A. J. Langguth - Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War

Also by A. J. Langguth

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A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (1994)

Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (1988)

Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro (1981)

Hidden Terrors (1978)

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Marksman (1974)

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Copyright 2010 by A.J. Langguth

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Text designed by Paul Dippolito

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Langguth, A. J., 1933

Driven West : Andrew Jacksons trail of tears to the Civil War / A. J. Langguth.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. United States History18151861. I. Title.

E338.L36 2011

973.56dc22 2010020455

ISBN 978-1-4165-4859-1

ISBN 978-1-4391-9327-3 (ebook)

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Henry Clay: The Granger Collection; John Quincy Adams: Library of Congress; Elias Boudinot: Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society; Harriet Boudinot: Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society; Sequoyah: Library of Congress; Cherokee Alphabet: Private Collection/Peter Newark, American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library International; Cherokee Phoenix: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library International; John Calhoun: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY; Margaret Eaton: The Granger Collection; John Henry Eaton: The Granger Collection; Theodore Frelinghuysen: The Granger Collection; John Marshall: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY; Daniel Webster: The Granger Collection; Sam Houston: The Granger Collection; John Howard Payne: Michael Nicholson/Corbis; Chief John Ross: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY; General Winfield Scott: The Granger Collection; Trail of Tears Painting: Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK; Rose Cottage: Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society; William Henry: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; John Tyler: Library of Congress; James Polk: Library of Congress; Zachary Taylor: Library of Congress; Millard Fillmore: Library of Congress; Franklin Pierce: Library of Congress; James Buchanan: Library of Congress; Stand Watie: The Granger Collection.

For Franklin D. Woodson
19332000

Henry Clay

A t 6 p.m. on Sunday, January 9, 1825, Henry Clay, one of his nations shrewdest political minds, made a miscalculation that helped to end his chance of ever becoming president of the United States.

Over the next three decades, Clays decision set off repercussions that transformed the character of his young country, uprooted the earliest Americans from their homes in the Southeast, and led ultimately to massive bloodshed.

But at the moment, Clay was only trying to achieve his lifelong goal.

During the prior thirteen years, Henry Clay had evolved from fire-brand to peacemaker. The transformation came during the quixotic War of 1812, when an overmatched United States took on Great Britain for a second time. Clay had been one of the most fervent congressional War Hawks, pressing President James Madison to strike back against Great Britains aggressiveness. Madisons opposition party, the Federalists of New England, had vehemently resisted the call to arms and had staged an antiwar convention that was seen as a threat to secede from the Union.

But the Federalist timing could not have been worse. As they met in Hartford, Connecticut, Henry Clay was already playing a crucial role at a peace conference in Belgium, and Britain and the United States reached terms on Christmas Eve, 1814. Given the lag in communication with Europe, news of that agreement arrived in America only after Andrew Jackson had scored his epic victory over the redcoats in New Orleans.

Flustered and discredited, the Federalists tried to explain away their actions, but they were finished as a political force. When Madisons secretary of state, James Monroe, ran to succeed him, he won 183 of 217 electoral votes. Four years later, the Federalists did not bother to put forward a candidate. Except for a single protest vote, Monroe swept to reelection unanimously.

Men who knew him agreed that Monroe did not have the intellectual heft of Jefferson and Madison, but he was adroit at avoiding controversy. When he toured the country to promote harmony, a Boston editor conferred on Monroes years in the White House an enduring labelthe Era of Good Feelings.

But Henry Clay saw himself as the man who had repeatedly defused divisive issues during that era and believed that he deserved the presidency as a reward for the nations tranquility.

The fifth son of a Baptist minister from Hanover County, Virginia, Clay was not preordained to rise to political prominence. He was four years old when his father died and left Henry as his inheritance only a fine speaking voice. to a hard-drinking English schoolmaster until Henrys widowed mother married a former army captain, and her husband landed his stepson a clerks job in Virginias High Court of Chancery.

The teenager already possessed a charm that compensated for a somewhat equine homeliness. He caught the attention of George Wythe, whose law office had once produced Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, and he spent four years as Wythes secretary before studying law with Virginias attorney general. For an ambitious young man, however, Richmonds entrenched gentry constituted a barrier to rapid advancement. When his mother and stepfather moved to Kentucky, Clay went with them.

From Lexington, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1806 at the age of twenty-nine, a year younger than the age stipulated in the Constitution. Clay was already a tall and rangy campaigner with every talent to ensure success. When he switched legislative chambers five years later, his nervy vitality led to a unique honor: On the first day of his first session in the House of Representatives, Clay was elected its Speaker.

Now, thirteen years later, Clay at forty-seven was still finding men eager for his all-night card games and women for kisses from his generous mouth. Clay understood both his appeal and the reticence that Americans expected from their politicians.