their pledges, though admitting they had done wrong. The most devoted and zealous of the General's friends were determined, however, to leave no stone unturned to defeat his election. Several persons were spoken of as opposing candidates, but none of them could obtain, it was ascertained, the requisite number of votes. The General's old friend, Johnny Rhea, could come the nearest, but he lacked three votes. This was a very unpleasant state of things. To elect a bitter, personal enemy of General Jackson, and one who was known to be in favor of Mr. Crawford for the presidency, would have a most injurious effect, it was believed, upon his prospects. Notwithstanding he had been nominated by the legislature some fifteen months before, it was apprehended, if an enemy of his should be sent to the Senate, it would be difficult to make the other States believe that Tennessee was in earnest in her support of him. It would certainly have the appearance of great inconsistency, and well calculated to nullify the effect of his nomination.

"This could not be permitted, and it was resolved, at all hazards, to defeat the election of Colonel Williams. It became necessary now to play a bold and decisive game. As nobody else could be found to beat the Colonel, it was proposed to beat him with the General himself! This having been made known produced great uneasiness and alarm among the more timid members, from an apprehension that even he could not be elected; but Mr. Eaton and myself, who were on the ground, took upon ourselves the responsibility of the step, and insisted on his being nominated to the Legislature as a candidate for the Senate. We came to the conclusion that if the General must be politically sacrificed, it mattered little in what way it was done—whether by being defeated himself in the election of a United States Senator, or by the election of his bitter enemy! But I had no fear of his being defeated-I did not believe it possible that a majority of the members would be willing to take upon themselves the responsibility of voting against him. He was, accordingly, nominated to the Legislature by Major Maney, a highly respectable member from Williamson County-and he was elected, as I anticipated, by quite a large majority! Had he been beaten it might possibly have destroyed, or at least impaired, his prospects for the presidency; but his defeat, it was believed, would not be more blasting in its effect than the election of Colonel Williams under all the circumstances of the case.

"These are the reasons which induced the friends of General Jackson to send him to the United States Senate in the winter of 1823-24; which was thought by many of his friends at the time to have been rash and impolitic. The General himself was far from desiring it; but there was no help for it, and he submitted with a good grace. He was a soldier, and knew how to obey as well as to command! It is proper, however, to state that the members of the Legislature who were in favor of electing

Colonel Williams, declared themselves to be decidedly the friends of General Jackson; but they maintained that to support the latter did not make it necessary to sacrifice the former. The active and most decided of the General's friends, however, differed with them in opinion. They had no doubt that to sustain Colonel Williams, under such circumstances, would be injurious to the prospects of the General for the presidency."

And so General Jackson was, at once, a Senator and a candidate for the presidency.

In connection with this interior view of his election to the Senate, the correspondence that passed between the General and one of the members of the Tennessee Legislature, previous to the election, has a certain interest. "All we want," said the member, "is a belief that you will permit your name to be used" To which General Jackson replied: "I have earnestly to request my friends, and beg of you, not to press me to an acceptance of the appointment. If appointed I could not decline, and yet, in accepting it, I should do great violence to my wishes and to my feelings. The length of time I have passed in public service authorizes me to make this request, which, with my friends, I trust, will be considered reasonable and proper."

Only twenty-five members of the Legislature ventured to vote against General Jackson for the senatorship; and such was the power of his name in Tennessee, that of those twenty-five but three were re-elected to the next legislature. Indeed, his popularity exercised a despotic sway in some portions of the State. There were districts of Tennessee in which a man would scarcely have been safe who was known to have voted against him.

In the northern States, where the leading presses and politicians were already enlisted in behalf of Adams, Crawford, or Calhoun, these proceedings of the Tennessee legislature were received with a general pooh-pooh. Great General, but unfit for civil employment." "The Tennesseeans can not be in earnest." "Vice-President, perhaps ; but

President-absurd !"

ticket!"

66

"Adams and Jackson-that's the

CHAPTER II.

KING

CAUCUS

DETHRONED.

