William Hendricks’ Political Circulars to his Constituents : First Senatorial Terni, 1826-1831* Edited by Frederick D. Hill** The Indiana General Assembly elected William Hendricks to the United States Senate on January 12, 1825. Hendricks had won his last congressional reelection in 1820 by a margin of more than ten to one and had been elected governor in 1822 without opposition, but his senatorial election was close. He trailed his leading opponent, Judge Isaac Blackford of the Indiana Supreme Court, by one vote on each of the first two ballots, but he was elected on the fourth ballot 32 to 30.l When Governor Hendricks resigned in February, 1825, a month after being elected to the Senate, he had served only a little more than two years of the three year term to which he had been elected.2 Senator Hendricks arrived at Washington on March 3, 1825, to attend the inauguration of President John Quincy Adams and to sit in the special session of the Senate, which convened the next day to act on the new president’s appoint- ments.3 This time he was no stranger on Capitol Hill. Eight * An introduction to the political career of William Hendricks and a discussion of political circulars and their use by Hendricks and others were included in the first installment in this series. See Frederick D. Hill, [ed.] , “William Hendricks’ Political Circulars to his Constituents: Congressional Period, 1816-1822,” Indiana Magazine of History, LXX (December, 1974), 296-309. ** Frederick D. Hill is professor of history at Indiana Central Uni- versity, Indianapolis. Dorothy Riker and Gayle Thornbrough, comps., Indiana Election Returns, 1816-1861 (Indiana Historical Collections, Vol. XL; Indian- apolis, 1960), 127; ibid., 73-74. Returns from Knox, Monroe, Scott, and Washington counties, being from the Corydon Indiana Gazette, August 31 and September 17, are unofficial. Ibid., 138. 2 William Hendricks to Secretary of State William W. Wick, Febru- ary 12, 1825, William H. English Papers (Indiana Historical Society Library, Indianapolis). 3 William Hendricks to Dennis Pennington et al., September 26, 1828, Madison Indiana Republican, October 15, 1828. Hendricks’ Circulars 125 of the senators had sat with him in the House of Representa- tives between 1816 and 1822.4 When Congress convened in regular session in December, Hendricks quickly went to work on behalf of his constituents. At his suggestion the Senate created a Select Committee on Roads and Canals. The next day he was made chairman of the committee, and ten days later he moved that the com- mittee be instructed to study federal aid to Indiana to build a canal connecting the Wabash and Maumee rivers.5 At the beginning of each session of Congress from 1825 to 1829, Hendricks moved the creation of this select committee; and each time, the committee was created and he was made its chairman. Then in January, 1830, Roads and Canals was made a standing committee, and the next winter Hendricks was again its chairman.& During this initial senatorial term he also served four sessions on the Standing Committee on Con- tingent Expenses of the Senate; four on Military Affairs; and three on Indian affair^.^ But his energies were devoted primarily to internal improvements and the work of the Com- mittee on Roads and Canals. Senator Hendricks was a diligent legislator, voting on more than ninety-five percent of the roll calls during his first term. Though he maintained his freedom of action, and no faction could legitimately claim him as a partisan, he usually acted with the majority.HHe voted with them on about seventy- five percent of the procedural questions and about sixty-five 4 James L. Harrison, comp., Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1949 (Washington, 1950), 110-35, 143-49. 5 Senate Journal, 19 Cong., 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 124), 32-33, 38, 55 (December 12, 13, 22, 1825). (i Ibid., 32-33, 38 (December 12, 13, 1825) ; ibid., 19 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 143), 35 (December 13, 1826); ibid., 20 Cong., 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 162), 36 (December 13, 1827); ibid., 20 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 180), 30 (December 15, 1828); ibid., 21 Cong. 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 191), 24, 90 (December 9, 1829, January 18, 1830); ibid., 21 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 202), 6 (December 7, 1830). 7 Ibid., 19 Cong., 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 124), 32 (December 12, 1825); ibid., 19 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 143), 30 (December 11, 1826) ; ibid., 20 Cong., 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial 162), 28, 29 (December 10, 11, 1827) ; ibid., 20 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 180), 22, 23 (December 9, 1828) ; ibid., 21 Cong., 1 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 191), 23 (December 9, 1829); ibid., 21 Cong., 2 Sess. (U.S. Serial Set 202), 6 (December 7, 1830). This was a period of transition from the nonpartisan “era of good feeling” to the partisan Jacksonian era, and national parties were just beginning to reemerge. Senators and representatives were sometimes described as Adams-Clay men or Jackson men, but many defied classifi- cation. New majorities, therefore, based on shifting alliances, often had to be mobilized issue by issue. 