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CHAPTER XII – THE DOWNFALL OF MACHIAVELLI CLAY

MACHIAVELLI CLAY is one who looks seldom from the window and often in the glass. No man carries himself more upon the back of his own regard than does Machiavelli Clay. He believes in the wisdom of the classes, the ignorance of the masses, and thinks that government should be of people, by statesmen, for statesmen. Also he has a profound respect for Money, and little for perishing flesh and blood. As to each of these thought-conditions he lives in head-on collision with the General, who in all things is his precise contradiction.

As a guide by which the popular view may direct itself, Machiavelli Clay asks the Senate to pass a vote of censure upon the General. With the help of Statesman Calhoun, he puts it through. The Clay-invoked “censure” strikes these sparks from the General:

“Major,” he cries, thinking on his saw-handles as he and Wizard Lewis sit with their evening pipes, “if I live to get these robes of office off, I may yet bring that rascal to a dear account.”

Banker Biddle, now when his precious Bank for its life or death will be made the campaign issue, is not without those pale misgivings which ever shake the livid heart of Money on the eve of war. Observing this knee-knocking trepidation, Machiavelli Clay attempts to give him courage. This is no difficult task for Machiavelli Clay to undertake; since, in his native ignorance of the popular, he harbors no doubt of the General’s downfall. Also he extends cheering word the more readily to the quaking Banker Biddle, because the latter and his jeopardized Bank are to furnish those golden sinews of war, which will be required for the Whig campaign.

Machiavelli Clay uplifts the confidence of Banker Biddle to a point where the latter, from his money lair in Philadelphia, writes him the following:

“He (the General) has all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars of its cage – a condition which I think should contribute to relieve the country of the tyranny of this miserable man. You, my dear sir, are destined to be the instrument of that deliverance, and at no period of your life has the public had a deeper stake in you.”

In so writing to Machiavelli Clay, Banker Biddle permits his hopes to overrun his intelligence. Machiavelli Clay is not to become “the deliverer” of his hour, nor shall the “chained panther” in the White House be cast out. Machiavelli Clay, however, is no Elijah gifted of prophecy; but, on the wooden-witted other hand, proves quite as besotted touching the future as does Banker Biddle. He replies to that financier in these words:

“Fear not; there shall come a cleansing of the Augean stables! Our cause cannot fail! That veto of the Bank charter is a broad confession of the incompetency of the Administration, and shows him (the General) unfit to carry on the business of government. I think we are authorized to confidently anticipate his defeat.”

Now when the candidates of the Democratic party are about to be named, Statesman Calhoun foresees that he himself will be ignored, and ex-Cabineteer Van Buren supplant him, nominationally, for the place of Vice-President.

To save his chagrin, and on the principle that when one is about to be thrown out it is wise to go out, he resigns from his vice-presidential perch, lays down the Senate gavel, and returns to his home-state of South Carolina. Once there, following the Kentucky example of Machiavelli Clay, he sees to it that his own Legislature returns him to Washington as a Senator.

Statesman Calhoun abandons hope of making his appearance as a White House candidate in the campaign at hand. What then? He is of middle years, and can wait. He will lie back and watch the struggle between the General and Machiavelli Clay. Let victory fall where it may, he, Statesman Calhoun, will prepare himself for his own sure triumph in the conflict four years away. Which demonstrates that, while his judgment is crippled, his ambition stands as tall and as straight as a mountain pine.

The tickets are brought to the field – the General against Machiavelli Clay, with ex-Cabineteer Van Buren, and a Whig obscurity named Sargent running for second place. The issue presents the alternative – the General or the Bank, humanity in a death-hug with Money.

Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle have no fears; for they are gold-blind and can see nothing beyond themselves. They are given a rude awakening. The people speak; and when the sound of that speaking dies out, the General has overwhelmed Machiavelli Clay with two hundred and nineteen electoral votes against the latter’s sixty-nine. Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle and the Bank go down, while the General – ever the conqueror and never once the conquered – sweeps back to the presidency. Also ex-Cabineteer Van Buren is made Vice-President, as aforetime resolved upon by the General and Wizard Lewis, and from that Senate eminence, so lately vacated by Statesman Calhoun, will wield the gavel over togaed discussion.

The General, President the second time, picks up the reins, settles himself upon the box, and proceeds to drive his governmental times after this wise. He kills out what few sparks of life still animate the Biddle Bank. He removes the Creeks and Cherokees from Florida and Georgia, and thereby guarantees the scalp on many an innocent head. He throws open the public lands for settlement at nominal figures. He fosters a gold currency and discourages paper.

