On December 1, a choice of the State and Treasury Departments was tendered to the statesman from Massachusetts, with the information that the former had already been declined by his rival, and that the latter was originally intended for himself. On the 11th, Webster accepted the Department of State, explaining that he was not attracted to the detail of the Treasury, and that the great matters of that department would come before all the members of the administration, as Cabinet questions.' At this point, Clay's influence seems to have ceased; for persons were not lacking to make the President-elect sensitive to dictation. Yet it must have been as a proxy for the party leader that John J. Crittenden, the junior Senator from Kentucky, was selected to be Attorney-General. With regard to the Treasury, Clay's views were positively set at naught. Thomas Ewing of Ohio had originally been slated for the Postmaster-Generalship, and the chieftain had not objected to assigning that office to the North-West. But influences from the North availed to shift Ewing's name to the Treasury. For this portfolio, Clay had selected John M. Clayton of Delaware, as a borderer known to be acceptable to the South for the part he had taken in passing the Compromise Tariff of 1833. Should Pennsylvania prevail, however,—and she was advocating John Sergeant, one of her Representatives, for the Treasury,-Clay would at least have the Navy Department for Clayton. But it was Ewing that became Secretary of the Treasury, while Delaware's ex-Senator received nothing. Two of the Cabinet appointments reflect particularly the heterogeneousness of the body of voters that had made Harrison President. Representative John Bell of Tennessee, who had been a Jackson Democrat, and in the disorganized opposition of 1836, had been a leading supporter of White and Tyler, was selected for the War Department. Incidentally to the gossip in Congressional circles, Mr. Bell himself had written to a friend that Webster was objecting to his appointment, for fear that he would make too much of a Clay 2 ' Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, II, 90, 93; Harrison to Webster, December 1, 1840; Webster to Harrison, December 11, 1840. 3 Clayton MSS., Clay to Clayton, December 17, 1840. man, and that Clay was not enthusiastic for it, for fear that he would not make enough of one. The New York member was Francis Granger. A seat was previously offered to Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, one of the many recruits from Democrat ranks. But Tallmadge had just been elected by his new party to continue in his old place in the Senate, and the circumstance held him to his seat there the more firmly. Francis Granger had been an Anti-Mason, and was now beginning to be classed with the abolitionists. In 1836, he had been the candidate for the Vice-Presidency, in most of the States that had supported General Harrison for the first place, and on the Massachusetts ticket, his name had been coupled with Webster's. He became Postmaster-General in Harrison's Cabinet, being the son of Gideon Granger, who enjoyed a long and somewhat notorious incumbency of the same office, without a Cabinet seat, under Jefferson and Madison. The Navy portfolio fell to the South by the sectional rule, and the particular man was left to the choice of the Congressional delegations. One of the names proposed was that of William C. Preston, Senator from South Carolina. And, inasmuch as the expected Bank measure had an uncertain majority in the Senate, a story went forth among its opponents, that it was the fear that Preston's resignation would cause a tie, and throw the casting vote to Vice-President Tyler, that prevented his appointment. George Badger of North Carolina was finally selected to be Secretary of the Navy. The factional forecast for the administration was that Clay, who already had an alter ego in Crittenden, would also gain control over Ewing, Bell, and Badger, while Granger followed the lead of Webster. But Clay had not achieved his triumph, when Harrison died. He had, in fact, suffered much embarrassment from the knowledge that political enemies were putting the President upon his guard, in the apportionment of offices, the principal business accomplished. The delicate subject had come up between the two both in conversation and correspondence. It is a very pertinent question, whether the uncertainty of Clay's ascendency in this administration does not throw much light upon the strange course of the next President towards his inherited Cabinet. ATTORNEY-GENERAL. JOHN J. CRITTENDEN, of Kentucky; continued from Harrison's Administration. HUGH S. LEGARÉ, of South Carolina, September 13, 1841. JOHN NELSON, of Maryland, July 1, 1843. POSTMASTER-GENERAL. FRANCIS GRANGER, of New York; continued from Harrison's Administration. CHARLES A. WICKLIFFE, of Kentucky, September 13, 1841. SELAH R. HOBBIE, of New York (First Assistant Postmaster-General), ad interim, September 14, 1841. SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. GEORGE E. BADGER, of North Carolina; continued from Harrison's Administration. JOHN D. SIMMS (Chief Clerk), ad interim, September 12, 1841. ABEL P. UPSHUR, of Virginia, September 13, 1841. DAVID HENSHAW, of Massachusetts, July 24, 1843. THOMAS W. GILMER, of Virginia, February 15, 1844. LEWIS WARRINGTON (Captain, U. S. N.), ad interim, February 29, 1844. |