SECRETARY OF STATE.--DEFINITE FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC CREED
Van Buren was appointed secretary of state on March 5, 1829; but did not
reach Washington until the 22d, and did not act as secretary until April
4. James A. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, but then an
influential Jackson man, was acting secretary in the meantime. The two
years of Van Buren's administration of this office are perhaps the most
picturesque years of American political history. The Eaton scandal; the
downfall of Calhoun's political power; the magical success of Van Buren;
the "kitchen cabinet;" the odious removals from office, and the outcries
of the removed; the fiery passion of Jackson; the horror both real and
affected of the opposition,--all these have been an inexhaustible quarry
to historical writers. Until very recently the larger use has been made
of the material derived from hostile sources; and it has seemed easy to
paint pictures of this really important time in the crudest and highest
colors of dislike. The American democracy, at last let loose, driven by
Jackson with a sort of demoniac energy and cunningly used by Van Buren
for his own selfish and even Mephistophelian ends, is supposed to have
broken from every sound and conservative principle. Perhaps for no other
period in our history has irresponsible and unverified campaign
literature of the time so largely become authority to serious writers;
and for no other period does truth more strongly require a judgment upon
well established results rather than upon partisan rumor and gossip.
During these years there was definitely and practically formed, under
the auspices of Jackson's administration, a political creed, a body of
principles or tendencies in politics which have ever since strongly held
the American people. Some of them have become established by a universal
acquiescence. During the same years there began an extension into
federal politics of the "spoils system," which has been an evil second
only to slavery, and from which we are only now recovering. To Van Buren
more than to any man of his time must be awarded the credit of forming
the creed of the Jacksonian Democracy. And in the shame of the abuse,
which has so greatly tended to neutralize the soundest articles of
political faith, Van Buren must participate with other and inferior men
of his own time, and with the very greatest of the men who followed him.
In this narrative it is impossible to ignore some of the petty and
undignified details which characterized the time,--details from part of
the discredit of which Van Buren cannot escape. But it would lead to
gross error to let such details obscure the vital and lasting political
work of the highest order in which Van Buren was a central and
controlling power.
Besides Van Buren, Jackson's cabinet included Ingham of Pennsylvania in
the Treasury, Eaton in the War Department, Branch in the Navy, Berrien
of Georgia attorney-general, and Barry of Kentucky in the Post-Office,
succeeding McLean, who after a short service was appointed to the
Supreme Court. Eaton, Branch, and Berrien had been federal senators, the
first chiefly commended by Jackson's strong personal liking for him.
Ingham, Branch, and Berrien represented, or were supposed to represent,
the Calhoun influence. Van Buren in ability and reputation easily stood
head and shoulders above his associates. When he left Albany for
Washington he was believed to have done more than any one else to secure
the Republican triumph; and if Webster's recollections twenty years
later were correct, he did more to prevent "Mr. Adams's reëlection in
1828, and to obtain General Jackson's election, than any other man--yes,
than any ten other men--in the country." He was the first politician in
the party; Calhoun and he were its most distinguished statesmen. Already
the succession after Jackson belonged to one of them, the only doubt
being to which; and in that doubt was stored up a long and complicated
feud. The rivalry between these two great men was inevitable; it was not
dishonorable to either. Calhoun's fame was the older; he was already one
of the junior candidates for the presidency, popular in Pennsylvania
and even in New England, when Van Buren was hardly known out of New
York. In 1829 he had been chosen vice-president for the second time. He
had shown talents of a very high order. But he had now suffered some
years from the presidential fever which distorts the vision, and which,
when popularity wanes, becomes heavy with enervating melancholy. He was
an able doctrinaire, but narrow and dogmatic. The jealous and ravenous
temper of the rich slaveholders of South Carolina already possessed him.
He was a Southern man; and all the presidents thus far, except the elder
and younger Adams, had been Southerners. In 1824 he had stood
indifferent between Jackson and Adams, and in Jackson's final triumph
had borne no decisive part. Van Buren's wider, richer, and more
constructive mind, his superior political judgment, his mellower
personality, his practical skill in affairs, sufficiently explain his
victory over Calhoun, without resort to the bitter rumors of tricks and
magical manoeuvres spread by Calhoun's and Clay's friends, and which,
though without authentic corroboration, have to our own day been widely
accepted.
Before Jackson's inauguration, Calhoun sought to prevent Van Buren's
selection for the State Department. He told the general that Tazewell of
Virginia ought to be appointed. New York, he said, would have been
secured by Clinton if he had lived; but now New York needed no
appointment. Jackson listened coldly to the plainly jealous appeal; and
James A. Hamilton, who was at the time on intimate terms with Jackson,
supposed it to be Calhoun's last interview with Jackson about the
cabinet. Van Buren had been Jackson's choice a year ago; and to all the
reasons which had then existed were now added his great services in the
canvass, and the prestige of his popular election as governor.
The episode of Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the new secretary of war, was
absurd enough in a constitutionally governed country; but this silly
"court scandal," which might very well have enlivened the pages of a
secretary of a privy council or an ambassador from a petty German
prince, did no more than hasten the inevitable division. In the
hastening, however, Van Buren doubtless reaped some profit in Jackson's
greater friendship. Many respectable people in Washington believed that
unchastity on the part of this lady had induced her former husband,
Timberlake, to cut his throat. Her second marriage to Eaton had just
taken place in January, 1829, after Jackson, learning of the scandal but
disbelieving it, had said to Eaton, "Your marrying her will disprove
these charges, and restore Peg's good name." The general treated with
violent contempt the persons, some of them clergymen, "whose morbid
appetite," he wrote the Rev. Dr. Ely on March 23, 1829, "delights in
defamation and slander." Burning with anger at those who had dared in
the recent canvass to malign his own wife now dead, he defended with
chivalrous resolution the lady whom his own wife "to the last moment of
her life believed ... to be an innocent and much-injured woman." Even
Mrs. Madison, he said, "was assailed by these fiends in human shape."
When protests were made against Eaton's appointment to the cabinet,
Jackson savagely cried, "I will sink or swim with him, by God!" All this
had happened before Van Buren reached Washington. There then followed
the grave question, whether Mrs. Eaton should be adjudged guilty by
society and sentenced to exclusion from its ceremonious enjoyments. The
ladies generally were determined against her, even the ladies of
Jackson's own household. Jackson proposed the task, impossible even to
an emperor, of compelling recognition of this distressed and persecuted
consort of a minister of state. The unfortunate married men in the
cabinet were in embarrassment indeed. They would not if they could, so
they said,--or at least they could not if they would,--induce their
wives to visit or receive visits from the wife of their colleague.