A TERRIBLE affliction fell upon Mr. Crawford. In August, 1823, when he was fifty-one years of age, he was stricken with paralysis, which left him helpless, speechless, nearly blind, and scarcely conscious. He rallied a little in the course of the month, but he lay during the rest of the canvass a wreck of the once stalwart and vigorous Crawford, slowly, very slowly regaining his faculties. By the aid of a mechanical contrivance, he was just able to affix his signature to public documents, and thus retain his office of Secretary of the Treasury. He was removed ere long to a pleasant and retired cottage near Washington, the quiet of which was essential to the preservation of his life. There he lived for some months, visited only by his confidential clerk and his nearest friends. The very papers necessary to refute the calumnies of the campaign were written for him by subordinates in his office.

Prostrated thus on the last reach of the course, he had fallen with his face toward the goal, with his eyes and his heart fixed upon it. He could not give up the race. Then was seen the sorry spectacle of politicians contending, as it were, over the body of the stricken chief. The Crawford papers and partisans strove to conceal the calamity from the public, asserting in a hundred paragraphs that the attack had not been severe, and that the patient was rapidly recovering. Friends and organs of the rival candidates exaggerated the truth, if exaggeration were possible. Piteous attempts were made to show the afflicted man, by driving him, propped with cushions, about the streets of Washington. In January a formal bulletin of the attending physicians pronounced him free from disease, and on the way to certain,

though slow recovery. Mr. Cobb, however, his chief of friends, wrote, almost on the same day, to a confidential ally: "As an honest man, I am bound to admit that Crawford's health, though daily improving, affords cause for objection. He is very fat, but his speech and vision are imperfect, and the paralysis of his hand continues. His speech improves slowly. His right eye is so improved that he sees well enough to play whist as well as an old man without spectacles. His hand also gets stronger. Yet defect in all these members is but too evident."*

The canvass raged on meanwhile. It was well to remove the sick man from the maddening excitements of a city where "every citizen was an electioneerer for the one party or the other, and every visitor within its walls was an active, working partisan." "The hotels," continues the author of 'Leisure Labors,' "were only so many caucus or club-rooms, in which to plan and direct the various schemes of party procedure. The drawing-rooms were thronged alike with the votaries of fashion and the satellites of the different champions; nor were these limited to the sterner sex. The theater was monopolized by one particular set of partisans in regular turn, as the most proper place for a public demonstration; but the artificial representations of the stage flagged and faded before the real exhibitions of the political drama. The legislative business of Congress received little or no attention. The members thought about nothing, talked about nothing, and wrote home about nothing but the presidential election."

During these months the questions agitated in all journals, all gatherings, were these: Will there be a congressional caucus? and, if yes, will the party accept its nominee? What a fire was kept up upon the pretensions of King Caucus, whose voice had once been so potential and unquestioned! All the candidates but Crawford were against the caucus. All the newspapers, except those devoted to Crawford, were

* Cobb's Leisure Labors, p. 215.

legislatures adopted strong Public meetings denounced

against it. Several of the State resolutions in reprehension of it. it. Ponderous essays were hurled at it; facetious squibs assailed it. Martin Van Buren and his friends strove mightily to stem the torrent, but it rolled on in ever-increasing strength.

A caucus, however, was destined to be held. On a certain day, early in February, 1824, appeared in the National Intelligencer, of Washington, two brief documents relating to the Bone of Contention. This was one :

"In consequence of the statements which have gone abroad in relation to a congressional nomination of candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, the undersigned have been requested, by many of their republican colleagues and associates, to ascertain the number of members of Congress who deem it inexpedient at this time to make such a nomination, and to publish the same, for the information of the people of the United States.

"In compliance with this request, they have obtained from gentlemen representing the several States satisfactory information that of two hundred and sixty-one, the whole number of members composing the present Congress, there are one hundred and eighty-one who deem it inexpedient, under existing circumstances, to meet in caucus, for the purpose of nominating candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States; and they have good reasons to believe that a portion of the remainder will be found unwilling to attend such a meeting."

This paper was signed by twenty-four members of Congress, among whom were Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky; Major Eaton, of Tennessee; Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina; S. D. Ingham, of Pennsylvania; George Kremer, of Pennsylvania; Sam Houston, of Tennessee; and J. R. Poinsett, of South Carolina.

The other document referred to was the following:

"The democratic members of Congress are invited to meet in the Representatives Chamber, at the Capitol, on the evening of the 14th of February, at 7 o'clock, to recommend candidates to the people of the United States for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States."