He pays off the last splinter of the national debt, and offers to the wondering eyes of history the spectacle of a country that doesn’t owe a dollar. He makes commercial treaties with every tribe of Europe. Finally, he compels France to pay five millions in gold for outrages long ago committed upon the sailors of America.

The last is not brought about without some show of force. France, at the General’s demand, falls into a white heat of rage and froths for instant war. The General takes France at her warlike word, notifies Congress, and orders his fleet into the Mediterranean, the flagship Constitution in the van.

The cool vigor of the move sets France gasping. She consults England across the Channel, and is privily assured that whipping a Yankee eighty-gun ship is a feat so difficult of marine accomplishment that, like the blossoming of the century plant, it would be foolish to look for it oftener than once in one hundred years. It is England’s impression, whispered in the Frankish ear, that it will be cheaper to pay the five millions. Whereupon, France breaks into diplomatic smiles, assures the General that her late war-rage was mere humor and her froth a jest. And pays.

By way of a little junket, the General visits New England, and at the genial sight of him that chill region thaws like icicles in July. Indeed, the New England temperature rises to a height where Harvard College confers upon the General the degree of Doctor of Laws. At which Statesman Adams nurses his wrath with this entry in his sour diary:

“Seminaries of learning have been timeservers and sycophants in every age.”

The General has done his people many a service. He has defended them from savage Red Stick Creeks, and savage Red-coat English with their war cry of “Beauty and Booty!” Now he will do his foremost work of all, and buckler them against the javelins of treason, save them from between the jaws of a conspiracy – wolfish and widespread for national destruction.

The conspiracy has its birth in the ambition-crazed bosom of Statesman Calhoun; its shiboleth is “Nullification!”

“I would sooner,” said Caesar, when his courtiers were laughing at the pompous mayor of a little mud town in Spain – “I would sooner be first here than second in Rome!” And, centuries after, the sentiment wakes a responsive echo in the jealous breast of Statesman Calhoun.

Statesman Calhoun aims to follow the General in the headship of American affairs. Defeated of that, he is resolved to sever those constitutional links which bind his home-state of South Carolina to her sister States in Federal Union, and declare her a nation by and of herself.

In his new rôle of “seceder,” Statesman Calhoun makes this impression on the English Harriet Martineau. After speaking of him as involving himself tighter and tighter in spinnings of political mysticism and fantastic speculation, she calls him a “cast-iron man” and says:

“He (Calhoun) is eager, absorbed, overspeculative. I know of no one who lives in such intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues them by the fireside as in the Senate. He is wrought like a piece of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer. He either passes by what you say, or twists it into suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. He is full of his ‘Nullification,’ and those who know the force that is in him and his utter incapacity for modification by other minds, will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never saw anyone who gave me so completely the idea of ‘possession.’”

By which the English woman would say that she thinks Statesman Calhoun insane. She overstates, however, his “incapacity for modification” and “self-retention.” There will come a day when he does not pause, nor close his eyes in sleep, between Washington and his home in South Carolina, such is his fear-spurred eagerness – with the shadow of the gibbet all across him! – to stamp out what fires of treason he has been at pains to kindle, and avoid that halter which the General promises as their reward.

It is in Senate debate that Statesman Calhoun removes the mask from his intended treason, and gives the world a glimpse of its blackness. He threatens, unless the tariff be changed to match his pleasure, that South Carolina will prevent its enforcement within her borders. He declares South Carolina superior to the nation in her powers, and proclaims for her the right to “nullify” what Federal laws she deems inimical to her peculiar interest. He shows how South Carolina will, as against the tariff contemplated, invoke that inherent right to “nullify,” and says, should the Washington government attempt to coerce her, she will take herself out of the Union.

To this exposition of States rights, the General in the White House listens with gathering scorn. He turns to Wizard Lewis:

“Why, sir,” he cries, addressing that Merlin of politics, “if one is to believe Calhoun, the Union is like a bag of meal open at both ends. No matter how you pick it up, the meal all runs out. I shall tie the bag and save the country!”

