USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 18
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18 Niles' Register, Vol. 28, p. 267.
19 The citizens of Madison County to the number of four or five hundred met at Richmond, the county seat, and decided to invite Clay to a public dinner there. He was unable to accept. In his reply he said, "that his enemies had sought to destroy him in the affections of his constituents." He said, "They would have de- prived me of the attachment and confidence of my constituents. My constituents have overwhelmed me by general and emphatic manifestations of their regard and esteem. They would have infused distrust into the minds of the people of my state, of the integrity of my public actions. Kentucky never displayed more entire satisfaction with me than at the present, to me, happy moment." Nites' Register, Vol. 28, pp. 296, 297.
20 Crittenden MSS., Vol. 3, Nos. 579, 580. Letter dated November 25.
21 As an example of impartiality strikingly shown, see the Clay dinner in Frank- fort in Argus, June 8, 1825.
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good method to hold his party together.22 A few months later Critten- den wrote Clay: "Our state politics have some effect naturally upon our National politics. This has been favorable as to Mr. Adams. The Anti-relief party have been his friends. The relief party has identified itself with the name and pretensions of Gen. Jackson. I think a little to his prejudice. The effect as to you has been temporarily disad- vantageous. The Union between the Jackson men and the Judge break- ers is artificial-it is rather a union between the Leaders than the parties. * * The alliance being offensive & defensive brought the Relief party to act against you. This Union will be dissolved as soon as the great question which now divides us is settled & most of the Relief party will return to their local political & personal attachments to you." 23 But, fundamentally, this cleavage and these alliances became permanent. Many relief men had a personal attachment to Clay which could be expected to hold under ordinary circumstances, when the choice was between Clay and some other candidate, but it was most likely to break when it was a decision between merely a Clay candidate and Jackson or a Jackson man.
The Jacksonian democrats were, in fact, everywhere, in Kentucky and out, likely to be more radical than the Clay and Adams party. It was, then, only natural that the majority of the relief party should join Jackson and the anti-relief party merge with the opponents of Jackson. In fact, the state parties and their names soon came to be a memory, as they became completely identified with the national parties. The Argus in 1827 said: "In Kentucky the prevailing anxiety which is felt on the national question has already obliterated in a great measure the distinctions of the State parties, which but a year ago seemed calculated to produce divisions among a people once almost unanimously devoted to the support of the republican principles which triumphed under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson over the feudal aristocracy headed by the elder Adams." 24 Party politics in the state was now for years to be made the tail of the national political kite. With few exceptions, divisions in the state were continued and intensified on national issues rather than on state affairs. It was easier to stir up feeling on national problems and, therefore, easier to hold the party together.
Preparations for the Presidential election of 1828 were begun by Jackson and his supporters immediately upon his defeat in 1825. In fact, the charges of "bargain and corruption" had been invented largely for this purpose, and the Jackson men were not going to let the people forget them. In Kentucky these accusations played an important part in the campaigning, being made use of from every possible angle. The Jackson men began early their maneuvers for advantage. They hoped to carry each contest prior to the Presidential election and thereby stand in an excellent position to carry the state for Jackson in 1828. They were very anxious to have their leader visit the state, through the belief that his presence would greatly aid the cause. But he was loath to run the risk of making what to him seemed an excellent position in Kentucky less favorable. He was conscious of the various constructions that would be put upon a visit from him. In 1826 he had intimated that he might visit Harrodsburg Springs in the interest of his wife's health. His friends seized this opportunity to urge him to come, but on Mrs. Jackson's health improving he decided not to hazard the trip. In answer to an invitation, he said : "I know that so far as Kentucky is concerned the unjust impu- tation which it is my wish to avoid would never be raised; or, rather,
