



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 land, seems to suffer some degree of
eclipse,--only temporary, it may well be believed, but nevertheless
real,--those who, like myself, have undertaken to present the careers of
great Americans who held this faith need not fear injustice or prejudice
in the field of American literature.

In this revised edition I have made a few corrections and added a few
notes; but the generous treatment which has been given to the book has
confirmed my belief that historic truth requires no material change.

A passage from the diary of Charles Jared Ingersoll (Life by William M.
Meigs, 1897) tempts me, in this most conspicuous place of the book, to
emphasize my observation upon one injustice often done to Van Buren.
Referring, on May 6, 1844, to his letter, then just published, against
the annexation of Texas, Mr. Ingersoll declared that, in view of the
fact that nearly all of Van Buren's admirers and most of the Democratic
press were committed to the annexation, Van Buren had committed a great
blunder and become _felo de se_. The assumption here is that Van Buren
was a politician of the type so painfully familiar to us, whose sole and
conscienceless effort is to find out what is to be popular for the time,
in order, for their own profit, to take that side. That Van Buren was
politic there can be no doubt. But he was politic after the fashion of a
statesman and not of a demagogue. He disliked to commit himself upon
issues which had not been fully discussed, which were not ripe for
practical solution by popular vote, and which did not yet need to be
decided. Mr. Ingersoll should have known that the direct and simple
explanation was the true one,--that Van Buren knew the risk and meant to
take it. His letter against the annexation of Texas, written when he
knew that it would probably defeat him for the presidency, was but one
of several acts performed by him at critical periods, wherein he
deliberately took what seemed the unpopular side in order to be true to
his sense of political and patriotic duty. The crucial tests of this
kind through which he successfully passed must, beyond any doubt, put
him in the very first rank of those American statesmen who have had the
rare union of political foresight and moral courage.

                                                    EDWARD M. SHEPARD.
  January, 1899.




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                             PAGE
     I. AMERICAN POLITICS WHEN VAN BUREN'S CAREER BEGAN.--
          JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE                                        1

    II. EARLY YEARS.--PROFESSIONAL LIFE                               14

   III. STATE SENATOR: ATTORNEY-GENERAL: MEMBER OF THE
          CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION                                   38

    IV. UNITED STATES SENATOR.--REESTABLISHMENT OF
          PARTIES.--PARTY LEADERSHIP                                  88

     V. DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828.--GOVERNOR                        153

    VI. SECRETARY OF STATE.--DEFINITE FORMATION OF THE
          DEMOCRATIC CREED                                           177

   VII. MINISTER TO ENGLAND.--VICE-PRESIDENT.--ELECTION
          TO THE PRESIDENCY                                          223

  VIII. CRISIS OF 1837                                               282

    IX. PRESIDENT.--SUB-TREASURY BILL                                325

     X. PRESIDENT.--CANADIAN INSURRECTION.--TEXAS.--SEMINOLE
          WAR.--DEFEAT FOR REELECTION                                350

    XI. EX-PRESIDENT.--SLAVERY.--TEXAS ANNEXATION.--DEFEAT
          BY THE SOUTH.--FREE SOIL CAMPAIGN.--LAST YEARS             398

   XII. VAN BUREN'S CHARACTER AND PLACE IN HISTORY                   449

  INDEX                                                              469




ILLUSTRATIONS


  MARTIN VAN BUREN                                        _Frontispiece_

    From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State
      Department at Washington.
    Autograph from a MS. in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum.
    The vignette of "Lindenwald," Mr. Van Buren's home, near
      Kinderhook, N. Y., is from a photograph.
                                                                    Page
  DE WITT CLINTON                                           _facing_ 110

    From a painting by Inman in the New York State Library, Albany,
      N. Y.
    Autograph from a MS. in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum.

  EDWARD LIVINGSTON                                         _facing_ 248

    From a bust by Ball Hughes in the possession of Miss Julia Barton
      Hunt, Barrytown on Hudson, N. Y.
    Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston Public Library.

  SILAS WRIGHT                                              _facing_ 416

    From a portrait painted by Whitehorne, 1844-1846, in the New York
      City Hall.
    Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston Public Library.




