PRESIDENT.--CANADIAN INSURRECTION.--TEXAS.--SEMINOLE WAR.--DEFEAT FOR
REËLECTION
Another unpopular duty fell to Van Buren during his presidency, a duty
but for which New York might have been saved to him in 1840. In the
Lower and Upper Canadas popular discontent and political tumult resulted
late in 1837 in violence, so often the only means by which English
dependencies have brought their imperial mistress to a respect for their
complaints.[16] The liberality of the Whigs, then lately triumphant in
England, was not broad enough to include these distant colonists. The
provincial legislature in each of the Canadas consisted of a Lower House
or assembly chosen by popular vote, and an Upper House or council
appointed by the governor, who himself was appointed by and represented
the crown. Reforms after reforms, proposed by the popular houses, were
rejected by the council. In Lower Canada the popular opposition was
among the French, who had never been embittered towards the United
States. In Upper Canada its strength was among settlers who had come
since the war closed in 1815. Lower Canada demanded in vain that the
council be made elective. Its assembly, weary of the effectual
opposition of the council to popular measures, began in 1832 to refuse
votes of supplies unless their grievances were redressed; and by 1837
government charges had accrued to the amount of £142,100. On April 14,
1837, Lord John Russell, still wearing the laurel of a victor for
popular rights, procured from the imperial parliament permission,
without the assent of the colonial parliament, to apply to these charges
the money in the hands of the receiver-general of Lower Canada. This
extraordinary grant passed the House of Commons by 269 to 46. A far less
flagitious case of taxation without representation had begun the
American Revolution. The money had been raised under laws which provided
for its expenditure by vote of a local representative body. It was
expended by the vote of a body at Westminster, three thousand miles
away, but few of whose members knew or cared anything for the bleak
stretch of seventeenth-century France on the lower St. Lawrence, and
none of whom had contributed a penny of it. To even Gladstone, lately
the under-secretary for the colonies and then a "rising hope of
unbending Tories," there seemed nothing involved but the embarrassment
of faithful servants of the crown. This thoroughly British disregard of
sentiment among other people roused a deep opposition which was headed
by Papineau, eloquent and a hero among the French. An insurrection broke
out in November, 1837, and blood was shed in engagements at St. Denis
and St. Charles, not far from Montreal. But the insurgents were quickly
defeated, and within three weeks the insurrection in Lower Canada was
ended.
In Upper Canada there was considerable Republican sentiment, and the
party of popular rights had among its leaders men of a high order of
ability. One of them, Marshall S. Bidwell, through the magnanimity or
procurement of the governor, escaped from Canada to become one of the
most honored and stately figures at the bar of New York. Early in 1836,
Sir Francis B. Head, a clever and not ill-natured man, arrived as
governor. He himself wrote the unconscious Anglicism that "the great
danger" he "had to avoid was the slightest attempt to conciliate any
party." It was assumed with the usual insufferable affectation of
omniscience that these hardy Western settlers were merely children who
did not know what was best for them. Even the suggestions of concession
sent him from England were not respected. In an election for the
Assembly he had the issue announced as one of separation from England;
and by the use, it was said, of his power and patronage, the colonial
Tories carried a majority of the House. Hopeless of any redress, and
fired by the rumors of the revolt in Lower Canada, an insurrection took
place early in December near Toronto. It was speedily suppressed. One of
the leaders, Mackenzie, escaped to Buffalo. Others were captured and
punished, some of them capitally.
The mass of the Canadians were doubtless opposed to the insurrection.
But there was among them a widespread and reasonable discontent, with
which the Americans, and especially the people of northern and western
New York, warmly sympathized. It was natural and traditional to believe
England an oppressor; and there was every reason in this case to believe
the Canadians right in their ill-feeling. The refugees who had fled to
New York met with an enthusiastic reception, and, in the security of a
foreign land, prepared to advance their rebellion. On the long frontier
of river, lake, and wilderness, it was difficult, with the meagre force
regularly at the disposal of the United States, to prevent depredations.
This difficulty became enhanced by a culpable though not unnatural
invasion of American territory by British troops. On December 12, 1837,
Mackenzie, who had the day before arrived with a price of $4000 set upon
his head, addressed a large audience at Buffalo. Volunteers were called
for; and the next day, with twenty-five men, commanded by Van
Rensselaer, an American, he seized Navy Island in the Niagara River, but
a short distance above the cataract, and belonging to Canada. He there
established a provisional government, with a flag and a great seal; and
that the new State might be complete, paper money was issued. By
January, 1838, there were several hundred men on the island, largely
Americans, with arms and provisions chiefly obtained from the American
side.
On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of Canadian militia crossed
the Niagara to seize the Caroline, a steamer in the service of the
rebels. It happened, however, that the steamer, instead of being at Navy
Island, was at Schlosser, on the American shore. The Canadians seized
the vessel, killing several men in the affray, and after setting her on
fire, loosened her from the shore, to go blazing down the river and over
the falls. This invasion of American territory caused indignant
excitement through the United States. Van Buren had promptly sought to
prevent hostility from our territory. On January 5, 1838, he had issued
a proclamation reciting the seizure of Navy Island by a force, partly
Americans, under the command of an American, with arms and supplies
procured in the United States, and declared that the neutrality laws
would be rigidly enforced and the offenders punished. Nor would they
receive aid or countenance from the United States, into whatever
difficulties they might be thrown by their violation of friendly
territory. On the same day Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to the
frontier, and by special message asked from Congress power to prevent
such offenses in advance, as well as afterwards to punish them,--a
request to which Congress, in spite of the excitement over the invasion
at Schlosser, soon acceded. The militia of New York were, on this
invasion, called out by Governor Marcy, and placed under General Scott's
command. But there was little danger. On January 13 the insurgents
abandoned Navy Island. The war, for the time, was over, although
excitement and disorder continued on the border and the lakes as far as
Detroit; and in the fall of 1838 other incursions were made from
American territory. But they were fruitless and short-lived. Nearly nine
hundred arrests were made by the Canadian authorities. Many death
sentences were imposed and several executed, and many more offenders
were sentenced to transportation.
England, in her then usual fashion, was duly waked to duty by actual
bloodshed. Sir Francis B. Head left Canada, and the Melbourne ministry
sent over the Earl of Durham, one of the finest characters in English
public life, to be governor-general over the five colonies; to redress
their wrongs; to conciliate, and perhaps yield to demands for
self-government: all which might far better have been done five years
before. Lord Durham used a wise mercy towards the rebels. He made rapid
progress in the reforms, and, best and first of all, he won the
confidence and affection of the people. But England used to distrust an
English statesman who practiced this kind of rule towards a dependency.
A malevolent attack of Lord Brougham was successful, and Lord Durham
returned to ministerial disgrace, though to a wiser popular applause,
soon to die in what ought to have been but an early year in his generous
and splendid career. Although punishing her benefactor, England was
shrewd enough to accept the benefit. The concessions which Lord Durham
had begun were continued, and Canada became and has remained loyal.
