Page images
PDF
EPUB

proceedings, and ordered the galleries to be cleared, and they were cleared accordingly. The House adjourned a few minutes afterward, and the friends of the different candidates hastened away to congratulate or console.

Three of the warmest of the partisans of Crawford repaired to his residence to announce to him the sudden failure of all his hopes. Mr. Cobb was one of the three, but he dared not witness the first shock of his chief's disappointment. The other two, Messrs. Macon and Lowry, went into the room of the ambitious invalid. "Crawford was calmly reclining in his easy chair, while one of his family read to him from a newspaper. Macon saluted him, and made known the result with delicacy, though with ill-concealed feeling. The invalid statesman gave a look of profound surprise, and remained silent and pensive for many minutes, evidently schooling his mind to a becoming tolerance of the event which had for ever thwarted his political elevation. He then entered freely into conversation, and commented on the circumstances of the election as though he had never been known as a candidate. He even jested and rallied his friend Cobb, whose excess of feeling had forbidden him to see Crawford until the shock had passed -for he knew that the enfeebled veteran would be shocked. The conversation, on the part of these friends, was not untinged with bitterness and spite, vented against the prominent actors in both the adverse political factions, but more especially against those of the successful party, as being more immediately responsible for the crushing overthrow of their own beloved candidate. Crawford himself refrained from giving utterance to the least exceptionable sentiment, and behaved, during the remainder of his stay in Washington, with a mildness and an urbanity befitting one of his exalted station, who had just staked and lost his political fortune."*

A few days after, Mr. Cobb wrote thus despondingly : "The presidential election is over, and you will have heard the result. The clouds were black, and portentous of storms

* Cobb's Leisure Labors, p. 227.

of no ordinary character. They broke in one horrid burst, and straight dispelled. Every thing here is silent. The victors have no cause to rejoice. There was not a single window lighted on the occasion. A few free negroes shouted, 'Huzza for Mr. Adams!' But they were not joined even by the cringing populace of this place. The disappointed submit in sullen silence. The friends of Jackson grumbled at first like the rumbling of distant thunder, but the old man himself submitted without a change of countenance. Mr. Crawford's friends changed not their looks. They command universal respect. Adams has caused it to be announced that they shall have no cause to be dissatisfied. Two days ago the Treasury Department was tendered to Crawford, and refused. On the same day General Jackson paid him a friendly and civil visit, but nothing passed but an interchange of civilities. Crawford will return home, and we must do the best we can with him. Should he and our friends wish that he should again go into the Senate, the way shall be open for him. I am sick and tired of every thing here, and wish for nothing so much as private life. My ambition is dead."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

There was a great crowd, however, besides "free negroes," to salute the Rising Sun. There was a presidential levee that evening, to which all Washington rushed; and there was a pleasant gentleman among the throng who has been so obliging as to tell the world, in his most agreeable manner, what he saw in the rooms of the White House on that occasion. We quote from the "Recollections" of Mr. S. G. Goodrich:

"I shall pass over other individuals present, only noting an incident which respects the two persons in the assembly who, most of all others, engrossed the thoughts of the visitors-Mr. Adams the elect, General Jackson the defeated. It chanced in the course of the evening that these two persons, involved in the throng, approached each other from opposite directions, yet without knowing it. Suddenly, as they were almost together, the persons around, seeing what was to hap

pen, by a sort of instinct stepped aside and left them face to face. Mr. Adams was by himself; General Jackson had a large, handsome lady on his arm. They looked at each other for a moment, and then General Jackson moved forward, and reaching out his long arm, said: 'How do you do, Mr. Adams? I give you my left hand, for the right, as you see, is devoted to the fair: I hope you are very well, sir.' All this was gallantly and heartily said and done. Mr. Adams took the General's hand, and said, with chilling coldness: 'Very well, sir; I hope General Jackson is well !' It was curious to see the western planter, the Indian fighter, the stern soldier, who had written his country's glory in the blood of the enemy at New Orleans, genial and gracious in the midst of a court, while the old courtier and diplomat was stiff, rigid, cold as a statue! It was all the more remarkable from the fact that, four hours before, the former had been defeated, and the latter was the victor, in a struggle for one of the highest objects of human ambition. The personal character of these two individuals was in fact well expressed in that chance meeting: the gallantry, the frankness, and the heartiness of the one, which captivated all; the coldness, the distance, the self-concentration of the other, which repelled all."

