Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"'Mr. Rhea's letter in answer is burnt this 12th April, 1819.'

"Mr. Calhoun's management was thus far completely triumphant. He had secretly assailed General Jackson in cabinet council, and caused it to be publicly announced that he was his friend. While the confiding soldier was toasting him as 'an honest man, the noblest work of God,' he was betraying his confidential correspondence to his enemy, and laying the basis of a document which was intended to blast his fame and ruin his character in the estimation of his countrymen. Lest accident should bring the truth to light, and expose his duplicity, he procures through the President and Mr. Rhea the destruction of the approving answer to the confidential letter. Mr. Rhea was an old man and General Jackson's health feeble. In a few years all who were supposed to have any knowledge of the reply would be in their graves. Every trace of the approval given beforehand by the government to the operations of General Jackson would soon be obliterated, and the undivided responsibility would forever rest on his head. At least, should accident or policy bring to light the duplicity of Mr. Calhoun, he might deny all knowledge of this reply, and challenge its production. He might defend his course in the cabinet and extenuate his disclosures to Mr. Lacock, by maintaining before the public that he had always believed General Jackson violated his orders and ought to have been punished. At the worst, the written reply if once destroyed could never be recalled from the flames; and should General Jackson still be living, his assertion might not be considered more conclusive than Mr. Calhoun's denial. In any view it was desirable to him that this letter should be destroyed, and through his management, as is verily believed, it was destroyed.

"Happily however for the truth of history and the cause of public justice, the writer of the reply is still alive; and from a journal kept at the time, is able to give an accurate account of this transaction. He testifies directly to the writing of the letter, to its contents, and the means taken to secure its destruction. Judge Overton, to whom the letter was confidentially shown, testifies directly to the existence of the letter, and to the fact that General Jackson afterwards told him it was destroyed.

"These, with the statement of General Jackson himself, and the entry in his letter-book which was seen by several persons many years ago, fix these facts beyond a doubt.

"Certainly the history of the world scarcely presents a parallel to this transaction. It has been seen with what severity Mr. Calhoun denounced Mr. Crawford for revealing the secret proceedings of the cabinet: with what justice may a retort of tenfold severity be made upon him, when he not only reveals to Mr. Lacock the proceedings of the cabinet, but the confidential letter of a confiding friend, not for the benefit of that friend, but through misrepresentation of the transaction and concealment of the reply, to aid his enemies in accomplishing his destruction. It was doubtless expected that Mr. Lacock would produce a document which would overwhelm General Jackson and destroy him in public estimation. In that event the proceedings of the cabinet would no longer have been held sacred. The erroneous impression made on the public mind would have been corrected, and the world have been informed that Mr. Calhoun not only disapproved the acts of General Jackson, but had in the cabinet attempted in vain to procure his punishment. As the matter stood, the responsibility of attacking the General rested on Mr. Crawford, and had the decision of the people been different, the responsibility of defending him would have been thrown exclusively upon Mr. Adams, and Mr. Calhoun would have claimed the merit of the attack. But until the public should decide, it was not prudent to lose the friendship of General Jackson, which might be of more service to Mr. Calhoun than the truth. It was thus at the sacrifice of every principle of honor and friendship that Mr. Calhoun managed to throw all responsibility on his political rivals, and profit by the result of these movements whatever it might be. It cannot be doubted, however, that Mr. Calhoun expected the entire prostration of General Jackson, and managed to procure the destruction of Mr. Rhea's letter, for the purpose of disarming the friend he had betrayed, that he might, with impunity when the public should have pronounced a sentence of condemnation, have come forward and claimed the merit of having been the first to denounce him.

"The people however sustained General Jackson against the attacks of all his enemies, public and private, open and secret, and therefore it became convenient for Mr. Calhoun to retain his mask, to appear as the friend of one whom the people had pronounced their friend, and to let Mr. Crawford bear the unjust imputation of having assailed him in the cabinet.

