Martin Van Buren Part 6

They declared that "indiscriminate 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 att.i.tude 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 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 5350 to 13,601. In Maine a minority of 6806 became a majority of 6087. In New Hampshire a minority of 3212 became a majority of 6476. In Ma.s.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 1813 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Pennsylvania went to Wilkins, a Pennsylvanian. Sergeant had the same 49 votes as Clay, Ellmaker the 7 votes of Vermont, and Henry Lee of Ma.s.sachusetts the 11 votes of South Carolina.[11]

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 President commanded obedience to the law and entreated for loyalty to the Union. It could not be overlooked that the treasonable att.i.tude of South Carolina had been taken by the portion of the Democratic party hostile to Van Buren.

In a peculiar way therefore he shared in Jackson's prestige.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Edward Livingston]

The election seemed to clarify some of the views of the administration.

They now dared to speak more explicitly. On his way to the inauguration, Van Buren, declining a dinner at Philadelphia, recited with approval what he called Jackson's repeated and earnest recommendations 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 importance of abstaining from all 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 because under the compromise tariff of 1833 a large decrease in revenue was antic.i.p.ated.

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 dangers of the proposed deposits of the moneys in the state banks were not appreciated. Van Buren at first opposed this so-called "removal of the deposits." Kendall tells of an interview with the Vice-President not long after his inauguration, and while he was a guest at the White House. Van Buren then warmly remonstrated against the continued agitation of the subject, after the resolution of the lower House at the last session that the government deposits were safe with the banks. Kendall replied that so certain to his mind was the success of the Whig party at the next presidential election and the consequent re-charter of the 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 deposits he should consider further opposition useless and would lay down his pen, leaving to others this question and all 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 certainly 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 the meeting of Congress, the executive action would seem less defiant; and in the mean time the friends of the administration could be more effectually united in support of the measure. Kendall yielded to the proposition though against his judgment, and wrote to the President in its favor. But Jackson 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 a.s.sent was given, but probably with no enthusiasm. He disliked the Bank heartily enough. The corrupting danger of intrusting government moneys to a single private corporation to loan in its discretion was clear. But a system 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 cla.s.ses. 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 tremendous power over credits doubtless gave it many votes of administration congressmen. Possibly, as Jackson and Blair feared, it might have secured enough to pa.s.s a re-charter over a veto. If it had been thus re-chartered, 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 political results of this heroic and imperfect measure.

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 congressmen to make friends by complimenting the enterprise 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 depositories 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 millions in value.

Addressing Van Buren in the Vice-President's chair, he begged him in a burst of bathos to repair to the executive 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 bleeding 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 respectfully and innocently at Clay, as if treasuring up every 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 execrations of all good men, should he shrink from the responsibility of conveying to Andrew Jackson the message sent by the Honorable Henry Clay." The whole agitation 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 or 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 interference by the general government except using its powers by giving through its mint a specie currency."

Van Buren took a permanent residence in Washington 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 t.i.tle 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 after the election of 1836 was safely over, Van Buren had every selfish motive as well as many generous motives to desire. His ambition was no-wise disagreeable to his chief. To see that ambition satisfied would gratify both patriotic and personal wishes of the tempestuous but not erratic old man in the White House. For there was the utmost intimacy and confidence between the two men. Van Buren had every reason, personal, political, and patriotic, to desire the entire success of the administration. He 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 the attorney-general's office to the Treasury, in September, 1833, to make the transfer of the deposits, Jackson appointed Benjamin F. Butler, Van Buren's intimate friend, his former pupil and partner, to Taney's place.

Louis McLane, Van Buren's predecessor in the mission to England, and his successor, after Edward Livingston, in the State Department, resigned the latter office in the summer of 1834. He had disapproved Jackson's removal of the deposits; he believed it would be unpopular, and the presidential bee 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 the first place in the cabinet.

Van Buren accompanied Jackson during part of the latter's visit to the Northeast in the summer of 1833, when as the 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 Jackson's second term hardly belong, with the information we yet have, to Van Buren's biography. They have been often and admirably told in the lives of Jackson and Clay, the seeming chiefs on the two sides of the long encounter.

Van Buren's nomination for the presidency, bitter as the opposition to it still was, came as matter of course. The large and serious secession of Calhoun and his followers from the Jacksonian party was followed by the later and more serious defection of the Democrats who made a rival Democratic candidate 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 life of Van Buren. Jackson's friendship for Van Buren, Crockett said, had arisen from his hatred to Calhoun, of which Van Buren, who was "secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculating, 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 the same battles, risked the same dangers, starved together in the same deserts, merely to gratify this 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 candidacy. 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 public or his party would 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 troublesome. He consented, apparently only for personal reasons, 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 comparatively short, and arrive at the head of the presidential table."

