Kitabı oku: «Thomas Hart Benton», sayfa 10
He made another powerful and carefully wrought speech in favor of what he called the act to provide for the divorce of bank and state. This bill, as finally drawn, consisted of two distinct parts, one portion making provision for the keeping of the public moneys in an independent treasury, and the other for the hard-money currency, which was all that the government was to accept in payment of revenue dues. This last provision, however, was struck out, and the bill thereby lost the support of Calhoun, who, with Webster, Clay, and the other Whigs, voted against it; but, mainly through Benton's efforts, it passed the Senate, although by a very slender majority. Benton, in his speech, dwelt with especial admiration on the working of the monetary system of France, and held it up as well worthy to be copied by us. Most of the points he made were certainly good ones, although he overestimated the beneficent results that would spring from the adoption of the proposed system, believing that it would put an end for the future to all panics and commercial convulsions. In reality it would have removed only one of the many causes which go to produce the latter, leaving the others free to work as before; the people at large, not the government, were mainly to blame, and even with them it was in some respects their misfortune as much as their fault. Benton's error, however, was natural; like most other men he was unable fully to realize that hardly any phenomenon, even the most simple, can be said to spring from one cause only, and not from a complex and interwoven tissue of causation—and a panic is one of the least simple and most complex of mercantile phenomena. Benton's deep-rooted distrust of and hostility to such banking as then existed in the United States certainly had good grounds for existence.
This distrust was shown again when the bill for the re-charter of the district banks came up. The specie basis of many of them had been allowed to become altogether too low; and Benton showed himself more keenly alive than any other public man to the danger of such a state of things, and argued strongly that a basis of specie amounting to one third the total of liabilities was the only safe proportion, and should be enforced by law. He made a most forcible argument, using numerous and apt illustrations to show the need of his amendment.
Nor was the tireless Missouri senator satisfied even yet; for he introduced a resolution asking leave to bring in a bill to tax the circulation of banks and bankers, and of all corporations, companies, or individuals, issuing paper currency. One object of the bill was to raise revenue; but even more he aimed at the regulation of the currency by the suppression of small notes; and for this end the tax was proposed to be made heaviest on notes under twenty dollars, and to be annually augmented until it had accomplished its object and they had been driven out of circulation. In advocating his measure he used, as was perhaps unavoidable, some arguments that savored strongly of demagogy; but on the whole he made a strong appeal, using as precedents for the law he wished to see enacted both the then existing banking laws in England and those that had obtained previously in the history of the United States.
Taken altogether, while the Jacksonians, during the period of Van Buren's presidency, rightly suffered for their previous financial misdeeds, yet so far as their actions at the time were concerned, they showed to greater advantage than the Whigs. Nor did they waver in their purpose even when the tide of popular feeling changed. The great financial measure of the administration, in which Benton was most interested, the independent treasury bill, he succeeded in getting through the Senate twice; the first time it was lost in the House of Representatives; but on the second occasion, towards the close of Van Buren's term, firmness and perseverance met their reward. The bill passed the Senate by an increased majority, scraped through the House after a bitter contest, and became a law. It developed the system known as that of the sub-Treasury, which has proved satisfactory to the present day.
It was during Van Buren's term that Biddle's great bank, so long the pivot on which turned the fortunes of political parties, finally tottered to its fall. It was ruined by unwise and reckless management; and Benton sang a pæan over its downfall, exulting in its fate as a justification of all that he had said and done. Yet there can be little doubt that its mismanagement became gross only after all connection with the national government had ceased; and its end, attributable to causes not originally existent or likely to exist, can hardly be rightly considered in passing judgment upon the actions of the Jacksonians in reference to it.
CHAPTER X
LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY
The difficulty and duration of a war with an Indian tribe depend less upon the numbers of the tribe itself than upon the nature of the ground it inhabits. The two Indian tribes that have caused the most irritating and prolonged struggle are the Apaches, who live in the vast, waterless, mountainous deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and whom we are at this present moment engaged in subduing, and the Seminoles, who, from among the impenetrable swamps of Florida, bade the whole United States army defiance for seven long years; and this although neither Seminoles nor Apaches ever brought much force into the field, nor inflicted such defeats upon us as have other Indian tribes, like the Creeks and Sioux.
The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left by Jackson to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost thirty millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts of several generals and numerous troops, who had previously shown themselves equal to any in the world. The expense, length, and ill-success of the struggle, and a strong feeling that the Seminoles had been wronged, made it a great handle for attack on the administration; and the defense was taken up by Benton, who always accepted completely the Western estimate of any form of the Indian question.
