EX-PRESIDENT.--SLAVERY.--TEXAS ANNEXATION.--DEFEAT BY THE
SOUTH.--FREE-SOIL CAMPAIGN.--LAST YEARS
Van Buren loitered at Washington a few days after his presidency was
over, and on his way home stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New
York. At New York he was finely welcomed. Amid great crowds he was taken
to the City Hall in a procession headed by Captain Brown's corps of
lancers and a body of armed firemen. He reached Kinderhook on May 15,
1841, there to make his home until his death. He had, after the seemly
and pleasing fashion of many men in American public life, lately
purchased, near this village among the hills of Columbia county, the
residence of William P. Van Ness, where Irving had thirty years before
lived in seclusion after the death of his betrothed, and had put the
last touches to his Knickerbocker. It was an old estate, whose lands had
been rented for twenty years and under cultivation for a hundred and
sixty, and from which Van Buren now managed to secure a profit. To this
seat he gave the name of Lindenwald, a name which in secret he probably
hoped the American people would come to group with Monticello,
Montpellier, and the Hermitage. But this could not be. Van Buren had
served but half the presidential term of honor. He was not a sage, but
still a candidate for the presidency. Before the electoral votes were
counted in 1841, Benton declared for his renomination in 1844; and until
the latter year he again held the interesting and powerful but critical
place of the probable candidate of his party for the presidency. He
remained easily the chief figure in the Democratic ranks. His defeat had
not taken from him that honor which is the property of the statesman
standing for a cause whose righteousness and promise belong to the
assured future. His defeat signified no personal, no political fault. It
had come to him from a widespread convulsion for which, perhaps less
than any great American of his time, he was responsible. His party could
not abandon its battle for a limited and non-paternal government and
against the use of public moneys by private persons. It could not
therefore abandon him; for more than any other man who had not now
finally retired he represented these causes in his own person. But his
easy composure of manner did not altogether hide that eating and
restless anxiety which so often attends the supreme ambition of the
American.
Two days after leaving the White House, Van Buren said, in reply to
complimentary resolutions of the legislature of Missouri, that he did
not utterly lament the bitter attacks upon him; for experience had
taught him that few political men were praised by their foes until they
were about abandoning their friends. With a pleasing frankness he
admitted that to be worthy of the presidency and to reach it had been
the object of his "most earnest desire;" but he said that the selection
of the next Democratic candidate must be decided by its probable effect
upon the principles for which they had just fought, and not upon any
supposition that he had been wounded or embittered by his defeat in
their defense. His description of a candidate meant himself, however,
and rightly enough. In November, 1841, he wrote of the "apparent success
of last year's buffoonery;" and intimated that, though he would take no
step to be a candidate, it was not true that he had said he should
decline a nomination.
Early in 1842, the ex-President made a trip through the South, in
company with James K. Paulding, visiting on his return Clay at Ashland,
and Jackson at the Hermitage. He was one of the very few men on
personally friendly terms with both those long-time enemies. At Ashland,
doubtless, Texas was talked over, even if a bargain were not made, as
has been fancied, that Clay and Van Buren should remove the troublesome
question from politics. In a fashion very different from that of modern
candidates, he now wrote, from time to time, able, long, and explicit,
but somewhat tedious letters on political questions. In one of them he
touched protection more clearly than ever before. He favored, he said
in February, 1843, a tariff for revenue only; the "incidental
protection" which that must give many American manufacturers was all the
protection which should be permitted; the mechanics and laborers had
been the chief sufferers from a "high protective tariff." He was at last
and definitely "a low tariff man." He declared that he should support
the Democratic candidate of 1844; for he believed it to be impossible
that a selection from that source should not accord with his views. He
did not perhaps realize to how extreme a test his sincerity would be
put. He added words which four years later read strangely enough. "My
name and pretensions," he said, "however subordinate in importance,
shall never be at the disposal of any person whatever, for the purpose
of creating distractions or divisions in the Democratic party."
The party was indeed known as the "Van Buren party" until 1844, so
nearly universal was the supposition that he was to be renominated, and
so plainly was he its leader. The disasters which had now overtaken the
Whigs made his return to power seem probable enough. The utterly
incongruous elements held together during the sharp discontent and
wonderful but inarticulate enthusiasm of 1840 had quickly fallen apart.
While on his way to Kinderhook Van Buren was the chief figure in the
obsequies at New York of his successful competitor. This honest man, of
whom John Quincy Adams said, with his usual savage exaggeration, that
his dull sayings were repeated for wit and his grave inanity passed off
for wisdom, had already quarreled with the splendid leader whose place
he was too conscious of usurping. Tyler's accession was the first, but
not the last illustration, which American politicians have had of the
danger of securing the presidency by an award of the second place to a
known opponent of the principles whose success they seek. Tyler had not
before his nomination concealed his narrow and Democratic views of
government. The Whigs had ostentatiously refused to declare any
principles when they nominated him. In technical conscientiousness he
marched with a step by no means cowardly to unhonored political
isolation, as a quarter of a century later marched another
vice-president nominated by a party in whose ranks he too was a new
recruit.
Upon Tyler's veto of the bill for a national bank, an outcry of agony
went up from the Whigs; the whole cabinet, except Webster, resigned; a
new cabinet was formed, partly from the Conservatives; and by 1844,
Tyler was a forlorn candidate for the Democratic nomination, which he
claimed for his support of the annexation of Texas.
Upon this first of the great pro-slavery movements Van Buren was
defeated for the Democratic nomination in 1844, although it seemed
assured to him by every consideration of party loyalty, obligation, and
wise foresight. The relations of government to private business ceased
to be the dominant political question a few months and only a few
months too soon to enable Van Buren to complete his eight years. Slavery
arose in place of economics.
No mistake is more common in the review of American history than to
suppose that slavery was an active or definite force in organized
American politics after the Missouri Compromise and before the struggle
for the annexation of Texas under Tyler's administration. The appeals of
the abolitionists to the simpler and deeper feelings of humanity were
indeed at work before 1835; and from that year on they were profoundly
stirring the American conscience and storing up tremendous moral energy.
But slavery was not in partisan politics. In 1836 and 1840 there was
upon slavery no real difference between the utterances of the candidates
and other leaders, Whig and Democratic, whether North or South. Van
Buren was supported by many abolitionists; the profoundest distrust of
him was at the South. Upon no question touching slavery with which the
president could have concern, did his opinions or his utterances differ
from those of John Quincy Adams. Clay said in November, 1838, that the
abolitionists denounced him as a slaveholder and the slaveholders
denounced him as an abolitionist, while both united on Van Buren. The
charge of truckling to the South, traditionally made against Van Buren,
is justified by no utterance or act different from those made by all
American public men of distinction at the time, except perhaps in two
instances,--his vote as vice-president for Kendall's bill against
sending inflammatory abolition circulars through the post-office to
States which prohibited their circulation, and his approval of the rules
in the Senate and House for tabling or refusing abolition petitions
without reading them. But neither of these, as has been shown, was a
decisive test. In the first case he met a political trick; and for his
vote there was justly much to be said on the reason of the thing, apart
from Southern wishes. As late as 1848, Webster, in criticising Van
Buren's inconsistency, would say no more of the law than that it was one
"of very doubtful propriety;" and declared that he himself should agree
to legislation by Congress to protect the South "from incitements to
insurrection." In the second case Van Buren's position in public life
might of itself properly restrain him from acquiescing in an agitation
in Congress for measures which, with all responsible public men, Adams
included, he believed Congress ought not to pass.
