ing been bought up and 'fee'd' by the bank. He has seized the ]nirse and
sword of the nation, and arrogandy claims to be 'the Government itself.'
He has, following the exam])le set by usurpers of former days, endeavored
to make the people believe that the other two departments of the Govern-
ment are inimical to their interest and welfare, and that he alone is their
friend. He has engrossed all i)ower, and is as absolute as any crowned head
in Europe. He only differs with them in the name.
SPEECH ON REMOVAL OF DEPOSITS. 22/
" Let US see the means he has adopted to perpetuate his power and rivet
our chains of slavery. All the officers of this government are a disciplined
corps, with but few exceptions. The post-office department, including post-
masters, clerks, mail contractors, and their dependents, furnishes thirty thou-
sand. The other departments supply about an equal number, making some-
thing like sixty thousand, scattered all over the United States, receiving and
disbursing twenty-five millions of dollars a year. What an a^jpalling phalanx
this is for the people to encounter ! how dangerous to liberty ! And if he
can only add to this powerful body the whole of the additional forces which
the pet banks bring to his aid when united, this army of dependents and
retainers will be resistless. He has chosen his successor — the last act of
royalty. He has shown the young C^sar to the Praetorian guards at the
seat of government, and last fall made the tour of the North with him to
show him the distant legions. All the office-holders and office-hunters
already begin to acknowledge his power, and recognize his right divine to
the succession. They are making daily efforts to get the rays of his counte-
nance to beam upon them ; but, as yet, through affected humility, he keeps
his eyes on the ground, and will look no man in the face.*
"What a dreary prospect we have now before us! How desperate
appears the cause of the people and of liberty ! The mariner, when lost in
the wide and almost boundless Pacific, tossed by storms and driven by
adverse currents, his water and provisions nearly exhausted, now and then
is cheered with a green island rearing its head out of the waste of waters.
So with the lost and wayworn traveler over the great desert of Sahara;
nothing but a wide and almost illimitable ocean of sand around him; from
above, the sun parching his head, the sand blistering his feet beneath ; he,
in this gloomy situation, occasionally meets with a well of water and a grove
of refreshing trees, which has escaped the baneful and withering sirocco, to
gladden his heart. But what, Mr. Speaker, have we before us in this wide
waste, ruin, and desolation of all our rights, civil, political, and religious?
I answer, nothing but hope and the justice of our cause are left to us.
Hope, almost alone, sustained Washington frequendy in the revolutionary
war ; and why should we, as yet, despair ? No ; let us not give up the ship ;
relief is coming. The people are breaking the chains that kept them spell-
bound. They are awakening everywhere. New York has manifested a
disposition to be free. Virginia has erected the standard of liberty, and not
only her own sons, but the nation, will rally around it. Kentucky will
know the banner — it was once her own — and, in this great contest, will be
found combating by the side of her parent. The Senate is with us. The
greatest men in the nation are there. Let us make one mighty effort, and
burst asunder, as the strong man of old did, the cords that bind us.
" I have, sir, been speaking of General Jackson and his administration
politically, and considered what has been done during his administration as
* Mr. Van Buren is alluded to.
228 BEN HARDIN.
done by himself; for the effect upon the nation is the same. It is due to
that distinguished individual, although his official conduct is ruining our
country and prostrating its best and dearest interests, to say, before I resume
my seat, that I believe he is an honest and truthful man, and will not stoop
to disguise his actions, however arbitrary and despotic they may be. His
greatest fault is the strength and violence of his passions, which, instead of
checking, he cherishes, feeds, and blows into a flame. He has a laudable love
of <Aovy, but he loves it to excess ; and hence he mistakes the selfish voice of
flattery for the unbought sound of the trumpet of fame. He courts the
applause of the world and posterity. Alas ! his ears hear nothing but the
servile adulations and praise of the vile miscreants who surround him. He,
from his habits as a general of our armies, has been taught to command,
and is impatient of control ; the wretches who fatten upon the spoils of the
nation avail themselves of his former education to keep the honest, honora-
ble, and high-minded men, who rallied around him originally, from having
any influence over him ; nay, nearly the whole of them are excluded from
his presence, and proscribed by the cabal that influence his conduct and
direct his actions. But behold and see his most powerful friends when he
came into power. Who are they? Calhoun, McDuftie, and Hamilton,
in the South, and in the West, Bibb, Wickliff'e, Chilton, Rowan, and Daniel.
