Martin Van Buren

by Edward Morse Shepard

It was also in 1820 that Van Buren promoted the reëlection of Rufus King, the distinguished Federalist, to the United States Senate. His motives in doing this were long bitterly assailed; but as the choice was intrinsically admirable, Van Buren was probably glad to gratify a patriotic impulse which was not very inconsistent with party advantage. In 1819 the Republican caucus, the last at which the Bucktails and Clintonians both attended, was broken up amid mutual recriminations. John C. Spencer, the son of Ambrose Spencer, and afterwards a distinguished Whig, was the Clintonian candidate, and had the greater number of Republican votes. In the legislature there was no choice, Rufus King having fewer votes than either of the Republicans. When the legislature of 1820 met, there appeared a pamphlet skillfully written in a tone of exalted patriotism. This decided the election for King. Van Buren was its author, and was said to have been aided by William L. Marcy. Both had suffered at the hands of Clinton. However much they may have been so influenced in secret, they gave in public perfectly sound and weighty reasons for returning this old and distinguished statesman to the place he had honored for many years. In 1813 King had received the votes of a few Republicans, without whom he would have been defeated by a Republican competitor. The Clintonians and their adversaries had since disputed which of them had then been guilty of party disloyalty. But it can hardly be doubted that King's high character and great ability, with the revolutionary glamour about him, made his choice seem patriotic and popular, and therefore politically prudent.

Van Buren's pamphlet of 1820 was addressed to the Republican members of the legislature by a "fellow-member" who told them that he knew and was personally known to most of them, and that he had, "from his infancy, taken a deep interest in the honor and prosperity of the party." This anonymous "fellow-member" pronounced the support of King by Republicans to "be an act honorable to themselves, advantageous to the country, and just to him." He declared that the only reluctance Republicans had to a public avowal of their sentiments arose from a "commendable apprehension that their determination to support him under existing circumstances might subject them to the suspicion of having become a party to a political bargain, to one of those sinister commutations of principle for power, which they think common with their adversaries, and against which they have remonstrated with becoming spirit." He showed that there were degrees even among Federalists; that some in the war had been influenced by "most envenomed malignity against the administration of their own government;" that a second and "very numerous and respectable portion" had been those "who, inured to opposition and heated by collision, were poorly qualified to judge dispassionately of the measures of government," who thought the war impolitic at the time, but who were ignorantly but honestly mistaken; but that a third class of them had risen "superior to the prejudices and passions of those with whom they once acted." In the last class had been Rufus King; at home and in the Senate he had supported the administration; he had helped procure loans to the State for war purposes. The address skillfully recalled his Revolutionary services, his membership in the convention which framed the Federal Constitution, his appointment by Washington as minister to the English court, and his continuance there under Jefferson. He was declared to be opposed to Clinton. The address concluded by reciting that there had been in New York "exceptionable and unprincipled political bargains and coalitions," which with darker offenses ought to be proved, to vindicate the great body of citizens "from the charge of participating in the profligacy of the few, and to give rest to that perturbed spirit which now haunts the scenes of former moral and political debaucheries;" but added that the nature of a vote for King precluded such suspicions.

The last statement was just. King's return was free from other suspicion than that he probably preferred the Van Buren to the Clinton Republicans. Van Buren, seeing that the Federalist party was at an end, was glad both to do a public service and to ally with his party, in the divisions of the future, some part of the element so finely represented by Rufus King. In private Van Buren urged the support of King even more emphatically. "We are committed," he wrote, "to his support. It is both wise and honest, and we must have no fluttering in our course. Mr. King's views towards us are honorable and correct.... Let us not, then, have any halting. I will put my head on its propriety." Van Buren's partisanship always had a mellow character. He practiced the golden rule of successful politics, to foresee future benefits rather than remember past injuries. Indeed, it is just to say more. In sending King to the Senate he doubtless experienced the lofty pleasure which a politician of public spirit feels in his occasional ability to use his power to reach a beneficent end, which without the power he could not have reached,—a stroke which to a petty politician would seem dangerous, but which the greater man accomplishes without injury to his party standing. A year or two after King's election, when Van Buren joined him at Washington, there were established the most agreeable relations between them. The refinement and natural decorum of the younger man easily fell in with the polished and courtly manner of the old Federalist. Benton, who had then just entered the Senate, said it was delightful to behold the deferential regard which Van Buren paid to his venerable colleague, a regard always returned by King with marked kindness and respect.

