The Whig Veteran

EVERY POLITICIAN must keep close to the bases of his power, and for King this meant continued activity in Georgia politics. In June 1843 he attended the Whig gubernatorial nominating convention in Milledgeville as a delegate from Glynn County. He was named to the Committee of Twenty-one that presented the agenda of the convention, and that functioned after the meeting as the Whig state committee. In consulting among themselves before the convention, the Whig leaders had discovered some dissension in the ranks over the choice of candidate for governor. The principal rivals were George W. Crawford and William C. Dawson. King favored Dawson, but in a compromise move nominated Duncan L. Clinch and then withdrew his nominee in favor of Crawford. Tensions existed among the Whigs, but they maintained an outward harmony in choosing Crawford as the candidate and naming King to the list of delegates to the Whig National Convention in Baltimore.¹

As chairman of the state committee, King fulfilled several functions. He consulted with party leaders at the summer retreat of the planters of Burke County, and he was the confidant of local politicians with special problems.² It fell to King as chairman of the committee to name the candidates for two congressional seats vacated by the resignation of John B. Lamar and the death of John Millen. The party was evidently well satisfied with King’s leadership, for he received proxies from one third of the committee members, accompanied by assurances that whomever he chose would be acceptable to them.³

The results of the summers activities were gratifying to the Whigs, They captured the governorship and both houses of the legislature, and elected two men to fill vacancies in Congress. One of the encouraging events of the campaign was the emergence of an effective stump speaker in the person of Alexander Hamilton Stephens.⁴

Enheartened by their success in 1843, the Whigs of Georgia turned quickly to the next year’s race. The campaign began early in March with a visit by Henry Clay, the almost certain Whig nominee for the presidency. Thomas Butler King was among the leaders invited to greet the great man on his arrival in the state, and he and other Whigs accompanied Clay on his tour of Georgia. Later in the spring the Georgia delegates to the Whig National Convention in Baltimore gave Clay their vote as the party nominee. King took part in these proceedings and stayed on for the Young Men’s Convention that ratified the nomination, serving as a vice-president of the assembly. From Baltimore he went on to Whig rallies in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where the enthusiastic reception of his speeches delighted him.⁵

King returned to Georgia to make an intensive campaign to recapture his old seat in Congress. In a tour of the First District, which embraced the entire coastal area, he concentrated his fire on the Van Buren administration, blaming the Democrats for the financial distresses of recent years. He acknowledged that he had changed his mind on the question of a national bank, and he spoke in favor of the Whig plan to establish an institution which would serve as a check on irresponsible state banks. He pointed out that he had voted against the Tariff of 1842 and promised to vote for a modification of it as soon as the debt was paid. He made much of Clay’s distribution scheme, saying that Georgia’s share of the funds should be devoted to the education of the poor. He advocated the annexation of Texas only when it could be done peaceably and honorably. He eulogized Henry Clay as a statesman.⁶

The Democrats charged King with inconsistency and vacillation. In contrast to his current opinions they quoted his campaign speeches of 1840, in which he had denounced Clay and the bank violently. They brought up his record in the state legislature of hostility to the interests of Savannah. They even pointed to his financial misfortunes as evidence of incompetence, and at one Democratic meeting a toast was proposed to “Thomas Butler King—The voters of the first Congressional District are too intelligent to trust their business to a man who cannot manage his own affairs.”⁷

The Democratic nominee was Charles H. Spalding, like King a resident of the coastal islands. The two candidates toured the district separately, each expressing a desire to meet the other on the same platform. When in August a series of joint debates took place, King continued his general discussion of national issues, but he also regaled his audiences with anecdotes that one Democratic editor alleged to be unprintable because of their vulgarity. King’s ability to tell humorous stories evidently nettled his opponent, who rather fretfully declared that “if the qualification of candidates rested upon their ability to amuse, he thought the claims of a circus clown superior to Mr. King’s and Jim Crow should be the undisputed President of the Country.”⁸ But the Whigs had learned from the campaign of 1840 the uses of humor and ballyhoo. At one all-day gathering in McIntosh County nearly five hundred voters assembled. An excursion steamer brought Whigs from Savannah, and the Clay Minstrels serenaded the group with campaign songs, including the chorus:

Tom Butler King, he is the man

With whom we’ll beat the Loco clan

The gallant King the boys do say

Deserves to run with Henry Clay.⁹

Such tactics must have been sound, for on the day of the election the Democratic paper of Savannah conceded that King would have a sizable majority.¹⁰

All told, the Whigs captured four congressional seats. Alexander H. Stephens and Robert A. Toombs carried the Seventh and Eighth districts by large majorities, Thomas Butler King the First by a comfortable margin, and Washington Poe the Third by a close vote.¹¹ These four did well to win half the seats in Congress in 1844, when Henry Clay was leading the national ticket to defeat. Instead of gaining from Clay’s name, the Georgia Whigs had to carry the burden of his candidacy in addition to their own. Clay’s opposition to the annexation of Texas met little favor in Georgia, nor did his high tariff views catch the fancy of the cotton planting area. Most Whig leaders in the state found it expedient to qualify their approval of the Whig tariff program. King’s correspondence indicates two other obstacles to victory in 1844. The anti-slavery stand of many Whigs in the North put Georgia partisans on the defensive. King’s friend S. T. Chapman uncovered an election-eve plot by the Democrats to accuse the Georgia Whigs of an alliance with abolitionists, and an observer in Washington attributed the Democratic successes in Georgia to the use of this stratagem. It was also suggested that Senator John M. Berrien should “have remained at home & canvassed the state thoroughly and completely,”¹² instead of going on a national speaking tour.

