



Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
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  Standard Library Edition


  AMERICAN STATESMEN

  EDITED BY
  JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

  IN THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES
  VOL. XVIII.

  DOMESTIC POLITICS: THE TARIFF
  AND SLAVERY

  MARTIN VAN BUREN




  [Illustration: M. Van Buren]




  American Statesmen

  STANDARD LIBRARY EDITION

  [Illustration: The Home of Martin Van Buren]

  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.




  American Statesmen


  MARTIN VAN BUREN

  BY

  EDWARD M. SHEPARD


  [Illustration]


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
  1899




  Copyright, 1888 and 1899,
  BY EDWARD M. SHEPARD.

  Copyright, 1899,
  BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

  _All rights reserved._




PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION


Since 1888, when this Life was originally published, the history of
American Politics has been greatly enriched. The painstaking and candid
labors of Mr. Fiske, Mr. Adams, Mr. Rhodes, and others have gone far to
render unnecessary the _caveat_ I then entered against the unfairness,
or at least the narrowness, of the temper with which Van Buren, or the
school to which he belonged, had thus far been treated in American
literature, and which had prejudicially misled me before I began my
work. Such a _caveat_ is no longer necessary. Even now, when the
political creed of which Jefferson, Van Buren, and Tilden have been
chief apostles in our