Before leaving Canada, Lord Durham was invited by a very complimentary
letter of Van Buren to visit Washington, but the invitation was
courteously declined.
Mackenzie was arrested at Buffalo and indicted. After his indictment he
addressed many public meetings through the United States in behalf of
his cause, one at Washington itself. In 1839, however, he was tried and
convicted. Van Buren, justly refusing to pardon him until he had served
in prison two thirds of his sentence, thus made for himself a persistent
and vindictive enemy.
Upon renewed raids late in 1838, the President, by a proclamation,
called upon misguided or deluded Americans to abandon projects dangerous
to their own country and fatal to those whom they professed a desire to
relieve; and, after various appeals to good sense and patriotism, warned
them that, if taken in Canada, they would be left to the policy and
justice of the government whose dominions they had, "without the shadow
of justification or excuse, nefariously invaded." This had no uncertain
sound. Van Buren was promptly declared to be a British tool. The plain
facts were ignored that the great majority of the Canadians, however
much displeased with their rulers, were hostile to Republican
institutions and to a separation from England, and that the majority in
Canada had the same right to be governed in their own fashion as the
majority here. There was seen, however, in this firm performance of
international obligations, only additional proof of Van Buren's coldness
towards popular rights, and of his sycophancy to power.
The system of allowing to actual settlers, at the minimum price, a
preëmption of public lands already occupied by them, was adopted at the
long session of 1837-38. Webster joined the Democrats in favoring the
bill, against the hot opposition of Clay, who declared it "a grant of
the property of the whole people to a small part of the people." The
dominant party was now wisely committed to the policy of using the
public domain for settlers, and not as mere property to be turned into
money. But a year or two before, the latter system had in practice
wasted the national estate and corrupted the public with a debauchery of
speculation.
The war between Mexico and the American settlers in her revolted
northeast province began in 1835. Early in 1836 the heroic defense of
the Alamo against several thousand Mexicans by less than two hundred
Americans, and among them Davy Crockett, Van Buren's biographer, and the
butchery of all but three of the Americans, had consecrated the old
building, still proudly preserved by the stirring but now peaceful and
pleasing city of San Antonio, and had roused in Texas a fierce and
resolute hatred of Mexico. In April, 1836, Houston overwhelmed the
Mexicans at San Jacinto, and captured their president, Santa Anna.
In his message of December 21, 1836, Jackson, although he announced
these successes of the Texans and their expulsion of Mexican civil
authority, still pointed out to Congress the disparity of physical force
on the side of Texas, and declared it prudent that we should stand aloof
until either Mexico itself or one of the great powers should have
recognized Texan independence, or at least until the ability of Texas
should have been proved beyond cavil. The Senate had then passed a
resolution for recognition of Texan independence. But the House had not
concurred; and before Van Buren's inauguration Congress had done no more
than authorize the appointment of a diplomatic agent to Texas whenever
the President should be satisfied of its independence. In August, 1837,
the Texan representative at Washington laid before Van Buren a plan of
annexation of the revolted Mexican state. The offer was refused; and it
was declared that the United States desired to remain neutral, and
perceived that annexation would necessarily lead to war with Mexico. In
December, 1837, petitions were presented in Congress against the
annexation of Texas, now much agitated at the South; and Preston,
Calhoun's senatorial associate from South Carolina, offered a resolution
for annexation. Some debate on the question was had in 1838, in which
both the pro-slavery character of the movement and the anti-slavery
character of the opposition clearly appeared. But this danger to Van
Buren was delayed several years. Nor was he yet a character in the drama
of the slavery conflict which by 1837 was well opened. The agitation
over abolition petitions and the murder of Lovejoy the abolitionist are
now readily enough seen to have been the most deeply significant
occurrences in America between Van Buren's inauguration and his defeat;
but they were as little part of his presidency as the arrival at New
York from Liverpool on April 22 and 23, 1838, of the Sirius and the
Great Western, the first transatlantic steamships. In Washington the
slavery question did not get beyond the halls of Congress. The White
House remained for several years free from both the dangers and the
duties of the question accompanying the discussion.
Van Buren's administration pressed upon Mexico claims arising out of
wrongs to American citizens and property which had long been a
grievance. Jackson had thought it our duty, in view of the "embarrassed
condition" of that republic, to "act with both wisdom and moderation by
giving to Mexico one more opportunity to atone for the past." In
December, 1837, Van Buren, tired of Mexican procrastination, referred
the matter to Congress, with some menace in his tone. In 1840 a treaty
was at last made for an arbitration of the claims, the king of Prussia
being the umpire. John Quincy Adams vehemently assailed the American
assertion of these claims, as intended to "breed a war with Mexico," and
"as machinery for the annexation of Texas;" and his violent
denunciations have obtained some credit. But Adams himself had been
pretty vigorous in the maintenance of American rights. And the plain and
well known facts are, that after several years of negotiation the claims
were with perfect moderation submitted for decision to a disinterested
tribunal; that they were never made the occasion of war; and that Van
Buren opposed annexation.
In June, 1838, James K. Paulding, long the navy agent at New York, was
made secretary of the navy in place of Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey,
who now resigned. Paulding seems to us rather a literary than a
political figure. Besides the authorship of part of "Salmagundi," of
"The Dutchman's Fireside," and of other and agreeable writings grateful
to Americans in the days when the sting of the question, "Who reads an
American book?" lay rather in its truth than in its ill-nature,
Paulding's pen had aided the Republican party as early as Madison's
presidency. Our politics have always, even at home, paid some honor to
the muses, without requiring them to descend very far into the partisan
arena. A curious illustration was the nomination of Edwin Forrest, the
famous tragedian, for Congress by the Democrats of New York in 1838, a
nomination which was more sensibly declined than made. An almost equally
curious instance was the tender Van Buren made of the secretaryship of
the navy to Washington Irving before he offered it to Paulding, who was
a connection by marriage of Irving's brother. Van Buren had, it will be
remembered, become intimately acquainted with Irving abroad; and others
than Van Buren strangely enough had thought of him for political
service. The Jacksonians had wanted him to run for Congress; and Tammany
Hall had offered him a nomination for mayor of New York. Van Buren wrote
to Irving that the latter had "in an eminent degree those peculiar
qualities which should distinguish the head of the department," and that
this opinion of his had been confirmed by Irving's friends, Paulding and
Kemble, the former of whom it was intimated was "particularly informed
in regard to the services to be rendered." But one cannot doubt that in
writing this the President had in mind the sort of service to the
public, and the personal pleasure and rest to himself, to be brought by
a delightful and accomplished man of letters, who was no mere recluse,
but long practiced in polished and brilliant life abroad, rather than
any business or executive or political ability. Irving wisely replied
that he should delight in full occupation, and should take peculiar
interest in the navy department; but that he shrank from the harsh
turmoils of life at Washington, and the bitter personal hostility and
the slanders of the press. A short career at Washington would, he said,
render him "mentally and physically a perfect wreck." Paulding's
appointment to the cabinet portfolio assigned to New York was not
agreeable to the politicians; and they afterwards declared that, if
Marcy had been chosen instead, the result in 1840 might have been
different. The next Democratic president gave the same place to another
famous man of letters, George Bancroft.
