Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States

by Martin Van Buren

That body recognized in the fullest manner the power and the right of a majority of the people of Kansas to decide upon their domestic institutions, including the subject of slavery, but was silent as to the period when that right should be exercised. That was, therefore, left an open question, and the President expressed his views in regard to it in the following words: "A difference of opinion has arisen in regard to the time when the people of a Territory shall decide this question for themselves. This is happily a matter of little practical importance, and besides it is a judicial question, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending, and will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled. To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be, though it has been my individual opinion," etc.

It is not necessary for the purpose of this reference to inquire either how far that question was decided by the Supreme Court, in the case referred to, or whether the President does justice to its importance. In respect to the latter point it is well known that a contrary opinion is extensively entertained. It will not be denied that the case he speaks of was that of Dred Scott, and that the questions to be decided in it related only to the personal rights and interests of the parties to the suit. It is in the settlement of such only that the Supreme Court could exercise jurisdiction upon such a subject, and all will admit that if it belongs to a Territory to determine the question of the toleration of slavery there, the occasion of the formation of its State constitution will be a proper time for the settlement of that question, if a majority consent that the decision shall be so long deferred. The question in regard to the true time can, therefore, only arise, when a majority wish to act upon the subject at an earlier period. If such an attempt be made, the most extreme advocates for judicial supremacy would not pretend that it would be competent for the Supreme Court to arrest the proceedings by injunction or writ of prohibition, or any other process. It could, therefore, only be in cases involving individual interests, which might be supposed to be affected by such a proceeding on the part of the Territory, that the judicial tribunals could interfere, and it was to such a case that the President was understood to refer. It was of an expected decision of the court in a case in law, brought for the settlement of private rights, that the President spoke, when he said that, though he had an opinion of his own, he would, notwithstanding, submit to the decision of the court upon the point, whatever that might be. By this declaration he announced to his constituents that in the exercise of the executive power upon the subject, whenever that might become necessary, he would take notice of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case he referred to as then pending, and would feel it to be his duty to maintain the rule it should lay down in respect to the particular question of which he spoke, and a fortiori in respect to the main question, the right of the Territory to act upon the matter, and that he would do so because the court had so decided without reference to his individual opinion in the premises—the consequence of which would be, that if his official sanction or coöperation should become necessary to a settlement of the question of slavery by the people of the Territory, he would give it if the people had acted conformably to the rule prescribed by the court, or withhold it if they had acted contrary thereto; and that if Congress should undertake to legislate upon any part of the subject against the decision of the Supreme Court, in respect to its constitutional powers, he would withhold his assent from any bill of that character which the two houses might pass.

It is our duty, and must be our aim, to interpret the language employed by the President according to what we, in good faith, believe to have been his intention. Attempts to pervert the sense of what is said by a man placed in his situation and acting under his grave responsibilities, would not injure him, and could not fail to recoil upon their author. If, dealing with his avowals in that spirit, we are yet bound to believe that the declaration which I have described is the legitimate interpretation and effect of his language, it is not only our right but our duty to speak of it as we conscientiously think it deserves. It can be scarcely necessary to say that those who regard the Republican principles of government applicable to the question before us, as they have been set forth in this work, as the true and only principles of the Constitution, must either abandon the tenets of their predecessors and their own convictions, or treat the declaration of Mr. Buchanan as a voluntary and seemingly a ready sacrifice of a most cherished principle of the Democratic faith—the reciprocal independence of the great departments of government; a principle the importance of which was apparent to and insisted on by the friends of liberty long before the establishment of our independence, and for the practical enforcement of which the American Revolution was regarded as presenting the best opportunity ever offered. For the security of this principle the fathers of our political school made the greatest efforts, and the invasion of it was met by Mr. Jefferson, at the commencement of his administration, with characteristic firmness, and was the subject of his anxious watchfulness during the closing scenes of his life.

