President Jackson January-April 1834
Jackson’s Protest to the U. S. Senate in 1834
President Jackson April-November 1834
Jackson’s Message on 1 December 1834
Andrew Jackson from Washington on 3 January 1834
wrote this letter to Vice President Martin Van Buren:
I have received and read the letters and
recommendations which you enclosed to me,
have place that of the Governor, comptroller
etc. etc. of New York on file and agreeably to
your request, now herewith, return you the others.
I have read Col. Hamilton with attention; he is a panic.
The object of the friends of the Bank in Congress is delay,
and this I told our friends from the first, time to get up
meetings and memorials and to let the U. S. Bank turn
its screw upon the people, raise a panic in the money
market, and by this means alarm the community by
cries of distress that does not exist, and obtain a
majority in Congress to carry McDuffie’s resolution.
This was seen by every man of common experience,
but the itch for speaking—selfish views were too
strong to adopt prompt measures for the public weal.
I am not in any panic; were all the worshippers
of the golden Calf to memorialize me and request
a restoration of the Deposits, I would cut my right
hand from my body before I would do such an act.
The golden calf may be worshipped by others,
but as for myself I will serve the Lord.
I would not be astonished that
Mr. McDuffie’s resolution would be carried.
The course of the friends of the administration
is playing precisely into the hands of the
opposition, and why discuss it now.
Why not have the facts reported by the Committee,
then it must be discussed before the committee
of the whole on the state of the union.
The opposition have everything to hope from delay;
every engine of corruption is at work, and our friends are
indulging them with time to carry their corruption into effect.
My Dear Sir, I am mortified at
the game played by our friends.
It is a time serving temporizing policy that destroys
(all in favor of) it, and well calculated to lose that majority
who would have been united by prompt, vigilant and
energetic measures at the commencement of the session.
If it is much longer postponed, you may rest
well assured that a panic will be introduced into
Congress that will have a most pernicious effect.
It will create a pretext for all those who are only
confined by their pledge to their constituents,
to vote for a restoration of the Deposits and may
be the cause of giving two thirds against my veto.
Think if this and say to your friends how much
has been, and how much may be lost by further
delay in taking this question, and to cease debate
for the present and take the vote on the resolution.
It is the doubt that is placed before the public mind
that favors the cry of panic which,
a negative vote will at once put down.1
During a labor strike for better pay on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
the Irish workers in two Maryland counties came into conflict
as workers from Cork tried to keep out others from Longford.
On 28 January 1834 the Maryland legislature asked the federal government to intervene.
The next day Jackson became the first US President
to send federal troops to control a civil disorder.
Again he was accused of violating states’ rights.
In January 1834 Jackson had Secretary of War Lewis Cass order Biddle
to turn over all the funds and accounts on Revolutionary War veterans’ pensions.
When Biddle refused, pension payments were suspended.
The House Ways and Means Committee reprimanded the Bank,
though the Senate supported the Bank.
On February 4 he sent a note to Congress complaining that the United States Bank
had not delivered books, papers, and funds in accordance with an act of Congress.
On February 17 Cornelius Van Ness signed a treaty for the United States
with Spain which agreed to pay $600,000.
That was half of what the US had demanded.
On 28 March 1834 the U. S. Senate passed Clay’s censure resolution 26-20,
the first one of an American President
This is the resolution finally passed:
Resolved, That the reasons assigned by the Secretary
of the Treasury for the removal of the money of the
United States deposited in the Bank of the United States
and its branches, communicated to Congress on the 4th
of December 1833 are unsatisfactory and insufficient.
That the President in the late executive proceedings
in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon
himself authority and power not conferred by the
Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.2
On April 4 Polk presented four resolutions on the Bank in the House
which all passed by the following votes: they were against charter renewal 134-82,
against restoring the deposits 118-103, for continuing deposits in state banks 117-105,
and for investigating the U. S. Bank 175-42.
Amos Kendal told a wavering Congressman,
This is a struggle to maintain a government
of the people against the most heartless of
all aristocracies, that of money.
Yield now, and the Bank of the United States
will henceforth be the governing power
whatever may be the form of our institutions.3
On 15 April 1834 President Andrew Jackson wrote this “Protest”
and sent it to the United State Senate which voted not to enter it on their Journal:
It appears by the published Journal of the Senate that on
the 26th of December last a resolution was offered by a
member of the Senate, which after a protracted debate was
on the 28th day of March last modified by the mover and
passed by the votes of twenty-six Senators out of forty-six
who were present and voted, in the following words, viz:
Resolved , That the President, in the late Executive
proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed
upon himself authority and power not conferred by the
Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.
Having had the honor, through the voluntary suffrages
of the American people, to fill the office of President of the
United States during the period which may be presumed
to have been referred to in this resolution, it is sufficiently
evident that the censure it inflicts was intended for myself.
Without notice, unheard and untried, I thus find myself
charged on the records of the Senate, and in a form
hitherto unknown in our history, with the high crime
of violating the laws and Constitution of my country.
It can seldom be necessary for any department of the
Government, when assailed in conversation or debate or
by the strictures of the press or of popular assemblies, to
step out of its ordinary path for the purpose of vindicating
its conduct or of pointing out any irregularity or injustice
in the manner of the attack; but when the Chief Executive
Magistrate is, by one of the most important branches of
the Government in its official capacity, in a public manner,
and by its recorded sentence, but without precedent,
competent authority, or just cause, declared guilty of
a breach of the laws and Constitution, it is due to his
station, to public opinion, and to a proper self-respect
that the officer thus denounced should promptly
expose the wrong which has been done.
In the present case, moreover, there is even a stronger
necessity for such a vindication. By an express provision
of the Constitution, before the President of the United States
can enter on the execution of his office he is required to
take an oath or affirmation in the following words:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the office of President of the United States
and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The duty of defending so far as in him lies the integrity
of the Constitution would indeed have resulted from the
very nature of his office, but by thus expressing it in the
official oath or affirmation, which in this respect differs
from that of any other functionary, the founders of our
Republic have attested their sense of its importance and
have given to it a peculiar solemnity and force. Bound to
the performance of this duty by the oath I have taken,
by the strongest obligations of gratitude to the American
people, and by the ties which unite my every earthly
interest with the welfare and glory of my country, and
perfectly convinced that the discussion and passage of
the above-mentioned resolution were not only unauthorized
by the Constitution, but in many respects repugnant to its
provisions and subversive of the rights secured by it to other
coordinate departments, I deem it an imperative duty to
maintain the supremacy of that sacred instrument and the
immunities of the department entrusted to my care by all
means consistent with my own lawful powers, with the
rights of others, and with the genius of our civil institutions.
To this end I have caused this my solemn protest against
the aforesaid proceedings to be placed on the files of the
executive department and to be transmitted to the Senate.
It is alike due to the subject, the Senate, and the people
that the views which I have taken of the proceedings
referred to, and which compel me to regard them in the
light that has been mentioned, should be exhibited at length,
and with the freedom and firmness which are required
by an occasion so unprecedented and peculiar.
Under the Constitution of the United States the powers
and functions of the various departments of the Federal
Government and their responsibilities for violation or neglect
of duty are clearly defined or result by necessary inference.
The legislative power is, subject to the qualified
negative of the President, vested in the Congress
of the United States, composed of the Senate and
House of Representatives; the executive power
is vested exclusively in the President, except
that in the conclusion of treaties and in certain
appointments to office he is to act with the advice
and consent of the Senate; the judicial power is
vested exclusively in the Supreme and other courts
of the United States, except in cases of impeachment,
for which purpose the accusatory power is vested
in the House of Representatives and that of
hearing and determining in the Senate.
But although for the special purposes which have
been mentioned there is an occasional intermixture
of the powers of the different departments, yet with
these exceptions each of the three great departments is
independent of the others in its sphere of action, and when
it deviates from that sphere is not responsible to the others
further than it is expressly made so in the Constitution.
In every other respect each of them is the coequal
of the other two, and all are the servants of the
American people, without power or right to
control or censure each other in the service of
their common superior, save only in the manner
and to the degree which that superior has prescribed.
The responsibilities of the President
are numerous and weighty.
He is liable to impeachment for high crimes and
misdemeanors, and on due conviction to removal
from office and perpetual disqualification;
and notwithstanding such conviction, he may
also be indicted and punished according to law.
He is also liable to the private action of any
party who may have been injured by his illegal
mandates or instructions in the same manner and
to the same extent as the humblest functionary.
In addition to the responsibilities which may thus
be enforced by impeachment, criminal prosecution,
or suit at law, he is also accountable at the bar
of public opinion for every act of his Administration.
Subject only to the restraints of truth and justice,
the free people of the United States have the undoubted
right, as individuals or collectively, orally or in writing,
at such times and in such language and form as they
may think proper, to discuss his official conduct and to
express and promulgate their opinions concerning it.
Indirectly also his conduct may come under review
in either branch of the Legislature, or in the Senate
when acting in its executive capacity, and so far as
the executive or legislative proceedings of these
bodies may require it, it may be exercised by them.
These are believed to be the proper and only
modes in which the President of the United States
is to be held accountable for his official conduct.
Tested by these principles, the resolution
of the Senate is wholly unauthorized by the
Constitution, and in derogation of its entire spirit.
It assumes that a single branch of the legislative
department may for the purposes of a public censure,
and without any view to legislation or impeachment,
take up, consider, and decide upon
the official acts of the Executive.
But in no part of the Constitution is the
President subjected to any such responsibility,
and in no part of that instrument is any such power
conferred on either branch of the Legislature.
The justice of these conclusions will be
illustrated and confirmed by a brief analysis
of the powers of the Senate and a comparison
of their recent proceedings with those powers.
The high functions assigned by the
Constitution to the Senate are in their nature
either legislative, executive, or judicial.
It is only in the exercise of its judicial powers,
when sitting as a court for the trial of impeachments,
that the Senate is expressly authorized and necessarily
required to consider and decide upon the conduct
of the President or any other public officer.
Indirectly, however, as has already been suggested,
it may frequently be called on to perform that office.
Cases may occur in the course of its legislative
or executive proceedings in which it may be
indispensable to the proper exercise of its powers that
it should inquire into and decide upon the conduct of
the President or other public officers, and in every such
case its constitutional right to do so is cheerfully conceded.
But to authorize the Senate to enter on such a task in its
legislative or executive capacity the inquiry must actually
grow out of and tend to some legislative or executive action,
and the decision, when expressed, must take the form
of some appropriate legislative or executive act.
The resolution in question was introduced, discussed,
and passed not as a joint but as a separate resolution.
It asserts no legislative power, proposes no
legislative action, and neither possesses the form
nor any of the attributes of a legislative measure.
It does not appear to have been entertained or passed
with any view or expectation of its issuing in a law
or joint resolution, or in the repeal of any law or
joint resolution, or in any other legislative action.
While wanting both the form and substance
of a legislative measure, it is equally manifest
that the resolution was not justified by any of
the executive powers conferred on the Senate.
These powers relate exclusively to the consideration
of treaties and nominations to office, and they are
exercised in secret session and with closed doors.
This resolution does not apply to any treaty or
nomination, and was passed in a public session.
Nor does this proceeding in any way belong to that class
of incidental resolutions which relate to the officers of the
Senate, to their Chamber and other appurtenances, or
to subjects of order and other matters of the like nature,
in all which either House may lawfully proceed without
any cooperation with the other or with the President.
On the contrary, the whole phraseology and
sense of the resolution seem to be judicial.
Its essence, true character, and only practical effect are to
be found in the conduct which it enlarges upon the President
and in the judgment which it pronounces on that conduct.
The resolution, therefore though discussed and adopted
by the Senate in its legislative capacity, is in its office
and in all its characteristics essentially judicial.
That the Senate possesses a high judicial power and
that instances may occur in which the President of the
United States will be amenable to it is undeniable;
but under the provisions of the Constitution it would
seem to be equally plain that neither the President
nor any other officer can be rightfully subjected to the
operation of the judicial power of the Senate except in the
cases and under the forms prescribed by the Constitution.
The Constitution declares that “the President,
Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States
shall be removed from office on impeachment for and
conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors;” that the House of Representatives “shall
have the sole power of impeachment;” that the Senate
“shall have the sole power to try all impeachments;”
that “when sitting for that purpose they shall be on oath or
affirmation;” that “when the President of the United States
is tried the Chief Justice shall preside;” that “no person
shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds
of the members present,” and that “judgment shall not
extend further than to removal from office and
disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of
honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”
The resolution above quoted charges, in substance,
that in certain proceedings relating to the public
revenue the President has usurped authority and
power not conferred upon him by the Constitution
and laws, and that in doing so he violated both.
Any such act constitutes a high crime—one of the highest,
indeed, which the President can commit—a crime which
justly exposes him to impeachment by the House of
Representatives, and, upon due conviction, to removal
from office and to the complete and immutable
disfranchisement prescribed by the Constitution.
The resolution, then, was in substance an impeachment
of the President, and in its passage amounts to a
declaration by a majority of the Senate that he is
As such it is spread upon the journals of
the Senate, published to the nation and to
the world, made part of our enduring archives,
and incorporated in the history of the age.
The punishment of removal from office and future
disqualification does not, it is true, follow this decision,
nor would it have followed the like decision if the
regular forms of proceeding had been pursued,
because the requisite number did not concur in the result.
But the moral influence of a solemn declaration
by a majority of the Senate that the accused is
guilty of the offense charged upon him has been as
effectually secured as if the like declaration had been
made upon an impeachment expressed in the same terms.
Indeed, a greater practical effect has been gained,
because the votes given for the resolution,
though not sufficient to authorize a judgment
of guilty on an impeachment, were numerous
enough to carry that resolution.
That the resolution does not expressly allege
that the assumption of power and authority which
it condemns was intentional and corrupt is no answer
to the preceding view of its character and effect.
The act thus condemned necessarily implies volition
and design in the individual to whom it is imputed,
and, being unlawful in its character, the legal
conclusion is that it was prompted by improper
motives and committed with an unlawful intent.
The charge is not of a mistake in the exercise
of supposed powers, but of the assumption of
powers not conferred by the Constitution and laws,
but in derogation of both, and nothing is suggested
to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act.
In the absence of any such excuse or palliation
there is only room for one inference, and that
is that the intent was unlawful and corrupt.
Besides, the resolution not only contains no mitigating
suggestions, but, on the contrary, it holds up the act
complained of as justly obnoxious to censure and
reprobation, and thus as distinctly stamps it with impurity
of motive as if the strongest epithets had been used.
The President of the United States, therefore,
has been by a majority of his constitutional
triers accused and found guilty of an impeachable
offense, but in no part of this proceeding have the
directions of the Constitution been observed.
The impeachment, instead of being preferred
and prosecuted by the House of Representatives,
originated in the Senate, and was prosecuted
without the aid or concurrence of the other House.
The oath or affirmation prescribed by the Constitution
was not taken by the Senators, the Chief Justice did not
preside, no notice of the charge was given to the accused,
and no opportunity afforded him to respond to the
accusation, to meet his accusers face to face, to
cross-examine the witnesses, to procure counteracting
testimony, or to be heard in his defense.
The safeguards and formalities which the Constitution
has connected with the power of impeachment were
doubtless supposed by the framers of that instrument
to be essential to the protection of the public servant,
to the attainment of justice, and to the order,
impartiality, and dignity of the procedure.
These safeguards and formalities were not only
practically disregarded in the commencement and
conduct of these proceedings, but in their result
I find myself convicted by less than two-thirds of
the members present of an impeachable offense.
In vain may it be alleged in defense of this
proceeding that the form of the resolution is not that
of an impeachment or of a judgment thereupon, that
the punishment prescribed in the Constitution does not
follow its adoption, or that in this case no impeachment
is to be expected from the House of Representatives.
It is because it did not assume the form of an impeachment
that it is the more palpably repugnant to the Constitution,
for it is through that form only that the President is
judicially responsible to the Senate; and though neither
removal from office nor future disqualification ensues,
yet it is not to be presumed that the framers of the
Constitution considered either or both of those results as
constituting the whole of the punishment they prescribed.
The judgment of guilty by the highest tribunal in the Union,
the stigma it would inflict on the offender, his family,
and fame, and the perpetual record on the Journal,
handing down to future generations the story of his
disgrace, were doubtless regarded by them as the bitterest
portions, if not the very essence, of that punishment.
So far, therefore, as some of its most material parts
are concerned, the passage, recording, and promulgation
of the resolution are an attempt to bring them on the
President in a manner unauthorized by the Constitution.
To shield him and other officers who are liable to
impeachment from consequences so momentous,
except when really merited by official delinquencies,
the Constitution has most carefully guarded
the whole process of impeachment.
A majority of the House of Representatives must
think the officer guilty before he can be charged.
Two-thirds of the Senate must pronounce him
guilty or he is deemed to be innocent.
Forty-six Senators appear by the Journal to have been
present when the vote on the resolution was taken.
If after all the solemnities of an impeachment, thirty of
those Senators had voted that the President was guilty,
yet would he have been acquitted; but by the mode of
proceeding adopted in the present case a lasting record
of conviction has been entered up by the votes of twenty-six
Senators without an impeachment or trial, whilst the
Constitution expressly declares that to the entry of such
a judgment an accusation by the House of Representatives,
a trial by the Senate, and a concurrence of two-thirds in
the vote of guilty shall be indispensable prerequisites.
Whether or not an impeachment was to be expected
from the House of Representatives was a point on
which the Senate had no constitutional right to speculate,
and in respect to which, even had it possessed the
spirit of prophecy, its anticipations would have
furnished no just ground for this procedure.
Admitting that there was reason to believe that a violation
of the Constitution and laws had been actually committed
by the President, still it was the duty of the Senate, as his
sole constitutional judges, to wait for an impeachment
until the other House should think proper to prefer it.
The members of the Senate could have no right
to infer that no impeachment was intended.
On the contrary, every legal and rational presumption on
their part ought to have been that if there was good reason
to believe him guilty of an impeachable offense the House
of Representatives would perform its constitutional duty
by arraigning the offender before the justice of his country.
The contrary presumption would involve an
implication derogatory to the integrity and
honor of the representatives of the people.
But suppose the suspicion thus implied were
actually entertained and for good cause,
how can it justify the assumption by the Senate
of powers not conferred by the Constitution?
It is only necessary to look at the condition in which
the Senate and the President have been placed by this
proceeding to perceive its utter incompatibility with
the provisions and the spirit of the Constitution and
with the plainest dictates of humanity and justice.
If the House of Representatives shall be of opinion
that there is just ground for the censure pronounced
upon the President, then will it be the solemn duty of
that House to prefer the proper accusation and to cause
him to be brought to trial by the constitutional tribunal.
But in what condition would he find that tribunal?
A majority of its members have already considered
the case, and have not only formed but expressed
a deliberate judgment upon its merits.
It is the policy of our benign systems of jurisprudence
to secure in all criminal proceedings, and even in the
most trivial litigations, a fair, unprejudiced, and impartial
trial, and surely it cannot be less important that such a trial
should be secured to the highest officer of the Government.
The Constitution makes the House of Representatives
the exclusive judges, in the first instance,
of the question whether the President
has committed an impeachable offense.
A majority of the Senate, whose interference with this
preliminary question has for the best of all reasons been
studiously excluded, anticipate the action of the House
of Representatives, assume not only the function which
belongs exclusively to that body, but convert themselves
into accusers, witnesses, counsel, and judges, and prejudge
the whole case, thus presenting the appalling spectacle in a
free State of judges going through a labored preparation for
an impartial hearing and decision by a previous ex parte
investigation and sentence against the supposed offender.
There is no more settled axiom in that Government
whence we derived the model of this part of our Constitution
than that “the lords cannot impeach any to themselves,
nor join in the accusation, because they are judges.”
Independently of the general reasons on which this rule
is founded, its propriety and importance are greatly
increased by the nature of the impeaching power.
The power of arraigning the high officers of
government before a tribunal whose sentence
may expel them from their seats and brand
them as infamous is eminently a popular remedy—
a remedy designed to be employed for the protection
of private right and public liberty against the abuses
of injustice and the encroachments of arbitrary power.
But the framers of the Constitution were also
undoubtedly aware that this formidable instrument
had been and might be abused, and that from
its very nature an impeachment for high crimes
and misdemeanors, whatever might be its result,
would in most cases be accompanied by so much
of dishonor and reproach, solicitude and suffering,
as to make the power of preferring it one of
the highest solemnity and importance.
It was due to both these considerations that the impeaching
power should be lodged in the hands of those who from the
mode of their election and the tenure of their offices would
most accurately express the popular will and at the same
time be most directly and speedily amenable to the people.
The theory of these wise and benignant
intentions is in the present case effectually
defeated by the proceedings of the Senate.
The members of that body represent not the people,
but the States; and though they are undoubtedly
responsible to the States, yet from their extended
term of service the effect of that responsibility during
the whole period of that term must very much depend
upon their own impressions of its obligatory force.
When a body thus constituted expresses beforehand
its opinion in a particular case, and thus indirectly invites
a prosecution, it not only assumes a power intended
for wise reasons to be confined to others, but it shields
the latter from that exclusive and personal responsibility
under which it was intended to be exercised, and
reverses the whole scheme of this part of the Constitution.
Such would be some of the objections to this
procedure, even if it were admitted that there
is just ground for imputing to the President
the offenses charged in the resolution.
But if, on the other hand, the House of Representatives
shall be of opinion that there is no reason for charging
them upon him, and shall therefore deem it improper
to prefer an impeachment, then will the violation of
privilege as it respects that House, of justice as it regards
the President, and of the Constitution as it relates to
both be only the more conspicuous and impressive.
The constitutional mode of procedure on an impeachment
has not only been wholly disregarded, but some of the first
principles of natural right and enlightened jurisprudence
have been violated in the very form of the resolution.
It carefully abstains from averring in which of “the
late proceedings in relation to the public revenue
the President has assumed upon himself authority
and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws.”
It carefully abstains from specifying what laws or
what parts of the Constitution have been violated.
Why was not the certainty of the offense—“the nature
and cause of the accusation “set out in the manner required
in the Constitution before even the humblest individual,
for the smallest crime, can be exposed to condemnation?
Such a specification was due to the accused that he
might direct his defense to the real points of attack,
to the people that they might clearly understand in
what particulars their institutions had been violated,
and to the truth and certainty of our public annals.
As the record now stands, whilst the resolution plainly
charges upon the President at least one act of usurpation
in “the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue,” and is so framed that those Senators who
believed that one such act, and only one, had been
committed could assent to it, its language is yet broad
enough to include several such acts, and so it may
have been regarded by some of those who voted for it.
But though the accusation is thus comprehensive in the
censures it implies, there is no such certainty of time,
place, or circumstance as to exhibit the particular
conclusion of fact or law which induced any one Senator
to vote for it; and it may well have happened that while
one Senator believed that some particular act embraced
in the resolution was an arbitrary and unconstitutional
assumption of power, others of the majority may have
deemed that very act both constitutional and expedient, or,
if not expedient, yet still within the pale of the Constitution;
and thus a majority of the Senators may have been
enabled to concur in a vague and undefined accusation
that the President, in the course of “the late Executive
proceedings in relation to the public revenue,” had violated
the Constitution and laws, whilst if a separate vote had
been taken in respect to each particular act included
within the general terms the accusers of the President
might on any such vote have been found in the minority.
Still further to exemplify this feature of the proceeding,
it is important to be remarked that the resolution as
originally offered to the Senate specified with adequate
precision certain acts of the President which it denounced
as a violation of the Constitution and laws, and that it was
not until the very close of the debate, and when perhaps
it was apprehended that a majority might not sustain
the specific accusation contained in it, that the resolution
was so modified as to assume its present form.
A more striking illustration of the soundness and
necessity of the rules which forbid vague and indefinite
generalities and require a reasonable certainty in all
judicial allegations, and a more glaring instance of the
violation of those rules, has seldom been exhibited.
In this view of the resolution it must certainly be regarded
not as a vindication of any particular provision of the law
or the Constitution, but simply as an official rebuke or
condemnatory sentence, too general and indefinite to
be easily repelled, but yet sufficiently precise to bring
into discredit the conduct and motives of the Executive.
But whatever it may have been intended to accomplish,
it is obvious that the vague, general, and abstract
form of the resolution is in perfect keeping with
those other departures from first principles and
settled improvements in jurisprudence so properly
the boast of free countries in modern times.
And it is not too much to say of the whole of these
proceedings that if they shall be approved and sustained
by an intelligent people, then will that great contest with
arbitrary power which had established in statutes, in
bills of rights, in sacred charters, and in constitutions of
government the right of every citizen to a notice before trial,
to a bearing before conviction, and to an impartial tribunal
for deciding on the charge have been waged in vain.
If the resolution had been left in its original form,
it is not to be presumed that it could ever have received
the assent of a majority of the Senate, for the acts therein
specified as violations of the Constitution and laws were
clearly within the limits of the Executive authority.
They are the “dismissing the late Secretary of the Treasury
because he would not, contrary to his sense of his own duty,
remove the money of the United States in deposit with the
Bank of the United States and its branches in conformity
with the President’s opinion, and appointing his successor
to effect such removal, which has been done.”
But as no other specification has been substituted,
and as these were the “Executive proceedings in relation
to the public revenue” principally referred to in the
course of the discussion, they will doubtless be generally
regarded as the acts intended to be denounced as
“an assumption of authority and power not conferred
by the Constitution or laws, but in derogation of both.”
It is therefore due to the occasion that a condensed
summary of the views of the Executive in respect
to them should be here exhibited.
By the Constitution “the executive power
is vested in a President of the United States.”
Among the duties imposed upon him, and which
he is sworn to perform, is that of “taking care
that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Being thus made responsible for the entire action
of the executive department, it was but reasonable
that the power of appointing, overseeing, and
controlling those who execute the laws—a power
in its nature executive—should remain in his hands.
It is therefore not only his right, but the Constitution
makes it his duty, to “nominate and, by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate, appoint” all “officers
of the United States whose appointments are not in
the Constitution otherwise provided for,” with a
proviso that the appointment of inferior officers may
be vested in the President alone in the courts of justice,
or in the heads of Departments.
The executive power vested in the Senate is
neither that of “nominating” nor “appointing.”
It is merely a check upon the
Executive power of appointment.
If individuals are proposed for appointment by
the President by them deemed incompetent
or unworthy, they may withhold their consent
and the appointment cannot be made.
They check the action of the Executive,
but cannot in relation to those very
subjects act themselves nor direct him.
Selections are still made by the President,
and the negative given to the Senate, without
diminishing his responsibility, furnishes an
additional guaranty to the country that the
subordinate executive as well as the judicial offices
shall be filled with worthy and competent men.
The whole executive power being vested in the
President, who is responsible for its exercise, it is a
necessary consequence that he should have a right
to employ agents of his own choice to aid him in the
performance of his duties, and to discharge them when
he is no longer willing to be responsible for their acts.
In strict accordance with this principle, the power
of removal, which, like that of appointment,
is an original executive power, is left unchecked
by the Constitution in relation to all executive
officers, for whose conduct the President is
responsible, while it is taken from him in relation to
judicial officers, for whose acts he is not responsible.
In the Government from which many of the fundamental
principles of our system are derived the head of the
executive department originally had power to appoint
and remove at will all officers, executive and judicial.
It was to take the judges out of this general
power of removal, and thus make them
independent of the Executive, that the tenure
of their offices was changed to good behavior.
Nor is it conceivable why they are placed in
our Constitution upon a tenure different from
that of all other officers appointed by the
Executive unless it be for the same purpose.
But if there were any just ground for doubt on the
face of the Constitution whether all executive officers
are removable at the will of the President, it is
obviated by the contemporaneous construction of
the instrument and the uniform practice under it.
The power of removal was a topic of solemn
debate in the Congress of 1789 while organizing the
administrative departments of the Government, and
it was finally decided that the President derived from
the Constitution the power of removal so far as it
regards that department for whose acts he is responsible.
Although the debate covered the whole ground, embracing
the Treasury as well as all the other Executive Departments,
it arose on a motion to strike out of the bill to establish a
Department of Foreign Affairs, since called the Department
of State, a clause declaring the Secretary “to be removable
from office by the President of the United States.”
After that motion had been decided in the negative
it was perceived that these words did not convey
the sense of the House of Representatives
in relation to the true source of the power of removal.
With the avowed object of preventing any future inference
that this power was exercised by the President in virtue of
a grant from Congress, when in fact that body considered
it as derived from the Constitution, the words which had
been the subject of debate were struck out, and in lieu
thereof a clause was inserted in a provision concerning
the chief clerk of the Department, which declared that
“whenever the said principal officer shall be removed
from office by the President of the United States, or in
any other case of vacancy,” the chief clerk should during
such vacancy have charge of the papers of the office.
This change having been made for the express purpose
of declaring the sense of Congress that the President
derived the power of removal from the Constitution,
the act as it passed has always been considered
as a full expression of the sense of the legislature
on this important part of the American Constitution.
Here, then, we have the concurrent authority of
President Washington, of the Senate, and the
House of Representatives, numbers of whom
had taken an active part in the convention which
framed the Constitution and in the State conventions
which adopted it, that the President derived an
unqualified power of removal from that instrument itself,
which is “beyond the reach of legislative authority.”
Upon this principle the Government has now been
steadily administered for about forty-five years,
during which there have been numerous removals
made by the President or by his direction, embracing
every grade of executive officers from the heads
of Departments to the messengers of bureaus.
The Treasury Department in the discussions of 1789
was considered on the same footing as the other
Executive Departments, and in the act establishing it
were incorporated the precise words indicative of the
sense of Congress that the President derives his power to
remove the Secretary from the Constitution, which appear
in the act establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs.
An Assistant Secretary of the Treasury was created, and it
was provided that he should take charge of the books and
papers of the Department “whenever the Secretary shall be
removed from office by the President of the United States.”
The Secretary of the Treasury being appointed by the
President, and being considered as constitutionally
removable by him, it appears never to have occurred
to anyone in the Congress of 1789, or since until very
recently, that he was other than an executive officer,
the mere instrument of the Chief Magistrate in the
execution of the laws, subject, like all other heads
of Departments, to his supervision and control.
No such idea as an officer of the Congress can be
found in the Constitution or appears to have suggested
itself to those who organized the Government.
There are officers of each House the appointment
of which is authorized by the Constitution,
but all officers referred to in that instrument
as coming within the appointing power of the
President, whether established thereby or
created by law, are “officers of the United States.”
No joint power of appointment is given to the two
Houses of Congress, nor is there any accountability
to them as one body; but as soon as any office is
created by law, of whatever name or character,
the appointment of the person or persons to fill it
devolves by the Constitution upon the President,
with the advice and consent of the Senate,
unless it be an inferior office, and the appointment
be vested by the law itself “in the President alone,
in the courts of law, or in the heads of Departments.”
But at the time of the organization of the Treasury
Department an incident occurred which distinctly
evinces the unanimous concurrence of the First Congress
in the principle that the Treasury Department is
wholly executive in its character and responsibilities.
