"A sentiment I had almost said of idolatry for the Supreme Court has grown up, which claims for its members an almost entire exemption from the fallibilities of our nature, and arraigns with unsparing bitterness the motives of all who have the temerity to look with inquisitive eyes into this consecrated sanctuary of the law. So powerful has this sentiment become, such strong holdhas it taken upon the press of this country, that it requires not a little share of firmness in a public man, however imperious may be his duty, to express sentiments that conflict with it. It is nevertheless correct, sir, that in this, as in almost every other case, the truth is to be found in a just medium of the subject. To so much of the high-wrought eulogies (which the fashion of the times has recently produced in such great abundance) as allows to the distinguished men who now hold in their hands that portion of the administration of public affairs, talents of the highest order, and spotless integrity, I cheerfully add the very humble testimony of my unqualified assent. That the uncommon man who now presides over the court, and who I hope may long continue to do so, is, in all human probability, the ablest judge now sitting upon any judicial bench in the world, I sincerely believe. But to the sentiment which claims for the judges so great a share of exemption from the feelings that govern the conduct of other men, and for the court the character of being the safest depository of political power, I do not subscribe. I have been brought up in an opposite faith, and all my experience has confirmed me in its correctness. In my legislation upon this subject I will act in conformity to those opinions. I believe the judges of the Supreme Court (great and good men as I cheerfully concede them to be) are subject to the same infirmities, influenced by the same passions, and operated upon by the same causes, that good and great men are in other situations. I believe they have as much of theesprit de corpsas other men. Those who think[4]otherwise form an erroneous estimate of humannature; and if they act upon that estimate, will, soon or late, become sensible of their delusion."
"A sentiment I had almost said of idolatry for the Supreme Court has grown up, which claims for its members an almost entire exemption from the fallibilities of our nature, and arraigns with unsparing bitterness the motives of all who have the temerity to look with inquisitive eyes into this consecrated sanctuary of the law. So powerful has this sentiment become, such strong holdhas it taken upon the press of this country, that it requires not a little share of firmness in a public man, however imperious may be his duty, to express sentiments that conflict with it. It is nevertheless correct, sir, that in this, as in almost every other case, the truth is to be found in a just medium of the subject. To so much of the high-wrought eulogies (which the fashion of the times has recently produced in such great abundance) as allows to the distinguished men who now hold in their hands that portion of the administration of public affairs, talents of the highest order, and spotless integrity, I cheerfully add the very humble testimony of my unqualified assent. That the uncommon man who now presides over the court, and who I hope may long continue to do so, is, in all human probability, the ablest judge now sitting upon any judicial bench in the world, I sincerely believe. But to the sentiment which claims for the judges so great a share of exemption from the feelings that govern the conduct of other men, and for the court the character of being the safest depository of political power, I do not subscribe. I have been brought up in an opposite faith, and all my experience has confirmed me in its correctness. In my legislation upon this subject I will act in conformity to those opinions. I believe the judges of the Supreme Court (great and good men as I cheerfully concede them to be) are subject to the same infirmities, influenced by the same passions, and operated upon by the same causes, that good and great men are in other situations. I believe they have as much of theesprit de corpsas other men. Those who think[4]otherwise form an erroneous estimate of humannature; and if they act upon that estimate, will, soon or late, become sensible of their delusion."
At this session, upon the election by the Senate of their temporary president, Van Buren received the compliment of four votes. In May, 1826, he participated in Benton's report on the reduction of executive patronage, a subject important enough, but there crudely treated. The report strongly exhibited the jealousy of executive power which had long been characteristic of American political thought. By describing the offices within the president's appointment, their numbers and salaries, and the expense of the civil list, a striking picture was drawn—and in that way a striking picture can always be drawn—of the power of any great executive. By imagining serious abuses of power, the picture was darkened with the dangers of patronage, as it could be darkened to-day. The country was urged to look forward to the time when public revenue would be doubled, when the number of public officers would be quadrupled, when the president's nomination would carry any man through the Senate, and his recommendation any measure through Congress. Names, the report said, were nothing. The first Roman emperor was styled Emperor of the Republic; and the late French emperor had taken a like title. The American president, it was hinted, might by his enormous patronage and by subsidies to the press, nominally for official advertisements, subject us to a like danger. But the usefulness of such pictures as theseof Benton and Van Buren depends upon the practical lesson taught by the artists. If there were disadvantages and dangers which our ancestors rightly feared, in placing the federal patronage under the sole control of the president, so there are disadvantages and dangers in scattering it by laws into various hands, or in its subjection to the traditions of "senatorial courtesy."
Six bills accompanied the report. Two of them proposed the appointment of military cadets and midshipmen, one of each from every congressional district; and this was afterwards done, giving a petty patronage to national legislators which public sentiment has but recently begun to compel them to use upon ascertained merit rather than in sheer favoritism. A third bill proposed that military and naval commissions should run "during good behavior" and not "during the pleasure of the president." A fourth sought with extraordinary unwisdom to correct the old but ever new abuse of government advertising, by depriving the responsible executive of its distribution and by placing it in the hands of congressmen, perhaps the very worst to hold it. Another required senatorial confirmation for postmasters whose emoluments exceeded an amount to be fixed. The remaining bill was very wise, and a natural sequence of Benton's not untruthful though too highly colored picture. The law of 1820, which fixed at four years the terms of many subordinate officers, was to be modified so as to limit the terms only for officers whohad not satisfactorily accounted for public moneys. It has been commonly said that this act was a device of Crawford, when secretary of the treasury, more easily to use federal patronage for his presidential canvass. But there seems to be no sufficient reason to doubt that Benton's and Van Buren's committee correctly stated the intent of the authors of the law to have been no more than that the officer should be definitely compelled by the expiration of his term to render his accounts and have them completely audited; that it was not intended that some other person should succeed an officer not found in fault; and that the practice of refusing re-commissions to deserving officers was an unexpected perversion of the law. The committee simply proposed to accomplish the true intent of the law. The same bill required the president to state his reasons for removals of officers when he nominated their successors. The proposals in the last two bills were very creditable to Benton and Van Buren and their coadjutors. It is greatly to be lamented that they were not safely made laws while patronage was dispensed conscientiously and with sincere public spirit by the younger Adams, so far as he could control it. The biographer has more particularly to lament that during the twelve years of Van Buren's executive influence he seemed daunted by the difficulties of voluntarily putting in practice the admirable rules which as a senator he would have imposed by law upon those in executive stations. It was only threeyears after this report, that the great chieftain, whom Benton and Van Buren helped to the presidency, discredited all its reasoning by proposing "a general extension" of the law whose operation they would have thus limited. The committee also proposed by constitutional amendment to forbid the appointment to office of any senator or representative until the end of the presidential term in which he had held his seat. This was also one of the reforms whose necessity seems plain enough to the reformer, until in office he discovers the conveniences and perhaps the public uses of the practice he has wished to abolish.
