CHAPTER VI.

TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION.

The six months' jubilee with which the whigs had celebrated the promised redemption of the state in advance,1 was brought to a worthy close by the inauguration of Harrison. Yet a glimpse behind the curtain showed that, from the moment of victory, the rosy light began to turn into the deeper tints which announce to the seaman the coming of a sharp wind on the morrow. Many things suggested the fear that the icy north-east wind which blew during the festivities of the inauguration, was an evil omen.

The chiefs of departments were instructed, in the name of the president, through a circular written by Webster, who, as secretary of state, stood at the head of the cabinet, to inform their subordinates, that, henceforth, any abuse of their official positions for purposes of political agitation would be considered a cause for dismissal. Harrison, therefore, seemed disposed to remember the promises of reform made by the party longer than did Jackson the good advice he had

"If one could imagine a whole nation declaring a holiday or season of rollicking for a period of six or eight months, and giving themselves up during the whole time to the wildest freaks of fun and frolic, caring nothing for business, singing, dancing, and carousing night and day, he might have some faint notion of the extraordinary scenes of 1840." N. Sargent, Public Men and Events, II, pp. 107, 108.

"The inauguration of William Henry Harrison as president of the United States was celebrated with demonstrations of popular feeling unexampled since that of Washington in 1789. . . . The coup-d'oeil of this day was showy-shabby. . . General Harrison was on a meanlooking white horse." Mem. of J. Q. Adams, X, p. 439.

3 March 20, 1841. Niles, LX, pp. 51, 52.

given Monroe. The character of the president was such as to permit no doubt that he honestly entertained the desire to live up to the principles expressed in the circular. But if the circular announced an irrevocable resolution, and if he remained really true to it, he was, to say the least, equal to Jackson in iron energy. While Jackson had struggled only with his opponents, Harrison would have thus begun as hot a contest with his own adherents. But the log rollers and lobbyists did not allow the leaders of the party to doubt, for a single day, that to them "change," in and of itself, meant the reform which was demanded and promised. It was as if they could not demonstrate quickly and thoroughly enough that it was not the personal turpitude of the democrats which was the cause of the evil, but that the system itself was based on a wrong principle and suffered therefrom. Seven weeks before the inauguration, John Bell, of Tennessee, who had been chosen to be secretary of war, admitted that the cry for office convinced him that the politicians thought only of power and plunder.1 Clay, for personal reasons, refused to recommend any one for office, but said that even if there were forty-eight hours to the day, he would not have had time enough to give attention to all applications. Crittenden, the designated attorney-general, did not see the matter in so bad a light-probably because he was ready to admit. that many had "just claims." Ten days in office, however,

"I am growing pretty sick already of this thing of office in my own case, and the increasing tide of application from new quarters that daily beats against my ears, gives me spasms. In truth, I begin to fear that we are at last, or rather that our leading politicians are in the several states, chiefly swayed by the thirst for power and plunder. Would you think that Senator Talmadge is willing to descend from the senate to the New York custom-house? This is yet a secret, but it is true!" J. Bell to Gov. Letcher, Washington, Jan. 13, 1841. Coleman, Life of J. J. Crittenden, I, p. 136.

2 Clay to Fr. Brooke, Feb. 5, 1841; Priv. Corresp., p. 451.

3 "I begin already to perceive that even he who has power to dispose of

sufficed to wring from him the confession that the hungry swarm could be satisfied only by a miracle. The crowd of political beggars was so wild that they were charged with causing the death of the president.

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Therefore, before the whigs could begin to carry out their programme, they had ceased, in respect to one of its most essential points, to form a compact party. And this was not the only point at which their internal dissolution began, before a prank of fate, by an unexpected event, gave an external impulse thereto.

Clay had not sat in a pouting-place during the electoral campaign. He had, however, by no means, gotten over the mortification he had endured. The imputation that he would enter the cabinet of his more fortunate but unequal rival, he unconditionally repelled. Harrison approached him with a great deal of tact, but yet with a certain reserve which betrayed an uncomfortable doubt, bordering on distrust, as to the attitude which the man who had been so many years the head of the party would assume towards him. Clay took

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all the offices, is only made to feel more sensibly the poverty of his means to satisfy the just claims of his friends. Although, as yet, it does not seem to me that any extraordinary avidity for office has been disclosed, yet I must confess that the number of claimants far surpasses my expectation." Crittenden to Gov. Letcher, Jan. 25, 1841; Coleman, 1. c., I, p. 140.