The Democratic-Republican Convention met at Baltimore 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 two each. In making the nominations, the delegates from each State, however numerous or few, cast a number of votes equal to its representation in the electoral college. The 183 delegates from Maryland cast therefore but ten votes; while the single delegate from Tennessee, much courted man that he must have been, cast 15.

It was the second national convention of the party. The members a.s.sembled 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 inst.i.tution. Efforts, he said, would be made at the approaching election to divide the Republican party and possibly to defeat an election by the people in their primary colleges. Their venerable president had advised, but in vain, const.i.tutional 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 prudence, 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 n.o.ble 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 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 principles." 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 convention. A strong fight was made for the vice-presidency 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 convention 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 William Henry Harrison 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 Virginia was the nominee of the bolting Democrats, for vice-president upon the ticket with White. The Whigs of Ma.s.sachusetts 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 n.o.ble art of oratory. South Carolina 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 called) 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 Jackson were only incidentally touched in the canva.s.s. Amos Kendall, then postmaster-general, towards the close of the canva.s.s wrote a letter which, coming from perhaps the worst of Jackson's "spoils-men," shows how far public sentiment was even then from justifying the political interference of federal officers in elections. Samuel McKean, senator from Pennsylvania, had written 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 communications 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 a.s.sumptions of the officeholder, he thought it dangerous to our inst.i.tutions that government employees should "a.s.sume 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 meetings, 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 callous to this odious abuse.

Jackson did not permit the presidential office to restrain 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, he said, in evil times, when political apostasy had become 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 measures, but protested against Jackson's dictating the succession. 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 declaration of principles made for the Whig candidates. Clay, the chief spokesman, complained that Jackson had killed with the pocket veto the land bill, 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 treatment of the Cherokees seemed the only point of attack apart from his financial policy.

The real party platforms this year were curiously found in letters of the candidates to Sherrod Williams, 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 surplus 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 public lands? Did he approve federal appropriations 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 const.i.tutional to expunge from the records of a house of Congress any of its proceedings? The last question referred to Benton's agitation for a resolution expunging from the records of the Senate the resolution of 1834, condemning Jackson's removal of the deposits as a violation of the Const.i.tution. 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 negative. Van Buren promptly pointed out to Williams 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 Congress 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 entirely 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 candidates for their letters of acceptance, Van Buren addressed a letter to Williams, 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 ma.s.ses of the people.

For clearness and explicitness, and for cogency of argument, 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-committalism." Congress, he said, does not possess the power under the Const.i.tution to raise money for distribution among the States. If a distinction were justifiable, 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 Const.i.tution. Any system of distribution must introduce vices into both the state and federal governments. It would be a great misfortune if the distribution bill already pa.s.sed should be deemed a pledge of like legislation 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 bill thus condemned. The utterance was clear and wise; and it was far more. It was a singularly bold att.i.tude to a.s.sume, not only against the views of the opposition, but against a measure pa.s.sed by Van Buren's own party friends and signed by Jackson, a 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 legislation shall terminate with the emergency that produced it." To the inquiry whether he would approve a distribution 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 approve 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 lighthouses, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sent 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 establish one." It was high time "that the federal government confine itself to the creation of coin, and that the States afford it a fair chance for circulation." With the 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 pa.s.sage of Colonel Benton's resolution as "an act of justice to a faithful and greatly injured public servant, not only const.i.tutional in itself, but imperiously demanded by a proper respect for the well-known will of the people."

This justly famous letter made up for the 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 convention, to the "editors and politicians throughout the Union" who had preferred him, to his "private correspondents and intimate friends," and to those, once his "friends and a.s.sociates, whom the fluctuations of political life"

had "converted into opponents." No man, he declared, could truly say that he had solicited political 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 the 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 himself, as public men usually and naturally do, behind Butler, the attorney-general, and others who had spoken for him, he directly a.s.sumed responsibility for their "explanations." He considered himself selected to carry out the principles and policy of Jackson's administration, "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 "religiously abstain from the a.s.sumption of such as have not been delegated by the Const.i.tution."

Upon still another question Van Buren explicitly declared 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 until 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 cla.s.s" of abolitionists "were none of your old-fashioned gradual emanc.i.p.ationists, 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, intelligent, and even wealthy as some of them were, the abolitionists did not belong to the always popular cla.s.s of well-to-do folks content with the inst.i.tutions of society. Most virtuous and religious people saw in them only wicked disturbers of the peace.

All the comfortable, philosophical opponents of slavery believed that such wild and reckless agitators would, if encouraged, prostrate the pillars of civilization, and bring on 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 abstract or economical question. They were undaunted by the examples of Washington and Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who, whatever they said or hoped against slavery, nevertheless held human beings in bondage; or of Adams and other Northern adherents of the Const.i.tution, 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 brutalizing 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 dissoluteness inevitable to the plantation system. Nor would they be still, 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 a real 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 Americans were so fond of saying, with a tender and affectionate regard for the feelings of the white slave-masters. About the same time began the continual presentation to Congress of pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery, and the foolish but Heaven-ordained attack of slaveholders on the right of pet.i.tion. The agitation rapidly flaming up was far different from the practical and truly political discussion over the Missouri Compromise fifteen years before.

As yet, indeed, the matter was not politically important, except in the attack upon Van Buren made by the Southern members of his party. Sixteen years before, he had voted against admitting more slave States. He had aided the reelection of Rufus King, a determined enemy of slavery. He had strongly opposed Calhoun and the Southern nullifiers. In the "Evening Post" and the "Plain-dealer" of New York appeared from 1835 to 1837 the really n.o.ble series of editorials by William 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 supported 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 pet.i.tions from twenty thousand memorialists 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 satisfaction. They must succeed, if at all, through Southern distrust or dislike of Van Buren. In July, 1834, he had publicly written to Samuel Gwin of Mississippi that his opinions upon the power of Congress over slave property in the Southern States were so well 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 Const.i.tution, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 soil 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 collisions. Its perpetual slavery was an unforeseen part of the price Alexander Hamilton had paid to procure the federal a.s.sumption of the war debts of the States. In Van Buren's time there was almost complete acquiescence in the proposition that, though slavery had in the District no const.i.tutional protection, it must still be deemed there a part of the inst.i.tution 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 n.o.bler salvation of our land. But Adams was emphatically opposed to the abolition of slavery in the District.

In December, 1831, the first month of his service in the House, on presenting a pet.i.tion for such abolition, he declared that he should not support it. In February, 1837, a few days before Van Buren's inauguration, there occurred the scene when Adams, with grim and dauntless irony, brought to the House the pet.i.tion of some slaves against abolition. In his speech then he said: "From the day I entered this House down to the present moment, I have invariably here, and invariably elsewhere, declared my opinions to be adverse to the prayer of pet.i.tions which call for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia."

It is a curious but inevitable impeachment of the impartiality 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 in a later year, 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 canva.s.s 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 att.i.tude, 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 skillful effort was made to embarra.s.s Van Buren with his Southern supporters over a more difficult question. 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 receipts from Southern post-offices led to great excitement and even violence. In August, 1835, Kendall, the postmaster-general, was appealed to by the postmaster at Charleston, South Carolina, for advice whether he should distribute papers "inflammatory, and incendiary, and insurrectionary in the highest degree," papers whose very custody endangered the mail. Kendall, in an extraordinary letter, said that he had no legal authority to prohibit the delivery of papers on account of their character, but that he was not prepared to direct the delivery at Charleston of papers such as were described. Gouverneur, the postmaster at New York, being then appealed to by his Charleston brother, declined to forward papers mailed by the American Anti-Slavery Society. This dangerous usurpation was defended 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 pa.s.sions of the slaves" (as they used to call the desire of black men to be free), "calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war." A bill 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 unconst.i.tutional, 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 Benton said, "tired of the eternal cry of dissolving the Union, did not believe in it, and would not give a repugnant vote to avoid the trial."

The debate did not reach a very exalted height. The question was by no 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 Kendall 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 prohibition of the use of the post-office for obscene literature, or, to take a better ill.u.s.tration, for the circulars of lotteries which are lawful in some States but not in others.

When the bill came to a vote in the Senate, although there was really a substantial majority against it, a tie was skillfully 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 measures of Calhoun and the pro-slavery men were most distasteful. 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 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 ent.i.tle the questioner to be told the truth. So Van Buren may have thought there were political interrogations 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 usually overcomes a candidate for great office in the stress of conflict. But lenient as may be 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 unanimous 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 4563; 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 7000 to Van Buren's 11,000. But in the Northeast Van Buren was very strong.

Jackson's majority in Maine of 6087 became a majority of 7751 for Van Buren. New Hampshire, the home of Hill and Woodbury, had given Jackson a majority of 6376; 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 1000. 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 6000 for Clay; it gave Van Buren over 500. Rhode Island had voted for Clay; it now voted for Van Buren.

Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Illinois, Van Buren fell far behind Jackson. The popular vote, omitting South Carolina, where the legislature chose the electors, was as follows:--

New Middle England. States. South. West. Total.

Van Buren 112,480 310,203 141,942 198,053 762,678 Harrison, White, and Webster 106,169 282,376 138,059 209,046 735,650

The electoral votes were thus divided:

New Middle England States. South. West. Total.

Van Buren 29 72 57 12 170 Harrison 7 21 -- 45 73 Webster 14 -- -- -- 14 White -- -- 26 -- 26

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 uncontested 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 Democrat 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 before 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 intellectual convictions, and not the triumph of sentiment. He had come to power, as "the House and galleries" well 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 among men of strong character and patriotic aspirations. But neither in his person nor in his speech or conduct was there anything of the strong picturesqueness which impresses ma.s.ses 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