22 Crittenden MSS., Vol. 3, Nos. 528, 529. Letter from Crittenden to Clay, December 26, 1825.
23 Crittenden MSS., Vol. 3, Nos. 565, 566. Letter dated April 22, 1826.
24 Oct. 31, 1827.
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that a great proportion of her citizens would attribute to their proper origin the objects of my visit, yet, when I reflect upon the management and intrigue which are operating abroad, the magnitude of the principles which they are endeavoring to supplant and the many means which they can draw to their assistance from the patronage of the government, I feel it is not less due to myself and to principle than to the American people, particularly so far as they have sanctioned my political creed, to steer clear of every conduct out of which the idea might arise that I was manoeuvering for my aggrandizement. If it be true that the administration have gone into power contrary to the voice of the nation and are now expecting, by means of this power thus acquired, to mould the public into an acquiescence with their authority, then is the issue fairly made out-shall the government or the people rule? and it be- comes the man whom the people shall indicate as their rightful repre- sentative in this solemn issue so to have acquitted himself that, while he displaces these enemies of liberty, there will be nothing in his own example to operate against the strength and durability of the govern- ment." 25 The following year he was invited to a public dinner in Frank- fort, but plead short notice and the press of important business at home as an excuse for not attending. He took occasion here to refer to the tactics of his enemies : "It is true that reproach and calumny have opened their streams of reproach against me. Everything dear to one at my time of life, who, of necessity, must repose for character and good name more on the past than the future, and who must look rather to what has been than what may be, has indeed been violently assailed. Placed before the people, I was not weak enough to presume that the volume of my life would not be opened and ransacked and every public incident seized upon that by possibility might be used to my disadvantage, yet I did hope that a liberal and generous feeling on the part of my countrymen would spare me at least those assaults which slander and falsehood might delight to inflict. In that I have been disappointed. Yet have I found a redeeming security in this, that truth was mighty, and although for a time her principles might be obscured, in the end her triumph would be but the more complete." 26
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1827, Jackson dinners, bar- becues, and various other kinds of meetings were held in almost every county in the state. The state leaders were actively organizing the state for a general convention which was to meet on January 8 (1828), a significant day in Kentucky's memory.27 On this day 203 delegates from fifty-nine counties met in Frankfort, with Robert Breckinridge as chair- man. The electoral ticket for the state was agreed upon and a committee appointed to prepare an address supporting Jackson and Calhoun. It was further agreed that William T. Barry should be their candidate for governor. An effective organization for the campaign was laid, with a state treasurer as a very important part of it. The delegates were urged to raise money in their respective districts and forward it to the party treasury, where it was urgently needed for partially meeting the expenses of speakers, for printing campaign leaflets, and for other campaigning purposes. Thus was the Jackson party being welded together in their first important political convention.28
The Clay and Adams party was not without its plans and activities. It was generally understood that Adams was to be the candidate in 1828, to succeed himself, for he should be reelected to vindicate his first elec- tion and also to carry out the custom of giving each President two terms.
25 Niles' Register, Vol. 31, p. 103. Letter dated July 31, 1826.
26 Niles' Register, Vol. 33, p. 87. Letter dated September 4, 1827.
27 See Argus, July-December, 1827.
28 Niles' Register, Vol. 33, p. 357; Argus, Jan. 16, 1828.
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It was equally understood by Clay and his friends that he would have the honor in 1832. Clay early entered into the campaign in Kentucky for Adams. In the summer of 1827 he attended a public dinner in Lex- ington, where his great hold on his fellow-citizens was again manifested. The following sentiment was expressed in a toast to him: "The furnace of persecution may be heated seven times hotter, and seventy times more he will come out unscathed by the fire of malignity, brighter to all and dearer to his friends; while his enemies shall sink with the dross of their own vile materials." 29 Clay then entered into a long defense of his actions in voting for Adams in 1825 and launched out upon a bitter denunciation of Jackson and his methods. "Had I voted for General Jackson," he declared, "in opposition to the well-known opinion which I entertained of him, one-tenth part of the ingenuity and zeal which have been employed to excite prejudices against me would have held me up to universal contempt, and, what would have been worse, I should have felt that I really deserved it." He repelled with indignation the "vilest calumnies" against him and "the charges, under every cameleon form" and demanded proof. He accused Jackson of shady methods in the election of 1825 and pointed to the evidence. As to his voting against instructions, he said: "It has been a thousand times asserted and re- peated that I violated instructions that I ought to have obeyed. I deny the charge; and I am happy to have this opportunity of denying it in the presence of my assembled constituents." He stated that the Gen- eral Assembly had requested the Kentucky delegation to vote a par- ticular way, and a majority of that delegation had not seen fit to follow this recommendation, but this did not violate the instructions, for they were not imperative but merely suggestive. But if anyone should wish to challenge this distinction, then he would abandon it and "dispute at once the right of the Legislature to issue a mandatory instruction to the representatives of the people. Such a right has no foundation in the constitution, in the reason or nature of things, nor in the usage of the Kentucky legislature. Its exercise would be a manifest usurpation." The people who elected the Legislature which had given the instruction had not elected it on the principle or with the understanding that it should instruct the Kentucky delegation in Congress how it should per- form its duty. "I put it to the candor of every elector present, if he intended to part with his own right or anticipated the exertion of any such power by the legislature when he gave his vote in August, 1824." The only instructions which he had received from a legitimate source were from his constituents, and he had followed them, as had been fre- quently attested since.
