Volume II Part 5 (1/2)
VAN BUREN DEFEATED AT BALTIMORE
1844
The ca.n.a.l contest and Horatio Seymour's success preceded many surprises and disappointments which were to be disclosed in the campaign of 1844. Never were the motions of the political pendulum more agitated or more irregular. For three years, public sentiment had designated Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren as the accepted candidates of their respective parties for President; and, until the spring of 1844, the confidence of the friends of the Kentucky statesman did not exceed the a.s.surance of the followers of the ex-President. Indeed, the Democratic party was known throughout the country as the ”Van Buren party,” and, although James Buchanan, John C. Calhoun, and Lewis Ca.s.s had each been named as suitable persons for Chief Executive, the sage of Lindenwald was the party's recognised leader and prospective candidate. His sub-treasury scheme, accepted as wise and salutary, was still the cornerstone of the party, b.u.t.tressed by a tariff for revenue and opposition to a national bank.
In national affairs, the Democratic party in New York was still a unit. The Legislature of 1843 had re-elected Silas Wright to the United States Senate, without a dissenting Democratic vote; and a state convention, held at Syracuse in September of the same year, and made up of Radicals and Conservatives, had instructed its delegation to support New York's favourite son. But a troublesome problem suddenly confronted Van Buren. President Tyler had secretly negotiated a treaty of annexation with Texas, ostensibly because of the contiguity and great value of its territory, in reality, because, as Calhoun, then secretary of state, showed in his correspondence with Great Britain, Texas seemed indispensable to the preservation and perpetuation of slavery. Texas had paved the way for such a treaty by providing, in its const.i.tution, for the establishment of slavery, and by prohibiting the importation of slaves from any country other than the United States. But for three months friends of the treaty in the United States Senate had vainly endeavoured to find a two-thirds majority in favour of its ratification. Then, the exponents of slavery, having secretly brought to their support the enormous prestige of Andrew Jackson, prepared to nominate a successor to President Tyler who would favour the treaty.
Van Buren had never failed the South while in the United States Senate. He had voted against sending abolition literature through the mails into States that prohibited its circulation; he had approved the rules of the Senate for tabling abolition pet.i.tions without reading them; he had publicly deprecated the work of abolition leaders; and, by his silence, had approved the mob spirit when his friends were breaking up abolition meetings. But, in those days, American slavery was simply seeking its const.i.tutional right to exist unmolested where it was; and, although the anti-slavery crusade from 1830 to 1840, had profoundly stirred the American conscience, slavery had not yet, to any extended degree, entered into partisan politics. The annexation of Texas, however, was an aggressive measure, the first of the great movements for the extension of slavery since the Missouri Compromise; and it was important to the South to know in advance where the ex-President stood. His administration had been adverse to annexation, and rumour credited him with unabated hostility. To force him into the open, therefore, William H. Hammit, a member of Congress from Mississippi, addressed him a letter on the 27th of March, 1844. ”I am an unpledged delegate to the Baltimore convention,” wrote Hammit, ”and it is believed that a full and frank declaration of your opinion as to the const.i.tutionality and expediency of immediately annexing Texas will be of great service to the cause, at a moment so critical of its destiny.”[327] Van Buren held this letter until the 20th of April, thirty-seven days before the meeting of the convention. When he did reply he recalled the fact that in 1837, after an exhaustive consideration of the question, his administration had decided against annexation, and that nothing had since occurred to change the situation; but that if, after the subject had been fully discussed, a Congress chosen with reference to the question showed that the popular will favoured it, he would yield. It was a letter of great length, elaborately discussing every point directly or indirectly relating to the subject.
[Footnote 327: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 441.]
