1827. THE CARTER BEVERLEY LETTER. 505 means was by that time so evident to Jackson that he began to believe that overtures of a corrupt nature had been made to him by Clay, and one day in March a most extraordinary letter appeared in the Fayetteville Observer. The writer, Mr. Carter Beverley, declared that he had just returned from a visit to Jackson; that he found him surrounded by "a crowd of company," and that " before all his company" the general said that "Mr Clay's friends made a proposition to his friends that if they would promise for him not to put Mr. Adams into the seat of Secretary of State, Clay and his friends would, in one hour, make him (Jackson) the President." * This new piece of evidence, it may well be believed, spread far and wide, and in time was brought to Clay's attention, and denied emphatically. So false was the story, he was "unwilling to believe that General Jackson had made any such statement," but, no matter with whom it originated, it was a gross fabrication." The veracity of the writer having thus been called in question, Mr. Duff Green, then editing a Jackson newspaper at Washington, indorsed the letter, and declared that Jackson had made the same statement to him two years before. "The general," said another journal, "now stands before the nation as the direct public accuser of Mr. Clay and his friends, and by inference of Mr. Adams also. The accusation has been deliberately denied. And if General Jackson should not sustain it by competent and credible proof the American people will not be restrained by the grateful respect which they have hitherto cherished for him from characterizing the charge, as in that event it will deserve to be considered." # Thus called on for proof, Mr. Beverley fell back on Jackson, who replied in detail. "Early in January, 1825," he said, "a member of Congress of high respectability visited me one morning and observed that he had a communication he was desirous to make; that he had been informed by the * Letter of Carter Beverley, March 8, 1827. Niles's Weekly Register, May 5, 1827, vol. xxxii, p. 162. + Democratic Press, Washington, April 18, 1827. Washington Telegraph, April 26, 1827. * National Journal, April 28, 1827. friends of Mr. Clay that the friends of Mr. Adams had made overtures to them, saying that if Mr. Clay and his friends would unite in aid of the election of Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay should be Secretary of State; that the friends of Mr. Clay stated the West did not wish to separate from the West, and if I would say, or permit any of my confidential friends to say, that in case I was elected President Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would put an end to the presidential contest in an hour. To which, in substance, I replied that in politics, as in everything else, my guide was principle, and, contrary to the expressed and unbiassed will of the people or their constituted agents, I never would step into the presidential chair, and requested him to say to Mr. Clay and his friends that before I would reach the presidential chair by such means of bargain and corruption I would see the earth open and swallow both Mr. Clay and his friends, and myself with them. The second day after this communication and reply it, was announced in the newspapers that Mr. Clay had come out openly and avowedly in favor of Mr. Adams." * The letter had scarcely reached Mr. Beverley, at Wheeling, when Clay, on his way down the river to Lexington, reached the same town and found the contents of the note the one topic of conversation. While the captain detained the steamboat a copy was made, and once at Lexington, Clay gave to the public "a direct, unqualified, and indignant denial." A fortnight later, at a dinner given him at Lexington, he spoke at great length, reviewed the letter word by word, and called on Jackson to name the congressman. “I rejoice again and again," said he, " that the contest has at last assumed its present practical form. Heretofore malignant whispers and dark surmises have been clandestinely circulated, or openly and unblushingly uttered by irresponsible agents. They were borne upon the winds, and, like them, *Jackson to Mr. Carter Beverley, June 5, 1827. Niles's Weekly Register, July 7, 1827, vol. xxxii, p. 317. + Clay's Letter "To the Public"; Kentucky Reporter, July 4, 1827; Niles's Weekly Register, July 21, 1827, vol. xxxii, p. 350. 1827. BUCHANAN'S DENIAL. 507 were invisible and intangible. No responsible man stood forward to sustain them with his acknowledged authority. They have at last a local habitation and a name. General Jackson has thrown off the mask, and comes confessedly forth from behind his concealed batteries publicly to accuse and convict me. We stand confronted before the American people. Pronouncing the charges, as I do again, destitute of all foundation and gross aspersions, whether clandestinely or openly issued from the halls of the Capitol, the saloons of the Hermitage, or by press, by pen, or by tongue, and safely resting in my conscious integrity, I demand the witness, and await the event with fearless confidence." * The challenge thus thrown down was promptly accepted, and Jackson, in a letter to the public, declared that the member of Congress who approached him was James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania.† The address to the public, for such it was, appeared in a Nashville newspaper, was copied all over the Union, was read by Buchanan in the columns of the Cincinnati Advertiser, and called forth from him an immediate and flat denial. He had, he stated, called on Jackson in the early part of January, 1825, had found him surrounded by friends, had remained till they left, and had then been invited to join him in a walk. As the two were strolling along the streets Buchanan remarked that a report was abroad that Jackson, if elected, intended to appoint Adams Secretary of State; that the rumor was likely to injure his chance of election; that unless he had so determined, the report ought to be contradicted, as there were several able and ambitious men, Mr. Clay among them, who aspired to the office. When Buchanan had finished, the general declared that he thought well of Mr. Adams; that he had never said or intimated that he would or would not appoint him Secretary of State; that he kept such matters to himself; *The speech was delivered July 12, and is reported in Niles's Weekly Register, August 4, 1827, vol. xxxii, pp. 375-380. Jackson's letter to the public, dated July 18th, is in Niles's Weekly Register, August 11, 1827, vol. xxxii, pp. 399-400. that, if chosen President, it should be without solicitation or intrigue on his part, and that he would go into office free and untrammelled, and would fill the public offices with such men as he believed to be the ablest and best in the country. "I called upon General Jackson," said Buchanan, "solely as his friend, upon my individual responsibility, and not as the agent of Mr. Clay or any other person. I never have been the political friend of Mr. Clay since he became a candidate for the office of President. Until I saw the letter of General Jackson to Mr. Beverley the conception never once entered my mind that he believed me to have been the agent of Mr. Clay or of his friends, or that I had intended to propose to him terms of any kind for them, or that he could think me capable of expressing the opinion that it was right to fight such intriguers with their own weapons." * The speech of Clay, the letter of Jackson, and the denial of Buchanan were still the subject of an animated public discussion when the Legislature of Tennessee met and added to the excitement by the adoption of resolutions affirming the bargain and corruption charge, and the discussion of a proposition to impeach the President. The resolutions set forth that the Constitution ought to be so amended as to give the election of President and Vice-President directly to the people, that the measures of the Administration were injurious to the interests and dangerous to the liberties of the country, and that “ the remedy of these evils is the election of Andrew Jackson to the Chief Magistracy of this Union." The mode of appointing the President, the preamble went on to state, had always been a source of inconvenience, and that the result of the last election and the anxiety regarding that soon to come made the amendment imperative. It could not be fairly denied that it was intended that the choice of the Chief Magistrate should be made by the free and unobstructed judgment of the people, and it must be admitted that in the late election the intention was defeated. * Buchanan's letter to the editor of the Lancaster Journal, August 8, 1827. Niles's Weekly Register, August 18, 1827, vol. xxxii, pp. 415, 416. 1827. RESOLUTION OF TENNESSEE. 509 On the occasion alluded to the candidate who, in the primary election, obtained the highest number of votes was set aside by a combination that triumphed because the election was transferred to a body of electors, of which one party to the combination was an influential member. "Mr. Adams desired the office of President; he went into the combination without it and came out with it. Mr. Clay desired that of Secretary of State; he went into the combination without it and came out with it. Of this transaction the simplest history is the best analysis. To believe when proof is insufficient is not greater folly than to doubt when it is conclusive; and when circumstantial evidence is conclusive, positive testimony is rather curious than valuable. It was but the other day that an atrocious murderer, in the enlightened State of New York, was detected and punished on circumstantial evidence, and surely a process of reasoning which will sanction the destruction of one man's life is rigorous enough to determine the conduct of another." The preamble closed with a bitter attack on Adams for his foreign policy, for the Panama mission, for his ideas on internal improvement, and denounced Clay as "an itinerant rhetor at electioneering feasts." The resolutions and the preamble having passed the State Senate with but two negative votes and the House unanimously, effort was made to instruct the representatives in Congress to take up the charges in the preamble, prefer them against the President, and seek to secure his impeachment and trial before the Senate of the United States. But cooler counsel prevailed, and the resolution was voted down by a great majority. The campaign had now opened in earnest, yet the cry of bargain and corruption could not be silenced. Every day it grew louder and louder, and Clay, in desperation, determined to make one more effort to quiet his accusers and furnish yet more positive proof of innocence to his defenders. Gathering a great mass of testimony from members of Congress who voted for Adams in 1825, he wrote a long introduction; reviewed the charges of Kremer, Jackson, Carter Beverley, and the democratic press; stated his relations with |