Cato V, Part XXVI: The Same Causes, contd.

Shifting the present discussion to an examination of the presidency of Andrew Jackson would naturally entail moving somewhat far afield of the nominal subject thereof. George Clinton penned Cato V in 1788, the proposed constitution whose ratification he was seeking to defeat was adopted in 1789, and the man himself died in 1812. As Jackson did not become President until 1829, one might therefore be forgiven for thinking of the events of his tenure in office as being too far removed from either Clinton’s perceptions or the events of his lifetime to have much at all to do with either. But consider, for a moment, the man himself. Consider Andrew Jackson.

Born in 1767 in a settlement bridging the territories of North Carolina and South Carolina, Jackson served in the Revolutionary War as a courier for the local militia, studied the law and became a backwoods lawyer, and served in the Senate and the House between 1796 and 1798. He next became a war hero in 1815, then governor of the Florida Territory in 1821, then a Senator again in 1823, and finally President of the United States in 1829. It was a full career, to be sure, and one which furnished him with a remarkable breadth of experience. But while his turn in the White House came more than a generation after those of either Washington or Jefferson – with the presidencies of James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams intervening – Jackson, by his own admission, was a man of conservative convictions. He did not take his cues from the 1810s or the 1820s, the adoption of Federalist policies by Madison and Monroe or Quincy Adams’ fixation on federally funded infrastructure projects. He was, on the contrary, a diehard Jeffersonian who had come up in the 1790s and believed wholeheartedly in the agrarian, small-government populism that the Sage of Monticello had raised to national prominence. He hated the national bank, like Jefferson, distrusted the federal courts, like Jefferson, and believed, like Jefferson, in a strict adherence to the text of the Constitution. But he was also, like Jefferson, willing to betray his own convictions. The main difference between them was in how they arrived at this outcome.

Thomas Jefferson, as mentioned previously, was not a man to whom the open-ended use of executive power came very naturally. Over the course of the 1790s, as variously Secretary of State, Vice-President, and private citizen, he argued fervently and publicly against the use of coercive federal authority by the Washington and Adams administrations and advocated time and again for the maintenance of an exceedingly limited national government. And while, as President himself in 1803, he did later see his way clear to authorizing the expansion of federal authority for the purpose of purchasing and incorporating the French territory of Louisiana – an outcome he deemed too good to pass up – even then his embrace of the latent power of the presidency was more than slightly halting. Initially, hoping to remain consistent with his own prior declarations, Jefferson thought it necessary to pursue an amendment to the Constitution explicitly authorizing his actions vis-à-vis Louisiana and its inhabitants. It was only after allies like James Madison and Albert Gallatin convinced him that he was worrying over nothing – that the Constitution certainly authorized the purchase of foreign territory, and that even if it didn’t the American people were unlikely to object – that he finally laid his convictions aside. By the end of his second term, of course, he no longer needed convincing. His attempts to enforce the terms of the Embargo Act (1807) speak very much to that. Still, it’s worth noting that it took almost eight years of having the means at his disposal for Jefferson to fully embrace the possibilities of his office. He had to grow into the powers of the presidency, to see for himself why his predecessors had acted in the ways that they did and to come to terms with the idea of acting that way himself.

When Andrew Jackson entered the White House in March of 1829, having defeated the incumbent President John Quincy Adams in the Election of 1828, no such period of adjustment was necessary. Jefferson had had doubts about the value of executive power and worked through those doubts over the course of his presidency. Jackson arrived “fully formed,” as it where, with no doubts, no uncertainties, and no need to be convinced. Not only had he witnessed his ideological idol Jefferson finally arrive at the conclusion that the President could and should be a powerful and effective figure in the political life of the American republic, but he himself had spent the better part of his adult life as an officer in the United States military. These experiences arguably combined to make Jackson the ideal “imperial” President. Why question his own use of authority? The man he most closely sought to emulate in politics had done all the questioning for him. Why second-guess the pursuit of a useful result? A good officer was decisive, took what he wanted, and never looked back. And hadn’t this approach worked out for Jackson before? In 1818, in the midst of a regional conflict between the United States and the Seminole tribes along the Georgia-Florida frontier, Jackson knowingly exceeded his orders to “terminate the conflict” by invading Spanish Florida, attacking Spanish fortifications, and capturing, trying, and executing two British merchants who had been aiding the Seminoles. The immediate result was a domestic and diplomatic uproar.

