Chapter 9
THE POWER STRUGGLE BEGINS
“All things are disjointed. Trade is at a stand; property diminished in value; confidence shaken to the center.” So wrote Whig and former New York City mayor Philip Hone in his now-famous diary in April 1841. His succinct analysis perfectly captured the state of things as the Twenty-Seventh Congress convened for its special session on May 31. “Never was there a time when political measures were brought so closely home to men’s bosoms,” Hone noted grimly. There had been a slight upturn in the economy in 1838, but the benefits had been short lived, and the country plunged into an even deeper depression in 1839. Suffering was widespread. “When or where this will stop, God only knows,” one southern newspaper editor wailed. “When, or from whence relief is to come, we know not; but unless relief does come, and come speedily, this country will present a scene of widespread ruin and desolation, such as has never been witnessed before.” The effects of the depression placed a tremendous burden on the majority Whig Party to accomplish something—anything—that would relieve the suffering of the American people. The people wanted bold action from the politicians.1
By winning control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 1840, Whigs believed they had been given a mandate by the American people to create and implement the strongly nationalistic program the majority of the party championed. Stalwart partisans believed that only this program would remedy the nation’s economic ills and place the United States on sound financial footing once again. “The condition of the Country &c &c still requires the adoption of certain great measures,” Henry Clay declared. “Let us have hearty & faithful co-operation between the President & his Cabinet, and their friends in Congress, and we cannot fail to redeem all our pledges and fulfill the just expectations of the Country.” The senator was eager to begin the work. As he and his adherents would soon find out, though, not everyone in the party interpreted the Whig victory at the polls in 1840 in the same way.2
The first, or special, session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress convened at noon on Monday, May 31, 1841. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate mustered a quorum on that first day, and both chambers quickly got down to preliminary business. In the House Henry Wise attempted unsuccessfully to get himself elected speaker. That honor instead went to Clay’s fellow Kentuckian John White. The Senate duly chose Samuel Southard of New Jersey as president pro tempore. As Tyler’s elevation to the presidency had left the country with no vice president, this meant Southard would preside over the Senate proceedings at all times, which suited Clay.3
After these matters had been attended to, both chambers engaged in debate over whether Tyler should rightly be called president of the United States. Democrat William Allen of Ohio raised the issue in the Senate and found support from his fellow Buckeye and Democrat Benjamin Tappan, who argued that Tyler deserved the presidential salary—$25,000—but not the title of president. In the House Democrat John McKeon of New York took the lead in asserting that Tyler should only be regarded as an “acting” president. Ultimately, bipartisan majorities in both houses voted down resolutions that called for referring to the Virginian in this way. Thus, the matter had been settled once and for all, and as Wise declared on the floor of the House, Tyler was “by the Constitution, by election and by the act of God, President of the United States.”4
By this time, more than his public displays of enthusiasm for Tyler’s title had raised Wise’s profile in the capital. All of Washington knew that he was advising the president. Most Whigs did not take comfort from this fact. One of them, Ebenezer Pettigrew, a former congressman from North Carolina, came to visit Tyler at the White House. Pettigrew was in Washington on other business but sought out the president seemingly in an effort to gauge his relationship with Wise. “I asked him if Wise was not crazy,” he reported in a letter to a friend. Tyler seemed taken aback by the question but assured his visitor “no, that [Wise] was a good whig [sic] & that all was right with him.” Pettigrew hoped that this was the case. But he feared the worst about Tyler’s association with Wise, owing to both Wise’s reputation as a hothead and his record as an atypical Whig. Perceptive Washington insiders also realized that the congressman nursed a grudge against Senator Clay because of lingering hard feelings over a duel to which both men had been a party in 1838. Wise’s newfound status as presidential confidant heightened the tension in Washington at the start of the special session.5
The gut feelings of Whigs such as Pettigrew were justified. Tyler and Wise had shared a meal alone at the White House on May 29, the Saturday before the special session began. As the two men ate, Wise informed the president that he had had an audience with Clay two days earlier. While there is no evidence that Tyler had prompted his friend to seek out the senator and take his measure, there can be no doubt that he listened intently to what Wise had to say about that meeting and thought about how best to use what he learned. He was in the process of crafting a message to Congress that would be distributed at the start of the special session, and he wanted to speak with Wise before he completed the final draft.