In the short session of 1826-1827, little of any importance was done. Van Buren refused to vote with Benton to abolish the duty on salt, a vote doubtless influenced by the apparent interest of New York, which itself taxed the production of salt to aid the State in its internal improvements, and which probably could not maintain the tax if foreign salt were admitted free. Van Buren did not, indeed, avow, nor did he disavow this reason. He was content to point out that the great canals of New York were of national use, though their expense was borne by his State alone. He voted at this session for lower duties on teas, coffees, and wines. He did not join Benton and others in their narrow unwillingness to establish a naval academy. Van Buren's temper was eminently free from raw prejudices against disciplined education. The death of one of the envoys to the Panamacongress enabled him again at this session to renew his opposition by a vote against filling the vacancy. Another attempt was made to pass a bankruptcy bill; but again it failed through the natural and wholesome dislike of increasing the powers of the federal judiciary, and the preference that state courts and laws should perform all the work to which they were reasonably competent. The bill did not even pass the Senate, until by Van Buren's opposition it had been reduced to a bill establishing a summary and speedy remedy for creditors against fraudulent or failing traders, instead of a general system of bankruptcy, voluntary and involuntary, for all persons. Van Buren's speech against the insolvency features of the bill was made on January 23, 1827, only a few days before his successor as senator was to be chosen. But the thoughtless popularity which often accompanies sweeping propositions of relief to insolvents did not move him from resolute and successful opposition to what he called (and later experience has most abundantly justified him) "an injurious extension of the patronage of the federal government, and an insupportable enlargement of the range of its judicial power." On February 24, 1827, a few days after his reëlection, he delivered a lucid and elaborate speech on the long-perplexing topic of the restrictions upon American trade with the British colonies, a subject to be afterwards closely connected with his political fortunes.
The agitation of the coming presidential electionleft little of its turbulence upon the records of the long session from December, 1827, to May, 1828. Van Buren was doubtless busy enough out of the senate chamber. But he was still a very busy legislator. He spoke at least twice in favor of the bill to abolish imprisonment under judgments rendered by federal courts for debts not fraudulently incurred, the bill which Richard M. Johnson had pressed so long and so honorably; and at last he saw the bill pass in January, 1828. He spoke often upon the technical bill to regulate federal judicial process. Again he voted, and again in a minority and in opposition to Benton and other political friends, against bills to extend the Cumberland road and for other internal improvements. Besides the usual bills to appropriate lands for roads and canals, and to subscribe to the stock of private canal companies, a step further was now taken in the constitutional change led by Adams and Clay. Public land was voted for the benefit of Kenyon College, in the State of Ohio. There was plainly intended to be no limit to federal beneficence. In this session Van Buren again rushed to defend the salt duty so dear to New York.
At the same session was passed the "tariff of abominations," a measure so called from the oppressive provisions loaded on it by its enemies, but in spite of which it passed. Van Buren, though he sat still during the debate, cast for the bill a protectionist vote, with Benton and several others whose convictions were against it, but who yieldedto the supposed public sentiment or the peremptory instructions of their States, or who did not yet dare to make upon the tariff a presidential issue. The votes of the senators were sectionally thus distributed: For the tariff,—New England, 6; Middle States, 8; Louisiana, 1; and the Western States, 11; in all 26. Against it,—New England, 5; Maryland, 2; Southern States, 13; and Tennessee, 1. It was a victory of neither political party, but of the Middle and Western over the Southern States. Only three negative votes were cast by senators who had voted against the administration on the Panama question in 1826; while of the votes for the tariff, fourteen were cast by senators who had then opposed the administration. Of the senators in favor of the tariff, six, Van Buren, Benton, Dickerson of New Jersey, Eaton of Tennessee (Jackson's close friend), Kane of Illinois, and Rowan of Kentucky, had in 1826 been in opposition, while ten of those voting against the tariff had then been with them.[5]The greater number of the opposition senators were therefore against the tariff, though very certainly the votes of Van Buren, Benton, and Eaton prevented the opposition from taking strong ground or suffering injury on the tariff in the election. Van Buren's silence in this debate of 1828 indicated at least a temper now hesitant. But he and his colleague, Sanford, according to the theory then popular that senatorswere simply delegated agents of their States, were constrained, whatever were their opinions, by a resolution of the legislature of New York passed almost unanimously in January, 1828. It stated a sort ofultima ratioof protection, commanding the senators "to make every proper exertion to effect such a revision of the tariff as will afford a sufficient protection to the growers of wool, hemp, and flax, and the manufacturers of iron, woolens, and every other article, so far as the same may be connected with the interest of manufactures, agriculture, and commerce." The senators might perhaps have said to this that, if they were to protect not only iron and woolens but also every other article, they ought not to levy prohibitory duties on some and not on other articles; that if they were equally to protect manufactures, agriculture, and commerce, they could do no better than to let natural laws alone. But the silly instruction said what no intelligent protectionist means; his system disappears with an equality of privilege; that equality must, he argues, at some point yield to practical necessities. Van Buren took the resolution, however, in its intended meaning, and not literally. Hayne concluded his fine struggle against the bill by a solemn protest upon its passage that it was a partial, unjust, and unconstitutional measure.
At this session Van Buren, upon the consideration of a rule giving the Vice-President power to call to order for words spoken in debate, madeperhaps the most elaborate of his purely political speeches. It was a skillful and not unsuccessful effort to give philosophical significance to the coming struggle at the polls. He spoke of "that collision, which seems to be inseparable from the nature of man, between the rights of the few and the many," of "those never-ceasing conflicts between the advocates of the enlargement and concentration of power on the one hand, and its limitation and distribution on the other." The one party, he said, had "grown out of a deep and settled distrust of the people and of the States:" the other, out of "a jealousy of power justified by all human experience." The advocates of "a strong government," having been defeated in much that they sought in the federal convention, had since, he said, "been at work to obtain by construction what was not included or intended to be included in the grant." He declared the incorporation of the United States Bank to be the "great pioneer of constitutional encroachments." Thence had followed those famous usurpations, the alien and sedition laws of the older Adams's administration. Then came the doctrine that the House of Representatives was bound to make all appropriations necessary to carry out a treaty made by the President and Senate; and then "the bold avowal that it belonged to the President alone to decide upon the propriety" of a foreign mission, and that it was for the Senate only "to pass on the fitness of the individuals selected as ministers." Helamented the single lapse of Madison, "one of the most, if not the most, accomplished statesman that our country has produced," in signing the bill to incorporate the new bank. The younger Adams, Van Buren declared, had "gone far beyond the utmost latitude of construction" therefore claimed; and he added a reference, decorous enough but neither fair nor gracious, to Adams's own early entrance in the public service upon a mission unauthorized by Congress. It was now demonstrated, he said, that the result of the presidential choice of 1825 "was not only the restoration of the men of 1798, but of the principles of that day." The spirit of encroachment had, it was true, become more wary; but it was no more honest. The system had then been coercion; now it was seduction. Then unconstitutional powers had been exercised to force submission; now they were assumed to purchase golden opinions from the people with their own means. Isolated acts of the Federalists had not produced an unyielding exclusion from the confidence of a majority of the people, for more than a quarter of a century, of large masses of men distinguished for talent and private worth. The great and glorious struggle had proceeded from something deeper, an opposition to the principle of an extension of the constructive powers of the government. Without harsh denunciation, and by suggestion rather than assertion, the administration of John Quincy Adams was grouped with the administration of his father. The earlieradministration had deserved and met the retribution of a Republican victory. The later one now deserved and ought soon to meet a like fate.