The campaign of 1844 generated intense personal antagonisms, and even after the returns were in the shooting was not over. On January 6, 1845, King and his defeated opponent, Charles H. Spalding, fought a duel on Amelia Island, Florida Territory. After exchanging two shots, the gentlemen shook hands and left the grounds together, and King considered the episode to have had an honorable conclusion. According to one version, King had challenged Spalding for insulting him during the campaign and then wasted his shots in a grand gesture. A Savannah kinsman of Senator Berrien reported the affair more lightly: “The difficulty between Mr. T. B. King and C. Spalding resulted fortunately in bad shooting and amicable adjustment.”¹³

King must have had great confidence in his shooting, supreme reliance on the justice of his cause, or an utter disregard for consequences, to flirt with death in an appeal to arms. A different outcome would have cast a heavy shadow over the wedding of his eldest daughter the following week. The marriage of Hannah Page King to William Audley Couper on January 15, 1845, allied King by marriage to one of the most prominent families of the area.

During the ten months that elapsed before the meeting of the next Congress, King devoted his attention to the development of his wife’s plantation. He experimented with the use of guano, with different methods of manuring, and with other practices of land improvement. He kept in touch with a Baltimore firm on the subject of a specially designed plow and moldboard. His ginning operations were so successful that he was consulted about equipment and methods. A neighbor who attained some eminence as an agricultural experimenter admitted that King surpassed him in the growing of turnips, a crop that King was trying out as a cattle feed. He exchanged information with other planters on seeds and methods of making the best use of labor. King’s agricultural practices, combined with a favorable growing season, brought a good crop yield for the year.¹⁴

While planting and harvesting went on, so did politics. All was not well in the ranks of the Georgia Whigs, for Senator Berrien had alienated many of them by his independent course in Congress. They also resented his failure to bolster the state campaign of 1844 with his presence; instead he had traveled conspicuously through the North, leading some observers to conclude that he was seeking a place in Clay’s problematical cabinet. Hard cash was involved, too, for Berrien and his coterie had made only reluctant contributions to the party funds for the state election campaign of 1845. One of King’s supporters wrote with some asperity: “If he and his friends expect uninterested persons to pay the expenses of a campaign from which they are to reap the benefit I think they will find themselves mistaken.”¹⁵ There was some discussion of abandoning Berrien as the senatorial candidate when his term should expire in 1847, and his appointment to the newly created supreme court of Georgia offered a method of easing him out of his position. Berrien awakened to the danger and resigned his seat to clear the way for a decision. After winning back his wavering followers and securing re-election for his own unexpired term, he made a brilliant speech defending himself against the charges that had been made against him. King, who had been eyeing Berrien’s seat in the Senate, was advised by his friends to abandon his immediate hopes.¹⁶

Clay’s defeat caused King to give up hope of appointment as Secretary of the Navy. Berrien staged a comeback, and with it recovered his grasp on the senatorship. Therefore, it was as Representative from the First Congressional District of Georgia that King journeyed to Washington in November 1845, to take his seat in the Twenty-ninth Congress. President James K. Polk’s followers, with a good working majority and capable leadership, quickly organized the House, and King was assigned to the committees on naval affairs and patents. In the first of these, of course, he was in familiar harness.

By his votes and brief comments, King recorded his opposition to such Democratic measures as the establishment of the Independent Treasury and the Walker Tariff.¹⁷ His only full dress speech of the session dealt with the Oregon question. Instead of advocating President Polk’s proposal to end unilaterally the joint occupation of the territory, he called for arbitration of the dispute with Great Britain. In the course of his remarks, he criticized the reckless conduct of foreign affairs by the Democrats and at the same time deplored “throwing our foreign relations into party contests for political power.”¹⁸ Polk’s Oregon policy merely furnished pretexts for the work of radical agitators, such as the movement for the abolition of slavery, “which seems ever ready to seize hold of the elements of discord.”¹⁹ Moderation in diplomacy and the emigration of hardy pioneers into contiguous territory would naturally and inevitably include Oregon in the nation’s march to greatness. He looked forward to the day when the whole Pacific slope would be settled by Americans.

