DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828.--GOVERNOR
When in May, 1828, Van Buren left Washington, the country universally
recognized him as the chief organizer of the new party and its
congressional leader. As such he turned all his skill and industry to
win a victory for Jackson and Calhoun. There was never in the history of
the United States a more legitimate presidential canvass than that of
1828. The rival candidates distinctly stood for conflicting principles
of federal administration. On the one side, under Van Buren's shrewd
management, with the theoretical coöperation of Calhoun,--the natural
bent of whose mind was now aided and not thwarted by the exigencies of
his personal career,--was the party inclined to strict limitation of
federal powers, jealous for local powers, hostile to internal
improvements by the federal government, inclined to a lower rather than
a higher tariff. On the other side was the party strongly national in
temper, with splendid conceptions of a powerful and multifariously
useful central administration, impatient of the poverties and meannesses
of many of the States. The latter party was led by a president with
ampler training in public life than any American of his time, who
sincerely and intelligently believed the principles of his party; and
his party held those principles firmly, explicitly, and with practical
unanimity. Jefferson, in almost his last letter, written in December,
1825, to William B. Giles, a venerable leader of the Democracy, the
"Charles James Fox of Congress," Benton's "statesman of head and
tongue," recalled indeed Adams's superiority over all ordinary
considerations when the safety of his country had been questioned; but
Jefferson declared himself in "the deepest affliction" at the
usurpations by which the federal branch, through the decisions of the
federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions
of Congress, was stripping its "colleagues, the state authorities, of
the powers reserved to them." The voice from Monticello, feeble with its
eighty-three years, and secretly uttered though it was, sounded the
summons to a new Democratic battle.
Van Buren and his coadjutors, however, led a party as yet of inclination
to principles rather than of principles. It was out of power. There was
neither warmth nor striking exaltation in its programme. Its
philosophical and political wisdom needed the aid of one of those simple
cries for justice which are so potent in political warfare, and a leader
to interest and fire the popular temper. Both were at hand. The late
defeat of the popular will by the Adams-Clay coalition was the cry; the
hero of the military victory most grateful to Americans was the leader.
To this cry and this leader Van Buren skillfully harnessed an
intelligible, and at the least a reasonable, political creed. There were
thus united nearly all the elements of political strength. Not indeed
all, for the record of the leader was weak upon several articles of
faith. Jackson had voted in the Senate for internal improvement bills,
and among them bills of the most obnoxious character, those authorizing
subscriptions to the stocks of private corporations. He had voted
against reductions of the tariff. But the votes, it was hoped, exhibited
only his inexpertness in applying general principles to actual
legislation, or a good-natured willingness to please his constituents by
single votes comparatively unimportant. In truth these mistakes were
really inconsistencies of the politician, and no more. There had been a
long inclination on Jackson's part to the Jeffersonian policy. Over
thirty years before, he had in Congress been a strict constructionist
and an anti-federalist. In 1801 he had required a candidate desiring his
support to be "an admirer of state authority, agreeable to the true
literal meaning" of the Constitution, and "banishing the dangerous
doctrine of implication." If he were now to have undivided
responsibility, this old Democratic trend of his would, it was hoped, be
strong enough under Democratic advice. As a candidate, the
inconsistencies of a soldier politician were far outweighed by his
picturesque and powerful personality. It is commonly thought of Jackson
that he was a headstrong, passionate, illiterate man, used and pulled
about by a few intriguers. Nothing could be further from the truth. He
was himself a politician of a high order. His letters are full of
shrewd, vigorous, and even managing suggestions of partisan
manoeuvres. Their political utterances show a highly active and
generally sensible though not disciplined mind. He had had long and
important experience of civil affairs, in the lower house of Congress,
in the federal Senate when he was only thirty years old, in the
constitutional convention of his State, in its Supreme Court, later
again in the Senate; he had been for eight years before the country as a
candidate for its first office, and for many years in public business of
large importance. There were two of the most distinguished Americans,
men of the ripest abilities and amplest experience, and far removed from
rashness, who from 1824 or before had steadily preferred Jackson for the
presidency. These were Edward Livingston of Louisiana and De Witt
Clinton of New York. Daniel Webster described his manners as "more
presidential than those of any of the candidates." Jackson was, he
wrote, "grave, mild, and reserved." Unless in Jackson's case there were
effects without adequate causes, it is very certain that, with faults of
most serious character, he still had the ability, the dignity, and the
wisdom of a ruler of a high rank. He was, as very few men are, born to
rule.
