But the Congress which was elected in 1832 and which sat from December, 1833, to March, 1835, was not so pliable as that which arranged the peace with South Carolina. Still, the Senate sustained the Bank by a decided majority, and in March it formally censured Jackson for his removal of the deposits. In this Clay was conspicuous, and Webster and Calhoun were his sympathetic allies. On the other hand, Benton, Silas Wright, of New York, and John Forsyth, of Georgia, made a most spirited defense of Jackson and of the cause of the people, as they insisted. In the House the situation was reversed, and all Biddle"s energy and resolute lobbying failed to secure a favorable vote. It became clear early in the spring that the President could not be moved, and that impeachment, which had been the hope and talk of many, would be impossible. When the weight of public opinion inclined visibly to the side of Jackson at the end of spring, Clay, who had for some time doubted the loyalty of Biddle, and who was especially anxious to regain his former popularity in the West, refused to continue the fight; Webster, too, lost interest and advised the directors of the Bank that the cause was lost. Calhoun, who had supported Clay and Webster to humiliate Jackson, could not retreat; he was again isolated, and he felt his position bitterly. McDuffie resigned his seat and his chairmanship in the House in utter disgust. To all but the president of the United States Bank the case seemed hopeless when Congress adjourned in early summer without pa.s.sing any act bearing on the situation. Biddle"s remark in a letter to a friend in Baltimore, "If the Bank charter were renewed or prolonged, I believe the pecuniary difficulties of the country would be immediately healed," shows his att.i.tude; and by this time the people seem to have come to the conclusion that it was not a war of Jackson upon the Bank so much as a war of the Bank upon the country to compel the reissue of a charter which was about to expire. Pet.i.tions now poured into Biddle"s office and delegations from Middle States cities urged a change of the Bank"s policy; even Albert Gallatin, long a defender and ardent friend, deserted Biddle. And at last, after the nation"s currency of some hundred millions had been reduced by one third, and when money rates in New York were running as high as twenty-four per cent, the order went out to the branch banks to suspend the stringent punitive measures in order that "We may save our beloved country from the curse of Van Burenism," as one of the directors described it.
The decline of the power of the Bank was now rapid. In the state and congressional elections of 1834 the President of the United States was everywhere sustained, even the Whigs quietly taking the same ground. The friendship of the Bank was now enough to d.a.m.n any party; Biddle realized the danger of his situation, and on election day sent his family out of town and barricaded his house and office. The legislatures of Pennsylvania and New York, where his flag had flown triumphantly for years, denounced him and planned to issue bonds for the relief of the people. The autumn saw a complete reversal of policy on the part of the Bank, and business at once resumed its normal course. Money became easy, prices rose to the former level, and the wheels of industry began to turn. Nothing seemed more conclusively shown than that most of the trouble had been due to the demand on the part of a few men for a continuation of financial privileges.
Jackson"s first great victory was won, and he would have been more than human not to have shown his sense of triumph on the rea.s.sembling of Congress at the end of the momentous year. The Monster had been crushed; and all his great enemies--Clay, Webster, Adams, and Calhoun--had been beaten!
Before the first break in the Cabinet Jackson had proved the value of direct and simple methods in diplomacy. In colonial times and during the operation of the Jay Treaty the West India trade was most important.
From New England and the Middle States fish, lumber, grain, and other plantation supplies had been sold to the West India planters in great quant.i.ties. The war of the Revolution curtailed this trade; that of 1812 practically destroyed it, and England thereafter refused to allow American shipping any rights in these possessions, though Adams and Clay had urged the reciprocal benefits of such a commerce.
The Jackson Administration succeeded in securing almost immediately the desired trade arrangements, and the shipping of the Chesapeake Bay, of Boston and New York, took its wonted course. This victory was hardly scored before the new President secured from France formal treaty recognition of the old spoliation claims arising from the depredations of Napoleon I, which no former administration had been able to collect.
