Martin Van Buren

by Edward Morse Shepard

Before he left the Senate Van Buren had pronounced against the Bank of the United States; but Jackson did not mention it in his inaugural. In his first annual message, however, Jackson warned Congress that the charter of the bank would expire in 1836, and that deliberation upon its renewal ought to commence at once. "Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank," he said, "are well questioned ...; and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." This was plain enough for a first utterance. A year later he told Congress that nothing had occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which many citizens apprehended from that institution as then organized, though he outlined an institution which should be not a corporation, but a branch of the Treasury Department, and not, as he thought, obnoxious to constitutional objections.

The removal of the Cherokee Indians from within the State of Georgia he defended by considerations which were practically unanswerable. It was dangerously inconsistent with our political system to maintain within the limits of a State Indian tribes, free from the obligations of state laws, having a tribal independence, and bound only by treaty relations with the United States. It was harsh to remove the Indians; but it would have been harsher to them and to the white people of the State to have supported by federal arms an Indian sovereignty within its limits. Jackson, with true Democratic jealousy, refused in his political and executive policy to defer to the merely moral weight of the opinion of the Supreme Court. For in that tribunal political and social exigencies could have but limited force in answering a question which, as the court itself decided, called for a political remedy, which the President and not the court could apply.

The tariff might, Jackson declared, be constitutionally used for protective purposes; but the deliberate policy of his party was now plainly intimated. In his first message he "regretted that the complicated restrictions which now embarrass the intercourse of nations could not by common consent be abolished." In the Maysville veto he said that, "as long as the encouragement of domestic manufactures" was "directed to national ends," ... it should receive from him "a temperate but steady support." But this is to be read with the expression in the same paper that the people had a right to demand "the reduction of every tax to as low a point as the wise observance of the necessity to protect that portion of our manufactures and labor, whose prosperity is essential to our national safety and independence, will allow." This encouragement was, he said in his inaugural, to be given to those products which might be found "essential to our national independence." In his second message he declared "the obligations upon all the trustees of political power to exempt those for whom they act from all unnecessary burdens;" that "the resources of the nation beyond those required for the immediate and necessary purposes of government can nowhere be so well deposited as in the pockets of the people;" that "objects of national importance alone ought to be protected;" and that "of those the productions of our soil, our mines, and our workshops, essential to national defense, occupy the first rank." Other domestic industries, having a national importance, and which might, after temporary protection, compete with foreign labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same attention in a subordinate degree. The economic light here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps as strong as it often is in a political paper. Jackson's conclusion was that the tariff then existing taxed some of the comforts of life too highly; protected interests too local and minute to justify a general exaction; and forced some manufactures for which the country was not ripe.

All this practical and striking growth in political science had taken place during the two years of Jackson's and Van Buren's almost daily intercourse at Washington. It is impossible from materials yet made public to point out with precision the latter's handiwork in each of these papers. James A. Hamilton describes his own long nights at the White House on the messages of 1829 and 1830; and his were not the only nights of the kind spent by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other strong men, and like some whose opportunities of education had been far ampler than his, freely used literary assistance, although, with all his inaccuracies, he himself wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interesting style. But with little doubt the political positions taken in these papers, and which made a definite and lasting creed, were more immediately the work of the secretary of state. The consultations with Van Buren, of which Hamilton tells, are only glimpses of what must continually have gone on. At the time of Jackson's inauguration Hamilton wrote that the latter's confidence was reposed in men in no way equal to him in natural parts, but who had been useful to him in covering "his very lamentable defects of education," and whom, through his reluctance to expose these defects to others, he was compelled to keep about him. He added that Van Buren could never reach the same relation which Lewis held with the general, because the latter would "not yield himself so readily to superior as to inferior minds." This was a mistake. Van Buren's personal loyalty to Jackson, his remarkable tact and delicacy, had promptly aroused in Jackson that extraordinary liking for him which lasted until Jackson died. With this advantage, Van Buren's clear-cut theories of political conduct were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally wise mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they were agreeable, and received there the deference due to the practical sagacity in which Van Buren's obvious political success had proved him to be a master. Van Buren was doubtless greatly aided by the kitchen cabinet. He was careful to keep on good terms with those who had so familiar an access to Jackson. Kendall's singular and useful ability he soon discovered. It was at the latter's instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at the White House, where Van Buren paid him special attention. The influence of the members of the kitchen cabinet with their master has been much exaggerated. Soon after Lewis was appointed, and in spite of his personal intimacy and of his rumored influence with the President, he was, as he wrote to Hamilton, in some anxiety whether he might not be removed; the President had at least, he said, entertained a proposition to remove him, and was therefore, in view of Jackson's great debt to him, no longer entitled to his "friendship or future support."