And where are they now ? In the ranks of his opponents. How has this
been done? Because a ' malign influence ' has driven him from his course,
and made him depart from his principles. They went in for principle, and
not for men.
" I have one more remark, Mr. Speaker, and then I have done : I once
heard a good and pious man, who had long ministered at the altar of God,
say, in finishing a sermon, that if he had made one convert, nay, brought
one man who heard him to seriously think upon the great truths he had
been delivering, he would consider himself amply rewarded for all his labor
and all his toils on that day, because such was his conviction of the great
truths of Christianity and the true religion of God, that a seeker would soon
become a convert; so with myself, comparing small things with great, the
matters of this world with the things to come hereafter ; if I have made one
convert, nay, brought one man to think seriously upon the political truths I
have attempted to deliver, I shall feel amply compensated for all my labor.
But, Mr. Speaker, whatever may be the result, I thank my God for this
opportunity and health sufficient (although lately greatly afflicted) to do my
duty to my constituents and country ; and into the hands and safe-keeping
of the Almighty, as far as I am concerned, do I commit the cause and des-
tinies of the American i)eople."
The President was unshaken and undismayed by all denunciations
and all clamor. The efforts of the bank and its friends, or as Mr.
Benton had it ' ' the unhallowed combination between the moneyed
THE END OF THE SESSION. 229
and a political power," to recover from the blow of the removal of
the despots was in vain. " King " Jackson (as Hardin called him on
the " stump ") had dealt his enemy a mortal blow for which there was,
as it proved, no remedy in political pharmacy.
On May i6, 1834, Mr. Boon, of Indiana, called up a resolution
previously offered by him fixing June 16th as the day for adjourn-
ment. Mr. Hardin moved to strike out and insert "July 2d," and said
that "he presumed the honorable member was not more solicitous
than he to return to the bosom of his family, his business, both pro-
fessional and private, calling upon him (Mr. Hardin) as urgently and
as imperiously as did that of any other honorable member." After
giving in detail various reasons why adjournment should not occur at
so early a day as proposed, he closed by saying " he hoped he would
get credit for the assertion that his anxiety to return to his home was
as great as that of any man, feeling with Cowper, in the beautiful
lines he attributes to Selkirk —
" ' When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to he there;
But, alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.'"
June 2d, Mr. Stevenson resigned as speaker, having been nomi-
nated by the President as minister to the English court. A lively
contest for the vacancy ensued. Ten ballots occurred before any one
received the requisite majority. On the first, second, and third bal-
lots Richard H. Wilde, of Georgia, received the highest vote (Mr.
Hardin receiving one on the second ballot). On the fourth, fifth, and
sixth James K. Polk received a plurality. On the seventh, eighth,
ninth, and tenth John Bell led Mr. Polk, and having a majority on
the last ballot was chosen speaker. To the union of the enemies of
Mr. Van Buren in the administration party and to the opposition the
new speaker owed success. June 30th Congress adjourned, Mr. Har-
din remaining until the closing hours of the session.
230
BEN HARDIN.
CHAPTER XIX.
A SOJOURNER,
HE wlio looked upon the meagerness of Washington City fifty years
ago httle dreamed that within a hfetime the beauty and magnifi-
cence of to-day would be realized. If Mr. Hardin sometimes spoke
of it disrespectfully, it must be remembered that in his day the national
capital had few admirers. "A national capital," writes Mary Clem-
mer Ames, " could only be fitly built by the nation. For many years
the Congress of the United States refused to do this to any fit degree,
and the result for more than one generation was the most forlorn city
in Christendom." *
It was during the period of Mr. Hardin's service in Congress
that the well-known English traveler and writer, Miss Harriet Marti-
neau, visited America. She spent some time at Washington, and her
references to her experience and observations there are extremely
graphic.
