funds; was a second time elected, receiving 219 out of 288 votes. Surely there must have been something besides an old military recollection to make these two elections so different from the two former; and there was! That something else was principle! and the same that I have stated in the beginning of this chapter as entering into the canvass of 1828, and ruling its issue. I pass on to the last disparagement. A victory which was a very ordinary achievement, and only to be remembered where battles were rare." Such was not the battle at New Orleans. It was no ordinary achievement. It was a victory without knowledge of scientific war, under a leader as little schooled as themselves in that particular, without other advantages than a slight field work (a ditch and a bank of earth) hastily thrown up-over double their numbers of British veterans, survivors of the wars of the French Revolution, victors in the Peninsula and at Toulouse, under trained generals of the Wel an abundant gold and silver currency; elected;-receiving but 99 electoral votes out of the public debt paid off; the treasury made 261. In the year 1828 he was first elected, reindependent of banks; the Indian tribes remov-ceiving 178 out of 261 votes; and in 1832 he ed from the States; indemnities obtained from all foreign powers for all past aggressions, and 10 new ones committed; several treaties obtained from great powers that never would treat with us before; peace, friendship, and cornmerce with all the world; and the measures established which, after one great conflict with the expiring Bank of the United States, and all her affiliated banks in 1837, put an end to bank dominion in the United States, and all its train of contractions and expansions, panic and suspension, distress and empirical relief. This is the answer which the respective periods of the beginning and the ending of General Jackson's administration of 4,600 citizens just called from their homes, gives to the flippant imputation of no capacity for civil government. I pass on to the next. "The majority of the enlightened classes always opposed to him." A majority of those classes which Mons. de Tocqueville would chiefly see in the cities, and along the highways-bankers, brokers, jobbers, contractors, politicians, and speculators were certainly against him, and he as certainly against them: but the mass of the in-lington school, and with a disparity of loss never telligence of the country was with him! and sustained him in retrieving the country from the deplorable condition in which the "enlightened classes "had sunk it! and in advancing it to that state of felicity at home, and respect abroad, which has made it the envy and admiration of the civilized world, and the absorbent of populations of Europe. I pass on. "Raised to the Presidency and maintained there solely by the recollection of the victory at New Orleans." Here recollection, and military glare, reverse the action of their ever previous attributes, and become stronger, instead of weaker, upon the lapse of time. The victory at New Orleans was gained in the first week of the year 1815; and did not bear this presidential fruit until fourteen and eighteen years afterwards, and until three previous good seasons had passed without production. There was a presidential election in 1816, when the victory was fresh, and the country ringing, and imaginations dazzled with it: but it did not make Jackson President, or even bring him forward as a candidate. The same four years afterwards, at the election of 1820-not even a candidate then. Four years still later, at the election of 1824, he became a candidate, and-was not VOL. I.-8 before witnessed. On one side 700 killed (including the first, second and third generals); 1400 wounded; 500 taken prisoners. On the other, six privates killed, and seven wounded; and the total repulse of an invading army which instantly fled to its "wooden walls," and never again placed a hostile foot on American soil. Such an achievement is not ordinary, much less "very" ordinary. Does Mons. de Tocqueville judge the importance of victories by the numbers engaged, and the quantity of blood shed, or by their consequences? If the former, the cannonade on the heights of Valmy (which was not a battle, nor even a combat, but a distant cannon firing in which few were hurt), must seem to him a very insignificant affair. Yet it did what the marvellous victories of Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry, Vauchamps and Montereau could not do-turned back the invader, and saved the soil of France from the iron hoof of the conqueror's horse! and was commemorated twelve years afterwards by the great emperor in a ducal title bestowed upon one of its generals. The victory at New Orleans did what the connonade at Valmy did-drove back the invader! and also what it did not do-de stroyed the one fourth part of his force. And, therefore, it is not to be disparaged, and will not be, by any one who judges victories by their consequences, instead of by the numbers engaged. And so the victory at New Orleans will remain in history as one of the great achievements of the world, in spite of the low opinion which the writer on American democracy entertains of it. But Mons. de Tocqueville's disparagement of General Jackson, and his achievement, does not stop at him and his victory. It goes beyond both, and reaches the American people, their republican institutions, and the elective franchise: It represents the people as incapable of selfgovernment-as led off by a little military glare to elect a man twice President who had not one qualification for the place, who was violent and mediocre, and whom the enlightened classes opposed: all most unjustly said, but still to pass for American history in Europe, and with some Americans at home. Regard for Mons. de Tocqueville is the cause of this correction of his errors: it is a piece of respect