In Van Buren's senatorial speeches there is nothing to justify the charge of "non-committalism" so much made against him. When he spoke at all he spoke explicitly; and he plainly, though without acerbity, exhibited his likes and dislikes. Jackson was struck with this when he sat in the Senate with him. "I had heard a great deal about Mr. Van Buren," he said, "especially about his non-committalism. I made up my mind that I would take an early opportunity to hear him and judge for myself. One day an important subject was under debate in the Senate. I noticed that Mr. Van Buren was taking notes while one of the senators was speaking. I judged from this that he intended to reply, and I determined to be in my seat when he spoke. His turn came; and he rose and made a clear, straightforward argument, which, to my mind, disposed of the whole subject. I turned to my colleague, Major Eaton, who sat next to me. 'Major,' said I, 'is there anything non-committal about that?' 'No, sir,' said the major." Van Buren scrupulously observed the amenities of debate. He was uniformly courteous towards adversaries; and the calm self-control saved him, as some greater orators were not saved, from a descent to the aspersion of motive so common and so futile in political debate. He could not, indeed, help now and then an allusion to the venality and monarchical tendency of the Federalists and their successors; but this was an old formula which strong haters had years before made very popular in the Republican phrase-book, and which, as to the venality, meant nobody in particular.
CHAPTER V
DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828.—GOVERNOR
When in May, 1828, Van Buren left Washington, the country universally recognized him as the chief organizer of the new party and its congressional leader. As such he turned all his skill and industry to win a victory for Jackson and Calhoun. There was never in the history of the United States a more legitimate presidential canvass than that of 1828. The rival candidates distinctly stood for conflicting principles of federal administration. On the one side, under Van Buren's shrewd management, with the theoretical coöperation of Calhoun,—the natural bent of whose mind was now aided and not thwarted by the exigencies of his personal career,—was the party inclined to strict limitation of federal powers, jealous for local powers, hostile to internal improvements by the federal government, inclined to a lower rather than a higher tariff. On the other side was the party strongly national in temper, with splendid conceptions of a powerful and multifariously useful central administration, impatient of the poverties and meannesses of many of the States. The latter party was led by a president with ampler training in public life than any American of his time, who sincerely and intelligently believed the principles of his party; and his party held those principles firmly, explicitly, and with practical unanimity. Jefferson, in almost his last letter, written in December, 1825, to William B. Giles, a venerable leader of the Democracy, the "Charles James Fox of Congress," Benton's "statesman of head and tongue," recalled indeed Adams's superiority over all ordinary considerations when the safety of his country had been questioned; but Jefferson declared himself in "the deepest affliction" at the usurpations by which the federal branch, through the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of Congress, was stripping its "colleagues, the state authorities, of the powers reserved to them." The voice from Monticello, feeble with its eighty-three years, and secretly uttered though it was, sounded the summons to a new Democratic battle.