In 1831 the Government of Louis Philippe agreed to pay these damages to the amount of 25,000,000 francs. But the French legislature delayed to vote the necessary appropriations. Jackson, a.s.suming that the obligations would be met promptly, drew upon the French treasury for the first installment and asked the National Bank to collect the bills--somewhat over $900,000. The papers were duly presented in Paris, but they were dishonored. This happened in 1833, when the Bank was in the midst of the fight on the President. Biddle, without hesitation, charged the Government $15,000 for the damage to the reputation of the Bank because the draft had been dishonored in Paris. The Government refused to pay the claim, and a lawsuit of ten years followed which was finally decided against the Bank.
It was at this juncture that Jackson, preparing for the removal of the deposits, sent Secretary Livingston to France to urge the execution of the treaty of 1831. Livingston failed to convince the French a.s.sembly that it was necessary either to pay the overdue claims or to execute certain reciprocity clauses of the treaty. In December, 1834, when the Bank crisis had pa.s.sed, the President sent to Congress a message which asked for the pa.s.sage of an act authorizing reprisals on French shipping or other property. Such a warlike proposition, with the explanation which accompanied it, aroused the country. In commercial centers there was great excitement, and insurance companies changed their contracts in expectation of war.
Once more the President was opposed and denounced in the Senate as a reckless Executive who would rush headlong into war. But the treaty with France authorized just such procedure as had been suggested, and only recently France had taken the same course with other countries. It soon became so clear that Jackson was within his rights and that the country was behind him, that resolutions were suffered to pa.s.s the Senate virtually approving this part of the message. In the House the vote indorsing the Executive was unanimous, though it was not thought advisable to do more than this until there had been ample time for reconsideration of the subject in France.
The strong language of the President aroused a storm of criticism in France, and for a time war was threatened. The French Minister in Washington was recalled, and of course the diplomatic representative of the United States in Paris was withdrawn. The conservative press of Europe made this another occasion for ridiculing the Yankee Republic, whose money-making propensities should be curtailed and whose gaudy wares and vulgar rocking-chairs should be tabooed everywhere. "Let the French navy sweep the Atlantic Ocean of their ships and again take possession of Louisiana" was the unfriendly advice of certain English journals. Before the summer of 1835 closed, all relations between France and the United States had ceased, though actual war was not expected.
When Congress met, Jackson reviewed the situation in a calm manner and gave every opportunity for the reopening of negotiations, though warlike preparations were recommended to meet those of France. But England tendered her friendly offices, and the difficulty was promptly brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the payment of the indemnity so long due.
More interesting and more important to the West and South was the stern and persistent policy of Jackson in removing the Indians from their fertile lands. From Michigan the natives were pushed into Wisconsin and Illinois, where they rested a few short years, only to be driven in 1833 beyond the Mississippi to the western parts of Iowa and Minnesota, against the heroic struggles of Black Hawk and a handful of followers.
From the lower South the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws were gradually removed during the years 1830 to 1838, sometimes after the most shameless and brutal treatment by the representatives of both the States and the Nation. Before Jackson came to office the Creeks of western Georgia had been browbeaten into sales of their lands and then removed to the region beyond Arkansas, to be known thereafter as the Indian Territory. In 1833 to 1835 the Choctaws and Chickasaws of Mississippi were defrauded of their best lands and carried forcibly to the new Indian country; but the most arbitrary part of the governmental policy was the expulsion of the Cherokees from their beautiful hills in northern Georgia. Thirteen thousand in number, civilized and devotedly attached to their homes, these people insisted on remaining and becoming a State to themselves. Under the leadership of John Ross, they presented the case to the United States Supreme Court, which decided in 1830 that they composed a nation and that they could not lawfully be compelled to submit to Georgia. The people of Georgia would not for a moment consider such a proposition, and moreover they had made up their minds that the Cherokees must likewise give up their lands and migrate to the Far West. Jackson took this view, and in December, 1835, he made a treaty with some of the chiefs whereby the Cherokees were to receive new lands in the Indian Territory and more than five millions in money.
This treaty was at once denounced and repudiated by the majority of the Indians, but the government agents executed it, and during the next three years the helpless natives were hunted down and carried, all save a small remnant, to the new region. Thus President Monroe"s plan of settling the natives beyond the western frontier in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and what is now Oklahoma, was worked out, and the land-hungry Western settlers were fast following them into their distant homes; but practically all the lands east of the great river were open to settlement, and Wisconsin, Illinois, Alabama, and Mississippi rapidly became populous communities.[4] No measure of Jackson"s Administration won him greater popularity than that of the removal of the Indians.
[Footnote 4: Compare maps showing Indian lands of 1830 and 1840 on pp.
26 and 88.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Growth of the West and removal of Indians from Cotton, Tobacco and First "Western" Grain Belts.
Reproduction of part of Tanner"s Map of 1840]
With the tariff question "definitely" settled, the internal improvements demands temporarily in abeyance, the Bank "out of the way," and with a growing prestige both at home and abroad, Jackson might now have formulated the other Western ideals, free homesteads, the re-claiming of Texas, and the occupation of Oregon. But this was all left to Van Buren, the man already practically chosen to carry forward the policies of the "old hero." However, without a free homestead law or even a preemption system, on which Benton had long insisted, the West was filling up with people in an unprecedented manner. The population of Alabama was only a little more than a hundred thousand in 1820; in 1835, it was not less than half a million. Mississippi counted seventy-five thousand in 1820; in 1840, its population had increased sixfold. The same story was told by the statistics of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
There was life, vigor, and rapid growth in all the accessible parts of the region which worshiped the President. Jackson"s election was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of the West; the long debates in Congress about checking emigration to the Mississippi Valley increased the desire to go to the new and happy country; and the hard times of 1833-34 set thousands of men upon the highways leading to the promised land. And in the Western States every effort was made to attract people. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois built waterways which should feed the Mississippi or Erie Ca.n.a.l commerce, and thus make Western life profitable as well as free and unconventional. Where ca.n.a.ls could not be constructed would go the great government road, pa.s.sing through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and its state-built branches. Even railroads were projected in that far-off country. In the Southwest the network of rivers offered transportation facilities to the increasing crops of cotton, and ambitious men flocked there to "make fortunes in a day." Sargent Prentiss, the poor New England cripple, went to Mississippi about 1830, and in six years he was both rich and famous; John A. Quitman, the preacher"s son, of New York, worked his way about the same time to the lower Mississippi country, and in a few years was receiving an annual income of forty thousand dollars. John Slidell left New York City a bankrupt in 1819, but soon became a great lawyer and slave-owner in New Orleans.
The yearly migration of thousands of Eastern men to the valley of the Mississippi was still further augmented by streams of refugees from the unsettled and distressed conditions of Germany. In Ohio, Kentucky, southern Illinois, and Missouri these idealistic emigrants from Europe found new homes and substantial encouragement. They sent glowing accounts of the new world to their friends at home, and the tide of immigration which was destined to enrich American life steadily increased. All this stimulated speculation in Western lands, in ca.n.a.l and banking ventures. The Government sales of lands rose from $4,837,000 in 1834 to $24,000,000 in 1836. And the ca.n.a.l schemes of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois found financial support in New York and in London. No wonder the eastern manufacturers sometimes desired to close the roads that crossed the Alleghanies.
"Nothing succeeds like success" is an American saying which applies admirably to Jackson"s second administration. The Western President had won all his great contests; Calhoun and the radical South had been tamed; Clay and Webster were dragged behind his car of state; the National Bank was rapidly pa.s.sing from the political stage; and the tariff was no longer a troublesome factor in public life. The receipts of the Treasury had steadily outrun the expenses, and in 1834 the last of the national debt was paid. Since the income was almost certain to continue great, Jackson was at a loss what to do. Henry Clay urged a simple distribution among the States. The President feared the effect of this, and vetoed a bill to that effect; he even proposed that the Federal Government should buy stock in all the railway corporations in order that these growing monopolies be duly restrained. After two years of disagreement a law was enacted which offered to deposit the surplus with the States without interest charges, but subject to recall. The States hastened to make the necessary arrangements, and during the second half of 1836 and the first quarter of 1837 more than $18,000,000 were thus deposited.
The land speculations, already at fever heat in the West, the building of railways and ca.n.a.ls, and the prospective distribution of millions of the public money warned the wise that sail must be taken in, else disaster would ensue. Jackson, therefore, issued an executive order in July, 1836, requiring the land offices to accept only specie in payment for lands; but it was not thought that this would occasion any great distress. The people seemed to be satisfied with the "reign" of Andrew Jackson, and it might have been expected that he would have little difficulty in placing his friend Van Buren in the high office so soon to be vacated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Presidential Election of 1836, the Popular Vote by Counties]
It did not prove so easy as it seemed. Calhoun and his followers were still hostile. In Tennessee, Hugh Lawson White was heading a serious revolt against Jackson and all his party, and of course New England was still dissatisfied. Since the great fight between the President and the Bank in 1833-34, Henry Clay had been welding together all the forces of the opposition. States-rights men in the South, like John Tyler, of Virginia, and William C. Preston, of South Carolina, the conservative forces in the Middle States who were connected with banking and "big business," and the internal improvements forces of the West that were still discontented, were all united in a more or less cohesive party of opposition. A platform they could not risk; in fact, platforms were not as yet necessary for election, nor was it thought best to nominate a single pair of candidates and submit their case to the country. The Whigs, as the opposition now came to be called, arranged a ticket which Daniel Webster led in the East, which William Henry Harrison, a popular military hero of the Northwest, headed in that section, and which Hugh Lawson White, a Jackson man till 1834, championed in the Southwest. There followed a four-cornered contest which resulted in the choice of Van Buren by a popular majority of less than 30,000. Van Buren carried more of the New England States than did Webster and more of the South than did White, but he lost most of the West, even Tennessee, which had been the stronghold of his party. The counties of the old South where Jackson had been most feared gave their votes to Van Buren, the "safe and sane"; and many New England and Middle States manufacturers preferred to take their chances with a masterful organizer of conservative temper, who had been the balance wheel of the Jackson Administration, to risking all in an election in the House of Representatives, where the sections would be fighting fiercely for political and party advantages. The new regime of 1829 was thus about to be turned into a reaction. There was a common feeling that Van Buren would do nothing "radical." Even Calhoun thought better of the President-elect than he thought of the "old hero," and the first six months of the new Administration had not pa.s.sed before he gave the President his support.
The political sun of Jackson went down brightly, not a cloud on the horizon; and his chosen successor declared openly in his inaugural that he would gladly follow in "the footsteps of his ill.u.s.trious predecessor." The country was still prosperous and the wheels of industry were running at full speed. Foreign Governments looked on with envy as the young Western Republic stretched her limbs and rose to gigantic proportions.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The most important book on the bank question is R. C. H. Catterall"s _The Second Bank of the United States_ (1903). The biographies referred to at the close of chapter _IV_ of this volume are all serviceable in general till about 1840. James Schouler"s _History of the United States_ (1894-99), vol. _IV_, and H. von Holst"s _Const.i.tutional and Political History of the United States_ (new ed., 1899), vol. _II_, give full narratives of the "war on the bank." J. Q. Adams"s _Memoirs_ are ever ready with the spice of personality to make its pages readable. _The Register of Debates_, the official publication of Congress which succeeded the former _Annals of Congress_ and _Niles"s Weekly Register_, published in Baltimore from 1811 to 1849, give the various phases of public opinion as it was expressed in Congress and in the newspapers of the time. _House Reports_, 22d Cong., 1st Sess., no. 460, and _House Executive Doc.u.ments_, 23d Cong., 1st Sess., no. 523, will satisfy those who seek to know the two sides as viewed by the parties to the conflict.
There is no satisfactory biography of Nicholas Biddle, though his papers may be consulted in the Pennsylvania Historical Society Library. R. G.
Wellington"s _The Political and Sectional Influence of the Public Lands, 1828-1842_ (1914) tends to show how much of the controversies of these years was due to sectional jealousy.
CHAPTER VI
DISTRESS AND REACTION
Martin Van Buren came to office without the enthusiastic support of any large segment of public opinion. The machine forces of the time and the hearty recommendation of Andrew Jackson had been responsible for his elevation. His position was very much like that of John Quincy Adams in 1825. If the East had preferred him to his predecessor, it was not because the East proposed to surrender any of her interests; and if the West liked him less than she had liked her hero, it was just because his feelings and interests were suspected.
He had supported Jackson in the breaking-down of a stable civil service in 1829, in order to ruin their common opponents, Adams and Clay. Now Van Buren was to inherit the evils of the spoils system, and Adams, Clay, and Webster were leading the attack upon him both in Congress and in the country. Jackson"s collector of the customs in New York defaulted in the sum of $1,250,000 during the first year of Van Buren"s term; and to make matters worse the new appointee behaved quite as scandalously the next year. Out of sixty-seven land officers in the West and South, sixty-four were reported in 1837 as defaulters, and the United States Treasury lost nearly a million dollars on their account. The Jacksonian Democracy was certainly putting its worst foot foremost, and the great leaders of the opposition held up their hands in horror at a system which "reeked with corruption from center to circ.u.mference."
Van Buren had begun badly. But worse was to follow. The receipts from federal land sales dropped from $24,000,000 in 1836 to $6,000,000 in 1837, and the total income of the Government declined from $50,000,000 to $24,000,000 in the same year; and the expenditures of the Treasury outran the receipts during 1837 and 1838 by more than $21,000,000. A deficit of $300,000,000 for two successive years in our time would not be worse than the deficit of the unpopular successor of Andrew Jackson.
From 1833 to 1836 there had been an annual surplus equal sometimes to the total expense of the Government. The national debt had been paid in full and money had been loaned to the States without interest or security. There was to be no more national debt and no more paying of interest to hard-driving capitalists; but Van Buren borrowed $34,000,000 in two years to meet the ordinary expenses of his Administration.
The honors of the time were, and have since been, bestowed upon Jackson, and all the blame of things was, and has since been, laid upon the shoulders of Van Buren. But the fault was not Van Buren"s. A number of causes had produced this surprising and distressing state of affairs.
After the great success of the Erie and other ca.n.a.ls in the East, Western States entered upon an era of ca.n.a.l building which the richest of communities could ill have borne. Railroads were beginning to create markets for Eastern farmers. The Westerners, therefore, sunk millions of their hard earnings in railways which paralleled their ca.n.a.ls or projected into wildernesses. Between 1830 and 1840 these ventures of the West, from Michigan to Louisiana, absorbed hundreds of millions of capital. Illinois borrowed $14,000,000 when her total annual income was hardly more than $250,000; Mississippi borrowed $12,000,000 on a yearly income a little less than that of Illinois. The States had mortgaged their futures for decades to come. This was especially true of Western communities; but Eastern States like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina were also in debt for similar amounts. Everybody thought the resources of the United States were inexhaustible; and everybody seemed willing to tax future generations beyond all precedent in order to develop these resources.
The depositing of the federal funds in state banks by Jackson had greatly stimulated speculation. Public interest in banks, already great, increased enormously. Forty new banks were created in Pennsylvania in a single year. State banks increased their capital and extended their operations. In two years the bank notes in circulation increased from $95,000,000 to $140,000,000; loans and discounts rose from $324,000,000 to $457,000,000. The National Bank, which had curtailed business in order to embarra.s.s the country and particularly President Jackson, quickly changed its tactics, and, sailing under a charter from the State of Pennsylvania, kept pace with its five hundred rivals. To be sure the Federal Const.i.tution forbade the States to issue bills of credit. But the States incorporated banking companies which issued the forbidden notes by the million, and the Supreme Court of the United States, now that Marshall was dead and the personnel of its membership had undergone a change, declared the practice lawful.
States indorsed or partic.i.p.ated in the proceedings of the banks, the banks loaned to other corporations or to private individuals on such security as land, slaves, improvements already made, or the personal credit of men otherwise deeply in debt. The flood of money was thus, before 1837, invested in lands and houses or railroads and ca.n.a.ls which could neither pay dividends nor return the princ.i.p.al for several years.
It seemed that when the Federal Government paid the last of its debt, the States eagerly pursued the opposite principle and created the greatest debts possible.
Though the people of the United States joined in all these wild ventures, they were not solely responsible. Europe, especially England, had been anxious to lend. The Erie Ca.n.a.l had been built upon borrowed capital, and it had paid good dividends. The old National Bank, now going out of business, had placed $25,000,000 of its stock in Europe, and the holders had received most liberal returns. American investments were quoted as "excellent" by the Baring Brothers of London to their thousands of customers. And why not? The Federal Government had recently paid the last dollar of its two huge debts, more than $80,000,000 for the cost of the Revolution and $110,000,000 for the cost of the War of 1812, and the rate of interest had often been as high as eight per cent.
Was there a similar example in all history? The bad reputation of 1783-1800 for debt-paying had been lived down.
Van Buren estimated the amount of money due by States and corporations to English creditors at $200,000,000. His estimate was probably not greatly exaggerated. Certainly as much as $12,000,000 in interest was due each year to English creditors. The merchants of the great towns regularly bought their goods on long time, sold them on time to the shopkeepers of the villages and hamlets, and these in turn sold on credit to their customers. Not less than $100,000,000 was thus distributed over the country. It was due any day in London or Liverpool.
The world seemed to "take stock" in the new Republic, particularly when the returns were large and prompt in appearing. And now that the Federal Government was not a borrower, the States became the heirs of the confidence of the capitalists who, not comprehending the difference between the National and the State Governments in the United States, expected that the authorities in Washington would bring due pressure to bear on local authorities that might turn indifferent when crops were bad.
All these things led to an inflated state of things. Jackson had seen the dangerous tendency, and his specie circular had been applied in 1836 in the hope of mending matters. But the people who bought lands had no gold or silver. The effect of the circular was to compel Western bankers to call on their Eastern correspondents for metallic money. All the specie in the Eastern vaults amounted to only $19,000,000, a sum not in excess of what it had been twenty years before, when the paper money in circulation was not half so great. Just as the West asked for more hard money English bankers and other business men called sharply for payment of outstanding debts due by leading business men in the East. Both demands could not be met at the same time. The bubble had been p.r.i.c.ked.
To make matters worse, the wheat crop of the Middle States and of the South failed utterly, and the farmers were compelled to import grain on credit for the next year"s seeding. The cotton output was large, but the price fell from twenty to ten cents a pound. Corn and meat were plentiful in the West; the means of transportation were, however, lacking. There was famine and plenty in the land at the same time.
Business came to a standstill, all forward movements stopped, and the banks closed their doors.
From a winter of greatest plenty and most amazing expectations the people, particularly the poor of the cities and mill towns, pa.s.sed into a summer and autumn of positive want and starvation. With flour at twelve dollars a barrel, the New York price, and with wages declining every day or industrial operations suspended altogether, the lot of the worker was hard. Riots were of weekly occurrence, and the greatest business houses of New York, Philadelphia, and even New Orleans, where cotton was expected to save men, declared themselves bankrupt and closed their doors. Men who had clamored against Jackson or Biddle in the time of distress three years before now looked upon that crisis as only a flurry. Everything seemed out of joint and the future gave no a.s.surance of speedy recovery. The East, which had condemned the West for their stay laws against the panic of 1819, now clamored for a federal stay law and urged Van Buren to suspend the specie circular. The President refused to offer any relief, and other failures and other risks followed. Before the summer had well begun every bank in the country suspended specie payment, and a little later local business men"s a.s.sociations issued notes or due bills in small denominations which were accepted as money. East, South, and West the commercial and financial panic held the country fast in its grip. Speculations fell flat, obligations were void, and men turned to the simpler forms of life to regain their equilibrium. Barter took the place of former methods of exchange.
People blamed the banks; some cried out that the monopolistic methods of business had been the cause. The Whigs maintained that the panic and distress were due to the blunders and crimes of the party in power.
Benton in reply declared that the paper money and stock-jobbing systems of the last few years had been the cause. Van Buren called Congress together in extra session in September, 1837, in order, as he said, to devise means of saving the Government itself from bankruptcy. But he could not place the blame on the preceding Administration, as his opponents delighted to do; he only said it was all because of "over-action in all departments of business." Congress suspended the distribution of the surplus revenue among the States, issued notes to the amount of ten million dollars to meet the obligations of the Government, and took measures for the safety of the public funds in banks which could not pay their debts. Gradually during the next year the signs of recovery appeared. Rise of prices in Europe, a good cotton crop, and the pa.s.sing of the panicky state of mind enabled the banks to resume specie payments, and the mills of the East to open their doors.
But the public was in doubt whether the ruin of the National Bank, the issuing of the specie circular by Jackson, or the lack of ability on the part of Van Buren had been the cause of the calamities of the year 1837.
And as it took years for men and business houses to regain their former mutual confidence, there was soreness and hesitation everywhere until after 1840.
The financial situation was, therefore, the one thing with which Van Buren had to deal during most of his term. After the emergency measures had pa.s.sed, he gave earnest attention to the enacting of a law which would create responsible agencies in the larger cities for the receipt and expenditure of the public moneys. The purpose was to avoid concentration and monopoly such as the National Bank had maintained, and to keep the control of the finances in the hands of the Government. It was called the Independent Treasury system. The President pressed the measure before a divided Congress and without the support of any concerted or strong public opinion. To the surprise of many, Calhoun, the bitterest of his enemies, came to his a.s.sistance. This meant the support of most of the cotton and tobacco planters. Yet the measure failed of pa.s.sage during the sessions of 1837-38 and 1838-39.
Van Buren did not know how to appeal to the popular heart when powerful congressional leaders and shrewd business men pressed too hard. He simply adhered to his Independent Treasury Bill against all opposition, fair and unfair. A group of conservative Democrats broke away from his leadership in 1838 and deprived him of a majority; in the next Congress he was no stronger, and the one measure of reform which he urged failed to pa.s.s before June, 1840. Another legacy of Jackson, his "ill.u.s.trious predecessor," was a war with the Seminole Indians, who resisted removal to the western frontier; and before 1842 the suppression of these desperate natives and their slave allies, runaways from the Georgia plantations, cost the Government $40,000,000, most of which had to be borrowed at high rates of interest.
Even more threatening than the Seminole troubles was the Texas problem.
The last act of Jackson"s official life was to recognize the independence of that aspiring State. But this was only preliminary to the real purposes of Texas and her agents, who pressed Van Buren in the summer of 1837 for annexation to the United States; though these same agents wrote home that if annexation did not succeed, the South would break away from the Union, and that if it did succeed, the North would withdraw from the federal compact. So that while Calhoun and his friends aided the President in his financial measures, they at the same time importuned him to help the South by adding another pro-slavery State to the Union. This was not the first time this question had embarra.s.sed a president. As already seen, Clay had denounced Monroe for giving away that princely domain; Benton and Van Buren had warred upon Adams and Clay in 1826-28 for not compelling a restoration, and under this pressure and that of the South in general, Adams had sought in vain to purchase Texas; under Jackson the problem was several times taken up, and as much as $5,000,000 was offered. Still the astute General had steered clear of trouble when annexation "with war" was offered in 1836.