What his fellow Virginian told him could not have surprised Tyler. Clay “is bent upon centralism,” Wise declared. Indeed, the senator intended to raise tariff rates and use the proceeds for distribution, “with the avowed reason of relieving the States from public debt.” Clay was also determined to have a national bank “with a charter from Congress and a location in Wall Street.” Wise had listened to these plans with horror and told the Kentuckian that he disagreed with his agenda “in toto.” He could never support such measures. Clay nodded, unconcerned. He was determined to push ahead with his plans. “I never give up,” he said firmly. Neither Tyler nor Wise doubted that Clay meant what he said.
The two then discussed what Clay’s agenda meant for the Whig Party and for Tyler’s presidency. Both men believed the fate of the party would go a long way toward determining whether Tyler could compete for a term in his own right in 1844. As they finished their meal, they dissected the situation. “Clay and Webster are now openly hostile,” Wise pointed out. Tyler was already well aware of that fact but wondered how best to use this hostility for their own purposes. Wise suggested letting things between Clay and Webster—and between their supporters—develop naturally. Hopefully, the Democrats would see that it was to their advantage to simply “let the [Whig] factions devour each other, and let the Republicanism left among us thrive by the contest.” Tyler had only “to be temperate and firmly neutral between” the warring Whig factions, “and the opposition [Democrats] only to be indulgent a little towards him, and the problem of power will solve itself.” At this point Wise believed that Tyler’s most promising course of action was to court the Democrats. But the president had to act with nuance—he could not just throw his whole lot with the opposition party. With this advice in mind, Tyler returned to his desk and completed his message.6
On June 1 the president submitted the message to both houses of Congress. He intended it as a more specific elaboration of the policy positions he had given in his inaugural address. Having had nearly two months to contemplate the direction he wished the country to take, and having listened to the counsel of his friends Wise and Professor Tucker, he wanted Congress to know where he stood on the important matters to be addressed in the special session. He maintained that he believed the special session was a good idea—at least that was what he said publicly—and offered the extremely politic statement that he looked forward to benefiting from “the combined wisdom” of the House and Senate. The dire times demanded cooperation between the executive and legislative branches, and the president pledged to do his part.
Tyler’s message began with brief details on foreign affairs. He mentioned the ongoing trouble with Britain over the fate of Alexander McLeod, a Canadian—and thus a British citizen—who had been indicted for murder and arson by the state of New York for his role in the destruction of the Caroline, an American steamer that conveyed men, guns, and supplies to Canadian rebels who were openly defying British authority. If a jury found McLeod guilty of the alleged crimes, he faced possible execution by New York, which could result in war between the United States and Britain. Tyler assured Congress that he and Secretary of State Webster would continue to monitor the situation.
Tyler then detailed the sorry state of the American treasury, reporting that the United States was approaching a national debt of nearly $5 million as well as a sizeable deficit. The “fiscal means, present and accruing, are insufficient to supply the wants of the Government for the current year,” he reported. Mindful that the Whig Congress might try to raise tariff rates to alleviate the budget shortfall, he argued that the Compromise Tariff of 1833—which he had helped shepherd into law—“should not be altered except under urgent necessities, which are not believed at this time to exist.” He pointed out that the tariff reductions called for in 1833 would finally be completed in the next year, with the compromise itself set to expire on June 30, 1842, and he expressed his hope that rates would “in the future be fixed and permanent.” By denying the existence of “urgent necessities” that might lead to a hike in rates, he signaled adherence to the very southern position that rates must be as low as possible. Tyler had evidently taken to heart Wise’s information on Clay’s plans to adjust tariff schedules upward and wanted to head off the Kentuckian, at least rhetorically.7