MARTIN VAN BUREN




CHAPTER I

AMERICAN POLITICS WHEN VAN BUREN'S CAREER BEGAN.--JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE


It sometimes happened during the anxious years when the terrors of civil
war, though still smouldering, were nearly aflame, that on Wall Street
or Nassau Street, busy men of New York saw Martin Van Buren and his son
walking arm in arm. "Prince John," tall, striking in appearance, his
hair divided at the middle in a fashion then novel for Americans, was in
the prime of life, resolute and aggressive in bearing. His father was a
white-haired, bright-eyed old man, erect but short in figure, of precise
though easy and kindly politeness, and with a touch of deference in his
manner. His presence did not peremptorily command the attention of
strangers; but to those who looked attentively there was plain
distinction in the refined and venerable face. Passers-by might well
turn back to see more of the two men thus affectionately and
picturesquely together. For they were famous characters,--the one in
the newer, the other in the older politics of America. John Van Buren,
fresh from his Free Soil battle and the tussles of the Hards and Softs,
was striving, as a Democrat, to serve the cause of the Union, though
conscious that he rested under the suspicion of the party to whose
service, its divisions in New York now seemingly ended, he had
reluctantly returned. But he still faced the slave power with an
independence only partially abated before the exigencies of party
loyalty. The ex-President, definitely withdrawn from the same Free Soil
battle, a struggle into which he had entered when the years were already
heavy upon him, had survived to be once more a worthy in the Democratic
party, again to receive its formal veneration, but never again its old
affection. In their timid manoeuvres with slavery it was perhaps with
the least possible awkwardness that the northern Democrats sought to
treat him as a great Democratic leader; but they did not let it be
forgotten that the leader was forever retired from leadership. While the
younger man was in the thick of political encounters which the party
carried on in blind futility, the older man was hardly more than an
historical personage. He was no longer, his friends strove to think, the
schismatic candidate of 1848, but rather the ally and friend of Jackson,
or, better still and further away, the disciple of Jefferson.

For, more than any other American, Martin Van Buren had succeeded to the
preaching of Jefferson's political doctrines, and to his political
power as well, that curious and potent mingling of philosophy,
statesmanship, and electioneering. The Whigs' distrust towards Van Buren
was still bitter; the hot anger of his own party over the blow he had
dealt in 1848 was still far from subsided; the gratitude of most Free
Soil men had completely disappeared with his apparent acquiescence in
the politics of Pierce and Buchanan. Save in a narrow circle of
anti-slavery Democrats, Van Buren, in these last days of his, was judged
at best with coldness, and most commonly with dislike or even contempt.
Not much of any other temper has yet gone into political history; its
writers have frequently been content to accept the harshness of partisan
opinion, or even the scurrility and mendacity visited upon him during
his many political campaigns, and to ignore the positive records of his
career and public service. The present writer confesses to have begun
this Life, not indeed sharing any of the hatred or contempt so commonly
felt towards Van Buren, but still given to many serious depreciations of
him, which a better examination has shown to have had their ultimate
source in the mere dislike of personal or political enemies,--a dislike
to whose expression, often powerful and vivid, many writers have
extended a welcome seriously inconsistent with the fairness of history.

When Abraham Lincoln was chosen president in 1860, this predecessor of
his by a quarter century was a true historical figure. The bright,
genial old man connected, visibly and really, those stirring and
dangerous modern days with the first political struggles under the
American Constitution, struggles then long passed into the quiet of
history, to leave him almost their only living reminiscence. Martin Van
Buren was a man fully grown and already a politician when in 1801 the
triumph of Thomas Jefferson completed the political foundation of the
United States. Its profound inspiration still remained with him on this
eve of Lincoln's election. Under its influence his political career had
begun and had ended.

At Jefferson's election the aspiration and fervor which attended the
first, the new-born sense of American national life, had largely worn
away. The ideal visions of human liberty had long before grown dim
during seven years of revolutionary war, with its practical hardships,
its vicissitudes of meanness and glory, and during the four years of
languor and political incompetence which followed. In the agitation for
better union, political theories filled the minds of our forefathers.
Lessons were learned from the Achaean League, as well as from the Swiss
Confederation, the German Empire, and the British Constitution. Both
history and speculation, however, were firmly subordinated to an
extraordinary common sense, in part flowing from, as it was most finely
exhibited in, the luminous and powerful, if unexalted, genius of
Franklin. From the open beginning of constitution-making at Annapolis in
1786 until the inauguration of John Adams, the American people, under
the masterful governing of Washington, were concerned with the framework
upon which the fabric of their political life was to be wrought. The
framework was doubtless in itself of a vast and enduring importance. If
the consolidating and aristocratic schemes of Hamilton had not met
defeat in the federal convention, or if the separatist jealousies of
Patrick Henry and George Clinton had not met defeat in Virginia and New
York after the work of the convention was done, there would to-day be a
different American people. Nor would our history be the amazing story of
the hundred years past. But upon the governmental framework thus set up
could be woven political fabrics widely and essentially different in
their material, their use, and their enduring virtue. For quite apart
from the framework of government were the temper and traditions of
popular politics out of which comes, and must always come, the essential
and dominant nature of public institutions. In this creative and deeper
work Jefferson was engaged during his struggle for political power after
returning from France in 1789, during his presidential career from 1801
to 1809, and during the more extraordinary, and in American history the
unparalleled, supremacy of his political genius after he had left
office. In the circumstances of our colonial life, in our race
extractions, in our race fusion upon the Atlantic seaboard, and in the
moral effect of forcible and embittered separation from the parent
country, arose indeed, to go no further back, the political instincts of
American men. It is, however, fatal to adequate conception of our
political development to ignore the enormous formative influence which
the twenty years of Jefferson's rule had upon American political
character. But so partial and sometimes so partisan have been the
historians of our early national politics in their treatment of that
great man, that a just appreciation of the political atmosphere in which
Van Buren began his career is exceedingly difficult.