As to Jackson's continued charges and methods of campaigning, he was glad the issues were now joined. "Heretofore, malignant whispers and dark surmises," declared Clay, "have been clandestinely circulated, or openly or unblushingly uttered by irresponsible agents. They were borne upon the winds and, like them, were invisible and intangible. No responsible man stood forward to sustain them, with his acknowledged authority. They have at last a local habitation and a name. General Jackson has now thrown off the mask. and comes confessedly forth from behind his concealed batteries, publicly to accuse and convict me. We stand confronted before the American people. Pronouncing the charges, as I again do, destitute of all foundation, and gross aspersions, whether clandestinely or openly issued from the halls of the Capitol. the saloons of the Hermitage, or by press, by pen, or by tongue, and safely resting on my conscious integrity, I demand the witness and await the event with fearless confidence."
With cutting invective he assailed Jackson as a man in whom he could
29 Life and Speeches of Clay, I, 285; Niles' Register, Vol. 32, p. 375.
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have no faith. "In voting against him as president of the United States I gave him no just cause of offence. I exercised no more than my indisputable privilege, as, on a subsequent occasion, of which 1 have never complained, he exercised his of voting against me as Secretary of State. Had I voted for him, I must have gone counter to every fixed principle of my public life. I believed him incompetent and his election fraught with danger. At this early period of the republic, keeping steadily in view the dangers which had overturned every other free state. I believed it to be essential to the lasting preservation of our liberties that a man devoid of civil talents and offering no recommendation but one founded on military service should not be selected to administer the government. I believe so yet, and I shall consider the days of the commonwealth numbered when an opposite principle is established. I believed, and still believe, that now, when our institutions are in com- parative infancy, is the time to establish the great principle, that military qualification alone is not sufficient title to the presidency. If we start right we may run a long race of liberty, happiness and glory. If we stumble in setting out, we shall fall, as others have fallen before us, and fall without even a claim to the regrets or sympathies of mankind."
He would make it plain that he had not the slightest personal grudge against Jackson, neither would he belittle in the least his military glory. No one heard of the battle of New Orleans with greater joy than had been his-a joy which was alloyed, however, when he read in the official report charges that the Kentucky militia had ingloriously fled the field of battle. He would also have it tunderstood that he was not making these statements "for the purpose of conciliating the favor or mitigating the wrath of Gen. Jackson. He has erected an impassable barrier between us, and I would scorn to accept any favor at his hands. I thank my God that He has endowed nie with a soul incapable of apprehensions from the anger of any being but myself." 30
Clay found his popularity undiminished among his fellow Ken- tuckians. Woodford County and the surrounding regions gave him a public dinner and reception at which more than 1,000 persons were pres- ent. At Paris, in Bourbon County, a dinner of even greater proportions was given him. It was reported that between 4.000 and 5,000 persons attended. According to the newspaper account, this entertainment "was the most sumptuous and extensive ever known in the Western country. Invitations from all parts of Kentucky, and many from Ohio, were hourly coming in, but could not be accepted." 31
A Clay and Adams organization was fast being perfected throughout the state. County meetings were held and numerous resolutions ground out. In Bracken County it was declared that "We have the most entire confidence in the wisdom, virtue and patriotism of the present chief magistrate of the union. It is true he was not our first choice; Ken- tucky's darling son, he who had indeed 'filled the measure of his country's glory,' was the object of our most anxious hopes. Nor will we say that the present chief magistrate was even our second choice, but, restricted as we were when reduced to the alternative, Adams or Jackson-a statesman or a 'military chieftan' -- we could not hesitate to sanction the election of our present worthy representative." Adams was endorsed for the Presidency and the continued confidence in Clay was expressed, "the contemptible slang of 'bargain and corruption' notwith- standing." 32 The state convention was held on December 17, 1827, the first of its kind ever held in the state, at which 300 delegates were pres-
