Flight of the Eagle. Conrad Black
weakness (slavery).
Jackson’s next major step, the veto of the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, stirred another immense controversy. Clay urged the head of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, to submit his application for recharter four years early, in 1832, to force Jackson’s hand and make an election issue of it. Biddle did so, and it was useful to Jackson, as the Bank was unpopular in the South and West, and seen as an elitist eastern organization that overly contracted credit in the faster-growing areas of the country. This also helped Jackson counter the nullifiers and appear generally as the champion of the little people. Biddle was judged too restrictive of credit through his ability to enforce ratios on smaller banks, and he was not accorded the credit the Bank generally deserved for avoiding inflation and keeping an orderly money supply. Shutting the Bank down was a mistake other than politically. Both houses of the Congress voted to renew, but they could not override Jackson’s veto. Jackson’s actions proved to be unsuccessful, but not as catastrophically mistimed as Madison’s inability to renew the charter in 1811.
Following the reelection of Jackson, Clay and Calhoun joined forces to get a House vote approving retention of government deposits in the Bank of the United States. Jackson felt he had won a clear mandate to get rid of the Bank, and Biddle thought his position justified his replying to Jackson’s war on him and his Bank by tightening credit, which he did. By the end of 1833, Biddle’s tactics had induced significant financial distress in the country, and Jackson had overcome a divided cabinet to remove federal government deposits from the Bank and place them in 23 state banks.
Jackson named Roger Taney, the attorney general, secretary of the Treasury to carry out the changes he sought, and as always with Jackson, there were insults and ruffled feathers all round. Clay got a censure vote against both Jackson and the Treasury through the Senate. Jackson’s transgression was that he refused to hand over to the Senate a paper he had read to his cabinet about the Bank recharter question. Jackson lodged a protest that he had been accused of an impeachable offense without being given an opportunity to defend himself. The Senate declined to confirm Taney at Treasury, but Jackson had him serve ad interim, and named him successfully, over strenuous opposition, as chief justice of the United States in 1835 when John Marshall died after 34 years in his office.12 Taney was the first senior American official who was a Roman Catholic; he would serve 29 years as chief justice, with very mixed results. Benton eventually had the censure of Jackson expunged.
Inflation was abetted by the use of land-sale speculators’ notes as a form of transactional debt, and the huge increase in western land sales generated great increases in activity, and consequently in the de facto money supply, since these notes served as currency. Jackson ordered that only gold, silver, and in a few cases certain state-backed scrip would be accepted as payment in sales of federal lands. This turned inflation instantly into deflation, sharply reducing sales of federal lands and placing great strain on the state banks. Jackson’s unnuanced decrees in banking and monetary policy caused syncopated economic lurches that were often destructive to many, and reduced general levels of confidence in the rational administration of the country’s affairs.
Presidents (J.Q.) Adams and Jackson had both offered to buy Texas from Mexico, without success. American settlement in Texas began in earnest with Moses Austin and his son Stephen F. Austin, and was agreed by successive Mexican governments until 1830, when Mexico outlawed slavery in Texas and forbade further American settlement there. Stephen Austin went to Mexico to negotiate with the president, the charming and imperishable scoundrel General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was nine times president of his country (though serving only seven years), and called himself “the Napoleon of the West” among other encomia. Santa Anna arrested Austin and imprisoned him for eight months. A group of Texans asserted their independence in 1835. Santa Anna set out to crush Texas militarily, and invested the San Antonio fortress, the Alamo, on February 23, 1836, with 3,000 men. The fortress was defended by only 188 men, including folkloric figures William Travis and Davy Crockett. After 10 days, Santa Anna overwhelmed the defenders and all the Americans were massacred, as were several hundred other Americans at different locations in Texas.
On April 21, Sam Houston led several hundred men stealthily across the San Jacinto River, near what is today the city of Houston, and defeated about 1,200 Mexicans at San Jacinto and captured Santa Anna, who was released to secure Mexican recognition of the independence of Texas. The Mexicans rejected this and Houston was elected president of the independent Republic of Texas. There were resolutions from both houses of the Congress for recognition of Texas, which Jackson, uncharacteristically, was hesitant to do. He wished to honor treaty obligations with Mexico and claimed not to wish a war with that country, though he would normally find such a prospect appetizing. He was more concerned with causing a split in the Democratic Party between pro- and anti-slavery forces, but on his last full day as president, March 3, 1837, Jackson did send a chargé to Texas in an act of quasi-recognition. This was another time bomb that Jackson would leave for his successors.
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