Congress censures President Jackson

Year
1834
Month Day
March 28

On March 28, 1834, President Andrew Jackson is censured by Congress for refusing to turn over documents. Jackson was the first president to suffer this formal disapproval from Congress.

During his first term, Jackson decided to dismantle the Bank of the United States and find a friendlier source of funds for his western expansion plans. Jackson, who embodied the popular image of the Wild West frontiersman, claimed that the bank had too many foreign investors, favored the rich over the poor and resisted lending funds to develop commercial interests in America’s Western territories. When the Senate passed legislation in 1831 to renew the bank’s charter, Jackson promptly vetoed it. An 1831 meeting with his cabinet generated classified documents regarding Jackson’s veto of the bank legislation. Soon after, Congress overruled Jackson’s veto.

One of the key issues in the election of 1832, between Jackson, a Democrat, and Whig (Republican) Henry Clay, was the bank’s survival. Jackson easily won reelection, but Clay’s Whigs took control of the Senate. Jackson renewed his attack on the bank early in his second term, appointing a new treasury secretary whom he ordered to dismantle the bank and distribute all federal funds to individual state banks until a new federal bank could be organized. The Senate, with Clay at its helm, fought Jackson’s attempts to destroy the bank, passing a resolution demanding to see his cabinet’s papers regarding the veto of 1831. When Jackson refused to release the documents, Clay retaliated by introducing a resolution to censure the president.

Congress debated the proposed censure for 10 weeks. Jackson protested, saying that since the Constitution did not provide any guidance regarding censure of a president, the resolution to censure him was therefore unconstitutional. Congress ignored him, slapping him on March 28 with what amounted to an official public scolding for assuming authority and power not conferred by the Constitution.

The largely symbolic censure failed to stop Jackson from revamping the federal banking system. Democrats regained the majority in the Senate in 1837 and had Jackson’s censure expunged from the record. Still, Jackson did take the reprimand personally—a biographer later wrote that when Jackson retired from the presidency, the only regret he expressed was not being able to shoot Henry Clay.

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About Andrew Jackson

Source

Stephen Austin imprisoned by Mexicans


Updated:
Original:
Year
1834
Month Day
January 03

Escalating the tensions that would lead to rebellion and war, the Mexican government imprisons the Texas colonizer Stephen Austin in Mexico City.

Stephen Fuller Austin was a reluctant revolutionary. His father, Moses Austin, won permission from the Mexican government in 1821 to settle 300 Anglo-American families in Texas. When Moses died before realizing his plans, Stephen took over and established the fledgling Texas community on the lower reaches of the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. Periodic upheavals in the government of the young Mexican Republic forced Austin to constantly return to Mexico City where he argued for the rights of the American colonists in Texas, representing their interests as a colonial founder. Yet, Austin remained confident that an Anglo-American state could succeed within the boundaries of the Mexican nation.

Mexican authorities were less certain. Alarmed by the growing numbers of former Americans migrating to Texas (8,000 in Austin’s colonies alone by 1832) and rumors the U.S. intended to annex the region, the Mexican government began to limit immigration in 1830. Though Austin found loopholes allowing him to circumvent the policy, the Mexican policy angered many Anglo-American colonists who already had a long list of grievances against their distant government. In 1833, a group of colonial leaders met to draft a constitution that would create a new Anglo-dominated Mexican state of Texas by splitting away from the Mexican-dominated Coahuila region it had previously been tied to. The colonists hoped that by decreasing the influence of native Mexicans, whose culture and loyalties were more closely wedded to Mexico City, they could argue more effectively for American-style reforms.

Once they had hammered out a new constitution, the colonial leaders directed Austin to travel to Mexico City to present it to the government along with a list of other demands. Austin conceded to the will of the people, but President Santa Ana refused to grant Texas separate status from Coahuila and threw Austin in prison on suspicion of inciting insurrection. When he was finally released eight months later in August 1835, Austin found that the Anglo-American colonists were on the brink of rebellion. They were now demanding a Republic of Texas that would break entirely from the Mexican nation. Reluctantly, Austin abandoned his hope that the Anglo Texans could somehow remain a part of Mexico, and he began to prepare for war. The following year Austin helped lead the Texan rebels to victory over the Mexicans and assisted in the creation of the independent Republic of Texas. Defeated by Sam Houston in a bid for the presidency of the new nation, Austin instead took the position of secretary of state. He died in office later that year.

Source

A torture chamber is uncovered by arson

Year
1834
Month Day
April 10

On April 10, 1834, a fire at the LaLaurie mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana, leads to the discovery of a torture chamber where enslaved workers are routinely brutalized by Delphine LaLaurie. Rescuers found a 70-year-old black woman trapped in the kitchen during the fire because she was chained up while LaLaurie was busy saving her furniture. The woman later revealed that she had set the fire in an attempt to escape LaLaurie’s torture. She led authorities up to the attic, where seven slaves were tied with spiked iron collars.

After Delphine LaLaurie married her third husband, Louis LaLaurie, and moved into his estate on Royal Street, she immediately took control of the large number of slaves used as servants. LaLaurie was a well-known sadist, but the mistreatment of enslaved workers by the wealthy and socially connected was not a matter for the police at the time.

However, in 1833, Delphine chased a small enslaved girl with a whip until the girl fell off the roof of the house and died. LaLaurie tried to cover up the incident, but police found the body hidden in a well. Authorities decided to fine LaLaurie and force the sale of the other enslaved people on the estate.

LaLaurie foiled this plan by secretly arranging for her relatives and friends to buy the enslaved workers. She then sneaked them back into the mansion, where she continued to torture them until the night of the fire in April 1834.

Apparently her Southern neighbors had some standards when it came to the treatment of enslaved people, because a mob gathered in protest after learning about LaLaurie’s torture chamber. She and her husband fled by boat, leaving the butler (who had also participated in the torture) to face the wrath of the crowd.

Although charges were never filed against LaLaurie, her reputation in upper-class society was destroyed. It is believed that she died in Paris in December 1842.

Source