Tyler also spent considerable time on the bank issue, now knowing for sure the type of institution Clay intended to seek. The president realized that one way or another, a bank bill would emerge out of this special session, despite his efforts to get Clay to postpone it. “To you, then,” the president told Congress, “who have come more directly from the body of our common constituents, I submit the entire question, as best qualified to give a full exposition of their wishes and opinions.” Thus, with these words Tyler had changed course yet again and passed responsibility for a new bank bill back to Clay and congressional Whigs. He detailed some of his misgivings about a bank but offered some concessions—such as giving it the authority to exercise oversight over free-lending state banks—that seemed to indicate he might sign into law whatever Clay and the Whigs devised. But he stated in no uncertain terms that he reserved the power to use the veto if he saw fit, a power, Tyler declared solemnly, “I could not part with even if I would.”8
Reading Tyler’s message to the special session in conjunction with his inaugural address, one begins to appreciate why the Whigs did not know fully what to expect from the president. His words are at once astute and muddled, prudent and bewildering. As one historian has put it, he “displayed that capacity for confusing the minds of others.” Some might even say he had a particularly unique talent for doing so. The president raised as many questions as he answered. What accounts for this?9
Tyler was not being deliberately opaque. He was not couching his language in such a way as to keep any potential enemies off guard. Rather, his words betray a man who was struggling to fuse his ideology with the need to take bold steps to alleviate the effects of the country’s economic crisis. The schizophrenic nature of his public pronouncements and his waffling over whether he wanted to take the lead in drafting a bank bill or have Congress assume responsibility for it reveal a man at odds with himself. Tyler wished to remain true to his political principles, principles with which he had been associated for his entire career, ones that even those who disagreed with him at least respected as earnest and deeply felt. He seemed to recognize, however, that perhaps those long-cherished principles might not see the country through to economic salvation. Indeed, he may have even had a passing thought that they might not be compatible with what needed to be done at this point in the nation’s history. Now faced with the most daunting challenge of his political life, Tyler seemed unsure himself as to what course he should pursue. The sure-handedness with which he had taken charge on the first day of his presidency seemed by June 1 to have disappeared, a casualty of his own overthinking and a constant barrage of advice from his friends. His political future was also a consideration. Tyler wanted a second term, wanted to be elected in his own right in 1844. He did not want to settle for being remembered—if indeed he was remembered at all—as merely the man who finished William Henry Harrison’s term. The trick for President Tyler over the next three and a half years would be finding a way to reconcile principle, pragmatism, and ambition and come to terms with the world in which he now lived. His success at doing so would determine whether he would become a strong leader with significant accomplishments to his credit. It would not be easy.
The same day Tyler sent his message to Congress, Clay rose in the Senate to begin the process he had been eager to start since the special session had been called back in March. He made a motion that the Senate elect members to the standing committees the next day; this motion carried. Clay also informed his colleagues that the following day he would make a motion to choose a special committee—the Select Committee on the Currency—to discuss the part of President Tyler’s message that addressed financial matters “with a view of suggesting such remedy.” One senator quickly asked him what the “nature of the remedy” might be. Without hesitation Clay replied, “a National Bank.”10
The next day, after Clay made his motion, the Senate agreed to form the select committee, which would consist of nine members.11 Eager to control the process, and acting as Senate majority leader (though this position would not be officially designated until the 1920s), Clay installed himself as chairman and made sure to include southerners as well as northerners, Democrats as well as Whigs. To no one’s surprise, though, Whigs outnumbered Democrats six to three. But one of the Democrats—New Yorker Nathaniel Tallmadge—belonged to the “Conservative” faction of the party (a group of six in the Senate, led by Tallmadge and Tyler’s former opponent William Cabell Rives, who by this time had become a states’ rights Whig)—and could be expected to sympathize with the desire to create a national bank as well as with efforts to bolster a paper-money policy. Clay had also seen to it that Rufus Choate, a friend and political ally of Webster’s, had been placed on the committee, perhaps in an effort to keep his enemies within the party close. The chairmanship of this select committee meant that Clay would take the lead in introducing legislation that he deemed necessary and proper. When combined with the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, which he had won on June 2 when standing-committee assignments were parceled out, the post enabled him to shape the entire agenda of the special session. He decided the session would deal only with the economic conditions of the country. Clay’s goals were the repeal of the Independent Treasury, a higher tariff, a temporary loan to cover the federal debt, and the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of public lands to the states. This was an ambitious agenda, but Clay was confident he could pull it off. He was the most powerful man in Congress. In the eyes of Congressman Wise, he had made himself a “dictator.”12