which I do not extend to the riffraff of European writers who come here to pick up the gossip of the highways, to sell it in Europe for American history, and to requite with defamation the hospitalities of our houses. He is not of that class: he is above it: he is evidently not intentionally unjust. But he is the victim of the company which he kept while among us; and his book must pay the penalty of the impositions practised upon him. The character of our country, and the cause of republican government, require his errors to be corrected: and, unhappily, I shall have further occasion to perform that duty. CHAPTER XXXIX. RETIRING OF MR. MACON. PHILOSOPHIC in his temperament and wise in his conduct, governed in all his actions by reason and judgment, aud deeply imbued with Bible images, this virtuous and patriotic man (whom Mr. Jefferson called "the last of the Romans)" had long fixed the term of his political existence at the age which the Psalmist assigns for the limit of manly life: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." He touched that age in 1828; and, true to all his purposes, he was true to his resolve in this, and executed it with the quietude and indifference of an ordinary transaction. He was in the middle of a third senatorial term, and in the full possession of all his faculties of mind and body; but his time for retirement had come-the time fixed by himself; but fixed upon conviction and for well-considered reasons, and inexorable to him as if fixed by fate. To the friends who urged him to remain to the end of his term, and who insisted that his mind was as good as ever, he would answer, that it was good enough yet to let him know that he ought to quit office before his mind quit him, and that he did not mean to risk the fate of the Archbishop of Grenada. He resigned his senatorial honors as he had worn them-meekly, unostentatiously, in a letter of thanks and gratitude to the General Assembly of his State;-and gave to repose at home that interval of thought and quietude which every wise man would wish to place between the turmoil of life and the stillness of eternity. He had nine years of this tranquil enjoyment, and died without pain or suffering June 29th, 1837, characteristic in death as in life. It was eight o'clock in the morning when he felt that the supreme hour had come, had himself full-dressed with his habitual neatness, walked in the room and lay upon the bed, by turns conversing kindly with those who were about him, and showing by his conduct that he was ready and waiting, but hurrying nothing. It was the death of Socrates, all but the hemlock, and in that full faith of which the Grecian sage had only a glimmering. He directed his own grave on the point of a sterile ridge (where nobody would wish to plough), and covered with a pile of rough flint-stone, (which nobody would wish to build with), deeming this sterility and the uselessness of this rock the best security for that undisturbed repose of the bones which is still desirable to those who are indifferent to monuments. In almost all strongly-marked characters there is usually some incident or sign, in early life, which shows that character, and reveals to the close observer the type of the future man. So it was with Mr. Macon. His firmness, his pa triotism, his self-denial, his devotion to duty conduct-this preference for a suffering camp and disregard of office and emolument; his modesty, integrity, self-control, and subjection of conduct to the convictions of reason and the dictates of virtue, all so steadily exemplified in a long life, were all shown from the early age of eighteen, in the miniature representation of individual action, and only confirmed in the subsequent public exhibitions of a long, beautiful, and exalted career. over a comfortable seat in the General Assembly? Mr. Macon answered him, in his quaint and sententious way, that he had seen the faces of the British many times, but had never seen their backs, and meant to stay in the army till he did. Greene instantly saw the material the young man was made of, and the handle by which he was to be worked. That material was patriotism; that handle a sense of duty; and He was of that age, and a student at Princeton laying hold of this handle, he quickly worked college, at the time of the Declaration of Ameri- the young soldier into a different conclusion from can Independence. A small volunteer corps was the one that he had arrived at. He told him he then on the Delaware. He quit his books, join- could do more good as a member of the General ed it, served a term, returned to Princeton, and Assembly than as a soldier; that in the army resumed his studies. In the year 1778 the South- he was but one man, and in the General Assemern States had become a battle-field, big with bly he might obtain many, with the supplies their own fate, and possibly involving the issue they needed, by showing the destitution and of the war. British fleets and armies appeared suffering which he had seen in the camp; and there, strongly supported by the friends of the that it was his duty to go. This view of duty British cause; and the conquest of the South and usefulness was decisive. Mr. Macon obeyed was fully counted upon. Help was needed in the Governor's summons; and by his representhese States; and Mr. Macon, quitting college, tations contributed to obtain the supplies which returned to his native county in North Carolina, enabled Greene to turn back and face Cornwallis, joined a militia company as a private, and march--fight him, cripple him, drive him further back ed to South Carolina-then the theatre of the enemy's operations. He had his share in all the hardships and disasters of that trying time; was at the fall of Fort Moultrie, surrender of Charleston, defeat at Camden; and in the rapid winter retreat across the upper part of North Carolina. He was in the camp on the left bank of the