JOHN CALHOUN STILL had ambitions, though he couldn’t say just what they were. The presidency had been a long shot since his embrace of nullification against Andrew Jackson, and his emergence as the chief apologist for slavery lengthened the odds still more. His estrangement from the two parties left him without the allies political advance typically required.
The death of William Harrison and the accession of John Tyler reopened the door a tad. Tyler was a Whig in name only; he might look with favor to other men lacking strong party ties. Yet the proud Calhoun would take no position less than the secretaryship of state, and Tyler wasn’t about to ask for the resignation of Daniel Webster, the only cabinet member who had stuck by him. As long as Webster wanted his job, he could keep it. But Webster decided, after the Senate confirmed his treaty with Ashburton, to step down.
Even then Tyler passed over Calhoun, preferring Abel Upshur, the secretary of the navy and, like Tyler, a Virginian. Calhoun might bring talent to the administration, but he would also bring enemies, and Tyler, with foes enough already, didn’t want to add to their ranks. Upshur, like Tyler, was an advocate of Texas annexation, and as secretary of state he labored to bring the Lone Star republic into the Union. He engaged in quiet diplomacy with envoys from Texas to craft a treaty of annexation and, with Tyler’s approval and support, lobbied senators to secure ratification. John Tyler Jr., the president’s son and sometime assistant, recalled how Upshur won over Thomas Benton by giving his son-in-law, army officer John C. Frémont, command of an expedition of Western exploration. “Senator Benton could be flattered as easily as any man who ever entered the United States Senate chamber,” the younger Tyler said. “He had consented to espouse the cause of annexation, and it was thought that the treaty was altogether arranged.”
Just then, however, a terrible accident occurred. President Tyler and four hundred Washington luminaries were taking an inspection cruise on a recent addition to the American fleet, the steam-driven warship Princeton. Among the guests were David Gardiner, a wealthy and well-connected New York lawyer, and his daughter Julia, to whom the widowed Tyler was paying court. The vessel carried the biggest gun ever mounted on a ship until then, a monster affectionately called the Peacemaker. Commander Robert Stockton was proud of the ship and its armament, and he wished to demonstrate the awe the craft could inspire in potential enemies. He ordered the Peacemaker fired. Two mighty blasts nearly deafened the guests and gave notice to all within ten miles that the United States could bring fearsome power to bear in war. As their hearing slowly returned, the guests sat down to luncheon on the deck. Tyler led the group in a toast to the ship, its captain and its powerful gun.
Some while later, as the ship churned by Mount Vernon, Commander Stockton ordered the crew to reload the gun for a salute to George Washington. The guests were scattered around the deck and below when Stockton himself pulled the lanyard to ignite the charge. Perhaps he had instructed the primers to pack a little extra powder into the gun, to intensify the impression made earlier. Perhaps they did so on their own. Maybe they miscalculated. But this time as the charge ignited, it burst the barrel of the gun, sending flames, searing heat and deadly shrapnel out the side. Abel Upshur and several others, including David Gardiner, were killed instantly. Tyler had been below deck and was coming up the ladder when the explosion occurred; he escaped death by a few seconds. Julia Gardiner swooned when she learned her father had been killed; Tyler took her in his arms and carried her away from the scene of death and destruction. Until now she had been skeptical about Tyler, who was old enough to be her father. But the loss of her own father, and the president’s decisive action in the aftermath, won her over. They were married within months.
THE PRINCETON TRAGEDY threatened to undo Abel Upshur’s work on Texas. Tyler had to decide on a replacement. He was still considering the matter when Henry Wise, a Virginia Whig who had stood by the president, intervened. “He was a man of great ability, but the very devil as an adviser,” John Tyler Jr. said of Wise. “On the day of Upshur’s death, without any consultation with my father, he went to McDuffie, the leading senator from South Carolina, and instructed him to write to John C. Calhoun to come at President Tyler’s request and accept the portfolio of State.”
The next day Wise went to the White House to tell Tyler what he had done. “President Tyler was thunderstruck,” Tyler Jr. said. “He gripped his chair with all his force. It was all he could do to resist telling Wise to begone from him forever. Before saying a word he got up and walked across the floor, and then came back in front of Mr. Wise, and, looking him sternly in the eye, said, ‘Mr. Wise, you certainly have not done this thing!’ Mr. Wise quailed, but said nothing. Father then walked to the other side of the room again, and, returning, exclaimed emphatically, ‘Mr. Wise, you cannot have done this thing!’ And, as Mr. Wise still said nothing, he exclaimed in rage, ‘Wise, have you done this thing?’ ”
Wise said he had.
“It was all my father could do to keep from telling him to go away and never to come into his sight,” Tyler’s son continued. “But Wise was his chief friend in Congress, and he did not dare to break with him. As it was, it was years before he felt well towards him, and he never really forgave him. But the letter had been sent, and it could not be withdrawn. Calhoun was appointed.”