Very soon after Van Buren's withdrawal from the cabinet, he was accused of primarily and chiefly causing the official proscription of men for political opinions which began in the federal service under Jackson. From that time to the present the accusation has been carelessly repeated from one writer to another, with little original examination of the facts. It is clear that Van Buren neither began nor caused this demoralizing and disastrous abuse. When he reached Washington in 1829, the removals were in full and lamentable progress. In the very first days of the administration, McLean was removed from the office of postmaster-general to a seat in the Supreme Court, because, so Adams after an interview with him wrote in his diary on March 14,1829, "he refused to be made the instrument of the sweeping proscription of postmasters which is to be one of the samples of the promised reform." This was a week or two before Van Buren reached Washington. On the same day Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from Washington: "No damned rascal who made use of his office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in, and General Jackson out of power, is entitled to the least lenity or mercy, save that of hanging.... Whether or not I shall get anything in the general scramble for plunder remains to be proven; but I rather guess I shall.... I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend you to push like a devil, if you expect anything from that quarter.... If I can only keep my own legs, I shall do well; but I'm darned if I can carry any weight with me." This man, against Van Buren's earnest protest and to his great disturbance, had some of the devil's luck in pushing. He was appointed collector of customs at New York,—one of the principal financial officers in the country. It is not altogether unsatisfactory to read of the scandalous defalcation of which he was afterwards guilty, and of the serious injury it dealt his party. The temper which he exposed so ingenuously, filled Washington at the time. Nor did it come only or chiefly from one quarter of the country. Kendall, then fresh from Kentucky, who had been appointed fourth auditor, wrote to his wife, with interestingly mingled sentiments: "I turned out six clerks on Saturday. Several of them have families and are poor. It was the most painful thing I ever did; but I could not well get along without it. Among them is a poor old man with a young wife and several children. I shall help to raise a contribution to get him back to Ohio.... I shall have a private carriage to go out with me and bring my whole brood of little ones. Bless their sweet faces."

Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton from Albany in March, 1829: "If the general makes one removal at this moment he must go on. Would it not be better to get the streets of Washington clear of office-seekers first in the way I proposed?... As to the publication in the newspapers I have more to say. So far as depends on me, my course will be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal character have since arisen which would make the reappointment in any case improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would pause." Among the Mackenzie letters is one from Lorenzo Hoyt, describing an interview with Van Buren while governor, and then complaining that the latter would "not lend the utmost weight of his influence to displace from office such men as John Duer," Adams's appointee as United States attorney at New York. If they had been struggling for political success for the benefit of their opponents, he angrily wrote, he wished to know it. He added, however, that, from the behavior of the President thus far, he thought Jackson would "go the whole hog." This was before Van Buren reached Washington. In answer to an insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging a removal, and telling the secretary of state that there was a "charm attending bold measures extremely fascinating" which had given Jackson all his glory, Van Buren wrote back: "Here I am engaged in the most intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible." Ingham, Jackson's secretary of the treasury, the next day wrote to this typical office-seeker that the rage for office in New York was such that an enemy menacing the city with desolation would not cause more excitement. He added, speaking of his own legitimate work: "These duties cannot be postponed; and I do assure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work 18 hours out of the 24 with all diligence. The appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors of the late administration that they suffered many important public interests to be neglected, while they were cruising about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do."

Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, condemned the system of removals; and his fairness may well be trusted. He said that in Jackson's first year (in which De Tocqueville, whom he was answering, said that Jackson had removed every removable functionary) there were removed but 690 officers through the whole United States for all causes, of whom 491 were postmasters: the entire number of postmasters being at the time nearly 8000. Kendall, reviewing the first three years of Jackson's administration near their expiration, said that in the city of Washington there had been removed but one officer out of seven, and "most of them for bad conduct and character," a statement some of the significance of which doubtless depends upon what was "bad character," but which still fairly limits the epithet "wholesale" customarily applied to these removals. In the Post-Office Department, he said, the removals had been only one out of sixteen, and in the whole government but one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party purposes; but he was cautious and precise; and his statements, made near the time, show how far behind the sudden "clean sweep" of 1861 was this earlier essay in "spoils," and how much exaggeration there has been on the subject. Benton says that in the departments at Washington a majority of the employees were opposed to Jackson throughout his administration. Of the officers having a judicial function, such as land and claims commissioners, territorial judges, justices in the District of Columbia, none were removed. The readiness to remove was stimulated by the discovery of the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after his removal from the fourth auditor's place, to which Kendall was appointed. Watkins had been Adams's warm personal friend, so the latter states in his diary, and "an over active partisan against Jackson at the last presidential election." Unreasonable as was a general inference from one of the instances of dishonesty which occur under the best administrations, and a flagrant instance of which was soon to occur under his own administration, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for many really shameful removals. There had doubtless been among office-holders under Adams a good deal of the "offensive partisanship" of our day, many expressions of horror by subordinate officers at the picture of Jackson as president. All this had angered Jackson, whose imperial temper readily classed his subordinates as servants of Andrew Jackson, rather than as ministers of the public service. Moreover, his accession, as Benton not unfairly pointed out, was the first great party change since Jefferson had succeeded the elder Adams. Offices had greatly increased in number. In the profound democratic change that had been actively operating for a quarter of a century, the force of old traditions had been broken in many useful as in many useless things. Great numbers of inferior offices had now become political, not only in New York, but in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other States. Adams's administration, except in the change of policy upon large questions, had been a continuation of Monroe's. He went from the first place in Monroe's cabinet to the presidency. His secretaries of the treasury and the navy and his postmaster-general and attorney-general had held office under Monroe, the latter three in the very same places. But Jackson thrust out of the presidency his rival, who had naturally enough been earnestly sustained by large numbers of his subordinates; and Adams's appointees were doubtless in general followers of himself and of Clay.

Jackson's first message contained a serious defense of the removals. Men long in office, he said, acquired the "habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests," and office became considered "a species of property." "The duties of all public officers," he declared, with an ignorance then very common among Americans, could be "made so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance." Further, he pointed out that no one man had "any more intrinsic right" to office than another; and therefore "no individual wrong" was done by removal. The officer removed, he concluded, with almost a demagogic touch, had the same means of earning a living as "the millions who never held office." In spite of individual distress he wished "rotation in office" to become "a leading principle in the Republican creed." Unfounded as most of this is now clearly seen to be, it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to a very large part of the American people.

In his own department Van Buren practiced little of the proscription which was active elsewhere. Of seventeen foreign representatives, but four were removed in the first year. Doubtless he was fortunate in having an office without the amount of patronage of the Post-Office or the Treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed a personal liking for removals. The distribution of offices was not distasteful to him; but his temper was neither prescriptive nor unfriendly. At times even his partisan loyalty was doubted for his reluctance in this, which was soon deemed an appropriate and even necessary party work.

But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and demoralizing system. Powerful as he was with Jackson, wise and far-seeing as he was, he must receive for his acquiescence, or even for his silence, a part of the condemnation which the American people, as time goes on, will more and more visit upon one of the great political offenses committed against their political integrity and welfare. But it must in justice be remembered, not only that Van Buren did not begin or actively conduct the distribution of spoils; not only that his acquiescence was in a practice which in his own State he had found well established; but that the practice in which he thus joined was one which it is probable he could not have fully resisted without his own political destruction, and perhaps the temporary prostration of the political causes to which he was devoted. Though these be palliations and not defenses, the biographer ought not to apply to human nature a rule of unprecedented austerity. In Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if any, more timidity or time-serving than in the like yielding by every man holding great office in the United States since Jackson's inauguration; and the worst, the most corrupting, and the most demoralizing official proscription in America took place thirty-two years afterwards, and under a president who, in wise and exalted patriotism, was one of the greatest statesmen, as he has been perhaps the best loved, of Americans, and to whom blame ought to be assigned all the larger by reason of the extraordinary power and prestige he enjoyed, and the moral fervor of the nation behind him, which rendered less necessary this unworthy aid of inferior patronage.