Jackson showed them very clearly that no other course would satisfy him.
Calhoun in his matrimonial state was at the same disadvantage. Even
foreign ministers and their wives met the President's displeasure for
not properly treating the wife of the American secretary of war.
When Van Buren entered this farcical scene, his widowed condition, and
the fortune of having sons rather than daughters, left him quite
unembarrassed. He politely called upon his associate's wife, as he
called upon the others; he treated her with entire deference of manner.
It is probable, though by no means clear, for popular feeling was
supposed to run high in sacred defense of the American home, that this
was the more politic course. It is now, however, certain that by doing
so he gave to Jackson, and some who were personally very close to
Jackson, more gratification than he gave offense elsewhere; and this has
been the occasion of much aspersion of Van Buren's motives. But whether
his course were politic or not, it is easy enough to see that any other
course would have been inexcusable. It would have been dastardly in the
extreme for Van Buren, reaching Washington and finding a controversy
raging whether or not the wife of one of his associates were virtuous,
to pronounce her guilty, as he most unmistakably would have done had he
refused her the attention which etiquette required him to pay all ladies
in her position. Parton in his Life of Jackson quotes from an anonymous
Washington correspondent, whose account he says was "exaggerated and
prejudiced but not wholly incorrect," the story that Van Buren induced
the British and Russian ministers, both of whom to their immediate peace
of mind happened to be bachelors, to treat Mrs. Eaton with distinction
at their entertainments. But the supposition seems quite gratuitous.
Neither of those unmarried diplomats was likely to do so absurdly
indefensible a thing as to insult by marked exclusion a cabinet
minister's wife, whom the President for any reason, good or bad, treated
with special distinction and respect. Van Buren's common sense was a
strong characteristic; and he doubtless looked upon the whole affair
with amused contempt. As the cabinet officer who had most to do with
social ceremonies, he may well have sought to calm the irritation and
establish for Mrs. Eaton, where he could, the usual forms of civility.
Like many other blessings of etiquette, these forms permit one to hold
unoffending neutrality upon the moral deserts of persons whom he meets.
It happened that Calhoun's friends had tried to prevent Eaton's
appointment to the War Department, and afterwards sought to remove him
from the cabinet. The episode added, therefore, keen edge to the growing
hostility of Jackson and his near friends to Calhoun, and thus tended to
strengthen his rival. But all this would have signified little but for
something deeper and broader. The preference of Van Buren had been
dictated by powerful causes long before Mrs. Timberlake became Mrs.
Eaton. These causes now grew more and more powerful.
Calhoun was serving his second term as Vice-President. A third term for
that office was obnoxious to the rule already established for the
presidency. Calhoun therefore desired Jackson to be content with one
term; for if he took a second, Calhoun feared, and with good reason,
that he himself, being then out of the vice-presidency, and so no longer
in sight on that conspicuous seat of preparation, might fall
dangerously out of mind. So it was soon known that Calhoun's friends
were opposed to a second term for Jackson. At a Pennsylvania meeting on
March 31, 1830, the opposition was openly made. Before this, and quite
apart from Jackson's natural hostility to the nullification theory which
had arisen in Calhoun's State, he had conceived a strong dislike for
Calhoun for a personal reason. With this Van Buren had nothing whatever
to do, so far as appears from any evidence better than the
uncorroborated rumors which ascribe to Van Buren's magic every incident
which injured Calhoun's standing with Jackson. Years before, Monroe's
cabinet had discussed the treatment due Jackson for his extreme measures
in the Seminole war. Calhoun, then secretary of war, had favored a
military trial of the victorious general; but John Quincy Adams and
Monroe had defended him, as did also Crawford, the secretary of the
treasury. For a long while Jackson had erroneously supposed that Calhoun
was the only member of the cabinet in his favor; and Calhoun had not
undeceived him. Some time before Jackson's election, Hamilton had
visited Crawford to promote the desired reconciliation between him and
the general; and a letter was written by Governor Forsyth of Georgia to
Hamilton, quoting Crawford's explanation of the real transactions in
Monroe's cabinet. Jackson was ignorant of all this until a dinner given
by him in honor of Monroe in November, 1829. Ringold, a personal friend
of Monroe's, in a complimentary speech at seeing Jackson and Monroe
seated together, said to William B. Lewis that Monroe had been "the only
one of his cabinet" friendly to Jackson in the Seminole controversy; and
after dinner the remark, after being discussed between Lewis and Eaton
the secretary of war, was repeated by the latter to Jackson, who said he
must be mistaken. Lewis then told Jackson of Forsyth's letter, which
greatly excited him, already disliking Calhoun as he did, and not
unnaturally susceptible about his reputation in a war which had been the
subject of violent and even savage attacks upon him in the recent
canvass. Jackson sent at once to New York for the letter. But Hamilton
was unwilling to give it without Forsyth's permission; and when Forsyth,
on the assembling of Congress, was consulted, he preferred that Crawford
should be directly asked for the information. This was done, and
Crawford wrote an account which in May, 1830, Jackson sent to Calhoun
with a demand for an explanation. Calhoun admitted that he had, after
hearing of the seizure of the Spanish forts in Florida and Jackson's
execution of the Englishmen Arbuthnot and Ambrister, expressed an
opinion against him, and proposed an investigation of his conduct by a
court of inquiry. He further told Jackson, with much dignity of manner,
that the latter was being used in a plot to effect Calhoun's political
extinction and the exaltation of his enemies. The President received
Calhoun's letter on his way to church, and upon his return from
religious meditation wrote to the Vice-President that "motives are to be
inferred from actions and judged by our God;" that he had long repelled
the insinuations that it was Calhoun, and not Crawford, who had secretly
endeavored to destroy his reputation; that he had never expected to say
to Calhoun, "_Et tu, Brute!_" and that there need be no further
communication on the subject. Thus was finally established the breach
between Calhoun and Jackson, which this personal matter had widened but
had by no means begun. In none of it did Van Buren have any part. When
Jackson sent Lewis to him with Calhoun's letter and asked his opinion,
he refused to read it, saying that an attempt would undoubtedly be made
to hold him responsible for the rupture, and he wished to be able to say
that he knew nothing of it. This course was doubtless politic, and
deserves no applause; but it was also simply right. On getting this
message Jackson said, "I reckon Van is right; I dare say they will
attempt to throw the whole blame on him."
A few weeks before, on April 13, 1830, the dinner to celebrate
Jefferson's birthday was held at Washington. It was attended by the
President and Vice-President, the cabinet officers, and many other
distinguished persons. There were reports at the time that it was
intended to use Jefferson's name in support of the state-rights
doctrines, and against internal improvements and a protective tariff.
