ments made during the recess were destined to meet with opposition, although it was supposed that the decided majority of the administration party in the Senate would prevent it from being effectual. The Senate however was not at once put to the test. The President allowed a month to elapse after it assembled, before he submitted any of the appointments made during the recess, and more than two months of the Session had expired before all those appointments were submitted for confirmation. This delay, which was attributed to the disagreement that already prevailed between the friends of the Vice President and of the Secretary of State, although it tended to consolidate the strength of the administration, did not produce a general confirmation of the appointments. A warm opposition was instituted to the whole course of the Executive in relation to removals -1st, on the ground of their unconstitutionality, and 2d, on that of inexpediency. The opposition failed on both points; and on the first it can hardly be doubted that it was unsound in principle. The expediency of the reform itself was a subject of greater difference of opinion; and whatever might have been urged on the one side in favor of rotation in office and a thorough reformation of abuses, and on the other in favor of the experience of the old incumbents and against deranging the whole business and policy of the Government by committing it to the hands of new and untried agents, it could not be disputed, that the President, in selecting the successors to those removed had been guided by personal predilections and a wish to reward electioneering services, rather than by a regard for the public good. The consequence was, that the Senate felt itself constrained by a sense of public duty to reject many of the appointments made during the recess, and in some instances the vote rejecting them was so large as to convey a strong censure upon the selection of the Presice t.* thirtyfive, Delaware sixteen, Maryland fourteen, District of Columbia one, Virginia eight, North Carolina four, Georgia two, Alabama two, Mississippi five, Louisiana four, Tennessee twelve, Kentucky sixteen, Ohio fiftyone, Indiana nineteen, Illinois three, Missouri seven, Florida one, Arkansas two, and Michigan one. *Henry Lee, Consul to Algiers, and James B. Gardner, Register of Land Office, rejected unanimously. John P. Decatur, Collector at Portsmouth, Samuel Cushman, District Attorney for New Hampshire, Isaac H 1, 2d Comptroller of the Treasury, Samuel Herricks, District Attorney for Ohio, Samuel McRoberts, District Attorney for Illinois, M. M. Noah, Surveyor at New York, Neg. 43. Aff. 1. Samuel Mc Roberts was confirmed upon re-consideration, aff. 24, neg. 22, and W. Rector and M. M. Noah were again re-nominated to the Senate, by which W. R. was again rejected, 21 neg. and 20 aff. and M. M. Noah was confirmed by the casting vote of the Vice President, 22 aff. 22 neg. Holmes, Marks and Tazewell, who before voted in the negative and Hayne, who voted in the affirmative, being absent, The removals in the post office were still more general, and when to these were added the changes made from time to time in those offices, where the commissions expired, they constituted a reform which could scarcely have been more complete had a revolution taken place in the government itself, instead of a change in the persons administering it. The decided manner in which the dominant party proceeded to appropriate all the offices of honor and profit under the government of the United States, was by no means an indication of any harmonious feeling prevailing among its leaders. The necessity which had kept its different sections together while in opposition, no longer existed, and its discordant materials began to obey their several principles of action and to range themselves under the standards of the rival chieftains, who had, by combining, achieved the overthrow of the late administration. Strong and incessant efforts had been made from the commencement of the administration by the respective partisans of the Vice President and of the Secretary of State, to direct the Executive patronage to the aggrandizement of their own friends. A division of the party was early foreseen to be inevitable, but the personal predilections of the President, which would give great preponderance to the side he might espouse, were as yet unknown. In the formation of his Cabinet the first post had been given to Mr Van Buren himself; but this advantage was in some measure conterbalanced by the appointment of Mr Ingham, a devoted friend of the Vice President, to the Treasury Department, the influence and patronage of which were much more direct and extensive than those of any other department of the Government. The other members of the Cabinet were not selected with reference to the views of either of the competitors for the succession to the Presidency; but upon grounds of personal preference on the part of the President. In fact the whole administration was formed as the organ of a personal party. It was not the representative of any specific principle, nor did it profess any particular system of national policy. The views of the Secretary of State and of the Secretary of the Navy concerning the policy and powers of the General Government, had not harmonized with those of the Secretaries of War and of the Treasury. The Attorney General had belonged to the old federal party, and the new Post-master General had not shown that his political principles necessarily inclined him to a narrow construction of the powers of the Federal Government. Upon the whole, however, the Cabinet was formed with an apparent preference of the political creed professed by the friends of the Vice President, rather than that of the radical party. The star of the Vice President was deemed to be in the ascendant, and it was generally believed that the influence of the Executive would be exerted to promote his elevation to the Presidential chair upon his own retirement. These opinions, however, were not realized. While the patronage of the Executive was so directed publicly to strengthen Mr Calhoun's political party by placing many of his friends in important posts, the ground on which he stood was crumbling beneath him, and measures were in train to create a breach between him and the President. To him, as a more early and efficient supporter, the President had given a greater share of confidence and manifested a warmer feeling than he had originally bestowed upon the Secretary of State, whose support was rather a matter of necessity than of choice. In this particular the Secretary labored under a disadvantage; but circumstances soon enabled him to obtain a great superiority of influence over the mind of the President. The Secretary of War had been brought into the Cabinet solely on account of the confidential relations and intimate friendship subsisting between him and the President, and of course was entitled to, and received, his entire confidence. Upon the arrival of the Secretary of State at Washington, he found a coolness existing between the Secretary of War and the Vice President, and a division in the Cabinet itself