The Democratic convention was to meet in May, 1844. The delegates had
been very generally instructed for Van Buren; and two months before it
assembled his nomination seemed beyond doubt. But the slave States were
now fired with a barbarous enthusiasm to extend slavery by annexing
Texas. To this Van Buren was supposed to be hostile. His Southern
opponents, in February, 1843, skillfully procured from Jackson, innocent
of the plan, a strong letter in favor of the annexation, to be used, it
was said, just before the convention, "to blow Van out of water." The
letter was first published in March, 1844. Van Buren was at once put to
a crucial test. His administration had been adverse to annexation; his
opinion was still adverse. But a large, and not improbably a controlling
section of his party, aided by Jackson's wonderful prestige, deemed it
the most important of political causes. Van Buren was, according to the
plan, explicitly asked by a Southern delegate to state, with distinct
reference to the action of the convention, what were his opinions.
The ex-President deeply desired the nomination; and the nomination
seemed conditioned upon his surrender. It was at least assured if he now
gave no offense to the South. But he did not flinch. He resorted to no
safe generalizations. His views upon the annexation were, he admitted,
different from those of many friends, political and personal; but in
1837 his administration after a careful consideration had decided
against annexation of the State whose independence had lately been
recognized by the United States; the situation had not changed;
immediate annexation would place a weapon in the hands of those who
looked upon Americans and American institutions with distrustful and
envious eyes, and would do us far more real and lasting injury than the
new territory, however valuable, could repair. He intimated that there
was jobbery in some of the enthusiasm for the annexation. The argument
that England might acquire Texas was without force; when England sought
in Texas more than the usual commercial favors, it would be time for the
United States to interfere. He was aware, he said, of the hazard to
which he exposed his standing with his Southern fellow-citizens, "of
whom it was aptly and appropriately said by one of their own number that
'they are the children of the sun and partake of its warmth.'" But
whether we stand or fall, he said, it is always true wisdom as well as
true morality to hold fast to the truth. If to nourish enthusiasm were
one of the effects of a genial climate, it seldom failed to give birth
to a chivalrous spirit. To preserve our national escutcheon untarnished
had always been the unceasing solicitude of Southern statesmen. The only
tempering he gave his refusal was to say that if, after the subject had
been fully discussed, a Congress chosen with reference to the question
showed the popular will to favor it, he would yield.[18] Van Buren thus
closed his letter: "Nor can I in any extremity be induced to cast a
shade over the motives of my past life, by changes or concealments of
opinions maturely formed upon a great national question, for the
unworthy purpose of increasing my chances for political promotion."
To a presidential candidate the eve of a national convention is dim with
the self-deceiving twilight of sophistry; and the twilight deepens when
a question is put upon which there is a division among those who are, or
who may be, his supporters. He can keep silence, he can procure the
questioning friend to withdraw the troublesome inquiry; he can ignore
the question from an enemy; he can affect an enigmatical dignity. Van
Buren did neither of these. His Texas letter was one of the finest and
bravest pieces of political courage, and deserves from Americans a long
admiration.
The danger of Van Buren's difference with Jackson it was sought to
avert. Butler visited Jackson at the Hermitage, and doubtless showed him
for what a sinister end he had been used. Jackson did not withdraw his
approval of annexation; but publicly declared his regard for Van Buren
to be so great, his confidence in Van Buren's love of country to be so
strengthened by long intimacy, that no difference about Texas could
change his opinions. Van Buren's nomination was again widely supposed
to be assured. But the work of Calhoun and Robert J. Walker had been too
well done. The convention met at Baltimore on May 27, 1844. George
Bancroft headed the delegation from Massachusetts. Before the Rev. Dr.
Johns had "fervently addressed the Throne of Grace" or the Rev. Mr.
McJilton had "read a scripture lesson," the real contest took place over
the adoption of the rule requiring a two thirds vote for a nomination.
For it was through this rule that enough Southern members, chosen before
Van Buren's letter as they had been, were to escape obedience to their
instructions to vote for him. Robert J. Walker, then a senator from
Mississippi, a man of interesting history and large ability, led the
Southerners. He quoted the precedent of 1832, when Van Buren had been
nominated for the vice-presidency under the two thirds rule, and that of
1835, when he had been nominated for the presidency. These nominations
had led to victory. In 1840 the rule had not been adopted. Without this
rule, he said amid angry excitement, the party would yield to those
whose motto seemed to be "rule or ruin." Butler, Daniel S. Dickinson,
and Marcus Morton led the Northern ranks. Butler regretted that any
member should condescend to the allusion to 1840. That year, he said,
had been a debauchery of the nation's reason amid log cabins, hard
cider, and coon-skins; and in an ecstasy of painful excitement at the
recollection and amid a tremendous burst of applause "he leaped from
the floor and stamped ... as if treading beneath his feet the object of
his loathing." The true Democratic rule, he continued, required the
minority to submit to the majority. Morton said that under the majority
rule Jefferson had been nominated; that rule had governed state, county,
and township conventions. Butler admitted that under the rule Van Buren
would not be nominated, although a majority of the convention was known
to be for him. In 1832 and 1835 the two thirds rule had prevailed
because it was certainly known who would be nominated; and the rule
operated to aid not to defeat the majority. If the rule were adopted, it
would be by the votes of States which were not Democratic, and would
bring "dismemberment and final breaking up of the party." Walker laughed
at Butler's "tall vaulting" from the floor; and, refusing to shrink from
the Van Buren issue, he protested against New York dictation, and
warningly said that, if Van Buren were nominated, Clay would be elected.
After the convention had received with enthusiasm a floral gift from a
Democratic lady whom the President declared to be fairer than the
flowers, the vote was taken. The two thirds rule was adopted by 148 to
118. All the negatives were Northerners, except 14 from Missouri,
Maryland, and North Carolina. Fifty-eight true "Northern men with
Southern principles" joined ninety Southerners in the affirmative. It
was really a vote on Van Buren,--or rather upon the annexation of
Texas,--or rather still upon the extension of American slave territory.
It was the first battle, a sort of Bull Run, in the last and great
political campaign between the interests of slavery and those of
freedom.
On the first ballot for the candidate, Van Buren had 146 votes, 13 more
than a majority. If after the vote on the two thirds rule anything more
were required to show that some of these votes were given in mere formal
obedience to instructions, the second ballot brought the proof. Van
Buren then sank to 127, less than a majority; and on the seventh ballot
to 99. A motion was made to declare him the nominee as the choice of a
majority of the convention; and there followed a scene of fury, the
President bawling for order amid savage taunts between North and South,
and bitter denunciations of the treachery of some of those who had
pledged themselves for Van Buren. Samuel Young of New York declared the
"abominable Texas question" to be the fire-brand thrown among them by
the "mongrel administration at Washington," whose hero was now doubtless
fiddling while Rome was burning. Nero seems to have been Calhoun, though
between the god-like young devil of antiquity wreathed with sensual
frenzy and infamy, and the solemn, even saturnine figure of the great
modern advocate of human slavery, the likeness seemed rather slight. The
motion was declared out of order; and the name of James K. Polk was
presented as that of "a pure whole-hogged Democrat." On the eighth
ballot he had 44 votes. Then followed the magnanimous scene of "union
and harmony" which has so often, after a conflict, charmed a political
body into unworthy surrender. The great delegation from New York retired
during the ninth balloting; and returned to a convention profoundly
silent but thrilling with that bastard sense of coming glory in which a
lately tumultuous and quarreling body waits the solution of its
difficulties already known to be reached but not yet declared. Butler
quoted a letter which Van Buren had given him authorizing the withdrawal
of his name if it were necessary for harmony; he eulogized Polk as a
strict constructionist, and closed by reading a letter from Jackson
fervently urging Van Buren's nomination. Daniel S. Dickinson said that
"he loved this convention because it had acted so like the masses," and
cast New York's 35 votes for Polk. The latter's nomination was declared
with the utmost joy, and sent to Washington over Morse's first telegraph
line, just completed. Silas Wright of New York, Van Buren's strong
friend and a known opponent of annexation, was, in the fashion since
followed, nominated for the vice-presidency, to soothe the feelings and
the conscience of the defeated. Wright peremptorily telegraphed his
refusal. He told his friends that he did "not choose to ride behind on
the black pony." George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania took his place.