This shows how clearly were already recognized some of the great causes
underlying the political movements and personal differences of the time.
The splendid parliamentary encounter between Hayne and Webster had taken
place but two or three months before. In his speech Hayne, who was
understood, as Benton tells us, to give voice to the sentiments of
Calhoun, had plainly enough stated the doctrine of nullification.
Jackson at the dinner robustly confronted the extremists with his famous
toast, "Our federal Union: it must be preserved." Calhoun, already
conscious of his leadership in a sectional controversy, followed with
the sentiment, true indeed, but said in words very sinister at that
time: "The Union: next to our liberty the most dear. May we all remember
that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States,
and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union." The
secretary of state next rose with a toast with little ring or
inspiration in it, but plainly, though in conciliatory phrase, declaring
for the Union. He asked the company to drink, "Mutual forbearance and
reciprocal concessions: through their agency the Union was established.
The patriotic spirit from which they emanated will forever sustain it."
Van Buren was now definitely a candidate for the succession. His
Northern birth and residence, his able leadership in Congress of the
opposition to the Adams administration, his almost supreme political
power in the first State of the Union, his clear and systematic
exposition of an intelligible and timely political creed, the support
his friends gave to Jackson's reëlection,--all these advantages were now
reënforced by the tendency to disunion clear in the utterances from
South Carolina, by Calhoun's efforts to exclude Van Buren and Eaton from
the cabinet, by the hostility to Mrs. Eaton of the ladies in the
households of Calhoun and of his friends in the cabinet, and now by
Jackson's discovery that, at a critical moment of his career ten years
before, Calhoun had sought his destruction. Here was a singular union of
really sound reasons why Van Buren should be preferred by his party and
by the country for the succession over Calhoun, with the strongest
reasons why Jackson, and those close to him, should be in most eager
personal sympathy with the preference. In December, 1829, Jackson had
explicitly pronounced in favor of Van Buren. This was in the letter to
Judge Overton of Tennessee, which Lewis is doubtless correct in saying
he asked Jackson to write lest the latter should die before his
successor was chosen. Jackson himself drafted the letter, which Lewis
copied with some verbal alteration; and the letter sincerely expressed
his own strong opinions. After alluding to the harmony between Van Buren
and his associates in the War and Post-Office Departments, he said: "I
have found him everything that I could desire him to be, and believe him
not only deserving my confidence, but the confidence of the nation.
Instead of his being selfish and intriguing, as has been represented by
some of his opponents, I have ever found him frank, open, candid, and
manly. As a counselor, he is able and prudent, republican in his
principles, and one of the most pleasant men to do business with I ever
knew. He, my dear friend, is well qualified to fill the highest office
in the gift of the people, who in him will find a true friend and safe
depositary of their rights and liberty. I wish I could say as much for
Mr. Calhoun and some of his friends." He criticised Calhoun for his
silence on the bank question, for his encouragement of the resolution in
the South Carolina legislature relative to the tariff, and for his
objection to the apportionment of the surplus revenues after the
national debt should be paid. Jackson had not yet definitely learned
from Forsyth's letter about Calhoun's attitude in Monroe's cabinet; but
his well-aroused suspicion doubtless influenced his expression. His
strong personal liking for the secretary of state had been evident from
the beginning of the administration. In a letter to Jesse Hoyt of April
13, 1829, the latter wrote that he had found the President affectionate,
confidential, and kind to the last degree, and that he believed there
was no degree of good feeling or confidence which the president did not
entertain for him. In July he wrote to Hamilton: "The general grows upon
me every day. I can fairly say that I have become quite enamored with
him."
The break between Calhoun and Jackson was kept from the public until
early in 1831. In the preceding winter, Duff Green, the editor of the
"Telegraph," until then the administration newspaper, but still entirely
committed to Calhoun, sought to have the publication of the
Calhoun-Jackson correspondence accompanied by a general outburst from
Republican newspapers against Jackson. The storm, Benton tells us, was
to seem so universal, and the indignation against Van Buren so great,
that even Jackson's popularity would not save the prime minister.
Jackson's friends, Barry and Kendall, learning of this, called to
Washington an unknown Kentuckian to be editor of a new and loyal
administration paper. Francis P. Blair was a singularly astute man,
whose name, and the name of whose family, afterwards became famous in
American politics. He belonged to the race of advisers of great men,
found by experience to be almost as important in a democracy as in a
monarchy. In February, 1831, Calhoun openly declared war on Jackson by
publishing the Seminole correspondence. Green having now been safely
reëlected printer to Congress, the "Telegraph," according to the plan,
strongly supported Calhoun. The "Globe," Blair's paper, attacked Calhoun
and upheld the President. The importance in that day ascribed by
politicians to the control of a single newspaper seems curious. In 1823,
Van Buren, while a federal senator, was interested in the "Albany
Argus," almost steadily from that time until the present the ably
managed organ of the Albany Regency;[9] and he then confidentially
wrote to Hoyt: "Without a paper thus edited at Albany we may hang our
harps on the willows. With it, the party can survive a thousand such
convulsions as those which now agitate and probably alarm most of those
around you." This seems an astonishingly high estimate of the power of a
paper which, though relatively conspicuous in the State, could have then
had but a small circulation. It was, however, the judgment of a most
sagacious politician. In 1822 he complained to Hoyt that his expenses of
this description were too heavy. In 1833 James Gordon Bennett, then a
young journalist of Philadelphia, wrote Hoyt a plain intimation that
money was necessary to enable him to continue his journalistic warfare
in Van Buren's behalf. Anguish, disappointment, despair, he said,
brooded over him, while Van Buren chose to sit still and sacrifice those
who had supported him in every weather. Van Buren replied that he could
not directly or indirectly afford pecuniary aid to Bennett's press, and
more particularly as he was then situated; that if Bennett could not
continue friendly to him on public grounds and with perfect
independence, he could only regret it, but he desired no other support.
He added, however, not to burn his ships behind him, that he had
supposed there would be no difficulty in obtaining money in New York, if
their "friends in Philadelphia could not all together make out to
sustain one press." Thus was invited a powerful animosity, vindictively
shown even when Van Buren was within three years of his death.
Soon after his arrival Blair entered the famous Kitchen Cabinet, a
singularly talented body, fond enough indeed of "wire-pulling," but with
clear and steady political convictions. William B. Lewis had long been a
close personal friend of Jackson and manager of his political interests,
and had but recently earned his gratitude by rushing successfully to the
defense of Mrs. Jackson's reputation. Kendall and Hill were adroit,
industrious, skillful men; the former afterwards postmaster-general, and
the latter to become a senator from New Hampshire. Blair entered this
company full of zeal against nullification and the United States Bank.
