Part 10 (1/2)
There were cries of ”fraud and corruption” because of this enormously increased vote, cries which Benton long afterwards seriously heeded; but there seems to be no good reason to treat them otherwise than as one of the many expressions of Democratic anguish.
Van Buren received the seemingly crus.h.i.+ng defeat with dignity and composure. While the cries of ”Van, Van, he's a used-up man,” were coming with some of the sting of truth through the White House windows, he prepared the final message with which he met Congress in December, 1840. The year, he said, had been one of ”health, plenty, and peace.”
Again he declared the dangers of a national debt, and the equal dangers of too much money in the treasury; for ”practical economy in the management of public affairs,” he said, ”can have no adverse influence to contend with more powerful than a large surplus revenue.” Again he attacked the national bank scheme. During four years of the greatest pecuniary embarra.s.sments ever known in time of peace, with a decreasing public revenue, with a formidable opposition, his administration had been able punctually to meet every obligation without a bank, without a permanent national debt, and without incurring any liability which the ordinary resources of the government would not speedily discharge. If the public service had been thus independently sustained without either of these fruitful sources of discord, had we not a right to expect that this policy would ”receive the final sanction of a people whose unbiased and fairly elicited judgment upon public affairs is never ultimately wrong?” Again with a clear emphasis he declared against any attempt of the government to repair private losses sustained in private business, either by direct appropriations or by legislation designed to secure exclusive privileges to individuals or cla.s.ses. In the very last words of this, his last message, he gave an account of his efforts to suppress the slave trade, and to prevent ”the prost.i.tution of the American flag to this inhuman purpose,” asking Congress, by a prohibition of the American trade which took supplies to the slave factories on the African coast, to break up ”those dens of iniquity.”
The short session of Congress was hardly more than a jubilee of the Whigs, happily ignorant of the complete chagrin and frustration of their hopes which a few months would bring. Some new bank suspensions occurred in Philadelphia, and among banks closely connected with that city. The Bank of the United States, after a resumption for twenty days, succ.u.mbed amid its own loud protestations of solvency, its final disgrace and ruin being, however, deferred a little longer.
Van Buren's cabinet had somewhat changed since his inauguration. In 1838 his old friend and ally, and one of the chief champions of his policy, Benjamin F. Butler, resigned the office of attorney-general, but without any break political or personal, as was seen in his fine and arduous labors in the canva.s.s of 1840 and in the Democratic convention of 1844.
Felix Grundy of Tennessee then held the place until late in 1839, when he resigned. Van Buren offered it, though without much heartiness, to James Buchanan, who preferred, however, to retain his seat in the Senate; and Henry D. Gilpin, another Pennsylvanian, was appointed. Amos Kendall's enormous industry and singular equipment of doctrinaire convictions, narrow prejudices, executive ability, and practical political skill and craft, were lost to the administration through the failure of his health in the midst of the campaign of 1840. In an address to the public he gave a curious proof that for him work was more wearing in public than in private service. He stated that as he was poor he should resort to private employment suitable to his health; and that he proposed, therefore, during the canva.s.s to write for the ”Globe” in defense of the President, in whose integrity, principles, and firmness his confidence, he said, had increased. In 1838, when his health had threatened to be unequal to his work, Van Buren had offered him the mission to Spain, if it should become vacant. John M. Niles, formerly a Democratic senator from Connecticut, took Kendall's place in the post-office.
Van Buren welcomed Harrison to the White House, and before the inauguration entertained him there as a guest, with the easy and dignified courtesy so natural to him, and in marked contrast to the absence of social amenities on either side at the great change twelve years before. Under Van Buren indeed the executive mansion was administered with elevated grace. There was about it, while he was its master, the unostentatious elegance suited to the dwelling of the chief magistrate of the great republic. There were many flings at him for his great economy, and what was called his parsimony; but he was accused as well of undemocratic luxury. The talk seemed never to end over the gold spoons. The contradictory charges point out the truth. Van Buren was an eminently prudent man. He did not indulge in the careless and useless waste which impoverished Jefferson and Jackson. By sensible and honorable economy he is said to have saved one half of the salary of $25,000 a year then paid to the President.[17] Returning to private life, he was spared the humiliation of pecuniary trouble, which had distressed three at least of his predecessors. But with his exquisite sense of propriety, he had not failed to order the White House with fitting decorum and a modest state. His son Abraham Van Buren was his private secretary; and after the latter's marriage, in November, 1838, to Miss Singleton of South Carolina, a niece of Andrew Stevenson, and a relation of Mrs. Madison, he and his wife formed the presidential family. In 1841 they accompanied the ex-President to his retirement at Lindenwald.
Under Andrew Jackson the social air of the White House had suffered from his ill-health and the bitterness of his partisans.h.i.+p; and in this respect the change to his successor was most pleasing. Van Buren used an agreeable tact with even his strongest opponents; and about his levees and receptions there were a charm and a grace by no means usual in the dwellings of American public men. He had, we are told in the Recollections of Sargent, a political adversary of his, ”the high art of blending dignity with ease and gravity.” He introduced the custom of dining with the heads of departments and foreign ministers, although with that exception he observed the etiquette of never being the guest of others at Was.h.i.+ngton. Judge Story mentions the ”splendid dinner”
given by the President to the judges in January, 1839.
John Quincy Adams's diary bears unintended testimony to Van Buren's admirable personal bearing in office. From the time he reached Was.h.i.+ngton as secretary of state, he had treated Adams in his defeat with marked distinction and deference, which Adams, as he records, accepted in his own house, in the White House, and elsewhere. At a social party the President, he said, ”was, as usual, courteous to all, and particularly to me.” Van Buren had therefore every reason to suppose that there was between himself and Adams a not unfriendly personal esteem. But Adams, in his churlish, bitter temper, apparently found in these wise and generous civilities only evidence of a mean spirit. After one visit at the White House during the height of the crisis of 1837, he recorded that he found Van Buren looking, not wretched, as he had been told, but composed and tranquil. Returning home from this observation of the President's ”calmness, his gentleness of manner, his easy and conciliatory temper,” this often unmannerly pen described besides ”his obsequiousness, his sycophancy, his profound dissimulation and duplicity, ... his fawning civility.” In a pa.s.sage which was remarkable in that time of political bitterness so largely personal, Clay said, in his parliamentary duel with Calhoun, after the latter rejoined the Democratic party, that he remembered Calhoun attributing to the President the qualities of ”the most crafty, most skulking, and the meanest of the quadruped tribe.” Saying that he had not shared Calhoun's opinion, he then added of Van Buren:--
”I have always found him in his manner and deportment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly; and he dispenses in the n.o.ble mansion which he now occupies, one worthy the residence of the chief magistrate of a great people, a generous and liberal hospitality.
An acquaintance with him of more than twenty years' duration has inspired me with a respect for the man, although I regret to be compelled to say, I detest the magistrate.”
CHAPTER XI
EX-PRESIDENT.--SLAVERY.--TEXAS ANNEXATION.--DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH.--FREE-SOIL CAMPAIGN.--LAST YEARS
Van Buren loitered at Was.h.i.+ngton 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sured 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 compet.i.tor. 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 pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 a.s.sured 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 pet.i.tions 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 pa.s.s.
The Democratic convention was to meet in May, 1844. The delegates had been very generally instructed for Van Buren; and two months before it a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sured 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sured. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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. d.i.c.kinson, 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 c.o.o.n-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 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.
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.