In this year the era of good feeling was at its height. Monroe was reëlected president by an almost unanimous vote, with Tompkins again as vice-president. The good feeling, however, was among the people, and not among the politicians. The Republican party was about to divide by reason of the very completeness of its supremacy. The Federalist party was extinguished and its members scattered. The greater number of them in New York went with the Clintonian Republicans, with whom they afterwards formed the chief body of the Whig party. A smaller number of them, among whom were James A. Hamilton and John C. Hamilton, the sons of the great founder of the Federalist party, William A. Duer, John A. King (the son of the reëlected senator), and many others of wealth and high social position, ranged themselves for a time in the Bucktail ranks under Van Buren's leadership. In the slang of the day, they were the "high-minded Federalists," because they had declared that Clinton's supporters practiced a personal subserviency "disgusting to high-minded and honorable men." With this addition, the Bucktails became the Democratic party in New York. In April, 1820, the gubernatorial election was between the Clintonians supporting Clinton, and the Bucktails supporting Tompkins, the Vice-President. Clinton's recent and really magnificent public service made him successful at the polls, but his party was beaten at other points.

Rufus King's reëlection to the Senate was believed to have some relation to the Missouri question, then agitating the nation. In one of his letters urging his Republican associates to support King, Van Buren declared that the Missouri question concealed no plot so far as King was concerned, but that he, Van Buren, and his friends, would "give it a true direction." King's strong opposition to the admission of Missouri as a slave State was, however, perfectly open. If he returned to the Senate, it was certain he would steadily vote against any extension of slavery. Van Buren knew all this, and doubtless meant that King was bargaining away none of his convictions for the senatorship. But what the "true direction" was which was to be given the Missouri question, is not clear. About the time of King's reëlection Van Buren joined in calling a public meeting at Albany to protest against extending slavery beyond the Mississippi. He was absent at the time of the meeting, and refused the use of his name upon the committee to send the anti-slavery resolutions to Washington. Nor is it clear whether his absence and refusal were significant. He certainly did not condemn the resolutions; and in January, 1820, he voted in the state Senate for an instruction to the senators and representatives in Congress "to oppose the admission, as a State in the Union, of any territory not comprised within the original boundary of the United States, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission." This resolution undoubtedly expressed the clear convictions of the Republicans in New York, whether on Van Buren's or Clinton's side, as well as of the remaining Federalists.

Van Buren's direct interest in national politics had already begun. In 1816 he was present in Washington (then a pretty serious journey from Albany) when the Republican congressional caucus was held to nominate a president. Governor Tompkins, after a brief canvass, retired; and Crawford, then secretary of war, became the candidate against Monroe, and was supported by most of the Republicans from New York. Van Buren's preference was not certainly known, though it is supposed he preferred Monroe. In 1820 he was chosen a presidential elector in place of an absentee from the electoral college, and participated in the all but unanimous vote for Monroe. He voted with the other New York electors for Tompkins for the vice-presidency. In April, 1820, he wrote to Henry Meigs, a Bucktail congressman then at Washington, that the rascality of some of the deputy postmasters in the State was intolerable, and cried aloud for relief; that it was impossible to penetrate the interior of the State with friendly papers; and that two or three prompt removals were necessary. The postmaster-general was to be asked "to do an act of justice and render us a partial service" by the removal of the postmasters at Bath, Little Falls, and Oxford, and to appoint successors whom Van Buren named. In January, 1821, Governor Clinton sent this letter to the legislature, with a message and other papers so numerous as to be carried in a green bag, which gave the name to the message, in support of a charge that the national administration had interfered in the state election. But the "green-bag message" did Van Buren little harm, for Clinton's own proscriptive rigor had been great, and it was only two years before that Van Buren himself had been removed from the attorney-generalship. In 1821 the political division of the New York Republicans was carried to national politics. When a speaker was to be chosen in place of Clay, Taylor of New York, the Republican candidate, was opposed by the Bucktail congressmen, because he had supported Clinton.

In February, 1821, Van Buren gained the then dignified promotion to the federal Senate. He was elected by the Bucktails against Nathan Sanford, the sitting senator, who was supported by the Clintonians and Federalists. Van Buren was now thirty-eight years old, and in the early prime of his powers. He had run the gauntlet of two popular elections; he had been easily first among the Republicans of the state Senate; he had there shown extraordinary political skill and an intelligent and public spirit; he had ably administered the chief law office of the State which was not judicial. Though not yet keenly interested in any federal question,—for his activity and thought had been sufficiently engaged in affairs of his own State,—he turned to the new field with an easy confidence, amply justified by his mastery of the problems with which he had so far grappled. He reached Washington the undoubted leader of his party in the State. The prestige of Governor Tompkins, although just reëlected vice-president, had suffered from his recent defeat for the governorship, and from his pecuniary and other difficulties; and besides, he obviously had not Van Buren's unrivaled equipment for political leadership.

