JOHN CALHOUN BECAME war secretary because Henry Clay didn’t want the job. James Monroe, on entering the White House—which in fact was still blackened from the British torch—attempted something unique in American history: one-party rule. Self-identifying Federalists had largely vanished; Republicans were everywhere. But some were more Republican than others, with differences owing to the interests of the different sections of the country. To keep all happy, Monroe spread the wealth of his patronage. In constructing his cabinet, he sought regional balance. The North must be represented; likewise the South and the West. To the North he looked for his secretary of state, choosing John Quincy Adams. Adams had special gifts for the post, having apprenticed in diplomacy under his father, John Adams, and spent many years abroad. But his appointment also reflected Monroe’s desire to drive a nail through the coffin of Federalism by poaching a famous son of New England, Federalism’s last redoubt. In tapping Adams for secretary of state, Monroe effectively made him heir apparent to the presidency. Monroe calculated that he could always change his mind, but for now the appointment allayed concerns that Virginia would never relinquish the White House.
William Crawford was given the treasury. Crawford was a Georgian of talent and ambition. He had been secretary of war under James Madison and then secretary of the treasury. Monroe deemed it prudent to keep him at the treasury, where his experience would help right the nation’s postwar finances and ensure the success of the new Bank of the United States. Crawford’s appointment would please the South.
To honor the West, Monroe looked to Henry Clay. Clay’s leading role in starting and then ending the War of 1812 made him a natural for war secretary. Clay had been offered the job before, by Madison, and had declined. Monroe renewed the offer; Clay again declined. He might have accepted the state department, the plum of the cabinet appointments. He might even have taken the treasury, which would surely play a large role in the coming years. But the war department looked a backwater, with no war in the offing. Clay kept his job as speaker of the House.
Monroe scoured the West again. He considered Andrew Jackson, now the most famous Westerner in America. But the general let him know his work in the field wasn’t finished. Monroe turned to Isaac Shelby, Clay’s model of Kentucky success. But Shelby was old and found his farm as appealing as Clay had described it, and declined the offer.
Despairing of getting a Westerner, Monroe settled for John Calhoun. Although from South Carolina, Calhoun was often seen as a proxy for Westerner Clay. Calhoun’s positions on the war mirrored Clay’s; he was an ardent supporter of Clay’s program of internal improvements, tariff protection and the national bank. And Calhoun, unlike Clay, considered the post of war secretary a promotion. When Monroe made the offer, Calhoun accepted.
HE DIDN’T REALIZE what he was getting into. The world knew Andrew Jackson as the hero of New Orleans. Washington insiders knew a bit more: that Jackson was headstrong, that he interpreted orders from his political superiors as suggestions, and that he despised the British and everything associated with them. What neither the Washington crowd collectively nor John Calhoun individually knew was just how headstrong Jackson was, how thoroughly he resented the intrusion of politics into his work as defender of America’s southwestern frontier, and how broadly he perceived the machinations of Britain.
During the war, Jackson had exceeded orders and attacked Spanish positions in Florida. The Madison administration thought two enemies—Britain and the Indian alliance backed by the British—were quite enough; Jackson was cautioned not to antagonize the Spanish. But Jackson concluded that he couldn’t secure his flanks against the British and the Indians if the Spanish, who favored both groups over the Americans, allowed them refuge and staging grounds in Florida. Jackson attacked Pensacola and dealt a humiliating blow to the Spanish there. The saving grace for the administration was precisely that Jackson had exceeded orders. Spain, which was no more eager for war with America than the American government was for war with Spain, was able to treat the attack as an error rather than a deliberate affront.
Jackson left Pensacola to fight the British at New Orleans. But he continued to deem Spanish Florida a threat to American security. Spanish control over Florida was notional at best. Seminole Indians raided American settlements north of the Florida border and fled south to escape reprisal. Escaped slaves from American plantations vanished into the Florida swamps and forests. British merchants, some doubling as agents of the British government, provisioned and sometimes provoked the Indians. Pirates waylaid vessels from harbors on the Florida coast. Jackson concluded that America would never be secure until Florida was America’s.
