Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/18

 party. We would say that the remembrance of this letter might yet furnish the hero of the Hermitage much consolation as he draws nigh the termination of his earthly career, if the charitable supposition had not been prevented by the malignity with which he yet assails Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, and all who have acted in opposition to any measures of his public life. But to the letter itself. General Jackson directly addresses himself to President Monroe on this very subject of the harmony of the two parties, and its delightful effect upon the returning prosperity of the country. He advises the chief magistrate of the country, as from his high standing in the opinions of the nation he had a perfect right to do, that now was the time to destroy forever the "monster party spirit"—that be should take all pains to promote so high and laudable an object, and that in furtherance of it, he could not do better than to compose his cabinet equally from the two great parties into which the country had been divided. General Jackson a no-party man! Gen. Jackson a peace-maker! Gen. Jackson advise the appointment of Federalists to office! … Let us carry our minds some seven or eight years ahead. There is a change presenting itself worth our notice. Mr. Monroe's administration had been conducted on the noble, liberal, and most truly national principles contained in this letter, and had passed away. His successor, Mr. Adams, had maintained the same high ground, although tempted to depart from them by the most unprincipled opposition by which a man had ever been assailed. We find this same General Jackson in office, and in a condition where he might have properly carried out his own advice. Can it be the same man? Could Hazael have known so little of himself! Would he not once have said, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" But so it is. Humiliating as the fact is to our human nature, the warmest friend, the most determined foe, must both agree, that since the establishment of the Constitution there had not been witnessed an administration in which so bitter a party proscription had been carried on; no period in which the doctrine was so unblushingly avowed, that to the victor belonged the spoils of the enemy. At no time had the waters of political strife been let out in such an overflowing torrent on the land. A bitterness and savage fierceness unknown to former conflicts marked all the administration of this most consistent man, and a more prescriptive party never cursed any country than that which had been studiously, designedly, and with the utmost care brought into being and fostered during that period, which, according to the noble principles of his letter to Mr. Monroe, ought to have been the golden age of peace, of harmony, of freedom from party spirit, and united national feeling in the promotion of every beneficent national work. Whence came this wondrous change? We will do General Jackson the justice to believe that he had been honest in his advice to Monroe. Men are always so in the declaration of their abstract sentiments. The events which followed were not primarily his. There had been an evil genius working in another part of the Union, who, combining subtlety and talent, playing upon the ungovernable passions of the military chieftain, had so transformed the scene, and dissipated the fair prospect which the letter had given reason to expect. Martin Van Buren, during the close of Mr. Monroe's administration, and the continuance of Mr. Adams's, had been playing the small game of "the mousing politician" in the State of New York. His circumstances were peculiar. A very great man then possessed the gubernatorial chair of this State. He felt the spirit of the times, and this, combined with the workings of his own noble and elevated intellect, led him to seek for honorable fame in promoting the best interests of his country. Ambitious he was, but ambitious in the noblest sense, to take advantage of returning peace with a foreign nation, and restored unity at home, in projecting and accomplishing that great scheme of national improvement from which we are now reaping such incalculable benefits. This man completely overshadowed Mr. Van Buren. It was a shade from which he could find no way to emerge into that distinction which he so ardently coveted, and which he felt himself unable to obtain by any means requiring the qualifications of a lofty statesmanship. But Mr. Clinton must be supplanted. He was an obstacle bidding defiance to any competition to be waged on any high and honorable grounds. There were, too, at that time, other great men, intimately connected with great national interests, and most honorably known in the national history. Not only Clinton and Adams, but that