Constitutional Whig

Ones circulated. Families coming to the city, were beset on their way, and on their arrival. No means which ingenuity could invent, or malice make use of, were left untried to give tone to public sentiment,—"to make it concentrate" and force the President to separate me from his councils. Hope gave the assurance that in a little while he would see public opinion concentrated and would "speedily correct the evil." Let me not be misunderstood. I never complained of any one, for not associating with me or my family. It is the right of every man, and of every woman, to visit whom they please. To see my house filled with unwilling or reluctant visitors constrained to call by the command of power, could never be desired by me. Happily, I was never dependent on such authority for friends, associates and visitors. Always, when my doors were open, at "large parties," and at social calls, I met friends, with cordial hearts and happy faces, who evinced by their frank and open demeanor that they came of their own volition, and not through hope of reward, or fear of punishment. It is true I did not meet some of my colleagues, or their families, nor some of their associates of the same political stamp, but I met ladies and gentlemen quite as respectable, and equally as agreeable. If, as is true, I and my family were not invited to the houses of Messrs. Ingham, Branch and Berrien, so neither were they invited to mine, and in this we were equal; and neither, as I conceive, had a right to complain. Mr. Berrien's family never did refuse to visit with mine, for they never had the opportunity. Custom required, when they came to the city, being last in their arrival, that we should first call on them, if we desired their acquaintance; but we never did call. How ridiculous does this single fact render Mr. Berrien's publication, which he has set forth with such grave formality. He had ascertained the sense of society here, he says, and conformed to it in this matter, when in fact he never had an opportunity to conform to, or depart from it. He maintains that the President threatened to dismiss him, because he would not compel his family to visit where he did not choose they should, when in fact they never had an opportunity to visit there. Throughout, he presents me and my family as craving the society of his, which he haughtily refused, when, in fact, the first, the natural and the usual advance, on our part, had never been made. It will be seen, then, that had the President set out to regulate the intercourse of society, and to direct its social relations, he ought to have begun with me, not Mr. Berrien. He must have threatened to dismiss me, if I did not compel my family first to call on his and leave a card. What! force Mr. Berrien, under such circumstances, to force his family upon us! The President certainly ought first to have forced us to give them an opportunity to decline our acquaintance. To force together unwilling people, and particularly to begin with the wrong persons, would indeed appear an odd and strange procedure. In the autumn of 1829, new attacks began to be made, in whispers, on my integrity. It was said I had conspired with my wife's first husband, Mr. Timberlake, to defraud the government of large sums of money. Other attempts to get rid of me, having failed, I was now to be presented as being in default to the government, through fraud practiced on it. Mr. Timberlake had been a Purser in the Navy, and this charge was based upon a reported deficiency in his accounts with the public; and on a private letter of mine, detained in the 4th Auditor's office, showing that on my suggestion, he had remitted money to me. Copies of my private confidential letters to him, had been taken from the office, that I might not escape through apprehended indulgence and favor, on the part of Mr. Kendall. Matters were considered well arranged, and the proof complete to show, that this delinquency was wholly occasioned by remittances of money to me, and which was yet in my possession. Such were the whispers circulated through the society of this place. But a close investigation, which occupied some time, showed that Mr. Timberlake's account had been deprived, through a series of shocking frauds, of credits to the amount of from $12 to $20,000, and that justly he was largely a creditor, not a debtor, to the Government. But with mutilated books—abstracts of accounts missing, and the inventory gone from the department, his family can only appeal, under all the circumstances, to the justice and honor of the country, for redress. While slander held its open day, and midnight round of whisper on this subject, I received from some malignant being, who subscribed himself Iago, the following note: "Sir, I have written a letter to Mr. Kendall about the money that paid for O'Neal's houses. You know what I mean. Revenge is sweet, and I have you in my power. "and will roast you, and broil you, and bake you; and I "hope you may long live to prolong my pleasure. Lay "not the flattering unction to your soul, that you can "escape me. I would not that death, or any evil thing, "should take you from my grasp for half the world." Who the writer of this fiendish note is, I have never ascertained. I cannot turn my thoughts on an enemy so unplacable, that he would be unwilling the man he hated should find repose in death. Yet it is in character with the acts of those whose forecast pointed to the means, by which the evil of my selection, as a member of the cabinet, was to be made apparent, and the President forced "speedily to see & correct the evil." If I could have been driven from all respectable society, or had fixed upon me collusion and fraud, in obtaining the funds of the Government, then would the Cabinet have been relieved of my presence, and the prophecy of Mr. Berrien completely fulfilled.