The recent action of the Democratic party upon this subject must be considered with many grains of allowance. The long-continued support of a majority of the people,—the only test of political merit in a Republic,—has secured a preference for its principles of which it may well be proud; and the general fidelity of its members to the faith they profess is creditably illustrated by the fact that after all the changes to which its organization has been exposed, its ranks, whatever may be the case as to some of its leaders, are mainly composed of men with like dispositions with those by whom that organization was effected; yet its best friends set up in its behalf no claim to infallibility, nor do they pretend that its members have never failed in their duty to the cause. They know that men do not escape from their liability to err by uniting with a political association. Circumstances of the gravest character have besides put the adherence of its members to the principles of their party, in the matter under consideration, to a severer test than any to which they have hitherto been exposed. For the first time since its ascent to power in the Federal Government, two of the three great departments, the Executive and the Judicial, are presided over by gentlemen who, though raised to their places by its favor, had not been bred in its ranks but joined them at comparatively advanced periods in their lives, with opinions formed and matured in an antagonist school. The motives by which these gentlemen were led to enlist under the Democratic banner were, beyond question, of the purest character, and the high position to which they have been raised by their new friends shows that they were appreciated as they deserved. Most of the principles and opinions they formed in the ranks of the adversary have doubtless been changed, and ours adopted in their stead, but, unfortunately, that which is the subject of our present remark appears not to have been among the number.

Several of the members of the President's cabinet and of the bench of the Supreme Court, perhaps a majority of each, stand in the same category. In Congress the state of things is not materially different; when we look at the gentlemen who have been most prominent in the Kansas embroilment, on the side of the administration, we find an unprecedented number of the same class. It is most proper to avoid referring unnecessarily to names in a work of this character, especially when such reference is not for particular commendation, but the innocence of the motive in this case will excuse a slight departure from the rule. Among the most prominent of those who have taken the lead on the Democratic side in the two houses of Congress in respect to the affairs of Kansas, will be found the names of Toombs, of the Senate, and Stephens, of the House—both from Georgia, and both, for aught I know or have ever known, honorable men, doubtless actuated by good motives. I know neither personally, and never heard of either particularly, save as extreme partisans in the ranks of our opponents. I will not vouch for precise accuracy as to dates, but I am persuaded I will not err materially in saying that neither professed to belong to the Democratic party until after their appointment and election to their present posts. All of these gentlemen not merely believe, as it is very natural that they should, in this supremacy of the judicial power in such matters,—an idea always heretofore scouted by the Democracy of the land,—but they maintain it before the country, under circumstances rendered very imposing by their high official positions, as a test of party fidelity. The Executive, whose elevation to power cost the Democracy so fearful a struggle, and from whose success so much was and still is expected, has done this clearly and undisguisedly in respect to the support of Lecompton, and virtually in respect to the question of judicial supremacy. Mr. Stephens offered a resolution declaring the support of the Lecompton Act, a measure closely interwoven with the principle of which we are speaking, as a test question in the Democratic caucus over which presided Mr. Cochran,—a promising young man from New York, descended from a family as thoroughly imbued with Hamiltonian Federalism as any this State has produced (one of them Hamilton's brother-in-law), brought up till he arrived at man's estate among the straightest of the sect, and on that account entitled to greater credit for throwing himself with becoming zeal into the Democratic ranks, but for the same reason less likely to embrace their creed in its full extent, and less qualified to instruct them in the principles of their faith.

But there is an obstacle to an adherence on the part of the Democratic party to their ancient faith, in respect to these proceedings of the court, far more potent than those to which I have referred. This arises from the circumstance that those proceedings had their origin mainly in a sincere belief that they were necessary to protect a paramount and absorbing interest in nearly half the States of the Confederacy, with the security and quiet of which the citizens of those States believe their happiness and welfare to be inseparably involved. These are also the States in which the Democratic party possesses comparatively its greatest influence, and in some of which the true principles of the Constitution have in general, and especially at earlier periods in our history, been sought after with great avidity, and in which that under consideration found its earliest, ablest, and most persevering supporters. I need not speak of the control which this belief is capable of exerting over most of those who are by their position brought within the range of its practical operation. Minds thus excited find no insuperable difficulty in placing the object of their solicitude upon the footing of the salus populi, or in looking upon any measure that tends to its security as justifiable, because it is in execution of the suprema lex. Before such a feeling, so widely diffused, constitutional objections and all the principles which on ordinary occasions bind the consciences and influence the actions of men, are seldom, if ever, of much avail.

