THE DUTCH REIGN OF MARTIN VAN BUREN.
1837–1841.
A New-Yorker reaches the White House, and has Hard Fare there.—The
Disadvantages of Competition.—A Financial Earthquake breaks large
Amounts of Crockery.—How much made a Pile in 1837.—The
Sub-Treasury.—The Connection between long Messages and Anarchy in
Finance.—Defalcations in Office.—Why an Old Man’s House is easily
robbed.—The Phantom of Slavery.—_Extraits de l’Afrique._—Principles
and Goods sold at a Profit.—A Political Trader loses his Capital, and
gives up Business.
At last New York saw one of her citizens reach the White House. Several
other gentlemen, General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Judge Hugh L.
White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Willie P.
Mangum of North Carolina, were each desirous of getting to this favorite
inn before the others, and of securing exclusive possession of it. For
four years the Dutch guest had a very hard time of it. All of his
disappointed competitors watched him, as hounds the fox in his hole,
ready for hot pursuit as soon as the brush showed from cover.
A financial earthquake broke through the commercial crust the first year
of Mr. Van Buren’s term, shattering most of the crockery in the great
cities, and sputtering red menaces of ruin through almost every village
and country store. In New York alone merchants toppled down amid heaps
of indebtedness piled up to $100,000,000,—a respectable pile then, now
scarcely worth failing for. To help up the departing credit, the
President recommended the sub-treasury scheme, or separate chests for
guarding the public moneys. Of course this expedient, like all financial
measures, was Dutch to the people generally, who became more hopelessly
anarchical by the interminably long messages, which aggravated their
want of ideas, and somehow fretfully tangled their losing tempers and
accounts.
A few defalcations among public officers chafed the popular mind to an
illogical but natural irritation. They looked upon the guard-houses of
the national moneys, like an old man’s residence, insecure from his
broken gait and few locks. The dark phantom of slavery again flitted
over the land, its dusky shadow disturbing the vision of commercial and
political traders. The President had, in his boresome in-augur-al,
promised to his Southern supporters, in advance of Congressional action,
to veto any bill forbidding slavery in the District of Columbia.
Petitions against slavery were laid under the table, while speeches in
its favor were extremely fashionable. Mails at the South were opened for
the discovery of antislavery papers. Politicians perfumed their
handkerchiefs with _extraits de l’Afrique_, and Northern merchants on
the seaboard sold to the South their principles and goods at a profit.
Still the great trader in the White House kept losing his capital. The
new war with the Seminoles created bad debts. A proposition for a
standing army mined his credit. The sub-treasury scheme drained specie
from the people into Federal pools. To Lindenwald he retired, enriched
by experience, but with his political ballot-paper at a heavy discount.