The possibility of war with Great Britain lent a justification for a number of measures that King brought out of the Committee on Naval Affairs, bills to double the appropriation for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to construct drydocks at Pensacola and Savannah, to build a fort at the entrance of Cumberland Sound in Georgia, to transfer the revenue service to the Navy Department, and to amend the naval reorganization act.²⁰ All of these were concerned with the maintenance or expansion of the existing naval establishment. More significant were the policy changes that the committee proposed, part of a long campaign to modernize the Navy.

King’s ideas on naval policy can be seen more fully in the committee reports, which gave an opportunity to present detailed arguments for change. In a recommendation to build twelve armed steamers, the committee reviewed general strategic concepts, compared the respective merits of iron and wood in naval construction, advocated competitive bidding for contracts, and especially endorsed a change from sailing ships to steam-driven propeller craft. King’s favorable review of the claims of the naval architect and inventor, John Ericsson, showed that the legislator was committed to a policy of innovation and experiment.²¹

Under King’s leadership the committee also recommended that the government should undertake to subsidize three commercial shipping lines to Liverpool, Le Havre, and Panama. To justify such a course, the report pointed to the success of the well-established British system, which gave Great Britain a large auxiliary fleet, subject to immediate use if war broke out. The subsidy which the committee proposed was to be paid to the private companies only if their steamships met naval specifications for conversion to war purposes and were subject to immediate use by the government in time of war. As an additional argument in favor of a subsidy, it was pointed out that the Chagres line would facilitate the movement of settlers into Oregon. Thus, the westward expansion of the nation supplied King with ammunition in his fight to improve the merchant marine and the Navy.²²

The outbreak of the war with Mexico gave additional emphasis to King’s nationalistic arguments. It was therefore logical that he should support Polk’s request for power to prosecute the war, even though he had opposed the President’s foreign policy. By approving war measures, he also catered to public sentiment in Georgia, where the war was popular.²³

The prolonged session of Congress made it difficult for King to conduct his campaign for re-election in 1846, and he struggled with the added burden of recurrent asthma.²⁴ Fortunately, the outlook in the First District was good. Among the Whigs no opposition to his renomination was discernible, while his measures for the advancement of Savannah had won him the approval of many Democrats in that city. King’s friends who managed his renomination in the Whig convention predicted that the Democrats would not oppose him in the First District. Some dissatisfaction arose among the Whigs because of a rumor that King had promised the succession to a Savannah follower, and the incumbent sent a denial to quiet the fears of the back-country party leaders.

In mid-July a small group of Democrats placed a candidate in the field without holding the usual nominating convention. Their choice, Solomon Cohen, issued a dignified address which promised that the campaign would be less personal than the preceding one. The Democratic newspaper, the Savannah Georgian, was less restrained, attacking King particularly for opposing the Walker Tariff. It accused King of logrolling in connection with the Rivers and Harbors bill, when the Savannah River project might have stood on its own merits as a separate measure. On the personal level, King was accused of being a visionary and a bungler, incompetent in business, and of being born in Pennsylvania. The Georgian hinted that King’s “opportune” illness was only serious enough to keep him in Washington working as a member of the Whig committee set up to circulate franked documents.²⁵

From his sickbed in the capital King dictated an address to his constituents, attacking the Polk administration, the Independent Treasury, the Walker Tariff, and the Mexican War. He favored a tariff of at least thirty per cent specific duties, declaring that no lower rates would supply the needs of the government. He also defended a limited protection of American industry. As in the previous campaign, he advocated the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands, coupling this with a denunciation of Democratic measures reducing the price of the lands. He also made much of his efforts in behalf of Savannah.

As the Georgian charged, King’s illness did not keep him entirely idle in Washington. Throughout the summer he worked with other Whig leaders, particularly Truman Smith of Connecticut, to capture the next Congress for the Whigs. To finance a special campaign in Iowa and Wisconsin territories, the two men appealed to businessmen in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In return for financial aid, the Whigs were to try to replace the Tariff of 1846 with one more to the liking of their friends in the East. Bostonians were cool to the proposal, and one correspondent wrote frankly: “… it would be impossible for me, to procure the cooperation of my friends, unless we have a pledge from the Whigs.…”²⁶ The response from New York was equally discouraging, but Philadelphians were more generous. Truman Smith reported to King that he had received from the Pennsylvanians enough funds to send an agent west with $3,000, and his way would be prepared by intensive distribution of Whig propaganda at public expense through the use of the franking privilege. The campaign was designed primarily to build up Whig voting power for a revision of the tariff, but it incidentally served as a check on the popularity of Whig presidential hopefuls. The results of this plan to bring Iowa into the Union as a Whig state failed, but the first elections in the new commonwealth showed surprising Whig strength.²⁷

Returning to Georgia in September, King showed himself to good advantage in a short tour through the district. The results of the election confirmed his strength in his own bailiwick. In an off-year election he had increased his margin of victory by more than three hundred votes, defeating Cohen by a count of 3,324 to 2,227. Democratic editors complained of agricultural duties that prevented Democrats (but not Whigs) from voting, but it seems more likely that King increased his majority mainly because of his efforts in behalf of Savannah.²⁸

