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HENRY CLAY: THE GREAT COMPROMISER, PART III

© John S. Cooper

In 1832, Henry Clay made another try for the White House. He had succeeded John Quincy Adams as leader of the National Republican Party after Adams was defeated in 1828. Clay returned to the Senate in March 1831 and quickly took the lead in opposing President Andrew Jackson and his newly formed Democratic Party.

Andrew Jackson was a military hero of the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans. Clay knew he could never defeat Jackson in a race of personality or personal popularity, so Clay needed an issue on which to focus his campaign. He chose as his issue the controversy surrounding the Bank of the United States. Jackson and the Democrats opposed the Bank, believing it benefited the rich at the expense of the common man. The Bank’s charter was due to expire in 1836, but Clay convinced Bank president Nicholas Biddle to apply for a new charter four years early, in 1832.

Congress passed the Bank bill and, as Clay knew he would, Jackson vetoed it. Clay now had his issue for the election of 1832. The National Republicans circulated Jackson’s veto message, but it backfired on them. The people approved of Jackson’s position, which pictured the Bank as a tool of the wealthy aristocracy. He called the paper money the Bank printed “rag money” and called for only silver and gold to be used as tender, as called for in the Constitution.

The National Republicans never had much of a chance, because regardless of Jackson and Clay trying to avoid personalities, Jackson was still very popular and many of the voters didn’t care about the Bank issue. Jackson won easily, 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay. Clay continued to lead the National Republicans, which soon became the Whigs, in the Senate.

South Carolina, angered by the Tariff of 1828 (called the Tariff of Abominations in the South because of the high duties it placed on goods the South had to import) and an even higher tariff bill in 1832, threatened to nullify the 1832 tariff. (A tariff is a tax on imports which was the main source of revenue for the federal government, and was sometimes used to protect home industries by making imports cost more. The North tended to favor high, protective tariffs, and the South favored much lower tariffs for revenue only.) South Carolina passed the South Carolina Exposition, which declared the 1832 tariff null and void in South Carolina. Jackson’s fiery Vice President, John Calhoun of South Carolina, secretly authored the resolution. Now a lame duck (a politician finishing the end of his term after having not been re-elected), Calhoun became the first Vice President to resign in December 1832 in order to take a seat in the Senate from South Carolina.