James Monroe came to the same conclusion more slowly. Rounding out America’s southern border by taking Florida had been an obvious goal for American policy since the acquisition of Louisiana, but Spain was in no mood to give it up. Most of Central and South America had risen in revolt against Spanish rule, with success that varied from region to region. The revolts followed the battering of Spanish pride and sovereignty by Napoleon, and the Spanish monarchy couldn’t cede Florida without further, perhaps fatal, loss of prestige.
Yet what Spain wouldn’t cede might be taken from it forcibly. Jackson knew this, and Monroe eventually concurred. The president pursued a two-track policy. He authorized John Quincy Adams as secretary of state to engage the Spanish in diplomatic negotiations, and he allowed, without expressly authorizing, Jackson to demonstrate that the Spanish couldn’t hold Florida if negotiations failed. Jackson wrote Monroe a letter explaining what should be done. The general proposed a punitive expedition into Florida, nominally against the marauding Seminoles. But he would keep marching until he had taken the whole place. “This done, it puts all opposition down, secures our citizens a complete indemnity, and saves us from a war with Great Britain or some of the continental powers combined with Spain.”
The part that most intrigued Monroe came next. “This can be done without implicating the government,” Jackson said. “Let it be signified to me through any channel, say Mr. J. Rhea”—John Rhea of Tennessee—“that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.”
MONROE’S RESPONSE TO Jackson’s offer became a matter of subsequent dispute, a dispute that centered on John Calhoun. “I was sick in bed and could not read it,” Monroe recalled of Jackson’s letter, in a letter to Calhoun. “You were either present or came in immediately afterwards, and I handed it to you for perusal. After reading it, you replaced it, with a remark that it required my attention, or would require an answer, but without any notice of its contents. Mr. Crawford came in soon afterwards, and I handed it also to him for perusal. He read it and returned it in like manner.” Monroe added, “I never showed it to any other person.” And that was that. “The letter was laid aside and forgotten by me, and I never read it until after the conclusion of the war.”
Jackson remembered things differently. “In accordance with the advice of Mr. Calhoun, and availing himself of the suggestion contained in the letter, Mr. Monroe sent for Mr. John Rhea (then a member of Congress), showed him the confidential letter, and requested him to answer it,” Jackson wrote in defense of his actions. Referring to himself in the third person, he continued, “In conformity with this request, Mr. Rhea did answer the letter and informed General Jackson that the President had shown him the confidential letter, and requested him to state that he approved of its suggestions.” Unfortunately for Jackson’s case, he didn’t save the letter, as he explained. Sometime after he received the letter, he and Rhea were in Washington together. “Mr. Rhea called on General Jackson, as he said, at the request of Mr. Monroe, and begged him on his return home to burn his reply. He said the President feared that by the death of General Jackson or some other accident, it might fall into the hands of those who would make an improper use of it.” Jackson said he did as Monroe requested.
The reason the matter was being argued years later was that after Jackson did what he claimed Monroe and Calhoun had authorized him to do—seize Florida by force—the president felt obliged to disown the general’s action. Jackson’s campaign affronted the Spanish, with whom Monroe was still publicly trying to negotiate. Jackson insulted the British as well, by seizing two British subjects in company with the Indians he was fighting and executing them for inciting war against the United States. If Monroe took responsibility for Jackson’s actions, he might compel the British, the Spanish or both to declare war on the United States. Better to blame an unruly general.
Jackson had invited such blame by saying that his Florida campaign needn’t implicate the administration. And if the chastisement had been simply for the benefit of the Spanish and the British, Jackson shouldn’t have objected. But he caught wind that the finger-pointing had a domestic audience. Some members of the administration were portraying him as a general drunk with blood. Jackson’s sources identified the principal culprit as William Crawford, who was known to have ambitions to succeed Monroe as president and thus had a motive to slander Jackson, a likely rival.
In fact it was Calhoun who led the critics. “Mr. Calhoun is extremely dissatisfied with General Jackson’s proceedings in Florida,” John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary after a meeting in which the administration weighed its response to the Spanish and British protests. “Thinks Jackson’s object was to produce a war for the sake of commanding an expedition against Mexico, and that we shall certainly have a Spanish war.” Calhoun judged that Jackson was uncontrollable. “He has violated his orders, and upon his own arbitrary will set all authority at defiance,” Calhoun said, according to Adams.