The issue was clearly made. The parties were formed. The result rested with the people. On February 6, 1827, Van Buren had been reëlected senator by a large majority in both houses of the New York legislature. In his brief letter of acceptance he said no more on public questions than that it should be his "constant and zealous endeavor to protect the remaining rights reserved to the States by the federal Constitution," and "to restore those of which they have been divested by construction." This had been the main burden of his political oratory from the inauguration of Adams. There are many references in books to doubts of Van Buren's position until 1827; but such doubts are not justified in the face of his prompt and perfectly explicit utterances in the session of 1825-1826, and from that time steadily on.
De Witt Clinton's death on February 11, 1828, removed from the politics of New York one of its most illustrious men, a statesman of the first rank, able and passionate, and of the noblest aspirations. The understanding reached between him and Van Buren in 1826, for the support of Jackson, had not produced a complete coalition. In spite of the union on Jackson, the Bucktails nominated and Van Buren loyally supported for governor against Clinton in 1826, William B. Rochester, a warm friend and supporter of Adams and Clay, and oneof the members of the very Panama mission against which so strenuous a fight had been made. Clinton was reëlected by a small majority. In a meeting at Washington after his death, Van Buren declared the triumph of his talents and patriotism to be monuments of high and enduring fame. He was glad that, though in their public careers there had been "collisions of opinions and action at once extensive, earnest, and enduring," they had still been "wholly free from that most venomous and corroding of all poisons, personal hatred." These collisions were now "turned to nothing and less than nothing." Speaking of his respect for Clinton's name and gratitude for his signal services, Van Buren concluded with this striking tribute: "For myself, so strong, so sincere, and so engrossing is that feeling, that I, who whilst living, never—no, never, envied him anything, now that he has fallen, am greatly tempted to envy him his grave with its honors."
With this session of 1827-1828 ended Van Buren's senatorial career and his parliamentary leadership. From 1821 to 1828 the Senate was not indeed at its greatest glory. Webster entered it only in December, 1827. Hayne and Benton with Van Buren are to us its most distinguished members, if Randolph's rather indescribable and useless personality may be excepted. But to neither of them has the opinion of later times assigned a place in the first rank of orators, although Hayne's tariff speech in 1824 deserves to be setwith the greatest of American political orations. The records and speeches of the Senate in which Van Buren sat have come to us with fine print and narrow margins; they have not contributed to the collected works of great men. But the Senate was then an able body. The principles of American politics were never more clearly stated. When the books are well dusted, and one has broken through the starched formality in which the speakers' phrases were set, he finds a copious fund of political instruction. The federal Senate was more truly a parliamentary body in those formative days than perhaps at any other period. Several at least of its members were in doubt as to the political course they should follow; they were in doubt where they should find their party associations. To them, debates had therefore a real and present significance. There were some votes to be affected, there were converts to be gained, by speeches even on purely political questions; there were some senators whose votes were not inexorably determined for them by the will of their parties or their constituents. Much that was said had therefore a genuine parliamentary ring. The orators really sought to convince and persuade those who heard them within the easy and almost conversational limits of the old senate chamber. There was little of the mere pronouncing of essays or declamations intended to have their real and only effect elsewhere. In this art of true parliamentary speaking rather than oratory, Van Buren was a master suchas Lord Palmerston afterwards became. He was not eloquent. His speeches, so far as they are preserved, interest the student of political history and not of literature. They are sensible, clear, practical arguments made in rather finished sentences. One does not find quotations from them in books of school declamation. But they served far more effectively the primary end of parliamentary speaking than did the elaborate and powerful disquisitions of Calhoun, or the more splendid flood of Webster's eloquence. Van Buren's speeches were intended to convince, and they did convince some of the men in the seats about him. They were meant to persuade, and they did persuade. They were lucid exhibitions of political principles, generally practical, and touched sufficiently but not morbidly with the theoretical fears so common to our earlier politics. Some of those fears have since been shown to be groundless; but out of many of them has come much that is best in the modern temper of American political institutions. Van Buren's speeches did not rise beyond the reach of popular understanding, although they never warmly touched popular sympathy. They were intended to formulate and spread a political faith in which he plainly saw that there was the material of a party,—a faith founded upon the jealousy of federal activity, however beneficent, which sought to avoid state control or encourage state dependence. The prolixity which was a grave fault of his state papers and political letters was far lessexhibited in his oratorical efforts. His style was generally easy and vigorous, with little of the turgid learning which loaded down many sensible speeches of the time. Now and then, however, he resorted to the sentences of stilted formality which sometimes overtake a good public speaker, as a good actor sometimes lapses into the stage strut.
In Van Buren's senatorial speeches there is nothing to justify the charge of "non-committalism" so much made against him. When he spoke at all he spoke explicitly; and he plainly, though without acerbity, exhibited his likes and dislikes. Jackson was struck with this when he sat in the Senate with him. "I had heard a great deal about Mr. Van Buren," he said, "especially about his non-committalism. I made up my mind that I would take an early opportunity to hear him and judge for myself. One day an important subject was under debate in the Senate. I noticed that Mr. Van Buren was taking notes while one of the senators was speaking. I judged from this that he intended to reply, and I determined to be in my seat when he spoke. His turn came; and he rose and made a clear, straightforward argument, which, to my mind, disposed of the whole subject. I turned to my colleague, Major Eaton, who sat next to me. 'Major,' said I, 'is there anything non-committal about that?' 'No, sir,' said the major." Van Buren scrupulously observed the amenities of debate. He was uniformly courteous towards adversaries; and the calm self-controlsaved him, as some greater orators were not saved, from a descent to the aspersion of motive so common and so futile in political debate. He could not, indeed, help now and then an allusion to the venality and monarchical tendency of the Federalists and their successors; but this was an old formula which strong haters had years before made very popular in the Republican phrase-book, and which, as to the venality, meant nobody in particular.
When in May, 1828, Van Buren left Washington, the country universally recognized him as the chief organizer of the new party and its congressional leader. As such he turned all his skill and industry to win a victory for Jackson and Calhoun. There was never in the history of the United States a more legitimate presidential canvass than that of 1828. The rival candidates distinctly stood for conflicting principles of federal administration. On the one side, under Van Buren's shrewd management, with the theoretical coöperation of Calhoun,—the natural bent of whose mind was now aided and not thwarted by the exigencies of his personal career,—was the party inclined to strict limitation of federal powers, jealous for local powers, hostile to internal improvements by the federal government, inclined to a lower rather than a higher tariff. On the other side was the party strongly national in temper, with splendid conceptions of a powerful and multifariously useful central administration, impatient of the poverties and meannesses of many of the States. The latter party was led by a president with ampler trainingin public life than any American of his time, who sincerely and intelligently believed the principles of his party; and his party held those principles firmly, explicitly, and with practical unanimity. Jefferson, in almost his last letter, written in December, 1825, to William B. Giles, a venerable leader of the Democracy, the "Charles James Fox of Congress," Benton's "statesman of head and tongue," recalled indeed Adams's superiority over all ordinary considerations when the safety of his country had been questioned; but Jefferson declared himself in "the deepest affliction" at the usurpations by which the federal branch, through the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of Congress, was stripping its "colleagues, the state authorities, of the powers reserved to them." The voice from Monticello, feeble with its eighty-three years, and secretly uttered though it was, sounded the summons to a new Democratic battle.
