TAMPERING WITH CONGRESS-HOW THEY DO IT. A. STEVENSON. 97

On the 22d of May, 1834, President Jackson nominated Andrew Stevenson, then presiding in the H. of R., to be Envoy Extraordinary to the court of London, doubtless as the reward of his subservience to the Executive. Mr. Clay moved an inquiry as to when Stevenson was first promised this $9,000 a year and $9,000 outfit, by a president who, when he wanted the people's votes, had a holy horror at influencing the free deliberations of the people's representatives by holding out expectations of wealth and power to leading congressmen who would be pliant and servile. The documents were produced by the President. Stevenson, who with Taylor and Campbell were candidates for the chair, said, "Elect me Speaker, and by God I'll sustain the administration "-(Adams and Clay.) He was not elected, and he turned to Jackson and against the men then in power. Stevenson denied that he had so said; but Governor Branch, when the unit cabinet broke up, stated that Jackson had expressed great contempt for Stevenson. If so, he took a sober second thought, and Stevenson proved such a strict and steady partisan that the party kept him seven years in the Speaker's chair. He resigned on June 2d, 1831, his office and seat, under the pressure of a severe and continued indisposition," which Jackson appears to have cured by the offer of a mission to London.

Jackson set a less value on Stevenson than Van Buren did. Stevenson's cunning, intriguing turn, suited Van Buren. Governor Branch says: "When, sir, I separated from General Jackson, but a short time previous to his deterinination to appoint Mr. Stevenson minister to the Court of St. James, he did not regard him as worth the powder and ball it would take to kill him.' This very expression I have heard used or assented to by him, and candor compels me to admit that I heartily concurred with General Jackson in his estimate of Mr. Stevenson's worth."

When the dispute arose in Congress about which set of New Jersey members were, or would be admitted to be, rutɛ silling members, and it became apparent that the decision would give one party or the other the selection of a Speaker, Van Buren's editor, Blair, through the Globe, gave the uninitiated a hint of the uses to which Speakers are put, in the words and sentences which follow:

"Organization of the House of Representatives.-We perceive that the public mind is strongly awakened in regard to the preparations of the Federal party to get command of the House of Representatives by their fraud in the election of members and falsification of returns afterwards. If they can foist on the Representative body spurious members enough to make a majority in the opening, there is no doubt they will hold it to the end. The command of the Speakership will give them the committees--among them the Committee of Elections. Their report will conform to the interest of the appointing party, and the same dishonest majority which would conspire to get a control of the House by counterfeiting members, would vote to maintain it."

Polk's editor, Ritchie, then of the Richmond Enquirer, was equally off his guard. In terror he exclaimed-" Have the whig party become desperate? Are they determined at all events to seize the reins--TO CARRY A SPEAKER for the next congress-AND HE TO SHAPE OUT THE WHOLE STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WHIGS !"—Enquirer, Nov. 6, 1838.

"The command of the Speakership will give them the committees," and the report of the committees "will conform to the interest of the appointing party." Van Buren writes from Kinderhook that Blair is the very best of authority-and hence it is evident that it was the usage of Speaker Stevenson's committees, and, of course, Speaker Polk's, to make their reforms to suit "the interest of the appointing party!" Here is the reason why the administration of justice is too often a reproach and a by-word, and the profligate expenditures and appropriations of the party always sustained, and inquiry stifled in the grand inquest of the nation. The majority, who elect the President, send congressmen, who elect a Speaker who will appoint committees to suit the Jackson, Polk or Van Buren of the day-and these committees will be deaf to the dishonesty of the worst men their leader may appoint. A Butler, Hoyt, Wetmore, Stevenson, Lawrence, Edinonds, Woodbury, McNulty, or J. Van Buren, is impregnable under such a system, by which the popular part of our free constitution becomes a screen for iniquity and crime. Sir," said J. Q. Adains, to the Speaker, during the Texas debate, June 16, 1838, "the Standing Committees are the eyes, the ears, and in a very great degree, the judgment of this House. They are instituted for that very end. They are appointed to meet the subjects sent to us, to consider them, and mature them for our action." General Dromgoole admitted the correctness of the Globe's statement, when he owned that his committee had reported on many resolutions of legislatures and petitions from citizens, without opening or looking at or into one of them!

98

LIVINGSTON, WRIGHT, BENTON, CLAY, WEBSTER, AND WALKER.

One of them was a letter from E. Livingston, sec. of state, to Speaker Stevenson, dated 15th of March, 1833, (FIFTEEN MONTHS BEFORE HIS NOMINATION!!!) in these words-" Sir: I am directed by the President to inform you, CONFI DENTIALLY, that as soon as advices shall be received that the British govern ment consent to open negotiations with this, which are daily expected, it is his intention to offer you the place of Minister to the Court of St. James, and he requests that, should this appointment be agreeable to you, you would hold yourself in readiness to embark in the course of the summer. Another letter was from T. Ritchie to W. B. Lewis, objecting to filling up of Van Buren's London berth with a congressman, without letting the senate know about it. The President declared that He never knew that Stevenson had answered the letter of Living

On June 24th, the senate, 23 to 22, negatived Stevenson's appointment, made under such suspicious circumstances. But among the Senators who approved of Jackson's plan of offering an American Speaker a high office, “confidentially," 15 months before he left the chair to accept it, and thus keeping the golden bait always before his eyes, although he and his fellow members might be CALLED to take a bold stand against executive encroachments, were

Silas Wright, T. H. Benton, King of Ala. (now minister to France,) Wilkins, Polk's teacher, Grundy, Isaac Hill, Tallmadge, Van Buren's Sec., Forsyth, and John Tyler! Among the nays were Clay, Calhoun, Ewing, Clayton, Webster, and Poindexter. But the Senate was defeated in the long run. In May, 1835, Andrew Stevenson might have been seen presiding in that mockery of a people's convention for the nation which nominated Martin Van Buren for the next presidency-and in due time Jackson's pledge to his unworthy confederate was redeemed, and Stevenson sent ambassador to London. It was Stevenson that put Polk at the head of

Since 1825, President Polk's mentor and advocate, Ritchie, has so veered about from Jackson's principles to Jackson's practice as to consent that congressmen and editors may be rewarded by the executive, as ambassadors, judges, and cabinet ministers [see Correspondence, p. 214 to 216]-he has even admitted that on a rare occasion, one of thein, at least, may accept $40,000 a year (himself, for instance), as printer to senate, house of representatives, and president. In accordance with this new definition of a boundary or fence against corruption, President Polk gave James Buchanan the vast power and patronage of the secretary of state's office; and perhaps that was settled, like the presidential candidate question, about the time of the last Baltimore Convention. That Buchanan knew the use of that power may be inferred from his speech in senate, 1838, where he said that "When a man is once appointed to office, all the selfish pas sions of his nature are enlisted for the purpose of retaining it. The office-holders are the enlisted soldiers of that administration by which they are sustained. Their comfortable exist ence often depends upon the re-election of their patron." The Secretaryship of the Treasury, with its ten to twelve millions of patronage, he gave to Robert J. Walker. Thus did he enlist two very conspicuous members of congress, and by so doing gave "strong grounds of apprehension and jealousy on the part of the people," "that corruption will be the order of the day' with him, however regular he may have been at college prayers in North Carolina, or his man Butler at "stated preachings" at Sandy Hill.

Secretary Walker is a native of Northumberland, Pa., in which state his father, Jonathan Walker, was a county judge, and I believe a teacher of youth. The Secretary is a lawyer; began his political career in his native state; and, on his emigration to Mississippi, entered into many speculations, partly in lands and contracts. He is said to have owned $40,000 worth of lands in Texas, and he certainly gave its annexation to the U. S., as a new field for the cultivation of slavery, all the support that Polk or Johnson could have desired. In the Senate, he was friendly to the principle of the last bankrupt law-perhaps, for a like reason with Stilwell, the U. S. Marshal here for Horace Greeley, in the Tribune of Dec. 8th, says he "has been deep enough in credit, speculation, and paper money-is now a bankrupt-and in 1834 wrote in favor of a national bank, and the restoration of the deposits" thereto. The Tribune publishes a letter of his, dated Natchez, March 1, 1834, as follows:

"Dear Sir: As I promised at our parting to give you my views on any subject which might be interesting to our common constituents, I hasten to say that Mississippi will with great unanimity sustain you on the Deposit Question. In fact, the public voice demands a restoration of the Deposits, and the creating a Bank to supply a general currency. A State Bank can no

POLK'S SECRETARY AND PRINTER. ON BUYING CONGRESSMEN.

