The Romance of Indian Warfare.
(p. 407)
CHAPTER XI.
THE DUTCH REIGN OF MARTIN VAN BUREN.
1837–1841.
A New-Yorker reaches the White House, and has Hard Fare there.—The Disadvantages of Competition.—A Financial Earthquake breaks large Amounts of Crockery.—How much made a Pile in 1837.—The Sub-Treasury.—The Connection between long Messages and Anarchy in Finance.—Defalcations in Office.—Why an Old Man’s House is easily robbed.—The Phantom of Slavery.—Extraits de l’Afrique.—Principles and Goods sold at a Profit.—A Political Trader loses his Capital, and gives up Business.
At last New York saw one of her citizens reach the White House. Several other gentlemen, General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Judge Hugh L. White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Willie P. Mangum of North Carolina, were each desirous of getting to this favorite inn before the others, and of securing exclusive possession of it. For four years the Dutch guest had a very hard time of it. All of his disappointed competitors watched him, as hounds the fox in his hole, ready for hot pursuit as soon as the brush showed from cover.
A financial earthquake broke through the commercial crust the first year of Mr. Van Buren’s term, shattering most of the crockery in the great cities, and sputtering red menaces of ruin through almost every village and country store. In New York alone merchants toppled down amid heaps of indebtedness piled up to $100,000,000,—a respectable pile then, now scarcely worth failing for. To help up the departing credit, the President recommended the sub-treasury scheme, or separate chests for guarding the public moneys. Of course this expedient, like all financial measures, was Dutch to the people generally, who became more hopelessly anarchical by the interminably long messages, which aggravated their want of ideas, and somehow fretfully tangled their losing tempers and accounts.
A few defalcations among public officers chafed the popular mind to an illogical but natural irritation. They looked upon the guard-houses of the national moneys, like an old man’s residence, insecure from his broken gait and few locks. The dark phantom of slavery again flitted over the land, its dusky shadow disturbing the vision of commercial and political traders. The President had, in his boresome in-augur-al, promised to his Southern supporters, in advance of Congressional action, to veto any bill forbidding slavery in the District of Columbia. Petitions against slavery were laid under the table, while speeches in its favor were extremely fashionable. Mails at the South were opened for the discovery of antislavery papers. Politicians perfumed their handkerchiefs with extraits de l’Afrique, and Northern merchants on the seaboard sold to the South their principles and goods at a profit. Still the great trader in the White House kept losing his capital. The new war with the Seminoles created bad debts. A proposition for a standing army mined his credit. The sub-treasury scheme drained specie from the people into Federal pools. To Lindenwald he retired, enriched by experience, but with his political ballot-paper at a heavy discount.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HARRISON-TYLER TROUPE; HOW IT PLAYED.
1841–1845.
General Harrison’s Death and Life-Insurance Companies.—Whig Bank-Bills with no Tyler Bodies to suit them.—A Good Flint which required a first-rate Gun, Stock, Breech, and Barrel, to suit it.—Definition of Crabs, etc.—The Ashburton Treaty.—The Bankrupt Act, and whom it helped.—Misfortunes and Fortunes.—Mr. Calhoun’s Texas Trick.—Diplomatic Magic-Lanterns exposed.—Roman-like Garments with Carthaginian Spots.—Florida our Stocking Heel; how darned.—Yarns about it.—Iron Railings as State Corsets.—How the Florida Keys might be usefully employed.
At the time General Harrison was called from the clerkship of the County Court of Hamilton County, Ohio, to preside at the People’s High Assizes at Washington, he lived at North Bend, a very different crook from that of his predecessor. He was sixty-eight years of age, and in feeble health; yet so seldom do people die in desirable offices, that any life-insurance company would have taken his life in a policy at the lowest premium.
April 4, 1841, however, he died. Of course John Tyler, the Vice-President, did not. To the subsequent regret of his party he lived on—a plane of his own, quite apart from the platform upon which he was placed by them, and bisected by a Virginia ecliptic so oblique that it rarely touched anything or anybody. Mr. Clay and the Whigs tried hard and long to shape a bank bill to his amphibious tastes; but as they could not find a body, neck, or feet to suit the bill, they abandoned the study of natural history as illustrated by Mr. Tyler. A bank—some bank—he seemed desirous to have; because he entertained a profound conviction that a bank was a good place to put a counter in. Like the gentleman who possessed a first-rate flint, and wished a gunsmith just to fit a good breech, lock, stock, and barrel to it, the acting President seemed anxious, in his interviews with the Congressional banksmiths, to have them fit a good bank, vaults, specie, and circulation, to his admirable counter.