in consequence of some disagree ment in their private relations; and it was instantly perceived that as the President had particularly interested himself in this matter, that the most direct road to his confidence was by sustaining his view of this delicate subject. Whether the Secretary of State was actuated by this motive, or regarding the lady in question as an injured woman, was desirous of doing her justice by affording her his countenance and support, certain it is, that he made signal efforts to facilitate her admission to society, and by the course he took ultimately rendered a pure question of morals and feeling, one having a direct political bearing and pregnant with great political results. As the President warmly sympathized in the feelings and resentment of the Secretary of War on this point, the Secretaries of the Treasury and Navy, as the objects of that resentment, gradually lost his confidence, which was transferred to the Secretary of State, whose course both in public and private had so completely harmonized with the wishes of himself and his friend. The loss of influence on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury had impaired the indirect power of Mr Calhoun, and the same cause had injured his own standing with the Executive. No open breach had however as yet taken place between them, and the Vice President and his friends in Congress continued to support the administration, some of whose most obnoxious appointments were carried by the casting vote of the Vice President as President of the Senate. Affairs remained on this uncertain footing, until nearly the close of the first Session of the 21st Congress. At that time and after the greater part of the questionable nominations had been confirmed, a movement was made which ripened the misunder standing between the President and the Vice President into a coinplete alienation of feeling, and prepared the way for an open rupture. Before this event occurred, the influence of the controversy above alluded to, had effected a change in the political relations of some of the members of the Cabinet; and upon that question, the President, the Secretaries of State and of War, and the Post-master General were opposed to the Secretaries of the Treasury and Navy, and the Attorney General, and the division was understood to have no inconsiderable bearing upon other questions of greater importance. This misunderstanding continued to increase, until finally an open rupture was produced. This quarrel however professedly originated in the view taken by Mr Calhoun of the conduct of General ackson during the Seminole Campaign in 1818. The Gen. Jackson had commanded the American troops in that war, and acting as he conceived in the execution of his orders, had invaded the territory of Florida then belonging to Spain, and occupied the forts and towns of Pensacola to which the Indians had fled for protection. Spanish minister at Washington remonstrated, and in the discussions which took place in Mr Monroe's Cabinet respecting this transaction, Mr Calhoun as Secretary of War proposed, that a court of inquiry should be held on General Jackson's conduct, inasmuch as he had transcended his orders. Mr Crawford, then Secretary of the Treasury, also advocated a course, which would have been deemed a censure on General Jackson; but the Secretary of State (Mr Adams) conceding, that the orders from the War Department had been transcended, so forcibly vindicated the course of General Jackson upon principles of national law, that all proceedin s against him were relinquished, and the Government determined in its discussions with Spain, to justify the invasion, while it delivered up the posts. This was done by an able reply from the Secretary of State to the complaints of the Spanish minister, in which the course of the American General was successfully vindicated. The subject was afterwards. agitated in Congress, and the friends of Mr Crawford in that body were particularly distinguished for their efforts to censure the conduct of General Jackson, which was denounced as arbitrary and contrary alike to the law of nations and the Constitution. As might have been expected, General Jackson felt greatly aggrieved by this attack, and his resentment was roused both against Mr Crawford and Mr Clay, whose opinions on this subject were openly avowed in the debate on the Seminole war. . Towards Mr Adams, by whom he had been so ably and so uniformly defended, and towards Mr Calhoun, who had publicly sustained him notwithstanding his first impressions, he had until lately expressed the warmest feelings of gratitude. This harmonious footing, which was first disturbed by the controversy abovementioned, was now destined to be totally destroyed. Towards the close of the 1st Session of the 21st Congress, and only two days after the confirmation of the nomination of Amos Kendall, (one of the obnoxious appointments of the Executive) by the casting vote of the Vice President, a letter from Mr Crawford to Mr Forsyth was placed in the hands of General Jackson by the agency of a particular friend of the Secretary of State then at Washington, accusing Mr Calhoun of having proposed a censure upon him for his conduct in the Seminole Campaign. This letter was transmitted to Mr Calhoun by the President, with an intimation, that it was so contrary to his impressions of the course he had supposed Mr Calhoun to have pursued, as to require some explanation. Mr Calhoun replied and showed, by referring to the correspondence between General Jackson and the Government in 1818, that he must have known Mr Calhoun's opinion to be that he had transcended his orders, and that his vindication had then been placed upon other and distinct grounds. Mr Calhoun then proceeded to inquire into the the motives, which had led at this late period, to a renewal of this discussion, and avowed his belief that it had originated in a desire to detract from his influence with the President, and thus to destroy his political standing with the friends of the administration. A long and protracted correspondence ensued, in which the late Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Crawford, and several of his confidential friends took part, and although the Secretary of State distinctly disclaimed all knowledge of the preliminary movements and all motive to detract from the political standing of the Vice President, still their respective claims upon the succession, his course in public and private, after being appointed Secretary State, and the political relations of the agents, who appeared as the prime movers in this discreditable business, produced a general impression, that its sole object was to create a breach between the President and Vice President, with the view of destroying the influence of a formidable competitor for public favor. of The movement was successful, and a party which was formed upon the principle of overturning by a personal combination, an administration that refused to subserve the political views of its leaders, was divided, and resolved into its original elements by the personal jealousies and conflicting claims of the rival competitors for the succession. 3* |