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CHAPTER XX – THE GENERAL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE

THIS is of a steamboat day, and keel boats are but a memory. The General makes his tedious eight-weeks’ way to Washington via the Cumberland, the Ohio, the mountains, and the Potomac valley. It is like the progress of a conqueror. The people throng about him until Wizard Lewis, remembering his broken state, fears for his life. The fears are without grounds to stand on. Applause never kills, and the General finds in it the milk of lions. He enters Washington renewed, and was never so fit for hard work. The General is inaugurated. As he is cheered into the White House by jubilant thousands, Statesman Clay, beaten and bitter, retires to Kentucky; while Statesman Adams goes back to Massachusetts, where his ice-waterisms, let us hope, will be appreciated, and from which frigid region he ought never to have been drawn.

When the General is declared President, Statesman Calhoun is made Vice-President. From his high perch in the Senate Statesman Calhoun begins at once to scan the plain of the possible for ways and means to name himself the General’s successor. He proves dull in the furtherance of his ambitions, and conceives that the only best path to victory lies over the General himself. He must break down that demigod in the hearts of the people, and teach them to hate where now they trust and love.

The General is not a day in Washington before Statesman Calhoun is intriguing to cut the ground of popularity from beneath his feet. As frequently happens with dark-lantern strategists, his plottings in their very inception go off on the wrong foot. Statesman Calhoun is so foolish as to commence his campaign against the General with an attack upon a woman. The woman thus malevolently distinguished is the pretty Peg, once belle of the Indian Queen.

Between that time when the General came last to Washington as Senator and the pretty Peg was petted and loved by the blooming Rachel, and now when the General occupies the White House as President, destiny has been moving rapidly and not always gayly with the pretty Peg. In that interim she becomes the wife of Purser Timberlake of the Navy, who later cuts his drunken throat and walks overboard to his drunken death in the Mediterranean.

In her widow’s weeds the pretty Peg looks prettier than before – since black is ever the best setting for beauty, and shows it off like a diamond. Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee and per incident friend of the General, is smitten of the pretty Peg, and marries her. The wedding bells are ringing as the General rides into Washington.

It is an hour wherein Vice-Presidents have more to say than they will later on. Statesman Calhoun, scheming his own advantage, puts forward covert efforts to place his friends about the General as cabineteers. This is not so difficult; since the General is not thinking on Statesman Calhoun. His eyes, hate-guided, are fastened upon Statesman Adams and Statesman Clay; his single aim is to advance no follower of theirs. These are happy conditions for Statesman Calhoun, who comes up unseen on the General’s blind side, and presents him – all unnoticed – with three of his Cabinet six.

Statesman Calhoun, who prefers four to three, next tries all he secretly knows to control the General’s choice of a War Secretary. In this he meets defeat; the General selects Major Eaton, just wedded to the pretty Peg. His completed Cabinet includes Van Buren, Secretary of State; Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury; Eaton, Secretary of War; Branch, Secretary of the Navy; Berrien, Attorney General; and Barry, Postmaster General. Of these, Statesman Calhoun, craftily reviewing the list from his perch in the Senate, may call Cabi-neteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien his henchmen.

The General is not aware of this Calhoun color to his Cabinet. The last man of the six hates Statesman Clay and Statesman Adams; which is the consideration most upon the General’s mind. He does not like Statesman Calhoun. But he in no sort suspects him; and, at this crisis of Cabinet making, that plotting Vice-President is not at all upon the General’s slope of thought.

Not content with half the Cabinet, Statesman Calhoun resents privily his failure to control the war portfolio. He resolves to attack Major Eaton, and drive him from the place. As much wanting in chivalry as in a wisdom of the popular, he decides to assail him through the pretty Peg. It is the error of Statesman Calhoun’s career, which now becomes one blundering procession of mistakes.

Statesman Calhoun’s attack on the pretty Peg begins with hidden adroitness. There lives in Philadelphia a smug dominie named Ely. On the merest Calhoun hint in the dark, Dominie Ely – who has a mustard-seed soul – writes the General a letter, wherein he charges the pretty Peg with every immorality. Dominie Ely prayerfully protests against the husband of a woman so morally ebon making one of the General’s official family.

The General is in flames in a moment. His loved and blooming Rachel was stabbed to death by slander! The pretty Peg was the blooming Rachel’s favorite, in that old day at the Indian Queen! The General possesses every angry reason for being aroused, and he sends fiercely for smug Dominie Ely.

