Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2). Benton Thomas Hart
recommended to avoid the caucus, and remain unbound by its resolves; and when the election came on, vote as they pleased: which they did: and enough of them throwing away their votes upon those who were no candidates, thus prevented the election of Mr. Lewis: and so returned upon the little fraction of pretenders the lesson which they had taught.
It was the same with the whig party. A fraction of its members refused to support the regular candidate of the party; and after many fruitless trials to elect him, he was abandoned – Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, taken up, and eventually elected. He had voted with the whig party in the New Jersey election case – among the scattering in the votes for speaker; and was finally elected by the full whig vote, and a few of the scattering from the democratic ranks. He was one of the small band of Mr. Calhoun's friends; so that that gentleman succeeded in governing the whig election of speaker, after failing to govern that of the democracy.
In looking over the names of the candidates for speaker it will be seen that the whole were Southern men – no Northern man being at any time put in nomination, or voted for. And this circumstance illustrates a pervading system of action between the two sections from the foundation of the government – the southern going for the honors, the northern for the benefits of the government. And each has succeeded, but with the difference of a success in a solid and in an empty pursuit. The North has become rich upon the benefits of the government: the South has grown lean upon its honors.
This arduous and protracted contest for speaker, and where the issue involved the vital party question of the organization of the House, and where every member classified himself by a deliberate and persevering series of votes, becomes important in a political classification point of view, and is here presented in detail as the political map of the House – taking the first vote as showing the character of the whole.
1. Members voting for Mr. Jones: 113.
Judson Allen, Hugh J. Anderson, Charles G. Atherton, Linn Banks, William Beatty, Andrew Beirne, Julius W. Blackwell, Linn Boyd, David P. Brewster, Aaron V. Brown, Albert G. Brown, Edmund Burke, Sampson H. Butler, William O. Butler, Jesse A. Bynum, John Carr, James Carroll, Zadok Casey, Reuben Chapman, Nathan Clifford, Walter Coles, Henry W. Connor, Robert Craig, Isaac E. Crary, Edward Cross, Amasa Dana, Thomas Davee, John Davis, John W. Davis, William Doan, Andrew W. Doig, George C. Dromgoole, Alexander Duncan, Nehemiah H. Earl, Ira A. Eastman, John Ely, John Fine, Isaac Fletcher, John G. Floyd, Joseph Fornance, John Galbraith, James Gerry, Robert H. Hammond, Augustus C. Hand, John Hastings, Micajah T. Hawkins, John Hill of North Carolina, Solomon Hillen jr., Joel Holleman, Enos Hook, Tilghman A. Howard, David Hubbard, Thomas B. Jackson, John Jameson, Joseph Johnson, Cave Johnson, Nathaniel Jones, George M. Keim, Gouverneur Kemble, Daniel P. Leadbetter, Isaac Leet, Stephen B. Leonard, Dixon H. Lewis, Joshua A. Lowell, William Lucas, Abraham McLellan, George McCulloch, James J. McKay, Meredith Mallory, Albert G. Marchand, William Medill, John Miller, James D. L. Montanya, William Montgomery, Samuel W. Morris, Peter Newhard, Isaac Parrish, William Parmenter, Virgil D. Parris, Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, Francis W. Pickens, John H. Prentiss, William S. Ramsey, John Reynolds, R. Barnwell Rhett, Francis E. Rives, Thomas Robinson jr., Edward Rodgers, Green B. Samuels, Tristram Shaw, Charles Shepard, Albert Smith, John Smith, Thomas Smith, David A. Starkweather, Lewis Steenrod, Theron R. Strong, Henry Swearingen, George Sweeny, Jonathan Taylor, Francis Thomas, Philip F. Thomas, Jacob Thompson, Hopkins L. Turney, Aaron Vanderpoel, David D. Wagner, Harvey M. Watterson, John B. Weller, William W. Wick, Jared W. Williams, Henry Williams, John T. H. Worthington.
