son employed his secretaries as clerks. His confidential advisers were a few intimate friends who held no important offices. These men — W. B. Lewis, Amos Kendall, Duff Green, and Isaac Hill — came to be known as the “kitchen cabinet.” Lewis had had much to do with bringing Jackson forward as a candidate for the presidency in 1821. Green and Hill were editors of partisan newspapers. Kendall was a man of considerable ability and many good qualities, but a “machine politician” of the worst sort. He was on many occasions the ruling spirit of the administration, and the cause of some of its most serious mistakes. Jackson's career as president cannot be fully understood without taking into account the agency of Kendall; yet it is not always easy to assign the character and extent of the influence which he exerted.
A yet more notable innovation was Jackson's treatment of the civil service. The earlier presidents had proceeded upon the theory that public office is a public trust, and not a reward for partisan services. They conducted the business of government upon business principles, and as long as a postmaster showed himself efficient in distributing the mail they did not turn him out of office because of his vote. Between 30 April, 1789, and 4 March, 1829, the total number of removals from office was seventy-four, and out of this number five were defaulters. Between 4 March, 1829, and 22 March, 1830, the number of changes made in the civil service was about 2,000. This was the inauguration upon a national scale of the so-called “spoils system.” The phrase originated with William L. Marcy, of New York, who in a speech in the senate in 1831 declared that “to the victors belong the spoils.” The system had been perfected in the state politics of New York and Pennsylvania, and it was probably inevitable that it should sooner or later be introduced into the sphere of national politics. The way was prepared in 1820 by Crawford, when he succeeded in getting the law passed that limits the tenure of office to four years. This dangerous measure excited very little discussion at the time. People could not understand the evil until taught by hard experience. Jackson did not understand that he was laying the foundations of a gigantic system of corruption, which within a few years would develop into the most serious of the dangers threatening the continuance of American freedom. He was very ready to believe ill of political opponents, and to make generalizations from extremely inadequate data. Democratic newspapers, while the campaign frenzy was on them, were full of windy declamation about the wholesale corruption introduced into all parts of the government by Adams and Clay. Nothing was too bad for Jackson to believe of these two men, and when the fourth auditor of the treasury was found to be delinquent in his accounts it was easy to suppose that many others were, in one way or another, just as bad. In his wholesale removals Jackson doubtless supposed he was doing the country a service by “turning the rascals out.” The immediate consequence of this demoralizing policy was a struggle for control of the patronage between Calhoun and Van Buren, who were rival aspirants for the succession to the presidency. A curious affair now came in to influence Jackson's personal relations to these men. Early in 1829 Eaton, secretary of war, married a Mrs. Timberlake, with whose reputation gossip had been busy. It was said that he had shown her too much attention during the lifetime of her first husband. Jackson was always slow to believe charges against a woman. His own wife, who had been outrageously maligned by the Whig newspapers during the campaign, had lately died, and there was just enough outward similarity between Eaton's marriage and his own to make him take Mrs. Eaton's part with more than his customary vehemence. Mrs. Calhoun and the wives of the secretaries would not recognize Mrs. Eaton. Mrs. Donelson, wife of the president's nephew, and mistress of ceremonies at the White House, took a similar stand. Jackson scolded his secretaries and sent Mrs. Donelson home to Tennessee; but all in vain. He found that vanquishing Wellington's veterans was a light task compared with that of contending against the ladies in an affair of this sort. Foremost among those who frowned Mrs. Eaton out of society was Mrs. Calhoun. On the other hand, Van Buren, a widower, found himself able to be somewhat more complaisant, and accordingly rose in Jackson's esteem. The fires were fanned by Lewis and Kendall, who saw in Van Buren a more eligible ally than Calhoun. Presently intelligence was obtained from Crawford, who hated Calhoun, to the effect that the latter, as a member of Monroe's cabinet, had disapproved of Jackson's conduct in Florida. This was quite true, but Calhoun had discreetly yielded his judgment to that of the cabinet led by Adams, and thus had officially sanctioned Jackson's conduct. These facts, as handled by Eaton and Lewis, led Jackson to suspect Calhoun of treacherous double-dealing, and the result was a quarrel which broke up the cabinet. In order to get Calhoun's friends — Ingham, Branch, and Berrien — out of the cabinet, the other secretaries began by resigning. This device did not succeed, and the ousting of the three secretaries entailed further quarrelling, in the course of which the Eaton affair and the Florida business were beaten threadbare in the newspapers, and evoked sundry challenges to deadly combat. In the spring and summer of 1831 the new cabinet was formed, consisting of Edward Livingston, secretary of state; Louis McLane, treasury; Lewis Cass, war; Levi Woodbury, navy; Roger B. Taney, attorney-general; in post-office no change. On Van Buren's resignation, Jackson at once appointed him minister to England, but there was a warm dispute in the senate over his confirmation, and it was defeated at length by the casting-vote of Calhoun. This check only strengthened Jackson's determination to have Van Buren for his successor in the presidency. The progress of this quarrel entailed a break in the “kitchen cabinet,” in which Duff Green, editor of the “Telegraph” and friend of Calhoun, was thrown out. His place was taken by Francis Preston Blair, of Kentucky, a man of eminent ability and earnest patriotism. To him and his sons, as energetic opponents of nullification and secession, our country owes a debt of gratitude which can hardly be overstated. Blair's indignant attitude toward nullification brought him at once into earnest sympathy with Jackson. In December, 1830, Blair began publishing the “Globe,” the organ henceforth of Jackson's party. For a period of ten years, until the defeat of the Democrats in 1840, Blair and Kendall were the ruling spirits in the administration. Their policy was to re-elect Jackson to the presidency in 1832, and make Van Buren his successor in 1836.
During Jackson's administration there came about a new division of parties. The strict constructionists, opposing internal improvements, protective tariff, and national banks, retained the name of Democrats, which had long been applied to members of the old Republican party. The term Republican fell into disuse. The loose constructionists, under the lead of Clay, took the name of