1 "We are laboring along and endeavoring to keep the peace among the office-seekers; but nothing less than a miracle could so multiply our offices and patronage as to enable us to feed the hungry crowd that are pressed upon us." Crittenden to Gov. Letcher, March 14, 1841; Coleman, I, p. 149.

2 Sargent, Public Men and Events, II, p. 121, mentions this charge, and with comical gravity proves its groundlessness. Woodbury said in the senate in June, 1841: " They [the vandal hordes of office-seekers] are represented as more voracious for office than the most famished harpies, and to have helped destroy already one president, and, if not made of iron, will embitter the life of his successor." Woodb.'s Writ., I, p. 128.

3 In a letter of the 15th of November, 1840, Harrison leaves it to Clay to decide whether they would not do best to exchange views through the me

the hand that was tendered him, with an equal degree of reserve. He assured Harrison of his honest support, and promised, always to let him know first what attitude he thought of assuming on important questions. But he warned him, at the same time, against lending his ear to the intriguers who were already endeavoring to force them apart, and who would, in the future, strive still harder to incense them against each other.

There was good reason for the warning. In a letter to the president, of the 15th of March, 1841, Clay complained, in a bitter and angry tone, that the latter had, a few days before, intimated to him that people were afraid that he (Clay) wanted to play the part of mentor to the new administration.1 Harrison, on the contrary, as Sargent relates, requested Clay to avoid frequent interviews with him, and rather to deal with him in writing."

Clay was wrong in attributing his differences with the president entirely to tale-bearers, busy as these, in all probability, were. Little as Harrison was free from over-estimating himself, he sufficiently appreciated Clay's intellectual superiority, and the advantage which experience and his wellearned position in the party gave him, not to be able to divest himself of the fear that the ambitious and hot-blooded Kentuckian would feel tempted to make him play the part of a figurant. That Clay could not and would not entirely forget his own personality, in the interest of the country or of party, he had shown by his refusal to enter the administration. And if he, notwithstanding, remained in the senate, he certainly did not think of surrendering the leadership

diation of a mutual friend, since their "personal meeting might give rise to speculations, and even jealousies, which it might be well to avoid." Clay, Priv. Corresp., p. 446.

'Clay, Priv. Corresp., pp. 452, 453.

Public Men and Events, II, p. 116.

there. This was all the less to be expected as his only equal rival now held the helm. Public opinion was certainly correct in the conviction that Clay and Webster would very eagerly strive for the presidency, now as well as before. And between them stood the fortunate possessor with the secret gnawing, feeling that he was indebted for his triumph over the two "giants" to his harmless mediocrity. This sitnation was created by the Harrisburg convention, and it necessarily involved strife, or at least a quiet but earnest underhand game of chess. Now, Clay's greatest weakness in political tactics was always that he did not know how to hold himself back, when it was his duty to do so. Why should he now have left the field entirely, from the first, to the opponents with whom he was on friendly terms?? Even if calm deliberation should have made him doubtful whether such was not, after all, the wisest course, his temperament would never have allowed the thought to be acted on. The moment he became certain that the next four years belonged to the whigs, his temperament misled him to proclaim, with imprudent warmth and offensive bluntness, what a clean sweep was to be made, and that he intended to handle the broom himself.

"Clay crows too much over a fallen foe," writes Adams in his diary. On the 14th of December, 1840, he moved that the law relating to the independent treasuryship should be abolished "immediately." That this congress would not accede

1 According to Sargent, II, p. 114, Harrison intended to offer no place in his cabinet to Webster, after Clay had declined his call, but that the latter had made him change his mind. Clay also, Priv. Corresp., p. 447, intimates the same, but does not clearly express it.

2 That Clay now announced that he intended to remain only a short time in the senate, is not, in my opinion, of importance. He often made such assertions without considering himself bound by them in any way. And if, as a matter of fact, he soon retired to private life, the fact proves nothing, since the situation had then entirely changed.