As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been much wrong done by each side; but in this instance we were the more to blame, although the Indians themselves were far from being merely harmless and suffering innocents. The Seminoles were being deprived of their lands in pursuance of the general policy of removing all the Indians west of the Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and influenced, probably, by fraudulent representations; but they declined to fulfill their agreement. If they had been treated wisely and firmly they might probably have been allowed to remain without serious injury to the surrounding whites. But no such treatment was attempted, and as a result we were plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown and untrodden recesses of the everglades the Indians found a secure asylum; and they issued from their haunts to burn and ravage almost all the settled part of Florida, fairly depopulating five counties; while the soldiers could rarely overtake them, and when they did, were placed at such a disadvantage that the Indians repulsed or cut off detachment after detachment, generally making a merciless and complete slaughter of each. The great Seminole leader, Osceola, was captured only by deliberate treachery and breach of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out rather than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature of their territory.
Our troops generally fought with great bravery; but there is very little else in the struggle, either as regards its origin or the manner in which it was carried on, to which an American can look back with any satisfaction. We usually group all our Indian wars together, in speaking of their justice or injustice; and thereby show flagrant ignorance. The Sioux and Cheyennes, for instance, have more often been sinning than sinned against; for example, the so-called Chivington or Sandy Creek Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier. On the other hand, the most cruel wrongs have been perpetrated by whites upon perfectly peaceable and unoffending tribes like those of California, or the Nez Perçés. Yet the emasculated professional humanitarians mourn as much over one set of Indians as over the other—and indeed, on all points connected with Indian management, are as untrustworthy and unsafe leaders as would be an equal number of the most brutal white borderers. But the Seminole War was one of those where the Eastern, or humanitarian view was more nearly correct than was any other; although even here the case was far from being entirely one-sided.
Benton made an elaborate but not always candid defense of the administration, both as to the origin and as to the prosecution of the war. He attempted to show that the Seminoles had agreed to go West, had broken their treaty without any reason, had perpetrated causeless massacres, had followed up their successes with merciless butcheries, which last statement was true; and that Osceola had forfeited all claim or right to have a flag of truce protect him. There was a certain justice in his position even on these questions, and when he came to defend the conduct of our soldiers he had the right entirely with him. They were led by the same commander, and belonged to the same regiments, that in Canada had shown themselves equal to the famous British infantry; they had to contend with the country, rather than with their enemies, as the sweltering heat, the stagnant lagoons, the quaking morasses, and the dense forests of Florida made it almost impossible for an army to carry on a successful campaign. Moreover, the Seminoles were well armed; and many tribes of North American Indians show themselves, when with good weapons and on their own ground, more dangerous antagonists than would be an equal number of the best European troops. Indeed, under such conditions they can only be contended with on equal terms if the opposing white force is made up of frontiersmen who are as good woodsmen and riflemen as themselves, and who, moreover, have been drilled by some man like Jackson, who knows how to handle them to the best advantage, both in disciplining their lawless courage and in forcing them to act under orders and together,—the lack of which discipline and power of supporting each other has often rendered an assemblage of formidable individual border-fighters a mere disorderly mob when brought into the field.
The war dragged on tediously. The troops—regulars, volunteers, and militia alike—fought the Indians again and again; there were pitched battles, surprises, ambuscades, and assaults on places of unknown strength; hundreds of soldiers were slain in battle or by treachery, hundreds of settlers were slaughtered in their homes, or as they fled from them; the bloody Indian forays reached even to the outskirts of Tallahatchee and to within sight of the walls of quaint old St. Augustine. Little by little, however, the power of the Seminoles was broken; their war bands were scattered and driven from the field, hundreds of their number were slain in fight, and five times as many surrendered and were taken west of the Mississippi. The white troops marched through Florida down to and into the everglades, and crossed it backwards and forwards, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean; they hunted their foes from morass to morass and from hummock to hummock; they mapped out the whole hitherto unknown country; they established numerous posts; opened hundreds of miles of wagon road; and built very many causeways and bridges. But they could not end the war. The bands of Indians broke up and entirely ceased to offer resistance to bodies of armed whites; but as individuals they continued as dangerous to the settlers as ever, prowling out at night like wild beasts from their fastnesses in the dark and fetid swamps, murdering, burning, and ravaging in all the outlying settlements, and destroying every lonely farm-house or homestead.
