THE TURBULENT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1828

By Thomas H. Benton.

SENATOR BENTON, the statesman-historian, from whose "Thirty Years' View" this account is taken, had not only become reconciled to General Jackson, with whom he had fought a spectacular duel fifteen years earlier, but had become a warm adherent of his in the campaign of 1828. This is particularly evidenced by his defense of "Old Hickory" against the flippant and shallow statements" made by the French statesman De Tocqueville, in his great work on "Democracy in America," published in 1835. In taking his French contemporary to task for his misstatements regarding Jackson, Benton ingenuously pleads that his action was inspired by his high regard for M. de Tocqueville and his even higher regard for "the cause of Republican government," of which Jackson was such a stalwart champion.

GENERAL JACKSON and John Quincy Adams were the candidates; with Henry Clay (his Secretary of State), so intimately associated in the public mind, on account of the circumstances of the previous presidential election in the House of Representatives, that their names and interests were inseparable during the canvass. General Jackson was elected, having received 178 electoral votes to 83 received by Mr. Adams. Mr. Richard Rush of Pennsylvania was the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of Mr. Adams, and received an equal vote with that gentleman: Mr. Calhoun was the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket with General Jackson, and received a slightly less vote the deficiency being in Georgia, where the friends of George Washington Crawford, State Attorney-General, and a Calhoun adherent, still resented his believed connection with the A. B. plot." In the previous election, he had been neutral between General Jackson and Mr. Adams; but was now decided on the part of the General, and received the same vote everywhere, except in Georgia. In this election there was a circumstance to be known and remembered. Mr. Adams and Mr. Rush were both from the non-slave holding General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun from the slave holding States, and both large slave owners themselves and both received a large vote (73 each) in the free States and of which at least forty were indispensable to their election. There was no jealousy, or hostile, or aggressive spirit in the North at that time against the South!

The election of General Jackson was a triumph of democratic principle, and an assertion of the people's right to govern themselves.

That principle had been violated in the presidential election in the House of Representatives in the session of 1824-25; and the sanction, or rebuke, of that violation was a leading question in the whole canvass. It was also a triumph over the high protective policy, and the Federal internal improvement policy, and the latitudinous construction of the Constitution; and of the Democracy over the Federalists, then called National Republicans; and was the re-establishment of parties on principle, according to the landmarks of the early ages of the government. For although Mr. Adams had received confidence and office from Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, and had classed with the Democratic party during the fusion of parties in the "era of good feeling," yet he had previously been Federal; and in the re-establishment of old party lines which began to take place after the election of Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives, his affinities, and policy, became those of his former party; and as a party with many individual exceptions, they became his supporters and his strength. General Jackson, on the contrary, had always been Democratic, so classing when he was a Senator in Congress, under the administration of the first Mr. Adams, and when party lines were most straightly drawn, and upon principle.

In the mean time I have some knowledge of General Jackson, and the American people, and the two presidential elections with which they honored the General, and will oppose it, that is, my knowledge, to the flippant and shallow statements of Monsieur de Tocqueville. "A man of violent temper." I ought to know something about that . . . and I can say that General Jackson had a good temper, kind and hospitable to everybody and a feeling of protection in it for the whole human race, and especially the weaker and humbler part of it. He had few quarrels on his own account; and probably the ones of which M. de Tocqueville had heard were accidental, against his will, and for the succor of friends.

"The majority of the enlightened classes always opposed him." A majority of those classes which M. de Tocqueville would chiefly see in the cities, and along the highways bankers, brokers, jobbers, contractors, politicians and speculators were certainly against him, and he was as certainly against them : but the mass of the intelligence of the country was with him, and sustained him in retrieving the country from the deplorable condition in which the "enlightened classes" had sunk it, and in advancing it to that state of felicity at home, and respect abroad, which has made it the envy and admiration of the civilized world, and the absorbent of populations of Europe.

I pass on. "Raised to the Presidency and maintained there solely by the recollection of the victory at New Orleans." Here recollection and military glare, reverse the action of their ever previous attributes, and become stronger, instead of weaker, upon the lapse of time. The victory at New Orleans was gained in the first week of the year 1815; . . . but it did not make Jackson President, or even bring him forward as a candidate. The same four years afterward, at the election of 1820 not even a candidate then. Four years still later, at the election of 1824, he became a candidate, and was not elected; receiving but 99 electoral votes out of 261.

I pass on to the last disparagement. "A victory which was a very ordinary achievement, and only to be remembered where battles were rare." Such was not the battle at New Orleans. It was no ordinary achievement. . . . It did what the marvelous victories of Champaubert, Montmirail, Chateau-Thierry, Vauchamp, and Montereau could not do turned back the invader, and saved the soil of France from the iron hoof of the conqueror's horse! . . . And so the victory at New Orleans will remain in history as one of the great achievements of the world, in spite of the low opinion which the writer on American Democracy entertains of it.

Regard for M. de Tocqueville is the cause of this correction of his error: . . . The character of our country, and the cause of Republican government, require his errors to be corrected.