Meanwhile, the “dictator” pressed Treasury Secretary Ewing for an administration bill that would charter a new national bank. Tyler had changed his mind once again and was content to let Ewing craft such a bill, but it would have to meet his constitutional requirements. For his part, the secretary submitted a report to Congress on June 2 that called for repeal of the Independent Treasury and expressed support for a national bank. But on actually drafting a bill, he wanted to buy some time and did his best to avoid Clay. At one point he took to his bed with what was apparently a feigned illness—or perhaps the stress was getting to him.13
Ewing could not tarry long and had to produce an administration bill. Clay was anxious for the measure and recognized the importance of what would soon happen. “We are in a crisis, as a party,” he wrote Kentucky governor Robert Letcher on Friday, June 11. “There is reason to fear that Tyler will throw himself upon Calhoun, Duff Green, etc., etc., and detach himself from the great body of the Whig party. A few days will disclose.” The senator even predicted how Tyler would do it: “It is understood that he wants a Bank located in the District [of Columbia], and having no power to branch without the consent of the State where the branch is located. What a Bank would that be!” Clay had little patience for consideration of anything but a national bank. “I am tired of experiments,” he wrote one associate.14
Clay’s ability to predict the branching provision of the administration bill seems to have resulted from a bit of intrigue. In an undated note marked “Confidential,” which the editors of his papers assert was sent sometime between June 8 and 11, Clay asked Ewing to provide some of the details of what he had been working on. “If you have matured the branching section suppose you send me a Copy of it either this evening or early tomorrow morning?” he suggested.15 There is no direct evidence proving that Ewing complied with Clay’s wishes, but it is curious that the senator wrote to his friend Letcher on June 11 with the confidence that he knew what the branching provision of the administration’s bill would entail. What is interesting is that both President Tyler and Senator Clay appear to have been attempting to secure intelligence on the other in an effort to gain the upper hand as they squared off on the bank. Tyler relied on Wise for his information; Clay received his from Ewing. Both men were trying to place themselves in the best possible political position. They recognized that the resolution of the bank question would go a long way to determining their respective political fates.
A national bank would become the centerpiece of Clay’s legislative agenda, but his very first priority was actually the repeal of the hated Independent Treasury. By August, Congress sent a bill to the White House doing just that. President Tyler happily signed it. At least there was something on which he and the congressional Whigs could agree.16
That, however, was the easy part. Ewing went to the White House on the evening of June 8 to discuss his draft of the administration bank bill with the president. Tyler listened to what his Treasury secretary had to say. Ewing’s bill would allow the national bank to establish branches in any state, whether the state wanted them or not. Tyler instructed him to strike out the provision, making clear his objection to that provision of the draft. Ewing acceded to the president’s wishes and rewrote the section on branching to match the old Hugh Lawson White plan that Tyler favored. The administration bill thus clearly bore Tyler’s imprint.17
On Saturday, June 12, the wait was over; Ewing’s handiwork arrived at the Senate chamber shortly before noon. The measure called for the charter of a fiscal agent in the District of Columbia—with Congress, in its function as the legislature for the nation’s capital, chartering the bank—that would be capitalized at $30 million, with the federal government owning one-sixth of the stock. The bill allowed branches, but only in those states that gave explicit permission for their establishment. Clay had been right, exactly right; his letter to Letcher the day before had spelled it out.