After the election he enjoyed a brief period of relaxation at his island home in Georgia. There he had the pleasure of seeing his first grandchild, Anna Couper, now nearing the end of her first year. The plantation was flourishing, confirming the reports of the overseer throughout the year. However, finances were not yet easy. Several of his creditors reminded him of old obligations, and he had found it necessary before he left the North to borrow money from his brother Henry and to float a loan with a Boston bank. His brother Stephen wrote to him about a single debt of $23,000, adding that he supposed he was Thomas Butler King’s largest creditor. Somehow, King found the money—or the credit-to import some blooded stock to improve the quality of the cattle at Retreat. He looked for good returns on the current crop and hoped to retrieve something from the wreck of the old railroad scheme at Brunswick, which began to show signs of revival.²⁹

When King returned to Washington, Congress was absorbed in the prosecution of the war with Mexico and in measures that made heavy demands on the Treasury. It is therefore remarkable that King, a member of the opposition, was able to secure the passage of bills requiring considerable appropriations. In behalf of his Savannah constituents he introduced petitions and bills for dredging the Savannah River and building a custom house. Both measures were lost in the legislative shuffle, but King managed to have the custom house project included in the civil and diplomatic appropriation. The House and the Senate disagreed over a long list of amendments, and in the complicated jockeying by members to add or remove projects King’s $30,000 provision for the building of a custom house in Savannah was retained. After conferences and trading on the very night of adjournment, the two houses finally concurred in the law.³⁰

In the same hurried evening session, King pushed through his scheme for further subsidization of the transatlantic mail, along with a naval procurement bill. The first section of the act appropriated $1,000,000 for the building of four steamships for the naval service. Then, in words following almost exactly the recommendations of King, the Secretary of the Navy was directed to conclude contracts with two designated agents to handle the Atlantic and Caribbean mails. Edward K. Collins was to carry the mail from New York to Liverpool in ships approved by naval authorities. Similarly, A. G. Sloo was to be the contractor for a line of ships from New York to New Orleans, with calls at Savannah, among other ports. The Sloo contract called for an extension to Chagres, Panama, and a separate contract was authorized for the Pacific mail to Oregon. The specific money required for this projected network was not mentioned in the act; subsequently, nearly $900,000 was required.³¹

King supported the administration in its war appropriations and even proposed to double a specific allocation of money for the Pensacola naval base. King’s support of this measure undoubtedly sprang from several sources. As usual he was willing to spend money liberally on the Navy, and the Pensacola base had proved its value during the Mexican War. There was the obvious advantage accruing from large federal expenditures in his section, even if the primary benefit was to Floridians. Finally, a number of his personal friends were interested in a proposed railroad which would terminate at Pensacola. He also introduced a measure of more interest to his general constituency when he proposed that the Secretary of War make a survey of the inland waterway from Savannah to the St. John’s River. At the same time that he voted for war appropriations, however, the gentleman from Georgia recorded his disapproval of a war of conquest.³²

Nationalistic as he showed himself in some regards, King stood firmly with his section in the voting on the Wilmot Proviso. When David Wilmot first tried to attach his ban on the extension of slavery to an appropriation bill, King recorded his opposition. When the proviso was added, he voted against the bill. Later the Senate returned the bill without the proviso, and again King showed his hostility, helping to prevent the addition of the restrictive clause.³³ The Twenty-ninth Congress concluded its session soon after this vote, and the members began their exodus from Washington.

King delayed his return to Georgia about a month, spending part of the time in New York. The merchants of that city, in appreciation of his leadership in the passage of the steamship subsidy, joined forces to give a dinner in his honor. Already his role had been praised by the Whig National Intelligencer; now Horace Greeley’s Tribune acclaimed the man whose “ardent, unremitting and successful exertions” had procured the establishment of a line of steamships from New York. The dinner was “intended as the expression by all parties of grateful feeling for the benefits obtained through his agency.”³⁴ In reply to compliments to his leadership and breadth of view, King spoke for the better part of an hour. He outlined the policy of the British government in steam navigation and presented statistics on the economic results. It was on the success of English policy and the preeminence of the British in the development of ocean steamers that “he predicated his opinion of the necessity of Governmental interference for the establishment of a national line of steamers.”³⁵

From the plaudits of the New York merchants, King returned to Georgia, only to find that there, too, public business monopolized his attention. There was little time to enjoy the society of his family, and perhaps to investigate the growth of the many exotic plants that he had ordered sent to his plantation from the North. In April he was elected a director of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia and was delegated by his fellow directors to represent them at a railroad convention in Chicago. The appointment was reinforced by an invitation, extended to him as a legislator, which he received from the sponsors of the convention.³⁶

