FLAGG'S SHOW. WRIGHT AND THE IMMORTAL SEVENTEEN. 57 In 1824, Colonel Young was the candidate of the bucktail caucus, composed chiefly of members of the legislature friendly to Crawford, for governor. On the 2d of April, this caucus, 106 in number, met; and on the first ballot, Young had 60 votes, and Joseph C. Yates 45; Erastus Root had 75 for lieutenant governor, and Burt 21. Root was for Crawford, Young for Clay, and both were defeated by Clinton and Tallmadge, who had their nominations from a state convention. Young was avowedly friendly, throughout, to the election of electors of President and Vice President by the people, and opposed to Van Buren's bargaining scheme of 1824, by which he and the Albany Regency sold, as it were, the votes of a hireling majority of bankjobbing lawgivers, to a particular set of minority congressional caucusing profligates, and endeavored to pledge the votes of the state in opposition to the known wishes of a majority of the people. In one state, only, is the election of electors confided to the legislature now, and that is South Carolina. Young's steady opposition to Crawford ensured his defeat in the legislature, and caused Adams to be returned in his stead, as the this State the choice of electors of President and Vice President." The noes were Silas Wright, Walter Bowne, John Sudam, F. Stranahan, E. P. Livingston, Jasper Ward, Jas. Mallory, Jonas Earll, Charles E. Dudley, Perley Keyes, Green, Greenly, Bronson, Lefferts, Thorn, Wheeler, Wooster, M'Call and Heman, J. Redfield. Among the ayes were Archibald M'Intire, John Cramer, Haight, Burt, Lynde, and Burrows. Flagg and his friends pretended that a special session was illegal, but were overruled. On the 5th, the resolve, to give the people, and take from the Legislature the choice of electors, was carried in the assembly, 75 to 41; Crolius, Furman, McClure, Riggs, Tallmadge, Wheaton, and Wilkin among the yeas. Flagg said that “as the shore was now over and the naines of the gentlemen spread on the record, he hoped they were ready to adjourn." Coleman, the tory editor of the Post, called this voting a ridiculous farce--he was with Van Buren, Flagg and Wright, for Crawford-and he went with Van Buren, too, for King as senator in 1813, and dead against the war and Clay and Madison, in 1812. The senate would not act. But though Van Buren, Wright, Flagg, Keyes, Marcy, Knower and their artful confederates, influenced the legislature to defy public opinion for two sessions, and to oust Clinton from the canal Board, they had their reward. Crawford failed to get the vote of N. Y.--he failed to get to be president-Clinton was elected as Governor by 17,000 majority, and Tallmadge Lieutenant Governor by 32,000, over Van Buren's nominees. Wright voted on the 10th of March to give the choice of electors to the people, by general ticket-he then proposed a complicated and preposterous scheme which only got four supporters. "The fact was" (says Hammond), "Mr. Wright, previous to his election, had given the people to understand that he would, if elected, support a bill giving to the people the right to choose presidential electors. All this manoruvring was for the purpose of exhibiting an appearance of redeeming that pledge. We shall shortly find him voting for an indefinite postponement of the bill." And it is a man who could thus descend to the meanness of tricking the men he pretended to represent, who is at this day governor of New York. The timber out of which good governors are made must be scarce in these parts. The bill got the go-by same day (10 March), E. P. Livingston having moved to stop all consideration of the bill to give the people the choice of a president till November, when it would be useless for another four years. Himself and Bowman, Bone, Bronson, Dudley, (Hoyt's correspondent,) Earll (canal Com'r), Greenly, Keyes (Silas Wright's mentor), Lefferts, Mallory, M'Call, Redfield, Stranahan, Sudam, Ward (JASPER), Wooster, and Governor Wright-the immortal 17 pretenders to a democracy they only practised, when, as Wright says in his letter (p. 203), they had to do journey work, being unable to seize THE SPOILS. Col. Young, like his friend Cramer, and General Root, was opposed to Van Buren in this matter. Wright, then in his 30th year, voted to remove Clinton from the canal board. It is enough to shake a man's faith in popular institutions when he sees such men as Van Buren and Wright succeed a Clinton as governors of this great state. General Root preferred in 1824, and Van Buren in 1828, an election of electors by separate districts, because the various districts have a variety of interests, and each section of country should have a voice in the choice of chief magistrate. The arguments used in favor of a general ticket for electors of president would justify to a far greater extent, the election of members of congress by general ticket, for the electors perforin