Martin Van Buren Part 9

The war between Mexico and the American settlers in her revolted northeast province began in 1835. Early in 1836 the heroic defense of the Alamo against several thousand Mexicans by less than two hundred Americans, and among them Davy Crockett, Van Buren's biographer, and the butchery of all but three of the Americans, had consecrated the old building, still proudly preserved by the stirring but now peaceful and pleasing city of San Antonio, and had roused in Texas a fierce and resolute hatred of Mexico. In April, 1836, Houston overwhelmed the Mexicans at San Jacinto, and captured their president, Santa Anna.

In his message of December 21, 1836, Jackson, although he announced these successes of the Texans and their expulsion of Mexican civil authority, still pointed out to Congress the disparity of physical force on the side of Texas, and declared it prudent that we should stand aloof until either Mexico itself or one of the great powers should have recognized Texan independence, or at least until the ability of Texas should have been proved beyond cavil. The Senate had then pa.s.sed a resolution for recognition of Texan independence. But the House had not concurred; and before Van Buren's inauguration Congress had done no more than authorize the appointment of a diplomatic agent to Texas whenever the President should be satisfied of its independence. In August, 1837, the Texan representative at Washington laid before Van Buren a plan of annexation of the revolted Mexican state. The offer was refused; and it was declared that the United States desired to remain neutral, and perceived that annexation would necessarily lead to war with Mexico. In December, 1837, pet.i.tions were presented in Congress against the annexation of Texas, now much agitated at the South; and Preston, Calhoun's senatorial a.s.sociate from South Carolina, offered a resolution for annexation. Some debate on the question was had in 1838, in which both the pro-slavery character of the movement and the anti-slavery character of the opposition clearly appeared. But this danger to Van Buren was delayed several years. Nor was he yet a character in the drama of the slavery conflict which by 1837 was well opened. The agitation over abolition pet.i.tions and the murder of Lovejoy the abolitionist are now readily enough seen to have been the most deeply significant occurrences in America between Van Buren's inauguration and his defeat; but they were as little part of his presidency as the arrival at New York from Liverpool on April 22 and 23, 1838, of the Sirius and the Great Western, the first transatlantic steamships. In Washington the slavery question did not get beyond the halls of Congress. The White House remained for several years free from both the dangers and the duties of the question accompanying the discussion.

Van Buren's administration pressed upon Mexico claims arising out of wrongs to American citizens and property which had long been a grievance. Jackson had thought it our duty, in view of the "embarra.s.sed condition" of that republic, to "act with both wisdom and moderation by giving to Mexico one more opportunity to atone for the past." In December, 1837, Van Buren, tired of Mexican procrastination, referred the matter to Congress, with some menace in his tone. In 1840 a treaty was at last made for an arbitration of the claims, the king of Prussia being the umpire. John Quincy Adams vehemently a.s.sailed the American a.s.sertion of these claims, as intended to "breed a war with Mexico," and "as machinery for the annexation of Texas;" and his violent denunciations have obtained some credit. But Adams himself had been pretty vigorous in the maintenance of American rights. And the plain and well known facts are, that after several years of negotiation the claims were with perfect moderation submitted for decision to a disinterested tribunal; that they were never made the occasion of war; and that Van Buren opposed annexation.

In June, 1838, James K. Paulding, long the navy agent at New York, was made secretary of the navy in place of Mahlon d.i.c.kerson of New Jersey, who now resigned. Paulding seems to us rather a literary than a political figure. Besides the authorship of part of "Salmagundi," of "The Dutchman's Fireside," and of other and agreeable writings grateful to Americans in the days when the sting of the question, "Who reads an American book?" lay rather in its truth than in its ill-nature, Paulding's pen had aided the Republican party as early as Madison's presidency. Our politics have always, even at home, paid some honor to the muses, without requiring them to descend very far into the partisan arena. A curious ill.u.s.tration was the nomination of Edwin Forrest, the famous tragedian, for Congress by the Democrats of New York in 1838, a nomination which was more sensibly declined than made. An almost equally curious instance was the tender Van Buren made of the secretaryship of the navy to Washington Irving before he offered it to Paulding, who was a connection by marriage of Irving's brother. Van Buren had, it will be remembered, become intimately acquainted with Irving abroad; and others than Van Buren strangely enough had thought of him for political service. The Jacksonians had wanted him to run for Congress; and Tammany Hall had offered him a nomination for mayor of New York. Van Buren wrote to Irving that the latter had "in an eminent degree those peculiar qualities which should distinguish the head of the department," and that this opinion of his had been confirmed by Irving's friends, Paulding and Kemble, the former of whom it was intimated was "particularly informed in regard to the services to be rendered." But one cannot doubt that in writing this the President had in mind the sort of service to the public, and the personal pleasure and rest to himself, to be brought by a delightful and accomplished man of letters, who was no mere recluse, but long practiced in polished and brilliant life abroad, rather than any business or executive or political ability. Irving wisely replied that he should delight in full occupation, and should take peculiar interest in the navy department; but that he shrank from the harsh turmoils of life at Washington, and the bitter personal hostility and the slanders of the press. A short career at Washington would, he said, render him "mentally and physically a perfect wreck." Paulding's appointment to the cabinet portfolio a.s.signed to New York was not agreeable to the politicians; and they afterwards declared that, if Marcy had been chosen instead, the result in 1840 might have been different. The next Democratic president gave the same place to another famous man of letters, George Bancroft.

