Part 5 (1/2)

In his second message he declared ”the obligations upon all the trustees of political power to exempt those for whom they act from all unnecessary burdens;” that ”the resources of the nation beyond those required for the immediate and necessary purposes of government can nowhere be so well deposited as in the pockets of the people;” that ”objects of national importance alone ought to be protected;” and that ”of those the productions of our soil, our mines, and our workshops, essential to national defense, occupy the first rank.” Other domestic industries, having a national importance, and which might, after temporary protection, compete with foreign labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same attention in a subordinate degree. The economic light here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps as strong as it often is in a political paper. Jackson's conclusion was that the tariff then existing taxed some of the comforts of life too highly; protected interests too local and minute to justify a general exaction; and forced some manufactures for which the country was not ripe.

All this practical and striking growth in political science had taken place during the two years of Jackson's and Van Buren's almost daily intercourse at Was.h.i.+ngton. It is impossible from materials yet made public to point out with precision the latter's handiwork in each of these papers. James A. Hamilton describes his own long nights at the White House on the messages of 1829 and 1830; and his were not the only nights of the kind spent by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other strong men, and like some whose opportunities of education had been far ampler than his, freely used literary a.s.sistance, although, with all his inaccuracies, he himself wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interesting style. But with little doubt the political positions taken in these papers, and which made a definite and lasting creed, were more immediately the work of the secretary of state. The consultations with Van Buren, of which Hamilton tells, are only glimpses of what must continually have gone on. At the time of Jackson's inauguration Hamilton wrote that the latter's confidence was reposed in men in no way equal to him in natural parts, but who had been useful to him in covering ”his very lamentable defects of education,” and whom, through his reluctance to expose these defects to others, he was compelled to keep about him.

He added that Van Buren could never reach the same relation which Lewis held with the general, because the latter would ”not yield himself so readily to superior as to inferior minds.” This was a mistake. Van Buren's personal loyalty to Jackson, his remarkable tact and delicacy, had promptly aroused in Jackson that extraordinary liking for him which lasted until Jackson died. With this advantage, Van Buren's clear-cut theories of political conduct were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally wise mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they were agreeable, and received there the deference due to the practical sagacity in which Van Buren's obvious political success had proved him to be a master. Van Buren was doubtless greatly aided by the kitchen cabinet. He was careful to keep on good terms with those who had so familiar an access to Jackson. Kendall's singular and useful ability he soon discovered. It was at the latter's instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at the White House, where Van Buren paid him special attention. The influence of the members of the kitchen cabinet with their master has been much exaggerated. Soon after Lewis was appointed, and in spite of his personal intimacy and of his rumored influence with the President, he was, as he wrote to Hamilton, in some anxiety whether he might not be removed; the President had at least, he said, entertained a proposition to remove him, and was therefore, in view of Jackson's great debt to him, no longer ent.i.tled to his ”friends.h.i.+p or future support.”

Very soon after Van Buren's withdrawal from the cabinet, he was accused of primarily and chiefly causing the official proscription of men for political opinions which began in the federal service under Jackson.

From that time to the present the accusation has been carelessly repeated from one writer to another, with little original examination of the facts. It is clear that Van Buren neither began nor caused this demoralizing and disastrous abuse. When he reached Was.h.i.+ngton in 1829, the removals were in full and lamentable progress. In the very first days of the administration, McLean was removed from the office of postmaster-general to a seat in the Supreme Court, because, so Adams after an interview with him wrote in his diary on March 14,1829, ”he refused to be made the instrument of the sweeping proscription of postmasters which is to be one of the samples of the promised reform.”

This was a week or two before Van Buren reached Was.h.i.+ngton. On the same day Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from Was.h.i.+ngton: ”No d.a.m.ned rascal who made use of his office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr.

Adams in, and General Jackson out of power, is ent.i.tled to the least lenity or mercy, save that of hanging.... Whether or not I shall get anything in the general scramble for plunder remains to be proven; but I rather guess I shall.... I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend you to push like a devil, if you expect anything from that quarter....

If I can only keep my own legs, I shall do well; but I'm darned if I can carry any weight with me.” This man, against Van Buren's earnest protest and to his great disturbance, had some of the devil's luck in pus.h.i.+ng.

He was appointed collector of customs at New York,--one of the princ.i.p.al financial officers in the country. It is not altogether unsatisfactory to read of the scandalous defalcation of which he was afterwards guilty, and of the serious injury it dealt his party. The temper which he exposed so ingenuously, filled Was.h.i.+ngton at the time. Nor did it come only or chiefly from one quarter of the country. Kendall, then fresh from Kentucky, who had been appointed fourth auditor, wrote to his wife, with interestingly mingled sentiments: ”I turned out six clerks on Sat.u.r.day. Several of them have families and are poor. It was the most painful thing I ever did; but I could not well get along without it.

Among them is a poor old man with a young wife and several children. I shall help to raise a contribution to get him back to Ohio.... I shall have a private carriage to go out with me and bring my whole brood of little ones. Bless their sweet faces.”

Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton from Albany in March, 1829: ”If the general makes one removal at this moment he must go on. Would it not be better to get the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton clear of office-seekers first in the way I proposed?... As to the publication in the newspapers I have more to say. So far as depends on me, my course will be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circ.u.mstances of a personal character have since arisen which would make the reappointment in any case improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would pause.” Among the Mackenzie letters is one from Lorenzo Hoyt, describing an interview with Van Buren while governor, and then complaining that the latter would ”not lend the utmost weight of his influence to displace from office such men as John Duer,” Adams's appointee as United States attorney at New York. If they had been struggling for political success for the benefit of their opponents, he angrily wrote, he wished to know it. He added, however, that, from the behavior of the President thus far, he thought Jackson would ”go the whole hog.” This was before Van Buren reached Was.h.i.+ngton. In answer to an insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging a removal, and telling the secretary of state that there was a ”charm attending bold measures extremely fascinating” which had given Jackson all his glory, Van Buren wrote back: ”Here I am engaged in the most intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to hara.s.s me under such circ.u.mstances with letters which no man of common sensibility can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible.”

Ingham, Jackson's secretary of the treasury, the next day wrote to this typical office-seeker that the rage for office in New York was such that an enemy menacing the city with desolation would not cause more excitement. He added, speaking of his own legitimate work: ”These duties cannot be postponed; and I do a.s.sure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work 18 hours out of the 24 with all diligence. The appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors of the late administration that they suffered many important public interests to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do.”

Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, condemned the system of removals; and his fairness may well be trusted. He said that in Jackson's first year (in which De Tocqueville, whom he was answering, said that Jackson had removed every removable functionary) there were removed but 690 officers through the whole United States for all causes, of whom 491 were postmasters: the entire number of postmasters being at the time nearly 8000. Kendall, reviewing the first three years of Jackson's administration near their expiration, said that in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton there had been removed but one officer out of seven, and ”most of them for bad conduct and character,” a statement some of the significance of which doubtless depends upon what was ”bad character,”

but which still fairly limits the epithet ”wholesale” customarily applied to these removals. In the Post-Office Department, he said, the removals had been only one out of sixteen, and in the whole government but one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party purposes; but he was cautious and precise; and his statements, made near the time, show how far behind the sudden ”clean sweep” of 1861 was this earlier essay in ”spoils,” and how much exaggeration there has been on the subject.

Benton says that in the departments at Was.h.i.+ngton a majority of the employees were opposed to Jackson throughout his administration. Of the officers having a judicial function, such as land and claims commissioners, territorial judges, justices in the District of Columbia, none were removed. The readiness to remove was stimulated by the discovery of the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after his removal from the fourth auditor's place, to which Kendall was appointed. Watkins had been Adams's warm personal friend, so the latter states in his diary, and ”an over active partisan against Jackson at the last presidential election.” Unreasonable as was a general inference from one of the instances of dishonesty which occur under the best administrations, and a flagrant instance of which was soon to occur under his own administration, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for many really shameful removals. There had doubtless been among office-holders under Adams a good deal of the ”offensive partisans.h.i.+p”

of our day, many expressions of horror by subordinate officers at the picture of Jackson as president. All this had angered Jackson, whose imperial temper readily cla.s.sed his subordinates as servants of Andrew Jackson, rather than as ministers of the public service. Moreover, his accession, as Benton not unfairly pointed out, was the first great party change since Jefferson had succeeded the elder Adams. Offices had greatly increased in number. In the profound democratic change that had been actively operating for a quarter of a century, the force of old traditions had been broken in many useful as in many useless things.

