Martin Van Buren

by Edward Morse Shepard

Van Buren was now definitely a candidate for the succession. His Northern birth and residence, his able leadership in Congress of the opposition to the Adams administration, his almost supreme political power in the first State of the Union, his clear and systematic exposition of an intelligible and timely political creed, the support his friends gave to Jackson's reëlection,—all these advantages were now reënforced by the tendency to disunion clear in the utterances from South Carolina, by Calhoun's efforts to exclude Van Buren and Eaton from the cabinet, by the hostility to Mrs. Eaton of the ladies in the households of Calhoun and of his friends in the cabinet, and now by Jackson's discovery that, at a critical moment of his career ten years before, Calhoun had sought his destruction. Here was a singular union of really sound reasons why Van Buren should be preferred by his party and by the country for the succession over Calhoun, with the strongest reasons why Jackson, and those close to him, should be in most eager personal sympathy with the preference. In December, 1829, Jackson had explicitly pronounced in favor of Van Buren. This was in the letter to Judge Overton of Tennessee, which Lewis is doubtless correct in saying he asked Jackson to write lest the latter should die before his successor was chosen. Jackson himself drafted the letter, which Lewis copied with some verbal alteration; and the letter sincerely expressed his own strong opinions. After alluding to the harmony between Van Buren and his associates in the War and Post-Office Departments, he said: "I have found him everything that I could desire him to be, and believe him not only deserving my confidence, but the confidence of the nation. Instead of his being selfish and intriguing, as has been represented by some of his opponents, I have ever found him frank, open, candid, and manly. As a counselor, he is able and prudent, republican in his principles, and one of the most pleasant men to do business with I ever knew. He, my dear friend, is well qualified to fill the highest office in the gift of the people, who in him will find a true friend and safe depositary of their rights and liberty. I wish I could say as much for Mr. Calhoun and some of his friends." He criticised Calhoun for his silence on the bank question, for his encouragement of the resolution in the South Carolina legislature relative to the tariff, and for his objection to the apportionment of the surplus revenues after the national debt should be paid. Jackson had not yet definitely learned from Forsyth's letter about Calhoun's attitude in Monroe's cabinet; but his well-aroused suspicion doubtless influenced his expression. His strong personal liking for the secretary of state had been evident from the beginning of the administration. In a letter to Jesse Hoyt of April 13, 1829, the latter wrote that he had found the President affectionate, confidential, and kind to the last degree, and that he believed there was no degree of good feeling or confidence which the president did not entertain for him. In July he wrote to Hamilton: "The general grows upon me every day. I can fairly say that I have become quite enamored with him."

The break between Calhoun and Jackson was kept from the public until early in 1831. In the preceding winter, Duff Green, the editor of the "Telegraph," until then the administration newspaper, but still entirely committed to Calhoun, sought to have the publication of the Calhoun-Jackson correspondence accompanied by a general outburst from Republican newspapers against Jackson. The storm, Benton tells us, was to seem so universal, and the indignation against Van Buren so great, that even Jackson's popularity would not save the prime minister. Jackson's friends, Barry and Kendall, learning of this, called to Washington an unknown Kentuckian to be editor of a new and loyal administration paper. Francis P. Blair was a singularly astute man, whose name, and the name of whose family, afterwards became famous in American politics. He belonged to the race of advisers of great men, found by experience to be almost as important in a democracy as in a monarchy. In February, 1831, Calhoun openly declared war on Jackson by publishing the Seminole correspondence. Green having now been safely reëlected printer to Congress, the "Telegraph," according to the plan, strongly supported Calhoun. The "Globe," Blair's paper, attacked Calhoun and upheld the President. The importance in that day ascribed by politicians to the control of a single newspaper seems curious. In 1823, Van Buren, while a federal senator, was interested in the "Albany Argus," almost steadily from that time until the present the ably managed organ of the Albany Regency;[9] and he then confidentially wrote to Hoyt: "Without a paper thus edited at Albany we may hang our harps on the willows. With it, the party can survive a thousand such convulsions as those which now agitate and probably alarm most of those around you." This seems an astonishingly high estimate of the power of a paper which, though relatively conspicuous in the State, could have then had but a small circulation. It was, however, the judgment of a most sagacious politician. In 1822 he complained to Hoyt that his expenses of this description were too heavy. In 1833 James Gordon Bennett, then a young journalist of Philadelphia, wrote Hoyt a plain intimation that money was necessary to enable him to continue his journalistic warfare in Van Buren's behalf. Anguish, disappointment, despair, he said, brooded over him, while Van Buren chose to sit still and sacrifice those who had supported him in every weather. Van Buren replied that he could not directly or indirectly afford pecuniary aid to Bennett's press, and more particularly as he was then situated; that if Bennett could not continue friendly to him on public grounds and with perfect independence, he could only regret it, but he desired no other support. He added, however, not to burn his ships behind him, that he had supposed there would be no difficulty in obtaining money in New York, if their "friends in Philadelphia could not all together make out to sustain one press." Thus was invited a powerful animosity, vindictively shown even when Van Buren was within three years of his death.