Neither will full justice have been done to the subject, notwithstanding this formidable array of hindrances in the path of duty, if I omit to refer to the inducement, always so strong with political parties, to avail themselves of every opportunity that presents or seems to present itself to "commend the poisoned chalice" to the lips of their opponents—a temptation they find it hard to resist, however much their own hands or consciences may have to be soiled in the operation. Few of the present generation who have made themselves at all conversant with the course of public affairs, need to be told how constant and openly professed has been the faith of the old Federalists and their political successors in the infallibility and omnipotence of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon constitutional questions. The complaints of the old Republicans and their successors upon that head have been both loud and long continued. When they made the country ring with them in respect to the unconstitutionality and tyrannical character of the Alien and Sedition Laws, the ready and only reply of their opponents was, that it belonged to the judicial power to decide upon their constitutionality, and that their expediency was a matter to be solved in the breast of Congress. In more modern times, when its unconstitutionality was objected to the second Bank of the United States, the decision of the Supreme Court in favor of the power of Congress to establish it was the equally ready and confident answer to all complaints on that ground. Other and similar instances might be referred to, but it is unnecessary. For the first time since the formation of the present Government the supreme bench, considerably changed in the political complexion of its members and tempted, doubtless more or less under the pressure of an all-absorbing popular influence at the South, to borrow a leaf from the book of our political opponents, has undertaken to control, adversely to the views of those opponents, a great political question by an extrajudicial decision of the court. As one of the consequences, a hue and cry has been raised against that august tribunal, hitherto revered by them as the only political sanctuary; trusted as the ark of safety;—a clamor reaching to a demand for the reorganization of the court itself;—a point never even approached by the Democracy when their displeasure has been raised to the greatest height by its unauthorized assumptions of political power. It is not then surprising that portions of the Democratic party should have been led to give the qualified assent which they have given to the Federal principle under consideration. I say qualified, for the guarded manner in which those who so assent have urged the influence which the decision of the court ought to have upon the question, must have been apparent to all; and this has been very much to their credit, especially in the slaveholding States. The references which have been made to the doings of the judiciary, in most instances, have savored more of what is known in the law as a plea of estoppel than of a claim of right,—a plea by which the truth or falsity of any matter brought forward by one party is waived, and its admission resisted on the ground that the party relying upon it has precluded himself from introducing it by some act or concession appearing upon the record, or established aliunde. If the doctrine of estoppel could be applied to politicians, it would certainly not be difficult to show that the Federal party and its successors are very clearly estopped from objecting to the action of the Supreme Court of which we have been speaking.

It may, under such circumstances, be safely assumed that the Democratic party has not committed itself to a departure from its professed principles upon this subject to an extent which it cannot be relieved from without a sacrifice of self-respect on the part of its members, or without serious prejudice to its well-earned title to the confidence of the country. That it will so relieve itself its past good sense and active patriotism forbid us to doubt. Let us hope that the protecting care of a kind Providence, which has hitherto carried our country in safety through so many perils, will in His own good time afford us a breathing spell at least, from the baleful excitements attendant upon slavery agitation. When that happy period arrives ... besides the incalculable advantage it will bring to the highest interests of all parties and all sections of our country, the Democrats in the slaveholding States will not fail to see the folly of asking their political coadjutors in the free States to coöperate in the support of measures and principles in sustaining which they cannot be sustained at home. The hair-breadth escape of their common party from destruction at the last Presidential election, and the deplorable condition to which the Democratic party has been reduced in the non-slaveholding States, by a past disregard of that consideration, will then be allowed their proper admonitory effect. All will then acknowledge that in the steps which have recently been taken, having their origin in the same bitter and deplorable source, the Democratic party, always before the able and zealous defender of the Constitution against similar inroads, had entered upon a path which leads directly and inevitably to a revolution of the Government in the most important of its functions—a revolution which would in time substitute for the present healthful and beneficial action of public opinion the selfish and contracted rule of a judicial oligarchy, which, sympathizing in feeling and acting in concert with the money power, would assuredly subvert the best features of a political system that needs only to be honestly administered to enable it to realize those anticipations of our country's greatness which now warm the hearts and animate the patriotism and nerve the arms of her faithful sons.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The opinion of the Supreme Court is thus summed up by the Chief Justice: "And upon a full and careful consideration of the subject the court is of opinion that upon the facts stated in the plea in abatement Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts; and consequently that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction of the cause and that the judgment on the plea in abatement is erroneous."