d as if he might also bequeath to his successor a
foreign war. France had agreed to pay the spoliation claims, but the
French Chambers failed to appropriate the money. Louis Philippe, the
king, suggested to Livingston, the American Minister, that a stronger
tone from the United States might stir the Chambers to action. Jackson
was the last man in the world to hurt a cause by taking too mild a tone.
In his message of 1834 to Congress, he took a tone so strong that it
made the French Chambers too angry to pay. Thereupon, he suggested
reprisals. The House, led by Adams, who never fell behind Jackson on a
question of foreign relations, sustained the President. The Senate took
no action. The French Chambers finally passed an appropriation, but with
a proviso that no money should be paid until satisfactory explanations
of the President's message were received. Jackson had no notion of
apologizing, and feeling was rising in both countries. Diplomatic
relations were broken off, and war was apparently very close, when, in
the winter of 1835-6, England offered to mediate. An expression in
Jackson's message of 1835, not meant as an apology, was somehow
construed as such by the French ministry, and France agreed to pay.

The final settlement came at the very end of Jackson's administration.
The presidential election of 1836 had fulfilled his wish that Van Buren
should be his successor. In January, 1837, the resolution of censure was
solemnly expunged from the records of the Senate. That body being now
controlled by his friends, and his enemy, John Marshall, being dead, he
named Taney Chief Justice, and the nomination was confirmed. He issued a
farewell address to the people, after the manner of Washington, and
stood, a white-haired, impressive figure, to watch the inauguration of
Van Buren; then he journeyed home to The Hermitage to receive his last
glorious welcome from his neighbors.

It was the most triumphant home-coming of them all. He had beaten all
his enemies. Clay, wearied out with politics, was again in retirement;
Adams, whom he found a President, was leading a minority of
representatives in a new sectional struggle, the fight against slavery;
Calhoun, whom he found but one step from the presidency, was a gloomy
and tragical figure, the Ishmael of American politics. As for his
friends, he left them in power everywhere,--in congress, on the bench,
in the White House. To friends and enemies he had been like fate.

There