Treason, however base, will have its friends, and Statesman Calhoun goes not without “Nullification” followers. In his own mischievous State the doctrine is received with open arms. The Governor issues his proclamation; a convention of the people is authorized by the Legislature. They are to meet at Columbia and settle the details of “Nullification” in its practical workings out. They do meet; and adopt unanimously an “Ordinance of Nullification” which declares the tariff just made in Washington “Null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.” They decree that no duties, enjoined by such tariff, shall be paid or permitted to be paid in any port of South Carolina. The closing assertion of the “Ordinance” runs that, should the Government of the United States try by force to collect the tariff duties, “The people of South Carolina will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States, and will proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”

Following this doughty setting-out of what one might call the Palmetto-rattlesnake position, the Governor suggests military associations on the model of the Minute Men of the Revolution, and makes ready for what blood-letting shall be required to sustain Statesman Calhoun in his new preachment. Altogether it is a South Carolina day of bombast and blue cockades, with Statesman Calhoun already chosen as the president of a coming “Southern Confederacy.” While these dour matters are in process of Palmetto transaction, Statesman Hayne encounters the lion-faced Webster on the floor of the Senate, and the latter establishes forever the rightful supremacy of the Federal Union, and demonstrates that the “Nullification” set up by Statesman Calhoun is but the chimera of a jaundiced, ambition-bitten mind. Thus canters the hour in the Senate and in South Carolina; while up in the White House the General sits reading a book.

CHAPTER XXIII – THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED

THE General is reading his book, when in walks Wizard Lewis. The latter necromancer casually alludes to Statesman Calhoun, and his pet infamy of “Nullification.” At this the General’s honest rage begins to mount.

“You bear witness, Major,” he cries – “you bear witness how Calhoun is trying me! But by the living heavens, I’ll uphold the law!” Then, shaking the ponderous tome at Wizard Lewis, his finger marking the place – “Here! I’ve been reading what old John Marshall said in the case of Aaron Burr. He makes treason in its definition as plain as a pikestaff. A man can’t think treason; he can’t talk treason; he can only act treason. It requires an act – an overt act! Calhoun is safe while he only talks or conspires. But let one of his followers perform one act of opposition to the law, even if it be no more than hand on sword hilt or just the snapping of a fireless flint against an empty rifle-pan, and I have him. There would be the overt act demanded by old Marshall; and he goes on to say that the overt act, once committed, attaches to all of the conspirators and becomes the act of each. I shall keep my ear as well as my eye, Major, on Calhoun’s State of South Carolina; and, at the first crackling of a treasonable twig beneath a traitorous foot, into a felon’s cell goes he. Then we shall see what a hempen noose will do for him and his ‘Nullification.’”

The General, the better to deliver this long oration, gets up and walks the floor. Having concluded, down he drops into his chair again, and to grubbing at old John Marshall.

The General and Wizard Lewis decide that a perfect White House silence concerning “Nullification” is the proper course. The General will sit mute, and never by so much as the arching of a bushy brow intimate what he will do, should Statesman Calhoun push his treason to that last extreme – that overt act of opposition to the Federal law and its enforcement, demanded by the great Chief Justice. And so, while arises all this turmoil of treason in the Senate and South Carolina, the White House is as voiceless as a tomb.

While the General is silent, he is in no sort idle. He makes secret preparations to bruise the head of the serpent of secession with a heel of steel. He sends General Scott to South Carolina. Into Castle Pinckney he conveys thousands of rifles. One by one his warships drop into Charleston harbor, until, with broadsides trained upon the town, scores of them ride at ominous anchor.

The General gets word to his ever-reliable Coffee. In those well-nigh twenty years which have come and gone since the English were swept up in fire at New Orleans, the hunting-shirt men in the General’s country of Tennessee have increased and multiplied. Their numbers are such that at the end of twenty days the energetic Coffee stands ready to cataract twenty-five thousand of them into South Carolina at the lifting of the General’s bony finger, and follow these in forty days with twenty-five thousand more. Not content with his fifty thousand hunting-shirt men from Tennessee, the General arranges for an equal force from North Carolina and Georgia.

If ever a people stood within the shadow of doom it is our treason-forging ones of South Carolina in these days of Nullification, Columbia Conventions, Minute Men, and Blue Cockades.

Some of them are not so dim of eye but what they perceive as much, and begin to catch their breath. Still a wrong, once it be set rolling like a stone down hill, is difficult to overtake and stop. So, while the heart of would-be Treason beats a little faster, and its cheek turns a little whiter, as inklings of what the wordless General is doing begin to creep about among Palmetto-rattlesnake coteries, the work of making ready for black revolt proceeds.