"The city is a grand mistake," she writes. " Its only attraction is the
seat of government, and it is thought it will not long continue to be so. The
far western States begin to demand a more central seat for Congress, and the
Cincinnati people are already speculating upon which of their hills or table-
lands is to be the site of the new capital. Whenever this takes place all will
be over with Washington ; ' thorns shall come up in her palaces, and the owl
and the raven shall dwell in it,' while her sister cities of the East will be still
spreading as fast as hands can be found to build them. * * * *
"The city itself is unlike any other that ever was seen, straggling out
hither and thither, with a small house or two a quarter of a mile from any
other ; so that in making calls in the city we had to cross ditches and stiles,
and walk alternately on grass and pavement, and strike across a field to
reach a street. * ''^ * Then there was the society singularly com-
pounded from the largest variety of elements — foreign embassadors, the
American government, members of Congress from Clay and Webster down
to Davy Crockett ; Benton, of Missouri, and Cuthbert, with the fresh Irish
brogue, from Georgia; flippant young belles, and pious wives, dutifully
attending their husbands and groaning over the frivolities of the place ; grave
judges, saucy travelers, pert newspaper reporters, melancholy Indian chiefs,
and timid New England ladies, trembling on the verge of the vortex. All
* Ten Years in Washington, by Mary Clemmer Ames, page 67.
THE NATIONAL CAPITAL IN 1 83 5, 23 I
this was wholly unlike anything that is to be seen in any other city in the
world; for all these are mixed up together in daily intercourse like the higher
circle of a little village, and there is nothing else. ;{; * ^ *
"It is in Washington that varieties of manners are conspicuous. There
the Southerners appear to the most advantage, and the New Englanders to
the least; the easy and frank courtesy of the gentry of the South (with an
occasional touch of arrogance, however,) contrasting favorably with the cau-
tious, somewhat gauche, and too deferential air of the members of the North.
One fancies one can tell a New England member in the open air, by his
deprecatory walk. He seems to bear in mind perpetually that he can not
fight a duel, while other people can. The odd mortals that wander in from
the Western border can not be described as a class, for no one is like any-
body else. One has a neck like a crane, making an interval oi inches
between stock and chin. Another wears no cravat, apparently because there
is no room for one. The third has his lank, black hair parted down the
middle, and disposed in bands in front, so that he is taken for a woman
when only his head is seen in a crowd. A fourth puts an arm around the neck
of a neighbor on either side, as he stands, seemingly afraid of his tall, wire-
hung frame drojiping to pieces if he tries to stand alone. A fifth makes
something between a bow and a courtesy to everybody who comes near, and
poses with a knowing air ; all having shrewd faces, and being probably very
fit for the business they come upon. * ?!<;;;** ;ic
" Some of our pleasantest evenings we spent at home in a society of the
highest order. Ladies, literary and fashionable, or domestic, would spend
an hour with us on their way from dinner or to a ball. Members of Con-
gress would repose themselves by our fireside. Mr. Clay, sitting upright on
the sofa, with his snuff-box ever in his hand, would discourse for many an
hour, in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of
American policy which might happen to start, always amazing us with the
moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been
able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, crack-
ing jokes, shaking the sofa with the burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly
discoursing to the perfect felicity of the local part of one's constitution, would
illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun — the cast-iron man —
who looks as if he had never been born and never could be extinguished,
would come in sometimes, and keep our understandings upon a painful
stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid,
theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make of it."*
In 1842, when it had changed little from the time of Mr. Hardin's
last sojourn there, and of Miss Martineau's visit, it thus impressed a
great English novelist, then traveling in the United States ;
=â– â– Western Travel, Vol T., page 144, et seg. John Quincy Adams mentions meeting Miss Martineau,
and says she was sprightly and entertaining, notwithstanding the ear-trumpet her deafness required.
J. Q. Adams' Memoirs, Vol. IX., page 200.
^,^ BEN HARDIN.
" It is sometimes called the 'City of Magnificent Distances,' but it might,
with greater propriety, be termed the ' City of Magnificent Intentions,' for
it IS only on taking a bird's eye view of it from the top of the capitol, that
one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring
Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing and lead nowhere ;
streets, miles long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public
buildings, that need but a public to be complete, and ornaments of great
thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament — are its
leading features. One might fancy the season over, and most of the
houses gone out of town forever with their masters. To the admirers of
cities it is a Barmecide feast, a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in,
a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription
to record its departed greatness.
" Such as it is it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the seat
of government as a means of averting the conflicting jealousies and interests
of the different States ; and very probably, too, as being remote from mobs
— a consideration not to be slighted, even in America." *
Mr. Dickens errs in assigning the cause that led to the selection of
the District of Columbia for the site of the capital of the republic.
Mr. James Parton is better authority on that subject, and the follow-
ing is his interesting explanation of how the seat of government found
its present location :
"The city of Washington, we may premise, was the unforeseen result of
an after-dinner conversation between Hamilton, Jefi"erson, and two or three
' Potomac members ' of Congress. Hamilton, finding himself in the minority
upon one of his fiscal measures, implored the aid of Jeff"erson's influence
over the Virginia delegation. 'Dine with me to-morrow,' said Jefferson,
' and 1 will invite some of the opposing members to meet you.' After din-
ner the subject was discussed, and two members agreed to change their
votes— to save the Union, of course. It was observed, by one of the gende-
men present, that the measure proposed would prove so repugnant to the
Southern people that ' some concomitant measure should be adopted to
sweeten it to them a little.' A lump of sugar would be needful after the
medicine. The lump of sugar ])roposed and swallowed was the selection of
a site for the permanent capital of the country in the wilderness on the
banks of the Potomac. In how many ways have the fortunes and the
morals of the United States been influenced by that talk over Mr. Jefferson's
mahogany in the year 1790! "t
The author of " Pickwick " was more deft at some other things than
prophecy. Such as it was when he saw it, Washington remained sub-
stantially until near the outbreak of the civil war. But as the clouds
'* American Notes, by Charles Dickens, page 51.
1 Life of Andrew Jackson, by James Parton, Vol. Ill , page 596.
•'messing in Washington. 233
of war passed away and as the government put on new habiliments,
its national city began to bedeck herself like a bride of the East. A
half century has metamorphosed the straggling town, of whose future
Dickens spoke so illy, into the handsomest capital of the world. In
"American Notes " will also be found a description of a Washington
hotel, and it is quite possible that the short-comings of that institution
may have colored the epicurean Englishman's view of his surround-
ings. Such or similar were the stopping places that welcomed Mr.
Hardin and his colleagues in his day.
Partly from motives of economy, possibly from a desire for greater
comfort or luxury, " messing " was then a common mode of life among
congressmen. Governor Thomas Corwin and Mr. Hardin messed
together during the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses,
and other congenial Kentuckians, doubtless, completed the house-
hold. Messing was less unfrequent in that day than now. By mess-
ing is meant that several persons clubbed together, rented apart-
ments, hired cooks, supplied their own larders, and thus maintained
a domestic establishment during the session, which was broken up at
the close. It was an independent as well as an economical arrange-
ment, in which those participating exercised certain reserved powers
over their expenditures, not possible at hotels and boarding-houses.
There were, however, temptations to frugality in Washington life, the
indulgence of which imperiled congressional prestige. The following
is an illustration which also shows the possibilities of the franking priv-
ilege when liberally exercised : It is related of Joe L — , a congressman
once representing the Louisville district, that he carried the principles
of saving econom.y so far as to send his soiled linen home by mail
under his frank to be washed, and that his wife returned it after that
process, adding to the address, " Free, Jennie L — . "
It would hardly be proper to look into the mode of life of these
messing sojourners too closely. It would be difficult to imagine a
household embracing Ben Hardin and Tom Corwin other than good
humored. These two, at least, were not given to drunkenness or
wine, yet it may be admitted that gaming sometimes afforded amuse-
ment. Congressmen frequently called at each other's lodgings, in a
social way, and gatherings often occurred which were marked by
roystering fun and good fellowship. A story is related of how, on
one occasion, the Kentucky delegation wagered an oyster supper with
the Georgia delegation that it could produce a Kentuckian " home-
lier" or more ill-favored than the latter could bring from Georgia, the
234
BEN HARDIN.
