With an ordinary share of Common sense which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die before the time when I shall be left at my own discretion.  I have before me a striking example of the distressing and humiliating situation a person is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to fall into the same error.

FROM THE MEMOIRS

JANUARY 14TH, 1831.—­I received a letter from John C. Calhoun, now Vice-President of the United States, relating to his present controversy with President Jackson and William H. Crawford.  He questions me concerning the letter of General Jackson to Mr. Monroe which Crawford alleges to have been produced at the Cabinet meetings on the Seminole War, and asks for copies, if I think proper to give them, of Crawford’s letter to me which I received last summer, and of my answer.  I answered Mr. Calhoun’s letter immediately, rigorously confining myself to the direct object of his inquiries.  This is a new bursting out of the old and rancorous feud between Crawford and Calhoun, both parties to which, after suspending their animosities and combining together to effect my ruin, are appealing to me for testimony to sustain themselves each against the other.  This is one of the occasions upon which I shall eminently need the direction of a higher power to guide me in every step of my conduct.  I see my duty to discard all consideration of their treatment of me; to adhere, in everything that I shall say or write, to the truth; to assert nothing positively of which I am not absolutely certain; to deny nothing upon which there remains a scruple of doubt upon my memory; to conceal nothing which it may be lawful to divulge, and which may promote truth and justice between the parties.  With these principles, I see further the necessity for caution and prudence in the course I shall take.  The bitter enmity of all three of the parties—­Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford—­against me, an enmity the more virulent because kindled by their own ingratitude and injustice to me; the interest which every one of them, and all their partisans, have in keeping up that load of obloquy and public odium which their foul calumnies have brought down upon me; and the disfavor in which I stand before a majority of the people, excited against me by their artifices;—­their demerits to me are proportioned to the obligations to me—­Jackson’s the greatest, Crawford’s the next, Calhoun’s the least of positive obligation, but darkened by his double-faced setting himself up as a candidate for the Presidency against me in 1821, his prevarications between Jackson and me in 1824, and his icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of social intercourse with me, solely from the terror of Jackson, since the 4th of March, 1829.  I walk between burning ploughshares; let me be mindful where I place my foot.