The villifying Dominie Ely appears before the General in fear and trembling – color stricken from his fat cheek. He falteringly confesses that he has been inspired to his slanders by a Dominie Campbell. The furious General summons Dominie Campbell, about whom there is a Calhoun atmosphere of jackal and buzzard in even parts. The General hurls pointed questions at Dominie Campbell, and catches him in lies.

While the General is putting to flight the two black-coat buzzards of slander, the war breaks out in a new quarter. The “Ladies of Washington,” compared to whom the Red Stick Creeks at the Horseshoe and the redcoat English at New Orleans are as children’s toys, fall upon the General’s social flank. They hate the pretty Peg because she is more beautiful than they. They resent her as the daughter of a tavern keeper – a common tapster! – who is now being lifted to a social eminence equal with their own. These reasons bring the “Ladies of Washington” to the field. But with militant sapiency they conceal them, and adopt as the pretended cause of their onslaught the slanders of those ophidians, Dominie Ely and Dominie Campbell.

Mrs. Calhoun, wife of Statesman Calhoun, at the head of Capital fashion and social war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington,” says she will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien, wives of the three Cabineteers who wear in private the colors of Statesman Calhoun, say they will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. Mrs. Donelson, wife of the General’s private secretary and ex officio “Lady of the White House,” says she will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. The latter drawing-room Red Stick is the General’s niece. Also, she is in fashionable leading strings to Mrs. Calhoun, who as social war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington” dazzles and benumbs her.

Mrs. Donelson approaches the General concerning the pretty Peg.

“Anything but that, Uncle!” she says. “I am sorry to offend you, but I cannot ‘recognize’ Mrs. Eaton.”

“Then you’d better go back to Tennessee, my dear!” returns the General, between puffs at his clay pipe.

Mrs. Donelson and her unwilling spouse go back to Tennessee. The war against the pretty Peg goes on.

The General’s Cabinet is a house divided against itself. Cabineteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien align themselves with Statesman Calhoun on this issue of the pretty Peg. For each has a ring in his nose, a wedding ring, and his wife leads him about by it socially, hither and yon as she chooses. Cabineteers Van Buren and Barry range themselves with Cabineteer Eaton and the pretty Peg.

Cabineteer Van Buren is short, round, fat, smooth, adroit, ambitious, and so much the mental tree-toad that, now when he is in contact with the positive General, his every opinion takes its color from that warrior. Also Cabineteer Van Buren is a widower, with no wife to lead him socially by the nose. Hat in hand, he calls upon the pretty Peg – a politeness which pleases the General tremendously.

Cabineteer Van Buren gives dinners, and asks the pretty Peg to perform as hostess. With a wise eye on the General, he incites Cabineteer Barry, who is a bachelor, to burst into similar dinners, with the pretty Peg in command. By his suggestion, Minister Vaughn of the English and Minister Krudener of the Russians, who like Cabineteer Barry are bachelors, follow amiable suit. They give legation dinners, at which the pretty Peg presides. The General adopts these brilliant examples with the White House. The pretty Peg finds herself in control of such society high ground as the English and Russian legations, two Cabinet houses besides her own, and last and most important the White House itself. It is a merry even if a savage war, and the pretty Peg is everywhere victorious.

Not everywhere! Mrs. Calhoun, as war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington,” with Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien about her as a staff, refuses to yield. These four indomitables and their beflounced and be-feathered followers, noses uptilted in scorn of the pretty Peg, prosecute their battle to the acrid end.

In the earlier stages, the General, his angry thoughts on Statesman Clay, inclines to the belief that these attacks on the pretty Peg are of that defeated personage’s connivance, and says so to Wizard Lewis.

Wizard Lewis, when the General is inaugurated, is for returning to his Cumberland home, but finds himself restrained by the lonesome General.

“What!” cries the latter, “would you leave me now, after doing more than all the rest to land me here?”

Upon which reproach, Wizard Lewis remains, and lives in the White House with the General. It befalls that with the earliest slanders of the ophidians, Dominie Ely and Dominie Campbell, the General goes to Wizard Lewis with accusations against Statesman Clay.

“It’s that pit-viper, Henry Clay!” cries the General. “Major, the pet employment of that scoundrel is the vindication of good women!”

Wizard Lewis holds to a different view. He declares that the secret impulse of this base war is Statesman Calhoun, and proves it as events unfold.

