early a period as possible.” He would move forward. He always did.
THE FRENCH REMAINED a problem. On Wednesday, October 22, 1834, John Forsyth, the new secretary of state, met with Sérurier. “The President was deeply hurt that a treaty ratified three years ago was still not carried out,” Sérurier reported Forsyth as saying. “Contrary to [Jackson’s] natural tendencies, he had been patient for a long time now, counting on justice in France and my promises. However, the moment had come to speak out, and in front of everyone.”
Behind the scenes, Jackson was ready for combat. The Cabinet secretaries were reluctant to endorse an unflinching stand on the French issue, but Jackson dismissed their concerns. “No, gentlemen,” he said, “I know them.… They won’t pay unless they’re made to.” In his annual message, sent to Congress on Monday, December 1, Jackson spent seventeen paragraphs describing foreign affairs, almost entirely cheerful and optimistic in tone. Then, in the eighteenth, he came to the French.
“It becomes my unpleasant duty to inform you that this pacific and highly gratifying picture of our foreign relations does not include those with France at this time,” he wrote. The United States was “wholly disappointed” with the French approach to the treaty of 1831. Jackson believed “the whole civilized world must pronounce France to be in the wrong.” Should the Chamber not authorize payment at its next session, Jackson would ask Congress for a law approving “reprisals upon French property” as a means of demonstrating the “inflexible determination on the part of the United States to insist on their rights.” And should France answer in kind if reprisals became necessary, France “would but add violence to injustice, and could not fail to expose herself to the just censure of civilized nations and to the retributive judgments of Heaven.”
SO THERE IT was: Jackson’s vision of what the preservation of America’s national honor required. “Threats are far from being avoided, and the worst possible measures are proposed,” Sérurier told Paris on December 2. “General Jackson, weary of his long constraint … gives way to his bad disposition. His flatterers tell him that nothing can resist him.” Three days later, after gauging reaction to the message, Sérurier fell back on the caricature of Jackson as a man beyond reason. “It is generally agreed … that this rash message, at least regarding France and its proposed measures, is entirely Jackson’s work.” The president, Sérurier said, could not be stopped: his “iron will subdued all resistance.”
Christmas Day 1834, Emily said, was “very cold and disagreeable.” The tensions with France consumed Jackson and his top men, including Forsyth. They were so busy that Emily dined alone with Mrs. Forsyth on Christmas Eve. While Emily was writing home on this dark Christmas Day, Louis Sérurier was composing a coded message to Paris, writing of war:
If we have war with the U.S., it will be very important to win the first round. This war will not be popular here: southern planters, shipowners, northern navigators … will all be against it. War would bring stupendous prestige, but only for a fleeting moment—acting upon the masses as those who … areled by a rash and adventurous ruler with an iron will.…
To ensure that we win this first round—so important for American public opinion in order to halt the outburst of their juvenile vanity—I would believe it desirable that the Minister of the Navy, at the first serious indication that war is imminent with this republic, arm 4–5 of our best frigates with a crew of our most elite seamen, commanded by officers known for their boldness and their knowledge of the sea … [and] that they should be ordered to look for American frigates and engage them in battle.…
There was one spot of hope: General Lafayette had died during the summer, and the American reaction was warm and widespread. Members of Congress decided to wear black armbands for a month of mourning; John Quincy Adams was asked to give a funeral oration in the House. “Never since Washington’s death has there been such an outpouring of public sympathy,” Sérurier wrote. “Americans have their faults, and I have pointed them out on occasion. However, they are certainly not an ungrateful people, at least in regard to the noble and first foreign champion of their independence.” On New Year’s Eve, Adams rose in the House to pay tribute to Lafayette as a crucial friend of the Republic.
The sentimental warmth of the occasion did not last long. Two weeks later, on Wednesday, January 14, 1835, the king of France recalled Sérurier home to Paris—a vivid diplomatic gesture underscoring the rising hostilities. Sérurier had predicted a harsh French reaction to Jackson’s words, and he was being proved right. “The impression that President Jackson’s message produced here in France is as you foresaw,” Count de Rigny, the French minister of foreign affairs, wrote Sérurier. “The king’s government, obviously, could not counter such an injurious procedure except by an equally dazzling demonstration.” De Rigny had summoned Edward Livingston, the American envoy to Paris, to inform him of the move the night before, and “passports will be at his disposal in case he feels he must leave. Such are the measures that his Majesty has deemed necessary to maintain the dignity of France.”
THE AMERICAN BILL, which was finally presented to the Chamber on Thursday, January 15, 1835, was amended in light of Jackson’s remarks. A new clause said that “all or part” of the 25 million francs could be used “to compensate French citizens for the losses caused by the measures adopted by the U.S.” By the time the bill had made its way through the French legislature, there was an additional requirement before the money would be paid to Washington: the United States, the Duc de Broglie, the current French minister of foreign affairs, wrote on Wednesday, June 17, 1835, must explain “the true meaning and real purport of divers passages inserted by the President in his message at the opening of the last session of Congress, and at which all France … was justly offended.” Jackson, France said, had to offer “new testimony to the good faith of the French government.”