Jackson himself was so strong-willed a man, so shrewd in management, so
skillful in reading the public temper, that the story of the complete
domination of this junto over him is quite absurd. The really great
abilities of these men and their entire devotion to his interests gained
a profound and justifiable influence with him, which occasional petty or
unworthy uses made of it did not destroy. No one can doubt that Jackson
was confirmed by them in the judgment to which Van Buren urged him upon
great political issues. The secretary of state refused to give the new
paper of Blair any of the printing of his department, lest its origin
should be attributed to him, and because he wished to be able to say
truly that he had nothing to do with it. Kendall, who lived through the
civil war, strongly loyal to the Union and to Jackson's memory, to die a
wealthy philanthropist, declared in his autobiography, and doubtless
correctly, that the "Globe" was not established by Van Buren or his
friends, but by friends of Jackson who desired his reëlection for
another four years. Nevertheless Van Buren was held responsible for the
paper; and its establishment was soon followed by the dissolution of the
cabinet.
This explosion, it is now clear, was of vast advantage to the cause of
the Union. It took place in April, 1831, and in part at least was Van
Buren's work. On the 9th of that month he wrote to Edward Livingston,
then a senator from Louisiana spending the summer at his seat on the
Hudson River, asking him to start for Washington the day after he
received the letter, and to avoid speculation "by giving out that" he
was "going to Philadelphia." Livingston wrote back from Washington to
his wife that Van Buren had taken the high and popular ground that, as a
candidate for the presidency, he ought not to remain in the cabinet when
its public measures would be attributed to his intrigue, and thus made
to injure the President; and that Van Buren's place was pressed upon him
"with all the warmth of friendship and every appeal to my love of
country."
Van Buren, with courageous skill, put his resignation to the public
distinctly on the ground of his own political aspiration. On April 11,
1831, he wrote to the President a letter for publication, saying that
from the moment he had entered the cabinet it had been his "anxious wish
and zealous endeavor to prevent a premature agitation of the question"
of the succession, "and at all events to discountenance, and if possible
repress, the disposition, at an early day manifested," to connect his
name "with that disturbing topic." Of "the sincerity and constancy
of his disposition" he appealed to the President to judge. But he
had not succeeded, and circumstances beyond his control had given
the subject a turn which could not then "be remedied except by a
self-disfranchisement, which, even if dictated by" his "individual
wishes, could hardly be reconcilable with propriety or self-respect." In
the situation existing at the time, "diversities of ulterior preference
among the friends of the administration" were unavoidable, and he added:
"Even if the respective advocates of those thus placed in rivalship be
patriotic enough to resist the temptation of creating obstacles to the
advancement of him to whose elevation they are opposed, by embarrassing
the branch of public service committed to his charge, they are
nevertheless, by their position, exposed to the suspicion of
entertaining and encouraging such views,--a suspicion which can seldom
fail, in the end, to aggravate into present alienation and hostility
the prospective differences which first gave rise to it." The public
service, he said, required him to remove such "obstructions" from "the
successful prosecution of public affairs;" and he intimated, with the
affectation of self-depreciation which was disagreeably fashionable
among great men of the day, that the example he set would,
"notwithstanding the humility of its origin," be found worthy of respect
and observance. When four years later he accepted the presidential
nomination he repeated the sentiment of this letter, but more
explicitly, saying that his "name was first associated with the question
of General Jackson's successor more through the ill-will of opponents
than the partiality of friends." This seemed very true. For every
movement which had tended to commit the administration or its chief
against Calhoun or his doctrines, he had been held responsible as a
device to advance himself. His adversaries had proclaimed him not so
much a public officer as a self-seeking candidate. It was a rare and
true stroke of political genius to admit his aspiration to the
presidency; to deny his present candidacy and his self-seeking; but,
lest the clamor of his enemies should, if he longer held his office,
throw doubt upon his sincerity, to withdraw from that station, and to
prevent the continued pretense that he was using official opportunities,
however legitimately, to increase his public reputation or his political
power. Thus would the candidacy be thrust on him by his enemies. In his
letter he announced that Jackson had consented to stand for reëlection;
and that, "without a total disregard of the lights of experience," he
could not shut his eyes to the unfavorable influence which his
continuance in the cabinet might have upon Jackson's own canvass in
1832.
In accepting the resignation Jackson declared the reasons which the
letter had presented too strong to be disregarded, thus practically
assenting to Van Buren's candidacy to succeed him. Jackson looked with
sorrow, he said, upon the state of things Van Buren had described. But
it was "but an instance of one of the evils to which free governments
must ever be liable," an evil whose remedy lay "in the intelligence and
public spirit of" their "common constituents," who would correct it; and
in that belief he found "abundant consolation." He added that, with the
best opportunities for observing and judging, he had seen in Van Buren
no other desire than "to move quietly on in the path of" his duties, and
"to promote the harmonious conduct of public affairs." "If on this
point," he apostrophized the departing premier, "you have had to
encounter detraction, it is but another proof of the utter insufficiency
of innocence and worth to shield from such assaults."
Never was a presidential candidate more adroitly or less dishonorably
presented to his party and to the country. For the adroitness lay in the
frank avowal of a willingness or desire to be president and a resolution
to be a candidate,--for which, so far as their conduct went, his
adversaries were really responsible,--and in seizing an undoubted
opportunity to serve the public. Quite apart from the sound reason that
the secretary of state should not, if possible, be exposed in dealing
with public questions to aspersions upon his motives, as Van Buren was
quite right in saying that he would be, it was also clear that the
cabinet was inharmonious; and that its lack of harmony, whatever the
facts or wherever the fault, seriously interfered with the public
business. The administration and the country, it was obvious, were now
approaching the question of nullification, and upon that question it was
but patriotic to desire that its members should firmly share the union
principles of their chief. Within a few weeks after the dissolution of
the cabinet, Jackson seized the opportunity afforded him by an
invitation from the city of Charleston to visit it on the 4th of July,
to sound in the ears of nullification a ringing blast for the Union.
If he could go, he said, he trusted to find in South Carolina "all
the men of talent, exalted patriotism, and private worth," however
divided they might have been before, "united before the altar of
their country on the day set apart for the solemn celebration of its
independence,--independence which cannot exist without union, and with
it is eternal." The disunion sentiments ascribed to distinguished
citizens of the State were, he hoped, if indeed they were accurately
reported, "the effect of momentary excitement, not deliberate design."
