CHAPTER VIII
CRISIS OF 1837
On March 4, 1837, Jackson and Van Buren rode together from the White House to the Capitol in a "beautiful phaëton" made from the timber of the old frigate Constitution, the gift to the general from the Democrats of New York city. He was the third and last president who has, after serving through his term, left office amid the same enthusiasm which attended him when he entered it, and to whom the surrender of place has not been full of those pangs which attend sudden loss of power, and of which the certain anticipation ought to moderate ambition in a country so rarely permitting a long and continuous public career. Washington, amid an almost unanimous love and reverence, left a station of which he was unaffectedly weary; and he was greater out of office than in it. Jefferson and Jackson remained really powerful characters. Neither at Monticello nor at the Hermitage, after their masters had returned, was there any lack of the incense of sincere popular flattery or of the appeals for the exercise of admitted and enormous influence, in which lies much of the unspeakable fascination of a great public station.
Leaving the White House under a still and brilliant sky, the retiring and incoming rulers had such a popular and military attendance as without much order or splendor has usually gone up Capitol Hill with our presidents. Van Buren's inaugural speech was heard, it is said, by nearly twenty thousand persons; for he read it with remarkable distinctness and in a quiet air, from the historic eastern portico. He returned from the inauguration to his private residence; and with a fine deference insisted upon Jackson remaining in the White House until his departure, a few days later, for Tennessee. Van Buren in his own carriage took Jackson to the terminus of the new railway upon which the journey home was to begin. He bade the old man a most affectionate farewell, and promised to visit him at the Hermitage in the summer.
The new cabinet, with a single exception, was the same as Jackson's: John Forsyth of Georgia, secretary of state; Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, secretary of the treasury; Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, secretary of the navy; Kendall, postmaster-general; and Butler, attorney-general. Joel R. Poinsett, a strong union man among the nullifiers of South Carolina, became secretary of war. Cass had left this place in 1836 to be minister to France, and Butler had since temporarily filled it, as well as his own post of attorney-general. The cabinet had indeed been largely Van Buren's, two years and more before he was president.
Van Buren's inaugural address began again with the favorite touch of humility, but it now had an agreeable dignity. He was, he said, the first president born after the Revolution; he belonged to a later age than his illustrious predecessors. Nor ought he to expect his countrymen to weigh his actions with the same kind and partial hand which they had used towards worthies of Revolutionary times. But he piously looked for the sustaining support of Providence, and the kindness of a people who had never yet deserted a public servant honestly laboring in their cause. There was the usual congratulation upon American institutions and history. We were, he said,—and the boast though not so delightful to the taste of a later time was perfectly true,—without a parallel throughout the world "in all the attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people." Though we restrained government to the "sole legitimate end of political institutions," we reached the Benthamite "greatest happiness of the greatest number," and presented "an aggregate of human prosperity surely not elsewhere to be found." We must, by observing the limitations of government, perpetuate a condition of things so singularly happy. Popular government, whose failure had fifty years ago been boldly predicted, had now been found "wanting in no element of endurance or strength." His policy should be "a strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the constitution ... viewing it as limited to national objects, regarding it as leaving to the people and the States all power not explicitly parted with." Upon one question he spoke precisely. For the first time slavery loomed up in the inaugural of an American president. It seemed, however, at once to disappear from politics in the practically unanimous condemnation of the abolition agitation, an agitation which, though carried on for the noblest purposes, seemed—for such is the march of human rights—insane and iniquitous to most patriotic and intelligent citizens. Van Buren quoted the explicit declaration made by him before the election against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the slave States, and against "the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists." Not a word was said of the extension of slavery in the Territories. That question still slept under the potion of the Missouri Compromise, to wake with the acquisition of Texas. In Van Buren's declaration there was nothing in the slightest degree inconsistent even with the Republican platforms of 1856 and 1860.
The inaugural concluded with a fine tribute to Jackson. "I know," Van Buren said, "that I cannot expect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and success. But united as I have been in his counsels, a daily witness of his exclusive and unsurpassed devotion to his country's welfare, agreeing with him in sentiments which his countrymen have warmly supported, and permitted to partake largely of his confidence, I may hope that somewhat of the same cheering approbation will be found to attend upon my path. For him I but express, with my own, the wishes of all, that he may yet long live to enjoy the brilliant evening of his well-spent life."
