view before those who were perhaps his most implacable opponents, the ladies of Boston, we have the testimony of the late Josiah Quincy, in his Figures from the Past, that the personal bearing of this obnoxious official was most unwillingly approved. Quincy was detailed by Governor Lincoln, on whose military staff he was, to attend President Jackson everywhere when visiting Boston in 1833; and this narrator testifies that, with every prejudice against Jackson, he found him essentially "a knightly personage prejudiced, narrow, mistaken on many points, it might be, but vigorously a gentleman in his high sense of honor and in the natural straightforward courtesies which are easily distinguished from the veneer of policy." Sitting erect on his horse, a thin, stiff type of military strength, he carried with him in the streets a bearing of such dignity that staid old Bostonians who had refused even to look upon him from their windows would finally be coaxed into taking one peep, and would then hurriedly bring forward their little daughters to wave their handkerchiefs. He wrought, Quincy declares, "a mysterious charm upon old and young"; showed, although in feeble health, a great consideration for others; and was in private a really agreeable companion. It appears from these reminiscences that the President was not merely the cause of wit in others, but now and then appreciated it himself, and that he used to listen with delight to the reading of the "Jack Downing" letters, laughing heartily sometimes, and declaring, "The Vice-president must have written that. Depend upon it, Jack Downing is only Van Buren in masquerade." It is a curious fact that the satirist is already the better remembered of the two, although

Van Buren was in his day so powerful as to preside over the official patronage of the nation, and to be called the "Little Magician."

But whatever personal attractions of manner President Jackson may have had, he threw away his social leadership at Washington by a single act of what may have been misapplied chivalry. This act was what Mr. Morse has tersely called "the importation of Mrs. Eaton's visiting list into the politics and government of the country." It was the nearest approach yet made under our masculine political institutions to those eminent scandals which constitute the minor material of court historians in Europe. The heroine of the comedy, considered merely as Peggy O'Neil, daughter of a Washington innkeeper

or as Mrs. Timberlake, the wife of a naval purser who had committed suicide because of strong drinkmight have seemed more like a personage out of one of Fielding's novels than as a feature in the history of an administration; but when fate at last made her Mrs. Secretary Eaton she became one who could disturb cabinets and annihilate friendships. It was not merely out of regard for her personal wrongs that all this took place, but there was a long history behind it. There had been a little irregularity about President Jackson's own marriage. He had espoused his wife after a supposed divorce from a previous husband; and when the divorce really took place the ceremony had to be repeated. Moreover, as the divorce itself had originally been based on some scandal about Jackson, he was left in a state of violent sensitiveness on the whole matrimonial question. Mrs. Eaton had nothing in the world to do with all this, but she got the benefit of it. The mere fact that she

to whom the President had good-naturedly nodded as Peggy O'Neil had been censured by his own officials, after she had become the wife of one of them, was enough to enrage him.

For once he overestimated his powers. He had conquered Indian tribes and checked the army of Great Britain, but the ladies of Washington society were too much for him. Every member of his cabinet expressed the utmost approval of his position, but they said with one accord that those matters must be left to their wives. Mrs. Donelson, his own niece—that is, the wife of his nephew, and the lady who received company for him at the White Housewould not receive Mrs. Eaton, and was sent back to Tennessee. Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of the Vice-president, took the same attitude, and ruined thereby her husband's political prospects, Calhoun being utterly superseded in the President's good graces by Van Buren, who, being a widower, could pay attention to the offending fair one without let or hinderance. Through his influence Baron Krudener, the Russian Minister, and Vaughan, the British Minister, both bachelors, gave entertainments at which "Bellona," as the newspapers afterwards called the lady, from her influence in creating strife, was pres

ent.

It did no good; every dance in which she stood up to take part was, in the words of a Washington letter-writer, "instantly dissolved into its original elements," and though she was placed at the head of the supper-table, every lady present ignored her very existence. Thus the amenities of Van Buren were as powerless as the anger of Jackson; but the astute Secretary won the President's heart, and with it that of his whole immediate circle-cabinet proper and

cabinet improper. It was one of the things that turned the scale between Calhoun and Van Buren, putting the New York "magician" in line for the Presidential succession; and in this way Peggy O'Neil had an appreciable influence on the political history of the nation. It was fortunate that she did not also lead to foreign embroilments, for the wife of the Dutch Minister once refused to sit next to her at a public entertainment, upon which the President threatened to demand the Minister's recall. All this time Jackson himself remained utterly free from scandal, nor did his enemies commonly charge him with anything beyond ill-timed quixotism. But it shows how feminine influence creeps inside of all political barriers, and recalls Charles Churchill's couplet:

"Women, who've oft as sovereigns graced the land, But never governed well at second-hand."

The two acts with which the administration of President Jackson will be longest identified are his dealings with South Carolina in respect to nullification and his long warfare with the United States. Bank. The first brought the New England States back to him, and the second took them away again. He perhaps won rather more applause than he merited by the one act, and more condemnation than was just for the other. Let us first consider the matter of nullification. When various southern StatesGeorgia, at first, not South Carolina, taking the lead ---had quarrelled with the tariff of 1828, and openly threatened to set it aside, they evidently hoped for the co-operation of the President; or at least for that silent acquiescence he had shown when Georgia had been almost equally turbulent on the Indian question,

and he would not interfere, as his predecessor had done, to protect the treaty rights of the Indian tribes. The whole South was therefore startled when he gave, at a banquet on Jefferson's birthday (April 13, 1830), a toast that now seems commonplace-"The Federal Union; it must be preserved." But this was not all; when the time came he took vigorous, if not altogether consistent, steps to preserve it.

When, in November, 1832, South Carolina for the first time officially voted that certain tariff acts were null and void in that State, the gauntlet of defiance was fairly thrown down, and Jackson picked it up. He sent General Scott to take command at Charleston, with troops near by, and two gun-boats at hand; he issued a dignified proclamation, written by Livingston (December 10, 1832), which pronounced the act of South Carolina contradictory to the Constitution, unauthorized by it, and destructive of its aims. So far, so good; but unfortunately the President had, the week before (December 4, 1832), sent a tariff message to Congress, of which John Quincy Adams wrote, "It goes far to dissolve the Union into its original elements, and is in substance a complete surrender into the hands of the nullifiers of South Carolina." Then came Mr. Clay's compromise tariff of 1833, following in part the line indicated by this message, and achieving, as Mr. Calhoun said, a victory for nullificationleaving the matter a drawn game, at any rate. The action of Jackson, being thus accompanied, settled nothing; it was like valiantly ordering a burglar out of your house with a pistol, and adding the suggestion that he will find a portion of the family silver on the hall table, ready packed for his use, as he goes out. Nevertheless, the burglar was gone for the moment,