Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

r. iyiers term, certain events ranks and out of camp, and then driven

have concurred to produce the effect of over to the

[graphic]

Engraved for the Democratie teview by Jorrest frame Daguerreotype Miniature

by Anthony Edwards &larke

Henry G Langley & Astor House New York

[blocks in formation]

We must be indulged in the harmless anachronism which thus anticipates, by a few days, the period when this agreeable form of expression may be employed, with a more strict accuracy than at the moment at which it is now written. For even though the hour has not yet quite arrived, which is to be brightened by the reflection that Tylerism has ceased to exist, in any other than the past tense, yet, by the time this page shall reach the eyes of most of its readers, they will have ceased to blush for the government of their country.

"It will take the country a long time before the morals of our politics can recover from the bad influence which has been exerted over them by the regime of Tylerism"-was the recent remark of a very eminent statesman, occupying a position entirely aloof from it and disinterested in regard to it; and who neither in his own person nor that of any friend had been injured or assailed by it, but who had rather been, on the contrary, an object of its good-will and flattering attentions. And the remark was true-so true that we scarcely know when and how to expect the curative influence or recuperative power which shall wholly undo the mischief, wholly atone for the disgrace, so deeply and broadly wrought by the events of the last four years.

Of late, indeed, toward the conclusion of Mr. Tyler's term, certain events have concurred to produce the effect of

raising a little faint show of factitious popularity-not his own but another'swhich attaches not to his general administration, but partly to his office-dispensing patronage, and partly to a particular measure-and which prevents the full manifestation of that common contempt, which both Whig and Democratic parties vie with each other in entertaining, for that nondescript tertium quid which he and an insignificant band of mercenary adherents have constituted, as a hybrid novelty unimagined before in our political experience. The strong arm of the great Statesman of the South so far upholds him, as to let him down with a decent show of dignity, in his descent from the high place to which accident alone ever raised him; and the blaze of a "Lone Star" streaming up over our south-western horizon, alone sheds a certain degree of feebly reflected light on his retiring person, to redeem it from the entire darkness in which it would otherwise have gone down.

Men rarely love a treason so well, as to forget to despise the traitor. Nor indeed is it by any means clear, that in his defection from the Whigs, who had placed him in the position which gave him his power to harm, Mr. Tyler is entitled even to the usual good treatment which the policy of war accords to deserters. To desert voluntarily is one thing; to be fairly scourged out of the ranks and out of camp, and then driven over to the enemy as the only place of

The Late Acting President.

refuge, is another, and a very different thing. And when the person thus expelled was himself already a deserter in the enemy's camp, from the side to which he is thus again ignominiously driven back-when his prolonged continuance there up to the time of that expulsion, has involved in itself the grossest treachery to the side from whom he again supplicates a refuge-it cannot be pretended that any very strong case is made out for a very cordial welcome. This is no overcharged picture for Mr. Tyler's position.

In the year 1840, what Whig outWhigged the renegade "Virginia Republican?" Nay, not only was he a Whig of the intensest sort, but he was peculiarly, and par excellence, a Henry Clay Whig. To be a Harrison Whig, or a Scott Whig, at that time, meant comparatively little or nothing; to be a Clay Whig was full of the deepest and strongest meaning. There was no noncommittalism about the bold Kentuckian. His name, his name alone, constituted as distinct an announcement of a system of political doctrine-and political doctrine of the worst sort-as could have been conveyed in any form of creed or catechism. And in the Convention of 1840, Mr. Tyler was so furiously a friend to the selection of Mr. Clay, to be the Presidential candidate and national representative of the Whig Party, that, as has been subsequently proved, it was to the bitterness of his lamentations for Clay's failure of nomination that he partly owed his own selection for the Vice-Presidency.

We should not have made this fact alone, "per se," the foundation of the charge against Mr. Tyler of having been a 66 renegade Virginia Republican," if he had not, by the palpable corruption of his subsequent course, reflected back upon his position at that time the clearest of lights by which to read his character and conduct. In his zealous Clayism of that day, there was no honesty of conversion, from what he had of old professed. He was sinning against great light, and he knew it. He has subsequently, when ambitious interest prompted a different course, thrown himself back again, with an ardor of Republicanism re-invigorated by its long intermission of repose, upon the old principles, and the old party, which he was then betraying. With no disposition to withhold from Mr. Tyler a

[March,

[graphic]

charitable judgment even, nevertheless the undisguised and unblushing excess of the political corruption which has rioted through his administration-now, happily, exhaling its very last breathhas been such as to compel justice, in the interpretation of former equivocal conduct, to accept in all cases the worst construction as the more probable truth.