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the Ways and Means in 1834. It was Polk who, when John Slidell had been elected to Congress from La., closed his trust with the people by sending him out to Mexico, without asking the senate's consent. How many salaries, outfits, and Mexican and Russian ambassadors has the Union paid since 1828, M. C's inclusive ?

more supply and govern the general currency than a State Government can direct and control the affairs of the Nation. Go on; your constituents are with you; the country must be relieved from the frightful scenes of distress which have visited us. Yours truly,

R. J. WALKER.' Walker's appointments in this State have been much influenced by his colleague, Marcy. In general, they could not well be worse than they are. Our custom-house, the headquarters of intrigue and corruption for the city, is under his especial supervision and care. The pious Polk invokes providence, omnipotence, heaven, and all that is good and great, to guide him-and then pitches upon a secretary of the treasury from the repudiating state of Mississippi-that secretary the prince of speculators-and whose moneyed transactions were so situated that he could not pay Van Buren for his furniture, and had judgments against him advertised for sale in the Natchez Courier, by the Union Bank of Mississippi, for some twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars, which that paragon of banks sadly needed to pay the gulled and cheated people. I say nothing of the lost note of hand. If the spirit of seventy-six is the spirit that now animates American bosoms, I shall be justified in these strictures, even upon those who sit highest in the confidence of the freemen of America.

In John C. Spencer's edition of De Tocqueville, I find the remark, "I have heard of patriPotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people. In all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will cling to power. It would have been impossible for the sycophants of Louis XIV. to flatter more dexterously" than the courtiers of America. Jefferson, writing to Thomas M'Kean, Feb. 2, 1801, tells him that Interferences at elections, whether of the state or federal government, by officers of the latter, should be deemed cause of removal; because the constitutional remedy by the elective principle becomes nothing if it may be smothered by the enormous patronage of the general government." Now, if interference with the freedom of elections is bad, are not temptations to the electors, by the executive, to betray those who elected them much worse? In a letter to President Madison, which I find in the RICHMOND ENQUIRER, by T. Ritchie, dated June 29, 1810, the appointment of Buckner Thurston and Benjamin Howard, both members of Congress, the one to be a judge, and the other the governor of a territory (by the President), is sternly reprobated, because that so long as they were "invested with the legislative character, it is the duty of the President to leave it around them."

President Madison is reminded that the patriot, Macon, had moved the following amendment to the constitution a few months previous: "No senator or representative, after having taken his seat, shall, during the time for which he was elected, be eligible to any civil appointment under the authority of the United States, nor shall any person be eligible to any such appointment until the expiration of the Presidential term, during which such person shall have been a senator or representative."

The editor of The Union, that now is-the man whose son is lessening the number of opposition writers, by violence, and who himself abused me, at the desire of President Polk, for braving the danger of exposing state criminals high in power, through their own confessions -promulgated the following pure doctrines in 1810:

Sir, if ever the Executive branch, in this country, acquires an undue ascendancy over the legislature, it will not be, as it is now in France, through the sword-but by corruption, as it is in Great Britain. It is true, sir, that no placeman or pensioner can sit on the floor of Congress, as they do in Parliament-but places and appointments may now be scattered among those who sit on that floor.

"Will you mark the danger of this distribution of offices? Will not the senator or representative, who wishes for an executive gift, always take care to consult the executive wishes, in his measures or votes? Instead of watching the misconduct of the President, will he not connive at it? Will not Cerberus sleep because he wishes for a sop? If the President should have evil designs to accomplish, here then are instruments disciplined to his hand--a fair exchange is struck between them. The one barters his conscience for the office—just as much, as if he were to barter a piece of land for a piece of gold. I know it is impossible to bribe both houses of Congress by such temptations. I know that there are some of them who are too virtuous to catch the contagion, but it is certain that in proportion to the extent of this corruption, will be the ruin of public morals and of public spirit. Are not offices of almost every description within the Executive Patronage? During the year 1798, Mr. Gallatin estimated the amount within his gift at $2,000,000. "And where the mere lust of lucre could not sway the man, there

100 VAN BUREN TAKING LESSONS AS A COURTIER, WHILE IN LONDON.

CHAPTER XXIV.

I shall ever regard my situation in that cabinet as one of the most fortunate events of my life, placing me as it did in close and familiar relations with one who has been well described by Mr. Jefferson as possessing more of the Roman in his character than any man living, and whose administration will be looked to, in future times, as a golden era in our history. To have served under such a chief, at such a time, and to have won his confidence and esteem is a sufficient glory.-Van Buren's letter to Walter Bone, James Campbell, Preserved Fish, Wm. M. Price, Elisha Tibbets, Gideon Lee, C. W. Lawrence, &c., London, Feb. 24, 1832, on his position in Jackson's first cabinet.

