5th of December for the closing session of the
Administration. The note of victory pervaded the President's message.
Yet there was one more triumph to be won: the resolution of censure
voted by the Senate in 1834 was still officially on the record book.
Now it was that Benton finally procured the passage of his expunging
resolution, although not until both branches of Congress had been
dragged into controversy more personal and acrid, if possible, than
any in the past eight years. The action taken was probably
unconstitutional. But Jackson's "honor" was vindicated, and that was
all that he and his friends saw, or cared to see, in the proceeding.
As early as 1831 the President conceived the idea of issuing a
farewell address to the people upon the eve of his retirement; and a
few weeks before the election of Van Buren he sent to Taney a list of
subjects which he proposed to touch upon in the document, requesting
him to "throw on paper" his ideas concerning them. The address was
issued on March 4, 1837, and followed closely the copy subsequently
found in Taney's hand writing in the Jackson manuscripts. Its contents
were thoroughly commonplace, being indeed hardly more than a resume of
the eight annual messages; and it might well have been dismissed as
the amiable musings of a garrulous old man. But nothing associated
with the name of Jackson ever failed to stir controversy. The Whigs
ridiculed the egotism which underlay the palpable imitation of
Washington. "Happily," said the New York _American_, "it is the last
humbug which the mischievous popularity of this illiterate, violent,
vain, and iron-willed soldier can impose upon a confiding and
credulous people." The Democrats, however, lauded the address, praised
the wisdom and sincerity of its author, and laid away among their most
valued mementoes the white satin copies which admiring friends
scattered broadcast over the country.

Showered with evidences of undiminished popularity, the General came
down to his last day in office. One enthusiast sent him a light wagon
made entirely of hickory sticks with the bark upon them. Another
presented a phaeton made of wood taken from the old frigate
_Constitution_. A third capped the climax by forwarding from New York
a cheese four feet in diameter, two feet thick, and weighing fourteen
hundred pounds--twice as large, the _Globe_ fondly pointed out, as the
cheese presented to Jefferson under similar circumstances a quarter of
a ce