2. Members voting for Mr. Bell: 102.
John Quincy Adams, John W. Allen, Simeon H. Anderson, Landaff W. Andrews, Daniel D. Barnard, Richard Biddle, William K. Bond, John M. Botts, George N. Briggs, John H. Brockway, Anson Brown, William B. Calhoun, William B. Campbell, William B. Carter, Thomas W. Chinn, Thomas C. Chittenden, John C. Clark, James Cooper, Thomas Corwin, George W. Crabb, Robt. B. Cranston, John W. Crockett, Edward Curtis, Caleb Cushing, Edward Davies, Garret Davis, William C. Dawson, Edmund Deberry, John Dennis, James Dellet, John Edwards, George Evans, Horace Everett, Millard Fillmore, Rice Garland, Seth M. Gates, Meredith P. Gentry, Joshua R. Giddings, William L. Goggin, Patrick G. Goode, James Graham, Francis Granger, Willis Green, William J. Graves, Moses H. Grinnell, Hiland Hall, William S. Hastings, Richard Hawes, Thomas Henry, John Hill of Virginia, Ogden Hoffman, Hiram P. Hunt, Francis James, Daniel Jenifer, Charles Johnston, William Cost Johnson, Abbott Lawrence, Levi Lincoln, Richard P. Marvin, Samson Mason, Charles F. Mercer, Charles F. Mitchell, James Monroe, Christopher Morgan, Calvary Morris, Charles Naylor, Charles Ogle, Thomas B. Osborne, Rufus Palen, Luther C. Peck, John Pope, George H. Proffit, Benjamin Randall, Joseph F. Randolph, James Rariden, Kenneth Rayner, John Reed, Joseph Ridgway, David Russell, Leverett Saltonstall, John Sergeant, William Simonton, William Slade, Truman Smith, Edward Stanly, William L. Storrs, John T. Stuart, John Taliaferro, Joseph L. Tillinghast, George W. Toland, Philip Triplett, Joseph Trumbull, Joseph R. Underwood, Peter J. Wagner, Edward D. White, John White, Thomas W. Williams, Lewis Williams, Joseph L. Williams, Christopher H. Williams, Sherrod Williams, Henry A. Wise.
3. Scattering: 20.
The following named members voted for William C. Dawson, of Georgia.
Julius C. Alford, John Bell, Edward J. Black, Richard W. Habersham, George W. Hopkins, Hiram P. Hunt, William Cost Johnson, Thomas B. King, Eugenius A. Nisbet, Waddy Thompson, jr., Lott Warren.
The following named members voted for Dixon H. Lewis, of Alabama:
John Campbell, Mark A. Cooper, John K. Griffin, John W. Jones, Walter T. Colquitt.
The following named members voted for Francis W. Pickens, of South Carolina:
Charles Fisher, Isaac E. Holmes, Robert M. T. Hunter, James Rogers, Thomas B. Sumter. James Garland voted for George W. Hopkins, of Virginia. Charles Ogle voted for Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia.
CHAPTER XL.
FIRST SESSION OF THE TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
The President met with firmness the new suspension of the banks of the southern and western half of the Union, headed by the Bank of the United States. Far from yielding to it he persevered in the recommendation of his great measures, found in their conduct new reasons for the divorce of Bank and State, and plainly reminded the delinquent institutions with a total want of the reasons for stopping payment which they had alleged two years before. He said:
"It now appears that there are other motives than a want of public confidence under which the banks seek to justify themselves in a refusal to meet their obligations. Scarcely were the country and government relieved, in a degree, from the difficulties occasioned by the general suspension of 1837, when a partial one, occurring within thirty months of the former, produced new and serious embarrassments, though it had no palliation in such circumstances as were alleged in justification of that which had previously taken place. There was nothing in the condition of the country to endanger a well-managed banking institution; commerce was deranged by no foreign war; every branch of manufacturing industry was crowned with rich rewards; and the more than usual abundance of our harvests, after supplying our domestic wants, had left our granaries and storehouses filled with a surplus for exportation. It is in the midst of this, that an irredeemable and depreciated paper currency is entailed upon the people by a large portion of the banks. They are not driven to it by the exhibition of a loss of public confidence; or of a sudden pressure from their depositors or note-holders, but they excuse themselves by alleging that the current of business, and exchange with foreign countries, which draws the precious metals from their vaults, would require, in order to meet it, a larger curtailment of their loans to a comparatively small portion of the community, than it will be convenient for them to bear, or perhaps safe for the banks to exact. The plea has ceased to be one of necessity. Convenience and policy are now deemed sufficient to warrant these institutions in disregarding their solemn obligations. Such conduct is not merely an injury to individual creditors, but it is a wrong to the whole community, from whose liberality they hold most valuable privileges – whose rights they violate, whose business they derange, and the value of whose property they render unstable and insecure. It must be evident that this new ground for bank suspensions, in reference to which their action is not only disconnected with, but wholly independent of, that of