A motion was made to strike out the provision of the bill
making it the duty of the Secretary “to digest and report
plans for the improvement and management of the
revenue and for the support of public credit,” on the
ground that it would give the executive department of the
Government too much influence and power in Congress.
The motion was not opposed on the ground
that the Secretary was the officer of Congress
and responsible to that body, which would have
been conclusive if admitted, but on other ground,
which conceded his executive character throughout.
The whole discussion evinces an unanimous concurrence
in the principle that the Secretary of the Treasury
is wholly an executive officer, and the struggle of
the minority was to restrict his power as such.
From that time down to the present the Secretary of the
Treasury, the Treasurer, Register, Comptrollers, Auditors,
and clerks who fill the offices of that Department have in
the practice of the Government been considered and
treated as on the same footing with corresponding
grades of officers in all the other Executive Departments.
The custody of the public property, under such regulations
as may be prescribed by legislative authority, has always
been considered an appropriate function of the executive
department in this and all other Governments.
In accordance with this principle, every species of
property belonging to the United States (excepting
that which is in the use of the several coordinate
departments of the Government as means to aid
them in performing their appropriate functions)
is in charge of officers appointed by the President,
whether it be lands, or buildings, or merchandise, or
provisions, or clothing, or arms and munitions of war.
The superintendents and keepers of the
whole are appointed by the President,
responsible to him, and removable at his will.
Public money is but a species of public property.
It cannot be raised by taxation or customs, nor brought
into the Treasury in any other way except by law;
but whenever or howsoever obtained, its custody always
has been and always must be, unless the Constitution
be changed, entrusted to the executive department.
No officer can be created by Congress for the
purpose of taking charge of it whose appointment
would not by the Constitution at once devolve on
the President and who would not be responsible
to him for the faithful performance of his duties.
The legislative power may undoubtedly bind him and
the President by any laws they may think proper to enact;
they may prescribe in what place particular portions of
the public property shall be kept and for what reason it
shall be removed, as they may direct that supplies for
the Army or Navy shall be kept in particular stores,
and it will be the duty of the President to see that the
law is faithfully executed; yet will the custody remain
in the executive department of the Government.
Were the Congress to assume, with or without a legislative
act, the power of appointing officers, independently of the
President, to take the charge and custody of the public
property contained in the military and naval arsenals,
magazines, and storehouses, it is believed that such
an act would be regarded by all as a palpable usurpation
of executive power, subversive of the form as well as
the fundamental principles of our Government.
But where is the difference in principle whether the
public property be in the form of arms, munitions of war,
and supplies or in gold and silver or bank notes?
None can be perceived; none is believed to exist.
Congress cannot, therefore, take out of the hands of the
executive department the custody of the public property
or money without an assumption of executive power
and a subversion of the first principles of the Constitution.
The Congress of the United States have never
passed an act imperatively directing that the public
moneys shall be kept in any particular place or places.
From the origin of the Government to the year 1816
the statute book was wholly silent on the subject.
In 1789 a Treasurer was created, subordinate to the
Secretary of the Treasury, and through him to the President.
He was required to give bond safely to keep and faithfully
to disburse the public moneys, without any direction as
to the manner or places in which they should be kept.
By reference to the practice of the Government it is found
that from its first organization the Secretary of the Treasury,
acting under the supervision of the President, designated
the places in which the public moneys should be kept,
and especially directed all transfers from place to place.
This practice was continued, with the silent acquiescence
of Congress, from 1789 down to 1816, and although
many banks were selected and discharged, and although
a portion of the moneys were first placed in the State
banks, and then in the former Bank of the United States,
and upon the dissolution of that were again transferred
to the State banks, no legislation was thought
necessary by Congress, and all the operations
were originated and perfected by Executive authority.
The Secretary of the Treasury, responsible to the President,
and with his approbation, made contracts and arrangements
in relation to the whole subject-matter, which was thus
entirely committed to the direction of the President
under his responsibilities to the American people and
to those who were authorized to impeach and punish
him for any breach of this important trust.
The act of 1816 establishing the Bank of the United States
directed the deposits of public money to be made in that
bank and its branches in places in which the said bank and
branches thereof may be established, “unless the Secretary
of the Treasury should otherwise order and direct,” in which
event he was required to give his reasons to Congress.
This was but a continuation of his preexisting power as
the head of an Executive Department to direct where the
deposits should be made, with the superadded obligation of
giving his reasons to Congress for making them elsewhere
than in the Bank of the United States and its branches.
It is not to be considered that this provision in any degree
altered the relation between the Secretary of the Treasury
and the President as the responsible head of the executive
department, or released the latter from his constitutional
obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
On the contrary, it increased his responsibilities
by adding another to the long list of laws
which it was his duty to carry into effect.
It would be an extraordinary result if because the
person charged by law with a public duty is one of his
Secretaries it were less the duty of the President to see
that law faithfully executed than other laws enjoining
duties upon subordinate officers or private citizens.
If there be any difference, it would seem that the
obligation is the stronger in relation to the former,
because the neglect is in his presence
and the remedy at hand.
It cannot be doubted that it was the legal duty
of the Secretary of the Treasury to order and
direct the deposits of the public money to be made
elsewhere than in the Bank of the United States whenever
sufficient reasons existed for making the change.
If in such a case he neglected or refused to act,
he would neglect or refuse to execute the law.
What would be the sworn duty of the President?
Could he say that the Constitution did not bind
him to see the law faithfully executed because
it was one of his Secretaries and not himself
upon whom the service was specially imposed?
Might he not be asked whether there was any such
limitation to his obligations prescribed in the Constitution?
Whether he is not equally bound to take care
that the laws be faithfully executed, whether they
impose duties on the highest officer of State or
the lowest subordinate in any of the Departments?
Might he not be told that it was for the sole purpose
of causing all executive officers, from the highest
to the lowest, faithfully to perform the services
required of them by law that the people of the
United States have made him their Chief Magistrate
and the Constitution has clothed him with the entire
executive power of this Government?
The principles implied in these questions
appear too plain to need elucidation.
But here also we have a contemporaneous
construction of the act which shows that it was not
understood as in any way changing the relations
between the President and Secretary of the Treasury,
or as placing the latter out of Executive control even
in relation to the deposits of the public money.
Nor on that point are we left to any equivocal testimony.
The documents of the Treasury Department show
that the Secretary of the Treasury did apply to the
President and obtained his approbation and sanction
to the original transfer of the public deposits to the
present Bank of the United States, and did carry
the measure into effect in obedience to his decision.
They also show that transfers of the public deposits from the
branches of the Bank of the United States to State banks at
Chillicothe, Cincinnati, and Louisville, in 1819, were made
with the approbation of the President and by his authority.
They show that upon all important questions appertaining
to his Department, whether they related to the public
deposits or other matters, it was the constant practice
of the Secretary of the Treasury to obtain for his acts
the approval and sanction of the President.
These acts and the principles on which they were
rounded were known to all the departments of the
Government, to Congress and the country, and until very
recently appear never to have been called in question.
Thus was it settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the
whole practice of the Government that the entire executive
power is vested in the President of the United States;
that as incident to that power the right of appointing and
removing those officers who are to aid him in the execution
of the laws, with such restrictions only as the Constitution
prescribes, is vested in the President; that the Secretary of
the Treasury is one of those officers; that the custody of the
public property and money is an Executive function which,
in relation to the money, has always been exercised
through the Secretary of the Treasury and his subordinates;
that in the performance of these duties he is subject to
the supervision and control of the President, and in all
important measures having relation to them consults the
Chief Magistrate and obtains his approval and sanction;
that the law establishing the bank did not, as it could not,
change the relation between the President and the
Secretary—did not release the former from his
obligation to see the law faithfully executed nor
the latter from the President’s supervision and control;
that afterwards and before the Secretary did in fact
consult and obtain the sanction of the President to
transfers and removals of the public deposits, and that
all departments of the Government, and the nation itself,
approved or acquiesced in these acts and principles
as in strict conformity with our Constitution and laws.
During the last year the approaching termination,
according to the provisions of its charter and the solemn
decision of the American people, of the Bank of the
United States made it expedient, and its exposed
abuses and corruptions made it, in my opinion,
the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to place
the moneys of the United States in other depositories.
The Secretary did not concur in that opinion and
declined giving the necessary order and direction.
So glaring were the abuses and corruptions of the bank,
so evident its fixed purpose to persevere in them,
and so palpable its design by its money and power
to control the Government and change its character,
that I deemed it the imperative duty of the Executive
authority by the exertion of every power confided to it by
the Constitution and laws, to check its career and lessen
its ability to do mischief, even in the painful alternative
of dismissing the head of one of the Departments.
At the time the removal was made, other causes
sufficient to justify it existed, but if they had not the
Secretary would have been dismissed for this cause only.
His place I supplied by one whose opinions were well
known to me, and whose frank expression of them in
another situation and generous sacrifices of interest and
feeling when unexpectedly called to the station he now
occupies ought forever to have shielded his motives
from suspicion and his character from reproach.
In accordance with the views long before
expressed by him he proceeded, with my sanction,
to make arrangements for depositing the moneys
of the United States in other safe institutions.
The resolution of the Senate as originally framed and
as passed, if it refers to these acts, presupposes a right in
that body to interfere with this exercise of Executive power.
If the principle be once admitted,
it is not difficult to perceive where it may end.
If by a mere denunciation like this resolution the President
should ever be induced to act in a matter of official duty
contrary to the honest convictions of his own mind in
compliance with the wishes of the Senate, the constitutional
independence of the executive department would be
as effectually destroyed and its power as effectually
transferred to the Senate as if that end had been
accomplished by an amendment of the Constitution.
But if the Senate has a right to interfere with the
Executive powers, they have also the right to make
that interference effective, and if the assertion of the
power implied in the resolution be silently acquiesced in
we may reasonably apprehend that it will be followed
at some future day by an attempt at actual enforcement.
The Senate may refuse, except on the condition that
he will surrender his opinions to theirs and obey their will,
to perform their own constitutional functions, to pass
the necessary laws, to sanction appropriations proposed
by the House of Representatives, and to confirm
proper nominations made by the President.
It has already been maintained (and it is not conceivable
that the resolution of the Senate can be based on any
other principle) that the Secretary of the Treasury
is the officer of Congress and independent of the President;
that the President has no right to control him
and consequently none to remove him.
With the same propriety and on similar grounds may the
Secretary of State, the Secretaries of War and the Navy,
and the Postmaster-General each in succession be declared
independent of the President, the subordinates of Congress,
and removable only with the concurrence of the Senate.
Followed to its consequences, this principle will be
found effectually to destroy one coordinate department
of the Government, to concentrate in the hands of the
Senate the whole executive power, and to leave the
President as powerless as he would be useless—
the shadow of authority after the substance had departed.
The time and the occasion which have called forth the
resolution of the Senate seem to impose upon me an
additional obligation not to pass it over in silence.
Nearly forty-five years had the President exercised,
without a question as to his rightful authority, those powers
for the recent assumption of which he is now denounced.
The vicissitudes of peace and war had attended our
Government; violent parties, watchful to take advantage
of any seeming usurpation on the part of the Executive,
had distracted our councils; frequent removals, or forced
resignations in every sense tantamount to removals,
had been made of the Secretary and other officers
of the Treasury, and yet in no one instance is it known
that any man, whether patriot or partisan, had raised
his voice against it as a violation of the Constitution.
The expediency and justice of such changes in reference
to public officers of all grades have frequently been the
topic of discussion, but the constitutional right of the
President to appoint, control, and remove the head
of the Treasury as well as all other Departments
seems to have been universally conceded.
And what is the occasion upon which other
principles have been first officially asserted?
The Bank of the United States, a great moneyed
monopoly, had attempted to obtain a renewal
of its charter by controlling the elections of the
people and the action of the Government.
The use of its corporate funds and power in that attempt
was fully disclosed, and it was made known to the
President that the corporation was putting in train the
same course of measures, with the view of making
another vigorous effort, through an interference in
the elections of the people, to control public opinion
and force the Government to yield to its demands.
This, with its corruption of the press, its violation
of its charter, its exclusion of the Government
directors from its proceedings, its neglect of duty
and arrogant pretensions, made it, in the opinion
of the President, incompatible with the public interest
and the safety of our institutions that it should be
longer employed as the fiscal agent of the Treasury.
A Secretary of the Treasury appointed in the recess of
the Senate, who had not been confirmed by that body,
and whom the President might or might not at his
pleasure nominate to them, refused to do what his
superior in the executive department considered the
most imperative of his duties, and became in fact,
however innocent his motives, the protector of the bank.
And on this occasion it is discovered for the first time
that those who framed the Constitution misunderstood it;
that the First Congress and all its successors have been
under a delusion; that the practice of near forty-five years
is but a continued usurpation; that the Secretary of the
Treasury is not responsible to the President, and that
to remove him is a violation of the Constitution and laws
for which the President deserves to stand forever
dishonored on the journals of the Senate.
There are also some other circumstances connected
with the discussion and passage of the resolution to which
I feel it to be not only my right, but my duty, to refer.
It appears by the Journal of the Senate that among
the twenty-six Senators who voted for the resolution
on its final passage, and who had supported it in debate
in its original form, were one of the Senators from
the State of Maine, the two Senators from New Jersey,
and one of the Senators from Ohio.
It also appears by the same Journal and by the files of the
Senate that the legislatures of these States had severally
expressed their opinions in respect to the Executive
proceedings drawn in question before the Senate.
The two branches of the legislature of the State of Maine
on the 25th of January, 1834, passed a preamble
and series of resolutions in the following words:
Whereas at an early period after the election of
Andrew Jackson to the Presidency, in accordance
with the sentiments which he had uniformly expressed,
the attention of Congress was called to the
constitutionality and expediency of the renewal
of the charter of the United States Bank; and
Whereas the bank has transcended its chartered limits
in the management of its business transactions
and has abandoned the object of its creation by
engaging in political controversies by wielding its
power and influence to embarrass the Administration
of the General Government, and by bringing insolvency
and distress upon the commercial community; and
Whereas the public security from such an institution
consists less in its present pecuniary capacity to
discharge its liabilities than in the fidelity with which
the trusts reposed in it have been executed; and
Whereas the abuse and misapplication of the powers
conferred have destroyed the confidence of the public
in the officers of the bank and demonstrated that such
powers endanger the stability of republican institutions:
Therefore,
Resolved, That in the removal of the public deposits
from the Bank of the United States, as well as in the
manner of their removal, we recognize in the
Administration an adherence to constitutional rights
and the performance of a public duty.
Resolved, That this legislature entertain the same opinion
as heretofore expressed by preceding legislatures
of this State, that the Bank of the United States
ought not to be re-chartered.
Resolved, That the Senators of this State in the Congress
of the United States be instructed and the Representatives
be requested to oppose the restoration of the deposits
and the renewal of the charter of the United States Bank.
On the 11th of January 1834 the house of assembly
and council composing the legislature of the
State of New Jersey passed a preamble and
a series of resolutions in the following words:
Whereas the present crisis in our public affairs
calls for a decided expression of the voice
of the people of this State; and
Whereas we consider it the undoubted right of the
legislatures of the several States to instruct those
who represent their interests in the councils of the nation
in all matters which intimately concern the public weal
and may affect the happiness or well-being of the people:
Therefore,
1. Be it resolved by the council and general assembly
of this State, That while we acknowledge with feelings
of devout gratitude our obligations to the Great Ruler
of Nations for His mercies to us as a people that
we have been preserved alike from foreign war,
from the evils of internal commotions, and the
machinations of designing and ambitious men who would
prostrate the fair fabric of our Union, that we ought
nevertheless to humble ourselves in His presence and
implore His aid for the perpetuation of our republican
institutions and for a continuance of that unexampled
prosperity which our country has hitherto enjoyed.
2. Resolved, That we have undiminished confidence
in the integrity and firmness of the venerable patriot
who now holds the distinguished post of Chief Magistrate
of this nation, and whose purity of purpose and
elevated motives have so often received the unqualified
approbation of a large majority of his fellow-citizens.
3. Resolved, That we view with agitation and alarm
the existence of a great moneyed incorporation which
threatens to embarrass the operations of the
Government and by means of its unbounded
influence upon the currency of the country to
scatter distress and ruin throughout the community,
and that we therefore solemnly believe the present
Bank of the United States ought not to be re-chartered.
4. Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be instructed
and our members of the House of Representatives,
be requested to sustain by their votes and influence the
course adopted by the Secretary of the treasury, Mr. Taney,
in relation to the Bank of the United States and the deposits
of the Government moneys, believing as we do
the course of the Secretary to have been constitutional,
and that the public good required its adoption.
5. Resolved, That the governor be requested to
forward a copy of the above resolutions to each
of our Senators and Representatives from this State
to the Congress of the United States.
On the 21st day of February last the legislature of
the same State reiterated the opinions and instructions
before given by joint resolutions in the following words:
Resolved by the council and general assembly of the
State of New Jersey, That they do adhere to the
resolutions passed by them on the 11th day of January last,
relative to the President of the United States,
the Bank of the United States, and the course
of Mr. Taney in removing the Government deposits.
Resolved, That the legislature of New Jersey has not seen
any reason to depart from such resolutions since the
passage thereof, and it is their wish that they should
receive from our Senators and Representatives of this State
in the Congress of the United States that attention and
obedience which are due to the opinion of a sovereign
State openly expressed in its legislative capacity.
On the 2nd of January 1834 the senate and house of
representatives composing the legislature of Ohio
passed a preamble and resolutions in the following words:
Whereas there is reason to believe that the Bank of
the United States will attempt to obtain a renewal
of its charter at the present session of Congress; and
Whereas it is abundantly evident that said bank
has exercised powers derogatory to the spirit of
our free institutions and dangerous to the
liberties of these United States; and
Whereas there is just reason to doubt the
constitutional power of Congress to grant acts
of incorporation for banking purposes
out of the District of Columbia; and
Whereas we believe the proper disposal of the
public lands to be of the utmost importance to the
people of these United States, and that honor and
good faith require their equitable distribution: Therefore,
Resolved by the general assembly of the State of Ohio,
That we consider the removal of the public deposits from
the Bank of the United States as required by the best
interests of our country, and that a proper sense of
public duty imperiously demanded that that institution
should be no longer used as a depository of the public funds.
Resolved also, That we view with decided disapprobation
the renewed attempts in Congress to secure the passage
of the bill providing for the disposal of the public domain
upon the principles proposed by Mr. Clay, inasmuch as
we believe that such a law would be unequal
in its operations and unjust in its results.
Resolved also, That we heartily approve of the principles
set forth in the late veto message upon that subject; and
Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be instructed
and our Representatives requested to use their influence to
prevent the re-chartering of the Bank of the United States,
to sustain the Administration in its removal of the public
deposits, and to oppose the passage of a land bill
containing the principles adopted in the act upon
that subject passed at the last session of Congress.
Resolved, That the governor be requested to transmit
copies of the foregoing preamble and resolutions
to each of our Senators and Representatives.
It is thus seen that four Senators have declared
by their votes that the President, in the late Executive
proceedings in relation to the revenue, had been guilty
of the impeachable offense of “assuming upon himself
authority and power not conferred by the Constitution
and laws, but in derogation of both,” while the legislatures
of their respective States had deliberately approved
those very proceedings as consistent with the
Constitution and demanded by the public good.
If these four votes had been given in accordance
with the sentiments of the legislatures, as above expressed,
there would have been but twenty-two votes out of
forty-six for censuring the President, and the
unprecedented record of his conviction could not
have been placed upon the Journal of the Senate.
In thus referring to the resolutions and instructions
of the State legislatures I disclaim and repudiate
all authority or design to interfere with the responsibility
due from members of the Senate to their own
consciences, their constituents, and their country.
The facts now stated belong to the history of these
proceedings, and are important to the just development
of the principles and interests involved in them
as well as to the proper vindication of the executive
department, and with that view, and that view only,
are they here made the topic of remark.
The dangerous tendency of the doctrine which denies
to the President the power of supervising, directing, and
controlling the Secretary of the Treasury in like manner
with the other executive officers would soon be manifest
in practice were the doctrine to be established.
The President is the direct representative of the
American people, but the Secretaries are not.
If the Secretary of the Treasury be independent
of the President in the execution of the laws,
then is there no direct responsibility to the people
in that important branch of this government to which
is committed the care of the national finances.
And it is in the power of the Bank of the United States,
or any other corporation, body of men, or individuals,
if a Secretary shall be found to accord with them in opinion
or can be induced in practice to promote their views,
to control through him the whole action of the Government
(so far as it is exercised by his Department)
in defiance of the Chief Magistrate elected
by the people and responsible to them.
But the evil tendency of the particular doctrine
averted to, though sufficiently serious, would be as
nothing in comparison with the pernicious consequences
which would inevitably flow from the approbation
situational power of arraigning and censuring the official
conduct of the Executive in the manner recently pursued.
Such proceedings are eminently calculated to unsettle the
foundations of the Government, to disturb the harmonious
action of its different departments, and to break down the
checks and balances by which the wisdom of its
framers sought to insure its stability and usefulness.
The honest differences of opinion which occasionally
exist between the Senate and the President in regard to
matters in which both are obliged to participate are
sufficiently embarrassing; but if the course recently adopted
by the Senate shall hereafter be frequently pursued,
it is not only obvious that the harmony of the relations
between the President and the Senate will be destroyed,
but that other and graver effects will ultimately ensue.
If the censures of the Senate be submitted to by the
President, the confidence of the people in his ability
and virtue and the character and usefulness of his
Administration will soon be at an end, and the real
power of the Government will fall into the hands of
a body holding their offices for long terms, not elected
by the people and not to them directly responsible.
If on the other hand the illegal censures of the Senate
should be resisted by the President, collisions and
angry controversies might ensue, discreditable in
their progress and in the end compelling the people
to adopt the conclusion either that their Chief Magistrate
was unworthy of their respect or that the Senate
was chargeable with calumny and injustice.
Either of these results would impair public confidence
in the perfection of the system and lead to serious
alterations of its framework or the practical
abandonment of some of its provisions.
The influence of such proceedings on the other
departments of the Government, and more especially
on the States, could not fail to be extensively pernicious.
When the judges in the last resort of official misconduct
themselves overleap the bounds of their authority as
prescribed by the Constitution, what general disregard of its
provisions might not their example be expected to produce?
And who does not perceive that such contempt of the
Federal Constitution by one of its most important
departments would hold out the strongest temptations to
resistance on the part of the State sovereignties whenever
they shall suppose their just rights to have been invaded?
Thus all the independent departments of the Government
and the states which compose our confederated Union,
instead of attending to their appropriate duties and leaving
those who may offend to be reclaimed or punished in the
manner pointed out in the Constitution, would fall to
mutual crimination and recrimination and give to the
people confusion and anarchy instead of order and law,
until at length some form of aristocratic power would
be established on the ruins of the Constitution
or the States be broken into separate communities.
Far be it from me to charge or to insinuate that
the present Senate of the United States intend in
the most distant way to encourage such a result.
It is not of their motives or designs, but only of the
tendency of their acts, that it is my duty to speak.
It is, if possible, to make Senators themselves sensible
of the danger which lurks under the precedent set in
their resolution, and at any rate to perform my duty
as the responsible head of one of the coequal
departments of the Government, that I have been
compelled to point out the consequences to which the
discussion and passage of the resolution may lead if the
tendency of the measure be not checked in its inception.
It is due to the high trust with which I have been charged,
to those who may be called to succeed me in it,
to the representatives of the people whose constitutional
prerogative has been unlawfully assumed, to the people
and to the States, and to the Constitution they have
established that I should not permit its provisions
to be broken down by such an attack on the
executive department without at least some effort
“to preserve, protect, and defend” them.
With this view, and for the reasons which have been stated,
I do hereby solemnly protest against the aforementioned
proceedings of the Senate as unauthorized by the
Constitution, contrary to its spirit and to several of its
express provisions, subversive of that distribution of the
powers of government which it has ordained and
established, destructive of the checks and safeguards by
which those powers were intended on the one hand to be
controlled and on the other to be protected, and calculated
by their immediate and collateral effects, by their character
and tendency, to concentrate in the hands of a body
not directly amenable to the people a degree of
influence and power dangerous to their liberties
and fatal to the Constitution of their choice.
The resolution of the Senate contains an imputation
upon my private as well as upon my public character,
and as it must stand forever on their journals,
I cannot close this substitute for that defense
which I have not been allowed to present in the
ordinary form without remarking that I have lived
in vain if it be necessary to enter into a formal vindication
of my character and purposes from such an imputation.
In vain do I bear upon my person enduring memorials
of that contest in which American liberty was purchased;
in vain have I since periled property, fame, and life
in defense of the rights and privileges so dearly bought;
in vain am I now without a personal aspiration or the hope
of individual advantage, encountering responsibilities and
dangers from which by mere inactivity in relation to a single
point I might have been exempt, if any serious doubts can
be entertained as to the purity of my purposes and motives.
If I had been ambitious, I should have sought
an alliance with that powerful institution which
even now aspires to no divided empire.
If I had been venal, I should have sold myself to its designs.
Had I preferred personal comfort and official
ease to the performance of my arduous duty,
I should have ceased to molest it.
In the history of conquerors and usurpers, never
in the fire of youth nor in the vigor of manhood
could I find an attraction to lure me from the path of duty,
and now I shall scarcely find and inducement to
commence their career of ambition when gray hairs
and a decaying fame, instead of inviting to toil and battle,
call me to the contemplation of other worlds,
where conquerors cease to be honored
and usurpers expiate their crimes.
The only ambition I can feel is to acquit myself to Him
to whom I must soon render an account of my stewardship,
to serve my fellowmen, and to live respected
and honored in the history of my country.
No; the ambition which leads me on is an anxious desire
and a fixed determination to return to the people unimpaired
the sacred trust they have confided to my charge;
to heal the wounds of the Constitution and preserve it
from further violation; to persuade my countrymen,
so far as I may, that it is not in a splendid government
supported by powerful monopolies and aristocratical
establishments that they will find happiness or their
liberties protection, but in a plain system, void of pomp,
protecting all and granting favors to none, dispensing its
blessings like the dews of Heaven unseen and unfelt save
in the freshness and beauty they contribute to produce.
It is such a government that the genius of our people
requires; such a one only under which our States may
remain for ages to come united, prosperous, and free.
If the Almighty Being who has hitherto sustained and
protected me will but vouchsafe to make my feeble powers
instrumental to such a result, I shall anticipate with pleasure
the place to be assigned me in the history of my country,
and die contented with the belief that I have contributed
in some small degree to increase the value
and prolong the duration of American liberty.
To the end that the resolution of the Senate may not be
hereafter drawn into precedent with the authority of
silent acquiescence on the part of the executive department,
and to the end also that my motives and views in the
Executive proceedings denounced in that resolution
may be known to my fellow-citizens, to the world,
and to all posterity, I respectfully request that
this message and protest may be entered
at length on the journals of the Senate.4
On April 14 Henry Clay compared “the Whigs of the present day”
to those who had resisted King George III,
and the National Republicans
and the Anti-Mason parties soon coalesced into the Whig Party.
Jackson responded with a long protest that Taney helped him write on April 15
which asserted the President’s duty “to see that the law is faithfully executed.”
Hearing a rumor that a conspiracy in Baltimore was going to raise 5,000 troops
to destroy the President, Jackson threatened to hang them all.
He had received a death threat in February and got others in April and October.
President Jackson in April 1834 wrote this letter to Amos Kendall:
My research has been that by President Washington,
Mr. E. Randolph was removed from office;
by Mr. Adams, Mr. Pickering; by Mr. Madison,
Mr. Smith, and Mr. Granger all Cabinet members.
The causes for removal is looking into.
By the resolutions of Mr. Clay as passed by the Senate,
it is to be observed that there is no one specific charge
made wherein I have assumed powers not conferred by
the Constitution, but the charge is general; “in the late
proceedings in relation to the public revenue;” therefore
although it would be improper in me to defend myself before
the Senate on any particular charge by them made, I think
I can with propriety enumerate what I have done, to wit:
ordered the Deposits to be removed; show the reasons
why, and that I was well authorized so to do, and from
the power given by the Board of Directors to the President
of the Bank to use all money on deposit, at will without
responsibility or voucher; and other corruptions and
violations of the charter as shown by the report of
the Government Directors, that it would have
been criminal in me not to have removed them.
And notwithstanding the bank might have been solvent,
still the public Deposits could not be considered safe,
confided solely to the will of one individual, who had
accepted the agency of corruption and the means to
carry it into effect; and conclude that surely those
denunciations could not be based upon these proceedings
that were so essential for the safety of the public money,
the purity of elections, and the public morals.
Next, that it surely cannot be for the removal
of a secretary who knew before he came into
office the determination of the Executive
to remove the public deposits.
Could I, upon inquiry, find safety for them in the
State Banks, and through them a facility to transmit
the public money from place to place, and establish a
safe system, to give to the country a uniform currency.
These acts being necessary from the charter of the
U. S. Bank being near expiring, and not to be renewed,
when the Secretary took the stand to defeat the views
of the Executive, and would not obey the directions of the
President; but violating his promise to retire if he could not,
and no doubt remains now from his conduct that there
was an understanding with Mr. Biddle when he accepted
the office that he would not remove the Deposits.
Did not Washington remove Randolph?
Did not Adams remove Pickering,
Madison Smith and Granger for less cause?
and the Constitution gives the Executive the power to do so.
The order of the President to the Secretary of the Treasury
for removing them could not be charged by the Senate
as a violation of the Constitution and laws, because it has
been practiced by him since the origin of the government,
and approved by Congress in the case of Mr. Secretary
Crawford when the mover of the resolution under view
was a member of Congress and approving the same.
The violation of the Constitution and laws cannot be for
this—it must then be by this false clamor to endeavor
to degrade the Executive in the minds of the people and
destroy the confidence of the people in him, and
thereby procure a re-charter of the Bank of the U. S.
Against all such unauthorized, unprecedented,
unconstitutional conduct by the Senate I do protest.
P.S. I have been engaged with the protest,
but have been so interrupted by other matters and
company that I have no time for proper reflection.
Mr. Butler is engaged in considering the legal part.
Mr. Taney is worn out almost, and I have a great desire
for your health to be restored, that you may be able to
review and arrange that part embraced by the hasty
scroll herewith sent you this evening at your own House.
I have been laboring under a bad headache this three days
which renders me quite unable to do anything properly.5
On 21 April 1834 Jackson and Treasury Secretary Taney worked
on currency reform, allowing the Secretary to remove deposits from any bank,
having banks submit monthly reports, permitting the government to
examine bank records, and issuing no more notes under $5.
Taney’s report was sent to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The Senate did not confirm Taney, the first cabinet nominee to be rejected.
Taney had invested $5,000 in the Union Bank of Maryland during the removal.
Jackson nominated Levi Woodbury, and on July 1 he became the Treasury Secretary.
Former New York Mayor Philip Hone was a wealthy merchant,
and in the early spring he may have been the first to call Jackson the “imperial President.”
He left behind a descriptive diary of the era 1828-51.
On April 15 Daniel Webster used the “imperial” term in a letter to Benjamin Welles.
Henry Clay led the opposition to the President and on April 14 accepted the name
of “Whigs” for the new political party that included Senators Webster and Calhoun
as well as those opposing Jackson’s attack on the U. S. bank.
By summer most leaders opposing Jackson were calling themselves Whigs.
Well organized Whig parties arose in New York, Massachusetts,
New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
In 1833 and 1834 two land offices in northern Mississippi
sold about 5 million acres at low prices the Jacksonians liked.
Jackson in June asked state legislatures to remove senators who had voted
to censure him, and 15 of the 26 were gone by the end of his second term.
That summer Jackson at a constitutional convention in Tennessee
toasted “gold and silver coinage” which he believed would
“protect the labor of our country without the aid of a national bank.”
On November 4 the journalist William Leggett wrote an editorial
in the New York Evening Post against the U. S. Bank, arguing that
the privilege of self-government is often molested by power and wealth
that steal from the many for the few.
He wrote about
The privilege of self-government is one which
the people will never be permitted to enjoy unmolested.
Power and wealth are continually stealing
from the many to the few.
There is a class continually gaining ground in the
community, who desire to monopolize the advantages
of the government, to hedge themselves round with
exclusive privileges, and elevate themselves at
the expense of the great body of the people.
These in our society are emphatically the aristocracy;
and these with all such as their means of persuasion or
corruption or intimidation, can move to act with them,
constitute the party which are now struggling against
the democracy, for that perpetuation of an odious
and dangerous moneyed institution.
Putting out of view for the present all other objections
to the United States Bank—that it is a monopoly,
that it possesses enormous and overshadowing power,
that it has been mostly corruptly managed, and that
it is identified with political leaders to whom the people
of the United States must ever be strongly opposed—
the constitutional objection alone
is an insurmountable objection to it.
The government of the United States
is a limited sovereignty.
The powers which it may exercise are
expressly enumerated in the Constitution.
None not thus stated, or that are not “necessary and proper”
to carry those which are stated into effect
can be allowed to be exercised by it.
The power to establish a bank is not expressly given;
neither is it incidental since it cannot be shown
to be “necessary” to carry the powers
which are given or any of them into effect.
That power cannot therefore be exercised
without transcending the constitutional limits.6
The Democrats regained control of the United States Senate in the November elections.
In this Sixth Annual Message to Congress on 1 December 1834 Jackson presented
a long review in 26 pages on his foreign policies:
In performing my duty at the opening of your present
session it gives me pleasure to congratulate you again
upon the prosperous condition of our beloved country.
Divine Providence has favored us with general health,
with rich rewards in the fields of agriculture and in
every branch of labor, and with peace to cultivate
and extend the various resources which employ
the virtue and enterprise of our citizens.
Let us trust that in surveying a scene so flattering
to our free institutions our joint deliberations to
preserve them may be crowned with success.
Our foreign relations continue, with but few
exceptions, to maintain the favorable aspect
which they bore in my last annual message,
and promise to extend those advantages which
the principles that regulate our intercourse with
other nations are so well calculated to secure.
The question of our North East boundary is
still pending with Great Britain, and the proposition
made in accordance with the resolution of the Senate
for the establishment of a line according to the treaty
of 1783 has not been accepted by that Government.
Believing that every disposition is felt on both sides to
adjust this perplexing question to the satisfaction of all
the parties interested in it, the hope is yet indulged that
it may be effected on the basis of that proposition.
With the Governments of Austria, Russia,
Prussia, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark
the best understanding exists.
Commerce with all is fostered and protected
by reciprocal good will under the sanction
of liberal conventional or legal provisions.
In the midst of her internal difficulties the
Queen of Spain has ratified the convention for the
payment of the claims of our citizens arising since 1819.
It is in the course of execution on her part,
and a copy of it is now laid before you for such
legislation as may be found necessary to enable
those interested to derive the benefits of it.
Yielding to the force of circumstances and to
the wise counsels of time and experience, that
power has finally resolved no longer to occupy
the unnatural position in which she stood to the
new Governments established in this hemisphere.
I have the great satisfaction of stating to you
that in preparing the way for the restoration
of harmony between those who have sprung
from the same ancestors, who are allied by
common interests, profess the same religion,
and speak the same language the United States
have been actively instrumental.
Our efforts to effect this good work will be
persevered in while they are deemed useful
to the parties and our entire disinterestedness
continues to be felt and understood.
The act of Congress to countervail the discriminating
duties to the prejudice of our navigation levied in
Cuba and Puerto Rico has been transmitted to the
minister of the United States at Madrid, to be
communicated to the Government of the Queen.
No intelligence of its receipt has yet
reached the Department of State.
If the present condition of the country permits the
Government to make a careful and enlarged
examination of the true interests of these important
portions of its dominions, no doubt is entertained
that their future intercourse with the United States
will be placed upon a more just and liberal basis.
The Florida archives have not
yet been selected and delivered.
Recent orders have been sent to the agent
of the United States at Havana to return with
all that he can obtain, so that they may be in
Washington before the session of the Supreme Court,
to be used in the legal questions there pending
to which the Government is a party.
Internal tranquility is happily restored to Portugal.
The distracted state of the country rendered
unavoidable the postponement of a final
payment of the just claims of our citizens.
Our diplomatic relations will be soon resumed,
and the long-subsisting friendship with that
power affords the strongest guaranty that
the balance due will receive prompt attention.
The first installment due under the convention
of indemnity with the King of the Two Sicilies
has been duly received, and an offer has been
made to extinguish the whole by a prompt
payment—an offer I did not consider myself
authorized to accept, as the indemnification
provided is the exclusive property of
individual citizens of the United States.
The original adjustment of our claims and the
anxiety displayed to fulfill at once the stipulations
made for the payment of them are highly
honorable to the Government of the Two Sicilies.
When it is recollected that they were the result of the
injustice of an intrusive power temporarily dominant in
its territory, a repugnance to acknowledge and to pay
which would have been neither unnatural nor unexpected,
the circumstances cannot fail to exalt its character for
justice and good faith in the eyes of all nations.
The treaty of amity and commerce between
the United States and Belgium, brought to your
notice in my last annual message as sanctioned
by the Senate, but the ratifications of which had
not been exchanged owing to a delay in its reception
at Brussels and a subsequent absence of the Belgian
minister of foreign affairs, has been, after mature
deliberation, finally disavowed by that Government
as inconsistent with the powers and instructions
given to their minister who negotiated it.
This disavowal was entirely unexpected, as the liberal
principles embodied in the convention, and which form
the ground-work of the objections to it, were perfectly
satisfactory to the Belgian representative, and were
supposed to be not only within the powers granted,
but expressly conformable to the instructions given to him.
An offer, not yet accepted, has been made by Belgium
to renew negotiations for a treaty less liberal in its
provisions on questions of general maritime law.
Our newly established relations with the Sublime
Porte promise to be useful to our commerce and
satisfactory in every respect to this Government.
Our intercourse with the Barbary Powers continues
without important change, except that the present
political state of Algiers has induced me to terminate
the residence there of a salaried consul and to
substitute an ordinary consulate, to remain so long
as the place continues in the possession of France.
Our first treaty with one of these powers,
the Emperor of Morocco, was formed in 1786,
and was limited to fifty years.
That period has almost expired.
I shall take measures to renew it with the
greater satisfaction as its stipulations are just
and liberal and have been, with mutual fidelity
and reciprocal advantage, scrupulously fulfilled.
Intestine dissensions have too frequently occurred
to mar the prosperity, interrupt the commerce, and
distract the governments of most of the nations of this
hemisphere which have separated themselves from Spain.
When a firm and permanent understanding with the parent
country shall have produced a formal acknowledgment of
their independence, and the idea of danger from that
quarter can be no longer entertained, the friends of freedom
expect that those countries, so favored by nature, will be
distinguished for their love of justice and their devotion
to those peaceful arts the assiduous cultivation of which
confers honor upon nations and gives value to human life.
In the mean time I confidently hope that the apprehensions
entertained that some of the people of these luxuriant
regions may be tempted, in a moment of unworthy
distrust of their own capacity for the enjoyment of liberty,
to commit the too common error of purchasing present
repose by bestowing on some favorite leaders the fatal
gift of irresponsible power will not be realized.
With all these Governments and with that of
Brazil no unexpected changes in our relations
have occurred during the present year.
Frequent causes of just complaint have arisen
upon the part of the citizens of the United States,
sometimes from the irregular action of the constituted
subordinate authorities of the maritime regions and
sometimes from the leaders or partisans of those
in arms against the established Governments.
In all cases representations have been or will
be made, and as soon as their political affairs are
in a settled position it is expected that our friendly
remonstrances will be followed by adequate redress.
The Government of Mexico made known in 1833
December last the appointment of commissioners
and a surveyor on its part to run, in conjunction
with ours, the boundary line between its territories
and the United States, and excused the delay for
the reasons anticipated—the prevalence of civil war.
The commissioners and surveyors not having met
within the time stipulated by the treaty, a new
arrangement became necessary, and our chargé
d’affaires was instructed in 1833 January to negotiate
in Mexico an article additional to the pre-existing treaty.
This instruction was acknowledged, and no difficulty
was apprehended in the accomplishment of that object.
By information just received that additional article
to the treaty will be obtained and transmitted to
this country as soon as it can receive the
ratification of the Mexican Congress.
The reunion of the three States of New Grenada,
Venezuela, and Ecuador, forming the Republic of Colombia,
seems every day to become more improbable.
The commissioners of the two first are understood
to be now negotiating a just division of the obligations
contracted by them when united under one government.
The civil war in Ecuador, it is believed, has prevented
even the appointment of a commissioner on its part.
I propose at an early day to submit, in the
proper form, the appointment of a diplomatic
agent to Venezuela, the importance of the
commerce of that country to the United States
and the large claims of our citizens upon the
Government arising before and since the division
of Colombia rendering it, in my judgment,
improper longer to delay this step.
Our representatives to Central America,
Peru, and Brazil are either at or on their
way to their respective posts.
From the Argentine Republic, from which
a minister was expected to this Government,
nothing further has been heard.
Occasion has been taken on the departure of a
new consul to Buenos Aires to remind that
Government that its long delayed minister, whose
appointment had been made known to us, had not arrived.
It becomes my unpleasant duty to inform you that
this pacific and highly gratifying picture of our foreign
relations does not include those with France at this time.
It is not possible that any Government and people could
be more sincerely desirous of conciliating a just and
friendly intercourse with another nation than are those
of the United States with their ancient ally and friend.
This disposition is founded as well on the most grateful
and honorable recollections associated with our struggle
for independence as upon a well-grounded conviction
that it is consonant with the true policy of both.
The people of the United States could not, therefore,
see without the deepest regret even a temporary
interruption of the friendly relations between the
two countries—a regret which would, I am sure,
be greatly aggravated if there should turn out to be
any reasonable ground for attributing such a result
to any act of omission or commission on our part.
I derive, therefore, the highest satisfaction from
being able to assure you that the whole course of
this Government has been characterized by a spirit
so conciliatory and forbearing as to make it impossible
that our justice and moderation should be questioned,
whatever may be the consequences of a longer
perseverance on the part of the French Government in
her omission to satisfy the conceded claims of our citizens.
The history of the accumulated and unprovoked
aggressions upon our commerce committed by
authority of the existing Governments of France
between the years 1800 and 1817 has been
rendered too painfully familiar to Americans to
make its repetition either necessary or desirable.
It will be sufficient here to remark that there has for many
years been scarcely a single administration of the French
Government by whom the justice and legality of the claims
of our citizens to indemnity were not to a very considerable
extent admitted, and yet near a quarter of a century has
been wasted in ineffectual negotiations to secure it.
Deeply sensible of the injurious effects resulting from
this state of things upon the interests and character of
both nations, I regarded it as among my first duties to
cause one more effort to be made to satisfy France that
a just and liberal settlement of our claims was as well
due to her own honor as to their incontestable validity.
The negotiation for this purpose was commenced with the
late Government of France, and was prosecuted with such
success as to leave no reasonable ground to doubt that a
settlement of a character quite as liberal as that which was
subsequently made would have been effected had not the
revolution by which the negotiation was cut off taken place.
The discussions were resumed with the present
Government, and the result showed that we were
not wrong in supposing that an event by which the
two Governments were made to approach each other
so much nearer in their political principles, and by
which the motives for the most liberal and friendly
intercourse were so greatly multiplied, could exercise
no other than a salutary influence upon the negotiation.
After the most deliberate and thorough examination of
the whole subject a treaty between the two Governments
was concluded and signed at Paris on 1831-07-04, by which
it was stipulated that “the French Government, in order to
liberate itself from all the reclamations preferred against it
by citizens of the United States for unlawful seizures,
captures, sequestrations, confiscations, or destruction of
their vessels, cargoes, or other property, engages to pay
a sum of 25,000,000 francs to the United States, who
shall distribute it among those entitled in the manner and
according to the rules it shall determine;” and it was also
stipulated on the part of the French Government that this
25,000,000 francs should “be paid at Paris, in six annual
installments of 4,166,666 francs and 66 centimes each,
into the hands of such person or persons as shall be
authorized by the Government of the US to receive it,”
the first installment to be paid “at the expiration of one
year next following the exchange of the ratifications of
this convention and the others at successive intervals
of a year, one after another, ‘til the whole shall be paid.
To the amount of each of the said installments
shall be added interest at 4% thereupon, as upon
the other installments then remaining unpaid,
the said interest to be computed from the day
of the exchange of the present convention.”
It was also stipulated on the part of the United States,
for the purpose of being completely liberated from all the
reclamations presented by France on behalf of its citizens,
that the sum of 1,500,000 francs should be paid to the
Government of France in six annual installments, to be
deducted out of the annual sums which France had agreed
to pay, interest thereupon being in like manner computed
from the day of the exchange of the ratifications.
In addition to this stipulation, important advantages
were secured to France by the following article, viz:
The wines of France, from and after the exchange
of the ratifications of the present conventions,
shall be admitted to consumption in the States
of the Union at duties which shall not exceed the
following rates by the gallon (such as it is used at
present for wines in the US), to wit: 6 cents for
red wines in casks; 10 cents for white wines in
casks, and 22 cents for wines of all sorts in bottles.
The proportions existing between the duties on
French wines thus reduced and the general rates
of the tariff which went into operation 1829-01-01,
shall be maintained in case the Government
of the United States should think proper to
diminish those general rates in a new tariff.
In consideration of this stipulation, which
shall be binding on the United States for 10 years,
the French Government abandons the reclamations
which it had formed in relation to the 8th article
of the treaty of cession of Louisiana.
It engages, moreover, to establish on the
long-staple cottons of the United States which
after the exchange of the ratifications of the
present convention shall be brought directly thence
to France by the vessels of the US or by French
vessels the same duties as on short-staple cotton.
This treaty was duly ratified in the manner prescribed
by the constitutions of both countries, and the ratification
was exchanged at the city of Washington on 1832-02-02.
On account of its commercial stipulations it was in five days
thereafter laid before the Congress of the United States,
which proceeded to enact such laws favorable to the
commerce of France as were necessary to carry it
into full execution, and France has from that period
to the present been in the unrestricted enjoyment of
the valuable privileges that were thus secured to her.
The faith of the French nation having been thus solemnly
pledged through its constitutional organ for the liquidation
and ultimate payment of the long deferred claims of our
citizens, as also for the adjustment of other points of great
and reciprocal benefits to both countries, and the United
States having, with a fidelity and promptitude by which
their conduct will, I trust, be always characterized,
done everything that was necessary to carry the
treaty into full and fair effect on their part, counted
with the most perfect confidence on equal fidelity
and promptitude on the part of the French Government.
