Part 8 (2/2)

As those payments were to be made in specie, and as specie had left circulation, it was proper that the United States as a creditor should exhibit the same leniency which was wise and necessary on the part of other creditors.

Commercial distress had now materially abated, although many of its wounds were still deep and unhealed. Before the regular session began in December, substantial progress was made towards specie payments. The price of gold in New York, which had ruled at a premium of eight and seven eighths per cent., had fallen to five. On October 20 the banks of New York, after waiting until Congress rose, to meet the wishes of the United States Bank and its a.s.sociates in Philadelphia, now invited representatives from all the banks to meet in New York on November 27 to prepare for specie payment. At this meeting the New York banks proposed resumption on March 1, 1838, but they were defeated; and a resolution to resume on July 1 was defeated by the votes of Pennsylvania and all the New England States except Maine (which was divided), together with New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and Indiana. Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia, with New York, made the minority. An adjournment was taken to the second Wednesday in April, the banks being urged meanwhile to prepare for specie payments.

The fall as well as the summer elections had been most disastrous for the Democrats. New York, which the year before had given Van Buren nearly 30,000 plurality, was now overwhelmingly Whig. The Van Buren party began to be called the Loco-focos, in derision of the fancied extravagance of their financial doctrines. The Loco-foco or Equal Rights party proper was originally a division of the Democrats, strongly anti-monopolist in their opinions, and especially hostile to banks,--not only government banks but all banks,--which enjoyed the privileges then long confirmed by special and exclusive charters. In the fall of 1835 some of the Democratic candidates in New York were especially obnoxious to the anti-monopolists of the party. When the meeting to regularly confirm the nominations made in committee was called at Tammany Hall, the anti-monopolist Democrats sought to capture the meeting by a rush up the main stairs. The regulars, however, showed themselves worthy of their regularity by reaching the room up the back stairs. In a general scrimmage the gas was put out. The anti-monopolists, perhaps used to the devices to prevent meetings which might be hostile, were ready with candles and loco-foco matches. The hall was quickly illuminated; and the anti-monopolists claimed that they had defeated the nominations. The regulars were successful, however, at the election; and they and the Whigs dubbed the anti-monopolists the Loco-foco men. The latter in 1836 organized the Equal Rights party, and declared it an imperative duty of the people ”to recur to first principles.” Their ”declaration of rights” might well have been drawn a few years later by a student of Spencer's ”Social Statics.” The law, they said, ought to do no more than restrain each man from committing aggressions on the equal rights of other men; they declared ”unqualified hostility to bank-notes and paper money as a circulating medium,” and to all special grants by the legislature. A great cry was raised against them as dangerous and incendiary fanatics. The Democratic press, except the ”Evening Post,” edited by William Cullen Bryant, turned violently upon the seceders. There was the same horror of them as the English at almost the very time had of the Chartists, and which in our time is roused by the political movements of Henry George. But with time and familiarity Chartism and Loco-focoism alike lost their horrid aspect.

Several of the cardinal propositions of the former have been adopted in acts of Parliament without a shudder. To the animosity of the Loco-focos against special legislation and special privileges Americans probably owe to-day some part of the beneficent movement in many of the States for const.i.tutional requirements that legislatures shall act by general laws.

The Equal Rights party, though casting but a few votes, managed to give the city of New York to the Whigs, a result which convinced the Democrats that, dangerous as they were, they were less dangerous within than without the party. The hatred which Van Buren after his message of September, 1837, received from the banks commended him to the Loco-focos; and in October, 1837, Tammany Hall witnessed their reconciliation with the regular Democrats upon the moderate declaration for equal rights. The Whigs had, indeed, been glad enough to have Loco-foco aid and even open alliance at the polls. But none the less they thought the Democratic welcome back of the seceders an enormity.

From this time the Democrats were, it was clear, no better than Loco-focos, and ought to bear the name of those dangerous iconoclasts.

Van Buren met Congress in December, 1837, with still undaunted front.