but one act while the congressmen perform many. Young and Van Buren, however, are now strongly in favor of election by general ticket, and South Carolina chooses her electors by the Legislature, after every other state has made a choice by the people. Only one of the above seventeen ventured to re-appear as a candidate, and he was swept away by the overwhelming majority given to his opponent, 58 THE TERM FEDERALIST AS A REPROACH. BURR FOR JACKSON. second candidate, instead of being behind Crawford and Clay, and not a candidate at all. Thus it was through New York that Adams became President. Adams had 84 votes, including 32 from this state, obtained through a union of the friends of Clay and Adams in the legislature. Crawford had 41, but would have had 73 had he got the 32 from N. Y., and Adams but 52. Instead of applying to parties the names which would most clearly indicate their principles, the usage is, to apply to an opponent any term which popular leaders and presses have rendered odious to the more ignorant. Young denounced, not long since, the supporters of John Q. Adams as federalists. When it was shown that he had aided Adams' election in 1824, he said that at that time Adams was a good democrat. If so, why abuse Clay for preferring one democrat to another? The truth is, that Blair, Croswell, and many other unprincipled hirelings use the term federalist as a reproach, and their impudence in so doing is unmatched, for Taney, McLane, Bryant, Buchanan, Ingersol, Bleecker, Oakley, Powers, Beekman, Vanderpool, and very many others of the party calling itself democratic, were formerly members of the great federal party, which numbers thousands of the greatest, wisest, and best names known to American history. It is now no more; it had its faults, its merits, its unworthy members-but it was honored in not having reared and educated a Burr and a Van Buren. Col. Young, in Senate, Feb. 4, 1846 [Argus report] does not hesitate severely to censure Van Buren for the Crawford caucus of 1824; he denounces it as "made by a minority of the democratic members of congress; and that very act broke down that machinery, for never since have members of congress nominated a president. It was regarded as so great an outrage on the former practice-for never before had a minority undertaken to nominate that the whole system broke down." CHAPTER XVI. Andrew Jackson nominated for President, in 1815, by Col. Burr. -The Texas Movement.-Polk and Slavery. Swartwout's Proceedings.-Channing's Views.-Jackson's position in 1806.-He acts as Burr's Agent.—Burr's attempt to Dissolve the Union-McDuffie's Effort.-The True Policy of this Republic.-Jackson and Van Buren Buying Texas.-Hamilton on Burr.Burr kills him.-Enters into Arrangements with Pitt.-Burr's Family.Judge Marshall on Blennerhassett.-Wilkinson's Testimony.-Davezac's Arrest.-The Daytons of New Jersey.-Frank Ogden. - Sedgwick on Texas.Texas, how Settled.-Its Convention.-Channing on Slavery-Van Buren's Instructions to the Mexican Minister, in 1829.-Benevolence and Disinterestedness of the U. S. Government.-A Curious Argument.-Gaines Invades Mexico.-Senator Houston.-Calhoun's Opinions on Slavery.-His Letters to King and Wilson Shannon.-Canada, a Refuge for the Oppressed Slave.— Southern Policy Disclosed by a Candid Minister to Mexico.-On Extending the Area of Oppression.-How to Raise the Price of Virginia Negroes.— Murphy's Hint to Play the Hypocrite.-Our Treaty with the Mexicans.—The Destiny of the Americans.-Public Life.-National Purity. ANDREW JACKSON was first nominated as President of the United States, by Aaron Burr. Col. Burr's letter, with his reasons for preferring Jackson, was addressed to Governor Alston, as early as 1815, and will be found among the correspondence. I have seen it stated, but not on any specific authority, that POLK'S INAUGURAL. MEXICO, SLAVERY AND TEXAS. 59 Burr's arguments in favor of Jackson had great influence over Van Buren's mind, when he became his adherent. Unquestionably, the popularity of Gen. Jackson was the leading inducement. We shall find that Burr and Jackson's views for conquering Mexico from Spain, in 1805, have been since carried out in part, by the Texas movement of Polk,* Van Buren, Jackson, Calhoun, and * The violent dismemberment of Mexico by citizens of the United States, with a view to the reëstablishment of slavery in Texas; and the very remarkable circumstances attending its recent annexation to this Union, in violation of good faith to a friendly republic; with the state of feeling to which these events, and their expected results, have given rise, form some apology for brief notices of the various parts played in the exciting drama, by Messrs. Polk, Van Buren, Benton, Houston, Jackson, Burr, Swartwout, and their friends or confederates. James Knox Polk took the oath of office at the Capitol, as Fresident, on Tuesday, March 4th, 1845, he being then in his 50th