There was but one way in which the war could be finally ended, and that was to have the territory occupied by armed settlers; in other words, to have it won and held exactly as almost all the land of the United States has been in the beginning. Benton introduced a bill to bring this about, giving to every such settler a good inheritance in the soil as a reward for his enterprise, toil, and danger; and the war was finished only by the adoption of this method. He supported his bill in a very effective speech, showing that the proposed way was the only one by which a permanent conquest could be effected; he himself had, when young, seen it put into execution in Tennessee and Kentucky, where the armed settlers, with their homesteads in the soil, formed the vanguard of the white advance: where the rifle-bearing backwoodsmen went forth to fight and to cultivate, living in assemblages of block-houses at first and separating into individual settlements afterwards. The work had to be done with axe, spade, and rifle alike. Benton rightly insisted that there was no longer need of a large army in Florida:—
Why, the men who are there now can find nobody to fight! It is two years since a fight has been had. Ten men who will avoid surprises and ambuscades can now go from one end of Florida to the other. As warriors, these Indians no longer appear; it is only as assassins, as robbers, as incendiaries, that they lurk about. What is now wanted is not an army to fight, but settlers and cultivators to take possession and keep possession; and the armed cultivator is the man for that. The block-house is the first house to be built in an Indian country; the stockade the first fence to be put up. Within that block-house, or within a hollow square of block-houses, two miles long on each side, two hundred yards apart, and inclosing a good field, safe habitations are to be found for families. Cultivation and defense then go hand in hand. The heart of the Indian sickens when he hears the crowing of the cock, the barking of the dog, the sound of the axe, and the crack of the rifle. These are the true evidences of the dominion of the white man; these are the proofs that the owner has come and means to stay, and then the Indians feel it to be time for them to go. While soldiers alone are in the country they feel their presence to be temporary; that they are mere sojourners in the land, and sooner or later must go away. It is the settler alone, the armed settler, whose presence announces the dominion, the permanent dominion, of the white man.
Benton's ideas were right, and were acted upon. It is impossible even to subdue an Indian tribe by the army alone; the latter can only pave the way for and partially protect the armed settlers who are to hold the soil.
Benton continued to take a great interest in the disposal of the public lands, as was natural in a senator from the West, where the bulk of these lands lay. He was always a great advocate of a homestead law. During Van Buren's administration, he succeeded in getting two or three bills on the subject through the Senate. One of these allowed lands that had been five years in the market to be reduced in price to a dollar an acre, and if they stood five years longer to go down to seventy-five cents. The bill was greatly to the interest of the Western farmer in the newer, although not necessarily the newest, parts of the country. The man who went on the newest land was in turn provided for by the preëmption bill, which secured the privilege of first purchase to the actual settler on any lands to which the Indian title had been extinguished; to be paid for at the minimum price of public lands at the time. An effort was made to confine the benefits of this proposed law to citizens of the United States, excluding unnaturalized foreigners from its action. Benton, as representing the new states, who desired immigrants of every kind, whether foreign or native, successfully opposed this. He pointed out that there was no question of conferring political rights, which involved the management of the government, and which should not be conferred until the foreigner had become a naturalized citizen; it was merely a question of allowing the alien a right to maintain himself and to support his family. He especially opposed the amendment on account of the class of foreigners it would affect. Aliens who wished to take up public lands were not paupers or criminals, and did not belong to the shiftless and squalid foreign mob that drifted into the great cities of the sea-board and the interior; but on the contrary were among our most enterprising, hardy, and thrifty citizens, who had struck out for themselves into the remote parts of the new states and had there begun to bring the wilderness into subjection. Such men deserved to be encouraged in every way, and should receive from the preëmption laws the same benefits that would enure to native-born citizens. The third bill introduced, which passed the Senate but failed in the House, was one to permit the public lands sold to be immediately taxed by the states in which they lay. Originally these lands had been sold upon credit, the total amount not being paid, nor the title passed, until five years after the sale; and during this time it would have been unjust to tax them, as failure in paying the installments to the government would have let the lands revert to the latter; but when the cash system was substituted for credit Benton believed that there was no longer reason why the new lands should not bear their share of the state burdens.
During Van Buren's administration the standard of public honesty, which had been lowering with frightful rapidity ever since, with Adams, the men of high moral tone had gone out of power, went almost as far down as it could go; although things certainly did not change for the better under Tyler and Polk. Not only was there the most impudent and unblushing rascality among the public servants of the nation, but the people themselves, through their representatives in the state legislatures, went to work to swindle their honest creditors. Many states, in the rage for public improvements, had contracted debts which they now refused to pay; in many cases they were unable, or at least so professed themselves, even to pay the annual interest. The debts of the states were largely held abroad; they had been converted into stock and held in shares, which had gone into a great number of hands, and now, of course, became greatly depreciated in value. It is a painful and shameful page in our history; and every man connected with the repudiation of the states' debts ought, if remembered at all, to be remembered only with scorn and contempt. However, time has gradually shrouded from our sight both the names of the leaders in the repudiation and the names of the victims whom they swindled. Two alone, one in each class, will always be kept in mind. Before Jefferson Davis took his place among the arch-traitors in our annals he had already long been known as one of the chief repudiators; it was not unnatural that to dishonesty towards the creditors of the public he should afterwards add treachery towards the public itself. The one most prominent victim was described by Benton himself: "The Reverend Sydney Smith, of witty memory, but amiable withal, was accustomed to lose all his amiability, but no part of his wit, when he spoke of his Pennsylvania bonds—which, in fact, was very often."
Many of the bond-holders, however, did not manifest their grief by caustic wit, but looked to more substantial relief; and did their best to bring about the assumption of the state debts, in some form, whether open or disguised, by the federal government. The British capitalists united with many American capitalists to work for some such action; and there were plenty of people in the states willing enough to see it done. Of course it would have been criminal folly on the part of the federal government to take any such step; and Benton determined to meet and check the effort at the very beginning. The London Bankers' Circular had contained a proposition recommending that the Congress of the United States should guarantee, or otherwise provide for, the ultimate payment of the debts which the states had contracted for state or local purposes. Benton introduced a series of resolutions declaring utter opposition to the proposal, both on the ground of expediency and on that of constitutionality. The resolutions were perfectly proper in their purpose, but were disfigured by that cheap species of demagogy which consists in denouncing purely supposititious foreign interference, complicated by an allusion to Benton's especial pet terror, the inevitable money power. As he put it: "Foreign interference and influence are far more dangerous in the invidious intervention of the moneyed power than in the forcible invasions of fleets and armies."
An attempt was made directly to reverse the effect of the resolutions by amending them so as to provide that the public land revenue should be divided among the states, to help them in the payment of these debts. Both Webster and Clay supported this amendment, but it was fortunately beaten by a large vote.
Benton's speech, like the resolutions in support of which he spoke, was right in its purpose, but contained much matter that was beside the mark. He had worked himself into such a condition over the supposititious intrigues of the "money power"—an attack on which is almost always sure to be popular—that he was very certain to discover evidence of their existence on all, even the most unlikely, occasions; and it is difficult to think that he was not himself aware how overdrawn was his prophecy of the probable interference of foreign powers in our affairs, if the resolutions he had presented were not adopted.
The tariff had once more begun to give trouble, and the South was again complaining of its workings, aware that she was falling always more to the rear in the race for prosperity, and blindly attributing her failure to everything but the true reason,—the existence of slavery. Even Benton himself showed a curiously pathetic eagerness to prove both to others and himself that the cause of the increasing disparity in growth, and incompatibility in interest between the two sections, must be due to some temporary and artificial cause, and endeavored to hide from all eyes, even from his own, the fact that the existence of slavery was working, slowly but surely, and with steadily increasing rapidity, to rend in sunder the Union which he loved and served with such heartfelt devotion. He tried to prove that the main cause of discontent was to be found in the tariff and other laws, which favored the North at the expense of the South. At the same time he entered an eloquent plea for a warmer feeling between the sections, and pointed out the absolute hopelessness of attempting to better the situation in any way by disunion. The great Missourian could look back with fond pride and regret to the condition of the South as it was during and immediately after the colonial days, when it was the seat of wealth, power, high living, and free-handed hospitality, and was filled to overflowing with the abounding life of its eager and turbulent sons. The change for the worse in its relative condition was real and great. He reproved his fellow-Southerners for attributing this change to a single cause, the unequal working of the federal government, "which gave all the benefits of the Union to the South and all its burdens to the North;" he claimed that it was due to many other causes as well. Yet those whom he rebuked were as near right as he was; for the change was due in the main to only one cause—but that cause was slavery. It is almost pitiful to see the strong, stern, self-reliant statesman refusing, with nervous and passionate willfulness, to look the danger in the face, and, instead thereof, trying to persuade himself into the belief that "the remedy lies in the right working of the Constitution; in the cessation of unequal legislation; in the reduction of the inordinate expenses of the government; in its return to the simple, limited, and economical machine it was intended to be; and in the revival of fraternal feelings and respect for each other's rights and just complaints." Like many another man he thought, or tried to think, that by sweeping the dust from the door-sill he could somehow stave off the whirling rush of the sand-storm.