On June 6, 1837, Louis Napoleon wrote the President from New York that the dangerous illness of his mother recalled him to the old world; and that he stated the reason for his departure lest the President might "have given credence to the calumnious surmises respecting" him. The famous adventurer used one of those many phrases of his which, if they had not for years imposed on the world, no wise man would believe could ever have obtained respect. Van Buren, as the ruler of a free people, ought to be advised, the prince wrote, that, bearing the name he did, it was impossible for him "to depart for an instant from the path pointed out to me by my conscience, my honor, and my duty."

The elections of 1838 showed a recovery from the defeat in 1837, a recovery which would perhaps have been permanent if the financial crisis had been really over. Maine wheeled back into the Van Buren ranks; and Maryland and Ohio now joined her. In New Jersey and Ma.s.sachusetts the Whig majorities were reduced; and in New York, where Seward and Weed had established a political management quite equal to the Regency, the former was chosen governor by a majority of over 10,000, but still less by 5000 than the Whig majority of 1837. The Democrats now reaped the unpopularity of Van Buren's upright neutrality in the Canadian troubles.

Northern and western New York gave heavy Whig majorities. Jefferson county on the very border, which had stood by Van Buren even in 1837, went over to the Whigs.

Van Buren met Congress in December, 1838, with more cheerful words. The harvest had been bountiful, he said, and industry again prospered. The first half century of our Const.i.tution was about to expire, after proving the advantage of a government "entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popular will." He returned firmly to his lecture on economics and the currency, drawing happily, but too soon, a lesson from the short duration of the suspension of specie payments in 1837 and the length of that in 1814. We had been saved, he said, the mortification of seeing our distresses used to fasten again upon us so "dangerous an inst.i.tution" as a national bank. The treasury would be able in the coming year to pay off the $8,000,000 outstanding of the $10,000,000 of treasury notes authorized at the extra session. Texas had withdrawn its application for admission to the Union. The final removal of the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi in accordance with the Democratic policy was almost accomplished. There were but two blemishes on the fair record the White House sent to the Capitol. Swartwout, Jackson's collector of New York, was found, after his super-session by Jesse Hoyt, to be a defaulter on a vast scale. His defalcations, the President carefully pointed out, had gone on for seven years, as well while public moneys were kept with the United States Bank and while they were kept with state banks, as while they were kept by public officers. It was broadly intimated that this disgrace was not unrelated to the general theory which had so long connected the collection and custody of public moneys with the advancement of private interests; and the President asked for a law making it a felony to apply public moneys to private uses. Swartwout's appointment in 1829, as has been said, was strenuously opposed by Van Buren as unfit to be made.

After a year or two Jackson returned to Van Buren his written protest, saying that time had proved his belief in Swartwout's unfitness to be a mistake. Van Buren's own appointment to the place was, however, far from an ideal one. Jesse Hoyt was shown by his published correspondence--a veritable instance, by the way, of "_stolen_ sweets"--to have been a shrewd, able man, who enjoyed the strangely varied confidence of many distinguished, discreet, and honorable men, and of many very different persons, ranging through a singular gamut of religion, morals, statesmanship, economics, politics, patronage, banking, trade, stock gambling, and betting. The respectability of some of Hoyt's friends and his possession of some ability palliate, but do not excuse, his appointment to a great post.

The second Florida war still dragged out its slow and murderous length.

The Seminoles under pressure had yielded to Jackson's firm policy of removing all the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi. The policy seemed, or rather it was, often cruel, as is so much of the progress of civilization. But the removal was wise and necessary. Tribal and independent governments by nomadic savages could not be tolerated within regions devoted to the arts and the government of white men.

Whatever the theoretical rights of property in land, no civilized race near vast areas of lands fit for the tillage of a crowding population has ever permitted them to remain mere hunting grounds for savages. The Seminoles in 1832, 1833, and 1834 agreed to go west upon terms like those accepted by other Indians. The removal was to take place, one third of the tribe in each of the three years 1833, 1834, and 1835; but the dark-skinned men, as their white brothers would have done, found or invented excuses for not keeping their promise of voluntary expatriation. Late in 1835, when coercion, although it had not yet been employed against the Seminoles, was still feared by them, they rose under their famous leader, the half-breed Powell, better known as Osceola, and ma.s.sacred the federal agent and Major Dade, and 107 out of 111 soldiers under him. Then followed a series of butcheries and outrages upon white men of which we have heard, and doubtless of crimes enough upon Indians of which we have not heard. Among the everglades, the swamps and lakes of Florida, its scorching sands and impenetrable thickets, a difficult, tedious, inglorious, and costly contest went on.

Military evolutions and tactics were of little value; it was a war of ambushes and a.s.sa.s.sination. Osceola, coming with a flag of truce, was taken by General Jessup, the defense for his capture being his violation of a former parole. He was sent to Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, and there died, after furnishing recitations to generations of schoolboys, and sentiment to many of their elders. Van Buren had been compelled to ask $1,600,000 from Congress at the extra session. Before his administration was ended nearly $14,000,000 had been spent; and not until 1842 did the war end. It was one of the burdens of the administration which served to irritate a people already uneasy for deeper and more general reasons. The prowess of the Indian chief, his eloquence, his pathetic end, the miseries and wrongs of the aborigines, the cost and delay of the war, all reenforced the denunciation of Van Buren by men who made no allowance for embarra.s.sments which could be surmounted by no ability, because they were inevitable to the settlement by a civilized race of lands used by savages. Time, however, has vindicated the justice and mercy, as well as the policy of the removal, and of the establishment of the Indian Territory.

A few days before the close of the session Van Buren asked Congress to consider the dispute with Great Britain over the northeast boundary.

Both Maine and New Brunswick threatened, by rival military occupations of the disputed territory, to precipitate war. Van Buren permitted the civil authorities of Maine to protect the forests from destruction; but disapproved any military seizure, and told the state authorities that he should propose arbitration to Great Britain. If, however, New Brunswick sought a military occupation, he should defend the territory as part of the State. Congress at once authorized the President to call out 50,000 volunteers, and put at his disposal a credit of $10,000,000. Van Buren persisted in his great effort peacefully to adjust the claims of our chronically belligerent northeastern patriots,--in Maine as in New York finding his fate in his duty firmly and calmly to restrain a local sentiment inspiring voters of great political importance to him. The "news from Maine" in 1840 told of the angry contempt the hardy lumbermen felt for the President's perfectly statesmanlike treatment of the question.

In the summer of 1839 Van Buren visited his old home at Kinderhook; and on his way there and back enjoyed a burst of enthusiasm at York, Harrisburg, Lebanon, Reading, and Easton in Pennsylvania, at Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, and at New York, Hudson, and Albany in his own State. There were salutes of artillery, pealing of bells, mounted escorts in blue and white scarfs, a.s.semblings of "youth and beauty," the complimentary addresses, the thronging of citizens "to grasp the hand of the man whom they had delighted to honor," and all the rest that makes up the ovations of Americans to their black-coated rulers. He landed in New York at Castle Garden, amid the salutes of the forts on Bedloe's, Governor's, and Staten Islands, and of a "seventy-four," whose yards were covered with white uniformed sailors. After the reception in Castle Garden he mounted a spirited black horse and reviewed six thousand troops a.s.sembled on the Battery; and then went in procession along Broadway to Chatham Street, thence to the Bowery, and through Broome Street and Broadway back to the City Hall Park. Not since Lafayette's visit had there been so fine a reception. At Kinderhook he was overwhelmed with the affectionate pride of his old neighbors. He declined public dinners, and by the simple manner of his travel offered disproof of the stories about his "English servants, horses and carriages." The journey was not, however, like the good-natured and unpartisan presidential journeys of our time. The Whigs often churlishly refused to help in what they said was an electioneering tour. Seward publicly refused the invitation of the common council of New York to partic.i.p.ate in the President's reception, because the State had honored him with the office of governor for his disapproval of Van Buren's political character and public policy, and because an acceptance of the invitation "would afford evidence of inconsistency and insincerity." Van Buren's own friends gave a party air to much of the welcome. Democratic committees were conspicuous in the ceremonies; and in many of the addresses much that was said of his administration was fairly in a dispute certain to last until the next year's election was over. Van Buren could hardly have objected to the coldness of the Whigs, for his own speeches, though decorous and respectful to the last degree to those who differed from him, were undisguised appeals for popular support of his financial policy. At New York he referred to the threatening dissatisfaction in his own State concerning his firm treatment of the Canadian troubles. But he was persuaded, he said, that good sense and ultimately just feeling would give short duration to these unfavorable impressions.

The President was too experienced and cool in judgment to exaggerate the significance of superficial demonstrations like these, which often seemed conclusive to his exuberant rival Clay. He was encouraged, however, by the elections of 1839. In Ohio the Whigs were "pretty essentially used up," though unfortunately not to remain so a twelve-month. In Ma.s.sachusetts Morton, the Van Buren candidate for governor, was elected by just one vote more than a majority of the 102,066 votes cast. Georgia, New Jersey, and Mississippi gave administration majorities. In New York the adverse majority which in 1837 had been over 15,000, and in 1838 over 10,000, was now less than 4000, in spite of the disaffection along the border counties. It was not an unsatisfactory result, although for the first time since 1818 the legislature was completely lost. Another year, Van Buren now hoped, would bring a complete recovery from the blow of 1837. But the autumn of 1839 had also brought a blast, to grow more and more chilling and disastrous.

In the early fall the Bank of the United States agreed to loan Pennsylvania $2,000,000; and for the loan obtained the privilege of issuing $5 notes, having before been restricted to notes of $20 and upwards. "Thus has the Van Buren State of Pennsylvania," it was boasted, "enabled the banks to overcome the reckless system of a Van Buren national administration." The price of cotton, which had risen to 16 cents a pound, fell in the summer of 1839, and in 1840 touched as low a point as 5 cents. In the Northwest many banks had not yet resumed since 1837. To avoid execution sales it was said that two hundred plantations had been abandoned and their slaves taken to Texas. The sheriff, instead of the ancient return, _nulla bona_, was said, in the grim sport of the frontier, to indorse on the fruitless writs "G. T.," meaning "Gone to Texas." A money stringency again appeared in England, in 1839. Its exportation of goods and money to America had again become enormous. The customs duties collected in 1839 were over $23,000,000, and about the same as they had been in 1836, having fallen in 1837 to $11,000,000, and afterwards in 1840 falling to $13,000,000. Speculation revived, the land sales exceeding $7,000,000 in 1839, while they had been $3,700,000 in 1838, and afterwards fell to $3,000,000 in 1840. Under the pressure from England the Bank of the United States sank with a crash. The "Philadelphia Gazette," complacently ignoring the plain reasons for months set before its eyes, said that the disaster had "its chief cause in the revulsion of the opium trade with the Chinese;" that upon the news that the Orientals would no longer admit the drug the Bank of England had "fairly reeled;" and that, the balance of trade being against us, we had to dishonor our paper. Explanations of like frivolity got wide credence. The Philadelphia banks suspended on October 9, 1839, the banks of Baltimore the next day, and in a few days the banks in the North and West followed. The banks of New York and New England, except those of Providence, continued firm. Although the excitement of 1839 did not equal that of 1837, there was a duller and completer despondency. It was at last known that the recuperative power of even our own proud and bounding country had limits. Years were yet necessary to a recovery.

But the presidential election would not, alas! wait years. With no faltering, however, Van Buren met Congress in December, 1839. He began his message with a regret that he could not announce a year of "unalloyed prosperity." There ought never, as presidential messages had run, to be any alloy in the prosperity of the American people. But the harvest, he said, had been exuberant, and after all (for the grapes of trade and manufacture were a little sour), the steady devotion of the husbandman was the surest source of national prosperity. A part of the $10,000,000 of treasury notes was still outstanding, and he hoped that they might be paid. We must not resort to the ruinous practice of supplying supposed necessities by new loans; a permanent debt was an evil with no equivalent. The expenditures for 1838, the first year over whose appropriations Van Buren had had control, had been less than those of 1837. In 1839 they had been $6,000,000 less than in 1838; and for 1840 they would be $5,000,000 less than in 1839. The collection and disburs.e.m.e.nt of public moneys by public officers rather than by banks had, since the bank suspensions in 1837, been carried on with unexpected cheapness and ease; and legislation was alone wanting to insure to the system the highest security and facility. Nothing daunted by the second disaster so lately clouding his political future, Van Buren sounded another blast against the banks. With unusual abundance of harvests, with manufactures richly rewarded, with our granaries and storehouses filled with surplus for export, with no foreign war, with nothing indeed to endanger well-managed banks, this banking disaster had come. The government ought not to be dependent on banks as its depositories, for the banks outside of New York and Philadelphia were dependent upon the banks in those great cities, and the latter banks in turn upon London, "the centre of the credit system." With some truth, but still with a touch of demagogy, venial perhaps in the face of the blatant and silly outcries against him from very intelligent and respectable people, he said that the founding of a new bank in a distant American village placed its business "within the influence of the money power of England." Let us then, he argued, have gold and silver and not bank-notes, at least in our public transactions; let us keep public moneys out of the banks. Again he attacked the national bank scheme. In 1817 and 1818, in 1823, in 1831, and in 1834 the United States Bank had swelled and maddened the tides of banking, but had seldom allayed or safely directed them. Turning with seemingly cool resolution, but with hidden anxiety, to the menacing distresses of the American voters, he did not flinch or look for fair or flattering words. We must not turn for relief, he said, to gigantic banks, or splendid though profitless railroads and ca.n.a.ls. Relief was to be sought, not by the increase, but by the diminution of debt. The faith of States already pledged was to be punctiliously kept; but we must be chary of further pledges. The bounties of Providence had come to reduce the consequences of past errors. "But let it be indelibly engraved on our minds," he said, "that relief is not to be found in expedients. Indebtedness cannot be lessened by borrowing more money, or by changing the form of the debt."

The House of Representatives was so divided that its control depended upon whether five Whig or five Democratic congressmen from New Jersey should be admitted. They had been voted for upon a general ticket through the whole State; and the Whig governor and council had given the certificate of election to the Whigs by acquiescing in the actions of the two county clerks who had, for irregularities, thrown out the Democratic districts of South Amboy and Millville. A collision arose curiously like the dispute over the electoral returns from Florida and Louisiana in 1877. This exclusion of the two districts the Democrats insisted to have been wrongful; and not improbably with reason, for at the next election in 1839 the State, upon the popular vote, gave a substantial majority against the Whigs, although by the district division of the State a majority of the legislature were Whigs and reelected the Whig governor. The clerk of the national House had, according to usage, prepared a roll of members, which he proceeded to call. He seems to have placed on the roll the names of the New Jersey representatives holding the governor's certificates. But before calling their names, he stated to the House that there were rival credentials; that he felt that he had no power to decide upon the contested rights; and that, if the House approved, he would pa.s.s over the names until the call of the other States was finished. The rival credentials included a record of the votes upon which the governor's certificate was presumed to be based. Objection was made to pa.s.sing New Jersey, and one of the governor's certificates was read. The New Jerseymen with certificates insisted that their names should be called. The clerk declined to take any step without the authority of the House, holding that he was in no sense a chairman. He behaved in the case with modesty and decorum, and the savage criticisms upon him seem to have no foundation except this refusal of his to decide upon the _prima facie_ right to the New Jersey seats, or to act as chairman except upon unanimous consent. He was clearly right. He had no power. The very roll he prepared, and his reading it, had no force except such as the House chose to give them.

Upon any other theory he would practically wield an enormous power justified neither by the Const.i.tution nor by any law. On the fourth day of tumult a simple and lawful remedy was discovered to be at hand. Any member could himself act as chairman to put his own motion for the appointment of a temporary speaker; and if a majority acquiesced, there was at once an organization without the clerk's aid. This was in precise accord with the att.i.tude of the clerk, hotly abused as he was by Adams and others who adopted his position. So Adams proposed himself to put the question on his own motion to call the roll with the members holding certificates. Further confusion then ensued, which was terminated by Rhett of South Carolina, who moved that John Quincy Adams act as chairman until a speaker should be chosen. Rhett put his own motion, and it was carried. Adams took the chair, rules were adopted, and order succeeded chaos. None of the New Jerseymen were permitted to vote for speaker, but a few Calhoun Democrats refused to vote for the administration candidate. Most of the administration members offered to accept a Calhoun man; but a few of them, naturally angry at South Carolina dictation, refused, under Benton's advice, to vote for him. At last the Whigs joined the Calhoun men, and ended this extraordinary contest. The speaker, Robert M. T. Hunter, was a so-called states-rights man, and a supporter of the independent treasury scheme. He had the fortune, after a singularly varied and even important career in the United States and the Confederate States, to be appointed by President Cleveland to the petty place of collector of customs at Tappahannock, in Virginia, and to live among Americans who were familiar with his prominence fifty years ago, but supposed him long since dead. The clerk, Hugh A. Garland, was reelected, in spite of what Adams in his diary, after his picturesque but utterly unjustifiable fashion, called the "baseness of his treachery to his trust." The Whig New Jerseymen were refused seats, and the apparent perversion of the popular vote was rightly defeated by seating their rivals. The Whigs posed as defenders of the sanct.i.ty of state authority, and sought, upon that political issue, to force the Van Buren men to be the apologists for centralization.

It was at this session that the sub-treasury bill was pa.s.sed. As a sort of new declaration of independence Van Buren signed it on July 4, 1840.

His long and honorable and his greatest battle was won. It was the triumph of a really great cause. The people, by their labor and capital, were to support the federal government as a mere agency for limited purposes. That government was not, in this way at least, to support or direct or control either the people or their labor or capital. But the captain fell at the time of his victory. The financial disaster of 1839 had exhausted the good-nature and patience of the people. Dissertations on finance and economics, however wise, now served to irritate and disgust. These cool admonitions to economy and a minding of one's business were popularly believed to be heartless and repulsive.

In 1840 took place the most extraordinary of presidential campaigns.

While Congress was wrangling over the New Jersey episode in December, 1839, the Whig national convention again nominated Harrison for President. Tyler was taken from the ranks of seceding Democrats as the candidate for Vice-President. The slaughter of Henry Clay, the father of the Whig party, had been effected by the now formidable Whig politicians of New York, cunningly marshaled by Thurlow Weed.

Availability had its first complete triumph in our national politics.

They had not come, Governor Barbour of Virginia, the president of the Whig convention, said, to whine after the fleshpots of Egypt, but to give perpetuity to Republican inst.i.tutions. To reach this end (not very explicitly or intelligibly defined), it mattered not what letters of the alphabet spelled the name of the candidate; for his part, he could sing Hosanna to any alphabetical combination. No platform or declaration of principles was adopted, lest some of those discontented with Van Buren should find there a counter-irritant. The candidates, in accepting their nominations, refrained from political discussion. Harrison stood for the plain, honest citizen, coming, as one of the New York conventions said, "like another Cincinnatus from his plough," resolute for a generous administration, and ready to diffuse prosperity and to end hard times.

Tyler, formerly a strict constructionist member of the Jackson party, was nominated to catch votes, in spite of his perfectly well known opposition to the whole Whig theory of government.

The Democratic, or Democratic-Republican, convention met at Baltimore on May 5, 1840. The party name was now definitely and exclusively adopted.

Among the delegates were men long afterwards famous in the later Republican party, John A. Dix, Hannibal Hamlin, Simon Cameron. There was an air of despondency about the convention, for the enthusiasm over "log cabin and hard cider" was already abroad. But the convention without wavering announced its belief in a limited federal power, in the separation of public moneys from banking inst.i.tutions; and its opposition to internal improvements by the nation, to the federal a.s.sumption of state debts, to the fostering of one industry so as to injure another, to raising more money than was required for necessary expenses of government, and to a national bank. Slavery now took for a long time its place in the party platform. The convention declared the const.i.tutional inability of Congress to interfere with slavery in the States, and that all efforts of abolitionists to induce Congress to interfere with slavery were alarming and dangerous to the Union. An elaborate address to the people was issued. It began with a clear, and for a political campaign a reasonably moderate, defense of Van Buren's administration; it renewed the well-worn arguments for the limited activity of government; it made a silly a.s.sertion that Harrison was a Federalist, and an insinuation that the glory of his military career was doubtful; it denounced the abolitionists, whose fanaticism it charged the Whigs with enlisting in their cause. In closing, it recalled the Democratic revolution of 1800 which broke the "iron rod of Federal rule," and contrasted the "costly and stately pageants addressed merely to the senses" by the Whigs with the truth and reason of the Democracy.

During the canva.s.s Van Buren submitted to frequent interrogation. In a fashion that would seem fatal to a modern candidate, he wrote to political friends and enemies alike, letter after letter, restating his political opinions. Especially was it sought to arouse Southern distrust of him. He was accused, with fire-eating anger, of having approved a sentence of a court-martial against a naval lieutenant which was based upon the testimony of negroes. He reiterated what he had already said upon slavery; but late in the canva.s.s he went one step further. When asked his opinion as to the treatment by Congress of the abolition pet.i.tions, he replied, justly enough, that the President could have no concern with that matter; but lest he should be charged with "non-committalism," he declared that Congress was fully justified in adopting the "gag" rule. For years the pet.i.tions had been received and referred. On one occasion in each House the subject had been considered upon a report of a committee, and decided against the pet.i.tioners with almost entire unanimity. The rule had been adopted only after it was clear that the pet.i.tioners simply sought to make Congress an instrument of an agitation which might lead to a dissolution of the Union. It was thus that Van Buren made his extreme concession to the slavocracy. And there was obvious a material excuse. No president while in office could approve the perversion of legislative procedure from the making of laws to be a mere stimulant of moral excitement. To encourage or justify pet.i.tions intended to inflame public sentiment against a wrong might be legitimate for some men, however well they knew, as Adams said he knew, that the body addressed ought not to grant the pet.i.tioners' prayers.

Such a course might be n.o.ble and praiseworthy for a private citizen, or possibly for a member of Congress representing the exalted moral sentiment of a single district. It would be highly illegitimate for a man holding a great public office, and there representing the entire people and its established system of laws. John Quincy Adams, under his sense of duty as president, had in 1828 pressed the humiliating claim that England should surrender American slaves escaped to English freedom; and there is little reason to doubt that, if he had remained in the field of responsible and executive public life, he would have agreed with Van Buren in his treatment of the matter of the abolition pet.i.tions, or rather in his expressions from the White House about them.

Harrison hastened to clear his skirts of abolitionism. Congress could not, he declared, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland and of the District itself. For, as he argued, ign.o.bly applying, as well as misquoting, the American words solemnly lauded by Lord Chatham in his speech on Quartering Soldiers in Boston, "what a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but which cannot be taken from him without his consent." He denounced as a slander the charge that he was an abolitionist, or that the vote he had given against anti-slavery restriction in Missouri had violated his conscience. He declared for the right of pet.i.tion, which indeed n.o.body disputed; but he did not say what course should be taken with the anti-slavery pet.i.tions, which was the real question to be answered. The discussion by the citizens of the free States of slavery in the slave States was not, he said, "sanctioned by the Const.i.tution." "Methinks," he said at Dayton, "I hear a soft voice asking, Are you in favor of paper money? I am;" and to that there were "shouts of applause."

In no presidential canva.s.s in America has there been, as Mr. Schurz well says in his life of Henry Clay, "more enthusiasm and less thought" than in the Whig canva.s.s of 1840. The people were rushing as from a long restraint. Wise saws about the duties of government had become nauseating. A plain every-day man administering a paternal and affectionate government was the ruling text, while Tyler and his strict construction quietly served their turn with some of the doctrinaires at the South. The nation, Clay said, was "like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible storm." There was what he called a "rabid appet.i.te for public discussions."

Webster's campaign speeches probably marked the height of the splendid and effectual flood of eloquence now poured over the land. The breeze of popular excitement, he said, with satisfactory magniloquence, was flowing everywhere; it fanned the air in Alabama and the Carolinas; and crossing the Potomac and the Alleghanies, to mingle with the gales of the Empire State and the mountain blasts of New England, would blow a perfect hurricane. "Every breeze," he declared, "says change; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." He had not, indeed, been born in a log cabin, but his elder brothers and sisters had; he wept to think of those who had left it; and if he failed in affectionate veneration for him who raised it, then might his name and the name of his posterity be blotted from the memory of mankind. He touched the bank question lightly; he denounced the sub-treasury as "the first in a new series of ruthless experiments," and declared that Van Buren's "abandonment of the currency" was fatal. Forgetting who had supported and who had opposed the continued distribution of surplus revenues among the States, he condemned the President for the low state of the treasury; and notwithstanding it declared his approval of a generous policy of internal improvements. He would not accuse the President of seeking to play the part of Caesar or Cromwell because Mr. Poinsett, his secretary of war, had recommended a federal organization of militia, the necessity or convenience of which, it was supposed, had been demonstrated by the Canadian troubles; but the plan, he said, was expensive, unconst.i.tutional, and dangerous to our liberties. He was careful to say nothing of slavery or the right of pet.i.tion. Only in brief and casual sentences did he even touch the charges that Van Buren had treated political contests as "rightfully struggles for office and emolument,"

and that federal officers had been a.s.sessed in proportion to their salaries for partisan purposes. The President was pictured as full of cynical and selfish disregard of the people; he had disparaged the credit of the States; he had accused Madison, and, monstrous sacrilege, even Washington, of corruption. "I may forgive this," Webster slowly said to the appalled audience, "but I shall not forget it;" such "abominable violations of the truth of history" filled his bosom with "burning scorn." This was a highly imaginative allusion to Van Buren's statement that the national bank had been originally devised by the friends of privileged orders. Nor need the South, even Webster intimated, have any fear of the Whigs about slavery. Could the South believe that Harrison would "lay ruthless hands on the inst.i.tutions among which he was born and educated?" No, indeed, for Washington and Hanc.o.c.k, Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts, had joined their thoughts, their hopes, their feelings. "How many bones of Northern men," he asked with majestic pathos, "lie at Yorktown?" Senator Rives, now one of the Conservatives, said that Van Buren was indeed "mild, smooth, affable, smiling;" but humility was "young and old ambition's ladder." The militia project meant military usurpation. Look at Cromwell, he said; look at Bonaparte. Were their usurpations not in the name of the people?

Preston of South Carolina said that Van Buren had advocated diminished wages to others; now he should himself receive diminished wages.

Harrison was, he said "a Southern man with Southern principles." As for Van Buren, this "Northern man with Southern principles," did he not come "from beyond the Hudson," had he not been "a friend of Rufus King, a Missouri restrictionist, a friend and advocate of free negro suffrage?"

Clay said that it was no time "to argue;" a rule his party for the moment well observed. The nation had already p.r.o.nounced upon the ravages Van Buren had brought upon the land, the general and widespread ruin, the broken hopes. With the mere fact of Harrison's election, "without reference to the measures of his administration," he told the Virginians at Hanover, "confidence will immediately revive, credit be restored, active business will return, prices of products will rise; and the people will feel and know that, instead of their servants being occupied in devising measures for their ruin and destruction, they will be a.s.siduously employed in promoting their welfare and prosperity."

All this was far more glorious than the brutally true advice of the old man with a broad-axe on his shoulders, whom the Democrats quoted. When asked what was to become of everybody in the heavy distress of the panic, he answered, "d.a.m.n the panic! If you would all work as I do, you would have no panic." The people no longer cared about "the interested few who desire to enrich themselves by the use of public money." If, as the Democrats said, the interested few had been thwarted, an almost universal poverty had for some reason or other come with their defeat.

Perhaps the reflecting citizen thought that he might become, if he were not already, one of the "interested few." Nor was the demagogy all on the side of the Whigs, although they enjoyed the more popular quality of the quadrennial product. Van Buren himself, in the futile fashion of aging parties which suppose that their ancient victories still stir the popular heart, recalled "the reign of terror" of the elder Adams, and how the "Samson of Democracy burst the cords which were already bound around its limbs," how "a web more artfully contrived, composed of a high protective tariff, a system of internal improvements, and a national bank, was then twined around the sleeping giant" until he was "roused by the warning voice of the honest and intrepid Jackson."