tration may be briefly summed up. BeThe history of Mr. Tyler's adminiscoming Acting President by accident, this view he first, in conjunction with his polar star was a second term. With Webster, aimed at an amalgamation of parties, until it became evident that neither Whigs nor Democrats would have anything to do with such a scheme. The former fairly scourged him forth from any place among them; while the latter as sternly and contemptuously denied him admittance even within the outermost verge of their gates. Then, and not till then, did Mr. Tyler adopt, as the next tack of his policy, the effort to force or buy his way into the Democratic party, by patronage and Texas,

discarding Webster, and all things Websterian, excepting faithlessness and recklessness; and hoping to throw us into such confusion as to create at least a probability, if not necessity, of rallying upon him for reelection, as the only means of averting the worse evil of the election of Clay. Hence his convention at the same place and day with that of the Democratic party. To this hope he clung long and desperately, till the ridieven to the proverbial fatuity of himself cule of his position became intolerable, and his family; and then, months after the nomination of Mr. Polk, he at last withdraws, only after an absurdly transparent attempt to make, by implied understanding with some of our party, the best terms of capitulation in his power for his office-holders. This is the naked outline of Mr. Tyler's administration.

it be remembered-the almost suppliant Does any reader doubt its truth? Let tenacity with which Mr. Tyler during his first year clung to the Whig party. At that time, be it borne in mind, the Whigs were fresh from the late contest, which had placed them in the attitude of an overwhelming ascendency; while the Democrats were apparently a broken-down party, not only comparatively feeble in force, but containing within themselves many elements of

1845.]

The Late Acting President.

confusion and disorganization. In concert with Mr. Webster, the bitterest enemy Mr. Clay has ever had, Mr. Tyler's game then was, clearly, to shake off Clay, retain the great bulk of the masses whose rush had borne Harrison and himself into power, trusting afterwards gradually so far to disintegrate the Republican party, as to bring in at least a considerable proportion of them around his administration. Hence, although he vetoed Mr. Clay's Bank Bill, he offered at the same time a much worse one, and actually clung to the profession and name of a Whig, pleading with them imploringly in one of his Messages on the ground of the number of other Whig bills he had signed, until all hope of success vanished, and Clay's controlling ascendency in the party succeeded in flinging him forcibly and scornfully off into a portion in which it became acknowledged treason for any Whig to maintain any sort of party communion with him.

Let it be remembered the manner in which he then proceeded to address himself to his next aim, that of courting the Democratic party. Then was witnessed a spectacle of the corrupt abuse of the patronage power of the Executive, unprecedented, unimagined before. One of Mr. Tyler's first acts after his entrance into power had been to promulgate a special declaration against the interference of the Federal office-holders in politics. On former occasions, also, Mr. Tyler had in a peculiar manner identified himself with this principle. And yet, as soon as he began the working of this policy, that of worming his way into a position in the Democratic party by means of his offices, systematically and universally throughout the country, they were held up as the bribes for adhesion to him and his interest, and activity in his cause. Every man then in the Democratic party occupying any sort of position capable of being represented as one of influence, had office at his disposal for the Democratic mere acceptance of it. Representatives in Congress had almost unlimited command over the Federal patronage of their districts. Anything to prove himself a Democrat-to get admission as such-recognition as such. In all directions were to be seen Whigs removed from office who had scarcely had time to get adjusted in the seats to which they had been appointed either

by General Harrison or by Mr. Tyler
himself Whigs of unimpeached per-
sonal worth and capability-for no other
even pretended reason than to confer
their offices on Democrats. It was a
positive public scandal-undisguised,
undissembled. We need not dwell on
details-a single prominent fact will
suffice to illustrate it. The whole sys-
tem adopted is typified in Mr. Tyler's
Baltimore Convention, of which body
nearly all were already his office-hold-
ers when they went there, while all the
rest, with scarcely an exception, have
been made so since!

The direct application of the vast ma-
chinery of the Federal patronage to the
object of buying a deserter's way into
some kind of welcome or reception by
a party on which he seeks to fasten
himself, presented a novelty in our poli-
tics. It certainly wrought a vast amount
It scattered broadcast
of mischief.
through the land, seeds of demoraliza-
tion, which could scarcely fail, almost
everywhere, to find at least a little soil
adapted to their too-ready germination.
Everywhere a certain number of per-
sons were to be found, urged perhaps
by their necessities, or little disposed to
be scrupulous in such matters, whom a
little judicious dangling of these baits
before their eyes could scarcely fail to
attract, with an eagerness little disposed
to quarrel with the hand from which
they were to drop. Unprincipled men
were also at many places to be found,
who had little difficulty in palming
themselves off upon the facile and fool-
ish confidence of Mr. Tyler and his
family as their special friends, and as
persons of astonishing zeal, activity, and
local importance, in whose hands the
local management of their interests
might safely be reposed. In general
able to get only the lowest and worst
to fraternize with them in their loud-
mouthed partizanship of Mr. Tyler,
this class of persons, at many points,
and especially in the cities, succeeded
in getting together miserable little
knots of persons, rarely more than suf-
ficient to fill the bar-room of some
mean haunt which constituted their
head-quarters, and these, in connection
with the higher incumbents of the lucra-
tive offices, constituted the "party"
worthy of their creation and creator, the
Tyler Party. With the aid of a few
newspapers, supported by the public
patronage and by a heavy system of

[graphic]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »