Martin Van Buren Part 10

There were cries of "fraud and corruption" because of this enormously increased vote, cries which Benton long afterwards seriously heeded; but there seems to be no good reason to treat them otherwise than as one of the many expressions 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 Congress 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 economy in the management of public affairs," he said, "can have no adverse influence to contend with more powerful than a large surplus revenue." Again he attacked the national bank scheme. During four years of the greatest pecuniary embarra.s.sments ever known in time of peace, with a decreasing public revenue, with a formidable 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 government would not speedily discharge. If the public service 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 sanction 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 sustained in private business, either by direct appropriations or by legislation designed to secure exclusive privileges to individuals or cla.s.ses. In the very last words of this, his last message, he gave an account of his efforts to suppress the slave trade, and to prevent "the prost.i.tution of the American flag to this inhuman purpose," asking Congress, by a prohibition of the American trade which took supplies to the slave factories on the African coast, to break up "those dens of iniquity."

The short session of Congress was hardly more than a jubilee of the Whigs, happily ignorant of the complete chagrin and frustration of their hopes which a few months would bring. Some new bank suspensions occurred in Philadelphia, and among banks closely connected with that city. The Bank of the United States, after a resumption for twenty days, succ.u.mbed amid its own loud protestations of solvency, its final disgrace and ruin being, however, deferred a little longer.

Van Buren's cabinet had somewhat changed since his inauguration. In 1838 his old friend and ally, and one of the chief champions of his policy, Benjamin F. Butler, resigned the office of attorney-general, but without any break political or personal, as was seen in his fine and arduous labors in the canva.s.s of 1840 and in the Democratic convention of 1844.

Felix Grundy of Tennessee 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 doctrinaire convictions, narrow prejudices, executive ability, 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 more wearing in public than in private service. He stated that as he was poor he should resort to private employment suitable to his health; and that he proposed, therefore, during the canva.s.s to write for the "Globe" in defense of the President, in whose integrity, principles, and firmness 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. Niles, 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 mansion was administered with elevated grace. There was about it, while he was its master, 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 parsimony; 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 impoverished 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.[17] Returning to private life, he was spared the humiliation of pecuniary trouble, which had distressed three at least of his predecessors. But with his exquisite sense of propriety, he had not failed to order the White House with fitting decorum and a modest state. His son Abraham Van Buren was his private secretary; and after the latter's marriage, in November, 1838, to Miss Singleton 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 bitterness 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 observed the etiquette of never being the guest of others at Washington. Judge Story mentions the "splendid dinner"

given by the President to the judges in January, 1839.

John Quincy Adams's diary bears unintended testimony to Van Buren's admirable personal bearing in office. From the time he reached Washington as secretary 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, and elsewhere. At a social party the President, he said, "was, as usual, courteous to all, and particularly to me." Van Buren had therefore every reason to suppose that there was between himself and Adams a not unfriendly personal esteem. But Adams, in his churlish, bitter temper, apparently found in these wise and generous civilities only evidence of a mean spirit. After one visit at the White House during the height of the crisis of 1837, he recorded that he found Van Buren looking, not wretched, as he had been told, but composed and tranquil. Returning home from this observation of the President's "calmness, his gentleness of manner, his easy and conciliatory temper," this often unmannerly pen described besides "his obsequiousness, his sycophancy, his profound dissimulation and duplicity, ... his fawning civility." In a pa.s.sage which was remarkable in that time of political bitterness so largely personal, Clay said, in his parliamentary duel with Calhoun, after the latter rejoined the Democratic party, that he remembered Calhoun attributing to the President the qualities of "the most crafty, most skulking, and the meanest of the quadruped tribe." Saying that he had not shared Calhoun's opinion, he then added of Van Buren:--

"I have always found him in his manner and deportment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly; and he dispenses in the n.o.ble mansion which he now occupies, one worthy the residence of the chief magistrate of a great people, a generous and liberal hospitality.

An acquaintance with him of more than twenty years' duration has inspired me with a respect for the man, although I regret to be compelled to say, I detest the magistrate."

