Martin Van Buren

by Edward Morse Shepard

Van Buren's administration pressed upon Mexico claims arising out of wrongs to American citizens and property which had long been a grievance. Jackson had thought it our duty, in view of the "embarrassed condition" of that republic, to "act with both wisdom and moderation by giving to Mexico one more opportunity to atone for the past." In December, 1837, Van Buren, tired of Mexican procrastination, referred the matter to Congress, with some menace in his tone. In 1840 a treaty was at last made for an arbitration of the claims, the king of Prussia being the umpire. John Quincy Adams vehemently assailed the American assertion of these claims, as intended to "breed a war with Mexico," and "as machinery for the annexation of Texas;" and his violent denunciations have obtained some credit. But Adams himself had been pretty vigorous in the maintenance of American rights. And the plain and well known facts are, that after several years of negotiation the claims were with perfect moderation submitted for decision to a disinterested tribunal; that they were never made the occasion of war; and that Van Buren opposed annexation.

In June, 1838, James K. Paulding, long the navy agent at New York, was made secretary of the navy in place of Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, who now resigned. Paulding seems to us rather a literary than a political figure. Besides the authorship of part of "Salmagundi," of "The Dutchman's Fireside," and of other and agreeable writings grateful to Americans in the days when the sting of the question, "Who reads an American book?" lay rather in its truth than in its ill-nature, Paulding's pen had aided the Republican party as early as Madison's presidency. Our politics have always, even at home, paid some honor to the muses, without requiring them to descend very far into the partisan arena. A curious illustration was the nomination of Edwin Forrest, the famous tragedian, for Congress by the Democrats of New York in 1838, a nomination which was more sensibly declined than made. An almost equally curious instance was the tender Van Buren made of the secretaryship of the navy to Washington Irving before he offered it to Paulding, who was a connection by marriage of Irving's brother. Van Buren had, it will be remembered, become intimately acquainted with Irving abroad; and others than Van Buren strangely enough had thought of him for political service. The Jacksonians had wanted him to run for Congress; and Tammany Hall had offered him a nomination for mayor of New York. Van Buren wrote to Irving that the latter had "in an eminent degree those peculiar qualities which should distinguish the head of the department," and that this opinion of his had been confirmed by Irving's friends, Paulding and Kemble, the former of whom it was intimated was "particularly informed in regard to the services to be rendered." But one cannot doubt that in writing this the President had in mind the sort of service to the public, and the personal pleasure and rest to himself, to be brought by a delightful and accomplished man of letters, who was no mere recluse, but long practiced in polished and brilliant life abroad, rather than any business or executive or political ability. Irving wisely replied that he should delight in full occupation, and should take peculiar interest in the navy department; but that he shrank from the harsh turmoils of life at Washington, and the bitter personal hostility and the slanders of the press. A short career at Washington would, he said, render him "mentally and physically a perfect wreck." Paulding's appointment to the cabinet portfolio assigned to New York was not agreeable to the politicians; and they afterwards declared that, if Marcy had been chosen instead, the result in 1840 might have been different. The next Democratic president gave the same place to another famous man of letters, George Bancroft.

On June 6, 1837, Louis Napoleon wrote the President from New York that the dangerous illness of his mother recalled him to the old world; and that he stated the reason for his departure lest the President might "have given credence to the calumnious surmises respecting" him. The famous adventurer used one of those many phrases of his which, if they had not for years imposed on the world, no wise man would believe could ever have obtained respect. Van Buren, as the ruler of a free people, ought to be advised, the prince wrote, that, bearing the name he did, it was impossible for him "to depart for an instant from the path pointed out to me by my conscience, my honor, and my duty."

The elections of 1838 showed a recovery from the defeat in 1837, a recovery which would perhaps have been permanent if the financial crisis had been really over. Maine wheeled back into the Van Buren ranks; and Maryland and Ohio now joined her. In New Jersey and Massachusetts the Whig majorities were reduced; and in New York, where Seward and Weed had established a political management quite equal to the Regency, the former was chosen governor by a majority of over 10,000, but still less by 5000 than the Whig majority of 1837. The Democrats now reaped the unpopularity of Van Buren's upright neutrality in the Canadian troubles. Northern and western New York gave heavy Whig majorities. Jefferson county on the very border, which had stood by Van Buren even in 1837, went over to the Whigs.