Van Buren and his coadjutors, however, led a party as yet of inclination to principles rather than of principles. It was out of power. There was neither warmth nor striking exaltation in its programme. Its philosophical and political wisdom needed the aid of one of those simple cries for justice which are so potent in political warfare, and a leader to interest and fire the popular temper. Both were at hand. The late defeat of the popular will by the Adams-Clay coalition was the cry; the hero of the military victory most grateful toAmericans was the leader. To this cry and this leader Van Buren skillfully harnessed an intelligible, and at the least a reasonable, political creed. There were thus united nearly all the elements of political strength. Not indeed all, for the record of the leader was weak upon several articles of faith. Jackson had voted in the Senate for internal improvement bills, and among them bills of the most obnoxious character, those authorizing subscriptions to the stocks of private corporations. He had voted against reductions of the tariff. But the votes, it was hoped, exhibited only his inexpertness in applying general principles to actual legislation, or a good-natured willingness to please his constituents by single votes comparatively unimportant. In truth these mistakes were really inconsistencies of the politician, and no more. There had been a long inclination on Jackson's part to the Jeffersonian policy. Over thirty years before, he had in Congress been a strict constructionist and an anti-federalist. In 1801 he had required a candidate desiring his support to be "an admirer of state authority, agreeable to the true literal meaning" of the Constitution, and "banishing the dangerous doctrine of implication." If he were now to have undivided responsibility, this old Democratic trend of his would, it was hoped, be strong enough under Democratic advice. As a candidate, the inconsistencies of a soldier politician were far outweighed by his picturesque and powerful personality. It is commonly thoughtof Jackson that he was a headstrong, passionate, illiterate man, used and pulled about by a few intriguers. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was himself a politician of a high order. His letters are full of shrewd, vigorous, and even managing suggestions of partisan manœuvres. Their political utterances show a highly active and generally sensible though not disciplined mind. He had had long and important experience of civil affairs, in the lower house of Congress, in the federal Senate when he was only thirty years old, in the constitutional convention of his State, in its Supreme Court, later again in the Senate; he had been for eight years before the country as a candidate for its first office, and for many years in public business of large importance. There were two of the most distinguished Americans, men of the ripest abilities and amplest experience, and far removed from rashness, who from 1824 or before had steadily preferred Jackson for the presidency. These were Edward Livingston of Louisiana and De Witt Clinton of New York. Daniel Webster described his manners as "more presidential than those of any of the candidates." Jackson was, he wrote, "grave, mild, and reserved." Unless in Jackson's case there were effects without adequate causes, it is very certain that, with faults of most serious character, he still had the ability, the dignity, and the wisdom of a ruler of a high rank. He was, as very few men are, born to rule.
After Crawford's defeat, Van Buren is creditedwith a skillful management of the alliance of his forces with those of Jackson. There is not yet public, if it exist, any original evidence as to the details of this work. Van Buren's enemies were fond of describing it as full of cunning and trickery, the work of "the little magician;" and later and fairer writers have adopted from these enemies this characterization. But all this seems entirely without proof. Nor is the story probable. The union of the Crawford and Jackson men was perfectly natural. Crawford was a physical wreck, out of public life. Numerous as were the exceptions, his followers and Jackson's included the great majority of the strict constructionists; and but a minority of either of the two bodies held the opposite views. Neither of the two men had, at the last election, been defeated by the other. That Van Buren used at Washington his unrivaled skill in assuaging animosities and composing differences there can be no doubt. After the end of the session in March, 1827, together with Churchill C. Cambreleng, a member of Congress from New York and a close political friend of his, he made upon this mission a tour through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. They visited Crawford, and were authorized to declare that he should support Jackson, but did not wish to aid Calhoun. At Raleigh Van Buren told the citizens that the spirit of encroachment had assumed a new and far more seductive aspect, and could only be resisted by the exercise of uncommon virtues. Passing throughWashington on his way north, he paid a polite visit to Adams, talking with him placidly about Rufus King, Monroe, and the Petersburg horse-races. The President, regarding him as "the great electioneering manager for General Jackson," promptly noted in his diary, when the interview was over, that Van Buren was now acting the part Burr had performed in 1799 and 1800; and he found "much resemblance of character, manners, and even person, between the two men."
As early as 1826 the Van Buren Republicans of New York, and an important part of the Clintonians with the great governor at their head, had determined to support Jackson. Van Buren is said to have concealed his attitude until after his reëlection to the Senate in 1827. But this is a complete error, except as to his public choice of a candidate. His opposition to the Adams-Clay administration, it has already appeared, had been outspoken from 1825. The Jackson candidacy was not indeed definitely announced in New York until 1827. The cry for "Old Hickory" then went up with a sudden unanimity which seemed to the Adams men a bit of devilish magic, but which was the patient prearrangement of a skillful politician appreciating his responsibility, and waiting, as the greatest of living politicians[6]recently told England a statesman ought to wait, until the time was really ripe, until the popular inclination was sufficiently formed to justify action by men in responsible public station.
The opposition to the reëlection of John Quincy Adams in 1828 was sincerely considered by him, and has been often described by others, as singularly causeless, unworthy, and even monstrous. But in truth it led to one of the most necessary, one of the truest, political revolutions which our country has known. Both Adams and Clay were positive and able men. They were resolute that the rather tepid democracy of Monroe should be succeeded by a highly national, a federally active administration. Prior to the election of 1824 Clay had been as nearly in opposition as the era of good feeling permitted. Early in Monroe's administration he had attacked the President's declaration that Congress had no right to construct roads and canals. His criticism, Mr. Schurz tells us in his brilliant and impartial account of the time, "had a strong flavor of bitterness in it;" it was in part made up of "oratorical flings," by which Clay unnecessarily sought to attack and humiliate Monroe. Adams's diary states Clay's opposition to have been "violent, systematic," his course to have been "angry, acrimonious." Late in 1819 Monroe'sfriends had even consulted over the wisdom of defeating Clay's reëlection to the speakership; and still later Clay had, as Mr. Schurz says, fiercely castigated the administration for truckling to foreigners. When Clay came into power, it would have been unreasonable for him to suppose that there must not arise vigorous parliamentary opposition on the part of those who consider themselves the true Republican successors of Monroe, seeking to stop the diversion into strange ways which Clay and Adams had now begun. Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, Adams's secretary of the treasury, and now the Adams candidate for vice-president, had, in one of his annual reports, declared it to be the duty of government "to augment the number and variety of occupations for its inhabitants; to hold out to every degree of labor, and to every modification of skill, its appropriate object and inducement; to organize the whole labor of a country; to entice into the widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber; to call forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving to effort activity and to emulation ardor; to create employment for the greater amount of numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and situations of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of genius, may come into requisition." Nor did this glowing picture of a useful and beneficent government go far beyond the utterances of Rush's senior associate on the presidential ticket. It is certain that it was highly agreeable to Clay.