test to take place on the occasion of the supper. The appointed
evening arrived, and the Georgia delegation had its man present, who,
by a trick of throwing all his face on one side, made himself decidedly
hideous. The Kentucky entry had, unfortunately, become so drunk
that he was unable to be on hand. The Kentuckians were on the
point of surrendering in despair and paying the wager, when one of
them was struck with a happy thought. Francis P. Blair, a Ken-
tuckian, was, at that time, editor of the Globe, and altogether one of
the most noted men about Washington. He was possessed of great
spirit and energy, and accomplished an astonishing amount of editorial
labor, but he was, in appearance, haggard, feeble, and emaciated, and
his face had a most cadaverous cast. In short, he was the absolute
reverse of good looking. The party with the happy thought above
alluded to called a hack and drove to the Globe office. He found Blair,
and hastily explained that a number of his old Kentucky friends were
having~an oyster party, and that they desired his presence, and would
accept no denial. Unable to withstand this friendly compulsion,
Blair stepped into the hack, and soon reached his destination. As he
entered, it required little discernment to perceive that social hilarity
was in the ascendant. Albert G. Hawes, a jolly member of the Ken-
tucky delegation, discovered him. and, heartily disgusted with the
Georgian's facial tricks, shouted : " Blair, look as the God of nature
made you, and I'll be d — d if the oysters ain't ours! "*
Let it not, however, be supposed that all delegations, or even all
members of those delegations, frequently gave way to these jovial
moods. Mr. Hardin thus referred to the dignified manner of life of
certain senators, in i8i 5 ; and while it is true the royal affectations he
criticised had passed away in 1835, there still survived a formal court-
liness that smacked of an aristocracy:
" There was, "as I said tlie other day, a small Federal party in the Senate,
and if I said anything on that occasion offensive to the powdered heads of
these gentlemen and their affected nobility, I will take it back ; but it was
literally true. They lacked the ribbons and the star, and that was all ; they
could not even board in the city, but must go to Georgetown and ride in
their splendid carriages, so brilliant that when the sun struck upon them
they gleamed as when the sun on the surrounding hills of Utica fell on the
burnished arms of Caesar's soldiers."
-•-Life of Sam Dale. Mr. Hawes possessed fine social qualities, and exuberant humor. John
Quincy Adams, who was a good talker, but almost devoid of humor, referring to a trip of a party of
Congressmen in May, 1834, to Harper's Ferry, says: " Mr. Hawes talked much more than his share,
sometimes to the great entertainment, and sometimes to the no small distaste, of the company." J. Q.
Adams' Memoirs, Vol. IX., page 142.
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236
BEN HARDIN.
Congressmen had many other duties to perform, aside from those
that are reported in the debates and proceedings. Committee meet-
ings and labor thereat, investigations in the congressional library* and
elsewhere for needed facts and statistics, encountering the lobbyist
and hearing his insidious speech, and entertaining the occasional con-
stituent who came to the national capital sight-seeing or office hunt-
ing, were some of the tasks, more or less agreeable, of the Represen-
tative. Mr. Hardin was accustomed to get copies of the poll books
of the various counties of his district, and from these send documents
through the mails to his constituents. A discourteous postmaster at
Bardstown, an intense Locofoco of the Jacksonian stripe, once refused
to deliver these missives. So Mr. Hardin, on his return home, pro-
cured a wagon and hauled them to the court-house, and there he
distributed them, seasoning his favors with anathemas on the delin-
quent official.
Political "fences" at home and the general good of the "party"
were matters of constant solicitude to the people's representative.