Van Buren met Congress in December, 1838, with more cheerful words. The harvest had been bountiful, he said, and industry again prospered. The first half century of our Constitution was about to expire, after proving the advantage of a government "entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popular will." He returned firmly to his lecture on economics and the currency, drawing happily, but too soon, a lesson from the short duration of the suspension of specie payments in 1837 and the length of that in 1814. We had been saved, he said, the mortification of seeing our distresses used to fasten again upon us so "dangerous an institution" as a national bank. The treasury would be able in the coming year to pay off the $8,000,000 outstanding of the $10,000,000 of treasury notes authorized at the extra session. Texas had withdrawn its application for admission to the Union. The final removal of the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi in accordance with the Democratic policy was almost accomplished. There were but two blemishes on the fair record the White House sent to the Capitol. Swartwout, Jackson's collector of New York, was found, after his super-session by Jesse Hoyt, to be a defaulter on a vast scale. His defalcations, the President carefully pointed out, had gone on for seven years, as well while public moneys were kept with the United States Bank and while they were kept with state banks, as while they were kept by public officers. It was broadly intimated that this disgrace was not unrelated to the general theory which had so long connected the collection and custody of public moneys with the advancement of private interests; and the President asked for a law making it a felony to apply public moneys to private uses. Swartwout's appointment in 1829, as has been said, was strenuously opposed by Van Buren as unfit to be made. After a year or two Jackson returned to Van Buren his written protest, saying that time had proved his belief in Swartwout's unfitness to be a mistake. Van Buren's own appointment to the place was, however, far from an ideal one. Jesse Hoyt was shown by his published correspondence—a veritable instance, by the way, of "stolen sweets"—to have been a shrewd, able man, who enjoyed the strangely varied confidence of many distinguished, discreet, and honorable men, and of many very different persons, ranging through a singular gamut of religion, morals, statesmanship, economics, politics, patronage, banking, trade, stock gambling, and betting. The respectability of some of Hoyt's friends and his possession of some ability palliate, but do not excuse, his appointment to a great post.

The second Florida war still dragged out its slow and murderous length. The Seminoles under pressure had yielded to Jackson's firm policy of removing all the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi. The policy seemed, or rather it was, often cruel, as is so much of the progress of civilization. But the removal was wise and necessary. Tribal and independent governments by nomadic savages could not be tolerated within regions devoted to the arts and the government of white men. Whatever the theoretical rights of property in land, no civilized race near vast areas of lands fit for the tillage of a crowding population has ever permitted them to remain mere hunting grounds for savages. The Seminoles in 1832, 1833, and 1834 agreed to go west upon terms like those accepted by other Indians. The removal was to take place, one third of the tribe in each of the three years 1833, 1834, and 1835; but the dark-skinned men, as their white brothers would have done, found or invented excuses for not keeping their promise of voluntary expatriation. Late in 1835, when coercion, although it had not yet been employed against the Seminoles, was still feared by them, they rose under their famous leader, the half-breed Powell, better known as Osceola, and massacred the federal agent and Major Dade, and 107 out of 111 soldiers under him. Then followed a series of butcheries and outrages upon white men of which we have heard, and doubtless of crimes enough upon Indians of which we have not heard. Among the everglades, the swamps and lakes of Florida, its scorching sands and impenetrable thickets, a difficult, tedious, inglorious, and costly contest went on. Military evolutions and tactics were of little value; it was a war of ambushes and assassination. Osceola, coming with a flag of truce, was taken by General Jessup, the defense for his capture being his violation of a former parole. He was sent to Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, and there died, after furnishing recitations to generations of schoolboys, and sentiment to many of their elders. Van Buren had been compelled to ask $1,600,000 from Congress at the extra session. Before his administration was ended nearly $14,000,000 had been spent; and not until 1842 did the war end. It was one of the burdens of the administration which served to irritate a people already uneasy for deeper and more general reasons. The prowess of the Indian chief, his eloquence, his pathetic end, the miseries and wrongs of the aborigines, the cost and delay of the war, all reënforced the denunciation of Van Buren by men who made no allowance for embarrassments which could be surmounted by no ability, because they were inevitable to the settlement by a civilized race of lands used by savages. Time, however, has vindicated the justice and mercy, as well as the policy of the removal, and of the establishment of the Indian Territory.

A few days before the close of the session Van Buren asked Congress to consider the dispute with Great Britain over the northeast boundary. Both Maine and New Brunswick threatened, by rival military occupations of the disputed territory, to precipitate war. Van Buren permitted the civil authorities of Maine to protect the forests from destruction; but disapproved any military seizure, and told the state authorities that he should propose arbitration to Great Britain. If, however, New Brunswick sought a military occupation, he should defend the territory as part of the State. Congress at once authorized the President to call out 50,000 volunteers, and put at his disposal a credit of $10,000,000. Van Buren persisted in his great effort peacefully to adjust the claims of our chronically belligerent northeastern patriots,—in Maine as in New York finding his fate in his duty firmly and calmly to restrain a local sentiment inspiring voters of great political importance to him. The "news from Maine" in 1840 told of the angry contempt the hardy lumbermen felt for the President's perfectly statesmanlike treatment of the question.

In the summer of 1839 Van Buren visited his old home at Kinderhook; and on his way there and back enjoyed a burst of enthusiasm at York, Harrisburg, Lebanon, Reading, and Easton in Pennsylvania, at Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, and at New York, Hudson, and Albany in his own State. There were salutes of artillery, pealing of bells, mounted escorts in blue and white scarfs, assemblings of "youth and beauty," the complimentary addresses, the thronging of citizens "to grasp the hand of the man whom they had delighted to honor," and all the rest that makes up the ovations of Americans to their black-coated rulers. He landed in New York at Castle Garden, amid the salutes of the forts on Bedloe's, Governor's, and Staten Islands, and of a "seventy-four," whose yards were covered with white uniformed sailors. After the reception in Castle Garden he mounted a spirited black horse and reviewed six thousand troops assembled on the Battery; and then went in procession along Broadway to Chatham Street, thence to the Bowery, and through Broome Street and Broadway back to the City Hall Park. Not since Lafayette's visit had there been so fine a reception. At Kinderhook he was overwhelmed with the affectionate pride of his old neighbors. He declined public dinners, and by the simple manner of his travel offered disproof of the stories about his "English servants, horses and carriages." The journey was not, however, like the good-natured and unpartisan presidential journeys of our time. The Whigs often churlishly refused to help in what they said was an electioneering tour. Seward publicly refused the invitation of the common council of New York to participate in the President's reception, because the State had honored him with the office of governor for his disapproval of Van Buren's political character and public policy, and because an acceptance of the invitation "would afford evidence of inconsistency and insincerity." Van Buren's own friends gave a party air to much of the welcome. Democratic committees were conspicuous in the ceremonies; and in many of the addresses much that was said of his administration was fairly in a dispute certain to last until the next year's election was over. Van Buren could hardly have objected to the coldness of the Whigs, for his own speeches, though decorous and respectful to the last degree to those who differed from him, were undisguised appeals for popular support of his financial policy. At New York he referred to the threatening dissatisfaction in his own State concerning his firm treatment of the Canadian troubles. But he was persuaded, he said, that good sense and ultimately just feeling would give short duration to these unfavorable impressions.

The President was too experienced and cool in judgment to exaggerate the significance of superficial demonstrations like these, which often seemed conclusive to his exuberant rival Clay. He was encouraged, however, by the elections of 1839. In Ohio the Whigs were "pretty essentially used up," though unfortunately not to remain so a twelve-month. In Massachusetts Morton, the Van Buren candidate for governor, was elected by just one vote more than a majority of the 102,066 votes cast. Georgia, New Jersey, and Mississippi gave administration majorities. In New York the adverse majority which in 1837 had been over 15,000, and in 1838 over 10,000, was now less than 4000, in spite of the disaffection along the border counties. It was not an unsatisfactory result, although for the first time since 1818 the legislature was completely lost. Another year, Van Buren now hoped, would bring a complete recovery from the blow of 1837. But the autumn of 1839 had also brought a blast, to grow more and more chilling and disastrous.