Soon after his arrival Blair entered the famous Kitchen Cabinet, a singularly talented body, fond enough indeed of "wire-pulling," but with clear and steady political convictions. William B. Lewis had long been a close personal friend of Jackson and manager of his political interests, and had but recently earned his gratitude by rushing successfully to the defense of Mrs. Jackson's reputation. Kendall and Hill were adroit, industrious, skillful men; the former afterwards postmaster-general, and the latter to become a senator from New Hampshire. Blair entered this company full of zeal against nullification and the United States Bank. Jackson himself was so strong-willed a man, so shrewd in management, so skillful in reading the public temper, that the story of the complete domination of this junto over him is quite absurd. The really great abilities of these men and their entire devotion to his interests gained a profound and justifiable influence with him, which occasional petty or unworthy uses made of it did not destroy. No one can doubt that Jackson was confirmed by them in the judgment to which Van Buren urged him upon great political issues. The secretary of state refused to give the new paper of Blair any of the printing of his department, lest its origin should be attributed to him, and because he wished to be able to say truly that he had nothing to do with it. Kendall, who lived through the civil war, strongly loyal to the Union and to Jackson's memory, to die a wealthy philanthropist, declared in his autobiography, and doubtless correctly, that the "Globe" was not established by Van Buren or his friends, but by friends of Jackson who desired his reëlection for another four years. Nevertheless Van Buren was held responsible for the paper; and its establishment was soon followed by the dissolution of the cabinet.

This explosion, it is now clear, was of vast advantage to the cause of the Union. It took place in April, 1831, and in part at least was Van Buren's work. On the 9th of that month he wrote to Edward Livingston, then a senator from Louisiana spending the summer at his seat on the Hudson River, asking him to start for Washington the day after he received the letter, and to avoid speculation "by giving out that" he was "going to Philadelphia." Livingston wrote back from Washington to his wife that Van Buren had taken the high and popular ground that, as a candidate for the presidency, he ought not to remain in the cabinet when its public measures would be attributed to his intrigue, and thus made to injure the President; and that Van Buren's place was pressed upon him "with all the warmth of friendship and every appeal to my love of country."

Van Buren, with courageous skill, put his resignation to the public distinctly on the ground of his own political aspiration. On April 11, 1831, he wrote to the President a letter for publication, saying that from the moment he had entered the cabinet it had been his "anxious wish and zealous endeavor to prevent a premature agitation of the question" of the succession, "and at all events to discountenance, and if possible repress, the disposition, at an early day manifested," to connect his name "with that disturbing topic." Of "the sincerity and constancy of his disposition" he appealed to the President to judge. But he had not succeeded, and circumstances beyond his control had given the subject a turn which could not then "be remedied except by a self-disfranchisement, which, even if dictated by" his "individual wishes, could hardly be reconcilable with propriety or self-respect." In the situation existing at the time, "diversities of ulterior preference among the friends of the administration" were unavoidable, and he added: "Even if the respective advocates of those thus placed in rivalship be patriotic enough to resist the temptation of creating obstacles to the advancement of him to whose elevation they are opposed, by embarrassing the branch of public service committed to his charge, they are nevertheless, by their position, exposed to the suspicion of entertaining and encouraging such views,—a suspicion which can seldom fail, in the end, to aggravate into present alienation and hostility the prospective differences which first gave rise to it." The public service, he said, required him to remove such "obstructions" from "the successful prosecution of public affairs;" and he intimated, with the affectation of self-depreciation which was disagreeably fashionable among great men of the day, that the example he set would, "notwithstanding the humility of its origin," be found worthy of respect and observance. When four years later he accepted the presidential nomination he repeated the sentiment of this letter, but more explicitly, saying that his "name was first associated with the question of General Jackson's successor more through the ill-will of opponents than the partiality of friends." This seemed very true. For every movement which had tended to commit the administration or its chief against Calhoun or his doctrines, he had been held responsible as a device to advance himself. His adversaries had proclaimed him not so much a public officer as a self-seeking candidate. It was a rare and true stroke of political genius to admit his aspiration to the presidency; to deny his present candidacy and his self-seeking; but, lest the clamor of his enemies should, if he longer held his office, throw doubt upon his sincerity, to withdraw from that station, and to prevent the continued pretense that he was using official opportunities, however legitimately, to increase his public reputation or his political power. Thus would the candidacy be thrust on him by his enemies. In his letter he announced that Jackson had consented to stand for reëlection; and that, "without a total disregard of the lights of experience," he could not shut his eyes to the unfavorable influence which his continuance in the cabinet might have upon Jackson's own canvass in 1832.

In accepting the resignation Jackson declared the reasons which the letter had presented too strong to be disregarded, thus practically assenting to Van Buren's candidacy to succeed him. Jackson looked with sorrow, he said, upon the state of things Van Buren had described. But it was "but an instance of one of the evils to which free governments must ever be liable," an evil whose remedy lay "in the intelligence and public spirit of" their "common constituents," who would correct it; and in that belief he found "abundant consolation." He added that, with the best opportunities for observing and judging, he had seen in Van Buren no other desire than "to move quietly on in the path of" his duties, and "to promote the harmonious conduct of public affairs." "If on this point," he apostrophized the departing premier, "you have had to encounter detraction, it is but another proof of the utter insufficiency of innocence and worth to shield from such assaults."

Never was a presidential candidate more adroitly or less dishonorably presented to his party and to the country. For the adroitness lay in the frank avowal of a willingness or desire to be president and a resolution to be a candidate,—for which, so far as their conduct went, his adversaries were really responsible,—and in seizing an undoubted opportunity to serve the public. Quite apart from the sound reason that the secretary of state should not, if possible, be exposed in dealing with public questions to aspersions upon his motives, as Van Buren was quite right in saying that he would be, it was also clear that the cabinet was inharmonious; and that its lack of harmony, whatever the facts or wherever the fault, seriously interfered with the public business. The administration and the country, it was obvious, were now approaching the question of nullification, and upon that question it was but patriotic to desire that its members should firmly share the union principles of their chief. Within a few weeks after the dissolution of the cabinet, Jackson seized the opportunity afforded him by an invitation from the city of Charleston to visit it on the 4th of July, to sound in the ears of nullification a ringing blast for the Union. If he could go, he said, he trusted to find in South Carolina "all the men of talent, exalted patriotism, and private worth," however divided they might have been before, "united before the altar of their country on the day set apart for the solemn celebration of its independence,—independence which cannot exist without union, and with it is eternal." The disunion sentiments ascribed to distinguished citizens of the State were, he hoped, if indeed they were accurately reported, "the effect of momentary excitement, not deliberate design." For all the work then performed in defense of the Union, Jackson and his advisers of the time must share with Webster and Clay the gratitude of our own and all later generations. The burst of loyalty in April, 1861, had no less of its genesis in the intrepid front and the political success of the national administration from 1831 to 1833, than in the pathetic and glorious appeals and aspirations of the great orators.

Jackson now called to the work Edward Livingston, privileged to perform in it that service of his which deserves a splendid immortality. He became secretary of state on May 24, 1831. Eaton, the secretary of war, voluntarily resigned to become governor of Florida; and Barry, the postmaster-general, who was friendly to the reorganization, was soon appointed minister to Spain, in which post Eaton later succeeded him. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, the Calhoun members, were required to resign. The new cabinet, apart from the state department, was on the whole far abler than the old; indeed, it was one of the ablest of American cabinets. Below Livingston at the council table sat McLane of Delaware, recalled from the British mission to take the treasury, Governor Cass of Michigan, and Senator Woodbury of New Hampshire, secretaries of war and navy. Amos Kendall brought to the post-office his extraordinary astuteness and diligence in administration; and Taney, later the chief justice, was attorney-general. The executive talents of this body of men, loyal as they were to the plans of Jackson and Van Buren, promised, and they afterwards brought, success in the struggle for the principles now adopted by the party, as well as for the control of the government. Van Buren stood as truly for a policy of state as ever stood any candidate before the American people. One finds it agreeable now to escape for a moment from the Washington atmosphere of personal controversy and ambition. It is not to be forgotten, however, that a like atmosphere has surrounded even those political struggles in America, only three or four in number, which have been greater and deeper than that in which Jackson and Van Buren were the chief figures. From this temper of personal controversy and ambition the greatest political benefactors of history have not been free, so inevitable is the mingling with large affairs of the varied personal motives, conscious and unconscious, of those who transact them.

When Van Buren left the first place in Jackson's cabinet, the latter, too, at last stood for the definite policy which he had but imperfectly adopted when he was elected, and which, as a practical and immediate political plan, it is reasonably safe to assert, was most largely the creation of the sagacious mind of his chief associate. Before Van Buren left Albany he had written to Hamilton on February 21, 1829, with reference to Jackson's inaugural: "I hope the general will not find it necessary to avow any opinion upon constitutional questions at war with the doctrines of the Jefferson school. Whatever his views may be, there can be no necessity of doing so in an inaugural address." This shows the doubt, which had been caused by some of Jackson's utterances and votes, of his intelligent and systematic adherence to the political creed preached by Van Buren. Jackson's inaugural was colorless and safe enough. Upon strict construction he said that he should "keep steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of the executive power;" that he would be "animated by a proper respect for those sovereign members of our Union, taking care not to confound the powers they have reserved to themselves with those they have granted to the confederacy." The bank he did not mention. And upon the living and really great question, to which Van Buren had given so much study, Jackson said, himself probably having a grim sense of humor at the absurd emptiness of the sentence: "Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the federal government, are of high importance."

Very different was the situation when two years later Van Buren left the cabinet. In several state papers of great dignity and ability and yet popular and interesting in style, Jackson had formulated a political creed closely consistent with that advocated by Van Buren in the Senate. Upon internal improvements, Jackson, on May 27, 1830, sent to the House his famous Maysville Road veto. That road was exclusively within the State of Ohio, and not connected with any existing system of improvements. Jackson very well said that if it could be considered national, no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the general and state governments need be attempted. He pointed out the tendency of such appropriations, little by little, to distort the meaning of the Constitution; and found in former legislation "an admonitory proof of the force of implication, and that necessity of guarding the Constitution with sleepless vigilance against the authority of precedents which have not the sanction of its most plainly defined powers." In his annual message of December, 1830, he referred to the system of federal subscriptions to private corporate enterprises, saying: "The power which the general government would acquire within the several States by becoming the principal stockholder in corporations, controlling every canal and each sixty or hundred miles of every important road, and giving a proportionate vote to all their elections, is almost inconceivable, and in my view dangerous to the liberties of the people." With these utterances ended the very critical struggle to give the federal government a power which even in those days would have been great, and which, as has already been said, had it continued with the growth of railways, would have enormously and radically changed our system of government.