Through the session of 1839–40 the financial policy of Mr. Van Buren continued to be the same. Still the plan of the “Independent Treasury,” as it was called, continued to occupy the attention of the Senate, and still Mr. Buchanan was among the ablest and steadiest of its supporters. On the 12th of January, 1840, and again at the same session, on the 3d of March, he took a leading part in the discussion of these subjects. These seven years of political warfare on the relations of the General Government to the currency, commencing in 1833 and extending into the year 1840, were a period of unexampled commercial distress; and when the two parties arrayed their forces and named their candidates for the next election of a President, the Democrats, although in possession of official power, were in a position in which the prevailing public and private embarrassments could be charged by their adversaries as the direct consequence of their measures. A great political revolution was at hand. That victorious party which claimed to have been founded by Jefferson, which nearly thirty years before its present precarious situation had carried Madison through a war with England, which had by its forbearance made for Monroe “the era of good feeling,” which had beaten the administration of the second Adams into the dust, which had twice elected Jackson and would have elected him a third time but for a sacred tradition of the Republic, which had enabled Jackson to name his successor, which filled the important offices and wielded the whole patronage of the Government, was now to be swept out of power by a popular tempest, such as the country had never known in a time of peace. It was broken in New York, it was broken in Pennsylvania, it was broken in many other States which for twelve years had been among its strongholds.

The summer and autumn of 1840 saw a popular excitement, in which there was much that history might condemn, but which the sober wisdom of history can both account for as natural, and regard as not unwholesome. There had come to be a feeling that the public men who had so long been entrusted with the Government of the country, and been sustained with so large a share of the popular confidence, who had been the peculiar friends of the people, whose party designation implied a democracy of a purer type, and a wider regard for the welfare of the masses, had grown indifferent to the general suffering.

At first, the course of General Jackson towards the Bank of the United States, his vast popularity and the influence which it gave him, enabled him and his followers to maintain their power. Hardly had there ever been a popular confidence greater than that which was reposed in Jackson, through the whole of his conflict with a moneyed institution, which a great majority of the people of the United States regarded, with him, as a dangerous instrument. But when year after year passed away and nothing was done for the relief of the prevailing embarrassment, when thousands had become bankrupt, when labor was unemployed or was remunerated in a depreciated and discredited currency, when the mercantile, the manufacturing, the agricultural classes were involved in a common distress, elements of political excitement, scarcely ever before combined, were united in a vague longing for a great political change. Then were to be seen the highest statesmen discussing before huge masses of the people the most profound questions of public finance and constitutional construction, and stump orators of all degrees, sounding the depths of popular agitation. The songs, the mottoes, the cries, the emblems of the party which had adopted the name of Whigs, a name which, both in English history and in our own, had represented popular interests against the prerogatives of government, were at once puerile and effective. They convey a scarcely intelligible meaning to the present generation, but to those who listened to and looked upon them, they expressed feelings and passions which stirred the popular heart.[[61]] For once, the Whigs had laid hold of a string, coarse indeed and rude, but which vibrated to every touch throughout the land with singular force. The divorce of the Government from all connection with the currency, the disclaimer of all responsibility about the circulating medium which must be used by the people, the exclusive regard for the monetary concerns of the Government as distinguished from the monetary interests of the community, were arrayed by the Whigs as the favorite and pernicious doctrines of the party in power. In all this there was some injustice, but when does not popular suffering produce injustice?

The result of this upheaving of society was the election of General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, as President, and of John Tyler, of Virginia, as Vice President, by a majority of 114 electoral votes. Never was a political defeat more overwhelming than the defeat of Mr. Van Buren. He obtained but 60 out of the 234 electoral votes. Of the larger States, he held only Virginia.[[62]]

Mr. Buchanan’s personal position was unaffected by this political change. He had been re-elected to the Senate in January, 1837, by a very large vote, and for a full term, which would not terminate until the 3d of March, 1843.[[63]] When the political “campaign” of 1840 came on, he did his part, and did it valiantly, for the success of his party and the re-election of Mr. Van Buren. The detail of his exertions would not be interesting now. It is enough to say that in the arrangements of the public meetings held by his political associates in various States, he was much relied upon as an antagonist to the great Whig leaders, and was often in one sense pitted against Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay, although it was not the habit of the time for public men on opposite sides to encounter each other on the same platform. As a popular orator, there was no one on the Democratic side who was listened to with more respect than Mr. Buchanan. But popular eloquence was not his forte. On the platform, as in the Senate, he was grave, earnest, perspicuous and impressive: but he did not kindle the passions or arouse the enthusiasm of audiences: nor indeed was there much enthusiasm to be evoked in the defence of a cause against which almost all the elements of ardent popular feeling were at the command of its adversaries.

Mr. Buchanan might have escaped from the Senate into the Cabinet of Mr. Van Buren, if he had wished to do so. It was Mr. Van Buren’s desire, in 1839, that Mr. Buchanan should become Attorney-General in his administration, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Grundy. The correspondence between them discloses that Mr. Buchanan preferred to remain in the Senate.

[MR. VAN BUREN TO MR. BUCHANAN.]

Washington, Dec. 27th, 1839.

Dear Sir:—

The office of Attorney-General of the United States has become vacant by the resignation of Mr. Grundy. Although I have no reason to suppose that it would be desirable to you to change your present position in the public service, I have nevertheless felt it to be my duty to offer the seat in my cabinet, which has thus been placed at my disposal, for your acceptance, and to assure you that it will afford me sincere pleasure to hear that it will be agreeable to you to accept it, a sentiment in which those who would be your associates, will, I am confident, cordially participate.