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MARTIN VAN BUREN

EDWARD M? SHEPARD

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
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1888

Copyright, 1888,
By EDWARD M. SHEPARD.
AU rights reserved.

Tlie Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
American Politics when Van Buren's Career began.
— Jefferson's Influence .  1
CHAPTER II.
Early Years. — Professional Life .... . . 12
CHAPTER III.
State Senator; Attorney-General; Member of the
Constitutional Convention ... . . 32
CHAPTER IV.
United States Senator. — Reestablishment of Par
ties. — Party Leadership .... . 7i
CHAPTER V.
Democratic Victory in 1828. — Governor  131
CHAPTER VI.
Secretary of State. — Definite Formation of the
Democratic Creed . . . ... . 151
CHAPTER VII.
Minister to England. — Vice-President. — Election
to the Presidency . .... . . . 101

vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
Crisis of 1837  242
CHAPTER IX.
President. — Sub-Treasury Bill  278
CHAPTER X.
President. — Canadian Insurrection. — Texas. — Semi
nole War. — Defeat for Reelection ... . . 300
CHAPTER XI.
Ex-President. — Slavery. — Texas Annexation. — De
feat by the South. — Free-Soil Campaign. — Last
Years  . . . . . . 340
CHAPTER XII.
Van Buren' s Character and Place in History. . . 383

MARTIN VAN BUREN.

CHAPTER I.
american politics when van buren's career
began. — jefperson's influence.
It sometimes happened during the anxious years
when the terrors of our civil war, though still smoulder
ing, were nearly aflame, that on Wall Street or Nassau
Street, busy men of New York saw Martin Van Buren
and his son walking arm in arm. " Prince John," tall,
striking in appearance, his hair divided at the middle in
a fashion then novel for Americans, was in the prime of
life, resolute and aggressive in bearing. His father was
a white-haired and bright-eyed old man, erect but short
in figure, of precise though easy and kindly politeness,
and with a touch of deference in his manner. His
presence did not peremptorily command the attention of
strangers ; but to those who looked attentively there
was a plain distinction in the refined and venerable
face. Passers-by might well turn back to see more of
the two men thus affectionately and picturesquely to
gether. For they were famous characters, — the one
in the newer, the other in the older politics of America.
John Van Buren, fresh from his Free Soil battle and the
tussles of the Hards and Softs, was striving to serve the

Z MASTIN VAN BUREN.
cause of the Union, though conscious that he rested
under the suspicion of the party to whose service, its
divisions in New York now seemingly ended, he had
lately returned. But he still faced the slave power with
an independence only partially abated before the exi
gencies of party loyalty. The ex-President, definitely
withdrawn from the same Free Soil battle, a struggle
into which he had entered when the years were already
heavy upon him, had survived to be once more a worthy
in the Democratic party, again to receive its formal
veneration, but never again its old affection. In their
timid manoeuvres with slavery it was perhaps with the
least possible awkwardness that the northern Democrats
sought to treat him as a great Democratic leader ; but
they did not let it be forgotten that the leader was for
ever retired from leadership. While the younger man
was in the thick of political encounters which the party
carried on in blind futility, the older man was hardly
more than an historical personage. He was no longer,
his friends strove to think, the schismatic candidate of
1848, but rather the ally and friend of Jackson, or,
better still and further away, the disciple of Jefferson.
For, more than any other American, Martin Van
Buren had succeeded to the preaching of Jefferson's
political doctrines, and to his political power as well,
that curious and potent mingling of philosophy, states
manship, and electioneering. The distrust of the Whigs
towards Van Buren was still bitter ; the hot anger of
his own party over the blow he had dealt in 1848 was
still far from subsided ; the gratitude of most Free Soil
men had completely disappeared with his apparent
acquiescence in the politics of Pierce and Buchanan.
Save in a narrow circle of anti-slavery Democrats, Van

AMERICAN POLITICS. 3
Buren, in these last days of his, was judged at best with
coldness, and most commonly with dislike or even con
tempt. Not much of any other temper has yet gone
into political history ; its writers have frequently been
content to accept the harshness of partisan opinion, or
even the scurrility and mendacity visited upon him
during his many political campaigns, and to ignore the
positive records of his career and public service. The
present writer confesses to have begun this Life, not
indeed sharing any of the hatred or contempt so com
monly felt towards Van Buren, but still given to many
serious depreciations of him, which, as a better exam
ination has shown the writer, had their ultimate source
in the mere dislike of personal or political enemies, —
a dislike to whose expression, often powerful and vivid,
many writers have extended a welcome seriously incon
sistent with the fairness and truth of history.
When Abraham Lincoln was chosen President in
1860, this predecessor of his by a quarter century was
justly enough an historical figure. The gracious, genial
old man connected, visibly and really, those stirring and
dangerous modern days with the first political struggles
under the American Constitution, struggles then long
passed into the quiet of history, to leave him almost
their only living reminiscence. Martin Van Buren was
a man fully grown and already a politician when in
1801 the triumph of Thomas Jefferson completed the
political foundation of the United States. Its profound
inspiration still remained with him on this eve of Lin
coln's election. Under its influence his political career
had begun and had ended.
At Jefferson's election the aspiration and fervor
which attended the first, the new-born sense of Ameri-

4 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
can national life, had largely worn away ; and the ideal
visions of human liberty had long before grown dim
amidst the practical hardships, the vicissitudes of mean
ness and glory during seven years of revolutionary war,
and amid the four years of languor and political in
competence which followed. In the agitation for better
union, political theories filled the minds of our fore
fathers. Lessons were learned from the Achaean League,
as well as from the Swiss Confederation, the German
Empire, and the British Constitution. Both history
and speculation, however, were firmly subordinated to
an extraordinary common sense, in part flowing from,
as it was most finely exhibited in, the luminous and
powerful, if unexalted, genius of Franklin. From the
open beginning of constitution-making at Annapolis in
1786 until the inauguration of John Adams, the Amer
ican people, under the masterful governing of Washing
ton, were concerned with the framework upon which the
fabric of their political life was to be wrought. The
framework was doubtless in itself of a vast and endur
ing importance. If the consolidating and aristocratic
schemes of Hamilton had not met defeat in tlie federal
convention, or if the separatist jealousies of Patrick
Henry and George Clinton had not met defeat in Vir
ginia and New York after the work of the convention
was done, there would to-day be a different American
people. Nor would our history be the amazing story
of the hundred years past. But upon the governmen
tal framework thus set up could be woven political
fabrics widely and essentially different in their material,
their use, and their enduring virtue. For quite apart
from the framework of government were the temper
and traditions of popular politics out of which comes

JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE. 5
and must always come, the essential and dominant nature
of public institutions. In this creative and deeper work
Jefferson was engaged during his struggle for political
power after returning from France in 1789, during his
presidential career from 1801 to 1809, and during the
more extraordinary, and in American history the un
paralleled, supremacy of his political genius after he had
left office. In the circumstances of our colonial life,
in our race extractions, in our race fusion upon the At
lantic seaboard, and in the moral effect of forcible and
embittered separation from the parent country, arose
indeed, to go no further back, the political instincts
of American men. It is, however, fatal to adequate
conception of our political development to ignore the
enormous formative influence which the twenty years of
Jefferson's rule had upon American political character.
But so partial and sometimes so partisan have been
the historians of our early national politics in their
treatment of that great man, that a just appreciation of
the political atmosphere in which Van Buren began his
career is exceedingly difficult.
There was an American government, an American
nation, when Washington gladly escaped to Mt. Vernon
from the bitterly factional quarrels of the politicians at
Philadelphia. The government was well ordered ; the
nation was respectable and dignified. But most of the
people were either still colonial and provincial, or were
rushing, in turbulence and bad temper, to crude specu
lations and theories. Twenty-five years later, Jefferson
had become the political idol of the American people, a
people completely and forever saturated with demo
cratic aspirations, democratic ideals, what John Mar
shall called " political metaphysics," a people with strong

6 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
and lasting characteristics, no longer either colonial or
provincial, but profoundly national. The skill, the in
dustry, the arts of the politician, had been used by a
man gifted with the genius and not free from the faults
of a philosopher, to plant in American usages, preju
dices, and traditions, in the very fibre of American
political life, a cardinal and fruitful idea. The work
was done for all time. For Americans, government
was thenceforth to be a- mere instrument. No longer
a symbol, or an ornament or crown of national life,
however noble and august, it was a simple means to a
plain end ; to be always, and if need be rudely, tested
and measured by its practical working, by its service to
popular rights and needs. In those earlier days, too,
there had been '• classes and masses," the former of
whom held public service und public policy as matters
of dignity and order and high assertion of national
right and power, requiring in their ministers peculiar
esoteric light, and an equipment of which common men
ought not to judge, because they could not judge aright.
Afterward, in Monroe's era of good feeling, the per
sonal rivalries of presidential candidates were in bad
temper enough ; but Americans were at last all demo
crats. "Whether for better or worse, the nation had
ceased to be either British or colonial or provincial in
its character. In the delightful Rip Van Winkle of a
later Jefferson, during the twenty years' sleep, the old
Dutch house has gone, the peasant's dress, the quaint
inn with its village tapster, all the old scene of loyal
provincial life. Rip returns to a noisy, boastful, self-
assertive town full of American •' push " and " drive "
and profane disregard of superiors and everything
ancient. It was hardly a less change which spread

JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE. 7
through the United States in the twenty years of Jef
ferson's unrivaled and fruitful leadership. Supersti
tious regard for the " well-born," for institutions of
government as images of veneration apart from their
immediate and practical use ; the faith in government
as essentially a financial establishment which ought to
be on peculiarly friendly relations with banks and bank
ers ; the treatment and consideration of our democratic
organization as an experiment to be administered with
deprecatory deference to European opinion ; the idea
that upon the great, simple elements of political belief
and practice, the mass of men could not judge as wisely
and safely as the opulent, the cultivated, the educated ;
the idea that it was a capital feature of political art
to thwart the rashness and incompetence of the lower
people, — all these theories and traditions, which had
firmly held most of the disciplined thought of Europe
and America, and to which the lurid horrors of the
French Revolution had brought apparent consecration,
— all these had now gone ; all had been fatally wounded,
or were sullenly and apologetically cherished in the
ao-inff bitterness of the Federalists. There was an Amer-
ican people with as distinct, as powerful, as character
istic a polity as belonged to the British islanders. In
1776 a youthful genius had seized upon a colonial re
volt against taxation as the occasion to make solemn
declaration of a seeming abstraction about human rights.
He had submitted, however, to subordinate his theory
during the organization of national defense and the
strengthening of the framework of government. Nor
did he shine in either of those works. But with the
nation established, with a union secured so that its peo
ple could safely attend to the simpler elements of human

8 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
rights, Jefferson and his disciples were able to lead
Americans to the temper, the aspirations, and the very
prejudices of essential democracy. The Declaration of
Independence, the ten amendments to the Constitution
theoretically formulating the rights of men or of the
states, sank deep into the sources of American political
life. So completely indeed was the work done, that in
1820 there was but one political party in America ; all
were Jeffersonian Republicans ; and in 1824, when the
Republican party was broken up, the only dispute was
whether Adams or Jackson or Crawford or Clay or
Calhoun best represented the political beliefs now al
most universal. It then seemed to Americans as if
they had never known any other beliefs, as if these
doctrines of their democracy were truisms to which the
rest of the world was marvelously blind.
Nothing in American public life has, in prolonged
anger and even savage desperation, equaled the attacks
upon Jefferson during the steady growth of his stupen
dous influence. The hatred of him personally, and the
belief in the wickedness of his private and public life,
survive in our time. Nine tenths of the Americans
who then read books sincerely thought him an enemy of
mankind and of all that was sacred. Nine tenths of the
authors of American books on history or politics have
to this day written under the influence which ninety
years ago controlled their predecessors. And for this
there is no little reason. As the American people grew
conscious of their own peculiar and intensely active
political force, there came to them a period of national
and popular life in which much was unlovely, much was
crude, much was disagreeably vulgar. Books upon
America written by foreign travelers, from the days of

JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE. 9
Jefferson down to our civil war, superficial and offensive
as they often were, told a great deal of truth. We do
not now need to wince at criticisms upon a rawness, an
insolent condescension towards the political ignorance of
foreigners and the unhappy subjects of kings, a harshness
in the assertion of the equality of Caucasian men, and a
restless, boastful manner. The criticisms were in great
measure just. But the critics were stupid and blind not
to see the vast and vital work and change going on
before their eyes, to chiefly regard the trifling and inci
dental things which disgusted them. Their eyes were
open to all our faults of taste and manner, but closed
to the self-dependent and self-assertive energy the dis
order of whose exhibition would surely pass away. In
every democratic experiment, in every experiment of
popular or national freedom, there is almost inevitable
a vulgarizing of public manners, a lack of dignity in
details, which disturbs men who find restful delight in
orderly and decorous public life ; and their disgust is
too often directed against beneficent political changes
or reforms. If one were to judge the political temper
of the American people from many of our own writers,
and still more if he were to judge it from the observa
tions even of intelligent and friendly foreigners prior to
1861, he would believe that temper to be sordid, mean,
noisy, boastful, and even cruel. But from the war
of 1812 with England to the election of Buchanan in
1856, the American people had been doing a profound,
organic, democratic work. Meantime many had seen
no more than the unsightly, the mean and trivial, the
malodorous details, which were mere incidents and blem
ishes of hidden and dynamic operations. Unimagina
tive minds usually fail to see the greater and deeper

10 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
movements of politics as well as those of science. In
the public virtues then maturing there lay the ability
long and strenuously to conduct an enterprise the great
est which modern times have known, and an extraordi
nary popular capacity for restraint and discipline. In
those virtues was sleeping a tremendously national spirit
which, with cost and sacrifice not to be measured by the
vast figures of the statistician, on one side sought inde
pendence, and on the other saved the Union, — an ex
alted love of men and truth and liberty, which, after all
the enervations of pecuniary prosperity, endured with
patience hardships and losses, and the less heroic but
often more dangerous distresses of taxation, — at the
North a magnanimity in victory unequaled in the tra
ditions of men, and at the South a composure and dig
nity and absence of either bitterness or meanness which
brought out of defeat far larger treasures than could
have come with victory. But these were not effects
without a cause. In them all was only the fruit, the
normal fruit, of the political habits, ideals, traditions,
whose early and unattractive disorders had chagrined
many of the best of Americans, and had seemed so
natural to foreigners who feared or distrusted a democ
racy. There had been forming, during forty or fifty
years of a certain raw unloveliness, the peculiar and
powerful self-reliance of a people whose political inde
pendence meant far more than a mere separate govern
ment. In these years Van Buren was one of the chief men
in American public life. He and his political associates
had been profoundly affected by the Jeffersonian phi
losophy of government. They robustly held its tenets
until the flame and vengeance of the slavery conflict

JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE. 11
drove them from political power. In our own day we
have, in the able speeches with which Samuel J. Tilden
fatigued respectful though often unsympathetic hearers
at Democratic meetings, heard something of the same
robust political philosophy, brought directly from inter
course with his famous neighbor and political master.
Van Buren himself breathed it as the very atmosphere
of American public life, during his early career which
had just begun when Jefferson, his robes of office
dropped and his faults of administration forgotten,
seemed the serene, wise old man presiding over a land
completely won to his ideals of democracy. Under
this extraordinary influence and in this political light,
there opened with the first years of the century the pub
lic life to be narrated in this volume.

CHAPTER II.
EARLY YEARS. — PROFESSIONAL LIFE.
At the close of the American Revolution, Abraham
Van Buren was a farmer on the east bank of the Hudson
River, New York. He was of Dutch descent, as was
his wife, whose maiden name Hoes, corrupted from Goes,
is said to have had distinction in Holland. But it would
be mere fancy to find in the statesman particular traits
brought from the dyked swam]) lands whence some of
his ancestors came. Those who farmed the rich fields
of Columbia county were pretty thorough Americans ;
their characteristics were more immediately drawn from
the soil they cultivated and from the necessary habits of
their life than from the lands, Dutch or English, from
which their forefathers had emigrated. Late in the
eighteenth century they were no longer frontiersmen.
For a century and more this eastern Hudson River coun
try had been peacefully and prosperously cultivated.
There was no lack of high spirit ; but it was shown in
lawsuits and political feuds rather than in skirmishes
with red men. It was close to the old town of Albany
with its official and not undignified life, and had com
paratively easy access to Now York by sloop or the post-
road. It had been an early settlement of the colony.
Within its borders were now the estates and mansions of
large landed proprietors, who inherited or acquired from
a more varied and affluent life some of the qualities,

EARLY YEARS. 13
good and bad, of a country gentry. It was a region of
easy, orderly comfort, sound and robust enough, but not
sharing the straight and precise, though meddling, puri
tanical habits which a few miles away, over the high
Berkshire hills, had come from the shores of New Eng
land. The elder Van Buren was said by his son's enemies to
have kept a tavern ; and he probably did. Farming and
tavern-keeping then were fairly interchangeable ; and the
gracious manner, the tact with men, which the younger
Van Buren developed to a marked degree, it is easy to
believe came rather from the social and varied life of an
inn than from the harsher isolation of a farm. The
statesman's boyish days were spent among poor and rude
neighbors. He was born at Kinderhook, an old village
of New York, on the 5th of December, 1782. The
usual years of schooling were probably passed in one of
the dilapidated, weather-beaten schoolhouses from which
has come so much of what is best in American life. He
studied later in the Kinderhook Academy, one of the
higher schools which in New York have done good work,
though not equaling the like schools in Massachusetts.
Here he learned a little Latin. But when at fourteen
years of age he entered a law office, he had of course the
chief discipline of book-learning still to acquire. In
1835 his campaign biographer rather rejoiced that he
had so little systematic education, fearing that " from
the eloquent pages of Livy, or the honeyed eulogiums of
Virgil, or the servile adulation of Horace, he might have
been inspired with an admiration for regal pomp and
aristocratic dignity uncongenial to the native indepen
dence of his mind," and have imbibed a " contempt for
plebeians and common people," unless, perhaps, the

14 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
speeches of popular leaders in Livy " had kindled his in
stinctive love of justice and freedom," or the sarcastic
vigor of Tacitus "had created in his bosom a fixed
hatred of tyranny in every shape." At an early age,
however, it is certain that Van Buren, like many other
Americans of original force and with instinctive fondness
for written pictures of human history and conduct, ac
quired an education which, though not that of a profes
sional scholar, was entirely appropriate to the skillful
man of affairs or the statesman to be set in conspicuous
places. This work must have been largely done during
the comparative leisure of his legal apprenticeship.
It was in 1796 that he entered the law office of
Francis Sylvester at Kinderhook, where he remained
until his twentieth year. He there read law. It is safe
to say besides that he swept the office, lighted the fires
in winter, and, like other law students in earlier and
simpler days, had to do the work of an office janitor and
errand boy, as well as to serve papers and copy the tech
nical forms of the common law, and the tedious but often
masterly pleadings of chancery. That his work as a
student was done with great industry and thoroughness
is demonstrated by the fact that at an early age he be
came a successful and skillful advocate in arguments ad
dressed to courts as distinguished from juries, a division
of professional work in which no skill and readiness will
supply deficiencies in professional equipment. His early
reputation for cleverness is illustrated by the story that
when only a boy he successfully summed up a case before
a jury against his preceptor Sylvester, being made by
the justice to stand upon a bench because he was so
small, with the exhortation, " There, Mat, beat your
master."

PROFESSIONAL STUDY. 15
In 1802 Van Buren entered the office of William P.
Van Ness, in the city of New York, to complete his
seventh and final year of legal study. Van Ness was
himself from Columbia county and an eminent lawyer.
He was afterwards appointed United States district judge
by Madison ; and was then an influential Republican and
a close friend and defender of Aaron Burr, then the
vice-president. The native powers and fascination of
Burr were at their zenith, though his political character
was blasted. Van Buren made his acquaintance, and
was treated with the distinguished and flattering atten
tion which the wisest of public men often show to young
men of promise. Van Buren's enemies were absurdly
fond of the fancy that in this slight intercourse he had
acquired the skill and grace of his manner, and the easy
principles and love of intrigue which they ascribed to
him. Burr, for years after he was utterly disabled,
inspired a childish terror in American politics. The
mystery and dread about him were used by the oppo
nents of Jackson because Burr had early pointed him out
for the presidency, and by the opponents of Clay because
in early life he had given Burr professional assistance.
But upon Burr's candidacy for governor in 1804 Van
Buren's freedom from his influence was clearly enough
exhibited. In 1803 Van Buren, being now of age and admitted
as an attorney, returned to Kinderhook and there began
the practice of his profession. The rank of counsellor-
at-law was still distinct and superior to that of attorney.
His half-brother on his mother's side, James J. Van
Alen, at once admitted the young attorney to a law part
nership. Van Alen was considerably older and had a
practice already established. Van Buren's career as a

16 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
lawyer was not a long one, but it was brilliant and
highly successful. After his election to the United
States Senate in 1821 his practice ceased to be very ac
tive. He left his profession with a fortune which se
cured him the ease in money matters so helpful and
almost necessary to a man in public life. Merely pro
fessional reputations disappear with curious and rather
saddening promptness and completeness. Of the prac
tice and distinction reached by Van Buren before he
withdrew from the bar, although they were unsurpassed
in the state, no vestige and few traditions remain be
yond technical synopses of his arguments in the instruc
tive but hardly succulent pages of Johnson's, Wendell's,
and Co wen's reports.
At an early day the legal profession reached in our
country a consummate vigor. Far behind as Americans
were in other learning and arts, they had, within a few
years after they escaped colonial dependence, judges,
advocates, and commentators of the first rank. Mar
shall, Kent, and Story were securely famous when hardly
another American of their time out of public and politi
cal life was known. In the legal art Americans were
even more accomplished than in its science ; and Colum
bia county and the valley of the Hudson were fine fields
for legal practice. Many animosities survived from
revolutionary days. The landed families, long used to
administer the affairs of others as well as their own, saw
with jealousy and fear the rapid and often insolent
spread of democratic doctrines and of leveling manners.
Political feuds were rife, and frequently appeared in the
professionally profitable collisions of neighbors with va
grant cows, or on watercourses insufficient for the needs
of the up-stream and the down -stream proprietors.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 17
There were slander suits and libel suits, and suits for
malicious prosecution. Into the most legitimate con
troversies over doubts about property there was driven
the bitterness which turns a lawsuit from a process
to ascertain a right into a weapon of revenge.
Van Buren's political opinions were strong and clear
from the beginning of his law practice ; but he was in a
professional minority among the rich Federalists of the
county. The adverse discipline was invaluable. Through
zeal and skill and large industry, he soon led the Repub
licans as their ablest lawyer, and the lawyers of Colum
bia county were famous. William W. Van Ness, after
wards a judge of the supreme court of the state, Gros-
venor, Elisha Williams, and Jacob R. Van Rensselaer
were active at the bar. Williams, although his very
name is nowadays hardly known, we cannot doubt from
the universal testimony of contemporaries, had extraor
dinary forensic talents. He was a Federalist ; and the
most decisive proof of Van Buren's rapid professional
growth was his promotion to be Williams's chief compet
itor and adversary. Van Buren's extraordinary applica
tion and intellectual clearness soon established him as
the better and the more successful lawyer, though not
the more powerful advocate. Williams at last said to
his rival, " I get all the verdicts, and you get all the
judgments." A famous pupil of Van Buren both in law
and in politics, Benjamin F. Butler, afterwards attorney-
general in his cabinet, finely contrasted them from his
own recollection of their conflicts when he was a law
student. " Never," he said, " were two men more dis
similar. Both were eloquent ; but the eloquence of Wil
liams was declamatory and exciting, that of Van Buren
insinuating and delightful. Williams had the livelier

18 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
imagination, Van Buren the sounder judgment. The
former presented the strong points of his case in bolder
relief, invested them in a more brilliant coloring, indulged
a more unlicensed and magnificent invective, and gave
more life and variety to his arguments by his peculiar
wit and inimitable humor. But Van Buren was his su
perior in analyzing, arranging, and combining the insu
lated materials, in comparing and weighing testimony, in
unraveling the web of intricate affairs, in eviscerating
truth from the mass of diversified and conflicting evi
dence, in softening the heart and moulding it to his pur
pose, and in working into the judgments of his hearers
the conclusions of his own perspicuous and persuasive
reasonings." Most of this is applicable to Van Buren's
career on the wider field of politics ; and much here said
of his early adversary on the tobacco-stained floors of
country court-houses might have been as truly said of a
later adversary of his, the splendid leader who, rather
than Harrison, ought to have been victor over Van
Buren in 1840, and over whom Van Buren rather than
Polk ought to have been victor in 1844.
In a few years Van Buren outgrew the professional
limitations of Kinderhook. In February, 1807, he had
been admitted as a counsellor of the supreme court;
and this promotion he most happily celebrated by mar
rying Hannah Hoes, a young lady of his own age, and
also of Dutch descent, a kinswoman of his mother, and
with whom he had been intimate from his childhood.
In 1808, the council of appointment becoming Republi
can, he was made surrogate of Columbia county, suc
ceeding his partner and half-brother Van Alen, a Fed
eralist in politics, who was, however, returned to the
place in 1815, when the Federalists regained the coun-

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 19
cil. The office was a respectable one, concerned with
the probate of wills, and the ordering of estates of de
ceased persons. Within a year after this appointment,
Van Buren remoyed to the new and bustling little city
of Hudson, directly on the river banks. Here he prac
ticed law with rapidly increasing success for seven years.
His pecuniary thrift now enabled him to purchase what
was called " a very extensive and well-selected library."
With this advantage he applied himself to " a systematic
and extended course of reading," which left him a well,
even an amply, educated man. His severity in study
did not, however, exclude him from the social pleasures
of which he was fond, and for which he was perfectly
fitted. He learned men quite as fast as he learned
books. A country surrogate, though then enjoying fees,
since commuted to a salary, had only a meagre compen
sation. But the duties of Van Buren's office did not
interfere with his activity in the private practice of the
law. On the contrary, the office enabled him to extend
his acquaintances, a process which, even without adven
titious aid, was to Van Buren easy and delightful.
In 1813, having been elected a member of the senate
of the state, he became as such a member of the court
for the correction of errors. This was the court of last
resort, composed, until 1847, of the chancellor, the
judges of the supreme court, the lieutenant-governor,
and the thirty-two senators. The latter, though often
laymen, were members of the court, partly through a
curious imitation of the theoretical function of the Brit
ish House of Lords, and partly under the idea, even
now feebly surviving in some states, that some besides
lawyers ought to sit upon the bench in law courts to con
tribute the common sense which it was fancied might be

20 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
absent from their more learned associates. It was not
found unsuitable for members of this, the highest court,
to be active legal practitioners. While Van Buren held
his place as a member he was, in February, 1815, made
attorney -general, succeeding Abraham Van Vechten,
one of the famous lawyers of the state. Van Buren
was then but thirty-two years old, and the professional
eminence accorded to the station was greater than now.
Among near predecessors in it had been Aaron Burr,
Ambrose Spencer and Thomas Addis Emmett; among
his near successors were Thomas J. Oakley, Samuel A.
Talcott, Greene C. Bronson and Samuel Beardsley, —
all names of the first distinction in the professional life
of New York. The office was of course political, as it
has always been, both in the United States and the
mother country. But Van Buren's appointment, if it
were made because he was an active and influential
Republican in politics, would still not have been made
unless his professional reputation had been high. The
salary was $5.50 a day, with some costs, — not an un
suitable salary in days when the chancellor was paid but
$3,000 a year. He held the office untd July, 1819,
when, upon the capture of the council of appointment
by a coalition of Clintonian Republicans and Federalists,
he was removed to give place to Oakley, the Federalist
leader in the state assembly.
In 1816 Van Buren, now rapidly reaching profes
sional eminence, removed to Albany, the capital of New
York. Though then a petty city of mean buildings and
about 10,000 inhabitants, it had a far larger relative im
portance in the professional and social life of the state
than has the later city of ten times the population, with
its costly and enormous state-house, its beautiful pubhc

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 21
buildings, and its steep and numerous streets of fine
residences. In 1820 he purposed removing to New
York ; but, for some reason altering his plans, continued
to reside at Albany until appointed secretary of state in
1829. His professional career was there crowned with
most important and lucrative work. Soon after mov
ing to Albany, he took into partnership Butler, just ad
mitted to the bar. Between the two men there were
close and life-long relations. The younger of them, also
a son of Columbia county, reached great professional
distinction, became a politician of the highest type, and
remained steadfast in his attachment to Van Buren's po
litical fortunes, and to the robust and distinctly marked
political doctrines and practices of the Albany Regency.
The law reports give illustrations of Van Buren's pre
cision, his clear and forcible common-sense, and his
aptitude for that learning of the law in which the great
counsel of the time excelled. In 1813, soon after his
service began as state senator, he delivered an opinion
in a case of " escape ; " and in very courteous words '
exhibited a bit of his dislike for Kent, then chief justice
of the supreme court, whose judgment he helped to re
verse, as well as his antipathy to imprisonment for debt,
which he afterwards helped to abolish. It was a petty
suit against the sureties upon the bond given by a
debtor. Under a relaxation of the imprisonment for
debt recently permitted, the debtor was, on giving the
bond, released from jail, but upon the condition that
he should keep within the " jail liberties," which in the
country counties was a prescribed area around the jail.
His bond was to be forfeit if he passed the " liberties."
While the debtor was driving a cow to or from pasture,
the latter contemptuously deviated " four, six, or ten

22 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
feet " from the liberties. The driver, yielding to inev
itable bucolic impulse and forgetting his bond, leaped
over the imaginary line to bring back the cow. He was
without the liberties but a moment, and afterwards
duly kept within them. But the creditor was watchful,
and for the technical " escape " sued the sureties. Al
though the debtor was within the limits when suit was
brought, the lower court refused to pardon the debtor's
technical and unintentional fault. At common law the
creditor was entitled to satisfaction of the debtor's
body ; and the milder statute establishing jail liberties
was, the court said, to be strictly construed against the
debtor ; it was not enough that the creditor had the
debtor's body when he called for it. The supreme court,
headed by Kent, affirmed this curiously harsh decision.
In the court of errors, Van Buren joined Chancellor
Lansing in reversing the rule upon an elaborate review
of the law, which to this day is important authority,
and which could not have been more carefully done had
. something greater seemed at stake than a bovine vagary
and a few dollars. The young lawyer, wearing for a
time the judicial robes, now sat in a review, by no
means unpleasant, of the utterances of magistrates be
fore whom he had until then stood in considerable awe ;
and seized the opportunity, doubtless with a keen per
ception of the drift of popular sentiment on matters of
personal liberty, to enlarge the mild policy of the later
law. When it was urged that, if the law were not
technically administered, imprisoned debtors would of
a Sunday wander beyond the " limits," securely able to
return before Monday, when the creditor could sue, —
Van Buren, with a contemptuous fling at the supreme
court, confessed in Johnsonian sentences his lenient tern-

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 23
per towards these " stolen pleasures," — his willingness
that debtors should snatch the " few moments of liberty
which, although soured by constant perturbation and
alarm, are, notwithstanding, deemed fit subjects for
judicial animadversion." His rhetoric was rather agree
ably florid when he declared the law establishing " jail
liberties " to be a concession for humane purposes made
by the inflexible spirit which authorized imprisonment
for debt. He strongly intimated his sympathy to be
with "the exertions of men of intelligence, reflection,
and philanthropy to mitigate its rigor ; of men who
viewed it as a practice fundamentally wrong, a practice
which forces their fellow-creatures from society, from
their friends, and their agonized families into the dreary
walls of a prison ; which compels them to leave all
those fascinating endearments to become an inmate with
vermin ;" and all this, not for crime or frauds, " but
for the misfortune of being poor, of being unable to
satisfy the all-digesting stomach of some ravenous cred
itor." The practice was one " confounding virtue and
vice, and destroying the distinction between guilt and
innocence which should unceasingly be cherished in
every well-regulated government." Democrats rejoiced
over this passage when Van Buren was a candidate for
the presidency. Richard M. Johnson, then his associate
upon the Democratic ticket, had successfully led an agi
tation for. the abolition of such imprisonment upon
judgments rendered in the federal courts.
Van Buren's professional life terminated with his
election as governor in 1828. In 1830, while secretary
of state at Washington, he is said to have appeared
before the federal supreme court in the great litigation
between Astor and the Sailors' Snug Harbor, in which

24 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
he had been counsel below ; but no record is preserved of
his argument there. His last well-known argument was
before the court of errors at Albany in Varick v. Jack
son, a branch of the famous Medcef Eden litigation.
This long and highly technical battle was lighted up by
the fame and competitions of the counsel. It arose upon
the question whether a will of Eden which gave a landed
estate to his son Joseph, but if Joseph died without
children, then to his surviving brother, Medcef Eden the
younger, created for Joseph the old lawyers' delight of
an " estate tail." If it were an " estate tail," then the
law of 1782, which, in the general tendency of American
legislation after the Revolution, was directed against the
entailing of property, would have made the first brother
Joseph the absolute owner, and have defeated the later
claim of Medcef. For Joseph had failed while in pos
session of the property. His creditors, accepting the
opinion of Alexander Hamilton, then the head of the
bar, insisted that he had been the absolute owner, that
the provision for his brother Medcef's accession to the
property was nugatory as an attempt to entail the estate ;
and upon this view the creditors sold the lands, which
by the rapid growth of the city soon became of large
value. Hamilton's opinion for years daunted the younger
Medcef and his children from asserting the right which
it was morally plain his father had intended for him.
Aaron Burr, not less Hamilton's rival at the bar than in
the politics of New York, gave a contrary opinion ; but
after killing Hamilton in 1804 and yielding up the vice-
presidency in 1805, his brilliant professional gifts were
exiled from New York. On his return in 1812 from
years of conspiracy, adventure, and romance, he took up
the discredited Medcef Eden claim ; and in the judicial

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 25
test of the question he, and not Hamilton, proved to have
been correct. The struggle went on in a number of
suits ; and when in 1823 the question was to be finally
settled in the court of last resort, Burr, fearing, as he
himself intimated to the court, lest the profound suspicion
under which he rested might obscure and break the force
of his legal arguments, or conscious that his past twenty
years had dimmed his faculties, called to his aid Van
Buren, then United States senator and a chief of the
profession. As Van Buren and Burr attended together
before the court of errors, they doubtless recalled their
meetings in Van Ness's office twenty years before, when
Burr, still a splendid though clouded figure in American
life, hoped, by Federalist votes added to the Republican
secession which he led, to reach the governorship and
recover his prestige ; those days in which the unknown
but promising young countryman had interested a vice-
president and enjoyed the latter's skillful and not al
ways insincere flattery. The firm and orderly procedure
of Van Buren's life was now well contrasted with the
discredited and profligate ability of the returned wan
derer. Against this earlier but long deposed, and
against this later and regnant chief in the Republican
politics of New York, were ranged in these cases David
B. Ogden, the famous lawyer of the Federalist ranks,
Samuel A. Talcott, and Samuel Jones. In Van Buren's
long, masterly, and successful argument there was again
an edge to the zeal with which he attacked the opinion
of Kent, the Federalist chancellor, who asked the court
of errors to overrule its earlier decisions, and the chan
cellor's own decision as well, and defeat the intention of
the elder Medcef Eden.
Van Buren's professional career was most enviable.

26 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
It lasted twenty-five years. It ended before he was
forty-six, when he was in the early ripeness of his
powers, but not until a larger and more shining career
seemed surely opened before him. He left the bar with
a competence fairly earned, which his prudence and skill
made grow into an ample fortune, without even mali
cious suggestion in the scurrility of politics that he had
profited out of public offices. In money matters he was
more thrifty and cautious than are most Americans in
public places. His enemies accused him of meanness
and parsimony, but apparently without other reason than
that he did not practice the careless and useless profu
sion and luxury which many of his countrymen in politi
cal life have thought necessary to indulge even when
their own tastes were far simpler. In the course of
professional employment he acquired an important es
tate near Oswego, whose value rapidly enhanced with
the rapid growth of western New York and the develop
ment of the lake commerce from that port.
The chief interest now found in Van Buren's profes
sional career lies in its relation to his political life. He
was the only lawyer of conspicuous and practical and
really great professional success who has reached the
White House. In the long preparation for the bar, in
the many hours of leisure at Kinderhook and Hudson
and even Albany permitted by the methods of practice
in vogue before there were railways or telegraphs, and
when travel was costly and slow and postage a shilling or
more, he gained the liberal education more difficult of
access to the busier young attorney and counsel of these
crowded days. Great lawyers were then fond of illus
trations from polite literature ; they loved to set off their
speeches with quotations from the classics, and to give

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 27
their style finish and ornament not practicable to the pre
cise, prompt methods which their successors learn in the
driving routine of modern American cities. Van Buren
did not, however, become a great orator at the bar. His
admirer, Butler, upon returning to partnership with him
in 1820, wrote indeed to an intimate friend, Jesse Hoyt
(destined afterwards to bring grief and scandal upon
both the partners), that if he were Van Buren he
" would let politics alone," and become, as Van Buren
might, the " Erskine of the state." But though his suc
cess, had he continued in the profession, would doubtless
have been of the very first order, his oratory would
never have reached the warm and virile splendor of
Erskine, or the weighty magnificence of Webster. Van
Buren's work as a lawyer brought him, however, some
thing besides wealth and the education and refinement of
books, and something which neither Erskine nor Web
ster gained. The profession afforded him an admirable
discipline in the conduct of affairs ; and affairs, in the
law as out of it, are largely decided by human nature
and its varying peculiarities. The preparation of de
tails ; the keen and far-sighted arrangement of the best,
because the most practicable, plan ; the refusal to fire
off ammunition for the popular applause to be roused
by its noise and flame ; the clear, steady bearing in
mind of the end to be accomplished, rather than the
prolonged enjoyment or systematic working out of inter
mediate processes beyond a utilitarian necessity, — all
these elements Van Buren mastered in a signal degree,
and made invaluable in legal practice. To men more
superbly equipped for tours de force, who ignored the
uses of long, attentive, varied, painstaking work, there
was nothing admirable in the methods which Van Buren

28 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
brought into political life out of his experience in the
law. He was, to undisciplined or envious opponents, a
" little magician," a trickster. The same thing appears,
in every department of human activity, in the anger
which failure often flings at success.
The predominance of lawyers in our politics was very
early established, and has been a characteristic distinc
tion between the politics of England and of America.
Conspicuous as lawyers have been in the politics of the
older country, they have rarely been figures of the first
rank. They have served in all its modern ministries,
and sometimes in other than professional stations ;
but, with the unimportant exception of Perceval, not as
the chief. English opinion has not unjustly believed
its greater landed proprietors to be animated with a
strong and peculiar desire for English greatness and
renown ; nor has the belief been destroyed by their fre
quent opposition to the most beneficent popular move
ments. Among these proprietors and those allied with
them, even when not strictly in then- ranks, England
has found her statesmen. To this day, the speech of a
lawyer in the British House of Commons is fancied to
show the narrowness of technical training, or is treated
as a bid for promotion to some of the splendid seats
open to the English bar. In America, the great landed
proprietor very early lost the direction of public affairs.
All the members of the " Virginian dynasty " were, it
is true, large land-owners, and in the politics of New
York there were several of them. But land-ownership
was to Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe simply a means
of support while they attended to public affairs ; it was
not one of their chief recommendations to the landed
interest throughout the country. For a time in the

LAWYERS IN PUBLIC LIFE. 29
early politics of New York the landed wealth of the
Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Livingstons was of itself
a source of strength ; but in the spread of democratic
sentiment it was found that to be a great landlord was
entirely consistent with dullness, narrowness, and timid
selfishness. Among the landlords there soon and inevi
tably decayed that sense of public obligation belonging to
exalted position and leadership which sometimes brings
courage, high public spirit, and even a sound and active
political imagination, to those who preside over bodies
of tenants. The laws were changed which facilitated
family accumulations of land. Since these early years
of the century a great land-owner has been in politics
little more than any other rich man. Both have had
advantages in that as in any other field of activity.
Certain easy graces not uncommon to inherited wealth
have often been popular, — not, however, for the wealth,
but for themselves. Where these graces have existed
in America without such wealth, they have been none
the less popular ; but in England a lifetime of vast pub
lic service and the finest personal attainments have
failed to overcome the distrust of a landless man as a
sort of adventurer.
When Van Buren's career began, the men who were
making money in trade or manufactures were generally
too busy for the anxious and busy cares of public life ;
the tradesmen and manufacturers who had already made
money were past the time of Hfe when men can vigor
ously and skillfully turn to a new and strange calling.
There was no leisure class except land-owners or re
tired men of business. Lawyers, far more than those
of any other calling, became public men, and naturally
enough. Their experience of life and their knowledge

30 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of men were large. The popular interest in their art of
advocacy; their travels from county seat to county seat;
their speeches to juries in towns where no other secular
public speaking was to be heard ; the varieties of human
life which they came to know, — varieties far greater
where the same men acted as attorneys and advocates
than in England where they act in only one of these
fields, — these and the like, combined with the equip
ment for the forms of political and governmental work
which was naturally gained in legal practice and the
sytematic study of law, gave to distinguished lawyers
in America their large place in its political life. For
this place the liberality of their lives helped, besides, to
fit them. They had ceased to be disqualified for it by
their former close alliance, as in England, with the
landed aristocracy ; and they had not yet begun to suffer
a disqualification, frequently unjust, for their close rela
tions with corporate interests, between which and the
public there often arises an antagonism of interests.
De Tocqueville, after his visit in 1832, said that law
yers formed in America its highest political class and
the most cultivated circle of society ; that the American
aristocracy was not composed of the rich, but that it
occupied the judicial bench and the bar. And the de
scriptions of the liberal and acute though theoretical
Frenchman are generally trustworthy, however often
his striking generalizations are at fault. Such, then,
was the intimacy of relations between the professions of
law and politics when Van Buren shone in both. And
when, in his early prime, he gave up the law, neither
forensic habits nor those of the attorney were yet too
strongly set to permit the easy and complete diversion
of his powers to the more generous and exalted activity
of public life.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 31
It is simpler thus separately to treat Van Buren's life
as a lawyer, because in a just view of the man it must
be subordinate to his hfe as a politician. It is to be
remembered, however, that in his earlier years his pro
gress in politics closely attended in time, and in much
more than time, his professional progress. When, at
thirty, he sat as an appellate judge in the court of
errors, he was already powerful in politics ; when, at
thirty-two, he was attorney-general, he was the leader
of his party in the state senate ; when, at forty-five, he
had perhaps the most lucrative professional practice in
New York, he was the leader of his party in the United
States senate. But it will be easier to follow his politi
cal career without interruption from his work as a law
yer, honorable and distinguished as it was, and much of
his political ability as he owed to its fine discipline.
Van Buren's domestic life was broken up by the
death of his wife at Albany, in February, 1819, leaving
him four sons. To her memory Van Buren remained
scrupulously loyal until his own death forty-three years
afterwards. We may safely believe political enemies
when, after saying of him many dastardly things, they
admitted that he had been an affectionate husband.
Nor were accusations ever made against the uprightness
and purity of his private life.

CHAPTER III.
STATE SENATOR ; ATTORNEY-GENERAL ; MEMBER OF THE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
The politics of New York state were never more
bitter, never more personal, than when Van Buren en
tered the field in 1803. The Federalists were sheltered
by the unique and noble prestige of Washington's name ;
and were conscious that in wealth, education, refine
ment, they far excelled the Republicans. They were
contemptuously suspicious of the unlettered ignorance,
the intense and exuberant vanity, of the masses of
American men. It was by that contempt and suspicion
that they invited the defeat which, protected though they
were by the property qualifications required of voters
in New York, they met in 1800 at the hands of a peo
ple in whom the instincts of democracy were strong and
unsubmissive. This was in our history the one complete
and final defeat of a great national party while in power.
The Federalists themselves made it final, — by their
silly and unworthy anger at a political reverse ; by their
profoundly immoral efforts to thwart the popular will
and make Burr president ; by their fatal and ingrained
disbelief in common men, who, they thought, foolishly
and impiously refused to accept wisdom and guidance
from the possessors of learning and great estates ; and
finally by their unpatriotic opposition to Jefferson and
Madison in the assertion of American rights on the seas

EARLY POLITICS IN NEW YORK. 33
during the Napoleonic wars. All these drove the party,
in spite of its large services in the past and its eminent
capacity for service in the future, forever from the con
fidence of the American people. The Federalists main
tained, it is true, a party organization in New York until
after the second war with England; but their efforts
were rather directed to the division and embarrassment
of their adversaries than to victories of their own
strength or upon their own policy. They carried the
lower house of the legislature in 1809, 1812, and 1813.
There were among them men of the first rank, who re
tained a strong hold on popular respect, among whom
John Jay and Rufus King were deservedly shining fig
ures. But never after 1799 did the Federalists elect
in New York a governor, or control both legislative
houses, or secure any solid power except by coalition
with one branch or another of the Republicans.
Van Buren's fondness for politics was soon de
veloped. His father was firmly attached to the Jeffer-
sonians or Republicans, — a rather discredited minority
among the Federalists of Columbia county and the
estates of the Hudson River aristocracy. Inheriting his
political preferences, Van Buren, with a great body of
other young Americans, caught the half-doctrinaire en
thusiasm which Jefferson then inspired, an enthusiasm
which in Van Buren was to be so enduring a force, and
to which sixty years later he was still as loyal as he
had been in the hot disputes on the sanded floors of the
village store or tavern. During these boyish years he
wrote and spoke for his party ; and before he was eigh
teen he was formally appointed a delegate to a Republi
can convention for Columbia and Rensselaer counties.
Van Buren returned from New York to Columbia

34 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
county late in 1803, just twenty-one years old. At
once he became active in politics. The Republican
party, though not strong in his county, was dominant
in the state ; and the game of politics was played be
tween its different factions, the Federalists aiding one
or the other as they saw their advantage. The Repub
licans were Clintonians, Livingstonians, or Burrites.
George Clinton, in whose career lay the great origin of
party politics of New York, was the Republican leader.
The son of an Irish immigrant, he had, without the aid
of wealth or influential connections, made himself the
most popular man in the State. He was the first gover
nor after colonial days were over, and was repeatedly
reelected. It was his opposition which most seriously
endangered New York's adoption of the Federal Con
stitution. But in spite of the wide enthusiasm which
the completed Union- promptly aroused, this opposition
did not prevent his reelection in 1789 and 1792. The
majorities were small however, it being even doubtful
whether in the latter year the majority were fairly given
him. In 1795 he declined to be a candidate, and Rob
ert R. Livingston, the Republican in his place, was de
feated. In 1801 Clinton was again elected. Later he
was vice-president in Jefferson's second term and Madi
son's first term ; and his aspiration to the presidency in
1808 was by no means unreasonable. He was a strong
party leader and a sincerely patriotic man. The Living
ston family interest in New York was very great.
The chancellor, Robert R. Livingston, who nowadays
is popularly associated with the ceremony of Washing
ton's inauguration, had been secretary for foreign af
fairs under the Articles of Confederation, and had left
the Federalists in 1790. After his sixty years had

EARLY POLITICS IN NEW YORK. 35
under the law disqualified him for judicial office, he be
came Jefferson's minister to France and negotiated with
Bonaparte the Louisiana treaty. Brockholst Livingston
was a judge of the supreme court of New York in 1801.
In 1807 Jefferson promoted him to the federal supreme
court. Edward Livingston, younger than his brother,
the chancellor, by seventeen years, was long after to be
one of the finest characters in our politics. Early in
Washington's administration he had become a strong
pro-French Republican, and had opposed Jay's treaty
with Great Britain ; though forty years later, when
Jackson brought him from Louisiana to be secretary of
state, he was sometimes reminded of his still earlier
Federalism. Morgan Lewis, judge of the supreme
court and afterwards chief justice, and still later gover
nor, was a brother-in-law of the chancellor. Smith
Thompson, also a judge and chief justice, and later sec
retary of the navy under Monroe and a judge of the
federal supreme court, and Van Buren's competitor for
governor in 1828, was a connection of the family. There
were sneers at the Livingston conversion to Democracy
as there always are at political conversions. But whe
ther or not Chancellor Livingston's Democracy came
from jealousy of Hamilton in 1790, it is at least cer
tain that he and his family connections rendered politi
cal services of the first importance during a half cen
tury. The drafting of Jackson's nullification proclama
tion in 1833 by Edward Livingston was one of the most
signal and noblest services which any American has had
the fortune to render to the country.
The best offices were largely held by the Clinton
and Livingston families and their connections, an ar
rangement very aristocratic indeed, but which did not

36 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
then seem inconsistent with efficient and decorous per
formance of the public business. Burr naturally gath
ered around him those restless, speculative men who
are as immoral in their aspirations as in their conduct,
and whose adherence has disgraced and weakened al
most every democratic movement known to history.
Burr had been attorney-general ; he had refused a seat
in the supreme court ; he had been United States sena
tor ; and now in the second office of the nation presided
with distinguished grace over the federal senate. His
hands were not yet red with Hamilton's blood when
Van Buren met him at New York in 1803 ; but Demo
cratic faces were averted from the man who, loaded
with its honors and enjoying its confidence, had in
trigued with its enemies to cheat his exultant party out
of their choice for president. In tribute to the Republi
cans of New York, George Clinton had already been
selected in his place to be the next vice-president.
While Van Buren was near the close of his law studies
at New York, Burr was preparing to restore his for
tunes by a popular election, for which he had some Re
publican support, and to which the fatuity of the de
feated party, again rejecting Hamilton's advice, added
a considerable Federalist support. William P. Van
Ness, as " Aristides," one of the classical names under
which our ancestors were fond of addressing the public,
had in the Burr interest written a bitter attack on the
Clintons and Livingstons, accusing them, and with rea
son, of dividing the offices between themselves.
Van Buren was easily proof against the allurements of
Burr, and even the natural influence of so distinguished
a man as Van Ness, with whom he had been studying a
year. Sylvester, his first preceptor, was a Federalist.

EARLY POLITICS IN NEW YORK. 37
So was Van Alen, his half-brother, soon to be his partner,
who in May, 1806, was elected to Congress. But Van
Buren was firm and resolute in party allegiance. In the
election for governor in April, 1804, Burr was badly
beaten by Morgan Lewis, the Clinton-Livingston candi
date, whom Van Buren warmly supported, and Burr's
political career was closed. The successful majority of
the Republicans was soon resolved into the Clintonians,
led by Clinton and Judge Ambrose Spencer, and the
Livingstonians, led by Governor Lewis. The active
participation of judges in the bitter politics of the time
illustrates the universal intensity of political feeling, and
goes very far to justify Jefferson's and Van Buren's
distrust of judicial opinions on political questions.
Brockholst Livingston, Smith Thompson, Ambrose
Spencer, Daniel D. Tompkins, — all judges of the state
supreme court, — did not cease when they donned the
ermine to be party politicians ; neither did the chancel
lors Robert R. Livingston and Lansing. Even Kent,
it is pretty obvious, was a man of far stronger and
more openly partisan feelings than we should to-day
think fitting so great a judicial station as he held. The
quarrels over offices were strenuous and increasing from
the very top to the bottom of the community.
The Federalists in 1807 generally joined the Lewis
ites, or " Quids." Governor Lewis, finding that the
jealousy of the Livingston interest would defeat his re-
nomination by the usual caucus of Republican members
of the legislature, became the candidate of a public
meeting at New York, and of a minority caucus, and
asked help from the Federalists. Such an alliance al
ways seemed monstrous only to the Republican faction
that felt strong enough without it. The regular legis-

38 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
lative caucus, controlled by the Clintonians, nominated
Daniel D. Tompkins, then a judge of the supreme
court, and for years after the Republican " war-horse."
Van Buren adhered to the purer, older, and less patri
cian democracy of the Clintonians. Tompkins was
elected, with a Clintonian legislature ; and the result
secured Van Buren's first appointment to public office.
A Clintonian council of appointment was chosen. The
council, a complex monument of the distrust of execu
tive power with which George III. had filled his re
volted subjects, was composed of five members, being
the governor and one member from each of the four
senatorial districts, who were chosen by the assembly
from among the six senators of the district. The four
senatorial members of the council were always, there
fore, of the political faith of the assembly, except in
cases where all the senators from a district belonged to
the minority party in the assembly. To this council
belonged nearly every appointment in the state, even of
local officers. Prior to 1801 the governor appointed,
with the advice and consent of the council. After the
constitutional amendment of that year, either member
of the council could nominate, the appointment being
made by the majority. Van Buren became surrogate
of Columbia county on February 20, 1808. There was
no prescribed term of office, the commission really run
ning until the opposition party secured the council of
appointment. Van Buren held the office about five
years and until his removal on March 19, 1813, when
his adversaries had secured control of the council.
At this time the system of removing the lesser as well
as the greater officers of government for political rea
sons was well established in New York. It is impos-

RISE OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 39
sible to realize the nature of Van Buren's political
education without understanding this old system of
proscription, whose influence upon American public life
has been so prodigious. The strife over the Federal
Constitution had been fierce. Its friends, after their
victory, sought, neither unjustly nor unnaturally, to
punish Governor Clinton for his opposition. Although
Washington wished to stand neutral between parties, he
still believed it politically suicidal to appoint officers not
in sympathy with his administration.1 Hamilton un
doubtedly determined the New York appointments when
the new government was launched, and they were made
from the political enemies of Governor Clinton, — a
course provoking an animosity which not improbably
appeared in the more numerous state appointments con
trolled by Clinton and the Republican council. After
the excesses of the French Revolution the Republicans
were denounced as Jacobins and radicals, dangerous in
politics and corrupt in morals. The family feuds aided
and exaggerated the divisions in this small community
of freehold voters. Appointments were made in the
federal and state services for political reasons and for
family reasons, precisely as they had long been made in
England. Especially along the rich river counties from
New York to the upper Hudson were so distributed the
lucrative offices, which were eagerly sought for their
profit as well as for their honor.
1 " I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the gov
ernment, bring a man into any office of consequence, knowingly,
whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the gen
eral government are pursuing ; for this, in my opinion, would be
a sort of political suicide." — Washington to Pickering, secretary
of war, September 27, 1795. Vol. 11 of Sparks's edition of Wash
ington's Writings, 74.

40 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
The contests were at first for places naturally va
cated by death or resignation ; the idea of the property
right of an incumbent actually in office lingered until after
the last century was out. It is not clear when the first
removals of subordinate officers took place for political
reasons. Some were made by the Federalists during
Governor Jay's administration ; but the first extensive
removals seem to have occurred after the elections of
1801. For this there were two immediate causes. In
that year the exclusive nominating power of the gov
ernor was taken from him. Each of the other four
members of the council of appointment could now nom
inate as well as confirm. Appointments and removals
were made, therefore, from that year until the new Con
stitution of 1821, by one of the worst of appointing
bodies, a commission of several men whose consultations
were secret and whose responsibility was divided. Sys
tematic abuse of the power of appointment became in
evitable. There was, besides, a second reason in the
anger against Federalists, which they had gone far to
provoke, and against their long and by no means gentle
domination. This anger induced the Republicans to
seek out every method of punishment. But for this,
the abuse might have been long deferred. Nor is it
unlikely that the refusal of Jefferson, inaugurated in
March of that year, to make a " clean sweep " of his
enemies, turned the longing eyes of embittered Republi
cans in New York more eagerly to the fat state offices
enjoyed by their insolent adversaries 6f the past twelve
years. The Clintons and Livingstons had led the Republi
cans to a victory at the state election in April, 1801.
Later in that year George Clinton, now again governor,

RISE OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 41
called together the new council with the nominating-
power vested in every one of its five members. This
council acted under distinguished auspices, and it de
serves to be long remembered. Governor Clinton pre
sided, and his famous nephew, De Witt Clinton, was
below him in the board. The latter represented the
Clintonian Republicans.1 Ambrose Spencer, a man of
great parts and destined to a notable career, represented
the Livingstons, of whom he was a family connection.
Rosehoom, the other Republican, was easily led by his
two abler party associates. The fifth member did not
count, for he was a Federalist. Two of the three really
distinguished men of this council, De Witt Clinton and
Ambrose Spencer, it is not unjust to say, first openly
and responsibly established in New York the " spoils
system " by removals, for political reasons, of officers
not political. The term of office of the four senatorial
members of this council had commenced while the illus
trious Federalist John Jay was governor ; but they
rejected his nominations until he was tired of making
them, and refused to call them together. When Clinton
took the governor's scat, he promptly summoned the
board, and in August, 1801, the work began. De Witt
Clinton publicly formulated the doctrine, but it did not
yet reach its extreme form. He said that the principal
executive offices in the state ought to be filled by the
friends of the administration, and the more unimportant
offices ought to be proportionally distributed between
the two parties. The council rapidly divided the chief
1 I use the political name then in vogue. The greater part of
tlie Republicans have, since the rearrangement of parties in John
Quincy Adams's time, or rather since Jackson's time, been known
as Democrats.

42 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
appointments among the Clintons and Livingstons and
their personal supporters. Officers were selected whom
Jay had refused to appoint. Edward Livingston, the
chancellor's brother, was given the mayoralty of New
York, a very profitable as well as important station ;
Thomas Tillotson, a brother-in-law of Chancellor Liv
ingston, was made secretary of state, in place of Daniel
Hale, removed ; John V. Henry, a distinguished Feder
alist lawyer, was removed from the comptrollership ;
the district attorney, the clerk and the recorder of New
York were removed ; William Coleman, the founder of
the " Evening Post," and a strong adherent of Hamil
ton, was turned out of the clerkship of the circuit court.
And so the work went on through minor offices. New
commissions were required by the Constitution to be
issued to the puisne judges of the county courts and to
justices of the peace throughout the state once in three
years. Instead of renewing the commissions and pre
serving continuity in the administration of justice, the
council struck out the names of Federalists and inserted
those of Republicans. The proceedings of this council
of 1801 have profoundly affected the politics of New
York to this day. Few political bodies in America
have exercised as serious and lasting an influence upon
the political habits of the nation. The tradition that
Van Buren and the Albany Regency began political pro
scription is untrue. The system of removals was thus
established several years before Van Buren held his first
office. Its founders, De Witt Clinton and Ambrose
Spencer, were long his political enemies. Governor
Clinton, whose honorable record it was that during the
eighteen years of his governorship he had never con
sented to apolitical removal, entered his protest — not

RISE OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 43
a very hearty one, it is to be feared — in the journal of
the council ; but in vain. In the next year the two
chief offenders were promoted, — De Witt Clinton to be
United States senator in the place of General Arm
strong, a brother-in-law of Chancellor Livingston, and
Ambrose Spencer to be attorney-general ; and two years
later Spencer became a judge of the supreme court.
After the removals there began a disintegration of
the party hitherto successfully led by Burr, the Clin
tons, and the Livingstons. Colonel Swartwout, Burr's
friend, was called by De Witt Clinton a liar, scoundrel
and villain; although, after receiving two bullets from
Clinton's pistol in a duel, he was assured by the latter,
with the courtesy of our grandfathers, that there was no
personal animosity. Burr's friends had of course to be
removed. But in 1805, after the Clintons and the Liv
ingstons had united in the election of Lewis as governor
over Burr, they too quarreled, — and naturally enough,
for the offices would not go around. So, after the Clin
tonians on the meeting of the legislature early in 1806
had captured the council, they turned upon their recent
allies. Maturin Livingston was removed from the New
York recordership, and Tillotson from his place as sec
retary of state. The work was now done most thor
oughly. Sheriffs, clerks, surrogates, county judges, jus
tices of the peace, had to go. But at the corporation
election in New York in the same year, the Livingstoni-
ans and Federalists, with a majority of the common coun
cil, in their fashion righted the wrong, and, with a vigor
not excelled by their successors a half century later, re
moved at once all the subordinate municipal officers sub
ject to their control who were Clintonians. In 1807
the Livingstonian Republicans, or, as they were now

44 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
called from the governor, the Lewisites, with the
Federalists and BuiTites, secured control of »the state
council ; and proceeded promptly to the work of re
movals, defending it as a legitimate return for the pro-
scriptive course of their predecessors. In 1808 the
Clintonians returned to the council, and, through its
now famdiar labors, to the offices from which the Lewis
ites were in their turn driven. In 1810 the Federalists
controlled the assembly which chose the council ; and
they enjoyed a " clean sweep " as keenly as had the
contending Republican factions. But the election of
this year, the political record tells us, taught a lesson
which politicians have ever since refused to learn, per
haps because it has not always been taught. The re
moval of the Republicans from office " had the natural
tendency to call'out all their forces." The Clintonians
in 1811, therefore, were enabled by the people to reverse
the Federalist proscription of 1810. The Federalists,
again in power in 1813, again followed the uniform
usage then twelve years old. Political removals had be
come part of the unwritten law.
•'• At this time Van Buren suffered the loss of his office
as surrogate, but doubtless without any sense of private
or public wrong. It was the customary fate of war. In
1812 he was nominated for state senator from the mid
dle district, composed of Columbia, Dutchess, Orange,
Ulster, Delaware, Chenango, Greene, and Sullivan coun
ties, as the candidate of the Clintonian Republicans
against Edward P. Livingston, the candidate of the
Lewisites or Livingstonians and Burrites as well as the
Federalists. Livingston was the sitting member, and a
Republican of powerful family and political connections.
Van Buren, not yet thirty, defeated him by a majority

RISE OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 45
of less than two hundred out of twenty thousand votes.
In November, 1812, he took his seat at Albany, and
easily and within a few months reached a conspicuous
and powerful place in state politics.
These details of the establishment of the "spoils
system " in New York politics seem necessary to be
told, that Van Buren's own participation in the wrong
may be fairly judged. It is a common historical vice to
judge the conduct of men of earlier times by standards
which they did not know. Van Buren found thoroughly
and universally established at Albany, when he entered
its life, the rule that, upon a change in the executive,
there should be a change in the offices, without reference
to their political functions. He had in his own person
experienced its operation both to his advantage and to
his disadvantage. Federalists and Republicans were
alike committed to the rule. The most distinguished
and the most useful men in active public life, whatever
their earlier opinion might have been, had acquiesced
and joined in the practice. Nor was the practice
changed or extended after Van Buren came into state
politics. It continued as it had thus begun, until he be
came a national figure. Success in it required an abil
ity and skill of which he was an easy master ; nor does
he seem to have shrunk from it. But he was neither
more nor less reprehensible than the universal public
sense about him. For it must be remembered that the
" spoils system " was not then offensive to the more
enlightened citizens of New York. The system was
no excess of democracy or universal suffrage. It haxl
arisen amidst a suffrage for governor and senators
limited to those who held in freehold land worth at least
£100, and for assemblymen limited to those who held in

46 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
freehold land worth £20, or paid a yearly rent of forty
shillings, and who were rated and actually paid taxes.
It was practiced by men of aristocratic habits chosen by
the well-to-do classes. It grew in the disputes of great
family interests, and in the bitterness of popular ele
ments met in a new country, still strange or even for
eign to one another, and permitted by their release from
the dangers of war and the fear of British oppression
to indulge their mutual dislikes.
The frequent " rotation " in office which was soon to
be pronounced a safeguard of republican institutions,
and which Jackson in December, 1829, told Congress
was a " leading principle in the Republicans' creed,"
was by no means an unnatural step towards an im
provement of the civil service of the state. Reformers
of our day lay great stress upon the fundamental rule
of democratic government, that a public office is simply
a trust for the people ; and they justly find the chief
argument against the abuses of patronage in the noto
rious use of office for the benefit of small portions
of the people, to the detriment of the rest. In Eng
land, however, for centuries (and to some extent the
idea survives there in our own time), there was in an
office a quality of property having about it the same
kind of sacred immunity which belongs to real or per
sonal estate. There were reversions to offices after the
deaths of their occupants, like vested remainders in
lands. It was offensive to common decency and justice
that the right of each officer to appropriate so much of
the public revenue should be attacked. It offended
neither justice nor the public conscience that great per
quisites should belong to officers performing work of the
most trifling value or none at all. The same practices

RISE OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 47
and traditions, weakened by distance from England and
by the simpler life and smaller wealth of the colonists,
came to our forefathers. They existed when the demo
cratic movement, stayed during the necessities of war
and civil reconstruction, returned at the end of the last
century and became all-powerful in 1801. To break
this idea of property and right in office, to make it clear
that every office was a mere means of service of the
people at the wish of the people, there seemed, to
very patriotic and generally very wise men, no simpler
way than that the people by their elections should take
away and distribute offices in utter disregard of the in
terests of those who held them. The odious result to
which this afterwards led, of making offices the mere
property of influential politicians, was but imperfectly
foreseen. Nor did that result, inevitable as it was,
follow for many years. There seems no reason to be
lieve that the incessant and extensive changes in office
which began in 1801, seriously lowered the standard of
actual public service until years after Van Buren was a
powerful and conspicuous politician. Political parties
were pretty generally in the hands of honest men. The
prostituted and venal disposition of " spoils," though a
natural sequence, was to come long after. Rotation
was practiced, or its fruits were accepted and enjoyed
with satisfaction, by public men of the state who were
really statesmen, who had high standards of public
honor and duty, whose minds were directed towards
great and exalted public ends. If it seemed right to
De Witt Clinton, Edward Livingston, Robert R. Liv
ingston, and Ambrose Spencer, surely lesser gods of our
early political Olympus could not be expected to refuse
its advantages or murmur at its hardships. Nor was

48 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the change distasteful to the people, if we may judge by
their political behavior. No faction or party seems to
have been punished by public sentiment for the practice
except in conspicuous cases like those of De Witt Clin
ton and Van Buren, where sometimes blows aimed at
single men roused popular and often an undeserved
sympathy. The idea that a public officer should easily
and naturally go from the ranks of the people without
special equipment, and as easily return to those ranks,
has been popularly agreeable wherever the story of Cin-
cinnatus has been told. Early in this century the close
ness of offices to ordinary life, and the absence of an
organized bureaucracy controlling or patronizing the
masses of men, seemed proper elements of the great
democratic reform. There had not yet arisen the very
modern and utilitarian and the vastly better conception
of a service, the responsible directors of whose policy
should be changed with popular sentiment, but whose
subordinates should be treated by the public as any
other employer would treat them, upon simple and un
sentimental rules of business. Another practical con
sideration makes more intelligible the failure of our an
cestors to perceive the dangers of the great change tkey
permitted. Offices were not nearly as technical, their
duties not nearly as uniform, as they have grown to be
in the more complex procedures of our enormously
richer and more populous time. Every officer did a
multitude of things. Intelligent and active men in un
official life shifted with amazing readiness and success
from one calling to another. A general became a judge,
or a judge became a general, — as, indeed, we have seen
in later days. A merchant could learn to survey ; a
farmer could keep or could learn to keep fair records.

WAR OF 1812. 49
In the art of making of the lesser offices ammunition
with which to fight great battles over great questions,
Van Buren became a master. His imperturbable temper
and patience, his keen reading of the motives and uses
of men, gave him so firm a hold upon politicians that it
has been common to forget the undoubted hold he long
had upon the people. In April, 1816, he was reelected
senator for a second term of four years. His eight
years of service in the senate expired in 1820.
In November, 1812, the first session of the new legisla
ture was held to choose presidential electors. Not untd
sixteen years later were electors chosen directly by the
people. Van Buren voted for the candidates favorable
to De Witt Clinton for president as against Madison.
In the successful struggle of the Clintonians for these
electors, he is said in this, his first session, to have shown
the address and activity which at once made him a Re
publican leader. For his vote against Madison Van
Buren's friends afterwards made many apologies ; his
adversaries declared it unpardonable treachery to one of
the revered Democratic fathers. But the young politi
cian was not open to much condemnation. De Witt
Clinton, though he had but just reached the beginning
of middle life, was a very able and even an illustrious
man. He had been unanimously nominated in an
orderly way by a caucus of the Republican members of
the legislature of 1811 and 1812 of which Van Buren
was not a member. He had accepted the nomination
and had declined to withdraw from it. There was a
strong Republican opposition to the declaration of war
at that time, because preparation for it had not been
adequately made. Most of the Republican members of
Congress from New York had voted against the declara-

50 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
tion. The virtues and abilities of Madison were not
those likely to make a successful war, as the event amply
proved. There was natural and deserved discontent
with the treatment by Jefferson's administration, in
which Madison had charge of foreign relations, and by
Madison's own administration, of the difficulties caused
by the British Orders in Councfl, the Berlin and Milan
decrees of Napoleon, and the unprincipled depredations
of both the great belligerents. Van Buren is said by
Butler, then an inmate of his family, to have been an
open and decided advocate of the embargo, and of all
the strong measures proposed against Great Britain
and of the war itself. Nor was this very inconsistent
with his vote for Clinton. He had a stronger sense of
allegiance to his party in the State than to his party at
Washington ; and the Republican party of New York
had regularly declared for Clinton. For once at least
Van Buren found himself voting with the great body
of the Federalists, men who had not, like John Quincy
Adams, become reconciled to the strong and obvious,
though sometimes ineffective, patriotism of Jefferson's
and Madison's administrations. But whatever had
been the motives which induced Van Buren to support
Clinton, they soon ceased to operate. Within a few
months after this the political relations between the two
men were dissolved ; and they were politically hostile,
until Clinton's death fourteen years afterwards called
from Van Buren a most pathetic tribute.
Although the youngest man but one, it was said, until
that time elected to the state senate, Van Buren was in
January, 1814, chosen to prepare the answer then cus
tomarily made to the speech of the governor. In it he
defended the war, which had been bitterly assailed in

WAR OF 1812. 51
the address to the governor made by the Federalist as
sembly. Political divisions even when carried to excess
were, he said, inseparable from the blessings of freedom ;
but such divisions were unfit in their resistance of a for
eign enemy. The great body of the New York Republi
cans, with Governor Tompkins at their head, now gave
Madison vigorous support ; although their defection in
1812 had probably made possible the Federalist success
at the election for the assembly in 1813, which embar
rassed the national administration. Van Buren warmly
supported Tompkins for his reelection in April, 1813,
and prepared for the legislative caucus a highly declam
atory, but clear and forcible, address to Republican elec
tors in his behalf. The provocations to war were strongly
set out. It was declared that " war and war alone was
our only refuge from national degradation ; " the " two
great and crying grievances " were " the destruction of
our commerce, and the impressment of our seamen ; "
for Americans did not anticipate the surrender at Ghent
two years later to the second wrong. While American
sailors' " deeds of heroic valor make old Ocean smile at
the humiliations of her ancient tyrant," the address
urged Americans to mark the man, meaning the trading
Federalist, who believed " in commuting our sailors'
rights for the safety of our merchants' goods." In the
sophomoric and solemn rhetoric of which Americans,
and Englishmen too, were then fond, it pointed out that
the favor of citizens was not sought " by the seductive
wiles and artful blandishments of the corrupt minions of
aristocracy," who of course were Federalists, but that
citizens were now addressed "in the language which
alone becomes freemen to use, — the language to which
alone it becomes freemen to listen."

52 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
In the legislative sessions of 1813 and 1814 Van
Buren gave a practical and skillful support to adminis
tration measures. But many of them were balked by
the Federalists, until in the election of April, 1814, the
rising patriotism of the country, undaunted by the un
skillful and unfortunate conduct of the war, pronounced
definitely in favor of a strong war policy. The Republi
cans recovered control of the assembly ; and there were
already a Republican governor and senate. An extra
session was summoned in September, 1814, through
which exceedingly vigorous measures were carried against
Federalist opposition. Van Buren now definitely led.
Appropriations were made from the state treasury for
the pay of militia in the national service. The State
undertook to enlist twelve thousand men for two years,
a corps of sea fencibles consisting of twenty companies,
and two regiments of colored men ; slaves enlisting with
the consent of their masters to be freed. Van Buren's
" classification act " Benton afterwards declared to be
the " most energetic war measure ever adopted in this
country." By it the whole military population was di
vided into 12,000 classes, each class to furnish one able-
bodied man, making the force of 12,000 to be raised.
If no one volunteered from a class, then any member .of
the class was authorized to procure a soldier by a bounty,
the amount of which should be paid by the members of
the class according to their ability, to be determined by
assessors. If no soldier from the class were thus pro
cured, then a soldier was to be peremptorily drafted from
each class. Van Buren was proud enough of this act to
file the draft of it in his own handwriting with the clerk
of the senate, indorsed by himself : " The original Classi
fication Bill, to be preserved as a memento of the patri-

ELECTED ATTORNEY-GENERAL. 53
otism, intelligence, and firmness of the legislature of
1814-15. M. V. B. Albany, Feb. 15, 1815."
Cheered, after many disasters, by the victory at Platts
burg and the creditable battle of Lundy's Lane, the sen
ate, in Van Buren's words, congratulated Governor
Tompkins upon " the brilliant achievements of our army
arid navy during the present campaign, which have
pierced the gloom that for a time obscured our political
horizon." The end of the war left in high favor the
Republicans who had supported it. The people were
good-humoredly willing to forget its many inefficiencies,
to recall complacently its few glories, and to find little
fault with a treaty which, if it established no disputed
right, at least brought peace without surrender and with
out dishonor. Jackson's fine victory at New Orleans
after the treaty was signed, though it came too late to
strengthen John Quincy Adams's dauntless front in the
peace conference, was quickly seized by the people as
the summing up of American and British prowess. The
Republicans now had a hero in the West, as well as a
philosopher at Monticello. Van Buren drafted the reso
lution giving the thanks of New York " to Major-Gen
eral Jackson, his gallant officers and troops, for their
wonderful and heroic victory."
In the method then well established the Republicans
celebrated their political success in 1814. Among the
removals, Abraham Van Vechten lost the post of attpr-
ney-general, which on February 17, 1815, was conferred
upon Van Buren for his brilliant and successful leader
ship in the senate. He remained, however, a senator of
the State. At thirty-two, therefore, he was, next to the
governor, the leader of the Tompkins Republicans, now
so completely dominant ; he held two political offices of

54 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
dignity and importance ; and he was conducting besides
an active law practice.
De Witt Clinton, after his defeat for the presidency,
suffered other disasters. It was in January, 1813, that
he and Van Buren broke their political relations ; and
the Republicans very largely fell off from him. The
reasons for this do not clearly appear ; hut were prob
ably Clinton's continuance of hostility to the national
administration, which seemed unpatriotic to the Repub
licans, and some of the mysterious matters of patronage
in which Clinton had been long and highly proscriptive.
In 1815 the latter was removed from the mayoralty of
New York by the influence of Governor Tompkins in
the council. He had been both mayor and senator for
several years prior to 1812. He was mayor and lieu
tenant-governor when he was a candidate for the presi
dency. In 1816 the Republicans in the assembly, then closely
divided between them and the Federalists (who seemed
to be favored by the apportionment), sought one of those
immoral advantages whose wrong in times of high
party feeling seems invisible to men otherwise honorable.
In the town of Pennington a Federalist, Henry Fel
lows, had been fairly elected to the assembly by a ma
jority of 30 ; but 49 of his ballots were returned as
reading " Hen. Fellows " ; and his Republican com
petitor, Peter Allen, got the certificate of appointment.
The Republicans, acting, it seems, in open conference
with Van Buren, insisted not only upon organizing the
house, which was perhaps right, but upon what was
wrong and far more important. They elected the council
of appointment before Fellows was seated, as he after
wards was by an almost unanimous vote. The " Peter

STATE SENATOR. ATTORNEY-GENERAL. 55
Allen legislature " is said to have become a term of re
proach. But, as with electoral abuses in later days,
the Federalists were not as much aided as they ought
to have been by this sharp practice of their rivals ; the
people perhaps thought that as they were in the minor
ity everywhere but in the assembly, they ought not to
have been permitted, by a capture of the council, to re
move the Republicans in office. At any rate the elec
tion in April, 1816, while the '' Peter Allen legislature "
was still in office, went heavily in favor of the Repub
licans, Van Buren receiving his second election to the
senate. On March 4, 1816, he was chosen by the legis
lature a regent of the University of the State of New
York, an office which he held until 1829. The Uni
versity was then, as now, almost a myth, being supposed
to be the associated colleges and academies of the state.
But the regents have had a varying charge of educa
tional matters.
In 1817 the agitation, so superbly and with such
foresight conducted by Clinton, resulted in the passage
of the law under which the construction of the Erie
Canal began. Van Buren's enmity to Clinton did not
cause him to oppose the measure, of which Hammond
says he was an " early friend." With a few others he
left his party ranks to vote with Clinton's friends ; and
this necessary accession, from the " Bucktails " is said
by the same very fair historian to have been produced
by Van Buren's " efficient and able efforts." In his
speech favoring it he declared that his vote for the law
would be " the most important vote he ever gave in his
life;" that "the project, if executed, would raise the
State to the highest possible pitch of fame and gran
deur," an expression not discredited by the splendid

56 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
and fruitful result of the enterprise. Clinton, after
hearing the speech, forgot for a moment their political
collisions, and personally thanked Van Buren.
In Aprd, 1817, Clinton was elected governor by a
practically unanimous vote. His resolute courage and
the prestige of the canal policy compelled this tribute
from the Republicans, in spite of his sacrilegious presi
dential aspiration in 1812, and his dismissal from the
mayoralty of New York in 1815. Governor Tompkins,
now vice-president, was Clinton's only peer in New
York politics. The popular tide was too strong for the
efforts of Tompkins, Van Buren, and their associates.
In the eagerness to defeat Clinton, it was even suggested
that Tompkins should serve both as governor and vice-
president ; should be at once ruler at Albany and vice-
ruler at Washington. Van Buren did not, however, go
with the hot-heads of the legislature in opposing a bill
for an election to fill the vacancy left by the resigna
tion, which it was at last thought necessary for Tomp
kins to make, of the governorship. No one dared run
against Clinton ; and he triumphantly returned to politi
cal power. Under this administration of his, the party
feud took definite form. Clinton's Republican adver
saries were dubbed " Bucktails," from the ornaments
worn on ceremonial occasions by the Tammany men
who had long been Clinton's enemies. The Bucktails
and their successors were the " regular " Republicans, or
the Democrats as they were later called ; and they kept
their regularity until, long afterwards, the younger and
greater Bucktail leader, when venerable and laden with
honors, became the titular head of the Barnburner de
fection. The merits of the feud between Bucktails and
Clintonians it is now difficult to find. Each accused the

STATE SENATOR. 57
other of coquetting with the Federalists ; and the accu
sation of one of them was nearly always true. Politics
was a highly developed and extremely interesting game,
whose players, though really able and patriotic men,
were apparently careless of the undignified parts they
were playing. Nor are Clintonians and Bucktails alone
in political history. Cabinets of the greatest nations
have, in more modern times, broken on grounds as
sheerly personal as those which divided Clinton and
Van Buren in 1818. British and French ministries,
as recent memoirs and even recent events have shown,
have fallen to pieces in feuds of as little essential dignity
as belonged to those of New York seventy years ago.
In 1819 the Bucktails suffered the fate of war; and
Van Buren, their efficient head, was removed from the
attorney-general's office. Thurlow Weed, then a country
editor, grotesquely wrote at the time that " rotation in
office is the most striking and brilliant feature of excel
lence in our benign form of government ; and that by
this doctrine, bottomed, as it is, upon the Magna Charta
of our liberties, Van Buren's removal was not only sanc
tioned, but was absolutely required." The latter still
remained state senator, and soon waged a short and
decisive campaign to recover political mastery. He
now came to the aid of Governor Tompkins, who dur
ing the war with England had borrowed money for
public use upon his personal responsibility, and in the
disbursement of several millions of dollars for war pur
poses had, through carelessness in book-keeping or cler
ical detail, apparently become a debtor of the State. The
comptroller, in spite of a law passed in 1819 to indem
nify Tompkins for his patriotic services, took a hostile
attitude which threatened the latter with pecuniary de-

58 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
struction. In March, 1820, Van Buren threw himself
into the contest with a skill and generous fervor which
saved the ex-governor. Van Buren's speech of two
days for the old chief of the Bucktails, is described by
Hammond, a political historian of New York not un
duly friendly to Van Buren, to have been " ingenious,
able, and eloquent."
It was also in 1820 that Van Buren promoted the re
election of Rufus King, the distinguished Federalist,
to the United States senate. His motives in doing this
were long bitterly assailed ; but as the choice was in
trinsically admirable, Van Buren was probably glad to
gratify a patriotic impulse which was not very incon
sistent with party advantage. In 1819 the Republican
caucus, the last at which the Bucktails and Clintonians
both attended, was broken up amid mutual recrimina
tions. John C. Spencer, the son of Ambrose Spencer,
and afterwards a distinguished Whig, was the Clin
tonian candidate, and had the greater number of Repub
lican votes. In the legislature there was no choice,
Rufus King having fewer votes than either of the Re
publicans. When the legislature of 1820 met, there ap
peared a pamphlet skillfully written in a tone of exalted
patriotism. This decided the election for King. Van
Buren was its author, and was said to have been aided
by William L. Marcy. Both had suffered at the hands
of Clinton. However much they may have been so in
fluenced in secret, they gave in public perfectly sound
and weighty reasons for returning this old and distin
guished statesman to the place he had honored for
many years. In 1813 King had received the votes of
a few Republicans, without whom he would have been
defeated by a Republican competitor. The Clintonians

ELECTION OF RUFUS KING. 59
and their adversaries had since disputed which of them
had then been guilty of party disloyalty. But it can
hardly be doubted that King's high character and great
ability, with the bit of revolutionary glamour about him,
made his choice seem patriotic and popular, and there
fore politically prudent.
Van Buren's pamphlet of 1820 was addressed to the
Republican members of the legislature by a "fellow-
member " who told them that he knew and was person
ally known to most of them, and that he had, " from
his infancy, taken a deep interest in the honor and
prosperity of the party." This anonymous " fellow-
member " pronounced the support of King by Republi
cans to " be an act honorable to themselves, advanta
geous to the country, and just to him." He declared that
the only reluctance Republicans had to a public avowal
of their sentiments arose from a "commendable appre
hension that their determination to support him under
existing circumstances might subject them to the sus
picion of having become a party to a political bargain,
to one of those sinister commutations of principle for
power, which they think common with their adversaries,
and against which they have remonstrated with becom
ing spirit." He showed that there were degrees even
among Federalists, — that some in the war had been
influenced by "most envenomed malignity against the
administration of their own government ; " that a second
and " very numerous and respectable portion " had been
those " who, inured to opposition and heated by colli
sion, were poorly qualified to judge dispassionately of
the measures of government," who thought the war im
politic at the time, but who were ignorantly but honestly
mistaken ; but that a third class of them had risen " su-

60 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
perior to the prejudices and passions of those with whom
they once acted." In the last class had been Rufus
King ; at home and in the senate he had supported the
administration ; he had helped procure loans to the
State for war purposes. The address skillfully recalled
his revolutionary services, his membership in the con
vention which framed the Federal Constitution, his ap
pointment by Washington as minister to the English
court, and his continuance there under Jefferson. He
was declared to be opposed to Clinton. The address
concluded by reciting that there had been in New York
"exceptionable and unprincipled political bargains and
coalitions," which with darker offenses ought to be
proved, to vindicate the great body of citizens " from
the charge of participating in the profligacy of the few,
and to give rest to that perturbed spirit which now
haunts the scenes of former moral and political de
baucheries ; " but added that the nature of a vote for
King precluded such suspicions.
The last statement was just. King's return was free
from other suspicion than that he probably preferred
the Van Buren to the Clinton Republicans. Van Buren,
seeing that the Federalist party was at an end, was
glad both to do a public service and to ally with his
party, in the divisions of the future, some part of the ele
ment so finely represented by Rufus King. In private
Van Buren urged the support of King even more em
phatically. " We are committed," he wrote, " to his
support. It is both wise and honest, and we must have
no fluttering in our course. Mr. King's views towards
us are honorable and correct. . . . Let us not, then,
have any halting. I will put my head on its propriety."
Van Buren's partisanship always had a mellow charac-

ELECTION OF RUFUS KING. 61
ter. He practiced the golden rule of successful politics,
to foresee future benefits rather than remember past
injuries. Indeed, it is just to say more. In sending
King to the senate he doubtless experienced the lofty
pleasure which a politician of public spirit feels in his
occasional ability to use his power to reach a beneficent
end, which without the power he could not have reached,
a stroke which to a petty politician would seem dan
gerous, but which the greater man accomplishes with
out injury to his party standing. A year or two after
King's election, when Van Buren joined him at Wash
ington, there were established the most agreeable rela
tions between them. The refinement and natural de
corum of the younger man easily fell in with the polished
and courtly manner of the old Federalist. Benton,
who had then just entered the senate, said it was de
lightful to behold the deferential regard which Van
Buren paid to his venerable colleague, a regard always
returned by King with marked kindness and respect.
In this year the era of good feeling was at its height.
Monroe was reelected president by an almost unanimous
vote, with Tompkins again as vice-president. The good
feeling, however, was among the people, and not among
the politicians. The Republican party was about to
divide by reason of the very completeness of its su
premacy. The Federalist party was extinguished and
its members scattered. The greater number of them in
New York went with the Clintonian Republicans, with
whom they afterwards formed the chief body of the
Whig party. A smaller number of them, among whom
were James A. Hamilton and John C. Hamilton, the
sons of the great founder of the Federalist party, Wil
liam A. Duer, John A. King (the son of the reelected

62 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
senator), and many others of wealth and high social
position, ranged themselves for a time in the Bucktail
ranks under Van Buren's leadership. In the slang of
the day, they were the " high-minded Federalists," be
cause they had declared that Clinton's supporters prac
ticed a jjersonal subserviency " disgusting to high-minded
and honorable men." With this addition, the Bucktails
became the Democratic party in New York. In April,
1820, the gubernatorial election was between the Clin
tonians supporting Clinton, and the Bucktails support
ing Tompkins, the vice-president. Clinton's recent and
really magnificent public service made him successful at
the polls, but his party was beaten at other points.
Rufus King's reelection to the senate was believed to
have some relation to the Missouri question, then agitating
the nation. In one of his letters urging his Republican
associates to support King, Van Buren declared that the
Missouri question concealed no plot so far as King was
concerned, but that he, Van Buren, and his friends, would
" give it a true direction." King's strong opposition to
the admission of Missouri as a slave state was, .how
ever, perfectly open. If he returned to the senate, it
was certain he would steadily vote against any extension
of slavery. Van Buren knew all this, and doubtless
meant that King was bargaining away none of his con
victions for the senatorship. But what the " true direc
tion " was which was to be given the Missouri question,
is not clear. About the time of King's reelection Van
Buren joined in calling a public meeting at Albany to
protest against extending slavery beyond the Missis
sippi. He was absent at the time of the meeting, and
refused the use of his name upon the committee to send
the anti-slavery resolutions to Washington. Nor is it

STATE SENATOR. 63
clear whether his absence and refusal were significant.
He certainly did not condemn the resolutions ; and in
January, 1820, he voted in the state senate for an in
struction to the senators and representatives in Congress
" to oppose the admission, as a state in the Union, of
any territory not comprised within the original boundary
of the United States, without making the prohibition of
slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission."
This resolution undoubtedly expressed the clear convic
tions of the Republicans in New York, whether on Van
Buren's or Clinton's side, as well as of the remaining
Federalists. Van Buren's direct interest in national politics had
already begun. In 1816 he was present in Washing
ton (then a pretty serious journey from Albany) when
the Republican congressional caucus was held to nominate
a president. Governor Tompkins, after a brief canvass,
retired ; and Crawford, then secretary of war, became
the candidate against Monroe, and was supported by
most of the Republicans from New York. Van Buren's
preference was not certainly known, though it is supposed
he preferred Monroe. In 1820 he was chosen a presi
dential elector in place of an absentee from the electoral
college, and participated in the all but unanimous vote for
Monroe. He voted with the other New York electors for
Tompkins for the vice-presidency. In April, 1820, he
wrote to Henry Meigs, a Bucktail congressman then at
Washington, that the rascality of some of the deputy
postmasters in the State was intolerable, and cried aloud
for relief ; that it was impossible to penetrate the inte
rior of the State with friendly papers ; and that two or
three prompt removals were necessary. The postmas
ter-general was to be asked " to do an act of justice and

64 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
render us a partial service " by the removal of the post
masters at Bath, Little Falls, and Oxford, and to ap
point successors, whom Van Buren named. In Janu
ary, 1821, Governor Clinton sent this letter to the
legislature, with a message and other papers so numer
ous as to be carried in a green bag, which gave the
name to the message, in support of a charge that the
national administration had interfered in the state elec
tion. But the "green-bag message" did Van Buren
little harm, for Clinton's own prescriptive rigor had
been great, and it was only two years before that Van
Buren himself had been removed from the attorney-
generalship. In 1821 the political division of the New
York Republicans was carried to national politics.
When a speaker was to be chosen in place of Clay,
Taylor of New York, the Republican candidate, was
opposed by the BucktaU congressmen, because he had
supported Clinton.
In February, 1821, Van Buren gained the splendid
promotion to the federal senate. He was elected by
the Bucktails against Nathan Sanford, the sitting sena
tor, who was supported by the Clintonians and Federal
ists. Van Buren was now thirty-eight years old, and in
the early prime of his powers. He had run the gaunt
let of two popular elections ; he had been easily first
among the Republicans of the state senate ; he had
there shown extraordinary political skill and an intelli
gent and public spirit ; he had ably administered the
chief law office of the State, which was not judicial.
Though not yet keenly interested in any federal ques
tion, — for his activity and thought had been sufficiently
engaged in affairs of his own state, — he turned to the
new field with an easy confidence, amply justified by his

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 65
mastery of the problems with which he had so far grap
pled. He reached Washington the undoubted leader
of his party in the state. The prestige of Governor
Tompkins, although just reelected vice-president, had
suffered from his recent defeat for the governorship, and
from his pecuniary and other difficulties ; and besides,
he obviously had not Van Buren's unrivaled equipment
for political leadership.
Before Van Buren attended his first session in the
federal capital he performed for the pubhc most honor
able service in the state constitutional convention which
sat in the autumn of 1821. This body illustrated the
earnest and wholesome temper in which the most pow
erful public men of the state, after many exhibitions of
partisan, personal, and even petty animosities, could
treat so serious and abiding a matter as its fundamental
law. The Democrats sent Vice-President Tompkins,
both the United States senators, King and Van Buren,
the late senator, Sanford, and Samuel Nelson, then be
ginning a long and honorable career. The Clintonians
and Federalists sent Chancellor Kent and Ambrose
Spencer, the chief justice. Van Buren was chosen from
Otsego, and not from his own county, probably because
the latter was politically unfavorable to him.
This convention was one of the steps in the demo
cratic march. It was called to broaden the suffrage, to
break up the central source of patronage at Albany, and
to enlarge local self-administration. The government
of New York had so far been a freeholders' government,
with those great virtues, and those greater and more
enduring vices, which were characteristic of a govern
ment controlled exclusively by the owners of land. The
painful apprehension aroused by the democratic resolu-

Q6 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
tion to reduce, if not altogether to destroy, the exclusive
privileges of land-owners, was expressed in the conven
tion by Chancellor Kent. He would not " bow before
the idol of universal suffrage ; " this extreme democratic
principle, he said, had " been regarded with terror by
the wise men of every age ; " wherever tried, it had
brought " corruption, injustice, violence, and tyranny ; "
if adopted, posterity would " deplore in sackcloth and
ashes the delusion of the day." He wished no laws to
• pass without the free consent of the owners of the soil.
He did not foresee English parliaments elected in 1885
and 1886 by a suffrage not very far from universal, or
a royal jubilee celebrated by democratic masses, or the
prudent conservatism in matters of property of the en
franchised French democracy, — he foresaw none of
these when he declared that England and France could
not sustain the weight of universal suffrage ; that " the
radicals of England, with the force of that mighty en
gine, would at once sweep away the property, the laws,
and the liberty of that island like a deluge." Van
Buren distinguished himself in the debate. Upon this
exciting and paramount topic he did not share the tem
per which possessed most of his party. His speech was
clear, explicit, philosophical, and really statesmanlike.
It so impressed even his adversaries ; and Hammond,
one of them, declared that he ought for it to be ranked
" among the most shining orators and able statesmen of
the age."
In reading this, or indeed any of the utterances of
Van Buren where the occasion required distinctness, it
is difficult to find the ground of the charge of " non-
committalism " so incessantly made against him. He
doubtless refrained from taking sides on questions not

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 67
yet ripe for decision, however clear, and whatever may
have been his speculative opinions. But this is the duty
of every statesman ; it has been the practice of every
politician who has promoted reform. Van Buren now
pointed out how completely the events of the forty years
past had discredited the grave speculative fears of
Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison upon provisions of the
Federal Constitution. With Burke he believed expe
rience to be the only unerring touchstone. He conclu
sively showed that property had been as safe in those
American communities which had universal suffrage as
in the few which retained a property qualification ; that
venality in voting, apprehended from the change, al
ready existed in the grossest forms at the parliamentary
elections of England. Going to the truth which is at
the dynamic source of democratic institutions, he told
the chancellor that when in America the principles of
order and good government should yield to principles of
, anarchy and violence and permit attacks on private prop
erty or an agrarian law, all constitutional provisions
would be idle and unavailing, because they would have
lost all their force and influence. With a true instinct,
however, Van Buren wished the steps to be taken gradu
ally. He was not yet ready, he said, to admit to the
suffrage the shifting population of cities, held to the
government by no other ties than the mere right to vote.
He was not ready for a really universal suffrage. The
voter ought, if he did not participate in the government
by paying taxes or performing militia duty, to be a man
who was a householder with some of the elements of
stability, with something at stake in the community.
Although they had reached "the verge of universal
suffrage," he could not with his Democratic friends take

68 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the " one step beyond ; " he would not cheapen the in
valuable right by conferring it with undiscriminating
hand " on every one, black or white, who would be kind
enough to condescend to accept it." Though a Democrat
he was opposed, he said, to a " precipitate and unex
pected prostration of all qualifications ; " he looked with
dread upon increasing the voters in New York city from
thirteen or fourteen thousand to twenty-five thousand,
believing (curious prediction for a father of the Demo
cratic party !) that the increase " would render their elec
tions rather a curse than a blessing," and " would drive
from the polls all sober-minded people."
The universal suffrage then postponed was wisely
adopted a few years later. Democracy marched steadily
on ; and Van Buren was willing, probably very willing,
to be guided by experience. He opposed in the conven
tion a proposal supported by most of his party to restrict
suffrage to white citizens, but favored a property quali
fication for black men, the $250 freehold ownership
until then required of white voters. He would not, he
said, draw from them a revenue and yet deny them the
right of suffrage. Twenty-five years later, in 1846,
nearly three-fourths of the voters of the state refused
equal suffrage to the blacks ; and even in 1869, six
years after the emancipation proclamation, a majority
still refused to give them the same rights as white men.
The question of appointments to office was the chief
topic in the convention. Van Buren, as chairman of
the committee on this subject, made an interesting and
able report. It was unanimously agreed that the use
of patronage by the council of appointment had been a
scandal. Only a few members voted to retain the coun
cil, even if it were to be elected by the people. He

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 69
recommended that military officers, except the highest,
be elected by the privates and officers of militia. Of
the 6,663 civil officers whose appointment and removal
by the council had for twenty years kept the state in
turmoil, he recommended that 3,643, being notaries,
commissioners, masters and examiners in chancery, and
other lesser officers, should be appointed under general
laws to be enacted by the legislature ; the clerks of
courts and district attorneys should be appointed by
the common pleas courts ; mayors and clerks of cities
should be appointed by their common councils, except
in New York, where for years afterwards the mayors
were appointed ; the heads of the state departments
should be appointed by the legislature ; and all other
officers, including surrogates and justices of the peace
as well as the greater judicial officers, should be ap
pointed by the governor upon the confirmation of the
senate. Van Buren declared himself opposed, here
again separating himself from many of his party associ
ates, to the popular election of any judicial officers, even
the justices of the peace. Of all this he was long after
to be reminded as proof of his aristocratic contempt for
democracy. His recommendations were adopted in the
main ; although county clerks and sheriffs, whom he
would have kept appointive, were made elective. Upon
this question he was in a small minority with Chancellor
Kent and Rufus King, having most of his party friends
against him. Thus was broken up the enormous politi
cal power so long wielded at Albany, and the patronage
distributed through the counties. The change, it was
supposed, would end a great abuse. It did end the
concentration of patronage at the capital ; but the par
tisan abuses of patronage were simply transferred to

70 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the various county seats, to exercise a different and
wider, though probably a less dangerous, corruption.
The council of revision fell with hardly a friend to
speak for it. It was one of those checks upon popular
power of which Federalists had been fond. It con
sisted of the governor with the chancellor and the judges
of the supreme court, and had a veto power upon bills
passed by the legislature. As the chancellor and judges
held office during good behavior until they had reached
the limit of age, the council was almost a small chamber
of life peers. The exercise of its power had provoked
great animosity. The chief judicial officers of the state,
judges, and chancellors, to whom men of our day look
back with a real veneration, had been drawn by it into
a kind of political warfare, in which few of our higher
magistrates, though popularly elected and for terms,
would dare to engage. An act had been passed by the
legislature in 1814 to promote privateering • but Chan
cellor Kent as a member of the council objected to it.
Van Buren maintained with him an open and heated
discussion upon the propriety of the objections, — a dis
cussion in which the judicial character justly enough
afforded no protection. Van Buren's feeling against
the judges who were his political adversaries was often
exhibited. He said in the convention : " I object to the
council, as being composed of the judiciary, who are not
directly responsible to the people. I object to it be
cause it inevitably connects the judiciary — those who,
with pure hearts and sound heads, should preside in the
sanctuaries of justice — with the intrigues and collisions
of party strife ; because it tends to make our judges
politicians, and because such has been its practical
effect." He further said that he would not join in

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 71
the rather courtly observation that the councd was
abolished because of a personal regard for the peace of
its members. He would have it expressly remembered
that the council had served the ends of faction ; though
he added that he should regard the loss of Chancellor
Kent from his judicial station as a public calamity. In
his general position Van Buren was clearly right.
Again and again have theorists, supposing judges to be
sanctified and illumined by their offices, placed in their
hands political power, which had been abused, or it was
feared would be abused, by men fancied to occupy less
exalted stations. Again and again has the result shown
that judges are only men, with human passions, preju
dices, and ignorance ; men who, if vested with functions
not judicial, if freed from the checks of precedents and
law and public hearings and appellate review, fall into
the same abuses and act on the same motives, political
and personal, which belong to other men. In the coun
cil of revision before 1821 and the electoral commission
of 1877 were signally proved the wisdom of restricting
judges to the work of deciding rights between parties
judicially brought before them.
Van Buren's far from " non-committal " talk about
the judges was not followed by any support of the pro
posal, in the horrid expression of the time, to " constitu-
tionize " them out of office. The animosity of a major
ity of the members against the judges then in office was
intense ; and they were not willing to accept the hfe of
the council of revision as a sufficient sacrifice. Nor
was the animosity entirely unreasonable. Butler, in one
of his early letters to Jesse Hoyt, described the auster
ity with which Ambrose Spencer, the chief justice, when
the young lawyer sought to address him, told him to

72 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
wait until his seniors had been heard. In the conven
tion there were doubtless many who had been offended
with a certain insolence of place whicli to this day
characterizes the bearing of many judges of real ability ;
and the opportunity of making repayment was eagerly
seized. Nor was it unreasonable that laymen should,
from the proceedings of judges when acting upon polit
ical matters which laymen understood as well as they,
make inferences about the fairness of their proceedings
on the bench upon which laymen could not always
safely speak. By a vote of 66 to 39, the convention re
fused to retain the judges then in office, — a proceeding
which, with all the faults justly or even naturally found
with them, was a gross violation of the fundamental
rule whicli ought to guide civilized lands in changing
their laws. For the retention of the judges was per
fectly consistent with the judicial scheme adopted. Van
Buren put all this most admirably before voting with
the minority. He told the convention, and doubtless
truly, that from the bench of judges, whose official fate
was then at their mercy, he had been assailed " with
hostility, political, professional, and personal, — hostility
which had been the most keen, active, and unyielding ; "
but that he would not indulge individual resentment in
the prostration of his private and political adversary.
The judicial officer, who could not be reached by im
peachment or the proceeding for removal by a two-
thirds vote, ought not to be disturbed. They should
amend the constitution, he told the convention, upon
general principles, and not descend to pull down obnox
ious officers. He begged it not to ruin its character and
credit by proceeding to such extremities. But the re
moval of the judges did not prove unpopular. Only

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 73
eight members of the convention voted against the con
stitution ; only fifteen others did not sign it. And the
freeholders of the state, while deliberately surrendering
some of their exclusive privileges, adopted it by a vote
of 75,422 to 41,497.
Van Buren's service in this convention was that of a
firm, sensible, far-seeing man, resolute to make demo
cratic progress, but unwilling, without further light from
experience, to take extreme steps difficult to retrace.
With a strong inclination towards great enlargement
of the suffrage, he pointed out that a mistake in going
too far could never be righted " except by the sword."
The wisdom of enduring temporary difficulties, rather
than to make theoretical changes greater than were
necessary to obviate serious and great wrongs, was
common to him with the highest and most influential
type of modern law-makers. With some men of the
first rank, the convention had in it very many others
crudely equipped for its work ; and it met in an atmos
phere of personal and political asperity unfavorable to
deliberations over organic law. Van Buren was politi
cally its most powerful member. It is clear that his
always conservative temper, aided by his tact and by
his temperate and persuasive eloquence, held back his
Democratic associates, headed by the impetuous and
angered General Root, from changes far more radical
than those which were made. He showed on this con
spicuous field, and while eminent as a party man, un
doubted courage and independence and high sense of
duty. Entering national politics he was fortunate there
fore to be known, not only as a skillful and adroit
and even managing politician, as a vigorous and clear
debater, as a successful leader in popular movements,

74 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
but also as a man of firm and upright patriotism, with
a ripe and educated sense of the complexity of popular
government, and a sober appreciation of the kind of
dangers so subtly mingled with the blessings of democ
racy.

CHAPTER IV.
UNITED STATES SENATOR. — REESTABLISHMENT OF
PARTIES.  PARTY LEADERSHIP.
In December, 1821, Van Buren took his seat in the
United States senate. The "era of good feeling" was
then at its height. It was with perfect sincerity that
Monroe in his message of the preceding year had said :
" I see much cause to rejoice in the felicity of our situa
tion." He had just been reelected president with but a
single vote against him. The country was in profound
peace. The burdens of the war with England were no
longer felt ; and its few victories were remembered with
exuberant good-nature. Two years before, Florida had
been acquired by the strong and persisting hand of the
younger Adams. Wealth and comfort were in rapid
increase. The moans and rage of the defeated and
disgraced Federalists were suppressed, or, if now and
then feebly heard, were complacently treated as out
bursts of senility and impotence. People were not only
well-to-do in fact, but, what was far more extraordinary,
they believed themselves to be so. In his great tariff
speech but three or four years later, Hayne called it the
"period of general jubilee." Every great public paper
and speech described the " felicity " of America. The
president pointed out to his fellow-citizens "the pros
perous and happy condition of our country in all the
great circumstances which constitute the felicity of a

76 MARTIN VAN BUREN
nation ; " he boldly admonished them that they were " a
free, virtuous, and enlightened people;" the unanimity
of public sentiment in favor of his " humble preten
sions " indicated, he thought, "the great strength and
stability of our Union." And all was reciprocated by
the people. This modest, gentle ruler was in his very
mediocrity agreeable to them. He symbolized the com
fort and order, the supreme respectability of which they
were proud. When in 1817 he made a tour through
New England, which had seen neither Jefferson nor
Madison as visitors during their terms of office, and in
his military coat of domestic manufacture, his light
small-clothes and cocked hat, met processions and ora
tors without end, it was obvious that this was not the
radical minister whom Washington had recalled from
Jacobin Paris for effusively pledging eternal friendship
and submitting to fraternal embraces in the national
convention. Such youthful frenzy was now long past.
America was enjoying a great national idyl. Even the
Federalists, except of course those who had been too
violent or who were still unrepentant, were not utterly
shut out from the light of the placid high noon. Jack
son had urged Monroe in 1816 " to exterminate that
monster called party spirit," and to let some Federalists
come to the board. Monroe thought, however, " that
the administration should rest strongly on the Republi
can party," though meaning to bring all citizens " into
the Republican fold as quietly as possible." Party,
he declared, was unnecessary to free government ; all
should be Republicans. And when Van Buren reached
the sprawling, slatternly American capital in 1821, all
were Republicans.
There were of course personal feuds in this great

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 77
political family. Those of New York were the most
notorious ; but there were many others. But such
rivalries and quarrels were only a proof of the political
calm. When families are smugly prosperous they in
dulge petty dislikes, which disappear before storm or
tragedy. The halcyon days could not last. Monroe's
dream of a country with but one party, and that basking
in perpetual " felicity," was, in spite of what seemed
for the moment a close realization, as far from the truth
as the dreams of later reformers who would in politics
organize all the honest, respectable folk together against
all the dishonest.
The heat of the Missouri question was ended at the
session before Van Buren's senatorial term began. It
seemed only a thunder-storm passing across a rich, warm
day in harvest time, angry and agitating for the moment,
but quickly forgotten by dwellers in the pastoral scene
when the rainbow of compromise appeared in the de
lightful hues of Henry Clay's eloquence. The elements
of the tremendous struggle yet to come were in the
atmosphere, but they were not visible. The slavery
question had no political importance to Van Buren
until fourteen years afterwards. In judging the men
of that day we shall seriously mistake if we set up our
own standards among their ideas. The moral growth
in the twenty-five years since the emancipation makes
it irksome to be fair to the views of the past generation,
or indeed to the former views of half of our present
generation. Slavery has come to seem intrinsically
wicked, hideous, to be hated everywhere. But sixty-
five years ago it still lingered in several of the north
ern states. It was wrong indeed ; but the temper of
condemnation towards it was Platonic, full of the un-

78 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
availing and unpoignant regret with which men hear of
poverty and starvation and disease and crime which
they do not see and which they cannot help. Nor did
slavery then seem to the best of men so very great a
wrong even to the blacks ; there were, it was thought,
many ameliorations and compensations. Men were
glad to believe and did believe that the human chattels
were better and happier than they would have been in
Africa. The economic waste of slavery, its corrupting
and enervating effect upon the whites, were thought to
be objections quite as serious. Besides, it was widely
fancied to be at worst but a temporary evil. Jefferson's
dislike of it was shared by many through the South as
well as the North. The advantages of a free soil were
becoming so apparent in the strides by which the North
was passing the South in every material advantage, that
the latter, it seemed, must surely learn the lesson. For
the institution within states already admitted to the
Union, anti-slavery men felt no responsibility. Forty
years later the great leader of the modern Republican
party would not, he solemnly declared in the very midst
of a pro-slavery rebellion, interfere with slavery in the
states if the Union could be saved without disturbing it.
If men in South Carolina cared to maintain a ruinous
and corrupting domestic institution, even if it were a
greater wrong against the slaves than it was believed to
be, or even if it were an injury to the whites themselves,
still men of Massachusetts and New York ought, it
seemed to them, to be no more disturbed over it than we
feel bound to be over polygamy in Turkey.
But as to the territory west of the Mississippi not yet
formed into states, there was a different sentiment held by
a great majority at the North and by many at the South.

THE MISSOURI QUESTION. 79"
Slavery was not established there. The land was
national domain, whose forms of political and social life
were yet to be set up. Why not, before the embarrass
ments of slave settlement arose, devote this new land to
freedom, not so much to freedom as that shining god
dess of mercy and right and justice who rose clear and
obvious to our purged vision out of the civil war, as
to the less noble deities of economic wellbeing, thrift,
and industrial comfort ? Democrats at the North, there
fore, were almost unanimous that Missouri should come
in free or not at all ; and so with the rest of the terri
tory beyond the Mississippi, except the old slave settle
ment of Louisiana, already admitted as a state. The
resolution in the legislature of New York in January,
1820, supported by Van Buren, that freedom be " an
indispensable condition of admission " of new states,
was but one of many exhibitions of feeling at the North.
Monroe and the very best of Americans did not, how
ever, think the principle so sacred or necessary as to
justify a struggle. John Quincy Adams, hating slavery
as did but few Americans, distinctly favored the com
promise by which Missouri came in with slavery, and
by which the other new territory north of the present
southern line of Missouri extended westward was to be
free, and the territory south of it slave. With no shame
he acquiesced in the very thing about which forty years
later the nation plunged into war. " For the present,"
he wrote, " this contest is laid asleep." So the flood of
peaceful sunshine and prosperity returned over the land.
Van Buren's views at this time were doubtless clear
against the extension of slavery. He disliked the in
stitution ; and in part saw how inconsistent were its
odious practices with the best civic growth, how de-

80 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
basing to whites and blacks alike. In March, 1822, he
voted in the senate, with Harrison Gray Otis of Massa
chusetts and Rufus King, for a proviso in the bill creat
ing the new territory of Florida by which the introduc
tion of slaves was forbidden except by citizens removing
there for actual settlement, and by which slaves intro
duced in violation of the law were to be freed. But he
was in a minority. Northern senators from Rhode Is
land, New Jersey, and Indiana refused to interfere with
free trade in slaves between the southern states and this
southernmost territory.
Among the forty-eight members of the senate which
met in December, 1821, neither Clay nor Calhoun nor
Webster had a seat. The first was restless in one of
his brief absences from official life ; the second was
secretary of war ; and Webster, out of Congress, was
making great law arguments and greater orations. Ben
ton was there from the new state of Missouri, just begin
ning his thirty years. The warm friendship and polit
ical alliance between him and Van Buren must have
soon begun. During all or nearly all Van Buren's sen-
atorship the two occupied adjoining seats. Two years
later Andrew Jackson was sent to the senate by Ten
nessee, as a suitable preliminary to his presidential can
vass. During the next two sessions Van Buren, Benton,
and Jackson were thrown together ; and without doubt
the foundations were laid of their lifelong intimacy
and political affection. Benton and Jackson, personal
enemies years before, had become reconciled. Among
these associates Van Buren adhered firmly enough to
his own clear views ; he did not turn obsequiously to
the rising sun of Tennessee. William H. Crawford, the
secretary of the treasury, had, in the Republican con-

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 81
gressional caucus of 1816, stood next Monroe for the
presidential nomination. For reasons which neither
history nor tradition seems sufficiently to have brought
us, he inspired a strong and even enthusiastic loyalty
among many of his party. His candidacy in 1824 was
more " regular " than that of either Adams, Jackson, or
Clay, whose friends combined against him as the strong
est of them all. Though Crawford had been prostrated
by serious disease in 1823, Van Buren remained faithful
to him until, in 1825, after refusing a seat in Adams's
cabinet, the latter retired from national public life a thor
oughly broken man.'
The first two sessions of Congress, after Van Buren's
service began, seem drowsy enough. French land-titles
in Louisiana, the settlement of the accounts of public
officers, the attempt to abolish imprisonment for debt,
the appropriation for money for diplomatic representa
tives to the new South American states and their recog
nition, — nothing more exciting than these arose, except
Monroe's veto, in May, 1822, of the bill authorizing the
erection of toll-gates upon the Cumberland road and
appropriating $9,000 for them. This brought distinctly
before the public the great question of internal improve
ments by the federal government, which Van Buren,
Benton, and Jackson afterwards chose as one of the chief
battle-grounds for their party. For this bfll Van Buren
indeed voted, while Benton afterwards boasted that he
was one of the small minority of seven who discerned
its true character. But this trifling appropriation was
declared by Barbour, who was in charge of the measure,
not to involve the general question ; it was said to be a
mere incident necessary to save from destruction a work
for which earlier statesmen were responsible. Monroe,

82 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
though declaring in his veto that the power to adopt
and execute a system of internal improvements national
in their character would have the happiest effect on all
the great interests of the Union, decided that the Con
stitution gave no such power. Six years later, in a note
to his speech upon the power of the vice-president to
call to order for words spoken in debate in the senate,
Van Buren apologized for his vote on the bill, because
it was his first session, and because he was sincerely
desirous to aid the western country and had voted with
out full examination. He added that if the question
were again presented to him, he should vote in the nega
tive ; and that it had been his only vote in seven years
of service which the most fastidious critic could torture
into an inconsistency with his principles upon internal
improvements. In January, 1823, during his second
session, Van Buren spoke and voted in favor of the bill
to repair the road, but still took no decided ground upon
the general question. He said that "the large expendi
ture already made on the road would have been worse
than useless if it were now suffered to decay ; that the
road, being already constructed, ought to be preserved ;
but whether he would vote for a new construction he
did not disclose. Even Benton, who was proud to have
been one of the small minority against the bill of the
year before for toll-gates upon the road, was now with
Van Buren, constitutional scruples yielding to the states
manlike reluctance to waste an investment of millions of
dollars rather than spend a few thousands to save it.
In January, 1824, Van Buren proposed to solve these
difficulties by a constitutional amendment. Congress
was to have power to make roads and canals, but the
money appropriated was to be apportioned among the

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 83
states according to population. No road or canal was to
be made within any state without the consent of its legis
lature ; and the money was to be expended in each state
under the direction of its legislature. This proposal seems
to have fallen still-born, and deservedly. It illustrated
Van Buren's jealousy of interference with the rights of
states. But the right of each state to be protected, he
seemed to forget, involved its right not to be taxed for
improvements in other states which it neither controlled
nor promoted. Van Buren's speech in support of the
proposal would to-day seem very heretical to his party.
A dozen years later he himself would probably have
admitted it to be so. He then believed in the abstract
proposition that such funds of the nation as could be
raised without oppression, and as were not necessary to
the discharge of indispensable demands upon the gov
ernment, should be expended upon internal improve
ments under restrictions guarding the sovereignty and
equal interests of the states. Henry Clay would not in
theory have gone much further. But to this subject in
its national aspect Van Buren had probably given but
slight attention. The success of the Erie Canal, with
him doubtless as with others, made adverse theories of
government seem less impressive. But Van Buren and
his school quickly became doubtful and soon hostile to
the federal promotion of internal improvements. The
opposition became popular on the broader reasoning
that great expenditures for internal improvements
within the states were not only, as the statesmen at first
argued, violations of the letter of the Constitution, whose
sanctity could, however, be saved by proper amendment,
but were intrinsically dangerous, and an unwholesome
extension of the federal power which ought not to take

84 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
place whether within the Constitution or by amending
it. Aided by Jackson's powerful vetoes, this sentiment
gained a strength with the people which has come down
to our day. We have river and harbor bills, but they
are supposed to touch directly or indirectly our foreign
commerce, which, under the Constitution and upon the
essential theory of our confederation, is a subject proper
to the care of the Union.
In the same session Van Buren spoke at length in
favor of the bill to abolish imprisonment for debt, and
drew with precision the distinction wisely established
by modern jurisprudence, that the property only, and
not the body of the debtor, should be at the mercy of
his creditor, where the debt involved no fraud or breach
of trust.
The session of 1823-1824 was seriously influenced
by the coming presidential election. The protective
tariff of 1824 was christened with the absurd name of
the " American system," though it was American in no
other or better sense than foreign war to protect fancied
national rights is an American system, and though the
system had come from the middle ages in the company
of other restrictions upon the intercourse of nations. It
was carried by the factitious help of this designation and
the fine leadership of Clay. With Jackson and Benton,
Van Buren voted for it, against men differing as widely
from each other as his associate, the venerable Feder
alist Rufus King, differed from Hayne, the brilliant
orator of South Carolina. Upon the tariff Van Buren
then had views clearer, at least, than upon internal im
provements. In 1824 he was unmistakably a protec
tionist. The moderation of his views and the pressure
from his own state were afterwards set up as defenses

TARIFF OF 1824. 85
for this early attitude of his. But he declared himself
with sufficient plainness not only to believe in the con
stitutionality of a protective tariff, but that 1824 was a
fit year in which to extend its protective features. He
acted, too, with the amplest light upon the subject.
The dislike of the Holy Alliance, the hated recollections
of the Orders in Council and the Napoleonic decrees,
the idea that, for self-defense in times of war, the coun
try must be forced to produce many goods not already
produced, — these considerations had great weight, as
very well appears in the speech for the bill delivered by
Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, afterwards Van Bu
ren's associate on the presidential ticket. " When the
monarchs of Europe are assembled together, do you
think," he asked, " that we are not a subject of their
holy consultations ? " But the support of the bill was
upon broader considerations. The debates upon the
tariff in the house of representatives in February,
March, and April, and in the senate in AprU, 1824,
were admirable presentations of the subject. Webster
in the house and Hayne in the senate put the free
trade side. The former, still speaking his own senti
ments, declared that " the best apology for laws of pro
hibition and laws of monopoly will be found in that
state of society, not only unenlightened but sluggish, in
which they are most generally established." But now,
he said, " competition comes in place of monopoly,
and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play and
an open field." He repudiated the principle of protec
tion. " On the contrary," said he, " I think freedom of
trade to be the general principle, and restriction the
exception." Nor was Van Buren then left without the light which

86 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
afterwards reached him on the constitutional question.
Rufus King said that, if gentlemen wished to encourage
the production of hemp and iron, they ought to bring
in a bill to give bounties on those articles ; for there
was the same constitutional right to grant bounties as to
levy restrictive duties upon foreign products. Hayne
made the really eloquent and masterly speech for which
he ought to stand in the first rank of orators, and which
summed up as well for free-traders now as then the
most telling arguments against artificial restrictions.
He skillfully closed with Washington's words : " Our
commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial
hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or
preferences ; consulting the natural course of things ;
diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams
of commerce, but forcing nothing." Hayne did not
confine himself to the doctrines of Adam Smith, or the
hardships which protection meant to a planting region
like his own. For the chief interest of the South was
in cotton ; and the price of cotton was largely deter
mined by the ability of foreigners to import it from
America, — an ability in its turn dependent upon the
willingness of America to take her pay, directly or indi
rectly, in foreign commodities. Hayne, however, went
further. He clearly raised the question, whether the
encouragement of manufactures could constitutionally
be made a federal object.
Sitting day after day under this long debate in the
little senate chamber then in use, where men listened
to speeches, if for no other reason, because they were
easily heard, Van Buren could not, with his ability and
readiness, have misunderstood the general principles
involved. Early in the debate, upon a motion to strike

TARIFF OF 1824. 87
out the duty on hemp, he briefly but explicitly said that
" he was in favor of increasing the duty on hemp, with
a view of affording protection to its cultivation in this
country." He voted against limiting the duty on wool
to twenty-five per cent., but voted against a duty of
twenty-five per cent, on India silks, — a revenue rather
than a protective duty. He voted for duties on wheat
and wheat-flour and potatoes. He voted against strik
ing out the duty on books, in spite of Hayne's grotesque
but forcible argument that they were to be considered
" a raw material, essential to the formation of the mind,
the morals, and the character of the people." It is dif
ficult to understand the significance of all Van Buren's
votes on the items of the bill ; but the record shows
them to have been, on the whole, protectionist, with a
preference for moderate rates, but a firm assertion of
the wool interests of New York. Benton tells us that
Van Buren was one of the main speakers for the bill ;
but the assertion is not borne out by the record. He
delivered no general speech upon the subject, as did
most of the senators, but seems to have spoken only
upon some of the details as they were considered in
committee of the whole. The best to be said is, that
Van Buren's judgment was not yet so ripe upon the
matter as not to be still open to great change. He was
in his third session, and still new to national politics,
and there was before him the plain and strong argu
ment that his state wanted protection. In 1835 But
ler, speaking for him as a presidential candidate, said
that his personal feelings had been " at all times adverse
to the high tariff policy." But " high tariff " was then,
as now, a merely relative term. His votes placed him
in that year very near Henry Clay. That from 1824

88 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
he grew more and more averse to the necessary details
and results of a protective policy is probably true. Nor
ought it to be, even from the standpoint of free-traders,
serious accusation that a public man varies his political
utterances upon the tariff question, if the variation be
progressive and steadily towards what they deem a
greater liberality. To Van Buren, however, the tariff
question never had a capital importance. Even thirty-
two years later, while rehearsing from his retirement the
achievements of his party in excuse of the support he
reluctantly gave Buchanan, he did not name among its
services its insistence upon merely revenue duties, al
though he had then for years been himself committed
to that doctrine.
Van Buren's vote for the tariff of 1824 had no very
direct relation to his political situation. His own suc
cessor was not to be chosen for nearly three years.
Crawford, whom he supported for the presidency, was
the only one of the four candidates opposed to the bill.
Adams was consistently a protectionist ; he believed in
actively promoting the welfare of men, though chiefly if
not exclusively American men, even when they resisted
their own welfare. He, like his father, was perfectly
ready to use the power of government where it seem
ingly promised to be effective, without caring much for
economical theories or constitutional restrictions. Jack
son himself was far enough away from the ranks of
strict constructionists on the tariff. In April, 1824, in
the midst of the debate, and while a presidential can
didate, he wrote from the senate what free-traders, who
afterwards supported him, would have deemed the worst
of heresies. Like most candidates, ancient and modern,
he was " in favor of a judicious examination and revi-

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 89
sion of " the tariff. He would advocate a tariff so far
as it enabled the country to provide itself with the
means of defense in war. But he would go further.
The tariff ought to •' draw from agriculture the super
abundant labor, and employ it in mechanism and man
ufactures ; " it ought to " give a proper distribution to
our labor, to take from agriculture in the United States
600,000 men, women, and children." It is time, he
cried, and quite as extravagantly as Clay, that " we
should become a little more Americanized." How
slight a connection the tariff had with the election of
1824 is further seen in the fact that Jackson, who thus
supported the bill, received the vote of several of the
states which strongly opposed the tariff.
In March, 1824, Van Buren urged the senate to act
upon a constitutional amendment touching the election
of president. As the amendment could not be adopted
in time to affect the pending canvass, there was, he said,
no room for partisan feeling. He insisted that if there
were no majority choice by the electors, the choice
should not rest with the house of representatives voting
by states, but that the electors should be reconvened,
and themselves choose between the highest two candi
dates. The debate soon became thoroughly partisan.
Rufus King, with but thinly veiled reference to Craw
ford's nomination, denounced the practice by which a
caucus at Washington deprived the constitutional elec
tors of any free choice; members of Congress were at
tending to president-making rather than to their duties.
He thought that the course of events had " led near
observers to suspect a connection existing between a
central power of this description at the seat of the gen
eral government and the legislatures of Georgia, North

90 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
CaroUna, Virginia, and New York, and perhaps of other
states." To this it was pointed out with much force
that such a caucus had chosen Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe without scandal or injury; that members of
Congress were distinguished and representative persons
familiar with national affairs, who might with great
advantage respectfully suggest a course of action to their
fellow-citizens. Van Buren went keenly to the real
point of the belated objection to the system ; it lay in
the particular action of the recent caucus. He did not
think it worth wiule to consider " those nice distinctions
which challenged respect for the proceedings of conven
tions of one description and denied it to others; or to
detect those still more subtle refinements which regarded
meetings of the same character as sometimes proper, and
at others destructive of the purity of elections and dan
gerous to the liberties of the people." After much talk
about the will of the people, the senate by a vote of
30 to 13 postponed the consideration of the amendments
until after the election. Benton joined Van Buren in
the minority, although they did not agree upon the form
of amendment ; but Jackson, perhaps because he was a
candidate, did not vote.
It was highly probable that there would be embarrass
ment in choosing the next president. It was already
nearly certain that neither candidate would have a ma
jority of the electoral votes. The decision was then, as
in our own time, supposed to rest with New York ; and
naturally therefore Van Buren's prestige was great,
gained, as it had been, in that difficult and opulent
political field. His attachment to Crawford was proof
against the signs of the latter's decaying strength.
Crawford was to him the Republican candidate regu-

ELECTION OF 1824. 91
larly chosen, and one agreeable to his party by the
vigorous democracy of his sentiments. His opposition
to Jefferson's embargo, and his vote for a renewal of
the charter of the Bank of the United States, had been
forgotten since his warm advocacy of the late war with
England. His formal claims to the nomination were
great. For he had been in the senate as early as 1807,
and its president upon the death of Vice-President Clin
ton in 1812 ; afterwards he had been minister to France,
and was now secretary of the treasury. In the caucus
of 1816 he had nearly as many votes as Monroe ; and
those votes were cast for him, it was said, though with
out much probability, in spite of his peremptory refusal
to compete with Monroe. Moreover, Crawford had a
majesty and grace of personal appearance which, with
undoubtedly good though not great abilities, had, apart
from these details of his career, made him conspicuous
in the Republican ranks ; and in its chief service he
was, after the retirement of Monroe, the senior, except
Adams, whose candidacy was far more recent. Craw
ford's claim to the succession was therefore very justifi
able; he was the most obvious, the most "regular," of
the candidates.
It has been said that Van Buren was at first inclined
to Adams. The latter's unequaled public experience
and discipline of intellect doubtless seemed, to Van
Buren's precise and orderly mind, eminent qualifications
for the first office in the land. Adams at this time, by
a coincidence not inexplicable, thought highly of Van
Buren. He entered in his diary a remark of his own,
in February, 1825, that Van Buren was " a man of great
talents and of good principles; but he had suffered
them to be too much warped by party spirit." This

92 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
from an Adams may be taken as extreme praise. It is
pretty certain that if Van Buren had reprehensibly
shifted his position from Adams to Crawford, we should
find a record of it in the vast treasure-house of damna
tions which Adams left. Nor is there good reason to
suppose that Van Buren was influenced by tlie nomina
tion whicli Crawford's friends in Georgia gave him in
1824 for the vice-presidency. This showed that New
York had already surrendered her favorite " son to the
nation ; " he was now definitely to be counted a power
in national politics, where he was known as the " Al
bany director." Crawford's enemies in Georgia, the
Clarkites, ridiculed this nomination with the coarse and
silly abuse which active politicians to this day are al
ways ready to use in their cynical under-estimate of
popular intelligence, — abuse which they are by and by
pretty sure to be glad to forget. Van Buren was pic
tured as half man and half cat, half fox and half monkey,
half snake and half mink. He was dubbed " Blue
Whiskey Van " and " Little Van." The Clarkites, being
only a minority in the Georgia assembly, delighted to
vote for him as their standing candidate for door
keeper and the like humbler positions.
New York was greatly disturbed through 1824 over
the presidency. Its politics were in tlie position de
scribed by Senator Cobb, one of Crawford's Georgia
supporters. " Could we hit upon a few great principles,"
he wrote home from Washington in January, 1825,
" and unite their support with that of Crawford, we
should succeed beyond doubt." But the great princi
ples were hard to find. The people and tlie greater
politicians were therefore swayed by personal prefer
ences, without strong reason for either choice ; and the

ELECTION OF 1824. 93
lesser politicians were simply watching to see how the
tide ran. Adams was the most natural choice of the
New York Republicans. The South had had the presi
dency for six terms. His early secession from the
Federalists ; his aid in solidifying the Republican sen
timent at the North ; his support of Jefferson in the
patriotic embargo struggle ; his long, eminent, and fruit
ful services ; and his place of secretary of state, from
which Madison and Monroe had in turn been promoted
to the presidency, — all these commended him to north
ern Republicans as a proper candidate.
De Witt Clinton admired and supported General Jack
son. In 1819 the latter had at a dinner in Tammany
Hall amazed and affronted the former's Bucktail ene
mies by giving as his toast, " De Witt Clinton, the en
lightened statesman and governor of the great and
patriotic state of New York." In January, 1824, Clinton
was the victim of a political outrage which illustrated
the harsh partisanship then ruling in New York politics,
and may well have determined the choice of president.
Clinton had retired from the governor's chair ; but he
still held the honorary and unpaid office of canal com
missioner, to which he brought distinguished honor but
which brought none to him, and whose importance he
more than any other man had created. The Crawford
men in the legislature feared a combination of the men
of the new People's Party with the Clintonians on the
presidential question. Clinton seemed at the time an
unpopular character. To embarrass the People's Party,
Crawford's enemies suddenly, and just before the rising
of the legislature, offered a resolution removing him
from the canal commissionership. The People's Party,
it was thought, by opposing the resolution, would incur

94 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
popular dislike through their alliance with the few and
unpopular Clintonians ; while by supporting the resolu
tion they would forfeit the support of the latter upon
which they relied. In either case the Crawford men
would apparently profit by the trick. The People's
Party men, including those favoring Adams for presi
dent, at once seized the wrong horn of the dilemma, and
voted for Clinton's removal, which was thus carried by
an almost unanimous vote. But the people themselves
were underrated ; the outrage promptly restored Clinton
to popular favor. In spite of the resistance of the poli
ticians, he was, in the fall of 1824, elected by a large
majority to the governor's seat, to which, or to any great
office, it had been supposed he could never return ; al
though at the same time and upon the same ticket one
of those who had voted for his removal was chosen
lieutenant-governor. Van Buren was no party to this
removal, although his political friends at Albany were
the first movers in the scheme. He himself was far-
sighted enough to see the probable effect of so gross and
indecent a use of political power. Nor was he so relent
less a partisan as to remember in unfruitful vengeance
Clinton's own proscriptive conduct, or to remove the
latter from an honorary seat which belonged to him
above all other men. By this silly blunder Clinton was
again raised to deserved power, which he held until his
death. The popular outburst consequent upon Clinton's re
moval in January, 1824, made it very dangerous for
the Bucktails to leave to the people in the fall the choice
of presidential electors. The rise of the People's Party
for a time seriously threatened Van Buren's influence.
Until 1824 the presidential electors of New York had

THE ALBANY REGENCY. 95
been chosen by its legislature. The opponents of Craw
ford and Van Buren, fearing that the latter 's superior
political skill would more easily capture the legislature
in November, 1824, raised at the legislative elections of
1823 a cry against the Albany Regency, and demanded
that presidential electors should be chosen directly by the
people. The Regency, popularly believed to have been
founded by Van Buren, consisted of a few able follow
ers of his, residing or in office at Albany. They were
also called the " conspirators." Chief among them were
William L. Marcy, the comptroller ; Samuel A. Tal-
cott, the attorney-general ; Benjamin F. Butler, then
district attorney of Albany county ; Edwin Croswell,
the state printer ; Roger Skinner, the United States
district judge ; and Benjamin Knower, the state treas
urer. Later there joined the Regency, Silas Wright,
Azariah C. Flagg, Thomas W. Olcott, and Charles E.
Dudley. Its members were active, skillful, shrewd pol
iticians ; and they were much more. They were men
of strong political convictions, holding and observing a
high standard for the public service, and of undoubted
personal integrity. In 1830 John A. Dix gave as a
chief reason for accepting office at Albany that he
should there be " one of the Regency." His son, Dr.
Morgan Dix, describes their aggressive honesty, their
refusal " to tolerate in those whom they could control
what their own fine sense of honor did not approve ; "
and he quotes a remark made to him by Thurlow Weed,
their long and most formidable enemy, " that he had
never known a body of men who possessed so much
power and used it so well." In his Memoirs, Weed
describes their " great ability, great industry, indomita
ble courage." Two at least of the original members,

96 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Marcy and Butler, afterwards justly rose to national
distinction. Even to our own day, the Albany Regency
has been a strong and generally a sagacious influence in
its party. John A. Dix, Horatio Seymour, Dean Rich
mond, and Samuel J. Tilden long directed its policy ;
and from the chief seat in its councils the late secretary
of the treasury, Daniel Manning, was chosen in 1885.
In November, 1823, the People's Party elected only a
minority of the legislature ; but many of the Democrats
were committed to the support of an electoral law, and
the movement was clearly popular. A just, though
possibly an insufficient objection to the law was its pro
posal of a great change in anticipation of a particular
election whose candidates were already before the pub
lic. But there was no resort to frank argument. Its
indirect defeat was proposed by the Democratic man
agers, and accomplished with the cooperation of many
supporters of Adams and Clay. A bill was reported
in the assembly, where the Regency was in a minority,
giving the choice of the electors to the people directly,
but cunningly requiring a majority instead of a plu
rality vote to elect. If there were no majority, then the
choice was to be left to the legislature. The Adams
and Clay men were unwilling to let a plurality elect, lest
in the uncertain state of public feeling some other can
didate might be at the head of the poll ; and they were
probably now quite as confident as the Bucktails, and
with more reason, of their strength upon joint ballot in
the legislature. Divided as the people of New York
were between the four presidential candidates, it was
well known that this device would really give them no
choice. The consideration of the electoral law was
postponed in the senate upon a pretense of objection to

ELECTION OF 1824. 97
the form of the bill, and with insincere protestations of
a desire to pass it. The outcome of all this was that in
the election of November, 1824, the Democrats were
punished at the polls both for the wanton attack on
Clinton and for their unprincipled treatment of the
electoral bill. The Regency got no more than a small
minority in the legislature ; and De Witt Clinton, as has
been said, was chosen governor by a great majority.
Crawford's supporters at Washington believed that in
a congressional caucus he would have a larger vote than
any other candidate. His opponents, in the same belief,
refused to join in a caucus, in spite of the cry that their
refusal was a treason to old party usage. The Repub
licans at Albany, probably upon Van Buren's advice, had
in April, 1823, declared in favor of a caucus, but without
effect. Two thirds of Congress would not assent. At
last in February, 1824, a caucus was called, doubtless in
the hope that many who had refused their assent would,
finding the caucus inevitable, attend through force of
party habit. But of the 261 members of Congress, only
66 attended ; and they were chiefly from New York,
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. In the caucus
62 voted for Crawford for president and 57 for Albert
Gallatin for vice-president. A cry was soon raised
against the latter as a foreigner ; so that in spite of his
American residence of forty-five years, and his invalua
ble services to the country and to the Republican party
through nearly all this period, he felt compelled to with
draw. The failure of the caucus almost destroyed Craw
ford's chances, though Van Buren steadily kept up
courage. A few days later he wrote a confidential let
ter complaining of the subserviency and ingratitude of

98 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the non-attendants, who had " partaken largely of the
favor of the party ; " but despondency, he said, was a
weakness with which he was but little annoyed, and if
New York should be firm and promptly explicit, the
election would be substantially settled. But New York
was neither firm nor promptly explicit. Its electoral
vote was in doubt until the meeting of the legislature in
November. The Adams and Clay forces then united,
securing 31 out of the 36 electors, although one of the 31
seems finally to have voted for Jackson. Five Craw
ford electors were chosen with the help of the Adams
men, who wished to keep Clay at the foot of the poll of
presidential electors, and thus prevent his eligibility as
one of the highest three in the house of representatives.
This device of the Adams men may have deprived Clay
of the presidency. Thus Van Buren's New York cam
paign met defeat even in the legislature, where his friends
had incurred odium rather than surrender the choice of
electors to the people, while his forces were being thor
oughly beaten by the people at the polls. In the elec
toral college Crawford received only 41 votes ; Adams
had 84 and Jackson 99 ; while Clay with only 37 was
fourth in the race, and could not therefore enter the con
test in the house. Georgia cast 9 electoral votes for
Van Buren as vice-president.
Van Buren did not figure in the choice of Adams in
the house by the coalition of Adams and Clay forces.
Nor does his name appear in the traditions of the
manceuvering at Washington in the winter of 1824-
1825, except in a vague and improbable story that he
wished, by dividing the New York delegation in the
house on the first vote by states, to prevent a choice, and
then to throw the votes of the Crawford members for

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 99
Adams, and thus secure the glory and political profit of
apparently electing him. He did not join in the cry
that Adams's election over Jackson was a violation of
the democratic principle. Nor was it a violation of
that principle. Jackson had but a minority of the pop
ular vote. Clay was in political principles and habits
nearer to Adams than Jackson. It was clearly Clay's
duty to take his strength to the candidate whose admin
istration was most likely to be agreeable to those opin
ions of his own which had made him a candidate. The
coalition was perfectly natural and legitimate ; and it
was wholesome in its consequences. It established the
Whig party ; it at least helped to establish the mod
ern Democratic party. That the acceptance of office
by Clay would injure him was probable enough. Coa
litions have always been unpopular in America and
England, when there has seemed to follow a division of
offices. They offend the strong belief in party govern
ment which hes deep in the political conscience of the '
two countries.
In the congressional session of 1824-1825 president-
making in the house stood in the way of everything else
of importance. Van Buren, with increasing experience,
was taking a greater and greater part in congressional
work. He joined far more frequently in the debates.
Again he spoke for the abolition of imprisonment for
debt, his colleague Rufus King differing from him on
this as be now seemed to differ from him on most dis
puted questions. King had not been reelected senator,
having declined to be a candidate, because, as he said,
of his advancing years. But doubtless Van Buren was
correct in telling John Quincy Adams, and the latter
was correct in believing, as his diary records, that King
could not have been rechosen.

