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tained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London.

Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured.

But

France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire extinguishment of the public debt-the first and the last time this has occurred in all our national history.

An important measure touching the hard-money system of our country was passed in large part through the influence of President Jackson. By the Mint Law of 1792 our silver dollar was made to contain three hundred and seventy-one and a

quarter grains of fine silver, or four hundred and sixteen of standard silver. The amount of pure silver in this venerable coin has remained unchanged ever since; only, in 1837, by a reduction of the alloy fraction to exactly one-tenth, the total weight of the coin became what it now is, four hundred and twelve and a half grains, nine-tenths fine. The same law of 1892 had given the gold dollar just one-fifteenth the weight of the silver dollar. This proportion, which Hamilton had arrived at after careful investigation characteristic of the man, was exactly correct at the time, but within a year, as is now known, on account of increase in the relative value of gold, the gold dollar at fifteen to one became more valuable than its silver mate. The consequence was that the gold brought to the United States mint for coinage fell off year by year, until some of the years between 1820 and 1830 it had been almost zero. Gold money had nearly ceased to circulate.

Jackson resolved to restore the yellow metal to daily use. In this he was opposed by many Whigs, who, so zealous were they for the United States. Bank, had become paper money men. The socalled Gold Bill was carried through Congress in 1834, changing the proportion of silver to gold in our currency from fifteen to one to sixteen to one. It should have been fifteen and a half to one. Now gold in its turn was over-valued, so that silver gradually ceased to circulate, as gold had almost ceased before. This result was made worse after 1848, when there was a still further appreciation of silver through the discovery of gold in California

and Australia. Silver dollars did not again circulate freely in the country until 1878, though they were full legal tender till 1873. Gold, on the other hand, was everywhere seen after 1834, though not abundant in circulation, owing to the large amounts of paper money then in use.

In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks. Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could, the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse. The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an occasion than the

cause.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH

PARTLY Jackson's personal influence, partly his able aides, partly favoring circumstances had, during his administrations, brought the Democracy into excellent condition, patriotic, national in general spirit, with a creed that, however imperfectclose construction being its integrating idea-was, after all, definite, consistent, and thoughtful. Yet in 1840 the Democrats, who four years before had chosen Van Buren by an electoral vote of 170 to seventy-three, had to surrender, with the same Van Buren for candidate, to the Whigs by a majority of 234 electoral votes to sixty, only five States, and but two of them northern, going for the democratic candidate.

There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at

the core and nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis.

More influential still was the financial predicament into which on Jackson's retirement his successor and the country were plunged. The commercial distress which seemed to spring from Jackson's measures was now first fully realized. Anger and pain from the death of the bank had not abated. Ardent hatred prevailed toward the pet" banks, extending to the party whose darlings they were, while the Specie Circular was held to have ruined most of the others. The subsequent legislation for distributing the treasury surplus among the States, by removing the deposits from the pet banks destroyed many of these as well. They had been using this government money for the discount of loans to business men, and were not in condition instantly to pay it back. Hence the panic of 1837. First the New York City banks suspended, soon followed by the others throughout that State, all sustained in their course by an act of the Legislature. Suspension presently occurred everywhere else. The financial pressure continued through the entire summer of 1837, banks, corporations, and business men going to the wall, and all values greatly sinking. Boston suffered one hundred and sixty-eight business failures in six months.

One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the whig vote was apparent, though the

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