Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle have no fears; for they are gold-blind and can see nothing beyond themselves. They are given a rude awakening. The people speak; and when the sound of that speaking dies out, the General has overwhelmed Machiavelli Clay with two hundred and nineteen electoral votes against the latter's sixty-nine. Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle and the Bank go down, while the General--ever the conqueror and never once the conquered--sweeps back to the presidency. Also ex-Cabineteer Van Buren is made Vice-President, as aforetime resolved upon by the General and Wizard Lewis, and from that Senate eminence, so lately vacated by Statesman Calhoun, will wield the gavel over togaed discussion.
The General, President the second time, picks up the reins, settles himself upon the box, and proceeds to drive his governmental times after this wise. He kills out what few sparks of life still animate the Biddle Bank. He removes the Creeks and Cherokees from Florida and Georgia, and thereby guarantees the scalp on many an innocent head. He throws open the public lands for settlement at nominal figures. He fosters a gold currency and discourages paper.
He pays off the last splinter of the national debt, and offers to the wondering eyes of history the spectacle of a country that doesn't owe a dollar. He makes commercial treaties with every tribe of Europe. Finally, he compels France to pay five millions in gold for outrages long ago committed upon the sailors of America.
The last is not brought about without some show of force. France, at the General's demand, falls into a white heat of rage and froths for instant war. The General takes France at her warlike word, notifies Congress, and orders his fleet into the Mediterranean, the flagship _Constitution_ in the van.
The cool vigor of the move sets France gasping. She consults England across the Channel, and is privily assured that whipping a Yankee eighty-gun ship is a feat so difficult of marine accomplishment that, like the blossoming of the century plant, it would be foolish to look for it oftener than once in one hundred years. It is England's impression, whispered in the Frankish ear, that it will be cheaper to pay the five millions. Whereupon, France breaks into diplomatic smiles, assures the General that her late war-rage was mere humor and her froth a jest. And pays.