100 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
At this session Van Buren took definite stand against
the schemes of internal improvement. On February
11, 1825, differing even from Benton, he voted against
topographical surveys in anticipation of public works by
the federal government. On February 23d he voted
against an appropriation of $150,000 to extend the
Cumberland road, while Jackson and Benton both voted
for it. So, also, the next day, when Jackson voted for
federal subscriptions to help construct the Delaware and
Chesapeake Canal and the Dismal Swamp Canal, Van
Buren was against him. Two days before the session
closed he voted against the bill for the occupation of
Oregon, Benton and Jackson voting in the affirmative.
Van Buren was one of the senatorial committee to re
ceive the new president upon his inauguration. It was
doubtless with the easy courtesy which was genuine with
him that he welcomed John Quincy Adams to the politi- ,
cal battle so disastrous to the latter.
When Congress met again, in December, 1825, Van n
Buren took a more important place than ever before in
national politics. He now became a true parliamentary
leader ; for he, like Clay, had the really parliamentary
career, which has rarely been seen in this country.
Dealing with amorphous political elements, Van Buren
created out of them a party to promote his policy, and
seized upon the vigor and popular strength of Jackson
to lead both party and policy to supreme power. While,
before 1825, Van Buren had not represented in the
senate a party distinctly constituted, from 1825 to 1828
he definitely led the formation of the modern Democratic
party. In this work he was^ clearly chief. From the
floor of the senate he addressed those of its members
inclined to his creed, and the sympathetic elements

PARTY LEADERSHIP. 101
throughout the country, and firmly guided and disci
plined them after that fashion which in very modern days
is best familiar to us in the parliamentary conflicts of
Great Britain. Since Van Buren wielded this organ
izing power, there has been in America no equally au
thoritative and decisive leadership from the senate ;
although he has since been surpassed there, not only as
an orator, but in other kinds of senatorial work. Seward
seemed to exercise a like leadership in the six years or
more preceding Lincoln's election ; but he was far more
the creature of the stupendous movement of the time than
he was its creator. So, in the two years before General
Grant's renomination in 1872, Charles Sumner and Carl
Schurz, speaking from the senate, created a new party
sentiment ; but the sentiment died in a " midsummer
madness " but for which our later political history might
have been materially different. In the interesting and
fruitful three years of Van Buren's senatorial opposi
tion, he showed the same qualities of firmness, supple
tact, and distinct political aims which had given him his
power in New York ; but all now upon a higher plane.
In December, 1825, Jackson was no longer in the
senate. His Tennessee friends had placed him there as
in a fitting vestibule to the White House ; but it seemed
as hard then as it has been since, to go from the senate
over the apparently broad and easy mile to the west on
Pennsylvania Avenue. So Jackson returned to the
Hermitage, to await, in the favorite American character
of Cincinnatus, the popular summons which he believed
to be only delayed. Van Buren, now thoroughly ac
quainted with the general, saw in him the strongest titu
lar leader of the opposition. It is pretty certain, how
ever, that Van Buren's preference was recent. The

102 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
" Albany Argus," a Van Buren paper, had but lately
declared that " Jackson has not a single feeling in com
mon with the Republican party, and makes the merit of
desiring the total extinction of it ; " while Jackson pa
pers had ridiculed Crawford's
" Shallow knaves with forms to mock us,
Straggling, one by one, to caucus."
It has been the tradition, carefully and doubtless sin
cerely begun by John Quincy Adams, and adopted by
most writers dealing with this period, that Adams met
his first Congress in a spirit which should have com
manded universal support ; and that it was a factious
opposition, cunningly led by Van Buren, which thwarted
his patriotic purposes. But this is an untrue account of
the second great party division in the United States.
The younger Adams succeeded to an administration
which had represented no party, or rather which had
represented a party now become so dominant as to
practically include the whole country. As president he
found himself able to promote opinions with a weighty
authority which he had not enjoyed while secretary of
state in an era of good feeling, and under a president
who was firm, even if gentle. Nor was it likely that
Adams, with his unrivalled experience, his resolute self-
reliance, and his aggressively patriotic feeling, would
fail to impress his own views upon the public service,
lest he might disturb a supposititious unanimity of sen
timent. His first message boldly sounded the notes of
party division. The second war with England was
well out'of the public mind ; and his old Federalist as
sociations, his belief in a strong, an active, a beneficent
federal government, his traditional dislike of what
seemed to him extreme democratic tendencies and con-

REESTABLISHMEXT OF PARTIES. 103
stitutional refinings away of necessary federal power, —
all these made him promptly and ably take an attitude
very different from that of his predecessors. The com
pliment was perfectly sincere which, in his inaugural
address, he had paid the Republican and Federalist
parties, saying of them that both had •¦ contributed
splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism,
and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and admin
istration " of the government. But it was idle for him
to suppose that the successors of these paities. although
from both had come his own supporters, and although, as
in his offer of the treasury to Crawford, he showed his
desire, even in the chief offices, to ignore political differ
ences, would remain united under him. if he espoused
causes upon which they widely differed. After recapit
ulating the tenets of American political faith, and show
ing that most discordant elements of pubhc opinion
were now blended into harmony, he was again perfectly
sincere in saying that only an effort of magnanimity
needed to be made, that individuals should discard
every remnant of rancor against each other. This ad
vice he was himself unable to follow ; and so were other
men. In his inaugural he distinctly adopted as his own
the policy of internal improvements by the federal gov
ernment, although he knew how wide and determined
had been the opposition to it. His own late chief.
Monroe, had pronounced the policy unconstitutional.
But he now told the people that the magnificence and
splendor of the pubhc works, the roads and aqueducts,
of Rome, were among the imperishable splendors of the
ancient republic. He asked to what single individual
our first national road had proved an injury. Of the
constitutional doubts which were raised, he said, with a

104 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
touch of the contempt of a practical administrator :
" Every speculative scruple will be solved by a practical
blessing." To the self-consecrated guardians of the
Constitution this was as corrupt as offers of largesses
to plebeians at Rome. In his first message he recom
mended again the policy of internal improvements, and
proposed the establishment of a national university.
Although he admitted the Constitution to be " a charter
of limited powers," he still intimated his opinion that
its powers might " be effectually brought into action by
laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, com
merce, and manufactures, the cultivation and encourage
ment of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the ad
vancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences,
ornamental and profound ; " and that to refrain from
exercising these powers for the benefit of the people
themselves, would be to hide the talent in the earth,
and a " treachery to the most sacred of trusts." Fur
ther, he now broached the novel project of the congress
at Panama, — a project surely doubtful enough to per
mit conscientious opposition.
All this was widely different from the contented mes- ^
sages of President Monroe. There was in these new
utterances a clear political diversion, marked not less by
the brilliant and restless genius of Henry Clay, now the
secretary of state, than by the president's consciousness
of his own strong and disciplined ability. Here was a
new policy formally presented by a new administration ;
and a formal and organized resistance was as sure to fol
low as effect to follow cause. Van Buren was soon at
the head of this inevitable opposition. It is difficult, at
least in the records of Congress, to find any evidence jus
tifying the long tradition that the opposition was factious

THE PANAMA MISSION. 105
or unworthy. It was doubtless a warfare, with its sur
prises, its skirmishes, and its pitched battles. Mistakes
of the adversary were promptly used. Debates were
not had simply to promote the formal business before
the house, but rather to reach the listening voters. But
all this belongs to parliamentary warfare. Nor is it in
consistent with most exalted aims and the most admi
rable performance of public business in a free country.
The greatest living master in the work of political re
form has described himself as an " old parliamentary
hand." Nor in the motions, the resolutions, the debates,
led by Van Buren during his three years of opposition,
can one find any device which Palmerston or Derby or
Gladstone in one forum, and Seward and even Adams
himself in his last and best years in another, have not
used with little punishment from disinterested and en
during criticism.
Immediately after Adams's inauguration Van Buren
voted for Clay's confirmation as secretary of state, while
Jackson and fourteen other senators, including Hayne,
voted to reject him, upon the unfounded story of Clay's
sale of the presidency to Adams for the office to which
he was now nominated. Van Buren's language and
demeanor towards the new administration were uni
formly becoming. He charged political but not per
sonal wrong-doing ; he made no insinuation of base
motives ; and his opposition throughout was the more
forcible for its very decorum.
The first great battle between the rapidly dividing
forces was over the Panama mission, a creation of
Clay's exuberant imagination. The president nomi
nated to the senate two envoys to an American congress
called by the new South American republics of Colum-

106 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
bia, Mexico, and Central America, and in which it was
proposed that Peru and Chile also should participate.
The congress was to be held at Panama, which, in the
extravagant rhetoric of some of the Republicans of the
South, would, if the world had to elect a capital, be
pointed out for that august destiny, placed as it was " in
the centre of the globe." Spain had not yet acknowl
edged the independence of her revolted colonies ; and it
was clear that the discussions of the congress must be
largely concerned with a mutual protection of American
nations which implied an attitude hostile to Spain.
Adams, in his message nominating the envoys, declared
that they were not to take part in deliberations of belli
gerent character, or to contract alliances or to engage in
any project importing hostility to any other nation. But
referring to the Monroe doctrine, Adams said that the
mission looked to an agreement between the nations rep
resented, that each would guard by its own means against
the establishment of any future European colony within
its borders ; and it looked also to an effort on the part
of the United States to promote religious liberty among
those intolerant republics. The decisive inducement, he
added, to join in the congress was to lay the foundation
of future intercourse with those states " in the broadest
principles of reciprocity and the most cordial feelings of
fraternal friendship."
This was vague enough. But when the diplomatic
papers were exhibited, it was plain that the southern re
publics proposed a congress looking to a close defensive
alliance, a sort of confederacy or Amphictyonic council
as Benton described it ; and that it was highly improb
able that the representatives from one country could
responsibly participate in the congress without most seri-

THE PANAMA MISSION. 107
ous danger of incurring obligations; or falling into pre
cisely the embarrassments which the well settled policy
of the United States had avoided. It was perfectly
agreeable to Adams, resolute and aggressive American
that he was, that his country should look indulgently
upon the smaller American powers, should stand at their
head, should counsel them in their difficulties with Euro
pean nations, and jealously take their side in those diffi
culties. To Clay's eager and enthusiastic mind there
was splendid allurement in the picture of a great leader
ship of America by the United States, an American sys
tem of nations, breathing the air of republicanism,
asserting a young and haughty independence of monar
chical Europe, and ready for opposition to its schemes.
In all this there has been fascination to many American
minds, which even in our own day we have seen in
fluence American diplomacy. But it was a step into
the entangling alliances against which American public
opinion had from Washington's day been set. When
Adams asked an appropriation for the expenses of the
mission, he told the house of representatives that he was
hardly sanguine enough to promise " all or even any of
the transcendent benefits to the human race which
warmed the conceptions of its first proposer," but that it
looked " to the melioration of the condition of man ; "
that it was congenial with the spirit which prompted
our own declaration of independence, which dictated
our first treaty with Prussia, and "which filled the
hearts and fired the souls of the immortal founders of
our revolution."
Such fanciful speculation the Republicans, led by Van
Buren, opposed with strong and heated protests, in tone
not unlike the Liberal protests of 1878 in England

108 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
against Disraeli's Jingo policy. In the secret session of
the senate Van Buren proposed resolutions against the
constitutionality of the mission, reciting that it was a
departure from our wise and settled policy ; that, for the
conference and discussion contemplated, our envoys al
ready accredited to the new republics were competent,
without becoming involved as members of the congress.
These resolutions, so the president at once wrote in his
opulent and invaluable diary, " are the fruit of the in
genuity of Martin Van Buren and bear the impress of
his character." The mission was, the opposition thus
insisted, unconstitutional ; a step enlarging the sphere
of the federal government ; a meddlesome and danger
ous interference with foreign nations ; and if it lay in
the course of a strong and splendid policy, it was still
part of a policy full of warlike possibilities almost sure
to drag us into old-world quarrels. Clay's " American
system," Hayne said in the senatorial debate, meant
restriction and monopoly when applied to our domestic
policy, and " entangling alliances " when applied to our
foreign policy.
Van Buren's own speech was very able. He did not
touch upon the liberality of the Spanish Americans
towards races other than the Caucasian, which peered
out of Hayne's speech as one of the southern objections.
After using the wise and seemingly pertinent language
of Washington against such foreign involvements, Van
Buren skillfully referred to the very Prussian treaty
which the president had cited in his message to the
house. The elder Adams, the senate was reminded,
had departed from the rule commended by his great
predecessor. He had told his first Congress that we
were indeed to keep ourselves distinct and separate

THE PANAMA MISSION. 109
from the political system of Europe " if we can," but
that we needed early and continual information of po
litical projects in contemplation ; that however we might
consider ourselves, others would consider us a weight in
the balance of power in Europe, which never could be
forgotten or neglected ; and that it was natural for us,
studying to be neutral, to consult with other nations
engaged in the same study. The younger Adams had
been, Van Buren pointed out, appointed upon the Berlin
mission to carry out these heretical suggestions of his
father. The Republicans of that day had vigorously
opposed the mission ; and for their opposition were de
nounced as a faction, and lampooned and vilified " by
all the presses supporting and supported by the govern
ment, and a host of malicious parasites generated by its
patronage." But, covered with Washington's mantle,
the Republicans of '98 had sought to strangle at its
birth this political hydra, this first attempt since the
establishment of the government to subject our political
affairs to the terms and conditions of political connection
with a foreign nation. Probably anticipating the suc
cess of the administration senators by a majority of five,
Van Buren ingeniously reminded the senate that those
early Republicans had failed with a majority of four
against them. But it was to be remembered, he con
tinued, that after a few more such Federalist victories
the ruin of Federalism had been complete. Its doc
trines had speedily received popular condemnation.
The new administration under the presidency of that
early minister to Prussia had returned to the practices
of the Federalist party, to which Van Buren with cour
teous indirection let it be remembered that the president
had originally belonged. Except a guaranty to Spain

110 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of its dominions beyond the Mississippi, which Jefferson
had offered as part of the price of a cession of the terri
tory between that river and the Mobile, the administra
tions of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had strictly
followed the admonition of Washington : " Peace, com
merce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none." If we were asked to form a con
nection with European states, such as was proposed with
the southern republics, Van Buren argued, no American
would approve it ; and there was no sound reason, there
was nothing but merely fanciful sentiment, to induce us
to distinguish between the states of Europe and those of
South America. If there were a Holy Alliance in mo
narchical Europe, it was a hollow glory, inconsistent with
a sober view of American interests, to create a holy
alliance in republican America. It might indeed be
easy to agree upon speculative opinions with our younger
neighbors at the south ; but we should be humiliated in
their eyes, and difficulties would at once arise, when
means of promoting those opinions were proposed, and
we were then to say we could talk but not fight. The
Monroe doctrine was not to be withdrawn ; but we
ought to be left free to act upon it without the burden
of promises, express or implied. The proposed Con
gress was a specious and disguised step towards an
American confederacy, full of embarrassment, full of
danger ; and the first step should be firmly resisted.
Such was the outline of Van Buren's argument ; and
its wisdom has commanded a general assent from that
day. Dickerson of New Jersey very well phrased sound
American sentiment when he said in the debate that,
next to a passion for war, he dreaded a passion for

THE PANAMA MISSION. Ill
diplomacy. The majestic declamation of Webster, his
pathetic picture of a South America once oppressed
but now emancipated, his eloquent cry that if it were
weak to feel that he was an American it was a weakness
from which he claimed no exemption, — all this met a
good deal of exuberant response through the country.
But it failed, as in our history most such efforts have
failed, to convince the practical judgment of Americans,
a judgment never long dazzled or inspired by the pic
ture of an America wielding enormous or dominant in
ternational power. The Panama congress met in the
absence of the American representatives, who had been
delayed. It made a treaty of friendship and perpetual
confederation to which all other American powers might
accede within a year. The congress was to meet annu
ally in time of common war, and biennially in times of
peace. But it never met again. The " centre of the
world " was too far away from its very neighbors.
Even South American republics could not be kept to
gether by effusions of republican glory and international
love. In spite of its victory in Congress, Adams's adminis
tration had plainly opened with a serious mistake. The
opposition was perfectly legitimate ; and although in the
debate it was spoken of as unorganized, it certainly
came out of the debate a pretty definite party. Before
the debate Adams had written in his diary, and truly,
that it was the first subject upon which a great effort
had been made " to combine the discordant elements of
the Crawford and Jackson and Calhoun men into a
united opposition against the administration." Although
some of the southern opposition was heated by a dislike
of states in which negroes were to be administrators,

112 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the division wras not at all upon a North and South line.
With Van Buren voted Findlay of Pennsylvania, Chan
dler and Holmes of Maine, Woodbury of New Hamp
shire, Dickerson of New Jersey, Kane of Illinois, making
seven northern with twelve southern senators. Against
Van Buren were eight senators from slave states, Barton
of Missouri, Bouligny and Johnston of Louisiana, Cham
bers of Alabama, Clayton and Van Dyke of Delaware,
Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, and Smith of Mary
land. It was an incipient but a true party division.
Throughout this session of 1824-1825 Van Buren was
very industrious in the senate, and nearly, if not quite,
its most conspicuous member, if account be not taken of
Randolph's furious and blazing talents. Calhoun was
only in the chair as vice-president ; the great duel be
tween him and Van Buren not yet begun. Clay was at
the head of the cabinet, and Webster in the lower house.
Jackson was in Tennessee, watching with angry confi
dence, and aiding the rising tide with the political dexter
ity in which he was by no means a novice. Having only
a minority with him, and with Benton frequently against
him, Van Buren gradually drilled his party into opposi
tion on internal improvements, — a most legitimate and
important issue. In December, 1825, he threw down
the gauntlet to the administration, or rather took up its
gauntlet. He proposed a resolution " that Congress does
not possess the power to make roads and canals within
the respective states." At the same time he asked for a
committee to prepare a constitutional amendment on the
subject like his earlier proposal, saying with a touch of
very polite partisanship that though the president's recent
declaration, that the power clearly existed in the Consti
tution, might diminish, it did not obviate, the necessity

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 113
of an amendment. In March, April, and May, 1826, he
opposed appropriations of $110,000 to continue the
Cumberland road, and of $50,000 for surveys prepara
tory to roads and canals, and subscriptions to stock of
the Louisville and Portland Canal Company and of the
Dismal Swamp Canal Company. AU these were dis
tinctly administration measures.
Although the principles advanced by Van Buren in
this part of his opposition have not since obtained com
plete and unanimous affirmance, they have at least
commanded so large, honorable, and prolonged support,
that his attitude can with little good sense be considered
one of factious difference. Especially wise was he on
the question of government subscriptions to private
canal companies. Upon one of these bills he said, in
May, 1826, that he did not believe that the government
had the constitutional power to make canals or to grant
money for them ; but he added that, if he believed other
wise, the grant of money should, he thought, be made
directly, and not by forming a partnership between the
government and a private corporation. In 1824 he had
voted for the road from Missouri to New Mexico ; but
this stood, as the Pacific railway later stood, upon a
different principle, the former as a road entirely without
state limits and a means of international commerce, and
the latter a road chiefly through federal territories, and
of obvious national importance in the war between the
North and the South.
The proposed amendment of the Constitution to pre
vent the election of president by a vote of states in the
house of representatives, upon which Van Buren had
spoken in 1824, had now acquired new interest. Van
Buren seized Adams's election in the house as a good

114 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
subject for political warfare ; and it was clearly a legiti
mate topic for party discussion and division. Van
Buren would have been far more exalted in his notions
of political agitation than the greatest of political leaders,
had he not sought to use the popular feeling, that the
American will had been subverted by the decision of
the house, to promote his plan of constitutional reform.
He told the senate in May, 1826, that he was satisfied
that there was no one point on which the people of the
United States were more perfectly united than upon the
propriety of taking the choice of president from the
house. But Congress was not ready for the change ;
however much in theory was to be said against the
clumsy system which nearly made Burr president in
1801, x and which produced in 1825 a choice which
Adams himself declared that he would vacate if the Con
stitution provided a mode of doing it.
As chairman of the judiciary committee, Van Buren
participated in a most laborious effort to enlarge the
federal judiciary. Upon the question whether the
judges of the supreme court should be relieved from
circuit duty, he made an elaborate and very able speech
upon the negative side. The opportunity arose for a
disquisition on the danger of centralized government,
and for a renewal of the criticisms he had made in the
New York constitutional convention upon the common
and absurd picture of judges as dwellers in an atmos
phere above all human infirmity, and beyond the reach
1 The more conspicuous difficulty in 1801 arose from the voting
by each elector for two candidates without distinguishing which
he preferred for president and which for vice-president. But the
awkwardness and not improbable injustice of a choice by the
house was also well illustrated in February, 1801.

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 115
of popular impression. Van Buren said, what all sen
sible men know, that in spite of every effort, incompe
tent men wdl sometimes reach the judicial bench. If
always sitting among associates in banc, their incompe
tence would be shielded, he said, by their abler brethren.
But if regularly compelled to perform their great duties
alone and in the direct face of the people, and not in
the isolation of Washington, there was another con
straint, Van Buren said very democratically and with
substantial truth. " There is a power in public opinion
in this country," he declared, " and I thank God for it,
for it is the most honest and best of all powers, which
will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to
hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes
of his fellow-citizens." He added an expression to
which he would afterwards have given most narrow
interpretation. The supreme court stood, he said, " as
the umpire between the conflicting powers of the general
and state governments." There was in the speech very
plain though courteous intimation of that jealousy with
which Van Buren's party examined the political utter
ances of the court from Jefferson's time until, years
after Van Buren's retirement, the party found it con
venient to receive from the court, with a sanctimonious
air of veneration, the most odious and demoralizing
of all its expressions of political opinion. In arguing
for a close and democratic relation between the judges
and the different parts of the country, and against their
dignified and exalted seclusion at Washington which
was so agreeable to many patriotic Americans, Van
Buren said, in a passage which is fairly characteristic of
his oratorical manner : —
" A sentiment I had almost said of idolatry for the

116 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
supreme court has grown up, which claims for its mem
bers an almost entire exemption from the fallibilities of
our nature, and arraigns with unsparing bitterness the
motives of all who have the temerity to look with in
quisitive eyes into this consecrated sanctuary of the law.
So powerful has this sentiment become, such strong
hold has it taken upon the press of this country, that it
requires not a little share of firmness in a public man,
however imperious may be his duty, to express senti
ments that conflict with it. It is nevertheless correct,
sir, that in this, as in almost every other case, the truth
is to be found in a just medium of the subject. To so
much of the high-wrought eulogies (which the fashion
of the times has recently produced in such great abun
dance) as allows to the distinguished men who now hold
in their hands that portion of the administration of pub
lic affairs, talents of the highest order, and spotless in
tegrity, I cheerfully add the very humble testimony of
my unqualified assent. That the uncommon man who
now presides over the court, and who I hope may long
continue to do so, is, in all human probability, the ablest
judge now sitting upon any judicial bench in the world,
I sincerely believe. But to the sentiment which claims
for the judges so great a share of exemption from the
feelings that govern the conduct of other men, and for
the court the character of being the safest depository of
political power, I do not subscribe. I have been brought
up in an opposite faith, and all my experience has con
firmed me in its correctness. In my legislation upon
this subject I will act in conformity to those opinions.
I believe the judges of the supreme court (great and
good men as I cheerfully concede them to be) are sub
ject to the same infirmities, influenced by the same pas-

ABUSES OF PATRONAGE. 117
sions, and operated upon by the same causes, that good
and great men are in other situations. I believe they
have as much of the esprit de corps as other men.
Those who think 1 otherwise form an erroneous estimate
of human nature ; and if they act upon that estimate,
will, soon or late, become sensible of their delusion."
At this session, upon the election by the senate of-
their temporary president, Van Buren received the com
pliment of four votes. In May, 1826, he participated in
Benton's report on the reduction of executive patronage,
a subject important enough, but there crudely treated.
The report strongly exhibited the jealousy of executive
power which had long been characteristic of American
political thought. By describing the offices within the
president's appointment, their numbers and salaries, and
the expense of the civil list, a striking picture was drawn,
and in that way a striking picture can always be drawn,
of the power of any great executive. By imagining
serious abuses of power, the picture was darkened with
the dangers of patronage, as it could be darkened to
day. The country was urged to look forward to the
time when public revenue would be doubled, when the
number of public officers would be quadrupled, when
the president's nomination would carry any man through
the senate, and his recommendation any measure through
Congi'ess. Names, the report said, were nothing. The
first Roman emperor was styled Emperor of the Repub
lic ; and the late French emperor had taken a like title.
The American president, it was hinted, might by his
enormous patronage and by subsidies to the press, nomi
nally for official advertisements, subject us to a like
1 Gales and Seaton's Debates in Congress give here the word
" act " instead of " think," — but erroneously, I assume.

118 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
danger. But the usefulness of such pictures as these
of Benton and Van Buren depends upon the practical
lesson taught by the artists. If there were disadvan
tages and dangers which our ancestors rightly feared, in
placing the federal patronage under the sole control of
the president, so there are disadvantages and dangers
in scattering it by laws into various hands, or in its sub
jection to the traditions of " senatorial courtesy."
Six bills accompanied the report. Two of them pro
posed the appointment of military cadets and midship
men, one of each from every congressional district ; and
this was afterwards done, giving a petty patronage to
national legislators which public sentiment has but re
cently begun to compel them to use upon ascertained
merit rather than in sheer favoritism. A third bill pro
posed that military and naval commissions should run
" during good behavior " and not " during the pleasure
of the president." A fourth sought with extraordinary
unwisdom to correct the old but ever new abuse of
government advertising, by depriving the responsible
executive of its distribution and by placing it in the
hands of congressmen, perhaps the very worst to hold
it. Another required senatorial confirmation for post
masters whose emoluments exceeded an amount to be
fixed. The remaining bill was very wise, and a natural
sequence of Benton's not untruthful though too highly
colored picture. The law of 1820, which fixed at four
years the terms of many subordinate officers, was to be
modified so as to limit the terms only for officers who
had not satisfactorily accounted for public moneys. It
has been commonly said that this act was a device of
Crawford, when secretary of the treasury, more easily to
use federal patronage for his presidential canvass. But

PATRONAGE. 119
there seems to be no sufficient reason to doubt that Ben
ton's and Van Buren's committee correctly stated the
intent of the authors of the law to have been no more
than that the officer should be definitely compelled by
the expiration of his term to render his accounts and
have them completely audited ; that it was not intended
that some other person should succeed an officer not
found in fault ; and that the practice of refusing re-com
missions to deserving officers was an unexpected perver
sion of the law. The committee simply proposed to
accomplish the true intent of the law. The same bill
required the president to state his reasons for removals
of officers when he nominated their successors. The
proposals in the last two bills were very creditable to
Benton and Van Buren and their coadjutors. It is
greatly to be lamented that they were not safely made
laws while patronage was dispensed conscientiously and
with sincere public spirit by the younger Adams, so far
as he could control it. The biographer has more par
ticularly to lament that during the twelve years of Van
Buren's executive influence he seemed daunted by the
difficulties of voluntarily putting in practice the admira
ble rules which as a senator he would have imposed by
law upon those in executive stations. It was only three
years after this report, that the great chieftain, whom
Benton and Van Buren helped to the presidency, dis
credited all its reasoning by proposing " a general ex
tension " of the law whose operation they would have
thus limited. The committee also proposed by constitu
tional amendment to forbid the appointment to office of
any senator or representative until the end of the presi
dential term in which he had held his seat. This was
also one of the reforms whose necessity seems plain

120 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
enough to the reformer, until in office he discovers the
conveniences and perhaps the public uses of the practice
he has wished to abolish.
In the short session of 1826-1827, little of any im
portance was done. Van Buren refused to vote with
Benton to abolish the duty on salt, a vote doubtless in
fluenced by the apparent interest of New York, which
itself taxed the production of salt to aid the state in its
internal improvements, and which probably could not
maintain the tax if foreign salt were admitted free.
Van Buren did not, indeed, avow, nor did he disavow
this reason. He was content to point out that the great
canals of New York were of national use, though their
expense was borne by his state alone. He voted at this
session for lower duties on teas, coffees, and wines. He
did not join Benton and others in their narrow unwill
ingness to establish a naval academy. Van Buren's
temper was eminently free from raw prejudices against
disciplined education. The death of one of the envoys
to the Panama congress enabled him again at this ses
sion to renew his opposition by a vote against filling the
vacancy. Another attempt was made to pass a bank- '
ruptcy bill ; but again it failed through the natural and
wholesome dislike of increasing the powers of the fed
eral judiciary, and the preference that state courts and
laws should perform all the work to which they were
reasonably competent. The bill did not even pass the
senate, until by Van Buren's opposition it had been re
duced to a bill establishing a summary and speedy
remedy for creditors against fraudulent or failing trad
ers, instead of a general system of bankruptcy, volun
tary and involuntary, for all persons. Van Buren's
speech against the insolvency features of the bill was

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 121
made on January 23, 1827, only a few days before his
successor as senator was to be chosen. But the thought
less popularity which often accompanies sweeping prop
ositions of relief to insolvents did not move him from
resolute and successful opposition to what he called (and
later experience has most abundantly justified him) " an
injurious extension of the patronage of the federal
government, and an insupportable enlargement of the
range of its judicial power." On February 24, 1827,
a few days after his reelection, he delivered a lucid and
elaborate speech on the long-perplexing topic of the
restrictions upon American trade with the British colo
nies, a subject to be afterwards closely connected with
his political fortunes.
The agitation of the coming presidential election left
little of its turbulence upon the records of the long
session from December, 1827, to May, 1828. Van
Buren was doubtless busy enough out of the senate
chamber. But he was still a very busy legislator. He
spoke at least twice in favor of the bill to abolish im
prisonment under judgments rendered by federal courts
for debts not fraudulently incurred, the bill which Rich
ard M. Johnson had pressed so long and so honorably;
and at last he saw the bill pass in January, 1828. He
spoke often upon the technical bill to regulate fed
eral judicial process. Again he voted, and again in a
minority and in opposition to Benton and other politi
cal friends, against bills to extend the Cumberland road
and for other internal improvements. Besides the
usual bills to appropriate lands for roads and canals,
and to subscribe to the stock of private canal companies,
a step further was now taken in the constitutional change
led by Adams and Clay. Public land was voted for

122 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the benefit of Kenyon College, in the state of Ohio.
There was plainly intended to be no limit to federal
beneficence. In this session Van Buren again rushed to
defend the salt duty so dear to New York.
At the same session was passed the " tariff of abomi
nations," a measure so called from the oppressive provi
sions loaded on it by its enemies, but in spite of which
it passed. Van Buren, though he sat still during the
debate, cast for the bill a protectionist vote, with Benton
and several others whose convictions were against it,
but who yielded to the supposed public sentiment or the
peremptory instructions of their states, or who did not
yet dare to make upon the tariff a presidential issue.
The votes of the senators were sectionally thus dis
tributed : For the tariff, — New England, 6 ; middle
states, 8 ; Louisiana, 1 ; and the western states, 11 ; in
all 26. Against it, — New England, 5 ; Maryland, 2 ;
southern states, 13 ; and Tennessee, 1. It was a vic
tory of neither political party, but of the middle and
western over the southern states. Only three negative
votes were cast by senators who had voted against the
administration on the Panama question in 1826 ; while
of the votes for the tariff, fourteen were cast by sena
tors who had then opposed the administration. Of the
senators in favor of the tariff, six, Van Buren, Benton,
Dickerson of New Jersey, Eaton of Tennessee (Jack
son's close friend), Kane of Illinois, and Rowan of
Kentucky, had in 1826 been in opposition, while ten of
those voting against the tariff had then been with them.1
The greater number of the opposition senators were
therefore against the tariff, though very certainly the
1 The comparison cannot of course be complete, as some who
were senators in 1826 were not senators in 1S28.

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 123
votes of Van Buren, Benton, and Eaton prevented the
opposition from taking strong ground or suffering in
jury on the tariff in the election. Van Buren's silence
in this debate of 1828 indicated at least a temper now
hesitant. But he and his colleague, Sanford, according
to the theory then popular that senators were simply
delegated agents of their states, were constrained, what
ever were their opinions, by a resolution of the legisla
ture of New York passed almost unanimously in Janu-
v ary, 1828. It stated a sort of ultima ratio of protec
tion, commanding the senators " to make every proper
exertion to effect such a revision of the tariff as will
afford a sufficient protection to the growers of wool,
hemp, and flax, and the manufacturers of iron, woolens,
and every other article, so far as the same may be con
nected with the interest of manufactures, agriculture,
and commerce." The senators might perhaps have said
to this that, if they were to protect not only iron and
woolens but also every other article, they ought not to
levy prohibitory duties on some and not on other arti
cles ; that if they were equally to protect manufactures,
agriculture, and commerce, they could do no better
than to let natural laws alone. But the silly instruction
said what no intelligent protectionist means ; his system
disappears with an equality of privilege ; that equality
must, he argues, at some point yield to practical neces
sities. Van Buren took the resolution, however, in its
intended meaning, and not literally. Hayne concluded
his fine struggle against the bill by a solemn protest
upon its passage that it was a partial, unjust, and uncon
stitutional measure.
At this session Van Buren, upon the consideration of
a rule giving the vice-president power to call to order

124 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
for words spoken in debate, made perhaps the most
elaborate of his purely political speeches. It was a
skillful and not unsuccessful effort to give philosophical
significance to the coming struggle at the polls. He
spoke of "that collision, which seems to be inseparable
from the nature of man, between the rights of the few
and the many," of "those never-ceasing conflicts be
tween the advocates of the enlargement and concentra
tion of power on the one hand, and its limitation and
distribution on the other." The one party, he said, had '*
" grown out of a deep and settled distrust of the people
and of the states ; " the other, out of " a jealousy of
power justified by all human experience." The advo
cates of " a strong government," having been defeated
in much that they sought in the federal convention, had
since, he said, " been at work to obtain by construction
what was not included or intended to be included in the
grant." He declared the incorporation of the United
States Bank to be the " great pioneer of constitutional
encroachments." Thence had followed those famous
usurpations, the alien and sedition laws of the older
Adams's administration. Then came the doctrine that
the house of representatives was bound to make all ap
propriations necessary to carry out a treaty made by
the president and senate ; and then " the bold avowal
that it belonged to the president alone to decide upon
the propriety " of a foreign mission, and that it was for
the senate only " to pass on the fitness of the individuals
selected as ministers." He lamented the single lapse of
Madison, " one of the most, if not the most, accomplished
statesman that our country has produced," in signing
the bill to incorporate the new bank. The younger
Adams, Van Buren declared, had " gone far beyond

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 125
the utmost latitude of construction " theretofore claimed ;
and he added a reference, decorous enough but neither
fair nor gracious, to Adams's own early entrance in the
public service upon a mission unauthorized by Congress.
It was now demonstrated, he said, that the result of the
presidential choice of 1825 " was not only the restora
tion of the men of 1798, but of the principles of that
day." The spirit of encroachment had, it was true,
become more wary ; but it was no more honest. The
system had then been coercion ; now it was seduction.
Then unconstitutional powers had been exercised to
force submission ; now they were assumed to purchase
golden opinions from the people with their own means.
Isolated acts of the Federalists had not produced an un
yielding exclusion from the confidence of a majority of
the people, for more than a quarter of a century, of large
masses of men distinguished for talent and private
worth. The great and glorious struggle had proceeded
for something deeper, an opposition to the principle of
an extension of the constructive powers of the govern
ment. Without harsh denunciation, and by suggestion
rather than assertion, the administration of John Quincy
Adams was grouped with the administration of his
father. The earlier administration had deserved and
met the retribution of a Republican victory. The later
one now deserved and ought soon to meet a like fate.
The issue was clearly made. The parties were
formed. The result rested with the people. On Feb
ruary 6, 1827, Van Buren had been reelected senator by
a large majority in both houses of the New York legisla
ture. In his brief letter of acceptance he said no more
on public questions than that it should be his " constant
and zealous endeavor to protect the remaining rights re-

126 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
served to the states by the Federal Constitution," and " to
restore those of which they have been divested by con
struction." This had been the main burden of his politi
cal oratory from the inauguration of Adams. There
are many references in books to doubts of Van Buren's
position until 1827 ; but such doubts are not justified
in the face of his prompt and perfectly explicit utter
ances in the session of 1825-1826, and from that time
steadily on.
De Witt Clinton's death on February 11, 1828, re
moved from the politics of New York one of its most
illustrious men, a statesman of the first rank, able and
passionate, and of the noblest aspirations. The under
standing reached between him and Van Buren in 1826,
for the support of Jackson, had not produced a complete
coalition. In spite of the union on Jackson, the Buck-
tails nominated and Van Buren loyally supported for
governor against Clinton in 1826, William B. Rochester,
a warm friend and supporter of Adams and Clay, and
one of the members of the very Panama mission against
which so strenuous a fight had been made. Clinton was
reelected by a small majority. In a meeting at Wash
ington after his death, Van Buren declared the triumph
of his talents and patriotism to be monuments of high
and enduring fame. He was glad that, though in their
public careers there had been " collisions of opinions and
action at once extensive, earnest, and enduring," they
had still been " wholly free from that most venomous
and corroding of all poisons, personal hatred." These
collisions were now " turned to nothing and less than
nothing." Speaking of his respect for Clinton's name
and gratitude for his signal services, Van Buren con
cluded with this striking tribute : " For myself, so

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 127
strong, so sincere, and so engrossing is that feeling, that
I, who whilst living, never — no, never, envied him any
thing, now that he has fallen, am greatly tempted to
envy him his grave with its honors."
With this session of 1827-1828 ended Van Buren's
senatorial career and his parliamentary leadership.
From 1821 to 1828 the senate was not indeed at its
greatest glory. Webster entered it only in December,
1827. Hayne and Benton with Van Buren are to us its
most distinguished members, if Randolph's rather inde
scribable and useless personality may be excepted. But
to neither of them has the opinion of later times assigned
a place in the first rank of orators, although Hayne's
tariff speech in 1824 deserves to be set with the greatest
of American political orations. The records and speeches
of the senate in which Van Buren sat have come to us
with fine print and narrow margins ; they have not con
tributed to the collected works of great men. But the
senate was then an able body. The principles of Ameri
can politics were never more clearly stated. When the
books are well dusted, and one has broken through the
starched formality in which were set the speakers'
phrases, he finds a copious fund of political instruction.
The federal senate was more truly a parliamentary body
in those formative days than perhaps at any other
period. Several at least of its members were in doubt
as to the political course they should follow ; they were
in doubt where they should find their party associations.
To them, debates had therefore a real and present sig
nificance. There were some votes to be affected, there
were converts to be gained, by speeches even on purely
political questions ; there were some senators whose
votes were not inexorably determined for them by the

128 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
will of their parties or their constituents. Much that
was said had therefore a genuine parliamentary ring.
The orators really sought to convince and persuade those
who heard them within the easy and almost conversa
tional limits of the old senate chamber. There was little
of the mere pronouncing of essays or declamations in
tended to have their real and only effect elsewhere. In
this art of true parliamentary speaking rather than ora
tory, Van Buren was a master such as Lord Palmerston
afterwards became. He was not eloquent. His speeches,
so far as they are preserved, interest the student of po
litical history and not of literature. They are sensible,
clear, practical arguments made in rather finished sen
tences. One does not find quotations from them in books
of school declamation. But they served far more effect
ively the primary end of parliamentary speaking than
did the elaborate and powerful disquisitions of Calhoun,
or the more splendid flood of Webster's eloquence. Van
Buren's speeches were intended to convince some of the
men in the seats about him, and they did convince.
They were meant to persuade, and they did persuade.
They were lucid exhibitions of political principles, gen
erally practical, and touched sufficiently but not morbidly
with the theoretical fears so common to our earlier poli
tics. Some of those fears have since been shown to be
groundless ; but out of many of them has come much
that is best in the modern temper of American political
institutions. Van Buren's speeches did not rise beyond
the reach of popular understanding, although they never
warmly touched popular sympathy. They were intended
to formulate and spread a political faith in which he
plainly saw that there was the material of a party, — a
faith founded upon the jealousy of federal activity, how-

UNITED STATES SENATOR. 129
ever beneficent, which sought to avoid state control or
encourage state dependence. The prolixity which was
a grave fault of his state papers and political letters was
far less exhibited in his oratorical efforts. His style was
generally easy and vigorous, with little of the turgid
learning which loaded down many sensible speeches of
the time. Now and then, however, he resorted to the
sentences of stilted formality which sometimes overtake
a good public speaker, as a good actor sometimes lapses
into the stage strut.
In Van Buren's senatorial speeches there is nothing to
justify the charge of " non-committalism " so much made
against him. When he spoke at all he spoke explicitly ;
and he plainly, though without acerbity, exhibited his
likes and dislikes. Jackson was struck with this when
he sat in the senate with him. " I had heard a great
deal about Mr. Van Buren," he said, " especially about
his non-committalism. I made up my mind that I
would take an early opportunity to hear him and judge
for myself. One day an important subject was under
debate in the senate. I noticed that Mr. Van Buren
was taking notes while one of the senators was speaking.
I judged from this that he intended to reply, and I de
termined to be in my seat when he spoke. His turn
came ; and he rose and made a clear, straightforward
argument, which, to my mind, disposed of the whole
subject. I turned to my colleague, Major Eaton, who
sat next to me. ' Major,' said I, ' is there anything non
committal about that ? ' ' No, sir,' said the major."
Van Buren scrupulously observed the amenities of de
bate. He was uniformly courteous towards adversaries ;
and the calm self-control saved him, as some greater
orators were not saved, from a descent to the aspersion

130 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of motives so common and so futile in political debate.
He could not, indeed, help now and then an allusion to
the venality and monarchical tendency of the Federal
ists and their successors ; but this was an old formula
which strong haters had years before made very popu
lar in the Republican phrase-book, and which, as to the
venality, meant nobody in particular.

CHAPTER V.
DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828.  GOVERNOR.
When in May, 1828, Van Buren left Washington, the
country universally recognized him as the chief organ
izer of the new party and its congressional leader. As
such he turned all his skill and industry to win a victory
for Jackson and Calhoun. There was never in the his
tory of the United States a more legitimate presidential
canvass than that of 1828. The rival candidates dis
tinctly stood for conflicting principles of federal adminis
tration. On the one side, under Van Buren's shrewd
management, with the theoretical cooperation of Cal
houn, — the natural bent of whose mind was now aided
and not thwarted by the exigencies of his personal
career, — was the party inclined to "strict limitation of
federal powers, jealous for local powers, hostile to in
ternal improvements by the federal government, inclined
to a lower rather than a higher tariff. On the other
side was the party strongly national in temper, with
splendid conceptions of a powerful and multifariously
useful central administration, impatient of the poverties
and meannesses of many of the states. The latter party
was led by a president with ampler training in public life
than any American of his time, who sincerely and in
telligently believed the principles of his party ; and his
party held those principles firmly, explicitly, and with
practical unanimity. Jefferson, in almost his last letter,

132 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
written in December, 1825, to William B. Giles, a vener
able leader of the Democracy, the " Charles James Fox
of Congress," Benton's " statesman of head and tongue,"
recalled indeed Adams's superiority over all ordinary
considerations when the safety of his country had been
questioned ; but Jefferson declared himself . in " the
deepest affliction " at the usurpations by which the
federal branch, through the decisions of the federal
court, the doctrines of the president, and the miscon
structions of Congress, was stripping its " colleagues, the
state authorities, of the powers reserved to them." The
voice from Monticello, feeble with its eighty-three years,
and secretly uttered though it was, sounded the sum
mons to a new Democratic battle.
Van Buren and his coadjutors, however, led a party
as yet of inclination to principles rather than of princi
ples. It was out of power. There was neither warmth
nor striking exaltation in its programme. Its philo
sophical and political wisdom needed the aid of one of
those simple cries for justice which are so potent in
political warfare, and a leader to interest and fire the
popular temper. Both were at hand. The late defeat
of the popular wdl by the Adams-Clay coalition was the
cry ; the hero of the military victory most grateful to
Americans was the leader. To this cry and this leader
Van Buren skillfully harnessed an intelligible, and at
the least a reasonable, political creed. There were thus
united nearly all the elements of political strength.
Not indeed all, for the record of the leader was weak
upon several articles of faith. Jackson had voted in the
senate for internal improvement bills, and among them
bills of the most obnoxious character, those authorizing
subscriptions to the stocks of private corporations. He

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828. 133
had voted against reductions of the tariff. But the
votes, it was hoped, exhibited only his inexpertness in
applying general principles to actual legislation, or a
good-natured willingness to please his constituents by
single votes comparatively unimportant. In truth these
mistakes were really inconsistencies of the politician,
and no more. There had been a long inclination on
Jackson's part to the Jeffersonian policy. Over thirty
years before, he had in Congress been a strict construc
tionist and an Anti-federalist. In 1801 he had required
a candidate desiring his support to be " an admirer of
state authority, agreeable to the true literal meaning "
of the Constitution, and " banishing the dangerous doc
trine of implication." If he were now to have undivided
responsibility, this old Democratic trend of his would,
it was hoped, be strong enough under Democratic ad
vice. As a candidate, the inconsistencies of a soldier
politician were far outweighed by his picturesque and
powerful personality. It is commonly thought of Jack
son that he was a headstrong, passionate, illiterate man,
used and pulled about by a few intriguers. Nothing
could be further from the truth. He was himself a pol
itician of a high order. His letters are full of shrewd,
vigorous, and even managing suggestions* of partisan
manoeuvres. Their political utterances show a highly
active and generally sensible though not disciplined mind.
He had had long and important experience of civil
affairs, in the lower house of Congress, in the federal
senate when he was only thirty years old, in the consti
tutional convention of his state, in its supreme court,
later again in the senate ; he had been for eight years
before the country as a candidate for its first office, and
for many years in public business of large importance.

134 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
There were two of the most distinguished Americans,
men of the ripest abilities and amplest experience, and
far removed from rashness, who from 1824 or before
had steadily preferred Jackson for the presidency.
These were Edward Livingston of Louisiana and De
Witt Clinton of New York. Daniel Webster described
his manners as " more presidential than those of any of
the candidates." Jackson was, he wrote, " grave, mild,
and reserved." Unless in Jackson's case there were
effects without adequate causes, it is very certain that,
with faults of most serious character, he still had the
ability, the dignity, and the wisdom of a ruler of a high
rank. He was, as very few men are, born to rule.
After Crawford's defeat, Van Buren is credited with .
a skillful management of the alliance of his forces with
those of Jackson. There is not yet public, if it exist,
any original evidence as to the details of this work.
Van Buren's enemies were fond of describing it as full
of cunning and trickery, the work of " the little magi
cian ; " and later and fairer writers have adopted from
these enemies this characterization. But all this seems
entirely without proof. Nor is the story probable. The
union of the Crawford and Jackson men was perfectly
natural. Crawford was a physical wreck, out of public
life. Numerous as were the exceptions, his followers
and Jackson's included the great majority of the strict
constructionists ; and but a minority of either of the two
bodies held the opposite views. Neither of the two
men had, at the last election, been defeated by the other.
That Van Buren used at Washington his unrivaled
skill in assuaging animosities and composing differences
there can be no doubt. After the end of the session in
March, 1827, together with Churchill C. Cambreleng, a

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828. 135
member of Congress from New York and a close politi
cal friend of his, he made upon this mission a tour
through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. They
visited Crawford, and were authorized to declare that
he should support Jackson, but did not wish to aid Cal
houn. At Raleigh Van Buren told the citizens that the
spirit of encroachment had assumed a new and far more
seductive aspect, and could only be resisted by the exer
cise of uncommon virtues. Passing through Washington
on his way north, he paid a polite visit to Adams, talk
ing with him placidly about Rufus King, Monroe, and
the Petersburg horse-races. The president, regarding
him as " the great electioneering manager for General
Jackson," when the interview was over, promptly noted
in his diary that Van Buren was now acting the part
Burr had performed in 1799 and 1800 ; and he found
" much resemblance of character, manners, and even
person, between the two men."
As early as 1826 the Van Buren Republicans of New
York, and an important part of the Clintonians with the
great governor at their head, had determined to support
Jackson. Van Buren is said to have concealed his atti
tude until after his reelection to the senate in 1827.
But this is a complete error, except as to his pubhc
choice of a candidate. His opposition to the Adams-
Clay administration, it has already appeared, had been
outspoken from 1825. The Jackson candidacy was not
indeed definitely announced in New York until 1827.
The cry for " Old Hickory " then went up with a sud
den unanimity which seemed to the Adams men a bit
of devilish magic, but which was the patient prearrange-
ment of a skillful politician appreciating his responsi-
bflity, and waiting, as the greatest of living politicians

136 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
recently told England a statesman ought to wait, until
the time was really ripe, until the popular inclination was
sufficiently formed to justify action by men in responsi
ble public station.
The opposition to the reelection of John Quincy
Adams in 1828 was sincerely considered by him, and
has been often described by others, as singularly cause
less, unworthy, and even monstrous. But in truth it led
to one of the most necessary, one of the truest, political
revolutions which our country has known. Both Adams
and Clay were positive and able men. They were reso
lute that the rather tepid democracy of Monroe should
be succeeded by a highly national, a federally active
administration. Prior to the election of 1824 Clay had
been as nearly in opposition as the era of good feeling
permitted. Early in Monroe's administration he had
attacked the president's declaration that Congress had
no right to construct roads and canals. His criticism,
Mr. Schurz tells us in his brilliant and impartial ac
count of the time, " had a strong flavor of bitterness in
it ; " it was in part made up of " oratorical flings," by
which Clay unnecessarily'sought to attack and humiliate
Monroe. Adams's diary states Clay's opposition to have
been " violent, systematic," his course to have been
" angry, acrimonious." Late in 1819 Monroe's friends
had even consulted over the wisdom of defeating Clay's
reelection to the speakership ; and still later Clay had,
as Mr. Schurz says, fiercely castigated the administra
tion for truckling to foreigners. When Clay came into
power, it would have been unreasonable for him to sup
pose that there must not arise vigorous parliamentary
opposition on the part of those who considered them
selves the true Republican successors of Monroe, seeking

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828. 137
to stop the diversion into strange ways which Clay and
Adams had now begun. Richard Rush of Pennsylvania,
Adams's secretary of the treasury, and now the Adams
candidate for vice-president, had, in one of his annual
reports, declared it to be the duty of government " to
augment the number and variety of occupations for its
inhabitants ; to hold out to every degree of labor, and to
every modification of skill, its appropriate object and in
ducement ; to organize the whole labor of a country ; to
entice into the widest ranges its mechanical and intel
lectual capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber;
to call forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving
to effort activity and to emulation ardor ; to create em
ployment for the greater amount of numbers by adapting
it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and situations
of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of
genius, may come into requisition." Nor did this glow
ing picture of a useful and beneficent government go
far beyond the utterances of Rush's senior associate on
the presidential ticket. It is certain that it was highly
agreeable to Clay.
Surely there could be no clearer political issue pre
sented, on the one side by Van Buren's speeches in the
senate, and on the other by authoritative and solemn
declarations of the three chief persons of the administra
tion. Whatever the better side of the issue may have
been, no issue was ever a more legitimate subject of a
political campaign. It is true that the accusations were
unfounded, which were directed against Adams for
treachery to the Republican principles he professed
after, on adhering to Jefferson, he had resigned his
seat in the senate. He had joined Jefferson on
questions of foreign policy and domestic defense, and

138 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
had, until his election to the presidency, been chiefly
concerned with diplomacy. But though the accusations
were false, it is true enough that Adams himself had
made the issue of the campaign. Nor was it creditable
to him that he saw in the opposition something merely
personal to himself. If he were wrong upon the issue,
as Van Buren and a majority of the people thought, his
long public service, his utter integrity, his exalted sense
of the obligations of office, ought not to have saved him
from the battle or from defeat. How true and deep
was this political contest of 1828 one sees in the fact
that from it, almost as much as from the triumph of
Jefferson, flow the traditions of one of the great Ameri
can parties, traditions which survived the corruptions of
slavery, and are still powerful in party administration.
If John Quincy Adams had been elected, and if, as
might naturally have been the case, there had followed,
at this commencement of railway building, a firm estab
lishment of the doctrine that the national government
could properly build roads within the states, it is more
than mere speculation to say that the later history of
the United States would, whether for the better or the
worse, have been very different from what it has been.
The dangers to which American institutions would be
exposed, if the federal government had become a great
power levying taxes upon the whole country to be used
in constructing railways, or, what was worse, purchasing
stock in railway corporations, and doing this, as it would
inevitably have done, according to the amount of pres
sure here or there, — such dangers, it is easy to under
stand, seem, whether rightly or wrongly, appalling to a
large class of political thinkers. To realize this sense
of danger dissipates the aspect of doctrinaire extrava-

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828. 139
gance in the speeches of Adams's opponents against
latitudinarian construction.
In the canvass of 1828 there was on both sides more
wicked and despicable exhibition of slander than had been
known since Jefferson and John Adams were pitted
against each other. Jackson was a military butcher and
utterly illiterate ; the chastity of his wife was doubtful.
Adams had corruptly bargained away offices ; his ac
counts of pubhc moneys received by him needed seri
ous scrutiny ; and, that the charges might be precisely
balanced, he had when minister at St. Petersburg acted
as procurer to the Czar of Russia. These lies doubtless
defeated themselves; but in each election since 1828
there have been politicians low enough and silly enough
to imitate them. To nothing of this kind did Van
Buren descend. Nor does it seem that even then he used
the cry of a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay,
in which Jackson believed as long as he lived. The
coalition of 1825, defeating, as it had, a candidate
chosen by a larger number of voters than any other, was
the most used, and probably the most successfully used,
of any of the campaign issues. Nor was this clearly
illegitimate, although Adams and many for him have
hotly condemned its immorality. Every political coali
tion between men lately in opposition political and per
sonal, by which both get office, is fairly open to criticism.
In experience it has always been full of political danger,
although since the prejudice of the times has worn away,
the defense of Adams and Clay is seen to be amply suffi
cient. Whatever had been their mutual dislikes political
or personal, each of them was politically and in his
practical statesmanship far nearer to the other than to
any other of the competitors. But we have yet to see a

140 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
political campaign against a coalition whose members
have been rewarded with office, in which this form of
attack is not made by men very intelligent and most
honest. Nor is there any reason to hold the followers
of Jackson to a higher standard. In our own time we
have seen two coalitions whose parties wisely recognized
this danger. The chief leaders of the Republican re
volt in 1884 neither sought nor took office from the
former adversaries with whom for once they then acted.
The Dissenting Liberals in England did not take office
in the Conservative ministry formed in 1886 ; and the
odium which, in the change later Blade in it, followed
Mr. Goschen into its second place, dlustrated very well
the truth that, however honorable the course may be, it
is inevitably dangerous.
Nor can moral condemnation be passed upon the use
in 1828 of the defeat in 1824 of the candidate having
the largest popular vote. We see pretty clearly in a
constitutionally governed country that when power is
lawfully lodged with a public man, he must act upon
his own judgment ; and that, if he be influenced by
others, then he ought to be influenced by the wishes and
interests of those who supported him, and not of those
who opposed him, even though far more numerous than
his supporters. Repeatedly have we seen a state legis
lature, which the arrangement of districts has caused to
be elected from a party in minority in the whole state,
choose a federal senator who it was known would have
been defeated upon a popular vote ; and this without
criticism of the conduct of the legislators, but only of
the defective district division. In Connecticut it has
happened more than once that, neither candidate for
governor having a majority vote, the legislature has

ELECTED GOVERNOR. 141
chosen a candidate having one of the smaller minori
ties ; and here again without criticism of the legisla
ture's morality. But stdl the general rule of American
elections is, that the candidate shall be chosen who is
preferred by more votes than any other. To assent to
a constitutional defeat of such a preference, but after
wards and under the law to make strong appeal to
right the wrong which the law has wrought, seems a
highly defensible course, and to deserve little of the
criticism visited upon the Jackson canvass of 1828. If
party divisions be justifiable, if chief pubhc officers are
to be chosen for their views on great questions of state,
if the cold appeals of political reasoning are ever rightly
strengthened by appeals to popular feelings, the cam
paign which Van Buren and his associates began in
1825 or 1826 was perfectly justifiable. Nor in its result
can any one deny, whether it were for better or worse,
that their success in the battle worked a change in the
principles of administration, and not a mere vulgar
driving from office of one body of men that another
might take their places.
The death of De Witt Clinton left Van Buren easily
the largest figure in public life, as he had for several
years been the most powerful politician, in New York
state. The gossip that the most important place in
Jackson's cabinet was really allotted to him before the
election of 1828 is probably true. But, whether true or
not, there was, apart from a natural desire to administer
the first office in his state, obvious advantage to his polit
ical prestige in passing successfully through a popular
election. The most cynical of managing politicians rec
ognize the enormous strength of a man for whom the
people have actually shown that they like to vote. Van

142 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Buren may have counted besides upon the advantage
which Jackson's personal popularity brought to those in
his open alliance, although Adams was known still to
have, as the election showed he had, considerable Demo
cratic strength. Van Buren took therefore the Bucktail
nomination for governor of New York. The National
Republicans, as the Adams men were called, nominated
Smith Thompson, a judge of the federal supreme court.
Van Buren got 136,794 and Thompson 106,444 votes.
But in spite of so large a plurality Van Buren did not
quite have a majority of the popular vote. Solomon
Southwick, the anti-Masonic candidate, received 33,345
votes. It was the first election after this extraordinary
movement. The abduction of Morgan and his probable
murder to prevent his revelation of Masonic secrets had
occurred in the fall of 1826. The criminal trials con
sequent upon it had caused intense excitement ; and a
political issue was easily made, for many distinguished
men of both parties were members of that secret order.
How powerful for a time may be a popular cry, though
based upon an utterly absurd issue, became more
obvious still later when electoral votes for president
were cast for William Wirt, the anti-Masonic candidate ;
and when John Quincy Adams, after graduating from
the widest experience in public affairs of any American
of his generation, was, as he himself records, willing to
accept, and when Wilham H. Seward was willing to ten
der him, a presidential nomination of the anti-Masonic
party. As Southwick's preposterous vote was in 1828
drawn from both parties, Van Buren's prestige, although
he had but a plurality vote, was increased by his victory
at the polls. Jackson very truly said in February,
1832, that it was now " the general wish and expecta-

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 143
tion of the Republican party throughout the Union"
that Van Buren should take the place next to the pres
ident in the national administration. Jackson was him
self elected by a very great popular and electoral major
ity. In New York, where on this single occasion the
electors were chosen in districts, and where the anti-
Masonic vote was cast against Jackson who held high
rank in the Masonic order, Adams secured 16 votes
to Jackson's 18 ; but to the latter were added the two
electors chosen by the thirty-four district electors.
Van Buren's career as governor was very brief. He
was inaugurated on January 1, 1829, and at once re
signed his seat in the federal senate. On March 12th of
the same year he resigned the governor's seat. His inau
gural message is said by Hammond, the political histo
rian of New York, by no means too friendly to Van
Buren, to have been " the best executive message ever
communicated to the legislature ; " and after nearly sixty
years, it seems, in the leather-covered tome containing
it, a remarkably clear, wise, and courageous paper. The
excitement over internal improvements in communica-
tipn was then at its height. He declared that, whatever
difference there might be as to whether such improve
ments ought to be undertaken by the federal govern
ment or by the states, none seriously doubted that it was
wise to apply portions of the means of New York to
such improvements. The investment of the state in the
Delaware and Hudson Canal, then just completed, had,
he thought, been "crowned with the most cheering
success." Splendid, too, as had been the success of the
Erie and Champlain canals, it was still clear that all
had not been equally benefited. The friends of the state
road and of the Chemung and Chenango canals had

144 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
urged him to recommend for them a legislative support.
But it was a time, he said, for " the utmost prudence
and circumspection " upon that " delicate and vitally
interesting subject."
The banking question, he told the legislature, would
make the important business of its session. It turned
out besides to be one of the important businesses of Van
Buren's career. To meet the attacks upon him for
having once been interested in a bank, he dexterously
recited that, " having for many years ceased to have an
interest in those institutions and declined any agency in
their management," he was ctinscious of his imperfect
information. But he could not ignore a matter of
such magnitude to their constituents. The whole bank
agitation at this time showed the difficulties and scan
dals caused by the absence of a free banking system,
and by the long accustomed grants of exclusive banking
charters. Of the forty banks in the state, all specially
incorporated, the charters of thirty-one would expire
within one, two, three, or four years. Their actual
capital was $15,000,000 ; their outstanding loans, more
than $30,000,000. Van Buren urged, therefore, the
legislature now to make by general law final disposition
of the whole subject. The abolition of banks had, he
said, no advocate, and a dependence solely upon those
established by federal authority deserved none ; but he
rejected the idea of a state bank. " Experience," he
declared, " has shown that banking operations, to be
successful, and consequently beneficial to the commu
nity, must be conducted by private men upon their own
account." He condemned the practice by which the
state accepted a money bonus for granting a bank char
ter, necessarily involving some monopoly. The concern

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 145
of the state, he pointed out, should be to make its banks
and their circulation secure ; and such security was im
paired, not increased, by encouraging banks in compe
tition with one another, and " stimulated by the golden
harvest in view," to make large payments for their
charters. He submitted for legislative consideration
the idea of the " safety fund " communicated to him in
an interesting and intelligent paper by Joshua Forman.
Under this system all the banks of the state, whatever
their condition, were to contribute to a fund to be ad
ministered under state supervision, the fund to be a
security for all dishonored bank-notes. To this extent
all the banks were to insure or indorse the circulation
of each bank, thus saving the scandal and loss arising
from the occasional failure of banks to redeem their
notes, and making every bank watchful of all its asso
ciates. In compelling the banks to submit to some gen
eral scheme, the representative of the people would
indeed, he said, enter into " conflict with the claims of
the great moneyed interest of the country ; but what
political exhibition so truly gratifying as the return to
his constituents of the faithful public servant after hav
ing turned away every approach and put far from him
every sinister consideration ! "
Van Buren proposed a separation of state from na
tional elections ; a question still discussed, and upon
each side of which much is to be said. He attacked
the use of money in elections, "the practice of employ
ing persons to attend the polls for compensation, of
placing large sums in the hands of others to entertain
the electors," and other devices by which the most valu
able of all our temporal privileges " was brought into
disrepute." If the expenses of elections should increase

146 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
as they had lately done, the time would soon arrive
" when a man in middling circumstances, however vir
tuous, will not be able to compete upon anything like
equal terms with a wealthy opponent." In long advance
of a modern agitation for reform which, lately begin
ning with us, will, it is to be hoped, not cease until the
abuses are removed, he proposed a law imposing " severe
and enforcible penalties upon the advance of money by
individuals for any purposes connected with the elec
tion except the single one of printing."
Turning to the field of general politics, he again de
clared the political faith to whose support he wished to
rally his party. That " a jealousy of the exercise of del
egated political power, a solicitude to keep public agents
within the precise limits of their authority, and an
assiduous adherence to a rigid and scrupulous economy,
were indications of a contracted spirit unbecoming the
character of a statesman," he pronounced to be a politi
cal heresy, from which he himself had not been entirely
free, but which ought at once to be exploded. Official
discretion, as a general rule, could not be confided to
any one without danger of abuse. But he reproved the
parsimony which disagreeably characterized the democ
racy of the time, and which inadequately paid great
public servants like the chancellor and judges. In the
tendency of the federal government to encroach upon
the states lay, he thought, the danger of the federal
Constitution. But of the disposition and capacity of the
American people to resist such encroachments as our
political history recorded, there were, he said, without
naming either Adams, " two prominent and illustrious
instances." As long as that good spirit was preserved,
the republic would be safe ; and for that preservation
every patriot ought to pray.

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 147
The reputation of the country had in some degree
suffered, he said, from " the uncharitable and unrelent
ing scrutiny to which private as well as public char
acter " had been subjected in the late election. But
this injury had been " relieved, if not removed, by see
ing how soon the overflowing waters of bitterness " had
spent themselves, and " that already the current of
public feeling had resumed its accustomed channels."
These excesses were the price paid for the full enjoyment
of the right of opinion. With an assertion of " perfect
deference to that sacred privilege, and in the humble
exercise of that portion of it " which belonged to him,
and of a sincere desire not to offend the feelings of
those who differed from him, he ended his message by
congratulating the legislature upon the election of Jack
son and Calhoun. This result, he said in words not
altogether insincere or untrue, but full of the unfairness
of partisan dispute, infused fresh vigor into the Ameri
can political system, refuted the odious imputation that
republics are ungrateful, dissipated the vain hope that
our citizens could be influenced by aught save appeals
to their understanding and love of country, and finally
exhibited in " bold relief the omnipotence of public
opinion, and the futility of all attempts to overawe it by
the denunciation of power, or to reduce it by the allure
ments of patronage."
Among the Hoyt letters, afterwards published by
Van Buren's rancorous enemy Mackenzie, are two let
ters of his upon his patronage as governor. It is not
unfair to suppose that he wrote many other letters like
them, and they give a useful glimpse of the distribution
of offices at Albany sixty years ago. These letters to
Hoyt were of the most confidential character, and

148 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
showed a strong but not uncontrolled desire to please
party friends and to meet party expectations. But in
none of them is there a suggestion of anything dishonor
able. He asked, " When will the Republican party be
made sensible of the indispensable necessity of nomi
nating none but true and tried men, so that when they suc
ceed they gain something ? " He was unable to oblige his
" good friend Coddington ... in relation to the health
appointments." Dr. Westervelt's claims were " decid
edly the strongest ; and much was due to the relations
in which he stood to Governor Tompkins, especially
from one who knew so well what the latter has done
and suffered for this state." He wrote of Marcy, whom
he appointed a judge of the supreme court, that he
" was so situated that I must make him a judge or ruin
him." All this is doubtless not unlike what the best of
public officers have sometimes said and thought, though
rarely written ; and, like most talk over patronage, it is
not in very exalted tone. But if Van Buren admitted as
one of Westervelt's claims to public office that he was of a
Whig family and a Democrat " from his cradle," he
found among his other claims that he was " a gentle
man and a man of talent," and had been " three years
in the hospital and five years deputy health officer, until
he was cruelly removed." Dr. Manley he refused to
remove from the health office, because " his extraordi
nary capacity is universally admitted ; " and pointed out
that the removal " could only be placed on political
grounds, and as he was a zealous Jackson man at the
last election, that could not have been done without
danger." "I should not," he said, however, "have
given Manley the office originally, if I could have found
a competent Republican to take it." William L. Marcy,

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 149
whom he made judge, was already known as one of the
ablest men in the state, and his appointment was admi
rable, though his salvation from ruin, if Van Buren
were speaking seriously, was not a pubhc end fit to be
served by high judicial appointment. John C. Spencer,
one of the best lawyers of New York, was appointed by
Van Buren special counsel for the prosecution of Mor
gan's murderers. Hammond wondered " how so rigid
a party man as Mr. Van Buren was, came to appoint a
political opponent to so important an office," but con
cluded that it was a fine specimen of his peculiar tact,
because Spencer, though a man of talents and great moral
courage, might be defeated in the prosecution, and thus
be injured with the anti-Masons ; while if he succeeded,
his vigor and fidelity would draw upon him Masonic
hostility. But the simpler explanation is the more prob
able. Van Buren desired to adhere in this, as he did
in most of his appointments, to a high standard. Upon
this particular appointment his own motives might be
distrusted ; and he therefore went to the ranks of his
adversaries for one of their most distinguished and in
vulnerable leaders. Van Buren was long condemned as
a " spoils " politician ; but he was not accused of ap
pointing either incompetent or dishonest men to office.
In the great place of governor he must have already
begun to see how difficult and dangerous was this power
of patronage. It must be fairly admitted that he pretty
carefully limited, by the integrity and efficiency of the
pubhc service, the political use which he made of his
appointments, — a use made in varying degrees by
every American holding important executive power
from the first Adams to our own time.
On March 12, 1829, Governor Van Buren resigned

150 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
his office with the hearty and unanimous approval of
his party friends, whom he gathered together on receiv
ing Jackson's invitation to Washington. He was in
their hands, he said, and should abide by their decision.
Both houses of the legislature passed congratulatory
and even affectionate resolutions ; and his brief and
brilliant career in the executive chamber of the state
ended happily, as does any career which ends that a
seemingly greater one may begin.

