A History of the American People

December 14, 1825. The two men had met to discuss appointments to the Customs, always
contentious because of the rising volume of cash handled and the opportunities for stealing it.
Monroe was obstructive and when Crawford rose to go he said contemptuously: Well, if you will not appoint the persons well qualified for the places, tell me who you will appoint that I may get rid of their importunities.' Monroe repliedwith great warmth, saying he considered
Crawford's language as extremely improper and unsuitable to the relations between them; when
Crawford, turning to him, raised his cane, as if in the attitude to strike, and said: "You damned
infernal old scoundrel," Mr Monroe seized the tongs at the fireplace in self-defense, applied a
retaliatory epithet to Crawford and told him he would immediately ring for servants himself and
turn him out of the house ... They never met afterwards.'
To assist their presidential prospects, both Crawford and Calhoun used agents in their
departments, whose duty it was to dispense money, as political campaigners; they were given
gold and silver but allowed to discharge payments in paper as a reward. Since each knew what
the other was doing and circulated rumors to that effect, these activities became public
knowledge. Then again, Crawford allowed one of his senatorial supporters to inspect government
land offices, at public expense, during which tour he made speeches supporting Crawford's
candidacy. Various members of the administration, it was claimed, had been given loans' by businessmen seeking favors, loans which were never repaid. But Congress was corrupt too. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri served aslegal representative' of Astor, on a huge
retainer, and managed to push through the abolition of the War Department's factory' system, which competed with Astor's own posts. The fact that the War Department's system was corrupt, as Benton easily demonstrated, was not the point: what was a senator doing working for a millionaire? Benton was not the only one. The great Massachusetts orator, Daniel Webster (1782-1852), received a fat fee forservices' to the hated Second Bank of the United States.
Webster has been described by one modern historian as a man who regularly took handouts from any source available and paid the expected price.' Astor seems to have had financial dealings with other men high in public life; indeed he even loaned $5,000 to Monroe himself; this was eventually repaid though not for fifteen years. He lent the enormous sum of $20,000 to Clay during the panic year 1819 when credit was impossible to come by. Clay, like Webster, served the Bank for money while Speaker. About this time, America's growing number of newspapers began to campaign vigorously about Washington's declining standards. The Baltimore Federal Republican announced that navy paymasters were guilty ofenormous
defalcation,' only one of innumerable instances of corruption in Washington.' The New York Statesman denouncedscandalous defalcation in our public pecuniary agents, gross
misapplications of public money, and an unprecedented laxity in official responsibilities.'
The evident corruption in Washington, coming on top of the financial crisis of 1819, persuaded
the victor of New Orleans, General Jackson, that it was high time, and his public duty, to
campaign for the presidency and engage in what he called a general cleansing' of the federal capital. He did not think it practicable to return to the Jeffersonian ideal of a pastoral America run by enlightened farmers. He wrote in 1816:Experience has taught me that manufactures are
now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.' But clearly a return to the pristine
purity of the republic was imperative. So Jackson became the first presidential candidate to grasp
with both hands what was to become the most popular campaigning theme in American history-
'Turn the rascals out.' Unfortunately for Jackson, if his own hands were clean-how could they not
be? He had barely set foot in Washington-there were quite different objections to his
candidature. His victory at New Orleans had enabled him to become a kind of unofficial viceroy