Yadkin when the sudden flooding of that river, in the brief interval between the crossing of the Americans and the coming up of the British, arrested the pursuit of Cornwallis, and enabled Greene to allow some rest to his wearied and exhausted men. In this camp, destitute of every thing and with gloomy prospects ahead, a summons came to Mr. Macon from the Governor of North Carolina, requiring him to attend a meeting of the General Assembly, of which he had been elected a member, without his knowledge, by the people of his county. He refused to go: and the incident being talked of through the camp, came to the knowledge of the general. Greene was a man himself, and able to know a He felt at once that, if this report was true, this young soldier was no common character; and determined to verify the fact. He sent for the young man, inquired of him, heard the truth, and then asked for the reason of this unexpected man. than he had advanced (for Wilmington is South of Camden), disable him from remaining in the South (of which, up to the battle of Guilford, he believed himself to be master); and sending him to Yorktown, where he was captured, and the war ended. It The philosophy of history has not yet laid hold of the battle of Guilford, its consequences and effects. That battle made the capture at Yorktown. The events are told in every history: their connection and dependence in none. broke up the plan of Cornwallis in the South, and changed the plan of Washington in the North. Cornwallis was to subdue the Southern States, and was doing it until Greene turned upon him at Guilford. Washington was occupied with Sir Henry Clinton, then in New-York, with 12,000 British troops. He had formed the heroic design to capture Clinton and his army (the French fleet co-operating) in that city, and thereby putting an end to the war. All his preparations were going on for that grand consummation when he got the news of the battle of Guilford, the retreat of Cornwallis to Wilmington, his inability to keep the field in the South, and his return northward through the lower part of Virginia. He saw his advantage—an easier prey -and the same result, if successful. Cornwallis tinental paper money, from which the civil or Clinton, either of them captured, would put functionaries who performed service, and the faran end to the war. Washington changed his mers who furnished supplies, suffered as much plan, deceived Clinton, moved rapidly upon the as any. On this principle he voted against the weaker general, captured him and his 7000 men; bill for Lafayette, against all the modern revoand ended the revolutionary war. The battle lutionary pensions and land bounty acts, and of Guilford put that capture into Washington's refused to take any thing under them (for many hands; and thus Guilford and Yorktown became were applicable to himself). connected; and the philosophy of history shows their dependence, and that the lesser event was father to the greater. The State of North Carolina gave General Greene 25,000 acres of western land for that day's work, now worth a million of dollars; but the day itself has not yet obtained its proper place in American history. to affect him personally, though politically opposed to him. He venerated Washington, admired the varied abilities and high qualities of Hamilton; and esteemed and respected the eminent federal gentlemen of his time. He had affectionate regard for Madison and Monroe; but Mr. Jefferson was to him the full and perfect exemplification of the republican statesman. His political principles were deep-rooted, innate, subject to no change and to no machinery of party. He was democratic in the broad sense of the word, as signifying a capacity in the people for self-government; and in its party sense, as in favor of a plain and economical administration of the federal government, and against latiThe military life of Mr. Macon finished with tudinarian constructions of the constitution. He his departure from the camp on the Yadkin, and was a party man, not in the hackneyed sense of his civil public life commenced on his arrival at the word, but only where principle was concernthe General Assembly, to which he had been ed; and was independent of party in all his sosummoned that civil public life in which he was cial relations, and in all the proceedings which continued above forty years by free elections- he disapproved. Of this he gave a strong inrepresentative in Congress under Washington, stance in the case of General Hamilton, whom Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and long the he deemed honorable and patriotic; and utterly Speaker of the House; senator in Congress un-refused to be concerned in a movement proposed der Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams; and often elected President of the Senate, and until voluntarily declining; twice refusing to be Postmaster General under Jefferson; never taking any office but that to which he was elected; and resigning his last senatorial term when it was only half run. But a characteristic trait remains to be told of his military life-one that has neither precedent nor imitation (the example is almost fifty years of personal and political of Washington being out of the line of compari- friendship and association with Mr. Randolph is son): he refused to receive pay, or to accept pro- historical, and indissolubly connects their names motion, and served three years as a private and memories in the recollection of their friends, through mere devotion to his country. And all and in history, if it does them justice. He was the long length of his life was conformable to this the early friend of General Jackson, and intimate patriotic and disinterested beginning: and thus with him when he was a senator in Congress the patriotic principles of the future senator were under the administration of the elder Mr. Adams; all revealed in early life, and