In Washington, that grim silence of the White House grows oppressive. There be prudent ones, among the nullifying adherents of Statesman Calhoun, who are willing to play the part of traitor if no peril attend the rôle. They are highly averse to the character if it promise to thrust their sensitive necks into gallows danger. The questions everywhere on the whispering lips of these timid treason mongers are:

“What is the Jackson intention? What will the President do? Will he look upon Nullification as merely some minor sin of politics? Or, will he treat it as stark treason, and fall back on courts and hangman’s ropes?”

No one answers, for no one knows. As for the General himself, his lips are as dumb as a statue’s. Traitors may go wrong, or go right; he will light no lamp for their guidance. The awful suspense is carrying many of the treason mongers to the brink of hysteria. Even Statesman Calhoun, morbid and ambition-mad, is made to pause. He himself begins to wonder if it would not be as well and as wise to measure in advance those iron-bound anti-treason lengths to which the General stands ready to go.

To help them in their perplexity, Statesman

Calhoun and his Nullifying followers evolve a cunning scheme. In its amiable execution, it should lay bare, they think, the purposes of the General. Statesman Calhoun and his coconspirators have long ago laid claim to the dead Jefferson as their patron saint of “Nullification,” asserting that precious tenet to be his invention. They decide to give a dinner in honor of the departed publicist. The dinner shall take place on the dead Jefferson’s birthday at the Indian Queen. The General shall come as a guest. Statesman Calhoun and his co-conspirators will be there. Statesman Calhoun will offer a toast, declaratory of those superior rights over the Federal government which he asserts in favor of the separate States. It shall be a Nullification toast, one redolent of a State’s right to secede from the Federal Union.

Statesman Calhoun having launched his fireship of sentiment, the General will be requested to give a toast. Should he comply, it is believed by Statesman Calhoun and his co-conspirators that he will in partial measure at least unlock his plans. If he refuse – why then, under the circumstances, his refusal will be pregnant of meaning. In either event, he will be beneath the batteries of five hundred eyes, and much should be read in his face.

That Jefferson dinner is an admirable device, one adapted to draw the General’s fire. Its authors go about felicitating themselves upon their sagacity in evolving it.

“What say you, Major?” asks the General, when he receives the invitation upon which so much of national good or ill may pend; “what say you? Shall we humor them? You know what these Calhoun traitors are after.”

“True!” responds Wizard Lewis; “they want to count us, and measure us, in that business of their proposed treason.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” says the General, after a pause. “I’ll fail to attend; but you shall go, and be counted in my stead. Also, since they’ll expect a toast from me, I’ll send them one in your care. I hope they may find it to their villain liking – they and their archtraitor Calhoun!”

The Indian Queen is a crowded hostelry that Jefferson night. The halls and waiting rooms are thronged of eminent folk. Some are there to attend the dinner; others for gossip and to hear the news. As Wizard Lewis climbs the stairs to the banquet room on the second floor, he encounters the lion-faced Webster coming down.

“There’s too much secession in the air for me,” says the lion-faced one, shrugging his heavy shoulders.

“If that be so,” returns Wizard Lewis, “it’s a reason for remaining.”

Wizard Lewis mingles with the groups in the corridors and parlors, for the banquet hall is not yet thrown open. Among these, he nods his recognition of Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky, tall of form, grave of brow, he who slew Tecumseh; Senator Benton, once of that safe receptive cellar; the lean Rufus Choate, eaten of Federalism and the worship of caste; Tom Corwin, round, humorous, with a face of ruddy fun; Isaac Hill, gray and lame, the General’s Senate friend from New Hampshire whose insulted credit started the war on Banker Biddle’s bank; Editor Noah, of New York, as Hebraic and as red of head as Absalom; the quick-eyed Amos Kendall; Editor Blair, who conducts the Globe, the General’s mouthpiece in Washington; the reckless Marcy, who declares that he sees “no harm in the aphorism that ‘to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.’”

The dinner is spread. The decorations are studied in their democracy. Hundreds of candles in many-armed iron branches blaze and gutter about the great room. The high ceilings and the walls are festooned of flags. The stars and stripes are draped over a portrait of the dead Jefferson. Here and there are hung the flags of the several States. With peculiar ostentation, and as though for challenge, next to the national colors flows the Palmetto-rattlesnake flag of South Carolina – Statesman Calhoun’s emblem.

