ind,
and a vigorous veto message was sent to Congress. To the dismay of the
tariff men, the country approved heartily, the West giving every
evidence of its continued faith in the Executive. The atmosphere in
Washington began to clear up; it was plain that a reorganization of the
Cabinet must ensue, and that the lower South, as yet in sympathy with
the stern anti-tariff policy of Calhoun, must be won away from the
South Carolinian. It seemed that the West would support the President
even if it were called upon to give up something that was held to be
very important.

In due time William B. Lewis produced a letter from William H. Crawford
which showed, what Jackson must have known since the summer of 1828,
that Calhoun had not been the President's defender in 1818, when he was
threatened with court-martial for his conduct during the Seminole War.
Jackson now made an issue of this, and welcomed a controversy with the
man who had done most to elevate him to the Presidency. Mrs. Eaton also
became a more important character, and the attitude of the families of
other members of the Cabinet were made subjects of official discussion
and displeasure. Calhoun's friends were commanded to receive her into
their circle or take the consequences. When these refused, it seemed
that this tempest in a teapot was about to become a grave matter of
state. None knew better than Jackson and Calhoun that other and deeper
causes were forcing the disruption of the party of 1828, the alliance
which had driven Adams and Clay from office.

Convinced that Van Buren had been the marplot of the Administration,
Calhoun attacked him publicly, and all the world saw what some astute
minds had long seen, that the two wings of the party in power were
irreconcilable enemies. Congress adjourned in March, 1831, and in April
the President demanded the resignations of all the friends of the
Vice-President in the Cabinet. Calhoun and Hayne returned sadly to
their constituents to advise actual resistance to the tariff, since both
the President--"an ungrateful son of Carolina"--and Congress had, during
two years, refused all relief to the suffering planters. Not one of the
problems, the solution of which had been the purpose of Jackson's
election, had been settled or seriously attacked. The East had defeated
Benton's land program; the President had refused to take up the tariff;
and internal improvements as a national policy had only been toyed with
in the Maysvi