CHAPTER VI.
SECRETARY OF STATE.  DEFINITE FORMATION OF THE
DEMOCRATIC CREED.
Van Buren was appointed secretary of state on
March 5, 1829 ; but did not reach Washington until
the 22d, and did not act as secretary until Aprd 4th.
James A. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, but
then an influential Jackson man, was acting-secretary
in the mean time. The two years of Van Buren's ad
ministration of this office are perhaps the most pictur
esque years of American political history. The Eaton
scandal ; the downfall of Calhoun's political power ; the
magical success of Van Buren ; the " Kitchen Cabinet ; "
the odious removals from office, and the outcries of the
removed ; the fiery passion of Jackson ; the horror both
real and affected of the opposition, — all these have
been an inexhaustible quarry to historical writers.
Untd very recently the larger use has been made of the
material derived from hostile sources ; and it has seemed
easy to paint pictures of this really important time in
the crudest and highest colors of dislike. The Ameri
can democracy, at last let loose, driven by Jackson with
a sort of demoniac energy and cunningly used by Van
Buren for his own selfish and even Mephistophelian
ends, is supposed to have broken from every sound and
conservative principle. Perhaps for no other period in
our history has irresponsible and unverified campaign

152 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
literature of the time so largely become authority to
serious writers ; and for no other period does truth more
strongly require a judgment upon well established results
rather than upon partisan rumor and gossip. During
these years there was definitely and practically formed,
under the auspices of Jackson's administration, a politi
cal creed, a body of principles or tendencies in politics
which have ever since strongly held the American peo
ple. Some of them have become established by a uni
versal acquiescence. During the same years there began
an extension into federal politics of the " spoils system,"
which has been an evil second only to slavery, and from
which we are only now recovering. To Van Buren
more than to any man of his time must be awarded the
credit of forming the creed of the Jacksonian Democ
racy. And in the shame of the abuse, which has so
greatly tended to neutralize the soundest articles of
political faith, Van Buren must participate with other
and inferior men of his own time, and with the very
greatest of the men who followed him. In this narra
tive it is impossible to ignore some of the petty and un
dignified details which characterized the time, — details
from some of the discredit of which Van Buren cannot
escape. But it would lead to gross error to let such
details obscure the vital and lasting political work of the
highest order in which Van Buren was a central and
controlling power.
Besides Van Buren, Jackson's cabinet included Ing
ham of Pennsylvania in the treasury, Eaton in the war
department, Branch in the navy, Berrien of Georgia
attorney-general, and Barry of Kentucky in the post-
office, succeeding McLean, who after a short service
was appointed to the supreme court. Eaton, Branch,

RIVALRY WITH CALHOUN. 153
and Berrien had been federal senators, the first chiefly
commended by Jackson's strong personal liking for him.
Ingham, Branch, and Berrien represented, or were sup
posed to represent, the Calhoun influence. Van Buren
in ability and reputation easily stood head and shoul
ders above his associates. When he left Albany for
Washington he was believed to have done more than
any one else to secure the Republican triumph ; and
if Webster's recollections twenty years later were cor
rect, he did more to prevent " Mr. Adams's reelection
in 1828, and to obtain General Jackson's election, than
any other man — yes, than any ten other men — in the
country." He was the first politician in the party ;
Calhoun and he were its most distinguished statesmen.
Already the succession after Jackson belonged to one of
them, the only doubt being to which ; and in that doubt
was stored up a long and complicated feud. The rivalry
between these two great men was inevitable ; it was not
dishonorable to either. Calhoun's fame was the older ;
he was already one of the junior candidates for the
presidency, popular in Pennsylvania and even in New
England, when Van Buren was hardly known out of
New York. In 1829 he had been chosen vice-president
for the second time. He had shown talents of a very
high order. But he had now suffered some years
from the presidential fever which distorts the vision,
and which, when popularity wanes, becomes heavy with
enervating melancholy. He was an able doctrinaire,
but narrow and dogmatic. The jealous and ravenous
temper of the rich slaveholders of South Carolina al
ready possessed him. He was a southern man ; and all
the presidents thus far, except the elder and younger
Adams, had been southerners. In 1824 he had stood

154 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
indifferent between Jackson and Adams, and in Jack
son's final triumph had borne no decisive part. Van
Buren's wider, richer, and more constructive mind, his
superior political judgment, his mellower personality,
his practical skill in affairs, sufficiently explain his vic
tory over Calhoun, without resort to the bitter rumors
of tricks and magical manoeuvres spread by Calhoun's
and Clay's friends, and which, though without authentic
corroboration, have to our own day been widely ac
cepted. Before Jackson's inauguration, Calhoun sought to
prevent Van Buren's selection for the state department.
He told the general that Tazewell of Virginia ought to
be appointed. New York, he said, would have been
secured by Clinton if he had lived ; but now New York
needed no appointment. Jackson listened coldly to the
plainly jealous appeal ; and James A. Hamilton, who
was at the time on intimate terms with Jackson, sup
posed it to be Calhoun's last interview with Jackson
about the cabinet. Van Buren had been Jackson's
choice a year ago ; and to all the reasons which had
then existed were now added his great services in the
canvass, and the prestige of his popular election as
governor. The episode of Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the new secre
tary of war, was absurd enough in a constitutionally
governed country; but this silly " court scandal," which
might very well have enlivened the pages of a secretary
of a privy council or an ambassador from a petty Ger
man prince, did no more than hasten the inevitable divi
sion. In the hastening, however, Van Buren doubtless
reaped some profit in Jackson's greater friendship.
Many respectable people in Washington believed that

EPISODE OF MRS. EATON. 155
unchastity on the part of this lady had induced her for
mer husband, Timberlake, to cut his throat. Her sec
ond marriage to Eaton had just taken place in January,
1829, after Jackson, learning of the scandal but dis
believing it, had said to Eaton, " Your marrying her
will disprove these charges, and restore Peg's good
name." The general treated with violent contempt the
persons, some of them clergymen, " whose morbid appe
tite," he wrote the Rev. Dr. Ely on March 23, 1829,
" delights in defamation and slander." Burning with
anger at those who had dared in the recent canvass to
malign his own wife now dead, he defended with chival
rous resolution the lady whom his own wife " to the last
moment of her hfe believed . . . to be an innocent and
much-injured woman." Even Mrs. Madison, he said,
" was assailed by these fiends in human shape." When
protests were made against Eaton's appointment to the
cabinet, Jackson savagely cried, " I will sink or swim
with him, by God ! " All this had happened before Van
Buren reached Washington. There then followed the
grave question, whether Mrs. Eaton should be adjudged
guilty by society and sentenced to exclusion from its
ceremonious enjoyments. The ladies generally were
determined against her, even the ladies of Jackson's
own household. Jackson proposed the task, impossible
even to an emperor, of compelling recognition of this
distressed and persecuted consort of a minister of state.
The unfortunate married men in the cabinet were in
embarrassment indeed. They would not if they could, so
they said, — or at least they could not if they would, —
induce their wives to visit or receive visits from the wife
of their colleague. Jackson showed them very clearly
that.no other course would satisfy him. Calhoun in his

156 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
matrimonial state was at the same disadvantage. Even
foreign ministers and their wives met the president's
displeasure for not properly treating the wife of the
American secretary of war.
When Van Buren entered this farcical scene, his
widowed condition, and the fortune of having sons rather
than daughters, left him quite unembarrassed. He po
litely called upon his associate's wife, as he called upon the
others ; he treated her with entire deference of manner.
It is probable, though by no means clear, for popular
feeling was supposed to run high in sacred defense of
the American home, that this was the more politic course.
It is now, however, certain that by doing so he gave to
Jackson, and some who were personally very close to
Jackson, more gratification than he gave offense else
where ; and this has been the occasion of much asper
sion of Van Buren's motives. But whether his course
were politic or not, it is easy enough to see that any
other course would have been inexcusable. It would
have been dastardly in the extreme for Van Buren,
reaching Washington and finding a controversy raging
whether or not the wife of one of his associates were
virtuous, to pronounce her guilty, as he most unmistak
ably would have done had he refused her the attention
which etiquette required him to pay all ladies in her
position. Parton in his Life of Jackson quotes from an
anonymous Washington correspondent, whose account
he says was " exaggerated and prejudiced but not wholly
incorrect," the story that Van Buren induced the British
and Russian ministers, both of whom to their immediate
peace of mind happened to be bachelors, to treat Mrs.
Eaton with distinction at their entertainments. But the
supposition seems quite gratuitous. Neither of those un-

RIVALRY WITH CALHOUN. 157
married diplomats was likely to do so absurdly indefen
sible a thing as to insult by marked exclusion a cabinet
minister's wife, whom the president for any reason, good
or bad, treated with especial distinction and respect.
Van Buren's common sense was a strong characteristic ;
and he doubtless looked upon the whole affair with
amused contempt. As the cabinet officer who had most
to do with social ceremonies, he may well have sought to
calm the irritation and establish for Mrs. Eaton, where
he could, the usual forms of civihty. Like many other
blessings of etiquette, these forms permit one to hold un
offending neutrality upon the moral deserts of persons
whom he meets. It happened that Calhoun's friends
had tried to prevent Eaton's appointment to the war
department, and afterwards sought to remove him from
the cabinet. The episode added, therefore, keen edge to
the growing hostility of Jackson and his near friends to
Calhoun, and thus tended to strengthen his rival. But
all this would have signified little but for something
deeper and broader. The preference of Van Buren had
been dictated by powerful causes long before Mrs. Tim-
berlake became Mrs. Eaton. These causes now grew
more and more powerful.
Calhoun was serving his second term as vice-presi
dent. A third term for that office was obnoxious to the
rule already established for the presidency. Calhoun
therefore desired Jackson to be content with one term ;
for if he took a second, Calhoun feared, and with good
reason, that he himself, being then out of the vice-presi
dency, and so no longer in sight on that conspicuous seat
of preparation, might fall dangerously out of mind. So .
it was soon known that Calhoun's friends were opposed ,
to a second term for Jackson. At a Pennsylvania meet-

158 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ing on March 31, 1830, the opposition was openly made.
Before this, and quite apart from Jackson's natural hos
tility to the nullification theory which had arisen in
Calhoun's state, he had conceived a strong dislike to
Calhoun for a personal reason. With this Van Buren
had nothing whatever to do, so far as appears from any
evidence better than the uncorroborated rumors which
ascribe to Van Buren's magic every incident which in
jured Calhoun's standing with Jackson. Years before,
Monroe's cabinet had discussed the treatment due Jack
son for his extreme measures in the Seminole war.
Calhoun, then secretary of war, had favored a military
trial of the victorious general ; but John Quincy Adams
and Monroe had defended him, as did also Crawford, the
secretary of the treasury. For a long while Jackson
had erroneously supposed that Calhoun was the only
member of the cabinet in his favor ; and Calhoun had not
undeceived him. Some time before Jackson's election,
Hamilton had visited Crawford to promote the desired
reconciliation between him and the general ; and a letter
was written by Governor Forsyth of Georgia to Hamil
ton, quoting Crawford's explanation of the real transac
tions in Monroe's cabinet. Jackson was ignorant of all
this until a dinner given by him in honor of Monroe in
November, 1829. Ringold, a personal friend of Mon
roe's, in a complimentary speech at seeing Jackson and
Monroe seated together, said to William B. Lewis that
Monroe had been " the only one of his cabinet " friendly
to Jackson in the Seminole controversy ; and after
dinner the remark, after being discussed between Lewis
and Eaton the secretary of war, was repeated by the
latter to Jackson, who said he must be mistaken. Lewis
then told Jackson of Forsyth's letter, whicli greatly ex-

JACKSON AND CALHOUN. 159
cited him, already disliking Calhoun as he did, and not
unnaturally susceptible about his reputation in a war
which had been the subject of violent and even savage
attacks upon him in the recent canvass. Jackson sent
at once to New York for the letter. But Hamilton was
unwilling to give it without Forsyth's permission ; and
when Forsyth, on the assembling of Congress, was con
sulted, he preferred that Crawford should be directly
asked for the information. This was done, and Craw
ford wrote an account which in May, 1830, Jackson sent
to Calhoun with a demand for explanation. Calhoun
admitted that he had, after hearing of the seizure of the
Spanish forts in Florida and Jackson's execution of the
Englishmen Arbuthnot and Ambrister, expressed an
opinion against him, and proposed an investigation of his
conduct by a court of inquiry. He further told Jackson,
with much dignity of manner, that the latter was being
used in a plot to effect Calhoun's political extinction and
the exaltation of his enemies. The president received
Calhoun's letter on his way to church, and upon his re
turn from religious meditation wrote to the vice-presi
dent that " motives are to be inferred from actions and
judged by our God ; " that he had long repelled the in
sinuations that it was Calhoun, and not Crawford, who
had secretly endeavored to destroy his reputation ; that
he had never expected to say to Calhoun " Et tu,
Brute ! " and that there need be no further communica
tion on the subject. Thus was finally established the
breach between Calhoun and Jackson, which this personal
matter had widened but had by no means begun. In
none of it did Van Buren have any part. When Jack
son sent Lewis to him with Calhoun's letter and asked
his opinion, he refused to read it, saying that an attempt

160 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
would undoubtedly be made to hold him responsible for
the rupture, and he wished to be able to say that he
knew nothing of it. This course was doubtless politic,
and deserves no applause ; but it was also simply right.
On getting this message Jackson said, " I reckon Van
is right ; I dare say they will attempt to throw the whole
blame on him."
A few weeks before, on April 13, 1830, the dinner to
celebrate Jefferson's birthday was held at Washington.
It was attended by the president and vice-president,
the cabinet officers, and many other distinguished per
sons. There -were reports at the time that it was in
tended to use Jefferson's name in support of the state-
rights doctrines, and against internal improvements
and a protective tariff. This shows how clearly were
already recognized some of the great causes underly
ing the political movements and personal differences
of the time. The splendid parliamentary encounter
between Hayne and Webster had taken place but two
or three months before. In his speech Hayne, who was
understood, as Benton tells us, to give voice to the senti
ments of Calhoun, had plainly enough stated the doc
trine of nullification. Jackson at the dinner robustly
confronted the extremists with his famous toast, " Our
federal Union : it must be preserved." Calhoun, already
conscious of his leadership in a sectional controversy, fol
lowed with the sentiment, true indeed, but said in words
very sinister at that time : " The Union : next to our
liberty the most dear. May we all remember that it
can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the
states, and distributing equally the benefit and burden
of the Union." The secretary of state next rose
with a toast with little ring or inspiration in it, but

CANDIDACY FOR THE SUCCESSION. 161
plainly, though in conciliatory phrase, declaring for the
Union. He asked the company to drink, " Mutual
forbearance and reciprocal concessions : through their
agency the Union was established. The patriotic spirit
from which they emanated will forever sustain it."
Van Buren was now definitely a candidate for the
succession. His northern birth and residence, his able
leadership in Congress of the opposition to the Adams
administration, his almost supreme political power in
the first state of the Union, his clear and systematic
exposition of an intelligible and timely political creed, the
support his friends gave to Jackson's reelection, — all
these advantages were now reinforced by the tendency
to disunion clear in the utterances from South Carolina,
by Calhoun's efforts to exclude Van Buren and Eaton
from the cabinet, by the hostility to Mrs. Eaton of the
ladies in the households of Calhoun and of his friends
in the cabinet, and now by Jackson's discovery that, at a
critical moment of his career ten years before, Calhoun
had sought his destruction. Here was a singular union
of really sound reasons why Van Buren should be pre
ferred by his party and by the country for the succession
over Calhoun, with the strongest reasons why Jackson,
and those close to him, should be in most eager personal
sympathy with the preference. In December, 1829,
Jackson had explicitly pronounced in favor of Van Buren.
This was in the letter to Judge Overton of Tennessee,
which Lewis is doubtless correct in saying he asked
Jackson to write lest the latter should die before his
successor was chosen. Jackson himself drafted the
letter, which Lewis copied with some verbal alteration ;
and the letter sincerely expressed his own strong opin
ions. After alluding to the harmony between Van

162 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Buren and his associates in the war and post-office de
partments, he said : " 1 have found him everything that
I could desire him to be, and believe him not only de
serving my confidence, but the confidence of the nation.
Instead of his being selfish and intriguing, as has been
represented by some of his opponents, I have ever found
him frank, open, candid, and manly. As a counselor,
he is able and prudent, republican in his principles, and
one of the most pleasant men to do business with I ever
knew. He, my dear friend, is well qualified to fill the
highest office in the gift of the people, who in him will
find a true friend and safe depositary of their rights
and liberty. I wish I could say as much for Mr. Cal
houn and some of his friends." He criticised Calhoun
for his silence on the bank question, for his encourage
ment of the resolution in the South Carolina legislature
relative to the tariff, and for his objection to the appor
tionment of the surplus revenues after the national debt
should be paid. Jackson had not yet definitely learned
from Forsyth's letter about Calhoun's attitude in Mon
roe's cabinet ; but his well-aroused suspicion doubtless
influenced his expression. His strong personal liking
for the secretary of state had been evident from the
beginning of the administration. In a letter to Jesse
Hoyt of April 13, 1829, the latter wrote that he had
found the president affectionate, confidential, and kind
to the last degree, and that he believed there was no
degree of good feeling or confidence which the president
did not entertain for him. In July he wrote to Hamil
ton : " The general grows upon me every day. I can
fairly say that I have become quite enamored with
him." The break between Calhoun and Jackson was kept

JACKSON AND CALHOUN. 163
from the public until early in 1831. In the preceding
winter, Duff Green, the editor of the " Telegraph,"
until then the administration newspaper, but still en
tirely committed to Calhoun, sought to have the publica
tion of the Calhoun-Jackson correspondence accompanied
by a general outburst from Republican newspapers
against Jackson. The storm, Benton tells us, was to
seem so universal, and the indignation against Van
Buren so great, that even Jackson's popularity would
not save the prime minister. Jackson's friends, Barry
and Kendall, learning of this, called to Washington an
unknown Kentuckian to be editor of a new and loyal
administration paper. Francis P. Blair was a singu
larly astute man, whose name, and the name of whose
family, afterwards became famous in American politics.
He belonged to the race of advisers of great men,
found by experience to be almost as important in a
democracy as in a monarchy. In February, 1831,
Calhoun openly declared war on Jackson by publishing
the Seminole correspondence. Green having now been
safely reelected printer to Congress, the " Telegraph,"
according to the plan, strongly supported Calhoun. The
" Globe," Blair's paper, attacked Calhoun and upheld
the president. The importance in that day ascribed by
politicians to the control of a single newspaper seems
curious. In 1823, Van Buren, while a federal senator,
was interested in the " Albany Argus," almost steadily
from that time until the present the ably managed
organ of the Albany Regency ; and he then confiden
tially wrote to Hoyt : " Without a paper thus edited at
Albany we may hang our harps on the willows. With
it, the party can survive a thousand such convulsions as
those which now agitate and probably alarm most of

164 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
those around you." This seems an astonishingly high
estimate of the power of a paper which, though rela
tively conspicuous in the state, could have then had but
a small circulation. It was, however, the judgment of
a most sagacious politician. In 1822 he complained to
Hoyt that his expenses of this description were too heavy.
In 1833 James Gordon Bennett, then a young journalist
of Philadelphia, wrote Hoyt a plain intimation that
money was necessary to enable him to continue his jour
nalistic warfare in Van Buren's behalf. Anguish, dis
appointment, despair, he said, brooded over him, while
Van Buren chose to sit still and sacrifice those who had
supported him in every weather. Van Buren replied that
he could not directly or indirectly afford pecuniary aid
to Bennett's press, and more particularly as he was then
situated ; that if Bennett could not continue friendly to
him on public grounds and with perfect independence,
he could only regret it, but he desired no other support.
He added, however, not to burn his ships behind him,
that he had supposed there would be no difficulty in ob
taining money in New York, if their " friends in Phila
delphia could not all together make out to sustain one
press." Thus was invited a powerful animosity, vindic
tively shown even when Van Buren was within three
years of his death.
Soon after his arrival Blair entered the famous
Kitchen Cabinet, a singularly talented body, fond enough
indeed of " wire-pulling," but with clear and steady
political convictions. William B. Lewis had long been
a close personal friend of Jackson and manager of his
political interests, and had but recently earned his grati
tude by rushing successfully to the defense of Mrs.
Jackson's reputation, Kendall and Hill were adroit,

DISSOLUTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET. 165
industrious, skillful men ; the former afterwards post
master-general, and the latter to become a senator from
New Hampshire. Blair entered this company full of
zeal against nullification and the United States Bank.
Jackson himself was so strong-willed a man, so shrewd
in management, so skillful in reading the public temper,
that the story of the complete domination of this junto
over him is quite absurd. The really great abilities of
these men and their entire devotion to his interests
gained a profound and justifiable influence with him,
which occasional petty or unworthy uses made of it did
not destroy. No one can doubt that Jackson was con
firmed by them in the judgment to which Van Buren
urged him upon great political issues. The secretary of
state refused to give the new paper of Blair any of the
printing of his department, lest its origin should be
attributed to him, and because he wished to be able to
say truly that he had nothing to do with it. Kendall,
who lived through the civil war, strongly loyal to the
Union and to Jackson's memory, to die a wealthy philan
thropist, declared in his autobiography, and doubtless
correctly, that the " Globe " was not established by Van
Buren or his friends, but by friends of Jackson who
desired his reelection for another four years. Neverthe
less Van Buren was held responsible for the paper ;
and its establishment was soon followed by the dissolu
tion of the cabinet.
This explosion, it is now clear, was of vast advantage
to the cause of the Union. It took place in April, 1831,
and in part at least was Van Buren's work. On the
9th of that month he wrote to Edward Livingston, then
a senator from Louisiana spending the summer at his seat
on the Hudson River, asking him to start for Washing-

166 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ton the day after he received the letter, and to avoid
speculation '¦ by giving out tliat " he was " going to
Philadelphia." Livingston wrote back from Washing
ton to his wife that Van Buren had taken the high and
popular ground that, as a candidate for the presidency,
he ought not to remain in the cabinet when its pubhc
measures would be attributed to his intrigue, and thus
made to injure the president ; and that Van Buren's
place was pressed upon him ¦• with all the warmth of
friendship and every appeal to my love of country."
Van Buren, with courageous skill, put his resignation
to the public distinctly on the ground of his own politi
cal aspiration. On April 11, 1S31, he wrote to the
president a letter for publication, saying that from the
moment he had entered the cabinet it had been his
'• anxious wish and zealous endeavor to prevent a pre
mature agitation of the question " of the succession,
" and at all events to discountenance, and if possible
repress, the disposition, at an early day manifested." to
connect his name " with that disturbing topic."' Of •' the
sincerity and constancy of his disposition " he appealed
to the president to judge. But he had not succeeded,
and circumstances beyond his control had given the sub
ject a turn which could not then " be remedied except
by a self-disfrancbisement, which, even if dictated by "
bis '• individual wishes, could hardly be reconcilable
with propriety or self-respect." In the situation exist
ing at the time. ¦' diversities of ulterior preference among
the friends of the administration " were unavoidable, and
he added : ' Even if the respective advocates of those
thus placed in rivalship be patriotic enough to resist the
temptation of creating obstacles to the advancement of
him to whose elevation they are opposed, by embar-

CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 167
rassing the branch of public service committed to his
charge, they are nevertheless, by their position, exposed
to the suspicion of entertaining and encouraging such
views, — a suspicion which can seldom fad, in the end,
to aggravate into present alienation and hostility the
prospective differences which first gave rise to it." The
public service, he said, required him to remove such
" obstructions " from " the successful prosecution of pub
hc affairs ; " and he intimated, with the affectation of
self-depreciation which was disagreeably fashionable
among great men of the day, that the example he set
would, " notwithstanding the humility of its origin," be
found worthy of respect and observance. When four
years later he accepted the presidential nomination
he repeated the sentiment of this letter, but more
explicitly, saying that his '* name was first associated
with the question of General Jackson's successor more
through the ill-will of opponents than the partiality
of friends." This seemed very true. For every move
ment which had tended to commit the administration
or its chief against Calhoun or his doctrines, he had
been held responsible as a device to advance himself.
His adversaries had proclaimed him not so much a
pubhc officer as a self-seeking candidate. It was a
rare and true stroke of political genius to admit his
aspiration to the presidency ; to deny his present can
didacy and his self-seeking ; but, lest the clamor of
his enemies should, if he longer held his office, throw
doubt upon his sincerity, to withdraw from that
station, and to prevent the continued pretense that he
was using official opportunities, however legitimately, to
increase his public reputation or his political power.
Thus would the candidacy be thrust on him by his ene-

168 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
mies. In his letter he announced that Jackson had con
sented to stand for reelection ; and that, " without a total
disregard of the lights of experience," he could not shut
his eyes to the unfavorable influence which his continu
ance in the cabinet might have upon Jackson's own can
vass in 1832.
In accepting the resignation Jackson declared the
reasons which the letter had presented too strong to be
disregarded, thus practically assenting to Van Buren's
candidacy to succeed him. Jackson looked with sor
row, he said, upon the state of things Van Buren had
described. But it was " but an instance of one of the
evils to which free governments must ever be liable,"
an evil whose remedy lay " in the intelligence and public
spirit of " their " common constituents," who would cor
rect it ; and in that belief he found " abundant consola
tion." He added that, with the best opportunities for
observing and judging, he had seen in Van Buren no
other desire than " to move quietly on in the path of"
his duties, and " to promote the harmonious conduct of
pubhc affairs." " If on this point," he apostrophized
the departing premier, "you have had to encounter
detraction, it is but another proof of the utter insuffi
ciency of innocence and worth to shield from such as
saults." Never was a presidential candidate more adroitly or
less dishonorably presented to his party and to the
country. For the adroitness lay in the frank avowal of
a willingness or desire to be president and a resolution
to be a candidate, — for which, so far as their conduct
went, his adversaries were really responsible, — and in
seizing an undoubted opportunity to serve the public.
Quite apart from the sound reason that the secretary of

DISSOLUTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET. 169
state should not, if possible, be exposed in dealing with
public questions to aspersions upon his motives, as Van
Buren was quite right in saying that he would be, it was
also clear that the cabinet was unharmonious ; and that
its lack of harmony, whatever the facts or wherever the
fault, seriously interfered with the public business. The
administration and the country, it was obvious, were
now approaching the question of nullification, and upon
that question it was but patriotic to desire that its mem
bers should firmly share the union principles of their
chief. Within a few weeks after the dissolution of the
cabinet, Jackson seized the opportunity afforded him by
an invitation from the city of Charleston to visit it on
the 4th of July, to sound in the ears of nullification a
ringing blast for the Union. If he could go, he said, he
trusted to find in South Carolina " all the men of talent,
exalted patriotism, and private worth," however divided
they might have been before, " united before the altar of
their country on the day set apart for the solemn cele
bration of its independence, — independence which can
not exist without union, and with it is eternal." The
disunion sentiments ascribed to distinguished citizens of
the state were, he hoped, if indeed they were accurately
reported, " the effect of momentary excitement, not
deliberate design." For all the work then performed in
defense of the Union, Jackson and his advisers of the
time must share with Webster and Clay the gratitude
of our own and all later generations. The burst of
loyalty in April, 1861, had no less of its genesis in the
intrepid front and the political success of the national
administration from 1831 to 1833, than in the pathetic
and glorious appeals and aspirations of the great ora
tors.

170 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Jackson now called to the work Edward Livingston,
privileged to perform in it that service of his which
deserves a splendid immortality. He became secretary
of state on May 24, 1831. Eaton, the secretary of war,
voluntarily resigned to become governor of Florida;
and Barry, the postmaster-general, who was friendly to
the reorganization, was soon appointed minister to
Spain, in which post Eaton later succeeded him. Ing
ham, Branch, and Berrien, the Calhoun members, were
required to resign. The new cabinet, apart from the
state department, was on the whole far abler than the
old ; indeed, it was one of the ablest of American cabi
nets. Below Livingston at the councfl table sat Mc-
Lane of Delaware, recalled from the British mission to
take the treasury, Governor Cass of Michigan, and Sena
tor Woodbury of New Hampshire, secretaries of war
and navy. Amos Kendall brought to the post-office his
extraordinary astuteness and diligence in administra
tion ; and Taney, later the chief justice, was attorney-
general. The executive talents of this body of men,
loyal as they were to the plans of Jackson and Van
Buren, promised, and they afterwards brought, success
in the struggle for the principles now adopted by the
party, as well as for the control of the government.
Van Buren stood as truly for a policy of state as ever
stood any candidate before the American people. One
finds it agreeable now to escape for a moment from the
Washington atmosphere of personal controversy and
ambition. It is not to be forgotten, however, that a
like atmosphere has surrounded even those political
struggles in America, only three or four in number,
which have been greater and deeper than that in which
Jackson and Van Buren were the chief figures. From

SECRETARY OF STATE. 171
this temper of personal controversy and ambition the
greatest political benefactors of history have not been
free, so inevitable is the mingling with large affairs of
the varied personal motives, conscious and unconscious,
of those who transact them.
When Van Buren left the first place in Jackson's
cabinet, the latter, too, at last stood for the definite pol
icy which he had but imperfectly adopted when he was
elected, and which, as a practical and immediate politi
cal plan, it is reasonably safe to assert, was most largely
the creation of the sagacious mind of his chief associate.
Before Van Buren left Albany he had written to Hamil
ton on February 21, 1829, with reference to Jackson's
inaugural : " I hope the general will not find it neces
sary to avow any opinion upon constitutional questions
at war with the doctrines of the Jefferson school.
Whatever his views may be, there can be no necessity
of doing so in an inaugural address." This shows the
doubt, which had been caused by some of Jackson's
utterances and votes, of his intelligent and systematic
adherence to the political creed preached by Van Buren.
Jackson's inaugural was colorless and safe enough.
Upon strict construction he said that he should " keep
steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of
the executive power ; " that he would be animated by
a proper respect for those sovereign members of our
Union, taking care not to confound the powers they have
reserved to themselves with those they have granted to
the confederacy." The bank he did not mention. And
upon the living and really great question, to which Van <
Buren had given so much study, Jackson said, himself
probably having a grim sense of humor at the absurd
emptiness of the sentence : " Internal improvement and

172 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be pro
moted by the constitutional acts of the federal govern
ment, are of high importance."
Very different was the situation when two years later
Van Buren left the cabinet. In several state papers of
great dignity and ability and yet popular and interest
ing in style, Jackson had formulated a political creed
closely consistent with that advocated by Van Buren in
the senate. Upon internal improvements, Jackson, on
May 27, 1830, sent to the house his famous Maysville
Road veto. That road was exclusively within the state
• of jghig^and not connected with any existing system of
improvements. Jackson very well said that if it could
be considered national, no further distinction between
the appropriate duties of the general and state govern
ments need be attempted. He pointed out the tendency
of such appropriations, little by httle, to distort the
meaning of the Constitution ; and found in former legis
lation " an admonitory proof of the force of implication,
and that necessity of guarding the Constitution with
sleepless vigilance against the authority of precedents
which have not the sanction of its most plainly defined
powers." In his annual message of December, 1830,
he referred to the system of federal subscriptions to pri
vate corporate enterprises, saying : " The power which
the general government would acquire within the several
states by becoming the principal stockholder in corpora
tions, controlling every canal and each sixty or hundred
miles of every important road, and giving a proportion
ate vote to all their elections, is almost inconceivable,
and in my view dangerous to the liberties of the people."
With these utterances ended the very critical struggle
to give the federal government a power which even

SECRETARY OF STATE. 173
in those days would have been great, and which, as has
already been said, had it continued with the growth of
railways, would have enormously and radically changed
our system of government.
Before he left the senate Van Buren had pronounced
against the Bank of the United States ; but Jackson did
not mention it in his inaugural. In his first annual
message, however, Jackson warned Congress that the
charter of the bank would expire in 1836, and that
deliberation upon its renewal ought to commence at
once. " Both the constitutionality and the expediency
of the law creating this bank," he said, " are well ques
tioned . . . ; and it must be admitted by all that it has
failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and
sound currency." This was plain enough for a first
utterance. A year later he told Congress that nothing
had occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which
many citizens apprehended from that institution as then
organized, though he outlined an institution which should
be not a corporation, but a branch of the treasury depart
ment, and not, as he thought, obnoxiaus to constitutional
objections. The removal of the Cherokee Indians from within
the state of Georgia he defended by considerations
which were practically unanswerable. It was danger
ously inconsistent with our political system to maintain
within the limits of a state Indian tribes, free from the
obligations of state laws, having a tribal independence,
and bound only by treaty relations with the United
States. It was harsh to remove the Indians ; but it
would have been harsher to them and to the white peo
ple of the state to have supported by federal arms an
Indian sovereignty within its limits. Jackson, with true

174 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Democratic jealousy, refused in his political and execu
tive policy to defer to the merely moral weight of the
opinion of the supreme court. For in that tribunal
political and social exigencies could have but limited
force in answering a question which, as the court itself
decided, called for a political remedy, which the presi
dent and not the court could apply.
The tariff might, Jackson declared, be constitutionally
used for protective purposes ; but the deliberate policy
of his party was now plainly intimated. In his first
message he " regretted that the complicated restrictions
which now embarrass the intercourse of nations could
not by common consent be abolished." In the Mays-
ville veto he said that, " as long as the encouragement
of domestic manufactures " was " directed to national
ends," ... it should receive from him " a temperate but
steady support." But this is to be read with the expres
sion in the same paper that the people had a right to
demand " the reduction of every tax to as low a point
as the wise observance of the necessity to protect that
portion of our manufactures and labor, whose prosperity
is essential to our national safety and independence, will
allow." This encouragement was, he said in his inaugu
ral, to be given to those products which might be found
" essential to our national independence." In his sec
ond message he declared " the obligations upon all the
trustees of political power to exempt those for whom
they act from all unnecessary burdens ; " that " the
resources of the nation beyond those required for the
immediate and necessary purposes of government can
nowhere be so well deposited as in the pockets of the
people ; " that " objects of national importance alone
ought to be protected ; " and that " of those the produc-

SECRETARY OF STATE. 175
tions of our soil, our mines, and our workshops, essential
to national defense, occupy the first rank." Other do
mestic industries, having a national importance, and
which might, after temporary protection, compete with
foreign labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same
attention in a subordinate degree. The economic light
here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps as strong
as it often is in a political paper. Jackson's conclu
sion was that the tariff then existing taxed some of the
comforts of hfe too highly ; protected interests too local
and minute to justify a general exaction ; and forced
some manufactures for which the country was not ripe.
All this practical and striking growth in political
science had taken place during the two years of Jack
son's and Van Buren's almost daily intercourse at Wash
ington. It is impossible from materials yet made public
to point out with precision the latter's handiwork in
each of these papers. James A. Hamilton describes his
own long nights at the White House on the messages of
1829 and 1830 ; and his were not the only nights of the
kind spent by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other
strong men, and like some whose opportunities of educa
tion had been far ampler than his, freely used literary
assistance, although, with all his inaccuracies, he himself
wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interesting style. But
with little doubt the political positions taken in these
papers, and which made a definite and lasting creed,
were more immediately the work of the secretary of
state. The consultations with Van Buren, of which
Hamilton tells, are only glimpses of what must continu
ally have gone on. At the time of Jackson's inaugura
tion Hamilton wrote that the latter's confidence was re
posed in men in no way equal to him in natural parts,

176 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
but who had been useful to him in covering " his very
lamentable defects of education," and whom, through
his reluctance to expose these defects to others, he was
compelled to keep about him. He added that Van
Buren could never reach the same relation which
Lewis held with the general, because the latter would
" not yield himself so readily to superior as to inferior
minds." This was a mistake. Van Buren's personal
loyalty to Jackson, his remarkable tact and delicacy, had
promptly aroused in Jackson that extraordinary liking
for him which lasted until Jackson died. With this ad
vantage, Van Buren's clear-cut theories of political con
duct were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally wise
mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they were
agreeable, and received there the deference due to the
practical sagacity in which Van Buren's obvious political
success had proved him to be a master. Van Buren
was doubtless greatly aided by the Kitchen Cabinet.
He was careful to keep on good terms with those who
had so familiar an access to Jackson. Kendall's singular
and useful ability he soon discovered. It was at the
latter's instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at
the White House, where Van Buren paid him special
attention. The influence of the members of the Kitchen
Cabinet with their master has been much exaggerated.
Soon after Lewis was appointed, and in spite of his per
sonal intimacy and of his rumored influence with the
president, he was, as he wrote to Hamilton, in some
anxiety whether he might not be removed ; the presi
dent had at least, he said, entertained a proposition to
remove him, and was therefore, in view of Jackson's
great debt to him, no longer entitled to his " friendship
or future support."

POLITICAL REMOVALS. 177
Very soon after Van Buren's withdrawal from the
cabinet, he was accused of primarily and chiefly causing
the official proscription of men for political opinions
which began in the federal service under Jackson. From
that time to the present the accusation has been care
lessly repeated from one writer to another, with little
original examination of the facts. It is clear that Van
Buren neither began nor caused this demoralizing and
disastrous abuse. When he reached Washington in
1829, the removals were in full and lamentable progress.
In the very first days of the administration, McLean
was removed from the office of postmaster-general to a
seat in the supreme court, because, so Adams after an
interview with him wrote in his diary on March 14,
1829, " he refused to be made the instrument of the
sweeping proscription of postmasters which is to be one
of the samples of the promised reform." This was a
week or two before Van Buren reached Washington.
On the same day Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from
Washington : " No damned rascal who made use of his
office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams
in, and General Jackson out of power, is entitled to the
least lenity or mercy, save that of hanging. . . .Whether
or not I shall get anything in the general scramble for
plunder remains to be proven ; but I rather guess I
shall. ... I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would rec
ommend you to push like a devil, if you expect any
thing from that quarter. ... If I can only keep my
own legs, I shall do well ; but I 'm darned if I can carry
any weight with me." This man, against Van Buren's
earnest protest and to his great disturbance, had some
of the devil's luck in pushing. He was appointed col
lector of customs at New York, — one of the principal

178 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
financial offices in the country. It is not altogether
unsatisfactory to read of the scandalous defalcation of
which he was afterwards guflty, and of the serious injury
it dealt his party. The temper which he exposed so
ingenuously, filled Washington at the time. Nor did it
come only or chiefly from one quarter of the country.
Kendall, then fresh from Kentucky, who had been ap
pointed fourth auditor, wrote to his wife, with interest
ingly mingled sentiments : " I turned out six clerks on
Saturday. Several of them have families and are poor.
It was the most painful thing I ever did ; but I could
not well get along without it. Among them is a poor
old man with a young wife and several children. I
shall help to raise a contribution to get him back to Ohio.
... I shall have a private carriage to go out with me
and bring my whole brood of httle ones. Bless their
sweet faces."
Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton from
Albany in March, 1829 : " If the general makes one
removal at this moment he must go on. Would it not
be better to get the streets of Washington clear of office-
seekers first in the way I proposed ? ... As to the
publication in the newspapers I have more to say. So
far as depends on me, my course will be to restore by a
single order every one who has been turned out by Mr.
Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a per
sonal character have since arisen which would make the
reappointment in any case improper. To ascertain that
will take a little time. There I would pause." Among
the Mackenzie letters is one from Lorenzo Hoyt, describ
ing an interview with Van Buren while governor, and
then complaining that the latter would " not lend the
utmost weight of his influence to displace from office such

POLITICAL REMOVALS. 179
men as John Duer," Adams's appointee as United States
attorney at New York. If they had been struggling for
political success for the benefit of their opponents, he
angrily wrote, he wished to know it. He added, how
ever, that, from the behavior of the president thus far, he
thought Jackson would " go the whole hog." This was
before Van Buren reached Washington. In answer to
an insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging a removal, and
telling the secretary of state that there was a " charm
attending bold measures extremely fascinating " which
had given Jackson all his glory, Van Buren wrote back :
" Here I am engaged in the most intricate and important
affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful
conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests
of the country depend, and which keep me occupied from
early in the morning until late at night. And can you
think it kind or just to harass me under such circum
stances with letters which no man of common sensibility
can read without pain ? . . . I must be plain with you.
. . . The terms upon which you have seen fit to place
our intercourse are inadmissible." Ingham, Jackson's
secretary of the treasury, the next day wrote to this
typical office-seeker that the rage for office in New York
was such that an enemy menacing the city with deso
lation would not cause more excitement. He added,
speaking of his own legitimate work : " These duties
cannot be postponed ; and I do assure you that I am
compelled daily to file away long lists of recommenda
tions, etc., without reading them, although I work 18
hours out of the 24 with all diligence. The appoint
ments can be postponed ; other matters cannot ; and it
was one of the prominent errors of the late administra
tion that they suffered many important public interests

180 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure
or buy up partisans. This we must not do."
Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, condemned
the system of removals ; and his fairness may well be
trusted. He said that in Jackson's first year (in which
De Tocqueville, whom he was answering, said that
Jackson had removed every removable functionary)
there were removed but 690 officers through the whole
United States for all causes, of whom 491 were post
masters : the entire number of postmasters being at the
time nearly 8,000. Kendall, reviewing the first three
years of Jackson's administration near their expiration,
said that in the city of Washington there had been
removed but one officer out of seven, and " most of them
for bad conduct and character," a statement some of
whose significance doubtless depends upon what was
" bad character," but which still fairly limits the epithet
" wholesale " customarily applied to these removals. In
the post-office department, he said, the removals had been
only one out of sixteen, and in the whole government
but one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party
purposes ; but he was cautious and precise ; and his
statements, made near the time, show how far behind
the sudden "clean sweep" of 1861 was this earlier
essay in "spoils," and how much exaggeration there
has been on the subject. Benton says that in the de
partments at Washington a majority of the employees
were opposed to Jackson throughout his administration.
Of the officers having a judicial function, such as land
and claims commissioners, territorial judges, justices in
the District of Columbia, none were removed. The
readiness to remove was stimulated by the discovery of
the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after his

POLITICAL REMOVALS. 181
removal from the fourth auditor's place, to which Ken
dall was appointed. Watkins had been Adams's warm
personal friend, so the latter states in his diary, and
" an over active partisan against Jackson at the last
presidential election." Unreasonable as was a general
inference from one of the instances of dishonesty which
occur under the best administrations, and a flagrant
instance of which was soon to occur under his own
administration, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for
many really shameful removals. There had doubtless
been among office-holders under Adams a good deal of
the " offensive partisanship " of our day, many expres
sions of horror by subordinate officers at the picture of
Jackson as president. All this had angered Jackson,
whose imperial temper readily classed his subordinates
as servants of Andrew Jackson, rather than as ministers
of the public service. Moreover, his accession, as Ben
ton not unfairly pointed out, was the first great party
change since Jefferson had succeeded the elder Adams.
Offices had greatly increased in number. In the pro
found democratic change that had been actively operat
ing for a quarter of a century, the force of old traditions
had been broken in many useful as in many useless
things. Great numbers of inferior offices had now
become political, not only in New York, but in Penn
sylvania, Georgia, and other states. Adams's adminis
tration, except in the change of policy upon large ques
tions, had been a continuation of Monroe's. He went
from the first place in Monroe's cabinet to the presi
dency. His secretaries of the treasury and the navy
and his postmaster-general and attorney-general had
held office under Monroe, the latter three in the very
same places. But Jackson thrust out of the presidency

182 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
his rival, who had naturally enough been earnestly
sustained by large numbers of his subordinates ; and
Adams's appointees were doubtless in general followers
of himself and of Clay.
Jackson's first message contained a serious defense
v of the removals. Men long in office, he said, acquired
the " habit of looking with indifference upon the public
interests," and office became considered " a species of
property." " The duties of all public officers," he
declared, with an ignorance then very common among
Americans, could be " made so plain and simple that
men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for
their performance." Further, he pointed out that no
one man had " any more intrinsic right " to office than
i another ; and therefore " no individual wrong " was
done by removal. The officer removed, he concluded,
with almost a demagogic touch, had the same means of
earning a living as " the millions who never held office."
In spite of individual distress he wished " rotation in
office " to become " a leading principle in the Republican
\, creed." Unfounded as most of this is now clearly seen
to be, it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to
a very large part of the American people.
In his own department Van Buren practiced little of
the proscription which was active elsewhere. Of seven
teen foreign representatives, but four were removed in
the first year. Doubtless he was fortunate in having an
office without the amount of patronage of the post-office
or the treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed
a personal liking for removals. The distribution of
offices was not distasteful to him; but his temper was
neither proscriptive nor unfriendly. At times even his
partisan loyalty was doubted for his reluctance in this,

POLITICAL REMOVALS. 183
which was soon deemed an appropriate and even neces
sary party work.
But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and de
moralizing system. Powerful as he was with Jackson,
wise and far-seeing as he was, he must receive for his
acquiescence, or even for his silence, a part of the con
demnation which the American people, as time goes on,
will more and more visit upon one of the great political
offenses committed against their political integrity and
welfare. But it must in justice be remembered, not
only that Van Buren did not begin, or actively conduct
the distribution of spoils ; not only that his acquiescence
was in a practice which in his own state he had found
well established ; but that the practice in which he thus
joined was one which it is probable he could not have
fully resisted without his own political destruction, and
perhaps the temporary prostration of the political causes
to which he was devoted. Though these be palliations
and not defenses, the biographer ought not to apply to
human nature a rule of unprecedented austerity. In
Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if any, more
timidity or time-serving than in the like yielding by
every man holding great office in the United States since
Jackson's inauguration ; and the worst, the most cor
rupting, and the most demoralizing official proscription
in America took place thirty-two years afterwards, and
under a president who, in wise and exalted patriotism,
was one of the greatest statesmen, as he has been per
haps the best loved, of Americans, and to whom blame
ought to be assigned all the larger by reason of the
extraordinary power and prestige he enjoyed, and the
moral fervor of the nation behind him, which rendered
less necessary this unworthy aid of inferior patronage.

184 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
So crowded and interesting were the two years of
Van Buren's life in the cabinet with matters apart from
the special duties of his office, that it is only at the last,
and briefly, that an account can be given of his career
as secretary of state. His conduct of foreign affairs
was firm, adroit, dignified, and highly successful. It
utterly broke the ideal of turbulent and menacing incom
petence which the Whigs set up for Jackson's presi
dency. He had to solve no difficulty of the very first
orders ; for the United States were in profound peace
with the whole world. He ])erformed, however, with
skill and success two diplomatic services of real impor
tance, services which brought deserved and most valu
able strength to Jackson's administration. The Ameri
can claims for French spoliations upon American ships
during the operation of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan
decrees had been under discussion for many years.
They were now resolutely pressed. In his message of
December, 1829, Jackson, doubtless under Van Buren's
advice, paid some compliments to " France, our ancient
ally ; " but then said very plainly that these claims,
unless satisfied, would continue " a subject of unpleas
ant discussion and possible collision between the two
governments." He politely referred to " the known
integrity of the French monarch," Charles X., as an
assurance that the claims would be paid. A few months
afterwards this Bourbon was tumbled off the French
throne ; and in December, 1830, Jackson with increased
courtliness, and with a flattering allusion to Lafayette,
conspicuous in this milder revolution as he had been in
1789, rejoiced in " the high voucher we possess for the
enlarged views and pure integrity " of Louis Philippe.
The new American vigor, doubtless aided by the liberal

BRITISH COLONIAL TRADE. 185
change in France, brought a treaty on July 4, 1831,
under which $5,000,000 was to be paid by France, a
result which Jackson, with pardonable boasting, said in
his message of December, 1831, was an encouragement
" for perseverance in the demands of justice," and would
admonish other powers, if any, inclined to evade those
demands, that they would never be abandoned. The
French treaty came so soon after Van Buren's retire
ment from the state department, and followed so natu
rally upon the methods of his negotiation, and his instruc
tions to Wdham C. Rives, our minister at Paris, that
much of its credit belonged to him. In March, 1830, a
treaty was made with Denmark requiring the payment
of $650,000 for Danish spoliations on American com
merce. The effective pressing of these claims was justly
one of the most popular performances of the administra
tion. Commercial treaties were concluded with Austria
in August, 1829 ; with Turkey in May, 1830 ; and with
Mexico in April, 1831.
But the chief transaction of Van Buren's foreign
administration was the opening of trade in American
vessels between the United States and the British West
Indian colonies. This commerce was then relatively
much more important to the United States than in later
times ; and it was chiefly by American shipping
that American commerce was carried on with foreign
countries. The absurd and odious restrictions upon
intercourse so highly natural and advantageous to
the people of our seaboard and of the British West
Indian islands had led to smuggling on a large scale,
and were fruitful of international irritations. Retalia
tory acts of Congress and Parliament, prohibitive
proclamations of our presidents, and British orders in

186 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
council, had at different times, since the close of the
second British war in 1815, oppressed or prevented
honest and profitable trade between neighbors who
ought to have been friendly traders. Van Buren found
the immediate position to be as follows. In July, 1825,
an act of Parliament had allowed foreign vessels to trade
to the British colonies upon conditions. To secure for
American vessels the benefit of this act, it was necessary
that within one year American ports should be open
to British vessels bringing the same kind of British
or colonial produce as could be imported in American
vessels ; that British and American vessels in the trade
should pay the same government charges ; that alien
duties on British vessels and cargoes, that is, duties not
imposed on the like vessels and cargoes owned by
Americans, should be suspended ; and that the provi
sion of an American law of 1823 limiting the privileges
of the colonial trade to British vessels carrying colonial
produce to American ports directly from the colonies
exporting it, and without stopping at intermediate ports,
should be repealed. John Quincy Adams's administra
tion had failed within the year to comply with the con
ditions imposed by the British law of 1825. In 1826,
therefore, Great Britain forbade this trade and inter
course in American vessels. Adams retorted with a
counter prohibition in March, 1827. And in this unfor
tunate position Van Buren found our commercial rela
tions with the West Indian, Bahama, and South Ameri
can colonies of England. The situation was aggravated
by a claim made by the American government in 1823
that American goods should pay in the colonial ports
no higher duties than British goods, a protest against
British protection to British industry in the British colo-

BRITISH COLONIAL TRADE. 187
nies coming with little grace from a country itself main
taining the protective system. Adams had sent Galla
tin to England to remedy the difficulty, but without
success. Van Buren adopted a different method of negotiation.
A more conciliatory bearing was assumed towards our
traditional adversary. Jackson, in language sounding
strangely from his imperious mouth, was made to say in
his first message that " with Great Britain, alike dis
tinguished in peace and war, we may look forward to
years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated competition ;
that it is their policy to preserve the most cordial rela
tions." These, he said, were his own views ; and such
were " the prevailing sentiments of our constituents."
In his instructions to McLane, the minister at London,
Van Buren, departing widely from conventional diplo
macy, expressly conceded that the American govern
ment had been wrong in its claim that England should
admit to its colonies American goods on as favorable
terms as British goods ; that it had been wrong in re
quiring British ships bringing colonial produce to come
and go directly from and to the producing colonies ; and
that it had been wrong in refusing the privileges offered
by the British law of 1825. This frank surrender of
untenable positions showed the highest skill in negotia
tion, a business for which Van Buren was perhaps bet
ter equipped than any American of his time. In these
points we were " assailable ; " we had " too long and
too tenaciously " resisted British rights. After these
admissions, it would, he said, be improper for Great
Britain to suffer " any feelings that find their origin in
the past pretensions of this government to have an
adverse influence upon the present conduct of Great

188 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Britain." McLane was to tell the Earl of Aberdeen
that " to set up the act of the late administration as the
cause of forfeiture of privileges which would otherwise
be extended to the people of the United States would,
under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and
could not fad to excite their deepest sensibility." Mc
Lane was also to allude to the parts taken by the mem
bers, of Jackson's administration in the former treat
ment of the question under discussion. And here
Van Buren used the objectionable sentence which led to
his subsequent rejection by the senate as minister to
England, and which through that, such are the curious
caprices of politics, led, or at least helped to lead, him to
the presidency. He said, " Their views upon that point
have been submitted to the people of the United States ;
and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed
are the result of the judgment expressed by the only
earthly tribunal to which the late administration was
amenable for its acts."
In Van Buren's sagacious desire to emphasize the
abandonment of claims preventing the negotiation, he
here introduced to a foreign nation the American peo
ple as a judge that had condemned the assertion of such
claims by Jackson's predecessor. The statement was
at least an exaggeration. There was little reason to
suppose that Adams's fadure in the negotiation over
colonial trade had much, if at all, influenced the election
of 1828. Nor was it dignified officially to expose our
party contests to foreign eyes. But Van Buren was
intent upon success in the negotiation. He could suc
ceed where others had failed, only by a strong asser
tion of a change in American policy. His fault was at
most one of taste in the manner of an assertion right

SECRETARY OF STATE. 189
enough and wise enough in itself. Nor were these
celebrated instructions lacking in firmness or dignity.
Great Britain was clearly warned that she must then
decide for all time whether the hardships from which
her West Indian planters suffered should continue ; and
that the United States would not " in expiation of sup
posed past encroachments " repeal their laws, leaving
themselves " wholly dependent upon the indulgence
of Great Britain," and not knowing in advance what
course she would follow. In his speech in the senate
in February, 1827, Van Buren had clearly stated the
general positions which he took in this famous despatch.
It is rather curious, however, that he found occasion then
to say upon this very subject what he seemed afterwards
to forget, that " in the collisions which may arise be
tween the United States and a foreign power, it is our
duty to present an unbroken front ; domestic differences,
if they tend to give encouragement to unjust preten
sions, should be extinguished or deferred ; and the cause
of our government must be considered as the cause of
our country." So easy it is to advise other men to be
bold and firm.
McLane's long and very able letter to the British
foreign secretary closely followed his instructions. Lord
Aberdeen was frankly told that the United States had
committed " mistakes " in the past ; and that the
" American pretensions " which had prevented a former
arrangement would not be revived. The negotiation
was entirely successful. In October, 1830, the president,
with the authorization of Congress, declared American
ports open to British vessels and their cargoes coming
from the colonies, and that they should be subject to
the same charges as American vessels coming from

190 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the same colonies. In November a British order in
council gave to American vessels corresponding privi
leges. On January 3, 1831, Jackson sent to the senate
the papers, including Van Buren's letter of instructions.
No criticism was made upon their tenor ; and the
public, heedless of the phrases used in reaching the end,
rejoiced in a most beneficent opening of commerce.

CHAPTER VII.
MINISTER TO ENGLAND.  VICE-PRESIDENT.  ELECTION
TO THE PRESIDENCY.
In the summer of 1831 Van Buren knew very well
the strong hold he had upon his party, the entire and
almost affectionate confidence which he enjoyed from
Jackson, and the prestige which his political and offi
cial success had brought him. But to the country, as
he was weU aware, he seemed also to be, as he was, a
politician, obviously skflled in the art, and an avowed
candidate for the presidency. His conciliatory bearing,
his abstinence from personal abuse, his freedom from
personal animosities, all were widely declared to be the
mere incidents of constant duplicity and intrigue. The
absence of proof, and his own explicit denial and appeal
to those who knew the facts, did not protect him from
the belief of his adversaries — a belief which, without
examination, has since been widely adopted — that to
prostrate. a dangerous rival he had promoted the quarrel
between Jackson and Calhoun. McLane, the minister
at London, wished to come home, and was to be the
new secretary of the treasury. Van Buren gladly seized
the opportunity. He would leave the field of political
management. Three thousand miles in distance and a
month in time away from Washington or New York,
there could, he thought, be little pretense of personal
manoeuvres on his part. He would thus plainly submit

192 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
his candidacy to popular judgment upon his public
career, without interference from himself. He would
escape the many embarrassments of every politician
upon whom demands are continually made, — demands
whose rejection or allowance alike brings offense. The
English mission was prominently in the public service,
but out of its difficulties ; and it was made particularly
grateful to him by his success in the recent negotiation
over colonial trade. He therefore accepted the post,
for which in almost every respect he had extraordinary-
equipment. He finally left the state department in
June, 1831 ; and on his departure from Washington
Jackson conspicuously rode with him out of the city.
On August 1st, he was formally appointed minister to
Great Britain ; and in September he arrived in London,
accompanied by his son John.
Van Buren found Washington Irving presiding over
the London legation in McLane's absence as charge
d'affaires. Irving's appointment to be secretary of lega
tion under McLane had been one of Van Buren's early
acts, — a proof, Irving wrote, " of the odd way in which
this mad world is governed, when a secretary of state of
a stern republic gives away offices of the kind at the rec
ommendation of a jovial little man of the seas hke Jack
Nicholson." But this was jocose. When the appoint
ment was suggested, it was particularly pleasant to Van
Buren that this graceful and gentle bit of patronage
should be given by so grim a figure as Jackson. Irving
had come on from Spain, his " Columbus " just finished,
and his " Alhambra Tales " ready for writing. His ex
traordinary popularity in England and his old familiarity
with its life made him highly useful to the American
minister, as Van Buren himself soon found. It was not

MINISTER TO ENGLAND. 193
the last time that Englishmen respected the republic of
the west the more because the respect carried with it an
homage to the republic of letters. Irving's was an early
one of the appointments which established the agreeable
tradition of the American diplomatic and consular ser
vice, that literary men should always hold some of its
places of honor and profit. When Van Buren arrived,
Irving was already weary of his post and had resigned.
He remained, however, with the new minister until he
too surrendered his office. The two men became warm
and lifelong friends. The day after Van Buren's ar
rival Irving wrote : "I have just seen Mr. Van Buren,
and do not wonder you should all be so fond of him.
His manners are most amiable and ingratiating ; and I
have no doubt he will become a favorite at this court."
After an intimacy of several months he wrote : " The
more I see of Mr. Van Buren, the more I feel confirmed
in a strong personal regard for him. He is one of the
gentlest and most amiable men I have ever met with ;
with an affectionate disposition that attaches itself to
those around him, and wins their kindness in return."
After a few months of the charming life which an
American of distinction finds open to him in London, a
life for whose duties and whose pleasures Van Buren
was happily fitted,1 there came to him an extraordinary
and enviable delight. He posted through England in an
open carriage with the author of the " Sketch Book " and
" Bracebridge HaU." From those daintiest sources he
1 A month or two after his arrival Van Buren wrote Hamilton
that his place was decidedly the most agreeable he had ever held,
but added : "Money — money is the thing." His house was
splendid and in a delightful situation ; but it cost him £500. His
carriage cost him £310, and his servants with their board $2,600.

194 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
had years before got an idea of English country life, and
of the festivities of an old-fashioned English Christmas ;
and now in an exquisite companionship the idea became
more nearly clothed with reality than happens with most
literary enchantments. After Oxford and Blenheim ;
after quartering in Stratford at the little inn of the Red
Horse, where they " found the same obliging little land
lady that kept it at the time of the visit recorded in the
' Sketch Book ' ; " after Warwick Castle and Kenilworth
and Lichfield and Newstead Abbey and Hardwick
Castle ; after a fortnight at Christmas in Barlborough
Hall, — "a complete scene of old English hospitality,"
with many of the ancient games and customs then obso
lete in other parts of England ; after seeing there the
" mummers and morris dancers and glee singers ; " after
" great feasting with the boar's-head crowned with holly,
the wassail bowl, the yule-log, snapdragon, etc. ; " — after
all these delights, inimitably told by his companion, Van
Buren returned to London, but not for long. He there
enjoyed the halcyon days which the brilliant society of
London knew, when George IV. had just left the throne
to his undignified but good-hearted and jovial brother ;
when Louis Philippe had found a bourgeois crown in
France and the condescending approval of England ;
when Wellington was the first of Englishmen ; when
Prince Talleyrand, his early republicanism and sacri
leges not at all forgotten, but forgiven to the prestige of
his abilities and the splendid fascinations of his society,
was the chief person in diplomatic life ; when the Wizard
of the \North\ though broken, and on his last and vain
trip to the Mediterranean for health, still lingered in
London, one of its grand figures, and sadly recalled to
Irving the times when they " went over the Eildon hills

MINISTER TO ENGLAND. 195
together ; " when Rogers was playing Maecenas and
Catullus at breakfast-tables of poets and bankers and
noblemen. It was amid this serene, shining, and magical
translation from the politics at home that Van Buren
received the rude and humiliating news of his rejection
by the senate ; for his appointment had been made in
recess, and he had left without a confirmation.
One evening in February, 1832, before attending a
party at Talleyrand's, Van Buren learned of the rejec
tion, as had all London which knew there was an Amer
ican minister. He was half ill when the news came ;
but he seemed imperturbable. Without shrinking he
mixed in the splendid throng, gracious and easy, as
if he did not know that his official heart would soon
cease to beat. Lord Auckland, then president of the
board of trade and afterwards governor-general of India,
said to him very truly, and more prophetically than he
fancied : " It is an advantage to a public man to be the
subject of an outrage." Levees and drawing-rooms and
state dinners were being held in honor of the queen's
birthday. After a doubt as to the more decorous course,
he kept the tenor of diplomatic life until he ceased to be
a minister ; and Irving said that, " to the credit of John
Bull," he " was universally received with the most
marked attention," and " treated with more respect and
attention than before by the royal family, by the mem
bers of the present and the old cabinet, and the different
persons of the diplomatic corps." On March 22, 1832,
he had his audience of leave ; two days later he dined
with the king at Windsor ; and about April 1st left for
Holland and a continental trip, this being, so he wrote
a committee appointed at an indignation meetrhg in
Tammany Hall, " the only opportunity " he should
probably ever have for the visit.

196 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Van Buren's despatches from England, now preserved
in the archives of the state department, are not nu
merous. They were evidently written by a minister
who was not very busy in official duties apart from the
social and ceremonial life of a diplomat. Some of
them are in his own handwriting, whose straggling
carelessness is quite out of keeping with the obvious
pains which he bestowed upon every subject he touched,
even those of seemingly slight consequence. Inter
spersed with allusions to the northeastern boundary ques
tion, and with accounts of his protests against abuses
practiced upon American ships in British ports, and of
the spread of the cholera, he gave English political
news and even gossip. He discussed the chances of the
reform bill, rumors of what the ministry would do, and
whether the Duke of Wellington would yield. Van
Buren participated in no important dispute, although
before surrendering his post he presented one of the
hateful claims which American administrations of both
parties had to make in those days. This was the de
mand for slaves who escaped from the American brig
" Comet," wrecked in the Bahamas, on her way from
the Potomac to New Orleans, and who were declared
free by the colonial authorities.
It is safe to believe that Secretary Livingston read
the more interesting of these letters at the W7hite House.
Van Buren discreetly lightened up some oi the diplomatic
pages with passages very agreeable to Jackson. In
describing his presentation to William IV., he told
Livingston that the king had formed the highest esti
mate of Jackson's character, and repeated the royal
remark " that detraction and misrepresentation were
the common lot of all public men." Of the president's

REJECTION BY THE SENATE. 197
message of December, 1831, he wrote that few in Eng
land refused to recognize its ability or the " distin
guished talents of the executive by whose advice and
labors " the affairs " of our highly favored country "
had been " conducted to such happy results."
On July 5, 1832, Van Buren arrived at New York,
having several weeks before been nominated for the
vice-presidency. He declined a public reception, he
said, because, afflicted as New York was with the chol
era, festivities would be discordant with the feelings of
his friends ; and a few days later he was in Washing
ton. Congress was in session, debating the tariff bill ;
and he quickly enough found it true, as he had already
believed, that his rejection had been a capital blunder
of his enemies. The rejection occurred on January 25,
1832. Jackson's nomination had gone to the senate
early in December, but the opposition had hesitated at
the responsibility for the affront. The debate took place
in secret session, but the speeches were promptly made
public for their effect on the country. Clay and Web
ster, the great leaders of the Whigs, and Hayne, the
eloquent representative of the Calhoun Democracy, and
others, spoke against Van Buren. Clay and Webster
based their rejection upon his language in the despatch
to McLane, already quoted. Webster said that he
would pardon almost anything where he saw true patri
otism and sound American feeling ; but he could not
forgive the sacrifice of these to party. Van Buren,
with sensible and skillful foresight, had frankly admit
ted that we had been wrong in some of our claims ; and
GaUatin, it was afterwards shown from his original
despatch to Clay, had expressly said the same thing.
But in a bit of buncombe Webster insisted that no

198 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
American minister must ever admit that his country
had been wrong. " In the presence of foreign courts,"
he solemnly said, " amidst the monarchies of Europe,
he is to stand up for his country and his whole country ;
that no jot nor tittle of her honor is to suffer in his
hands ; that he is not to allow others to reproach either
his government or his country, and far less is he him
self to reproach either ; that he is to have no objects in
his eye but American objects, and no heart in his bosom
but an American heart." To say all this, Webster de
clared, was a duty whose performance he wished might
be heard " by every independent freeman in the United
States, by the British minister and the British king, and
every minister and every crowned head in Europe." Van
Buren's language, Clay said, had been that of an hum
ble vassal to a proud and haughty lord, prostrating and
degrading the American eagle before the British lion.
These cheap appeals fell perfectly flat. If Van Buren
had been open to criticism for the .manner in which he
pointed out a party change in American administration,
the error was, at the worst, committed to preclude a
British refusal from finding justification in the offensive
attitude previously taken by Adams. In admitting our
mistaken " pretensions," Van Buren had been entirely
right, barring a slight fault in the word, which did not,
however, then seem to import the consciousness of
wrong which it carries to later ears. Webster and Clay
ought to have known that Van Buren's success where
all before had failed would make the American people
loath to find fault with his phrases. Nor were they at
all ready to believe that Jackson's administration toadied
to foreign courts. They knew better ; they were con
vinced that no American president had been more reso
lute towards other nations.

¦J

REJECTION BY THE SENATE. 199
It was also said that Van Buren had introduced the
system of driving men from office for political opinions ;
that he was a New York politician who had brought his
art to Washington. Marcy, one of the New York sen
ators, defended his state with these words, which after
wards he must have wished to recall : " It may be, sir,
that the politicians of New York are not so fastidious as
some gentlemen are as to disclosing the principles on
which they act. They boldly preach what they practice.
When they are contending for victory they avow their
intention of enjoying the fruits of it. If they are de
feated, they expect to retire from office ; if they are
successful, they claim, as a matter of right, the advan
tages of success. They see nothing wrong in the rule
that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy." To
this celebrated and execrable defense Van Buren owes
much of the later and unjust belief that he was an
inveterate " spoilsman." It has already been shown
how little foundation there is for the charge that he in
troduced the system of official proscription. Benton
truly said that Van Buren's temper and judgment were
both against it, and that he gave ample proofs of his
forbearance. Webster did not touch upon this objec
tion. Clay made it very subordinate to the secretary's
abasement before the British lion.
The attack of the Calhoun men was based upon Van
Buren's supposed intrigue against their chief, and his
breaking up of the cabinet. But people saw then, better
indeed than some historians have since seen, that be
tween Calhoun and Van Buren there had been great
and radical political divergence far deeper than per
sonal jealousy. To surrender the highest cabinet office,
to leave Washington and aU the places of political man-

200 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
agement, in order to take a lower office in remote exile
from the sources of political power, — these were not be
lieved to be acts of mere trickery, but rather to be parts
of a courageous and self-respecting appeal for justice.
It seemed a piece of political animosity wantonly to
punish a rival with such exquisite humdiation in the eyes
of foreigners.
There was a clear majority against confirming Van
Buren. But to make his destruction the more signal,
and as Calhoun had no opportunity to speak, enough of
the majority refrained from voting to enable the Demo
cratic vice-president to give the casting vote for the rejec
tion of this Democratic nominee. Calhoun's motive
was obvious enough from his boast in Benton's hearing :
"It will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He will never
kick, sir, never kick." This bit of unaffected nature
was refreshing after all the solemnly insincere declara
tions of grief which had fallen from the opposition sena
tors in performing their duty.
The foUy of the rejection was quickly apparent. Ben
ton very well said to Moore, a senator from Alabama
who had voted against Van Buren, " You have broken
a minister and elected a vice-president. The people
wiU see nothing in it but a combination of rivals against
a competitor." The popular verdict was promptly
given. Van Buren had already become a candidate to
succeed Jackson five years later ; he was only a pos
sible candidate for vice-president at the next election.
When the rejection was widely known, it was known
almost equally well and soon that Van Buren would be
the Jacksonian candidate for vice-president. Meetings
were held ; addresses were voted ; the issue was eagerly
seized. The Democratic members of the New York

REJECTION BY THE SENATE. 201
legislature early in February, 1832, under an inspiration
from Washington, addressed to Jackson an expression of
their indignation in the stately words which our fathers
loved, even when they went dangerously near to bathos.
They had freely, they said, surrendered to his call their
most distinguished fellow-citizen ; when Van Buren had
withdrawn from the cabinet they had beheld in Jack
son's continual confidence in him irrefragable proof
that no combination could close Jackson's eyes to the
cause of his country ; New York would indeed avenge
the indignity thus offered to her favorite son ; but they
would be unmindful of their duty if they failed to console
Jackson with their sympathy in this degradation of the
country he loved so well. On February 28th, Jackson
replied with no less dignity and with skill and force.
He was, he said, — and the whole country believed him,
— incapable of tarnishing the pride or dignity of that
country whose glory it had been his object to elevate ;
Van Buren's instructions to McLane had been his
instructions ; American pretensions which Adams's ad
ministration had admitted to be untenable had been
resigned ; if just American claims were resisted upon
the ground of the unjust position taken by his predeces
sor, then and then only was McLane to point out that
there had been a change in the policy and counsels of
the government with the change of its officers. Jack
son said that he owed it to the late secretary of state
and to the American people to declare that Van Buren
had no participation whatever in the occurrences between
Calhoun and himself ; and that there was no ground
for imputing to Van Buren advice to make the removals
from office. He had called Van Buren to the state
department not more for his acknowledged talents and

202 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
public services than to meet the general wish and
, expectation of the Republican party ; his signal ability
' and success in office had fuUy justified the selection ;
his own respect for Van Buren's great public and pri
vate worth, and his full confidence in his integrity were
undiminished. This blast from the unquestioned head
of the party prodigiously helped the general movement.
The only question was how best to avenge the wrong.
It was suggested that Van Buren should return
directly and take a seat in the senate, which Dudley
would wiUingly surrender to him, and should there meet
his slanderers face to face. Some thought that he
should have a triumphal entry into New York, without
an idea of going into the " senatorial cock-pit " unless
he were not to receive the vice-presidency. Others
thought that he should be made governor of New York,
an idea shadowed forth in the Albany address to Jack
son. As a candidate for that place, he would escape
the jealousies of Pennsylvania and perhaps Virginia,
and augment the local strength of the party in New
York. To this it was replied from Washington that
they might better cut his throat at once ; that if the
Republican party could not, under existing circum
stances, make Van Buren vice-president, they need never
look to the presidency for him. This was declared to
be the unanimous opinion of the cabinet. New York
Republicans were begged not to " lose so glorious an op
portunity of strengthening and consolidating the party."
The people at Albany, it was said, were " mad, ... as
if New York can make amends for an insult offered by
fourteen states of the Union."
In this temper the Republican or Democratic con
vention met at Baltimore on May 21, 1832. It was the

NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. 203
first national gathering of the party ; and was summoned
simply to nominate a vice-president. Jackson's renomi-
nation was already made by the sovereign people, which
might be justly affronted by the assembling of a body
in apparent doubt whether to obey the popular decree.
National conventions were inevitable upon the failure
of the congressional caucus in 1824. The system of
separate nominations in different states at irregular
times was too inconvenient, too inconsistent with unity
of action and a central survey of the whole situation.
In 1824 its inconvenience had been obvious enough.
In 1828 circumstances had designated both the candi
dates with perfect certainty ; and isolated nominations
in different parts of the country were then in no danger
of clashing. It has been recently said that the conven
tion of 1832 was assembled to force Van Buren's
nomination for vice-president. But it is evident from
the letter which Parton prints, written by Lewis to Ken
dall on May 25, 1831, when the latter was visiting
Isaac HiU, the Jacksonian leader in New Hampshire,
that the convention was even then proposed by " the
most judicious " friends of the administration. It was
suggested as a plan " of putting a stop to partial nomi
nations " and of " harmonizing " the party. Barbour,
Dickinson and McLane were the candidates discussed
in this letter ; Van Buren was not named. He was about
safling for England; and although an open candidate
for the presidential succession after Jackson, he was not
then a candidate for the second office. The ascription
of the convention to management in his behalf seems
purely gratuitous. Upon this early invitation, the New
Hampshire Democrats called the convention. One of
them opened its session by a brief speech alluding to

204 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the favor with which the idea of the convention had
met, " although opposed by the enemies of the Demo
cratic party," as the Republican party headed by Jack
son was now perhaps first definitely called. He said
that " the coming together of representatives of the peo
ple from the extremity of the Union would have a ten
dency to soothe, if not to unite, the jarring interests ; "
and that the people, after seeing its good effects in con
ciliating the different and distant sections of the coun
try, would continue the mode of nomination. This
natural and sensible motive to strengthen and solidify
the party is ample explanation of the convention, with
out resorting to the rather worn charge brought against
so many political movements of the time, that they
arose from Jackson's dictatorial desire to throttle the
sentiment of his party. In making nominations the
convention resolved that each state should have as many
votes as it would be entitled to in the electoral college.
To assure what was deemed a reasonable approach to
unanimity, two thirds of the whole number of votes was
required for a choice, — a precedent sad enough to Van
Buren twelve years later. On the first ballot Van Buren
had 208 of the 283 votes. Virginia, South Carolina,
Indiana, and Kentucky, with a few votes from North
Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, were for Philip P. Bar
bour of Virginia or Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky.
The motion, nowadays immediately made, that the
nomination be unanimous was not offered ; but after an
adjournment a resolution was adopted that inasmuch as
Van Buren had received the votes of two thirds of the
delegates, the convention unanimously concur " in recom
mending him to the people of the United States for their
support."

NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. 205
No platform was adopted. A committee was appoint
ed after the nomination to draft an address ; but after
a night's work they reported that, although " agreeing
fully in the principles and sentiments which they believe
ought to be embodied in an address of this description,
if such an address were to be made," it still seemed
better to them that the convention recommend the
several delegations " to make such explanations by
address, report, or otherwise to their respective constitu
ents of the objects, proceedings, and result of the meet
ing as they may deem expedient." This was a franker
intimation than those to which we are now used, that
the battle was to be fought in each state upon the issue
best suited to its local sentiments ; and was entitled to
quite as much respect as meaningless platitudes adopted
lest one state or another be offended at something
explicit. Jackson's firm and successful foreign policy,
his opposition to internal improvements by the federal
government, his strong stand against nuUification, his
opposition to the United States Bank, — from the battle
over whose rechartering, precipitated by Clay early in
1832 to embarrass Jackson, the latter had not shrunk,
— and above all Jackson himself, these were the real
planks of the platform. But the party wanted the votes
of Pennsylvania Jacksonians who believed in the Bank
and of western Jacksonians who wished federal aid for
roads and canals. The great tariff debate was then
going on in Congress ; and the subject seemed full of
danger. The election was like the usual English can
vass on a parliamentary dissolution. The country was
merely asked without specifications : Do you on the whole
like Jackson's administration ?
There is no real ground for the supposition that

206 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
intrigue or coercion was necessary to procure Van
Buren's nomination. It was dictated by the simplest
and plainest political considerations. Calhoun was in
opposition. After Jackson, Van Buren was clearly the
most distinguished and the ablest member of the
administration party ; he had rendered it services of
the highest order ; he was very popular in the most
important state of New York ; he was abroad, suffering
from what Irving at the time truly called " a very short
sighted and mean-spirited act of hostility." The affront
had aroused a general feeling which would enable Van
Buren to strengthen the ticket. In his department had
been performed the most shining achievements of the
administration. To the politicians about Jackson, and
very shrewd men they were, Van Buren's succession to
Jackson promised a firmer, abler continuance of the ad
ministration than that of any other public man. Could
he indeed have stayed minister to England, he would have
continued a figure of the first distinction, free from local
and temporary animosities and embarrassments. From
that post he might perhaps, as did a later Democratic
statesman, most easily have ascended to the presidency ;
the vice-presidency would have been unnecessary to the
final promotion. But after the tremendous affront
dealt him by Calhoun and Clay, his tame return to pri
vate life would seem fatal. He must reenter public life.
And no reentry, it was plain, could be so striking as a
popular election to the second station in the land, nomi
nal though it was, and in taking it to displace the very
enemy who had been finally responsible for the wrong
done him.
A month after his return Van Buren formally accepted
the nomination. The committee of the convention had

NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. 207
assured him that if the great Republican party con
tinued faithful to its principles, there was every reason
to congratulate him and their illustrious president that
there was in reserve for his wounded feelings a just and
certain reparation. Van Buren said in reply that previ
ous to his departure from the United States his name
had been frequently mentioned for the vice-presidency ;
but that he had uniformly declared himself altogether
unwilling to be considered a candidate, and that to his
friends, when opportunity offered, he had given the
grounds of his unwillingness. AU this was strictly true.
He had become a candidate for the presidential succes
sion ; and honorable absence as minister to England
secured a better preparation than presence as vice-presi
dent amidst the difficulties and suspicions of Washing
ton. But his position, he added, had since that period
been essentiaUy changed by the circumstance to which
the committee had referred, and to which, with some
excess of modesty he said, rather than to any superior
fitness on his part, he was bound to ascribe his nomina
tion. He gratefully received this spontaneous expres
sion of confidence and friendship from the delegated
democracy of the Union. He declared it to be fortu
nate for the country that its public affairs were under
the direction of one who had an early and inflexible
devotion to republican principles and a moral courage
which distinguished him from all others. In the con
viction, he said, that on a faithful adherence to these
principles depended the stability and value of our con
federated system, he humbly hoped lay his motive,
rather than any other, for accepting the nomination.
This rather clumsy affectation of humdity would have
been more disagreeable had it not been closely asso-

208 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ciated with firm and manly expressions, and because it
was so common u formality in the political vernacular of
the day. In treating the people as the sovereign, there
were adopted some of the rhetorical extravagances used
by attendants upon monarchs.
On October 4, 1832, Van Buren, upon an interroga
tion by a committee of a meeting at Sliocco Springs,
North Carolina, wrote a letter upon the tariff. He said
that he believed " the establishment of commercial regu
lations with a view to the encouragement of domestic
products to be within the constitutional power of Con
gress." But as to what should be the character of the
tariff he indulged in the generalities of a man who has
opinions which he does not think it wise or timely to
exhibit. He did not wish to see the power of Congress
exercised with " oppressive inequality " or " for the
advantage of one section of the Union at the expense of
another." The approaching extinguishment of the
national debt presented an opportunity for a " more
equitable adjustment of the tariff," an opportunity
already embraced in the tariff of 1832. whose spirit as
" a conciliatory measure " he trusted would be cherished
by all who preferred public to private interests. These
vague expressions would have fitted either a revenue
reformer or an extreme protectionist. Both disbelieved,
or said they did, in oppression and inequality. With a
bit of irony, perhaps unconscious, he added that he had
been thus " explicit " in the statement of his sentiments
that there might not be room for misapprehension of
his views. He did, however, in the letter approve " a
reduction of the revenue to the wants of the govern
ment," and " a preference in encouragement given to
such manufactures as are essential to the national

NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. 209
defense, and its extension to others in proportion as
they are adapted to our country and of which the raw
material is produced by ourselves." The last phrase
probably hinted at Van Bm-en's position. He believed
' in strictly limiting protective duties, although he had
voted for the tariff of 1828. But he told Benton that
he cast this vote in obedience to the " demos krateo "
principle, that is, because his state required it. He again
spoke strongly against the policy of internal improve
ments, and the " scrambles and combinations in Con
gress " unavoidably resulting from them. He was
'• unreservedly opposed " to a renewal of the charter of
tlie Bank, and equally opposed to nullification, which
involved, he believed, the " certain destruction of the
confederacy." A few days later he wrote to a committee of " demo
cratic-republican young men " in New York of the
peculiar hatred and contumely visited upon him. In
vectives against other men, he said, were at times sus
pended ; but he had never enjoyed a moment's respite
since his first entrance into pubhc life. Many distin
guished pubhc men had, he added, been seriously
injured by favors from the press ; but there was scarcely
an instance in which the objects of its obloquy had not
been raised in public estimation in exact proportion to
the intensity and duration of ±he abuse.
Both the letter from the Baltimore convention and
Van Buren's reply aUuded to " diversity of sentiments
and interests," disagreements •' as to measures and
men " among the Repubhcans. The secession of Cal
houn and the bitter hostility of his friends seriously
weakened the party. But against this was to be set the
Anti-Masonic movement which drew far more largely

210 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
from Jackson's opponents than from his supporters, for
Jackson was a Mason of a high degree. This strange
agitation had now spread beyond New York, and se
cured the support of reaUy able men. Judge McLean
of the Supreme Court desired the Anti-Masonic nomina
tion ; WiUiam Wirt, the famous and accomplished Vir
ginian, accepted it. John Quincy Adams would probably
have accepted it, had it been tendered him. He wrote
in his diary : " The dissolution of the Masonic institu
tion in the United States I believe to be reaUy more
important to us and our posterity than the question
whether Mr. Clay or General Jackson shaU be the presi
dent." In New York the National Republicans or
Whigs, with the eager and silly leaning of minority
parties to political absurdities or vagaries, united with
the Anti-Masons, among whom William H. Seward and
Thurlow Weed had become influential. In 1830 they
had supported Francis Granger, the Anti-Masonic candi
date for governor. In 1832 the Anti-Masons in New
York nominated an electoral ticket headed by Chan
cellor Kent, whose bitter, narrow, and uninteUigent poli
tics were in singular contrast with his extraordinary legal
equipment and his professional and literary accomplish
ments, and by John C. Spencer, lately in charge of the
prosecution of Morgan's abductors. If the ticket were
successful, its votes were to go to Wirt or Clay, which
ever they might serve to elect. Amos EUmaker of
Pennsylvania was the Anti-Masonic candidate for vice-
president. In December, 1831, Clay had been nomi
nated for president with the loud enthusiasm which poli
ticians often mistake for widespread conviction. John
Sergeant of Pennsylvania was the candidate for vice-
president. The Whig convention made the Bank re-

ELECTION OF 1832. 211,
charter the issue. The very ably conducted Young
Men's National Republican Convention, held at Wash
ington in May, 1832, gave Clay a noble greeting, made
pilgrimage to the tomb of Washington there to seal their
solemn promises, and adopted a clear and brief platform
for protection, for internal improvements by the federal
government, for the binding force upon the coordinate
branches of the government of the Supreme Court's opin
ions as to constitutional questions, not only in special
cases formaUy adjudged, but upon general principles,
and against the manner in which the West Indian trade
had been recovered. They declared that " indiscrimi
nate removal of public officers for a mere difference of
political opinion is a gross abuse of power, corrupting
the morals and dangerous to the liberties of the people
of this country."
Even more clearly than in the campaign of 1828 was
the campaign of 1832 a legitimate political battle upon
plain issues. The tariff bill of 1832, supported by both
parties and approved by Jackson, prevented the question
of protection' from being an issue, however ready the
Whigs might be, and however unready the Democrats,
to give commercial restrictions a theoretical approval.
Except on the " spoils " question, the later opinion of
the United States has sustained the attitude of Jackson's
party and the popular verdict of 1832. The verdict was
clear enough. In spite of the Anti-Masonic fury, the
numerous secessions from the Jacksonian ranks, and
some alarming journalistic defections, especially of the
New York " Courier and Enquirer " of James Watson
Webb and Mordecai M. Noah, the people of the United
States continued to believe in Jackson and the principles
for which he stood. Upon the popular vote Jackson and

212 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Van Buren received 687,502 votes against 530,189 votes
for Clay and Wirt combined, a popular majority over
both of 157,313. In 1828 Jackson had had 647,276
votes and Adams 508,064, a popular majority of 139,212.
The increase in Jackson's popular majority over two
candidates instead of one was particularly significant in
the north and east. The majority in New York rose
from 5,350 to 13,601. In Maine a minority of 6,806
became a majority of 6,087. In New Hampshire a
minority of 3,212 became a majority of 6,476. In Mas
sachusetts a minority of 23,860 was reduced to 18,458.
In Rhode Island and Connecticut the minorities were
reduced. In New Jersey a minority of 1,813 became a
majority of 463. The electoral vote was even more
heavily against Clay. He had but 49 votes to Jackson's
219. Wirt had the 7 votes of Vermont, while South
Carolina, beginning to step out of the Union, gave its 11
votes to John Floyd of Virginia. Clay carried only
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, a
part of Maryland, and his own affectionate Kentucky.
Van Buren received for vice-president the same electoral
vote as Jackson, except that the 30 votes of Pennsyl
vania went to Wilkins, a Pennsylvanian. Sergeant had
the same 49 votes as Clay, Ellmaker the 7 votes of Ver
mont, and Henry Lee of Massachusetts the 11 votes of
South Carolina.1
1 In estimating the popular vote in 1S2S, Delaware and South
Carolina are excluded, their electors having been chosen by the
legislature. In Georgia in that year there was no opposition to
Jackson. In 1832 no popular vote is included for South Carolina
or for Alabama. In Mississippi and Missouri there was no oppo
sition to Jackson. In 1S2SI, upon Van Buren's recommendation
when governor, the system of choosing eleotors by districts, which
had been in force in the election of 1!^, was abolished ; and

VICE-PRESIDENT. 213
This popular triumph brought great glory to Jackson's
second inauguration. The glory was soon afterwards
made greater and almost universal by his bold attack
upon nullification, and by the vigorous and ringing yet
dignified and even pathetic proclamation of January,
1833, drafted by Edward Livingston, in which the presi
dent commanded obedience to the law and entreated
for loyalty to the Union. It could not be overlooked that
the treasonable attitude of South Carolina had been taken
by the portion of the Democratic party hostile to Van
Buren. In a pecuhar way therefore he shared in Jack
son's prestige.
The election seemed to clarify some of the views of
the administration. They now dared to speak more ex
plicitly. On his way to the inauguration, Van Buren,
declining a dinner at Phdadelphia, recited with approval
what he called Jackson's repeated and earnest recom
mendations of " a reduction of duties to the revenue
standard." In his second inaugural Jackson said that
there should be exercised " by the general government
those powers only that are clearly delegated." In his
message of December, 1833, he again spoke of " the im
portance of abstaining from aU appropriations which are
not absolutely required for the public interests, and
authorized by the powers clearly delegated to the United
States ; " and this he said with the more emphasis be
cause under the compromise tariff of 1833 a large de
crease in revenue was anticipated.
In September, 1833, was announced Jackson's refusal
longer to deposit the moneys of the government with
the Bank of the United States. It is plain that the
there was adopted the present system of choosing all the electors
by the popular vote of the whole state.