On June 6, 1837, Louis Napoleon wrote the President from New York that
the dangerous illness of his mother recalled him to the old world; and
that he stated the reason for his departure lest the President might
"have given credence to the calumnious surmises respecting" him. The
famous adventurer used one of those many phrases of his which, if they
had not for years imposed on the world, no wise man would believe could
ever have obtained respect. Van Buren, as the ruler of a free people,
ought to be advised, the prince wrote, that, bearing the name he did, it
was impossible for him "to depart for an instant from the path pointed
out to me by my conscience, my honor, and my duty."
The elections of 1838 showed a recovery from the defeat in 1837, a
recovery which would perhaps have been permanent if the financial crisis
had been really over. Maine wheeled back into the Van Buren ranks; and
Maryland and Ohio now joined her. In New Jersey and Massachusetts the
Whig majorities were reduced; and in New York, where Seward and Weed had
established a political management quite equal to the Regency, the
former was chosen governor by a majority of over 10,000, but still less
by 5000 than the Whig majority of 1837. The Democrats now reaped the
unpopularity of Van Buren's upright neutrality in the Canadian troubles.
Northern and western New York gave heavy Whig majorities. Jefferson
county on the very border, which had stood by Van Buren even in 1837,
went over to the Whigs.
Van Buren met Congress in December, 1838, with more cheerful words. The
harvest had been bountiful, he said, and industry again prospered. The
first half century of our Constitution was about to expire, after
proving the advantage of a government "entirely dependent on the
continual exercise of the popular will." He returned firmly to his
lecture on economics and the currency, drawing happily, but too soon, a
lesson from the short duration of the suspension of specie payments in
1837 and the length of that in 1814. We had been saved, he said, the
mortification of seeing our distresses used to fasten again upon us so
"dangerous an institution" as a national bank. The treasury would be
able in the coming year to pay off the $8,000,000 outstanding of the
$10,000,000 of treasury notes authorized at the extra session. Texas
had withdrawn its application for admission to the Union. The final
removal of the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi in
accordance with the Democratic policy was almost accomplished. There
were but two blemishes on the fair record the White House sent to the
Capitol. Swartwout, Jackson's collector of New York, was found, after
his super-session by Jesse Hoyt, to be a defaulter on a vast scale. His
defalcations, the President carefully pointed out, had gone on for seven
years, as well while public moneys were kept with the United States Bank
and while they were kept with state banks, as while they were kept by
public officers. It was broadly intimated that this disgrace was not
unrelated to the general theory which had so long connected the
collection and custody of public moneys with the advancement of private
interests; and the President asked for a law making it a felony to apply
public moneys to private uses. Swartwout's appointment in 1829, as has
been said, was strenuously opposed by Van Buren as unfit to be made.
After a year or two Jackson returned to Van Buren his written protest,
saying that time had proved his belief in Swartwout's unfitness to be a
mistake. Van Buren's own appointment to the place was, however, far from
an ideal one. Jesse Hoyt was shown by his published correspondence--a
veritable instance, by the way, of "_stolen_ sweets"--to have been a
shrewd, able man, who enjoyed the strangely varied confidence of many
distinguished, discreet, and honorable men, and of many very different
persons, ranging through a singular gamut of religion, morals,
statesmanship, economics, politics, patronage, banking, trade, stock
gambling, and betting. The respectability of some of Hoyt's friends and
his possession of some ability palliate, but do not excuse, his
appointment to a great post.
The second Florida war still dragged out its slow and murderous length.
The Seminoles under pressure had yielded to Jackson's firm policy of
removing all the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi. The
policy seemed, or rather it was, often cruel, as is so much of the
progress of civilization. But the removal was wise and necessary. Tribal
and independent governments by nomadic savages could not be tolerated
within regions devoted to the arts and the government of white men.
Whatever the theoretical rights of property in land, no civilized race
near vast areas of lands fit for the tillage of a crowding population
has ever permitted them to remain mere hunting grounds for savages. The
Seminoles in 1832, 1833, and 1834 agreed to go west upon terms like
those accepted by other Indians. The removal was to take place, one
third of the tribe in each of the three years 1833, 1834, and 1835; but
the dark-skinned men, as their white brothers would have done, found or
invented excuses for not keeping their promise of voluntary
expatriation. Late in 1835, when coercion, although it had not yet been
employed against the Seminoles, was still feared by them, they rose
under their famous leader, the half-breed Powell, better known as
Osceola, and massacred the federal agent and Major Dade, and 107 out of
111 soldiers under him. Then followed a series of butcheries and
outrages upon white men of which we have heard, and doubtless of crimes
enough upon Indians of which we have not heard. Among the everglades,
the swamps and lakes of Florida, its scorching sands and impenetrable
thickets, a difficult, tedious, inglorious, and costly contest went on.
Military evolutions and tactics were of little value; it was a war of
ambushes and assassination. Osceola, coming with a flag of truce, was
taken by General Jessup, the defense for his capture being his violation
of a former parole. He was sent to Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor,
and there died, after furnishing recitations to generations of
schoolboys, and sentiment to many of their elders. Van Buren had been
compelled to ask $1,600,000 from Congress at the extra session. Before
his administration was ended nearly $14,000,000 had been spent; and not
until 1842 did the war end. It was one of the burdens of the
administration which served to irritate a people already uneasy for
deeper and more general reasons. The prowess of the Indian chief, his
eloquence, his pathetic end, the miseries and wrongs of the aborigines,
the cost and delay of the war, all reënforced the denunciation of Van
Buren by men who made no allowance for embarrassments which could be
surmounted by no ability, because they were inevitable to the settlement
by a civilized race of lands used by savages. Time, however, has
vindicated the justice and mercy, as well as the policy of the removal,
and of the establishment of the Indian Territory.
A few days before the close of the session Van Buren asked Congress to
consider the dispute with Great Britain over the northeast boundary.
Both Maine and New Brunswick threatened, by rival military occupations
of the disputed territory, to precipitate war. Van Buren permitted the
civil authorities of Maine to protect the forests from destruction; but
disapproved any military seizure, and told the state authorities that he
should propose arbitration to Great Britain. If, however, New Brunswick
sought a military occupation, he should defend the territory as part of
the State. Congress at once authorized the President to call out 50,000
volunteers, and put at his disposal a credit of $10,000,000. Van Buren
persisted in his great effort peacefully to adjust the claims of our
chronically belligerent northeastern patriots,--in Maine as in New York
finding his fate in his duty firmly and calmly to restrain a local
sentiment inspiring voters of great political importance to him. The
"news from Maine" in 1840 told of the angry contempt the hardy lumbermen
felt for the President's perfectly statesmanlike treatment of the
question.
In the summer of 1839 Van Buren visited his old home at Kinderhook; and
on his way there and back enjoyed a burst of enthusiasm at York,
Harrisburg, Lebanon, Reading, and Easton in Pennsylvania, at Newark and
Jersey City in New Jersey, and at New York, Hudson, and Albany in his
own State. There were salutes of artillery, pealing of bells, mounted
escorts in blue and white scarfs, assemblings of "youth and beauty," the
complimentary addresses, the thronging of citizens "to grasp the hand of
the man whom they had delighted to honor," and all the rest that makes
up the ovations of Americans to their black-coated rulers. He landed in
New York at Castle Garden, amid the salutes of the forts on Bedloe's,
Governor's, and Staten Islands, and of a "seventy-four," whose yards
were covered with white uniformed sailors. After the reception in Castle
Garden he mounted a spirited black horse and reviewed six thousand
troops assembled on the Battery; and then went in procession along
Broadway to Chatham Street, thence to the Bowery, and through Broome
Street and Broadway back to the City Hall Park. Not since Lafayette's
visit had there been so fine a reception. At Kinderhook he was
overwhelmed with the affectionate pride of his old neighbors. He
declined public dinners, and by the simple manner of his travel offered
disproof of the stories about his "English servants, horses and
carriages." The journey was not, however, like the good-natured and
unpartisan presidential journeys of our time. The Whigs often churlishly
refused to help in what they said was an electioneering tour. Seward
publicly refused the invitation of the common council of New York to
participate in the President's reception, because the State had honored
him with the office of governor for his disapproval of Van Buren's
political character and public policy, and because an acceptance of the
invitation "would afford evidence of inconsistency and insincerity." Van
Buren's own friends gave a party air to much of the welcome. Democratic
committees were conspicuous in the ceremonies; and in many of the
addresses much that was said of his administration was fairly in a
dispute certain to last until the next year's election was over. Van
Buren could hardly have objected to the coldness of the Whigs, for his
own speeches, though decorous and respectful to the last degree to those
who differed from him, were undisguised appeals for popular support of
his financial policy. At New York he referred to the threatening
dissatisfaction in his own State concerning his firm treatment of the
Canadian troubles. But he was persuaded, he said, that good sense and
ultimately just feeling would give short duration to these unfavorable
impressions.
The President was too experienced and cool in judgment to exaggerate the
significance of superficial demonstrations like these, which often
seemed conclusive to his exuberant rival Clay. He was encouraged,
however, by the elections of 1839. In Ohio the Whigs were "pretty
essentially used up," though unfortunately not to remain so a
twelve-month. In Massachusetts Morton, the Van Buren candidate for
governor, was elected by just one vote more than a majority of the
102,066 votes cast. Georgia, New Jersey, and Mississippi gave
administration majorities. In New York the adverse majority which in
1837 had been over 15,000, and in 1838 over 10,000, was now less than
4000, in spite of the disaffection along the border counties. It was not
an unsatisfactory result, although for the first time since 1818 the
legislature was completely lost. Another year, Van Buren now hoped,
would bring a complete recovery from the blow of 1837. But the autumn of
1839 had also brought a blast, to grow more and more chilling and
disastrous.
In the early fall the Bank of the United States agreed to loan
Pennsylvania $2,000,000; and for the loan obtained the privilege of
issuing $5 notes, having before been restricted to notes of $20 and
upwards. "Thus has the Van Buren State of Pennsylvania," it was boasted,
"enabled the banks to overcome the reckless system of a Van Buren
national administration." The price of cotton, which had risen to 16
cents a pound, fell in the summer of 1839, and in 1840 touched as low a
point as 5 cents. In the Northwest many banks had not yet resumed since
1837. To avoid execution sales it was said that two hundred plantations
had been abandoned and their slaves taken to Texas. The sheriff, instead
of the ancient return, _nulla bona_, was said, in the grim sport of the
frontier, to indorse on the fruitless writs "G. T.," meaning "Gone to
Texas." A money stringency again appeared in England, in 1839. Its
exportation of goods and money to America had again become enormous. The
customs duties collected in 1839 were over $23,000,000, and about the
same as they had been in 1836, having fallen in 1837 to $11,000,000, and
afterwards in 1840 falling to $13,000,000. Speculation revived, the land
sales exceeding $7,000,000 in 1839, while they had been $3,700,000 in
1838, and afterwards fell to $3,000,000 in 1840. Under the pressure from
England the Bank of the United States sank with a crash. The
"Philadelphia Gazette," complacently ignoring the plain reasons for
months set before its eyes, said that the disaster had "its chief cause
in the revulsion of the opium trade with the Chinese;" that upon the
news that the Orientals would no longer admit the drug the Bank of
England had "fairly reeled;" and that, the balance of trade being
against us, we had to dishonor our paper. Explanations of like frivolity
got wide credence. The Philadelphia banks suspended on October 9, 1839,
the banks of Baltimore the next day, and in a few days the banks in the
North and West followed. The banks of New York and New England, except
those of Providence, continued firm. Although the excitement of 1839 did
not equal that of 1837, there was a duller and completer despondency. It
was at last known that the recuperative power of even our own proud and
bounding country had limits. Years were yet necessary to a recovery.
But the presidential election would not, alas! wait years. With no
faltering, however, Van Buren met Congress in December, 1839. He began
his message with a regret that he could not announce a year of
"unalloyed prosperity." There ought never, as presidential messages had
run, to be any alloy in the prosperity of the American people. But the
harvest, he said, had been exuberant, and after all (for the grapes of
trade and manufacture were a little sour), the steady devotion of the
husbandman was the surest source of national prosperity. A part of the
$10,000,000 of treasury notes was still outstanding, and he hoped that
they might be paid. We must not resort to the ruinous practice of
supplying supposed necessities by new loans; a permanent debt was an
evil with no equivalent. The expenditures for 1838, the first year over
whose appropriations Van Buren had had control, had been less than those
of 1837. In 1839 they had been $6,000,000 less than in 1838; and for
1840 they would be $5,000,000 less than in 1839. The collection and
disbursement of public moneys by public officers rather than by banks
had, since the bank suspensions in 1837, been carried on with unexpected
cheapness and ease; and legislation was alone wanting to insure to the
system the highest security and facility. Nothing daunted by the second
disaster so lately clouding his political future, Van Buren sounded
another blast against the banks. With unusual abundance of harvests,
with manufactures richly rewarded, with our granaries and storehouses
filled with surplus for export, with no foreign war, with nothing indeed
to endanger well-managed banks, this banking disaster had come. The
government ought not to be dependent on banks as its depositories, for
the banks outside of New York and Philadelphia were dependent upon the
banks in those great cities, and the latter banks in turn upon London,
"the centre of the credit system." With some truth, but still with a
touch of demagogy, venial perhaps in the face of the blatant and silly
outcries against him from very intelligent and respectable people, he
said that the founding of a new bank in a distant American village
placed its business "within the influence of the money power of
England." Let us then, he argued, have gold and silver and not
bank-notes, at least in our public transactions; let us keep public
moneys out of the banks. Again he attacked the national bank scheme. In
1817 and 1818, in 1823, in 1831, and in 1834 the United States Bank had
swelled and maddened the tides of banking, but had seldom allayed or
safely directed them. Turning with seemingly cool resolution, but with
hidden anxiety, to the menacing distresses of the American voters, he
did not flinch or look for fair or flattering words. We must not turn
for relief, he said, to gigantic banks, or splendid though profitless
railroads and canals. Relief was to be sought, not by the increase, but
by the diminution of debt. The faith of States already pledged was to
be punctiliously kept; but we must be chary of further pledges. The
bounties of Providence had come to reduce the consequences of past
errors. "But let it be indelibly engraved on our minds," he said, "that
relief is not to be found in expedients. Indebtedness cannot be lessened
by borrowing more money, or by changing the form of the debt."
The House of Representatives was so divided that its control depended
upon whether five Whig or five Democratic congressmen from New Jersey
should be admitted. They had been voted for upon a general ticket
through the whole State; and the Whig governor and council had given the
certificate of election to the Whigs by acquiescing in the actions of
the two county clerks who had, for irregularities, thrown out the
Democratic districts of South Amboy and Millville. A collision arose
curiously like the dispute over the electoral returns from Florida and
Louisiana in 1877. This exclusion of the two districts the Democrats
insisted to have been wrongful; and not improbably with reason, for at
the next election in 1839 the State, upon the popular vote, gave a
substantial majority against the Whigs, although by the district
division of the State a majority of the legislature were Whigs and
reëlected the Whig governor. The clerk of the national House had,
according to usage, prepared a roll of members, which he proceeded to
call. He seems to have placed on the roll the names of the New Jersey
representatives holding the governor's certificates. But before calling
their names, he stated to the House that there were rival credentials;
that he felt that he had no power to decide upon the contested rights;
and that, if the House approved, he would pass over the names until the
call of the other States was finished. The rival credentials included a
record of the votes upon which the governor's certificate was presumed
to be based. Objection was made to passing New Jersey, and one of the
governor's certificates was read. The New Jerseymen with certificates
insisted that their names should be called. The clerk declined to take
any step without the authority of the House, holding that he was in no
sense a chairman. He behaved in the case with modesty and decorum, and
the savage criticisms upon him seem to have no foundation except this
refusal of his to decide upon the _prima facie_ right to the New Jersey
seats, or to act as chairman except upon unanimous consent. He was
clearly right. He had no power. The very roll he prepared, and his
reading it, had no force except such as the House chose to give them.
Upon any other theory he would practically wield an enormous power
justified neither by the Constitution nor by any law. On the fourth day
of tumult a simple and lawful remedy was discovered to be at hand. Any
member could himself act as chairman to put his own motion for the
appointment of a temporary speaker; and if a majority acquiesced, there
was at once an organization without the clerk's aid. This was in
precise accord with the attitude of the clerk, hotly abused as he was by
Adams and others who adopted his position. So Adams proposed himself to
put the question on his own motion to call the roll with the members
holding certificates. Further confusion then ensued, which was
terminated by Rhett of South Carolina, who moved that John Quincy Adams
act as chairman until a speaker should be chosen. Rhett put his own
motion, and it was carried. Adams took the chair, rules were adopted,
and order succeeded chaos. None of the New Jerseymen were permitted to
vote for speaker, but a few Calhoun Democrats refused to vote for the
administration candidate. Most of the administration members offered to
accept a Calhoun man; but a few of them, naturally angry at South
Carolina dictation, refused, under Benton's advice, to vote for him. At
last the Whigs joined the Calhoun men, and ended this extraordinary
contest. The speaker, Robert M. T. Hunter, was a so-called states-rights
man, and a supporter of the independent treasury scheme. He had the
fortune, after a singularly varied and even important career in the
United States and the Confederate States, to be appointed by President
Cleveland to the petty place of collector of customs at Tappahannock, in
Virginia, and to live among Americans who were familiar with his
prominence fifty years ago, but supposed him long since dead. The clerk,
Hugh A. Garland, was reëlected, in spite of what Adams in his diary,
after his picturesque but utterly unjustifiable fashion, called the
"baseness of his treachery to his trust." The Whig New Jerseymen were
refused seats, and the apparent perversion of the popular vote was
rightly defeated by seating their rivals. The Whigs posed as defenders
of the sanctity of state authority, and sought, upon that political
issue, to force the Van Buren men to be the apologists for
centralization.
It was at this session that the sub-treasury bill was passed. As a sort
of new declaration of independence Van Buren signed it on July 4, 1840.
His long and honorable and his greatest battle was won. It was the
triumph of a really great cause. The people, by their labor and capital,
were to support the federal government as a mere agency for limited
purposes. That government was not, in this way at least, to support or
direct or control either the people or their labor or capital. But the
captain fell at the time of his victory. The financial disaster of 1839
had exhausted the good-nature and patience of the people. Dissertations
on finance and economics, however wise, now served to irritate and
disgust. These cool admonitions to economy and a minding of one's
business were popularly believed to be heartless and repulsive.
In 1840 took place the most extraordinary of presidential campaigns.
While Congress was wrangling over the New Jersey episode in December,
1839, the Whig national convention again nominated Harrison for
President. Tyler was taken from the ranks of seceding Democrats as the
candidate for Vice-President. The slaughter of Henry Clay, the father
of the Whig party, had been effected by the now formidable Whig
politicians of New York, cunningly marshaled by Thurlow Weed.
Availability had its first complete triumph in our national politics.
They had not come, Governor Barbour of Virginia, the president of the
Whig convention, said, to whine after the fleshpots of Egypt, but to
give perpetuity to Republican institutions. To reach this end (not very
explicitly or intelligibly defined), it mattered not what letters of the
alphabet spelled the name of the candidate; for his part, he could sing
Hosanna to any alphabetical combination. No platform or declaration of
principles was adopted, lest some of those discontented with Van Buren
should find there a counter-irritant. The candidates, in accepting their
nominations, refrained from political discussion. Harrison stood for the
plain, honest citizen, coming, as one of the New York conventions said,
"like another Cincinnatus from his plough," resolute for a generous
administration, and ready to diffuse prosperity and to end hard times.
Tyler, formerly a strict constructionist member of the Jackson party,
was nominated to catch votes, in spite of his perfectly well known
opposition to the whole Whig theory of government.
The Democratic, or Democratic-Republican, convention met at Baltimore on
May 5, 1840. The party name was now definitely and exclusively adopted.
Among the delegates were men long afterwards famous in the later
Republican party, John A. Dix, Hannibal Hamlin, Simon Cameron. There was
an air of despondency about the convention, for the enthusiasm over "log
cabin and hard cider" was already abroad. But the convention without
wavering announced its belief in a limited federal power, in the
separation of public moneys from banking institutions; and its
opposition to internal improvements by the nation, to the federal
assumption of state debts, to the fostering of one industry so as to
injure another, to raising more money than was required for necessary
expenses of government, and to a national bank. Slavery now took for a
long time its place in the party platform. The convention declared the
constitutional inability of Congress to interfere with slavery in the
States, and that all efforts of abolitionists to induce Congress to
interfere with slavery were alarming and dangerous to the Union. An
elaborate address to the people was issued. It began with a clear, and
for a political campaign a reasonably moderate, defense of Van Buren's
administration; it renewed the well-worn arguments for the limited
activity of government; it made a silly assertion that Harrison was a
Federalist, and an insinuation that the glory of his military career was
doubtful; it denounced the abolitionists, whose fanaticism it charged
the Whigs with enlisting in their cause. In closing, it recalled the
Democratic revolution of 1800 which broke the "iron rod of Federal
rule," and contrasted the "costly and stately pageants addressed merely
to the senses" by the Whigs with the truth and reason of the Democracy.
During the canvass Van Buren submitted to frequent interrogation. In a
fashion that would seem fatal to a modern candidate, he wrote to
political friends and enemies alike, letter after letter, restating his
political opinions. Especially was it sought to arouse Southern distrust
of him. He was accused, with fire-eating anger, of having approved a
sentence of a court-martial against a naval lieutenant which was based
upon the testimony of negroes. He reiterated what he had already said
upon slavery; but late in the canvass he went one step further. When
asked his opinion as to the treatment by Congress of the abolition
petitions, he replied, justly enough, that the President could have no
concern with that matter; but lest he should be charged with
"non-committalism," he declared that Congress was fully justified in
adopting the "gag" rule. For years the petitions had been received and
referred. On one occasion in each House the subject had been considered
upon a report of a committee, and decided against the petitioners with
almost entire unanimity. The rule had been adopted only after it was
clear that the petitioners simply sought to make Congress an instrument
of an agitation which might lead to a dissolution of the Union. It was
thus that Van Buren made his extreme concession to the slavocracy. And
there was obvious a material excuse. No president while in office could
approve the perversion of legislative procedure from the making of laws
to be a mere stimulant of moral excitement. To encourage or justify
petitions intended to inflame public sentiment against a wrong might be
legitimate for some men, however well they knew, as Adams said he knew,
that the body addressed ought not to grant the petitioners' prayers.
Such a course might be noble and praiseworthy for a private citizen, or
possibly for a member of Congress representing the exalted moral
sentiment of a single district. It would be highly illegitimate for a
man holding a great public office, and there representing the entire
people and its established system of laws. John Quincy Adams, under his
sense of duty as president, had in 1828 pressed the humiliating claim
that England should surrender American slaves escaped to English
freedom; and there is little reason to doubt that, if he had remained in
the field of responsible and executive public life, he would have agreed
with Van Buren in his treatment of the matter of the abolition
petitions, or rather in his expressions from the White House about them.
Harrison hastened to clear his skirts of abolitionism. Congress could
not, he declared, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without
the consent of Virginia and Maryland and of the District itself. For, as
he argued, ignobly applying, as well as misquoting, the American words
solemnly lauded by Lord Chatham in his speech on Quartering Soldiers in
Boston, "what a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which
he may freely give, but which cannot be taken from him without his
consent." He denounced as a slander the charge that he was an
abolitionist, or that the vote he had given against anti-slavery
restriction in Missouri had violated his conscience. He declared for the
right of petition, which indeed nobody disputed; but he did not say what
course should be taken with the anti-slavery petitions, which was the
real question to be answered. The discussion by the citizens of the free
States of slavery in the slave States was not, he said, "sanctioned by
the Constitution." "Methinks," he said at Dayton, "I hear a soft voice
asking, Are you in favor of paper money? I am;" and to that there were
"shouts of applause."
In no presidential canvass in America has there been, as Mr. Schurz well
says in his life of Henry Clay, "more enthusiasm and less thought" than
in the Whig canvass of 1840. The people were rushing as from a long
restraint. Wise saws about the duties of government had become
nauseating. A plain every-day man administering a paternal and
affectionate government was the ruling text, while Tyler and his strict
construction quietly served their turn with some of the doctrinaires at
the South. The nation, Clay said, was "like the ocean when convulsed by
some terrible storm." There was what he called a "rabid appetite for
public discussions."
Webster's campaign speeches probably marked the height of the splendid
and effectual flood of eloquence now poured over the land. The breeze of
popular excitement, he said, with satisfactory magniloquence, was
flowing everywhere; it fanned the air in Alabama and the Carolinas; and
crossing the Potomac and the Alleghanies, to mingle with the gales of
the Empire State and the mountain blasts of New England, would blow a
perfect hurricane. "Every breeze," he declared, "says change; the cry,
the universal cry, is for a change." He had not, indeed, been born in a
log cabin, but his elder brothers and sisters had; he wept to think of
those who had left it; and if he failed in affectionate veneration for
him who raised it, then might his name and the name of his posterity be
blotted from the memory of mankind. He touched the bank question
lightly; he denounced the sub-treasury as "the first in a new series of
ruthless experiments," and declared that Van Buren's "abandonment of the
currency" was fatal. Forgetting who had supported and who had opposed
the continued distribution of surplus revenues among the States, he
condemned the President for the low state of the treasury; and
notwithstanding it declared his approval of a generous policy of
internal improvements. He would not accuse the President of seeking to
play the part of Cæsar or Cromwell because Mr. Poinsett, his secretary
of war, had recommended a federal organization of militia, the necessity
or convenience of which, it was supposed, had been demonstrated by the
Canadian troubles; but the plan, he said, was expensive,
unconstitutional, and dangerous to our liberties. He was careful to say
nothing of slavery or the right of petition. Only in brief and casual
sentences did he even touch the charges that Van Buren had treated
political contests as "rightfully struggles for office and emolument,"
and that federal officers had been assessed in proportion to their
salaries for partisan purposes. The President was pictured as full of
cynical and selfish disregard of the people; he had disparaged the
credit of the States; he had accused Madison, and, monstrous sacrilege,
even Washington, of corruption. "I may forgive this," Webster slowly
said to the appalled audience, "but I shall not forget it;" such
"abominable violations of the truth of history" filled his bosom with
"burning scorn." This was a highly imaginative allusion to Van Buren's
statement that the national bank had been originally devised by the
friends of privileged orders. Nor need the South, even Webster
intimated, have any fear of the Whigs about slavery. Could the South
believe that Harrison would "lay ruthless hands on the institutions
among which he was born and educated?" No, indeed, for Washington and
Hancock, Virginia and Massachusetts, had joined their thoughts, their
hopes, their feelings. "How many bones of Northern men," he asked with
majestic pathos, "lie at Yorktown?" Senator Rives, now one of the
Conservatives, said that Van Buren was indeed "mild, smooth, affable,
smiling;" but humility was "young and old ambition's ladder." The
militia project meant military usurpation. Look at Cromwell, he said;
look at Bonaparte. Were their usurpations not in the name of the people?
Preston of South Carolina said that Van Buren had advocated diminished
wages to others; now he should himself receive diminished wages.
Harrison was, he said "a Southern man with Southern principles." As for
Van Buren, this "Northern man with Southern principles," did he not come
"from beyond the Hudson," had he not been "a friend of Rufus King, a
Missouri restrictionist, a friend and advocate of free negro suffrage?"
Clay said that it was no time "to argue;" a rule his party for the
moment well observed. The nation had already pronounced upon the ravages
Van Buren had brought upon the land, the general and widespread ruin,
the broken hopes. With the mere fact of Harrison's election, "without
reference to the measures of his administration," he told the Virginians
at Hanover, "confidence will immediately revive, credit be restored,
active business will return, prices of products will rise; and the
people will feel and know that, instead of their servants being occupied
in devising measures for their ruin and destruction, they will be
assiduously employed in promoting their welfare and prosperity."
All this was far more glorious than the brutally true advice of the old
man with a broad-axe on his shoulders, whom the Democrats quoted. When
asked what was to become of everybody in the heavy distress of the
panic, he answered, "Damn the panic! If you would all work as I do, you
would have no panic." The people no longer cared about "the interested
few who desire to enrich themselves by the use of public money." If, as
the Democrats said, the interested few had been thwarted, an almost
universal poverty had for some reason or other come with their defeat.
Perhaps the reflecting citizen thought that he might become, if he were
not already, one of the "interested few." Nor was the demagogy all on
the side of the Whigs, although they enjoyed the more popular quality of
the quadrennial product. Van Buren himself, in the futile fashion of
aging parties which suppose that their ancient victories still stir the
popular heart, recalled "the reign of terror" of the elder Adams, and
how the "Samson of Democracy burst the cords which were already bound
around its limbs," how "a web more artfully contrived, composed of a
high protective tariff, a system of internal improvements, and a
national bank, was then twined around the sleeping giant" until he was
"roused by the warning voice of the honest and intrepid Jackson."
Harrison's own numerous speeches were awkward and indefinite enough; but
still they showed an honest and sincere man, and in the enthusiasm of
the day they did him no harm.
The revolts against the severe party discipline of the Democracy, aided
by the popular distress, were serious. Calhoun, indeed, had returned;
but all his supporters did not return with him. The Southern defection
headed by White in 1836 was still most formidable, and was now
reënforced by the Conservative secession North and South. Even Major
Eaton forgot Van Buren's gallantry ten years before, and joined the
enemy. The talk of "spoils" was amply justified; but the abuses of
patronage had not prevented Jackson's popularity, and under Van Buren
they were far less serious. This cry did not yet touch the American
people. The most serious danger of "spoils" still lay in the future.
Patronage abuses had injured the efficiency of the public service, but
they had not yet begun to defeat the popular will. Jackson came
resolutely to Van Buren's aid in the fashionable letter-writing. "The
Rives Conservatives, the Abolitionists and Federalists" had combined,
the ex-President vivaciously said, to obtain power "by falsehood and
slander of the basest kind;" but the "virtue of the people," he declared
in what from other lips would have seemed cant, would defeat "the money
power." Van Buren's firmness and ability entitled him, he thought, to a
rank not inferior to Jefferson or Madison, while he rather unhandsomely
added that he had never admired Harrison as a military man.
The Whig campaign was highly picturesque. Meetings were measured by
"acres of men." They gathered on the field of Tippecanoe. Revolutionary
soldiers marched in venerable processions. Wives and daughters came with
their husbands and fathers. There were the barrel of cider, the
coon-skins, and the log cabin with the live raccoon running over it and
the latch-string hung out; for Harrison had told his soldiers when he
left them, that never should his door be shut, "or the string of the
latch pulled in." Van Buren meantime, with an aristocratic sneer upon
his face, was seated in an English carriage, after feeding himself from
the famous gold spoons bought for the White House. Harrison was a hunter
who had caught a fox before and would again; one of the county
processions from Pennsylvania boasted, "Old Mother Cumberland--she'll
bag the fox." Illinois would "teach the palace slaves to respect the log
cabin." "Down with the wages, say the administration." "Matty's policy,
fifty cents a day and French soup; our policy, two dollars a day and
roastbeef." Newspapers were full of advertisements like this: "The
subscriber will pay $5 a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected, and
$2.50 if Van Buren is."
But the songs were most interesting. The ball, which Benton had said in
his last speech on the expunging resolution that he "solitary and alone"
had put in motion, was a mine of similes. They sang:
"With heart and soul
This ball we roll."
"As rolls the ball,
Van's reign does fall,
And he may look
To Kinderhook."
"The gathering ball is rolling still,
And still gathering as it rolls."
Harrison's battle with the Indians gave the effective cry of "Tippecanoe
and Tyler too." And so they sang:
"Farewell, dear Van,
You're not our man;
To guard the ship,
We'll try old Tip."
"With Tip and Tyler
We'll burst Van's biler."
"Old Tip he wears a homespun suit,
He has no ruffled shirt--wirt--wirt;
But Mat he has the golden plate,
And he's a little squirt--wirt--wirt."
When the election returns began to come from the August and September
States, the joyful excitement passed all bounds. Then the new Whigs
found a new Lilliburlero. To the tune of the "Little Pig's Tail" they
sang:
"What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too!
"And with them we'll beat little Van, Van;
Van is a used-up man.
Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine,
All honest and true?
One thousand for Kent and seven thousand gain
For Tippecanoe," etc.
And then Joe Hoxie would close the meetings by singing "Up Salt River."
The result was pretty plain before November. New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, and Virginia voted for state officers in the spring. All
had voted for Van Buren in 1836; all now gave Whig majorities, except
New Hampshire, where the Democratic majority was greatly reduced. In
August North Carolina was added to the Whig column, though in Missouri
and Illinois there was little change. But when in September Maine, which
had given Van Buren nearly eight thousand majority, and had since
remained steadfast, "went hell-bent for Governor Kent" and gave a slight
Whig majority, the administration's doom was sealed.
Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van Buren 60. New York gave
Harrison 13,300 votes more than Van Buren; but a large part of this
plurality, perhaps all, came from the counties on the northern and
western borders. Only one Northern State, Illinois, voted for Van Buren.
Of the slave States, five, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri,
and Arkansas, were for Van Buren; the other eight for Harrison. There
was a popular majority in the slave States of about 55,000 against Van
Buren in a total vote of about 695,000, and in the free States, of about
90,000 in a total vote of about 1,700,000, still showing, therefore, his
greater popular strength in the free States. The increase in the popular
vote was the most extraordinary the country has ever known, proving the
depth and universality of the feeling. This vote had been about
1,500,000 in 1836; it reached about 2,400,000 in 1840, an increase of
900,000, while from 1840 to the Clay canvass of 1844 it increased only
300,000. Van Buren, as a defeated candidate in 1840, received about
350,000 votes more than elected him in 1836; and the growth of
population in the four years was probably less, not greater, than usual.
There were cries of "fraud and corruption" because of this enormously
increased vote, cries which Benton long afterwards seriously heeded; but
there seems to be no good reason to treat them otherwise than as one of
the many expressions of Democratic anguish.
Van Buren received the seemingly crushing defeat with dignity and
composure. While the cries of "Van, Van, he's a used-up man," were
coming with some of the sting of truth through the White House windows,
he prepared the final message with which he met Congress in December,
1840. The year, he said, had been one of "health, plenty, and peace."
Again he declared the dangers of a national debt, and the equal dangers
of too much money in the treasury; for "practical economy in the
management of public affairs," he said, "can have no adverse influence
to contend with more powerful than a large surplus revenue." Again he
attacked the national bank scheme. During four years of the greatest
pecuniary embarrassments ever known in time of peace, with a decreasing
public revenue, with a formidable opposition, his administration had
been able punctually to meet every obligation without a bank, without a
permanent national debt, and without incurring any liability which the
ordinary resources of the government would not speedily discharge. If
the public service had been thus independently sustained without either
of these fruitful sources of discord, had we not a right to expect that
this policy would "receive the final sanction of a people whose unbiased
and fairly elicited judgment upon public affairs is never ultimately
wrong?" Again with a clear emphasis he declared against any attempt of
the government to repair private losses sustained in private business,
either by direct appropriations or by legislation designed to secure
exclusive privileges to individuals or classes. In the very last words
of this, his last message, he gave an account of his efforts to suppress
the slave trade, and to prevent "the prostitution of the American flag
to this inhuman purpose," asking Congress, by a prohibition of the
American trade which took supplies to the slave factories on the African
coast, to break up "those dens of iniquity."
The short session of Congress was hardly more than a jubilee of the
Whigs, happily ignorant of the complete chagrin and frustration of their
hopes which a few months would bring. Some new bank suspensions occurred
in Philadelphia, and among banks closely connected with that city. The
Bank of the United States, after a resumption for twenty days,
succumbed amid its own loud protestations of solvency, its final
disgrace and ruin being, however, deferred a little longer.
Van Buren's cabinet had somewhat changed since his inauguration. In 1838
his old friend and ally, and one of the chief champions of his policy,
Benjamin F. Butler, resigned the office of attorney-general, but without
any break political or personal, as was seen in his fine and arduous
labors in the canvass of 1840 and in the Democratic convention of 1844.
Felix Grundy of Tennessee then held the place until late in 1839, when
he resigned. Van Buren offered it, though without much heartiness, to
James Buchanan, who preferred, however, to retain his seat in the
Senate; and Henry D. Gilpin, another Pennsylvanian, was appointed. Amos
Kendall's enormous industry and singular equipment of doctrinaire
convictions, narrow prejudices, executive ability, and practical
political skill and craft, were lost to the administration through the
failure of his health in the midst of the campaign of 1840. In an
address to the public he gave a curious proof that for him work was more
wearing in public than in private service. He stated that as he was poor
he should resort to private employment suitable to his health; and that
he proposed, therefore, during the canvass to write for the "Globe" in
defense of the President, in whose integrity, principles, and firmness
his confidence, he said, had increased. In 1838, when his health had
threatened to be unequal to his work, Van Buren had offered him the
mission to Spain, if it should become vacant. John M. Niles, formerly a
Democratic senator from Connecticut, took Kendall's place in the
post-office.
Van Buren welcomed Harrison to the White House, and before the
inauguration entertained him there as a guest, with the easy and
dignified courtesy so natural to him, and in marked contrast to the
absence of social amenities on either side at the great change twelve
years before. Under Van Buren indeed the executive mansion was
administered with elevated grace. There was about it, while he was its
master, the unostentatious elegance suited to the dwelling of the chief
magistrate of the great republic. There were many flings at him for his
great economy, and what was called his parsimony; but he was accused as
well of undemocratic luxury. The talk seemed never to end over the gold
spoons. The contradictory charges point out the truth. Van Buren was an
eminently prudent man. He did not indulge in the careless and useless
waste which impoverished Jefferson and Jackson. By sensible and
honorable economy he is said to have saved one half of the salary of
$25,000 a year then paid to the President.[17] Returning to private life,
he was spared the humiliation of pecuniary trouble, which had
distressed three at least of his predecessors. But with his exquisite
sense of propriety, he had not failed to order the White House with
fitting decorum and a modest state. His son Abraham Van Buren was his
private secretary; and after the latter's marriage, in November, 1838,
to Miss Singleton of South Carolina, a niece of Andrew Stevenson, and a
relation of Mrs. Madison, he and his wife formed the presidential
family. In 1841 they accompanied the ex-President to his retirement at
Lindenwald.
Under Andrew Jackson the social air of the White House had suffered from
his ill-health and the bitterness of his partisanship; and in this
respect the change to his successor was most pleasing. Van Buren used an
agreeable tact with even his strongest opponents; and about his levees
and receptions there were a charm and a grace by no means usual in the
dwellings of American public men. He had, we are told in the
Recollections of Sargent, a political adversary of his, "the high art of
blending dignity with ease and gravity." He introduced the custom of
dining with the heads of departments and foreign ministers, although
with that exception he observed the etiquette of never being the guest
of others at Washington. Judge Story mentions the "splendid dinner"
given by the President to the judges in January, 1839.
John Quincy Adams's diary bears unintended testimony to Van Buren's
admirable personal bearing in office. From the time he reached
Washington as secretary of state, he had treated Adams in his defeat
with marked distinction and deference, which Adams, as he records,
accepted in his own house, in the White House, and elsewhere. At a
social party the President, he said, "was, as usual, courteous to all,
and particularly to me." Van Buren had therefore every reason to suppose
that there was between himself and Adams a not unfriendly personal
esteem. But Adams, in his churlish, bitter temper, apparently found in
these wise and generous civilities only evidence of a mean spirit. After
one visit at the White House during the height of the crisis of 1837, he
recorded that he found Van Buren looking, not wretched, as he had been
told, but composed and tranquil. Returning home from this observation of
the President's "calmness, his gentleness of manner, his easy and
conciliatory temper," this often unmannerly pen described besides "his
obsequiousness, his sycophancy, his profound dissimulation and
duplicity, ... his fawning civility." In a passage which was remarkable
in that time of political bitterness so largely personal, Clay said, in
his parliamentary duel with Calhoun, after the latter rejoined the
Democratic party, that he remembered Calhoun attributing to the
President the qualities of "the most crafty, most skulking, and the
meanest of the quadruped tribe." Saying that he had not shared Calhoun's
opinion, he then added of Van Buren:--
"I have always found him in his manner and deportment, civil,
courteous, and gentlemanly; and he dispenses in the noble mansion
which he now occupies, one worthy the residence of the chief
magistrate of a great people, a generous and liberal hospitality.
An acquaintance with him of more than twenty years' duration has
inspired me with a respect for the man, although I regret to be
compelled to say, I detest the magistrate."