After Crawford's defeat, Van Buren is credited with a skillful
management of the alliance of his forces with those of Jackson. There is
not yet public, if it exist, any original evidence as to the details of
this work. Van Buren's enemies were fond of describing it as full of
cunning and trickery, the work of "the little magician;" and later and
fairer writers have adopted from these enemies this characterization.
But all this seems entirely without proof. Nor is the story probable.
The union of the Crawford and Jackson men was perfectly natural.
Crawford was a physical wreck, out of public life. Numerous as were the
exceptions, his followers and Jackson's included the great majority of
the strict constructionists; and but a minority of either of the two
bodies held the opposite views. Neither of the two men had, at the last
election, been defeated by the other. That Van Buren used at Washington
his unrivaled skill in assuaging animosities and composing differences
there can be no doubt. After the end of the session in March, 1827,
together with Churchill C. Cambreleng, a member of Congress from New
York and a close political friend of his, he made upon this mission a
tour through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. They visited
Crawford, and were authorized to declare that he should support Jackson,
but did not wish to aid Calhoun. At Raleigh Van Buren told the citizens
that the spirit of encroachment had assumed a new and far more seductive
aspect, and could only be resisted by the exercise of uncommon virtues.
Passing through Washington on his way north, he paid a polite visit to
Adams, talking with him placidly about Rufus King, Monroe, and the
Petersburg horse-races. The President, regarding him as "the great
electioneering manager for General Jackson," promptly noted in his
diary, when the interview was over, that Van Buren was now acting the
part Burr had performed in 1799 and 1800; and he found "much resemblance
of character, manners, and even person, between the two men."
As early as 1826 the Van Buren Republicans of New York, and an important
part of the Clintonians with the great governor at their head, had
determined to support Jackson. Van Buren is said to have concealed his
attitude until after his reëlection to the Senate in 1827. But this is a
complete error, except as to his public choice of a candidate. His
opposition to the Adams-Clay administration, it has already appeared,
had been outspoken from 1825. The Jackson candidacy was not indeed
definitely announced in New York until 1827. The cry for "Old Hickory"
then went up with a sudden unanimity which seemed to the Adams men a bit
of devilish magic, but which was the patient prearrangement of a
skillful politician appreciating his responsibility, and waiting, as the
greatest of living politicians[6] recently told England a statesman
ought to wait, until the time was really ripe, until the popular
inclination was sufficiently formed to justify action by men in
responsible public station.
The opposition to the reëlection of John Quincy Adams in 1828 was
sincerely considered by him, and has been often described by others, as
singularly causeless, unworthy, and even monstrous. But in truth it led
to one of the most necessary, one of the truest, political revolutions
which our country has known. Both Adams and Clay were positive and able
men. They were resolute that the rather tepid democracy of Monroe should
be succeeded by a highly national, a federally active administration.
Prior to the election of 1824 Clay had been as nearly in opposition as
the era of good feeling permitted. Early in Monroe's administration he
had attacked the President's declaration that Congress had no right to
construct roads and canals. His criticism, Mr. Schurz tells us in his
brilliant and impartial account of the time, "had a strong flavor of
bitterness in it;" it was in part made up of "oratorical flings," by
which Clay unnecessarily sought to attack and humiliate Monroe. Adams's
diary states Clay's opposition to have been "violent, systematic," his
course to have been "angry, acrimonious." Late in 1819 Monroe's friends
had even consulted over the wisdom of defeating Clay's reëlection to the
speakership; and still later Clay had, as Mr. Schurz says, fiercely
castigated the administration for truckling to foreigners. When Clay
came into power, it would have been unreasonable for him to suppose that
there must not arise vigorous parliamentary opposition on the part of
those who consider themselves the true Republican successors of Monroe,
seeking to stop the diversion into strange ways which Clay and Adams had
now begun. Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, Adams's secretary of the
treasury, and now the Adams candidate for vice-president, had, in one of
his annual reports, declared it to be the duty of government "to augment
the number and variety of occupations for its inhabitants; to hold out
to every degree of labor, and to every modification of skill, its
appropriate object and inducement; to organize the whole labor of a
country; to entice into the widest ranges its mechanical and
intellectual capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber; to call
forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving to effort activity and
to emulation ardor; to create employment for the greater amount of
numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and
situations of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of
genius, may come into requisition." Nor did this glowing picture of a
useful and beneficent government go far beyond the utterances of Rush's
senior associate on the presidential ticket. It is certain that it was
highly agreeable to Clay.