Surely there could be no clearer political issue presented, on the one side by Van Buren's speeches in the Senate, and on the other by authoritative and solemn declarations of the three chief persons of the administration. Whatever the better side of the issue may have been, no issue was ever a more legitimate subject of a political campaign. It is true that the accusations were unfounded, which were directed against Adams for treachery to the Republican principles he professed after, on adhering to Jefferson, he had resigned his seat in the Senate. He had joined Jefferson on questions of foreign policy and domestic defense, and had, until his election to the presidency, been chiefly concerned with diplomacy. But though the accusations were false, it is true enough that Adams himself had made the issue of the campaign. Nor was it creditable to him that he saw in the opposition something merely personal to himself. If he were wrong upon the issue, as Van Buren and a majority of the people thought, his long public service, his utter integrity, his exalted sense of the obligations of office, ought not to have saved him from the battle or from defeat. How true and deep was this political contest of 1828 one sees in the fact that from it, almost as much as from the triumph of Jefferson, flow the traditions of one of the great American parties, traditions which survived the corruptions of slavery, and are still powerful in party administration.[7]If John QuincyAdams had been elected, and if, as might naturally have been the case, there had followed, at this commencement of railway building, a firm establishment of the doctrine that the national government could properly build roads within the States, it is more than mere speculation to say that the later history of the United States would, whether for the better or the worse, have been very different from what it has been. The dangers to which American institutions would be exposed, if the federal government had become a great power levying taxes upon the whole country to be used in constructing railways, or, what was worse, purchasing stock in railway corporations, and doing this, as it would inevitably have done, according to the amount of pressure here or there,—such dangers, it is easy to understand, seem, whether rightly or wrongly, appalling to a large class of political thinkers. To realize this sense of danger dissipates the aspect ofdoctrinaireextravagance in the speeches of Adams's opponents against latitudinarian construction.
In the canvass of 1828 there was on both sides more wicked and despicable exhibition of slander than had been known since Jefferson and John Adams were pitted against each other. Jackson was a military butcher and utterly illiterate; thechastity of his wife was doubtful. Adams had corruptly bargained away offices; his accounts of public moneys received by him needed serious scrutiny; and, that the charges might be precisely balanced, he had when minister at St. Petersburg acted as procurer to the Czar of Russia. These lies doubtless defeated themselves; but in each election since 1828 there have been politicians low enough and silly enough to imitate them. To nothing of this kind did Van Buren descend. Nor does it seem that even then he used the cry of a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay, in which Jackson believed as long as he lived. The coalition of 1825, defeating, as it had, a candidate chosen by a larger number of voters than any other, was the most used, and probably the most successfully used, of any of the campaign issues. Nor was this clearly illegitimate, although Adams and many for him have hotly condemned its immorality. Every political coalition between men lately in opposition political and personal, by which both get office, is fairly open to criticism. In experience it has always been full of political danger, although since the prejudice of the times has worn away, the defense of Adams and Clay is seen to be amply sufficient. Whatever had been their mutual dislikes political or personal, each of them was politically and in his practical statesmanship far nearer to the other than to any other of the competitors. But we have yet to see a political campaign against a coalition whose members have been rewarded withoffice, in which this form of attack is not made by men very intelligent and most honest. Nor is there any reason to hold the followers of Jackson to a higher standard. In our own time we have seen two coalitions whose parties wisely recognized this danger. The chief leaders of the Republican revolt in 1884 neither sought nor took office from the former adversaries with whom for once they then acted. The Dissenting Liberals in England did not take office in the Conservative ministry formed in 1886; and the odium which, in the change later made in it, followed Mr. Goschen into its second place, illustrated very well the truth that, however honorable the course may be, it is inevitably dangerous.[8]
Nor can moral condemnation be passed upon the use in 1828 of the defeat in 1824, of the candidate having the largest popular vote. We see pretty clearly in a constitutionally governed country that when power is lawfully lodged with a public man, he must act upon his own judgment; and that, if he be influenced by others, then he ought to be influenced by the wishes and interests of those whosupported him, and not of those who opposed him, even though far more numerous than his supporters. Repeatedly have we seen a state legislature, which the arrangement of districts has caused to be elected from a party in minority in the whole State, choose a federal senator who it was known would have been defeated upon a popular vote; and this without criticism of the conduct of the legislators, but only of the defective district division. In Connecticut it has happened more than once that, neither candidate for governor having a majority vote, the legislature has chosen a candidate having one of the smaller minorities; and here again without criticism of the legislature's morality. But still the general rule of American elections is, that the candidate shall be chosen who is preferred by more votes than any other. To assent to a constitutional defeat of such a preference, but afterwards and under the law to make strong appeal to right the wrong which the law has wrought, seems a highly defensible course, and to deserve little of the criticism visited upon the Jackson canvass of 1828. If party divisions be justifiable, if chief public officers are to be chosen for their views on great questions of state, if the cold appeals of political reasoning are ever rightly strengthened by appeals to popular feelings, the campaign which Van Buren and his associates began in 1825 or 1826 was perfectly justifiable. Nor in its result can any one deny, whether it were for better or worse, that their success in the battle worked a change in the principlesof administration, and not a mere vulgar driving from office of one body of men that another might take their places.
The death of De Witt Clinton left Van Buren easily the largest figure in public life, as he had for several years been the most powerful politician, in New York State. The gossip that the most important place in Jackson's cabinet was really allotted to him before the election of 1828 is probably true. But, whether true or not, there was, apart from a natural desire to administer the first office in his State, obvious advantage to his political prestige in passing successfully through a popular election. The most cynical of managing politicians recognize the enormous strength of a man for whom the people have actually shown that they like to vote. Van Buren may have counted besides upon the advantage which Jackson's personal popularity brought to those in his open alliance, although Adams was known still to have, as the election showed he had, considerable Democratic strength. Van Buren took therefore the Bucktail nomination for governor of New York. The National Republicans, as the Adams men were called, nominated Smith Thompson, a judge of the federal Supreme Court. Van Buren got 136,794 and Thompson 106,444 votes. But in spite of so large a plurality Van Buren did not quite have a majority of the popular vote. Solomon Southwick, the anti-Masonic candidate, received 33,345 votes. It was the first election after this extraordinarymovement. The abduction of Morgan and his probable murder to prevent his revelation of Masonic secrets had occurred in the fall of 1826. The criminal trials consequent upon it had caused intense excitement; and a political issue was easily made, for many distinguished men of both parties were members of that secret order. How powerful for a time may be a popular cry, though based upon an utterly absurd issue, became more obvious still later when electoral votes for president were cast for William Wirt, the anti-Masonic candidate; and when John Quincy Adams, after graduating from the widest experience in public affairs of any American of his generation, was, as he himself records, willing to accept, and when William H. Seward was willing to tender him, a presidential nomination of the anti-Masonic party. As Southwick's preposterous vote was in 1828 drawn from both parties, Van Buren's prestige, although he had but a plurality vote, was increased by his victory at the polls. Jackson very truly said in February, 1832, that it was now "the general wish and expectation of the Republican party throughout the Union" that Van Buren should take the place next to the President in the national administration. Jackson was himself elected by a very great popular and electoral majority. In New York, where on this single occasion the electors were chosen in districts, and where the anti-Masonic vote was cast against Jackson who held high rank in the Masonic order, Adams secured 16 votes toJackson's 18; but to the latter were added the two electors chosen by the thirty-four district electors.
