He had vetoed the recharter of the United States Bank during his first term, and supplemented that hostility to the institution early in his second term by the removal of the Government deposits from the bank. His Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Duane, resolutely opposed the removal of the deposits, but Jackson would not brook opposition, and in order to carry out his new financial policy, he accepted Duane’s resignation and appointed Roger B. Taney, who was in accord with the President, and who was finally rewarded by his promotion to the Chief Justiceship of the United States.
He had devoted followers in Congress; he was absolute master of Congressional action during his second term, and he was heartily supported by the great mass of the people, a very large portion of whom regarded him as the model patriot and the infallible political oracle of the nation. They loved his courage and his pugnacity, and as he always was the winner, they had every inspiration to rejoice over the triumphs of their devotedly worshipped leader.
Strange as it may seem, the first evidence of the weakness of Jackson’s popular strength was exhibited in his own State of Tennessee, where Hugh L. White, a Senator from that State, was nominated to succeed Jackson as President by the Tennessee Legislature. Jackson was much disturbed by it. When the question was before the Legislatures of Alabama and Tennessee, copies of the Washington Globe, the organ of the administration, containing severe assaults upon Senator White, were franked to the members of those Legislatures by the President himself; but notwithstanding all Jackson’s efforts to make Van Buren his successor, Tennessee voted for Judge White by 10,000 majority.
Upon his retirement from the Presidency in 1837, he imitated Washington by a farewell address to the American people, that was received by a large majority as second in reverence only to the farewell address of Washington. His health was feeble when his stormy eight years of Presidential rule were ended, and after the inauguration of Van Buren he retired to “The Hermitage,” his home, near Nashville, in Tennessee, where he died on the 8th of June, 1845.
MARTIN VAN BUREN
THE VAN BUREN-HARRISON CONTEST
1836
The national contest of 1836 that made Martin Van Buren President gave birth to a new political organization known as the Whig party. The opposition to Jackson agreed only in opposing Jackson, but it was not possible to unite on any national policy. The strongest organized element of the opposition was the anti-Masonic party, that was very powerful in the North, but among the opponents of Jackson were many who, like Mr. Clay, were Masons of high degree, and they could not act with a political party that made anti-Masonry one of the cardinal principles of its faith.
The National Republican party practically perished with the defeat of Clay in 1832, and a very large majority of its members were not in sympathy with the anti-Masons. These conditions led to the organization of the Whig party in 1834, and it gradually absorbed all the old National Republicans, Federalists, anti-Masons, and all the other varied forms of opposition to Jackson. Its name and its declaration of principles were declared by a number of leading men in 1834, and it gradually developed in strength until it was the leading factor in the support of Harrison in 1836, and won the election of Harrison by an overwhelming majority of both the popular and electoral votes in 1840. The Whig party maintained itself as one of the ablest political organizations the country has ever had, but it was much more noted for its conservative restraints upon the Democrats than for the successful establishment of its policy in the administration of the Government. It elected two Presidents, Harrison and Taylor, but neither seriously impressed the policy of the Whig party upon the nation. It practically perished in 1852, when it made its last great battle for General Scott for President, and carried but four States.