The Democratic party now threw away all advantage of the issue made by
the undeserved defeat four years before. Thirty-six years later it
repeated the blunder in discarding Van Buren's famous neighbor and
disciple. Polk's was the first nomination by the party of a man of the
second or of even a lower rank. Polk was known to have ability inferior
not only to that of Van Buren and Calhoun, but to Cass, Buchanan,
Wright, and others. He was the first presidential "dark horse," and
indeed hardly that. His own State of Tennessee had, by resolution,
presented him as its choice for vice-president with Van Buren in the
first place. He had been speaker of the national House, and later,
governor of his State; but since holding these places had been twice
defeated for governor. In accepting the nomination he declared, with an
apparent fling at Van Buren, that, if elected, he should not accept a
renomination, and should thus enable the party in 1848 to make "a free
selection."
The nomination aroused disgust enough. "Polk! Great God, what a
nomination!" Letcher, the Whig governor of Kentucky, wrote to Buchanan.
But the experiment of 1840 with the Whigs had been disastrous; the
people had swung back to the strict doctrines of the Democracy. Van
Buren faithfully kept his promise to support the nomination; under his
urgency Wright finally accepted the nomination for governor of New York.
And by the vote of New York Henry Clay was defeated by a man vastly his
inferior. Polk had 5000 plurality in that State; but Wright had 10,000.
Had not James G. Birney, the abolitionist candidate who polled there
15,812 votes, been in the field, not even Van Buren's party loyalty
would have prevented Clay's election. Van Buren's friends saved the
State; but in doing so voted for annexation. In April, 1844, Clay had
written a letter against annexation. As it appeared within a few days of
Van Buren's letter, and as the personal relations between the two great
party leaders were most friendly, some have inferred an arrangement
between them to take the question out of politics. This would indeed
have been an extraordinary occurrence. One might well wish to have
overheard a negotiation between two rivals for the presidency to exclude
a great question distasteful to both. After the Democratic convention,
Tyler's treaty of annexation was rejected in the Senate by 35 to 16, six
Democrats from the North, among them Wright of New York and Benton of
Missouri, voting against it. During the campaign Clay had weakly
abandoned even the mild emphasis of his first opposition, and by flings
at the abolitionists had openly bid for the pro-slavery vote; thus
perhaps losing enough votes in New York to Birney to defeat him. After
the election the current for annexation seemed too strong; and a
resolution passed both Houses authorizing the admission of Texas as a
State. The resolution provided for the formation of four additional
States out of Texas. In any such additional State formed north of the
Missouri compromise line, slavery was to be prohibited; but in those
south of it slavery was to be permitted or prohibited as the inhabitants
might choose.
Slavery was now clearly before the political conscience of the nation.
Van Buren was the conspicuous victim of the first encounter. The
Baltimore convention had in its platform complimented "their illustrious
fellow-citizen," "his inflexible fidelity to the Constitution," his
"ability, integrity, and firmness," and had tendered to him, "in
honorable retirement," the assurance of the deeply-seated "confidence,
affection, and respect of the American Democracy." This sentence to
"honorable retirement" Van Buren, who was only in his sixty-second year
and in the amplitude of his natural powers, received with outward
complacency. On the eve of the election he pointed out, probably
referring to Cass, that the hostility to him had not been in the
interest of Polk, and warmly said that, unless the Democratic creed were
a delusion, personal feelings ought to be turned to nothing. Van Buren
was, however, profoundly affected by what he deemed the undeserved
Southern hostility to himself. For he hardly yet appreciated that his
defeat was politically legitimate, and not the result of political
treachery or envy. Between him and the Southern politicians had opened a
true and deep division over the greatest single question in American
politics since Jefferson's election.
With Polk's accession and the Mexican war, the schism in the Democratic
ranks over the extension of American slave territory became plainer.
Even during the canvass of 1844 a circular had been issued by William
Cullen Bryant, David Dudley Field, John W. Edmonds, and other Van Buren
men, supporting Polk, but urging the choice of congressmen opposed to
annexation. Early in the new administration the division of New York
Democrats into "Barnburners" and "Old Hunkers" appeared. The former were
the strong pro-Van Buren, anti-Texas men, or "radical Democrats," who
were likened to the farmer who burned his barn to clear it of rats. The
latter were the "Northern men with Southern principles," the supporters
of annexation, and the respectable, dull men of easy consciences, who
were said to hanker after the offices. The Barnburners were led by men
of really eminent ability and exalted character: Silas Wright, then
governor, Benjamin F. Butler, John A. Dix, chosen in 1845 to the United
States Senate, Azariah C. Flagg, the famous comptroller, and John Van
Buren, the ex-President's son, and a singularly picturesque figure in
politics, who was, in 1845, made attorney-general by the legislature. He
had been familiarly called "Prince John" since his travels abroad during
his father's presidency. Daniel S. Dickinson and William L. Marcy were
the chief figures in the Hunker ranks. Polk seemed inclined, at the
beginning, to favor, or at least to placate, the Barnburners. He
offered the Treasury to Wright, though he is said to have known that
Wright could not leave the governorship. He offered Butler the War
Department, but the latter's devotion to his profession, for which he
had resigned the attorney-general's place in Van Buren's cabinet, made
him prefer the freedom of the United States attorneyship at New York,
and Marcy was finally given the New York place in the cabinet. Jackson's
death in June, 1845, deprived the Van Buren men of the tremendous moral
weight which his name carried, and which might have daunted Polk. It
perhaps also helped to loosen the weight of party ties on the Van Buren
men. After this the schism rapidly grew. In the fall election of 1845
the Barnburners pretty thoroughly controlled the Democratic party of the
State in hostility to the Mexican war, which the annexation of Texas had
now brought. Samuel J. Tilden of Columbia county, and a profound admirer
of Van Buren, became one of their younger leaders.
[Illustration: Silas Wright]
Now arose the strife over the "Wilmot Proviso," in which was embodied
the opposition to the extension of slavery into new Territories. Upon
this proviso the modern Republican party was formed eight years later;
upon it, fourteen years later, Abraham Lincoln was chosen president; and
upon it began the war for the Union, out of whose throes came the vastly
grander and unsought beneficence of complete emancipation. David Wilmot
was a Democratic member of Congress from Pennsylvania; in New York he
would have been a Barnburner. In 1846 a bill was pending to appropriate
$3,000,000 for use by the President in a purchase of territory from
Mexico as part of a peace. Wilmot proposed an amendment that slavery
should be excluded from any territory so acquired. All the Democratic
members, as well as the Whigs from New York, and most strongly the Van
Buren or Wright men, supported the proviso. The Democratic legislature
approved it by the votes of the Whigs with the Barnburners and the Soft
Hunkers, the latter being Hunkers less friendly to slavery. It passed
the House at Washington, but was rejected by the Senate, not so quickly
open to popular sentiment. In the Democratic convention of New York, in
October, 1846, the "war for the extension of slavery" was charged by the
Barnburners on the Hunkers. The former were victorious, and Silas Wright
was renominated for governor, to be defeated, however, at the election.