in the obscurity of and was able to tell Congress and the world who an unknown situation. Conformably to this be- he was when he began to astonish Europe and ginning, he refused to take any thing under the America by his victories. He was the kind obmodern acts of Congress for the benefit of the server of the conduct of young men, encouragsurviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution, ing them by judicious commendation when he and voted against them all, saying they had suf- saw them making efforts to become useful and fered alike (citizens and military), and all been respectable, and never noting their faults. He rewarded together in the establishment of inde- was just in all things, and in that most difficult pendence; that the debt to the army had been of all things, judging political opponents,—to settled by pay, by pensions to the wounded, by whom he would do no wrong, not merely in half-pay and land to the officers; that no mili-word or act, but in thought. He spoke frequenttary claim could be founded on depreciated con- ly in Congress, always to the point, and briefly and wisely; and was one of those speakers which professions; yet, when speaker of the House of Mr. Jefferson described Dr. Franklin to have Representatives, he displaced Mr. Randolph from been-a speaker of no pretension and great performance,—who spoke more good sense while he was getting up out of his chair, and getting back into it, than many others did in long discourses; and he suffered no reporter to dress up a speech for him. the head of the committee of ways and means, because the chairman of that committee should be on terms of political friendship with the administration,-which Mr. Randolph had then ceased to be with Mr. Jefferson's. He was above executive office, even the highest the He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also President could give; but not above the lowest above dependence and idleness; and, like an old the people could give, taking that of justice of the Roman of the elder Cato's, time, worked in the peace in his county, and refusing that of Postfields at the head of his slaves in the intervals master-General at Washington. He was opof public duty; and did not cease this labor until posed to nepotism, and to all quartering of his advancing age rendered him unable to stand the connections on the government; and in the hot sun of summer-the only season of the year course of his forty-years' service, with the absowhen senatorial duties left him at liberty to fol- lute friendship of many administrations and the low the plough, or handle the hoe. I think it perfect respect of all, he never had office or conwas the summer of 1817,-that was the last time tract for any of his blood. He refused to be a (he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too candidate for the vice-presidency, but took the hot for him—then sixty years of age, a senator, place of elector on the Van Buren ticket in 1836. and the refuser of all office. How often I think He was against paper money and the paper sysof him, when I see at Washington robustious tem, and was accustomed to present the strong men going through a scene of supplication, tribu- argument against both in the simple phrase, that lation, and degradation, to obtain office, which this was a hard-money government, made by the salvation of the soul does not impose upon hard-money men, who had seen the evil of paperthe vilest sinner! His fields, his flocks, and his money, and meant to save their posterity from it. herds yielded an ample supply of domestic pro- He was opposed to securityships, and held that ductions. A small crop of tobacco-three hogs- no man ought to be entangled in the affairs heads when the season was good, two when bad of another, and that the interested parties alone -purchased the exotics which comfort and ne--those who expected to find their profit in the cessity required, and which the farm did not pro- transaction-should bear the bad consequences, duce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dispense hospitality and charity, to receive all guests in his house, from the President to the day laborer-no other title being necessary to enter his house but that of an honest man; rich enough to bring up his family (two daughters) as accomplished ladies, and marry them to accomplished gentlemen-one to William Martin, Esq., the other to William Eaton, Esq., of Roanoke, my early school-fellow and friend for more than half a century; and, above all, he was rich enough to pay as he went, and never to owe a dollar to any man. He was steadfast in his friendships, and would stake himself for a friend, but would violate no point of public duty to please or oblige him. Of this his relations with Mr. Randolph gave a signal instance. He drew a knife to defend him in the theatre at Philadelphia, when menaced by some naval and military officers for words spoken in debate, and deemed offensive to their as well as enjoy the good ones, of their own dealings. He never called any one "friend" without being so; and never expressed faith in the honor and integrity of a man without acting up to the declaration when the occasion required it. Thus, in constituting his friend Weldon N. Edwards, Esq., his testamentary and sole executor, with large discretionary powers, he left all to his honor, and forbid him to account to any court or power or the manner in which he should execute that trust. This prohibition was so characteristic, and so honorable to both parties, and has been so well justified by the event, that I give it in his own words, as copied from his will, to wit: "I subjoin the following, in my own handwriting, as a codicil to this my last will and tesis to say, having full faith in the honor and intament, and direct that it be a part thereof-that tegrity of my executor above named, he shall not be held to account to any court or power what |