Van Buren presented by Bowne with the Freedom of N. Y. and a good CharacterC. C. Cambreleng.—Jackson's First Cabinet.-Some facts about Lewis Cass. -His War Exploits, Politeness, Notions of Slavery, Friendship to the Indians, Vast Wealth, Indian Agencies, Laws, Eloquence in Senate, and Notions_about Teras.-Calhoun's Position.-The Seminole War.-Monroe's Secret Letters to Jackson-Johnny Ray.-Intrigues by Hamilton, Crawford, Forsyth and others, to injure Calhoun and benefit Van Buren.-Jackson Quarrels with Calhoun.--On the Publication of Political Secrets. -John Henry Eaton and Wife. -Jackson Quarrels with three of his Cabinet about her.-The Russian Mission. -Branch on Van Buren.-John Tyler and a Second Term.-Van Buren sent as Envoy to London, but Rejected by the Senate.-Opinions of Webster, Clay, Frelinghuysen, Foot, &c.-The Colonial Trade.-Van Buren elected Vice President.

HAVING resigned his office as governor, on the 12th of March, 1829, Van Buren left Albany, accompanied by his friend and confederate, B. F. Butler, on the forenoon of the 17th, to take upon himself the duties of Premier, Secretary

are offices of distinction to invite and soothe his ambition. * * * In the making of Laws, it is for the members of Congress to have a simple eye to the interests of their country. It is for them to decide upon the merits of every question that comes before them, without either hope or fear, without compulsion or reward. From the moment that they are led astray by such inducements, they are shorn of their representative character-they cease to be the agents of the people, to become the tools of the Executive."

Will it be believed that the man who could publish these truths in 1810, is now grown so grey in sin that he has for sixteen years upheld the violators of right, and at length accepted office from those who practise what is here so justly condemned!

Jackson, to get popularity for himself and his friends, recommended Macon's measure of 1809, to prohibit this buying and bribing of needy and greedy congressmen; but it was a deception, for he practised continually the baiting system. Benton, too, when he and Van Buren were seeking power and popularity in 1826, made, with the help of Van Buren, a grand report against those abuses which have brought free institutions into disgrace all over the world, but the report was never acted on, nor meant to be. It was an electioneering trap to catch voters.

I have seen a list of congressmen whom Van Buren and Jackson tempted to leave the people and take offices of far more emolument under the executive, but I am not sure that it was correct. It contained seventy-five names, and among these were, for the Russian mission sinecure, John Randolph, James Buchanan, W. Wilkins, $9,000 a year, and $9,000 outfit, for a trip to the continent. Cambreleng and Wilkins's brother-in-law, V. P. Dallas, had also the $18,000 godsend to Petersburgh, but were out of Congress before being rewarded. There is another Russian minister since, and doubtless we will soon have one more, if not half a dozen. [Duane of Pennsylvania, as a bribe or inducement to take an unfair course, was offered by Jackson, the Russian mission, and so was Samuel D. Ingham, by way of "a sop to Pennsylvania," as he tells in his letter to the President, July 26, 1831, in which he accuses Jackson with duplicity and falsehood; with secretly cherished hostility to him, and with credulity and imbecility. There is no doubt but that he was managed by Van Buren and his associates to great advantage for themselves.] Eli Moore, S. H. Gholson, Arnold Plummer, Felix Grundy, Leonard Jarvis, and Gorham Parks, and C. C. Cambreleng were rejected as candidates for Congress, and instantly placed in lucrative offices by Van Buren.

WEEDING OUT CONGRESS, C. C. CAMBReleng.