Van Buren and his coadjutors, however, led a party as yet of inclination to principles rather than of principles. It was out of power. There was neither warmth nor striking exaltation in its programme. Its philosophical and political wisdom needed the aid of one of those simple cries for justice which are so potent in political warfare, and a leader to interest and fire the popular temper. Both were at hand. The late defeat of the popular will by the Adams-Clay coalition was the cry; the hero of the military victory most grateful to Americans was the leader. To this cry and this leader Van Buren skillfully harnessed an intelligible, and at the least a reasonable, political creed. There were thus united nearly all the elements of political strength. Not indeed all, for the record of the leader was weak upon several articles of faith. Jackson had voted in the Senate for internal improvement bills, and among them bills of the most obnoxious character, those authorizing subscriptions to the stocks of private corporations. He had voted against reductions of the tariff. But the votes, it was hoped, exhibited only his inexpertness in applying general principles to actual legislation, or a good-natured willingness to please his constituents by single votes comparatively unimportant. In truth these mistakes were really inconsistencies of the politician, and no more. There had been a long inclination on Jackson's part to the Jeffersonian policy. Over thirty years before, he had in Congress been a strict constructionist and an anti-federalist. In 1801 he had required a candidate desiring his support to be "an admirer of state authority, agreeable to the true literal meaning" of the Constitution, and "banishing the dangerous doctrine of implication." If he were now to have undivided responsibility, this old Democratic trend of his would, it was hoped, be strong enough under Democratic advice. As a candidate, the inconsistencies of a soldier politician were far outweighed by his picturesque and powerful personality. It is commonly thought of Jackson that he was a headstrong, passionate, illiterate man, used and pulled about by a few intriguers. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was himself a politician of a high order. His letters are full of shrewd, vigorous, and even managing suggestions of partisan manœuvres. Their political utterances show a highly active and generally sensible though not disciplined mind. He had had long and important experience of civil affairs, in the lower house of Congress, in the federal Senate when he was only thirty years old, in the constitutional convention of his State, in its Supreme Court, later again in the Senate; he had been for eight years before the country as a candidate for its first office, and for many years in public business of large importance. There were two of the most distinguished Americans, men of the ripest abilities and amplest experience, and far removed from rashness, who from 1824 or before had steadily preferred Jackson for the presidency. These were Edward Livingston of Louisiana and De Witt Clinton of New York. Daniel Webster described his manners as "more presidential than those of any of the candidates." Jackson was, he wrote, "grave, mild, and reserved." Unless in Jackson's case there were effects without adequate causes, it is very certain that, with faults of most serious character, he still had the ability, the dignity, and the wisdom of a ruler of a high rank. He was, as very few men are, born to rule.
After Crawford's defeat, Van Buren is credited with a skillful management of the alliance of his forces with those of Jackson. There is not yet public, if it exist, any original evidence as to the details of this work. Van Buren's enemies were fond of describing it as full of cunning and trickery, the work of "the little magician;" and later and fairer writers have adopted from these enemies this characterization. But all this seems entirely without proof. Nor is the story probable. The union of the Crawford and Jackson men was perfectly natural. Crawford was a physical wreck, out of public life. Numerous as were the exceptions, his followers and Jackson's included the great majority of the strict constructionists; and but a minority of either of the two bodies held the opposite views. Neither of the two men had, at the last election, been defeated by the other. That Van Buren used at Washington his unrivaled skill in assuaging animosities and composing differences there can be no doubt. After the end of the session in March, 1827, together with Churchill C. Cambreleng, a member of Congress from New York and a close political friend of his, he made upon this mission a tour through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. They visited Crawford, and were authorized to declare that he should support Jackson, but did not wish to aid Calhoun. At Raleigh Van Buren told the citizens that the spirit of encroachment had assumed a new and far more seductive aspect, and could only be resisted by the exercise of uncommon virtues. Passing through Washington on his way north, he paid a polite visit to Adams, talking with him placidly about Rufus King, Monroe, and the Petersburg horse-races. The President, regarding him as "the great electioneering manager for General Jackson," promptly noted in his diary, when the interview was over, that Van Buren was now acting the part Burr had performed in 1799 and 1800; and he found "much resemblance of character, manners, and even person, between the two men."
As early as 1826 the Van Buren Republicans of New York, and an important part of the Clintonians with the great governor at their head, had determined to support Jackson. Van Buren is said to have concealed his attitude until after his reëlection to the Senate in 1827. But this is a complete error, except as to his public choice of a candidate. His opposition to the Adams-Clay administration, it has already appeared, had been outspoken from 1825. The Jackson candidacy was not indeed definitely announced in New York until 1827. The cry for "Old Hickory" then went up with a sudden unanimity which seemed to the Adams men a bit of devilish magic, but which was the patient prearrangement of a skillful politician appreciating his responsibility, and waiting, as the greatest of living politicians[6] recently told England a statesman ought to wait, until the time was really ripe, until the popular inclination was sufficiently formed to justify action by men in responsible public station.
