Deprived of solid evidence of a broader plot against the president, Blair and the Globe settled for blaming anti-Jackson Senate speeches for the attack. Because of the assaults of men like Calhoun, the Globe asserted, Lawrence, a “sullen and deep-brooding fanatic” who was “violent in his expressions of hostility to the Administration of the President,” took up arms. “Is it … a strained inference that this malignant partisan might have been fired to commit the deed by the violent denunciations fulminated against the President?”