In the early fall the Bank of the United States agreed to loan Pennsylvania $2,000,000; and for the loan obtained the privilege of issuing $5 notes, having before been restricted to notes of $20 and upwards. "Thus has the Van Buren State of Pennsylvania," it was boasted, "enabled the banks to overcome the reckless system of a Van Buren national administration." The price of cotton, which had risen to 16 cents a pound, fell in the summer of 1839, and in 1840 touched as low a point as 5 cents. In the Northwest many banks had not yet resumed since 1837. To avoid execution sales it was said that two hundred plantations had been abandoned and their slaves taken to Texas. The sheriff, instead of the ancient return, nulla bona, was said, in the grim sport of the frontier, to indorse on the fruitless writs "G. T.," meaning "Gone to Texas." A money stringency again appeared in England, in 1839. Its exportation of goods and money to America had again become enormous. The customs duties collected in 1839 were over $23,000,000, and about the same as they had been in 1836, having fallen in 1837 to $11,000,000, and afterwards in 1840 falling to $13,000,000. Speculation revived, the land sales exceeding $7,000,000 in 1839, while they had been $3,700,000 in 1838, and afterwards fell to $3,000,000 in 1840. Under the pressure from England the Bank of the United States sank with a crash. The "Philadelphia Gazette," complacently ignoring the plain reasons for months set before its eyes, said that the disaster had "its chief cause in the revulsion of the opium trade with the Chinese;" that upon the news that the Orientals would no longer admit the drug the Bank of England had "fairly reeled;" and that, the balance of trade being against us, we had to dishonor our paper. Explanations of like frivolity got wide credence. The Philadelphia banks suspended on October 9, 1839, the banks of Baltimore the next day, and in a few days the banks in the North and West followed. The banks of New York and New England, except those of Providence, continued firm. Although the excitement of 1839 did not equal that of 1837, there was a duller and completer despondency. It was at last known that the recuperative power of even our own proud and bounding country had limits. Years were yet necessary to a recovery. But the presidential election would not, alas! wait years. With no faltering, however, Van Buren met Congress in December, 1839. He began his message with a regret that he could not announce a year of "unalloyed prosperity." There ought never, as presidential messages had run, to be any alloy in the prosperity of the American people. But the harvest, he said, had been exuberant, and after all (for the grapes of trade and manufacture were a little sour), the steady devotion of the husbandman was the surest source of national prosperity. A part of the $10,000,000 of treasury notes was still outstanding, and he hoped that they might be paid. We must not resort to the ruinous practice of supplying supposed necessities by new loans; a permanent debt was an evil with no equivalent. The expenditures for 1838, the first year over whose appropriations Van Buren had had control, had been less than those of 1837. In 1839 they had been $6,000,000 less than in 1838; and for 1840 they would be $5,000,000 less than in 1839. The collection and disbursement of public moneys by public officers rather than by banks had, since the bank suspensions in 1837, been carried on with unexpected cheapness and ease; and legislation was alone wanting to insure to the system the highest security and facility. Nothing daunted by the second disaster so lately clouding his political future, Van Buren sounded another blast against the banks. With unusual abundance of harvests, with manufactures richly rewarded, with our granaries and storehouses filled with surplus for export, with no foreign war, with nothing indeed to endanger well-managed banks, this banking disaster had come. The government ought not to be dependent on banks as its depositories, for the banks outside of New York and Philadelphia were dependent upon the banks in those great cities, and the latter banks in turn upon London, "the centre of the credit system." With some truth, but still with a touch of demagogy, venial perhaps in the face of the blatant and silly outcries against him from very intelligent and respectable people, he said that the founding of a new bank in a distant American village placed its business "within the influence of the money power of England." Let us then, he argued, have gold and silver and not bank-notes, at least in our public transactions; let us keep public moneys out of the banks. Again he attacked the national bank scheme. In 1817 and 1818, in 1823, in 1831, and in 1834 the United States Bank had swelled and maddened the tides of banking, but had seldom allayed or safely directed them. Turning with seemingly cool resolution, but with hidden anxiety, to the menacing distresses of the American voters, he did not flinch or look for fair or flattering words. We must not turn for relief, he said, to gigantic banks, or splendid though profitless railroads and canals. Relief was to be sought, not by the increase, but by the diminution of debt. The faith of States already pledged was to be punctiliously kept; but we must be chary of further pledges. The bounties of Providence had come to reduce the consequences of past errors. "But let it be indelibly engraved on our minds," he said, "that relief is not to be found in expedients. Indebtedness cannot be lessened by borrowing more money, or by changing the form of the debt."