The dinner is profuse, and folk of appetite and fineness declare it elegant. There is none of your long-drawn courses, so dear to Whigs and Federalists. Black servants come and go, to shift plates and knives, and carve at the call of a guest. At hopeful intervals along the tables repose huge sirloins, and steaming rounds of beef. There are quail pies; chickens fried and turkeys roasted; pies of venison and rabbits, and pot pies of squirrels; soups and fishes and vegetables; boiled hams, and giant dishes of earthenware holding baked beans; roast suckling pigs, each with a crab-apple in his jaws; corn breads and flour breads, and pancakes rolled with jellies; puddings – Indian, rice, and plum; mammoth quaking custards. Everywhere bristle ranks and double ranks of bottles and decanters; a widest range of drinks, from whisky to wine of the Cape, is at everybody’s elbow. Also on side tables stand wooden bowls of salads, supported by weighty cheeses; and, to close in the flanks, pies – mince, pumpkin, and apple; with final coffee and slim, long pipes of clay in which to smoke tobacco of Trinidad.

As the guests seat themselves, Chairman Lee proposes:

“The memory of Thomas Jefferson.”

The toast is drunk in silence. Then, with clatter of knife and fork, clink of glasses, and hum of conversation, the feast begins.

The General’s absence is a daunting surprise to many who do not know how to construe it. Wizard Lewis, through Chairman Lee, presents the General’s regrets. He expected to be present, but is unavoidably detained at the White House. The “regrets” are received uneasily; the General’s absence plainly gives concern to more than one.

As the dinner marches forward, “Nullification” and secession are much and loudly talked. They become so openly the burden of conversation and are withal so loosely in the common air, that sundry gentlemen – more timorous than loyal perhaps – make pointless excuses, and withdraw.

Statesman Calhoun sits on the right hand of Chairman Lee. The festival approaches the glass and bottle stage, and toasts are offered. There are a round score of these; each smells of secession and State’s rights. The speeches which follow are even more malodorous of treason than the toasts.

The hour is hurrying toward the late. Statesman Calhoun whispers a word to Chairman Lee; evidently the urgent moment is at hand.

Statesman Calhoun hands a slip of paper to Chairman Lee. There falls a stillness; laughter dies and talk is hushed.

Chairman Lee rises to his feet. He pays Statesman Calhoun many flowery compliments.

“The distinguished statesman from South Carolina,” says Chairman Lee in conclusion, “begs to propose this sentiment.” He reads from the slip: “‘The Federal Union! Next to our liberty, the most dear! May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the burdens and the benefits of that Union!’”

The stillness of death continues – marked and profound; for, as Chairman Lee resumes his seat, Wizard Lewis rises. All know his relations with the General; every eye is on him with a look of interrogation. Now when the Calhoun toast has been read, they scan the face of Wizard Lewis, representative of the absent General, to note the effect of the shot. Wizard Lewis is admirable, and notably steady.

“The President,” says Wizard Lewis, “when he sent his regrets, sent also a sentiment.”

Wizard Lewis passes a folded paper to Chairman Lee, who opens it and reads:

“‘The Federal Union! It must be preserved!”’

The words fall clear as a bell – for some, perhaps, a bell of warning. Statesman Calhoun’s face is high and insolent. But only for a moment. Then his glance falls; his brow becomes pallid, and breaks into a pin-point sprinkle of sweat. He seems to shrink and sear and wither, as though given some fleeting picture of the future, and the gallows prophecy thereof. In the end he sits as though in a kind of blackness of despair. The General is not there, but his words are there, and Statesman Calhoun is not wanting of an impression of the terrible meaning, personal to himself, which underlies them.

It is a moment ominous and mighty – a moment when a plot to stampede history is foiled by a sentiment, and Treason’s heart and Treason’s hand are palsied by a toast of seven words. And while Statesman Calhoun, white and frightened and broken, is helpless in the midst of his followers, the General sits alone and thoughtful with his quiet White House pipe.

For all the plain sureness of that toast, the would-be rebellionists now crave a surer sign. A member of Congress from South Carolina, polite and insinuating, calls on the General.

“Mr. President,” says the insinuating signseeking one, suavely deferential, “to-morrow I go back to my home. Have you any message for the good folk of South Carolina?”

“Yes,” returns the General grimly, his hard blue eyes upon the insinuating one, while his heavy brows are lowered in that falcon-trick of menace – “yes; I have a message for the ‘good folk of South Carolina.’ You may say to the ‘good folk of South Carolina’ that if one of them so much as lift finger in defiance of the laws of this government, I shall come down there. And I’ll hang the first man I lay hands on, to the first tree I can reach.”