Before departing for Chicago, where the convention was to meet in July, King joined with other dignitaries to welcome Daniel Webster to Savannah. There was a connecting link between these honors to Webster and the plans of the Central Railroad, for the “god-like Daniel” in his speech found occasion to direct his hearers’ attention to the glorious prospect of joining Savannah to Pensacola by rail. This project was already dear to the hearts of some of his hosts, including the Representative from the First Congressional District.³⁷

In these dinners for Webster in Savannah and for King in New York can be seen the outline of the alliance of planters, merchants, and manufacturers that made the Whig party a formidable political organization. Few figures in the party exemplified better than King the mutual and reciprocal economic interests that tied the elements together. Equally significant was the Chicago convention that King was scheduled to attend, for it was a barely veiled attempt to capture the allegiance of the West and add another economic bloc to the alliance.

The Chicago Rivers and Harbors Convention had many political implications, but it was advertised as a non-partisan gathering. It originated at Rathbun’s Hotel in New York among a group of Westerners who had been antagonized by Polk’s veto of the Rivers and Harbors bill in 1846. Determined to focus the resentment of their section against the administration’s policy, they called the public meeting in Chicago. The leading Polk newspaper in Washington attacked the principles that the sponsors proclaimed, but some Democratic organs forsook their party allegiance to give publicity and support to the meeting. Democrats and Whigs alike were numbered among the delegates.³⁸

Thomas Butler King was a member of the temporary steering committee and one of the vice-presidents of the convention which opened July 5, 1847. The first day was spent in celebration of the national holiday—the Fourth had fallen on Sunday—and in organizing the nearly 4,000 delegates. The next morning was devoted to the reading of letters from distinguished guests who had found it impossible or impolitic to attend. Martin Van Buren, Henry Clay, Thomas Hart Benton, Daniel Webster, and Silas Wright all expressed sympathy for the development of the transportation facilities of the West. True to Democratic doctrine, Van Buren and Benton were cautious about the principle of federal aid, but the latter went to great pains to show that he had long been a champion of western development. Webster publicly endorsed the general purposes of the meeting and pointed out that Whig leaders had always been in favor of internal improvements with federal aid. Webster’s fears that Democrats would gain from the meeting had led him to reject an invitation to attend. Privately, he wrote King:

Pray defend it [his rejection] as far as you think it may deserve defense. I have no idea that the Whigs ought to give up now all the vantage ground they possess, in having so long maintained the doctrine of Internal Improvements.³⁹

At the afternoon session the committee brought in a series of fifteen resolutions, generally declaring that the improvement of rivers and harbors was properly the concern of the national government, that the needs were urgent, and that candidates with soundness on these points should be elected to office regardless of their party affiliation. After brief debate and minor alterations the resolutions were passed unanimously, and the president of the convention appointed King as one of the two Georgia delegates on the publicity committee. Besides serving on every one of the committees, King delivered one of the principal addresses of the meeting.⁴⁰

When King returned to Saint Simons Island he was urged to attend the state railroad convention in Atlanta, but several domestic matters demanded his attention at home. Decisions had to be made on where to send the children to school, and the money for tuition had to be raised. Fortunately, Andrew King, who had made a success of his sugar planting operations in Cuba, offered to assume the burden of college expenses for his two eldest nephews.⁴¹ This was especially good news, for although the Retreat cotton crop had proved to be a good one, King received only gloomy forecasts on the price outlook from his factor.⁴² Besides these personal concerns, political fences needed mending, for the trip to Chicago had prevented his attendance at the state Whig Convention during the summer. These varied affairs kept him busy until the reassembling of Congress.

Since the Whigs had captured the House of Representatives in the off-year elections, the political arena in Washington offered King more opportunities than usual. He could look forward to increased responsibility as Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. In addition, his years of service made him one of the most experienced members of the House, for less than half the members had served in the preceding Congress. President Polk could hope for little more than necessary bills to emerge from a Whig House and a Democratic Senate. Above all, this was a presidential election year, and partisanship would tend to dominate the proceedings of Congress.

King frequently took part in the debates of the session, but seldom delivered a set speech of any length. He usually ventured onto the floor of the House as chairman of his committee, and almost invariably he appeared as an advocate of larger or additional appropriations. Some of the sums involved were petty, as in the case of a proposed bonus payment to naval professors; others were for considerable sums, such as the $150,000 to build a drydock at the New York navy yard. King was kept busy sponsoring new bills and defending those already reported.⁴³

King also debated bills concerned with private claims against the Navy, administrative details, and humanitarian reforms. The claims were so numerous that the chairman of the naval affairs committee pleaded with his colleagues to establish a system to eliminate routine private relief bills. For the humanitarian attempts to eliminate corporal punishment and abolish the liquor ration in the Navy, he showed only a perfunctory sympathy. He chided the advocates of these reforms for loading an appropriation bill with irrelevant amendments.⁴⁴