The compromise tariff of 1833 had abolished all specific duties, establishing ad valorem ones in their place; and the result had been great uncertainty and injustice in its working. Now whether a protective tariff is right or wrong may be open to question; but if it exists at all, it should work as simply and with as much certainty and exactitude as possible; if its interpretation varies, or if it is continually meddled with by Congress, great damage ensues. It is in reality of far less importance that a law should be ideally right than that it should be certain and steady in its workings. Even supposing that a high tariff is all wrong, it would work infinitely better for the country than would a series of changes between high and low duties. Benton strongly advocated a return to specific duties, as being simpler, surer, and better on every account. In commenting on the ad valorem duties, he showed how they had been adopted blindly and without discussion by the frightened, silent multitude of congressmen and senators, who jumped at Clay's compromise bill in 1833 as giving them a loop-hole of escape from a situation where they would have had to face evil consequences, no matter what stand they took. Benton's comment on men of this stamp deserves chronicling, from its justice and biting severity: "It (the compromise act) was passed by the aid of the votes of those—always a considerable per centum in every public body—to whom the name of compromise is an irresistible attraction; amiable men, who would do no wrong of themselves, and without whom the designing could also do but little wrong."
He not only devoted himself to the general subject of the tariff in relation to specific duties, but he also took up several prominent abuses. One subject, on which he was never tired of harping with monotonous persistency, was the duty on salt. The idea of making salt free had become one which he was almost as fond of bringing into every discussion, no matter how inappropiate to the matter in hand, as he was of making irrelevant and abusive allusions to his much-enduring and long-suffering hobby, the iniquitous "money power." Benton had all the tenacity of a snapping turtle, and was as firm a believer in the policy of "continuous hammering" as Grant himself. His tenacity and his pertinacious refusal to abandon any contest, no matter what the odds were against him, and no matter how often he had to return to the charge, formed two of his most invaluable qualities, and when called into play on behalf of such an object as the preservation of the Union, cannot receive too high praise at our hands; for they did the country services so great and lasting that they should never be forgotten. It would have been fortunate indeed if Clay and Webster had possessed the fearless, aggressive courage and iron will of the rugged Missourian, who was so often pitted against them in the political arena. But when Benton's attention was firmly fixed on the accomplishment of something comparatively trivial, his dogged, stubborn, and unyielding earnestness drew him into making efforts of which the disproportion to the result aimed at was rather droll. Nothing could thwart him or turn him aside; and though slow to take up an idea, yet, if it was once in his head, to drive it out was a simply hopeless task. These qualities were of such invaluable use to the state on so many great occasions that we can well afford to treat them merely with a good-humored laugh, when we see them exercised on behalf of such a piece of foolishness as, for example, the expunging resolution.
The repeal of the salt tax, then, was a particular favorite in Benton's rather numerous stable of hobbies, because it gave free scope for the use of sentimental as well as of economic arguments. He had the right of the question, and was not in the least daunted by his numerous rebuffs and the unvarying ill success of his efforts. Speaking in 1840, he stated that he had been urging the repeal for twelve years; and for the purpose of furnishing data with which to compare such a period of time, and without the least suspicion that there was anything out of the way in the comparison, he added, in a solemn parenthesis, that this was two years longer than the siege of Troy lasted. In the same speech was a still choicer morsel of eloquence about salt: "The Supreme Ruler of the Universe has done everything to supply his creatures with it; man, the fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little brief authority, has done much to deprive them of it." After which he went on to show a really extensive acquaintance with the history of salt taxes and monopolies, and with the uses and physical structure and surroundings of the mineral itself—all which might have taught his hearers that a man may combine much erudition with a total lack of the sense of humor. The salt tax is dragged, neck and heels, into many of Benton's speeches much as Cooper manages, on all possible occasions, throughout his novels, to show the unlikeness of the Bay of Naples to the Bay of New York—not the only point of resemblance, by the way, between the characters of the Missouri statesman and the New York novelist. Whether the subject under discussion was the taxation of bank-notes, or the abolition of slavery, made very little difference to Benton as to introducing an allusion to the salt monopoly. One of his happy arguments in favor of the repeal, which was addressed to an exceedingly practical and commonplace Congress, was that the early Christian disciples had been known as the salt of the earth—a biblical metaphor, which Benton kindly assured his hearers was very expressive; and added that a salt tax was morally as well as politically wrong, and in fact "was a species of impiety."