214 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
dangers of the proposed deposits of the moneys in tlie
state banks were not appreciated. Van Buren at first
opposed this so-called " removal of tlie deposits." Ken
dall tells of an interview with the vice-president not long
after his inauguration, and whde he was a guest at the
White House. Van Buren then warmly remonstrated
against the continued agitation of tlie subject, after the
resolution of the lower house at the last session that the
government deposits were safe with the banks. Kendall
rephed that so certain to his mind was the success of the
Whig party at the next presidential election and the
consequent recharter of tlie Bank, unless it were now
stripped of the power which the charge of the public
moneys gave it, that if the Bank were to retain the de
posits he should consider further opposition useless and
would lay down his pen, leaving to others this question
and aU other politics. " I can live," he said to the vice-
president, " under a corrupt despotism as well as any
other man by keeping out of its way, which I shall cer
tainly do." They parted in excitement. A few weeks
later Van Buren confessed to Kendall, '¦ I had never
thought seriously upon the deposit question until after
my conversation with you ; I am now satisfied that you
were right and I was wrong." Kendall was sent to
ascertain whether suitable state banks would accept the
deposits, and on what terms. While in New York Van
Buren, with McLane lately transferred from the treasury
to the state department, called on him and proposed that
the order for the change in the government depositories
should take effect on the coming first of January. The
date being a month after tlie meeting of Congress, the
executive action would seem less defiant ; and in tlie
mean time the friends of the administration could be

VICE-PRESIDENT. 215
more effectually united in support of the measure. Ken
dall yielded to the proposition though against his judg
ment, and wrote to the president in its favor. But Jack
son would not yield. Whether or not its first inspiration
came from Francis P. Blair or Kendall, the removal of
the deposits was peculiarly Jackson's own deed. The
government moneys should not be left in the hands of
the chief enemy of his administration, to be loaned in its
discretion, that it might secure doubtful votes in Congress
and the support of presses pecuniarily weak. As the
Bank's charter would expire within three years, it was
pointed out that the government ought to prepare for it
by withholding further deposits and gradually drawing
out the moneys then on deposit. Van Buren's assent
was given, but probably with no enthusiasm. He dis
liked the Bank heartily enough. The corrupting danger
of intrusting government moneys to a single private cor
poration to loan in its discretion was clear. But a sys
tem of " pet banks " through the states was too slight
an improvement, if an improvement at all. And any
change would at least offend and alarm the richer
classes.. It is impossible to say what effect upon the re-
charter of the Bank and the election of 1836 its continued
possession of the deposits would have had. Its tremen
dous power over credits doubtless gave it many votes of
administration congressmen. Possibly, as Jackson and
Blair feared, it might have secured enough to pass a re-
charter over a veto. If it had been thus rechartered, it
may be doubtful whether the blow to the prestige of the
administration might not have been serious enough to
elect a Whig in 1836. But it is not doubtful that Van
Buren, and not Jackson, was compelled to face the politi
cal results of this heroic and imperfect measure.

216 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Some financial disturbance took place in the winter
of 1833-1834, which was ascribed by the Whigs to the
gradual transfer of the government moneys from the
United States Bank and its numerous branches to the
state banks. For political effect, this disturbance was
greatly exaggerated. Deputations visited Washington
to bait Jackson. Memorial after memorial enabled con
gressmen to make friends by complimenting the enter
prise and beauty of various towns, and to depict the
utter misery to which all their industries had been
brought, solely by a gradual transference throughout
the United States of $10,000,000, from one set of depos
itories to another. The removal, Webster said, had
produced a degree of evil that could not be borne. " A
tottering state of credit, cramped means, loss of property
and loss of employment, doubts of the condition of others,
doubts of their own condition, constant fear of failures
and new explosions, and awful dread of the future " —
all these evils, " without hope of improvement or change,"
had resulted from the removal. Clay was more precise
in his absurdity. The property of the country had been
reduced, he declared, four hundred mdlions in value.
Addressing Van Buren in the vice-president's chair, he
begged him in a burst of bathos to repair to the execu
tive mansion and place before the chief magistrate the
naked and undisguised truth. " Go to him," he cried,
" and tell him without exaggeration, but in the language
of truth and sincerity, the actual condition of this bleed
ing country, ... of the tears of helpless widows no
longer able to earn their bread, and of unclad and
unfed orphans." Van Buren, in the story often quoted
from Benton, while thus apostrophized, looked respect
fully and innocently at Clay, as if treasuring up every

VICE-PRESIDENT. 217
word to be faithfully borne to the president ; and when
Clay had finished, he called a senator to the chair, went
up to the eloquent and languishing Kentuckian, asked
him for a pinch of his fine maccoboy snuff, and walked
away. But this frivolity was not fancied everywhere.
At a meeting in Philadelphia it was resolved " that
Martin Van Buren deserves and will receive the execra
tions of all good men, should he shrink from the respon
sibility of conveying to Andrew Jackson the message
sent by the honorable Henry Clay." The whole agita
tion was hollow enough. Jackson was not far wrong in
saying in his letter to Hamilton of January 2, 1834 :
" There is no real general distress. It is only with those
who live by borrowing, trade on loans, and the gamblers
in stocks." The business of the country was not injured
by refusing to let Nicholas Biddle and his subordinates,
rather than other men, lend for gain ten millions of
government money. But business was soon to be injured
by permitting the state banks to do the same thing.
The change did not, as Jackson thought, " leave all to
trade on their own credit and capital without any inter
ference by the general government except using its
powers by giving through its mint a specie currency."
Van Buren took a permanent residence in Washing
ton after his inauguration as vice-president. He now
held a rank accorded to no other vice-president before
or since. He was openly adopted by the American
Augustus, and seemed already to wear the title of Caesar.
As no other vice-president has been, he was the chief
adviser of the president, and as much the second officer
of the government in power as in the dignity of his
station. His only chance of promotion did not lie in the
president's death. That the president should live until

218 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
after tho election of 1836 was safely over, Van Buren
had every selfish motive as well as many generous
motives to desire. His ambition was nowiso disagroo-
nble to his chief. To see that ambition satisfied would
be grateful to the patriotic and to tho personal wishes of
the tempestuous but not erratic old man in tho Whito
House. For there was the utmost intimacy and confi
dence between the two men. Van Buren bud every
reason, personal, political, and jiatriotic, to desire the
entire success of tho administration. Ho was not, only
the second member of it ; but in his jealous and anxious
watch over it he was preserving his own patrimony.
His ability and experience were far greater than those
of any other of its members. After Taney had been
transferred from tho attorney-general's office to the
treasury, in September, 1833, to make tlie transfer of
tho deposits, Jackson appointed Benjamin V. Butler,
Van Buren's intimate friend, his former pupil and part
ner, to Taney's place. Louis McLane, Van Buren's
predecessor in the mission to England, and his successor,
after Edward Livingston, in tho state department, re
signed the latter office in the summer of 1834. lie had
disapproved Jackson's removal of the deposits j he be
lieved it would be unpopular, arid the presidential boo
was buzzing in his bonnet. John Forsyth of Georgia,
an admirer of Van Buren, and one of his defenders in
the senatorial debate at the time of his rejection, then
took tho first place in the cabinet. Van Buren accom
panied Jackson during part of the latter's visit to the
northeast in the summer of 1833, when as tho adversary
of nullification his popularity was at its highest, so high
indeed that Harvard College, to Adams's disgust, made
him a Doctor of Laws. But the exciting events of

NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 219
Jackson's second term hardly belong, with the infor
mation we yet have, to Van Buren's biography. They
have been often and admirably told in the lives of Jack
son and Clay, tlie seeming chiefs on the two sides of the
long encounter.
Van Buren's nomination for tlie presidency, bitter as
the opposition to it stiU was, came as matter of course.
The large and serious secession of Calhoun and his
followers from tlie Jacksonian party was foUowed by
the later and wider, and tlie more serious defection
of the Democrats, who made a rival Democratic candi
date of Hugh L. White, a senator from Tennessee and
formerly a warm friend and adherent of Jackson. It
was in White's behalf that Davy Crockett wrote, in
1835, his entertaining though scurrilous hfe of Van
Buren. Jackson's friendship for Van Buren, Crockett
said, had arisen from his hatred to Calhoun, of which
Von Buren, who was " secret, sly, selfish, cold, calcu
lating, distrustful, treacherous," had taken advantage.
Jackson was now about to give up " an old, long-tried
faithful friend. Judge White, who stuck to him through
all his tribulations, helped to raise his fortunes from the
beginning ; adventurers together in a new country.
friends in youth and in old age, fought together in tlie
same battles, risked the same dangers, starved together
in tlie same deserts, merely to gratify tins revengeful
feeling." Van Buren was "as opposite to General
Jackson as dung is to a diamond."
It is difficult, to find any justification for White's can
didacy. He was a •modest, dignified senator whose
popularity in the Democratic southwest rendered him
available to Van Buren's enemies. But neither his
abilities nor his services to the pubhc or his party would

220 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
have suggested him for the presidency. Doubtless in
him as with other modest, dignified men in history, there
burned ambition whose fire never burst into flame, and
which perhaps for its suppression was the more trouble
some. He consented, apparently only for personal rea
sons, to head the southern schism from Jackson and Van
Buren ; and in his political destruction he paid the
penalty usually and justly visited upon statesmen who
through personal hatred or jealousy or ambition, break
party ties without a real difference of principle. Benton
said that White consented to run "because in his
advanced age he did the act which, with all old men, is
an experiment, and with most of them an unlucky one.
He married again ; and this new wife having made an
immense stride from the head of a boarding-house table
to the head of a senator's table, could see no reason why
she should not take one step more, and that compara
tively short, and arrive at the head of the presidential
table." The Democratic-Republican convention met at Balti
more on May 20, 1835, nearly eighteen months before
the election. There were over five hundred delegates
from twenty-three states. South Carolina, Alabama, and
Illinois were not represented. Party organization was
still very imperfect. The modern system of precise and
proportional representations was not yet known. The
states which approved the convention sent delegates in
such number as suited their convenience. Maryland,
the convention being held in its chief city, sent 183
delegates ; Virginia, close at hand, sent 102 ; New
York, although the home of the proposed candidate,
sent but 42, the precise number of its electoral votes.
Tennessee sent but one ; Mississippi and Missouri, only

NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 221
two each. In making the nominations, the delegates
from each state, however numerous or few, cast a num
ber of votes equal to its representation in the electoral
college. The 183 delegates from Maryland cast there
fore but ten votes ; while the single delegate from Ten
nessee, much courted man that he must have been,
cast 15.
It was the second national convention of the party.
The members assembled at the " place of worship of the
Fourth Presbyterian Church." Instead of the firm and
now long-recognized opening by the chairman of the
national committee provided by the well -geared machinery
of our later politics, George Kremer of Pennsylvania
first " stated the objects of the meeting." Andrew
Stevenson of Virginia, the president, felt it necessary in
his opening speech to defend the still novel party insti
tution. Efforts, he said, would be made at the approach
ing election to divide the Republican party and possibly
to defeat an election by the people in their primary col
leges. Their venerable president had advised, but in
vain, constitutional amendments securing this election
to the people, and preventing its falling to the house
of representatives. A national convention was the best
means of concentrating the popular will, the only defense
against a minority party. It was recommended by pru
dence, sanctioned by the precedent of 1832, and had
proved effectual by experience. They must guard
against local jealousies. "What, gentlemen," he said,
" would you think of the sagacity, and prudence of that
individual who would propose the expedient of cutting
up the noble ship that each man might seize his own
plank and steer for himself ? " The inquiries must be :
Who can best preserve the unity of the Democratic

222 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
party? Who best understands the principles and
motives of our government ? Who will carry out the
principles of the Jeffersonian era and General Jackson's
administration ? These demands clearly enough pointed
out Van Buren. Prayers were then offered up "in a
fervent, feeling manner." The rule requiring two thirds
of the whole number of votes for a nomination was again
adopted, because " it would have a more imposing effect,"
though nearly half the convention, 210 to 231, thought
a majority was more " according to Democratic princi
ples." Niles records that the formal motion to proceed
to the nomination caused a smile among the members,
so well settled was it that Van Buren was to be the
nominee. He received the unanimous vote of the con
vention. A strong fight was made for the vice-presi
dency between the friends of Richard M. Johnson of
Kentucky and William C. Rives of Virginia. The
former received barely the two-thirds vote. The
Virginia delegation upon the defeat of the latter did
what would now be a sacrilegious laying of violent
hands on the ark. Party regularity was not yet so chief
a deity in the political temple. The Virginians had,
they said, an unpleasant duty to perform ; but they would
not shrink from it. They would not support Johnson
for the vice-presidency ; they had no confidence in his
principles or his character ; they had come to the con
vention to support principles, not men ; they had already
gone as far as possible in supporting Mr. Van Buren,
and they would not go further. Not long afterwards
Rives left the party. No platform was adopted ; but a
committee was appointed to prepare an address to the
people. The Whigs nominated General WUliam Henry Har-

CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 223
rison for the presidency and Francis Granger for the
vice-presidency. They had but a forlorn hope of direct
success. But the secession from the Democratic party
of the nullifiers, and the more serious secession in the
Southwest headed by White, made it seem possible to
throw the election into the house. John Tyler of Vir
ginia was the nominee of the bolting Democrats for
vice-president upon the ticket with White. The Whigs
of Massachusetts preferred their unequaled orator ; for
they then and afterwards failed to see, as the admirers
of some other famous Americans have failed to see, that
other qualities make a truer equipment for the first office
of the land than this noble art of oratory. South Caro
lina would vote against Calhoun's victorious adversary ;
but she would not, in the first instance at least, vote with
the Whig heretics.
It was a disorderly campaign, lasting a year and a
half, and never reaching the supreme excitement of 1840
or 1844. The opposition did not deserve success. It
had neither political principle nor discipline. Calhoun
described the Van Buren men as "a powerful faction
(party it cannot be caUed) held together by the hopes of
public plunder and marching under a banner whereon is
written ' to the victors belong the spoils.' " There was
in the rhetorical exaggeration enough truth perhaps to
make an issue. But the political removals under Jack
son were only incidentally touched in the canvass.
Amos Kendall, then postmaster-general, towards the
close of the canvass wrote a letter which, coming from
perhaps the worst of Jackson's " spoilsmen," shows how
far public sentiment was even then from justifying the
political interference of federal officers in elections.
Samuel McKean, senator from Pennsylvania, had writ-

224 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ten to Kendall complaining that three employees of the
post - office had used the time and influence of their
official stations to affect elections, by written communi
cations and personal importunities. This, he said, was
" a loathsome public nuisance," though admitting that
since Kendall became postmaster-general he had given
no cause of complaint. Kendall replied on September
27, 1836, that though it was difficult to draw the line
between the rights of the citizen and the assumptions of
the office-holder, he thought it dangerous to our institu
tions that government employees should " assume to
direct public opinion and control the results of elections
in the general or state government." His advice to
members of his department was to keep as clear from
political strife as possible, " to shun mere political meet
ings, or, if present, to avoid taking any part in their
proceedings, to decline acting as members of political
committees or conventions." In making appointments
he would prefer political friends ; but he " would not
remove a good postmaster and honest man for a mere
difference of political opinion." The complaints were
for offenses committed under his predecessor; one of
the three offenders had left the service ; the other two
had been free from criticism for seventeen months.
There can be little doubt that the standard thus set up in
public was higher than the general practice of Kendall
or his subordinates ; but the letter showed that public
sentiment had not yet grown caUous to this odious abuse.
Jackson did not permit the presidential office to re
strain him from most vigorous and direct advocacy of
Van Buren's claims. He begged Tennessee not to
throw herself " into the embraces of the Federalists, the
Nullifiers, or the new-born Whigs." They were living,

CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 225
he said, in evil times, when political apostasy had be
come frequent, when public men (referring to White,
John Tyler, and others who had gone with them) were
abandoning principle and their party attachment for
selfish ends. To this it was replied that the president's
memory was treacherous ; that he had forgotten his
early friends, and listened. only "to the voice of flattery
and the siren voice of sycophancy." The dissenting
Republicans affected to support administration meas
ures, but protested against Jackson's dictating the suc
cession. They were then, they said, " what they were
in 1828, — Jacksonians following the creed of that
apostle of liberty, Thomas Jefferson."
Without principle as was this formidable secession, it
is impossible to feel much more respect for the declara
tion of principles made for the Whig candidates. Clay,
the chief spokesman, complained that Jackson had
killed with the pocket veto the land biU, which proposed
to distribute the proceeds of the sales of public lands
among the states according to their federal population
(which in the South included three fifths of the slaves),
to be used for internal improvements, education, or
other purposes. He pointed out, with " mixed feelings
of pity and ridicule," that the few votes in the senate
against the " deposit bill," which was to distribute the
surplus among the states, had been cast by administration
senators, since deserted by their numerous followers who
demanded distribution. He rejoiced that Kentucky was
to get a million and a half from the federal treasury.
He denounced Jackson's " tampering with the currency "
by the treasury order requiring public lands to be paid
for in specie and not in bank-notes. Jackson's treat
ment of the Cherokees seemed the only point of attack
apart from his financial policy.

226 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
The real party platforms this year were curiously
found in letters of the candidates to Sherrod WiUiams,
an individual by no means distinguished. On April 7,
1836, he addressed a circular letter to Harrison, Van
Buren, and White, asking each of them his opinions on
five points : — Did he approve a distribution of the sur
plus revenue among the states according to their federal
population, for such uses as they might appoint ? Did
he approve a like distribution of the proceeds of the
sales of pubhc lands ? Did he approve federal appro
priations to improve navigable streams above ports of
entry ? Did he approve another bank charter, if it
should become necessary to preserve the revenue and
finances of the nation ? Did he believe it constitutional
to expunge from the records of a house of Congress any
of its proceedings ? The last question referred to Ben
ton's agitation for a resolution expunging from the rec
ords of the senate the resolution of 1834 condemning
Jackson's removal of the deposits as a violation of the
Constitution. Harrison, for whose benefit the questions
were put, returned what was supposed to be the popular
affirmative to the first three inquiries. The fourth he
answered in the affirmative, and the fifth in the nega
tive. Van Buren promptly pointed out to WriUiams
that he doubted the right of an elector, who had already
determined to oppose him, to put inquiries " with the
sole view of exposing, at his own time and the mode he
may select, the opinions of the candidate to unfriendly
criticism," but nevertheless promised a reply after Con
gress had risen. This delay he deemed proper, because
during the session he might, as president of the senate,
have to vote upon some of the questions. Williams
replied that the excuse for delay was " wholly and en-

CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 227
tirely unsatisfactory." Van Buren curtly said that he
should wait as he had stated. On August 8, not far
from the time nowadays selected by presidential candi
dates for their letters of acceptance, Van Buren ad
dressed a letter to WUhams, the prolixity of which
seems a fault, but which, when newspapers were fewer
and shorter, and reading was less multifarious, secured
perhaps, from its length, a more ample and deliberate
study from the masses of the people.
For clearness and explicitness, and for cogency of ar
gument, this letter has few equals among those written
by presidential candidates. This most conspicuous of
Van Buren's preelection utterances has been curiously
ignored by those who have accused him of " non-com
mittalism." Congress, he said, " does not possess the
power under the Constitution to raise money for dis
tribution among the states." If a distinction were justi
fiable, and of this he was not satisfied, between raising
money for such a purpose and the distribution of an
unexpected surplus, then the distribution ought not to
be attempted without previous amendment of the Con
stitution. Any system of distribution must introduce
vices into both the state and federal governments. It
would be a great misfortune if the distribution biU al
ready passed should be deemed a pledge of like legisla
tion in the future. So much of the letter has since
largely had the approval of American sentiment, and
was only too soon emphasized by the miserable results
of the biU thus condemned. The utterance was clear
and wise ; and it was far more. It was a singularly
bold attitude to assume, not only against the views of
the opposition, but against a measure passed by Van
Buren's own party friends and signed by Jackson, a

228 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
measure having a vast and cheap popularity throughout
the states which were supposed, and with too much
truth, not to see that for what they took out of the
federal treasury they would simply have to put so much
more in. " I hope and believe," said Van Buren, "that
the public voice will demand that this species of legisla
tion shaU terminate with the emergency that produced
it." To the inquiry whether he would approve a dis
tribution among the states of the proceeds of selling the
public lands, Van Buren plainly said that if he were
elected he would not favor the policy. These moneys,
he declared, should be applied " to the general wants of
the treasury." To the inquiry whether he would ap
prove appropriations to improve rivers above ports of
entry, he quoted with approval Jackson's declaration in
the negative. He would not go beyond expenditures for
light-houses, buoys, beacons, piers, and the removal of
obstructions in rivers and harbors below such ports.
Upon the bank question, too, he left his interrogator
in no doubt. If the people wished a national bank as a
permanent branch of their institutions, or if they desired
a chief magistrate who as to that would consider it his
duty to watch the course of events and give or withhold
his assent according to the supposed necessity, then
another than himself must be chosen. And he added :
" If, on the other hand, with this seasonable, explicit
and published avowal before them, a majority of the
people of the United States shall nevertheless bestow
upon me their suffrages for the office of president,
skepticism itself- must cease to doubt, and admit their
will to be that there shall not be any Bank of the United
States until the people, in the exercise of their sovereign
authority, see fit to give to Congress the right to estab-

CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 229
lisli one." It was high time " that the federal govern
ment confine itself to the creation of coin, and that the
states afford it a fair chance for circulation." With
tlie power of either house of Congress to expunge from
its records, he pointed out that the president could have
no concern. But rather than avoid an answer, he said
that he regarded the passage of Colonel Benton's resolu
tion as " an act of justice to a faithful and greatly in
jured public servant, not only constitutional in itself, but
imperiously demanded by a proper respect for the weU-
known will of tlie people."
This justly famous letter made up for tlie rather
jejune and conventional letter of acceptance written a
year before. Not concealing his sensitiveness to the
charge of intrigue and management. Van Buren had
then appealed to the members of the Democratic con
vention, to the " editors and politicians throughout the
Union " who had preferred him, to his " private corre
spondents and intimate friends," and to those, once his
" friends and associates, whom tlie fluctuations of politi
cal life " had " converted into opponents." No man,
he declared, could truly say that he had sohcited politi
cal support, or entered or sought to enter into any
arrangement to procure him the nomination he had now
received, or to elevate him to the chief magistracy.
There was no public question of interest upon which his
opinions had not been made known by his official acts,
his own public avowals, and tlie authorized explanations
of his friends. The last was a touch of the frankness
which Van Buren used in vain to stop his enemies'
accusations of indirectness. Instead of shielding him
self, as public men usually and naturaUy do, behind
Butler, the attorney-general, and others who had spoken

230 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
for him, he directly assumed responsibility for their
" explanations." He considered himself selected to
carry out the principles and policy of Jackson's adminis
tration, " happy," he said, " if I shall be able to perfect
the work which he has so gloriously begun." He closed
with the theoretical declaration which consistently ran
through his chief utterances, that, though he would
" exercise the powers which of right belong to the
general government in a spirit of moderation and
brotherly love," he would on the other hand " religious
ly abstain from the assumption of such as have not been
delegated by the Constitution."
Upon stiU another question Van Buren explicitly de
clared himself before the election. In 1835, the year
of his nomination, appeared the cloud like a man's hand
which was not to leave the sky untd out of it had come
a terrific, complete, and beneficent convulsion. Then
openly and seriously began the work of the extreme
anti-slavery men. Clay pointed out in his speech on
colonization in 1836 that " this fanatical class " of
abolitionists " were none of your old-fashioned gradual
emancipationists, such as Franklin, Rush, and the other
wise and benevolent Pennsylvanians who framed the
scheme for the gradual removal of slavery." He was
right. Many of the new abolitionists were on the verge,
or beyond it, of quiet respectability. Educated, intelli
gent, and even wealthy as some of them were, the aboli
tionists did not belong to the always popular class of
well-to-do folks content with the institutions of society.
Most virtuous and religious people saw in them only
wicked disturbers of the peace. AU the comfortable,
philosophical opponents of slavery believed that such
wdd and reckless agitators would, if encouraged, pros-

THE ABOLITIONISTS. 231
trate the pillars of civilization, and bring in anarchy,
bloodshed, and servile wars worse even to the slaves
than the wrongs of their slavery. But to the members
of the abolition societies which now rose, this was no
philosophical or economical question. They were un
daunted by the examples of Washington and Jefferson
and Patrick Henry, who, whatever they said or hoped
against slavery, nevertheless held human beings in bond
age ; or of Adams and other northern adherents of the
Constitution, who for a season at least had joined in a
pact to protect the infamous slave traffic. To them,
talk of the sacred Union, or of the great advance which
negroes had made in slavery and would not have made
in freedom, was idle. With unquenched vision they saw
the horrid picture of the individual slave life, not the
general features of slavery ; they saw the chain, the
lash, the brutahzing and contrived ignorance ; they saw
the tearing apart of families, with their love and hope,
precisely like those of white men and women, crushed
out by detestable cruelty ; they saw the beastly dissolute
ness inevitable to the plantation system. Nor would
they be stiU, whatever the calm preaching of political
wisdom, whatever the sincere and weighty insolence of
men of wisdom and uprightness and property. Northern
men of 1888 must look with ineffaceable shame upon
the behavior of their fathers and grandfathers towards
the narrow, fiery, sometimes almost hateful, apostles of
human rights ; and with even greater shame upon the
talk of the sacred right of white men to make brutes of
black men, a right to be treated, as the best of Ameri
cans were so fond of saying, with a tender and affection
ate regard for the feelings of the white slave-masters.
About the same time began the continual presentation

232 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
to Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery, and
the foolish but Heaven-ordained attack of slaveholders
on the right of petition. The agitation rapidly flaming
up was far different from the practical and truly politi
cal discussion over the Missouri Compromise fifteen years
before. As yet, indeed, the matter was not politically impor
tant, except in the attack upon Van Buren made by
the southern members of his party. Sixteen years be
fore, he had voted against admitting more slave states.
He had aided the reelection of Rufus King, a deter
mined enemy of slavery. He had strongly opposed
Calhoun and the southern nullifiers. In the " Evening
Post " and the " Plaindealer " of New York appeared
from 1835 to 1837 the reaUy noble series of editorials by
WiUiam Leggett, strongly proclaiming the right of free
discussion and the essential wrong of slavery ; although
sometimes he condemned the fanaticism now aroused
as " a species of insanity." The " Post " strongly sup
ported Van Buren, and was declared at the South to be
his chosen organ for addressing the public. It denied,
however, that Van Buren had any " connection in any
way or shape with the doctrines or movements of the
abolitionists." But such denials were widely disbelieved
by the slaveholders. It was declared that he had a
deep agency in the Missouri question which fixed upon
him a support of abolition ; his denials were answered
by the anti-slavery petitions from twenty thousand me
morialists in his own state of New York, and by the
support brought him by the enemies of slavery. To all
this the Whig " dough-faces " listened with entire satis
faction. They must succeed, if at all, through southern
distrust or dislike of Van Buren. In July, 1834, he had

SLAVERY. 233
publicly written to Samuel Gwin of Mississippi that his
opinions upon the power of Congress over slave prop
erty in the southern states were so weU understood by
his friends that he was surprised that an attempt should
be made to deceive the public about them; that slavery
was in his judgment " exclusively under the control of
the state governments ; " that no " contrary opinion to
an extent deserving consideration " was entertained in
any part of the United States ; and that, without a
change of the Constitution, no interference with it in a
state could be had " even at the instance of either or of
all the slaveholding states." But, it was said, " Tappan,
Garrison, and every other fanatic and abolitionist in
the United States not entirely run mad, will grant that."
And, indeed, Abraham Lincoln was nominated twenty-
four years later upon a like declaration of " the right
of each state to order and control its own domestic
institutions according to its own judgment exclusively."
The District of Columbia, however, was one bit of
territory in which Congress doubtless had the power to
abolish slavery. In our better days it would seem to
have been a natural enough impulse to seek to make free
sod at least of the capital of the land of freedom. But
the District lay between and was completely surrounded
by two slave states. Washington had derived its laws
and customs from Maryland.- If the District were free
while Virginia and Maryland were slave, it was feared
with much reason that there would arise most dangerous
coUisions. Its perpetual slavery was an unforeseen part
of the price Alexander Hamilton had paid to procure the
federal assumption of the war debts of the states. In
Van Buren's time there was almost complete acquies
cence in the proposition that, though slavery had in the

234 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
District no constitutional protection, it must stiU be
deemed there a part of the institution in Virginia and
Maryland. How clear was the understanding may be
seen from language of undoubted authority. John
Quincy Adams had hitherto labored for causes which
have but cold and formal interest to posterity. But now,
leaving the field of statesmanship, where his glory had
been meagre, and, fortunately for his reputation, with
the shackles of its responsibility no longer upon him, the
generous and exalted love of humanity began to touch
his later years with the abiding splendor of heroic and
far-seeing courage. He became the first of the great
anti-slavery leaders. He entered for all time the group
of men, Garrison, Lovejoy, Giddings, Phillips, Sumner,
and Beecher, to whom so largely we owe the second and
nobler salvation of our land. But Adams was emphati
cally opposed to the abolition of slavery in the District.
In December, 1831, the first month of his service in the
house, on presenting a petition for such abolition, he de
clared that he should not support it. In February, 1837,
a few days before Van Buren's inauguration, there oc
curred the scene when Adams, with grim and dauntless
irony, brought to the house the petition of some slaves
against abolition. In his speech then he said : " From
the day I entered this house down to the present mo
ment, I have invariably here, and invariably elsewhere,
declared my opinions to be adverse to the prayer of peti
tions which caU for the abolition of slavery in the Dis
trict of Columbia."
It is a curious but inevitable impeachment of the im
partiality of history that for a declaration precisely the
same as that made by a great and recognized apostle of
anti-slavery, and made by that apostle within a year

SLAVERY. 235
after, Van Buren has been denounced as a truckler to the
South, a " northern man with southern principles." Van
Buren's declaration was made, not like Adams's in the
easy freedom of an independent member of Congress
from an anti-slavery district, but under the constraint
of a presidential nomination partially coming from the
South. In the canvass before his election Van Buren
gave perfectly fair notice of his intention. " I must go,"
he said, " into the presidential chair the inflexible and
uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part
of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia
against the wishes of the slaveholding states." This
was the attitude, not only of Van Buren and Adams,
but of every statesman north and south, and of the
entire North itself with insignificant exceptions. The
former's explicit declaration was doubtless aimed at the
pro-slavery jealousy stirred up against himself in the
South ; it was intended to have political effect. But
it was none the less the unambiguous expression of an
opinion sincerely shared with the practically unanimous
sense of the country.
A skUlf ul effort was made to embarrass Van Buren
with his southern supporters over a more difficult ques
tion. The anti-slavery societies at the North sought to
circulate their literature at the South. So strong an
enemy of slavery as William Leggett condemned this as
" fanatical obstinacy," obviously tending to stir up at the
South insurrections, whose end no one could foresee,
and as the fruit of desperation and extravagance. The
southern states by severe laws forbade the circulation
of the literature. Its receipt from southern post-offices
led to great excitement and even violence. In August,
1835, KendaU, the postmaster-general, was appealed to

236 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
by the postmaster at Charleston, South Carolina, for ad
vice whether he should distribute papers " inflammatory
and incendiary and insurrectionary in the highest de
gree," papers whose very custody endangered the mail.
Kendall, in an extraordinary letter, said he had no legal
authority to prohibit the delivery of papers on account
of their character, but that he was not prepared to di
rect the delivery at Charleston of papers such as were
described. Gouverneur, the postmaster at New York,
being then appealed to by his Charleston brother, de
clined to forward papers mailed by the American Anti-
Slavery Society. This dangerous usurpation was de
fended upon the principle of salus populi suprema lex.
In December, 1835, Jackson called the attention of
Congress to the circulation of "inflammatory appeals
addressed to the passions of the slaves " (as they used
to caU the desire of black men to be free), " calculated
to stimulate them to insurrection and to produce aU the
horrors of a servile war." A bdl was introduced making
it unlawful for any postmaster knowingly to deliver any
printed or pictorial paper touching the subject of slavery
in states by whose laws their circulation was prohibited.
Webster condemned the bill as a federal violation of the
freedom of the press. Clay thought it unconstitutional,
vague, indefinite, and unnecessary, as the states could
lay hold of citizens taking such publications from post-
offices within their borders. Benton and other senators,
several of them Democrats and seven from slaveholding
states, voted against the bill, because they were, so Ben
ton said, "tired of the eternal cry of dissolving the
Union, did not believe in it, and would not give a re
pugnant vote to avoid the trial." The debate did not
reach a very exalted height. The question was by no

SLAVERY. 237
means free from doubt. Anti-slavery papers probably
were, as the southerners said, " incendiary " to their
states. Slavery depended upon ignorance and fear.
The federal post-office no doubt was intended, as Ken
dall argued, to be a convenience to the various states,
and not an offense against their codes of morality.
There has been little opposition to the present prohibi
tion of the use of the post-office for obscene literature,
or, to take a better illustration, for the circulars of lot
teries which are lawful in some states but not in others.
When the bill came to a vote in the senate, although
there was reaUy a substantial majority against it, a tie
was skUlfully arranged to compel Van Buren, as vice-
president, to give the casting vote. White, the southern
Democratic candidate so seriously menacing him, was
in the senate, and voted for the bill. Van Buren must,
it was supposed, offend the pro-slavery men by voting
against the bill, or offend the North and perhaps bruise
his conscience by voting for it. When the roll was
being called, Van Buren, so Benton tells us, was out of
the chair, walking behind the colonnade at the rear of
the vice-president's seat. Calhoun, fearful lest he might
escape the ordeal, eagerly asked where he was, and told
the sergeant-at-arms to look for him. But Van Buren
was ready, and at once stepped to his chair and voted
for the bill. His close friend, Silas Wright of New
York, also voted for it. Benton says he deemed both
the votes to be political and given from policy. So they
probably were. To Van Buren all the fire-eating meas
ures of Calhoun and the pro-slavery men were most dis
tasteful. He probably thought the bill would do more
to increase than allay agitation at the North. Walter
Scott, when the prince regent toasted him as the author

238 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of Waverley, feeling that even Royal Highness had no
right in a numerous company to tear away the long kept
and valuable secrecy of " the great Unknown," rose and
gravely said to his host : " Sire, I am not the author
of Waverley." There were, he thought, questions which
did not entitle the questioner to be told the truth. So
Van Buren may have thought there were political inter
rogations which, being made for sheer party purposes,
might rightfully be answered for like purposes. Since
the necessity for his vote was contrived to injure him
and not to help or hurt the bill, he probably felt justified
so to vote as best to frustrate the design against him.
This persuasive casuistry usuaUy overcomes a candidate
for great office in the stress of conflict. But lenient as
maybe the judgment of party supporters, and distressing
as may seem the necessity, the untruth pretty surely
returns to plague the statesman. Van Buren never
deserved to be called a " northern man with southern
principles." But this vote came nearer to an excuse for
the epithet than did any other act of his career.
The election proved how large was the southern
defection. Georgia and Tennessee, which had been
almost unanimously for Jackson in 1836, now voted for
White. Mississippi, where in that year there had been
no opposition, and Louisiana, where Jackson had eight
votes to Clay's five, now gave Van Buren majorities of
but three hundred each. In North Carolina Jackson
had had 24,862 votes and Clay only 4,563 ; White got
23,626 to 26,910 for Van Buren. In Virginia Jackson
had three times the vote of Clay ; Van Buren had but
one fourth more votes than White. In Benton's own
state, so nearly unanimous for Jackson, White had over
7,000 to Van Buren's 11,000. But in the Northeast

ELECTED PRESIDENT.

239

Van Buren was very strong. Jackson's majority in
Maine of 6,087 became a majority of 7,751 for Van
Buren. New Hampshire, the home of HU1 and Wood
bury, had given Jackson a majority of 6,376 ; it gave
Van Buren over 12,000. The Democratic majority in
New York rose from less than 14,000 to more than
28,000, and this majority was rural and not urban.
The majority in New York city was but about 1,000.
Of the fifty-six counties Van Buren carried forty-two,
while nowadays his political successors rarely carry
more than twenty. Connecticut had given a majority
of 6,000 for Clay ; it gave Van Buren over 500. Rhode
Island had voted for Clay ; it now voted for Van Buren.
Massachusetts was carried for Webster by 42,247 against
34,474 for Van Buren ; Clay had had 33,003 to only
14,545 for Jackson. But New Jersey shifted from
Jackson to Harrison, although a very close state at both
elections ; and in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illi
nois Van Buren fell far behind Jackson.
The popular vote, omitting South Carolina, where the
legislature chose the electors, was as follows :

Van Buren .
Harrison, White,
and Webster .

New
England.

Middle States.

South.

West.

112,480 106,169

310,203 282,376

141,942 138,059

198,053
209,046

762,678
735,650

The electoral votes were thus divided

New-
England.

Middle States.

South.

West.

Total.

Van Buren .
Harrison .
Webster .
White. . . .

29 7
14

72
21

5720

12
45

170 73 14
26

240 MARTIN VAN BUREN
Van Buren thus came to the presidency supported by
the great Middle States and New England against the
West, with the South divided. Omitting the uncon
tested reelection of. Monroe in 1820, and the almost
uncontested reelection of Jefferson in 1804, Van Buren
was the first Democratic candidate for president who
carried New England. He had there a clear majority
in both the electoral and the popular vote. Nor has any
Democrat since Van Buren obtained a majority of the
popular vote in that strongly thinking and strongly
prejudiced community. Pierce, against the feeble Whig
candidacy of Scott, carried its electoral vote in 1852,
but by a minority of its popular vote, and only because
of the large Free Soil vote for Hale. No other Demo
crat since 1852 has had any electoral vote from New
England outside of Connecticut. Virginia refused its
vote to Johnson, who, in the failure of either candidate
to receive a majority of the electoral vote, was chosen
vice-president by the senate.
When the electoral votes were formally counted be
fore the houses of Congress, the result, so contemporary
record informs us, was "received with perfect decorum
by the house and galleries." Enthusiasm was going
out with Jackson, to come back again with Harrison.
Van Buren's election was the success of inteUectual
convictions, and not the triumph of sentiment. He
had come to power, as " the house and galleries " weU
knew, in " perfect decorum." Not a single one of the
generous but sometimes cheap and fruitless rushes of
feeling occasionally so potent in politics had helped him
to the White House. Not that he was ungenerous or
lacking in feeling. Very far from it; few men have
inspired so steady and deep a political attachment

ELECTED PRESIDENT. 241
among men of strong character and patriotic aspira
tions. But neither in his person nor in his speech or
conduct, was there anything of the strong picturesque-
ness which impresses masses of men, who must be
touched, if at all, by momentary glimpses of great men
or by vivid phrases which become current about them.
His election was no more than a triumph of disciplined
good sense and political wisdom.

CHAPTER VIII.
CRISIS OF 1837.
On March 4, 1837, Jackson and Van Buren rode to
gether from the White House to the Capitol in a " beau
tiful phaeton " made from the timber of the old frig
ate Constitution, the gift to the general from the Demo
crats of New York city. He was the third and last
president who has, after serving through his term, left
office amid the same enthusiasm which attended him
when he entered it, and to whom the surrender of place
has not been full of those pangs_ which attend sudden
loss of power, and of which the certain anticipation
ought to moderate ambition in a country so rarely per
mitting a long and continuous public career. Washing
ton, amid an almost unanimous love and reverence, left
a station of which he was unaffectedly weary ; and he
was greater out of office than in it. Jefferson and
Jackson remained really powerful characters. Neither
at Monticello nor at the Hermitage, after their masters
had returned, was there any lack of the incense of sin
cere popular flattery or of the appeals for the exercise
of admitted and enormous influence, in which lies much
of the unspeakable fascination of a great public station.
Leaving the White House under a still and brilliant
sky, the retiring and incoming rulers had such a popu
lar and military attendance as without much order or
splendor has usually gone up Capitol HiU with our

CRISIS OF 1837. 243
presidents. Van Buren's inaugural speech was heard,
it is said, by nearly twenty thousand persons ; for he
read it with remarkable distinctness and in a quiet air,
from the historic eastern portico. He returned from
the inauguration to his private residence ; and with a
fine deference insisted upon Jackson remaining in the
White House until his departure, a few days later, for
Tennessee. Van Buren in his own carriage took Jack
son to the terminus of the new railway upon which the
journey home was to begin. He bade the old man a
most affectionate farewell, and promised to visit him at
the Hermitage in the summer.
The new cabinet, with a single exception, was the same
as Jackson's : John Forsyth of Georgia, secretary of
state ; Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, secretary of
the treasury ; Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, secre
tary of the navy ; Kendall, postmaster-general ; and
Butler, attorney-general. Joel R. Poinsett, a strong
union man among the nullifiers of South Carolina,
became secretary of war. Cass had left this place in
1836 to be minister to France, and Butler had since
temporarily filled it, as well as his own post of attorney-
general. The cabinet had indeed been largely Van
Buren's, two years and more before he was president.
Van Buren's inaugural address began again with the
favorite touch of humdity, but it now had an agreeable
dignity. He was, he said, the first president born after
the revolution ; he belonged to a later age than his illus
trious predecessors. Nor ought he to expect his coun
trymen to weigh his actions with the same kind and
partial hand which they had used towards worthies of
revolutionary times. But he piously looked for the sus
taining support of Providence, and the kindness of a

214 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
people who had never yet deserted a public servant
honestly laboring in their cause. There was the usual
congratulation upon American institutions and history.
We were, he said, — and the boast though not so delight
ful to the taste of a later time was perfectly true, —
without a parallel throughout the world "in all the
attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people."
Though we restrained government to the " sole legiti
mate end of political institutions," we reached the
Benthamite " greatest happiness of the greatest num
ber," and presented " an aggregate of human prosperity
surely not elsewhere to be found." We must, by observ
ing the limitations of government, perpetuate a condition
of things so singularly happy. Popular government,
whose failure had fifty years ago been boldly predicted,
had now been found " wanting in no element of en
durance or strength." His policy should be " a strict
adherence to the letter and spirit of the constitution
. . . viewing it as limited to national objects, regarding
it as leaving to the people and the states aU power not
explicitly parted with." Upon one question he spoke
precisely. For the first time slavery loomed up in the
inaugural of an American president. It seemed, how
ever, at once to disappear from politics in the practically
unanimous condemnation of the abolition agitation, an
agitation which, though carried on for the noblest pur
poses, seemed — for such is the march of human rights
— insane and iniquitous to most patriotic and intelli
gent citizens. Van Buren quoted the explicit declara
tion made by him before the election against the aboli
tion of slavery in the District of Columbia without the
consent of the slave states, and against " the slightest
interference with it in the states where it exists." Not

CRISIS OF 1837. 245
a word was said of the extension of slavery in the terri
tories. That question still slept under the potion of the
Missouri Compromise, to wake with the acquisition of
Texas. In Van Buren's declaration there was nothing
in the slightest degree inconsistent even with the Repub
lican platforms of 1856 and 1860.
The inaugural concluded with a fine tribute to Jack
son. " I know," Van Buren said, " that I cannot ex
pect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and
success. But united as I have been in his counsels, a
daily witness of his exclusive and unsurpassed devo
tion to his country's welfare, agreeing with him in senti
ments which his countrymen have warmly supported,
and permitted to partake largely of his confidence, I
may hope that somewhat of the same cheering approba
tion will be found to attend upon my path. For him I
but express, with my own, the wishes of aU, that he may
yet long live to enjoy the brilliant evening of his weU-
spent life."
The lucid optimism of the speech was in perfect tem
per with this one of those shining and meUow days,
which even March now and then brings to Washington.
But there was latent in the atmosphere a storm, carry
ing with it a singularly furious and complete devastation.
In the month before the inauguration, Benton, upon
whom Van Buren was pressing a seat in the cabinet,
told the president-elect that they were on the eve of an
explosion of the paper-money system. But the latter
offended Benton by saying : " Your friends think you a
little exalted in the head on the subject." And doubt
less the prophecies of the bank opponents had been
somewhat discredited by the delay of the disaster which
was to justify their denunciations. The profoundly

246 MARTIN VAX BUREN.
thrUling and hidden delight which comes with the first
taste of supreme power, even to the experienced and
battered man of affairs, had been enjoyed by Van Buren
only a few days, when the air grew heavy about him,
and then perturbed, and then violently agitated, until in
two months broke fiercely and beyond all restraint the
most terrific of commercial convulsions in the United
States. Since Washington began the experiment of our
federal government amid the sullen doubts of extreme
Federalists and extreme Democrats, no president, save
only Abraham Lincohi, has had to face at the outset of
his presidency so appalling a political situation.
The causes of the panic of 1837 lay far deeper than
in the complex processes of banking or in tlie faults of
federal administration of the finances. But, as a man
suddenly ill prefers to find for his ailment some recent
and obvious cause, and is not convinced by even a long
and dangerous sickness that its origin lay in old and con
tinued habits of life, so the greater part of the American
people and of their leaders believed this extraordinary
crisis to be the result of financial blunders of Jackson's
administration. They believed that Van Buren could
with a few strokes of his pen repair, if he pleased, those
blunders and restore commercial confidence and prosper
ity. The panic of 1837 became, and has very kvrgely
remained, the subject of political and partisan differ
ences, which obscure its real phenomena and causes.
The far-seeing and patriotic intrepidity with which Van
Buren met its almost overwhelming difficulties is really
the crown of his political career. Fairly to appreciate
the service he then rendered his country, the causes of
this famous crisis must be attentively considered.
In 1819 the United States suffered from commercial

CRISIS OF 1837. 247
and financial derangement, which may be assumed to
have been the effect of the second war with Great
Britain. The enormous waste of a great war carried on
by a highly organized nation is apt not to become obvious
in general business distress until some time after the war
has ended. A buoyant extravagance in living and in
commercial and manufacturing ventures will continue
after a peace has brought its extraordinary promises,
upon the faith of which, and in joyful ignorance, the
evil and inevitable day is postponed. All this was seen
later and on a vaster scale from 1865 to 1873. In 1821
the country had quite recovered from its depression ;
and from this time on to near the end of Jackson's ad
ministration the United States saw a material prosperity,
doubtless the greatest ever before known. The exuber- '
ant outburst of Jobn Quincy Adams's message of 1827,
— that the productions of our soil, the exchanges of our
commerce, the vivifying labors of human industry, had
combined " to mingle in our cup a portion of enjoyment
as large and liberal as the indulgence of Heaven has
perhaps ever granted to the imperfect state of man upon
earth," — was in the usual tone of the public utterances
of our presidents from 1821 to 1837. Our harvests
were always great. We were a chosen people delight
ing in reminders from our rulers of our prosperity, and
not restless under their pious urgency of perennial grati
tude to Providence. In 1821 the national debt had
slightly increased, reaching upwards of $90,000,000 ;
but from that time its steady and rapid payment went
on until it was aU discharged in 1834. Our cities grew.
Our population stretched eagerly out into the rich Mis
sissippi vaUey. From a population of ten millions in
1821, we reached sixteen miUions in 1837. New York

248 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
from about 1,400,000 became 2,200,000 ; and Pennsyl
vania from about 1,000,000 became 1,600,000. But
the amazing growth was at the west — Illinois from
60,000 to 400,000, Indiana from 170,000 to 600,000,
Ohio from 600,000 to 1,400,000, Tennessee from 450,000
to 800,000. Missouri had increased her 70,000 to five
fold ; Mississippi her 80,000 to four-fold ; Michigan her
10,000 twenty-fold. Iowa and Wisconsin were entirely
unsettled in 1821 ; • in 1837 the fertde lands of the former
maintained nearly forty thousand and of the latter nearly
thirty thousand hardy citizens. New towns and cities
rose with magical rapidity. With much that was un
lovely there was also exhibited an amazing energy and
capacity for increase in wealth. The mountain barriers
once passed, not only by adventurous pioneers but by
the pressing throngs of settlers, there were few obstacles
to the rapid creation of comfort and wealth. Nor in the
Mississippi valley and the lands of the Northwest were
the settlers met by the harsh soil, the hostilities and re
luctance of nature in whose conquest upon the Atlantic
seaboard the American people had gained some of their
strongest and most enduring characteristics. We hardly
realize indeed how much better it was for after times
that our first settlements were difficult. In the easy
opening and tiUage of the rich and sometimes rank lands
at the West there was an inferior, a less arduous' disci
pline. The American temper rushed now to speculation,
rather than to toil or venture. It did not seem neces
sary to create wealth by labor ; the treasures lay ready
for whomever should first reach the doors of the treasure
houses. To make easy the routes to El Dorado of
prairies and river bottoms was the quickest way to
wealth.

CRISIS OF 1837. 249
Roads, canals, river improvements, preceded, attended,
followed these sudden settlements, this vast and jubilant
movement of population. There was an extraordinary
growth of " internal improvements." In his message of
1831, Jackson rejoiced at the high wages earned by
laborers in the construction of these works, which he
truly said were " extending with unprecedented rapid
ity." The constitutional power of the federal govern
ment to promote the improvements within the states
became a serious question, because the improvements
proposed were upon so vast a scale. No single interest
had for fifteen years before 1837 held so large a part of
American attention as did the making of canals and
roads. The debates of Congress and legislatures, the
messages of presidents and governors, were full of it. If
the Erie Canal, finished in 1825, had rendered vast''
natural resources available, and had made its chief
budder famous, why should not like schemes prosper
further west. 'The success of railroads was already es
tablished ; and there was indefinite promise in the exten
sions of them already planned. In 1830 twenty-three
miles had been constructed ; in 1831 ninety-four miles ;
and in 1836 the total construction had risen to twelve
hundred and seventy-three miles.
The Americans were then a far more homogeneous
people than they are to-day. The great Irish, German,
and Scandinavian immigrations had not taken place.
Our race diversities were, with exceptions, unimportant
in extent or lost in the lapse of time, the diversities of
British descendants. The compensations and balances,
which in the varying habits and prejudices of a more
varied population tend to restrain and neutralize vaga
ries, did not exist. One sentiment seized the whole nation

250 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
far more readily than could happen in the complexity of
our modern population and the diversity and rivalry of
its strains. Not only did this homogeneity make Ameri
cans open to single impulses ; but there was besides little
essential difference in their various environments. They
all, since the later days of Monroe's presidency, had
lived in the atmosphere of official delight and congratu
lation over the past, and of unrestrained promise for the
future. They all, whether in the grain fields at the
North or the cotton fields at the South, had behind them
the Atlantic with traditions or experiences of poverty and
oppression beyond it. Every American had, in his own
latitude, since the ampler opening of roads and water
ways, and the peaceful conquest of the Appalachian
mountain ranges, seen to the west of him fertility and
promise and performance. And the fertility and prom
ise had, since the second English war, been no longer
in a land of hardship and adventure remote and almost
foreign to the seaboard. Every Americali under Jack
son's administration had before him, as the one universal
experience of those who had taken lands at the West, an
enormous and certain increase of value, fuU of enchant
ment to the tillers of flinty soil in New England or of
the overused fields of the South. If new lands at the
West could be made accessible by internal improvements,
the succession of seed-time and harvest had for a dozen
years seemed no more certain than that the value of
those lands would at once increase prodigiously. So the
American people with one consent gave themselves to an
amazing extravagance of land speculation. The Eden
which Martin Chuzzlewit saw in 'malarial decay was to
be found in the new country on almost every stream to
the east of the Mississippi and on many streams west of

CRISIS OF 1837. 251
it where flatboats could be floated. Frauds there doubt
less were ; but they were incidental to the honest delu
sion of inteUigent men inspired by the most extraordi
nary growth the world had seen. The often quoted
Ulustration of Mobile, the valuation of whose real estate
rose from $1,294,810 in 1831 to $27,482,961 in 1837,
to sink again in 1846 to $8,638,250, not unfairly tells
the story. In Pensacola, lots which to-day are worth
$50 each were sold for as much as lots on Fifth Avenue in
New York, which to-day are worth $100,000 apiece. Real
estate in the latter city was assessed in 1836 at more
than it was in the greatly larger and richer city of fifteen
years later. From 1830 to 1837 the steamboat tonnage
on the western livers rose from 63,053 to 253,661.
From 1833 to 1837 the cotton crop of the newer slave
states, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Ar
kansas and Florida, increased from 536,450 to 916,960
bales, while the price with fluctuations rose from ten to
twenty cents a pound. Foreign capital naturally enough
came to share in the splendid money-making. From
1821 to 1833 the annual import of specie from England
had averaged about $100,000, in the last year being only
$31,903 ; but in 1834 it became $5,716,253, in 1835,
$914,958, and in 1836 $2,322,920, the entire export to
England of specie for all these three years being but
$51,807, while the average export from 1822 to 1830
had been about $400,000 ; and its amount in 1831 had
been $2,089,766, in 1832, $1,730,571. From 1830 to
1837, both years inclusive, although the imports from all
countries of general merchandise exceeded the exports .
by $140,700,000, there was no counter movement of
specie. The imports of specie from all countries during
these years exceeded the exports by the comparatively

2t>2 MARTIN ]'AN BUREN.
enormous sum of $44, 700,000. The foreigners there
fore took pay for their goods, not only in our raw
materials, but in part also in our investments or rather
our speculations, and sent these vast quantities of moneys
besides. So our good fortune fired the imaginations of
even the dull Europeans. They helped to feed and
clothe us that we might experiment with Aladdin's lamp.
The price of public lands was fixed by law at $1.25
an acre ; and they were open to any purchaser, without
the wholesome limits of acreage and the restraint to actual
settlers which were afterwards established. Here then
was a commodity whose price to wholesale purchasers
did not rise, and the very commodity by whicli so many
fortunes had been made. In public lands, therefore, the
fury of money-getting, the boastful confidence in the
future of the country, reached their climax. From 1820
to 1829 the annual sales had averaged less than $1,300,-
000, in 1829 being $1,517,175. But in 1830 they ex
ceeded $2,300,000, in 1831 $3,200,000, in 1832 $2,-
600,000, in 1833 $3,900,000, and in 1834 $4,800,000.
In 1835 they suddenly mounted to $14,757,600, and in
1 836 to $24,877, 1 79. In his messages of 1829 and 1830
Jackson not unreasonably treated the moderate increase
in the sales as a proof of increasing prosperity. In 1831
his congratulations were hushed ; but in 1835 he again
saw, even in the abnormal sales of that year, only ampler
proof of ampler prosperity. In 1836 he at last saw that
tremendous speculation was the true significance of the
enormous increase. Prices of course went up. Every
body thought himself richer and his labor worth more.
A week after Van Buren's inauguration a meeting was
held in the City Hall Park in New York to protest
against high rents and the high prices of provisions ; and

CRISIS OF 1837. 253
with much discernment the cry went up, "No rag
money ; give us gold and silver ! "
There is no longer dispute that the prostration of busi
ness in 1837, and for several years afterward, was the
^ perfectly natural result of the speculation which had
gone before. The absurd denunciations of Van Buren
by the most eminent of the Whigs for not ending the
crisis by governmental interference are no longer re
spected. But it is stiU fancied that tlie speculation itself
was caused by one financial blunder, and the crisis imme
diately occasioned by another financial blunder, of Jack
son. It is not improbable that the deposits of treasury
moneys in fifty state banks1 instead of in the United
sj y States Bank and its twenty and more branches, which
began in the fall of 1833, aided tlie tendency to specu
lation. But this aid was at the most a slight matter.
The impression has been sedulously created that these
state banks, the " pet banks," were doubtful institutions.
There seems httle reason to doubt that in general they
were perfectly sound and reputable institutions, with
which the government moneys would be quite as safe as
with the United States Bank. It is clear that if the
1 The Treasurer's statement for August, 1S37. gave eighty-four
deposit banks. But of these, nine had less than $5,000 each on
deposit, six from $5,000 to $10,000, and eight from $10,000 to
$20,000. Fourteen had from $50,000 to $100,000 each. Only
twenty-nine had more than $100,000 each. It is not unfair to
speak of the deposits as being substantially in fifty banks.
The enormous land sales at the Southwest had placed a most
disproportionate amount of money in banks in that part of tlie
country. John Quinoy Adams seemed, but with little reason,
to oonsider this an intentional discrimination against the North.
It is quite probable that, if the deposits had been in one na
tional bank, the peculiarly excessive strain at that point would
have been modified. But this was no great factor in the crisis.

254 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
latter Bank were not to be rechartered, the deposits
should, without regard to the accusations of political
meddling brought against it, have been removed some
time in advance of its death in March, 1836. At best
it is matter of doubtful speculation whether the United
States Bank under Biddle's direction would, in 1834,
1835, and 1836, while the government deposits were
enormously increasing, have behaved with much greater
prudence and foresight than did the state deposit banks.
So far as actual experience helps us, the doubt might
weU be solved in the negative. The United States
Bank, when its federal charter lapsed, obtained a char
ter from Pennsylvania, continuing under the same man
agement ; and is said, and possibly with truth, to have
entered upon its new career with a great surplus. But
it proved no stronger than the state banks in 1837 ; it
obstructed resumption in 1838 ; it suspended again in
1839, while the eastern banks stood firm ; and in 1841
it went to pieces in disgraceful and complete disaster.
The enormous extension of bank credits during the
three years before the break-down in 1837 was rather
the symptom than the cause of the disease. The fever
of speculation was in the veins of the community before
" kiting " began. Bank officers dwelt in the same at
mosphere as did other Americans, and their sanguine
extravagance in turn stimulated the universal temper
of speculation. The order of causes was in reality this :
When the United States Bank lost the government
deposits, late in 1833, they amounted to a little less than
$10,000,000. On January 1, 1835, more than ayear
after the state banks took the deposits, they had in
creased to a httle more than $10,000,000. But the
public debt being then paid and the outgo of money

CRISIS OF 1837. 255
thus checked, the deposits had by January 1, 1836,
reached $25,000,000, and by June 1, 1836, $41,500,000.
This enormous advance represented the sudden increase
in the sales of pubhc lands, which were paid for in
bank paper, which in turn formed the bulk of the gov
ernment deposits. The deposits were with only a small
part of the six hundred and more state banks then in
existence. But the increase in the sales of public lands
was the result of all the organic causes and of all the
long train of events which had seated the fever of spec
ulation so profoundly in the American character of the
day. To those causes and events must ultimately be
ascribed the extension of bank credits so far as it im
mediately arose out of the increase of government
deposits. Nor is there any sufficient reason to suppose
that if the deposits, instead of being in fifty state banks,
had remained in the United States Bank and its
branches, the tendency to speculation would have been
less. The influences which surrounded that Bank were
the very influences most completely subject to the popu
lar mania.
But the increase of government deposits was only
fuel added to the flames. The craze for banks and
credits was unbounded before the removal of the deposits
had taken place, and before their great increase could
have had serious effect. Between 1830 and January 1,
1834, the banking capital of the United States had risen
from $61,000,000 to about $200,000,000 ; the loans and
discounts of the banks from $200,000,000 to $324,-
000,000; and their note circulation from $61,000,000
to $95,000,000. The increase from January 1, 1834, to
January 1, 1836, was even more rapid, the banking
capital advancing in the two years to $251,000,000, the

256 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
loans and discounts to $457,000,000, and the note circu
lation to $140,000,000. But there was certainty of dis>
aster in the abnormal growth from 1830 to 1834. The
insanity of speculation was in ample though unobserved
control of the country while Nicholas Biddle still con
trolled the deposits, and was certain to reach a climax
whether they stayed with him or went elsewhere.
It is difficult rightly to apportion among the states
men and politicians of the time so much of blame for
the mania of speculation as must go to that body of
men. They had all drunk in the national intoxication
over American success and growth. But if we pass
from the greater and deeper causes to the lesser though
more obvious ones, it is impossible not to visit the
greater measure of blame upon the statesmen who
resisted reduction of taxation, which would have left
money in the pockets of those who earned it, and not
collected it in one great bank with many branches or in
fifty lesser banks ; upon the statesmen who insisted that
the government ought to aid commercial ventures by
encouraging the loans to traders of its own moneys held
in the. deposit banks ; upon the statesmen who promoted
the dangerous scheme of distributing the surplus among
the states instead of abolishing the surplus. As the
condemnation of public men in the wrong must be pro
portioned somewhat to the distinction of their positions
and the greatness of their natural gifts, this larger share
of blame must go chiefly to Daniel Webster and Henry
Clay. At the head of their associates, they had re
sisted the reduction of taxation. In his speech on the
tariff bill of 1832 Clay said, with the exuberance so
delightful to minds of easy discipline, that our resources
should " not be hoarded and hugged with a miser's

CRISIS OF 1837. 257
embrace, but liberally used." They insisted upon freely
lending the public moneys. In his speech on the distri
bution of the surplus, Webster urged that the number of
the deposit banks " be so far increased that each may
regard that portion of the public treasure which it may
receive as an increase of its effective deposits, to be
used, like other moneys in deposit, as a basis of dis
count, to a just and proper extent." The public money
was locked up, he declared, instead of aiding the general
business of the country. Nor after this was he ashamed
in 1838 to condemn Jackson's secretary of the treasury
for advising the new deposit banks, as he had himself
thus advised them, " to afford increased facilities to
commerce." If, indeed, Congress would not take steps
to keep a government surplus out of the banks and in
the pockets of producers, the secretary ought not to
have been harshly judged for advising that the money
go out into commerce rather than lie in bank vaults.
The distribution of the surplus among the states by
the law of 1836 was the last and in some respects the
worst of the measures which aided and exaggerated the
tendency to speculation. By this bill, aU the money
above $5,000,000 in the treasury on January 1, 1837,
was to be " deposited " with the states in four quarterly
instaUments commencing on that day. According to the
law the " deposit " was but a loan to the states ; but, as
Clay declared, not " a single member of either house
imagined that a doUar would ever be recalled." It was
in truth a mere gift. Clay's triumphant ridicule of the
opposition to this measure has already been mentioned.
Webster in sounding periods declared his " deep and
earnest conviction " of the propriety of the stupendous
folly. He did not, indeed, defend the general system of

258 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
making the federal government a tax-gatherer for the
states. But this one distribution would, he said in his
speech of May 31, 1836, " remove that severe and al
most unparalleled pressure for money which is now dis
tressing and breaking down the industry, the enterprise,
and even the courage of the commercial community."
The Whig press declared that a congressman who could
for mere party reasons vote against a measure which
would bring so much money into his state, must be " far
gone in political hardihood as well as depravity ; " and
that " to the Republican-Whig party alone are the states
indebted for the benefits arising from the distribution."
William H. Seward, two years before and two years
later the Whig candidate for governor of New York,
said the proposal was "noble aud just." The meas
ure passed the senate with six Democratic votes against
it, among them the vote of Silas Wright, then probably
closer than any other senator to Van Buren. Jack
son yielded to the bill what in his message in De
cember of the same year he called " a reluctant ap
proval." He then gave at length very clear reasons for
his reluctance, but none for his approval. He declared
that " improvident expenditure of money is the parent
of profligacy," and that no intelligent and virtuous com
munity would consent to raise a surplus for the mere
purpose of dividing it. In his first message, indeed,
Jackson had called the distribution among the states
"the most safe, just, and federal disposition" of the sur
plus. But his views upon this, as upon other subjects,
had changed during the composition of the Democratic
creed which went on during the early years of his ad
ministration. His second message rehearsed at length
the objections to the distribution, though affecting to

CRISIS OF 1837. 259
meet them. In his third message he recommended the
abolition of unnecessary taxation, not the distribution of
its proceeds ; and in 1832 he made his explicit declara
tion that duties should be " reduced to the revenue
standard." Benton says it was understood that in
1836 some of Van Buren's friends urged Jackson to ap
prove the bill, lest a veto of so popular a measure might
bring a Democratic defeat. There must have been some
reason unrelated to the merit of the measure. But
whatever the opinions of Van Buren's friends, he took
care before the election to make known unequivocaUy,
in the Sherrod Williams letter already quoted, his dis
like of this piece of demagogy. From the passage of
the deposit biU in June, 1836, until the crash in 1837,
this superb donation of thirty-seven millions was before
the enraptured and deluded vision of the country. Over
nine miUions a quarter to be poured into " improve
ments " or loaned to the needy, — what a luscious pros
pect ! The lesson is striking and wholesome, and ought
not to be forgotten, that, when the land was in the very
midst of these largesses, the universal bankruptcy set in.
During 1835 and 1836 there were omens of the com
ing storm. Some perceived the rabid character of the
speculative fever. WUliam L. Marcy, governor of New
York, in his message of January, 1836, answering the
dipsomaniac cry for more banks, declared that an un
regulated spirit of speculation had taken capital out of
the state ; but that the amount so transferred bore no
comparison to.the enormous speculations in stocks and
in real property within the state. Lands near the cities
and villages of the state had risen several hundred per
cent, in value, and were sold, not to be occupied by the
buyers, but to be sold again at higher prices. The pas-

260 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
sion for speculation prevailed to an extent before un
known, not only among capitalists, but among merchants,
who abstracted capital from their business for land and
stock speculations and then resorted to the banks. The
warning was treated contemptuously ; but before the
year was out the federal administration also became
anxious, and the increase in land sales no longer signi
fied to Jackson an increasing prosperity. The master
hand which drew the economic disquisition in his mes
sage of 1836 pointed to these sales as the effects of the
extension of bank credit and of the over-issue of bank
paper. The banks, it was declared, had lent their notes
as "mere instruments to transfer to speculators the most
valuable public land, and pay the government by a credit
on the books of the banks." Each speculation had fur
nished means for another. No sooner had one purchaser
paid his debt in the notes than they were lent to another
for a like purpose. The banks had extended their busi
ness and their issues so largely as to alarm considerate
men. The spirit of expansion and speculation had not
been confined to deposit banks, but had pervaded the
whole multitude of banks throughout the Union, and had
given rise to new institutions to aggravate the evU. So
Jackson proceeded with his sound defense of the famous
specie circular, long and even still denounced as the
causa causans of the crisis of 1837.
By this circular, issued on July 11, 1836, the secre
tary of the treasury had required payment for public
lands to be made in specie, with an exception until De
cember 15, 1836, in favor of actual settlers and actual
residents of the state in which the lands were sold. The
enormous sales of land in this year, and the large pay
ments required for them under the circular, at once made

CRISIS OF 1837. 261
the banks realize that there ought to be an actual physi
cal basis for their paper transactions. Gold was called
from the East to the banks at the West to make the land <
payments. Into the happy exaltation of unreal transac
tions was now plunged that harsh demand for real value
which sooner or later must always come. The demand
was passed on from one to another, and its magnitude
and peremptoriness grew rapidly. The difference be
tween paper and gold became plainer and plainer.
Nature's vital and often hidden truth that value depends
upon labor could no longer be kept secret by a few wise
men. The suspicion soon arose that there was not real
and available value to meet the demands of nominal
value. The suspicion was soon bruited among the less
as well as the more wary. Every man rushed to his
bank or his debtor, crying, " Pay me in value, not in
promises to pay ; there is, I at last see, a difference be
tween them." But the banks and debtors had no avail
able value, but only its paper semblances. Every man
found that what he wanted his neighbors did not have
to give him, and what he had his neighbors did not
want. This is hardly an appropriate place to attempt an
analysis of the elements of a commercial crisis. But it
is not possible rightly to estimate Van Buren's moral
courage and keen-sighted wisdom in meeting the terrible
pressure of 1837 without appreciating what it was which
had really happened. The din of the disputes over the
refusal to recharter the bank, over the removal of the
deposits, over the refusal to pay the last installment of
the distribution among the states, and over the specie
circular, resounds even to our own time. To many the
crisis seemed merely a financial or even a great bank-

262 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ing episode. Many friends of the administration loudly
cried that the disaster arose from the treachery of the
banks in suspending. Many of its enemies saw only the
normal fruit of administrative blunders, first in reckless
ness, and last in heartless indifference. To most Ameri
cans, whatever their differences, the explanation of this
profound and lasting disturbance seemed to lie in the
machinery of finance, rather than in the deeper facts of
tlie physical wealth and power of the trading classes.
Speculation is sometimes said to be universal ; and
it was never nearer universality than from 1830 to
1837. But speculation affects after all but a small
part of the community, — the part engaged in trade,
venture, new settlement or new manufacture ; those
classes of men the form of whose work is not established
by tradition, but is changing and improving under the
spur of ingenuity and invention, and with whom imagi
nation is most powerful and fruitful. These men use
the surplus resources of the vastly greater number who
go on through periods of high prices and of low prices
with their steady toil and unvaried production. In
our country and in all industrial communities it is to
the former comparatively small class that chiefly and
characteristically belong "good times" and "bad
times," panics and crises and depressions. It is this
class which in newspapers and financial reviews becomes
"the country." It chiefly supports the move influen
tial of the clergy, the lawyers, the editors, and others
of the professional classes. It deals with the new uses
and the accumulations of wealth ; it almost monopolizes
public attention ; it is chiefly and conspicuously identi
fied with industrial and commercial changes and pro
gress. But if great depressions were really as univer-

CRISIS OF 1837. 263
sal as the rhetoric of economists and historians would
hteraUy signify, our ancestors fifty years ago must have
experienced a devastation such as Alaric is said to have
brought to the fields of Lombardy. But this was not
so. The processes of general production went on ; the
land was tiUed ; the farmer's work of the year brought
about the same amount of comfort ; the ordinary me
chanic was not much worse off. If some keen observer
from another planet had in 1835 and again later in
1837 looked into the dining-rooms and kitchens and
parlors of America, had seen its citizens with their fami
lies going to church of a Sunday morning, or watched
the tea-parties of their wives, or if he had looked over
the fields and into the shops, there would have seemed
to him but slight difference between the two years in the
occupations, the industry, or the comfort of the people.
But if he had stopped looking and begun to listen, he
would in 1837 at oiice have perceived a tremendous
change. The great masses of producing men would
have been mute, as they usually are. But the capitalists,
the traders, the manufacturers, all whose skUl, courage,
imagination, and adventure made them the leaders of
progress, and whose voices were the only loud, clear,
inteUigible voices, untd there arose the modern organiza
tions of laboring men, — all those who in 1835 were
flushed and glorious with a royal money-getting, — he
would now have heard crying in frenzy and desperation.
It is not meant to disparage the importance of this smaller
but louder body of men, or to underrate the disaster which
they suffered. In proportion to their numbers, they
were vastly the most important part of the community.
If they were prostrated, there must not only suffer the
body of clerks, operatives, and laborers immediately

264 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
engaged in their enterprises, and who may for economi
cal purposes be ranked with them ; but later on, the
masses of the community must to a real extent feel the
interruption of progress which has overtaken that section
of the community to which are committed the charac
teristic operations of material progress : and whether
through the fault or the misfortune of that section, the
injury is alike serious. A wise ruler, in touching the
finances of his country, wiU forget none of this. He will
look through all the agitation of bankers and traders
and manufacturers, the well-voiced leaders of the richer
classes of men, to the far vaster processes of industry
carried on by men who are silent, and whose silent in
dustry will go on whatever devices of currency or bank
ing may be adopted. This wisdom Van Buren now
showed in an exalted degree.
The disaster which in 1837 overtook so large and so
important a part of the community was, in its ultimate
nature, not difficult to comprehend. There had not been
one equal and universal increase in nominal values.
Such an increase would not have produced the crisis.
But while the great mass of the national industry went
on in channels and with methods and rates substantiaUy
undisturbed, there took place an enormous and specula
tive advance of prices in the cities where were carried on
the operations of important traders and the promoters
of enterprises, and in the very new country where these
enterprises found their material. When a new canal
or road was built, or a new line of river steamers
launched and an unsettled country made accessible, sev
eral things inevitably happened in the temper produced
by the jubilant observation of the past. There was not
only drawn from the ordinary industry of the country

CRISIS OF 1S37. 265
the wealth necessary to build the canal or road or steam
ers ; but the country thus rendered accessible seemed
suddenly to gain a value measured by the best results
of former settlements, however exceptional, and by the
most sanguine hopes for the future. The owners of the
prairies and woods and river bottoms became suddenly
rich, as a miner in Idaho becomes rich when he strikes
a true fissure vein. The owners of the canal or road
or line of steamers found their real investment at once
multiplied in doUars by the value of the country whose
trade they were to enjoy ; for, new as that value was, it
seemed assured. Like investments were made in banks,
and in every implement of direct or indirect use in the
conduct of industries which seemed to belong as a neces
sity to the new value of the land. The numerous sales
of lands and of stocks in roads or canals or banks at
rapidly advancing prices did not alter the nature, al
though they vastly augmented the effect, of what was
happening. The so-called " business classes " through
out the country, related as they quickly became, under
the great impetus of the national hopefulness and vanity,
to the new lands, to the new cities and towns and farms,
and to the means of reaching them and of providing
them with the necessities and comforts of civilization,
found their wealth rapidly and largely increasing. Then
naturally enough followed the spending of money in
personal luxury. This meant the withdrawal of labor
in the older part of the country from productive work,
for which the country was fitted, to work which, whether
suitable or not, was unproductive. The unproductive
labor was paid, as the employers supposed, from the
new value lately created at the West. So capital, that
is, accumulated labor, was first spent in improvements

266 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
in the new country, and then, and probably in a far
greater amount, spent in more costly food, clothes, equi
page, and other luxuries in the older country. The
successive sales at advancing prices simply increased the
sense of new wealth, and augmented more and more
this destructive consumption of the products of labor,
or the destructive diversion of labor from productive
to unproductive activity at the East by the well-to-do
classes. On the eve of the panic the new wealth, whose seem
ing possession apparently justified this destructive con
sumption or diversion to luxury of physical value, was
primarily represented by titles to lands, stocks in land,
canal, turnpike, radroad, transportation, or banking com
panies, and the notes issued by banks or traders or
speculators. The value of these stocks and notes
depended upon the fruitfulness of the lands or canals or
roads or steamboat lines. Prices of many commodities
had, indeed, been enhanced by speculation beyond all
proper relation to other commodities, measured by the
ultimate standard of the quantity and quahty of labor.
But important as was this element, it was subordinate
to the apparent creation of wealth at the West.
Before the panic broke, it began to appear that mere
surveys of wild tracts into lots made neither towns nor
cities ; that canals and roads and steamboats did not
hew down trees or drain morasses or open the glebe.
The basis of the operations of capitalists and promoters
and venturers in new fields, if those operations were to
have real success, must lie in the masses of strong and
skillful arms of men of labor. The operations were
fruitless until there came a population well sinewed and
gladly ready for arduous tod. In 1836 and 1837 the

CRISIS OF 1837. 267
operators found that there was no longer a population
to give enduring life to their new operations. They
had far outstripped all the immediate or even the nearly
promised movements of settlers. Men, however hardy,
preferred to work within an easier reach of the physical
and social advantages of settlements already made, until
they could see the superior fruitfulness of labor further
on. The new cities and towns and farms and the means
of reaching them would be mere paper assets until an
army of settlers was ready to enter in and make them
sources of actual physical wealth. But the army stopped
far short of the new Edens and metropolises. There
was no creation among them of the actual wealth, the
return of physical labor, to make good and real the
popular semblances of wealth, upon the faith of which in
the older part of the country had arisen new methods
of business and habits of living. The withdrawal of
actual wealth from the multifarious treasuries of capital
and industry, to meet the expense of the improvements
at the West and the increased luxury at the East, had
reached a point where the pressure caused by the defi
ciency of physical wealth was too great for the hopeful
ness or credulity of those who had been surrendering
that wealth upon the promises of successful and opulent
settlements at the West. Nor was all this confined to
ventures in the new states. Almost every Eastern city
. had a suburb where with slight differences all the phe
nomena of speculation were as real and obvious as in
Illinois or Mississippi.
Jackson's specie circular toppled over the house of
cards, which at best could have stood but little longer.
In place of bank-notes, which symbolized the expecta
tions and hopes of the owners of new towns and im-

268 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
provements, the United States after July, 1836, required
from all but actual settlers gold and silver for lands.
An insignificant part of the sales had been lately made
to settlers. They were chiefly made to speculators.
The public lands, which sold invariably at $1.25 an acre,
were enormously magnified in nominal value the instant
the speculators owned them. Paper money was freely
issued upon these estimates of value, to be again paid to
the government for more lands at $1.25. But now gold
and silver must be found ; and nothing but actual labor
could find gold and silver. A further stream of true
wealth was summoned from the East, already denuded,
as it was, of aU the surplus it had ready to be invested
upon mere expectation. Enormous rates were now paid
for real money. But of the real money necessary to
make good the paper bubble promises of the speculators
not one tenth part really existed. Banks could neither
make their debtors pay in gold and silver, nor pay their
own notes in gold and silver. So they suspended.
The great and long concealed devastation of physical
wealth and of the accumulation of legitimate labor, by
premature improvements and costly personal living,
became now quickly apparent. Fancied wealth sank
out of sight. Paper symbols of new cities and towns,
canals and roads, were not only without value, but they
were now plainly seen to be so. Rich men became poor
men. The prices of articles in which there had been ,
speculation sank in the reaction far below their true
value. The industrious and the prudent, who had given
their labor and their real wealth for paper promises issued
upon the credit of seemingly assured fortunes, suffered
at once with men whose fortunes had never been any
thing better than the delusions of their hope and imagi
nation.

CRISIS OF 1837. 269
It is now plain enough that to recover from this crisis
was a work of physical reparation to which must go
time, industry, and frugality. There was foUy in every
effort to retain and use as valuable assets the invest
ments in companies and banks whose usefulness, if it
had ever begun, was now ended. There was folly in
every effort to conceal from the world by words of hope
fulness the fact that the imagined values in new cities
and garden lands had disappeared in a rude disenchant
ment as complete as that of Abon-Hassan in the Thou
sand and One Nights, or that of Sly, the tinker, left un
told in the Taming of the Shrew. Their sites were no
more than wild lands, whose value must wait the march
of American progress, fast enough indeed to the rest of
the world, but slow as the snail to the wild pacing of
the speculators. Every pretense of a politician, whether
in or out of the senate chamber, that the government
could by devices of financiering avoid this necessity of
long physical repair, was either folly or wickedness.
And of this folly or even wickedness there was no lack
in the anxious spring and summer of 1837.
There had already occurred in many quarters that
misery which is borne by the humbler producers of
wealth not for their own consumption, but simply for
exchange, whose earnings are not increased to meet the
inflation of prices upon which traders and speculators
are accumulating apparent fortunes and spending them
as if they were real. On February 14, 1837, several
thousand people met in front of the City Hall in New
York under a call of men whom the " Commercial
Advertiser " described as " Jackson Jacobins." The caU
was headed : " Bread, meat, rent, fuel ! Their prices
must come down ! " It invited the presence of " all

270 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
friends of humanity determined to resist monopolists
and extortionists." A very respectable meeting about
high prices had been held two or three weeks before at
the Broadway Tabernacle. The meeting in the City
Hall Park, with a mixture of wisdom and folly, urged
the prohibition of bank - notes under $100, and called
for gold and sUver ; and then denounced landlords and
dealers in provisions. The excitement of the meeting
was foUowed by a riot, in which a great flour warehouse
was gutted. The rioters were chiefly foreigners and
few in number ; nor were the promoters of the meeting
involved in the riot. The military were called out ;
and Eli Hart & Co., the unfortunate flour merchants,
issued a card pointing out with grim truth " that the
destruction of the article cannot have a tendency to
reduce the price."
The distribution of the treasury surplus to the states
precipitated the crash. The first quarter's payment of
$9,367,000 was made on January 1, 1837. There was
disturbance in taking this large sum of money from
the deposit banks. Loans had to be called in, and the
accommodation to business men lessened for the time.
There was speculative disturbance in the receipt of the
moneys by the state depositories. There was apprehen
sion for the next payment on April 1, which was accom
plished with still greater disturbance, and after the crisis
had begun. The caUs for gold and silver, begun under
the specie circular, and the disturbances caused by these
distributions, were increased by financial pressure in
England, whose money aids to America were but partly
shown by the shipments of gold and silver already men
tioned. The extravagance of living had been shown in
foreign importations for consumption in luxury, to meet

CRISIS OF 1837. 271
which there had gone varied promises to pay, and secu
rities whose true value depended upon the true and not
the apparent creation of wealth in America. Before
the middle of March the money excitement at Man
chester was great ; and to the United States alone, it
was then declared, attention was directed for larger
remittances and for specie. The merchants of Liver
pool about the same time sent a memorial to the chan-
ceUor of the exchequer saying " that the distress of the
mercantile interest is intense beyond example, and that
it is rapidly extending to all ranks and conditions of the
community, so as to threaten irretrievable ruin in aU
directions, involving the prudent with the imprudent."
The " London Times " on April 10, 1837, said that great
distress and pressure had been produced in every branch
of national industry, and that the calamity had never
been exceeded.
The cry was quickly reechoed from America. Com
mercial failures began in New York about April 1.
By AprU 8 ninety-eight failures had occurred in that
city, five of foreign and exchange brokers, thirty of dry-
goods jobbers, sixteen of commission houses, twenty-
eight of real-estate speculators, eight of stock brokers,
and six others. Three days later the failures had
reached one hundred and twenty-eight. Provisions,
wages, rents, everything, as the " New York Herald " on
that day announced, were coming down. Within a few
days more the failures were too numerous to be specially
noticed ; and before the end of the month the rest of the
country was in a like condition. The prostration in the
newer cotton states was peculiarly complete. Their
staple was now down to ten cents a pound ; within a
year it had been worth twenty. All other staples feU
enormously in price.

272 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Late in April the merchants of New York met. In
stead of condemning their own folly, they resolved, in a
silly fury, that the disaster was due to government in
terference with the business and commercial operations
of the country by requiring land to be paid for in specie
instead of paper, to its destruction of the bank, and to its
substitution of a metallic for a credit currency. A com
mittee of fifty, including Thomas Denny, Henry Parish,
Elisha Riggs, and many others whose names are still
honored in New York, was appointed to remonstrate with
the president. " What constitutional or legal justifica
tion," it was seriously demanded, " can Martin Van
Buren offer to the people of the United States for hav
ing brought upon them aU their present difficulties ? "
The continuance of the specie circular, they said, was
more high-handed tyranny than that which had cost
Charles I. his crown and his head. On May 3 the
committee visited Washington and told the president
that their real estate had depreciated forty millions,
their stocks twenty millions, their immense amounts of
merchandise in warehouses thirty per cent. They pite-
ously said to him, " The noble city which we represent
lies prostrate in despair, its credit blighted, its industry
paralyzed, and without a hope beaming through the dark
ness, unless " — and here we might suppose they would
have added, " unless Americans at once stop spending
money which has not been earned, and repair the ruin
by years of sensible industry and strict economy." But
the conclusion of the merchants was that the darkness
must continue unless relief came from Washington. It
was unjust, they said, to attribute the evils to excessive
development of mercantile enterprise ; they flowed in
stead from " that unwise system which aimed at the

CRISIS OF 1837. 273
substitution of a metaUic for a paper currency.'7 The
error of their rulers " had produced a wider desolation
than the pestilence which depopulated our streets, or the
conflagration which laid them in ashes." In the opinion
of these sapient gentlemen of business, it was the re
quirement that the United States, in seUing western
lands to speculators, should be paid in real and not in
nominal money, which had prostrated in despair the
metropolis of the country. They asked for a withdrawal
of the specie circular, for a suspension of government
suits against importers on bonds given for duties, for an
extra session of Congress to pass Clay's bill for the dis
tribution of the land revenue among the states, and for
the rechartering of the bank. Never did men out of
their heads with fright propose more foolish attempts at
relief than some of these. But the folly, as will be
seen, seized statesmen of the widest experience as well
as frenzied merchants. The president's answer was
dignified, but " brief and explicit." To the insolent sug
gestion that Jackson's financial measures had been more
destructive than fire or pestilence, he calmly reminded
them that he had made fully known, before he was
elected, his own approval of those measures ; that know
ing this tho people had deliberately chosen him ; and
that he would still adhere to those measures. The
specie circular should be neither repealed nor modified.
Such indulgence in enforcing custom-house bonds would
be allowed as the law permitted. The emergency did
not, he thought, justify an extra session. Nicholas
Biddle called on Van Buren ; and many were disgusted
that in the presence of this arch enemy the president re
mained " profoundly silent upon the great and interest
ing topics of the day."

274 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Van Buren's resolution to face the storm without
either the aid or the embarrassment of the early presence
of Congress he was soon compelled to abandon. Within
a few days of the return of the merchants to New York,
that city sent the president an appalling reply. On
May 10 its banks suspended payment of their notes in
coin. A few days before some banks in lesser cities of
the Southwest had stopped. On the day after the New
York suspension, the banks of Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Albany, Hartford, New Haven, and Providence foUowed.
On the 12th the banks of Boston and Mobile, on the
13th those of New Orleans, and on the 17th those of
Charleston and Cincinnati fell in the same crash. There
was now simply a general bankruptcy. Men would no
longer meet their promises to pay, because no longer
could new paper promises pay off old ones. No longer
would men surrender physical wealth safely in their
hands for the expectation of wealth to be created by the
future progress of the country. But men with perfectly
real physical wealth in their storehouses, which they
could not themselves use, were also in practical bank
ruptcy because of their commercial debts most prudently
incurred. The natural exchange of their own goods for
goods which they or their creditors might use was ob
structed by the utter discredit of paper money, and by
the almost complete disappearance of gold and silver.
Extra sessions of state legislatures were called to devise
relief. The banks' suspension of specie payment in New
York was within a few days legalized by the legislature
of that state. On May 12 the secretary of the treasury
directed government collectors themselves to keep public
moneys where the deposit banks had suspended.
For banks holding the public moneys sank with the

CRISIS OF 1837. 275
others. And it was this which compelled Van Buren in
one matter to yield to the storm. On May 15 he issued
a proclamation for an extra session of Congress to meet
on the first Monday of September. It would meet, the
proclamation said, to consider " great and weighty mat
ters." No scheme of relief was suggested. The locking
up of public moneys in suspended banks made neces
sary some relief to the government itself. It was, per
haps, weU enough that excited and terrified people,
casting about for a remedy, should, until their wits were
somewhat restored, be soothed by assurance that the
great council of the nation would, at any rate, discuss
the situation. Moreover, it was wise to secure time,
that most potent ally of the statesman. Within the
three months and a half to elapse, Van Buren, like a
wise ruler, thought the true nature of the calamity
would become more apparent ; proposals of remedies
might be scrutinized ; and thoughtless or superficial
men might weary of their own absurd proposals, or the
people might fully perceive their absurdity.
During the summer popular excitement ran very
high against the administration. The Whig papers de
clared it to be " the melancholy truth, the awful truth,"
that the administration did nothing to relieve, but every
thing to distress the commercial community. Abbot
Lawrence, one of the richest and most influential citi
zens of Boston, told a great meeting, on May 17, that
there was no other people on the face of God's earth
that were so abused, cheated, plundered, and trampled
on by their rulers ; that the government exacted impos
sibilities. No overt act, he said, with almost a sinister
suggestion, ought to be committed until the laws of self-
preservation compeUed a forcible resistance ; but the

276 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
time might come when the crew must seize the ship.
The friends of the administration sought, indeed, to
stem the tide ; and a series of skillfully devised popular
gatherings was held, very probably inspired by Van
Buren, who highly estimated such organized appeals to
popular sentiment. In Philadelphia a great meeting
denounced the bank suspensions and the issue of small
notes as devices in the interest of a foreign conspiracy
to throw sdver coin out of circulation and export it to
Europe, to raise the prices of necessaries, and recom
mence a course of gambling under the name of specula
tion and trade, in which the people must be the victims,
and " the foreign and home desperadoes " the gainers.
The meeting declared for a metaUic currency. " We
hereby pledge our lives, if necessary," they said, " for
the support of the same." Later, on May 22, there was
in the same city a large gathering at Independence
Square, which solemnly caUed upon the administration
" manfully, fearlessly, and at all hazards to go on collect
ing the public revenues and paying the public dues in
gold and sflver." Their forefathers, who fought for their
liberties, the framers of our Constitution, the patriarchs
whose memory they revered, were, with a funny mix
ture of truth and falsehood, declared to have been hard-
money men. A week later, a great meeting in Balti
more approved the specie circular, and urged its fearless
execution, " notwithstanding the senseless clamors of the
British party ; " for the crisis, they said, was " a strug
gle of the virtuous and industrious portions of the com
munity against bank advocates and the enemies to good
morals and republicanism." Protests were elsewhere
made against forcing small notes into circulation. Pa
per had, however, to be used, for there was nothing else.

CRISIS OF 1837. 217
Barter must go on, even upon the most flimsy tokens.
In New York one saw, as were seen twenty-four years
later, bits of paper like this : " The bearer wiU be enti
tled to fifty cents' value in refreshments at the Auction
Hotel, 123 and 125 Water Street. New York, May,
1837. Charles Redabock." In TaUahassee a commit
tee of citizens was appointed to print bank tickets for
purposes of change. In Easton the currency had a
more specific basis. One of the tokens read : " This
ticket wiU hold good for a sheep's tongue, two crackers,
and a glass of red-eye."
When Congress assembled, the country had cried
itself, if not to sleep, at least to seeming quiet. The
sun had not ceased to rise and set. Although merchants
and bankers were prostrate with anxiety or even in irre
mediable ruin ; although thousands of clerks and labor
ers were out of employment or earning absurdly low
wages, — for near New York hundreds of laborers were
rejected who apphed for work at four dollars a month
and board ; although honest frontiersmen found them
selves hopelessly isolated in a wilderness, — for the
frontier had suddenly shrunk far behind them, — still
the harvest had been good, the masses of men had been
at work, and economy had prevailed. The desperation
was over. But there was a profound melancholy, from
which a recovery was to come only too soon to be
lasting;.

CHAPTER IX.
PRESIDENT.  SUB-TREASUKF BILL.
Van Buren's bearing in the crisis was admirable.
Even those who have treated him with animosity or
contempt do not here refuse him high praise. " In this
one question," says Von Hoist, "he reaUy evinced cour
age, firmness, and statesmanlike insight. . . . Van Buren
bore the storm bravely. He repeUed aU reproaches
with decision, but with no bitterness. . . . Van Buren
unquestionably merited weU of the country, because he
refused his cooperation, in accordance with the guar
dianship principle of the old absolutisms, to accustom the
people of the Republic also to see the government enter
as a saving deus ex machina in every calamity brought
about by their own fault and folly. . . . Van Buren
had won a brilliant victory and placed his countrymen
under lasting obligations to him." l
1 1 cannot refrain from noticing here the curious fact that Dr.
Von Hoist, after a contemptuous picture of Van Buren as a
mere verbose, coarse-grained politician given to scheming and du
plicity, was not surprised at his meeting in so lofty a spirit this
really great trial. For surely here, if anywhere, the essential
fibre of the man "would be discovered. I must also express my
regret that this writer, to whom Americans owe very much,
should have been content (although in this he has but joined
some other historians of American polities) to accept mere cam
paign or partisan rumors which when directed against other men,
have gone unnoticed, but against Van Buren have become the

EXTRA SESSION. 279
Van Buren met the extra session with a message
which marks the zenith of his political wisdom. It is
one of the greatest of American state papers. With
clear, unflinching, and unanswerable logic he faced the
crisis. Thare was no effort to evade the questions put
to him, or to divert public attention from the true issue.
The government could not, he showed, help people earn
their living ; but it could refuse to aid the deception
that paper was gold, and the delusion that value could
arise without labor. The masterly argument seems long
to a sauntering reader ; but it treated a difficult question
which had to be answered by the multitudes of a democ
racy many of whom were pinched and excited by per
sonal distresses and anxiety and who were sure to read
it. Few episodes in our political history give one more
exalted appreciation of the good sense of the American
masses, than that, in this stress of national suffering, a
skillful politician should have appealed to them, not
even sweetening the truth, but resisting with direct and
painful sobriety their angry and natural impulses ; this,
too, when most of the talented and popular leaders were
basis for emphatic disparagement and contumely. Even Macken
zie, the publisher of the purloined letters, writing his pamphlet
with the most obvious and reckless venom, is quoted by this
learned historian as respectable authority. Van Buren had
refused during nearly a year to pardon Mackenzie from prison '
for his unlawful use of American territory to prepare armed
raids on Canada. Sir Francis B. Head's opinion was doubtless
somewhat colored ; but he was not entirely without justification
in applying to Mackenzie the words : "He lies out of every pore
in his skin. Whether he be sleeping or waking, on foot or on
horseback, together with his neighbors or writing for a news
paper, a multitudinous swarm of lies, visible, palpable, and tan
gible, are buzzing and settling about him like flies around a horse
in August." (Narrative of Sir F. B. Head, London, 1839.)

280 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
promoting, rather than reducing or diverting the heated
folly of the time.
Van Buren quietly began by saying that the law
.required the secretary of the treasury to deposit public
moneys only in banks that paid their notes in specie. All
the banks had stopped such payment. It was obvious
therefore that some other custody of public moneys must
be provided, and it was for this that he had summoned
Congress. He then began what was really an address to
the people. He pointed out that the government had not
caused, and that it could not cure, the profound commer
cial distemper. Antecedent causes had been stimulated
by the enormous inflations of bank currency and other
credits, and among them the many millions of foreign
loans, and the lavish accommodations extended "by for
eign dealers to our merchants." Thence had come the
spirit of reckless speculation, and from that a foreign
debt of more than thirty millions ; the extension to trad
ers in the interior of credits for supplies greatly beyond
the wants of the people ; the investment of thirty-nine
and a half millions in unproductive public lands ; the
creation of debts to an almost countless amount for real
estate in existing or anticipated cities and villages ; the
expenditure of immense sums in improvements ruin
ously improvident ; the diversion to other pursuits of
labor that should have gone to agriculture, so that this
first of agricultural countries had imported two millions
of dollars worth of grain in the first six months of
1837 ; and the rapid growth of luxurious habits founded
too often on merely fancied wealth. These evils had
been aggravated by the great loss of capital in the
famous fire af New York in December, 1835, a loss
whose effects, though real, were not at once apparent

EXTRA SESSION. 281
because of the shifting and postponement of the burdens
through facilities of credit, by the disturbance which the
transfers of public monej's in the distribution among
the states caused, and by necessities of foreign creditors
which made them seek to withdraw specie from the
United States. He pointed out the unprecedented ex
pansion of credit in Great Britain at the same time, and,
with the redundancy of paper currency 1 there, the rise
of adventurous and unwholesome speculation.
To the demand for a reestablishment of a national
bank, he replied that quite the contrary must be done ;
that the fiscal concerns of the government must be sep
arated from those of individuals or corporations ; that
to create such a bank would be to disregard the popular
will twice solemnly and unequivocally expressed ; that
the same motives would operate on the administrators
of a national as on those of state banks ; that the Bank
of the United States had not prevented former and
similar embarrassments, and that the Bank of England
had but lately failed in its own land to prevent serious
abuses of credit. He knew indeed of loud and serious
complaint because the government did not now aid com
mercial exchange. But this was no part of its duty.
It was not the province of government to aid individ
uals in the transfer of their funds otherwise than
through the facilities of the post-office. As justly
might the government be asked to transport merchan
dise. These were operations of trade to be conducted
by those who were interested in them. Throughout
Europe domestic as well as foreign exchanges were car-
1 The reference was to commercial paper and not to bank
notes. But both had been active characteristics of American
speculation.

282 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
ried on by private houses, and often, if not generally,
without the assistance of banks. Our own exchanges
ought to be carried on by private enterprise and compe
tition, without legislative assistance, free from the influ
ence of political agitation, and from the neglect, par
tiality, injustice, and oppression unavoidably attendiilg
the interference of government with the proper concerns
of individuals. His own views, Van Buren declared,
were unchanged. Before his election he had distinctly
apprised the people that he would not aid in the re-
establishment of a national bank. His conviction had
been strengthened that such a bank meant a concen
trated money power hostile to the spirit and permanency
of our republican institutions.
He then turned to those state banks which had held
government deposits. At all times they had held some
of the federal moneys, and since 1833 they had held the
whole. Since that year the utmost security had been
required from them for such moneys ; but when lately
called upon to pay the surplus to the states, they had,
while curtailing their discounts and increasing the gen
eral distress, been with the other banks fatally involved
in the revulsion. Under these circumstances it was a
solemn duty to inquire whether the evils inherent in any
connection between the government and banks of issue
were not such as to require a divorce. Ought the
moneys taken from the people for public uses longer to
be deposited in banks and thence to be loaned for the
profit of private persons ? Ought not the collection,
safe-keeping, transfer, and disbursement of public moneys
to be managed by public officers ? The public revenues
must be limited to public expenses so that there should
be no great surplus. The care of the moneys inevitably

INDEPENDENT TREASURY. 283
accumulated from time to time would involve expense ;
but this was a trifling consideration in so important a
matter. Personally it would be agreeable to him to be
free from concern in the custody and disbursement of
the public revenue. Not indeed that he would shrink
from a proper official responsibility, but because he firm
ly believed the capacity of the Executive for usefulness
was in no degree promoted by the possession of patron
age not actuaUy necessary. But he was clear that the
connection of the Executive with powerful moneyed in
stitutions, capable of ministering to the interests of men
in points where they were most accessible to corruption,
was more liable to abuse than his constitutional agency
in the appointment and control of the few public officers
required by the proposed plan.
, Thus was announced the independent treasury scheme,
the divorce of bank and state, the famous achievement
of Van Buren's presidency. He argued besides elabo
rately in favor of the specie circular. An individual
could, if he pleased, accept payment in a paper promise
or in any other way as he saw fit. But a public servant
should in exchange for public domain take only what
was universally deemed valuable. He ought not to have
a discretion to measure the value of mere promises.
The $9,367,200 in the treasury for deposit with the
states in October, or rather for a permanent distribution
to them, he desired to retain for federal necessities.
This would doubtless inconvenience states which had re
lied on the federal donation ; but as the United States
needed the money to meet its own obligations, there was
neither justice nor expediency in generously giving it
away. Van Buren here left the defensive with a
menace to the banks that a bankruptcy law for corpo-

284 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
rations suspending specie payment might impose a salu
tary check on the issues of paper money.
The president finally spoke in words which seem
golden to aU who share his view of the ends of govern
ment. " Those who look to the action of this govern
ment," he said, " for specific aid to the citizen to relieve
embarrassments arising from losses by revulsions in com
merce and credit, lose sight of the ends for which it was
created, and the powers with which it is clotiied. It
was established to give security to us aU, in our lawful
and honorable pursuits, under the lasting* safeguard of
republican institutions. It was not intended to confer
special favors on individuals, or on any classes of them ;
to create systems of agriculture, manufactures, or trade ;
y or to engage in them, either separately or in connec
tion with individual citizens or organizations. . . . All
communities are apt to look to government for too
much . . . We are prone to do so especially at periods
of sudden embarrassment and distress. . . . The less
| government interferes with private pursuits, the better
' for the general prosperity. It is not its legitimate ob
ject to make men rich, or to repair by direct grants of
money or legislation in favor of particular pursuits, losses
not incurred in the public service." To avoid unneces
sary interference with such pursuits would be far more
beneficial than efforts to assist limited interests, efforts
eagerly, but perhaps naturally, sought for under tempo
rary pressure. Congress and himself, Van Buren closed
by saying, acted for a people to whom the truth, however
unpromising, could always be spoken with safety, and
who, in the phrase of which he was fond, were sure
never to desert a public functionary honestly laboring
for the public good.

INDEPENDENT TREASURY. 285
An angry and almost terrible outburst received this
plain, honest, and wise declaration that the people must
repair their own disasters without paternal help of gov
ernment; and that, rather than to promote the extension
- of credit with public moneys, the crisis ought to afford
means of departing forever from that pohcy. Most
of the able men who to this generation have seemed
the larger statesmen of the day, joined with passionate
declamation in the furious gust of folly. It was a fa
vorite delusion that government was a separate entity
which could help the people, and not a mere agency,
simply using wealth and power which the people must
themselves create. Webster, in a speech at Madison,
Indiana, on June 1, 1837, professed his conscientious
convictions that aU the disasters had proceeded from
"the measures of the general government in relation to
the currency." He ridiculed the idea that the people
had helped cause them. The people, he thought, had
no lesson to learn. " Over-trading, over-buying, over-
seUing, over-speculation, over-production," — these, he
said, were terms he " could not very weU understand."
In his speech of December, 1836, on the specie circular,
he had given a leonine laugh at the idea of there being
inflation. If he were asked, he said, what kept up the
value of money " in this vast and sudden expansion and
increase of it," he should answer that it was kept up
" by an equally vast and sudden increase in the property
of the country." That this amazing utterance upon the
dynamics of national economy might be clear, he added
that the vast and sudden increase was " in the value of
that property intrinsic as weU as marketable." No
speculator of the day said a more foolish thing than
did this towering statesman. There were, he admitted,

286 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
" other minor causes," but they were " not worth enu
merating." " The great and immediate origin of the
evil " was " disturbances in the exchange . . . caused
by the agency of the government itself." At the extra
session Webster described the shock caused him by the
president's " disregard for the public distress," by his
" exclusive concern for the interest of government and
revenue, by his refusal to prescribe for the sickness and
disease of society," by the separation he would draw
" between the interests of the government and the inter
ests of the people." For his part he would be warm
and generous in his statesmanship. He resisted the bill
to suspend the " deposit " with the states ; he would in
the coming October pay out the last instaUment, stricken
though the treasury was. He would again sweeten the
popular palate with government manna, bitter as it had
proved itself to the belly. It was the duty of the gov
ernment, he said, to aid in exchanges by establishing a
paper currency ; he and those with him preferred the
long-tried, well-approved practice of the government to
letting Benton, as he said, " embrace us in his gold and
silver arms and hug us to his hard money breast." As
if this were not a time for soberness over its shameful
abuses, credit, and the banks and bank-notes which aided
it were almost apotheosized. At St. Louis in the sum
mer, Webster, in a speech which he did not include in
his collected works, said that help must come " from the
government of the United States, from thence alone ;"
adding, " Upon this I risk my political reputation, my
honor, my all. . . . He who expects to live to see all
these twenty-six states resuming specie payments in regu
lar succession once more, may expect to see the restora
tion of the Jews. Never ! He will die without the
sight."

INDEPENDENT TREASURY. 287
John Quincy Adams had told his friends at home that
the distribution of the public moneys among the state
banks was the most pernicious cause of the disaster,
although, differing from Webster, he admitted that "the
abuse of credit. especiaUv by the agency of banks," and
the unrestrained pursuit of individual wealth, were the
proximate causes of the disaster, for history had testi
fied ' ; Peace to corrupt, no less than war to waste. : '
He would punish suspension of specie payments by a
bank with a forfeiture of its charter and the imprison
ment of its president and officers. A national bank, he
said, was " the only practicable expedient for restoring
and maintaining specie payments."' In the extra ses
sion he showed that the deposit banks of the South
already held more money of the government than their
states would receive, if the last installment of distribu
tion should be paid, while the northern banks held far
less of that money than the northern states were to
receive. He denounced as a southern measure the prop
osition to postpone this piece of recklessness. Should
the northern states hail with shouts of Hosanna '• this
evanescence of their funds from their treasuries." or be
" humbugged out of their vested rights by a howl of
frenzy against Nicholas Biddle," or be mystified out of
their money and out of their senses by a Hark foUow !
against aU banks, or bv a summons to Doctors' Com
mons for a divorce of bank and state .'
That skillful political weathercock, Caleb Cushing.
told his constituents at Lowell that private banking was
the " shinplaster system ; " and asked whether we wished
to have men who, hke the Rothschilds, make " peace or
war as they choose, and wield at wiU the destiny of

288 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
empires." The plan of the administration was like that
of " a cowardly master of a sinking ship, to take posses
sion of the long boat and provisions, cut oft, and leave
the ship's company and passengers to their fate." To
the plausible cry of separating bank and state he would
answer, " Why not separate court and state ... or
law and state ... or custom-house and state." It
was " the new nostrum of political quackery." Clay
delivered a famous speech in the senate on September
25, 1837. He was appalled at the heartlessness of the
administration. " The people, the states, and their
banks," he said in the favorite cant of the time, " are
left to shift for themselves," as if that were not the very
thing for them to do. We were all, he said, — " peo
ple, states, Union, banks, ... all entitled to the pro-
^i tecting care of a parental government." He cried out
against " a selfish solicitude for the government itself,
but a cold and heartless insensibility to the sufferings of
a bleeding people." The substitution of an exclusive
metallic currency was " forbidden by the principles of
eternal justice." For his part he saw no adequate
remedy which did " not comprehend a national bank
as an essential part of it." In banking corporations,
indeed, " the interests of the rich and poor are happily
blended ; " nor should we encourage here private bank
ers, Hopes and Barings and Rothschilds and Hotin-
guers, " whose vast overgrown capitals, possessed by
the rich exclusively of the poor, control the destiny of
nations." The bill for the independent treasury was firmly
pressed by the administration. It did not deceive the
people with any pretense that banks and paper money
would stand in lieu of industry, economy, and good

EXTRA SESSION. 289
sense. The summer elections, then far more numerous-
than now, had, as Clay warningly pointed out, gone
heavUy against Van Buren. The biU passed the senate,
26 to 20. In the house it was defeated. Upon the
election of speaker, the administration candidate, James
K. Polk, had had 116 votes to 103 for John BeU. But
this very moderate majority was insecure. A break in
the administration ranks was promptly shown by the
defeat, for printers to the house, of Francis P. Blair
and his partner, who in their paper, the " Washington
Globe," had firmly supported the hard money and anti-
bank policy. They received only 107 votes, about fifteen
Democrats uniting with the Whigs to defeat them.
Van Buren was unable to educate all his party to his
own firm, clear-sighted views. There was formed a
smaU party of " conservatives," Democrats who took
what seemed, and what for the time was, the popular
course. The independent treasury bill was defeated in
the house by 120 to 106.
Van Buren's proposal was carried, however, to post
pone the " deposite," as it was called, the gift as it was,
of the fourth installment of the surplus. On October 1,
Webster- and Clay led the seventeen senators who
insisted upon the foUy of the national treasury in its
destitution playing the magnificent donor, and further
debauching the states with streams of pretended wealth.
Twenty-eight senators voted for the bill ; and in the
house it was carried by 118 to 105, John Quincy Adams
heading the negative vote.
The administration further proposed the issue of
$10,000,000 in treasury notes. It was a measure strictly
of temporary relief. Gold and silver had disappeared ;
bank-notes were discredited. The government, whose

290 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
gold and silver the banks would not pay out, was dis
abled from meeting its current obligations ; and the
treasury notes were proposed to meet the necessity.
They were not to be legal tender, but interest-bearing
obligations in denominations not less than $50, to be
merely receivable for all public dues, and thus to gain a
credit whicli would secure their circulation. This nat
ural and moderate measure was assailed by those who
were lauding a paper currency to the skies. The radi
cal difference was ignored between a general currency
of small as well as large bills, without intrinsic value,
adopted for all time, and a limited and perfectly secure
government loan, to be freely taken or rejected by the
people, in bills of large amounts, to meet a serious- but
brief embarrassment. " Who expected," said Webster
in the senate, " that in the fifth year of the experiment
for reforming the currency, and bringing it to an abso
lute gold and silver circulation, the treasury department
would be found recommending to us a regular emission
of paper money?" He voted, however, for the bill,
the only negative votes in the senate being given by
Clay and four others. In the house it was carried by
127 to 98.
Such was the substantial work of the extra session.
Its circumstances and debates were a fount of experi
ence and wisdom, to whicli thirty and forty years later
may not improbably be ascribed the hard-money leaven
which prevented the great disaster of further paper
inflation, and brought the country to a currency which,
if not the best, is a currency of coin and of redeemable
paper, whose value, apart from the legal-tender notes
left us by the war and the decision of the supreme court,
depends upon the best of securities, coin or government

EXTRA SESSION. 291
bonds, deposited in the treasury, and a currency whose
amount may therefore safely be left to the natural
operations of trade.
Clay's appeal for a great banking institution, which
should accomplish by magic the results of popular labor
and saving, was met by a vote of the house, 123 to 91,
that it was inexpedient to charter a national bank, many
voting against a bank who had already voted against an
independent treasury. The senate also resolved against
a national bank by 31 to 14, six senators who had voted
against an independent treasury voting also against a
bank. The temporary expedient) adopted by the treas
ury on the suspension of the banks was therefore con-
tinned, and public moneys were kept in the hands of
public officers.
Calhoun now rejoined the Democratic party. It was
only the year before he had denounced it as " a powerful
faction held together by the hopes of public plunder ; "
and early in this very year he had referred to the re
moval of the deposits as an act fit for " the days of
Pompey or Caesar," and had declared that even a Ro
man senate would not have passed the expunging resolu
tion " until the times of Caligula and Nero." But Van
Buren, Calhoun now said, had been driven to his posi
tion ; nor would he leave the position for that reason.
He referred to the strict construction of the powers of
the government involved in the divorce of bank and
state. There was no suggestion that Van Buren had
become a convert to nullification. But Calhoun could
with consistency support Van Buren. The independent
treasury scheme was plainly far different from the re
moval of the deposits from one great bank to many les
ser ones. The reasons for political exasperation had

292 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
besides disappeared. Van Buren was chief among the
beati possidentes, and could not for years be disturbed.
His tact and skill left open no personal feud ; he had
not yet conferred the title of Caesar ; no successor to
himself was yet named by any clear designation. Cal
houn joined Silas Wright and the other administration
senators ; but he stiU maintained a grim and indepen
dent front.
The extra session ended on October 16. Besides
the issuance of $10,000,000 in treasury notes and the
postponement of the distribution among the states, the
only measure adopted for relief was a law permitting
indulgence of payment to importers upon custom-house
bonds. As those payments were to be made in specie,
and as specie had left circulation, it was proper that the
United States as a creditor should exhibit the same leni
ency which was wise and necessary on the part of other
creditors. Commercial distress had now materially abated, al
though many of its wounds were stdl deep and unhealed.
Before the regular session began in December, substantial
progress was made towards specie payments. The price
of gold in New York which had ruled at a premium
of eight and seven eighths per cent., had fallen to five.
On October 20 the banks of New York, after waiting
until Congress rose, to meet the wishes of the United
States Bank and its associates in Philadelphia, now in
vited representatives from aU the banks to meet in New
York on November 27 to prepare for specie payment.
At this meeting the New York banks proposed resump
tion on March 1, 1838, but they were defeated ; and a
resolution to resume on July 1 was defeated by the
votes of Pennsylvania and all the New England states

LOCO-FOCOS. 293
except Maine (which was divided), together with New
Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and In
diana. Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Ken
tucky, and the District of Columbia, with New York,
made the minority. An adjournment was taken to the
second Wednesday in AprU, the banks being urged
meanwhile to prepare for specie payments.
The fall as well as the summer elections had been
most disastrous for the Democrats. New York, which
the year before had given Van Buren nearly 30,000
plurality, was now overwhelmingly Whig. The Van
Buren party began to be called the Loco-focos, in deri
sion of the fancied extravagance of their financial doc
trines. The Loco-foco or Equal Rights party proper
was originally a division of the Democrats, strongly anti-
monopolist in their opinions, and especially hostile to
banks, — not only government banks but aU banks, —
which enjoyed the privileges then long conferred by
special and exclusive charters. In the f aU of 1835 some
of the Democratic candidates in New York were espe
cially obnoxious to the anti-monopolists of the party.
When the meeting to regularly confirm the nominations
made in committee was called at Tammany Hall, the
anti-monopolist Democrats sought to capture the meet
ing by a rush up the main stairs. The regulars, how
ever, showed themselves worthy of their regularity by
reaching the room up the back stairs. In a general
scrimmage the gas was put out. The anti-monopolists,
perhaps used to the devices to prevent meetings which
might be hostile, were ready with candles and loco-foco
matches. The haU was quickly iUuminated ; and the anti-
monopolists claimed that they had defeated the nomina
tions. The regulars were successful, however, at the elec-

294 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
tion ; and they and the Whigs dubbed the anti-monopo
lists the Loco-foco men. The latter in 1836 organized
the Equal Rights party, and declared it an imperative
duty of the people " to recur to first principles." Their
" declaration of rights " might well a few years later
have been drawn by a student of Spencer's " Social Stat
ics." The law, they said, ought to do no more than
restrain each man from committing aggressions on the
equal rights of other men ; they declared " unqualified
hostility to bank-notes and paper money as a circulat
ing medium," and to all special grants by the legisla
ture. A great cry was raised against them as danger
ous and incendiary fanatics. The Democratic press,
except the " Evening Post," edited by WiUiam Cullen
Bryant, turned violently upon the seceders. There was
the same horror of them as the English at almost the
very time had of the Chartists, and which in our time
is roused by the political movements of Henry George.
But with time and famdiarity Chartism and Loco-foco-
ism alike lost their horrid aspect. Several of the cardi
nal propositions of the former have been adopted in
acts of Parliament without a shudder. To the animosity
of the Loco-focos against special legislation and special
privUeges Americans probably owe to-day some part of
the beneficent movement in many of the states for con
stitutional requirements that legislatures shaU act by
general laws.
The Equal Rights party, though casting but a few
votes, managed to give the city of New York to the
Whigs, a result which convinced the Democrats that,
dangerous as they were, they were less dangerous within
than without the party. The hatred which Van Buren
after his message of September, 1837, received from

INDEPENDENT TREASURY. 295
the banks commended him to the Loco-focos ; and in
October, 1837, Tammany HaU witnessed their recon
ciliation with the regular Democrats upon a moderate
declaration for equal rights. The Whigs had, indeed,
been glad enough to have Loco-foco aid and even open
alliance at the poUs. But none the less they thought the
Democratic welcome back of the seceders an enormity.
From this time the Democrats were, it was clear, no
better than Loco-focos, and ought to bear the name of
those dangerous iconoclasts.
Van Buren met Congress in December, 1837, with
still undaunted front. His first general review of the
operations of the government was but little longer than
his message to the extra session on the single topic of
finance. He refused to consider the result of the elec
tions as a popular disapproval of the divorce of bank
and state. In only one state, he pointed out, had a
federal election been held ; and in the other elections,
which had been local, he intimated that the fear of a
forfeiture of the state-bank charters for their suspension
of specie payments had determined the result. He still
emphatically opposed the connection between the govern
ment and the banks which could offer such strong in
ducements for political agitation. He blew another blast
against the United States Bank, now a Pennsylvania
corporation, for continuing to reissue its notes originally
made before its federal charter had expired and since
returned. He recommended a preemption law for the-
benefit of actual settlers on public lands, and a classifi
cation of lands under different rates, to encourage the
settlement of the poorer lands near the older settle
ments. There was a conciliatory but firm reference
to the dispute with England over the northeastern

296 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
boundary. He announced his failure to adjust the
dispute with Mexico over the claims which had been
pressed by Jackson. The Texan cloud which six years
later brought Van Buren's defeat was already threaten
ing. At this session the independent or sub-treasury bill
was again introduced, and again a titanic battle was
waged in the senate. In this encounter Clay taunted
Calhoun for going over to the enemy ; and Calhoun, re
ferring to the Adams-Clay coalition, retorted that Clay
had on a memorable occasion gone over, and had not
left it to time to disclose his motives. Here it was that,
in the decorous fury of the times, both senators stamped
accusations with scorn in the dust, and hurled back darts
fallen harmless at their feet. The bill passed the senate
by 27 to 25 ; but Calhoun finally voted against it be
cause there had been stricken out the provision that
government dues should be paid in specie. The bill
was again defeated in the house by 125 to 111. The
latter vote was late in June, 1838. But while Con
gress refused a law for it, the independent treasury in
fact existed. Under the circular issued upon the bank
suspension, the eoUection, keeping, and payment of
federal moneys continued to be done by federal offi
cers. The absurdity of the declamation about one's
blood curdling at Van Buren's recommendations, about
this being the system in vogue where people were ground
" to the very dust by the awful despotism of their
rulers," was becoming apparent in the easy, natural
operation of the system, dictated though it was by neces
sity rather than law. The Whigs, in the sounding
jeremiades of Webster and the perfervid eloquence of
Clay, were joined by the Conservatives, former Demo-

ABATEMENT OF THE CRISIS. 297
crats, with Tallmadge of New York and Rives of Vir
ginia at their head. They had retired into the cave of
superior wisdom, of which many men are fond when a
popular storm seems rising against their party ; they
affected oppressive grief at Van Buren's reckless hatred
of the popular welfare, and accused him of designing
entire destruction of credit in the ordinary transactions j
of business. This silly charge was continually made, [
and gained color from the extreme doctrines of the \
Equal Rights movement and the fixing of the Loco-foco
name upon the Democratic party.
The sub-treasury bill was again taken up at the long
session of 1839-40 by the Congress elected in 1838.
Again the wisdom of separating bank and state, again
the wrong of using public moneys to aid private business
and speculation, were stated with perfectly clear but un
inspiring logic. Again came the antiphonal cry, warm
and positive, against the cruelty of withdrawing the gov
ernment from an affectionate care for the people, and
from its duty generously to help every one to earn his
living. In and out of Congress it was the debate of the
time, and rightly ; for it involved a profound and criti
cal issue, which since the foundation of the government
has been second in importance only to the questions of
slavery and national existence and reconstruction. In ,
1840 the bill passed the senate by 24 to 18 and the house j
by 124 to 107. This chief monument of Van Buren's '
administration seemed quickly demolished by the tri
umphant Whigs in 1841, but was finally set up again
in 1846 without the aid of its architect. From that
time to our own, in war and in peace, the independence
of the federal treasury has been a cardinal feature of
American finance. Nor was its theory lost even in the

298 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
system of national banks and public depositories created
for the tremendous necessities of the civil war.1
By the spring of 1838 business had revived during
the year of enforced industry and economy among the
people. In January, 1838, the premium on gold at New
York sank to 3 per cent. ; and when the bank conven
tion met on the adjourned day in April, the premium
was less than 1 per cent. The United States Bank re
sisted resumption with great affectation of public spirit,
but for selfish reasons soon to be disclosed. The New
York banks, with an apology to their associates, resolved
to resume by May 10, five days before the date to
which the state had legalized the suspension. The con
vention adopted a resolution for general resumption on
January 1, 1839, without precluding earlier resumption
by any banks which deemed it proper. In April it was
learned that the Bank of England was shipping a miUion
sterling to aid resumption by the banks. On July 10,
Governor Ritner of Pennsylvania by proclamation re
quired the banks of his state to resume by August 1.
On the 13th of that month the banks of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Vir
ginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
yielded to the moral coercion of the New York banks,
and to the resumption now enforced on the Bank of the
United States. By the faU of 1838 resumption was
general although the banks at the Southwest did not fol
low until midwinter. Confidence was so much restored
that " runs " on the banks did not occur. The crisis
1 The depositories now authorized for the proceeds of the in
ternal revenue secure the government by a deposit of the bonds
of the latter, which the depositories must of course purchase and
own. (U. S. Kov. Stats. § 5153.)

ABATEMENT OF THE CRISIS. 299
seemed at an end ; and Van Buren not unreasonably
fancied that he saw before the country two years of
steady and sound return to prosperity. Two such years
would, in November, 1840, bring the reward of his sa
gacity and endurance. But a far deeper draft upon the
vitality of the patient had been made than was supposed ;
and in its last agony, eighteen months later, Biddles's
bank was able to help to blast Van Buren's political am
bition.

CHAPTER X.
PRESIDENT.  CANADIAN INSURRECTION.  TEXAS. 
SEMINOLE WAR.  DEFEAT FOR REELECTION.
Another unpopular duty fell to Van Buren during
his presidency, a duty but for which New York might
have been saved to him in 1840. In the Lower and
Upper Canadas popular discontent and political tumult
resulted late in 1837 in violence, so often the only means
by which English dependencies have brought their im
perial mistress to a respect for their complaints. The
liberality of the Whigs, then lately triumphant in Eng
land, was not broad enough to include these distant
colonists. The provincial legislature in each of the
Canadas consisted of a lower house or assembly chosen
by popular vote, and an upper house or council appointed
by the governor, who himself was appointed by and rep
resented the crown. Reforms after reforms, proposed
I by the popular houses, were rejected by the council. In
Lower Canada the popular opposition was among the
French, who had never been embittered towards the
United States. In Upper Canada its strength was
among settlers who had come since the war closed in
1815. Lower Canada demanded in vain that the council
be made elective. Its assembly, weary of the effectual
opposition of the council to popular measures, began in
1832 to refuse votes of supplies unless their grievances
were redressed ; and by 1837 government charges had

CANADIAN INSURRECTION. 301
accrued to the amount of £142,100. On April 14,
1837, Lord John Russell, still wearing the laurel of a
victor for popular rights, procured from the imperial
parliament permission, without the assent of the colonial
parliament, to apply to these charges the money in the
hands of the receiver-general of Lower Canada. This
extraordinary grant passed the House of Commons by
269 to 46. A far less flagitious case of taxation with
out representation had begun the American Revolution.
The money had been raised under laws which provided
for its expenditure by vote of a local representative
body. It was expended by the vote of a body at West
minster, three thousand miles away, but few of whose
members knew or cared anything for the bleak piece of
seventeenth-century France on the lower St. Lawrence,
and none of whom had contributed a penny of it. To
even Gladstone, lately the under-secretary for the colonies
and then a rising hope of unbending Tories, there seemed
nothing involved but the embarrassment of faithful ser
vants of the crown. This thoroughly British disregard
of sentiment among other people roused a deep opposi
tion which was headed by Papineau, a hero of eloquence
among the French. An insurrection broke out in No
vember, 1837, and blood was shed in engagements at St.
Denis and St. Charles, not far from Montreal. But the
insurgents were quickly defeated, and within three weeks
the insurrection in Lower Canada was ended.
In Upper Canada there was considerable republican
sentiment, and the party of popular rights had among
its leaders men of a high order of ability. One of
them, Marshall S. Bidwell, through the magnanimity or
procurement of the governor, escaped from Canada to
become one of the most honored and stately figures at

302 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the bar of New York. Early in 1836 Sir Francis B.
Head, a clever and not ill-natured man, arrived as gov
ernor. He himself wrote the unconscious Anglicism
that " the great danger " he " had to avoid was the
slightest attempt to conciliate any party." It was as
sumed with the usual insufferable affectation of omni
science that these hardy western settlers were merely
children who did not know what was best for them.
Even the suggestions of concession sent him from Eng
land were not respected. In an election for the assem
bly he had the issue announced as one of separation
from England ; and by the use, it was said, of his power
and patronage, the colonial Tories carried a majority of
the house. Hopeless of any redress, and fired by the
rumors of the revolt in Lower Canada, an insurrection
took place early in December near Toronto. It was
speedily suppressed. One of the leaders, Mackenzie,
escaped to Buffalo. Others were captured and pun
ished, some of them capitally.
The mass of the Canadians were doubtless opposed
to the insurrection. But there was among them a wide
spread and reasonable discontent, with which the Amer
icans, and especially the people of northern and western
New York, warmly sympathized. It was natural and
traditional to believe England an oppressor ; and there
was every reason in this case to believe the Canadians
right in their ill-feeling. The refugees who had fled to
New York met with an enthusiastic reception, and, in
the security of a foreign land, prepared to advance
their rebellion. On the long frontier of river, lake, and
wilderness it was difficult, with the meagre force regu
larly at the disposal of the United States, to prevent
depredations. This difficulty became enhanced by a

CANADIAN INSURRECTION. 303
culpable though not unnatural invasion of American ter
ritory by British troops. On December 12, 1837,
Mackenzie, who had the day before arrived with a price
of $4,000 set upon his head, addressed a large audience
at Buffalo. Volunteers were called for ; and the next
day, with twenty-five men, commanded by Van Rensse
laer, an American, he seized Navy Island in the Niag
ara River, but a short distance above the cataract, and
belonging to Canada. He there established a provi
sional government, with a flag and a great seal ; and
that the new state might be complete, paper money was
issued. By January, 1838, there were several hundred
men on the island, largely Americans, with arms and
provisions chiefly obtained from the American side.
On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of Cana
dian militia crossed the Niagara to seize the Caroline, a
steamer in the service of the rebels. It happened, how
ever, that the steamer, instead of being at Navy Island,
was at Schlosser, on the American shore. The Cana
dians seized the vessel, kiUing several men in the affray,
and after setting her on fire, loosened her from the
shore, to go blazing down the river and over the falls.
This invasion of American territory caused indignant
excitement through the United States. Van Buren
had promptly sought to prevent hostility from our terri
tory. On January 5, 1838, he had issued a proclama
tion reciting the seizure of Navy Island by a force,
partly Americans, under the command of an American,
with arms and supplies procured in the United States,
and declared that the neutrality laws would be rigidly
enforced and the offenders punished. Nor would they
receive aid or countenance from the United States, into
whatever difficulties they might be thrown by their vio-

304 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
lation of friendly territory. On the same day Van
Buren sent General Winfield Scott to the frontier, and
by special message asked from Congress power to pre
vent such offenses in advance, as well as afterwards to
punish them, — a request to which Congress, in spite
of the excitement over the invasion at Schlosser, soon
acceded. The militia of New York were, on this inva
sion, called out by Governor Marcy, and placed under
General Scott's command. But there was little danger.
On January 13 the ' insurgents abandoned Navy Island.
The war, for the time, was over, although excitement
and disorder continued on the border and the lakes as
far as Detroit ; and in the fall of 1838 other incursions
were made from American territory. But they were
fruitless and short-lived. Nearly nine hundred arrests
were made by the Canadian authorities. Many death
sentences were imposed and several executed, and many
more offenders were sentenced to transportation.
England, in her usual fashion, was now duly waked
to duty by actual bloodshed. Sir Francis B. Head left
Canada, and the Melbourne ministry sent over the Earl
of Durham, one of the finest characters in English pub
lic life, to be governor-general over the five colonies ; to
redress their wrongs ; to conciliate, and perhaps yield
to demands for self-government : all which might far
better have been done five years before. Lord Durham
used a wise mercy towards the rebels. He made rapid
progress in the reforms, and, best and first of all, he
won the confidence and affection of the people. But
England used to distrust an English statesman who
practiced this kind of rule towards a dependency. A
malevolent attack of Lord Brougham was successful,
and Lord Durham returned to ministerial disgrace,

CANADIAN INSURRECTION. 305
though to a wiser popular applause, soon to die on what
ought to have been but an early day in bis generous and
splendid career. Although punishing her benefactor,
England was shrewd enough to accept the benefit. The
concessions which Lord Durham had begun were con
tinued, and Canada became and has remained loyal.
Before leaving Canada, Lord Durham was invited by a
very complimentary letter of Van Buren to visit Wash
ington, but the invitation was courteously declined.
Mackenzie was arrested at Buffalo and indicted.
After his indictment he addressed many public meet
ings through the United States in behalf of bis cause,
one at Washington itself. In 1839, however, he was
i tried and convicted. Van Buren, justly refusing to
I pardon him untd he had served in prison two thirds of
his sentence, thus made for himself a persistent and
vindictive enemy.
Upon renewed raids late in 1838, the president, by a
proclamation, caUed upon misguided or deluded Ameri
cans to abandon projects dangerous to their own coun
try and fatal to those whom they professed a desire to
relieve ; and, after various appeals to good sense and
patriotism, warned them that, if taken in Canada, they
would be left to the policy and justice of the govern
ment whose dominions they had, " without the shadow
of justification or excuse, nefariously invaded." This
had no uncertain sound. Van Buren was promptly
declared to be a British tool. The plain facts were ig
nored that the great majority of the Canadians, however
much displeased with their rulers, were hostde to repub
lican institutions and to a separation from England, and
that the majority in Canada had the same right to be
governed in their own fashion as the majority here.

306 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
There was seen, however, in this firm performance of
international obligations, only additional proof of Van
Buren's coldness towards popular rights, and of his
sycophancy to power.
The system of allowing to actual settlers, at the mini
mum price, a preemption of pubhc lands already occu
pied by them, was adopted at the long session of 1837-
1838. Webster joined the Democrats in favoring the
biU, against the hot opposition of Clay, who declared it
" a grant of the property of the whole people to a smaU
part of the people." The dominant party was now
i wisely committed to the policy of using the pubhc do
main for settlers, and not as mere property to be turned
into money. But a year or two before the latter system
had in practice wasted the national estate and corrupted
the pubhc with a debauchery of speculation.
The war between Mexico and the American settlers
in her revolted northeast province began in 1835. Early
in 1836 the heroic defense of the Alamo against several
thousand Mexicans by less than two hundred Ameri
cans, and among them Davy Crockett, Van Buren's
biographer, and the butchery of all but three of the Amer
icans, had consecrated the old building, still proudly
preserved by the stirring but now peaceful and pleasing
city of San Antonio, and had roused in Texas a fierce
and resolute hatred of Mexico. In April, 1836, Houston
overwhelmed the Mexicans at San Jacinto, and captured
their president, Santa Ana.
In his message of December 21, 1836, Jackson, al
though he announced these successes of the Texans and
their expulsion of the civil authority of Mexico, still
pointed out to Congress the disparity of physical force on
the side of Texas, and declared it prudent that we should

TEXAS. 307
stand aloof untU either Mexico itself or one of the great
powers should have recognized Texan independence, or
at least until the ability of Texas should have been
proved beyond cavU. The senate had then passed a
resolution for recognition of Texan independence. But
the house had not concurred ; and before Van Buren's
inauguration Congress had done no more than authorize
the appointment of a diplomatic agent to Texas when
ever the president should be satisfied of its independence.
In August, 1837, the Texan representative at Washing
ton laid before Van Buren a plan of annexation of the
revolted Mexican state. The offer was refused ; and it
iwas declared that the United States desired to remain
neutral, and perceived that annexation would necessa
rily lead to war with Mexico. In December, 1837, peti
tions were presented in Congress against the annexation
of Texas, now much agitated at the South ; and Preston,
Calhoun's senatorial associate from South Carolina,
offered a resolution for annexation. Some debate on the
question was had in 1838, in which both the pro-slavery
character of the movement and the anti-slavery charac
ter of the opposition clearly appeared. But this danger
to Van Buren was delayed several years. Nor was he
yet a character in the drama of the slavery conflict which
by 1837 was well opened. The agitation over abohtionj
petitions and the murder of Lovejoy the abolitionist are!
now readily enough seen to have been the most deeply
significant occurrences in America between Van Buren's •.
inauguration and his defeat ; but they were as little part j
of his presidency as the arrival at New York from Liver- !
pool on AprU 22 and 23, 1838, of the Sirius and the
Great Western, the first transatlantic steamships. In
Washington the slavery question did not get beyond the

308 MARTIN VAN BUREN
halls of Congress. The White House remained for
several years free from both the dangers and the duties
of the question accompanying the discussion.
Van Buren's administration pressed upon Mexico
claims arising out of wrongs to American citizens and
property which had long been a grievance. Jackson
had thought it our duty, in view of the " embarrassed
condition " of that republic, to " act with both wisdom
and moderation by giving to Mexico one more opportu
nity to atone for the past." In December, 1837, Van
Buren, tired of Mexican procrastination, referred the
matter to Congress, with some menace in his tone. In
1840 a treaty was at last made for an arbitration of the
claims, the king of Prussia being the umpire. John
Quincy Adams vehemently assailed the American asser
tion of these claims, as intended to " breed a war with
Mexico," and " as machinery for the annexation of
Texas ;" and his violent denunciations have obtained
some credit. But Adams himself had been pretty vigor
ous in the maintenance of American rights. And the
plain and well known facts are, that after several years
of negotiation the claims were with perfect moderation
submitted for decision to a disinterested tribunal; that
they were never made the occasion of war ; and that
Van Buren opposed annexation.
In June, 1838, James K. Paulding, long the navy
agent at New York, was made secretary of the navy in
place of Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, who now re
signed. Paulding seems to us rather a literary than a
political figure. Besides the authorship of part of " Sal
magundi," of " The Dutchman's Fireside," and of other
and agreeable writings grateful to Americans in the days
when the sting of the question, " Who reads an American

AND WASHINGTON IRVING. 309
book?" lay rather in its truth than in its Ul-nature,
Paulding's pen had aided the Repubhcan party as early
as Madison's presidency. Our politics have always, even
at home, paid some honor to the muses, without requir
ing them to descend very far into the partisan arena.
A curious iUustration was the nomination of Edwin For
rest, the famous tragedian, for Congress by the Demo
crats of New York in 1838, a nomination which was
more sensibly declined than made. An almost equaUy
curious instance was the tender Van Buren made of the
secretaryship of the navy to Washington Irving before
he offered it to Paulding, who was a connection by mar
riage of Irving's brother. Van Buren had, it will be
remembered, become intimately acquainted with Irving
abroad ; and others than Van Buren strangely enough
had thought of him for political service. The Jack
sonians had wanted him to run for Congress ; and
Tammany Hall had offered him a nomination for mayor
of New York. Van Buren wrote to Irving that the
latter had " in an eminent degree those peculiar qualities
[which should distinguish the head of the department,"
and that this opinion of his had been confirmed by
Irving's friends, Paulding and Kemble, the former of
whom it was intimated was " particularly informed in
regard to the services to be rendered." But one cannot
doubt that in writing this the president had in mind the
sort of service to the public, and the personal pleasure
and rest to himself, to be brought by a delightful and
accomplished man of letters, who was no mere recluse,
but long practiced in polished and briUiant life abroad,
rather than any business or executive or political abdity.
Irving wisely replied that he should delight in full
occupation, and should take peculiar interest in the navy

310 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
department ; but that he shrank from the harsh turmoils
of life at Washington, and the bitter personal hostility
and the slanders of the press. A short career at Wash
ington would, he said, render him " mentally and physi
cally a perfect wreck." Paulding's appointment to the
cabinet portfolio assigned to New York was not agree
able to the politicians ; and they afterwards declared
that, if Marcy had been chosen instead, the result in
1840 might have been different. The next Democratic
president gave the same place to another famous man of
letters, George Bancroft.
On June 6, 1837, Louis Napoleon wrote the president
from New York that the dangerous illness of his mother
recalled him to the old world ; and that he stated the
reason for his departure lest the president might " have
given credence to the calumnious surmises respecting "
him. The famous adventurer used one of those many
phrases of his which, if they had not for years imposed
on the world, no wise man would believe could ever
have obtained respect. Van Buren, as the ruler of a free
people, ought to be advised, the prince wrote, that, bear
ing the name he did, it was impossible for him " to depart
for an instant from the path pointed out to me by my
conscience, my honor, and my duty."
The elections of 1838 showed a recovery from the
defeat in 1837, a recovery which would perhaps have
been permanent if the financial crisis had been really
over. Maine wheeled back into the Van Buren ranks ;
and Maryland and Ohio now joined her. In New
Jersey and Massachusetts the Whig majorities were re
duced ; and in New York, where Seward and AVeed had
established a political management quite equal to the
Regency, the former was chosen governor by a majority of

ELECTIONS OF 1838. 311
over 10,000, but still less by 5,000 than the Whig major
ity of 1837. The Democrats now reaped the unpopu
larity of Van Buren's upright neutrality in the Canadian
troubles. Northern and western New York gave heavy
Whig majorities. Jefferson county on the very border,
which had stood by Van Buren even in 1837, went over
to the Whigs.
Van Buren met Congress in December, 1838, with
more cheerful words. The harvest had been bountiful,
he said, and industry again prospered. The first half
century of our Constitution was about to expire, after
proving the advantage of a government " entirely de
pendent on the continual exercise of the popular wdl."
He returned firmly to his lecture on economics and
the currency, drawing happily, but too soon, a lesson
from the short duration of the suspension of specie pay
ments in 1837 and the length of that in 1814. We had
been saved, he said, the mortification of seeing our dis
tresses used to fasten again upon us so " dangerous an
institution " as a national bank. The treasury would be
able in the coming year to pay off the $8,000,000 out
standing of the $10,000,000 of treasury notes authorized
at the extra session. Texas had withdrawn its applica
tion for admission to the Union. The final removal
of the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi
in accordance with the Democratic policy was almost
accomplished. There were but two blemishes on the
fair record the White House sent to the Capitol.
Swartwout, Jackson's collector of New York, was
found, after his supersession by Jesse Hoyt, to be a
defaulter on a vast scale. His defalcations, the presi
dent carefully pointed out, had gone on for seven years, -
as well while public moneys were kept with the United

312 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
States Bank and while they were kept with state banks,
as while they were kept by public officers. It was
broadly intimated that this disgrace was not unrelated
to the general theory which had so long connected the
collection and custody of public moneys with the ad
vancement of private interests ; and the president asked
for a law making it a felony to apply public moneys to
private uses. Swartwout's appointment in 1829, as has
been said, was strenuously opposed by Van Buren as unfit
to be made. After a year or two Jackson returned to Van
Buren his written protest, saying that time had proved
his belief in Swartwout's unfitness to be a mistake. Van
Buren's own appointment to the place was, however, far
from an ideal one. Jesse Hoyt was shown by his pub
lished correspondence — a veritable instance, by the way,
of "stolen sweets" — to have been a shrewd, able man,
who enjoyed the strangely varied confidence of many
distinguished, discreet, and honorable men, and of many
very different persons, ranging through a singular gamut
of religion, morals, statesmanship, economics, politics,
patronage, banking, trade, stock gambling, and betting.
The superior part of Hoyt's friends and abilities pal
liates, but does not excuse, his appointment to a great
post. The second Florida war still dragged out its slow and
murderous length. The Seminoles under pressure had
yielded to Jackson's firm policy of removing all the In
dian tribes to the west of the Mississippi. The policy
seemed, or rather it was, often cruel, as is so much of
the progress of civilization. But the removal was wise
and necessary. Tribal and independent governments
by nomadic savages could not be tolerated within re
gions devoted to the arts and the government of white

SECOND FLORIDA WAR. 313
men. Whatever the theoretical rights of property in
land, no civilized race near vast areas of lands fit for
the tiUage of a crowding population has ever permitted
them to remain mere hunting grounds for savages.
The Seminoles in 1832, 1833, and 1834 agreed to go
west upon . terms like those accepted by other Indians.
The removal was to take place, one third of the tribe
in each of the three years 1833, 1834, and 1835 ; but
the dark-skinned men, as their white brothers would
have done, found or invented excuses for not keeping
their promise of voluntary expatriation. Late in 1835,
when coercion, although it had not yet been employed
against the Seminoles, was stiU feared by them, they rose
under their famous leader, the half-breed Powell, better
known as Osceola, and massacred the federal agent and
Major Dade, and 107 out of 111 soldiers under him.
Then followed a series of butcheries and outrages upon
white men of which we have heard, and doubtless of
crimes enough upon Indians of which we have not heard.
Among the everglades, the swamps and lakes of Florida,
its. scorching sands and impenetrable thickets, a difficult,
tedious, inglorious, and costly contest went on. Military
evolutions and tactics were of little value ; it was a war
of ambushes and assassination. Osceola, coming with
a flag of truce, was taken by General Jessup, the defense
for his capture being his violation of a former parole.
He was sent to Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor,
and there died, after furnishing recitations to genera
tions of school-boys, and sentiment to many of their
elders. Van Buren had been compelled to ask $1,600,000
from Congress at the extra session. Before his ad
ministration was ended nearly $14,000,000 had been
spent ; and not until 1842 did the war end. It was one

314 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of the burdens of the administration which served to
irritate a people already uneasy for deeper and more
general reasons. The prowess of the Indian chief, his
eloquence, his pathetic end, the miseries and wrongs of
'the Aborigines, the cost and delay of the war, all reen-
forced the denunciation of Van Buren by. men who
made no allowance for embarrassments which could be
surmounted by no ability, because they were inevitable
to the settlement by a civilized race of lands used by
savages. Time, however, has vindicated the justice and
mercy as weU as the policy of the removal, and of the
establishment of the Indian Territory.
A few days before the close of the session Van Buren
¦ asked Congress to consider the dispute with Great Brit
ain over the northeast boundary. Both Maine and New
Brunswick threatened, by rival military occupations of
the disputed territory, to precipitate war. Van Buren
assented to the civil authorities of Maine protecting the
forests from destruction ; but disapproved any military
seizure, and told the state authorities that he should pro
pose to Great Britain an arbitration. If, however, New
Brunswick sought a military occupation, he should de
fend the territory as part of the state. Congress at
once authorized the president to call out 50,000 volun
teers, and put at his disposal a credit of $10,000,000.
Van Buren persisted in his great effort peacefully to
adjust the claims of our chronicaUy belligerent north
eastern patriots, — in Maine as in New York finding
his fate in his duty firmly and calmly to restrain a local
sentiment inspiring voters of great political importance
to him. The " news from Maine " in 1840 told of the
angry contempt the hardy lumbermen felt for the presi
dent's perfectly statesmanlike treatment of the question.

ENTHUSIASTIC DEMONSTRATIONS. 315
111 the summer of 1839 Van Buren visited his old
home at Kinderhook ; and on his way there and back
enjoyed a burst of enthusiasm at York, Harrisburg,
Lebanon, Reading, and Easton in Pennsylvania, at
Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, and at New
York, Hudson, and Albany in his own state. There
were salutes of artillery, pealing of bells, mounted
escorts in blue and white scarfs, assemblings of " youth
and beauty," the complimentary addresses, the throng
ing of citizens " to grasp the hand of the man whom
they had delighted to honor," and all the rest that
makes up the ovations of Americans to their black-
coated rulers. He landed in New York at Castle Gar
den, amid the salutes of the forts on Bedloe's, Gov
ernor's, and Staten Islands, and of a " seventy-four,"
whose yards were covered with white-uniformed sadors.
After the reception in Castle Garden he mounted a
spirited black horse and reviewed six thousand troops
assembled on the Battery ; and then went in procession
along Broadway to Chatham Street, thence to the Bow
ery, and through Broome Street and Broadway back to
the City Hall Park. Not since Lafayette's visit had
there been so fine a reception. At Kinderhook he was
overwhelmed with the affectionate pride of his old
neighbors. He declined public dinners, and by the
simple manner of his travel offered disproof of the sto
ries about his " English servants, horses and carriages."
The journey was not, however, like the good-natured
and unpartisan presidential journeys of our time. The
Whigs often churlishly refused to help in what they said
was an electioneering tour. Seward publicly refused
the invitation of the common council of New York to
participate in the president's reception, because the state

316 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
had honored him with the office of governor for his dis
approval of Van Buren's political character and public
policy, and because an acceptance of the invitation
" would afford evidence of inconsistency and insincer
ity." Van Buren's own friends gave a party air to
much of the welcome. Democratic committees were
conspicuous in the ceremonies ; and in many of the
addresses much that was said of his administration was
fairly in a dispute certain to last until the next year's
election was over. Van Buren could hardly have ob
jected to the coldness of the Whigs, for his own speeches,
though decorous and respectful to the last degree to
those who differed from him, were undisguised appeals
for popular support of his financial policy. At New
York he referred to the threatening dissatisfaction in
his own state concerning his firm treatment of the Cana
dian troubles. But he was persuaded, he said, that
good sense and ultimately just feeling would give short
duration to these unfavorable impressions.
The president was too experienced and cool in judg
ment to exaggerate the significance of superficial demon
strations like these, which often seemed conclusive to his
exuberant rival Clay. He was encouraged, however, by
the elections of 1839. In Ohio the Whigs had been
" pretty essentially used up," though unfortunately not
to remain so a twelvemonth. In Massachusetts Mor
ton, the Van Buren candidate for governor, was elected
by just one vote more than a majority of the 102,066
votes cast. Georgia, New Jersey, and Mississippi gave
administration majorities. In New York the adverse
majority which in 1837 had been over 15,000, and in
1838 over 10,000, was now less than 4,000, in spite of
the disaffection along the border counties. It was not

RETURN OF THE CRISIS. 317
an unsatisfactory result, although for the first time
since 1818 the legislature was completely lost. Another
year, Van Buren now hoped, would bring a complete
recovery from the blow of 1837. But the autumn of
1839 had also brought a blast, to grow more and more
chilling and disastrous.
In the early fall the Bank of the United States agreed
to loan Pennsylvania $2,000,000 ; and for the loan ob
tained the privilege of issuing $5 notes, having before
been restricted to notes of $20 and upwards. " Thus
has the Van Buren state of Pennsylvania," it was
boasted, " enabled the banks to overcome the reckless
system of a Van Buren national administration." The
price of cotton, which had risen to 16 cents a pound, fell
in the summer of 1839, and in 1840 touched as low a
point as 5 cents. In the Northwest many banks had
not yet resumed since 1837. To avoid execution sales
it was said that two hundred plantations had been aban
doned and their slaves taken to Texas. The sheriff, in
stead of the ancient return, nulla bona, was said, in the
grim sport of the frontier, to endorse on the fruitless
writs " G. T.," meaning " Gone to Texas." A money
stringency again appeared in England, as in 1837. Its
exportation of goods and money to America had again
become enormous. The customs duties collected in
1839 were over $23,000,000, and about the same as they
had been in 1836, having fallen in 1837 to $11,000,000,
and afterwards in 1840 falling to $13,000,000. Specu
lation revived, the land sales exceeding $7,000,000 in
1839, while they had been $3,700,000 in 1838, and
afterwards fell to $3,400,000 in 1840. Under the
pressure from England the Bank of the United States
sank with a crash. The " Philadelphia Gazette," com-

318 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
placently ignoring the plain reasons for months set be
fore its eyes, said that the disaster had "its chief cause
in the revulsion of the opium trade with the Chinese ; "
that upon the news that the Orientals would no longer
admit the drug the Bank of England had " fairly
reeled ; " and that, the balance of trade being against us,
we had to dishonor our paper. Explanations of like
frivolity got wide credence. The Philadelphia banks
suspended on October 9, 1839, the banks of Baltimore
the next day, and in a few days the banks in the North
and West foUowed. The banks of New York and New
England, except those of Providence, continued firm.
Although the excitement of 1839 did not equal that of
1837, there was a duller and completer despondency. It
was at last known that tho recuperative power of even
our own proud and bounding country had limits. Years
were yet necessary to a recovery. But the presidential
election would not, alas ! wait years. With no faltering,
however, Van Buren met Congress in December, 1839.
He began his message with a regret that he could not
announce a year of " unalloyed prosperity." There
ought never, as presidential messages had run, to be
any alloy in the prosperity of the American people.
But the harvest, he said, had been exuberant, and after
all (for the grapes of trade and manufacture were a
little sour), the steady devotion of the husbandman was
the surest source of national prosperity. A part of the
$10,000,000 of treasury notes was still outstanding, and
he hoped that they might be paid. We must not resort
to the ruinous practice of supplying supposed necessities
by new loans ; a permanent debt was an evil with no
equivalent. The expenditures for 1838, the first year
over whose appropriations Van Buren had had control,

RETURN OF THE CRISIS. 319
had been less than those of 1837. In 1839 they had
been $6,000,000 less than in 1838 ; and for 1840 they
would be $5,000,000 less than in 1839. The collection
and disbursement of public moneys by pubhc officers
rather than by banks had, since the bank suspensions in
1837, been carried on with unexpected cheapness and
ease ; and legislation was alone wanting to insure to the
system the highest security and facility. Nothing daunted
by the second disaster so lately clouding his political
future, Van Buren sounded another blast against the
banks. With unusual abundance of harvests, with manu
factures richly rewarded, with our granaries and store
houses filled with surplus for export, with no foreign war,
with nothing indeed to endanger well -managed banks,
this banking disaster had come. The government ought
not to be dependent on banks as its depositories, for the
banks out of New York and Philadelphia were depend
ent upon the banks in those great cities, and the latter
banks in turn upon London, " the centre of the credit
system." With some truth, but still with a touch of
demagogy, venial perhaps in the face of the blatant
and silly outcries against him from very intelligent and
respectable people, he said that the founding of a new
bank in a distant American village placed its business
" within the influence of the money power of England."
Let us then, he argued, have gold and silver and not
bank-notes, at least in our public transactions ; let us
keep public moneys out of the banks. Again he attacked
the national bank scheme. In 1S17 and 1818, in 1823,
in 1831, and in 1834 the United States Bank had swelled
and maddened die tides of banking, but had seldom
allayed or safely directed them. Turning with seem
ingly cool resolution, but with hidden anxiety, to the

320 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
menacing distresses of the American voters, he did not
flinch or look for fair or flattering words. We must not
turn for rehef, he said, to gigantic banks, or splendid
though profitless railroads and canals. Relief was to be
sought, not by the increase, but by the diminution of
debt. The faith of states already pledged was to be
punctiliously kept ; but we must be chary of further
pledges. The bounties of Providence had come to re
duce tlie consequences of past errors. " But let it be
indelibly engraved on our minds," he said, " that relief
is not to be found in expedients. Indebtedness cannot
/ be lessened by borrowing more money, or by changing
tlie form of the debt."
The house of representatives was so divided that its
control depended upon whether five Whig or Demo
cratic congressmen from New Jersey should be admit
ted. They had been voted for upon a general ticket
tlirough tlie whole state ; and tlie Whig governor and
council had given the certificate of election to the Whigs
by acquiescing in the actions of the two county clerks
who had, for irregularities, thrown out the Democratic
districts of South Amboy and MillviUe. A collision
arose curiously like the dispute over the electoral returns
from Florida and Louisiana in 1877. This exclusion
of tlie two districts the Democrats insisted to have been
wrongful ; and not improbably with reason, for at tlie
next election in 1839 the state, upon the popular vote,
gave a substantial majority against the Whigs, although
by the district division of tlie state a majority of tho
legislature were Whigs and reelected tlie Whig gov
ernor. The clerk of tlie national house had, according
to usage, prepared a roll of members, which he pro
ceeded to call. He seems to have placed on the roll tlie

DISPUTED ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE. 321
names of the New Jersey representatives holding the
governor's certificates. But before caUing their names,
he stated to tlie house that there were rival credentials ;
that he felt that he had no power to decide upon the
contested rights ; and that, if tlie house approved, he
would pass over tlie names until the call of tlie other
states was finished. The rival credentials included a
record of the votes upon whicli the governor's certificate
was presumed to be based. Objection was made to
passing New Jersey, and one of the governor's certifi
cates was read. The New Jerseymen with certificates
insisted that their names should be caUed. The clerk
declined to take any step without the authority of the
house, holding that he was in no sense a chairman. He
behaved in the case with modesty and decorum, and tlie
savage criticisms upon him seem to have no founda
tion except this refusal of his to decide upon tlie prriina
facie right to tlie New Jersey seats, or to act as chair
man except upon unanimous consent. He was clearly
right. He had no power. The very roll he prepared,
and his reading it, had no force except such as tlie house
chose to give them. Upon any other theory he would
practically wield an enormous power justified neither by
tlie Constitution nor by any law. On the fourth day of
tumult a simple and lawful remedy was discovered to
be at hand. Any member could himself act as chair
man to put his own motion for tlie appointment of a
temporary speaker ; and if a majority acquiesced, there
was at once an organization without the clerk's aid.
This was in precise accord with the attitude of tlie
clerk, hotly abused as he was by Adams and others who
adopted his position. So Adams proposed himself to
put tlie question on his own motion to caU the roll with

322 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the members holding certificates. Further confusion
then ensued, which was terminated by Rhett of South
Carolina, who moved that John Quincy Adams act as
chairman until a speaker should be chosen. Rhett put
his own motion, and it was carried. Adams took the
chair, rules were adopted, and order succeeded chaos.
None of the New Jerseymen were permitted to vote for
speaker, but a few Calhoun Democrats refused to vote
for the administration candidate. Most of the adminis
tration members offered to accept a Calhoun man ; but
a few of them, naturally angry at South Carolina dic
tation, refused, under Benton's advice, to vote for him.
At last the Whigs joined the Calhoun men, and ended
this extraordinary contest. The speaker, Robert M. T.
Hunter, was a so-called states-rights man, and a sup
porter of the independent treasury scheme. He had
the fortune, after a singularly varied and even impor
tant career in the United States and the Confederate
States, to be appointed by President Cleveland to the
petty place of collector of customs at Tappahannock, in
Virginia, and to die among Americans who were famil
iar with his prominence fifty years ago, but supposed
him long since buried. The clerk, Hugh A. Garland,
was reelected, in spite of what Adams in his diary, after
his picturesque but utterly unjustifiable fashion, called
the " baseness of his treachery to his trust." The
Whig New Jerseymen were refused seats, and the ap
parent perversion of the popular vote was rightly de
feated by seating their rivals. The Whigs posed as
defenders of the sanctity of state authority, and sought,
upon that political issue, to force the Van Buren men
to be the apologists for centralization.
It was at this session that the sub-treasury bill was

ELECTION OF 1840. 323
passed. As a sort of new declaration of independence
Van Buren signed it on July 4, 1840. His long and
honorable and his greatest battle was won. It was the
triumph of a really great cause. The people, by their
labor and capital, were to support the federal govern-
' ment as a mere agency for limited purposes. That
government was not, in this way at least, to support or
direct or control either the people or their labor or
capital. But the captain fell at the time of his victory.
The financial disaster of 1839 had exhausted the good
nature and patience of the people. Dissertations on
finance and economics, however wise, now served to
irritate and disgust. These cool admonitions to econ
omy and a minding of one's business were at last for
a year or two popularly believed to be heartless and(
repulsive. In 1840 took place the most extraordinary of presi
dential campaigns. While Congi'ess was wrangling
over the New Jersey episode in December, 1839, the
Whig national convention again nominated Harrison for
president. Tyler was taken from the ranks of seceding
Democrats as the candidate for vice-president. The
slaughter of Henry Clay, the father of the Whig party,
had been effected by the now formidable Whig politi
cians of New York, cunningly marshalled by Thurlow
Weed. Availabdity had its first complete triumph in
our national politics. They had not come, Governor
Barbour of Virginia, the president of the Whig conven
tion, said, to whine after the flesh-pots of Egypt, but to
give perpetuity to republican institutions. To reach
this end (not very exphcitly or intelligibly defined), it
mattered not what letters of the alphabet speUed the
name of the candidate ; for his part, he could sing Ho-

324 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
sanna to any alphabetical combination. No platform or
declaration of principles was adopted, lest some of those
discontented with Van Buren should find there a coun
ter-irritant. The candidates, in accepting then- nomi
nations, refrained from political discussion. Harrison
stood for the plain, honest citizen, coming, as one of the
New York conventions said, " like another Cincinnatus
from his plough," resolute for a generous administra
tion, and ready to diffuse prosperity and to end hard
times. Tyler, formerly a strict constructionist member
of the Jackson party, was nominated to catch votes, in
spite of his perfectly weU known opposition to the whole
Whig theory of government.
The Democratic, or Democratic-Republican, conven
tion met at Baltimore on May 5, 1840. The party
name was now definitely and exclusively adopted.
Among the delegates were men long afterwards famous
in the later Republican party. John A. Dix, Hannibal
Hamlin. Simon Cameron. There was an air of despon
dency about the convention, for the enthusiasm over
" log cabin and hard cider " was already abroad. But '
tlie convention without wavering announced its belief in
a limited federal power, in the separation of pubhc
moneys from banking institutions ; and its opposition to
internal improvements by the nation, to the federal as
sumption of state debts, to the fostering of one industry
so as to injure another, to raising more money than was
required for necessary expenses of government, and to
a national bank. Slavery now took for a long time its
place in the party platform. The convention declared
the constitutional inability of Congress to interfere with
slavery in the states, and that aU efforts of abolitionists ,
to induce Congress to interfere with slavery were alarm-

ELECTION OF 1840. 325
ing and dangerous to the Union. An elaborate address
to the people was issued. It began with a clear, and
for a political campaign a reasonably moderate, defense
of Van Buren's administration ; it renewed the weU-
worn arguments for the limited activity of government ;
it made a siUy assertion that Harrison was a Federalist,
and an insinuation that the glory of his military career
was doubtful ; it denounced the abolitionists, whose
fanaticism it charged the Whigs with enlisting in their
cause. In closing, it recaUed the Democratic revolution
of 1800 which broke the " iron rod of Federal rule,"
and contrasted the " costly and stately pageants ad
dressed merely to the senses " by the WTiigs with the
truth and reason of the Democracy.
During the canvass Van Buren submitted to frequent
interrogation. In a fashion that would seem fatal to a
modern candidate, he wrote to political friends and
enemies ahke, letter after letter, restating his political
opinions. EspeciaUy was it sought to arouse southern
distrust of him. He was accused, with fire-eating anger,
of having approved a sentence of a court-martial against
a naval lieutenant which was based upon the testimony
of negroes. He reiterated what he had already said
upon slavery ; but late in the canvass he went one step
further. When asked his opinion as to the treatment
by Congress of the abolition petitions, he replied, justly
enough, that the president could have no concern with
that matter ; but lest he should be charged with " non-
committalism," he declared that Congress was ftdly jus
tified in adopting the -'gag "rule. For years the peti
tions had been received and referred. On one occasion
in each house the subject had been considered upon a
report of a committee, and decided against the petition-

J

-J

MARTIN VAN BUREN.

ers with almost entire unanimity. The rule had been
adopted only after it was clear that the petitioners sim
ply sought to make Congress an instrument of an agita
tion which might lead to a dissolution of the Union. It
was thus that Van Buren made his extreme concession
to the slavocraev. And there was obvious a material
excuse. No president while in office could approve the
perversion of legislative procedure from the making of
laws to be a mere stimulant of moral excitement. To
encourage or justify petitions intended to inflame public
sentiment against a wrong might be legitimate for some
men, however well they knew, as Adams said he knew,
that the body addressed ought not to grant tlie peti
tioners' prayers. Such a course might be noble and
praiseworthy for a private citizen, or possibly for a
member of Congress representing the exalted moral sen
timent of a single district. It would be highly illegiti
mate for a man holding a great public office, and there
representing the entire people and its established sys
tem of laws. John Quincy Adams, under his sense of
duty as president, had in 1828 pressed the humiliating
claim that England should surrender American slaves
escaped to English freedom ; and there is little reason
to doubt that, if he had remained in the field of respon
sible and executive public life, he would have agreed
with Van Buren in his treatment of the matter of the
abolition petitions, or rather in his expressions from the
White House about them.
Harrison hastened to clear his skirts of abolitionism.
Congress could not, he declared, abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia
and Maryland and of the District itself. For, as he
argued, ignobly applying, as well as misquoting, the

ELECTION OF MM. 327
American words solemnly lauded by Lord Chatham in
his speech on Quartering Soldiers in Boston, "what a
man has honestly acquired is absolutely bis own, which
he may freely give, but which cannot be taken from
him without his consent." He denounced as a slander
the charge that he was an abolitionist, or that the vote
he had given against anti-slavery restriction in Missouri
had violated his conscience. He declared for the right
of petition, which indeed nobody disputed ; but he did
not say what course should be taken with the anti-slavery
petitions, which was the real question to be answered.
The discussion by the citizens of the free states of slav
ery in the slave states was not, he said, " sanctioned by
the Constitution."' " Methinks," he said at Dayton, " I
hear a soft voice asking, Are you in favor of paper
money ? I am ; " and to that there were " shouts of
applause." In no presidential canvass in America has there been,
as Mr. Schurz weU says in his life of Henry Clay, " more
enthusiasm and less thought " than in the Whig canvass
of 1840. The people were rushing as from a long re
straint. Wise saws about the duties of government had
become nauseating. A plain every-day man administer
ing a paternal and affectionate government was the rul
ing text, while Tyler and bis strict construction quietly
served their turn with some of the doctrinaires at the
South. The nation, Clay said, was " like the ocean
when convulsed by some terrible storm." There was
what he caUed a " rabid appetite for pubhc discussions."
Webster's campaign speeches probably marked the
height of the splendid and effectual flood of eloquence
now poured over the land. The breeze of popular ex
citement, he said, with satisfactory magnUoquence, was

328 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
flowing everywhere ; it fanned the air in Alabama and
the Carolinas ; and crossing the Potomac and the AUe
ghenies, to mingle with the gales of the Empire State
.and the mountain blasts of New England, would blow a
perfect hurricane. " Every breeze," he declared, " says
change ; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." He
had not, indeed, been born in a log cabin, but his elder
brothers and sisters had ; he wept to think of those who
had left it ; and if he failed in affectionate veneration
for him who raised it, then might his name and the
name of his posterity be blotted from the memory of
mankind. He touched the bank question lightly ; he
denounced the sub-treasury as " the first in a new series
of ruthless experiments," and declared that Van Buren's
" abandonment of the currency " was fatal. Forgetting
who had supported and who had opposed the continued
distribution of surplus revenues among the states, he
condemned the president for the low state of the treas
ury ; and notwithstanding it declared his approval of a
generous policy of internal improvements. He would not
accuse the president of seeking to play the part of Csesar
or Cromwell because Mr. Poinsett, his secretary of war,
had recommended a federal organization of militia, the
necessity or convenience of which, it was supposed, had
been demonstrated by the Canadian troubles ; but the
plan, he said, was expensive, unconstitutional, and dan
gerous to our liberties. He was careful to say nothing
of slavery or the right of petition. Only in brief and
casual sentences did he even touch the charges that Van
Buren had treated political contests as " rightfully
struggles for office and emolument," and that federal
officers had been assessed in proportion to their salaries
for partisan purposes. The president was pictured as

ELECTION OF 1S40. 329
full of cynical and selfish disregard of the people ; he
had disparaged the credit of the states ; he had accused
Madison, and, monstrous sacrilege, even Washington, of
corruption. " I may forgive this," Webster slowly said
to the appalled audience, " but I shall not forget it ; "
such " abominable violations of the truth of history "
filled his bosom with " burning scorn." This was a
highly imaginative aUusion to Van Buren's statement
that the national bank had been originally devised by
the friends of privileged orders. Nor need the South,
even Webster intimated, have any fear of the Whigs
about slavery. Could the South believe that Harrison
would " lay ruthless hands on the institutions among
which he was born and educated " ? No indeed, for
Washington and Hancock, Virginia and Massachusetts,
had joined their thoughts, their hopes, their feelings.
" How many bones of northern men," he asked with
majestic pathos, " lie at Yorktown ? " Senator Rives, '
now one' of the Conservatives, said that Van Buren was
indeed " mild, smooth, affable, smiling ; " but humility
was " young and old ambition's ladder." The militia
project meant military usurpation. Look at Cromwell,
he said ; look at Bonaparte. Were their usurpations not
in the name of the people ? Preston of South Carolina
said that Van Buren had advocated diminished wages to
others ; now he should himself receive diminished wages.
Harrison was, he said, " a southern man with southern
principles." As for Van Buren, this " northern man
with southern principles," did he not come " from be
yond the Hudson," had he not been "a friend of Rufus
King, a Missouri restrictionist, a friend and advocate of
free negro suffrage " ? Clay said that it was no time " to
argue ; " a rule his party for the moment well observed.

330 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
The nation had already pronounced upon the ravages
Van Buren had brought upon the land, the general and
widespread ruin, the broken hopes. With the mere fact
of Harrison's election, " without reference to the meas
ures of his administration," he told the Virginians at
Hanover, " confidence will immediately revive, credit be
, restored, active business will return, prices of products
will rise ; and the people will feel and know that, instead
of their servants being occupied in devising measures
for their ruin and destruction, they will be assiduously
employed in promoting their welfare and prosperity."
All this was far more glorious than the brutally true
advice of the old man with a broad-axe on his shoulders,
whom the Democrats quoted. When asked what was to
become of everybody in the heavy distress of the panic,
he answered, " Damn the panic ! If you would all work
as I do, you would have no panic." The people no
longer cared about " the interested few who desire to en
rich themselves by the use of public money." If, as the
Democrats said, the interested few had been thwarted,
an almost universal poverty had for some reason or other
come with their defeat. Perhaps the reflecting citizen
thought that he might become, if he were not already,
one of the " interested few." Nor was the demagogy
all on the side of the Whigs, although they enjoyed
the more popular quality of the quadrennial product.
Van Buren himself, in the futile fashion of aging par
ties which suppose that their ancient victories still stir
the popular heart, recalled " the reign of terror " of
the elder Adams, and how the " Samson of Democracy
bursts the cords which were already bound around its
limbs," how " a web more artfully contrived, composed
of a high protective tariff, a system of internal improve-

ELECTION OF 1840. 331
ments, and a national bank, was then twined around the
sleeping giant " until he was " roused by the warning
voice of the honest and intrepid Jackson." Harrison's
own numerous speeches were awkward and indefinite
enough ; but still they showed an honest and sincere man,
and in the enthusiasm of the day they did him no harm.
The revolts against the severe party discipline of the
Democracy, aided by the popular distress, were serious.
Calhoun, indeed, had returned ; but all his supporters
did not return with him. The southern defection headed
by White in 1836 was still most formidable, and was
now reenforced by the Conservative secession north
and south. Even Major Eaton .forgot Van Buren's gal
lantry ten years before, and joined the enemy. The
talk of •' spoils '' was amply justified ; but the abuses of
patronage had not prevented Jackson's popularity, and
under Van Buren they were far less serious. This cry i
did not yet touch the American people. The most seri
ous danger of " spoils " still lay in the future. Patron
age abuses had injured the efficiency of the public ser
vice, but they had not yet begun to defeat the popular
will. Jackson came resolutely to Van Buren's aid in
the fashionable letter-writing. " The Rives Conserva
tives, the Abolitionists and Federalists " had combined,
the ex-president vivaciously said, to obtain power " by
falsehood and slander of the basest kind ; " but the
" virtue of the people," he declared in what from other
lips would have seemed cant, would defeat " the money
power." Van Buren's firmness and ability entitled him,
he thought, to a rank not inferior to Jefferson or Madi
son, while he rather unhandsomely added that he had
never admired Harrison as a military man.
The Whig campaign was highly picturesque. Meetings
were measured by " acres of men." They gathered on

332 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
the field of Tippecanoe. Revolutionary soldiers marched
in venerable processions. Wives and daughters came
with their husbands and fathers. There were the
barrel of cider, the coon-skins, and the log cabin with
the live raccoon running over it and the latch-string
hung out ; for Harrison had told his soldiers when he
left them, that never should his door be shut, " or the
string of the latch pulled in." Van Buren meantime,
with an aristocratic sneer upon his face, was seated in an
English carriage, after feeding himself from the famous
gold spoons bought for the White House. Harrison
was a hunter who had caught a fox before and would
again ; one of the county processions from Pennsylva
nia boasted, " Old Mother Cumberland — she 'U bag
the fox." Illinois would " teach the palace slaves to
respect the log cabin." "Down with the wages, say the
administration." " Matty's policy, fifty cents a day and
French soup ; our policy, two dollars a day and roast
beef." Newspapers were fuU of advertisements like
this : " The subscriber will pay $5 a hundred for pork
if Harrison is elected, and $2.50 if Van Buren is."
But the songs were most interesting. The ball, which
Benton had said in his last speech on the expunging res
olution that he " solitary and alone " had put in motion,
was a mine of similes. They sang :
' ' With heart and soul
This ball we roll."
" As rolls the ball,
Van's reign does fall,
And he may look
To Kinderhook."
" The gathering ball is rolling still,
And still gathering as it rolls.''

ELECTION OF 1840. 333
Harrison's battle with the Indians gave the effective
cry of " Tippecanoe and Tyler too." And so they sang :
" Farewell, dear Van,
You 're not our man ;
To guard the ship,
We '11 try old Tip."
' With Tip and Tyler
We '11 burst Van's biler."
Old Tip he wears a homespun suit,
He has no ruffled shirt — wirt — wirt ;
But Mat he has the golden plate,
And he 's a little squirt — wirt — wirt."
When the election returns began to come from the
August and September states, the joyful excitement
passed all bounds. Then the new Whigs found a new
Lilliburlero. To the tune of the " Little Pig's Tail " they
sang :
' ' What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through ?
It is the ball a-rolling on,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too !
" And with them we '11 beat little Van, Van ;
Van is a used-up man. .
Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine,
All honest and true ?
One thousand for Kent and seven thousand gain
For Tippecanoe," etc.
And then Joe Hoxie would close the meetings by sing
ing " Up Salt River."
The result was pretty plain before November. New
Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Virginia
voted for state officers in the spring. All had voted for
Van Buren in 1836 ; aU now gave Whig majorities,

334 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
except New Hampshire, where the Democratic majority
was greatly reduced. In August North Carolina was
added to the Whig column, though in Missouri and Il
linois there was little change. But when in September
Maine, which had given Van Buren nearly eight thou
sand majority, and had since remained steadfast, " went
hell-bent for Governor Kent " and gave a slight Whig
majority, the administration's doom was sealed.
Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van Buren
60. New York gave Harrison 13,300 votes more than
Van Buren ; but a large part of this plurality, per
haps all, came from the counties on the northern and
western borders. Only one northern state, Illinois,
voted for Van Buren. Of the slave states, five, Vir
ginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas,
were for Van Buren ; the other eight for Harrison.
There was a popular majority in the slave states of
about 55,000 against Van Buren in a total vote of about
695,000, and in the free states, of about 90,000 in a to
tal vote of about 1.700,000, still showing, therefore, his
greater popular strength in the free states. The in
crease in the popular vote was the most extraordinary
the country has ever known, proving the depth and
universality of the feeling. This vote had been about
1,500,000 in 1836 ; it reached about 2,400,000 in 1840,
an increase of 900,000, while from 1840 to the Clay
canvass of 1844 it increased only 300,000. Van Bu
ren, as a defeated candidate in 1840, received about
350,000 votes more than elected him in 1836 ; and the
growth of population in the four years was probably
less, not greater, than usual. There were cries of
" fraud and corruption " because of this enormously
increased vote, cries which Benton long afterwards se-

DEFEAT. 335
riously heeded ; but there seems to be no good reason to
treat them otherwise than as one of the many expres
sions of Democratic anguish.
Van Buren received the seemingly crushing defeat
with dignity and composure. While the cries of " Van,
Van, he 's a used-up man," were coming with some of
the sting of truth through the White House windows,
he prepared the final message with which he met Con
gress in December, 1840. The year, he said, had been
one of " health, plenty, and peace." Again he declared
the dangers of a national debt, and the equal dangers of
too much money in the treasury ; for " practical econ
omy in the management of public affairs," he said, " can
have no adverse influence to contend with more power
ful than a large surplus revenue." Again he attacked
the national bank scheme. During four years of the
greatest pecuniary embarrassments ever known in time
of peace, with a decreasing public revenue, with a for
midable opposition, his administration had been able
punctually to meet every obligation without a bank,
without a permanent national debt, and without incurring
any liability which the ordinary resources of the govern
ment would not speedily discharge. If the public ser
vice had been thus independently sustained without
either of these fruitful sources of discord, had we not a
right to expect that this policy would " receive the final
Sanson of a people whose unbiased and fairly elicited
judgment upon public affairs is never ultimately wrong " ?
Again with a clear emphasis he declared against any
attempt of the government to repair private losses sus
tained in private business, either by direct appropria
tions or by legislation designed to secure exclusive
privileges to individuals or classes. In the very last

336 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
words of this, his last message, he gave an account of
his efforts to suppress the slave trade, and to prevent
"the prostitution of the American flag to this inhuman
purpose," asking Congress, by a prohibition of the Amer
ican trade which took supplies to the slave factories on
the African coast, to break up " those dens of iniquity."
V The short session of Congress was hardly more than
a jubilee of the Whigs, happily ignorant of the com
plete chagrin and frustration of their hopes which a few
months would bring. Some new bank suspensions oc
curred in Philadelphia, and among banks closely con
nected with that city. The Bank of the United States,
after a resumption for twejity days, succumbed amid its
own loud protestations of solvency, its final disgrace
and ruin being, however, deferred a little longer.
Van Buren's cabinet was somewhat changed before
he left office. In 1838 his old friend and ally, and one
of the chief champions of his policy, Benjamin F. But
ler, resigned the office of attorney-general, but without
any break political or personal, as was seen in his fine
and arduous labors in the canvass of 1840 and in the
Democratic convention of 1844. Felix Grundy of Ten
nessee then held the place until late in 1839, when he
resigned. Van Buren offered it, though without much
heartiness, to James Buchanan, who preferred, however,
to retain his seat in the senate; and Henry D. Gilpin,
another Pennsylvanian, was appointed. Amos Kendall's
enormous industry and singular equipment of doctri
naire convictions, narrow prejudices, executive abdity,
and practical political skill and craft, were lost to the
administration through the failure of his health in the
midst of the campaign of 1840. In an address to the
public he gave a curious proof that for him work was

DEFEAT. 337
more wearing in public than in private service. He stated
that as he was poor he should resort to private employ
ment suitable to his health ; and that he proposed, there
fore, during the canvass to write for the Globe in defense
of the president, in whose integrity, principles, and firm
ness his confidence, he said, had increased. In 1838,
when his health had threatened to be unequal to his
work, Van Buren had offered him the mission to Spain,
if it should become vacant. John M. NUes, formerly a
Democratic senator from Connecticut, took Kendall's
place in the post-office.
Van Buren welcomed Harrison to the White House,
and before the inauguration entertained him there as a
guest, with the easy and dignified courtesy so natural to
him, and in marked contrast to the absence of social
amenities on either side at the great change twelve years
before. Under Van Buren indeed the executive man
sion was administered with elevated grace. There was
about it, while he was master there, the unostentatious
elegance suited to the dwelling of the chief magistrate
of the great republic. There were many flings at him
for his great economy, and what was called his par
simony ; but he was accused as well of undemocratic
luxury. The talk seemed never to end over the gold
spoons. The contradictory charges point out the truth.
Van Buren was an eminently prudent man. He did
not indulge in the careless and useless waste which im
poverished Jefferson and Jackson. By sensible and
honorable economy he is said to have saved one half of
the salary of $25,000 a year then paid to the president.1
1 It should be remembered that several great expenses of the
White House were then and are now met by special and additional
appropriations.

338 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Returning to private life, he was spared the humiliation
of pecuniary trouble, which had distressed three at least
of his predecessors. But through an exquisite sense of
propriety, he had not faded to order the White House
with fitting decorum and a modest state. His son Abra
ham Van Buren was his private secretary ; and after
.the latter's marriage, in November, 1838, to Miss Single
ton of South Carolina, a niece of Andrew Stevenson,
and a relation of Mrs. Madison, he and his wife formed
the presidential family. In 1841 they accompanied the
ex-president to his retirement at Lindenwald.
Under Andrew Jackson the social air of the White
House had suffered from his ill-health and the bitter
ness of his partisanship ; and in this respect the change
to his successor was most pleasing. Van Buren used an
agreeable tact with even his strongest opponents ; and
about his levees and receptions there were a charm and
a grace by no means usual in the dwellings of American
public men. He had, we are told in the Recollections
of Sargent, a political adversary of his, " the high art of
blending dignity with ease and gravity." He introduced
the custom of dining with the heads of departments and
foreign ministers, although with that exception he ob
served the etiquette of never being the guest of others at
Washington. Judge Story mentions the " splendid din
ner " given by the president to the judges in January,
1839. John Quincy Adams's diary bears unintended testi
mony to Van Buren's admirable personal bearing in
office. From the time he reached Washington as secre
tary of state, he had treated Adams in his defeat with
marked distinction and deference, which Adams, as he
records, accepted in his own house, in the White House,

DEFEAT. 33
and elsewhere. At a social party the president, he sail
" was, as usual, courteous to all and particularly to me.
Van Buren had therefore every reason to suppose tlu
there was between himself and Adams a not unfriend]
personal esteem. But Adams, in his churlish, bitte
temper, apparently found in these wise and generoi
civilities only evidence of a mean spirit. After one vis
at the White House during the height of the crisis c
1837, he recorded that he found Van Buren looking
not wretched, as he had been told, but composed an
tranquil. Returning home from this observation of th
president's " calmness, his gentleness of manner, h
easy and conciliatory temper," this often unmannerl
pen described besides " his obsequiousness, his syci
phancy, his profound dissimulation and duplicity, . .
his fawning civility." In a passage which was remarl
able in that time of political bitterness so largely pe
sonal, Clay said, in his parliamentary duel with Ca
houn, after the latter rejoined the Democratic part;
that he remembered Calhoun attributing to the pres
dent the qualities of " the most crafty, most skulking
and the meanest of the quadruped tribe." Saying th;
he had not shared Calhoun's opinion, he then added <
Van Buren : —
" I have always found him in his manner and depor
ment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly ; and he di
penses in the noble mansion which he now occupies, oi
worthy the residence of the chief magistrate of a gre;
people, a generous and liberal hospitality. An acquain
ance with him of more than twenty years' duration hi
inspired me with a respect for the man, although I regr<
to be compeUed to say, I detest the magistrate."

CHAPTER XI.
EX-PRESIDENT.  SLAVERY.  TEXAS ANNEXATION. 
DEFEAT BiT THE SOUTH.  FREE-SOIL CAMPAIGN.
LAST YEARS.
Van Buren loitered at Washington a few days after
his presidency was over, and on his way home stopped
at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. At New
York he was finely welcomed. Amid great crowds he
was taken to the City Hall in a procession headed by
Captain Brown's corps of lancers and a body of armed
firemen. He reached Kinderhook on May 15, 1841,
there to make his home until his death. He had, after
the seemly and pleasing fashion of many men in Ameri
can public life, lately purchased near this village among
the hills of Columbia county, the residence of William
P. Van Ness, where Irving had thirty years before lived
in seclusion after the death of his betrothed, and had put
the last touches to his Knickerbocker. It was an old
estate, whose lands had been rented for twenty years
and under cultivation for a hundred and sixty, and from
which Van Buren now managed to secure a profit. To
this seat he gave the name of Lindenwald, a name which
in secret he probably hoped the American people would
come to group with Monticello, Montpellier, and the
Hermitage. But this could not be. Van Buren had
served but half the presidential term of honor. He was
not a sage, but still a candidate for the presidency.

EX-PRESIDENT. 3
Before the electoral votes were counted in 1841, Bent
declared for his renomination in 1844 ; and until t
latter year he again held the interesting and power
but critical place of the probable candidate of his pai
for the presidency. He remained easily the chief figi
in the Democratic ranks. His defeat had not tak
from him that honor which is the property of the stat
man standing for a cause whose righteousness and pro
ise belong to the assured future. His defeat signified
personal, no political fault. It had come to him fron
widespread convulsion for which, perhaps less than a
great American of his time, he was responsible, /l
party could not abandon its battle for a limited a
non-paternal government and against the use of pul
moneys by private persons.) It could not therefore ab
don him ; for more than any other man who had :
now finally retired he represented these causes in
own person. But his easy composure of manner did :
altogether hide that eating and restless anxiety which
often attends this supreme ambition of the American
Two days after leaving the White House, Van Bm
said, in reply to complimentary resolutions of the leg
lature of Missouri, that he did not utterly lament
bitter attacks upon him ; for experience had taught 1
that few pohtical men were praised by their foes ui
they were about abandoning their friends. With
pleasing frankness he admitted that to be worthy of
presidency and to reach it had been the object of
" most earnest desire ; " but he said that the selection
the next Democratic candidate must be decided by
probable effect upon the principles for which they 1
just fought, and not upon any supposition that he 1
been wounded or embittered by his defeat in th

342 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
defense. His description of a candidate meant himself,
however, and rightly enough. In November, 1841, he
wrote of the " apparent success of last year's buffoonery ;" '
and intimated that, though he would take no step to be
a candidate, it was not true that he had said he should
decline a nomination.
Early in 1842, the ex -president made a trip through
the South, in company with James K. Paulding, visiting
on his return Clay at Ashland, and Jackson at the Her
mitage. He was one of the very few men on personally
friendly terms with both those long-time enemies. At
Ashland, doubtless, Texas was talked over, even if a
bargain were not made, as has been fancied, that Clay
and Van Buren should remove the troublesome question
from politics. In a fashion very different from that of
modern candidates, he now wrote, from time to time,
able, long, and explicit, but somewhat tedious letters on
political questions. In one of them he touched protec
tion more clearly than ever before. He favored, he
said in February, 1843, a tariff for revenue only ; the
" incidental protection " which that must give many
American manufacturers was all the protection which
should be permitted ; the mechanics and laborers had
been the chief sufferers from a " high protective tariff."
He was at last and definitely " a low tariff man." He
declared that he should support the Democratic candi
date of 1844 ; for he believed it to be impossible that a
selection from that source should not accord with his
views. He did not perhaps realize to how extreme a
test his sincerity would be put. He added words which
four years later read strangely enough. " My name and
pretensions," he said, " however subordinate in impor
tance, shaU never be at the disposal of any person what-

EX-PRESIDENT. 34
ever, for the purpose of creating distractions or divisioi
in the Democratic party."
The party was indeed known as the " Van Bun
party " until 1844, so nearly universal was the suppoi
tion that he was to be renominated, and so plainly w
he its leader. The disasters which had now overtaki
the Whigs made his return to power seem probab
enough. The utterly incongruous elements held togeth
during the sharp discontent and wonderful but inartic
late enthusiasm of 1840 had quickly fallen apart. Whi
on his way to Kinderhook Van Buren was the chief figu
in the obsequies of Harrison at New York. This hone
man, of whom John Quincy Adams said, with his usu
savage exaggeration, that his dull sayings were repeati
for wit and his grave inanity passed off for wisdom, hi
already quarreled with the splendid leader whose pla
he was too coifscious of usurping. Tyler's accession w
the first, but not the last warning, which American poli
cians have had of the danger of securing the president
by an award of the second place to a known opponent
the principles whose success they seek. Tyler had n
before his nomination concealed his narrow and Dem
cratic views of government. The Whigs had ostent
tiously refused to declare any principles when th
nominated him. In technical conscientiousness
marched with a step by no means cowardly to unhonor
political isolation, as a quarter of a century later march
another vice-president nominated by a party in who
ranks he too was a new recruit. Upon Tyler's veto
the bill for a national bank, an outcry of agony went i
from the Whigs ; the whole cabinet, except Webstf
resigned ; a new cabinet was formed, partly from t
Conservatives ; and by 1844, Tyler was a forlorn can(

344 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
date for the Democratic nomination, which he claimed
for his support of the annexation of Texas.
Upon this first of the great pro-slavery movements
Van Buren was defeated for the Democratic nomination
in 1844, although it seemed assured to him by every
consideration of party loyalty, obligation, and wise fore
sight. The relations of government to private business
ceased to be the dominant political question a few
months and only a few months too soon to enable Van
Buren to complete his eight years. Slavery arose in
place of economics.
No mistake is more common in the review of Ameri
can history than to suppose that slavery was an active
or definite force in organized American politics after
the Missouri Compromise and before the struggle for
the annexation of Texas under Tyler's administration.
The appeals of the abolitionists to the simpler and
deeper feelings of humanity were indeed at work before
1835 ; and from that year on they were profoundly
stirring the American conscience and storing up tremen
dous moral energy. But slavery was not in partisan
politics. In 1836 and 1840 there was upon slavery no
real difference between the utterances of the candidates
and other leaders, Whig and Democratic, whether north
or south. Van Buren was supported by many aboli
tionists ; the profoundest distrust of him was at the
South. Upon no question touching slavery with which
the president could have concern, did his opinions or
his utterances differ from those of John Quincy Adams.
Clay said in November, 1838, that the abolitionists
denounced him as a slaveholder and the slaveholders
denounced him as an abolitionist, while both united on
Van Buren. The charge of truckling to the South,

DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH. 345
traditionally made against Van Buren, is justified by no
utterance or act different from those made by all
American public men of distinction at the time, except
perhaps in two instances, — his vote as vice-president
for Kendall's bill against sending inflammatory abolition
circulars through the post-office to states which pro
hibited their circulation, and his approval of the rules
in the senate and house for tabling or refusing abolition
petitions without reading them. But neither of these,
as has been shown, was a decisive test. In the first case
he met a political trick ; and for his vote there was
justly much to be said on the reason of the thing, apart
from southern wishes. As late as 1848, Webster, in
criticising Van Buren's inconsistency, would say no
more of the law than that it was one " of very doubtful
propriety ; " and declared that he himself should agree
to legislation by Congress to protect the South " from
incitements to insurrection." In the second case Van
Buren's position in public life restrained him from
acquiescing in an agitation in Congress for measures
which, with all responsible public men, Adams included,
he believed Congress ought not to pass.
The Democratic convention was to meet in May,
1844. The delegates had been very generally in
structed "for Van Buren ; and two months before it
assembled his nomination seemed beyond doubt. But
the slave states were now fired with a barbarous enthu
siasm to extend slavery by annexing Texas. To this
Van Buren was supposed to be hostUe. His southern
opponents, in February, 1843, skillfully procured from
Jackson, innocent of the plan, a strong letter in favor of
the annexation, to be used, it was said, just before the
convention, " to blow Van out of water." The letter

346 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
was first published in March, 1844. Van Buren was at
once put to a crucial test. His administration had been
adverse to annexation ; his opinion was still adverse.
But a large, and not improbably a controlling section of
his party, aided by Jackson's wonderful prestige, deemed
it the most important of political causes. Van Buren
was, according to the plan, explicitly asked by a
southern delegate to state, with distinct reference to the
action of the convention, what were his opinions.
The ex-president deeply desired the nomination ; and
the nomination seemed conditioned upon his surrender.
It was at least assured if he now gave no offense to the
South. But he did not flinch. He resorted to no safe
generalizations. His views upon the annexation were,
he admitted, different from those of many friends,
political and personal ; but in 1837 his administration
after a careful consideration had decided against
annexation of the state whose independence had lately
been recognized by the United States ; the situation had
not changed ; immediate annexation would place a
weapon in the hands of those who looked upon Ameri
cans and American institutions with distrustful and
envious eyes, and would do us far more real and lasting
injury than the new territory, however valuable, could
repair. He intimated that there was jobbery in some
of the enthusiasm for the annexation. The argument
that England might acquire Texas was without force ;
when England sought in Texas more than the usual
commercial favors, it would be time for the United
States to interfere. He was aware, he said, of the
hazard to which he exposed his standing with his south
ern feUow-citizens, " of whom it was aptly and appropri
ately said by one of their own number that ' they are

DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH. 347
the children of the sun and partake of its warmth.' "
But whether we stand or fall, he said, it is always true
wisdom as well as true morality to hold fast to the
truth. If to nourish enthusiasm were one of the effects
of a genial climate, it seldom failed to give birth to a
chivalrous spirit. To preserve our national escutcheon
untarnished had always been the unceasing solicitude of
southern statesmen. The only tempering he gave his
refusal was to say that if, after the subject had l«eh
fully discussed, a Congress chosen with r/^crence to the
question showed the popular will to favor it, he would
yield.1 Van Buren thus closed his letter : " Nor can I
in any extremity be induced to cast a shade over the
motives of my past life, by changes or concealments of
opinions maturely formed upon a great national ques
tion, for the unworthy purpose of increasing my chances
for political promotion."
1 I must again complain of the curious though unintended
unfairness of Professor Yon Hoist (Const. Hist, of the TJ. S. 1S2S-
1846, Chicago, 1879, p. C63). He treats this letter with great
contempt. He assumes indeed that Van Buren's declaration for
annexation would have given him the nomination ; and admits
that Van Buren declared himself " decidedly opposed to annexa
tion." After this sufficient proof of courage, for Van Buren
could at least have simply promised to adopt the vote of Congress
on the main question, it was not very sensible to declare ' ' disgust
ing " Van Buren's efforts "to creep through the thorny hedge
which shut him off from the party nomination. ' ' Professor Von
Hoist's "disgust" seems particularly directed against the pas
sage here annotated where, after his strong argument against
annexation, he declared that he would not be influenced by sec
tional feeling, and would obey the wishes of a Congress chosen
with reference to the question. Few, I think, will consider this
promise with reference to such a question, either cowardly or
' ' disgusting, ' ' made, as it was, by a candidate for the presidency
of a democratic Eepublic, after clearly and firmly declaring his
own views in advance of the congressional elections.

348 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
To a presidential candidate the eve of a national con
vention is dim with the self-deceiving twilight of sophis
try ; and the twilight deepens when a question is put
upon which there is a division among those who are, or
who may be, his supporters. He can keep silence, he
can procure the questioning friend to withdraw the
troublesome inquiry ; he can ignore the question from
an enemy ; he can affect an enigmatical dignity. Van
Bui ^ did neither of these. His Texas letter was one
of the finest ai.l bravest pieces of political courage, and
deserves from Americans a long admiration.
The danger of Van Buren's difference with Jackson
it was sought to avert. Butler visited Jackson at the
Hermitage, and doubtless showed him for what a sinister
end he had been used. Jackson did not withdraw his
approval of annexation ; but publicly declared his re
gard for Van Buren to be so great, his confidence in Van
Buren's love of country to be so strengthened by long
intimacy, that no difference about Texas could change
his opinions. Van Buren's nomination was again widely
supposed to be assured. But the work of Calhoun and
Robert J. Walker had been too well done. The con
vention met at Baltimore on May 27, 1844. George
Bancroft headed the delegation from Massachusetts.
Before the Rev. Dr. Johns had " fervently addressed the
Throne of Grace " or the Rev. Mr. McJilton had " read
a scripture lesson," the real contest took place over the
adoption of the rule requiring a two-thirds vote for a
nomination. For it was through this rule that enough
southern members, chosen before Van Buren's letter as
they had been, were to escape obedience to their instrucT
tions to vote for him. Robert J. Walker, then a senator
from Mississippi, a man of interesting history and large

DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH. 349
ability, led the southerners. He quoted the precedent
of 1832, when Van Buren had been nominated for the
vice-presidency under the two-thirds rule, and that of
1835, when he had been nominated for the presidency.
These nominations had led to victory. In 1840 the
rule had not been adopted. Without this rule, he said
amid angry excitement, the party would yield to those
whose motto seemed to be " rule or ruin." Butler,
Daniel S. Dickinson, and Marcus Morton led the north
ern ranks. Butler regretted that any member should
condescend to the aUusion to 1840. That year, he said,
had been a debauchery of the nation's reason amid log
cabins, hard cider, and coon-skins ; and in an ecstasy of
painful excitement at the recollection and amid a tre
mendous burst of applause " he leaped from the floor
and stamped ... as if treading beneath liis feet the
object of his loathing." The true Democratic rule, he
continued, required the minority to submit to the ma
jority. Morton said that under the majority rule Jeffer
son had been nominated ; that rule had governed state,
county, and township conventions. Butler admitted
that under the rule Van Buren would not be nominated,
although a majority of the convention was known to be
for him. In 1832 and 1835 the two-thirds rule had pre
vailed because it was certainly known who would be
nominated ; and the rule operated to aid not to defeat
the majority. If the rule were adopted, it would be by the
votes of states which were not Democratic, and would
bring " dismemberment and final breaking up of the
party." Walker laughed at Butler's " tall vaulting "
from the floor ; and, refusing to shrink from the Van
Buren issue, he protested against New York dictation,
and warningly said* that, if Van Buren were nominated,

350 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Clay would be elected. After the convention had re
ceived with enthusiasm a floral gift from a Democratic
lady whom the president declared to be fairer than the
flowers, the vote wras taken. The two-thirds rule was
adopted by 148 to 118. AU the negatives were north
erners, except 14 from Missouri, Maryland, and North
Carolina. Fifty-eight true " northern men with southern
principles " joined ninety southerners in the affirmative.
I* was reaUy a vote on Van Buren, — or rather upon
the annexation of Texas, — or rather still upon the ex
tension of American slave territory. It was the first
battle, a sort of Bull Run, in the last and great political
campaign between the interests of slavery and those of
freedom. On the first ballot for the candidate, Van Buren
had 146 votes, 13 more than a majority. If after the
vote on the two-thirds rule anything more were required
to show that some of these votes were given in mere
formal obedience to instructions, the second ballot
brought the proof. Van Buren then sank to 127, less
than a majority ; and on the seventh ballot to 99. A
motion was made to declare him the nominee as the
choice of a majority of the convention ; and there fol
lowed a scene of fury, the president bawling for order
amid savage taunts between North and South, and bitter
denunciations of the treachery of some of those who had
pledged themselves for Van Buren. Samuel Young of
New York declared the " abominable Texas question "
to be the fire-brand thrown among them by the " mon
grel administration at Washington," whose hero was
now doubtless fiddling while Rome was burning. Nero
seems to have been Calhoun, though between the god
like young devil of antiquity wreathed with sensual

DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH. 351
frenzy and infamy, and the solemn, even saturnine
figure of the great modern advocate of human slavery
the likeness seemed rather distant. The motion was
declared out of order ; and the name of James K. Polk
was presented as that of " a pure whole-hogged Demo
crat." On the eighth ballot he had 44 votes. Then
followed the magnanimous scene of " union and har
mony " which has so often, after a conflict, charmed a
political body into unworthy surrender. The great
delegation from New York retired during the ninth
balloting ; and returned to a convention profoundly
silent but thrilling with that bastard sense of coming
glory in which a lately tumultuous and quarreling body
waits the solution of its difficulties already known to be
reached but not yet declared. Butler quoted a letter
which Van Buren had given him authorizing the with
drawal of his name if it were necessary for harmony ;
he eulogized Polk as a strict constructionist, and closed
by reading a letter from Jackson fervently urging Van
Buren's nomination. Daniel S. Dickinson said that
" he loved this convention because it had acted so like
the masses," and cast New York's 35 votes for Polk.
The latter's nomination was declared with the utmost
joy, and sent to Washington over Morse's first tele
graph line, just, completed. Silas Wright of New York,
Van Buren's strong friend and a known opponent of
annexation, was, in the fashion since followed, nomi
nated for the vice-presidency, to soothe the feelings
and the conscience of the defeated. Wright peremp
torily telegraphed his refusal. He told his friends that
he did " not choose to ride behind on the black pony."
George M. DaUas of Pennsylvania took his place.
The Democratic party now threw away all advantage

352 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
of the issue made by the undeserved defeat four years
before. Thirty-six years later it repeated the blunder
in discarding Van Buren's famous neighbor and disciple.
It was the first selection by the party of a man distinctly
of the second or of even a lower rank. Polk was known
to have ability inferior not only to that of Van Buren
and Calhoun, but to Cass, Buchanan, Wright, and others.
He was the first presidential " dark horse," and indeed
hardly that. His own state of Tennessee had, by reso
lution, presented him as its choice for vice-president
with Van Buren in the first place. He had been
speaker of the national house, and later, governor of his
state ; but since holding these places had been twice de
feated for governor. In accepting the nomination he
declared, with an apparent fling at Van Buren, that, if
elected, he should not accept a renomination, and should
thus enable the party in 1848 to make " a free selec
tion." The nomination aroused disgust enough. " Polk !
Great God, what a nomination ! " Letcher, the Whig
governor of Kentucky, wrote to Buchanan. But the
experiment of 1840 with the Whigs had been disastrous ;
the people had swung back to the strict doctrines of
the Democracy. Van Buren faithfully kept his promise
to support the nomination ; under his urgency Wright
finally accepted the nomination for governor of New
York. And by the vote of New York Henry Clay was
defeated by a man vastly his inferior. Polk had 5,000
plurality in that state ; but Wright had 10,000. Had
not James G. Birney, the abolitionist candidate who
polled there 15,812 votes, been in the field, not even Van
Buren's party loyalty would have prevented Clay's elec
tion. Van Buren's friends saved the state ; but in

SLAVERY IN POLITICS. 353
doing so voted for annexation. In April, 1844, Clay
had written a letter against annexation. As it appeared
within a few days of Van Buren's letter, and as the per
sonal relations between the two great party leaders were
most friendly, some have inferred an arrangement be
tween them to take the question out of politics. This
would indeed have been an extraordinary occurrence.
One might weU wish to have overheard a negotiation
between two rivals for the presidency to exclude a great
question distasteful to both. After the Democratic con
vention, Tyler's treaty of annexation was rejected in the
senate by 35 to 16, six Democrats from the North,
among them Wright of New York and Benton of Mis
souri, voting against it. During the campaign Clay
had weakly abandoned even the mild emphasis of his
first opposition, and by flings at the abolitionists had
openly bid for the pro-slavery vote ; thus perhaps los
ing enough votes in New York to Birney to defeat him.
After the election the current for annexation seemed
too strong ; and a resolution passed both houses author
izing the admission of Texas as a state. The resolution
provided for the formation of four additional states out
of Texas. In any such additional state formed north
of the Missouri compromise hne, slavery was to be pro
hibited ; but in those south of it slavery was to be per
mitted or prohibited as the inhabitants might choose.
Slavery was now clearly before the political conscience
of the nation. Van Buren was the conspicuous victim
of the first encounter. The Baltimore convention had
in its platform complimented " their illustrious feUow
citizen," " his inflexible fidelity to the Constitution," his
" ability, integrity, and firmness," and had tendered to
him, " in honorable retirement," the assurance of the

354 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
deeply-seated " confidence, affection, and respect of the
American Democracy." This sentence to "honorable
retirement " Van Buren, who was only in his sixty-
second year and in the amplitude of his natural powers,
received with outward complacency. On the eve of the
election he pointed out, probably referring to Cass, that
the hostility to him had not been in the interest of Polk,
and warmly said that, unless the Democratic creed were a
delusion, personal feelings ought to be turned to nothing-
Van Buren was, however, profoundly affected by what
he deemed the undeserved southern hostility to himself.
For he hardly yet appreciated that his defeat was politi
cally legitimate, and not the result of political treachery
or envy. Between him and the southern politicians had
opened a true and deep division over the greatest single
question in American politics since Jefferson's election.
With Polk's accession and the Mexican war, the
schism in the Democratic ranks over the extension of
American slave territory became plainer. Even during
the canvass of 1844 a circular had been issued by Wil
liam CuUen Bryant, David Dudley Field, John W. Ed
monds, and other Van Buren men, supporting Polk, but
urging the choice of congressmen opposed to annexa
tion. Early in the new administration the division of
New York Democrats into " barnburners " and " old
hunkers " appeared. The former were the strong pro-
Van Buren, anti-Texas men, or " radical Democrats,"
who were likened to the farmer who burned his barn to
clear it of rats. The latter were the " northern men
with southern principles," the supporters of annexation,
and the respectable, dull men of easy consciences, who
were said to hanker after the offices. The Barnburn
ers were led by men of really eminent ability and

THE WILMOT PROVISO. 355
exalted character : Silas Wright, then governor, Benja
min F. Butler, John A. Dix, chosen in 1845 to the
United States senate, Azariah C. Flagg, the famous
comptroller, and John Van Buren, the ex-president's
son, and a singularly picturesque figure in politics, who
was, in 1845, made attorney-general by the legislature.
He had been familiarly called " Prince John " since his
travels abroad during his father's presidency. Daniel
S. Dickinson and William L. Marcy were the chief
figures in the Hunker ranks. Polk seemed inclined, at
the beginning, to favor, or at least to placate, the Barn
burners. He offered the treasury to Wright, though
he is said to have known that Wright could not leave
the governorship. He offered Butler the war depart
ment, but the latter's devotion to his profession, for
which he had resigned the attorney-general's place in
Van Buren's cabinet, made him prefer the freedom of
the United States attorneyship at New York, and Marcy
was finally given the New York place in the cabinet.
Jackson's death in June, 1845, deprived the Van Buren
men of the tremendous moral weight which his name
carried, and which might have daunted Polk. It per
haps also helped to loosen the weight of party ties on
the Van Buren men. After this the schism rapidly
grew. In the fall election of 1845 the Barnburners
pretty thoroughly controlled the Democratic party of
the state in hostility to the Mexican war, which the an
nexation of Texas had now brought. Samuel J. Tilden
of Columbia county, and a profound admirer of Van
Buren, became one of their younger leaders.
Now arose the strife over the " WUmot proviso," in
which was embodied the opposition to the extension of
slavery into new territories. Upon this proviso the

356 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
modern Republican party was formed eight j-ears later :
upon it, fourteen years later, Abraham Lincoln was
chosen president ; and upon it began the war for tlie
Union, out of whose throes came the vastly grander and
unsought beneficence of complete emancipation. David
Wilmot was a Democratic member of Congress from
Pennsylvania ; in New York he would have been a
Barnburner. In 1S46 a bill was pending to appropri
ate $3,000,000 for use by the president in a purchase
of territory from Mexico as part of a peace. Wilmot
proposed an amendment that slavery should be excluded
from any territory so acquired. All the Democratic
members, as well as the Whigs from New York, and
most strongly the Van Buren or Wright men, sup
ported the proviso. The Democratic legislature ap
proved it by the votes of the Whigs with the Barnburn
ers and the Soft Hunkers, the latter being Hunkers less
friendly to slavery. It passed the house at Washing
ton, but was rejected by the senate, not so quickly open
to popular sentiment. In the Democratic convention of
New York, in October, 1S46, the " war for the exten
sion of slavery " was charged by the Barnburners on
the Hunkers. The former were victorious, and Silas
Wright was renominated for governor, to be defeated,
however, at the election. Polk, Marcy, and Dickinson,
angered at the Democratic opposition in New York to
the pro-slavery Mexican policy, now threw all the
weight of federal patronage against the Barnburners,
many of whom believed the administration to have
been responsible for Wright's defeat. Van Buren and
his influence were completely separated from the na
tional administration. Just before the adjournment of
Congress in 1847, the appropriation to secure territory

THE BARNBURNERS. 357
from Mexico was again proposed. Again the Wilmot
proviso was added in the house ; again it was rejected
in the senate, to the defeat of the appropriation ; and
again Barnburners and Whigs carried in the New York
legislature a resolution approving it, and directing the
New York senators to support it.
The tide was rising. It seemed that Mexican law
prohibited slavery in New Mexico and Calif ornia, and
that upon their cession the principles of international
law would preserve their condition of freedom. Ben
ton, therefore, deemed the WUmot proviso unnecessary ;
a " tiling of nothing in itself, and seized upon to con
flagrate the states and dissolve the Union." For the
supreme court had not then pronounced slavery a neces
sary accompaniment of American supremacy. But the
legal protection of freedom was practicaUy unsubstan
tial, even if not technical ; there could be no doubt of
the determination of the South to carry slavery into
these territories, whatever might be the obligations of
either municipal or international law ; and their con
quest, therefore, made imminent a decision of the vital
question whether slavery should be still further ex
tended. At the Democratic convention at Syracuse, in Sep
tember, 1847, the Hunkers, after a fierce struggle over
contested seats, seized control of the body. David
Dudley Field, for the Barnburners, proposed a resolu
tion that, although the Democracy of New York would
faithfuUy adhere to the compromises of the Constitution
and maintain the reserved rights of the states, they
would still declare, since the crisis had come, " their
uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery into
territory now free." This was defeated. The Barn-

358 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
burners then seceded, and issued an address, in which
Lawrence Van Buren, the ex-president's brother, joined.
They protested that the anti-slavery resolution had been
defeated by a fraudulent organization of the convention,
and called a mass meeting at Herkimer, on October 26,
" to avow their principles and consult as to future
action." The Herkimer convention was really an im
portant preliminary to the formation of the modern
Republican party. It was a gathering of the ex-presi
dent's friends. Cambreleng, his old associate, presided ;
IHvjd Wilmot addressed the meeting ; and John Van
Buren, now very conspicuous in politics, reported the
resolutions. In these the fraud at Syracuse was again
denounced; a convention was called for Washington's
birthday in 1848, to choose Barnburner delegates to
contest the seats of those chosen by the Hunkers in the
national Democratic convention. It was declared that
the freemen of New York would not submit to slavery
in the conquered provinces ; and that, against the threat
of Democrats at the South that they would support no
candidate for the presidency who did not assent to the
extension of slavery, the Democrats of New York would
proclaim their determination to vote for no candidate
who did so assent.
It was clear that Van Buren sympathized with all
this. Relieved from the constraint of power, there
strongly revived his old hostility to slavery ; he recalled
his vote twenty-eight years before against admitting
Missouri otherwise than free. He now perceived how
profound had really been the political division between
him and the southern Democrats when, in 1844, he
wrote his Texas letter. Ignoring the legitimate char
acter of the politics of Polk's administration in denying

THE BARNBURNERS. 359
official recognition or reward to Barnburners, — legiti
mate if, as Van Buren had himself pretty uniformly
maintained, patronage should go to friends rather than
enemies, and if, as was obvious, there had arisen a true
political division upon principles, — Van Buren was
now touched with anger at the proscription of his
friends. Excluded from the power which ought to have
belonged to the chief of Democrats enjoying even in
" honorable retirement " the " confidence, affection, and
respect " of his party, independence rapidly grew less
heinous in his eyes. One can hardly doubt that there
now more freely welled up in his mind, to clarify and
aid its vision, the sense of personal wrong which since
Polk's nomination had been so long held in magnani
mous and dignified restraint, though of this he was prob
ably unconscious. Van Buren was not insincere when,
in October, 1847, he wrote from Lindenwald to an
enthusiastic Democratic editor in Pennsylvania, who
had hoisted his name to the top of his columns for 1848.
Whatever, he said, had been his aspirations in the past,
he now had no desire to be president ; every day con
firmed him in the political opinions to which he had
adhered. Conscious of always having done his duty to
the people to the best of his abdity, he had " no heart
burnings to be allayed and no resentments to be grati
fied by a restoration of power." Life at Lindenwald
was entirely adapted to his taste ; and he was (so he
wrote, and so doubtless he had forced himself to think)
" sincerely and heartily desirous to wear the honors and
enjoyments of private life uninterruptedly to the end."
If tendered a unanimous Democratic support with the
assurance of the election it would bring, he should not
" hesitate respectfully and gratefully, but decidedly to

360 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
decline it," adding, however, the proviso so precious to
public men, " consulting only my own feelings and
wishes." It was in the last degree improbable, he said,
and so it was, that any emergency should arise in which
this indulgence of his own preferences would, in the
opinion of his true and faithful friends^ conflict with his
duty to the party to which his whole life had been
devoted, and to which he owed any personal sacrifice,
The Mexican war had, he said, been so completely
sanctioned by the government that it must be carried
through ; and, he ominously added, the propriety of
thereafter instituting inquiries into the necessity of its
occurrence, so as to fix the just responsibility to pubhc
opinion of pubhc servants, was then out of season. Not
a word of praise did he speak of Polk's administration ;
in this he was for once truly and grimly " non-com
mittal." In the New York canvass of 1847, the Barnburners,
after their secession, " talked of indifferent matters."
The Whigs were therefore completely successful. In
the legislature the Barnburners, or " Freesoilers " as
they began to be called, outnumbered the Hunkers.
Dickinson proposed in the senate at Washington a reso
lution, the precursor of Douglass's " squatter sovereign
ty," — that all questions concerning the domestic policy
of the territories should be left to their legislatures to be
chosen by their people. Lewis Cass, now the coming
candidate of the South, asserted in December, 1847, the
same proposition, pointing out that, if Congress could
abolish the relation of master and servant in the terri
tories, it might in hke manner treat the relation of hus
band and wife. After this " Nicholson letter " of his,
Cass might well have been asked whether he would

THE FREE-SOIL PARTY. 361
have approved the admission of a state where the last
relation was forbidden, and where concubinage existed
as a " domestic institution." Dickinson's proposal
meant that the first settlers of each territory should
determine it to freedom or to slavery ; it meant that in
admitting new states the nation ought to be indifferent
to their laws on slavery. If slavery were a mere inci
dent in the polity of the state, a matter of taste or con
venience, the proposition would have been true enough.
But euphemistic talk about " domestic institutions "
blinded none but theorists or lovers of slavery to the
truth that slavery was a fearful and barbarous power,
and that it must become paramount in any new southern
state, monstrous and corrupting in its tendencies towards
savagery, unyielding, wasteful, and ruinous, — a power
whose corruption and savagery, whose waste and ruin,
infected, debauched, and enfeebled all communities
closely allied to the states which maintained it, — a
power in whose rapid growth, in whose affirmative and
dictatorial arrogance, and in the intellectual abdity and
even the moral excellences of the aristocracy which
administered it at the South, there was an appalling
menace. As well might one propose the admission to
political intimacy and national unity of a state whose
laws encouraged leprosy or required the funeral obla
tions of the suttee. If there were already slave states
in the confederacy, it was no less true that the nation
had profoundly suffered from their slavery. Nor could
all the phrases of constitutional lawyers make the slave-
block, the black laws, and all the practices of this bar
barism mere local peculiarities, distasteful perhaps to
the North but not concerning it, peculiarities to be
ranked with laws of descent or judicial procedure.

362 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Cass and Dickinson for their surrender to the South
were now called "doughfaces" and " slavocrats " by the
Democratic Freesoilers. They were the true " northern
men with southern principles."
The Barnburners met at Utica on February 16, an
earher day than that first appointed, John Van Buren
again being the chief figure. The convention praised
John A. Dix for supporting the Wilmot proviso ; and
declared that Benton, a senator from a slave state, but
now a sturdy opponent of extending the evil, and long
the warm friend and admirer of Van Buren, had " won
a proud preeminence among the statesmen of the day."
Delegates were chosen to the national convention to
oppose the Hunkers. In Aprd, 1848, the Barnburner
members of the legislature issued an address, the authors
of which were long afterwards disclosed by Samuel J.
Tilden to be himself and Martin and John Van Buren.
At great length it demonstrated the Free-soil principles
of the Democratic fathers.
The national convention assembled in May, 1848. It
offered to admit the Barnburner and Hunker delegations
together to cast the vote of the state. The Barnburners
rejected the compromise as a simple nullification of the
vote of the state, and then withdrew. Lewis Cass was
nominated for president, the Wilmot proviso being thus
emphatically condemned. For Cass had declared in
favor of letting the new territories themselves decide
upon slavery. The Barnburners, returning to a great
meeting in the City Hall Park at New York, cried,
" The lash has resounded tlirough the halls of the Capi
tol ! " and condemned the cowardice of northern sena
tors who had voted with the South. Among the letters
read was one from Franklin Pierce, who had in 1844

THE FREE-SOIL PARTY. 363
voted against annexation, a letter which years afterwards
was, with a reference to his famous friend and bio
grapher, called the " Scarlet Letter." The delegates
issued an address written by Tilden, fearlessly calling
Democrats to independent action. In June a Barnburner
convention met at Utica. Its president, Samuel Young,
who had refused at the convention at Baltimore in 1844
to vote for Polk when the rest of his delegation sur
rendered, said that if the convention did its duty, a clap
of political thunder would in November "make the pro
pagandists of slavery shake like Belshazzar." Butler,
John Van Buren, and Preston King, afterwards a Re
publican senator, were there. David Dudley Field read
an explicit declaration from the ex-president against the
action and the candidates of the national convention.
This letter, whose prolixity is an extreme illustration of
Van Buren's literary fault, created a profound impres
sion. He declared his " unchangeable determination
never again to be a candidate for public office." The
requirement by the national convention that the New
York delegates should pledge themselves to vote for any
candidate who might be nominated was, he said, an
indignity of the rankest character. The Virginia dele
gates had been permitted, without incurring a threat of
exclusion, to declare that they would not support a cer
tain nominee. The convention had not allowed the
Democrats of New York fair representation, and its acts
did not therefore bind them.
The point of political regularity, when discussed upon
a technical basis, was, however, by no means clear. The
real question was whether the surrender of the power
of Congress over the territories and the refusal to use
that power to exclude slavery, accorded with Democratic

364 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
principles. On this Van Buren was most explicit.
Jefferson had proposed freedom for the northwest terri
tories ; and all the representatives from the slaveholding
states had voted for the ordinance. Not only Washing
ton and the elder and younger Adams had signed bills
imposing freedom as the condition of admitting new
territories or states, but those undoubted Democrats,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, had signed
such bills ; and so had he himself in 1838 in the case of
Iowa. This power of Congress was part of " the com
promises of the Constitution," compromises which, "deep
ly penetrated " as he had been " by the convictions that
slavery was the only subject that could endanger our
blessed Union," he had, he was aware, gone further to
sustain against northern attacks than many of his best
friends approved. He would go no further. As the
national convention had rejected this old doctrine of the
Democracy, he should not vote for its candidate, General
Cass ; and if there were no other candidate but General
Taylor, he should not vote for president. If our ances
tors, when the opinion and conduct of the world about
slavery were very different, had rescued from slavery
the territory now making five great states, should we,
he asked, in these later days, after the gigantic efforts
of Great Britain for freedom, and when nearly all man
kind were convinced of its evils, doom to slavery a ter
ritory from which as many more new states might be
made. He counseled moderation and forbearance, but
still a firm resistance to injustice.
This powerful declaration from the old chief of the
Democracy was decisive with the convention. Van
Buren was nominated for president, and Henry Dodge,
a Democratic senator of Wisconsin, for vice-president.

THE FREE-SOIL PARTY. 3G5
Dodge, however, declined, proud though he would be,
as he said, to have his name under other circumstances
associated with Van Buren's. But his state had been
represented in the Baltimore convention ; and as one
of its citizens he cordially concurred in the nomination
of Cass. A national convention was called to meet at
Buffalo on August 9, 1848.
Charles Francis Adams, the son of John Quincy
Adams, presided at the Buffalo convention ; and in it
Joshua R. Giddings, the famous abolitionist, and Salmon
P. Chase were conspicuous. To the unspeakable horror
of every Hunker there participated in the deliberations a
negro, the Rev. Mr. Ward. Butler reported the resolu
tions in words whose inspiration is still fresh and ringing.
They were assembled, it was said, " to secure free soil
for a free people ;" the Democratic and Whig organiza
tions had been dissolved, the one by stifling the voice of
a great constituency, the other by abandoning its prin
ciples for mere availability. Remembering the example
of their fathers in the first declaration of independence,
they now, putting their trust in God, planted themselves
on the national platform of freedom in opposition to the
sectional platform of slavery ; they proposed no inter
ference with slavery in any state, but its prohibition in
the territories then free ; for Congress, they said, had
" no more power to make a slave than to make a king."
There must be no more compromises with slavery.
They accepted the issue forced upon them by the slave
power ; and to its demand for more slave states and
more slave territories, their calm and final answer was,
" no more slave states and no more slave territory." At
the close were the stirring and memorable words : " We
inscribe on our banner, Free Soil, Free Speech, Free

366 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Labor, and Free Men ; and under it we wiU fight on
and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward
our exertions."
Joshua Leavitt of Massachusetts, one of tlie " black
est " of abolitionists, reported to the convention the name
of Martin Van Buren for president. After the convention
was over, even Gerrit Smith, the ultra-abolitionist candi
date, declared that, of aU the candidates whom there
was the least reason to believe the convention would
nominate. Van Buren was his preference. The nomina
tion was enthusiastically made by acclamation, after
Van Buren had on an informal baUot received 159
votes to 129 cast for John P. Hale. A brief letter
from Van Buren was read, declaring that his nomina
tion at Utica had been against Ids earnest wishes ; that
he had yielded because his obligation to the friends, wdio
had now gone so far, required him to abide by their
decision that his name was necessary to enable " the
ever faithful Democracy of New York to sustain them
selves in the extraordinary position into which they have
been driven by the injustice of others ; " but that the
abandonment at Buffalo of his Utica nomination would
be most satisfactory to his feelings and wishes. The
exclusion of slavery from the territories was an object,
he said, " sacred in the sight of heaven, the accomplish
ment of which is due to the memories of tlie great and
just men long since, we trust, made perfect in its courts."
Charles Francis Adams was nominated for vice-presi
dent ; and dazzled and incredulous eyes beheld on a
presidential ticket with Martin Van Buren the son of
one of his oldest and bitterest adversaries. That adver
sary had died a few months before, the best of his
honors being his latest, those won in a querulous but
valiant old age, hi a fiery fight for freedom.

THE FREE-SOIL PARTY. 367
In September, John A. Dix, then a Democratic sena
tor, accepted the Free-soil nomination for governor of
New York. The Democratic party was aghast. The
schismatics had suddenly gained great dignity and
importance. Martin Van Buren, the venerable leader
of the party, its most famous and distinguished member,
this courtly, cautious statesman, — could it be he rushing
from that " honorable retirement," to whose safe retreat
his party had committed him with so deep an affection,
to consort with long-haired and wild-eyed abolitionists !
He was the arch " apostate," leading fiends of disunion
who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
Where now was his boasted loyalty to the party ? Rage
struggled with loathing. All the ancient stories told of
him by Whig enemies were revived, and believed by
those who had long treated them with contempt. It is
clear, however, that Van Buren's attitude was in no
wise inconsistent with his record. His party had never
pronounced for the extension of slavery ; nor had he.
The Buffalo convention was sdent upon abolition in the
District of Columbia. There was for the time in politics
but one question, and that was born of the annexation
of Texas, — Shall slavery go into free territory ? As
amid the clash of arms the laws are stiUed, so in the
great fight for human freedom, the independent treas
ury, the tariff, and internal improvements could no
longer divide Americans.
The Whigs had in June nominated Taylor, one of the
two heroes of the Mexican war. It is a curious fact
that Taylor had been authoritatively sounded by the
Free-soil leaders as to an acceptance of their nomina
tion. Clay and Webster were now discarded by their
party for this bluff soldier, a Louisiana slaveholder of

368 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
unknown politics ; and with entire propriety and perfect
caution the Whigs made no platform. A declaration
against the extension of slavery was voted down. Web
ster said at Marshfield, after indignation at Taylor's
nomination had a little worn away, that for " the leader
of the Free-spoil party " to " become the leader of the
Free-soil party would be a joke to shake his sides and
mine." The anti-slavery Whigs hesitated for a time ;
but Seward of New York and Horace Greeley in the
New York Tribune finally led most of them to Taylor
rather than, as Seward said, engage in " guerrilla war
fare " under Van Buren. Whigs must not, he added,
leave the ranks because of the Whig affront to Clay and
Webster. " Is it not," he finely, though for the occasion
sophistically, said, " by popular injustice that greatness
is burnished ? " This launching of the modern Repub
lican party was, strangely enough, to include in New
York few besides Democrats. In November, 1847, the
Liberty or Abolition party nominated John P. Hale for
president ; but upon Van Buren's nomination he was
withdrawn. Upon the popular vote in November, 1848, Van Buren
received 291,263 votes, while there were 1,220,544 for
Cass and 1,360,099 for Taylor. Van Buren had no
electoral votes. In no state did he receive as many
votes as Taylor ; but in New York, Massachusetts, and
Vermont he had more than Cass. The vote of New
York was an extraordinary tribute to his personal
power : he had 120,510 votes to 114,318 for Cass ; and
it was clear that nearly all the former came from the
Democratic party. In Ohio he had 35,354 votes, most
of which were probably drawn from the Whig abolition
ists. In Massachusetts he had 38,058 votes, in no small

POLITICAL CAREER ENDED. 369
part owing to the early splendor, the moral austerity and
the elevation of Charles Sumner's eloquence. " It is
not," he said, " for the Van Buren of 1838 that we are
to vote ; but for the Van Buren of to-day, — the vet
eran statesman, sagacious, determined, experienced, who,
at an age when most men are rejoicing to put off their
armor, girds himself anew and enters the lists as cham
pion of Freedom." Taylor had 163 electoral votes and
Cass 127.
The political career of Van Buren was now ended.
It is mere speculation whether he had thought his elec
tion a possible thing. That he should think so was very
unlikely. Few men had a cooler judgment of political
probabilities ; few knew better how powerful was party
/discipline in the Democratic ranks, for no one had done
more to create it ; few could have appreciated more
truly the Whig hatred of himself. Still the wakening
rush of moral sentiment was so strong, the bitterness of
Van Buren's Ohio and New York supporters had been
so great at his defeat in 1844, that it seemed not utterly
absurd that those two states might vote for him. If they
did, that dream of every third party in America might
come true, — the failure of either of the two great
parties to obtain a majority in the electoral college, and
the consequent choice of president in the house, where
each of them might prefer the third party to its greater
rival. Ambition to reenter the White House could
indeed have had but the slightest influence with him
when he accepted the Free-soil nomination, Nor was
his acceptance an act of revenge, as has very commonly
been said. The motives of a public man in such a case
are subtle and recondite even to himself. No distin
guished political leader with strong and publicly declared

370 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
opinions, however exalted his temper, can help uniting
in his mind the cause for which he has fought with his
own political fortunes. If he be attacked, he is certain
to honestly believe the attack made upon the cause
as well as upon himself. When his party drives him
from a leadership already occupied by him, he may sub
mit without a murmur ; but he will surely harbor the
belief that his party is playing false with its principles.
In 1848 there was a great and new cause for which Van
Buren stood, and upon which his party took the wrong
side ; but doubtless his zeal burned somewhat hotter, the
edge of his temper was somewhat keener, for what he
thought the indignities to himself and his immediate
political friends. To say this is simply to pronounce
him human. His acceptance of the nomination was
/ given largely out of loyalty to those friends whose
advice was strong and urgent. It was the mistake
which any old leader of a political party, who has
enjoyed its honors, makes in the seeming effort — and
every such political candidacy at least seems to be such
an effort ¦ — to gratify his personal ambition at its ex
pense. Van Buren and his friends should have made
another take the nomination, to which his support, how
ever vigorous, should have gone sorrowfully and reluc
tantly ; and the form as well as the substance of his rela
tions to the canvass should have been without personal
interest. Had Van Buren died just after the election of 1848
his reputation to-day would be far higher. He had
stood firmly, he had suffered politically, for a clear,
practical, and philosophical method and limitation of
government ; he had adhered with strict loyalty to the
party committed to this method, until there had arisen

POLITICAL CAREER ENDED 371
the cause of human freedom, which far transcended any
question still open upon the method or limits of govern
ment. With this cause newly risen, a cause surely not
to leave the political field except in victory, he was now
closely united. He might therefore have safely trusted to
the judgment of later days and of wiser and truer sighted
men, growing in number and influence every year. His
offense could never be pardoned by his former associates
at the South and their allies at the North. No confes
sion of error, though it were full of humiliation, no new
and affectionate return to party allegiance, could make
them forget what they sincerely deemed astounding
treason and disastrous sacrUege. Loyal remembrance of
his incomparable party services had irretrievably gone, to
be brought back by no reasoning and by no persuasion.
If he were to live, he should not have wavered from his
last position. Its righteousness was to be plainer and
plainer with the passing years.
Van Buren did live, however, long after his honorable
battle and defeat ; and lived to dim its honor by the
faltering of mistaken patriotism. In 1849 John Van
Buren, during the efforts to unite the Democratic party
in New York, declared it his wish to make it " the great
anti-slavery party of the Union." Early in 1850 and
when the compromise was threatened at Washington, he
wrote to the Free-soil convention of Connecticut that
there had never been a time when the opponents of
slavery extension were more urgently called to act with
energy and decision or to hold their representatives to a
rigid responsibility, if they faltered or' betrayed their
trust. With little doubt his father approved these utter
ances. A year later, however, the ex-president, with
nearly all northern men, yielded to the soporific which

372 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Clay in his old age administered to the American people.
In their support of the great compromise between slavery
and freedom, Webster and Clay forfeited much of their
fame, and justly. For though the cause of humanity
gained a vast political advantage in the admission of
California as a free state, the advantage, it was plain,
could not have been long delayed had there been no
compromise. But the rest of the new territory was
thrown into a struggle among its settlers, although the
power of Congress over the territories was not yet
denied ; and a fugitive-slave law of singular atrocity was
passed. All the famous northern Whigs were now true
" doughfaces." Fillmore, president through Taylor's
death, one of the most dignified and timid of their num
ber, signed the compromise bills.
The compromise being passed, Van Buren with al
most the entire North submissively sought to believe
slavery at last expelled from politics. It would have
been a wise heroism, it would have given Van Buren a
clearer, a far higher place with posterity, if after 1848
he had even done no more than remain completely aloof
from the timid politics of the time, if he had at least
refused acquiescence in any compromise by which con
cessions were made to slavery. But he was an old man.
He shared with his ancient and famous Whig rivals that
intense love and almost adoration of the Union, upon
which the arrogant leaders of the South so long and so
successfully played. The compromise was however ac
complished. It would perhaps be the last concession
to the furious advance of the cruel barbarism. The
free settlers in the new territories would, he hoped, by
their number and hardihood, defeat the incoming slave
owners, and even under " squatter sovereignty " save

POLITICAL CAREER ENDED. 373
their homes from slavery. If the Union should now
stand without further disturbance, all might still come
right without civil war. Economic laws, the inexorable
and beneficent progress of civilization, would perhaps
begin, slowly indeed but surely, to press to its death this
remnant of ancient savagery. But if the Union were to
be broken by a violation of the compromise, a vast and
irremediable catastrophe and ruin would undo all the
patriotic labors of sixty years, would dismiss to lasting
unreality the dreams of three generations of great men
who had loved their country. It seemed too appalling
a responsibility. Upon all this reasoning there is much unfair modern
judgment. The small number of resolute abolitionists,
who cared little for the Union in comparison with the
one cause of human rights, and whose moral fervor found
in the compromises of the Constitution, so dear and
sacred to all American statesmen, only a covenant with
hell, may for the moment be ignored. Among them
there was not a public man occupying politically re
sponsible or widely influential place. The vast body of
northern sentiment was in two great classes. The one
was led by men like Seward, and even Benton, who con
sidered the South a great bully. They believed that to
a firm front against the extension of slavery the South
would, after many fire-eating words, surrender in peace.
The other class included most of the influential men of
the day, some of them greater men, some lesser and
some little men. Webster, Clay, Cass, Buchanan, Marcy,
Douglass, Fillmore, Dickinson, were now joined by Van
Buren and by many Free-soil men of 1848 daunted at
the seeming slowness with which the divine mills were
grinding. They believed that the South, to assert the

374 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
fancied " rights " of their monstrous wrong, would accept
disunion and even more, that in this cause it would
fiercely accept aU the terrors of a civil war and its limit
less devastation. The event proved the first men utterly
in the wrong ; and it was fortunate that their mistake
was not visible until in 1861 the battle was irreversibly
joined. The second and more numerous class were
right. There had to be yielding, unless such evils were
to be let loose, unless Webster's "ideas, so full of all
that is horrid and horrible," were to come true. The
anxiety not to offend the South was perhaps most strik
ingly shown after the election of Lincoln. A distin
guished living statesman of the modern Republican party
has recently pointed out x that in February, 1861, the
Republican members of Congress, and among them
Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, acquiesced in
the organization of the new territories of Colorado, Da
kota, and Nevada, without any prohibition of slavery,
thus ignoring the very principle and the only principle
upon which their great battle had been fought and their
great victory won.
Complete truth dwelt only with the smaU and hated
abolitionist minority. Without honored and influential
leaders in political life they alone saw that war with all
these horrors was better, or even a successful secession
was better, than further surrender of human rights, a
surrender whose corruption and barbarism would cloud
all the glories, and destroy all the beneficence of the
Union. No historical judgment has been more unjust
and partial than the implied condemnation of Van Buren
for his acquiescence in Clay's compromise, while only
gentle words have chided the great statesmen whose
1 James G. Blaine's Twenty Years, vol. i. pp. 269, 272

IN RETIREMENT. 375
eloquence was more splendid and inspiring but whose
devotion to the Union was never more supreme than Van
Buren's, — statesmen who had made no sacrifice like his
in 1844, who in their whitening years had taken no
bold step like his in 1848, and who had in 1850 actively
promoted the surrender to which Van Buren did no
more than submit after it was accomplished.
In 1852 the overwhelming agreement to the compro
mise brought on a colorless presidential campaign,
fought in a sort of fool's paradise. Its character was
well represented by Franklin Pierce, the second Demo
cratic mediocrity raised to the first place in the party
and the land, and by the absurd political figure of Gen
eral Scott, fitly enough the last candidate of the decayed
Whig party. Both parties heartily approved the com
promise, but it mattered little which of the two candi
dates were chosen. The votes cast for John P. Hale,
the Free-soil candidate, were as much more significant
and honorable as they were fewer than those cast for
Pierce or Scott. Van Buren, in a note to a meeting
in New York, declared that time and circumstances
had issued edicts against his attendance, but that he
earnestly wished for Pierce's election. He attempted
no argument in this, perhaps the shortest political let
ter he ever wrote. But John Van Buren, in a speech
at Albany, gave some reasons which prevent much
condemnation of his father's perfunctory acquiescence
in the action of his party. The movement of 1848,
he said, had been intended to prevent the extension
of slavery. Since then, California had come in, a
free state, and not, as the South had desired, a slave
state ; and " the abolition of the slave market in the
District of Columbia was another great point gained."

376 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
The poverty of reasons was shown in the eager insist
ence that every member of Congress from New Hamp
shire had voted against slavery extension, and that the
Democratic party now took its candidate from that state
" without any pledges whatever."
After this election Van Buren spent two years in
Europe. President Pierce tendered him the position of
the American arbitrator upon the British-American
claims commission established under the treaty of Feb
ruary 8, 1853, but he declined. During his absence
the South secured the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise, and the practical opening
to slavery of the new territories north of the line of
36° 30'. If the settlers of Kansas, which lay wholly on
the free side of that compromise line, desired slavery,
they were to have it. But even this was not sufficient.
The hardy settlers of this frontier, separated though
they were by the slave state of Missouri from free soil
and free influences, would, it now seemed, pretty cer
tainly favor freedom. The ermine of the supreme court
had, therefore, to be used to sanctify with the Dred
Scott decision the last demand of slavery, inconsistent
though it was with the claims of the South from the
time when it secured the Missouri Compromise until
Calhoun grimly advanced his monstrous propositions.
Slavery was to be decreed a constitutional right in all
territories, whose exercise in them Congress was without
power to prohibit, and which could not be prevented
even by the majority of their settlers until they were
admitted as states.
Van Buren came back to America when there was still
secret within the judicial breast the momentous decision
that the American flag carried human slavery with it

IN RETIREMENT. 377
to conquered territory as a necessary incident of its
stars and stripes, and that Congress could not, if it
would, save the land to freedom. Van Buren voted for
Buchanan ; a vote essentially inconsistent with his free-
soil position, a vote deeply to be regretted. He still
thought that free settlers would defeat the intention of
the Kansas-Nebraska act, and bring in, as they after
wards did, a free though bleeding Kansas. There was
something crude and menacing in this new Republican
party, and in its enormous and growing enthusiasm.
It was hard to believe that its candidate had been seri
ously selected for chief magistrate of the United States.
Fremont probably seemed to Van Buren a picturesque
sentimentalist leading the way to civil war, which, if it
were to come, ought, so it seemed to this former sena
tor and minister and president, to be led in by serious
and disciplined statesmen. The new party was repul
sive to him as a body chiefly of Whigs ; old and bitter
adversaries whom he distrusted, with hosts of camp-
followers smelling the coming spoils. All this a young
man might endure, when he saw the clear fact that the
Republican convention, ignoring for the time all former
differences, had pronounced not a word inconsistent
with the Democratic platform of 1840, and had made
only the one declaration essential to American freedom
and right, that slavery should not go into the territories.
Van Buren was not, however, a young man, or one of
the few old men in whom a fiery sense of morality, an
eager and buoyant resolution, go unchilled by thinner
and slower blood, and indomitably overcome the con
servative influences of age. A bold outcry from him,
even now, would have placed him for posterity in one
of the few niches set apart to the very greatest Ameri-

378 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
cans. But since 1848 Van Buren had come to seventy-
four years.
Invited to the Tammany Hall celebration of Inde
pendence Day, he wrote, on June 28, 1856, a letter in
behalf of Buchanan. There was no diminution in ex
plicit clearness ; but hope was nearly gone ; the peril of
the Union obscured every other danger ; the South was
so threatening that patriotism seemed to him to require
at the least a surrender to all that had passed ; and for
the future our best reliance would be upon a fair vote
in Kansas between freedom and slavery. He could not
come to its meeting, he told Tammany HaU, because of
his age. He had left one invitation unanswered; and
if he were so to leave another, he might be suspected
of a desire to conceal his Sentiments. But this letter
should be his last, as it was his first, appearance in the
canvass. He was glad of the Democratic reunion ; for
although not always perfectly right, in no other party
had there been " such exclusive regard and devotion to
the maintenance of human rights and the happiness and
welfare of the masses of the people." There was a
touch of age in his fond recitals of the long services of
that party since, in Jefferson's days, it had its origin
with " the root-and-branch friends of the republican
system ; " of its support of the war of 1812 ; of its
destruction of the national bank ; of its establishment
of an independent treasury. But slavery, he admitted,
was now the living issue. Upon that he had no regrets
for his course. He had always preferred the method
of dealing with that institution practiced by the found
ers of the government. He lamented the recent depar
ture from that method ; no one was more sincerely
opposed than himself to the repeal of the Missouri Com-

IN RETIREMENT. 379
promise. He had heard of it, and had condemned it in
a foreign land ; he had there foreseen the disastrous
reopening of the slavery agitation. But the measure was
now accomplished ; there was no more left than to decide
what was the best now to do. The Kansas-Nebraska
act had, he said, gradually become less obnoxious to
him ; though this impression, he admitted, might result
from the unanimous acquiescence in it of the party in
which he had been reared. Its operation, he trusted,
would be beneficial ; and he had now come to believe
that the feelings and opinions of the free states would
be more respected under its provisions than by specific
congressional interference. He did not doubt the power
of Congress to enable the people of a territory to ex
clude slavery. Buchanan's pledge to use the presiden
tial power to restore harmony among the sister states
could be redeemed in but one way ; and that was, to
secure to the actual settlers of the territory a " full,
free, and practical enjoyment " of the rights of suffrage
on the slavery question conferred by the act. He
praised Buchanan, if not exuberantly, still sufficiently.
He must, Van Buren thought, be solicitous for his rep
utation in the near " evening of his life." He believed
that Buchanan would redeem his pledge, and should
therefore cheerfully support him. If Buchanan were
elected, there were " good grounds for hope " that the
Union might be saved. Such was this saddening and
despondent letter. It was a defense of a vote which
it was rather sorry work that he should have needed
to make. But the tramp of armies and the conflagra
tion of American institutions were heard and seen in the
sky with terrifying vividness. The letter secured,
however, no forgiveness from the angry South. The

380 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
" Richmond Whig " said : " If there is a man within
the limits of the republic who is cordially abhorred and
detested by inteUigent and patriotic men of aU parties at
the South, that man is Martin Van Buren."
Many of the best Americans shared Van Buren's dis
trust of Fremont and of those who supported Fremont ;
they shared his love of peace and his fear of that blood
shed, north and south, which seemed the dismal El
Dorado to which the "path -finder's " feet were surely
tending. So the majority of the northern voters
thought ; for those north of Mason and Dixon's line
who divided themselves between Buchanan and Fill
more, the candidate of the " Silver Gray " Whigs, con
siderably outnumbered the voters for Fremont.
In 1860 Van Buren voted for the union electoral
ticket which represented in New York the combined
opposition to Lincoln. Every motive which had influ
enced him in 1856 had now increased even more than
his years. The Republican party was not only now
come bringing, it seemed, the torch in fuU flame to
light an awful conflagration ; but in its second national
convention there became obvious upon the tariff ques
tion the preponderance of the Whig elements, which
made up the larger though not the more earnest or
efficient body of its supporters.
After Van Buren's return from Europe in 1855, he
lived in dignified and gracious repose. This complete
and final escape from the rush about him had often
seemed in his busy strenuous years full of delight. But
doubtless now in the peaceful pleasures of Lindenwald
and in the occasional glimpses of the more crowded
social life of New York which was glad to honor him,
there were the regrets and slowly dying impatience, the

IN RETIREMENT. 381
sense of isolation, which must at the best touch with
some sadness the later and well-earned and even the
best-crowned years. At this time he began writing
memoirs of his life and times, which were brought down
to the years 1833—1834 ; but they were never revised
by him and have not been published. Out of this work
grew a sketch of the early growth of American parties,
f which was edited by his sons and printed in 1867. Its
pages do not exhibit the firm and logical order which
was so characteristic of Van Buren's earlier political
compositions. It was rather the reminiscence of the
political philosophy which had completely governed
him. With some repetitions, but in an easy and
interesting way, he recalled the far-reaching political
differences between Jefferson and Hamilton. In these
chapters of his old age are plain the profound and
varied influences which had been exercised over him by
the great founder of his party, and his unquenchable
animosity towards " the money power " from the days
of the first secretary of the treasury to its victory of
" buffoonery " in 1840. In one chapter, with words
rather courtly but still not to be mistaken, he condemns
Buchanan for a violation of the principles of Jefferson
-and Jackson in accepting the Dred Scott decision as
a rule of political action ; and this the more because
its main conclusion was unnecessary to adjudge Dred
Scott's rights in that suit, and because its announcement
was part of a political scheme. Chief Justice Taney
and Buchanan, Van Buren pointed out, though raised
to power by the Democratic party, had joined it late in
life, " with opinions formed and matured in an antag
onist school." Both had come from the Federalist
ranks, whose political heresy Van Buren believed to be
hopelessly incurable.

382 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
At the opening of the civil war Van Buren's ani
mosity to Buchanan's behavior became more and more
marked. He strongly sympathized with the uprising
of the North ; and sustained the early measures of Lin
coln's administration. But he was not to see the dread
ful but lasting and benign solution of the problem of
American slavery. His life ended when the fortunes
of the nation were at their darkest ; when McClellan's
seven clays' battles from the Chickahominy to the James
were just over, and the North was waiting in terror
lest his troops might not return in time to save the
capital. For several months he suffered from an asth
matic attack, which finally became a malignant catarrh,
causing him much anguish. In the latter days of his
sickness his mind wandered ; but when sensible and col
lected he still showed a keen interest in public affairs,
expressed his confidence in President Lincoln and Gen
eral McClellan, and declared his faith that the rebellion
would end without lasting damage to the Union.
On July 24, 1862, he died, nearly eighty years old,
in the quiet summer air at Lindenwald, the noise of bat
tles far away from his green lawns and clumps of trees.
In the ancient Dutch church at Kinderhook the simple
funeral was performed ; and a great rustic gathering
paid the last and best honor of honest and respectful
grief to their old friend and neighbor. For his fame
had brought its chief honor to this village of his birth,
the village to which in happy ending of his earthly career
he returned, and where through years of well-ordered
thrift, of a gentle and friendly hospitality, and of in
teresting and not embittered reminiscence, he had been
permitted " To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose."

CHAPTER XII.
van buren's character and place in history.
In the engraved portrait of Van Buren in old age,
prefixed to his History of Parties, are plainly to be seen
some of his traits, — the alert outlooking upon men, the
J bright, easy good-humor, the firm, self-reliant judgment.
Inman's painting now in the City Hall of New York,1
gives the face in the prime of life, — the same shrewd,
kindly expression, but more positively touched with that
half cynical doubt of men which almost inevitably belongs
to those in great places. The deep wrinkles of the old
and retired ex-president were hardly yet incipient in the
smooth, prosperous, almost complacent countenance of
the governor. In the earlier picture the locks flared
outwards from the face, as they did later ; as yet, how
ever, they were dark and a bit curling. His form was
always slender and erect, but hardly reached the middle
height, so that to his political enemies it was endless
delight to call him " Little Van."
In the older picture one sees a scrupulous daintiness
about the ruffled shirt and immaculate neckerchief ; for
Van Buren was fond of the elegance of life. The Whigs
used to declare him an aristocrat, given to un-American,
to positively British splendor. Very certainly he never
affected contempt for the gracious and stately refinement
1 An engraving of this portrait accompanies Holland's biogra
phy, written for the campaign of 1836.

384 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
suited to his long held place of public honor, that con
tempt which a silly underrating of American good sense
has occasionally commended to our statesmen. At Lin
denwald, among books and guests and rural cares, he
led what in the best and truest sense was the life of a
country gentleman, not set like an urban exotic among
the farmers, but fond of his neighbors as they were fond
of him, and unaffectedly sharing without loss of distinc
tion or elegance their thrifty and homely cares. When
he retired to this home he was able, without undignified
or humiliating shifts, to live in ease and even affluence.
For in 1841 his fortune of perhaps $200,000 was a
generous one. His last days were not, like those of
Jefferson and Monroe and Jackson, embittered by
money anxieties, the penalty of the careless profusion the
temptation to which, felt even by men wise in the affairs
of others, is often greater than the certain danger and
unwisdom of its indulgence. But no suggestion was*
breathed against his pecuniary integrity, public or pri
vate. Nor was there heard of him any story of wrong
or oppression or ungenerous dealing.
Van Buren's extraordinary command of himself was
apparent in his manners. They are finely described
from intimate acquaintance by William Allen Butler,
the son of Van Buren's long-time friend, in his charming
and appreciative sketch printed just after Van Buren's
death. They had, Mr. Butler said, a neatness and polish
which served every turn of domestic, social, and public
intercourse. " As you saw him once, you saw him al
ways — always punctilious, always polite, always cheer
ful, always self-possessed. It seemed to anyone who
studied this phase of his character as if, in some early
moment of destiny, his whole nature had been bathed in

CHARACTER. 385
a cool, clear, and unruffled depth, from winch it drew
this life-long serenity and self-control." An accomplished
English traveler, " the 'author of Cyrd Thornton," who
saw him while secretary of state, and before he had been
abroad, said that he had more of " the manner of the
world" than any other of the distinguished men at
Washington ; that in conversation he was " fuU of anec
dote and vivacity." Chevalier, one of our French critics,
in his letters from America described him as setting up
" for the American Talleyrand." John Quincy Adams,
as has been said, sourly mistook all this, and even the
especial courtesy Van Buren paid him after his political
downfall, as mere proof of insincerity ; and he more than
once compared Van Buren to Aaron Burr, a comparison
of which many Democrats were fond after 1848. In his
better natured moments, however, Adams saw in his ad
versary a resemblance to the conciliatory and philosophic
Madison. For his " extreme caution in avoiding and
averting personal collisions," he called him another Sosie
of Moliere's Amphitryon, " ami de tout le monde."
Van Buren's skiU in dealing with men was indeed
^extraordinary. It doubtless came from this temper of
amity, and from an inborn genius for society ; but it had
been wonderfuUy sharpened in the unrivaled school of
New York's early politics. When he was minister at
London, he wrote that he was making it his business to
be cordial with prominent men on both sides ; a branch
of duty, he said, in which he was not at home, because
he had all his life been " wholly on one side." But he
was jocosely unjust to himself. He was, for the politics
of his day, abundantly fair to his adversaries. Some
times indeed he saw too much of what might be said on
the other side. Had he seen less, he would sometimes

386 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
have been briefer, less indulgent in formal caution. Nor
did he fail to avoid the unnecessary misery caused to
many public men, the obstacles needlessly raised in their
way, by personal disputes, or by letting into negotiations
matters of controversy irrelevant to the thing to be done.
Patience in listening, a steady and singularly acute ob
servance of the real end he sought, and a quick, keen
reading of men, saved him this wearing unhappiness so
widespread in public life. Once he thus criticised his
friend Cambreleng : " There is more in small matters
than he is always aware of, although he is a really sen
sible and useful man." In this maxim of lesser things
Van Buren was carefully practiced. During the Jackson-
Adams campaign, the younger Hamilton was about send
ing to some important person an account of the general.
Van Buren knowing of this wrote to Hamilton, and,
after signing his letter, added : " P. S. — Does the old
gentleman have prayers in his own house ? If so, men
tion it modestly."
His self-command was not stilted or unduly precise or
correct. He was very human. A candidate for gover
nor of New York would to-day hardly write to another
public man, however friendly to him, as Van Buren in
August and September, 1828, wrote to Hamilton. " Bet
on Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois," he said, "jointly
if you can, or any two of them ; don't forget to bet all
you can." But this was the fashion of the day.1 His
1 The mania for election betting among public men was very
curious. In the letters and memoranda printed by Mackenzie, the
bets of John Van Buren and Jesse Hoyt are given in detail. They
ranged from $5,000 to $50 ; from "3 cases of champagne" or
" 2 bales of cbtton, " to "boots, $7," or " a bam, S3." They
were made with the younger Alexander Hamilton, James Watson
Webb, Moses H. Grinnell, John A. King, George F. Talman,
Dudley Selden, and other notable men of the time.

CHARACTER. 387
life was entirely free from the charges of dissipation or
of irregular habits, then so commonly, and often truly,
made against great men. This very correctness was
part of the offense he gave his rivals and their followers.
It would hardly be accurate to describe him, even in
younger years, as jovial with his friends ; but he was
perfectly companionable. Of a social and cheerful tem
per, he not only liked the decorous gaiety of receptions
and public entertainment, but was delighted and delight
ful in closer and easier conversation and in the chat of
familiar friends. His reminiscences of men are said to
have been full of the charm which flows from a strong
natural sense of humor, and a correct and vivid memory
of human action and character.
There are many apocryphal stories of Van Buren's
craft or cunning or selfishness in politics. It is a curi
ous appreciation with which reputable historians have
received such stories from irresponsible or anonymous
sources ; for they deserve as little credence as those told
of Lincoln's frivolity or indecency. To them all may
not only be pleaded the absence of any proof deserving
respect, but they are refuted by positive proof, such as
from earliest times has been deemed the best which pri
vate character can in its own behalf offer to history.
In politics Van Buren enjoyed as much strong and con
stant friendship as he encountered strong and constant
hatred. Nothing points more surely to the essential
soundness of life and the generosity of a public man
than the near and long-continued friendship of other
able, upright, and honorably ambitious men. It was an
extraordinary measure in which Van Buren enjoyed
friendship of this quality. With all the light upon his
character, Jackson was too shrewd to suffer long from im-

388 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
position. His intimacy with Van Buren for twenty years
and more was reaUy affectionate ; his admiration for
the younger statesman was profound. The explanation
is both unnecessary and unworthy, which ascribes to
hatred of Clay all Jackson's ardor in the canvass of
1840 or his almost pathetic anxiety for Van Buren's
nomination in 1844. Their peculiar and continuous
association for six years at Washington had so power
fully established Van Buren in his love and respect,
that neither distant separation nor disease nor the nearer
intrigues and devices of rivals could abate them. Those
who were especially known as Van Buren men, those
who not only stood with him in the party but who went
/with him out of it, were men of great talents and of the
highest character. Butler's career closely accompanied
Van Buren's. Both were born at Kinderhook ; they
were together in Hudson, in Albany, in Washington ;
they were together as BucktaUs, as Jacksonian Demo
crats, as Free-soU men ; they were close to one another
from Butler's boyhood until, more than a half-century
later, they were parted by death. To this strong-headed
and sound-hearted statesman, we are told by WiUiam
Allen Butler, in a fine and weUnigh sufficient eulogy,
that Van Buren was the object of an affection true and
steadfast, faithful through good report and evil report,
loyal to its own high sense of duty and affection, tender
and generous. Benton, liberal and sane a slaveholder
though he was, did not approve the Wilmot proviso, or
join the Free-soil revolt. But in retirement and old
age, reviewing his " Thirty years," during twenty of
which he and Van Buren had, spite of many differences,
remained on closely intimate terms, he showed a deep
liking for the man. SUas Wright, Azariah C. Flagg,

CHARACTER. 389
and John A. Dix, all strong and famous characters in
the public life of New York, were among the others
of those steadily faithful in loyal and unwavering re
gard for this political and personal chief. Nor were
they deceived. Jackson and Butler, Wright and Flagg
and Dix, sturdy, upright, skiUful, experienced men of
affairs, were not held in true and lifelong friendship
and admiration by the insinuating manners, the clever
management, the selfish and timid aims, which make
the Machiavellian caricature of Van Buren so often
drawn. No American in public life has shown firmer
and longer devotion to his friends. His reputation for
statesmanship must doubtless rest upon the indisputable
facts of his career. But for his integrity of life, for his
sincerity, for his fidelity to those obligations of political,
party, and personal friendship, within which lies so much
of the usefulness as well as of the singular charm of
public life, his relations with these men make a proof
not to be questioned, and surely not to be weakened by
the malicious or unfathered stories of political warfare.
For the absurdly sinister touch which his political
enemies gave to his character, it is difficult now to find
any just reason. It may be that the cool and impertur
bable appearance of good-nature, with which he received
the savage and malevolent attacks so continuaUy made
upon him, to many seemed so impossible to be real as
to be sheer hypocrisy ; 1 and from the fancy of such hy-
1 One of the latest and most important historians of the time,
after saying that ' ' nothing ruffled ' ' Van Buren, is contented
with a different explanation from mine. Professor Sumner says
that "he was thick-skinned, elastic, and tough; he did not win
confidence from anybody." But within another sentence or two
the historian adds, as if effect did not always need adequate
cause, that " as president he showed the honorable desire to have

390 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
pocrisy it was easy for the imagination to infer all the
arts and characteristics of deceit. Doubtless the elabo
rate caution of Van Buren's political papers irritated
impatient and angry opponents. They found them full
of elaborate and subtle reservations, as they fancied,
against future political contmgencies ; a charge, it ought
to be remembered, which is continuaUy made against the
ripest, bravest, and greatest character in English politics
of to-day or of the century. Van Buren's reasoning
was perfectly clear, and his style highly finished. But
he had not the sort of genius which in a few phrases
states and lights up a political problem. The complex
ity of human affairs, the danger of short and sweeping
assertions, pressed upon him as he wrote ; and the ampli
tude of his arguments, sometimes tending to prolixity,
seemed timid and lawyer-like to those who disliked his
conclusions. Van Buren was not, however, an unpopular man,
except as toward the last his politics were unpopular as
politics out of sympathy with those of either of the great
parties, and except also at the South, where he was soon
suspected and afterwards hated as an anti-slavery man.
He was on the whole a strong candidate at the polls.
In his own state and at the northeast his strength with
the people grew more and more until his defeat by the
slaveholders in 1844. Perhaps the most striking proof
of this strength was the canvass of 1848, when in New
York he was able to take fuUy half of his party with him
into irregular opposition, a feat with hardly a precedent
in our political history. And there was complete reci
procity. Van Buren was profoundly democratic in his
a statesmanlike and high-toned administration." (Sumner's Jack
son, p. 384.)

HIS POLITICAL CREED. 391
convictions. He thoroughly, honestly, and without dema
gogy believed in the common people and in their com
petence to deal wisely with political difficulties. Even
when his faith was tried by what he deemed the mis
takes of popular elections, he still trusted to what in
a famous phrase of his he called " the sober second
thought of the people." 1
However widely the student of history may differ
from the politics of Van Buren's associates, the politics
of Benton, Wright, Butler, and Dix, and in a later rank
of his New York disciples, of Samuel J. TUden and
Sanford E. Church, it is impossible not to see that their
political purpose was at the least as long and steady as
their friendship for Van Buren. Love for the Union, i
a belief in a simple, economical, and even unheroic gov
ernment, a jealousy of taking money from the people,
and a scrupulous restriction upon the use of public
moneys for any but public purposes, a strict limitation
of federal powers, a dislike of slavery and an opposition .
to its extension, — these made up one of the great and/
fruitful political creeds of America, a creed which had^*
ardent and hopeful apostles a half century ago, and
which, save in the articles which touched slavery and
are now happUy obsolete, wdl doubtless find apostles no
less ardent and hopeful a half century hence. Each of
its assertions has been found in other creeds ; but the
entire creed with all its articles made the peculiar and
"^ powerful faith only of the Van Buren men. As history
gradually sets reputations aright, the leader of these
1 This expression was not original with Van Buren, as has been
supposed. It was used by Fisher Ames in 1788 ; and Bartlett's
Quotations also gives a still earlier use of part of it by Matthew
Henry in 1710.

392 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
men must justly wear the laurel of a statesman who,
apart from his personal and party relations and ambi
tions, has stood clearly for a powerful and largely tri
umphant cause.
No vague, no thoughtless rush of popular Sentiment
touched or shook this faith of Van Buren. Had there
been indeed a readier emphasis about him, a heartier
and quicker sympathy with the temper of the day, he
would perhaps have aroused a popular enthusiasm, he
might perhaps have been the hero which in fact he
never was. But his intellectual perceptions did not
permit the subtle self-deceit, the enthusiastic surrender
to current sentiment, to which the striking figures that
delight the masses of men are so apt to yield. Van
Buren was steadfast from the beginning to the end, save
when the war threats of slavery alarmed his old age and
the sober second thought of a really patient and resolute
people seemed a long time coming. Two years before
his death Jefferson wrote to Van Buren an elaborate
sketch of his relations with Hamilton and of our first
party division. Two years before his own death Van
Buren was finishing a history of the same political divi
sion written upon the theory and in the tone running
through Jefferson's writings. It was composed by Van
Buren in the very same temper in which he had respect
fully read the weighty epistle from the great apostle of
Democracy. Between the ending life at MonticeUo and
that at Lindenwald, the political faith of the older man
had been steadily followed by the younger.
The rise of the " spoils " system, and the late coming,
but steadily increasing perception of its corruptions and
dangers, have seriously and justly dimmed Van Buren's
fame. But history should be not less indulgent to him

HIS CHARACTER. 393
than to other great Americans. The practical politics
which he first knew had been saturated with the abuse.
He did no more than adopt accustomed means of politi
cal warfare. Neither he nor other men of his time per
ceived the kind of evil which political proscription of
men in unpolitical places must yield. They saw the
undoubted rightfulness of shattering the ancient idea
that in offices there was a property right. They saw
but too clearly the apparent help which the powerful
love of holding office brings to any political cause, and
which has been used by every great minister of state
the world over. Van Buren had, however, no love of
patronage in itself. The use of a party as a mere
agency to distribute offices would have seemed to him
contemptible. In neither of the great executive places
which he held, as governor, secretary of state, or presi
dent, did he put into an extreme practice the proscrip-
tive rules which were far more rigorously adopted about
him. To his personal temper not less than to his con
ceptions of public duty the inevitable meanness and
wrong of the system were distasteful.
Chief among the elements of Van Buren's public
character ought to be ranked his moral courage and the
explicitness of his political utterances, — the two qualities
which, curiously enough, were most angrily denied him
by his enemies. His weU-known Shocco Springs letter
of 1832 on the tariff was indeed lacking in these quali
ties ; but he was then not chiefly interested. There was
only a secondary responsibility upon him. But it is not
too much to say that no American in responsible and
public station, since the days when Washington returned
from his walk among the miserable huts at Valley Forge
to write to the Continental Congress, or to face the petty

394 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
imbecilities of the jealous colonists, has shown so com
plete a political courage as that with which Van Buren
faced the crisis of 1837, or in which he wrote his famous
Texas letter. Nor did any American, stirred with am
bition, conscious of great powers, as was this captain of
politicians, and bringing aU bis political fortunes, as he
must do, to the risks of universal suffrage, ever meet
living issues dangerously dividing men ready to vote for
him if he would but remain quiet, with clearer or more
decided answers than did Van Buren in his Sherrod
Williams letter of 1836 and in most of his chief pubhc
utterances from that year untd 1844. The courtesies
of his manner, his fadure in trenchant brevity, and even
the almost complete absence of invective or extravagance
from his papers or speeches, have obscured these capital
virtues of his character. He saw too many dangers ;
and he sometimes made it too clear that he saw them.
But upon legitimate issues he was among the least timid
and the most explicit of great Americans. No presi
dent of ours has in office been more courageous or more
direct. It is perhaps an interesting, it is at least a harmless
speculation, to look for Van Buren's place of honor in
the varied succession of meri who have reached the first
office, though not always the first place, in American
public life. Every student wiU be powerfuUy, even
when unconsciously, influenced in this judgment by the
measure of strength or beneficence he accords to differ
ent political tendencies. With this warning the present
writer wiU, however, venture upon an opinion.
Van Buren very clearly does not belong among the
mediocrities or accidents of the White House, — among
Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, FUlmore, and

HIS PLACE IN HISTORY. 395
Pierce, not to meddle with the years since the civU war
whose party disputes are still part of contemporary
politics. Van Buren reached the presidency by politi
cal abilities and public services of the first order, as the
most distinguished active member of his party, and with
a universal popular recognition for years before his
promotion that he was among the three or four Ameri
cans from whom a president would be naturally chosen.
Buchanan's experience in pubhc life was perhaps as
great as Van Buren's, and his political skill and distinc
tion made his accession to the presidency by no means
unworthy. But he never led, he never stood for a
cause ; he never led men ; he was never chief in his
party ; and in his great office he sank with timidity be
fore the slaveholding aggressors, as they strove with ven
geance to suppress freedom in Kansas, and before the
menaces and open plunderings of disunion. Van Buren
showed no such timidity in a place of equal difficulty.
Jackson stands in a rank by himself. He had a
stronger and more vivid personality than Van Buren.
But useful as he was to the creation of a powerful senti
ment for union and of a hostility to the schemes of a
paternal government, it is clear that in those qualities of
steady wisdom, foresight, patience, which of right be
long to the chief magistracy of a republic, he was far in
ferior to his less picturesque and less forceful successor.
The first Adams, a man of very superior parts, com
petent and singularly patriotic, was deep in too many
personal collisions within and without his party, and his
presidency incurred too complete and lasting, and it must
be added, too just a popular condemnation, to permit it
high rank, though very certainly he belonged among
neither the mediocrities nor the accidents of the White
House.

396 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
If to the highest rank of American presidents be as
signed Washington, and if after him in it come Jefferson
and perhaps Lincoln (though more than a quarter of a
century must go to make the enduring measure of his
fame), the second rank would seem to include Madison,
the younger Adams, and Van Buren. Between the first
and the last of these, the second of them, as has been
said, saw much resemblance. But if Madison had a
mellower mind, more obedient to the exigencies of the
time and of a wider scholarship, Van Buren had a firmer
and more direct courage, a steadier loyalty to his politi
cal creed, and far greater resolution and efficiency in the
performance of executive duties. If one were to imitate
Plutarch in behalf of John Quincy Adams and Van Bu
ren, he would need largely to compare their rival politi
cal creeds. But leaving these, it wdl not be unjust to
say that in virile and indomitable continuance of moral
purpose after official power had let go its trammels, and
when the harassments and feebleness of age were inex
orable, and though the heavens were to fall, the younger
Adams was the greater ; that in executive success they
were closely together in a high rank ; but that in skill
and power of political leadership, in breadth of political
purpose, in freedom from political vagaries, in personal
generosity and political loyalty, Van Buren was easily
the greater man.
Van Buren could not approach the massive and for
cible eloquence of Webster, or the more captivating
though fleeting speech of Clay, or the delightful warmth
of the latter's leadership, or the strength and glory which
their very persons and careers gave to American nation
ality. But in the persistent and fruitful adherence to a
political creed fitted to the time and to the genius of the

BIS PLACE IN HISTORY. 397
American people, in that noble art which gathers and
binds to one another and to a creed the elements of a
political party, the art which disciplines and guides the
party, when formed, to clear and definite purposes, with
out wavering and without weakness or demagogy,
Van Buren was a greater master than either of those
men, in many things more interesting as they were. In
this exalted art of the politician, this consummate art
of the statesman, Van Buren was close to the greatest
of American party leaders, close to Jefferson and to
Hamilton. In his very last years the stir and rumbling of war
left Van Buren in quiet recollection and anxious loyalty
at Lindenwald. As his growing Ulness now and then
spared him moments of ease, his mind must sometimes
have turned back to the steps of his career, senator of
his state, senator of the United States, governor, first
cabinet minister, foreign envoy, vice-president, and presi
dent. There must again have sounded in his ears the
hardly remembered jargon of Lewisites and Burrites,
Clintonians and Livingstonians, Republicans and Feder
alists, Bucktails and Jacksonians and National Republi
cans, Democrats and Whigs, Loco-focos and Conserva
tives, Barnburners and Hunkers. There must rapidly
though dimly have shifted before him the long series of
his struggles, — struggles over the second war with
England, over internal improvements, the Bank, nuUifi-
cation, the divorce of bank and state, the resistance to
slavery extension. Through them all there had run,
and this at least his memory clearly recalled, the one
strong faith of his politics and statesmanship. In all his
labors of office, in aU his multifarious strifes, he never
faltered in upholding the Union. But not less firmly

398 MARTIN VAN BUREN.
would this true disciple of Jefferson restrain the activi
ties of the federal government. Whatever wisdom,
whatever integrity of purpose might belong to ministers
and legislators at Washington, — though the strength of
the United States might be theirs, and though they were
panoplied in the august prestige rightly ascribed by
American patriotism to that sovereign title of our Na
tion, — still Van Buren was resolute that they should
not do for the people what the states or the people them
selves could do as weU. To his eyes there was clear and
undimmed from the beginning to the close of his career,
the idea of government as an instrument of useful pub
lic service, and not as an object of superstitious venera
tion, the idea but two years after his death clothed with
memorable words by a master in brief speech, the dem
ocratic idea of a " government of the people, by the
people, for the people."

INDEX.

Abolition. See Slavery ; Anti-Slavery
Literature ; District of Columbia.
Adams, Charles Francis, 365, 366.
Adams, John Quincy, favors Missouri
Compromise, 79 ; opinions of Van
Buren, 91, 135, 338, 339, 385 ; nat
ural choice of New York Republi
cans for presidency, 93 ; chosen
president, 98, 99 ; initiates modern
party divisions, 102-105, 141 ; oppo
sition to, 136-138 ; opinions on crisis
of 1837, 287 j votes against stoppage
of surplus distribution, 289 ; in New
Jersey contest in House, 321, 322;
as president pressed claims for es
caped slaves, 326 ; character, 396.
Alamo, defense of, 306.
Anti-Masons, 209, 210.
Anti- Slavery literature, circulation
of, 235-238.
Auckland, Lord, 195.
Bancroft, George, 310, 348.
Bank of the United States, Jackson's
hostility to, 173; removal of depos
its from, 213-217, 253, 254; Van
Buren pronounces against its rees-
tablishment, 228 ; resolution of Con
gress against reestablishment, 291 ;
resists resumption, 298; final fall,
299.
Banks, 144, 145, 253-257 ; suspension
of, 274 ; resumption of, 292, 293,298.
Barnburners, 354-363.
Barry, 'William T., 152, 153, 170.
Bell, John, 289.
Bennett, James Gordon, 194.
Benton, Thomas H., 80, 82, 90, 117,
180, 236, 353, 357, 373, 388.
Berrien, John M., 152, 153, 170.
Betting among public men, 386, /*.,
387.
Biddle, Nicholas, 273.
Bidwell, Marshall S., 301.
Blair, Francis P., 1G3, 164, 289.
Branch, John, 152, 153, 170.

British Colonial Trade, 121, 185-190.
Bryant, William Cullen, 354.
Buchanan, James, 336, 373, 395.
Bucktails, 56, 94.
Burr, Aaron, 15, 24, 36, 37.
Butler, Benjamin F., 17, 95, 218, 243,
336, 349, 355, 363, 388, 389.
Cabinet, Van Buren's, 243, 336, 337.
Calhoun, John C, 80, 153; opposes
Van Buren's appointment in Jack
son's cabinet, 154 ; feud with Jack
son, 157-1G0 ; toast on Jefferson's
birthday, 160 ; opposes Van Bu
ren's confirmation as minister to
England, 200 ; opposes Van Buren's
election to presidency, 223, 237 ; re
joins Democratic party, 291 ; en
counter with Clay, 296.
Cambreleng, Churchill C, 134, 358,
386.
Canadian insurrection, 300-306.
"Caroline," seizure and burning of
steamer, 303.
Cass, Lewis, 170.
Caucus of 1824, 97.
Chase, Salmon P., 365.
Cherokees, 173.
Classification bill, 52.
Clay, Henry, 80 ; coalition with Ad
ams, 98, 99 ; promotes Panama mis
sion, 104 ; opposition to his confir
mation as secretary of state, 105,
112 ; promotes party division, 13G ;
opposes Van Buren's confirmation
as minister to England, 197-199 ;
denunciation of removal of deposits,
216 ; on bill against circulation of
abolition literature, 236 ; advocates
liberal appropriations, 256, and dis
tribution of surplus, 257, 258 ; op
poses postponement of distribution,
2S9, and issue of treasury notes,
290, 291 ; encounter with Calhoun,
296 ; opposition to independent
treasury, 296 ; opposes preemption

400

INDEX.

by settlers, 306 ; in campaign of
1840, 327, 329, 330 ; estimate of Van
Buren, 339 ; defeated in 1844, 352 }
Texas letter, 353, 372, 373.
Clinton, De Witt, 41, 43, 49, 50, 54,
56, 64, 93, 94, 97, 126.
Clinton, George, 34.
Clintonians, 37.
Cobb, Thomas W., 92.
Colonial trade, 121, 185-190.
" Comet," case of the brig, 196.
Constitutional convention of 1821, 65-
73.
Council of appointment, 38, 40-42, 68,
69.
Council of revision, 70, 71.
Court for correction of errors, 19.
Crawford, William H., 80, 81, 88, 90,
91, 97, 118, 158.
Crisis of 1837, 242-277, 292, 293 ; crisis
returns in 1839, 317-319.
Crockett, Davy, 219, 306.
Croswell, Edwin, 95.
Cushing, Caleb, 287, 288.
Dallas, George M., 351.
Democratic conventions : in 1832, 202-
205 ; in 1836, 220-222 ; in 1840, 324,
325 ; in 1S44, 345, 348-351 ; at Syra
cuse in 1847, 357.
Democratic party, 132, 136-138, 172.
Dickerson, Mahlon, 110, 243.
Dickinson, Daniel S., 349, 355, 356,
360, 373.
District of Columbia, abolition of slav
ery in, 233-235, 244, 326.
Dix, John A., 95, 355, 367, 389.
Dodge, Henry, 364, 365.
Dred Scott decision, 376.
Dudley, Charles E., 95.
Durham, Earl of, 304, 305.
Eaton, John H., 152, 153, 170.
Eaton, Mrs., episode of, 154-157.
Edmonds, John W., 354.
Elections : in 1824, 90-98 ; in 1828,
131-141 ; in 1832, 211-213 ; in 1836,
223-225, 238-240; in 1837, 293; in
1838, 310, 311 ; in 1839, 310, 317 ; in
1840, 323-335 ; in 1844, 352, 353 ; in
1848, 368, 369.
Electors, presidential, choice of, in
New York, 94.
Equal Rights party, 293-295.
Era of good feeling, 75.
Erie Canal, 55.
Expunging resolution, 229.
Federalists, 32.
Field, David Dudley, 354, 357.
Fillmore, Millard, 372, 373, 394.

Flagg, Azariah C, 95, 355, 388, 389.
Florida war, second, 312-314.
Forrest, Edwin, 309.
Forsyth, John, 218, 243.
Free-soil convention at Buffalo, 365,
366.
Gallatin, Albert, 97.
Garland, Hugh A., 320-322.
Giddings, Joshua R., 365.
Giles, William B., 132.
Gilpin, Henry D., 336.
Granger, Francis, 223.
Greeley, Horace, 368.
" Green bag " message, 64.
Green, Dull, 103.
Grundy, Felix, 336.
Hale, John P., 375.
Hamilton, Alexander, 39.
Hamilton, James A., 151, 154, 175, 386.
Harrison, WiUiam Henry, 222, 323,
326, 331, 343, 394.
Hayne, Robert Y., 84, 85, 86, 105, 108,
123, 127, 160, 197.
Head, Sir Francis B., 302, 304.
" High-minded " Federalists, 62.
Hill Isaac 164.
Hoyt, Jesse, 27 j 162, 177, 179, 312, 313.
Hoyt, Lorenzo, 178.
Hunkers, 354.
Hunter, Robert M. T., 322.
Imprisonment for debt, 22, 84, 99.'?'
Inauguration and inaugural of Van
Buren, 242-245.
Independent treasury, 2S2-289, 296-
298, 322, 323.
Inflammatory literature, circulation
of, 235-238.
Ingham, Samuel D., 152, 153, 170.
Internal improvements, 81-84, 100,
103, 104, 112, 113, 121, 172, 173.
Irving, Washington, 192-194, 309, 310.
Jackson, Andrew, 53 ; urges Monroe
to exterminate party spirit, 76, 80 ;
course on tariff, 84, 88, 90, 101, 105,
112, 174 ; course on internal im
provements, 132 ; elected president,
143; feud with Calhoun, 157-160,
163 ; favors Van Buren as his suc
cessor, 161, 162, 168 ; sends strong
Union letter to Charleston, 169 ;
political opinions, 133, 171 ; contest
with U. S. Bank, 173, 213-217;
opinions on removals, 182 ; reply to
New York Democrats on Van
Buren's rejection, 201 ; reelection,
212, 213; nullification proclamation,
213 ; leaves Washington, 242 ; Van

INDEX.

401

Buren's tribute to, 245 ; aids Van
Buren in 1840, 331 ; letter on Texas,
345, 346 ; supports Van Buren's re
nomination, 348, 351 ; death, 355 ;
386, 3S7, 3S8, 3S9 ; his character, 395.
Jay, John, 41.
Jefferson's birthday celebration in
1830, 160.
Jefferson, Thomas, influence on Van
Buren, 3, 10, 11, 397, 398 ; his cre
ative work in American politics,
3-10 ; letter to Giles, 132 ; letter to
Van Buren, 391, 396.
Johnson, Richard M., 85, 222.
Judges, political power with, 71, 72 ;
Van Buren's opinions of, 114-117.
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 376.
Kendall, Amos, 163, 170, 178, 235, 236,
243, 336.
Kent, James, 25, 37, 70.
King, Rufus, 58-61, 80, 84, 86, 89, 99.
King, Preston, 363.
"Kitchen cabinet," 164.
Knower, Benjamin, 95.
Kremer, George, 221.
Land bill, 225.
Land-owners in America and England,
28,29.
Lawrence, Abbott, 275.
Lawyers in America and England,
28,29.
Legal profession in America, 16, 28.
Leggett, "William, 232, 235.
Lewisites, 37.
Lewis, Morgan, 35, 37.
Lewis, William B., 158, 164.
Lindenwald, 340.
Liviugston, Brockholst, 35, 37.
Liviugston, Edward, 35, 165, 166, 170,
213.
Livingston, Robert R. , 34.
Livingston family, 34.
Livingstonians, 37.
Loco-focos, 293-295.
Mackenzie, William L., 279, ¦«. ; 302,
303, 305.
Madison, James, 396.
Manners, American, 9.
Manning, Darnel, 96.
Marcy, WiUiam L., 58, 95, 199, 259,
355, 356, 373.
McLane, Louis, 170, 188, 189, 191,
218
McLean, John, 152, 153, 177.
Medcef Eden litigation, 24.
Mexican war, 354.
Mexico, claims against, 296, 309.
Missouri compromise, 62, 77, 79, 37b.

Monroe, James, 75, 76, 81, 82, 158,
394.
Morton, Marcus, 349.
Napoleon, Louis, 311.
Navy Island, seizure of, 303.
New Jersey, disputed election of
representatives from, 320, 322.
Newspapers, political importance of,
163, 164.
Niles, John M., 337.
Northeast boundary question, 295, 315.
Nullification, 157, 160, 169, 213.
Office, property in, 46.
Olcott, Thomas W., 95.
Osceola, 314.
Panama mission, 105, 112.
Paper money system, 245.
Parties reestablished, 102, 136, 172.
Patronage, Benton's report on, 117-
119 ; Van Buren's use of, as gov
ernor, 148, as secretary of state,
182, 183.
Paulding, James K., 309-311.
People's party, 93, 94.
" Peter Allen " legislature, 54, 55.
Pierce, Franklin, 362, 375, 395.
Poinsett, Joel R., 243.
Politics, American, at , beginning of
Van Buren's career, 3-11.
Politics of New York, 32-57 ; family
influence in, 36 ; in 1824, 92.
Polk, James K. , 289, 351, 352, 356, 394.
Preston, William C, 329.
Proscription for political opinion. See
" Spoils System."
Quids, 37.
Regency, Albany, 95, 96.
Removals from office. See " Spoils
System."
Removal of deposits, 213-217, 253-255.
Richmond, Dean, 96.
Riot in New York in 1837, 270.
Rives, William C, 222, 297, 329.
Rochester, William B., 126.
Rotation in office, 46. See "Spoils
System."
Rush, Richard, 137.
"Safety Fund" system of banking,
145.
Sanford, Nathan, 64, 65.
Scott, Winfield S., 304, 375.
Seminole war, 313-315.
Senate, federal, from 1821 to 1828, 127.
Seward, William H., 101, 142, 258,
368, 373.

402

INDEX.

Seymour, Horatio, 96.
Sherrod WilUams' letter, 226-229.
Shocco Springs letter, 208, 393.
Slavery, American opinion of, at be
ginning of Van Buren's senatorship,
77, 79; Van Buren's views on, 79,
80 ; rise of abolition agitation, 230-
234 ; in District of Columbia, 233-
235 ; circulation of abolition litera
ture, 235-238 ; first mentioned by
Van Buren in a presidential inaugu
ral, 244 ; with reference to Texas,
308, 309 ; in Democratic platform of
1840, 324 ; petitions against, 325,
326 ; from Missouri Compromise to
Texas agitation, 344 ; becomes the
chief issue, 353 ; in territories ac
quired from Mexico, 357.
Smith, Gerrit, 366.
Soft Hunkers, 356.
Songs in campaign of 1840, 332, 333.
Southwick, Solomon, 142.
Specie circular, 260, 261, 267.
Spencer, Ambrose, 37, 41, 43.
Spencer, John C, 149.
" Spoils System," rise of, in New
York, 38-48 ; Van Buren's responsi
bility for, in national politics, 152,
177-183, 199 ; in campaign of 1840,
331, 392, 393.
Stevenson, Andrew, 221.
Sub-treasury biU. See Independent
Treasury.
Suffrage, extension of, in New York,
65-68.
Sumner, Charles, 369.
Sumner, WiUiam G., his estimate of
Van Buren, 389.
Surplus distribution, 227, 228, 257-
259, 270, 289.
Swartwout, Samuel, 177, 312, 313.
Talcott, Samuel A., 95.
Tallmadge, Nathaniel P., 297.
Taney, Roger B., 218.
Tariff question, in 1824, 84-89 ; in 1826-
1827, 120 ; "tariff of abominations,"
122, 123 ; change in views of Jack
sonian democracy on, 174, 175 ; Van
Buren's views on, in 1832, 208, 209 ;
in 1832, 211.
Taylor, Zachary, 367, 394.
Tenure of office, law of, 1820, 118, 119.
Texas, 296, 307, 308, 353.
Thompson, Smith, 35, 37, 142.
Tilden, Samuel J., 11, 96, 355, 363.
Tompkins, Daniel D., 37, 38, 57, 65.
Treasury notes, issue of $10,000,000 of,
289, 290.
Two-thirds rule, 204, 349, 350.
Tyler, John, 223, 323, 343, 344, 394.

Van Alen, James I., 15.
Van Buren, Abraham, 12.
Van Buren, Abraham, the younger,
338
Van Buren, John, 1, 358, 3C3, 371.
Van Buren, Lawrence, 358.
Van Buren, Martin, personal appear
ance, 1, 383 ; popular judgment of,
in later years, 2, 3 ; descent and
early home, 12, 13 ; birth, 13 ; edu
cation, 13, 14 ; law-student, 14, 15 ;
in New York city, meets Burr, 15 ;
admitted as attorney, 15 ; profes
sional career, 16-31 ; pecuniary suc
cess, 16, 26, 384 ; rivahy with Elisha
Williams, 17 ; admitted as counsel
lor, 18 ; marriage, 18 ; surrogate, 18,
19, 38 ; removes to Hudson, 19 ;
member of Court of Errors, 19 ; at
torney-general, 20 ; removes to Al
bany, 20 ; opinion in caBe of " es
cape," and hostiUty to imprisonment
for debt, 21-23 ; counsel in Medcef-
Eden case, 24 ; attacks Chancellor
Kent's opinion, 25 ; professional
ability, 27 ; death of Mrs. Van Bu
ren, 31 ; entrance into politics, 33 ;
participation in "spoils system,"
45, 49 ; elected state senator, 44 ;
reelected state senator, 49 ; sup
ports Clinton for presidency, 49 ;
opinions and services in war with
England, 50-53; political relations
with Clinton dissolved, 50-54 ; at
torney-general, 53 ; regent of the
University, 55 ; votes for construc
tion of Erie Canal, 55 ; removed from
attorney-generalship, 57 ; aids Gov
ernor Tompkins, 57 ; promotes Ru
fus King's election, 58-61 ; votes in
1820 against slavery extension, 63
presidential election, 63 ; asks foi
removals of postmasters, 63, 64
chosen United States senator, 64
constitutional convention, 65-74
his "non-committalism," 66, 129
discussions with Chancellor Kent
70; views on slavery, 79, 80, 100
112, 113 ; opposition to internal im
provements by federal government,
82, 83 ; protectionist in 1824, 84r-89 :
urges constitutional amendment as
to election of president, 89, 90, 113 ;
supports Crawford, 90, 97 ; inclina
tion at first to Adams, 91 ; nomina
tion by Georgia for vice-presidency,
92 ; opposition leader in Congress,
100, 104, 105, 113, 114 ; treatment of
Adams's administration, 105 ; op
poses Panama mission, 107-110 ; pro
poses constitutional amendment as

INDEX.

403

to internal improvements, 112 ;
chairman of judiciary committee,
314; opinions of judges, 114-117;
receives votes for president pro tern.
of senate., 117 ; participates in Ben
ton's report on patronage, 117 ;
course upon the tariff, 120, 208, 209 ;
votes for " tariff of abominations,"
122 ; speech on power of the vice-
president, 123-125 ; reelected sena
tor, 125 ; speech on De Witt Clin
ton's death, 126 ; as a parliamentary
speaker, 128-130 ; promotes union
of Crawford and Jackson support
ers, 134 ; southern trip, 135 ; gov
ernor of New York, 142-150 ; his
gubernatorial patronage, 148, 149 ;
secretary of state, 151 ; share in the
Eaton episode, 156, 157 ; rivalry with
Calhoun, 157-160 ; toast at Jeffer
son's birthday celebration, 160 ; can
didate for succession to Jackson,
161 ; opinion of Jackson, 162 ; rela
tions with newspapers, 163, 164 ; re
signs from the cabinet, 166-168 ; per
sonal relations with Jackson, 175,
176 ; opinions on removals, 178, 182,
183 ; foreign negotiations, 184-189 ;
minister to England, 191-197 ; Ir
ving's opinion of, 193 ; rejection of,
by the Senate, 195, 197-202; de
spatches from London, 196, 197 ; re
turns to New York, 197 ; nominated
for vice-president, 204; accepts nom
ination, 206 ; Shocco Springs letter,
208 ; writes Democratic-Republican
young men, 209 ; elected vice-presi
dent, 212 ; speech at Philadelphia,
213 ; apostrophized by Clay, 216 ;
permanent residence in Washington,
217 ; visits New England with Jack
son, 218 ; nominated for presidency,
219-222 ; letter to Sherrod Williams,
226-229 ; letter accepting presiden
tial nomination, 229, 230 ; declares
against abolition in District of Co
lumbia, 235 ; letter to Samuel Gwin,
233 ; votes for bill prohibiting circu
lation of anti-slavery literature, 237 ;
elected president, 238-241 ; inaugu
rated, 243 ; his cabinet, 243, 309-
311, 336; inaugural address, 243-
245 ; interview with New York mer
chants in crisis of 1837, 272, 273;
summons Congress, 275 ; Von Hoist's
opinions of, 278, 347, n. ; meets extra
session, 279 ; message to extra ses
sion, 280-284; message to regular
session of 1837, 295 ; issues procla
mation against American invaders
of Canada, 303 ; message of Decem

ber, 1838, 312 ; action on northeast
boundary question, 315 ; trip
through New York, 316, 317 ; mes
sage of December, 1839, 319, 320;
signs independent treasury bill, 323 ;
in campaign of 1840, 325, 326, 330 ;
declares "gag" rule justified, 325;
defeat, 334, 335 ; message of Decem
ber, 1840, 335 ; welcomes Harrison,
337 ; social administration of White
House, 337-339 ; Clay's estimate of,
339 ; retires to Lindenwald, 340 ;
candidate for Democratic renomina
tion, 341-351 ; visits the South, and
Clay and Jackson, 342 ; his Texas
letter, 346-348 ; defeated for renom
ination, 350 ; supports Polk, 354 ;
sympathizes with Barnburner defec
tion from the Democratic party,
358 ; letter to Barnburner conven
tion at Utica, 363, 364 ; nominated
for presidency at Utica, 364 ; letter
to Free-soil convention, 366 ; defeat
in 1848, and end of political career,
368, 369 ; yields to Clay compromise
of 1850, 371 ; supports Pierce, 375 ;
revisits Europe, 376 ; tendered ap
pointment as international arbitra
tor, 376; supports Buchanan, 377-
379 ; opposes election of Lincoln,
380 ; literary work in retirement,
381 ; death, 382 ; person, character,
and place in history, 383-398.
Van Buren, Mrs., 18, 31.
Van Ness, William P., 36.
Von Hoist, H., estimate of Van Buren,
278, 347, n.
Walker, Robert J., 348.
War with England, 49.
Washington's opinion on party ap
pointments, 39.
Watkins, Tobias, 180, 181.
Webster, Daniel, 80 ; views on tariff
in 1824, 85 ; speech on Panama mis
sion, 111, 112, 160 ; speech on Van
Buren's rejection as minister to
England, 197-199 ; on removal of
the deposits, 216 ; on bill against cir
culation of abolition literature, 236 ;
share in crisis of 1837, 256, 285 ; on
surplus distribution, 257, 286, 289 ;
on specie circular, 285 ; on bill for
issuance of treasury notes, 290 ; on
independent treasury, 296 ; favors
preemption of public lands by actual
settlers, 306 ; in campaign of 1840,
327-329 ; remains in Tyler's cabinet
after resignation of his colleagues,
343 ; opinion of law about circula-
I tion of abolition literature, 345 ; on

404

INDEX.

Van Buren and the Free-soil party,
368, 372, 373.
Weed, Thurlow, 323.
Whig conventions : in 1831, 210 ; in
1840, 323, 324.
White, Hugh L., 219, 220.
William IV., 196.
Williams, Elisha, 17.
Wilmot, David, 356, 358.

Wilmot proviso, 355-357.
Wirt, William, 142.
Woodbury, Levi, 170, 243.
Wright, Silas, 95, 237, 258, 351, 353,
355, 356, 388, 3S9.
Young Men's National Republican
Convention, 211.
Young, Samuel, 350, 363.

"American statesmen.
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