There was an American government, an American nation, when Washington
gladly escaped to Mt. Vernon from the bitterly factional quarrels of the
politicians at Philadelphia. The government was well ordered; the nation
was respectable and dignified. But most of the people were either still
colonial and provincial, or were rushing, in turbulence and bad temper,
to crude speculations and theories. Twenty-five years later, Jefferson
had become the political idol of the American people, a people
completely and forever saturated with democratic aspirations, democratic
ideals, what John Marshall called "political metaphysics," a people with
strong and lasting characteristics, no longer either colonial or
provincial, but profoundly national. The skill, the industry, the arts
of the politician, had been used by a man gifted with the genius and not
free from the faults of a philosopher, to plant in American usages,
prejudices, and traditions,--in the very fibre of American political
life, a cardinal and fruitful idea. The work was done for all time. For
Americans, government was thenceforth to be a mere instrument. No longer
a symbol, or an ornament or crown of national life, however noble and
august, it was a simple means to a plain end; to be always, and if need
be rudely, tested and measured by its practical working, by its service
to popular rights and needs. In those earlier days, too, there had been
"classes and masses," the former of whom held public service and public
policy as matters of dignity and order and high assertion of national
right and power, requiring in their ministers peculiar and esoteric
light, and an equipment of which common men ought not to judge, because
they could not judge aright. Afterward, in Monroe's era of good feeling,
the personal rivalries of presidential candidates were in bad temper
enough; but Americans were at last all democrats. Whether for better or
worse, the nation had ceased to be either British or colonial, or
provincial, in its character. In the delightful Rip Van Winkle of a
later Jefferson, during the twenty years' sleep, the old Dutch house has
gone, the peasant's dress, the quaint inn with its village tapster, all
the old scene of loyal provincial life. Rip returns to a noisy,
boastful, self-assertive town full of American "push" and "drive," and
profane disregard of superiors and everything ancient. It was hardly a
less change which spread through the United States in the twenty years
of Jefferson's unrivaled and fruitful leadership. Superstitious regard
for the "well-born," for institutions of government as images of
veneration apart from their immediate and practical use; the faith in
government as essentially a financial establishment which ought to be on
peculiarly friendly relations with banks and bankers; the treatment and
consideration of our democratic organization as an experiment to be
administered with deprecatory deference to European opinion; the idea
that upon the great, simple elements of political belief and practice,
the mass of men could not judge as wisely and safely as the opulent, the
cultivated, the educated; the idea that it was a capital feature of
political art to thwart the rashness and incompetence of the lower
people,--all these theories and traditions, which had firmly held most
of the disciplined thought of Europe and America, and to which the lurid
horrors of the French Revolution had brought apparent consecration,--all
these had now gone; all had been fatally wounded, or were sullenly and
apologetically cherished in the aging bitterness of the Federalists.
There was an American people with as distinct, as powerful, as
characteristic a polity as belonged to the British islanders. In 1776 a
youthful genius had seized upon a colonial revolt against taxation as
the occasion to make solemn declaration of a seeming abstraction about
human rights. He had submitted, however, to subordinate his theory
during the organization of national defense and the strengthening of
the framework of government. Nor did he shine in either of those works.
But with the nation established, with a union secured so that its people
could safely attend to the simpler elements of human rights, Jefferson
and his disciples were able to lead Americans to the temper, the
aspirations, and the very prejudices of essential democracy. The
Declaration of Independence, the ten amendments to the Constitution
theoretically formulating the rights of men or of the States, sank deep
into the sources of American political life. So completely indeed was
the work done, that in 1820 there was but one political party in
America; all were Jeffersonian Republicans; and when the Republican
party was broken up in 1824, the only dispute was whether Adams or
Jackson or Crawford or Clay or Calhoun best represented the political
beliefs now almost universal. It seemed to Americans as if they had
never known any other beliefs, as if these doctrines of their democracy
were truisms to which the rest of the world was marvelously blind.

Nothing in American public life has, in prolonged anger and even savage
desperation, equaled the attacks upon Jefferson during the steady growth
of his stupendous influence. The hatred of him personally, and the
belief in the wickedness of his private and public life, survive in our
time. Nine tenths of the Americans who then read books sincerely thought
him an enemy of mankind and of all that was sacred. Nine tenths of the
authors of American books on history or politics have to this day
written under the influence which ninety years ago controlled their
predecessors. And for this there is no little reason. As the American
people grew conscious of their own peculiar and intensely active
political force, there came to them a period of national and popular
life in which much was unlovely, much was crude, much was disagreeably
vulgar. Books upon America written by foreign travelers, from the days
of Jefferson down to our civil war, superficial and offensive as they
often were, told a great deal of truth. We do not now need to wince at
criticisms upon a rawness, an insolent condescension towards the
political ignorance of foreigners and the unhappy subjects of kings, a
harshness in the assertion of the equality of Caucasian men, and a
restless, boastful manner. The criticisms were in great measure just.
But the critics were stupid and blind not to see the vast and vital work
and change going on before their eyes, to chiefly regard the trifling
and incidental things which disgusted them. Their eyes were open to all
our faults of taste and manner, but closed