The Invincible Duff Green Whig of the West
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www.ebook3000.com THE INVINCIBLE DUFF GREEN www.ebook3000.com www.ebook3000.com THE INVINCIBLE DUFF GREEN WHIGz OF THE WEST W. Stephen Belko University of Missouri Press Columbia and London www.ebook3000.com Copyright © 2006 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 CIP to come This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Stephanie Foley Typesetter: Printer and binder: Typefaces: Bodoni BE and Century Schoolbook The University of Missouri Press offers its grateful acknowledgment to an anonymous donor whose generous grant in support of the publication of outstanding dissertations has assisted us with this volume. www.ebook3000.com TO MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY, MY PARENTS, MY WIFE, SAVAN NAH TAYLOR, AND ANDREW JACKSON www.ebook3000.com www.ebook3000.com CONTENTSz ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 Nascent Jacksonian Ancestry, Kentucky Days, and the Emergence of a Western Democrat 8 z SECTION I THE MAKING OF A JACKSONIAN Missouri Years (1816–1826) 31 CHAPTER 2 Land Speculator, Lawyer, Merchant, and General 33 CHAPTER 3 Politics and Panic 47 CHAPTER 4 New Pursuits and a New Career 61 z SECTION II THE ELECTION OF 1828 Jacksonian Partisan 75 CHAPTER 5 Ideology, Party System, and Party Press 79 CHAPTER 6 Defense of Jackson, Attack on the Coalition, and the Corrupt Bargain 107 CHAPTER 7 The Calhoun Factor 131 CHAPTER 8 The Issues Tariff, Internal Improvements, and Slavery 143 CHAPTER 9 Victory! 162 z vii www.ebook3000.com viii Contents SECTION III JACKSON’S FIRST ADMINISTRATION (1829–1833) Jacksonian Apostate 169 CHAPTER 10 Appointments and Patronage 176 CHAPTER 11 The Rise of the Globe 183 CHAPTER 12 The Jackson-Calhoun Correspondence 195 CHAPTER 13 The Eaton Affairs 210 CHAPTER 14 The Election of 1832 226 z SECTION IV JACKSON’S SECOND ADMINISTRATION (1833–1837) Jacksonian Adversary 243 CHAPTER 15 The Nullification Crisis 248 CHAPTER 16 The Bank War 272 CHAPTER 17 Slavery 281 z SECTION V DEFEAT, DEJECTION, AND DIVERSIONS Jacksonian American 293 CHAPTER 18 The Printing Business 297 CHAPTER 19 The Election of 1836 307 CHAPTER 20 New Pursuits 316 z SECTION VI AGENT OF MANIFEST DESTINY Jacksonian Expansionist 323 CHAPTER 21 England 332 CHAPTER 22 England and Texas 356 CHAPTER 23 England, Texas, and Mexico 381 CHAPTER 24 Little Hickory’s Wars 404 CHAPTER 25 Jacksonian Capitalist and Territorial Expansion 414 z CONCLUSION The Last Years of a Jacksonian American 439 BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 INDEX 473 www.ebook3000.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTSz n a monograph of this length it is always hard to remember all the individuals who had a helping hand in some form or another I in putting it all together. But some individuals certainly had an integral role in getting this tome researched, written, and published. First and foremost I want to thank the members of my doctoral com- mittee at Mississippi State University, especially Charles Lowery, John Marszalek, and Bill Parrish. The interlibrary loan department at MSU must be recognized for their outstanding work in acquiring a substantial number of resources quickly and efficiently. Thanks to my friend Jeanne Drewes, director of the rare book acquisitions at the other MSU, Michigan State University library, for getting numerous reels of microfilm of the Duff Green papers. Special thanks also must go out to Chris Phillips of the University of Cincinnati for reading the manuscript and offering wonderful suggestions for its improvement. I owe him more than just a single lunch. A portion of the manuscript first appeared in the Missouri Historical Review 98 (January and April 2004), published by the State Historical Society of Missouri. Finally, I must thank the one person who had to put up with all of this toil and tribulation—and exaltation at its completion—as much as I had—my wife, Mindy, who could have complained bitterly and regularly, but rarely ever did, about the extensive time and trouble it took to research and write this book. She deserves more acknowledg- ment for getting this work completed than anyone else. ix THE INVINCIBLE DUFF GREEN INTRODUCTIONz n a crisp Christmas Eve afternoon, 1832, the notorious editor of the United States Telegraph, General Duff Green, casually Ostrolled down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Suddenly, without warning, James Blair, a congressman from South Carolina, approached him from behind, raised his walking stick, and clubbed him. A huge man of three hundred and fifty pounds, Blair delivered a stag- gering blow that hurled the editor into the gutter. Blair again attacked with his cudgel. Though Green managed to deflect it, the second blow broke his arm severely. The South Carolinian then hurled his entire weight onto the stunned victim, breaking