Van Buren's career as governor was very brief. He was inaugurated on January 1, 1829, and at once resigned his seat in the federal Senate. On March 12th of the same year he resigned the governor's seat. His inaugural message is said by Hammond, the political historian of New York, by no means too friendly to Van Buren, to have been "the best executive message ever communicated to the legislature;" and after nearly sixty years, it seems, in the leather-covered tome containing it, a remarkably clear, wise, and courageous paper. The excitement over internal improvements in communication was then at its height. He declared that, whatever difference there might be as to whether such improvements ought to be undertaken by the federal government or by the States, none seriously doubted that it was wise to apply portions of the means of New York to such improvements. The investment of the State in the Delaware and Hudson canal, then just completed, had, he thought, been "crowned with the most cheering success." Splendid, too, as had been the success of the Erie and Champlain canals, it was still clear that all had not been equally benefited. The friends of the state road and of the Chemung and Chenango canals had urged him to recommend for them a legislative support. But it was a time, he said, for "the utmost prudence and circumspection" upon that "delicate and vitally interesting subject."
The banking question, he told the legislature, would make the important business of its session. It turned out besides to be one of the important businesses of Van Buren's career. To meet the attacks upon him for having once been interested in a bank, he dexterously recited that, "having for many years ceased to have an interest in those institutions and declined any agency in their management," he was conscious of his imperfect information. But he could not ignore a matter of such magnitude to their constituents. The whole bank agitation at this time showed the difficulties and scandals caused by the absence of a free banking system, and by the long accustomed grants of exclusive banking charters. Of the forty banks in the State, all specially incorporated, the charters of thirty-one would expire within one, two, three, or four years. Their actual capital was $15,000,000; their outstanding loans, more than $30,000,000. Van Buren urged, therefore, the legislature now to make by general law final disposition of the whole subject. The abolition of banks had, he said, no advocate, and a dependence solely upon those established by federal authority deserved none; but he rejected the idea of a state bank. "Experience," he declared, "has shown that banking operations, to be successful, and consequently beneficial to the community, must be conducted by private men upon their own account." He condemned the practice by which the State accepted a money bonus for granting a bank charter, necessarily involving some monopoly. The concern of the State, he pointed out, should be to make its banks and their circulation secure; and such security was impaired, not increased, by encouraging banks in competition with one another, and "stimulated by the golden harvest in view," to make large payments for their charters. He submitted for legislative consideration the idea of the "safety fund" communicated to him in an interesting and intelligent paper by Joshua Forman. Under this system all the banks of the State, whatever their condition, were to contribute to a fund to be administered under state supervision, the fund to be a security for all dishonored bank-notes. To this extent all the banks were to insure or indorse the circulation of each bank, thus saving the scandal and loss arising from the occasional failure of banks to redeem their notes, and making every bank watchful of all its associates. In compelling the banks to submit to some general scheme, the representative of the people would indeed, he said, enter into "conflict with the claims of the great moneyed interest of the country; but what political exhibition so truly gratifying as the return to his constituents of the faithful public servant after having turned away every approach and put far from him every sinister consideration!"
Van Buren proposed a separation of state from national elections; a question still discussed, and upon each side of which much is to be said. He attacked the use of money in elections, "the practice of employing persons to attend the polls for compensation, of placing large sums in the hands of others to entertain the electors," and other devices by which the most valuable of all our temporal privileges "was brought into disrepute." If the expenses of elections should increase as they had lately done, the time would soon arrive "when a man in middling circumstances, however virtuous, will not be able to compete upon anything like equal terms with a wealthy opponent." In long advance of a modern agitation for reform which, lately beginning with us, will, it is to be hoped, not cease until the abuses are removed, he proposed a law imposing "severe and enforcible penalties upon the advance of money by individuals for any purposes connected with the election except the single one of printing."
Turning to the field of general politics, he again declared the political faith to whose support he wished to rally his party. That "a jealousy of the exercise of delegated political power, a solicitude to keep public agents within the precise limits of their authority, and an assiduous adherence to a rigid and scrupulous economy, were indications of a contracted spirit unbecoming the character of a statesman," he pronounced to be a political heresy, from which he himself had not been entirely free, but which ought at once to be exploded. Official discretion, as a general rule, could not be confided to any one without danger of abuse. But he reproved the parsimony which disagreeably characterized the democracy of the time, and which inadequately paid great public servants like the chancellor and judges. In the tendency of the federal government to encroach upon the States lay, he thought, the danger of the federal Constitution. But of the disposition and capacity of the American people to resist such encroachments as our political history recorded, there were, he said, without naming either Adams, "two prominent and illustrious instances." As long as that good spirit was preserved, the republic would be safe; and for that preservation every patriot ought to pray.
The reputation of the country had in some degree suffered, he said, from "the uncharitable and unrelenting scrutiny to which private as well as public character" had been subjected in the late election. But this injury had been "relieved, if not removed, by seeing how soon the overflowing waters of bitterness" had spent themselves, and "that already the current of public feeling had resumed its accustomed channels." These excesses were the price paid for the full enjoyment of the right of opinion. With an assertion of "perfect deference to that sacred privilege, and in the humble exercise of that portion of it" which belonged to him, and of a sincere desire not to offend the feelings of those who differed from him, he ended his message by congratulating the legislature upon the election of Jackson and Calhoun. This result, he said in words not altogether insincere or untrue,but full of the unfairness of partisan dispute, infused fresh vigor into the American political system, refuted the odious imputation that republics are ungrateful, dissipated the vain hope that our citizens could be influenced by aught save appeals to their understanding and love of country, and finally exhibited in "bold relief the omnipotence of public opinion, and the futility of all attempts to overawe it by the denunciation of power, or to reduce it by the allurements of patronage."