Wise knew the details of the bill before Ewing had sent it to Congress. But he realized that what the administration offered was dead on arrival. Clay would now get to work on the bill he wanted after formally referring the administration bill to the select committee. Wise knew what this meant. “Clay is wholly impracticable,” he said. “Tyler will veto his full-grown central monster . . . and he is madly jealous enough of T’s running for a second term to make it a point now to drive him to a veto if he can.” Wise welcomed this. “Let him do it,” he sneered. “The veto kills Clay; and Webster and his friends will take shelter under T., and the united opposition forces him back in a war with centralism—Clay for the focus.”18
Clay was indeed the focus. Determined to get the bank bill he wanted, the Kentuckian mobilized the Whig Senate caucus for a series of meetings in the days immediately following the introduction of the administration bill. He would use the caucus to frame his own bank bill. By doing so, Clay bypassed the Senate select committee, a body that looked more and more like a sham to many Democrats. In fact, Democrats had at first been demoralized—“in a bad temper” as one Whig put it—for they believed the administration bill satisfied Tyler’s constitutional objections and would, therefore, pass both houses of Congress. But they quickly realized what Wise had known from the start: Clay would not be satisfied with the bill Ewing had devised. Democrats perked up. Would the hubris of “Harry of the West” force a showdown with the president and give them, the minority party, a new political lease on life?19
As the Senate Whigs met to hash out the details of the measure they would introduce, discussion turned to the possibility of a presidential veto. Apparently, someone in the caucus warned Clay about the dangerous effect a veto would have on the party. Clay took the warning to heart. Sometime in June—the evidence suggests it was after the Ewing bill had been introduced but before the Whigs offered their counter bill—the senator made a visit to the White House to see the president. Tyler later told Tucker that the two men had had the “fullest conversation” about the bank and that he had urged Clay “in the strongest manner” to adopt the administration bill. Clay demurred, insisting that the bill was not what he wanted and not what the American people demanded from the Whig majority. Whatever he had hoped to accomplish with this meeting, it did not end well. After listening to him for several minutes, Tyler stood up, looked his adversary straight in the eye, and let him have it. “Then, sir, I wish you to understand this—that you and I were born in the same district; that we have fed upon the same food, and breathed the same natal air. Go you now, then, Mr. Clay, to your end of the avenue, where stands the Capitol, and there perform your duty to the country as you shall think proper. So help me God, I shall do mine at this end of it as I think proper.”20
Family tradition has it that Tyler’s meeting with Clay ended with just this flash of presidential temper. We know the meeting occurred; Tyler referred to it in a letter to Tucker one month later. Whether he ever actually spoke these exact words to Clay is open to question. Historians tend to doubt that the exchange took place in this manner, but it is a good story, and the sentiments Tyler supposedly expressed so forcefully do reflect the hardened view he would take of the senator and the bank as the summer of 1841 and the special session dragged on. What is known for sure is that the battle lines between Tyler and Clay were drawn after Ewing submitted the administration bill to Congress. A showdown loomed.
One very important question remains. Why would Clay have taken pains to ensure that the Tyler administration presented its own bank bill when he knew it would be unacceptable to himself and the majority of the Whigs? Wise thought he knew the answer. “Clay’s game, to be plain, was plainly seen,” he told Tucker. “One thing which struck us at first was that he wished to play tyrant and dictator, and drive Tyler to a veto. A veto, he thought, would kill him.” According to Wise, the senator wanted the administration bill presented to Congress so that he could keep it in reserve. He would then work on a bill that created a truly national bank, one that would surely be killed either by the Democrats and states’ rights Whigs in the Senate or by the president’s veto. Clay “was for playing the ‘Great Pacificator’ again, instead of the dictator; that he would satisfy Wall-street centralism by offering and pressing his and their plan first, and, after throwing the defeat [of the congressional bill] upon Tyler’s friends, then go back to Ewing’s scheme in the spirit of conciliation and compromise,—two terms magical and fortune-making with him.”
According to Wise’s logic, then, Clay recognized that the bill Ewing had drafted was better than nothing at all, and he would fall back on it as a compromise measure. This would allow him to accomplish three things. First, he would get a fiscal agent, which he could present to the American people as evidence that the Whigs had accomplished what they had set out to do when the special session was called. Second, he would isolate Tyler and states’ rights Whigs such as Rives, William C. Preston, William S. Archer, William D. Merrick, and Alexander Barrow, and hopefully drive them from the party. These men could make trouble for Clay’s legislative agenda. Third, emerging out of the first two, Clay would consolidate his power and position himself as the Whig nominee for president in 1844. This was the magic and fortune making to which Wise referred.21
Wise’s conspiracy theory appears plausible—all such theories do to some extent. Certainly, it offers an explanation of why Clay pushed so hard for a truly national bank with vast powers. Unfortunately, there is no real evidence documenting Wise’s position. And we must remember that, by the summer of 1841, Wise saw perfidy in just about everything the Whig leader did.