"It must be confessed that the mask was worn with consummate skill. Mr. Calhoun was understood by all of General Jackson's friends to be his warm and able defender. When, in 1824, Mr. Calhoun was withdrawn from the lists as a candidate for the Presidency, the impression made on the friends of General Jackson was that he did it to favor the election of their favorite, when it is believed to be susceptible of proof that he secretly flattered the friends of Mr. Adams with the idea that he was with them. It is certain that for the Vice-Presidency he continued to secure nearly all the Adams votes, most of the Jackson votes, and even half of the Clay votes in Kentucky. But never did the friends of General Jackson doubt his devotion to their cause in that contest, until the publication of his correspondence with General Jackson. In a note, page 7, he undeceives them by saying:

"'When my name was withdrawn from the list of presidential candidates, I assumed a perfectly neutral position between General Jackson and Mr. Adams. I was decidedly opposed to a congressional caucus, as both those gentlemen were also, and as I bore very friendly personal and political relations to both, I would have been well satisfied with the election of either.'

"I have now given a faithful detail of the circumstances and facts which transpired touching my movements in Florida, during the Seminole campaign.

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1

Report of a Committee of the House of Representatives on Mr. McDuffie's proposition.

2

"The vote on hemp this night." In rejecting Mr. Webster's motion to strike out the duty on hemp, and a vote in which the South went unanimously with the West. —Note by Mr. B.

3

Mr. Kendall's letter to the author is in these words:

"December 29, 1853. – In reply to your note just received, I have to state that, wishing to do exact justice to all men in my Life of General Jackson, I addressed a note to Mr. Calhoun stating to him in substance, that I was in possession of the evidences on which the general based his imputation of duplicity touching his course in Mr. Monroe's cabinet upon the Florida war question, and inquiring whether it was his desire to furnish any further information on the subject, or rest upon that which was already before the public (in his publication). A few days afterwards, the Hon. Dixon H. Lewis told me that Mr. Calhoun had received my letter, and had requested him to ask me what was the nature of the evidences among General Jackson's papers to which I alluded. I stated them to him, as embodied in General Jackson's 'Exposition,' to which you refer. Mr. Lewis afterwards informed me that Mr. Calhoun had concluded to let the matter rest as it was. This is all the answer I ever received from Mr. Calhoun."

4

Mr. Calhoun in his conversation with Colonel Hamilton, substantially denied that such a proposition as that which he now admits he made, was ever submitted to the cabinet. He is asked "whether at any meeting of Mr. Monroe's cabinet the propriety of arresting General Jackson for any thing done during the Seminole war had been at any time discussed." He replies "Never; such a measure was not thought of, much less discussed: the only point before the cabinet was the answer to be given to the Spanish government." By the last branch of the answer the denial is made to embrace the whole subject in any form it might have assumed, and therefore deprives Mr. Calhoun of all grounds of cavil or escape by alleging that he only proposed a military inquiry, and not an arrest, and that he did not therefore answer the inquiry in the negative. But again when Colonel Hamilton submitted to Mr. Calhoun his recollection of the conversation that Mr. Calhoun might correct it if erroneous, and informed him that he did so because he intended to communicate in to Major Lewis, Mr. Calhoun did not question the correctness of Colonel Hamilton's recollection of the conversation; he does not qualify or alter it; he does not say, as in frankness he was bound to do – "It is true, the proposition to arrest General Jackson was not discussed, but an inquiry into his conduct in that war was discussed on a proposition to that end made by me." He does not say that the answer to the Spanish government was not the only point before the cabinet, but he endeavors, without denying as was alleged by Colonel Hamilton that this part of the conversation was understood between them to be confidential, to prevent him from making it public, and to that end and that alone he writes a letter of ten pages on the sacredness of cabinet deliberations. Why, let us ask, did Mr. Calhoun upon reflection feel so much solicitude to prevent a disclosure of his answer to Colonel Hamilton, which if true could not injure him? At first, although put upon his guard, he admits that this part of the conversation was not confidential, although it referred to what was, as well as what was not done in cabinet council. The reason is to be found in his former involutions, and in the fact that the answer was not true, and in his apprehension that if that answer was made public, Mr. Crawford, who entertained the worst opinions of Mr. Calhoun, and who had suffered in General Jackson's opinion on this subject, would immediately disclose the whole truth, as he has since done; and that thus the veil worn out, of the sacredness of cabinet deliberations under which Mr. Calhoun upon second thought had endeavored to conceal himself, would be raised, and he would be exposed to public indignation and scorn. This could alone be the motive for his extreme anxiety to prevent Colonel Hamilton from communicating the result of an inquiry made by him from the best and purest motives, to the persons who had prompted that inquiry from like motives.