Surely there could be no clearer political issue presented, on the one
side by Van Buren's speeches in the Senate, and on the other by
authoritative and solemn declarations of the three chief persons of the
administration. Whatever the better side of the issue may have been, no
issue was ever a more legitimate subject of a political campaign. It is
true that the accusations were unfounded, which were directed against
Adams for treachery to the Republican principles he professed after, on
adhering to Jefferson, he had resigned his seat in the Senate. He had
joined Jefferson on questions of foreign policy and domestic defense,
and had, until his election to the presidency, been chiefly concerned
with diplomacy. But though the accusations were false, it is true enough
that Adams himself had made the issue of the campaign. Nor was it
creditable to him that he saw in the opposition something merely
personal to himself. If he were wrong upon the issue, as Van Buren and a
majority of the people thought, his long public service, his utter
integrity, his exalted sense of the obligations of office, ought not to
have saved him from the battle or from defeat. How true and deep was
this political contest of 1828 one sees in the fact that from it, almost
as much as from the triumph of Jefferson, flow the traditions of one of
the great American parties, traditions which survived the corruptions of
slavery, and are still powerful in party administration.[7] If John
Quincy Adams had been elected, and if, as might naturally have been the
case, there had followed, at this commencement of railway building, a
firm establishment of the doctrine that the national government could
properly build roads within the States, it is more than mere speculation
to say that the later history of the United States would, whether for
the better or the worse, have been very different from what it has been.
The dangers to which American institutions would be exposed, if the
federal government had become a great power levying taxes upon the whole
country to be used in constructing railways, or, what was worse,
purchasing stock in railway corporations, and doing this, as it would
inevitably have done, according to the amount of pressure here or
there,--such dangers, it is easy to understand, seem, whether rightly or
wrongly, appalling to a large class of political thinkers. To realize
this sense of danger dissipates the aspect of _doctrinaire_ extravagance
in the speeches of Adams's opponents against latitudinarian
construction.
In the canvass of 1828 there was on both sides more wicked and
despicable exhibition of slander than had been known since Jefferson and
John Adams were pitted against each other. Jackson was a military
butcher and utterly illiterate; the chastity of his wife was doubtful.
Adams had corruptly bargained away offices; his accounts of public
moneys received by him needed serious scrutiny; and, that the charges
might be precisely balanced, he had when minister at St. Petersburg
acted as procurer to the Czar of Russia. These lies doubtless defeated
themselves; but in each election since 1828 there have been politicians
low enough and silly enough to imitate them. To nothing of this kind did
Van Buren descend. Nor does it seem that even then he used the cry of a
corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay, in which Jackson believed as
long as he lived. The coalition of 1825, defeating, as it had, a
candidate chosen by a larger number of voters than any other, was the
most used, and probably the most successfully used, of any of the
campaign issues. Nor was this clearly illegitimate, although Adams and
many for him have hotly condemned its immorality. Every political
coalition between men lately in opposition political and personal, by
which both get office, is fairly open to criticism. In experience it has
always been full of political danger, although since the prejudice of
the times has worn away, the defense of Adams and Clay is seen to be
amply sufficient. Whatever had been their mutual dislikes political or
personal, each of them was politically and in his practical
statesmanship far nearer to the other than to any other of the
competitors. But we have yet to see a political campaign against a
coalition whose members have been rewarded with office, in which this
form of attack is not made by men very intelligent and most honest. Nor
is there any reason to hold the followers of Jackson to a higher
standard. In our own time we have seen two coalitions whose parties
wisely recognized this danger. The chief leaders of the Republican
revolt in 1884 neither sought nor took office from the former
adversaries with whom for once they then acted. The Dissenting Liberals
in England did not take office in the Conservative ministry formed in
1886; and the odium which, in the change later made in it, followed Mr.
Goschen into its second place, illustrated very well the truth that,
however honorable the course may be, it is inevitably dangerous.[8]
Nor can moral condemnation be passed upon the use in 1828 of the defeat
in 1824, of the candidate having the largest popular vote. We see pretty
clearly in a constitutionally governed country that when power is
lawfully lodged with a public man, he must act upon his own judgment;
and that, if he be influenced by others, then he ought to be influenced
by the wishes and interests of those who supported him, and not of
those who opposed him, even though far more numerous than his
supporters. Repeatedly have we seen a state legislature, which the
arrangement of districts has caused to be elected from a party in
minority in the whole State, choose a federal senator who it was known
would have been defeated upon a popular vote; and this without criticism
of the conduct of the legislators, but only of the defective district
division. In Connecticut it has happened more than once that, neither
candidate for governor having a majority vote, the legislature has
chosen a candidate having one of the smaller minorities; and here again
without criticism of the legislature's morality. But still the general
rule of American elections is, that the candidate shall be chosen who is
preferred by more votes than any other. To assent to a constitutional
defeat of such a preference, but afterwards and under the law to make
strong appeal to right the wrong which the law has wrought, seems a
highly defensible course, and to deserve little of the criticism visited
upon the Jackson canvass of 1828. If party divisions be justifiable, if
chief public officers are to be chosen for their views on great
questions of state, if the cold appeals of political reasoning are ever
rightly strengthened by appeals to popular feelings, the campaign which
Van Buren and his associates began in 1825 or 1826 was perfectly
justifiable. Nor in its result can any one deny, whether it were for
better or worse, that their success in the battle worked a change in the
principles of administration, and not a mere vulgar driving from office
of one body of men that another might take their places.
The death of De Witt Clinton left Van Buren easily the largest figure in
public life, as he had for several years been the most powerful
politician, in New York State. The gossip that the most important place
in Jackson's cabinet was really allotted to him before the election of
1828 is probably true. But, whether true or not, there was, apart from a
natural desire to administer the first office in his State, obvious
advantage to his political prestige in passing successfully through a
popular election. The most cynical of managing politicians recognize the
enormous strength of a man for whom the people have actually shown that
they like to vote. Van Buren may have counted besides upon the advantage
which Jackson's personal popularity brought to those in his open
alliance, although Adams was known still to have, as the election showed
he had, considerable Democratic strength. Van Buren took therefore the
Bucktail nomination for governor of New York. The National Republicans,
as the Adams men were called, nominated Smith Thompson, a judge of the
federal Supreme Court. Van Buren got 136,794 and Thompson 106,444 votes.
But in spite of so large a plurality Van Buren did not quite have a
majority of the popular vote. Solomon Southwick, the anti-Masonic
candidate, received 33,345 votes. It was the first election after this
extraordinary movement. The abduction of Morgan and his probable murder
to prevent his revelation of Masonic secrets had occurred in the fall of
1826. The criminal trials consequent upon it had caused intense
excitement; and a political issue was easily made, for many
distinguished men of both parties were members of that secret order. How
powerful for a time may be a popular cry, though based upon an utterly
absurd issue, became more obvious still later when electoral votes for
president were cast for William Wirt, the anti-Masonic candidate; and
when John Quincy Adams, after graduating from the widest experience in
public affairs of any American of his generation, was, as he himself
records, willing to accept, and when William H. Seward was willing to
tender him, a presidential nomination of the anti-Masonic party. As
Southwick's preposterous vote was in 1828 drawn from both parties, Van
Buren's prestige, although he had but a plurality vote, was increased by
his victory at the polls. Jackson very truly said in February, 1832,
that it was now "the general wish and expectation of the Republican
party throughout the Union" that Van Buren should take the place next to
the President in the national administration. Jackson was himself
elected by a very great popular and electoral majority. In New York,
where on this single occasion the electors were chosen in districts, and
where the anti-Masonic vote was cast against Jackson who held high rank
in the Masonic order, Adams secured 16 votes to Jackson's 18; but to
the latter were added the two electors chosen by the thirty-four
district electors.
Van Buren's career as governor was very brief. He was inaugurated on
January 1, 1829, and at once resigned his seat in the federal Senate. On
March 12th of the same year he resigned the governor's seat. His
inaugural message is said by Hammond, the political historian of New
York, by no means too friendly to Van Buren, to have been "the best
executive message ever communicated to the legislature;" and after
nearly sixty years, it seems, in the leather-covered tome containing it,
a remarkably clear, wise, and courageous paper. The excitement over
internal improvements in communication was then at its height. He
declared that, whatever difference there might be as to whether such
improvements ought to be undertaken by the federal government or by the
States, none seriously doubted that it was wise to apply portions of the
means of New York to such improvements. The investment of the State in
the Delaware and Hudson canal, then just completed, had, he thought,
been "crowned with the most cheering success." Splendid, too, as had
been the success of the Erie and Champlain canals, it was still clear
that all had not been equally benefited. The friends of the state road
and of the Chemung and Chenango canals had urged him to recommend for
them a legislative support. But it was a time, he said, for "the utmost
prudence and circumspection" upon that "delicate and vitally interesting
subject."
The banking question, he told the legislature, would make the important
business of its session. It turned out besides to be one of the
important businesses of Van Buren's career. To meet the attacks upon him
for having once been interested in a bank, he dexterously recited that,
"having for many years ceased to have an interest in those institutions
and declined any agency in their management," he was conscious of his
imperfect information. But he could not ignore a matter of such
magnitude to their constituents. The whole bank agitation at this time
showed the difficulties and scandals caused by the absence of a free
banking system, and by the long accustomed grants of exclusive banking
charters. Of the forty banks in the State, all specially incorporated,
the charters of thirty-one would expire within one, two, three, or four
years. Their actual capital was $15,000,000; their outstanding loans,
more than $30,000,000. Van Buren urged, therefore, the legislature now
to make by general law final disposition of the whole subject. The
abolition of banks had, he said, no advocate, and a dependence solely
upon those established by federal authority deserved none; but he
rejected the idea of a state bank. "Experience," he declared, "has shown
that banking operations, to be successful, and consequently beneficial
to the community, must be conducted by private men upon their own
account." He condemned the practice by which the State accepted a money
bonus for granting a bank charter, necessarily involving some monopoly.
The concern of the State, he pointed out, should be to make its banks
and their circulation secure; and such security was impaired, not
increased, by encouraging banks in competition with one another, and
"stimulated by the golden harvest in view," to make large payments for
their charters. He submitted for legislative consideration the idea of
the "safety fund" communicated to him in an interesting and intelligent
paper by Joshua Forman. Under this system all the banks of the State,
whatever their condition, were to contribute to a fund to be
administered under state supervision, the fund to be a security for all
dishonored bank-notes. To this extent all the banks were to insure or
indorse the circulation of each bank, thus saving the scandal and loss
arising from the occasional failure of banks to redeem their notes, and
making every bank watchful of all its associates. In compelling the
banks to submit to some general scheme, the representative of the people
would indeed, he said, enter into "conflict with the claims of the great
moneyed interest of the country; but what political exhibition so truly
gratifying as the return to his constituents of the faithful public
servant after having turned away every approach and put far from him
every sinister consideration!"
Van Buren proposed a separation of state from national elections; a
question still discussed, and upon each side of which much is to be
said. He attacked the use of money in elections, "the practice of
employing persons to attend the polls for compensation, of placing large
sums in the hands of others to entertain the electors," and other
devices by which the most valuable of all our temporal privileges "was
brought into disrepute." If the expenses of elections should increase as
they had lately done, the time would soon arrive "when a man in middling
circumstances, however virtuous, will not be able to compete upon
anything like equal terms with a wealthy opponent." In long advance of a
modern agitation for reform which, lately beginning with us, will, it is
to be hoped, not cease until the abuses are removed, he proposed a law
imposing "severe and enforcible penalties upon the advance of money by
individuals for any purposes connected with the election except the
single one of printing."
Turning to the field of general politics, he again declared the
political faith to whose support he wished to rally his party. That "a
jealousy of the exercise of delegated political power, a solicitude to
keep public agents within the precise limits of their authority, and an
assiduous adherence to a rigid and scrupulous economy, were indications
of a contracted spirit unbecoming the character of a statesman," he
pronounced to be a political heresy, from which he himself had not been
entirely free, but which ought at once to be exploded. Official
discretion, as a general rule, could not be confided to any one without
danger of abuse. But he reproved the parsimony which disagreeably
characterized the democracy of the time, and which inadequately paid
great public servants like the chancellor and judges. In the tendency of
the federal government to encroach upon the States lay, he thought, the
danger of the federal Constitution. But of the disposition and capacity
of the American people to resist such encroachments as our political
history recorded, there were, he said, without naming either Adams, "two
prominent and illustrious instances." As long as that good spirit was
preserved, the republic would be safe; and for that preservation every
patriot ought to pray.