Polk, Marcy, and Dickinson, angered at the Democratic opposition in New
York to the pro-slavery Mexican policy, now threw all the weight of
federal patronage against the Barnburners, many of whom believed the
administration to have been responsible for Wright's defeat. Van Buren
and his influence were completely separated from the national
administration. Just before the adjournment of Congress in 1847, the
appropriation to secure territory from Mexico was again proposed. Again
the Wilmot Proviso was added in the House; again it was rejected in the
Senate, to the defeat of the appropriation; and again Barnburners and
Whigs carried in the New York legislature a resolution approving it, and
directing the New York senators to support it.
The tide was rising. It seemed that Mexican law prohibited slavery in
New Mexico and California, and that upon their cession the principles of
international law would preserve their condition of freedom. Benton,
therefore, deemed the Wilmot Proviso unnecessary; a "thing of nothing in
itself, and seized upon to conflagrate the States and dissolve the
Union." For the Supreme Court had not then pronounced slavery a
necessary accompaniment of American supremacy. But the legal protection
of freedom was practically unsubstantial, even if not technical; there
could be no doubt of the determination of the South to carry slavery
into these Territories, whatever might be the obligations of either
municipal or international law; and their conquest, therefore, made
imminent a decision of the vital question whether slavery should be
still further extended.
At the Democratic convention at Syracuse, in September, 1847, the
Hunkers, after a fierce struggle over contested seats, seized control of
the body. David Dudley Field, for the Barnburners, proposed a resolution
that, although the Democracy of New York would faithfully adhere to the
compromises of the Constitution and maintain the reserved rights of the
States, they would still declare, since the crisis had come, "their
uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery into territory now
free." This was defeated. The Barnburners then seceded, and issued an
address, in which Lawrence Van Buren, the ex-President's brother,
joined. They protested that the anti-slavery resolution had been
defeated by a fraudulent organization of the convention, and called a
mass meeting at Herkimer, on October 26, "to avow their principles and
consult as to future action." The Herkimer convention was really an
important preliminary to the formation of the modern Republican party.
It was a gathering of the ex-President's friends. Cambreleng, his old
associate, presided; David Wilmot addressed the meeting; and John Van
Buren, now very conspicuous in politics, reported the resolutions. In
these the fraud at Syracuse was again denounced; a convention was called
for Washington's birthday in 1848, to choose Barnburner delegates to
contest the seats of those chosen by the Hunkers in the national
Democratic convention. It was declared that the freemen of New York
would not submit to slavery in the conquered provinces; and that,
against the threat of Democrats at the South that they would support no
candidate for the presidency who did not assent to the extension of
slavery, the Democrats of New York would proclaim their determination to
vote for no candidate who did so assent.
It was clear that Van Buren sympathized with all this. Relieved from the
constraint of power, there strongly revived his old hostility to
slavery; he recalled his vote twenty-eight years before against
admitting Missouri otherwise than free. He now perceived how profound
had really been the political division between him and the Southern
Democrats when, in 1844, he wrote his Texas letter. Ignoring the
legitimate character of the politics of Polk's administration in denying
official recognition or reward to Barnburners,--legitimate if, as Van
Buren had himself pretty uniformly maintained, patronage should go to
friends rather than enemies, and if, as was obvious, there had arisen a
true political division upon principles,--Van Buren was now touched with
anger at the proscription of his friends. Excluded from the power which
ought to have belonged to the chief of Democrats enjoying even in
"honorable retirement" the "confidence, affection, and respect" of his
party, independence rapidly grew less heinous in his eyes. One can
hardly doubt that there now more freely welled up in his mind, to
clarify its vision, the sense of personal wrong which, since Polk's
nomination, had been so long held in magnanimous and dignified
restraint,--though of this he was probably unconscious. Van Buren was
not insincere when, in October, 1847, he wrote from Lindenwald to an
enthusiastic Democratic editor in Pennsylvania, who had hoisted his name
to the top of his columns for 1848. Whatever, he said, had been his
aspirations in the past, he now had no desire to be President; every day
confirmed him in the political opinions to which he had adhered.
Conscious of always having done his duty to the people to the best of
his ability, he had "no heart burnings to be allayed and no resentments
to be gratified by a restoration of power." Life at Lindenwald was
entirely adapted to his taste; and he was (so he wrote, and so doubtless
he had forced himself to think) "sincerely and heartily desirous to wear
the honors and enjoyments of private life uninterruptedly to the end."
If tendered a unanimous Democratic support with the assurance of the
election it would bring, he should not "hesitate respectfully and
gratefully, but decidedly to decline it," adding, however, the proviso
so precious to public men, "consulting only my own feelings and wishes."
It was in the last degree improbable, he said,--and so it was,--that any
emergency should arise in which this indulgence of his own preferences
would, in the opinion of his true and faithful friends, conflict with
his duty to the party to which his whole life had been devoted, and to
which he owed any personal sacrifice. The Mexican war had, he said, been
so completely sanctioned by the government that it must be carried
through; and, he ominously added, the propriety of thereafter
instituting inquiries into the necessity of its occurrence, so as to fix
the just responsibility to public opinion of public servants, was then
out of season. Not a word of praise did he speak of Polk's
administration; in this he was for once truly and grimly
"non-committal."
In the New York canvass of 1847, the Barnburners, after their secession,
"talked of indifferent matters." The Whigs were therefore completely
successful. In the legislature the Barnburners, or "Free-soilers" as
they began to be called, outnumbered the Hunkers. Dickinson proposed in
the Senate at Washington a resolution, the precursor of Douglas's
"squatter sovereignty,"--that all questions concerning the domestic
policy of the Territories should be left to their legislatures to be
chosen by their people. Lewis Cass, now the coming candidate of the
South, asserted in December, 1847, the same proposition, pointing out
that, if Congress could abolish the relation of master and servant in
the Territories, it might in like manner treat the relation of husband
and wife. After this "Nicholson letter" of his, Cass might well have
been asked whether he would have approved the admission of a State where
the last relation was forbidden, and where concubinage existed as a
"domestic institution." Dickinson's proposal meant that the first
settlers of each Territory should determine it to freedom or to slavery;
it meant that in admitting new States the nation ought to be indifferent
to their laws on slavery. If slavery were a mere incident in the polity
of the State, a matter of taste or convenience, the proposition would
have been true enough. But euphemistic talk about "domestic
institutions" blinded none but theorists or lovers of slavery to the
truth that slavery was a fearful and barbarous power, and that it must
become paramount in any new Southern State, monstrous and corrupting in
its tendencies towards savagery, unyielding, wasteful, and ruinous,--a
power whose corruption and savagery, whose waste and ruin, debauched and
enfeebled all communities closely allied to the States which maintained
it,--a power in whose rapid growth, in whose affirmative and dictatorial
arrogance, and in the intellectual ability and even the moral
excellences of the aristocracy which administered it at the South, there
was an appalling menace. As well might one propose the admission to
political intimacy and national unity of a State whose laws encouraged
leprosy or required the funeral oblations of the suttee. If there were
already slave States in the confederacy, it was no less true that the
nation had profoundly suffered from their slavery. Nor could all the
phrases of constitutional lawyers make the slave-block, the black laws,
and all the practices of this barbarism mere local peculiarities,
distasteful perhaps to the North but not concerning it, peculiarities to
be ranked with laws of descent or judicial procedure. Cass and Dickinson
for their surrender to the South were now called "dough-faces" and
"slavocrats" by the Democratic Free-soilers. They were the true
"Northern men with Southern principles."