The result was just as Tyler feared. Abel Upshur’s careful work was undone. “Tom Benton raged around like a great bull,” Tyler Jr. said. Benton hated Calhoun as much as Andrew Jackson did. “Calhoun’s name had the effect of the red rag flaunted in his face. When the treaty came up he howled against it, and defeated it by calling it a Calhoun conspiracy.”
“CONSPIRACY” WAS A strong word but not inapt. Calhoun sought Texas, yet something more than Texas; he sought international recognition of the moral righteousness and permanent legitimacy of slavery. And maybe—just maybe—a last chance at the presidency.
Calhoun’s instrument was his pen, and his agent was Richard Pakenham, the British minister in Washington. Pakenham had held the post for nearly a decade and had conducted himself as a model diplomat, representing Britain vigorously to the United States government while keeping clear of the divisive issues of American politics. Calhoun, however, insisted on drawing Pakenham in. The new secretary of state wrote a letter to Pakenham excoriating the minister for what Calhoun characterized as British tampering with American slavery. Pakenham’s sin? Declaring that Britain looked forward to the eventual end of slavery around the world and was doing what it could to achieve this end. Calhoun granted that Britain was free to adopt whatever policy it chose for its own dominions. “But when she goes beyond, and avows it as her settled policy, and the object of her constant exertions, to abolish it throughout the world, she makes it the duty of all other countries whose safety or prosperity may be endangered by her policy to adopt such measures as they may deem necessary for their protection.”
Britain’s policy was particularly troubling as it applied to Texas, Calhoun asserted. The British were urging the Texans to abolish slavery in exchange for British support of Texas against Mexico. This took unfair advantage of Texas, and it posed a threat to the United States. “The consummation of the avowed object of her wishes in reference to Texas would be followed by hostile feelings and relations between that country and the United States, which could not fail to place her under the influence and control of Great Britain.” The United States had, within the memory of its older citizens, fought two wars against Britain. The American government would never allow Britain to plant itself on America’s southwestern border.
Calhoun thereupon broke the news to Pakenham of the American treaty with Texas, which heretofore had not been publicly announced. “This step has been taken as the most effectual, if not the only, means of guarding against the threatened danger and securing their permanent peace and welfare.” The treaty would be submitted to the Senate for ratification forthwith.
To this point Calhoun’s letter must have struck Pakenham as extreme. The British minister was aware the Americans and the Texans had been negotiating, and he couldn’t have been surprised that they had reached terms. But for the treaty to be cast as a response to British aggression was outrageous.
Yet what followed was downright bizarre. Calhoun launched into a defense of slavery as an institution for the uplift of Africans. He quoted statistics purporting to show that the incidence of insanity and serious disability was far higher among free Negroes in the Northern states than among slaves in the South. Massachusetts, the home of the American abolitionist movement, was among the worst offenders. “By the latest authentic accounts, there was one out of every twenty-one of the black population in jails or houses of correction, and one out of every thirteen was either deaf and dumb, blind, idiot, insane, or in prison.” America’s slaves, by contrast, were prospering. “The condition of the African race throughout all the states where the ancient relation between the two races has been retained enjoys a degree of health and comfort which may well compare with that of the laboring population of any country in Christendom; and it may be added that in no other condition, or in any other age or country, has the negro race ever attained so high an elevation in morals, intelligence or civilization.” British officials should take note before they meddled in America’s affairs. Should Britain succeed in abolitionizing the United States, it would have much to answer for. “So far from being wise or humane, she would involve in the greatest calamity the whole country, and especially the race which it is the avowed object of her exertions to benefit.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Pakenham to realize he was only incidentally the audience for Calhoun’s effusion. His guess was confirmed when the gist of Calhoun’s nominally confidential letter began circulating in Washington. The letter established Calhoun as the defender of America against Britain, as well as of slavery and the South against all foes. Calhoun’s appointment to be secretary of state had served as a step in his possible rehabilitation as a national figure. The secretary of state stood second only to the president in dignity and prestige. Calhoun had now exploited this position to take on Britain, America’s historic foe. The greatest threat to slavery and the South heretofore had been the abolitionists of the North. Calhoun’s attacks on them pleased Southern slaveholders but did nothing for his national reputation. Attacking Britain was another matter. Andrew Jackson had reached the White House on the strength of his record against Britain. What had worked for Jackson might work for John Calhoun.
BUT IT DIDN’T work for Texas. Calhoun’s Pakenham letter torpedoed the Texas negotiations. Abel Upshur had kept the matter quiet in hope the treaty might slip through the Senate. He deliberately downplayed the role of slavery in Texas, trying to make annexation seem a real estate deal, like the Louisiana Purchase. His success had been reflected in the willingness of Thomas Benton to abide the bargain.
Calhoun’s emphasis on slavery in the Texas matter, and his unprovoked attack on Britain, guaranteed the full attention of the country. Calhoun’s action enraged Benton, as Calhoun knew it would. It doomed the Texas treaty in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority was required. Calhoun knew it would do that, too. But he knew something else: that a man could be elected president with much less than two-thirds of the nation’s vote.