Perhaps the correct answer to why Clay pursued the bank is the simplest: he believed it best for the country and did not believe Tyler had it in him to oppose the measure. Recall that he believed the president lacked “moral firmness.” Consider as well Clay’s belief that sticking to the Whig program actually gave Tyler the best chance to win the Whig nomination for president in 1844. If Tyler had “further hopes,” Clay told an associate at one point, “if, as is quite probable, he may cherish the hope of being elected hereafter to the Presidency, would he not endeavor to retain the confidence of those political friends through whose selection for the second, he has been enabled to reach the first office, in the Nation?” This statement indicates that Clay did not regard Tyler’s likely desire for the party’s nomination in 1844 as a threat to his own political fortunes. Therefore, he would not have seen the need to isolate the president in the manner that Wise suggested. A further point to consider is that Clay had not fully determined at this point that he would in fact be a candidate for president himself in 1844. While he was the consummate political animal and seemed always to be aware of the potential ramifications of his actions for his presidential ambitions (excepting, of course, the “corrupt bargain”), in June 1841 his focus was on enacting the Whig program.
On the other hand, Wise’s charges cannot be wholly dismissed. His claim that Clay intended to isolate Tyler is compelling, especially in light of the senator’s assertion that if the president sought election in his own right, “would he not endeavor to retain the confidence of those political friends” who had placed him on the ticket in 1839? What better way to ensure that Tyler not retain the confidence of those men than by boxing him in to the position where he would be forced to veto the party’s bank bill?22
Clay’s version of the bank, which he introduced to the Senate on Monday, June 21, would be capitalized at $30 million, with a congressional option to increase that amount later to $50 million. The bank would be headquartered in Washington and could establish branches wherever it wanted, with no state interference. Clay was confident that the select committee had built in safeguards that would eliminate significant problems that had attended the Second Bank of the United States: there would be a limit on the amount of dividends that could be paid to stockholders, for example, and there would be a ceiling on the total debt the bank could have on its books at any one time. The new institution would also operate with more transparency and allow more congressional oversight than its predecessor. Clay argued that this bank would aid manufacturing, enhance the country’s position with respect to foreign trade, and promote the economic recovery of the United States. It all seemed so perfect.23
What concessions had the Whigs made to President Tyler? There were a few. For one thing, they located the parent bank in Washington—not on Wall Street or in Philadelphia. This conformed to Tyler’s constitutional principle that Congress could establish a bank in the capital because of its power to legislate for the District of Columbia. The parent bank would also be prohibited from making discounts or loans, except for loans to the federal government itself as provided by law. The nine directors of the parent bank, moreover, would be paid a salary and would not receive “the usual form of bank accommodations”—that is, dividends—as compensation. Finally, Clay’s national bank would exercise oversight on state and local banks, which the president saw as necessary.
But the major substantive difference between the administration bill and the one that emerged from the Whig caucus concerned the branching provision, and it was this upon which the special session would founder. Tyler snatched up a copy of Clay’s report as soon it was made available. What he read merely confirmed what Wise had told him nearly one month earlier. There were no surprises. Now, Clay’s goals were part of the official record. Tyler was not fooled by the portions of the report that sounded conciliatory. “Remember always,” he wrote Virginia governor John Rutherfoord, “that the power claimed by Mr. Clay and others is a power to create a corporation to operate per se over the Union. This from the first has been the contest.” There was no way the president could approve of the bill that emerged out of Clay’s select committee; he would never sign such a monstrosity into law.24
Whig supporters of the administration—and there were several—marshaled their opposition to Clay’s bank. Senator Rives introduced an amendment to the Senate bill on July 1 stipulating that the “assent of the Legislature” of a state must be secured before the national bank could establish branches there. To mollify Clay, the amendment also contained a guarantee that once a state had granted its consent to the establishment of a branch, it could not subsequently withdraw consent in the event its legislature changed hands from one party to the other. What Rives had offered, then, was a compromise between the administration and the congressional Whigs. But he had revived the portion of the administration bill that Clay and the majority of the Whigs found most objectionable. The Kentuckian immediately argued against the amendment.25
Clay did not know that Rives had offered his amendment at the behest of the president himself. Tyler and Rives had corresponded several times since Tyler assumed the presidency in April and had met at the White House on at least two occasions since May 29 to discuss the bank. They strategized about what course to pursue when (not if) Clay introduced a bill to create a “true” national bank. Rives favored White’s bank plan, which meshed nicely with Tyler’s preference for that type of fiscal agent.
The relationship between Tyler and Rives had grown more amicable since they had clashed over the Senate seat in 1839, and the two men found that they liked each other. While it may be a stretch to say that they had become personally close, they did begin to see the benefit of acting in concert politically. Rives informed his wife that the president had told him that he was the only member of Congress with whom he communicated confidentially. This may have been Tyler’s way of flattering the senator, for surely Wise and Tyler shared confidential communication, but Rives believed—correctly—that he was a vital ally of the president. The two worked together to put their plan of an amendment in place soon after Clay reported his national-bank bill. They put the finishing touches on this plan during the last week of June. Tyler had used Wise’s reconnaissance of Clay to prepare himself for the steps he would take to counter him and brought Rives into the fold.26
Rives’s amendment—and his argument in favor of using the branching provision of the administration bill—yielded dividends. Senator Preston voiced his support. “You need not fear but that we shall have Preston’s co-operation,” Wise assured Tucker. The South Carolinian, he said, “is trying to be with Tyler. He is already, and wants only to be trusted.” Preston “may be relied on with us,” the Virginia congressman bluntly said, “because he can do no better.” Besides Preston, Wise believed he could count on at least three other states’ rights Whig senators to support the president. “Archer is obliged to be with us, or perhaps he would not be. He is weak, but not wicked.” Further, “Merrick, of Maryland, is with us. Barrow, of Louisiana, may be.” Wise’s ruminations spoke to a larger truth: despite Clay’s stature as undisputed leader of the congressional Whigs, his power was not absolute. Indeed, the very men Wise mentioned, along with a few others as well as the Democrats, mobilized to stymie Clay’s attempt to secure passage of his bill in the Senate.27
Also working in Tyler’s favor was the emergence of the Daily Madisonian as the administration organ, which gave the president support in the Washington press. The Intelligencer was the Whig paper of record, was highly supportive of Clay, and as such would begin to turn against the president as the bank debate continued. While the Madisonian was not, as Wise admitted, “exactly official” in June 1841, its editorial page had gradually begun to tilt in the Tyler administration’s direction. Founded in 1838 as a vehicle for Conservative Democrats to oppose President Van Buren’s Independent Treasury, the paper’s editor, Thomas Allen, found common cause with Rives (a former Conservative Democrat) and favored his amendment to Clay’s bank bill. All of this was welcome news to Wise, who understood the importance of having a sympathetic newspaper offering support to the administration. He wished that the paper would come out more boldly in support of Tyler to counter the influence of the Intelligencer. “It will and shall, however, insert your arrows in its bow,” Wise predicted to Professor Tucker at the end of June, suggesting that it had the potential to coalesce the states’ rights men into a base of support for Tyler. By September, the Madisonian would be recognized as the proadministration paper and began receiving patronage from the White House. Clearly, Wise was readying himself and the president’s allies in Virginia for the battle he hoped was imminent.28
When put to a vote on July 6, Rives’s amendment was defeated handily, 10 to 38. But it had still served a multilayered purpose. For one thing, it allowed the president to gauge how much Whig support he had in the Senate, which in turn enabled him to speculate on his early prospects of winning the party’s nomination for president in 1844. For another, it siphoned off enough Whig votes—8 to be exact—to ensure that, with Democrats voting against it, Clay would not be able to get his bill passed. Finally, by highlighting the branching provision of the administration bill and portraying it as a reasonable solution, Rives cast Tyler in the role of a compromiser willing to do his part to alleviate the country’s financial difficulties. Whether it was Tyler and Rives’s conscious intention to do so or not, they had also cast Clay as the president’s foil, a man whose own actions (they believed) would increasingly undermine his reputation as the Great Compromiser and benefit Tyler.