year. In his inaugural address, he expressed a deep regret that "misguided persons" had indulged in schemes and agitations “whose object is the destruction of DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS existing in certain States or sections"-and thought that all must see that if these persons could succeed, "the dissolution of the Union" must speedily follow. "To increase the attachment of our people to the Union (said he) OUR LAWS SHOULD BE JUST. ANY POLICY WHICH SHALL TEND TO FAVOR MONOPOLIES, OR THE PECULIAR INTERESTS OF SECTIONS OR CLASSES, must operate to the prejudice of the interests of their fellowcitizens, and SHOULD BE AVOIDED." It would be his aim "to observe a careful respect for the rights of other nations," and "none could fail to see the danger to our safety and future peace, if Texas remains an independent state." "Our title to the country of the Oregon is clear AND UNQUESTIONABLE." The President "fervently invoked the aid of the Almighty Ruler of the Universe, to guard this heaven-favored land against the mischiefs which might arise from an unwise public policy." "With a firm reliance upon the wisdom of Omnipotence to sustain and direct him in the path of duty which he had been appointed to pursue," he stood there to take the oath, &c. O! what is worth made for, if 'tis not the same, Thro' joy and thro' torment-thro' glory and shame. Mr. Polk thought that the laws should be just and free from monopoly, and that there was nothing wrong in one man with a white skin, possessing a life lease of the labor of many families of his fellow creatures whose skins were more or less tinged with black-no harm in buying them-selling them-separating the husband from the wife, the sister from the brother, the parent from the child-keeping them in poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance, and severely punishing him or her who would venture to teach them to read and write-there was no monopoly in all that, nothing unjust, nor in annexing Texas, the patrimony of a weaker republic, simply because that republic was weaker-and he invoked the aid of Almighty God to enable him to preserve the Union, through the continuance of this description of democratic justice and had a firm reliance upon the wisdom of Omnipotence to aid hum in having every free black driven out of the new addition of the "heaven-favored land" called Texas, and slavery and a monopoly of the slave-trade upheld there, which he considered very essential "to our safety and future peace." Had the Baltimore Convention nominated Benjamin Franklin Butler when they pitched upon a pious Tennessee lawyer, he could not have performed his part more in character. When defending his friend Jacob Barker, in an indictment for fraud, Benjamin told the court and jury that the Lord, in his good providence, had watched over Jacob's trade and blessed it; Jacob's occuaption, thus especially sanctified, being that of a Wall Street stockjobber! I should not feel at all surprised, if it were to turn out that Benjamin, who sometimes penned protests and messages for Jackson and Van Buren, should prove to have been the author of this unique inaugural of James Knox Polk. It denounces defaulters, and its reputed compiler has since proved his sincerity in the cause of regular accountants by employing in the highest pecuniary trusts the very punctual R. J. Walker, our defaulting bank president, C. W. Lawrence, with the aforesaid Benjamin and such like. It is to be doubted whether he had "the wisdom of Omnipotence to sustain and direct him" in these and some other acts of his, done after the fashion of Charles I., defender of the faith, &c., &c. When George III. seized the Danish fleet, and bombarded Copenhagen, the capital of his faithful ally, in 1807, his excuse for the robbery was, that the fleet, if he did not seize it, might fall into the hands of France. President Polk finds an argument for the annexation of Texas, in this, that if the slave States did not seize upon it to be used as a negro pen, England might influence the Texans todo as Mexico had done, crush slave-driving and slave-working there altogether! Being myself a native of Scotland, and Robert Dale Owen the annexationist, an Englishman, I beg that my humble strictures upon President Polk's piety and politics may be taken as a sort of set off against the powerful harangues and steady votes of the Indiana philosopher, in favor of BURR BLENNERHASSETT, JACKSON AND THE DONS. Houston. By reference to the annexed correspondence, it will be seen that Samuel Swartwout, who was an active canvasser for Jackson, in New Jersey, as early as 1823, expended large sums in Texan lands, sent settlers there, kept up a correspondence with Houston and the Texan malcontents, and with Major Neville, an old associate of Burr's, interested himself deeply in the Texan trade, and was looked up to by young Blennerhassett as a friend, and the friend of his father. Swartwout's connection with Burr, Blennerhassett, and the attempt on Mexico, in 1805-6, is matter of history. As an illustration of the life and times of Van Buren, and showing what his course has been, I have appended as a note,* a brief sketch of the origin and progress of increasing the domain of human bondage and suffering in the South, as a means of decreasing it in the North-and who consoles "his excellency" by the assurance that "Slavery, like Monarchy, is a temporary evil, which will disappear when it becomes commercially unprofitable!" or in other words, that Mr. Polk will discontinue selling his Tennessee negroes when he can find no one to buy them from him!! The President's well-written message to Congress, when they met last, would be amusing, were it not a burlesque upon the great principles of the Declaration of Independence, and a practical defiance of the cardinal doctrines of that glorious manifesto, yet to be honored in more auspicious times. Am I too sanguine? I hear from youth, 'Man's prospects daily brighten : The Press illumines, and the gas enlightens; BERANGER. In a letter to Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, dated Nov. 12, 1806, General Jackson says:-"Be on the alert, keep a watchful eye upon our General [Wilkinson], and beware of an attack [on New Orleans], as well from our own country as Spain. You have enemies within your own city that may try to separate it from the Union. You know I never hazard ideas without good ground. ... Be on the alert. Your government [Louisiana], I fear, is in danger. I fear there are plans afoot inimical to the Union.... I love my country and government: I HATE THE DONS: I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MEXICO REDUCED: but I will die in the last ditch before I would yield a foot to the Dons, or see the Union reduced." Next Jan. 3, Jefferson, who had perfect confidence in Wilkinson, wrote to him, with instructions how to arrest Burr's movements, and added, "If everything from that place (Louisville) be successfully arrested, there is nothing from below that is to be feared. Be assured that Tennessee, and particularly General Jackson, are faithful." General Jackson admits here his hatred of the Spanish in Mexico, and his earnest desire to see it reduced. He retained the friendship of Burr to the day of his death; was his general agent in Tennessee in 1806 and 1807, and received large sums of money from him for the use of that agency. Burr, when in Tennessee, was often at Jackson's, who introduced him formally at a ball in Nashville, the night before he sailed with his recruits and boats from the mouth of the Cumberland River, when he took with him Stokely Hays, his (Jackson's) nephew. When, months after, the press and the government had noticed Burr's course, then, but not sooner, did Jackson write to Claiborne, whose suspicions he directed against Wilkinson, and not against Burr. That he had no wish to dismember this Union, I believe; but as to his being free from the knowledge of Burr's plans for invading Mexico, I see no reason to think that he was so. His anxiety to break up and dismember that Roman Catholic country, appears to have continued to the last hour of his life. It was Wilkinson's letter to Jef ferson, Nov. 25th, that enabled him to comprehend Purr's designs, viz., the severance of the Union by the Alleghany Mountains, and the conquest of Mexico. A committee in Tennessee, which were W. B. Lewis, John Overton, R. C. Foster, John Shelby, Th. Claiborne, anders, met in 1828 to take evidence and report on the nature of Jackson's connection with Bun In General John Coffee's letter to them, August 28, he says, that Burr was in Tennes see in 1805 and in 1806-that he wrote afterwards that there would be war with Spain, in which case Jefferson was to give him the command of an expedition against Mexico-that Burnt $3,500 to Jackson, which, with other $500, were placed in his (Coffee's) hands, to bui iad purchase six boats, and lay in provisions. That suspicions afterwards arose that all was not right, and in December, 1806, the balance was handed to Burr, in Tennessee-that Bun was charged by Jackson with improper views, which he denied, and that then Jackson MCDUFFIE ON DISSOLVING THE UNION. BURR AND JACKSON. 61 the dismemberment of a weak power, by the force and fraud of a strong one. The truly great and good Dr. Channing, in his letter to Clay on Texas, apprehended that its incorporation with the Union would prove a deep injury to these gave him a letter to Gov. Claiborne, and sent his nephew with him. Judge Williams stated to the committee, that in the spring or fall of 1806, Jackson spoke to him about a commission in Burr's army, adding, "When I recollect that the destruction of American institutions was the object of the Burr conspiracy, and that General Jackson was in the possession of facts and circumstances which would have convicted the conspirators, and yet improperly withheld them when summoned to Richmond to give his testimony," &c. He also wrote to Jackson as to what he had written, that while Burr or Adair, or both, were at Jackson's house, he (the general) told him (Williams) and others "Take notice, gentlemen, you will find that a division of the United States has taken deep root; you will find that a number of the Senate, and a number of the members of the House of Representatives, are deeply involved in the scheme." How often, in the history of this country, do we see anxious wishes expressed for a dissolution of the Union! Burr tried to dissolve it-the men of the East, whoin Adams could not be brought to act with, tried to dissolve it-the abolitionists of the East complain of it now --and how often have Governor McDuffie and others of South Carolina sighed after more southern territory, as a means of ruling the Union, or splitting it up! In the South Carolinian of Feb. 8, 1844, I find McDuffie's speech in the Senate of the 19th of January, in which he calculates the value of this great and glorious confederacy of states by dollars and cents, thus:-"Sir, ever since the tariff of 1828, I have regarded the exporting, the slave states of this Union, as being practically reduced to a state of colonial vassalage to the manufacturing states. It is a much more oppressive state of tributary dependence than that which once bound us to Great Britain. . . . I can solemnly declare, as a citizen of South Carolina, that in nearly a quarter of a century I have never felt this government [that of the U. S.] but by its oppressions." Governor McDuffie, in 1844, hesitated not to state, in Senate, a project to divide the United States into three confederations, and to calculate by dollars and cents the advantages of his scheme. Like his friend Van Buren, he was a warm supporter of Polk for President; and so were Jackson, Calhoun, and others, who, like McDuffie, considered the bondage of the kidnapped African the corner-stone of democratic institutions. of N Y., had "it rushed into his In Gen. Jackson's letter to G. W. Campbell, Jan. 15, 1807, he states, that on Nov. 10th, 1806, Capt. called at his house, and told him that the adventurers intended to divide the Union, "by seizing New Orleans and the Bank, shutting the port, conquering Mexico, and uniting the western parts of the Union to the conquered country"-that told him so that knowing that Burr was well acquainted with mind like lightning that Burr was at the head"-that he wrote to Burr that he suspected him, and then to Governor Claiborne, but without warning him of Burr-that Burr denied the charge of intending to split up the Union, but not a word is said as to invading Mexico. It was after this November conversation that Jackson was most intimate with Burr, introduced him at the ball, even after Jefferson's proclamation, and sent his nephew with him, who left him, as he tells the committee, at the mouth of Bayou Pierre. Willis Alston stated that Jefferson had told him that Jackson had written to him that he "had been tendered a high command by Burr," and had tendered his services "TO MAKE A DESCENT UPON MEXICO." Is it not remarkable that Jackson, though in attendance at Burr's trial before Judge Marshall, was not examined? He promises Campbell, that "in a few weeks he would give the proof." When did he do it? The true course for this republic, in its dealings with Mexico, would have been, to be generous and liberal to a people struggling for freedom, but without enough of intelligence to secure and maintain it in quietness. The independence of Mexico was acknowledged at Washington while she was in the midst of a revolution-and distracted with faction, harassed by wars with Spain and France, troubled with domestic revolts, some of them caused by Americans, encouraged, as I shall show, by official men here: who could expect that the U.S. commerce would not suffer injury? The Sabine river, &c., formed the western boundary of the Union, as settled in 1819 with Spain, and in 1828 with Mexico-vet scarcely was Jackson seated in the chair of Washington, than, in August, 1829, he offered Mexico five millions of dollars for Texas, and again, in 1835, he ordered the offer to be repeated. In 1837, Congress declared Texas independent, and in 1845, added that fine province of Mexico to the Union, as a new State, confirming and restoring perpetual slavery throughout a territory of 400,000 square miles, from which Catholic Mexico had banished it 21 years before! Mr. Adams, in his speech in Congress, April 15, 1842, speaking of the Mexican treaty of 1828, said: I had myself, in the negotiation of our treaty with Spain, labored to get the Rio del Norte as our boundary; and I adhered to the demand till Mr. Monroe and all his cabinet directed me to forego it, and to assent to take the Sabine. Before the treaty was signed, it was |