Paris had misjudged Washington—and, for once, Jackson was not alone in his resolve. In the House, John Quincy Adams rallied to his foe’s side.
Sir, this treaty has been ratified on both sides of the ocean; it has received the sign manual of the sovereign of France, through his Imperial Majesty’s principal Minister of State; it has been ratified by the Senate of this republic; it has been sanctioned by Almighty God; and still we are told … that the arrogance of France—nay, sir, not of France, but of her Chamber of Deputies—the insolence of the French Chambers must be submitted to, and we must come down to the lower degradation of reopening negotiations to attain that which has already been acknowledged to be our due! Sir, is this a specimen of your boasted chivalry? Is this an evidence of the existence of that heroic valor which has so often led our arms on to glory and immortality? Reopen negotiations, sir, with France? Do it, and soon you will find your flag insulted, dishonored, and trodden in the dust by the pygmy States of Asia and Africa—by the very banditti of the earth.
Sir Charles Vaughan told London that the French were misreading Jackson. “The President told me that he should consider any concession on his part, at this moment, as compromising the honor of his country.” From the White House, Jackson said the suggestion that he would apologize in writing was absurd—“wholly inadmissible.”
There was also news, Jackson said, “of naval preparations on the part of France destined for our seas.” Congress should consider, then, a trade and shipping embargo against France. America would not be caught off guard. Jackson asked for “large and speedy appropriations for the increase of the Navy and the completion of our coastal defenses,” for, he added, “come what may, the explanation which France demands can never be accorded, and no armament, however powerful and imposing, at a distance or on our coast, will, I trust, deter us from discharging the high duties which we owe to our constituents, our national character, and to the world.”
Things seemed to be at an impasse, with the French nation and Andrew Jackson standing opposite each other, unblinking. But there had been part of a sentence in his December 1835 annual message to Congress that could serve as a face-saving measure for the French. Amid his strident rhetoric, Jackson had said: “The conception that it was my intention to menace or insult the Government of France is … unfounded.…” At this point, Britain, fearing that a war between France and the United States would be pointlessly disruptive, stepped in to play a mediating role, and both sides accepted the offer. On February 8, 1836, Jackson suspended his call for an embargo but reiterated the need for military preparations—just in case.
In these weeks Thomas P. Barton, Livingston’s aide in France, returned to Washington and arrived at the White House to brief Jackson, Van Buren, and Secretary of State Forsyth. In a conversation Barton related to James Parton, Jackson was at once testy but curious. “Tell me, sir, do the French mean to repay that money?” Jackson asked.
“General Jackson, I am sorry to inform you that they do not.”
“There, gentlemen!” Jackson said to Van Buren and Forsyth. “What have I told you all along?” He paused and, Parton reports, “strode up and down the room several times in a state of extreme excitement.” He stopped and asked Barton: “What do they say about it, sir? What excuse do they give?”
“I verily believe, General, that down to a recent period, the French government was trifling with us.”
Jackson jumped up. “Do you hear that, gentlemen? Trifling with us! My very words. I have always said so.”
“I mean by trifling with us,” Barton went on, “that they thought the treaty was a matter of no great importance, and one which was not pressing, and would not be pressed by the United States. It could be attended to this year, or next year—it was of small consequence which.”
Parton then paraphrased the crux of Barton’s explanation: “The exchargé proceeded to say that the popular opposition to the payment of the indemnity had risen to such a height in France that any ministry that should pay it before the President had apologized would not only lose their places but subject themselves to impeachment. There was no man in France who would dare encounter the odium of attempting it. The king would endanger his throne if he should give it his sanction.… The king, the ministry, the capitalists, and all reflecting persons sincerely desired to avoid a collision with the United States, from which France could gain nothing that she desired to gain. But the people were mad; and no one could predict how far the government might be compelled to yield to their fury.”
ACCORDING TO PARTON’S account, hearing these points helped soothe “the irritation of [Jackson’s] mind.” But why? Though Jackson would endure no insult, as a politician himself, this firsthand account of the popular forces bearing down on Louis Philippe and his government may have helped him see the issue in more measured perspective. It was not that the king was heedlessly courting controversy with the United States, but that the French people had taken it up, and Jackson well knew that the management of public opinion was a complicated business.
The British resolved the matter quickly. France chose to take the conciliatory line of Jackson’s from December as apology enough, and the matter was settled: France would pay its debt. The episode over, Jackson used the occasion to remind Americans that while war did not come this time, it remained an inevitable element in the lives of nations, especially great nations. On Monday, February 22, 1836, in a message to Congress, Jackson quoted George Washington: “There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times, ready for war.”
Andrew Jackson, at least, always was.