1824: The Arkansas War

CHAPTER 28

Washington, D.C.

Henry Clay was elected president of the United States on the first ballot in the House of Representatives. By the rules established in the Constitution, each state got one vote, determined by the majority of its delegation. Thirteen votes were thus needed for Clay to be elected president, since the nation had twenty-four states.

That's exactly what he got. Thirteen votes.

The solid core came from the seven states of the Deep South, delivered by Calhoun's people and those of Crawford's who were not breaking away with Van Buren and the New Yorkers:

Alabama

Florida

Georgia

Louisiana

Mississippi

North Carolina

South Carolina

He also picked up Virginia, although it was a much closer call than he and his associates had expected.

On the one hand, the state was politically dominated by the same class of slave-owners who ruled the roost in the Deep South. In fact, Virginia had historically led the South in the direction of ever harsher laws regarding slavery as an institution and black people as a race. In 1785, it had been the first state to officially declare any person with "black blood" to be a mulatto and to legally define mulattos as negroes. In 1799, it had banished white mothers of mulattos with their children. In 1806, it had required slaves to leave the state within a year of manumission. And, finally, in 1819, Virginia had been the first-and was still the only-state in the union that outlawed blacks and mulattos, whether free or slave, from meeting for the purposes of education. It also forbade anyone, including whites, from teaching black people to read and write.

On the other hand:

The Old Dominion's elite took great pride in its political history and saw Virginia as the nation's preeminent state. And why should they not? Four of five presidents of the United States had been Virginians-and all of them had served two terms, unlike the one-term tenure of the sole outsider, John Adams. The Old Dominion had produced a similarly disproportionate number of the country's political leaders in Congress and the judicial branch.

So, even with their class interests inclining them toward following Clay, their well-honed political instincts were shrieking alarm bells. The manner in which Clay was taking the office-and no other term than "taking" could really be used-was far outside the parameters of what many of Virginia's congressmen could easily swallow.

But eventually, enough of them did. The quirky and unpredictable John Randolph perhaps swung the matter when he abruptly decided-following a train of logic that was semi-incomprehensible but, as usual, brilliantly expounded on the floor of Congress-that electing Henry Clay was essential to the preservation of slavery, an institution that he personally viewed with dubiety but whose stalwart defense was necessary to prevent the ever-growing encroachment of federal dictatorship upon the liberties of the states.

"In a phrase," John Quincy Adams caustically remarked afterward, "John Randolph felt it necessary to install a tyrant in order to forestall tyranny."

What made Randolph's actions particularly bizarre was that he detested Clay personally. When they met in a corridor of the Capitol shortly after the vote, Randolph stood his ground and hissed at the newly elected president, "I never sidestep skunks."

Clay smiled. "I always do," he replied, and deftly skirted him.

The border states split. Tennessee and Kentucky voted for Jackson; Missouri and Maryland, for Clay. No surprise there.

Granted, a different sort of politician might have been embarrassed by the fact that his own home state had voted for another candidate. But Clay was above such picayune concerns. As well he might be, having managed the notable feat of getting elected as the nation's chief executive with five out of six voters opposed to him.

He did lose New York, which caused a momentary panic among his advisers. At the last minute, Martin Van Buren broke publicly with Crawford and Clay and threw his support to Jackson. Van Buren himself was a senator, not a congressman, so his own vote was irrelevant. But they didn't call him the Little Magician for nothing. Van Buren had created the nation's first really well-oiled political machine in New York, and the machine delivered.

The decision came from the West. Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana all voted for Clay.

Ohio's vote was expected by everyone and really had little to do with the ruckus over Arkansas Post. Ohio had long been "Clay country" because it was the state that felt it had the most to gain from the newly elected president's American System.

So, in the end, Illinois and Indiana were the key-and their votes were purely the product of panic over Arkansas Post. Both states were new-Indiana had been admitted to the union in 1816; Illinois in 1818-and both bordered on "wild Injun country."

Most of all, both were sparsely settled, which made them feel vulnerable to the nebulous danger of being suddenly overrun by hordes of murdering negroes surging out of Arkansas. The fact that Arkansas was hundreds of miles away and no sane man could think of any conceivable way the Confederacy would or could attack Illinois or Indiana without stumbling over Tennessee and Kentucky-with their large populations and the nation's two most powerful and best-organized militias-was neither here nor there. By that point, Clay's partisans had pulled out all the stops and were fanning every spark of fear they could find into a blaze of terror.

So, there it was. In the nation as a whole, in the presidential election of 1824, about 360,000 popular votes were cast. Of that total, the decision was made by the delegations representing 16,000 voters in Indiana and fewer than 5,000 in Illinois-and, in both states, by narrow margins.

"In the history of the world," Andrew Jackson would thunder the next day, "was ever a greater mockery made of the phrase 'decision of the people'?"

Needless to say, the question was not rhetorical. Old Hickory proceeded to answer it at length many times thereafter. To the end of their days, the mildest term anyone could remember him using to refer to Clay and his minions was "the rascals."

John Quincy Adams was more restrained. But the capital's political observers noted that he immediately announced his intention to run for Congress from Massachusetts.

The House, not the Senate, interestingly enough. Given that a Senate seat would also be available in 1826, and that the Senate was generally considered a more prestigious body, Adams's choice seemed odd.

But perhaps not so odd, in the opinion of the more astute of those observers. True enough, a "senator" was a more august personage than a mere "congressman." But those terms were abstractions. The concrete reality remained that no senator-indeed, no person in the country save the president himself-potentially wielded more power and influence than the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

True, the thought of John Quincy Adams serving in the same post that Henry Clay had transformed into such a political powerhouse was extraordinarily peculiar. Clay was the nation's most adroit and adept politician, as everyone including his bitterest enemies would agree; Adams, its most awkward and inept.

But perhaps that was what Adams was basing his calculations upon. After two years of Henry Clay in the White House, perhaps by 1826 the nation would welcome a Speaker-freshman though he might be-who was everything Henry Clay was not. Stubborn on matters of principle where Clay was lizard-quick, thoughtful and deeply read where Clay was clever and facile, and if not as gracious in his manners, more than his equal in intelligence.

A week after the election, the announcement was made that William Crawford would be Clay's nominee for the nation's next secretary of state; John Calhoun, for its next secretary of war.

That drew another round of thunder from Jackson. "So you see, the Judas of the South has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. His end will be the same. Was there ever witnessed such a bare-faced corruption in any country before?"

To no one's surprise, Crawford said nothing. The Georgia politician's physical ailment was now so widely known that everyone understood the appointment was a mere fig leaf. Crawford's partisans would be allowed to use the State Department to pass around perks, privileges, posts, and the like, but Clay himself would direct the nation's foreign affairs.

Calhoun, still only forty-two years old, was in his prime. But he also made no public response to Jackson's denunciations. Instead, he limited his riposte to an indirect one.

He immediately announced that he would be urging Congress to approve a rapid and major expansion of the nation's armed forces "to deal with the barbaric threat arisen on our western border." Then, with an implied sneer, wondered how such an expansion could possibly be opposed by prominent figures-he did not mention Jackson by name-who had long advocated the same measure.

That was a pointless tactic, given Old Hickory. Jackson's response came the next day:

"In times past, I advocated strengthening the nation's armed forces to fend off foreign murderers, arsonists, and robbers. Calhoun calls for its expansion for the sole purpose of murdering, burning, and robbing neighbors who have never attacked us at all. Judas, did I name him? If so, I insulted Judas."

The most astute of the capital's observers, however, ignored this predictable byplay. They were quite fascinated by something else.

John Quincy Adams was starting to profess-in public-a liking for whiskey. So long as it was the corn-based whiskey distilled out West, not the Eastern rye-based stuff. What some people were starting to call "bourbon."

Arkansas Post