In this reasonable expectation we have been,
I regret to inform you, wholly disappointed.
No legislative provision has been made by France for
the execution of the treaty, either as it respects the
indemnity to be paid or the commercial benefits to be
secured to the United States, and the relations between
the United States and that power in consequence
thereof are placed in a situation threatening to
interrupt the good understanding which has so long
and so happily existed between the two nations.
Not only has the French Government been thus wanting
in the performance of the stipulations it has so solemnly
entered into with the United States, but its omissions
have been marked by circumstances which would seem
to leave us without satisfactory evidences that such
performance will certainly take place at a future period.
Advice of the exchange of ratifications
reached Paris prior to 1832-04-08.
The French Chambers were then sitting, and continued
in session until 1832-04-21, and although one installment
of the indemnity was payable on 1833-02-02, one year
after the exchange of ratifications, no application was
made to the Chambers for the required appropriation,
and in consequence of no appropriation having then been
made the draft of the United States Government for that
installment was dishonored by the minister of finance, and
the United States thereby involved in much controversy.
The next session of the Chambers commenced
on 1832-11-19, and continued until 1833-04-25.
Notwithstanding the omission to pay the first installment
had been made the subject of earnest remonstrance
on our part, the treaty with the United States and a bill
making the necessary appropriations to execute it were
not laid before the Chamber of Deputies until 1833-04-06,
nearly five months after its meeting, and only
nineteen days before the close of the session.
The bill was read and referred to a committee,
but there was no further action upon it.
The next session of the Chambers commenced
on 1833-04-26, and continued until 1833-06-26.
A new bill was introduced on 1833-06-11, but nothing
important was done in relation to it during the session.
In 1834 April, nearly three years after the signature
of the treaty, the final action of the French Chambers
upon the bill to carry the treaty into effect was obtained,
and resulted in a refusal of the necessary appropriations.
The avowed grounds upon which the bill was rejected
are to be found in the published debates of that body,
and no observations of mine can be necessary
to satisfy Congress of their utter insufficiency.
Although the gross amount of the claims of our citizens
is probably greater than will be ultimately allowed by
the commissioners, sufficient is, never the less, shown to
render it absolutely certain that the indemnity falls far short
of the actual amount of our just claims, independently of
the question of damages and interest for the detention.
That the settlement involved a sacrifice in this respect
was well known at the time—a sacrifice which was
cheerfully acquiesced in by the different branches of
the Federal Government, whose action upon the treaty
was required from a sincere desire to avoid further
collision upon this old and disturbing subject and in
the confident expectation that the general relations
between the two countries would be improved thereby.
The refusal to vote the appropriation, the news
of which was received from our minister in Paris
about 1834-05-15, might have been considered the final
determination of the French Government not to execute
the stipulations of the treaty, and would have justified an
immediate communication of the facts to Congress, with a
recommendation of such ultimate measures as the interest
and honor of the United States might seem to require.
But with the news of the refusal of the Chambers to
make the appropriation were conveyed the regrets
of the King and a declaration that a national vessel
should be forthwith sent out with instructions to the
French minister to give the most ample explanations
of the past and the strongest assurances for the future.
After a long passage the promised dispatch vessel arrived.
The pledges given by the French minister upon receipt of
his instructions were that as soon after the election of the
new members as the charter would permit the legislative
Chambers of France should be called together and the
proposition for an appropriation laid before them; that all
the constitutional powers of the King and his cabinet should
be exerted to accomplish the object, and that the result
should be made known early enough to be communicated
to Congress at the commencement of the present session.
Relying upon these pledges, and not doubting that the
acknowledged justice of our claims, the promised
exertions of the King and his cabinet, and, above all,
that sacred regard for the national faith and honor for
which the French character has been so distinguished
would secure an early execution of the treaty in all its
parts, I did not deem it necessary to call the attention
of Congress to the subject at the last session.
I regret to say that the pledges made through
the minister of France have not been redeemed.
The new Chambers met on 1834-07-31, and although the
subject of fulfilling treaties was alluded to in the speech
from the throne, no attempt was made by the King or his
cabinet to procure an appropriation to carry it into execution.
The reasons given for this omission, although they might be
considered sufficient in an ordinary case, are not consistent
with the expectations founded upon the assurances given
here, for there is no constitutional obstacle to entering into
legislative business at the first meeting of the Chambers.
This point, however, might have been over-looked had
not the Chambers, instead of being called to meet at so
early a day that the result of their deliberations might
be communicated to me before the meeting of Congress,
been prorogued to 1834-12-29—a period so late
that their decision can scarcely be made known
to the present Congress prior to its dissolution.
To avoid this delay our minister in Paris, in virtue
of the assurance given by the French minister in
the United States, strongly urged the convocation
of the Chambers at an earlier day, but without success.
It is proper to remark, however, that this refusal
has been accompanied with the most positive
assurances on the part of the executive government
of France of their intention to press the appropriation
at the ensuing session of the Chambers.
The executive branch of this Government has,
as matters stand, exhausted all the authority upon
the subject with which it is invested and which it had
any reason to believe could be beneficially employed.
The idea of acquiescing in the refusal to execute
the treaty will not, I am confident, be for a moment
entertained by any branch of this Government, and further
negotiation upon the subject is equally out of the question.
If it shall be the pleasure of Congress to await
the further action of the French Chambers,
no further consideration of the subject will
at this session probably be required at your hands.
But if from the original delay in asking for an appropriation,
from the refusal of the Chambers to grant it when asked,
from the omission to bring the subject before the Chambers
at their last session, from the fact that, including that
session, there have been five different occasions when the
appropriation might have been made, and from the delay in
convoking the Chambers until some weeks after the meeting
of Congress, when it was well known that a communication
of the whole subject to Congress at the last session was
prevented by assurances that it should be disposed of
before its present meeting, you should feel yourselves
constrained to doubt whether it be the intention of the
French Government, in all its branches, to carry the treaty
into effect, and think that such measures as the occasion
may be deemed to call for should be now adopted, the
important question arises what those measures shall be.
Our institutions are essentially pacific.
Peace and friendly intercourse with all nations
are as much the desire of our Government
as they are the interest of our people.
But these objects are not to be permanently secured
by surrendering the rights of our citizens or permitting
solemn treaties for their indemnity, in cases of
flagrant wrong, to be abrogated or set aside.
It is undoubtedly in the power of Congress
seriously to affect the agricultural and manufacturing
interests of France by the passage of laws relating
to her trade with the United States.
Her products, manufactures, and tonnage may be
subjected to heavy duties in our ports, or all
commercial intercourse with her may be suspended.
But there are powerful and to my mind conclusive
objections to this mode of proceeding.
We cannot embarrass or cut off the trade of France
without at the same time in some degree
embarrassing or cutting off our own trade.
The injury of such a warfare must fall, though unequally,
upon our own citizens, and could not but impair the
means of the Government and weaken that united
sentiment in support of the rights and honor of the
nation which must now pervade every bosom.
Nor is it impossible that such a course of legislation
would introduce once more into our national councils
those disturbing questions in relation to the tariff
of duties which have been so recently put to rest.
Besides, by every measure adopted by the Government
of the United States with the view of injuring France the
clear perception of right which will induce our own people
and the rulers and people of all other nations, even of
France herself, to pronounce our quarrel just will be
obscured and the support rendered to us in a final resort to
more decisive measures will be more limited and equivocal.
There is but one point of controversy,
and upon that the whole civilized world
must pronounce France to be in the wrong.
We insist that she shall pay us a sum of money which
she has acknowledged to be due, and of the justice of
this demand there can be but one opinion among mankind.
True policy would seem to dictate that the question
at issue should be kept thus disencumbered and that
not the slightest pretense should be given to France
to persist in her refusal to make payment by any act
on our part affecting the interests of her people.
The question should be left, as it is now, in such
an attitude that when France fulfills her treaty
stipulations, all controversy will be at an end.
It is my conviction that the United States ought to insist
on a prompt execution of the treaty, and in case it be
refused or longer delayed take redress into their own hands.
After the delay on the part of France of a quarter of a
century in acknowledging these claims by treaty,
it is not to be tolerated that another quarter of a century
is to be wasted in negotiating about the payment.
The laws of nations provide a remedy for such occasions.
It is a well-settled principle of the international code
that where one nation owes another a liquidated debt
which it refuses or neglects to pay, the aggrieved party
may seize on the property belonging to the other,
its citizens or subjects, sufficient to pay the debt
without giving just cause of war.
This remedy has been repeatedly resorted to,
and recently by France herself toward Portugal,
under circumstances less unquestionable.
The time at which resort should be had to this or any
other mode of redress is a point to be decided by Congress.
If an appropriation shall not be made by the French
Chambers at their next session, it may justly be
concluded that the Government of France has finally
determined to disregard its own solemn undertaking
and refuse to pay an acknowledged debt.
In that event every day's delay on our part
will be a stain upon our national honor, as well
as a denial of justice to our injured citizens.
Prompt measures, when the refusal of France shall be
complete, will not only be most honorable and just,
but will have the best effect upon our national character.
Since France, in violation of the pledges given through
her minister here, has delayed her final action so long
that her decision will not probably be known in time
to be communicated to this Congress, I recommend that
a law be passed authorizing reprisals upon French property
in case provision shall not be made for the payment of the
debt at the approaching session of the French Chambers.
Her pride and power are too well known to expect
anything from her fears and preclude the necessity
of a declaration that nothing partaking of the
character of intimidation is intended by us.
She ought to look upon it as the evidence only
of an inflexible determination on the part
of the United States to insist on their rights.
That Government, by doing only what it has itself
acknowledged to be just, will be able to spare
the United States the necessity of taking redress
into their own hands and save the property of French
citizens from that seizure and sequestration which American
citizens so long endured without retaliation or redress.
If she should continue to refuse that act of acknowledged
justice and, in violation of the law of nations, make
reprisals on our part the occasion of hostilities against
the United States, she would but add violence to injustice,
and could not fail to expose herself to the just censure of
civilized nations and to the retributive judgments of Heaven.
Collision with France is the more to be regretted
on account of the position she occupies in Europe
in relation to liberal institutions, but in maintaining our
national rights and honor all governments are alike to us.
If by a collision with France in a case where she is
clearly in the wrong the march of liberal principles
shall be impeded, the responsibility for that result
as well as every other will rest on her own head.
Having submitted these considerations, it belongs
to Congress to decide whether after what has taken
place it will still await the further action of the French
Chambers or now adopt such provisional measures
as it may deem necessary and best adapted to protect
the rights and maintain the honor of the country.
Whatever that decision may be, it will be faithfully enforced
by the Executive as far as he is authorized so to do.
According to the estimate of the Treasury Department,
the revenue accruing from all sources during the present
year will amount to $20,624,717, which, with the balance
remaining in the Treasury on 1834-01-01 of $11,702,905,
produces an aggregate of $32,327,623.
The total expenditure during the year for all objects,
including the public debt, is estimated at $25,591,390,
which will leave a balance in the Treasury
on 1835-01-01 of $6,736,232.
In this balance, however, will be included
about $1,150,000 of what was heretofore
reported by the Department as not effective.
Of former appropriations it is estimated that
there will remain unexpended at the close of the year
$8,002,925, and that of this sum there will not be
required more than $5,141,964 to accomplish
the objects of all the current appropriations.
Thus it appears that after satisfying all those appropriations
and after discharging the last item of our public debt, which
will be done on 1835-01-01, there will remain unexpended
in the Treasury an effective balance of about $440,000.
That such should be the aspect of our finances is highly
flattering to the industry and enterprise of our population
and auspicious of the wealth and prosperity which
await the future cultivation of their growing resources.
It is not deemed prudent, however, to recommend any
change for the present in our impost rates, the effect of
the gradual reduction now in progress in many of them
not being sufficiently tested to guide us in determining
the precise amount of revenue which they will produce.
Free from public debt, at peace with all the world,
and with no complicated interests to consult in our
intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be
hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable
for the settlement of those principles in our domestic
policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our
Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.
Among these principles, from our past experience,
it cannot be doubted that simplicity in the
character of the Federal Government and
a rigid economy in its administration should
be regarded as fundamental and sacred.
All must be sensible that the existence of the public debt
by rendering taxation necessary for its extinguishment has
increased the difficulties which are inseparable from every
exercise of the taxing power, and that it was in this respect
a remote agent in producing those disturbing questions
which grew out of the discussions relating to the tariff.
If such has been the tendency of a debt incurred in the
acquisition and maintenance of our national rights and
liberties, the obligations of which all portions of the
Union cheerfully acknowledged, it must be obvious
that whatever is calculated to increase the burdens
of Government without necessity must be fatal
to all our hopes of preserving its true character.
While we are felicitating ourselves, therefore, upon the
extinguishment of the national debt and the prosperous
state of our finances, let us not be tempted to depart
from those sound maxims of public policy which enjoin
a just adaptation of the revenue to the expenditures
that are consistent with a rigid economy and an entire
abstinence from all topics of legislation that are not
clearly within the constitutional powers of the
Government and suggested by the wants of the country.
Properly regarded under such a policy, every diminution
of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to
individual enterprise increased power and furnishes
to all the members of our happy Confederacy
new motives for patriotic affection and support.
But above all, its most important effect will be found in its
influence upon the character of the Government by confining
its action to those objects which will be sure to secure
to it the attachment and support of our fellow citizens.
Circumstances make it my duty to call the attention
of Congress to the Bank of the United States.
Created for the convenience of the Government,
that institution has become the scourge of the people.
Its interference to postpone the payment of a portion
of the national debt that it might retain the public money
appropriated for that purpose to strengthen it in a political
contest, the extraordinary extension and contraction of its
accommodations to the community, its corrupt and partisan
loans, its exclusion of the public directors from a knowledge
of its most important proceedings, the unlimited authority
conferred on the president to expend its funds in hiring
writers and procuring the execution of printing, and the use
made of that authority, the retention of the pension money
and books after the selection of new agents, the groundless
claim to heavy damages in consequence of the protest of
the bill drawn on the French Government, have through
various channels been laid before Congress.
Immediately after the close of the last session the bank,
through its president, announced its ability and readiness
to abandon the system of unparalleled curtailment and the
interruption of domestic exchanges which it had practiced
upon from 1833-08-01 to 1834-06-30, and to extend
its accommodations to the community.
The grounds assumed in this annunciation amounted to an
acknowledgment that the curtailment, in the extent to which
it had been carried, was not necessary to the safety of the
bank, and had been persisted in merely to induce Congress
to grant the prayer of the bank in its memorial relative to
the removal of the deposits and to give it a new charter.
They were substantially a confession that all the real
distresses which individuals and the country had endured
for the preceding 6 or 8 months had been needlessly
produced by it, with the view of affecting through the
sufferings of the people the legislative action of Congress.
It is subject of congratulation that Congress and the country
had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction, that the
energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton
tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from
almost every part of the world, and that at the close of
this tremendous effort to control our Government the
bank found itself powerless and no longer
able to loan out its surplus means.
The community had learned to manage its affairs
without its assistance, and trade had already found
new auxiliaries, so that on 1834-10-01 the extraordinary
spectacle was presented of a national more than half
of whose capital was either lying unproductive
in its vaults or in the hands of foreign bankers.
To the needless distresses brought on the country
during the last session of Congress has since been added
the open seizure of the dividends on the public stock to the
amount of $170,041, under pretense of paying damages,
cost, and interest upon the protested French bill.