Jackson was investigated by Congress, his dismissal became a topic of harried discussion among the cabinet of President Monroe, and Spain and Britain lodged formal complaints against the invasion of the territory and the murder of their citizens, respectively. The long-term result, however, was nothing but beneficial. Having first offered a tactical apology for Jackson’s undeniably rash behavior, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams then used the weakness that Jackson had exposed to pressure the Spanish into selling Florida to the United States. Jackson thereafter became the first Governor of the resulting Florida Territory and potential disciplinary action against him was dismissed in light of his soaring popularity with the American people. This same pattern of action and reaction would more or less adhere to the Hero of New Orleans throughout his entire tenure as President. If ever he sighted a useful outcome that was near at hand, he would grasp it firmly with both hands and absolutely refuse to let go. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was strictly authorized to do so, nor the struggle that ensued, nor the criticism he endured in the meantime. In the end, he seemed convinced, history would vindicate his actions. Hadn’t it always? Hadn’t it done so for Jefferson? The so-called “Nullification Crisis” of 1828-1832 stands as an early and very prominent example of exactly this attitude.

Following the War of 1812 – a conflict which itself arose out of British harassment of American trade during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) – American political culture underwent something of an ideological realignment. The stresses that the conflict had exerted on the American people and their government revealed a number of weaknesses in the Democratic-Republican policy program that had been shaping the nation’s political and economic evolution since the Election of 1800. Having nearly gone bankrupt attempting to pay for soldiers and supplies, and having struggled to move troops to where they were needed amidst a dearth of passable roads and canals, the Madison Administration thereafter concluded that the creation of a national bank and federal funding for infrastructure – both of which the Democratic-Republicans had previously opposed – might perhaps be worthy of reconsideration. Combined with the growth of domestic manufacturing spurred by the effects of the Embargo Act and a general feeling of national pride and unity – occasioned in no small part by Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans in early 1815 – the second half of the 1810s witnessed a shift in American domestic political priorities away from the free trade and small government policies that had previously defined the Jeffersonian ethos and towards things like economic protectionism and revenue-generating tariffs.

            Initially, while the economy remained strong, this shift did not occasion much in the way of dissent. Southern agriculturalists may have continued to object, in principle, to import taxes intended to protect domestic industry, but even they had come to understand the practical value of shielding America’s fledgling manufacturing sector from foreign competition. The late war, while ultimately concluding without major American losses, had severely strained the nation’s resources in no small part because of its limited ability to supply its own industrial needs. Supporting the growth of American manufacturing therefore represented a national security objective as well as an economic one. The United States needed to be able to arm, clothe, and supply its own soldiers, and tariffs were one potential way of making this possible. Bearing this in mind, along with the limited impact tariffs would exert on Southern agriculture and the soaring revenues Southern planters were then bringing in thanks to the reopening of American trade, it was really not all that surprising that the Tariff of 1816 enjoyed such widespread support across the entire American republic. Many of the Southerners and Westerners who might otherwise have supported free trade were also ardent nationalists with strong opinions as to the value of American self-sufficiency, after all. And if some of the money generated by these new federal taxes went towards infrastructure projects that made it easier and cheaper for American produce to be brought to market? Well, that was only so much the better.