Before Van Buren attended his first session in the federal capital he performed for the public most honorable service in the state constitutional convention which sat in the autumn of 1821. This body illustrated the earnest and wholesome temper in which the most powerful public men of the State, after many exhibitions of partisan, personal, and even petty animosities, could treat so serious and abiding a matter as its fundamental law. The Democrats sent Vice-President Tompkins, both the United States senators, King and Van Buren, the late senator, Sanford, and Samuel Nelson, then beginning a long and honorable career. The Clintonians and Federalists sent Chancellor Kent and Ambrose Spencer, the chief justice. Van Buren was chosen from Otsego, and not from his own county, probably because the latter was politically unfavorable to him.

This convention was one of the steps in the democratic march. It was called to broaden the suffrage, to break up the central source of patronage at Albany, and to enlarge local self-administration. The government of New York had so far been a freeholders' government, with those great virtues, and those greater and more enduring vices, which were characteristic of a government controlled exclusively by the owners of land. The painful apprehension aroused by the democratic resolution to reduce, if not altogether to destroy, the exclusive privileges of land-owners, was expressed in the convention by Chancellor Kent. He would not "bow before the idol of universal suffrage;" this extreme democratic principle, he said, had "been regarded with terror by the wise men of every age;" wherever tried, it had brought "corruption, injustice, violence, and tyranny;" if adopted, posterity would "deplore in sackcloth and ashes the delusion of the day." He wished no laws to pass without the free consent of the owners of the soil. He did not foresee English parliaments elected in 1885 and 1886 by a suffrage not very far from universal, or a royal jubilee celebrated by democratic masses, or the prudent conservatism in matters of property of the enfranchised French democracy,—he foresaw none of these when he declared that England and France could not sustain the weight of universal suffrage; that "the radicals of England, with the force of that mighty engine, would at once sweep away the property, the laws, and the liberty of that island like a deluge." Van Buren distinguished himself in the debate. Upon this exciting and paramount topic he did not share the temper which possessed most of his party. His speech was clear, explicit, philosophical, and really statesmanlike. It so impressed even his adversaries; and Hammond, one of them, declared that he ought for it to be ranked "among the most shining orators and able statesmen of the age."

In reading this, or indeed any of the utterances of Van Buren where the occasion required distinctness, it is difficult to find the ground of the charge of "noncommittalism" so incessantly made against him. He doubtless refrained from taking sides on questions not yet ripe for decision, however clear, and whatever may have been his speculative opinions. But this is the duty of every statesman; it has been the practice of every politician who has promoted reform. Van Buren now pointed out how completely the events of the forty years past had discredited the grave speculative fears of Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison as to the result of some provisions of the Federal Constitution. With Burke he believed experience to be the only unerring touchstone. He conclusively showed that property had been as safe in those American communities which had universal suffrage as in the few which retained a property qualification; that venality in voting, apprehended from the change, already existed in the grossest forms at the parliamentary elections of England. Going to the truth which is at the dynamic source of democratic institutions, he told the chancellor that when among the masses of America the principles of order and good government should yield to principles of anarchy and violence and permit attacks on private property or an agrarian law, all constitutional provisions would be idle and unavailing, because they would have lost all their force and influence. With a true instinct, however, Van Buren wished the steps to be taken gradually. He was not yet ready, he said, to admit to the suffrage the shifting population of cities, held to the government by no other ties than the mere right to vote. He was not ready for a really universal suffrage. The voter ought, if he did not participate in the government by paying taxes or performing militia duty, to be a man who was a householder with some of the elements of stability, with something at stake in the community. Although they had reached "the verge of universal suffrage," he could not with his Democratic friends take the "one step beyond;" he would not cheapen the invaluable right by conferring it with indiscriminating hand "on every one, black or white, who would be kind enough to condescend to accept it." Though a Democrat he was opposed, he said, to a "precipitate and unexpected prostration of all qualifications;" he looked with dread upon increasing the voters in New York city from thirteen or fourteen thousand to twenty-five thousand, believing (curious prediction for a father of the Democratic party!) that the increase "would render their elections rather a curse than a blessing," and "would drive from the polls all sober-minded people."