His first general review of the operations of the government was but little longer than his message to the extra session on the single topic of finance. He refused to consider the result of the elections as a popular disapproval of the divorce of bank and state. In only one State, he pointed out, had a federal election been held; and in the other elections, which had been local, he intimated that the fear of a forfeiture of the state-bank charters for their suspension of specie payments had determined the result. He still emphatically opposed the connection between the government and the banks which could offer such strong inducements for political agitation. He blew another blast against the United States Bank, now a Pennsylvania corporation, for continuing to reissue its notes originally made before its federal charter had expired and since returned. He recommended a preemption law for the benefit of actual settlers on public lands, and a cla.s.sification of lands under different rates, to encourage the settlement of the poorer lands near the older settlements. There was a conciliatory but firm reference to the dispute with England over the northeastern boundary. He announced his failure to adjust the dispute with Mexico over the claims which had been pressed by Jackson. The Texan cloud which six years later brought Van Buren's defeat was already threatening.

At this session the independent or sub-treasury bill was again introduced, and again a t.i.tanic battle was waged in the Senate. In this encounter Clay taunted Calhoun for going over to the enemy; and Calhoun, referring to the Adams-Clay coalition, retorted that Clay had on a memorable occasion gone over, and had not left it to time to disclose his motives. Here it was that, in the decorous fury of the times, both senators stamped accusations with scorn in the dust, and hurled back darts fallen harmless at their feet. The bill pa.s.sed the Senate by 27 to 25; but Calhoun finally voted against it because there had been stricken out the provision that government dues should be paid in specie. The bill was again defeated in the House by 125 to 111. The latter vote was late in June, 1838. But while Congress refused a law for it, the independent treasury in fact existed. Under the circular issued upon the bank suspension, the collection, keeping, and payment of federal moneys continued to be done by federal officers. The absurdity of the declamation about one's blood curdling at Van Buren's recommendations, about this being the system in vogue where people were ground ”to the very dust by the awful despotism of their rulers,” was becoming apparent in the easy, natural operation of the system, dictated though it was by necessity rather than law. The Whigs, in the sounding jeremiades of Webster and the perfervid eloquence of Clay, were joined by the Conservatives, former Democrats, with Tallmadge of New York and Rives of Virginia at their head. They had retired into the cave of superior wisdom, of which many men are fond when a popular storm seems rising against their party; they affected oppressive grief at Van Buren's reckless hatred of the popular welfare, and accused him of designing entire destruction of credit in the ordinary transactions of business.

This silly charge was continually made, and gained color from the extreme doctrines of the Equal Rights movement and the fixing of the Loco-foco name upon the Democratic party.

The sub-treasury bill was again taken up at the long session of 1839-40 by the Congress elected in 1838. Again the wisdom of separating bank and state, again the wrong of using public moneys to aid private business and speculation, were stated with perfectly clear but uninspiring logic.

Again came the antiphonal cry, warm and positive, against the cruelty of withdrawing the government from an affectionate care for the people, and from its duty generously to help every one to earn his living. In and out of Congress it was the debate of the time, and rightly; for it involved a profound and critical issue, which since the foundation of the government has been second in importance only to the questions of slavery and national existence and reconstruction. In 1840 the bill pa.s.sed the Senate by 24 to 18 and the House by 124 to 107. This chief monument of Van Buren's administration seemed quickly demolished by the triumphant Whigs in 1841, but was finally set up again in 1846 without the aid of its architect. From that time to our own, in war and in peace, the independence of the federal treasury has been a cardinal feature of American finance. Nor was its theory lost even in the system of national banks and public depositories created for the tremendous necessities of the civil war.[15]

By the spring of 1838 business had revived during the year of enforced industry and economy among the people. In January, 1838, the premium on gold at New York sank to three per cent.; and when the bank convention met on the adjourned day in April, the premium was less than one per cent. The United States Bank resisted resumption with great affectation of public spirit, but for selfish reasons soon to be disclosed. The New York banks, with an apology to their a.s.sociates, resolved to resume by May 10, five days before the date to which the State had legalized the suspension. The convention adopted a resolution for general resumption on January 1, 1839, without precluding earlier resumption by any banks which deemed it proper. In April it was learned that the Bank of England was s.h.i.+pping a million sterling to aid resumption by the banks.

On July 10, Governor Ritner of Pennsylvania by proclamation required the banks of his State to resume by August 1. On the 13th of that month the banks of Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois yielded to the moral coercion of the New York banks, and to the resumption now enforced on the Bank of the United States. By the fall of 1838 resumption was general, although the banks at the Southwest did not follow until midwinter. Confidence was so much restored that ”runs” on the banks did not occur. The crisis seemed at an end; and Van Buren not unreasonably fancied that he saw before the country two years of steady and sound return to prosperity. Two such years would, in November, 1840, bring the reward of his sagacity and endurance. But a far deeper draft upon the vitality of the patient had been made than was supposed; and in its last agony, eighteen months later, Biddle's bank helped to blast Van Buren's political ambition.

