[206] With the exception of Barry's wife Catherine,[207] the cabinet members' wives followed the lead of Vice-president Calhoun's wife Floride and refused to socialize with the Eatons.[208] Though Jackson defended Margaret, her presence split the cabinet, which had been so ineffective that he rarely called it into session,[190] and the ongoing disagreement led to its dissolution.[209]
In the spring of 1831, Jackson demanded the resignations of all the cabinet members except Barry,[210] who would resign in 1835 when a Congressional investigation revealed his mismanagement of the Post Office.[211] Jackson tried to compensate Van Buren by appointing him the Minister to Great Britain, but Calhoun blocked the nomination with a tie-breaking vote against it.[210] Van Buren—along with Amos Kendall, who helped organize what would become the Democratic Party,[212] and Francis Preston Blair, the editor of The Globe newspaper that served as Jackson's house organ,[213]—would become regular participants in Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet, an unofficial, varying group of advisors that Jackson turned to for decision making even after he had formed a new official cabinet.