CHAPTER XI

EX-PRESIDENT.--SLAVERY.--TEXAS ANNEXATION.--DEFEAT BY 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 American 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. Before the electoral votes were counted in 1841, Benton declared for his renomination in 1844; and until the latter year he again held the interesting and powerful but critical place of the probable candidate of his party for the presidency. He remained easily the chief figure in the Democratic ranks. His defeat had not taken from him that honor which is the property of the statesman standing for a cause whose righteousness and promise belong to the a.s.sured future. His defeat signified no personal, no political fault. It had come to him from a widespread convulsion for which, perhaps less than any great American of his time, he was responsible. His party could not abandon its battle for a limited and non-paternal government and against the use of public moneys by private persons. It could not therefore abandon him; for more than any other man who had not now finally retired he represented these causes in his own person. But his easy composure of manner did not altogether hide that eating and restless anxiety which so often attends the supreme ambition of the American.

Two days after leaving the White House, Van Buren said, in reply to complimentary resolutions of the legislature of Missouri, that he did not utterly lament the bitter attacks upon him; for experience had taught him that few political men were praised by their foes until they were about abandoning their friends. With a pleasing frankness he admitted that to be worthy of the presidency and to reach it had been the object of his "most earnest desire;" but he said that the selection of the next Democratic candidate must be decided by its probable effect upon the principles for which they had just fought, and not upon any supposition that he had been wounded or embittered by his defeat in their 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 Hermitage. 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 protection 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 candidate 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 importance, shall never be at the disposal of any person whatever, for the purpose of creating distractions or divisions in the Democratic party."

The party was indeed known as the "Van Buren party" until 1844, so nearly universal was the supposition that he was to be renominated, and so plainly was he its leader. The disasters which had now overtaken the Whigs made his return to power seem probable enough. The utterly incongruous elements held together during the sharp discontent and wonderful but inarticulate enthusiasm of 1840 had quickly fallen apart.

While on his way to Kinderhook Van Buren was the chief figure in the obsequies at New York of his successful compet.i.tor. This honest man, of whom John Quincy Adams said, with his usual savage exaggeration, that his dull sayings were repeated for wit and his grave inanity pa.s.sed off for wisdom, had already quarreled with the splendid leader whose place he was too conscious of usurping. Tyler's accession was the first, but not the last ill.u.s.tration, which American politicians have had of the danger of securing the presidency by an award of the second place to a known opponent of the principles whose success they seek. Tyler had not before his nomination concealed his narrow and Democratic views of government. The Whigs had ostentatiously refused to declare any principles when they nominated him. In technical conscientiousness he marched with a step by no means cowardly to unhonored political isolation, as a quarter of a century later marched another vice-president nominated by a party in whose ranks he too was a new recruit.

Upon Tyler's veto of the bill for a national bank, an outcry of agony went up from the Whigs; the whole cabinet, except Webster, resigned; a new cabinet was formed, partly from the Conservatives; and by 1844, Tyler was a forlorn candidate 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 a.s.sured to him by every consideration of party loyalty, obligation, and wise foresight. 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 American 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 tremendous 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 abolitionists; 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, 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 prohibited their circulation, and his approval of the rules in the Senate and House for tabling or refusing abolition pet.i.tions 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 might of itself properly restrain him from acquiescing in an agitation in Congress for measures which, with all responsible public men, Adams included, he believed Congress ought not to pa.s.s.

The Democratic convention was to meet in May, 1844. The delegates had been very generally instructed for Van Buren; and two months before it a.s.sembled his nomination seemed beyond doubt. But the slave States were now fired with a barbarous enthusiasm to extend slavery by annexing Texas. To this Van Buren was supposed to be hostile. 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 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 a.s.sured 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 Americans and American inst.i.tutions 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 Southern fellow-citizens, "of whom it was aptly and appropriately said by one of their own number that 'they are 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 been fully discussed, a Congress chosen with reference to the question showed the popular will to favor it, he would yield.[18] 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 question, for the unworthy purpose of increasing my chances for political promotion."

To a presidential candidate the eve of a national convention is dim with the self-deceiving twilight of sophistry; 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 Buren did neither of these. His Texas letter was one of the finest and 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 regard 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 a.s.sured. But the work of Calhoun and Robert J. Walker had been too well done. The convention met at Baltimore on May 27, 1844. George Bancroft headed the delegation from Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 instructions to vote for him. Robert J. Walker, then a senator from Mississippi, a man of interesting history and large 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. d.i.c.kinson, and Marcus Morton led the Northern ranks. Butler regretted that any member should condescend to the allusion to 1840. That year, he said, had been a debauchery of the nation's reason amid log cabins, hard cider, and c.o.o.n-skins; and in an ecstasy of painful excitement at the recollection and amid a tremendous burst of applause "he leaped from the floor and stamped ... as if treading beneath his feet the object of his loathing." The true Democratic rule, he continued, required the minority to submit to the majority. Morton said that under the majority rule Jefferson 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 prevailed 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, Clay would be elected.