CHAPTER X

PRESIDENT.--CANADIAN INSURRECTION.--TEXAS.--SEMINOLE WAR.--DEFEAT FOR REeLECTION

Another unpopular duty fell to Van Buren during his presidency, a duty but for which New York might have been saved to him in 1840. In the Lower and Upper Canadas popular discontent and political tumult resulted late in 1837 in violence, so often the only means by which English dependencies have brought their imperial mistress to a respect for their complaints.[16] The liberality of the Whigs, then lately triumphant in England, was not broad enough to include these distant colonists. The provincial legislature in each of the Canadas consisted of a Lower House or a.s.sembly chosen by popular vote, and an Upper House or council appointed by the governor, who himself was appointed by and represented the crown. Reforms after reforms, proposed by the popular houses, were rejected by the council. In Lower Canada the popular opposition was among the French, who had never been embittered towards the United States. In Upper Canada its strength was among settlers who had come since the war closed in 1815. Lower Canada demanded in vain that the council be made elective. Its a.s.sembly, weary of the effectual opposition of the council to popular measures, began in 1832 to refuse votes of supplies unless their grievances were redressed; and by 1837 government charges had accrued to the amount of 142,100. On April 14, 1837, Lord John Russell, still wearing the laurel of a victor for popular rights, procured from the imperial parliament permission, without the a.s.sent of the colonial parliament, to apply to these charges the money in the hands of the receiver-general of Lower Canada. This extraordinary grant pa.s.sed the House of Commons by 269 to 46. A far less flagitious case of taxation without representation had begun the American Revolution. The money had been raised under laws which provided for its expenditure by vote of a local representative body. It was expended by the vote of a body at Westminster, three thousand miles away, but few of whose members knew or cared anything for the bleak stretch of seventeenth-century France on the lower St. Lawrence, and none of whom had contributed a penny of it. To even Gladstone, lately the under-secretary for the colonies and then a ”rising hope of unbending Tories,” there seemed nothing involved but the embarra.s.sment of faithful servants of the crown. This thoroughly British disregard of sentiment among other people roused a deep opposition which was headed by Papineau, eloquent and a hero among the French. An insurrection broke out in November, 1837, and blood was shed in engagements at St. Denis and St. Charles, not far from Montreal. But the insurgents were quickly defeated, and within three weeks the insurrection in Lower Canada was ended.

In Upper Canada there was considerable Republican sentiment, and the party of popular rights had among its leaders men of a high order of ability. One of them, Marshall S. Bidwell, through the magnanimity or procurement of the governor, escaped from Canada to become one of the most honored and stately figures at the bar of New York. Early in 1836, Sir Francis B. Head, a clever and not ill-natured man, arrived as governor. He himself wrote the unconscious Anglicism that ”the great danger” he ”had to avoid was the slightest attempt to conciliate any party.” It was a.s.sumed with the usual insufferable affectation of omniscience that these hardy Western settlers were merely children who did not know what was best for them. Even the suggestions of concession sent him from England were not respected. In an election for the a.s.sembly he had the issue announced as one of separation from England; and by the use, it was said, of his power and patronage, the colonial Tories carried a majority of the House. Hopeless of any redress, and fired by the rumors of the revolt in Lower Canada, an insurrection took place early in December near Toronto. It was speedily suppressed. One of the leaders, Mackenzie, escaped to Buffalo. Others were captured and punished, some of them capitally.

The ma.s.s of the Canadians were doubtless opposed to the insurrection.

But there was among them a widespread and reasonable discontent, with which the Americans, and especially the people of northern and western New York, warmly sympathized. It was natural and traditional to believe England an oppressor; and there was every reason in this case to believe the Canadians right in their ill-feeling. The refugees who had fled to New York met with an enthusiastic reception, and, in the security of a foreign land, prepared to advance their rebellion. On the long frontier of river, lake, and wilderness, it was difficult, with the meagre force regularly at the disposal of the United States, to prevent depredations.

This difficulty became enhanced by a culpable though not unnatural invasion of American territory by British troops. On December 12, 1837, Mackenzie, who had the day before arrived with a price of $4000 set upon his head, addressed a large audience at Buffalo. Volunteers were called for; and the next day, with twenty-five men, commanded by Van Rensselaer, an American, he seized Navy Island in the Niagara River, but a short distance above the cataract, and belonging to Canada. He there established a provisional government, with a flag and a great seal; and that the new State might be complete, paper money was issued. By January, 1838, there were several hundred men on the island, largely Americans, with arms and provisions chiefly obtained from the American side.