Great numbers of inferior offices had now become political, not only in New York, but in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other States. Adams's administration, except in the change of policy upon large questions, had been a continuation of Monroe's. He went from the first place in Monroe's cabinet to the presidency. His secretaries of the treasury and the navy and his postmaster-general and attorney-general had held office under Monroe, the latter three in the very same places. But Jackson thrust out of the presidency his rival, who had naturally enough been earnestly sustained by large numbers of his subordinates; and Adams's appointees were doubtless in general followers of himself and of Clay.

Jackson's first message contained a serious defense of the removals. Men long in office, he said, acquired the ”habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests,” and office became considered ”a species of property.” ”The duties of all public officers,” he declared, with an ignorance then very common among Americans, could be ”made so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance.” Further, he pointed out that no one man had ”any more intrinsic right” to office than another; and therefore ”no individual wrong” was done by removal. The officer removed, he concluded, with almost a demagogic touch, had the same means of earning a living as ”the millions who never held office.” In spite of individual distress he wished ”rotation in office” to become ”a leading principle in the Republican creed.” Unfounded as most of this is now clearly seen to be, it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to a very large part of the American people.

In his own department Van Buren practiced little of the proscription which was active elsewhere. Of seventeen foreign representatives, but four were removed in the first year. Doubtless he was fortunate in having an office without the amount of patronage of the Post-Office or the Treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed a personal liking for removals. The distribution of offices was not distasteful to him; but his temper was neither prescriptive nor unfriendly. At times even his partisan loyalty was doubted for his reluctance in this, which was soon deemed an appropriate and even necessary party work.

But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and demoralizing system.

Powerful as he was with Jackson, wise and far-seeing as he was, he must receive for his acquiescence, or even for his silence, a part of the condemnation which the American people, as time goes on, will more and more visit upon one of the great political offenses committed against their political integrity and welfare. But it must in justice be remembered, not only that Van Buren did not begin or actively conduct the distribution of spoils; not only that his acquiescence was in a practice which in his own State he had found well established; but that the practice in which he thus joined was one which it is probable he could not have fully resisted without his own political destruction, and perhaps the temporary prostration of the political causes to which he was devoted. Though these be palliations and not defenses, the biographer ought not to apply to human nature a rule of unprecedented austerity. In Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if any, more timidity or time-serving than in the like yielding by every man holding great office in the United States since Jackson's inauguration; and the worst, the most corrupting, and the most demoralizing official proscription in America took place thirty-two years afterwards, and under a president who, in wise and exalted patriotism, was one of the greatest statesmen, as he has been perhaps the best loved, of Americans, and to whom blame ought to be a.s.signed all the larger by reason of the extraordinary power and prestige he enjoyed, and the moral fervor of the nation behind him, which rendered less necessary this unworthy aid of inferior patronage.