Among the Hoyt letters, afterwards published by Van Buren's rancorous enemy, Mackenzie, are two letters of his upon his patronage as governor. It is not unfair to suppose that he wrote many other letters like them, and they give a useful glimpse of the distribution of offices at Albany sixty years ago. These letters to Hoyt were of the most confidential character, and showed a strong but not uncontrolled desire to please party friends and to meet party expectations. But in none of them is there a suggestion of anything dishonorable. He asked, "When will the Republican party be made sensible of the indispensable necessity of nominating none but true and tried men, so that when they succeed they gain something?" He was unable to oblige his "good friend Coddington ... in relation to the health appointments." Dr. Westervelt's claims were "decidedly the strongest; and much was due to the relations in which he stood to Governor Tompkins, especially from one who knew so well what the latter has done and suffered forthis State." He wrote of Marcy, whom he appointed a judge of the supreme court, that he "was so situated that I must make him a judge or ruin him." All this is doubtless not unlike what the best of public officers have sometimes said and thought, though rarely written; and, like most talk over patronage, it is not in very exalted tone. But if Van Buren admitted as one of Westervelt's claims to public office that he was of a Whig family and a Democrat "from his cradle," he found among his other claims that he was "a gentleman and a man of talent," and had been "three years in the hospital and five years deputy health officer, until he was cruelly removed." Dr. Manley he refused to remove from the health office, because "his extraordinary capacity is universally admitted;" and pointed out that the removal "could only be placed on political grounds, and as he was a zealous Jackson man at the last election, that could not have been done without danger." "I should not," he said, however, "have given Manley the office originally, if I could have found a competent Republican to take it." William L. Marcy, whom he made judge, was already known as one of the ablest men in the State, and his appointment was admirable, though his salvation from ruin, if Van Buren was speaking seriously, was not a public end fit to be served by high judicial appointment. John C. Spencer, one of the best lawyers of New York, was appointed by Van Buren special counsel for the prosecution of Morgan'smurderers. Hammond wondered "how so rigid a party man as Mr. Van Buren was, came to appoint a political opponent to so important an office," but concluded that it was a fine specimen of his peculiar tact, because Spencer, though a man of talents and great moral courage, might be defeated in the prosecution, and thus be injured with the anti-Masons; while if he succeeded, his vigor and fidelity would draw upon him Masonic hostility. But the simpler explanation is the more probable. Van Buren desired to adhere in this, as he did in most of his appointments, to a high standard. Upon this particular appointment his own motives might be distrusted; and he therefore went to the ranks of his adversaries for one of their most distinguished and invulnerable leaders. Van Buren was long condemned as a "spoils" politician; but he was not accused of appointing either incompetent or dishonest men to office. In the great place of governor he must have already begun to see how difficult and dangerous was this power of patronage. It must be fairly admitted that he pretty carefully limited, by the integrity and efficiency of the public service, the political use which he made of his appointments,—a use made in varying degrees by every American holding important executive power from the first Adams to our own time.
On March 12, 1829, Governor Van Buren resigned his office with the hearty and unanimous approval of his party friends, whom he gathered together on receiving Jackson's invitation to Washington. He was in their hands, he said, and should abide by their decision. Both houses of the legislature passed congratulatory and even affectionate resolutions; and his brief and brilliant career in the executive chamber of the State ended happily, as does any career which ends that a seemingly greater one may begin.
Van Buren was appointed secretary of state on March 5, 1829; but did not reach Washington until the 22d, and did not act as secretary until April 4. James A. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, but then an influential Jackson man, was acting secretary in the meantime. The two years of Van Buren's administration of this office are perhaps the most picturesque years of American political history. The Eaton scandal; the downfall of Calhoun's political power; the magical success of Van Buren; the "kitchen cabinet;" the odious removals from office, and the outcries of the removed; the fiery passion of Jackson; the horror both real and affected of the opposition,—all these have been an inexhaustible quarry to historical writers. Until very recently the larger use has been made of the material derived from hostile sources; and it has seemed easy to paint pictures of this really important time in the crudest and highest colors of dislike. The American democracy, at last let loose, driven by Jackson with a sort of demoniac energy and cunningly used by Van Burenfor his own selfish and even Mephistophelian ends, is supposed to have broken from every sound and conservative principle. Perhaps for no other period in our history has irresponsible and unverified campaign literature of the time so largely become authority to serious writers; and for no other period does truth more strongly require a judgment upon well established results rather than upon partisan rumor and gossip. During these years there was definitely and practically formed, under the auspices of Jackson's administration, a political creed, a body of principles or tendencies in politics which have ever since strongly held the American people. Some of them have become established by a universal acquiescence. During the same years there began an extension into federal politics of the "spoils system," which has been an evil second only to slavery, and from which we are only now recovering. To Van Buren more than to any man of his time must be awarded the credit of forming the creed of the Jacksonian Democracy. And in the shame of the abuse, which has so greatly tended to neutralize the soundest articles of political faith, Van Buren must participate with other and inferior men of his own time, and with the very greatest of the men who followed him. In this narrative it is impossible to ignore some of the petty and undignified details which characterized the time,—details from part of the discredit of which Van Buren cannot escape. But it would lead to gross error to let such details obscure the vital and lastingpolitical work of the highest order in which Van Buren was a central and controlling power.
Besides Van Buren, Jackson's cabinet included Ingham of Pennsylvania in the Treasury, Eaton in the War Department, Branch in the Navy, Berrien of Georgia attorney-general, and Barry of Kentucky in the Post-Office, succeeding McLean, who after a short service was appointed to the Supreme Court. Eaton, Branch, and Berrien had been federal senators, the first chiefly commended by Jackson's strong personal liking for him. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien represented, or were supposed to represent, the Calhoun influence. Van Buren in ability and reputation easily stood head and shoulders above his associates. When he left Albany for Washington he was believed to have done more than any one else to secure the Republican triumph; and if Webster's recollections twenty years later were correct, he did more to prevent "Mr. Adams's reëlection in 1828, and to obtain General Jackson's election, than any other man—yes, than any ten other men—in the country." He was the first politician in the party; Calhoun and he were its most distinguished statesmen. Already the succession after Jackson belonged to one of them, the only doubt being to which; and in that doubt was stored up a long and complicated feud. The rivalry between these two great men was inevitable; it was not dishonorable to either. Calhoun's fame was the older; he was already one of the junior candidates for the presidency, popular in Pennsylvania and even in New England, when Van Buren was hardly known out of New York. In 1829 he had been chosen vice-president for the second time. He had shown talents of a very high order. But he had now suffered some years from the presidential fever which distorts the vision, and which, when popularity wanes, becomes heavy with enervating melancholy. He was an able doctrinaire, but narrow and dogmatic. The jealous and ravenous temper of the rich slaveholders of South Carolina already possessed him. He was a Southern man; and all the presidents thus far, except the elder and younger Adams, had been Southerners. In 1824 he had stood indifferent between Jackson and Adams, and in Jackson's final triumph had borne no decisive part. Van Buren's wider, richer, and more constructive mind, his superior political judgment, his mellower personality, his practical skill in affairs, sufficiently explain his victory over Calhoun, without resort to the bitter rumors of tricks and magical manœuvres spread by Calhoun's and Clay's friends, and which, though without authentic corroboration, have to our own day been widely accepted.
Before Jackson's inauguration, Calhoun sought to prevent Van Buren's selection for the State Department. He told the general that Tazewell of Virginia ought to be appointed. New York, he said, would have been secured by Clinton if he had lived; but now New York needed no appointment. Jackson listened coldly to the plainlyjealous appeal; and James A. Hamilton, who was at the time on intimate terms with Jackson, supposed it to be Calhoun's last interview with Jackson about the cabinet. Van Buren had been Jackson's choice a year ago; and to all the reasons which had then existed were now added his great services in the canvass, and the prestige of his popular election as governor.