For all the work then performed in defense of the Union, Jackson and
his advisers of the time must share with Webster and Clay the gratitude
of our own and all later generations. The burst of loyalty in April,
1861, had no less of its genesis in the intrepid front and the political
success of the national administration from 1831 to 1833, than in the
pathetic and glorious appeals and aspirations of the great orators.
Jackson now called to the work Edward Livingston, privileged to perform
in it that service of his which deserves a splendid immortality. He
became secretary of state on May 24, 1831. Eaton, the secretary of war,
voluntarily resigned to become governor of Florida; and Barry, the
postmaster-general, who was friendly to the reorganization, was soon
appointed minister to Spain, in which post Eaton later succeeded him.
Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, the Calhoun members, were required to
resign. The new cabinet, apart from the state department, was on the
whole far abler than the old; indeed, it was one of the ablest of
American cabinets. Below Livingston at the council table sat McLane of
Delaware, recalled from the British mission to take the treasury,
Governor Cass of Michigan, and Senator Woodbury of New Hampshire,
secretaries of war and navy. Amos Kendall brought to the post-office his
extraordinary astuteness and diligence in administration; and Taney,
later the chief justice, was attorney-general. The executive talents of
this body of men, loyal as they were to the plans of Jackson and Van
Buren, promised, and they afterwards brought, success in the struggle
for the principles now adopted by the party, as well as for the control
of the government. Van Buren stood as truly for a policy of state as
ever stood any candidate before the American people. One finds it
agreeable now to escape for a moment from the Washington atmosphere of
personal controversy and ambition. It is not to be forgotten, however,
that a like atmosphere has surrounded even those political struggles in
America, only three or four in number, which have been greater and
deeper than that in which Jackson and Van Buren were the chief figures.
From this temper of personal controversy and ambition the greatest
political benefactors of history have not been free, so inevitable is
the mingling with large affairs of the varied personal motives,
conscious and unconscious, of those who transact them.
When Van Buren left the first place in Jackson's cabinet, the latter,
too, at last stood for the definite policy which he had but imperfectly
adopted when he was elected, and which, as a practical and immediate
political plan, it is reasonably safe to assert, was most largely the
creation of the sagacious mind of his chief associate. Before Van Buren
left Albany he had written to Hamilton on February 21, 1829, with
reference to Jackson's inaugural: "I hope the general will not find it
necessary to avow any opinion upon constitutional questions at war with
the doctrines of the Jefferson school. Whatever his views may be, there
can be no necessity of doing so in an inaugural address." This shows the
doubt, which had been caused by some of Jackson's utterances and votes,
of his intelligent and systematic adherence to the political creed
preached by Van Buren. Jackson's inaugural was colorless and safe
enough. Upon strict construction he said that he should "keep steadily
in view the limitations as well as the extent of the executive power;"
that he would be "animated by a proper respect for those sovereign
members of our Union, taking care not to confound the powers they have
reserved to themselves with those they have granted to the confederacy."
The bank he did not mention. And upon the living and really great
question, to which Van Buren had given so much study, Jackson said,
himself probably having a grim sense of humor at the absurd emptiness of
the sentence: "Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so
far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the federal
government, are of high importance."
Very different was the situation when two years later Van Buren left the
cabinet. In several state papers of great dignity and ability and yet
popular and interesting in style, Jackson had formulated a political
creed closely consistent with that advocated by Van Buren in the Senate.
Upon internal improvements, Jackson, on May 27, 1830, sent to the House
his famous Maysville Road veto. That road was exclusively within the
State of Ohio, and not connected with any existing system of
improvements. Jackson very well said that if it could be considered
national, no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the
general and state governments need be attempted. He pointed out the
tendency of such appropriations, little by little, to distort the
meaning of the Constitution; and found in former legislation "an
admonitory proof of the force of implication, and that necessity of
guarding the Constitution with sleepless vigilance against the authority
of precedents which have not the sanction of its most plainly defined
powers." In his annual message of December, 1830, he referred to the
system of federal subscriptions to private corporate enterprises,
saying: "The power which the general government would acquire within the
several States by becoming the principal stockholder in corporations,
controlling every canal and each sixty or hundred miles of every
important road, and giving a proportionate vote to all their elections,
is almost inconceivable, and in my view dangerous to the liberties of
the people." With these utterances ended the very critical struggle to
give the federal government a power which even in those days would have
been great, and which, as has already been said, had it continued with
the growth of railways, would have enormously and radically changed our
system of government.
Before he left the Senate Van Buren had pronounced against the Bank of
the United States; but Jackson did not mention it in his inaugural. In
his first annual message, however, Jackson warned Congress that the
charter of the bank would expire in 1836, and that deliberation upon
its renewal ought to commence at once. "Both the constitutionality
and the expediency of the law creating this bank," he said, "are well
questioned ...; and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the
great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." This was plain
enough for a first utterance. A year later he told Congress that nothing
had occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which many citizens
apprehended from that institution as then organized, though he outlined
an institution which should be not a corporation, but a branch of the
Treasury Department, and not, as he thought, obnoxious to constitutional
objections.
The removal of the Cherokee Indians from within the State of Georgia he
defended by considerations which were practically unanswerable. It was
dangerously inconsistent with our political system to maintain within
the limits of a State Indian tribes, free from the obligations of state
laws, having a tribal independence, and bound only by treaty relations
with the United States. It was harsh to remove the Indians; but it would
have been harsher to them and to the white people of the State to have
supported by federal arms an Indian sovereignty within its limits.
Jackson, with true Democratic jealousy, refused in his political and
executive policy to defer to the merely moral weight of the opinion of
the Supreme Court. For in that tribunal political and social exigencies
could have but limited force in answering a question which, as the court
itself decided, called for a political remedy, which the President and
not the court could apply.
The tariff might, Jackson declared, be constitutionally used for
protective purposes; but the deliberate policy of his party was now
plainly intimated. In his first message he "regretted that the
complicated restrictions which now embarrass the intercourse of nations
could not by common consent be abolished." In the Maysville veto he said
that, "as long as the encouragement of domestic manufactures" was
"directed to national ends," ... it should receive from him "a temperate
but steady support." But this is to be read with the expression in the
same paper that the people had a right to demand "the reduction of every
tax to as low a point as the wise observance of the necessity to protect
that portion of our manufactures and labor, whose prosperity is
essential to our national safety and independence, will allow." This
encouragement was, he said in his inaugural, to be given to those
products which might be found "essential to our national independence."
In his second message he declared "the obligations upon all the trustees
of political power to exempt those for whom they act from all
unnecessary burdens;" that "the resources of the nation beyond those
required for the immediate and necessary purposes of government can
nowhere be so well deposited as in the pockets of the people;" that
"objects of national importance alone ought to be protected;" and that
"of those the productions of our soil, our mines, and our workshops,
essential to national defense, occupy the first rank." Other domestic
industries, having a national importance, and which might, after
temporary protection, compete with foreign labor on equal terms,
merited, he said, the same attention in a subordinate degree. The
economic light here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps as strong
as it often is in a political paper. Jackson's conclusion was that the
tariff then existing taxed some of the comforts of life too highly;
protected interests too local and minute to justify a general exaction;
and forced some manufactures for which the country was not ripe.
All this practical and striking growth in political science had taken
place during the two years of Jackson's and Van Buren's almost daily
intercourse at Washington. It is impossible from materials yet made
public to point out with precision the latter's handiwork in each of
these papers. James A. Hamilton describes his own long nights at the
White House on the messages of 1829 and 1830; and his were not the only
nights of the kind spent by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other
strong men, and like some whose opportunities of education had been far
ampler than his, freely used literary assistance, although, with all his
inaccuracies, he himself wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interesting
style. But with little doubt the political positions taken in these
papers, and which made a definite and lasting creed, were more
immediately the work of the secretary of state. The consultations with
Van Buren, of which Hamilton tells, are only glimpses of what must
continually have gone on. At the time of Jackson's inauguration Hamilton
wrote that the latter's confidence was reposed in men in no way equal to
him in natural parts, but who had been useful to him in covering "his
very lamentable defects of education," and whom, through his reluctance
to expose these defects to others, he was compelled to keep about him.
He added that Van Buren could never reach the same relation which Lewis
held with the general, because the latter would "not yield himself so
readily to superior as to inferior minds." This was a mistake. Van
Buren's personal loyalty to Jackson, his remarkable tact and delicacy,
had promptly aroused in Jackson that extraordinary liking for him which
lasted until Jackson died. With this advantage, Van Buren's clear-cut
theories of political conduct were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally
wise mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they were agreeable,
and received there the deference due to the practical sagacity in which
Van Buren's obvious political success had proved him to be a master. Van
Buren was doubtless greatly aided by the kitchen cabinet. He was careful
to keep on good terms with those who had so familiar an access to
Jackson. Kendall's singular and useful ability he soon discovered. It
was at the latter's instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at the
White House, where Van Buren paid him special attention. The influence
of the members of the kitchen cabinet with their master has been much
exaggerated. Soon after Lewis was appointed, and in spite of his
personal intimacy and of his rumored influence with the President, he
was, as he wrote to Hamilton, in some anxiety whether he might not be
removed; the President had at least, he said, entertained a proposition
to remove him, and was therefore, in view of Jackson's great debt to
him, no longer entitled to his "friendship or future support."
Very soon after Van Buren's withdrawal from the cabinet, he was accused
of primarily and chiefly causing the official proscription of men for
political opinions which began in the federal service under Jackson.
From that time to the present the accusation has been carelessly
repeated from one writer to another, with little original examination of
the facts. It is clear that Van Buren neither began nor caused this
demoralizing and disastrous abuse. When he reached Washington in 1829,
the removals were in full and lamentable progress. In the very first
days of the administration, McLean was removed from the office of
postmaster-general to a seat in the Supreme Court, because, so Adams
after an interview with him wrote in his diary on March 14,1829, "he
refused to be made the instrument of the sweeping proscription of
postmasters which is to be one of the samples of the promised reform."
This was a week or two before Van Buren reached Washington. On the same
day Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from Washington: "No damned rascal
who made use of his office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr.
Adams in, and General Jackson out of power, is entitled to the least
lenity or mercy, save that of hanging.... Whether or not I shall get
anything in the general scramble for plunder remains to be proven; but I
rather guess I shall.... I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend
you to push like a devil, if you expect anything from that quarter....
If I can only keep my own legs, I shall do well; but I'm darned if I can
carry any weight with me." This man, against Van Buren's earnest protest
and to his great disturbance, had some of the devil's luck in pushing.
He was appointed collector of customs at New York,--one of the principal
financial officers in the country. It is not altogether unsatisfactory
to read of the scandalous defalcation of which he was afterwards guilty,
and of the serious injury it dealt his party. The temper which he
exposed so ingenuously, filled Washington at the time. Nor did it come
only or chiefly from one quarter of the country. Kendall, then fresh
from Kentucky, who had been appointed fourth auditor, wrote to his wife,
with interestingly mingled sentiments: "I turned out six clerks on
Saturday. Several of them have families and are poor. It was the most
painful thing I ever did; but I could not well get along without it.
Among them is a poor old man with a young wife and several children. I
shall help to raise a contribution to get him back to Ohio.... I shall
have a private carriage to go out with me and bring my whole brood of
little ones. Bless their sweet faces."
Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton from Albany in March, 1829:
"If the general makes one removal at this moment he must go on. Would it
not be better to get the streets of Washington clear of office-seekers
first in the way I proposed?... As to the publication in the newspapers
I have more to say. So far as depends on me, my course will be to
restore by a single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay
for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal character have
since arisen which would make the reappointment in any case improper. To
ascertain that will take a little time. There I would pause." Among the
Mackenzie letters is one from Lorenzo Hoyt, describing an interview with
Van Buren while governor, and then complaining that the latter would
"not lend the utmost weight of his influence to displace from office
such men as John Duer," Adams's appointee as United States attorney at
New York. If they had been struggling for political success for the
benefit of their opponents, he angrily wrote, he wished to know it. He
added, however, that, from the behavior of the President thus far, he
thought Jackson would "go the whole hog." This was before Van Buren
reached Washington. In answer to an insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging
a removal, and telling the secretary of state that there was a "charm
attending bold measures extremely fascinating" which had given Jackson
all his glory, Van Buren wrote back: "Here I am engaged in the most
intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the
successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of
the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning
until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me
under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility
can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon
which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible."
Ingham, Jackson's secretary of the treasury, the next day wrote to this
typical office-seeker that the rage for office in New York was such that
an enemy menacing the city with desolation would not cause more
excitement. He added, speaking of his own legitimate work: "These duties
cannot be postponed; and I do assure you that I am compelled daily to
file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without reading them,
although I work 18 hours out of the 24 with all diligence. The
appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of
the prominent errors of the late administration that they suffered many
important public interests to be neglected, while they were cruising
about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do."
Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, condemned the system of removals;
and his fairness may well be trusted. He said that in Jackson's first
year (in which De Tocqueville, whom he was answering, said that Jackson
had removed every removable functionary) there were removed but 690
officers through the whole United States for all causes, of whom 491
were postmasters: the entire number of postmasters being at the time
nearly 8000. Kendall, reviewing the first three years of Jackson's
administration near their expiration, said that in the city of
Washington there had been removed but one officer out of seven, and
"most of them for bad conduct and character," a statement some of the
significance of which doubtless depends upon what was "bad character,"
but which still fairly limits the epithet "wholesale" customarily
applied to these removals. In the Post-Office Department, he said, the
removals had been only one out of sixteen, and in the whole government
but one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party purposes; but he
was cautious and precise; and his statements, made near the time, show
how far behind the sudden "clean sweep" of 1861 was this earlier essay
in "spoils," and how much exaggeration there has been on the subject.
Benton says that in the departments at Washington a majority of the
employees were opposed to Jackson throughout his administration. Of the
officers having a judicial function, such as land and claims
commissioners, territorial judges, justices in the District of Columbia,
none were removed. The readiness to remove was stimulated by the
discovery of the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after his removal
from the fourth auditor's place, to which Kendall was appointed. Watkins
had been Adams's warm personal friend, so the latter states in his
diary, and "an over active partisan against Jackson at the last
presidential election." Unreasonable as was a general inference from one
of the instances of dishonesty which occur under the best
administrations, and a flagrant instance of which was soon to occur
under his own administration, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for
many really shameful removals. There had doubtless been among
office-holders under Adams a good deal of the "offensive partisanship"
of our day, many expressions of horror by subordinate officers at the
picture of Jackson as president. All this had angered Jackson, whose
imperial temper readily classed his subordinates as servants of Andrew
Jackson, rather than as ministers of the public service. Moreover, his
accession, as Benton not unfairly pointed out, was the first great party
change since Jefferson had succeeded the elder Adams. Offices had
greatly increased in number. In the profound democratic change that had
been actively operating for a quarter of a century, the force of old
traditions had been broken in many useful as in many useless things.
Great numbers of inferior offices had now become political, not only in
New York, but in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other States. Adams's
administration, except in the change of policy upon large questions, had
been a continuation of Monroe's. He went from the first place in
Monroe's cabinet to the presidency. His secretaries of the treasury and
the navy and his postmaster-general and attorney-general had held office
under Monroe, the latter three in the very same places. But Jackson
thrust out of the presidency his rival, who had naturally enough been
earnestly sustained by large numbers of his subordinates; and Adams's
appointees were doubtless in general followers of himself and of Clay.
Jackson's first message contained a serious defense of the removals. Men
long in office, he said, acquired the "habit of looking with
indifference upon the public interests," and office became considered "a
species of property." "The duties of all public officers," he declared,
with an ignorance then very common among Americans, could be "made so
plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves
for their performance." Further, he pointed out that no one man had "any
more intrinsic right" to office than another; and therefore "no
individual wrong" was done by removal. The officer removed, he
concluded, with almost a demagogic touch, had the same means of earning
a living as "the millions who never held office." In spite of individual
distress he wished "rotation in office" to become "a leading principle
in the Republican creed." Unfounded as most of this is now clearly seen
to be, it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to a very large
part of the American people.
In his own department Van Buren practiced little of the proscription
which was active elsewhere. Of seventeen foreign representatives, but
four were removed in the first year. Doubtless he was fortunate in
having an office without the amount of patronage of the Post-Office or
the Treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed a personal liking
for removals. The distribution of offices was not distasteful to him;
but his temper was neither prescriptive nor unfriendly. At times even
his partisan loyalty was doubted for his reluctance in this, which was
soon deemed an appropriate and even necessary party work.
But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and demoralizing system.
Powerful as he was with Jackson, wise and far-seeing as he was, he must
receive for his acquiescence, or even for his silence, a part of the
condemnation which the American people, as time goes on, will more and
more visit upon one of the great political offenses committed against
their political integrity and welfare. But it must in justice be
remembered, not only that Van Buren did not begin or actively conduct
the distribution of spoils; not only that his acquiescence was in a
practice which in his own State he had found well established; but that
the practice in which he thus joined was one which it is probable he
could not have fully resisted without his own political destruction, and
perhaps the temporary prostration of the political causes to which he
was devoted. Though these be palliations and not defenses, the
biographer ought not to apply to human nature a rule of unprecedented
austerity. In Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if any,
more timidity or time-serving than in the like yielding by every man
holding great office in the United States since Jackson's inauguration;
and the worst, the most corrupting, and the most demoralizing official
proscription in America took place thirty-two years afterwards, and
under a president who, in wise and exalted patriotism, was one of the
greatest statesmen, as he has been perhaps the best loved, of Americans,
and to whom blame ought to be assigned all the larger by reason of the
extraordinary power and prestige he enjoyed, and the moral fervor of the
nation behind him, which rendered less necessary this unworthy aid of
inferior patronage.
So crowded and interesting were the two years of Van Buren's life in the
cabinet with matters apart from the special duties of his office, that
it is only at the last, and briefly, that an account can be given of his
career as secretary of state. His conduct of foreign affairs was firm,
adroit, dignified, and highly successful. It utterly broke the ideal of
turbulent and menacing incompetence which the Whigs set up for Jackson's
presidency. He had to solve no difficulty of the very first order; for
the United States were in profound peace with the whole world. He
performed, however, with skill and success two diplomatic services of
real importance, services which brought deserved and most valuable
strength to Jackson's administration. The American claims for French
spoliations upon American ships during the operation of Napoleon's
Berlin and Milan decrees had been under discussion for many years. They
were now resolutely pressed. In his message of December, 1829, Jackson,
doubtless under Van Buren's advice, paid some compliments to "France,
our ancient ally;" but then said very plainly that these claims, unless
satisfied, would continue "a subject of unpleasant discussion and
possible collision between the two governments." He politely referred to
"the known integrity of the French monarch," Charles X., as an assurance
that the claims would be paid. A few months afterwards this Bourbon was
tumbled off the French throne; and in December, 1830, Jackson with
increased courtliness, and with a flattering allusion to Lafayette,
conspicuous in this milder revolution as he had been in 1789, rejoiced
in "the high voucher we possess for the enlarged views and pure
integrity" of Louis Philippe. The new American vigor, doubtless aided by
the liberal change in France, brought a treaty on July 4, 1831, under
which $5,000,000 was to be paid by France, a result which Jackson, with
pardonable boasting, said in his message of December, 1831, was an
encouragement "for perseverance in the demands of justice," and would
admonish other powers, if any, inclined to evade those demands, that
they would never be abandoned. The French treaty came so soon after Van
Buren's retirement from the state department, and followed so naturally
upon the methods of his negotiation, and his instructions to William C.