In the running feud with President Polk on the conduct of the war with Mexico, King acted as a spokesman for his party. The Whigs took advantage of their majority in the House to demand from the President an account of his diplomatic dealings in regard to the Mexican general, Santa Anna. When Polk refused to comply with their request, King moved that his action be referred to a select committee, but the House declined to go along. To Democratic charges that the Whigs had not supported the war, he pointed out that his party had faithfully voted for the necessary appropriations, even though they disapproved of the Democrats’ policies and Polk’s conduct of the war. Although this partisan bickering tended to become bitter, King avoided personalities in his defense and twice protested against intemperate wrangling in debate. At the same time he provided a focus for the Whig attack on Polk by including in the general civil and diplomatic appropriations a provision to remove the sunken hulks of ships that impeded navigation in the Savannah River. In debate he denied that his measure had been proposed in order to embarrass the President, but Polk was convinced that this item had been included from partisan motives and determined to veto the bill if it carried the Savannah appropriation.⁴⁵

King continued to lead the fight for mail subsidies to expand the American merchant marine. He sponsored and defended laws aimed at carrying out the measures which he had introduced during earlier sessions, and gave his support to new subsidies. When Robert Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina, introduced an amendment calling for direct voyages of mail steamers from Charleston to Havana, King succeeded in adding Savannah as a required port of call. In the exchange between the two congressmen can be seen the strong commercial rivalry of Charleston and Savannah for the trade of the southeastern coast. In further debate on the same bill, King urged that the Secretary of the Navy, as well as the Postmaster General, be given a hand in the award of mail contracts. Such dual authority he based on the same principle that he had embodied in his own subsidy bills. Mail steamers, he argued, should meet the standards of a board of naval inspectors, in order to be convertible to war uses. The House did not approve of his argument, and the members may have been influenced by the workings of the subsidy measure of the previous session. Under that generous grant of authority the Secretary of the Navy was receiving bills for setting up a Pacific mail system over which the Postmaster General had little authority. Contractors were competing for profits with small regard for the needs of the postal service. Yet, despite the flaws in the operation of King’s subsidy law, the House approved without objection the $874,600 for mail steamer contracts in the general Navy appropriation. The Senate and President Polk concurred.⁴⁶

King’s only long speech of the session was in support of mail subsidies. In it he summoned up from earlier debates and reports familiar arguments. The United States depended on foreign-owned lines to carry the transatlantic mail. The British therefore received the profits from high American postal rates, while they enjoyed low rates on their own subsidized ocean steamers. At the same time, by their governmental policy they encouraged the growth of their merchant marine. After a long statistical review of the results, King drew the conclusion that only through a similar program of subsidies could the United States lines compete with their British rivals. He drew special attention to the defensive value of the vessels which would be added by this measure to the national maritime service. He concluded by presenting joint resolutions authorizing the opening of bids for American flag lines to Le Havre and Antwerp.

This speech was little more than a recapitulation of parts of King’s committee report on trade routes to China, which he presented on May 4, 1848. He began with a ten-page review of Anglo-American trade with China, its nature, value, and potentialities. From the survey the author concluded that China constituted an enormous potential market for American manufactured goods, particularly cotton. The next eight pages of the report were devoted to an examination of the trade routes to the Orient. The shortest route from Europe to China ran through Panama, and from that port the shortest course to Shanghai passed close to San Francisco. Mail for the Orient, and other cargo which required speedy delivery, would naturally fall into the hands of whoever developed the route first. The United States should exploit its geographic advantage. With a confident glance into the future, the writer saw the development of transcontinental rail connections, such as Whitney’s planned railroad to Oregon or a line from the Mississippi to San Francisco. With the completion of such a network the United States would absorb the carrying trade and commerce of the East, and New York would replace London as the financial center of the world. For accomplishing the first step to these desired ends, resolutions looking toward the opening of the Asiatic trade routes were proposed. The Secretary of the Navy was to be empowered to maintain a regular mail service to Hawaii by Navy steamers and to inaugurate the same type of service to Shanghai. Further resolutions called for the same official to contract with a private firm for a continuation of these mails within two years.⁴⁷

Even though King’s proposal was tabled it attracted attention both in Congress and in the press. The Senate embarked on a general discussion of the policy, with Democrats leading a sucessful attack on extending the commitments of the government further. The New York Herald approved the establishment of a two-ocean network, as did the Whig organ in Washington, the National Intelligencer. The China trade report attracted special notice. The Philadelphia Ledger endorsed its glowing predictions, while the National Intelligencer devoted one whole page to its publication and carried an additional column of editorial analysis and favorable comment. In September and October the same newspaper ran a series of seven articles on the subject of the China trade, which made frequent references to the report. In this manner King contributed to one of the most persistent American myths, the unlimited market in China for manufactured goods.⁴⁸