The episode of Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the new secretary of war, was absurd enough in a constitutionally governed country; but this silly "court scandal," which might very well have enlivened the pages of a secretary of a privy council or an ambassador from a petty German prince, did no more than hasten the inevitable division. In the hastening, however, Van Buren doubtless reaped some profit in Jackson's greater friendship. Many respectable people in Washington believed that unchastity on the part of this lady had induced her former husband, Timberlake, to cut his throat. Her second marriage to Eaton had just taken place in January, 1829, after Jackson, learning of the scandal but disbelieving it, had said to Eaton, "Your marrying her will disprove these charges, and restore Peg's good name." The general treated with violent contempt the persons, some of them clergymen, "whose morbid appetite," he wrote the Rev. Dr. Ely on March 23, 1829, "delights in defamation and slander." Burning with anger at those who had dared in the recent canvass to malign his own wife now dead, he defended with chivalrous resolution the lady whom his own wife "to the last moment of her life believed ... to be an innocent and much-injured woman." Even Mrs. Madison, he said, "was assailed by these fiends in human shape." When protests were made against Eaton's appointment to the cabinet, Jackson savagely cried, "I will sink or swim with him, by God!" All this had happened before Van Buren reached Washington. There then followed the grave question, whether Mrs. Eaton should be adjudged guilty by society and sentenced to exclusion from its ceremonious enjoyments. The ladies generally were determined against her, even the ladies of Jackson's own household. Jackson proposed the task, impossible even to an emperor, of compelling recognition of this distressed and persecuted consort of a minister of state. The unfortunate married men in the cabinet were in embarrassment indeed. They would not if they could, so they said,—or at least they could not if they would,—induce their wives to visit or receive visits from the wife of their colleague. Jackson showed them very clearly that no other course would satisfy him. Calhoun in his matrimonial state was at the same disadvantage. Even foreign ministers and their wives met the President's displeasure for not properly treating the wife of the American secretary of war.
When Van Buren entered this farcical scene, his widowed condition, and the fortune of having sons rather than daughters, left him quite unembarrassed. He politely called upon his associate's wife, as he called upon the others; he treated her with entire deference of manner. It is probable, though by no means clear, for popular feeling was supposed to run high in sacred defense of the American home, that this was the more politic course. It is now, however, certain that by doing so he gave to Jackson, and some who were personally very close to Jackson, more gratification than he gave offense elsewhere; and this has been the occasion of much aspersion of Van Buren's motives. But whether his course were politic or not, it is easy enough to see that any other course would have been inexcusable. It would have been dastardly in the extreme for Van Buren, reaching Washington and finding a controversy raging whether or not the wife of one of his associates were virtuous, to pronounce her guilty, as he most unmistakably would have done had he refused her the attention which etiquette required him to pay all ladies in her position. Parton in his Life of Jackson quotes from an anonymous Washington correspondent, whose account he says was "exaggerated and prejudiced but not wholly incorrect," the story that Van Buren induced the British and Russian ministers, both of whom to their immediate peace of mind happened to be bachelors, to treat Mrs. Eaton with distinction at their entertainments. But the supposition seems quite gratuitous. Neither of those unmarried diplomats was likely to do so absurdly indefensible a thing as to insult bymarked exclusion a cabinet minister's wife, whom the President for any reason, good or bad, treated with special distinction and respect. Van Buren's common sense was a strong characteristic; and he doubtless looked upon the whole affair with amused contempt. As the cabinet officer who had most to do with social ceremonies, he may well have sought to calm the irritation and establish for Mrs. Eaton, where he could, the usual forms of civility. Like many other blessings of etiquette, these forms permit one to hold unoffending neutrality upon the moral deserts of persons whom he meets. It happened that Calhoun's friends had tried to prevent Eaton's appointment to the War Department, and afterwards sought to remove him from the cabinet. The episode added, therefore, keen edge to the growing hostility of Jackson and his near friends to Calhoun, and thus tended to strengthen his rival. But all this would have signified little but for something deeper and broader. The preference of Van Buren had been dictated by powerful causes long before Mrs. Timberlake became Mrs. Eaton. These causes now grew more and more powerful.
Calhoun was serving his second term as Vice-President. A third term for that office was obnoxious to the rule already established for the presidency. Calhoun therefore desired Jackson to be content with one term; for if he took a second, Calhoun feared, and with good reason, that he himself, being then out of the vice-presidency, and so no longer in sight on that conspicuous seatof preparation, might fall dangerously out of mind. So it was soon known that Calhoun's friends were opposed to a second term for Jackson. At a Pennsylvania meeting on March 31, 1830, the opposition was openly made. Before this, and quite apart from Jackson's natural hostility to the nullification theory which had arisen in Calhoun's State, he had conceived a strong dislike for Calhoun for a personal reason. With this Van Buren had nothing whatever to do, so far as appears from any evidence better than the uncorroborated rumors which ascribe to Van Buren's magic every incident which injured Calhoun's standing with Jackson. Years before, Monroe's cabinet had discussed the treatment due Jackson for his extreme measures in the Seminole war. Calhoun, then secretary of war, had favored a military trial of the victorious general; but John Quincy Adams and Monroe had defended him, as did also Crawford, the secretary of the treasury. For a long while Jackson had erroneously supposed that Calhoun was the only member of the cabinet in his favor; and Calhoun had not undeceived him. Some time before Jackson's election, Hamilton had visited Crawford to promote the desired reconciliation between him and the general; and a letter was written by Governor Forsyth of Georgia to Hamilton, quoting Crawford's explanation of the real transactions in Monroe's cabinet. Jackson was ignorant of all this until a dinner given by him in honor of Monroe in November, 1829. Ringold, apersonal friend of Monroe's, in a complimentary speech at seeing Jackson and Monroe seated together, said to William B. Lewis that Monroe had been "the only one of his cabinet" friendly to Jackson in the Seminole controversy; and after dinner the remark, after being discussed between Lewis and Eaton the secretary of war, was repeated by the latter to Jackson, who said he must be mistaken. Lewis then told Jackson of Forsyth's letter, which greatly excited him, already disliking Calhoun as he did, and not unnaturally susceptible about his reputation in a war which had been the subject of violent and even savage attacks upon him in the recent canvass. Jackson sent at once to New York for the letter. But Hamilton was unwilling to give it without Forsyth's permission; and when Forsyth, on the assembling of Congress, was consulted, he preferred that Crawford should be directly asked for the information. This was done, and Crawford wrote an account which in May, 1830, Jackson sent to Calhoun with a demand for an explanation. Calhoun admitted that he had, after hearing of the seizure of the Spanish forts in Florida and Jackson's execution of the Englishmen Arbuthnot and Ambrister, expressed an opinion against him, and proposed an investigation of his conduct by a court of inquiry. He further told Jackson, with much dignity of manner, that the latter was being used in a plot to effect Calhoun's political extinction and the exaltation of his enemies. The President received Calhoun's letter onhis way to church, and upon his return from religious meditation wrote to the Vice-President that "motives are to be inferred from actions and judged by our God;" that he had long repelled the insinuations that it was Calhoun, and not Crawford, who had secretly endeavored to destroy his reputation; that he had never expected to say to Calhoun, "Et tu, Brute!" and that there need be no further communication on the subject. Thus was finally established the breach between Calhoun and Jackson, which this personal matter had widened but had by no means begun. In none of it did Van Buren have any part. When Jackson sent Lewis to him with Calhoun's letter and asked his opinion, he refused to read it, saying that an attempt would undoubtedly be made to hold him responsible for the rupture, and he wished to be able to say that he knew nothing of it. This course was doubtless politic, and deserves no applause; but it was also simply right. On getting this message Jackson said, "I reckon Van is right; I dare say they will attempt to throw the whole blame on him."