80 Niles' Register, Vol. 32, pp. 375-380.
31 Ibid., p. 380.
32 Niles' Register, Vol. 32, p. 192. This meeting also "Resolved, That we who are new court men, cannot but reject, without hesitation the attempt to identify us, as a party, with the supporters of Gen. Jackson. We act from principle."
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ent, representing sixty counties. Adams was supported for the Presi . dency, and with regard to the Vice-Presidency, it was decided that no choice should be indicated, but that the selection should be left to the friends of the administration throughout the Union. For the state elec- tion it nominated Thomas Metcalfe.33
Outside of the personalities of the two candidates and of Clay, one of the most persistent points of interest and discussion was the charges of "bargain and corruption" in 1825, and Clay's refusal to be bound by the Legislature's instructions. As just noted, Clay had made this subject the burden of his speeches in the state during his visit in the summer of 1827. But it seemed that the charges would not be silenced with all the denials that Clay had been making. As a last resort and with a feeling of desperation, Clay collected together a mass of evidence and, with a long introduction by himself, gave it to the public in a pam- phlet in January, 1828, entitled, An Address of Henry Clay to the Public, containing Certain Testimony in Refutation of the Charges against him made by General Andrew Jackson touching the Last Presidential Election. This pamphlet reached the members of the Kentucky Legislature near the time for its adjournment. The Clay supporters in the Senate believed that Clay's refutation had been complete and they determined to score a political triumph by passing a set of resolutions to that effect. Accord- ingly, resolutions were introduced declaring that the Legislature looked with indignation upon the attempt being made to blast the reputations of members of Congress who had voted for Adams, and that, after hav- ing thoroughly examined all the evidence, it had no hesitation in saying that the charges of "bargain and corruption" were utterly without foun- dation, were malicious, and were brought forward for no other purpose than to elevate General Jackson to the Presidency. The Jackson men at first attempted to defeat the resolutions, but, finding themselves in a minority on this question, they sought to obstruct their passage by calling for an investigation. The investigation, after an attempt at first had been made by the Clay men to defeat it, was made, in which seventeen witnesses were called and certain papers asked for. The Senate, as was to be expected, voted that the charges were not proved and proceeded to pass the original resolutions by a strictly party vote. The House, under the control of a Jackson majority, laid the resolutions on the table.34 Concerning this investigation, a correspondent of the Kentucky Gazette said: "Even honorable Senators, invested with special delegated powers, forgetting their own dignity and the duties they owe their coun- try and constituents, acting under the impress of this political fever and goaded on by the same mad and furious zeal, under the flimsy pretext of settling important principles and regardless of the subjects of legiti- mate legislation, have formed themselves into a body, infinitely more terrible than a Spanish inquisition, in order to whitewash their political friends and blackball their political enemies." 35
A clever maneuver during this investigation was made by the Jackson men, greatly to the discomfiture of the opposition. As was well known, Adams had not stood out in times past for conspicuous friendship for the West. During the years 1822 and 1823 Amos Kendall had brought out in the Argus a series of letters or articles attacking Adams' course in the negotiations at Ghent and his hostility to the West. He had shown particularly how Clay had opposed Adams when he was attempting to trade the interests of the West for rights for New England fishermen. These publications being before the time when Clay's and Adams' inter-
88 Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 316.