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of State, or Minister of Foreign Affairs, at Washington. He stopt a short time a Kinderhook, Hudson, Poughkeepsie, &c., and soon after his arrival at New York, was presented by the Mayor and Aldermen with "the freedom of the city," which had been voted to him on the 23d, on motion of Jesse Hoyt's friend, Cebra, who is said to have had a hint from Cambreleng. Corporations

John Forsyth was taken out of Congress by Jackson and Van Buren, to be Secretary of State -R. T. Lyttle to be Surveyor General of Ohio-Jesse Miller to be first auditor [and such an auditor!]-H. H. Leavitt to be a district judge-J. M. Wayne to be a judge [$4,500]— Geo. Loyall to be a navy agent-John Branch to be secretary of the navy-John H. Eaton to be secretary at war-Thomas P. Moore to be ambassador to Columbia-Louis M'Lane to be ambassador to London-William C. Rives to be ambassador to France-E. Livingston and Levi Woodbury to cabinet offices-Jeromus Johnson [see him in correspondence!] to be an appraiser-J. S. Pennybacker to be a judge, and it is my impression that H. A. Muhlenberg was a member of Congress when sent to Austria-Philip P. Barbour when placed on the Supreme Court Bench-Powhattan Ellis when sent to Mexico-and Nathaniel Garrow when appointed marshal-but it may be that in one or two instances the executive reward was not conferred till the recipient had been rejected at the hustings, or had retired.

One grand secret was soon found out by Stevenson, namely, to pay court to Van Buren and his confederates. He is uncle to the wife of one of Van Buren's sons, and one of his steadiest supporters. On the 9th of May, 1834, J. Q. Adams moved to refuse that part of the money vote of the year which granted $18,000 to ambassadors in Russia and England, as there were none, and these honors and emoluments held in terrorem, as attractions to members of Congress. The yeas were 69, and among them Wise, Selden, Slade, Vance, Gilmer, Corwin, and Lincoln. The nays were Vanderpool, Gillet, Cambreleng, J. B. Sutherland, Polk, &c., 123. About a month afterwards it was found that Speaker Stevenson had had the promise of the London mission for fifteen months!!! Have I not shown that Jackson was right, when, in 1825, he declared that if congressmen were not kept out of executive offices until two years after the term for which the people had elected them," corruption would be the order of the day;" as also that he, his confederates, Van Buren, Polk, Ritchie, and their partisans were guilty of the practices they affected to condemn? The more I look into the past, into facts, the more I see the necessity, not only of a state, but also of a national convention. If we have not reform, we shall have worse: while England is really improving her defective institutions, we are allowing bad men to trample our more pure system into the very dust. In the language of Webster, "Our political institutions-our government itself, is made an engine of corruption, and undoes what our social institutions perform. The patronage of government, offices, and emoluments, are considered as rewards, instead of being regarded as necessary agencies of the people; the hopes and fears attendant upon this state of things; the desire to get office and the apprehension of losing it, all become motives of action, and lead many to a course never dictated by feelings of patriotism, if such people ever feel patriotism."

*CHURCHILL CALDOM CAMBRELENG.--This gentleman's letters require no comment. If he is not an unscrupulous, unprincipled partisan, where shall we find one? His motives in attacking the 35 million bank at Philadelphia were to get a 35 million bank at New York, or a new United States Bank, through the Boston and Portland people, who were leading the Way. On the 16th of October, 1832, he hinted to Hoyt that the stockjobbers of Wall Street ought to "follow the Bostonians and Portland people in asking for A NEW BANK from the federal government, but on the plan they propose.' His notions of honor and confidence, with respect to private letters, need no remark. His stock speculations as one of the Van Buren, Hoyt, and Butler clique, are well known; and his efforts to mock the workies, and make them his instruments, for no noble and worthy purpose, show that, like Van Buren, he has quite enough of the cunning of the fox. He wanted to be Consul at Liverpool, but Frank Ogden's interest was too heavy for him there. The Custom House, in Hoyt's and Swartwout's time, was a political machine for raining milled dollars into the palms of his parasites, and as Lawrence is the old confederate of Hoyt and Swartwout, Cambreleng's influence there now must be very considerable. That sinecure, the Russian embassy, which is used so cleverly for paying off" old and active politicians," produced to him, in his turn, $18,000 and the et ceteras. He was for the pets in '34, for the sub-treasury in '37-for Jesse Hoyt as collector, and for Coddington as postmaster. When Van Buren took his southern tour, in 1827, Cambreleng was his companion or pilot-fish. He was an old Crawford man, and treated Calhoun, in 1827, about as honorably as he did Webb, a few years later. The confidential letter to which Cambreleng refers, page 234, No. 225, as one which A. S. Clayton, of Georgia, would publish, was written by Webb, and appears in the Courier and Enquirer of Sept. 25, 1832, credited to the Milledgeville papers. Webb there says, "We have alone and single-handed fought the battle of the SOUTH. In us Georgia has found a bold and steadfast friend," &c. Mohawk and Hudson Railroad stock was actually puffed up to 196 by