After the convention had received with enthusiasm a floral gift from a Democratic lady whom the President declared to be fairer than the flowers, the vote was taken. The two thirds rule was adopted by 148 to 118. All the negatives were Northerners, except 14 from Missouri, Maryland, and North Carolina. Fifty-eight true "Northern men with Southern principles" joined ninety Southerners in the affirmative. It was really a vote on Van Buren,--or rather upon the annexation of Texas,--or rather still upon the extension 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 followed 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 "mongrel administration at Washington," whose hero was now doubtless fiddling while Rome was burning. Nero seems to have been Calhoun, though between the G.o.d-like young devil of antiquity wreathed with sensual frenzy and infamy, and the solemn, even saturnine figure of the great modern advocate of human slavery, the likeness seemed rather slight. The motion was declared out of order; and the name of James K. Polk was presented as that of "a pure whole-hogged Democrat." On the eighth ballot he had 44 votes. Then followed the magnanimous scene of "union and harmony" 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 withdrawal 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. d.i.c.kinson said that "he loved this convention because it had acted so like the ma.s.ses," 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 telegraph 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, nominated for the vice-presidency, to soothe the feelings and the conscience of the defeated. Wright peremptorily telegraphed his refusal. He told his friends that he did "not choose to ride behind on the black pony." George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania took his place.

The Democratic party now threw away all advantage 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. Polk's was the first nomination by the party of a man 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 Ca.s.s, Buchanan, Wright, and others. He was the first presidential "dark horse," and indeed hardly that. His own State of Tennessee had, by resolution, 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 defeated 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 selection."

The nomination aroused disgust enough. "Polk! Great G.o.d, 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 5000 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 election. Van Buren's friends saved the State; but in 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 personal relations between the two great party leaders were most friendly, some have inferred an arrangement between them to take the question out of politics. This would indeed have been an extraordinary occurrence. One might well wish to have overheard a negotiation between two rivals for the presidency to exclude a great question distasteful to both. After the Democratic convention, 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 Missouri, 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 losing enough votes in New York to Birney to defeat him. After the election the current for annexation seemed too strong; and a resolution pa.s.sed both Houses authorizing 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 line, slavery was to be prohibited; but in those south of it slavery was to be permitted 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 ill.u.s.trious fellow-citizen," "his inflexible fidelity to the Const.i.tution," his "ability, integrity, and firmness," and had tendered to him, "in honorable retirement," the a.s.surance of the 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 Ca.s.s, 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 politically 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 canva.s.s of 1844 a circular had been issued by William Cullen Bryant, David Dudley Field, John W. Edmonds, and other Van Buren men, supporting Polk, but urging the choice of congressmen opposed to annexation. 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 Barnburners were led by men of really eminent ability and exalted character: Silas Wright, then governor, Benjamin 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. d.i.c.kinson 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 Barnburners. 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 Department, 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 perhaps 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 annexation of Texas had now brought. Samuel J. Tilden of Columbia county, and a profound admirer of Van Buren, became one of their younger leaders.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Silas Wright]

Now arose the strife over the "Wilmot Proviso," in which was embodied the opposition to the extension of slavery into new Territories. Upon this proviso the modern Republican party was formed eight years later; upon it, fourteen years later, Abraham Lincoln was chosen president; and upon it began the war for the Union, out of whose throes came the vastly grander and unsought beneficence of complete emanc.i.p.ation. David Wilmot was a Democratic member of Congress from Pennsylvania; in New York he would have been a Barnburner. In 1846 a bill was pending to appropriate $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, supported the proviso. The Democratic legislature approved it by the votes of the Whigs with the Barnburners and the Soft Hunkers, the latter being Hunkers less friendly to slavery. It pa.s.sed the House at Washington, but was rejected by the Senate, not so quickly open to popular sentiment. In the Democratic convention of New York, in October, 1846, the "war for the extension 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 d.i.c.kinson, 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 national administration. Just before the adjournment of Congress in 1847, the appropriation to secure territory 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 California, and that upon their cession the principles of international law would preserve their condition of freedom. Benton, therefore, deemed the Wilmot Proviso unnecessary; a "thing of nothing in itself, and seized upon to conflagrate the States and dissolve the Union." For the Supreme Court had not then p.r.o.nounced slavery a necessary accompaniment of American supremacy. But the legal protection of freedom was practically unsubstantial, 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 munic.i.p.al or international law; and their conquest, therefore, made imminent a decision of the vital question whether slavery should be still further extended.