So crowded and interesting were the two years of Van Buren's life in the cabinet with matters apart from the special duties of his office, that it is only at the last, and briefly, that an account can be given of his career as secretary of state. His conduct of foreign affairs was firm, adroit, dignified, and highly successful. It utterly broke the ideal of turbulent and menacing incompetence which the Whigs set up for Jackson's presidency. He had to solve no difficulty of the very first order; for the United States were in profound peace with the whole world. He performed, however, with skill and success two diplomatic services of real importance, services which brought deserved and most valuable strength to Jackson's administration. The American claims for French spoliations upon American s.h.i.+ps during the operation of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees had been under discussion for many years. They were now resolutely pressed. In his message of December, 1829, Jackson, doubtless under Van Buren's advice, paid some compliments to ”France, our ancient ally;” but then said very plainly that these claims, unless satisfied, would continue ”a subject of unpleasant discussion and possible collision between the two governments.” He politely referred to ”the known integrity of the French monarch,” Charles X., as an a.s.surance that the claims would be paid. A few months afterwards this Bourbon was tumbled off the French throne; and in December, 1830, Jackson with increased courtliness, and with a flattering allusion to Lafayette, conspicuous in this milder revolution as he had been in 1789, rejoiced in ”the high voucher we possess for the enlarged views and pure integrity” of Louis Philippe. The new American vigor, doubtless aided by the liberal change in France, brought a treaty on July 4, 1831, under which $5,000,000 was to be paid by France, a result which Jackson, with pardonable boasting, said in his message of December, 1831, was an encouragement ”for perseverance in the demands of justice,” and would admonish other powers, if any, inclined to evade those demands, that they would never be abandoned. The French treaty came so soon after Van Buren's retirement from the state department, and followed so naturally upon the methods of his negotiation, and his instructions to William C.

Rives, our minister at Paris, that much of its credit belonged to him.

In March, 1830, a treaty was made with Denmark requiring the payment of $650,000 for Danish spoliations on American commerce. The effective pressing of these claims was justly one of the most popular performances of the administration. Commercial treaties were concluded with Austria in August, 1829; with Turkey in May, 1830; and with Mexico in April, 1831.

But the chief transaction of Van Buren's foreign administration was the opening of trade in American vessels between the United States and the British West Indian colonies. This commerce was then relatively much more important to the United States than in later times; and it was chiefly by American s.h.i.+pping that American commerce was carried on with foreign countries. The absurd and odious restrictions upon intercourse so highly natural and advantageous to the people of our seaboard and of the British West Indian islands had led to smuggling on a large scale, and were fruitful of international irritations. Retaliatory acts of Congress and Parliament, prohibitive proclamations of our presidents, and British orders in council, had at different times, since the close of the second British war in 1815, oppressed or prevented honest and profitable trade between neighbors who ought to have been friendly traders. Van Buren found the immediate position to be as follows. In July, 1825, an act of Parliament had allowed foreign vessels to trade to the British colonies upon conditions. To secure for American vessels the benefit of this act, it was necessary that within one year American ports should be open to British vessels bringing the same kind of British or colonial produce as could be imported in American vessels; that British and American vessels in the trade should pay the same government charges; that alien duties on British vessels and cargoes, that is, duties not imposed on the like vessels and cargoes owned by Americans, should be suspended; and that the provision of an American law of 1823 limiting the privileges of the colonial trade to British vessels carrying colonial produce to American ports directly from the colonies exporting it, and without stopping at intermediate ports, should be repealed. John Quincy Adams's administration had failed within the year to comply with the conditions imposed by the British law of 1825. In 1826, therefore, Great Britain forbade this trade and intercourse in American vessels. Adams retorted with a counter prohibition in March, 1827. And in this unfortunate position Van Buren found our commercial relations with the West Indian, Bahama, and South American colonies of England. The situation was aggravated by a claim made by the American government in 1823 that American goods should pay in the colonial ports no higher duties than British goods, a protest against British protection to British industry in the British colonies coming with little grace from a country itself maintaining the protective system. Adams had sent Gallatin to England to remedy the difficulty, but without success.

Van Buren adopted a different method of negotiation. A more conciliatory bearing was a.s.sumed towards our traditional adversary. Jackson, in language sounding strangely from his imperious mouth, was made to say in his first message that ”with Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace and war, we may look forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated compet.i.tion; that it is their policy to preserve the most cordial relations.” These, he said, were his own views; and such were ”the prevailing sentiments of our const.i.tuents.” In his instructions to McLane, the minister at London, Van Buren, departing widely from conventional diplomacy, expressly conceded that the American government had been wrong in its claim that England should admit to its colonies American goods on as favorable terms as British goods; that it had been wrong in requiring British s.h.i.+ps bringing colonial produce to come and go directly from and to the producing colonies; and that it had been wrong in refusing the privileges offered by the British law of 1825.