“And yet,” asks the General, “why should he assail little Peg? Both he and Mrs. Calhoun called upon her and Major Eaton, and congratulated them on their marriage.”

“That was while Major Eaton was a senator,” Wizard Lewis responds, “and before he became War Secretary and got in the way of the Calhoun plans. Your Vice-President, General, is mad to be President. Also, he is so blurred in his strategy as to imagine that these attacks on little Peg will advance his prospects.”

The General snorts suspiciously; a light breaks upon him.

“Then your theory is,” he says, “that Calhoun assails Peg as a step toward the presidency.”

“Precisely, General! Rightly construed, it is not an attack on Peg, but you. He is trying to put you before the people in the role of one who countenances the immoral, and upholds a bad woman. In that he hopes to array every virtuous fireside against you. He looks for you to ask a second term; and, by any means in his power, he will strive to destroy you out of his path.”

“Now, was there ever such infamy!” cries the General. “Here is a man so vile that he would pave his way to the White House with the slain honor of a woman!”

The hate of the General is now focused upon Statesman Calhoun. That ignoble strategist, he resolves, shall never achieve the presidency.

As one wherewith to defeat Statesman Calhoun and succeed himself, the General picks upon Cabineteer Van Buren – that suave one, who is so much to the urbane fore for the pretty Peg.

“Yes, sir,” says the General to Wizard Lewis; “I’ll take a second term! And then, Major, we will make Matt President after me.”

“We’ll do more,” returns Wizard Lewis. “When we elect you President the second time, we’ll shove aside the plotting Calhoun, and make Van Buren Vice-President.”

“Right!” exults the General. “Then, should I die, Matt will at once step into my shoes.”

Neither the General nor Wizard Lewis is at pains to conceal their design. The sallow cheek of Statesman Calhoun grows sallower; for the news is like an icicle through his heart. It in no wise abates his war upon the pretty Peg, however; which – as Wizard Lewis guesses – is only meant to break down the General with good people.

Vindicated; in all quarters she rises in triumph over Mrs. Calhoun, Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, Mrs. Berrien, and what other “society Red Sticks” – as he terms them – seek her destruction. The next thing is to shear away the cabinet strength of Statesman Calhoun. Wizard Lewis recommends a dissolution of the Cabinet. He lays his thought before the General, who sits listening in the smoke of his long pipe. Cabineteer Van Buren will resign. Cabi-neteers Eaton and Barry will emulate his example and turn over their portfolios. With half his Cabinet gone, should the Calhoun three prove backward, the General shall demand their portfolios.

“And then?” asks the General, his iron-gray head in a cloud of tobacco smoke.

CHAPTER XXI – WIZARD LEWIS URGES A CHANGE IN FRONT

WIZARD LEWIS, bending his brows to the situation, now counsels an extreme step.

“Then you will make Van Buren Minister to England, and give Major Eaton the governorship of Florida. Little Peg should look well in the palace at St. Augustine.”

“By the Eternal!” cries the General, as he hurls his clay pipe into the fireplace where hundreds of its brittle predecessors have gone crashing – “by the Eternal, we’ll do it! The last vestige of a Calhoun cabinet influence shall be wiped out!”

It comes to pass as Wizard Lewis programmes. Cabineteer Van Buren resigns, and Cabineteers Eaton and Barry hasten to follow his lead. The three other cabineteers sit dazed; the suddenness of the thing takes away their cabinet breaths. They sit dazed so long that the General loses patience and asks for their portfolios. One by one they hand them in, as it were at the White House door – Cabineteer Ingham being last and most reluctant of all.

There be tears and mournful wailings now among the society Red Sticks. Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien are shaken in their social souls, never for one moment having foreseen this movement in disastrous flank. However, there is no help for it. The deposed three wash off their social war paint, and go their divers ways lamenting; while the General and Wizard Lewis grin sourly over their fireside pipes. As for Statesman Calhoun, his schemes experience a chill; for in thus sending Cabineteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien into political exile, the General drives a knife to the very heart of his selfish diplomacy.

Cabinet wiped out, the General constructs another, with his old-time friend and comrade Livingston as Secretary of State. Also, the agreeable Van Buren departs for the Court of St. James as the General’s envoy to England, while Major Eaton and the villified yet victorious Peg wend southward among the flowers to rule over Florida.