At the Democratic convention at Syracuse, in September, 1847, the Hunkers, after a fierce struggle over contested seats, seized control of the body. David Dudley Field, for the Barnburners, proposed a resolution that, although the Democracy of New York would faithfully adhere to the compromises of the Const.i.tution 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 Barnburners 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 ma.s.s meeting at Herkimer, on October 26, "to avow their principles and consult as to future action." The Herkimer convention was really an important preliminary to the formation of the modern Republican party.

It was a gathering of the ex-President's friends. Cambreleng, his old a.s.sociate, presided; David 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 a.s.sent to the extension of slavery, the Democrats of New York would proclaim their determination to vote for no candidate who did so a.s.sent.

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 character of the politics of Polk's administration in denying official recognition or reward to Barnburners,--legitimate 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 its vision, the sense of personal wrong which, since Polk's nomination, had been so long held in magnanimous and dignified restraint,--though of this he was probably 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 confirmed 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 ability, he had "no heart burnings to be allayed and no resentments to be gratified 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 a.s.surance of the election it would bring, he should not "hesitate respectfully and gratefully, but decidedly to 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 inst.i.tuting inquiries into the necessity of its occurrence, so as to fix the just responsibility to public opinion of public 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-committal."

In the New York canva.s.s of 1847, the Barnburners, after their secession, "talked of indifferent matters." The Whigs were therefore completely successful. In the legislature the Barnburners, or "Free-soilers" as they began to be called, outnumbered the Hunkers. d.i.c.kinson proposed in the Senate at Washington a resolution, the precursor of Douglas's "squatter sovereignty,"--that all questions concerning the domestic policy of the Territories should be left to their legislatures to be chosen by their people. Lewis Ca.s.s, now the coming candidate of the South, a.s.serted in December, 1847, the same proposition, pointing out that, if Congress could abolish the relation of master and servant in the Territories, it might in like manner treat the relation of husband and wife. After this "Nicholson letter" of his, Ca.s.s might well have been asked whether he would have approved the admission of a State where the last relation was forbidden, and where concubinage existed as a "domestic inst.i.tution." d.i.c.kinson'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 incident in the polity of the State, a matter of taste or convenience, the proposition would have been true enough. But euphemistic talk about "domestic inst.i.tutions" 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, 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 ability 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 oblations 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 const.i.tutional lawyers make the slave-block, the black laws, and all the practices of this barbarism mere local peculiarities, distasteful perhaps to the North but not concerning it, peculiarities to be ranked with laws of descent or judicial procedure. Ca.s.s and d.i.c.kinson for their surrender to the South were now called "dough-faces" and "slavocrats" by the Democratic Free-soilers. They were the true "Northern men with Southern principles."

The Barnburners met at Utica on February 16, an earlier 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 st.u.r.dy 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 April, 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 a.s.sembled 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 Ca.s.s was nominated for president, the Wilmot Proviso being thus emphatically condemned. For Ca.s.s 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 through the halls of the Capitol!" and condemned the cowardice of Northern senators who had voted with the South. Among the letters read was one from Franklin Pierce, who had in 1844 voted against annexation, a letter which years afterwards was, with a reference to his famous friend and biographer, 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 surrendered, said that if the convention did its duty, a clap of political thunder would in November "make the propagandists of slavery shake like Belshazzar."

Butler, John Van Buren, and Preston King, afterwards a Republican 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 ill.u.s.tration of Van Buren's literary fault, created a profound impression. 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 delegates had been permitted, without incurring a threat of exclusion, to declare that they would not support a certain 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 principles. On this Van Buren was most explicit. Jefferson had proposed freedom for the Northwest Territories; and all the representatives from the slaveholding States had voted for the ordinance. Not only Washington 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 compromises of the Const.i.tution," compromises which, "deeply 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 Ca.s.s; and if there were no other candidate but General Taylor, he should not vote for president. If our ancestors, 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 mankind were convinced of its evils, doom to slavery a territory 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.

Dodge, however, declined, proud though he would be, as he said, to have his name under other circ.u.mstances a.s.sociated 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 Ca.s.s. A national convention was called to meet at Buffalo on August 9, 1848.