84 Argus, Jan. 23, 1827; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, V, 511, 512.
36 Quoted in Argus, March 5, 1828.
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ests had drawn each other together, were highly complimented by the former, who gave Kendall $100 to aid in bringing them out in pamphlet form.36 The Jackson men now cleverly tacked on to the original reso- lutions an amendment declaring that all of Kendall's charges against Adams were utterly false. The Clay and Adams senators were now caught in a distressing dilemma; whatever action they should take would stultify themselves. They voted down the amendment and passed the resolutions as above stated. But in so doing they had laid themselves open to the cutting lampoons of the Jackson party, which was quick to take advantage of this opportunity in an address to the people in which appeared the following: "If they voted for the amendment, with the evidence before them that Mr. Clay had himself circulated these charges and paid for their circulation, they would vote he was a slanderer and libeller. If they voted against it, they would vote that Adams was an enemy of the West, ready to sell its blood! In this predicament they divided; some voted that Clay was a libeller, and others that Adams was a knave; but the amendment was rejected by the casting vote of the lieutenant-governor. This shows that the party cares nothing for Mr. Adams; they will vote him a knave when he stands alone, but an honest man when connected with Mr. Clay." 37
Nothing could better show how unnatural was the Clay-Adams alli- ance than this incident. It was very hard for the Kentuckians to grow enthusiastic over a man whom all a short while previously had agreed to be the enemy of the West, and a man who had shown it on every occasion possible. It was only the great attachment the people had for Clay that made Adams a possibility in Kentucky at all. It became in- creasingly evident as the campaign progressed that he was a mill-stone around the neck of Clay. The Jackson men began to say less about the favorite son of Kentucky, who was not running for the Presidency, and who therefore need not be attacked merely to antagonize his numerous friends, when Adams afforded such a perfect target. His record through- out had not a single bright spot for the West. Not only was his well- known record at Ghent constantly kept before the people, but even more puerile attacks on the negotiations were made. Adams had included as an item in the expenses at Ghent $3,005.62 as "contingencies." The Argus, anxious for the people's money, would know what the "contin- gencies" were for which so large a sum of money was spent. "The peo- ple ought to know what it was for which he charged upwards of $3,000 in three or four months, in addition to outfit, salon, and travelling ex- penses." 38 At a Jackson dinner in Lexington, at which Pope and Barry were the chief speakers, the following sentiment was offered in a toast : "John Q. Adams. As he was in the beginning, so he is now, and will ever remain-no real republican, no friend to the West." 39 This was a view rather widely held over the state, and not confined to the Jackson followers. As between Jackson and Adams, the campaigner could dis- play the former to a thousand-fold better advantage to a Westerner-a Kentuckian. The one had grown up as an embodiment of the West while the other had filled the same role for the East. Barry, seizing this line of attack by the deadly comparison, pictured Jackson struggling in poverty in his boyhood and rising to his high position by sheer ability and determination. But on the other hand, "See the youthful Adams, born of illustrious parents, laid in the lap of wealth, dandled on the knee
86 The pamphlet was entitled, Letters to John Quincy Adams Relative to the Fisheries and the Mississippi, first published in the Argus of Western America, revised and enlarged by Amos Kendall, 1823.
87 Address to the People of Kentucky by the Central Jackson Committee of Kentucky; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, V, 512, 513. 88 April 2, 1828.
89 Argus, July 25, 1827.
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of nobles, raised and educated in foreign lands in the midst of luxuries and far from war's alarms, imbibing in his very infancy, and confirming it in his approach to manhood, the principles of aristocracy and mon- archy." He then charged Adams with having opposed the interests of the West in the Louisiana Purchase, the Cumberland Road, the canal around the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, and he believed he was hostile to the tariff and to internal improvements. As to Kentucky's favorite son, "I respect Mr. Clay ; but in politics, here we part." 40 Adams' record of friendship for the South was equally as open to attack as for the West. And, as Kentucky considered herself as much Southern as West- ern, Kentuckians could be weaned from him on this point. The Jackson men took particular pains to point out this hostility, and at the same time remind Kentuckians where the market for their horses, cattle and hogs was and where, therefore, much of their prosperity came from.41 Thus was Adams a liability instead of an asset to the Clay party in Kentucky.
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