The opposition to the reëlection of John Quincy Adams in 1828 was sincerely considered by him, and has been often described by others, as singularly causeless, unworthy, and even monstrous. But in truth it led to one of the most necessary, one of the truest, political revolutions which our country has known. Both Adams and Clay were positive and able men. They were resolute that the rather tepid democracy of Monroe should be succeeded by a highly national, a federally active administration. Prior to the election of 1824 Clay had been as nearly in opposition as the era of good feeling permitted. Early in Monroe's administration he had attacked the President's declaration that Congress had no right to construct roads and canals. His criticism, Mr. Schurz tells us in his brilliant and impartial account of the time, "had a strong flavor of bitterness in it;" it was in part made up of "oratorical flings," by which Clay unnecessarily sought to attack and humiliate Monroe. Adams's diary states Clay's opposition to have been "violent, systematic," his course to have been "angry, acrimonious." Late in 1819 Monroe's friends had even consulted over the wisdom of defeating Clay's reëlection to the speakership; and still later Clay had, as Mr. Schurz says, fiercely castigated the administration for truckling to foreigners. When Clay came into power, it would have been unreasonable for him to suppose that there must not arise vigorous parliamentary opposition on the part of those who consider themselves the true Republican successors of Monroe, seeking to stop the diversion into strange ways which Clay and Adams had now begun. Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, Adams's secretary of the treasury, and now the Adams candidate for vice-president, had, in one of his annual reports, declared it to be the duty of government "to augment the number and variety of occupations for its inhabitants; to hold out to every degree of labor, and to every modification of skill, its appropriate object and inducement; to organize the whole labor of a country; to entice into the widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber; to call forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving to effort activity and to emulation ardor; to create employment for the greater amount of numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and situations of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of genius, may come into requisition." Nor did this glowing picture of a useful and beneficent government go far beyond the utterances of Rush's senior associate on the presidential ticket. It is certain that it was highly agreeable to Clay.
Surely there could be no clearer political issue presented, on the one side by Van Buren's speeches in the Senate, and on the other by authoritative and solemn declarations of the three chief persons of the administration. Whatever the better side of the issue may have been, no issue was ever a more legitimate subject of a political campaign. It is true that the accusations were unfounded, which were directed against Adams for treachery to the Republican principles he professed after, on adhering to Jefferson, he had resigned his seat in the Senate. He had joined Jefferson on questions of foreign policy and domestic defense, and had, until his election to the presidency, been chiefly concerned with diplomacy. But though the accusations were false, it is true enough that Adams himself had made the issue of the campaign. Nor was it creditable to him that he saw in the opposition something merely personal to himself. If he were wrong upon the issue, as Van Buren and a majority of the people thought, his long public service, his utter integrity, his exalted sense of the obligations of office, ought not to have saved him from the battle or from defeat. How true and deep was this political contest of 1828 one sees in the fact that from it, almost as much as from the triumph of Jefferson, flow the traditions of one of the great American parties, traditions which survived the corruptions of slavery, and are still powerful in party administration.[7] If John Quincy Adams had been elected, and if, as might naturally have been the case, there had followed, at this commencement of railway building, a firm establishment of the doctrine that the national government could properly build roads within the States, it is more than mere speculation to say that the later history of the United States would, whether for the better or the worse, have been very different from what it has been. The dangers to which American institutions would be exposed, if the federal government had become a great power levying taxes upon the whole country to be used in constructing railways, or, what was worse, purchasing stock in railway corporations, and doing this, as it would inevitably have done, according to the amount of pressure here or there,—such dangers, it is easy to understand, seem, whether rightly or wrongly, appalling to a large class of political thinkers. To realize this sense of danger dissipates the aspect of doctrinaire extravagance in the speeches of Adams's opponents against latitudinarian construction.