Harrison's own numerous speeches were awkward and indefinite enough; but still they showed an honest and sincere man, and in the enthusiasm of the day they did him no harm.

The revolts against the severe party discipline of the Democracy, aided by the popular distress, were serious. Calhoun, indeed, had returned; but all his supporters did not return with him. The Southern defection headed by White in 1836 was still most formidable, and was now reenforced by the Conservative secession North and South. Even Major Eaton forgot Van Buren's gallantry ten years before, and joined the enemy. The talk of "spoils" was amply justified; but the abuses of patronage had not prevented Jackson's popularity, and under Van Buren they were far less serious. This cry did not yet touch the American people. The most serious danger of "spoils" still lay in the future.

Patronage abuses had injured the efficiency of the public service, but they had not yet begun to defeat the popular will. Jackson came resolutely to Van Buren's aid in the fashionable letter-writing. "The Rives Conservatives, the Abolitionists and Federalists" had combined, the ex-President vivaciously said, to obtain power "by falsehood and slander of the basest kind;" but the "virtue of the people," he declared in what from other lips would have seemed cant, would defeat "the money power." Van Buren's firmness and ability ent.i.tled him, he thought, to a rank not inferior to Jefferson or Madison, while he rather unhandsomely added that he had never admired Harrison as a military man.

The Whig campaign was highly picturesque. Meetings were measured by "acres of men." They gathered on the field of Tippecanoe. Revolutionary soldiers marched in venerable processions. Wives and daughters came with their husbands and fathers. There were the barrel of cider, the c.o.o.n-skins, and the log cabin with the live racc.o.o.n running over it and the latch-string hung out; for Harrison had told his soldiers when he left them, that never should his door be shut, "or the string of the latch pulled in." Van Buren meantime, with an aristocratic sneer upon his face, was seated in an English carriage, after feeding himself from the famous gold spoons bought for the White House. Harrison was a hunter who had caught a fox before and would again; one of the county processions from Pennsylvania boasted, "Old Mother c.u.mberland--she'll bag the fox." Illinois would "teach the palace slaves to respect the log cabin." "Down with the wages, say the administration." "Matty's policy, fifty cents a day and French soup; our policy, two dollars a day and roastbeef." Newspapers were full of advertis.e.m.e.nts like this: "The subscriber will pay $5 a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected, and $2.50 if Van Buren is."

But the songs were most interesting. The ball, which Benton had said in his last speech on the expunging resolution that he "solitary and alone"

had put in motion, was a mine of similes. They sang:

"With heart and soul This ball we roll."

"As rolls the ball, Van's reign does fall, And he may look To Kinderhook."

"The gathering ball is rolling still, And still gathering as it rolls."

Harrison's battle with the Indians gave the effective cry of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." And so they sang:

"Farewell, dear Van, You're not our man; To guard the ship, We'll try old Tip."

"With Tip and Tyler We'll burst Van's biler."

"Old Tip he wears a homespun suit, He has no ruffled shirt--wirt--wirt; But Mat he has the golden plate, And he's a little squirt--wirt--wirt."

When the election returns began to come from the August and September States, the joyful excitement pa.s.sed all bounds. Then the new Whigs found a new Lilliburlero. To the tune of the "Little Pig's Tail" they sang:

"What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion, Our country through?

It is the ball a-rolling on, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too!

"And with them we'll beat little Van, Van; Van is a used-up man.

Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine, All honest and true?

One thousand for Kent and seven thousand gain For Tippecanoe," etc.

And then Joe Hoxie would close the meetings by singing "Up Salt River."

The result was pretty plain before November. New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Virginia voted for state officers in the spring. All had voted for Van Buren in 1836; all now gave Whig majorities, except New Hampshire, where the Democratic majority was greatly reduced. In August North Carolina was added to the Whig column, though in Missouri and Illinois there was little change. But when in September Maine, which had given Van Buren nearly eight thousand majority, and had since remained steadfast, "went h.e.l.l-bent for Governor Kent" and gave a slight Whig majority, the administration's doom was sealed.

Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van Buren 60. New York gave Harrison 13,300 votes more than Van Buren; but a large part of this plurality, perhaps all, came from the counties on the northern and western borders. Only one Northern State, Illinois, voted for Van Buren.

Of the slave States, five, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas, were for Van Buren; the other eight for Harrison. There was a popular majority in the slave States of about 55,000 against Van Buren in a total vote of about 695,000, and in the free States, of about 90,000 in a total vote of about 1,700,000, still showing, therefore, his greater popular strength in the free States. The increase in the popular vote was the most extraordinary the country has ever known, proving the depth and universality of the feeling. This vote had been about 1,500,000 in 1836; it reached about 2,400,000 in 1840, an increase of 900,000, while from 1840 to the Clay canva.s.s of 1844 it increased only 300,000. Van Buren, as a defeated candidate in 1840, received about 350,000 votes more than elected him in 1836; and the growth of population in the four years was probably less, not greater, than usual.