Rives, our minister at Paris, that much of its credit belonged to him.
In March, 1830, a treaty was made with Denmark requiring the payment of
$650,000 for Danish spoliations on American commerce. The effective
pressing of these claims was justly one of the most popular performances
of the administration. Commercial treaties were concluded with Austria
in August, 1829; with Turkey in May, 1830; and with Mexico in April,
1831.
But the chief transaction of Van Buren's foreign administration was the
opening of trade in American vessels between the United States and the
British West Indian colonies. This commerce was then relatively much
more important to the United States than in later times; and it was
chiefly by American shipping that American commerce was carried on with
foreign countries. The absurd and odious restrictions upon intercourse
so highly natural and advantageous to the people of our seaboard and of
the British West Indian islands had led to smuggling on a large scale,
and were fruitful of international irritations. Retaliatory acts of
Congress and Parliament, prohibitive proclamations of our presidents,
and British orders in council, had at different times, since the close
of the second British war in 1815, oppressed or prevented honest and
profitable trade between neighbors who ought to have been friendly
traders. Van Buren found the immediate position to be as follows. In
July, 1825, an act of Parliament had allowed foreign vessels to trade to
the British colonies upon conditions. To secure for American vessels the
benefit of this act, it was necessary that within one year American
ports should be open to British vessels bringing the same kind of
British or colonial produce as could be imported in American vessels;
that British and American vessels in the trade should pay the same
government charges; that alien duties on British vessels and cargoes,
that is, duties not imposed on the like vessels and cargoes owned by
Americans, should be suspended; and that the provision of an American
law of 1823 limiting the privileges of the colonial trade to British
vessels carrying colonial produce to American ports directly from the
colonies exporting it, and without stopping at intermediate ports,
should be repealed. John Quincy Adams's administration had failed within
the year to comply with the conditions imposed by the British law of
1825. In 1826, therefore, Great Britain forbade this trade and
intercourse in American vessels. Adams retorted with a counter
prohibition in March, 1827. And in this unfortunate position Van Buren
found our commercial relations with the West Indian, Bahama, and South
American colonies of England. The situation was aggravated by a claim
made by the American government in 1823 that American goods should pay
in the colonial ports no higher duties than British goods, a protest
against British protection to British industry in the British colonies
coming with little grace from a country itself maintaining the
protective system. Adams had sent Gallatin to England to remedy the
difficulty, but without success.
Van Buren adopted a different method of negotiation. A more conciliatory
bearing was assumed towards our traditional adversary. Jackson, in
language sounding strangely from his imperious mouth, was made to say in
his first message that "with Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace
and war, we may look forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and
elevated competition; that it is their policy to preserve the most
cordial relations." These, he said, were his own views; and such were
"the prevailing sentiments of our constituents." In his instructions to
McLane, the minister at London, Van Buren, departing widely from
conventional diplomacy, expressly conceded that the American government
had been wrong in its claim that England should admit to its colonies
American goods on as favorable terms as British goods; that it had been
wrong in requiring British ships bringing colonial produce to come and
go directly from and to the producing colonies; and that it had been
wrong in refusing the privileges offered by the British law of 1825.
This frank surrender of untenable positions showed the highest skill in
negotiation, a business for which Van Buren was perhaps better equipped
than any American of his time. In these points we were "assailable;" we
had "too long and too tenaciously" resisted British rights. After these
admissions, it would, he said, be improper for Great Britain to suffer
"any feelings that find their origin in the past pretensions of this
government to have an adverse influence upon the present conduct of
Great Britain." McLane was to tell the Earl of Aberdeen that "to set up
the act of the late administration as the cause of forfeiture of
privileges which would otherwise be extended to the people of the United
States would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and
could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility." McLane was also to
allude to the parts taken by the members of Jackson's administration in
the former treatment of the question under discussion. And here Van
Buren used the objectionable sentence which led to his subsequent
rejection by the Senate as minister to England, and which through that,
such are the curious caprices of politics, led, or at least helped to
lead, him to the presidency. He said, "Their views upon that point have
been submitted to the people of the United States; and the counsels by
which your conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment
expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration
was amenable for its acts."
In Van Buren's sagacious desire to emphasize the abandonment of claims
preventing the negotiation, he here introduced to a foreign nation the
American people as a judge that had condemned the assertion of such
claims by Jackson's predecessor. The statement was at least an
exaggeration. There was little reason to suppose that Adams's failure in
the negotiation over colonial trade had much, if at all, influenced the
election of 1828. Nor was it dignified to officially expose our party
contests to foreign eyes. But Van Buren was intent upon success in the
negotiation. He could succeed where others had failed, only by a strong
assertion of a change in American policy. His fault was at most one of
taste in the manner of an assertion right enough and wise enough in
itself. Nor were these celebrated instructions lacking in firmness or
dignity. Great Britain was clearly warned that she must then decide for
all time whether the hardships from which her West Indian planters
suffered should continue; and that the United States would not "in
expiation of supposed past encroachments" repeal their laws, leaving
themselves "wholly dependent upon the indulgence of Great Britain," and
not knowing in advance what course she would follow. In his speech in
the Senate in February, 1827, Van Buren had clearly stated the general
positions which he took in this famous dispatch. It is rather curious,
however, that he found occasion then to say upon this very subject what
he seemed afterwards to forget, that "in the collisions which may arise
between the United States and a foreign power, it is our duty to present
an unbroken front; domestic differences, if they tend to give
encouragement to unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or deferred;
and the cause of our government must be considered as the cause of our
country." So easy it is to advise other men to be bold and firm.
McLane's long and very able letter to the British foreign secretary
closely followed his instructions. Lord Aberdeen was frankly told that
the United States had committed "mistakes" in the past; and that the
"American pretensions" which had prevented a former arrangement would
not be revived. The negotiation was entirely successful. In October,
1830, the President, with the authorization of Congress, declared
American ports open to British vessels and their cargoes coming from the
colonies, and that they should be subject to the same charges as
American vessels coming from the same colonies. In November a British
order in council gave to American vessels corresponding privileges. On
January 3, 1831, Jackson sent to the Senate the papers, including Van
Buren's letter of instructions. No criticism was made upon their tenor;
and the public, heedless of the phrases used in reaching the end,
rejoiced in a most beneficent opening of commerce.