The repulsive manner of Mr. Adams in official stations was not exhibited, it appears, in circles more private. Judge Brackenridge writes of him: "The first time I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Adams, was in the summer of 1817, when he arrived at New York with his family, after a long and tedious passage across the Atlantic. Lodging in the same house, I soon formed an acquaintance with him. I found him in his domestic intercourse remarkably free and affable, and in his family particularly amiable. He was then in the prime of life; in his manner open and communicative, and even playful and facetious in a small circle of friends. I afterward saw him often in public, when he appeared cold and distant, and even awkward, which I attributed partly to natural reserve in the midst of promiscuous company, and

partly to the diplomatic habit of dismissing all expression from his countenance, derived from his position abroad. Knowing his natural warmth of disposition, I was surprised when I afterward saw him, as the chief magistrate of the nation, receive a splendidly dressed personage, glittering in gold and feathers, with a formal coldness that froze like the approach to an iceberg."*

Five days after the election, Mr. Clay wrote a hasty note to his friend, Francis Brooke: "Southard remains in the Navy department. I am offered that of the State, but have not yet decided. The others not yet determined on. Crawford retires. What shall I do ?"

We all know what he did. He deliberated a week, consulted with friends, and accepted the office. Warnings he had, but he disregarded them. He evidently knew not what he did, and anticipated nothing of what followed. "From the first," he wrote to Mr. Crittenden, "I determined to throw myself into the hands of my friends, and if they advised me to decline the office, not to accept it; but if they thought it was my duty, and for the public interest, to go into it, to do so. I have an unaffected repugnance to any executive employment, and my rejection of the offer, if it were in conformity to their deliberate judgment, would have been more compatible with my feelings than its acceptance. But as their advice to me is to accept, I have resolved accordingly, and I have just communicated my final determination to Mr. Adams. An opposition is talked of here; but I regard that as the ebullition of the moment, the natural offspring of chagrin and disappointment."

* Eulogy upon John Quincy Adams. By Hon. H. M. Brackenridge. Pittsburgh, 1848.

CHAPTER

VII.

JACKSON'S PRIVATE OPINION OF THESE TRANSACTIONS.

WELL, reader, and was General Jackson so loftily acquiescent in his defeat as he seemed ?

Running for the presidency is not unlike the pursuit of a coy, bewitching damsel, whom one has long been accustomed to see at a distance, and to admire without a thought of possessing her. But the swain gets more intimately acquainted with her at length. She smiles upon him when he approaches. She seems not to disdain, nor to dislike the association of his name with hers, nor to prefer the society of other men to his. He has been wont to think of himself as an awkward, ungainly fellow, fit to "command an army in a rough way," but not to win so fair a prize as that fair hand. Yet the intoxicating thought will steal, at last, into his mind, that the enchanting creature may be his. From that moment he is in love.

Rivals appear upon the carpet. They were there before, but he regarded them not; tall, handsome rascals, more used to the carpet than himself. But, after all, what are they? Talkers merely. While he was on the frontiers, fighting his country's battles, and gaining victories over her enemies, and ending a disastrous war in a blaze of glory, that shines still in every American countenance, they were speaking pretty speeches and writing paper arguments. And some of them (by the Eternal!) presume to sneer at his pretensions, because he served his country in her hour of need, because he abandoned home and family, and went forth into the howling wilderness to fight and starve ! Military chieftain, forsooth! They took good care to keep their skins whole! No one can accuse them of risking any thing for their country-the speech-makers!

The lover thinks he has fairly won the girl. She gives a

« PreviousContinue »