The lucid optimism of the speech was in perfect temper with this one of those shining and mellow days, which even March now and then brings to Washington. But there was latent in the atmosphere a storm, carrying with it a furious and complete devastation. In the month before the inauguration, Benton, upon whom Van Buren was pressing a seat in the cabinet, told the President-elect that they were on the eve of an explosion of the paper-money system. But the latter offended Benton by saying: "Your friends think you a little exalted in the head on the subject." And doubtless the prophecies of the Bank opponents had been somewhat discredited by the delay of the disaster which was to justify their denunciations. The profoundly thrilling and hidden delight which comes with the first taste of supreme power, even to the experienced and battered man of affairs, had been enjoyed by Van Buren only a few days, when the air grew heavy about him, and then perturbed, and then violently agitated, until in two months broke fiercely and beyond all restraint the most terrific of commercial convulsions in the United States. Since Washington began the experiment of our federal government amid the sullen doubts of extreme Federalists and extreme Democrats, no president, save only Abraham Lincoln, has had to face at the outset of his presidency so appalling a political situation.
The causes of the panic of 1837 lay far deeper than in the complex processes of banking or in the faults of federal administration of the finances. But, as a man suddenly ill prefers to find for his ailment some recent and obvious cause, and is not convinced by even a long and dangerous sickness that its origin lay in old and continued habits of life, so the greater part of the American people and of their leaders believed this extraordinary crisis to be the result of financial blunders of Jackson's administration. They believed that Van Buren could with a few strokes of his pen repair, if he pleased, those blunders, and restore commercial confidence and prosperity. The panic of 1837 became, and has very largely remained, the subject of political and partisan differences, which obscure its real phenomena and causes. The far-seeing and patriotic intrepidity with which Van Buren met its almost overwhelming difficulties is really the crown of his political career. Fairly to appreciate the service he then rendered his country, the causes of this famous crisis must be attentively considered.
In 1819 the United States suffered from commercial and financial derangement, which may be assumed to have been the effect of the second war with Great Britain. The enormous waste of a great war carried on by a highly organized nation is apt not to become obvious in general business distress until some time after the war has ended. A buoyant extravagance in living and in commercial and manufacturing ventures will continue after a peace has brought its extraordinary promises, upon the faith of which, and in joyful ignorance, the evil and inevitable day is postponed. All this was seen later and on a vaster scale from 1865 to 1873. In 1821 the country had quite recovered from its depression; and from this time on to near the end of Jackson's administration the United States saw a material prosperity, doubtless greater than any before known. The exuberant outburst of John Quincy Adams's message of 1827,—that the productions of our soil, the exchanges of our commerce, the vivifying labors of human industry, had combined "to mingle in our cup a portion of enjoyment as large and liberal as the indulgence of Heaven has perhaps ever granted to the imperfect state of man upon earth,"—was in the usual tone of the public utterances of our presidents from 1821 to 1837. Our harvests were always great. We were a chosen people delighting in reminders from our rulers of our prosperity, and not restless under their pious urgency of perennial gratitude to Providence. In 1821 the national debt had slightly increased, reaching upwards of $90,000,000; but from that time its steady and rapid payment went on until it was all discharged in 1834. Our cities grew. Our population stretched eagerly out into the rich Mississippi valley. From a population of ten millions in 1821, we reached sixteen millions in 1837. New York from about 1,400,000 became 2,200,000; and Pennsylvania from about 1,000,000 became 1,600,000. But the amazing growth was at the West—Illinois from 60,000 to 400,000, Indiana from 170,000 to 600,000, Ohio from 600,000 to 1,400,000, Tennessee from 450,000 to 800,000. Missouri had increased her 70,000 five-fold; Mississippi her 80,000 four-fold; Michigan her 10,000 twenty-fold. Iowa and Wisconsin were entirely unsettled in 1821; in 1837 the fertile lands of the former maintained nearly forty thousand and of the latter nearly thirty thousand hardy citizens. New towns and cities rose with magical rapidity. With much that was unlovely there was also exhibited an amazing energy and capacity for increase in wealth. The mountain barriers once passed, not only by adventurous pioneers but by the pressing throngs of settlers, there were few obstacles to the rapid creation of comfort and wealth. Nor in the Mississippi valley and the lands of the Northwest were the settlers met by the harsh soil, the hostilities and reluctance of nature in whose conquest upon the Atlantic seaboard the American people had gained some of their strongest and most enduring characteristics. We hardly realize indeed how much better it was for after times that our first settlements were difficult. In the easy opening and tillage of the rich and sometimes rank lands at the West there was an inferior, a less arduous discipline. American temper there rushed often to speculation, rather than to toil or venture. It did not seem necessary to create wealth by labor; the treasures lay ready for those first reaching the doors of the treasure house. To make easy the routes to El Dorado of prairies and river bottoms was the quickest way to wealth.