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"That is just it," interrupted Troup; "the man is desperate. So are his followers, his 'little band. They were sick and gasping after Burr's failure to receive one vote in the Republican caucus for even the Vice-Presidency, and they know that the Louisiana Purchase has made Jefferson invincible with the Democrats or the Republicans, as Jefferson still persists in calling them.
On the 3d of May, in the evening, a select and confidential federal caucus was held.
By what right did these accidental and temporary holders of office prescribe party politics? There had been no Convention, not even a caucus, since this question arose. The party was not committed. The President had no right to tell a Senator his duty and command his allegiance. He had no power to prescribe tests. A Senator's first duty was to his State.
He was elected by the votes of the artizans and agricultural labourers in a constituency where at the election before there had been a great majority for the opposing candidate, though he had no personal influence, had spent nothing in "nursing the constituency," and refused to give pledges or act as a delegate to register the instructions of any caucus.
Before the caucus had eliminated the individual initiative, there was much more of personal feeling in elections. A vote against a man had something of offense in it, and sometimes stirred up a defeated candidate to heroic vengeance.
John Quincy Adams, "the secretarial successor," had the second highest number of electoral votes, and Crawford, the candidate of the caucus, the next. With his usual ill-fortune, Clay had the least and must be dropped. He had carried the three States of Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. It was to be presumed that he would throw his influence in these States to Jackson, his fellow of the South-west.
But in August, 1823 six months before the caucus nomination he was stricken with paralysis and rendered speechless, almost blind, and practically helpless. For months he hovered between life and death in a "mansion" on the outskirts of Washington, while his friends labored to conceal the seriousness of his condition and to keep his canvass going.
Tilden's immediate friends in the House his attitude and objection, united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill and reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon the members of the committee.
Senator Chandler, for whom I have always had the greatest respect as a man and as a Senator, after the caucus was held told Senator Frye that he had heard I had some ambition for the place. Mr. Frye came at once to my house and to my study and asked me, in so many words, if I had desired to be president of the Senate.
Absolute power, the centralists assumed and their fanatical associates seemed to suppose, was vested in the legislative body of the country, and its decrees, arbitrary and despotic, often originating in and carried first by a small vote in party caucus, were in all cases claimed to be decisive, and to be obeyed by the Executive, the judiciary, and the people, regardless of the Constitution.
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