Before he leaves Washington, the ill-used Eaton makes praiseworthy attempts to fasten a duel upon ex-Cabineteer Ingham, who hires a whole stage coach and gallops off to Baltimore – the fear of death upon him – to avoid being sacrificed. The flight of ex-Cabineteer Ingham is a shock to the General.

“I knew he was a bad, designing man,” says the General with a sigh; “but, upon my soul, Major, I didn’t think him a coward!”

Statesman Calhoun, weaker by virtue of that Cabinet lopping off, is still too narrowly set in his White House ambitions to give up the war. In this he is much sustained by the Senate, which jealous body pretends to possess its own causes of complaint. Chief among these is the obvious manner in which the General promotes the importance of that old fox, Colonel Burr. The General shows that he cares more for the appointment-indorsement of Colonel Burr than for the recommendations of half the Senate. This does not set well on the proud senatorial stomachs of the togaed ones; and, with Statesman Calhoun to lead them, they are willing to obstruct and baffle the General in his policies. Moved of this spirit, and at the instigation of Statesman Calhoun, the Senate refuses to confirm the appointment of Minister Van Buren – a Burrite – who thereupon makes his farewell unruffled bow to the great ones at St. James and returns amiably home.

That Thomas Benton, who was so fortunate as to fall into a receptive cellar on a certain Nashville occasion when the muzzle of the General’s saw-handle was at his breast, and who is now in the Senate from Missouri, gives Statesman Calhoun notice of what he may expect:

“You have broken a minister,” observes the farsighted Benton – “you have broken a Minister to make a Vice-President.”

While the slander battle against the pretty Peg is raging, a storm cloud of a different character is gathering over the General. Although Statesman Clay has no part in that war upon the pretty Peg, he by no means sits with folded hands in idleness.

There is a certain money-creature called the United States Bank. It is controlled by one Biddle of Philadelphia. Banker Biddle is a glistening, serpentine personage, oily and avaricious – a polished composite of assurance, greed, and lies. He is a proven and unscrupulous corruptionist, and a majority of both Senate and House wait upon his money-bidding. Under the Biddle influence, the Bank never fails to consider the mere “name” of a Congressman as perfect collateral for a loan. Even so incorrigible a bankrupt as the lion-faced Webster is good at the Biddle Bank for thousands.

Secure in its hold on Congress, and insolent – as Money ever is when it feels secure – the Biddle Bank thinks to crack a political whip. The main bank is in Philadelphia. There are twenty-five branch banks scattered here and there throughout the country. In pursuance of its determination to dominate politics, the Biddle Bank suddenly refuses loans to the General’s friends. Banker Biddle and the Bank are secretly moved to these doughty attitudes by Statesman Clay, who, with his party of the Whigs, has for long been their ally.

Statesman Clay, in possession of the machinery of his party, is resolved to put his own name forward at the head of the next Whig ticket against the formidable General. He foresees that Statesman Calhoun – who is of the General’s party of the Democrats – will come to utter grief in his intrigues to supplant the General and make himself a candidate. And yet, the blue-grass Machiavelli can use Statesman Calhoun. The latter is powerful with the Senate. The Senate hates the General as blindly as does Statesman Calhoun.

Machiavelli Clay resolves to have advantage of this double condition of hatred. He will beguile the General to attack the Biddle Bank. The attack can only be made by message to Congress. That should be the opportunity of Machiavelli Clay. He will have the Senate for the battle ground; and it shall go hard if he do not emerge with the General defeated and the Bank and Banker Biddle at his back. With such friends in the campaign to come later he should have the General and his party of democracy at his mercy. Thus dreams Machiavelli Clay.

It is a beautiful dream – this long-drawn chicane of Machiavelli Clay. As a move toward its realization he suggests the policy of a loan hostility toward the General’s friends; for the General will fight almost as quickly for a friend as for a woman.

Banker Biddle adopts it, and the Bank develops it in Portsmouth. The paper of one of the General’s friends – a Mr. Isaac Hill – is dishonored, and the General’s friendship is understood to be the reason. The thing is managed like a challenge, and has the instant effect of bringing the General – ever ready for such a war – to the field. In its invidious attitude toward his friends, the Bank throws down the glove; and the General promptly picks it up. In a message to Congress, he assails the Bank; and the fight is on.

Money is always a coward, and commonly a fool. Also its instinct is the weak instinct of corruption. Its attitude toward a public is ever that of the threatening, bullying, bragging terrorist, who will either rule or ruin. It works by fear, and resorts to every quack device. It will gnash its jaws, lash its tail, spout fire and smoke in the face of a quailing world. And yet all this tail-lashing and jaw-gnashing and fire-spouting is a sham. Money, for all its appearance of ferocity, is no more perilous to folk who face it than is the fire-spouting, jaw-gnashing, tail-lashing papier-maché dragon of grand opera. Attack it, and what follows? A couple of rueful supernumeraries crawl abjectly, if grumblingly, from its papier-maché stomach – the complete yet harmless reason of the jaw-gnashing, fire-spouting, tail-lashing from which a frightened world shrunk back.

Besides these furious matters, Money does another lying thing. It seeks to teach the public to regard it as the palpitant heart of the country itself.

“I am the seat of life!” cries Money. “Touch me, and you die!”

The advantage of this lie is clear; that is, if the lie win credit. Being the heart, however corrupt, no law surgery may reach it. If Money were the hand of a people, or the fingers on that hand, then it might be dealt with. It could be statute-lanced or poulticed or even amputated, and no threat to life ensue. Money foresees this; and, with that lying cunning which is ever the scoundrel sword and shield of cowards, it declares itself to be the heart. Thus is it safeguarded against the honest least correction of communal saw and knife. Being the heart, its vileness may be deplored but cannot be mended. For who is the mediciner that shall handle the heart to any result save death?

And yet while Money thus proclaims itself the nation’s heart it lies. It is not even so reputable a member as the hand. At the most it comes to be no more than just a thumb, or a forefinger, and the farthest possible remove from any source of life. Folk who would aid their money-throttled hour must remember these things.

Banker Biddle and the Bank, now when the General advances upon them, go through that furious charlatanry of jaw-gnashing, tail-lashing, and fire-spouting. The General is unconvinced, unterrified. His hawk eyes pierce the miserable masquerade. He knows the Bank for a dragon of paper and pretense, and does not hesitate.

Failing to arouse his personal-political fear, Banker Biddle and the Bank attempt to stay the General by proclaiming a peril to the country at large.

“We are the throbbing heart of all prosperity!” they cry.

The General recognizes the lie. He knows that prosperity comes from the rain and the sun and the soil, and not from banks or bankers. As well might the two-bushel sacks declare themselves to be the harvest reason of a nation’s wheat. The General continues his advance. There shall be no evasion, no hiding, no safety by lies; masks are not to avail nor pretenses protect.

The General in his attack on Banker Biddle and the Bank displays a genius even with that which he employed against the English at New Orleans. Banker Biddle and the Bank are the petted custodians of all the millions of Government. The General “removes” those millions – a yellow mountain of gold! Incidentally, he dismisses a weak-kneed Secretary of the Treasury as a preliminary.

“Remove the deposits!” says the General.

“I dare not!” whines the weak-kneed one.

“I will take the responsibility!” urges the General.

Still the weak-kneed one falters. At that the General sets him aside.

The “removal” of those Government millions, which is as the drawing off of half their life blood, leaves the Bank and Banker Biddle exceeding pale in the face. They look appealingly at Statesman Clay, who, the better to manage his side of the conflict, has taken a Kentucky seat in the Senate. Statesman Clay encourages the Bank and Banker Biddle. It will all come right, he says; there is a Senate bomb preparing.

To bring the General squarely before the public as the Bank’s destroyer, Statesman Clay anticipates the years and offers a measure renewing the charter of that money temple. Statesman Calhoun, with every Senate foe of the General, is for it. The measure gallops through both Senate and House. It is sent whirling to the White House.

“Will he sign it?” wonders Statesman Clay, in consultation with his own thoughts.

For an anxious moment Statesman Clay fears the coming of that signature; he cannot conceive of courage greater than his own. His anxiety is misplaced. The General will not sign. When the Clay-constructed measure renewing the charter of the Bank is laid before him, with about what ado might attend the killing of a garter snake he breaks its back with his veto.

Statesman Clay rubs his satisfied hands.

“Now,” says he to Banker Biddle, who is becoming a bit weak, “we have him helpless! That veto is his death warrant! The campaign is at hand; I shall be the candidate of my party, he of his. That veto shall be the issue! Money, you know, is all powerful. Being so, who shall doubt the result when now the public is driven to choose between the Bank and the White House – Prosperity and Andrew Jackson?”