The reputation of the country had in some degree suffered, he said, from
"the uncharitable and unrelenting scrutiny to which private as well as
public character" had been subjected in the late election. But this
injury had been "relieved, if not removed, by seeing how soon the
overflowing waters of bitterness" had spent themselves, and "that
already the current of public feeling had resumed its accustomed
channels." These excesses were the price paid for the full enjoyment of
the right of opinion. With an assertion of "perfect deference to that
sacred privilege, and in the humble exercise of that portion of it"
which belonged to him, and of a sincere desire not to offend the
feelings of those who differed from him, he ended his message by
congratulating the legislature upon the election of Jackson and Calhoun.
This result, he said in words not altogether insincere or untrue, but
full of the unfairness of partisan dispute, infused fresh vigor into the
American political system, refuted the odious imputation that republics
are ungrateful, dissipated the vain hope that our citizens could be
influenced by aught save appeals to their understanding and love of
country, and finally exhibited in "bold relief the omnipotence of public
opinion, and the futility of all attempts to overawe it by the
denunciation of power, or to reduce it by the allurements of patronage."
Among the Hoyt letters, afterwards published by Van Buren's rancorous
enemy, Mackenzie, are two letters of his upon his patronage as governor.
It is not unfair to suppose that he wrote many other letters like them,
and they give a useful glimpse of the distribution of offices at Albany
sixty years ago. These letters to Hoyt were of the most confidential
character, and showed a strong but not uncontrolled desire to please
party friends and to meet party expectations. But in none of them is
there a suggestion of anything dishonorable. He asked, "When will the
Republican party be made sensible of the indispensable necessity of
nominating none but true and tried men, so that when they succeed they
gain something?" He was unable to oblige his "good friend Coddington ...
in relation to the health appointments." Dr. Westervelt's claims were
"decidedly the strongest; and much was due to the relations in which he
stood to Governor Tompkins, especially from one who knew so well what
the latter has done and suffered for this State." He wrote of Marcy,
whom he appointed a judge of the supreme court, that he "was so situated
that I must make him a judge or ruin him." All this is doubtless not
unlike what the best of public officers have sometimes said and thought,
though rarely written; and, like most talk over patronage, it is not in
very exalted tone. But if Van Buren admitted as one of Westervelt's
claims to public office that he was of a Whig family and a Democrat
"from his cradle," he found among his other claims that he was "a
gentleman and a man of talent," and had been "three years in the
hospital and five years deputy health officer, until he was cruelly
removed." Dr. Manley he refused to remove from the health office,
because "his extraordinary capacity is universally admitted;" and
pointed out that the removal "could only be placed on political grounds,
and as he was a zealous Jackson man at the last election, that could not
have been done without danger." "I should not," he said, however, "have
given Manley the office originally, if I could have found a competent
Republican to take it." William L. Marcy, whom he made judge, was
already known as one of the ablest men in the State, and his appointment
was admirable, though his salvation from ruin, if Van Buren was speaking
seriously, was not a public end fit to be served by high judicial
appointment. John C. Spencer, one of the best lawyers of New York, was
appointed by Van Buren special counsel for the prosecution of Morgan's
murderers. Hammond wondered "how so rigid a party man as Mr. Van Buren
was, came to appoint a political opponent to so important an office,"
but concluded that it was a fine specimen of his peculiar tact, because
Spencer, though a man of talents and great moral courage, might be
defeated in the prosecution, and thus be injured with the anti-Masons;
while if he succeeded, his vigor and fidelity would draw upon him
Masonic hostility. But the simpler explanation is the more probable. Van
Buren desired to adhere in this, as he did in most of his appointments,
to a high standard. Upon this particular appointment his own motives
might be distrusted; and he therefore went to the ranks of his
adversaries for one of their most distinguished and invulnerable
leaders. Van Buren was long condemned as a "spoils" politician; but he
was not accused of appointing either incompetent or dishonest men to
office. In the great place of governor he must have already begun to see
how difficult and dangerous was this power of patronage. It must be
fairly admitted that he pretty carefully limited, by the integrity and
efficiency of the public service, the political use which he made of his
appointments,--a use made in varying degrees by every American holding
important executive power from the first Adams to our own time.
On March 12, 1829, Governor Van Buren resigned his office with the
hearty and unanimous approval of his party friends, whom he gathered
together on receiving Jackson's invitation to Washington. He was in
their hands, he said, and should abide by their decision. Both houses of
the legislature passed congratulatory and even affectionate resolutions;
and his brief and brilliant career in the executive chamber of the State
ended happily, as does any career which ends that a seemingly greater
one may begin.