relief. This is the answer which the respective periods of the beginning and the ending of General Jackson's administration gives to the flippant imputation of no capacity for civil government. I pass on to the next. "
The majority of the enlightened classes always opposed to him." A majority of those classes which Mons. de Tocqueville would chiefly see in the cities, and along the highways – bankers, brokers, jobbers, contractors, politicians, and speculators – were certainly against him, and he as certainly against them: but the mass of the intelligence of the country was with him! and sustained him in retrieving the country from the deplorable condition in which the "enlightened classes" had sunk it! and in advancing it to that state of felicity at home, and respect abroad, which has made it the envy and admiration of the civilized world, and the absorbent of populations of Europe. I pass on. "
Raised to the Presidency and maintained there solely by the recollection of the victory at New Orleans." Here recollection, and military glare, reverse the action of their ever previous attributes, and become stronger, instead of weaker, upon the lapse of time. The victory at New Orleans was gained in the first week of the year 1815; and did not bear this presidential fruit until fourteen and eighteen years afterwards, and until three previous good seasons had passed without production. There was a presidential election in 1816, when the victory was fresh, and the country ringing, and imaginations dazzled with it: but it did not make Jackson President, or even bring him forward as a candidate. The same four years afterwards, at the election of 1820 – not even a candidate then. Four years still later, at the election of 1824, he became a candidate, and – was not elected; – receiving but 99 electoral votes out of 261. In the year 1828 he was first elected, receiving 178 out of 261 votes; and in 1832 he was a second time elected, receiving 219 out of 288 votes. Surely there must have been something besides an old military recollection to make these two elections so different from the two former; and there was! That something else was principle! and the same that I have stated in the beginning of this chapter as entering into the canvass of 1828, and ruling its issue. I pass on to the last disparagement. "A victory which was a very ordinary achievement, and only to be remembered where battles were rare." Such was not the battle at New Orleans. It was no ordinary achievement. It was a victory if 4,600 citizens just called from their homes, without knowledge of scientific war, under a leader as little schooled as themselves in that particular, without other advantages than a slight field work (a ditch and a bank of earth) hastily thrown up – over double their numbers of British veterans, survivors of the wars of the French Revolution, victors in the Peninsula and at Toulouse, under trained generals of the Wellington school, and with a disparity of loss never before witnessed. On one side 700 killed (including the first, second and third generals); 1400 wounded; 500 taken prisoners. On the other, six privates killed, and seven wounded; and the total repulse of an invading army which instantly fled to its "wooden walls," and never again placed a hostile foot on American soil. Such an achievement is not ordinary, much less "very" ordinary. Does Mons. de Tocqueville judge the importance of victories by the numbers engaged, and the quantity of blood shed, or by their consequences? If the former, the cannonade on the heights of Valmy (which was not a battle, nor even a combat, but a distant cannon firing in which few were hurt), must seem to him a very insignificant affair. Yet it did what the marvellous victories of Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry, Vauchamps and Montereau could not do – turned back the invader, and saved the soil of France from the iron hoof of the conqueror's horse! and was commemorated twelve years afterwards by the great emperor in a ducal title bestowed upon one of its generals. The victory at New Orleans did what the connonade at Valmy did – drove back the invader! and also what it did not do – destroyed the one fourth part of his force. And, therefore, it is not to be disparaged, and will not be, by any one who judges victories by their consequences, instead of by the numbers engaged. And so the victory at New Orleans will remain in history as one of the great achievements of the world, in spite of the low opinion which the writer on American democracy entertains of it. But Mons. de Tocqueville's disparagement of General Jackson, and his achievement, does not stop at him and his victory. It goes beyond both, and reaches the American people, their republican institutions, and the elective franchise: It represents the people as incapable of self-government – as led off by a little military glare to elect a man twice President who had not one qualification for the place, who was violent and mediocre, and whom the enlightened classes opposed: all most unjustly said, but still to pass for American history in Europe, and with some Americans at home.
Regard for Mons. de Tocqueville is the cause of this correction of his errors: it is a piece of respect which I do not extend to the riffraff of European writers who come here to pick up the gossip of the highways, to sell it in Europe for American history, and to requite with defamation the hospitalities of our houses. He is not of that class: he is above it: he is evidently not intentionally unjust. But he is the victim of the company which he kept while among us; and his book must pay the penalty of the impositions practised upon him. The character of our country, and the cause of republican government, require his errors to be corrected: and, unhappily, I shall have further occasion to perform that duty.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
RETIRING OF MR. MACON
Philosophic in his temperament and wise in his conduct, governed in all his actions by reason and judgment, and deeply imbued with Bible images, this virtuous and patriotic man (whom Mr. Jefferson called "the last of the Romans)" had long fixed the term of his political existence at the age which the Psalmist assigns for the limit of manly life: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." He touched that age in 1828; and, true to all his purposes, he was true to his resolve in this, and executed it with the quietude and indifference of an ordinary transaction. He was in the middle of a third senatorial term, and in the full possession of all his faculties of mind and body; but his time for retirement had come – the time fixed by himself; but fixed upon conviction and for well-considered reasons, and inexorable to him as if fixed by fate. To the friends who urged him to remain to the end of his term, and who insisted that his mind was as good as ever, he would answer, that it was good enough yet to let him know that he ought to quit office before his mind quit him, and that he did not mean to risk the fate of the Archbishop of Grenada. He resigned his senatorial honors as he had worn them – meekly, unostentatiously, in a letter of thanks and gratitude to the General Assembly of his State; – and gave to repose at home that interval of thought and quietude which every wise man would wish to place between the turmoil of life and the stillness of eternity. He had nine years of this tranquil enjoyment, and died without pain or suffering June 29th, 1837, – characteristic in death as in life. It was eight o'clock in the morning when he felt that the supreme hour had come, had himself full-dressed with his habitual neatness, walked in the room and lay upon the bed, by turns conversing kindly with those who were about him, and showing by his conduct that he was ready and waiting, but hurrying nothing. It was the death of Socrates, all but the hemlock, and in that full faith of which the Grecian sage had only a glimmering. He directed his own grave on the point of a sterile ridge (where nobody would wish to plough), and covered with a pile of rough flint-stone, (which nobody would wish to build with), deeming this sterility and the uselessness of this rock the best security for that undisturbed repose of the bones which is still desirable to those who are indifferent to monuments.
In almost all strongly-marked characters there is usually some incident or sign, in early life, which shows that character, and reveals to the close observer the type of the future man. So it was with Mr. Macon. His firmness, his patriotism, his self-denial, his devotion to duty and disregard of office and emolument; his modesty, integrity, self-control, and subjection of conduct to the convictions of reason and the dictates of virtue, all so steadily exemplified in a long life, were all shown from the early age of eighteen, in the miniature representation of individual action, and only confirmed in the subsequent public exhibitions of a long, beautiful, and exalted career.
He was of that age, and a student at Princeton college, at the time of the Declaration of American Independence. A small volunteer corps was then on the Delaware. He quit his books, joined it, served a term, returned to Princeton, and resumed his studies. In the year 1778 the Southern States had become a battle-field, big with their own fate, and possibly involving the issue of the war. British fleets and armies appeared there, strongly supported by the friends of the British cause; and the