The Barnburners met at Utica on February 16, an earlier day than that
first appointed, John Van Buren again being the chief figure. The
convention praised John A. Dix for supporting the Wilmot Proviso; and
declared that Benton, a senator from a slave State, but now a sturdy
opponent of extending the evil, and long the warm friend and admirer of
Van Buren, had "won a proud preëminence among the statesmen of the day."
Delegates were chosen to the national convention to oppose the Hunkers.
In April, 1848, the Barnburner members of the legislature issued an
address, the authors of which were long afterwards disclosed by Samuel
J. Tilden to be himself and Martin and John Van Buren. At great length
it demonstrated the Free-soil principles of the Democratic fathers.
The national convention assembled in May, 1848. It offered to admit the
Barnburner and Hunker delegations together to cast the vote of the
State. The Barnburners rejected the compromise as a simple nullification
of the vote of the State, and then withdrew. Lewis Cass was nominated
for president, the Wilmot Proviso being thus emphatically condemned. For
Cass had declared in favor of letting the new Territories themselves
decide upon slavery. The Barnburners, returning to a great meeting in
the City Hall Park at New York, cried, "The lash has resounded through
the halls of the Capitol!" and condemned the cowardice of Northern
senators who had voted with the South. Among the letters read was one
from Franklin Pierce, who had in 1844 voted against annexation, a letter
which years afterwards was, with a reference to his famous friend and
biographer, called the "Scarlet Letter." The delegates issued an
address written by Tilden, fearlessly calling Democrats to independent
action. In June a Barnburner convention met at Utica. Its president,
Samuel Young, who had refused at the convention at Baltimore in 1844 to
vote for Polk when the rest of his delegation surrendered, said that if
the convention did its duty, a clap of political thunder would in
November "make the propagandists of slavery shake like Belshazzar."
Butler, John Van Buren, and Preston King, afterwards a Republican
senator, were there. David Dudley Field read an explicit declaration
from the ex-President against the action and the candidates of the
national convention. This letter, whose prolixity is an extreme
illustration of Van Buren's literary fault, created a profound
impression. He declared his "unchangeable determination never again to
be a candidate for public office." The requirement by the national
convention that the New York delegates should pledge themselves to vote
for any candidate who might be nominated was, he said, an indignity of
the rankest character. The Virginia delegates had been permitted,
without incurring a threat of exclusion, to declare that they would not
support a certain nominee. The convention had not allowed the Democrats
of New York fair representation, and its acts did not therefore bind
them.
The point of political regularity, when discussed upon a technical
basis, was, however, by no means clear. The real question was whether
the surrender of the power of Congress over the Territories, and the
refusal to use that power to exclude slavery, accorded with Democratic
principles. On this Van Buren was most explicit. Jefferson had proposed
freedom for the Northwest Territories; and all the representatives from
the slaveholding States had voted for the ordinance. Not only Washington
and the elder and younger Adams had signed bills imposing freedom as the
condition of admitting new Territories or States, but those undoubted
Democrats, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, had signed such
bills; and so had he himself in 1838 in the case of Iowa. This power of
Congress was part of "the compromises of the Constitution," compromises
which, "deeply penetrated" as he had been "by the convictions that
slavery was the only subject that could endanger our blessed Union," he
had, he was aware, gone further to sustain against Northern attacks than
many of his best friends approved. He would go no further. As the
national convention had rejected this old doctrine of the Democracy, he
should not vote for its candidate, General Cass; and if there were no
other candidate but General Taylor, he should not vote for president. If
our ancestors, when the opinion and conduct of the world about slavery
were very different, had rescued from slavery the territory now making
five great States, should we, he asked, in these later days, after the
gigantic efforts of Great Britain for freedom, and when nearly all
mankind were convinced of its evils, doom to slavery a territory from
which as many more new States might be made. He counseled moderation and
forbearance, but still a firm resistance to injustice.
This powerful declaration from the old chief of the Democracy was
decisive with the convention. Van Buren was nominated for president, and
Henry Dodge, a Democratic senator of Wisconsin, for vice-president.
Dodge, however, declined, proud though he would be, as he said, to have
his name under other circumstances associated with Van Buren's. But his
State had been represented in the Baltimore convention; and as one of
its citizens he cordially concurred in the nomination of Cass. A
national convention was called to meet at Buffalo on August 9, 1848.
Charles Francis Adams, the son of John Quincy Adams, presided at the
Buffalo convention; and in it Joshua R. Giddings, the famous
abolitionist, and Salmon P. Chase were conspicuous. To the unspeakable
horror of every Hunker there participated in the deliberations a negro,
the Rev. Mr. Ward. Butler reported the resolutions in words whose
inspiration is still fresh and ringing. They were assembled, it was
said, "to secure free soil for a free people;" the Democratic and Whig
organizations had been dissolved, the one by stifling the voice of a
great constituency, the other by abandoning its principles for mere
availability. Remembering the example of their fathers in the first
declaration of independence, they now, putting their trust in God,
planted themselves on the national platform of freedom in opposition to
the sectional platform of slavery; they proposed no interference with
slavery in any State, but its prohibition in the Territories then free;
for Congress, they said, had "no more power to make a slave than to make
a king." There must be no more compromises with slavery. They accepted
the issue forced upon them by the slave power; and to its demand for
more slave States and more slave Territories, their calm and final
answer was, "no more slave States and no more slave territory." At the
close were the stirring and memorable words: "We inscribe on our banner,
Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men; and under it we will
fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our
exertions."
Joshua Leavitt of Massachusetts, one of the "blackest" of abolitionists,
reported to the convention the name of Martin Van Buren for president.
After the convention was over, even Gerrit Smith, the ultra-abolitionist
candidate, declared that, of all the candidates whom there was the least
reason to believe the convention would nominate, Van Buren was his
preference. The nomination was enthusiastically made by acclamation,
after Van Buren had on an informal ballot received 159 votes to 129 cast
for John P. Hale. A brief letter from Van Buren was read, declaring that
his nomination at Utica had been against his earnest wishes; that he had
yielded because his obligation to the friends, who had now gone so far,
required him to abide by their decision that his name was necessary to
enable "the ever faithful Democracy of New York to sustain themselves in
the extraordinary position into which they have been driven by the
injustice of others;" but that the abandonment at Buffalo of his Utica
nomination would be most satisfactory to his feelings and wishes. The
exclusion of slavery from the Territories was an object, he said,
"sacred in the sight of heaven, the accomplishment of which is due to
the memories of the great and just men long since, we trust, made
perfect in its courts." Charles Francis Adams was nominated for
vice-president; and dazzled and incredulous eyes beheld on a
presidential ticket with Martin Van Buren the son of one of his oldest
and bitterest adversaries. That adversary had died a few months before,
the best of his honors being his latest, those won in a querulous but
valiant old age, in a fiery fight for freedom.
