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speeches of the subdued senators furnish a pretty clear index to their feelings on that occasion.

Mr. Calhoun said : “ No one, not blinded by party zeal, can possibly be insensible that the measure proposed is a violation of the constitution. The constitution requires the senate to keep a jourual; this resolution goes to expunge the journal. If you may expunge a part, you may expunge the whole; and if it is expunged, how is it kept? . This is to be done, not in consequence of argument, but in spite of argument. I know perfectly well the gentlemen have no liberty to vote otherwise." [Mr. Calhoun here alluded to the instructions which some senators had received from their state legislatures.] “They try, indeed, to comfort their conscience by saying that it is the will of the people. It is no such thing. We all know how these legislative returns have been obtained. It is by dictation from the White House. The president himself, with that vast mass of patronage which he wields, and the thousand expectations he is able to hold up, has obtained the votes of the state legislatures; and this, forsooth, is said to be the voice of the people. The voice of the people! Sir, can we forget the scene which was exhibited in this chamber when that expunging resolution was first introduced here? Have we forgotten the universal giving way of conscience, so that the senator from Missouri was left alone? I see before me senators who could not swallow that resolution; and has its nature changed since then? Is it any more constitutional now than it was then ? Not at all. But executive power has interposed. Talk to me of the voice of the people! No, sir; it is the combination of patronage

and power to coerce this body into a gross and palpable violation of the constitution.

“But why do I waste my breath ? I know it is all utterly vain. The day is gone; night approaches, and night is suitable to the dark deed we meditate." Mr. C. said other violations had been committed ; but they had been done in the heat of party. In these, power had been "compelled to support itself by seizing upon new instruments of influence and patronage;" among these was the removal of the deposits, which gave to the president ample means of “rewarding his friends and punishitg his enemies." Said Mr. C., "Something may, perhaps, be pardoned to him in this matter, on the old apology of tyrants—the plea of necessity. Here no necessity can so much as be pretended. This act originates in pure, personal idolatry. It is the melancholy evidence of a broken spirit, ready to bow at the feet of power. The former act was such a one as might have been perpetrated in the days of Pompey or Cæsar; but an act like this could never have been consummated by a Roman senate until the times of Caligula and Nero."

Mr. Clay expressed his disappointment at the intention of again putting this resolution to a vote. He said: “It is, however, now revived; and sundry changes having taken place in the members of this body, it would seem that the present design is to bring the resolution to an absa lute conclusion.” He concluded his speech with a violent denunciation of the president and his friends, thus: “The decree has gone forth. The deed is to be done—that foul deed which, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never wash out. Proceed, then, with the noble work which lies before you, and, like other skillful executioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated it, go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors you have achieved for them and the country. Tell them that you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burnt at the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered in defense of the constitution, and bravely spiked the cannon. Tell them that, henceforward, no matter what daring or outrageous act any president may perform, you have forever hermetically sealed the mouth of the senate. Tell them that he may fearlessly assume what powers he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military detachment to enter the halls of the capitol, overawe congress, trample down the constitution, and raze every bulwark of freedom; but that the senate must stand mute, in silent submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice; that it must wait until a house of representatives, humbled and subdued like itself, and a majority of it, composed of the partisans of the president, shall prefer articles of impeachment. Tell them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. And, if the people do not pour out their indignation and imprecations, I have yet to learn the character of American freemen.”

Mr. Webster, who made the concluding speech, protested against the intended act, as unconstitutional. “A record expunged,” he said, " is not a record which is kept, any more than a record which is destroyed can be a record which is preserved. The part expunged is no longer part of the record; it has no longer a legal existence. It can not bo certified as a part of the proceeding of the senate for any proof or evidence.” He protested also that they had no right to deprive him of the personal constitutional right of having his yea and nay recorded and preserved on the journal. They might as well erase the yeas and nays on any other, or on all other questions as on this. He expressed his deep regret to see the legislatures of respectable states instructing their senators to vote for violating the journal of the senate.

He believed these proceedings of states had their origin in promptings from Wask

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a

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ington; and had been brought about by the influence and power of the executive branch of this government.

“But this resolution is to pass. We expect it. That cause which has been powerful enough to influence so many state legislatures, will show itself powerful enough, especially with such aids, to secure the passage of the resolution here. We collect ourselves to look on, in silence, while a scene is exhibited which, if we did not regard it as a ruthless violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to us to be little elevated above the character of a contemptible farce." The following is his concluding paragraph:

“Having made this PROTEST, our duty is performed. We rescue our own names, character, and honor, from all participation in this matter; and whatever the wayward character of the times, the headlong and plunging spirit of party devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that they bave not, as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true republican principles, and a sacred regard for the constitution, in that state whose soil was drenched to a mire, by the first and best blood of the revolution. Massachusetts, as yet, has not been conquered ; and while we have the honor to hold seats here as her senators, we shall never consent to a sacrifice either of her rights or our own. We shall never fail to oppose what we regard a plain and open violation of the constitution of the country; and we should have thought ourselves wholly unworthy of her if we had not, with all the solemnity and earnestness in our power, protested against the adoption of the resolution now before the senate."

It was now near midnight; and the vote was taken in the presence of a crowd of spectators. There were yeas, 24; nays, 19; absent, 5. After the resolution had passed, the secretary of the senate, according to order, took the manuscript journal of the senate, and drew a square of broad black lines around the resolution of the 28th of March, 1834, and wrote across it, “ Expunged by order of the senate, this 16th day of January, 1837.”

Mr. Benton, in closing his account of the transaction, says: "The gratification of General Jackson was extreme. He gave a grand dinner to the expungers (as they were called) and their wives; and being too weak to sit at the table, he only met the company, placed the 'headexpunger' in his chair, and withdrew to his sick chamber. That expurgation ! it was the crowning mercy' of his civil, as New Orleans had been of his military life!"

At the presidential election in 1836, the electoral vote was divided upon five individuals. Mr. Van Buren had been nominated by a na

tional democratic convention held in Baltimore, in February, 1835, with Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, for vice-president. This convention was held, if not at the instance, yet in accordance with the previously expressed wishes of Gen. Jackson, who, as was well known, was desirous that Mr. Van Buren should be his successor. Mr. Van Buren also was known to be in favor of the project. No other national convention to nominate a candidate for president, was held. Gen. William H. Harri. son was nominated by whig conventions in many of the states, and by the anti-masonic state convention, at Harrisburg, Pa. Francis Granger was nominated at most or all of these conventions for vice-president. Hugh L. White, senator in congress from Tennessee, and a friend of Gen. Jackson, was nominated in January, 1835, by the legislature of Alabama. He was also nominated by the people of Tennessee, in which nomination the delegation from that state in the house of representatives in congress concurred, with the exception of James K. Polk and Cave Johnson. John M'Lean, of Ohio, and Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, had been nominated by the whig members of the legislatures of these states.

Mr. Van Buren received of the electoral votes, 170; Gen. Harrison, 73; Judge White, 26; Mr. Webster, 14; and Willie P. Mangum, of North Carolina, 11. Total, 294. For vice-president, R. M. Johnson, 144; Francis Granger, 77; John Tyler, 47 ; Wm. Smith, 23. Total, 294. There would probably have been a less scattering vote, but for the hope of diminishing the chances of Mr. Van Buren's success by bringing the election into the house of representatives.

CHAPTER LV.

MR.

VAN BUREN'S INAUGURATION.-SPECIAL SESSION OF CONGRESS. SUB-TREASURY.—OTHER FINANCIAL MEASURES.

On the 4th of March, 1837, Martin Van Buren was inaugurated as president of the United States. The inauguration was attended with the display usual on such occasions. He was accompanied to the capitol by his predecessor, General Jackson, where he delivered his inaugural address, and took the oath of office, administered by chief justice Taney.

The inaugural address gave no indications of a change in the general policy of the government. A prominent topic of the address was the then agitating question of the abolition of slavery in the District of

Columbia. He had been interrogated on this agitating subject before the election; and he then declared that, if elected, he "must go into the presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt, on the part of congress, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, against the wishes of the slaveholding states ; and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the states where it exists;' and said: “It now only remains to add, that no bill conflicting with these views can ever receive my constitutional sanction.” His reserve and caution in committing himself on public measures, was proverbial—a trait of character familiarly denominated by his opponents, “non-committalism.” This announcement, in advance, therefore, of his views and intentions in relation to this subject, was the more noticed, and was attributed by his opponents to the design of strengthening his popularity at the south. Such announcement was deemed the more uncalled for, as there was not the slightest probability of the passage of a bill like that which he had thus foredoomed. It was regarded by many also as objectionable in principleas an improper interference, on the part of the executive, with the freedom of legislation.

Mr. Van Buren's accession to the presidency occurred at an unpropitious period. The pecuniary pressure which followed the issuing of the specie eircular, and which was already general and severe, was rapidly approaching its crisis. This pressure was extensively regarded as the natural result of a policy which he was pledged to continue.

In May, the event for some time anticipated by many—a general bank explosion -took place. The banks in the city of New York, by common consent, suspended specie payments. The banks in other cities were compelled to adopt the same course. In the state of New York, the legislature legalized the suspension for one year.

Among the causes to which the suspension of specie payments was ascribed, were the diversion of specie to the west, and the drain upon the banks in the Atlantic cities for exportation to Europe, to pay for the excessive importations of goods. Another cause of the derangement of the currency was supposed to be the large loans made by the banks having on deposit the surplus revenue, with the expectation that it would remain with them until called for by the general government. Instead, however, of being permitted to retain these funds as a basis for the extension of their loans, they were unexpectedly demanded for the purpose of distribution among the states.

The speculation and enormous appreciation of property during the last two or three years, was followed by a revulsion, and a corresponding depreciation. Mercantile failures in the commercial cities, as Boston,