and internal improvement;"—to take its place as a proviso to a bill entitled, "To repeal the State tax, and to continue the improvements of the State by railroads and canals;"-and to be no further indicated in the title to that act than what could be found under the addendum of that vague and flexible generality, "other purposes;" usually added to point attention to something not worth a specification. mass of pregnant circumstances were collected, covering the whole case with black suspicion: but direct bribery was proved upon no one. Probably, the case of the Yazoo fraud is to be the last, as it was the first, in which a succeeding general assembly has fully and unqualifiedly condemned its predecessor for corruption. The charter thus obtained was accepted: and, without the change of form or substance in any particular, the old bank moved on as if Having mastered the first step-the one of greatest difficulty, if there is truth in the prov-nothing had happened-as if the Congress charerb,-the remainder of the proceeding was easy ter was still in force-as if a corporate instituand rapid, the bill, with its proviso, being re- tion and all its affairs could be shifted by statported, read a first, second, and third time, ute from one foundation to another;—as if a passed the House-sent to the Senate; read a transmigration of corporate existence could be first, second, and third time there, and passed-operated by legislative enactment, and the debtsent to the Governor and approved, and made a law of the land: and all in as little time as it usually requires to make an act for changing the name of a man or a county. To add to its titles to infamy, the repeal of the State tax which it assumed to make, took the air of a bamboozle, the tax being a temporary imposition, and to expire within a few days upon its own limitation. The distribution of the bonus took the aspect of a bribe to the people, being piddled out in driblets to the inhabitants of the counties: and, to stain the bill with the last suspicion, a strong lobby force from Philadelphia hung over its progress, and cheered it along with the affection and solicitude of parents for their offspring. Every circumstance of its enactment announced corruption-bribery in the members who passed the act, and an attempt to bribe the people by distributing the bonus among them: and the outburst of indignation throughout the State was vehement and universal. People met in masses to condemn the act, demand its repeal, to denounce the members who voted for it, and to call for investigation into the manner in which it passed. Of course, the legislature which passed it was in no haste to respond to these demands; but their successors were different. An election intervened; great changes of members took place; two-thirds of the new legislature demanded investigation, and resolved to have it. A committee was appointed, with the usual ample powers, and sat the usual length of time, and worked with the usual indefatigability, and made the usual voluminous report; and with the usual "lame and impotent conclusion." A ors, creditors, depositors, and stockholders in one bank changed, transformed, and constituted into debtors, creditors, depositors and stockholders in another. The illegality of the whole proceeding was as flagrant as it was corruptas scandalous as it was notorious-and could only find its motive in the consciousness of a condition in which detection adds infamy to ruin; and in which no infamy, to be incurred, can exceed that from which escape is sought. And yet it was this broken and rotten institution-this criminal committing crimes to escape from the detection of crimes-this "counterfeit presentment” of a defunct corporation—this addendum to a Pennsylvania railroad-this whited sepulchre filled with dead men's bones, thus bribed and smuggled through a local legislature-that was still able to set up for a power and a benefactor! still able to influence federal legislation-control other banks-deceive merchants and statesmen-excite a popular current in its favor-assume a guardianship over the public affairs, and actually dominate for months longer in the legislation and the business of the country. It is for the part she acted-the dominating part-in contriving the financial distress and the general suspension of the banks in 1837-the last one which has afflicted our country,-that renders necessary and proper this notice of her corrupt transit through the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania. CHAPTER VII. RANGEMENT OF BUSINESS: SUPPRESSION AND periment:" "the gold humbug exploded :" "is this what was promised us?" "behold the effects of tampering with the currency." The presidential mansion was infested, and almost EFFECTS OF THE SUSPENSION: GENERAL DE- polluted with these missives, usually made the cover of some vulgar taunt. Even gold and MISSION OF THE PEOPLE: CALL OF CONGRESS. silver could not escape the attempted degrada tion-copper, brass, tin, iron pieces being struck in imitation of gold and silver coins-made ridiculous by figures and devices, usually the whole hog, and inscribed with taunting and reproachful expressions. Immense sums were expended in these derisory manufactures, extensively carried on, and universally distributed; and reduced to a system as a branch of party warfare, and intended to act on the thoughtless and ignorant through appeals to their eyes and passions. Nor were such means alone resorted to to inflame the multitude against the administration. The opposition press teemed with inflammatory publications. The President and his friends were held up as great state criminals, ruthlessly destroying the property of the people, and meriting punishment-even death. Nor did these publications appear in thoughtless or obscure papers only, but in some of the most weighty and iufluential of the bank party. Take, for example, this paragraph from a leading paper in the city of New York: A GREAT disturbance of course took place in the business of the country, from the stoppage of the banks. Their agreement to receive each others' notes made these notes the sole currency of the country. It was a miserable substitute for gold and silver, falling far below these metals when measured against them, and very unequal to each other in different parts of the country. Those of the interior, and of the west, being unfit for payments in the great commercial Atlantic cities, were far below the standard of the notes of those cities, and suffered a heavy loss from difference of exchange, as it was called (although it was only the difference of depreciation,) in all remittances to those cities to which points the great payments tended. All this difference was considered a loss, and charged upon the mismanagement of the public affairs by the administration, although the clear effect of geographical position. Specie disappeared as a currency, being systematically suppressed. It became an article of merchan"We would put it directly to each and all of dise, bought and sold like any other marketable our readers, whether it becomes this great peocommodity; and especially bought in quantities ple, quietly and tamely to submit to any and for exportation. Even metallic change disap- every degree of lawless oppression which their rulers may inflict, merely because resistance peared, down to the lowest subdivision of the may involve us in trouble and expose those who dollar. Its place was supplied by every con- resist, to censure? We are very certain their ceivable variety of individual and corporation reply will be, No, but at what point is "resisttickets-issued by some from a feeling of necesance to commence ?"-is not the evil of resistance greater than the evil of submission ?" sity; by others, as a means of small gains; by We answer promptly, that resistance on the many, politically, as a means of exciting odium part of a free people, if they would preserve against the administration for having destroyed their freedom, should always commence whenthe currency. Fictitious and burlesque notes ever it is made plain and palpable that there has been a deliberate violation of their rights; were issued with caricatures and grotesque pic- and whatever temporary evils may result from tures and devices, and reproachful sentences, such resistance, it can never be so great or so entitled the "better currency:" and exhibited dangerous to our institutions, as a blind submission to a most manifest act of oppression every where to excite contempt. They were sent in derision to all the friends of the specie what shadow of right, what plea of expeand tyranny. And now, we would ask of allcircular, especially to him who had the credit diency, what constitutional or legal justification (not untruly) of having been its prime mover- can MARTIN VAN BUREN offer to the people of most of them plentifully sprinkled over with the United States, for having brought upon them all their present difficulties by a continuance of taunting expressions to give them a personal the specie circular, after two-thirds of their application: such as-"This is what you have representatives had declared their solemn conbrought the country to:" "the end of the ex-victions that it was injurious to the country 6 and should be repealed? Most assuredly, none, strong contrast with those of the government deand we unhesitatingly say, that it is a more posit banks. The loss on each payment was high-handed measure of tyranny than that which cost Charles the 1st his crown and his great-one dollar in every five. Even patriotism head-more illegal and unconstitutional than could not stand it. The deposit banks and their the act of the British ministry which caused the notes were execrated: the Bank of the United patriots of the revolution to destroy the tea in States and its notes were called for. It was the the harbor of Boston-and one which calls more children of Israel wailing for the fleshpots of loudly for resistance than any act of Great Britain which led to the Declaration of Inde- Egypt. Discontent, from individual became pendence." general, extending from persons to masses. The State took the infection. From being one of the firmest and foremost of the democratic States, Tennessee fell off from her party, and went into opposition. At the next election she showed a majority of 20,000 against her old friends; and that in the lifetime of General Jackson; and contrary to what it would have been if his foresight had been seconded. He foresaw the consequences of paying out this depreciated paper. The paymaster had foreseen them, and before drawing a dollar from the banks he went to General Jackson for his advice. This energetic man, then aged, and dying, and retired to his beloved hermitage,--but all head and nerve to the last, and scorning to see the government capitulate to insurgent banks,— acted up to his character. He advised the paymaster to proceed to Washington and ask for solid money-for the gold and silver which was then lying in the western land offices. He went; but being a military subordinate, he only applied according to the rules of subordination, through the channels of official intercourse: and was denied the hard money, wanted for payments on debenture bonds and officers of the government. He did not go to Mr. Van Buren, as General Jackson intended he should do. He did not feel himself authorized to go beyond official routine. It was in the recess of Congress, and I was not in Washington to go to the President in his place (as I should instantly have done); and, returning without the desired orders, the payments were made, through a storm of imprecations, in this loathsome trash: and Tennessee was lost. And so it was, in more or less degree, throughout the Union. The first object of the suspension had been accomplished -a political revolt against the administration. Taken by surprise in the deprivation of its revenues,―specie denied it by the banks which held its gold and silver,—the federal government could only do as others did, and pay out depreciated paper. Had the event been foreseen by the government, it might have been provided against, and much specie saved. It was now too late to enter into a contest with the banks, they in possession of the money, and the suspension organized and established. They would only render their own notes: the government could only pay in that which it received. Depreciated paper was their only medium of payment; and every such payment (only received from a feeling of duresse) brought resentment, reproach, indignation, loss of popularity to the administration; and loud calls for the re-establishment of the National Bank, whose notes had always been equal to specie, and were then contrived to be kept far above the level of those of other suspended banks. Thus the administration found itself, in the second month of its existence, struggling with that most critical of all government embarrassments-deranged finances, and depreciated currency; and its funds dropping off every day. Defections were incessant, and by masses, and sometimes by whole States: and all on account of these vile payments in depreciated paper. Take a single example. The State of Tennessee had sent numerous volunteers to the Florida Indian war. There were several thousands of them, and came from thirty different counties, requiring payments to be made through a large part of the State, and to some member of almost every family in it. The paymaster, Col. Adam Duncan Steuart, had treasury drafts on the Nashville deposit banks for the money to make the payments. They delivered their own notes, and these far below par even twenty per cent. below those of the socalled Bank of the United States, which the policy of the suspension required to be kept in Miserable as was the currency which the government was obliged to use, it was yet in the still more miserable condition of not having enough of it! The deposits with the States had absorbed two sums of near ten millions each: NORTH CAROLINA-Bedford Brown and Rob SOUTH CAROLINA-John C. Calhoun and Wm. Campbell Preston. GEORGIA-John P. King and Alfred Cuth bert. ALABAMA-Wm. Rufus King and Clement C. Clay. MISSISSIPPI LOUISIANA-Robert C. Nicholas and Alexander Mouton. two more sums of equal amount were demand- CHAPTER VIII. TENNESSEE-Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy. KENTUCKY-Henry Clay and John Critten den. ARKANSAS-Ambrose H. Sevier and William S. Fulton. MISSOURI-Thomas H. Benton and Lewis F. Linn. ILLINOIS-Richard M. Young and John M. Robinson. INDIANA-Oliver H. Smith and John Tipton. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. MAINE-George Evans, John Fairfield, Timothy J. Carter, F. O. J. Smith, Thomas Davee, EXTRA SESSION: MESSAGE, AND RECOMMENDA- Jonathan Cilley, Joseph C. Noyes, Hugh J. CONNECTICUT-Isaac Toucey, Samuel Ingham, Elisha Haley, Thomas T. Whittlesey, Launcelot Phelps, Orrin Holt. VERMONT-Hiland Hall, William Slade, Heman Allen, Isaac Fletcher, Horace Everett. NEW YORK-Thomas B. Jackson, Abraham Vanderveer, C. C. Cambreleng, Ely Moore, Edward Curtis, Ogden Hoffman, Gouverneur Kemble, Obadiah Titus, Nathaniel Jones, John C. Broadhead, Zadoc Pratt, Robert McClelland, Henry Vail, Albert Gallup, John I. DeGraff, David Russell, John Palmer, James B. Spencer, John Edwards, Arphaxad Loomis, Henry A. Foster, Abraham P. Grant, Isaac H. Bronson, John H. Prentiss, Amasa J. Parker, John C. Clark, Andrew D. W. Bruyn, Hiram Gray, William Taylor, Bennett Bicknell, William H. Noble, Samuel Birdsall, Mark H. Sibley, John T. Andrews, Timothy Childs, William Patterson, Luther C. Peck, Richard P. Marvin, Millard Fillmore, Charles F. Mitchell. NEW JERSEY-John B. Aycrigg, John P. B. Maxwell, William Halstead, Jos. F. Randolph, INDIANA-Ratliff Boon, John Ewing, William Charles G. Stratton, Thomas Jones Yorke. Graham, George H. Dunn, James Rariden, WilPENNSYLVANIA-Lemuel Paynter, John Ser-liam Herrod, Albert S. White. geant, George W. Toland, Charles Naylor, Ed ILLINOIS-A. W. Snyder, Zadoc Casey, Wm. LOUISIANA-Henry Johnson, Eleazer W. Rip MISSISSIPPI-John F. H. Claiborne, S. H. Gholson. ward Davies, David Potts, Edward Darlington, L. May. DELAWARE-John J. Milligan. MARYLAND-John Dennis, James A. Pearce, J. T. H. Worthington, Benjamin C. Howard, Isaac McKim, William Cost Johnson, Francis Thomas, Daniel Jenifer. VIRGINIA-Henry A. Wise, Francis Mallory, John Robertson, Charles F. Mercer, John Taliaferro, R. T. M. Hunter, James Garland, Francis E. Rives, Walter Coles, George C. Dromgoole, James W. Bouldin, John M. Patton, James M. Mason, Isaac S. Penny backer, Andrew Beirne, Archibald Stuart, John W. Jones, Robert Craig, Geo. W. Hopkins, Joseph Johnson, Wm. S. Morgan. ARKANSAS-Archibald Yell. MISSOURI-Albert G. Harrison, John Miller. In these ample lists, both of the Senate and of the House, will be discovered a succession of eminent names-many which had then achieved eminence, others to achieve it—and, besides those which captivate regard by splendid ability, a still larger number of those less brilliant, equally respectable, and often more useful members, whose business talent performs the work of the body, and who in England are well called, the working members. Of these numerous members, as well the brilliant as the useful, NORTH CAROLINA-Jesse A. Bynum, Edward it would be invidious to particularize part withD. Stanley, Charles Shepard, Micajah T. Haw-out enumerating the whole; and that would kins, James McKay, Edmund Deberry, Abraham Rencher, William Montgomery, Augustine require a reproduction of the greater part of the H. Shepherd, James Graham, Henry Connor, list of each House. Four only can be named, Lewis Williams, Samuel T. Sawyer. and they entitled to that distinction from the station attained, or to be attained by them: SOUTH CAROLINA-H. S. Legare, Waddy Thompson, Francis W. Pickens, W. K. Clowney, F. H. Elmore, John K. Griffin, R. B. Smith, John Campbell, John P. Richardson. GEORGIA Thomas Glascock, S. F. Cleveland, Seaton Grantland, Charles E. Haynes, Hopkins Holsey, Jabez Jackson, Geo. W. Owens, Geo. W. B. Townes, W. C. Dawson. TENNESSEE-Wm. B. Carter, A. A. McClelland, Joseph Williams, (one vacancy,) H. L. Turney, Wm. B. Campbell, John Bell, Abraham P. Maury, James K. Polk, Ebenezer J. Shields, Richard Cheatham, John W. Crockett, Christopher H. Williams. KENTUCKY-John L. Murray, Edward Rumsey, Sherrod Williams, Joseph R. Underwood, James Harlan, John Calhoun, John Pope, Wm. J. Graves, John White, Richard Hawes, Richard H. Menifee, John Chambers, Wm. W. Southgate. OHIO-Alexander Duncan, Taylor Webster, Patrick G. Goode, Thomas Corwin, Thomas L. Hamer, Calvary Morris, Wm. K. Bond, J. Ridgeway, John Chaney, Samson Mason, J. Alexander, jr., Alexander Harper, D. P. Leadbetter, Wm. H. Hunter, John W. Allen, Elisha Whittlesey, A. W. Loomis, Matthias Shepler, Daniel Kilgore. ALABAMA-Francis S. Lyon, Dixon H. Lewis, Joab Lawler, Reuben Chapman, J. L. Martin. Mr. John Quincy Adams, who had been president; Messrs. James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, who became presidents. In my long service I have not seen a more able Congress; and it is only necessary to read over the names, and to possess some knowledge of our public men, to be struck with the number of names which would come under the description of useful or brilliant members. The election of speaker was the first business of the House; and Mr. James K. Polk and Mr. John Bell, both of Tennessee, being put in nomination, Mr. Polk received 116 votes; and was elected-Mr. Bell receiving 103. Mr. Walter S. Franklin was elected clerk. The message was delivered upon receiving notice of the organization of the two Houses; and, with temperance and firmness, it met all the exigencies of the occasion. That specie order which had been the subject of so much denunciation, the imputed cause of the suspension, and the revocation of which was demanded with so much pertinacity and such imposing demon |