Van Buren deeply desired the nomination, and if the South supported him he was practically certain of it. It was in view of the necessity of such support that Van Buren's letter has been p.r.o.nounced by a recent biographer ”one of the finest and bravest pieces of political courage, and deserves from Americans a long admiration.”[328] Such eulogy is worthily bestowed if Van Buren, at the time of the Hammit letter, fully appreciated the gravity of the situation; but there is no evidence that he understood the secret and hostile purpose which led up to the Hammit inquiry, and the letter itself is evidence that he sought to conciliate the Southern wing of his party. Charles Jared Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, in his diary of May 6, 1844, declares that nearly all of Van Buren's admirers and most of the Democratic press were even then committed to annexation. Nevertheless, Van Buren and his trusted advisers could not have known of the secret plotting of Buchanan's and Ca.s.s's followers, or of the deception shrewdly practised by Cave Johnson of Tennessee, ostensibly a confidential friend, but really a leader in the plot to defeat Van Buren.[329]
Besides, the sentiment of the country unmistakably recognised that powerful and weighty as the inducements for annexation appeared, they were light when opposed in the scale of reason to the treaty of amity and commerce with Mexico, which must be scrupulously observed so long as that country performed its duties and respected treaty rights. Even after the nomination of a President only sixteen senators out of fifty-one voted for annexation, proving that the belief still obtained, in the minds of a very large and influential portion of the party, that annexation was decidedly objectionable, since it must lead, as Benton put it in his great speech delivered in May, 1844, to an unjust, unconst.i.tutional war with Mexico upon a weak and groundless pretext. Thus, Van Buren had behind him, the weight of the argument, a large majority of the Senate, including Silas Wright, his n.o.ble friend, and a party sentiment that had not yet yielded to the crack of the southern whip; and he was ignorant of the plan, already secretly matured, to defeat him with the help of the followers of Buchanan and Ca.s.s by insisting upon the two-thirds rule in the convention. Under these circ.u.mstances, it did not require great courage to reaffirm his previous views so forcibly and ably expressed. Cognisant, however, of the growing desire in the South for annexation, he took good care to remove the impression that he was a hard-sh.e.l.l, by promising to yield his opinion to the judgment of a new Congress. This was a long step in the direction of consent. It virtually said, ”If you elect a Congress that will ratify the treaty and pay the price, I will not stand in your way.” In the presence of such complacency, the thought naturally occurs that he might have gone a step farther and consented to yield his opinions at once had he known or even suspected the secret plans of his southern opponents, the bitterness of Calhoun and Robert J. Walker, and their understanding with the friends of Buchanan and Ca.s.s. Jackson's letter favourable to annexation, skilfully procured for publication just before the convention, ”to blow Van out of water,” as his enemies expressed it, was, indeed, known to Van Buren, but the latter believed its influence discounted by the great confidence Jackson subsequently expressed in his wisdom.[330]
[Footnote 328: Edward M. Shepard, _Life of Martin Van Buren_, p. 407.]
[Footnote 329: ”Judge Fine, Mr. Butler, and other members of the New York delegation, reposed great confidence in the opinions and statements of Mr. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee. He frequently met with the delegation, and expressed himself in the strongest terms of personal and political friends.h.i.+p towards Mr. Van Buren and Mr.
Wright. He said he regretted that the Democratic convention in Tennessee had not named Mr. Van Buren as the candidate. So strong was the confidence in Mr. Johnson as a friend of Mr. Van Buren, that he was apprised of all our plans in regard to the organisation of the convention, and was requested to nominate Gov. Hubbard of New Hamps.h.i.+re, as temporary chairman. But when the convention a.s.sembled Gen. Saunders of North Carolina called the convention to order and nominated Hendrick B. Wright, of Pennsylvania, a friend of Mr.
Buchanan, as temporary president. Messrs. Walker, Saunders, and Cave Johnson were the princ.i.p.al managers for the delegates from the southern section of the Union.”--Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol. 3, p. 447.]
[Footnote 330: ”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 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 opinion. But the work of Calhoun and Robert J. Walker had been too well done.”--Edward M.
Shepard, _Life of Martin Van Buren_, p. 407.]