On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of Canadian militia crossed the Niagara to seize the Caroline, a steamer in the service of the rebels. It happened, however, that the steamer, instead of being at Navy Island, was at Schlosser, on the American sh.o.r.e. The Canadians seized the vessel, killing several men in the affray, and after setting her on fire, loosened her from the sh.o.r.e, to go blazing down the river and over the falls. This invasion of American territory caused indignant excitement through the United States. Van Buren had promptly sought to prevent hostility from our territory. On January 5, 1838, he had issued a proclamation reciting the seizure of Navy Island by a force, partly Americans, under the command of an American, with arms and supplies procured in the United States, and declared that the neutrality laws would be rigidly enforced and the offenders punished. Nor would they receive aid or countenance from the United States, into whatever difficulties they might be thrown by their violation of friendly territory. On the same day Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to the frontier, and by special message asked from Congress power to prevent such offenses in advance, as well as afterwards to punish them,--a request to which Congress, in spite of the excitement over the invasion at Schlosser, soon acceded. The militia of New York were, on this invasion, called out by Governor Marcy, and placed under General Scott's command. But there was little danger. On January 13 the insurgents abandoned Navy Island. The war, for the time, was over, although excitement and disorder continued on the border and the lakes as far as Detroit; and in the fall of 1838 other incursions were made from American territory. But they were fruitless and short-lived. Nearly nine hundred arrests were made by the Canadian authorities. Many death sentences were imposed and several executed, and many more offenders were sentenced to transportation.

England, in her then usual fas.h.i.+on, was duly waked to duty by actual bloodshed. Sir Francis B. Head left Canada, and the Melbourne ministry sent over the Earl of Durham, one of the finest characters in English public life, to be governor-general over the five colonies; to redress their wrongs; to conciliate, and perhaps yield to demands for self-government: all which might far better have been done five years before. Lord Durham used a wise mercy towards the rebels. He made rapid progress in the reforms, and, best and first of all, he won the confidence and affection of the people. But England used to distrust an English statesman who practiced this kind of rule towards a dependency.

A malevolent attack of Lord Brougham was successful, and Lord Durham returned to ministerial disgrace, though to a wiser popular applause, soon to die in what ought to have been but an early year in his generous and splendid career. Although punis.h.i.+ng her benefactor, England was shrewd enough to accept the benefit. The concessions which Lord Durham had begun were continued, and Canada became and has remained loyal.

Before leaving Canada, Lord Durham was invited by a very complimentary letter of Van Buren to visit Was.h.i.+ngton, but the invitation was courteously declined.

Mackenzie was arrested at Buffalo and indicted. After his indictment he addressed many public meetings through the United States in behalf of his cause, one at Was.h.i.+ngton itself. In 1839, however, he was tried and convicted. Van Buren, justly refusing to pardon him until he had served in prison two thirds of his sentence, thus made for himself a persistent and vindictive enemy.

Upon renewed raids late in 1838, the President, by a proclamation, called upon misguided or deluded Americans to abandon projects dangerous to their own country and fatal to those whom they professed a desire to relieve; and, after various appeals to good sense and patriotism, warned them that, if taken in Canada, they would be left to the policy and justice of the government whose dominions they had, ”without the shadow of justification or excuse, nefariously invaded.” This had no uncertain sound. Van Buren was promptly declared to be a British tool. The plain facts were ignored that the great majority of the Canadians, however much displeased with their rulers, were hostile to Republican inst.i.tutions and to a separation from England, and that the majority in Canada had the same right to be governed in their own fas.h.i.+on as the majority here. There was seen, however, in this firm performance of international obligations, only additional proof of Van Buren's coldness towards popular rights, and of his sycophancy to power.

The system of allowing to actual settlers, at the minimum price, a preemption of public lands already occupied by them, was adopted at the long session of 1837-38. Webster joined the Democrats in favoring the bill, against the hot opposition of Clay, who declared it ”a grant of the property of the whole people to a small part of the people.” The dominant party was now wisely committed to the policy of using the public domain for settlers, and not as mere property to be turned into money. But a year or two before, the latter system had in practice wasted the national estate and corrupted the public with a debauchery of speculation.

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