John Quincy Adams — 10 - Chapter 2D

Yet though he declined to be a courtier of popular favor he did not conceal from himself or from others the chagrin which he would feel if there should be a manifestation of popular disfavor.

Before the popular election he stated that if it should go against him he should construe it as the verdict of the people that they were dissatisfied with his services as a public man, and he should then retire to private life, no longer expecting or accepting public functions.

He did not regard politics as a struggle in which, if he should now (p. 167) be beaten in one encounter, he would return to another in the hope of better success in time.

His notion was that the people had had ample opportunity during his incumbency in appointive offices to measure his ability and understand his character, and that the action of the people in electing or not electing him to the Presidency would be an indication that they were satisfied or dissatisfied with him.

In the latter event he had nothing more to seek.

Politics did not constitute a profession or career in which he felt entitled to persist in seeking personal success as he might in the law or in business.

Neither did the circumstances of the time place him in the position of an advocate of any great principle which he might feel it his duty to represent and to fight for against any number of reverses.

No such element was present at this time in national affairs.

He construed the question before the people simply as concerning their opinion of him.

He was much too proud to solicit and much too honest to scheme for a favorable expression.

It was a singular and a lofty attitude even if a trifle egotistical and not altogether unimpeachable by argument.

It could not diminish but rather it intensified his interest in a contest which he chose to regard not simply as a struggle for a glittering (p. 168) prize but as a judgment upon the services which he had been for a lifetime rendering to his countrymen.

How profoundly his whole nature was moved by the position in which he stood is evident, often almost painfully, in the Diary.

Any attempt to conceal his feeling would be idle, and he makes no such attempt.

He repeats all the rumors which come to his ears; he tells the stories about Crawford's illness; he records his own temptations; he tries hard to nerve himself to bear defeat philosophically by constantly predicting it; indeed, he photographs his whole existence for many weeks; and however eagerly any person may aspire to the Presidency of the United States there is little in the picture to make one long for the preliminary position of candidate for that honor.

It is too much like the stake and the flames through which the martyr passed to eternal beatitude, with the difference as against the candidate that he has by no means the martyr's certainty of reward.

In those days of slow communication it was not until December, 1824, that it became everywhere known that there had been no election of a president by the people.

When the Electoral College met the result of their ballots was as follows:-- General Jackson led with 99 votes.

(p. 169) Adams followed with 84 " Crawford had 41 " Clay had 37 " --- Total 261 votes.

Mr. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by the handsome number of 182 votes.

This condition of the election had been quite generally anticipated;

yet Mr. Adams's friends were not without some feeling of disappointment.

They had expected for him a fair support at the South, whereas he in fact received seventy-seven out of his eighty-four votes from New York and New England; Maryland gave him three, Louisiana gave him two, Delaware and Illinois gave him one each.

When the electoral body was known to be reduced within the narrow limits of the House of Representatives, intrigue was rather stimulated than diminished by the definiteness which became possible for it.

Mr. Clay, who could not come before the House, found himself transmuted from a candidate to a President-maker; for it was admitted by all that his great personal influence in Congress would almost undoubtedly confer success upon the aspirant whom he should favor.

Apparently his predilections were at least possibly in favor of Crawford; but (p. 170) Crawford's health had been for many months very bad; he had had a severe paralytic stroke, and when acting as Secretary of the Treasury he had been unable to sign his name, so that a stamp or die had been used; his speech was scarcely intelligible; and when Mr. Clay visited him in the retirement in which his friends now kept him, the fact could not be concealed that he was for the time at least a wreck.

Mr. Clay therefore had to decide for himself, his followers, and the country whether Mr. Adams or General Jackson should be the next President of the United States.

A cruel attempt was made in this crisis either to destroy his influence by blackening his character, or to intimidate him, through fear of losing his reputation for integrity, into voting for Jackson.

An anonymous letter charged that the friends of Clay had hinted that, "like the Swiss, they would fight for those who pay best;" that they had offered to elect Jackson if he would agree to make Clay Secretary of State, and that upon his indignant refusal to make such a bargain the same proposition had been made to Mr. Adams, who was found less scrupulous and had promptly formed the "unholy coalition."

This wretched publication, made a few days before the election in the House, was traced to a dull-witted Pennsylvania Representative by the name of Kremer, who had (p. 171) obviously been used as a tool by cleverer men.

It met, however, the fate which seems happily always to attend such ignoble devices, and failed utterly of any more important effect than the utter annihilation of Kremer.

In truth, General Jackson's fate had been sealed from the instant when it had fallen into Mr. Clay's hands.

Clay had long since expressed his unfavorable opinion of the "military hero," in terms too decisive to admit of explanation or retraction.

Without much real liking for Adams, Clay at least disliked him much less than he did Jackson, and certainly his honest judgment favored the civilian far more than the disorderly soldier whose lawless career in Florida had been the topic of some of the great orator's fiercest invective.

The arguments founded on personal fitness were strongly upon the side of Adams, and other arguments advanced by the Jacksonians could hardly deceive Clay.

They insisted that their candidate was the choice of the people so far as a superiority of preference had been indicated, and that therefore he ought to be also the choice of the House of Representatives.

It would be against the spirit of the Constitution and a thwarting of the popular will, they said, to prefer either of his competitors.

The fallacy of this reasoning, if reasoning it could be called, was glaring.

If the spirit of the Constitution (p. 172) required the House of Representatives not to _elect_ from three candidates before it, but only to induct an individual into the Presidency by a process which was in form voting but in fact only a simple certification that he had received the highest number of electoral votes, it would have been a plain and easy matter for the letter of the Constitution to have expressed this spirit, or indeed to have done away altogether with this machinery of a sham election.

The Jackson men had only to state their argument in order to expose its hollowness; for they said substantially that the Constitution established an election without an option; that the electors were to vote for a person predestined by an earlier occurrence to receive their ballots.

But besides their unsoundness in argument, their statistical position was far from being what they undertook to represent it.

The popular vote had been so light that it really looked as though the people had cared very little which candidate should succeed; and to talk about a manifestation of the _popular will_ was absurd, for the only real manifestation had been of popular indifference.

For example, in 1823 Massachusetts had cast upwards of 66,000 votes in the state election, whereas in this national election she cast only a trifle more than 37,000. Virginia distributed (p. 173) a total of less than 15,000 among all four candidates.

Pluralities did not signify much in such a condition of sentiment as was indicated by these figures.

Moreover, in six States, viz.

, Vermont, New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, the electors were chosen by the legislatures, not by the people; so that there was no correct way of counting them at all in a discussion of pluralities.

Guesses and approximations favored Adams, and to an important degree; for these six States gave to Adams thirty-six votes, to Jackson nineteen, to Crawford six, to Clay four.

In New York, Jackson had hardly an appreciable following.

Moreover, in other States many thousands of votes which had been "cast for no candidate in particular, but in opposition to the caucus ticket generally," were reckoned as if they had been cast for Jackson or against Adams, as suited the especial case.

Undoubtedly Jackson did have a plurality, but undoubtedly it fell very far short of the imposing figure, nearly 48,000, which his supporters had the audacity to name.

The election took place in the House on February 9, 1825. Daniel Webster and John Randolph were tellers, and they reported that there were "for John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, thirteen votes; for Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, seven votes; for William H. Crawford, of Georgia, four votes."

Thereupon the speaker announced Mr. Adams (p. 174) to have been elected President of the United States.

This end of an unusually exciting contest thus left Mr. Adams in possession of the field, Mr. Crawford the victim of an irretrievable defeat, Mr. Clay still hopeful and aspiring for a future which had only disappointment in store for him, General Jackson enraged and revengeful.

Not even Mr. Adams was fully satisfied.

When the committee waited upon him to inform him of the election, he referred in his reply to the peculiar state of things and said, "could my refusal to accept the trust thus delegated to me give an opportunity to the people to form and to express with a nearer approach to unanimity the object of their preference, I should not hesitate to decline the acceptance of this eminent charge and to submit the decision of this momentous question again to their decision."

That this singular and striking statement was made in good faith is highly probable.

William H.

Seward says that it was "unquestionably uttered with great sincerity of heart."

The test of action of course could not be applied, since the resignation of Mr. Adams would only have made Mr. Calhoun President, and could not have been so arranged as to bring about a new election.

Otherwise the course of his argument would (p. 175) have been clear; the fact that such action involved an enormous sacrifice would have been to his mind strong evidence that it was a duty; and the temptation to perform a duty, always strong with him, became ungovernable if the duty was exceptionally disagreeable.

Under the circumstances, however, the only logical conclusion lay in the inauguration, which took place in the customary simple fashion on March 4, 1825. Mr. Adams, we are told, was dressed in a black suit, of which all the materials were wholly of American manufacture.

Prominent among those who after the ceremony hastened to greet him and to shake hands with him appeared General Jackson.

It was the last time that any friendly courtesy is recorded as having passed between the two.

Many men eminent in public affairs have had their best years embittered by their failure to secure the glittering prize of the Presidency.

Mr. Adams is perhaps the only person to whom the gaining of that proud distinction has been in some measure a cause of chagrin.

This strange sentiment, which he undoubtedly felt, was due to the fact that what he had wished was not the office in and for itself, but the office as a symbol or token of the popular approval.

He had held important and responsible public positions during substantially his whole active (p. 176) life; he was nearly sixty years old, and, as he said, he now for the first time had an opportunity to find out in what esteem the people of the country held him.

What he wished was that the people should now express their decided satisfaction with him.

This he hardly could be said to have obtained; though to be the choice of a plurality in the nation and then to be selected by so intelligent a body of constituents as the Representatives of the United States involved a peculiar sanction, yet nothing else could fully take the place of that national indorsement which he had coveted.

When men publicly profess modest depreciation of their successes they are seldom believed; but in his private Diary Mr. Adams wrote, on December 31, 1825:-- "The year has been the most momentous of those that have passed over my head, inasmuch as it has witnessed my elevation at the age of fifty-eight to the Chief Magistracy of my country, to the summit of laudable or at least blameless worldly ambition; not however in a manner satisfactory to pride or to just desire; not by the unequivocal suffrages of a majority of the people; with perhaps two thirds of the whole people adverse to the actual result."

No President since Washington had ever come into office so entirely free from any manner of personal obligations or partisan (p. 177) entanglements, express or implied, as did Mr. Adams.

Throughout the campaign he had not himself, or by any agent, held out any manner of tacit inducement to any person whomsoever, contingent upon his election.

He entered upon the Presidency under no indebtedness.

He at once nominated his Cabinet as follows: Henry Clay, Secretary of State;

Richard Rush, Secretary of the Treasury; James Barbour, Secretary of War; Samuel L. Southard, Secretary of the Navy; William Wirt, Attorney-General.

The last two were renominations of the incumbents under Monroe.

The entire absence of chicanery or the use of influence in the distribution of offices is well illustrated by the following incident: On the afternoon following the day of inauguration President Adams called upon Rufus King, whose term of service as Senator from New York had just expired, and who was preparing to leave Washington on the next day.

In the course of a conversation concerning the nominations which had been sent to the Senate that forenoon the President said that he had nominated no minister to the English court, and "asked Mr. King if he would accept that mission.

His first and immediate impulse was to decline it.

He said that his determination to retire from the public service had been (p. 178) made up, and that this proposal was utterly unexpected to him.

Of this I was aware; but I urged upon him a variety of considerations to induce his acceptance of it....

I dwelt with earnestness upon all these motives, and apparently not without effect.

He admitted the force of them, and finally promised fully to consider of the proposal before giving me a definite answer."

The result was an acceptance by Mr. King, his nomination by the President, and confirmation by the Senate.

He was an old Federalist, to whom Mr. Adams owed no favors.

With such directness and simplicity were the affairs of the Republic conducted.

It is a quaint and pleasing scene from the period of our forefathers: the President, without discussion of "claims" to a distinguished and favorite post, actually selects for it a member of a hostile political organization, an old man retiring from public life; then quietly walks over to his house, surprises him with the offer, and finding him reluctant urgently presses upon him arguments to induce his acceptance.

But the whole business of office-seeking and office-distributing, now so overshadowing, had no place under Mr. Adams.

On March 5 he sent in several nominations which were nearly all of previous incumbents.

"Efforts had been made," he writes, "by some of the senators to obtain different nominations, and to introduce a principle of change or (p. 179) rotation in office at the expiration of these commissions, which would make the Government a perpetual and unintermitting scramble for office.

A more pernicious expedient could scarcely have been devised....

I determined to renominate every person against whom there was no complaint which would have warranted his removal."

A notable instance was that of Sterret, naval officer at New Orleans, "a noisy and clamorous reviler of the Administration," and lately busy in a project for insulting a Louisiana Representative who had voted for Mr. Adams.

Secretary Clay was urgent for the removal of this man, plausibly saying that in the cases of persons holding office at the pleasure of the Administration the proper course was to avoid on the one hand political persecution, and on the other any appearance of pusillanimity.

Mr. Adams replied that if Sterret had been actually engaged in insulting a representative for the honest and independent discharge of duty, he would make the removal at once.

But the design had not been consummated, and an _intention_ never carried into effect would scarcely justify removal.

"Besides [he added], should I remove this man for this cause it must be upon some fixed principle, which would apply to others as well as to him.

And where was it possible to draw the line?

(p. 180) Of the custom-house officers throughout the Union, four fifths in all probability were opposed to my election.

Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, had distributed these positions among his own supporters.

I had been urged very earnestly and from various quarters to sweep away my opponents and provide with their places for my friends.

I can justify the refusal to adopt this policy only by the steadiness and consistency of my adhesion to my own.

If I depart from this in one instance I shall be called upon by my friends to do the same in many.

An invidious and inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal dispositions of public officers will creep through the whole Union, and the most selfish and sordid passions will be kindled into activity to distort the conduct and misrepresent the feelings of men whose places may become the prize of slander upon them."

Mr. Clay was silenced, and Sterret retained his position, constituting thereafter only a somewhat striking instance among many to show that nothing was to be lost by political opposition to Mr. Adams.

It was a cruel and discouraging fatality which brought about that a man so suicidally upright in the matter of patronage should find that the bitterest abuse which was heaped upon him was founded in an allegation of corruption of precisely this nature.

When before the election the ignoble George Kremer anonymously charged that (p. 181) Mr. Clay had sold his friends in the House of Representatives to Mr. Adams, "as the planter does his negroes or the farmer his team and horses;" when Mr. Clay promptly published the unknown writer as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar;" when next Kremer, being unmasked, avowed that he would make good his charges, but immediately afterward actually refused to appear or testify before a Committee of the House instructed to investigate the matter, it was supposed by all reasonable observers that the outrageous accusation Was forever laid at rest.

But this was by no means the case.

The author of the slander had been personally discredited; but the slander itself had not been destroyed.

So shrewdly had its devisers who saw future usefulness in it managed the matter, that while Kremer slunk away into obscurity, the story which he had told remained an assertion denied, but not disproved, still open to be believed by suspicious or willing friends.

With Adams President and Clay Secretary of State and General Jackson nominated, as he quickly was by the Tennessee Legislature, as a candidate for the next Presidential term, the accusation was too plausible and too tempting to be allowed to fall forever into dusty death; rather it was speedily exhumed from its shallow burial and galvanized into new life.

The partisans of (p. 182) General Jackson sent it to and fro throughout the land.

No denial, no argument, could kill it.

It began to gain that sort of half belief which is certain to result from constant repetition; since many minds are so constituted that truth may be actually, as it were, manufactured for them by ceaseless iteration of statement, the many hearings gaining the character of evidence.

It is long since all students of American history, no matter what are their prejudices, or in whose interest their researches are prosecuted, have branded this accusation as devoid of even the most shadowy basis of probability, and it now gains no more credit than would a story that Adams, Clay, and Jackson had conspired together to get Crawford out of their way by assassination, and that his paralysis was the result of the drugs and potions administered in performance of this foul plot.

But for a while the rumor stalked abroad among the people, and many conspicuously bowed down before it because it served their purpose, and too many others also, it must be confessed, did likewise because they were deceived and really believed it.

Even the legislature of Tennessee were not ashamed to give formal countenance to a calumny in support of which not a particle of evidence had ever been adduced.

In a preamble to certain resolutions passed by this (p. 183) body upon this subject in 1827, it was recited that: "Mr. Adams desired the office of President; he went into the combination without it, and came out with it.

Mr. Clay desired that of Secretary of State;

he went into the combination without it, and came out with it."

No other charge could have wounded Mr. Adams so keenly; yet no course was open to him for refuting the slander.

Mr. Clay, beside himself with a just rage, was better able to fight after the fashion of the day--if indeed he could only find somebody to fight.

This he did at last in the person of John Randolph, of Roanoke, who adverted in one of his rambling and vituperative harangues to "the coalition of Blifil and Black George--the combination unheard of till then of the Puritan and the black-leg."

This language led naturally enough to a challenge from Mr. Clay.

The parties met[6] and exchanged shots without result.

The pistols were a second time loaded; Clay fired; Randolph fired into the air, walked up to Clay and without a word gave him his hand, which Clay had as it were perforce to take.

There was no injury done save to the skirts of Randolph's long flannel coat which were pierced by one of the bullets.

[Footnote 6: April 8, 1826. ] By way of revenge a duel may be effective if the wrong man does (p. 184) not happen to get shot; but as evidence for intelligent men a bloodier ending than this would have been inconclusive.

It so happened, however, that Jackson, altogether contrary to his own purpose, brought conclusive aid to President Adams and Secretary Clay.

Whether the General ever had any real faith in the charge can only be surmised.

Not improbably he did, for his mental workings were so peculiar in their violence and prejudice that apparently he always sincerely believed all persons who crossed his path to be knaves and villains of the blackest dye.

But certain it is that whether he credited the tale or not he soon began to devote himself with all his wonted vigor and pertinacity to its wide dissemination.

Whether in so doing he was stupidly believing a lie, or intentionally spreading a known slander, is a problem upon which his friends and biographers have exhausted much ingenuity without reaching any certain result.

But sure it is that early in the year 1827 he was so far carried beyond the bounds of prudence as to declare before many persons that he had proof of the corrupt bargain.

The assertion was promptly sent to the newspapers by a Mr. Carter Beverly, one of those who heard it made in the presence of several guests at the Hermitage.

The name of Mr. Beverly, at first concealed, soon became known, and he was of course compelled to (p. 185) vouch in his principal.

General Jackson never deserted his adherents, whether their difficulties were noble or ignoble.

He came gallantly to the aid of Mr. Beverly, and in a letter of June 6 declared that early in January, 1825, he had been visited by a "member of Congress of high respectability," who had told him of "a great intrigue going on" of which he ought to be informed.

This gentleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr. Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jackson should be elected President, "Mr. Adams would be continued Secretary of State (innuendo, there would be no room for Kentucky); that if I would say, or permit any of my confidential friends to say, that in case I were elected President, Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would put an end to the Presidential contest in one hour.

And he was of opinion it was right to fight such intriguers with their own weapons."

This scarcely disguised suggestion of bargain and corruption the General said that he repudiated indignantly.

Clay at once publicly challenged Jackson to produce some evidence--to name the "respectable" member of Congress who appeared in the very unrespectable light of (p. 186) advising a candidate for the Presidency to emulate the alleged baseness of his opponents.

Jackson thereupon uncovered James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Buchanan was a friend of the General, and to what point it may have been expected or hoped that his allegiance would carry him in support of his chief in this dire hour of extremity is matter only of inference.

Fortunately, however, his fealty does not appear to have led him any great distance from the truth.

He yielded to the prevailing desire to pass along the responsibility to some one else so far as to try to bring in a Mr. Markley, who, however, never became more than a dumb figure in the drama in which Buchanan was obliged to remain as the last important character.

With obvious reluctance this gentleman then wrote that if General Jackson had placed any such construction as the foregoing upon an interview which had occurred between them, and which he recited at length, then the General had totally misconstrued--as was evident enough--what he, Mr. Buchanan, had said.

Indeed, that Jackson could have supposed him to entertain the sentiments imputed to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said, "exceedingly unhappy."

In other words, there was no foundation whatsoever for the charge thus traced back to an originator who denied having originated it and said that it was all a mistake.

General (p. 187) Jackson was left to be defended from the accusation of deliberate falsehood only by the charitable suggestion that he had been unable to understand a perfectly simple conversation.

Apparently Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay ought now to be abundantly satisfied, since not only were they amply vindicated, but their chief vilifier seemed to have been pierced by the point which he had sharpened for them.

They had yet, however, to learn what vitality there is in falsehood.

General Jackson and his friends had alone played any active part in this matter.

Of these friends Mr. Kremer had written a letter of retraction and apology which he was with difficulty prevented from publishing; Mr. Buchanan had denied all that he had been summoned to prove; a few years later Mr. Beverly wrote and sent to Mr. Clay a contrite letter of regret.

General Jackson alone remained for the rest of his life unsilenced, obstinately reiterating a charge disproved by his own witnesses.

But worse than all this, accumulations of evidence long and laboriously sought in many quarters have established a tolerably strong probability that advances of precisely the character alleged against Mr. Adams's friends were made to Mr. Clay by the most intimate personal associates of General Jackson.

The discussion (p. 188) of this unpleasant suspicion would not, however, be an excusable episode in this short volume.

The reader who is curious to pursue the matter further will find all the documentary evidence collected in its original shape in the first volume of Colton's "Life of Clay," accompanied by an argument needlessly elaborate and surcharged with feeling yet in the main sufficiently fair and exhaustive.