In September, John A. Dix, then a Democratic senator, accepted the
Free-soil nomination for governor of New York. The Democratic party was
aghast. The schismatics had suddenly gained great dignity and
importance. Martin Van Buren, the venerable leader of the party, its
most famous and distinguished member, this courtly, cautious
statesman,--could it be he rushing from that "honorable retirement," to
whose safe retreat his party had committed him with so deep an
affection, to consort with long-haired and wild-eyed abolitionists! He
was the arch "apostate," leading fiends of disunion who would rather
rule in hell than serve in heaven. Where now was his boasted loyalty to
the party? Rage struggled with loathing. All the ancient stories told of
him by Whig enemies were revived, and believed by those who had long
treated them with contempt. It is clear, however, that Van Buren's
attitude was in no wise inconsistent with his record. His party had
never pronounced for the extension of slavery; nor had he. The Buffalo
convention was silent upon abolition in the District of Columbia. There
was for the time in politics but one question, and that was born of the
annexation of Texas,--Shall slavery go into free territory? As amid the
clash of arms the laws are stilled, so in the great fight for human
freedom, the independent treasury, the tariff, and internal improvements
could no longer divide Americans.
The Whigs had in June nominated Taylor, one of the two heroes of the
Mexican war. It is a curious fact that Taylor had been authoritatively
sounded by the Free-soil leaders as to an acceptance of their
nomination. Clay and Webster were now discarded by their party for this
bluff soldier, a Louisiana slaveholder of unknown politics; and with
entire propriety and perfect caution the Whigs made no platform. A
declaration against the extension of slavery was voted down. Webster
said at Marshfield, after indignation at Taylor's nomination had a
little worn away, that for "the leader of the Free-_spoil_ party" to
"become the leader of the Free-soil party would be a joke to shake his
sides and mine." The anti-slavery Whigs hesitated for a time; but Seward
of New York and Horace Greeley in the New York "Tribune" finally led
most of them to Taylor rather than, as Seward said, engage in "guerrilla
warfare" under Van Buren. Whigs must not, he added, leave the ranks
because of the Whig affront to Clay and Webster. "Is it not," he finely,
though for the occasion sophistically, said, "by popular injustice that
greatness is burnished?" This launching of the modern Republican party
was, strangely enough, to include in New York few besides Democrats. In
November, 1847, the Liberty or Abolition party nominated John P. Hale
for president; but upon Van Buren's nomination he was withdrawn.
Upon the popular vote in November, 1848, Van Buren received 291,263
votes, while there were 1,220,544 for Cass and 1,360,099 for Taylor. Van
Buren had no electoral votes. In no State did he receive as many votes
as Taylor; but in New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont he had more than
Cass. The vote of New York was an extraordinary tribute to his personal
power; he had 120,510 votes to 114,318 for Cass; and it was clear that
nearly all the former came from the Democratic party. In Ohio he had
35,354 votes, most of which were probably drawn from the Whig
abolitionists. In Massachusetts he had 38,058 votes, in no small part
owing to the early splendor, the moral austerity and elevation of
Charles Sumner's eloquence. "It is not," he said, "for the Van Buren of
1838 that we are to vote; but for the Van Buren of to-day,--the veteran
statesman, sagacious, determined, experienced, who, at an age when most
men are rejoicing to put off their armor, girds himself anew and enters
the lists as champion of Freedom." Taylor had 163 electoral votes and
Cass 127.
The political career of Van Buren was now ended. It is mere speculation
whether he had thought his election a possible thing. That he should
think so was very unlikely. Few men had a cooler judgment of political
probabilities; few knew better how powerful was party discipline in the
Democratic ranks, for no one had done more to create it; few could have
appreciated more truly the Whig hatred of himself. Still the wakening
rush of moral sentiment was so strong, the bitterness of Van Buren's
Ohio and New York supporters had been so great at his defeat in 1844,
that it seemed not utterly absurd that those two States might vote for
him. If they did, that dream of every third party in America might come
true,--the failure of either of the two great parties to obtain a
majority in the electoral college, and the consequent choice of
president in the House, where each of them might prefer the third party
to its greater rival. Ambition to reënter the White House could indeed
have had but the slightest influence with him when he accepted the
Free-soil nomination. Nor was his acceptance an act of revenge, as has
very commonly been said. The motives of a public man in such a case are
subtle and recondite even to himself. No distinguished political leader
with strong and publicly declared opinions, however exalted his temper,
can help uniting in his mind the cause for which he has fought with his
own political fortunes. If he be attacked, he is certain to honestly
believe the attack made upon the cause as well as upon himself. When his
party drives him from a leadership already occupied by him, he may
submit without a murmur; but he will surely harbor the belief that his
party is playing false with its principles. In 1848 there was a great
and new cause for which Van Buren stood, and upon which his party took
the wrong side; but doubtless his zeal burned somewhat hotter, the edge
of his temper was somewhat keener, for what he thought the indignities
to himself and his immediate political friends. To say this is simply to
pronounce him human. His acceptance of the nomination was given largely
out of loyalty to those friends whose advice was strong and urgent. It
was the mistake which any old leader of a political party, who has
enjoyed its honors, makes in the seeming effort--and every such
political candidacy at least seems to be such an effort--to gratify his
personal ambition at its expense. Van Buren and his friends should have
made another take the nomination, to which his support, however
vigorous, should have gone sorrowfully and reluctantly; and the form as
well as the substance of his relations to the canvass should have been
without personal interest.
Had Van Buren died just after the election of 1848 his reputation to-day
would be far higher. He had stood firmly, he had suffered politically,
for a clear, practical, and philosophical method and limitation of
government; he had adhered with strict loyalty to the party committed to
this method, until there had arisen the cause of human freedom, which
far transcended any question still open upon the method or limits of
government. With this cause newly risen, a cause surely not to leave the
political field except in victory, he was now closely united. He might
therefore have safely trusted to the judgment of later days and of wiser
and truer-sighted men, growing in number and influence every year. His
offense could never be pardoned by his former associates at the South
and their allies at the North. No confession of error, though it were
full of humiliation, no new and affectionate return to party allegiance,
could make them forget what they sincerely deemed astounding treason and
disastrous sacrilege. Loyal remembrance of his incomparable party
services had irretrievably gone, to be brought back by no reasoning and
by no persuasion. If he were to live, he should not have wavered from
his last position. Its righteousness was to be plainer and plainer with
the passing years.
Van Buren did live, however, long after his honorable battle and defeat;
and lived to dim its honor by the faltering of mistaken patriotism. In
1849, John Van Buren, during the efforts to unite the Democratic party
in New York, declared it his wish to make it "the great anti-slavery
party of the Union." Early in 1850 and when the compromise was
threatened at Washington, he wrote to the Free-soil convention of
Connecticut that there had never been a time when the opponents of
slavery extension were more urgently called to act with energy and
decision or to hold their representatives to a rigid responsibility, if
they faltered or betrayed their trust. With little doubt his father
approved these utterances. A year later, however, the ex-President, with
nearly all Northern men, yielded to the soporific which Clay in his old
age administered to the American people. In their support of the great
compromise between slavery and freedom, Webster and Clay forfeited much
of their fame, and justly. For though the cause of humanity gained a
vast political advantage in the admission of California as a free State,
the advantage, it was plain, could not have been long delayed had there
been no compromise. But the rest of the new territory was thrown into a
struggle among its settlers, although the power of Congress over the
Territories was not yet denied; and a fugitive-slave law of singular
atrocity was passed. All the famous Northern Whigs were now true
"doughfaces." Fillmore, president through Taylor's death, one of the
most dignified and timid of their number, signed the compromise bills.