Unfortunately – and as seems invariably to be the case in American politics – this sense of national unity did not last for very long. The Panic of 1819, brought about by a combination of unsustainably high land prices, the recovery of European agriculture, unregulated lending by state banks, and a sudden credit crunch initiated by the 2^nd Bank of the United States, fairly devastated agricultural earnings and heralded a period of economic depression that would last through most of the 1820s. Southerners, formerly willing to agree to the passage of protective tariffs in the name of economic self-sufficiency, found it harder and harder to afford higher-priced foreign goods as their own incomes steadily declined. Among former free-trade advocates looking for something or someone on which to foist their resentment, tariffs became an obvious and easy target. Only the manufacturers in the North stood to benefit, they said. The South was being asked to pay for the prosperity of a population that thought them backward, simple, and cruel, they said. South Carolina in particular gave rise to some of the most vehement objections to the economic policies of the so-called “New Republicans.” As Great Britain began to flood the American market with cheap Indian cotton following its economic recovery from the Napoleonic Wars, and as planters in the increasingly developed states of the Old Southwest – i.e. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana – began to benefit from better soil conditions than in the increasingly eroded and overplanted Southeast, the Palmetto State began to experience an unusually harsh economic downturn that shattered the runaway prosperity that had persisted since the colonial era. Over the course of the 1820s thousands of people consequently left South Carolina for more promising environs, leaving the state depopulated, demoralized, and desperate. Then came the Tariff of 1828.

Ironically enough, the so-called “Tariff of Abominations,” which the Democratic-Republicans in South Carolina so despised that they nearly provoked a civil war by refusing to adhere to its terms, was originally devised by a Democratic-Republican political operative for the purpose of securing a victory for that party’s presidential candidate. Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), one of the founders of the Democratic Party and perhaps the canniest political organizer in American history, formulated the tariff after essentially surveying the prospects of his patron, Andrew Jackson, and picking out exactly which elements of the American electorate needed appeasing and warranted ignoring. New England, he determined, though generally in favor of tariffs because of its increasing reliance on manufacturing, was going to vote for the incumbent John Quincy Adams – a Massachusetts native – no matter what Jackson said or did. And the South, he further concluded, though increasingly opposed to tariffs since the Panic of 1819 and the consequent collapse of agricultural prices, was going to vote for Jackson out of sheer sectional loyalty. That left the Mid-Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) and the West (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky) as really the only groups of states whose favor actively needed to be sought. Bearing this in mind, Van Buren crafted a tariff that increased prices on some of the raw goods that New England needed but which this third group of states could produce; namely hemp, flax, and iron. The resulting bill passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 105 to 94 in May of 1828. The South was overwhelmingly opposed, New England was almost evenly split, and the aforementioned Mid-Atlantic and Western states were overwhelmingly in favor. President Adams thereafter signed it into law – though he knew, reportedly, what it was likely to cost him – and scant months later lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson by a margin of 83 electoral votes to 178.

The South, whose inhabitants had delivered electoral majorities for Jackson in every state but Maryland, naturally expected that the resulting administration would make a point of decrying the tariffs and seeking their repeal. They were unjust, after all, they benefited one section of the union of states at the expense of the others, and they threatened the livelihoods of the planter class to which Jackson himself belonged. In South Carolina, where circumstances, as aforementioned, were particularly strained, such sentiments manifested as early as the summer of 1828. Not long after the passage of the offending tariff by Congress, the Palmetto State’s congressional delegation gathered for a series of meetings by which those present sought to organize a general response among the affected communities in the South so as to better secure the outcome they desired. Former South Carolina Congressman John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), then serving as Vice-President under John Quincy Adams and standing as Jackson’s running mate in the forthcoming election, was chosen by this group to issue a report on the tariff situation summarizing its impact and explaining their opposition. The resulting “Exposition and Protest” was delivered to the South Carolina legislature in December 1828, the members of which authorized the printing and distribution of some five thousand copies. In it, though he intended to exert a moderating influence on some of his state’s more radical elements, Calhoun nevertheless took an uncompromising line on what he characterized as an issue of state sovereignty. “If it be conceded,” he notably declared therein,

As it must be by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that the latter hold their portion by the same tenure as the former, it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction.

The principle upon which Calhoun’s reasoning was founded, though he never said as much, was plainly the same as that which had previously animated the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison during their own confrontations with the Adams Administration in the late 1790s. Then, in 1798, the co-founders of the Democratic-Republican faction declared in response to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts that the states maintained the right and privilege to declared a given example of federal legislation to be, “Altogether void, and of no force” if said legislation was found to be in violation of the terms of the Constitution. At the time, though nothing ultimately came of this assertion, the questions which Jefferson and Madison sought to raise were nonetheless exceptionally significant. Notwithstanding the position put forward by Alexander Hamilton in the text of Federalist No. 78 – in which he argued that, “Whenever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the Judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former” – as well as several extant examples in the state courts of laws being struck down for having violated the relevant governing charter, the mechanism by which federal laws might have been examined and struck down remained a matter of theory and debate. In consequence, though Jefferson and Madison did ultimately fail in their attempt to present the states as the rightful arbiter of what was and wasn’t valid under the terms of the US Constitution, they weren’t wrong to make the attempt. The power of reviewing federal legislation – and federal action more broadly – for its adherence to the Constitution was undeniably necessary if the American republic was going to continue to function for more than a handful of years.

In actual fact, of course, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835), used the case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) to conclusively affirm the sole responsibility of that selfsame institution to review legislation and determine its legitimacy. Having by that time become the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson was unsurprisingly displeased with this outcome. Not only had his pet theory being entirely supplanted, but his ideological opposition – in the form of the Federalists, who still largely controlled the judiciary – had successfully claimed a far-reaching power which he could do little to counter. Initially intent on removing the offending Federalist justices, Jefferson accordingly attempted to have them systematically impeached and replaced in cooperation with the Democratic-Republicans who held the majority in both houses of Congress. When this failed on the first attempt, however – Associate Justice Samuel Chase (1741-1811) being acquitted in the Senate in March 1805 – Jefferson quietly accepted Marshall’s sweeping victory and ceased to challenge it thereafter. Subsequent rulings by the Marshal Court (1801-1835) went on to confirm the precedent set by its initial 1803 decision – Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), for example, or McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) – thus establishing conclusively and by general affirmation that the Supreme Court possessed sole authority to determine the constitutional validity of federal legislation.

Be that as it may – and for whatever reason – John C. Calhoun seemed not to have cottoned to this well-established outcome when he set himself to crafting his aforementioned Exposition and Protest in 1828. Having claimed, as cited above, that the states maintained the right to determine when their liberties had been abridged as well as the means by which they might seek remediation, he thereafter went on to assert that the denial of a given state’s freedom of judgement was tantamount to denying the basic fact of its sovereignty. “To divide power,” he wrote,

And to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is, in reality, not to divide it at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the General Government […] is to convert it, in fact, into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to divest the States, in reality, of all their rights.

Again, the parallels to the position advanced decades prior by the likes of Jefferson and Madison are exceptionally clear. Indeed, it seems likely that this formed an essential part of Calhoun’s purpose. The Supreme Court had already invalidated most of what Calhoun was trying to say. And the Democratic-Republican party had largely moved on from the small-government populism of its founding to the centralization and economic nationalism of the Madison, Monroe, and Quincy Adams administrations. But there most assuredly remained an element of the increasingly fragmented Democratic-Republican flock who continued to attach more importance to their state governments than to the federal government, and for whom 1790s radical Jeffersonianism possessed a certain romantic attraction amidst unceasing talk of protective tariffs and internal improvements. Coupled with those whose belief in the latter-day Democratic-Republican program had been severely shaken by the ongoing effects of the Panic of 1819, and there would seem to have existed a significant audience in 1828 for the kind of rhetoric that Calhoun was dispensing. It may not have been strictly politic to argue at that time that the states in fact maintained the right to invalidate federal laws. As time would shortly tell, in fact, it was a very foolish thing to do. But it was also a very Jeffersonian approach – in the original sense of the term – and one which the Vice-President perhaps hoped would appeal to a similarly avowed Jeffersonian like the President-Elect.