This frank surrender of untenable positions showed the highest skill in negotiation, a business for which Van Buren was perhaps better equipped than any American of his time. In these points we were ”a.s.sailable;” we had ”too long and too tenaciously” resisted British rights. After these admissions, it would, he said, be improper for Great Britain to suffer ”any feelings that find their origin in the past pretensions of this government to have an adverse influence upon the present conduct of Great Britain.” McLane was to tell the Earl of Aberdeen that ”to set up the act of the late administration as the cause of forfeiture of privileges which would otherwise be extended to the people of the United States would, under existing circ.u.mstances, be unjust in itself, and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility.” McLane was also to allude to the parts taken by the members of Jackson's administration in the former treatment of the question under discussion. And here Van Buren used the objectionable sentence which led to his subsequent rejection by the Senate as minister to England, and which through that, such are the curious caprices of politics, led, or at least helped to lead, him to the presidency. He said, ”Their views upon that point have been submitted to the people of the United States; and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts.”

In Van Buren's sagacious desire to emphasize the abandonment of claims preventing the negotiation, he here introduced to a foreign nation the American people as a judge that had condemned the a.s.sertion of such claims by Jackson's predecessor. The statement was at least an exaggeration. There was little reason to suppose that Adams's failure in the negotiation over colonial trade had much, if at all, influenced the election of 1828. Nor was it dignified to officially expose our party contests to foreign eyes. But Van Buren was intent upon success in the negotiation. He could succeed where others had failed, only by a strong a.s.sertion of a change in American policy. His fault was at most one of taste in the manner of an a.s.sertion right enough and wise enough in itself. Nor were these celebrated instructions lacking in firmness or dignity. Great Britain was clearly warned that she must then decide for all time whether the hards.h.i.+ps from which her West Indian planters suffered should continue; and that the United States would not ”in expiation of supposed past encroachments” repeal their laws, leaving themselves ”wholly dependent upon the indulgence of Great Britain,” and not knowing in advance what course she would follow. In his speech in the Senate in February, 1827, Van Buren had clearly stated the general positions which he took in this famous dispatch. It is rather curious, however, that he found occasion then to say upon this very subject what he seemed afterwards to forget, that ”in the collisions which may arise between the United States and a foreign power, it is our duty to present an unbroken front; domestic differences, if they tend to give encouragement to unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or deferred; and the cause of our government must be considered as the cause of our country.” So easy it is to advise other men to be bold and firm.

McLane's long and very able letter to the British foreign secretary closely followed his instructions. Lord Aberdeen was frankly told that the United States had committed ”mistakes” in the past; and that the ”American pretensions” which had prevented a former arrangement would not be revived. The negotiation was entirely successful. In October, 1830, the President, with the authorization of Congress, declared American ports open to British vessels and their cargoes coming from the colonies, and that they should be subject to the same charges as American vessels coming from the same colonies. In November a British order in council gave to American vessels corresponding privileges. On January 3, 1831, Jackson sent to the Senate the papers, including Van Buren's letter of instructions. No criticism was made upon their tenor; and the public, heedless of the phrases used in reaching the end, rejoiced in a most beneficent opening of commerce.

CHAPTER VII

MINISTER TO ENGLAND.--VICE-PRESIDENT.--ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY

In the summer of 1831 Van Buren knew very well the strong hold he had upon his party, the entire and almost affectionate confidence which he enjoyed from Jackson, and the prestige which his political and official success had brought him. But to the country, as he was well aware, he seemed also to be, as he was, a politician, obviously skilled in the art, and an avowed candidate for the presidency. His conciliatory bearing, his abstinence from personal abuse, his freedom from personal animosities, all were widely declared to be the mere incidents of constant duplicity and intrigue. The absence of proof, and his own explicit denial and appeal to those who knew the facts, did not protect him from the belief of his adversaries--a belief which, without examination, has since been widely adopted--that to prostrate a dangerous rival he had promoted the quarrel between Jackson and Calhoun.