The compromise being passed, Van Buren with almost the entire North
submissively sought to believe slavery at last expelled from politics.
It would have been a wise heroism, it would have given Van Buren a
clearer, a far higher place with posterity, if after 1848 he had even
done no more than remain completely aloof from the timid politics of the
time, if he had at least refused acquiescence in any compromise by which
concessions were made to slavery. But he was an old man. He shared with
his ancient and famous Whig rivals that intense love and almost
adoration of the Union, upon which the arrogant leaders of the South so
long and so successfully played. The compromise was accomplished. It
would perhaps be the last concession to the furious advance of the cruel
barbarism. The free settlers in the new Territories would, he hoped, by
their number and hardihood, defeat the incoming slave-owners, and even
under "squatter sovereignty" save their homes from slavery. If the Union
should now stand without further disturbance, all might still come right
without civil war. Economic laws, the inexorable and beneficent progress
of civilization, would perhaps begin, slowly indeed but surely, to press
to its death this remnant of ancient savagery. But if the Union were to
be broken by a violation of the compromise, a vast and irremediable
catastrophe and ruin would undo all the patriotic labors of sixty
years, would dismiss to lasting unreality the dreams of three
generations of great men who had loved their country. It seemed too
appalling a responsibility.
Upon all this reasoning there is much unfair modern judgment. The small
number of resolute abolitionists, who cared little for the Union in
comparison with the one cause of human rights, and whose moral fervor
found in the compromises of the Constitution, so dear and sacred to all
American statesmen, only a covenant with hell, may for the moment be
ignored. Among them there was not a public man occupying politically
responsible or widely influential place. The vast body of Northern
sentiment was in two great classes. The one was led by men like Seward,
and even Benton, who considered the South a great bully. They believed
that to a firm front against the extension of slavery the South would,
after many fire-eating words, surrender in peace. The other class
included most of the influential men of the day, some of them greater
men, some lesser, and some little men. Webster, Clay, Cass, Buchanan,
Marcy, Douglas, Fillmore, Dickinson, were now joined by Van Buren and by
many Free-soil men of 1848 daunted at the seeming slowness with which
the divine mills were grinding. They believed that the South, to assert
the fancied "rights" of their monstrous wrong, would accept disunion and
even more, that in this cause it would fiercely accept all the terrors
of a civil war and its limitless devastation. The event proved the
first men utterly in the wrong; and it was fortunate that their mistake
was not visible until in 1861 the battle was irreversibly joined. The
second and more numerous class were right. There had to be yielding,
unless such evils were to be let loose, unless Webster's "ideas, so full
of all that is horrid and horrible," were to come true. The anxiety not
to offend the South was perhaps most strikingly shown after the election
of Lincoln. A distinguished statesman of the modern Republican party has
recently pointed out[19] that in February, 1861, the Republican members
of Congress, and among them Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens,
acquiesced in the organization of the new Territories of Colorado,
Dakota, and Nevada, without any prohibition of slavery, thus ignoring
the very principle and the only principle upon which their great battle
had been fought and their great victory won.
Complete truth dwelt only with the small and hated abolitionist
minority. Without honored and influential leaders in political life they
alone saw that war with all these horrors was better, or even a
successful secession was better, than further surrender of human rights,
a surrender whose corruption and barbarism would cloud all the glories,
and destroy all the beneficence of the Union. No historical judgment has
been more unjust and partial than the implied condemnation of Van Buren
for his acquiescence in Clay's compromise, while only gentle words have
chided the great statesmen whose eloquence was more splendid and
inspiring but whose devotion to the Union was never more supreme than
Van Buren's,--statesmen who had made no sacrifice like his in 1844, who
in their whitening years had taken no bold step like his in 1848, and
who had in 1850 actively promoted the surrender to which Van Buren did
no more than submit after it was accomplished.
In 1852 the overwhelming agreement to the compromise brought on a
colorless presidential campaign, fought in a sort of fool's paradise.
Its character was well represented by Franklin Pierce, the second
Democratic mediocrity raised to the first place in the party and the
land, and by the absurd political figure of General Scott, fitly enough
the last candidate of the decayed Whig party. Both parties heartily
approved the compromise, but it mattered little which of the two
candidates were chosen. The votes cast for John P. Hale, the Free-soil
candidate, were as much more significant and honorable as they were
fewer than those cast for Pierce or Scott. Van Buren, in a note to a
meeting in New York, declared that time and circumstances had issued
edicts against his attendance, but that he earnestly wished for Pierce's
election. He attempted no argument in this, perhaps the shortest
political letter he ever wrote. But John Van Buren, in a speech at
Albany, gave some reasons which prevent much condemnation of his
father's perfunctory acquiescence in the action of his party. The
movement of 1848, he said, had been intended to prevent the extension of
slavery. Since then, California had come in, a Free State, and not, as
the South had desired, a slave State; and "the abolition of the slave
market in the District of Columbia was another great point gained." The
poverty of reasons was shown in the eager insistence that every member
of Congress from New Hampshire had voted against slavery extension, and
that the Democratic party now took its candidate from that State
"without any pledges whatever."
After this election Van Buren spent two years in Europe. President
Pierce tendered him the position of the American arbitrator upon the
British-American claims commission established under the treaty of
February 8, 1853, but he declined. During his absence the South secured
the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the
practical opening to slavery of the new Territories north of the line of
36° 30'. If the settlers of Kansas, which lay wholly on the free side of
that compromise line, desired slavery, they were to have it. But even
this was not sufficient. The hardy settlers of this frontier, separated
though they were by the slave State of Missouri from free soil and free
influences, would, it now seemed, pretty certainly favor freedom. The
ermine of the Supreme Court had, therefore, to be used to sanctify with
the Dred Scott decision the last demand of slavery, inconsistent though
it was with the claims of the South from the time when it secured the
Missouri Compromise until Calhoun grimly advanced his monstrous
propositions. Slavery was to be decreed a constitutional right in all
Territories, whose exercise in them Congress was without power to
prohibit, and which could not be prevented even by the majority of their
settlers until they were admitted as States.
Van Buren came back to America when there was still secret within the
judicial breast the momentous decision that the American flag carried
human slavery with it to conquered territory as a necessary incident of
its stars and stripes, and that Congress could not, if it would, save
the land to freedom. Van Buren voted for Buchanan; a vote essentially
inconsistent with his Free-soil position, a vote deeply to be regretted.
He still thought that free settlers would defeat the intention of the
Kansas-Nebraska act, and bring in, as they afterwards did, a free though
bleeding Kansas. There was something crude and menacing in this new
Republican party, and in its enormous and growing enthusiasm. It was
hard to believe that its candidate had been seriously selected for chief
magistrate of the United States. Fremont probably seemed to Van Buren a
picturesque sentimentalist leading the way to civil war, which, if it
were to come, ought, so it seemed to this former senator and minister
and president, to be led in by serious and disciplined statesmen. The
new party was repulsive to him as a body chiefly of Whigs; old and
bitter adversaries whom he distrusted, with hosts of camp-followers
smelling the coming spoils. All this a young man might endure, when he
saw the clear fact that the Republican convention, ignoring for the time
all former differences, had pronounced not a word inconsistent with the
Democratic platform of 1840, and had made only the one declaration
essential to American freedom and right, that slavery should not go into
the Territories. Van Buren was not, however, a young man, or one of the
few old men in whom a fiery sense of morality, and an eager and buoyant
resolution, are unchilled by thinner and slower blood, and indomitably
overcome the conservative influences of age. A bold outcry from him,
even now, would have placed him for posterity in one of the few niches
set apart to the very greatest Americans. But since 1848 Van Buren had
come to seventy-four years.