In the closely related field of land transportation, too, King supported the principle of government aid to expand the nation’s commerce. He presented resolutions from the Georgia legislature approving Asa Whitney’s project of a railroad from Lake Michigan to Oregon, and alluded to future transcontinental connections between the Mississippi and San Francisco. From the naval affairs committee he reported a bill to grant to the Alabama, Florida and Georgia Railroad Company alternate sections of the public land along the route of their contemplated roads, under certain conditions. Despite persistent parliamentary maneuvering in which he worked closely with his junior colleague, Alexander H. Stephens, he failed to bring the bill to a final vote.⁴⁹

In the midst of his congressional duties King faced again in 1848 the recurrent problem of the politician, re-election. He had given his friends and family some reason to believe that he might not seek office again. However, as the incumbent and as the sponsor of legislation which had benefited his district, it might be reasonably assumed that the nomination was his for the asking. His political friends encouraged him to run again, and he began making plans with his closest supporters on the choice of delegates to the nominating convention and on publicity for the race.⁵⁰

As King’s advisers had predicted, the convention named him the Whig candidate for the First District, but the meeting was not wholly harmonious. When it became apparent that King would be renominated, the supporters of James Lindsay Seward bolted the convention. King’s private report on the meeting assured him that his prospects remained bright and that Seward had little backing. Later, Seward announced for Congress as an Independent, throwing the Whigs into an argument over the political morality of his action that lasted all summer. The Democrats of the First District contributed to the confusion by not nominating a candidate.⁵¹

While King worked in Congress during the summer, his friends sent him encouraging reports on the political scene in Georgia. Probably the most helpful occurrence took place in Philadelphia, where Thomas Butler King helped to nominate Zachary Taylor as the Whig candidate for the presidency. The First District leaders were much relieved; in fact, they had urged their candidate earlier to come out openly for Old Zach. King’s friend W. W. Paine expressed the general consensus: “If Gen. Taylor is our candidate and the Democrats run Seward you will in my opinion beat him 400 or 500 votes. Should Mr. Clay be our candidate and Gen. Taylor run on his own hook—Seward may beat you.”⁵² The results of the National Whig convention were therefore more than satisfactory to King’s backers.

Since Seward was leading a Whig splinter movement, King profited greatly from the failure of the Democrats to nominate a candidate. His efforts in behalf of Savannah had gained him such widespread support in that city that the Democrats were willing to see him return to Congress. In fact, even while the Democratic newspaper of the city sang the praises of Cass and the Democratic party, it gave favorable notice to King for his part in securing an appropriation for the new custom house, for his efforts to remove obstructions in the Savannah River, and for his proposal to build additional mail steamers. This happy state of affairs did not continue through the summer. On August 25 the Georgian, which had carried no Democratic candidate for the First District at the masthead with the regular party ticket, proposed the name of Joseph W. Jackson. Their nominee accepted the call to duty, but pleaded age and infirmity as excuses for not canvassing the district. Seward, whose chance for a Democratic endorsement had now gone glimmering, announced his withdrawal from the race, and King was left with only a feeble rival for his seat. Yet opposition still existed in another quarter, within his own family. His wife reproached him in almost bitter terms:

I dare say I would have been mortified had your name been rejected–but you promised me you would not consent to be again put up for a target to be shot at. And I believed you! … If you would but stay with us, how much better it would be—how much happier I would be. I have said all this before.⁵³

Others in the family were more enthusiastic about his political activities. Lord and Thomas Butler, Jr., both referred to the probable victory of Zachary Taylor, and the former added the hope that “the old scamp will have the manners to make you Secretary of the Navy, or some foreign ambassador…,”⁵⁴ Butler made a more practical contribution by supervising the preparation of the buggy that King would use in the last days of the campaign.

While all these domestic and political reports were coming in, King remained in the North, first at his duties in Washington and then on a brief vacation advised by his doctor. It was probably more than good fortune that his health had recovered enough for him to attend a political rally in Albany, New York, where he made a soothing speech to the Whigs in Thurlow Weed’s territory.⁵⁵ About three weeks before the October election date he returned to Saint Simons Island for a one-day visit before departing on the political canvass. The Democratic Georgian, which had praised him earlier in the summer, now discovered that King’s efforts in behalf of Savannah were no more than any representative would have made. How, asked the editor, could voters support such a man, who was openly against the Tariff of 1846? But the favorite charge against him was guilt of association. Had he not joined John Quincy Adams, William Slade, and Joshua Giddings in endorsing the proposal to limit the veto power of the President, a protection for minorities? Had the Philadelphia paper which praised King not pleaded the abolitionist cause in the same issue?⁵⁶

These partisan criticisms proved to be mere rearguard sniping, for King defeated Jackson by nearly nine hundred votes. In the November presidential election Zachary Taylor carried the state. Once more King could hope for a prominent place in the majority party—and a share in the spoils of office.⁵⁷

