Part 26 (1/2)
Calhoun ranks among the foremost of American statesmen, and as the champion of the South his place is far above any who appeared before or who have come after him. As a speaker, he was logical, clear, and always deeply in earnest. Daniel Webster said of him: ”He had the indisputable basis of all high character--unspotted integrity and honor unimpeached.
Nothing groveling, low, or meanly selfish came near his head or his heart.”
HENRY CLAY.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY CLAY. (1777-1852).]
Henry Clay was born April 12, 1777, in the ”Slashes,” Virginia. He studied law, and at the age of twenty removed to Kentucky, which is proud to claim the honor of having been his home and in reality his State. His great ability and winning manners made him popular everywhere. He served in the Kentucky Legislature, and, before he was thirty years old, was elected to the United States Senate, of which he was a member from 1806 to 1807. He soon became recognized as the foremost champion of the cause of internal improvements and of the tariff measures, known as the ”American System.” His speakers.h.i.+p of the Kentucky a.s.sembly, his term as United States senator again, 1809-11, and as a member of the House of Representatives in 1811, followed rapidly.
Against precedent, being a newcomer, he was chosen Speaker, and served until his resignation in 1814. He was as strenuous an advocate of the war with Great Britain as Calhoun, and it has been stated that he was one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ghent in 1814. The following year he was again elected to the House of Representatives, and acted without a break as Speaker until 1821. He was the most powerful advocate of the recognition of the Spanish-American States in revolt, and but for Clay the Missouri Compromise would not have been prepared and adopted.
Absent but a brief time from Congress, he again acted as Speaker in 1823-25. President Adams appointed him his secretary of State, and he retired from office in 1829, but two years later entered the Senate from Kentucky. For the following twenty years he was the leader of the Whig party, opposed Jackson in the bank controversy, and secured the tariff compromise of 1833 and the settlement with France in 1835. He retired from the Senate in 1843, his nomination for the presidency following a year later. Once more he entered the Senate, in 1849, and brought about the great compromise of 1850. He died June 29, 1852.
Clay's vain struggle for the presidency is told in the succeeding chapter. It seems strange that while he was indisputably the most popular man in the United States, he was not able to secure the great prize. The American Congress never knew a more brilliant debater, nor did the public ever listen to a more magnetic orator. His various compromise measures in the interest of the Union were beyond the attainment of any other man. His fame rests above that which any office can confer. His friends idolized and his opponents respected him. A strong political enemy once refused an introduction to him on the ground that he could not withstand the magnetism of a personal acquaintance which had won ”other good haters” to his side. John C. Breckinridge, his political adversary, in his funeral oration, said: ”If I were to write his epitaph, I would inscribe as the highest eulogy on the stone which shall mark his resting-place, 'Here lies a man who was in the public service for fifty years and never attempted to deceive his countrymen.'”
DANIEL WEBSTER.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL WEBSTER. (1782-1852).]
Daniel Webster was born January 18, 1782, at Salisbury, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and died October 24, 1852. He was educated at Exeter Academy and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801. After teaching school a short time in Maine, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and began practice at Boscawen, in his native State. Two years afterward, he removed to Portsmouth, where he speedily became a leader at the bar and served in Congress from 1813 to 1817. At that time he was a moderate Federalist. He settled in Boston in 1818, and a.s.sumed a front rank among lawyers by his argument before the United States Supreme Court in the celebrated ”Dartmouth College Case,” which involved the obligation of contracts and the powers of the national government. He was congressman from Ma.s.sachusetts from 1823 to 1827, was chairman of the judiciary committee, and attracted great attention by his speeches on Greece, then struggling for independence, and his pleas in favor of free trade.
Webster's fame as an eloquent orator was already established. As such, he was the greatest that America ever produced, and many claim that he surpa.s.sed any who spoke the English tongue. Among his masterpieces were his speeches at Plymouth, 1820, on the bi-centennial; at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument, 1825; and his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, 1826.
When he entered the United States Senate in 1827, he immediately took rank beside the giants, Calhoun and Clay. He was an advocate of the protective tariff of 1823, and in 1830 reached the highest point of thrilling and eloquent logic in his reply to Robert Young Hayne, of South Carolina, who a.s.serted that any State had the right to disobey such laws of Congress as she deemed unconst.i.tutional. Webster's speech is a cla.s.sic, never surpa.s.sed in its way, and the debate won for him the proud t.i.tle of ”Expounder of the Const.i.tution.”
Naturally Webster opposed nullification, and he and Calhoun had many earnest contests worthy of two such masters of logic. W.H. Harrison appointed him his secretary of State, and he remained with Tyler until 1843. In 1845, he was again sent to the United States Senate, but in 1850 he alienated many of his former supporters by his speech in favor of Clay's compromise measures, He was secretary of State in 1850-52, and his death called out more addresses and testimonials than any other since that of Was.h.i.+ngton.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1836.
The following was the electoral vote cast in 1836: Martin Van Buren, of New York, Democrat, 170; William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, Whig, 73; Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, Whig, 26; Daniel Webster, of Ma.s.sachusetts, Whig, 14; Willie P. Mangum, of North Carolina, Whig, 11. For Vice-President, Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, Democrat, 147; Francis Granger, of New York, Whig, 77; John Tyler, of Virginia, Whig, 47; William Smith, of Alabama, Democrat, 23. The vote for Johnson as Vice-President was not sufficient to elect him, but he was chosen by the House of Representatives.
MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Martin Van Buren, eighth President, was born December 5, 1782, at Kinderhook, N.Y., and died July 24, 1862. He became eminent as a lawyer, and his skill as a Democratic politician caused him to be known as the ”Little Magician.” He held a number of public offices, being State senator, United States senator, 1821-28; governor of New York, 1828-29; and secretary of State under Jackson, 1829-31, when Jackson appointed him minister to England, but his political opponents secured his defeat in the Senate. Becoming Vice-President under Jackson, he presided in the Senate from 1833 to 1837. Jackson was so pleased with Van Buren that he chose him as his successor. He was the Free Soil candidate for the presidency in 1848, and thereby brought about the defeat of Ca.s.s by Taylor.
The administration of Van Buren was one of the most unpopular we have ever had, and through no fault of his. A great deal of the prosperity of Jackson's term was superficial. He had been despotic, as shown in his removal of the United States Bank deposits and the issue of the specie circular of 1836. Confusion ensued in business, and an era of wild speculation followed a distribution of the surplus in the treasury among the States. The credit system took the place of the cash system, banks sprang up like mushrooms, and an immense amount of irredeemable money was put in circulation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN VAN BUREN.
(1782-1862.) One term, 1837-1841.]
These inst.i.tutions were known as ”wild-cat banks,” and their method of defrauding the public was as follows: They bought several hundred thousands of cheap bills which, having cost them practically nothing, they used in offering higher prices for public lands than others could pay in gold and silver. They trusted to chance that their bills would not soon come back for redemption, but if they did so, the banks ”failed” and the holders of the notes lost every dollar.
The fraud was a deliberate one, but the establishment of the national banking law since then renders a repet.i.tion of the swindle impossible.
THE PANIC OF 1837.