Tariff of 1828, and they assumed that Vice President Calhoun would succeed to the presidency and would protect southern interests. They were wrong on both counts.
Jackson favored states’ rights, but only within a perpetual and inviolable union.
A tariff was ultimately a matter of foreign policy, clearly within the jurisdiction of the federal government. To allow a state to veto a tariff would be to deny the legal existence of the United States.
Jackson revealed his views at a celebration of Jefferson’s birthday on April
13, 1830. Calhoun’s southern friends dominated the speechmaking, and Jackson
listened quietly as speaker after speaker defended the extreme states’-rights
position. After the formal speeches were over, the president rose to propose an
after-dinner toast: “Our Federal Union,” he said, “It must be preserved.” Isaac
Hill, a New Hampshire Democrat and a supporter of Van Buren, reported, “an
order to arrest Calhoun where he sat would not have come with more blinding,
staggering force.” Dumbstruck, the southerners looked to Calhoun, who as vice
president was to propose the second toast. Shaken by Jackson’s unqualified
defense of the Union, Calhoun offered this toast: “The Union. Next to our liber-
ties the most dear.” They were strong words, but they had little meaning after
Jackson’s affirmation of the Union. A few days later, a South Carolina congress-
man on his way home asked the president if he had any message for him to take
back. “Yes, I have,” replied Jackson. “Please give my compliments to my friends
in your state, and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can
reach.”
Having reaffirmed the Union and rejected nullification, Jackson asked
Congress to reduce the tariff rates in the hope that he could isolate the nullifiers from southerners who simply hated the tariff. The resulting Tariff of 1832 lowered the rates on many items but still affirmed the principle of protectionism.
That, along with the Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s declaration
of war on slavery in 1831, followed by Nat Turner’s bloody slave uprising in
Virginia that same year (see Chapter 9), led the whites of South Carolina and
Georgia to intensify their distrust of outside authority and their insistence on the right to govern their own neighborhoods. South Carolina, now with Calhoun’s
open leadership and support, called a state convention that nullified the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832.
In Washington, President Jackson raged that nullification (not to mention
the right of secession that followed logically from it) was illegal. Insisting that
“Disunion ... is treason,” he asked Congress for a Force Bill empowering him to
personally lead a Federal army into South Carolina. At the same time, however,
he supported the rapid reduction of tariffs. When Democratic attempts at reduction bogged down, Henry Clay, who was now back in the Senate, took on the tricky
legislative task of rescuing his beloved protective tariff while quieting southern fears. The result was the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which, by lowering tariffs
over the course of several years, gave southern planters the relief they demanded while maintaining moderate protectionism and allowing northern manufacturers
time to adjust to the lower rates. Congress also passed the Force Bill. Jackson
signed both into law on March 2, 1833.
Jacksonian Democracy and the South
397
With that, the nullification crisis came to a quiet end. No other southern state
had joined South Carolina in nullifying the tariff, although some states had made vague pledges of support in the event that Jackson led his army to Charleston.
The Compromise Tariff of 1833 isolated the South Carolina nullifiers. Deprived of their issue and most of their support, they declared victory and disbanded their convention, but not before nullifying the Force Bill. Jackson chose to overlook that last defiant gesture because he had accomplished what he wanted: He had asserted a
perpetual Union, and he had protected southern interests within it.
The “Petticoat
The spoils system, Indian removal, nullification, and other
Wars”
heated questions of Jackson’s first term were fought out
against a backdrop of gossip, intrigue, and angry division
within the inner circles of Jackson’s government. The talk centered on Peggy
O’Neal Timberlake, a Washington tavern keeper’s daughter who, in January 1829,
had married John Henry Eaton, Jackson’s old friend and his soon to be secretary of war. Eaton was middle-aged; his bride was 29, pretty, flirtatious, and, according to Washington gossip, “frivolous, wayward, [and] passionate.” Knowing that his
marriage might cause trouble for the new administration, Eaton had asked for and
received Jackson’s blessings—and, by strong implication, his protection.
The marriage of John and Peggy Eaton came at a turning point in the history of
both Washington society and elite sexual mores. Until the 1820s, most officeholders had left their families at home. They took lodgings at taverns and boardinghouses and lived in a bachelor world of shirtsleeves, tobacco, card playing, and occasional liaisons with local women. But in the 1820s, the boardinghouse world was giving
way to high society. Cabinet members, senators, congressmen, and other officials
moved into Washington houses, and their wives presided over the round of dinner
parties through which much of the government’s business was done. As in other
wealthy families, political wives imposed new forms of gentility and politeness on these affairs, and they assumed the responsibility of drawing up the guest lists.
Many of them determined to exclude Peggy Eaton from polite society.
The shunning of Peggy Eaton split the Jackson administration in two. Jackson
was committed to protect her. He had met his own beloved Rachel while boarding
at her father’s Nashville tavern, and their grand romance (as well as the gossip
that surrounded it) was a striking parallel to the affair of John and Peggy Eaton.
That, coupled with Jackson’s honor-bound agreement to the Eaton marriage,
ensured that he would protect the Eatons to the bitter end. Always suspicious of
intrigues, Jackson labeled the “dark and sly insinuations” about Peggy Eaton part of a “conspiracy” against his presidency. Jackson noted that the rumor mongers
were not only politicians’ wives but also prominent clergymen. Most prominent
among the latter was Ezra Styles Ely of Philadelphia, who had recently called for an evangelical “Christian Party in politics.” Jackson blamed the conspiracy on
“females with clergymen at their head.”
In fact, Mrs. Eaton’s tormentors included most of the cabinet members as well
as Jackson’s own White House “family.” Widowed and without children, Jackson
had invited his nephew and private secretary Andrew Jackson Donelson, along with
his wife and her sister, to live in the White House. Donelson’s wife, serving as
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