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It was intended next to denounce all the President's personal friends, who were near him, as a malign influence,' to represent him as the victim of their intrigues, that one by one, they might be driven from him; or if he would not part with them, and should prove to be refractory, to open the phials of their wrath against him, until sickened and disgusted with the turmoil, he might retire to the solitude of the Hermitage, and yield the strife of politics to the Vice-President and his rivals. All the visiting cards that were ever printed and circulated in this city, were as nothing compared to this grand, this important design, which was to be brought out subsequently as an after-piece to the new plot that was built upon the letter of Mr. Crawford and the published correspondence.

"The question arises, why were not these plans carried out at the intended time? Why not executed? Why were these designs suspended and all the labor of preparation brought to a pause? Passing events furnished the answer. On the 31st of March, the day after the letter to Mr. Ritchie was written, and before the 'FEW DAYS' of waiting had expired, a voice from Pennsylvania was hurrying through the land. The democratic members of the Legislature of that great State, which first had presented General Jackson, and through two contests sustained him, were now again the first to express their confidence in his administration and to nominate him for re-election. Awed by the independent and uncorrupted voice of this State, the managers at Washington paused in their career, to listen for the distant echoes of this deafening sound, this unexpected enunciation. Mark how it was announced in the Telegraph:

"The position of this press located at the seat of the government, its presumed relation to the President, the high respect and delicate regard which it has at all times maintained for public opinion, impose restraints upon it in relation to the discussion at this time, of the propriety of his continuance in office for another term.'

"Again, a voice from New York, responding to the recommendation from Pennsylvania in terms of approbation, equally strong, was also heard, and these two large States, thus moving and acting together, gave answers that whoever chose to go into retirement could do so, but that the claims of Mr. Calhoun to the Presidency would, certainly for the present, have to be postponed. Before a recovery could be effected from these decisive movements, the ceto of the President upon the Maysville Road Bill was announced and filled the South with joy and hope. It falsified the predictions which had been made to Mr. Ritchie, and swept away that whence a successful opposition was expected to arise. It was perceived that the President's moral, was no less than his physical courage, and the people of the South already exhibited. a general feeling in his favor. All hope of arraying the South against the North, was seemingly impracticable and for a time. abandoned. Evidences of better feeling began to appear, and in

June, The Telegraph undertook to show that it had always been in favor of the re-election of General Jackson. In the mean time, the President and the Vice President had differed in relation to some incident connected with the Seminole (Indian) war, which had occasioned a coolness and separation.

"Congress again assembled, and it was rumored that Mr. Calhoun intended to write a book, and give to the public his correspondence with the President. The papers were shown privately to his friends who busied themselves in representing the affair in conversation and in their letters as an intrigue which had been gotten up on the part of Van Buren to destroy Mr. Calhoun. In preparing and bringing forward this address, much policy was necessary and it was employed. I was requested to examine the manuscript, that if there was any thing in it that could have a tendency to induce the President to reply to it a modification might take place. The request I obeyed; but afterwards, that incident was used to prove that the friends of the President had read and sanctioned the address, before it obtained publication. ment, as it related to me, was illiberal and untrue.

The state

"The publication of this work again aroused party animosity, and partizans were perceived to take sides according to their personal predilections, and to bring up the question of the succession, prematurely, as the means of creating division among the original supporters of the administration. The discussions in Congress were evidently marked by such lines of separation; and while Messrs. Ingham, Branch and Berrien, could there find apologists and advocates, the other three members of the Cabinet, were struck at as the points of attack by the new opposition. The one was a 'malign influence,' which was bending everything to selfish purpose, while our colleagues were receiving honor and commendation. Abuse from the papers on one side and a disposition to retaliate from the other, was now clearly manifest. We thus had a prospect of open war between partizans of different portions of the Cabinet, the evils of which as was plainly to be perceived could not but penetrate into our deliberations, interrupt business, affect the progress of public affairs, and disturb the quiet and repose of the country. While a party to contest the succession was thus organized in Congress and in the Cabinet, one of the prominent friends of Mr. Calhoun introduced a resolution which contemplated, by a restrospective provision, to amend the Constitution so as to exclude General Jackson from being eligible to a re-election. If those who urged this measure in the House of Representatives did not hope absolutely to disfranchise the President by obtaining such an amendment, they moved it as a means of bringing a general principle to operate on him alone, and by obtaining a vote on the abstract proposition, to urge it as the sense of the representatives of the people against his re-election. In this mode was the war waged against the fame and influence of the man who was elevated by the voice of the people, and who was again summoned by them

to become a candidate because he had realized all their hopes as the reformer of abuses in the government, and was securing the rights of our citizens and adjusting the difficulties of the country.

"The situation of the President was now easily to be perceived. With a Cabinet politically divided, and personally, as may be presumed, not very friendly, it was impossible for him to move along the arduous duties of his station with satisfaction to himself or advantage to the country. It was apparent that in justice to himself, he must soon be under the necessity of re-organizing his Cabinet, and if it could not otherwise be accomplished to dismiss the disaffected portion of it. Having accepted reluctantly a place in the Cabinet, I concluded no longer to sacrifice my private comfort or be the occasion of embarrassment to the President. Early in April, I communicated to him (what in the previous month I had written to a friend in Philadelphia), my wish and intention to resign, which I shortly after executed. In my letter of resignation, it was not necessary or proper that I should go into a history of events such as are now presented. I confined my remarks solely to that which concerned myself, without adverting to or touching on the conduct of others. I felt not that any defense or vindication for voluntarily yielding my office was necessary; and feeling no disposition to injure or assail others, I forebore to enter into details. The same determination would have been persevered in, had not the illiberal conduct of my colleagues made a different course necessary.

"Mr. Van Buren taking a similar view of the condition of the Cabinet, and the situation of the President, connected with the peculiar circumstances in which he had been placed by his opponents, thought proper also to resign. Without going into a full explanation in his letter of resignation, or naming any of his colleagues, he presented briefly the result of the political intrigues. which were dividing the Cabinet, distracting the party, and which pointed to a change in the councils of the President as necessary and indispensable.

"The secret feelings and designs with which my colleagues entered the Cabinet, and which while there they continued to cherish, their 'notes' of private conversations, treasured up for future and concerted use, the advice of a certain cabal and an acquiescence in the counsel given to enter the Cabinet and countinue there for special purposes, notwithstanding the insuperable bar' which conscience suggested and the indignity and outrage' which had been offered and borne for fifteen months, were all unknown to me. These were secrets worth preserving and they were kept closely. Yet, entire confidence was reposed that on being informed that Mr. Van Buren and myself had retired, the others would appreciate the motives which had occasioned it, and place their offices again at the disposition of the President that he might organize a new Cabinet of homogeneous materials which would not be obnoxious to the attacks of any of his professing friends, and