Three days before the date of Van Buren's letter, Henry Clay, writing upon the same subject, expressed the opinion that annexation at this time, without the a.s.sent of Mexico, would be a measure ”compromising the national character, involving us certainly in war with Mexico, probably with other foreign powers, dangerous to the integrity of the Union, inexpedient to the present financial condition of the country, and not called for by any general expression of public opinion.” Van Buren had visited Clay at Ashland in 1842, and, after the publication of their letters, it was suggested that a bargain had then been made to remove the question of annexation from politics. However this may be, the friends of the ex-President, after the publication of his letter, understood, quickly and fully, the gravity of the situation.
Subterranean activity was at its height all through the month of May.
Men wavered and changed, and changed again. So great was the alarm that leading men of Ohio addressed their delegation in Congress, insisting upon Van Buren's support. It was a moment of great peril.
The agitators themselves became frightened. A p.r.o.nounced reaction in favour of Van Buren threatened to defeat their plans, and the better to conceal intrigue and tergiversation they deemed it wise to create the belief that opposition had been wholly and finally abandoned. In this they proved eminently successful. ”Many of the strongest advocates of annexation,” wrote a member of the New York delegation in Congress, on May 18, nine days before the convention, ”have come to regard the grounds taken by Van Buren as the only policy consistent not only with the honour, but the true interests of the country. Such is fast becoming and will soon be the opinion of the whole South.”[331]
But the cloud, at last, burst. No sooner had the Baltimore convention convened than Benjamin F. Butler, the ardent friend and able spokesman of Van Buren, discovered that the backers of Ca.s.s and Buchanan were acting with the Southerners in the interest of a rule that required two-thirds of all the delegates in the convention to nominate.
Instantly the air was thick with suggestion, devices, expedients. All the arts of party emergency went on at an unprecedented rate. The eloquent New Yorker, his clear, tenor voice trembling with emotion, fought the battle on the highest moral grounds.
[Footnote 331: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 444.]
With inexhaustible tenacity, force, and resource, he laboured to hold up to men's imagination and to burn into their understanding the shame and dishonour of adopting a rule, not only unsound and false in principle, but which, if adhered to, would coerce a majority to yield to a minority. ”I submit,” declared Butler, in closing, ”that to adopt a rule which requires what we know cannot be done, unless the majority yield to the minority, is to subject ourselves to the rule, not of reason, but of despotism, and to defeat the true purposes and objects of this convention--the accomplishment of the people's will for the promotion of the people's good.”[332]
[Footnote 332: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 450.
”The real contest took place over the adoption of the rule requiring a two-thirds vote for the nomination. For it was through this rule that enough Southern members, chosen before Van Buren's letter, 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. d.i.c.kinson, and Marcus Morton led the Northern ranks.... Morton said that under the majority rule Jefferson had been nominated; that rule had governed state, county, and towns.h.i.+p 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.”--Edward M. Shepard, _Life of Martin Van Buren_, p. 408.]
The adoption of the rule, by a vote of 148 to 118, showed that the Democratic party did not have a pa.s.sionate devotion for Martin Van Buren. Buchanan opposed his nomination; leading men in other States did not desire him. The New England States, with Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, had instructed for him; yet sixty-three of these instructed delegates voted for the two-thirds rule, knowing that its adoption would defeat him. The rule received thirty majority, and Van Buren, on the first ballot, received only thirteen. On the second ballot he dropped to less than a majority; on the seventh he had only ninety-nine votes.
The excitement reached a climax when a motion to declare him the nominee by a majority vote, was ruled out of order. In the pandemonium, the New Yorkers, for the first time, seemed to unloose themselves, letting fly bitter denunciations of the treachery of the sixty-three delegates who were pledged to Van Buren's support. When order was restored, a Virginian suddenly put forward the name of James K. Polk as that of ”a pure, whole-hogged Democrat.” Then the convention adjourned until the next day.
Harmony usually follows a bitter convention quarrel. Men become furiously and sincerely indignant; but the defeated ones must accept the results, or, Samson-like, destroy themselves in the destruction of their party. The next morning, Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson, the most violently indignant the day before, declared that ”he loved this convention because it had acted so like the ma.s.ses.” In a high state of nervous excitement, Samuel Young had denounced ”the abominable Texas question”