Invited to the Tammany Hall celebration of Independence Day, he wrote,
on June 28, 1856, a letter in behalf of Buchanan. There was no
diminution in explicit clearness; but hope was nearly gone; the peril of
the Union obscured every other danger; the South was so threatening that
patriotism seemed to him to require at the least a surrender to all that
had passed; and for the future our best reliance would be upon a fair
vote in Kansas between freedom and slavery. He could not come to its
meeting, he told Tammany Hall, because of his age. He had left one
invitation unanswered; and if he were so to leave another, he might be
suspected of a desire to conceal his sentiments. But this letter should
be his last, as it was his first, appearance in the canvass. He was glad
of the Democratic reunion; for although not always perfectly right, in
no other party had there been "such exclusive regard and devotion to the
maintenance of human rights and the happiness and welfare of the masses
of the people." There was a touch of age in his fond recitals of the
long services of that party since, in Jefferson's days, it had its
origin with "the root-and-branch friends of the Republican system;" of
its support of the war of 1812; of its destruction of the national bank;
of its establishment of an independent treasury. But slavery, he
admitted, was now the living issue. Upon that he had no regrets for his
course. He had always preferred the method of dealing with that
institution practiced by the founders of the government. He lamented the
recent departure from that method; no one was more sincerely opposed
than himself to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He had heard of
it, and condemned it in a foreign land; he had there foreseen the
disastrous reopening of the slavery agitation. But the measure was now
accomplished; there was no more left than to decide what was the best
now to do. The Kansas-Nebraska act had, he said, gradually become less
obnoxious to him; though this impression, he admitted, might result from
the unanimous acquiescence in it of the party in which he had been
reared. Its operation, he trusted, would be beneficial; and he had now
come to believe that the feelings and opinions of the free States would
be more respected under its provisions than by specific congressional
interference. He did not doubt the power of Congress to enable the
people of a Territory to exclude slavery. Buchanan's pledge to use the
presidential power to restore harmony among the sister States could be
redeemed in but one way; and that was, to secure to the actual settlers
of the Territory a "full, free, and practical enjoyment" of the rights
of suffrage on the slavery question conferred by the act. He praised
Buchanan, if not exuberantly, still sufficiently. He must, Van Buren
thought, be solicitous for his reputation in the near "evening of his
life." He believed that Buchanan would redeem his pledge, and should
therefore cheerfully support him. If Buchanan were elected, there were
"good grounds for hope" that the Union might be saved. Such was this
saddening and despondent letter. It was a defense of a vote which it was
rather sorry work that he should have needed to make. But the tramp of
armies and the conflagration of American institutions were heard and
seen in the sky with terrifying vividness. The letter secured, however,
no forgiveness from the angry South. The "Richmond Whig" said: "If there
is a man within the limits of the Republic who is cordially abhorred and
detested by intelligent and patriotic men of all parties at the South,
that man is Martin Van Buren."
Many of the best Americans shared Van Buren's distrust of Fremont and of
those who supported Fremont; they shared his love of peace and his fear
of that bloodshed, North and South, which seemed the dismal El Dorado to
which the "pathfinder's" feet were surely tending. So the majority of
the Northern voters thought; for those north of Mason and Dixon's line
who divided themselves between Buchanan and Fillmore, the candidate of
the "Silver Gray" Whigs, considerably outnumbered the voters for
Fremont.
In 1860 Van Buren voted for the union electoral ticket which represented
in New York the combined opposition to Lincoln. Every motive which had
influenced him in 1856 had now increased even more than his years. The
Republican party was not only now come bringing, it seemed, the torch in
full flame to light an awful conflagration; but in its second national
convention there became obvious upon the tariff question the
preponderance of the Whig elements, which made up the larger though not
the more earnest or efficient body of its supporters.
After Van Buren's return from Europe in 1855, he lived in dignified and
gracious repose. This complete and final escape from the rush about him
had often seemed in his busy strenuous years full of delight. But
doubtless now in the peaceful pleasures of Lindenwald and in the
occasional glimpses of the more crowded social life of New York which
was glad to honor him, there were the regrets and slowly dying
impatience, the sense of isolation, which must at the best touch with
some sadness the later and well-earned and even the best-crowned years.
At this time he began writing memoirs of his life and times, which were
brought down to the years 1833-1834; but they were never revised by him
and have not been published. Out of this work grew a sketch of the early
growth of American parties, which was edited by his sons and printed in
1867. Its pages do not exhibit the firm and logical order which was so
characteristic of Van Buren's political compositions. It was rather the
reminiscence of the political philosophy which had completely governed
him. With some repetitions, but in an easy and interesting way, he
recalled the far-reaching political differences between Jefferson and
Hamilton. In these chapters of his old age are plain the profound and
varied influences which had been exercised over him by the great founder
of his party, and his unquenchable animosity towards "the money power"
from the days of the first secretary of the treasury to its victory of
"buffoonery" in 1840. In one chapter, with words rather courtly but
still not to be mistaken, he condemns Buchanan for a violation of the
principles of Jefferson and Jackson in accepting the Dred Scott decision
as a rule of political action; and this the more because its main
conclusion was unnecessary to adjudge Dred Scott's rights in that suit,
and because its announcement was part of a political scheme. Chief
Justice Taney and Buchanan, Van Buren pointed out, though raised to
power by the Democratic party, had joined it late in life, "with
opinions formed and matured in an antagonist school." Both had come from
the Federalist ranks, whose political heresy Van Buren believed to be
hopelessly incurable.
At the opening of the civil war Van Buren's animosity to Buchanan's
behavior became more and more marked. He strongly sympathized with the
uprising of the North; and sustained the early measures of Lincoln's
administration. But he was not to see the dreadful but lasting and
benign solution of the problem of American slavery. His life ended when
the fortunes of the nation were at their darkest; when McClellan's seven
days' battle from the Chickahominy to the James was just over, and the
North was waiting in terror lest his troops might not return in time to
save the capital. For several months he suffered from an asthmatic
attack, which finally became a malignant catarrh, causing him much
anguish. In the latter days of his sickness his mind wandered; but when
sensible and collected he still showed a keen interest in public
affairs, expressed his confidence in President Lincoln and General
McClellan, and declared his faith that the rebellion would end without
lasting damage to the Union.
On July 24, 1862, he died, nearly eighty years old, in the quiet summer
air at Lindenwald, the noise of battle far away from his green lawns
and clumps of trees. In the ancient Dutch church at Kinderhook the
simple funeral was performed; and a great rustic gathering paid the last
and best honor of honest and respectful grief to their old friend and
neighbor. For his fame had brought its chief honor to this village of
his birth, the village to which in happy ending of his earthly career he
returned, and where through years of well-ordered thrift, of a gentle
and friendly hospitality, and of interesting and not embittered
reminiscence, he had been permitted
"To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose."