he Treasury; John H. Eaton,
Secretary of War; John Branch, Secretary of the Navy; John M'P.
Berrien, Attorney-General; William T. Barry, Postmaster-General.

In April, 1830, when the Legislatures of New York and Pennsylvania took
incipient measures to nominate Jackson for a second term of office, the
favorable moment arrived to bring his artillery to bear upon Calhoun.
At this time two letters of Crawford were brought to the mind of
General Jackson,--the one to Alfred Balch, already referred to; the
other to John Forsyth, dated the 30th of April, 1830,[4]--in which
Crawford expressly stated that "Mr. Calhoun had made a proposition to
the cabinet of Monroe for _punishing_ him for his conduct in the
Seminole war." Jackson, greatly excited, immediately, on the 12th of
May, 1830, addressed a letter to Mr. Calhoun, declaring his great
surprise at the information those letters contained, and inquiring
whether he had moved or sustained any attempt seriously to affect him
in Monroe's cabinet council. Calhoun replied, that he "could not
recognize the right of General Jackson to call in question his conduct
in the discharge of a high official duty, and under responsibility to
his conscience and his country only." The anger of Jackson was not in
the least assuaged by this reply, nor by the explanations which
accompanied it. A correspondence ensued, which, with collateral and
documentary evidence, occupied fifty-two pages of an octavo pamphlet;
resulting in Jackson's declaration of his poignant mortification to see
in Calhoun's letter, instead of a negative, an admission of the truth
of Crawford's allegations. An irreconcilable alienation between Jackson
and Calhoun was evinced in this correspondence; a state of feeling
which for the time was concealed from the public, but was well known to
their respective partisans, who understood that at the approaching
election the influence of the former would be thrown into the scale of
Van Buren. Jackson's intention of standing for the Presidency a second
time was kept a profound secret until January, 1831. Under the
supposition that he might decline, the partisans of Calhoun, Clay, and
Van Buren, engaged in active measures to put them respectively into the
field.

[4] For which see _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XL., pp. 12,
13.

From the party movements during this uncertainty it was clearly
perceived that, if Jackson was not again a candidate, a contest between