This sum constituted a portion of the estimated
revenues for the year 1834, upon which the
appropriations made by Congress were based.
It would as soon have been expected that our collectors
would seize on the customs or the receivers of our land
offices on the moneys arising from the sale of public lands
under pretenses of claims against the United States
as that the bank would have retained the dividends.
Indeed, if the principle be established that anyone
who chooses to set up a claim against the United States
may without authority of law seize on the public property
or money wherever he can find it to pay such claim,
there will remain no assurance that our revenue will
reach the Treasury or that it will be applied after the
appropriation to the purposes designated in the law.
The pay masters of our Army and the pursers of our Navy
may under like pretenses apply to their own use moneys
appropriated to set in motion the public force,
and in time of war leave the country without defense.
This measure resorted to by the bank is disorganizing and
revolutionary, and if generally resorted to by private citizens
in like cases would fill the land with anarchy and violence.
It is a constitutional provision “that no money
shall be drawn from the Treasury but in
consequence of appropriations made by law.”
The palpable object of this provision is to prevent
the expenditure of the public money for any purpose
whatsoever which shall not have been 1st approved
by the representatives of the people
and the States in Congress assembled.
It vests the power of declaring for what purposes
the public money shall be expended in the legislative
department of the Government, to the exclusion of
the executive and judicial, and it is not within the
constitutional authority of either of those departments
to pay it away without law or to sanction its payment.
According to this plain constitutional provision,
the claim of the bank can never be paid
without an appropriation by act of Congress.
But the bank has never asked for an appropriation.
It attempts to defeat the provision of the Constitution
and obtain payment without an act of Congress.
Instead of awaiting an appropriation passed by both Houses
and approved by the President, it makes an appropriation
for itself and invites an appeal to the judiciary to sanction it.
That the money had not technically been paid
into the Treasury does not affect the principle
intended to be established by the Constitution.
The Executive and the judiciary have as little right to
appropriate and expend the public money without
authority of law before it is placed to the credit
of the Treasury as to take it from the Treasury.
In the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury,
and in his correspondence with the president of the bank,
and the opinions of the Attorney General accompanying it,
you will find a further examination of the claims
of the bank and the course it has pursued.
It seems due to the safety of the public funds remaining
in that bank and to the honor of the American people
that measures be taken to separate the Government
entirely from an institution so mischievous to the public
prosperity and so regardless of the Constitution and laws.
By transferring the public deposits, by appointing other
pension agents as far as it had the power, by ordering
the discontinuance of the receipt of bank checks in the
payment of the public dues after 1834-01-01, the Executive
has exerted all its lawful authority to sever the connection
between the Government and this faithless corporation.
The high-handed career of this institution imposes
upon the constitutional functionaries of this Government
duties of the gravest and most imperative character—
duties which they cannot avoid and from which I trust there
will be no inclination on the part of any of them to shrink.
My own sense of them is most clear, as is also my readiness
to discharge those which may rightfully fall on me.
To continue any business relations with the Bank of the
United States that may be avoided without a violation of the
national faith after that institution has set at open defiance
the conceded right of the Government to examine its affairs,
after it has done all in its power to deride the public
authority in other respects and to bring it into disrepute
at home and abroad, after it has attempted to defeat the
clearly expressed will of the people by turning against them
the immense power entrusted to its hands and by involving
a country otherwise peaceful, flourishing, and happy,
in dissension, embarrassment, and distress, would make
the nation itself a party to the degradation so sedulously
prepared for its public agents and do much to destroy
the confidence of mankind in popular governments
and to bring into contempt their authority and efficiency.
In guarding against an evil of such magnitude
consideration of temporary convenience should
be thrown out of the question, and we should be
influenced by such motives only as look to the
honor and preservation of the republican system.
Deeply and solemnly impressed with the justice of these
views, I feel it to be my duty to recommend to you that
a law be passed authorizing the sale of the public stock;
that the provision of the charter requiring the receipt of
notes of the bank in payment of public dues shall,
in accordance with the power reserved to Congress
in the 14th section of the charter, be suspended until
the bank pays to the Treasury the dividends withheld,
and that all laws connecting the Government
or its officers with the bank, directly or indirectly,
be repealed, and that the institution be left
hereafter to its own resources and means.
Events have satisfied my mind, and I think the
minds of the American people, that the mischiefs
and dangers which flow from a national bank
far over-balance all its advantages.
The bold effort the present bank has made to control the
Government, the distresses it has wantonly produced,
the violence of which it has been the occasion in one
of our cities famed for its observance of law and order,
are but premonitions of the fate which awaits the American
people should they be deluded into a perpetuation
of this institution or the establishment of another like it.
It is fervently hoped that thus admonished those who have
heretofore favored the establishment of a substitute
for the present bank will be induced to abandon it,
as it is evidently better to incur any inconvenience
that may be reasonably expected than to concentrate
the whole moneyed power of the Republic in any
form whatsoever or under any restrictions.
Happily it is already illustrated that the agency
of such an institution is not necessary
to the fiscal operations of the Government.
The State banks are found fully adequate to the
performance of all services which were required
of the Bank of the United States,
quite as promptly and with the same cheapness.
They have maintained themselves and discharged all these
duties while the Bank of the United States was still powerful
and in the field as an open enemy, and it is not possible
to conceive that they will find greater difficulties in their
operations when that enemy shall cease to exist.
The attention of Congress is earnestly invited to the
regulation of the deposits in the State banks by law.
Although the power now exercised by the executive
department in this behalf is only such as was uniformly
exerted through every Administration from the origin of the
Government up to the establishment of the present bank,
yet it is one which is susceptible of regulation by law,
and therefore ought so to be regulated.
The power of Congress to direct in what places
the Treasurer shall keep the moneys in the Treasury
and to impose restrictions upon the Executive authority
in relation to their custody and removal is unlimited,
and its exercise will rather be courted than discouraged
by those public officers and agents on whom
rests the responsibility for their safety.
It is desirable that as little power as possible should be left
to the President or the Secretary of the Treasury over
those institutions, which, being thus freed from Executive
influence, and without a common head to direct their
operations, would have neither the temptation nor the
ability to interfere in the political conflicts of the country.
Not deriving their charters from the national authorities,
they would never have those inducements to
meddle in general elections which have led
the Bank of the United States to agitate and
convulse the country for upward of two years.
The progress of our gold coinage is creditable to the
officers of the Mint and promises in a short period
to furnish the country with a sound and portable currency,
which will much diminish the inconvenience to travelers
of the want of a general paper currency should the
State banks be incapable of furnishing it.
Those institutions have already shown themselves
competent to purchase and furnish domestic exchange
for the convenience of trade at reasonable rates,
and not a doubt is entertained that in a short period
all the wants of the country in bank accommodations
and exchange will be supplied as promptly and as
cheaply as they have heretofore been
by the Bank of the United States.
If the several States shall be induced gradually to
reform their banking systems and prohibit the issue
of all small notes, we shall in a few years have a
currency as sound and as little liable to fluctuations
as any other commercial country.
The report of the Secretary of War, together with the
accompanying documents from the several bureaus
of that Department, will exhibit the situation of the
various objects committed to its administration.
No event has occurred since your last session
rendering necessary any movements of the Army,
with the exception of the expedition of the regiment
of dragoons into the territory of the wandering and
predatory tribes inhabiting the western frontier
and living adjacent to the Mexican boundary.
These tribes have been heretofore known to us
principally by their attacks upon our own citizens and upon
other Indians entitled to the protection of the United States.
It became necessary for the peace of the frontiers
to check these habitual inroads, and I am happy to
inform you that the object has been effected
without the commission of any act of hostility.
Colonel Dodge and the troops under his command
have acted with equal firmness and humanity,
and an arrangement has been made with those
Indians which it is hoped will assure their
permanent pacific relations with the United States
and the other tribes of Indians upon that border.
It is to be regretted that the prevalence of sickness in that
quarter has deprived the country of a number of valuable
lives, and particularly that General Leavenworth, an officer
well known, and esteemed for his gallant services in the
late war and for his subsequent good conduct, has fallen a
victim to his zeal and exertions in the discharge of his duty.
The Army is in a high state of discipline.
Its moral condition, so far as that is known here, is good,
and the various branches of the
public service are carefully attended to.
It is amply sufficient under its present organization
for providing the necessary garrisons for the seaboard
and for the defense of the internal frontier,
and also for preserving the elements of military knowledge
and for keeping pace with those improvements which
modern experience is continually making.
And these objects appear to me to embrace all the
legitimate purposes for which a permanent military force
should be maintained in our country.
The lessons of history teach us its danger
and the tendency which exists to an increase.
This can be best met and averted by a just caution
on the part of the public itself, and of those
who represent them in Congress.
From the duties which devolve on the Engineer
Department and upon the topographical engineers,
a different organization seems to be demanded
by the public interest, and I recommend
the subject to your consideration.
No important change has during this season
taken place in the condition of the Indians.
Arrangements are in progress for the removal of the
Creeks, and will soon be for the removal of the Seminoles.
I regret that the Cherokees east of the Mississippi
have not yet determined as a community to remove.
How long the personal causes which have heretofore
retarded that ultimately inevitable measure will
continue to operate, I am unable to conjecture.
It is certain, however, that delay will bring with it
accumulated evils which will render their
condition more and more unpleasant.
The experience of every year adds to the conviction
that emigration, and that alone, can preserve from
destruction the remnant of the tribes yet living among us.
The facility with which the necessaries of life are procured
and the treaty stipulations providing aid for the emigrant
Indians in their agricultural pursuits and in the important
concern of education, and their removal from those
causes which have heretofore depressed all and
destroyed many of the tribes, cannot fail to
stimulate their exertions and to reward their industry.
The two laws passed at the last session of Congress
on the subject of Indian affairs have been carried into effect,
and detailed instructions for their
administration have been given.
It will be seen by the estimates for the present session
that a great reduction will take place in the expenditures
of the Department in consequence of these laws,
and there is reason to believe that their operation
will be salutary and that the colonization of the Indians
on the western frontier, together with a judicious system
of administration, will still further reduce the expenses
of this branch of the public service and at the
same time promote its usefulness and efficiency.
Circumstances have been recently developed showing
the existence of extensive frauds under the various laws
granting pensions and gratuities for Revolutionary services.
It is impossible to estimate the amount which may have
been thus fraudulently obtained from the National Treasury.
I am satisfied, however, it has been such as to justify
a re-examination of the system and the adoption
of the necessary checks in its administration.
All will agree that the services and sufferings of the remnant
of our Revolutionary band should be fully compensated;
but while this is done, every proper precaution should
be taken to prevent the admission
of fabricated and fraudulent claims.
In the present mode of proceeding the attestations and
certificates of the judicial officers of the various States
form a considerable portion of the checks which
are interposed against the commission of frauds.
These, however, have been and may be fabricated, and in
such a way as to elude detection at the examining offices.
And independently of this practical difficulty, it is ascertained
that these documents are often loosely granted;
sometimes even blank certificates have been issued;
sometimes prepared papers have been signed
without inquiry, and in one instance, at least,
the seal of the court has been within reach of
a person most interested in its improper application.
It is obvious that under such circumstances no severity
of administration can check the abuse of the law.
And information has from time to time been
communicated to the Pension Office questioning
or denying the right of persons placed upon
the pension list to the bounty of the country.
Such cautions are always attended to and examined,
but a far more general investigation is called for,
and I therefore recommend, in conformity with the
suggestion of the Secretary of War, that an actual inspection
should be made in each State into the circumstances
and claims of every person now drawing a pension.
The honest veteran has nothing to fear from such a scrutiny,
while the fraudulent claimant will be detected,
and the public Treasury relieved to an amount,
I have reason to believe, far greater
than has heretofore been suspected.
The details of such a plan could be so regulated
as to interpose the necessary checks without
any burdensome operation upon the pensioners.
The object should be two-fold:
1. To look into the original justice of the claims, so far as
this can be done under a proper system of regulations, by
an examination of the claimants themselves and by inquiring
in the vicinity of their residence into their history and into
the opinion entertained of their Revolutionary services.
2. To ascertain in all cases whether the original claimant
is living and this by actual personal inspection.
This measure will, if adopted, be productive, I think,
of the desired results, and I therefore recommend it to your
consideration, with the further suggestion that all payments
should be suspended 'til the necessary reports are received.
It will be seen by a tabular statement annexed to the
documents transmitted to Congress that the appropriations
for objects connected with the War Department,
made at the last session, for the service of the year 1834,
excluding the permanent appropriation for the payment
of military gratuities under the act of 1832-06-07,
the appropriation of $200,000 for arming and equipping
the militia, and the appropriation of $10,000 for the
civilization of the Indians, which are not annually renewed,
amounted to the sum of $9,003,261, and that the estimates
of appropriations necessary for the same branches of
service for the year 1835 amount to the sum of $5,778,964,
making a difference in the appropriations of the
current year over the estimates of the
appropriations for the next of $3,224,297.
The principal causes which have operated at this time
to produce this great difference are shown in the
reports and documents and in the detailed estimates.
Some of these causes are accidental and temporary,
while others are permanent, and, aided by a just course
of administration, may continue to operate
beneficially upon the public expenditures.
A just economy, expending where the public service
requires and withholding where it does not,
is among the indispensable duties of the Government.
I refer you to the accompanying report of the
Secretary of the Navy and to the documents with it
for a full view of the operations of that important
branch of our service during the present year.
It will be seen that the wisdom and liberality with which
Congress has provided for the gradual increase of our
navy material have been seconded by a corresponding
zeal and fidelity on the part of those to whom has been
confided the execution of the laws on the subject,
and that but a short period would be now required
to put in commission a force large enough for any
exigency into which the country may be thrown.
When we reflect upon our position in relation
to other nations, it must be apparent that in the
event of conflicts with them we must look chiefly
to our Navy for the protection of our national rights.
The wide seas which separate us from other Governments
must of necessity be the theater on which an enemy
will aim to assail us, and unless we are prepared
to meet him on this element, we cannot be said to possess
the power requisite to repel or prevent aggressions.
We cannot, therefore, watch with too much attention
this arm of our defense, or cherish with too much care
the means by which it can possess
the necessary efficiency and extension.
To this end our policy has been heretofore wisely directed
to the constant employment of a force sufficient to guard
our commerce, and to the rapid accumulation of the
materials which are necessary to repair our vessels
and construct with ease such new ones
as may be required in a state of war.
In accordance with this policy, I recommend to your
consideration the erection of the additional dry dock
described by the Secretary of the Navy, and also the
construction of the steam batteries to which he has referred,
for the purpose of testing their efficacy
as auxiliaries to the system of defense now in use.
The report of the Postmaster General herewith submitted
exhibits the condition and prospects of that Department.
From that document it appears that there was a deficit
in the funds of the Department at the commencement of
the present year beyond its available means of $315,599.98,
which on the first of July last (1834-07-01)
had been reduced to $268,092.74.
It appears also that the revenues for the coming year
will exceed the expenditures about $270,000, which,
with the excess of revenue which will result from the
operations of the current half year, may be expected,
independently of any increase in the gross amount of
postage, to supply the entire deficit before the end of 1835.
But as this calculation is based on the gross amount of
postage which had accrued within the period embraced
by the times of striking the balances, it is obvious that
without a progressive increase in the amount of postage
the existing retrenchments must be persevered in
through the year 1836 that the Department may
accumulate a surplus fund sufficient
to place it in a condition of perfect ease.
It will be observed that the revenues of the Post Office
Department, though they have increased,
and their amount is above that of any former year,
have yet fallen short of the estimates more than $100,000.
This is attributed in a great degree to the increase
of free letters growing out of the extension
and abuse of the franking privilege.
There has been a gradual increase in the number of
executive offices to which it has been granted,
and by an act passed in 1833-03, it was extended
to members of Congress throughout the whole year.
It is believed that a revision of the laws relative to the
franking privilege, with some enactments to enforce
more rigidly the restrictions under which it is granted,
would operate beneficially to the country, by enabling the
Department at an earlier period to restore the mail facilities
that have been withdrawn, and to extend them more widely,
as the growing settlements of the country may require.
To a measure so important to the Government and so just
to our constituents, who ask no exclusive privileges for
themselves and are not willing to concede them to others,
I earnestly recommend the serious attention of Congress.
The importance of the Post Office Department
and the magnitude to which it has grown,
both in its revenues and in its operations,
seem to demand its reorganization by law.
The whole of its receipts and disbursements
have hitherto been left entirely to
Executive control and individual discretion.
The principle is as sound in relation to this as to any other
Department of the Government, that as little discretion
should be confided to the executive officer who
controls it as is compatible with its efficiency.
It is therefore earnestly recommended that it be
organized with an auditor and treasurer of its own,
appointed by the President and Senate,
who shall be branches of the Treasury Department.
Your attention is again respectfully invited to the defect
which exists in the judicial system of the United States.
Nothing can be more desirable than the uniform operation
of the Federal judiciary throughout the several States,
all of which, standing on the same footing as
members of the Union, have equal rights
to the advantages and benefits resulting from its laws.
This object is not attained by the judicial acts now in force,
because they leave one quarter
of the States without circuit courts.
It is undoubtedly the duty of Congress to place
all the States on the same footing in this respect,
either by the creation of an additional number of associate
judges or by an enlargement of the circuits assigned to
those already appointed so as to include the new States.
Whatever may be the difficulty in a proper organization
of the judicial system so as to secure its efficiency and
uniformity in all parts of the Union and at the same time
to avoid such an increase of judges as would encumber
the supreme appellate tribunal, it should not
be allowed to weigh against the great injustice
which the present operation of the system produces.
I trust that I may be also pardoned for renewing the
recommendation I have so often submitted to your attention
in regard to the mode of electing the
President and Vice President of the United States.
All the reflection I have been able to bestow upon the
subject increases my conviction that the best interests
of the country will be promoted by the adoption of some
plan which will secure in all contingencies that important
right of sovereignty to the direct control of the people.
Could this be attained, and the terms of those officers
be limited to a single period of either four or six years,
I think our liberties would possess an additional safeguard.
At your last session I called the attention of Congress
to the destruction of the public building
occupied by the Treasury Department.
As the public interest requires that another building
should be erected with as little delay as possible,
it is hoped that the means will be seasonably provided
and that they will be ample enough to authorize
such an enlargement and improvement in the plan
of the building as will more effectually accommodate
the public officers and secure the public documents
deposited in it from the casualties of fire.
I have not been able to satisfy myself that the bill entitled
“An act to improve the navigation of the Wabash River,”
which was sent to me at the close of your last session,
ought to pass, and I have therefore withheld from it
my approval and now return it to the Senate,
the body in which it originated.
There can be no question connected with the
administration of public affairs more important or more
difficult to be satisfactorily dealt with than that which relates
to the rightful authority and proper action of the Federal
Government upon the subject of internal improvements.
To inherent embarrassments have been added others
resulting from the course of our legislation concerning it.
I have heretofore communicated freely with Congress
upon this subject, and in adverting to it again I cannot
refrain from expressing my increased conviction of its
extreme importance as well in regard to its bearing upon
the maintenance of the Constitution and the prudent
management of the public revenue as on account of
its disturbing effect upon the harmony of the Union.
We are in no danger from violations of the Constitution
by which encroachments are made
upon the personal rights of the citizen.
The sentence of condemnation long since pronounced
by the American people upon acts of that character will,
I doubt not, continue to prove as salutary in its effects
as it is irreversible in its nature.
But against the dangers of unconstitutional acts which,
instead of menacing the vengeance of offended authority,
proffer local advantages and bring in their train the
patronage of the Government, we are, I fear, not so safe.
To suppose that because our Government has been
instituted for the benefit of the people, it must therefore
have the power to do whatever may seem to conduce
to the public good is an error into which
even honest minds are too apt to fall.
In yielding themselves to this fallacy they overlook
the great considerations in which
the Federal Constitution was founded.
They forget that in consequence of the conceded diversities
in the interest and condition of the different States
it was foreseen at the period of its adoption that
although a particular measure of the Government
might be beneficial and proper in 1 State,
it might be the reverse in another; that it was for this reason
the States would not consent to make a grant to the
Federal Government of the general and usual powers
of government, but of such only as were specifically
enumerated, and the probable effects of which they could,
as they thought, safely anticipate;
and they forget also the paramount obligation upon all
to abide by the compact then so solemnly
and, as it was hoped, so firmly established.
In addition to the dangers to the Constitution
springing from the sources I have stated,
there has been one which was perhaps greater than all.
I allude to the materials which this subject has afforded
for sinister appeals to selfish feelings, and the opinion
heretofore so extensively entertained of its adaptation
to the purposes of personal ambition.
With such stimulus it is not surprising that the acts
and pretensions of the Federal Government in this behalf
should sometimes have been carried to an alarming extent.
The questions which have arisen
upon this subject have related—
First. To the power of making internal improvements
within the limits of a State, with the right of territorial
jurisdiction, sufficient at least for their preservation and use.
Second. To the right of appropriating money in aid of such
works when carried on by a State or by a company in virtue
of State authority, surrendering the claim of jurisdiction; and
Third. To the propriety of appropriation for improvements
of a particular class, viz, for light houses, beacons, buoys,
public piers, and for the removal of sand bars, sawyers,
and other temporary and partial impediments
in our navigable rivers and harbors.
The claims of power for the General Government
upon each of these points certainly
present matter of the deepest interest.
The first is, however, of much the greatest importance,
in as much as, in addition to the dangers of unequal and
improvident expenditures of public moneys common to all,
there is superadded to that the conflicting jurisdictions
of the respective governments.
Federal jurisdiction, at least to the extent I have stated,
has been justly regarded by its advocates
as necessarily appurtenant to the power in question,
if that exists by the Constitution.
That the most injurious conflicts would unavoidably arise
between the respective jurisdictions of the State and Federal
Governments in the absence of a constitutional provision
marking out their respective boundaries cannot be doubted.
The local advantages to be obtained would induce the States
to overlook in the beginning the dangers and difficulties
to which they might ultimately be exposed.
The powers exercised by the Federal Government would
soon be regarded with jealousy by the State authorities,
and originating as they must from implication or assumption,
it would be impossible to affix
to them certain and safe limits.
Opportunities and temptations to the assumption of power
incompatible with State sovereignty would be increased
and those barriers which resist the tendency
of our system toward consolidation greatly weakened.
The officers and agents of the General Government
might not always have the discretion to abstain
from intermeddling with State concerns, and if they did,
they would not always escape
the suspicion of having done so.
Collisions and consequent irritations would spring up;
that harmony which should ever exist between the
General Government and each member of the
Confederacy would be frequently interrupted;
a spirit of contention would be engendered
and the dangers of disunion greatly multiplied.
Yet we all know that notwithstanding these grave
objections, this dangerous doctrine was
at one time apparently proceeding to
its final establishment with fearful rapidity.
The desire to embark the Federal Government in works of
internal improvement prevailed in the highest degree
during the first session of the first Congress
that I had the honor to meet in my present situation.
When the bill authorizing a subscription on the part of the
United States for stock in the Maysville and Lexington
Turnpike Company passed the two houses,
there had been reported by the Committees of Internal
Improvements bills containing appropriations for such
objects, inclusive of those for the Cumberland road and for
harbors and light houses, to the amount of $106,000,000.
In this amount was included authority to the Secretary
of the Treasury to subscribe for the stock of different
companies to a great extent, and the residue was principally
for the direct construction of roads by this Government.
In addition to these projects, which had been presented
to the two Houses under the sanction and recommendation
of their respective Committees on Internal Improvements,
there were then still pending before the committees,
and in memorials to Congress presented but not referred,
different projects for works of a similar character,
the expense of which cannot be estimated with certainty,
but must have exceeded $100,000,000.
Regarding the bill authorizing a subscription to the stock
of the Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Company as the
entering wedge of a system which, however weak at first,
might soon become strong enough to drive the bands
of the Union asunder, and believing that if its passage was
acquiesced in by the Executive and the people
there would no longer be any limitation upon the
authority of the General Government in respect to
the appropriation of money for such objects;
I deemed it an imperative duty to withhold
from it the Executive approval.
Although from the obviously local character of that work
I might well have contented myself with a refusal
to approve the bill upon that ground, yet sensible of
the vital importance of the subject, and anxious that
my views and opinions in regard to the whole matter
should be fully understood by Congress and by
my constituents, I felt it my duty to go further.
I therefore embraced that early occasion to apprise
Congress that in my opinion the Constitution did not
confer upon it the power to authorize the construction
of ordinary roads and canals within the limits of a State
and to say, respectfully, that no bill admitting
such a power could receive my official sanction.
I did so in the confident expectation that the speedy
settlement of the public mind upon the whole subject
would be greatly facilitated by the difference between
the 2 Houses and myself, and that the harmonious action
of the several departments of the Federal Government
in regard to it would be ultimately secured.
So far, at least, as it regards this branch of the subject,
my best hopes have been realized.
Nearly four years have elapsed, and several sessions
of Congress have intervened, and no attempt
within my recollection has been made
to induce Congress to exercise this power.
The applications for the construction of roads and canals
which were formerly multiplied upon your files are
no longer presented, and we have good reason to infer that
the current public sentiment has become so decided against
the pretension as effectually to discourage its reassertion.
So thinking, I derive the greatest satisfaction from the
conviction that thus much at least has been secured
upon this important and embarrassing subject.
From attempts to appropriate the national funds to objects
which are confessedly of a local character we cannot,
I trust, have anything further to apprehend.
My views in regard to the expediency of making
appropriations for works which are claimed to be of
a national character and prosecuted under State authority—
assuming that Congress have the right to do so—
were stated in my annual message to Congress in 1830,
and also in that containing my objections
to the Maysville road bill.
So thoroughly convinced am I that no such appropriations
ought to be made by Congress until a suitable constitutional
provision is made upon the subject, and so essential
do I regard the point to the highest interests of our country,
that I could not consider myself as discharging my duty
to my constituents in giving the Executive sanction
to any bill containing such an appropriation.
If the people of the United States desire that the
public Treasury shall be resorted to for the means
to prosecute such works, they will concur in an
amendment of the Constitution prescribing a rule
by which the national character of the works is to be tested,
and by which the greatest practicable equality of benefits
may be secured to each member of the Confederacy.
The effects of such a regulation would be most salutary
in preventing unprofitable expenditures, in securing
our legislation from the pernicious consequences
of a scramble for the favors of Government,
and in repressing the spirit of discontent which
must inevitably arise from an unequal distribution
of treasures which belong alike to all.
There is another class of appropriations for what
may be called, without impropriety, internal improvements,
which have always been regarded as standing upon
different grounds from those to which I have referred.
I allude to such as have for their object the improvement
of our harbors, the removal of partial and temporary
obstructions in our navigable rivers,
for the facility and security of our foreign commerce.
The grounds upon which I distinguished appropriations
of this character from others
have already been stated to Congress.
I will now only add that at the 1st session of Congress
under the new Constitution it was provided by law that all
expenses which should accrue from and after the
15th day of August, 1789, in the necessary support
and maintenance and repairs of all light houses, beacons,
buoys, and public piers erected, placed, or sunk
before the passage of the act within any
bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States,
for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe,
should be defrayed out of the Treasury of the United States,
and, further, that it should be the duty of the
Secretary of the Treasury to provide by contracts,
with the approbation of the President, for rebuilding
when necessary and keeping in good repair
the light houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers in the
several States, and for furnishing them with supplies.
Appropriations for similar objects have been continued
from that time to the present without interruption or dispute.
As a natural consequence of the increase and extension
of our foreign commerce, ports of entry and delivery
have been multiplied and established,
not only upon our seaboard but in the interior of
the country upon our lakes and navigable rivers.
The convenience and safety of this commerce have led to
the gradual extension of these expenditures;
to the erection of light houses, the placing, planting,
and sinking of buoys, beacons, and piers,
and to the removal of partial and temporary obstructions
in our navigable rivers and in the harbors
upon our Great Lakes as well as on the seaboard.
Although I have expressed to Congress my apprehension
that these expenditures have sometimes been extravagant
and disproportionate to the advantages to be derived
from them, I have not felt it to be my duty to refuse
my assent to bills containing them,
and have contented myself to follow in this respect
in the footsteps of all my predecessors.
Sensible, however, from experience and observation
of the great abuses to which the unrestricted exercise
of this authority by Congress was exposed,
I have prescribed a limitation for the government
of my own conduct by which expenditures of this character
are confined to places below the
ports of entry or delivery established by law.
I am very sensible that this restriction is not as satisfactory
as could be desired, and that much embarrassment may
be caused to the executive department in its execution by
appropriations for remote and not well-understood objects.
But as neither my own reflections nor the lights which
I may properly derive from other sources have supplied me
with a better, I shall continue to apply my best exertions
to a faithful application of the rule upon which it is founded.
I sincerely regret that I could not give
my assent to the bill entitled:
“An act to improve the navigation of the Wabash River;”
but I could not have done so without receding from the
ground which I have, upon the fullest consideration,
taken upon this subject, and of which Congress
has been heretofore apprised, and without throwing
the subject again open to abuses which no good citizen
entertaining my opinions could desire.
I rely upon the intelligence and candor of my fellow
citizens, in whose liberal indulgence I have already
so largely participated, for a correct appreciation on
my motives in interposing as I have done on this
and other occasions checks to a course of legislation
which, without in the slightest degree calling in question
the motives of others, I consider as sanctioning improper
and unconstitutional expenditures of public treasure.
I am not hostile to internal improvements and wish
to see them extended to every part of the country.
But I am fully persuaded, if they are not commenced
in a proper manner, confined to proper objects,
and conducted under an authority generally conceded
to be rightful, that a successful prosecution
of them cannot be reasonably expected.
The attempt will meet with resistance where it
might otherwise receive support, and instead
of strengthening the bonds of our Confederacy,
it will only multiply and aggravate the causes of disunion.7
President Jackson noted proudly that the United States debt
had been completely paid, leaving a balance of $440,000.
The national debt had risen to $127 million after the War of 1812
and was $58.4 million when Jackson became President.
On December 12 he demanded that France pay its debt
to the United States Government for loans during the Napoleonic Wars
as the U. S. had lowered its duties on French wine.
Notes
1. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson Volume V 1833-1838, p. 238-239.
2. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845
by Robert V. Remini, p. 151.
3. Autobiography of Amos Kendall, p. 416.
4. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson Volume V 1833-1838, p. 257-258.
5. The Annals of America, Volume 6, p. 75.
6. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume III,
ed. James D. Richardson, p. 97-123.
Andrew Jackson to 1812
Andrew Jackson & Wars 1813-15
Andrew Jackson & Indian Wars 1816-20
Andrew Jackson 1821-24
Andrew Jackson 1825-28
President Jackson in 1829
President Jackson & Indians 1829-36
President Jackson in 1830
President Jackson in 1831
Jackson’s Veto & Banks in 1832
President Jackson in 1833
President Jackson in 1834
President Jackson in 1835
President Jackson in 1836
Andrew Jackson 1837-45
Andrew Jackson Summary & Evaluation
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