The last session of the Thirtieth Congress was almost wholly taken up with one absorbing topic, the extension of slavery into the territories acquired by the Mexican War. In spite of their preoccupation, however, the lawmakers despatched their regular business, and Thomas Butler King followed the same course he had taken in previous sessions. As Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs he presented a number of bills aimed at restoring the Navy to a peacetime footing. Of such a nature were measures to substitute marines for landsmen on shipboard, to transfer the Pacific naval agency from Lima, Peru, to San Francisco, and to shift the control of vessels from the Secretary of War to the Navy. Again King opposed the complete abolition of the spirit ration to sailors. In defense of the general naval appropriation bill he answered the charges of extravagance leveled by Horace Greeley. In the money bill once more was an appropriation for $874,600 to fulfill the contracts for mail subsidies under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy, and the total appropriation for the Pensacola navy yard amounted to more than $450,000.⁵⁸

On January 16, 1849, King presented an elaborate report which recommended the building of a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama.⁵⁹ This was closely related to the system of subsidized mail steamers which King had sponsored, and the method of lending government aid was similar. William H. Aspinwall and his associates in the Pacific mail contract petitioned Congress for financial aid in building a rail line linking the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. They had acquired from the government of New Granada the lapsed charter of a French company, but Aspinwall saw no hope of obtaining enough private capital to complete so huge a project. In pleading for government aid, the contractors pointed out the advantage to the United States of having a means of transporting troops and supplies to forces on the Pacific coast, particularly in case of war. They asked for no direct grants of money, but rather for Congress to give the Secretary of the Navy the authority to contract for twenty years for the transporting of mail, troops, and supplies across the Isthmus. The payment was not to exceed that given by the government to the Edward K. Collins line of steamers that carried the Atlantic mails. With assurance of such indirect government aid, the promoters were confident of success.

King’s committee endorsed the proposition with additional emphasis on the future advantages for American trade generally. Mileage tables that included the comparative distances between Asiatic ports and ports in America and Europe were presented in tabular form to point out the savings in time and distance which such a railroad would effect. The needs of American emigrants to California would also justify the lending of government aid—not the hundred thousand who were expected to flock to the newly found gold region this year, but the future population of the new area of the United States. Because of the nature of their work, Californians were expected for a long time to constitute a market for products from the older states. It was also pointed out that the treaty of 1846 between the United States and New Granada virtually committed the United States to a defensive alliance with that country. The ownership by citizens of the United States of a railroad across Panama would give reality to the right of transit for which the United States had bargained. Summarizing all the arguments, the report contained the speculation that over the course of twenty years the actual savings to the American government would amount to more than $85,000,000. The committee therefore recommended that the petitioners’ request be granted, with the amount of compensation to be limited to $250,000 annually.

The House never discussed King’s ambitious proposal. In the Senate a similar bill received little better treatment. Thomas Hart Benton introduced the measure; he was supported by Jefferson Davis in his efforts to schedule debate. When Benton’s bill was taken up, Stephen A. Douglas offered a substitute more nearly in accordance with King’s measure in the House, but the Senate soon turned to the discussion of other matters.⁶⁰ The issue of slavery in the territories was coming to outweigh all other problems of the day and to draw a line between North and South that Thomas Butler King would find it difficult to erase.

The members of the Thirtieth Congress from the Southern states had already had to face the divisive effects of the extension of slavery. Alarmed at the tendencies he saw developing in the government, John C. Calhoun headed a group of Southerners from both parties who met in caucus to consult on defending the rights of their section. This meeting placed some of the members of Congress in a difficult position, for many of them disagreed with Calhoun on the gravity of the dangers he professed to see. The Whigs, in particular, could hardly be expected to become enthusiastic about a movement that would obliterate party lines. After a long famine their party was about to enjoy the fruits of victory, and if they followed Calhoun’s lead they would lose the confidence of the rest of their party. Abstention from the caucus, on the other hand, might be regarded at home as disloyalty to their section. In this dilemma the Southern Whigs, following the leadership of the Georgians, decided to attend the meeting and either turn it to their own ends or frustrate the designs of their fire-eating colleagues.⁶¹

In the deliberations of the caucus King showed his opposition to any radical disunionist moves and his solidarity with the other Georgia Whigs. At the first tumultuous meeting on January 15, 1849, he voted with other moderates to exclude reporters from the proceedings. When Calhoun’s Address to the Southern States was put forward as a presentation of the views of the assembly, the Georgia Whigs who tried to lay it on the table were in the minority. Unsuccessful in the first vote, they resorted to delaying actions, and the majority agreed to recommit Calhoun’s address to a committee for revision. In other meetings of the group King supported successive delaying motions by his fellow Georgian Alexander H. Stephens to adjourn sine die, to issue a declaration that it was inexpedient at the time to publish an address, and to adjourn for a month. None of the motions carried. John M. Berrien, Whig Senator from Georgia, brought in from the committee of revision an address very different in content and tone from Calhoun’s, King supported this mild address to the nation, and when it was rejected as the choice of the caucus he joined the large body of Whigs and moderate Democrats who refused to sign the published Calhoun address.⁶²