126 Indiana Magazine of History percent of the amendments proposed. On passage of bills Hendricks voted with the majority about eighty-five percent of the time. He and James Noble, the other senator from Indiana, frequently disagreed on procedural matters and sometimes opposed each other in substantive debate. But they stood together on about eighty-five percent of the roll call votes in which both participated.9 Few problems of national importance are resolved quick- ly, and the political circulars that Senator Hendricks wrote during his first term show the persistence of many questions that he had treated while in the House of Representatives. Proposed changes in public land policy and the proper rela- tion to Latin American republics continued to receive detailed coverage; internal improvements and Indian affairs became major issues and were reported in depth; and the contro- versial tariff question was occasionally reviewed. Congress had ended credit sales of public lands in 1820 and the next year had passed a comprehensive relief law to lighten the burden of purchasers already in arrears and to hasten liquidation of the accumulated indebtedness. At that time Hendricks believed this law to be broad enough to satisfy completely the need for relief.’” He was mistaken, however, and Congress repeatedly extended the deadline for claiming benefits under the law and liberalized its terms.I1 By the middle of the 1820s western states were dotted with unsold tracts of public land because settlers moving westward bypassed areas that seemed less fertile or were less readily accessible to purchase what appeared to be choice land. Bills that provided for pricing public land according to its desirability, measured by the length of time it had been on the market and remained unsold, were being introduced at every session of Congress. The most popular graduation proposal would have reduced the price of land already on the cfi These statistics were compiled from roll call votes recorded in the Register of Debates, 19-21 Cong. (March 4, 1825-March 3, 1831). 10AnnaZs of Congress, 16 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix 2578-80 (April 24, 1820); ihid., 16 Cong., 2 Sess., Appendix 1795-98 (March 2, 1821); see Hill, “William Hendricks’ Political Circulars to his Constituents: Congressional Period, 1816-1822,” 335-38. ‘1 Annals of Congress, 17 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix 2591-92 (April 20, 1822) ; ibid., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., Appendix 1408 (March 3, 1823) ; ibid., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix 3219-20, 3231-32 (May 18, 26, 1824) ; Register of Debates, 19 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix xii-xiii (May 4, 1826) ; ibid., 20 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix xxiii (May 23, 1828) ; ibid., 21 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix xiii (March 31, 1830); ibid., 21 Cong., 2 Sess., Appendix 17 (February 25, 1831). Hendricks’ Circulars 127 market to one dollar per acre on March 1, 1827, and con- tinued to reduce it twenty-five cents per acre each year. If any remained unsold after one year on the market at twenty- five cents per acre, it would be ceded to the state in which it was located. Most congressmen from the thirteen original states were opposed to graduating the price of public lands, however, and no such law was enacted at this time.12 During the 1827 debate on graduation, Hendricks labeled the current public land policy unjust and offered an amend- ment that would have limited graduation to lands in the terri- tories and ceded all other public lands to the states in which they were located. Though he had earlier supported the prohibition of slavery as a condition for the admission of Missouri to the Union, Hendricks now denied the power of Congress to condition the admission of a state by retaining title to public lands located therein. He took his stand on the Ordinance of 1787, which provided for the admission of new states “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever,’’ and on the Constitution, into which he read the same idea.’d Federal control of public lands in the states and tax exemption for these lands while public and for five years after they passed into private hands, he said, were “contrary to the spirit of the Constitution.” According to him “rights of soil and taxation are inseparable from the sover- eignty of every independent state.”’* The Madison Indiana Republicun credited Hendricks with originating the cession concept and along with the Indianapolis Indiana Journal ap- plauded his initiative and diligence.