Green’s collarbone and sev- eral ribs and dislocating his hip. The general would spend a painful holiday season recuperating in bed. Such was the fury that Duff Green evoked from others. He had, on prior occasions, engaged in several duels and brawls, and the Blair as- sault would certainly not be his last physical confrontation. The attack came as a result of the passions engendered by the nullification crisis that gripped the nation during the early 1830s. Green, though he op- posed the actual implementation of the doctrine, sympathized with the nullifiers of South Carolina and labeled the Union Party of that state, of which Blair was a member, as Tories. Infuriated by the slander in the columns of the Telegraph likening the Union Party to the American Loyalists of the Revolutionary era, Blair fumed and blustered and threat- ened to thrash Green. The editor ignored the threats, however, and continued the charge, provoking the congressman to carry out his as- sault. Green sued Blair, eventually winning three hundred and fifty dollars in damages—one dollar for each pound of his assailant. Born in 1791, three years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and passing away in 1875, two years before the purported end of Recon- struction, Duff Green led a long, eventful, and often volatile life, covering 1 2 Introduction an important span of the young nation’s history, from its founding, through its near dissolution, to its bitter reunion. During these forma- tive years of American history, Green engaged in numerous pursuits and ventures—pedagogical, military, legal, political, editorial, diplo- matic, industrial, and financial. Some were successful, some were not. He took part in many of the great events that shaped the rising Amer- ican republic, contributed a verse to a host of the major issues of his day, and rubbed shoulders with the foremost figures of antebellum and Civil War America, among them Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lin- coln. One of Green’s contemporaries put it succinctly when he sug- gested, as late as 1867, that Green’s name was “a household word in all this country.” Historians have also recognized Green’s prominence in nineteenth-century America. William Freehling was correct, for exam- ple, when he suggested that “no antebellum American asked ‘Who’s he?’ about Duff Green.”1 Despite Green’s prominence, surprisingly, no full-scale biography of this important figure exists; four dissertations, three master’s theses, and a handful of articles are the only studies of Green to date. Yet, nearly everywhere I turned, prominent historians called for such a com- prehensive study. Freehling has written, for example, “Duff Green, amazingly, still awaits his biographer.” Thomas R. Hietala noted that “no biography exists of [Green]” and that his “colorful and controversial career merits an in-depth study.” In the introduction of volume eleven of the Papers of John C. Calhoun, edited by W. Edwin Hemphill, Robert L. Meriwether, and Clyde Wilson, I read the passage, “Duff Green is possi- bly the most important American in the nineteenth century who lacks a full-scale biography. [H]is career is more instructive and intrinsically interesting than that of scores of now better-known contemporaries.”2 Although prominent historians have called for a full-scale study of Green, they also epitomized the reason why such a study is needed. They simply assumed things about the man that were misleading or untrue. The real Duff Green, therefore, had to be located and uncovered. I assumed that there was some reason for this omission: either the lack of primary materials precluded such a study, or the materials that 1. J. L. P. Smith to Asa Packer, October 18, 1867, Duff Green Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hereafter cited as Green Papers, SHC-UNC. William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854, 385. 2. Freehling, Disunion, 607. W. Edwin Hemphill, Robert L. Meriwether, and Clyde Wilson, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 11: xxv, hereafter cited as JCCP. Introduction 3 did exist did not warrant the time and energy required to undertake the effort. I was grossly wrong on both accounts. There exists a great abundance of primary resources on Green. Indeed, the quantity is al- most overwhelming. The Duff Green Papers consist of twenty-five reels in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Caro- lina and three reels in the Library of Congress. Hundreds of other let- ters to and from, and references about, can be found in nearly eighty other manuscript collections across the country, from the Huntington Library in California to the New York Public Library. The U.S. Tele- graph alone encompasses sixteen reels—abundant material indeed. The wealth of primary materials coupled with the absence of a full- scale study, however, do not alone justify writing a monograph on Green.