A few weeks before, on April 13, 1830, the dinner to celebrate Jefferson's birthday was held at Washington. It was attended by the President and Vice-President, the cabinet officers, and many other distinguished persons. There were reports at the time that it was intended to use Jefferson's name in support of the state-rights doctrines, and against internal improvements and a protectivetariff. This shows how clearly were already recognized some of the great causes underlying the political movements and personal differences of the time. The splendid parliamentary encounter between Hayne and Webster had taken place but two or three months before. In his speech Hayne, who was understood, as Benton tells us, to give voice to the sentiments of Calhoun, had plainly enough stated the doctrine of nullification. Jackson at the dinner robustly confronted the extremists with his famous toast, "Our federal Union: it must be preserved." Calhoun, already conscious of his leadership in a sectional controversy, followed with the sentiment, true indeed, but said in words very sinister at that time: "The Union: next to our liberty the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union." The secretary of state next rose with a toast with little ring or inspiration in it, but plainly, though in conciliatory phrase, declaring for the Union. He asked the company to drink, "Mutual forbearance and reciprocal concessions: through their agency the Union was established. The patriotic spirit from which they emanated will forever sustain it."
Van Buren was now definitely a candidate for the succession. His Northern birth and residence, his able leadership in Congress of the opposition to the Adams administration, his almost supreme political power in the first State of the Union, hisclear and systematic exposition of an intelligible and timely political creed, the support his friends gave to Jackson's reëlection,—all these advantages were now reënforced by the tendency to disunion clear in the utterances from South Carolina, by Calhoun's efforts to exclude Van Buren and Eaton from the cabinet, by the hostility to Mrs. Eaton of the ladies in the households of Calhoun and of his friends in the cabinet, and now by Jackson's discovery that, at a critical moment of his career ten years before, Calhoun had sought his destruction. Here was a singular union of really sound reasons why Van Buren should be preferred by his party and by the country for the succession over Calhoun, with the strongest reasons why Jackson, and those close to him, should be in most eager personal sympathy with the preference. In December, 1829, Jackson had explicitly pronounced in favor of Van Buren. This was in the letter to Judge Overton of Tennessee, which Lewis is doubtless correct in saying he asked Jackson to write lest the latter should die before his successor was chosen. Jackson himself drafted the letter, which Lewis copied with some verbal alteration; and the letter sincerely expressed his own strong opinions. After alluding to the harmony between Van Buren and his associates in the War and Post-Office Departments, he said: "I have found him everything that I could desire him to be, and believe him not only deserving my confidence, but the confidence of the nation. Instead of his being selfish andintriguing, as has been represented by some of his opponents, I have ever found him frank, open, candid, and manly. As a counselor, he is able and prudent, republican in his principles, and one of the most pleasant men to do business with I ever knew. He, my dear friend, is well qualified to fill the highest office in the gift of the people, who in him will find a true friend and safe depositary of their rights and liberty. I wish I could say as much for Mr. Calhoun and some of his friends." He criticised Calhoun for his silence on the bank question, for his encouragement of the resolution in the South Carolina legislature relative to the tariff, and for his objection to the apportionment of the surplus revenues after the national debt should be paid. Jackson had not yet definitely learned from Forsyth's letter about Calhoun's attitude in Monroe's cabinet; but his well-aroused suspicion doubtless influenced his expression. His strong personal liking for the secretary of state had been evident from the beginning of the administration. In a letter to Jesse Hoyt of April 13, 1829, the latter wrote that he had found the President affectionate, confidential, and kind to the last degree, and that he believed there was no degree of good feeling or confidence which the president did not entertain for him. In July he wrote to Hamilton: "The general grows upon me every day. I can fairly say that I have become quite enamored with him."
The break between Calhoun and Jackson waskept from the public until early in 1831. In the preceding winter, Duff Green, the editor of the "Telegraph," until then the administration newspaper, but still entirely committed to Calhoun, sought to have the publication of the Calhoun-Jackson correspondence accompanied by a general outburst from Republican newspapers against Jackson. The storm, Benton tells us, was to seem so universal, and the indignation against Van Buren so great, that even Jackson's popularity would not save the prime minister. Jackson's friends, Barry and Kendall, learning of this, called to Washington an unknown Kentuckian to be editor of a new and loyal administration paper. Francis P. Blair was a singularly astute man, whose name, and the name of whose family, afterwards became famous in American politics. He belonged to the race of advisers of great men, found by experience to be almost as important in a democracy as in a monarchy. In February, 1831, Calhoun openly declared war on Jackson by publishing the Seminole correspondence. Green having now been safely reëlected printer to Congress, the "Telegraph," according to the plan, strongly supported Calhoun. The "Globe," Blair's paper, attacked Calhoun and upheld the President. The importance in that day ascribed by politicians to the control of a single newspaper seems curious. In 1823, Van Buren, while a federal senator, was interested in the "Albany Argus," almost steadily from that time until the present the ably managedorgan of the Albany Regency;[9]and he then confidentially wrote to Hoyt: "Without a paper thus edited at Albany we may hang our harps on the willows. With it, the party can survive a thousand such convulsions as those which now agitate and probably alarm most of those around you." This seems an astonishingly high estimate of the power of a paper which, though relatively conspicuous in the State, could have then had but a small circulation. It was, however, the judgment of a most sagacious politician. In 1822 he complained to Hoyt that his expenses of this description were too heavy. In 1833 James Gordon Bennett, then a young journalist of Philadelphia, wrote Hoyt a plain intimation that money was necessary to enable him to continue his journalistic warfare in Van Buren's behalf. Anguish, disappointment, despair, he said, brooded over him, while Van Buren chose to sit still and sacrifice those who had supported him in every weather. Van Buren replied that he could not directly or indirectly afford pecuniary aid to Bennett's press, and more particularly as he was then situated; that if Bennett could not continue friendly to him on public grounds and with perfect independence, he could only regret it, but he desired no other support. He added, however,not to burn his ships behind him, that he had supposed there would be no difficulty in obtaining money in New York, if their "friends in Philadelphia could not all together make out to sustain one press." Thus was invited a powerful animosity, vindictively shown even when Van Buren was within three years of his death.
Soon after his arrival Blair entered the famous Kitchen Cabinet, a singularly talented body, fond enough indeed of "wire-pulling," but with clear and steady political convictions. William B. Lewis had long been a close personal friend of Jackson and manager of his political interests, and had but recently earned his gratitude by rushing successfully to the defense of Mrs. Jackson's reputation. Kendall and Hill were adroit, industrious, skillful men; the former afterwards postmaster-general, and the latter to become a senator from New Hampshire. Blair entered this company full of zeal against nullification and the United States Bank. Jackson himself was so strong-willed a man, so shrewd in management, so skillful in reading the public temper, that the story of the complete domination of this junto over him is quite absurd. The really great abilities of these men and their entire devotion to his interests gained a profound and justifiable influence with him, which occasional petty or unworthy uses made of it did not destroy. No one can doubt that Jackson was confirmed by them in the judgment to which Van Buren urged him upon great political issues. Thesecretary of state refused to give the new paper of Blair any of the printing of his department, lest its origin should be attributed to him, and because he wished to be able to say truly that he had nothing to do with it. Kendall, who lived through the civil war, strongly loyal to the Union and to Jackson's memory, to die a wealthy philanthropist, declared in his autobiography, and doubtless correctly, that the "Globe" was not established by Van Buren or his friends, but by friends of Jackson who desired his reëlection for another four years. Nevertheless Van Buren was held responsible for the paper; and its establishment was soon followed by the dissolution of the cabinet.
This explosion, it is now clear, was of vast advantage to the cause of the Union. It took place in April, 1831, and in part at least was Van Buren's work. On the 9th of that month he wrote to Edward Livingston, then a senator from Louisiana spending the summer at his seat on the Hudson River, asking him to start for Washington the day after he received the letter, and to avoid speculation "by giving out that" he was "going to Philadelphia." Livingston wrote back from Washington to his wife that Van Buren had taken the high and popular ground that, as a candidate for the presidency, he ought not to remain in the cabinet when its public measures would be attributed to his intrigue, and thus made to injure the President; and that Van Buren's place was pressed upon him "with all the warmth of friendship and every appeal to my love of country."
Van Buren, with courageous skill, put his resignation to the public distinctly on the ground of his own political aspiration. On April 11, 1831, he wrote to the President a letter for publication, saying that from the moment he had entered the cabinet it had been his "anxious wish and zealous endeavor to prevent a premature agitation of the question" of the succession, "and at all events to discountenance, and if possible repress, the disposition, at an early day manifested," to connect his name "with that disturbing topic." Of "the sincerity and constancy of his disposition" he appealed to the President to judge. But he had not succeeded, and circumstances beyond his control had given the subject a turn which could not then "be remedied except by a self-disfranchisement, which, even if dictated by" his "individual wishes, could hardly be reconcilable with propriety or self-respect." In the situation existing at the time, "diversities of ulterior preference among the friends of the administration" were unavoidable, and he added: "Even if the respective advocates of those thus placed in rivalship be patriotic enough to resist the temptation of creating obstacles to the advancement of him to whose elevation they are opposed, by embarrassing the branch of public service committed to his charge, they are nevertheless, by their position, exposed to the suspicion of entertaining and encouraging such views,—a suspicion which can seldom fail, in the end, to aggravate into present alienation and hostility theprospective differences which first gave rise to it." The public service, he said, required him to remove such "obstructions" from "the successful prosecution of public affairs;" and he intimated, with the affectation of self-depreciation which was disagreeably fashionable among great men of the day, that the example he set would, "notwithstanding the humility of its origin," be found worthy of respect and observance. When four years later he accepted the presidential nomination he repeated the sentiment of this letter, but more explicitly, saying that his "name was first associated with the question of General Jackson's successor more through the ill-will of opponents than the partiality of friends." This seemed very true. For every movement which had tended to commit the administration or its chief against Calhoun or his doctrines, he had been held responsible as a device to advance himself. His adversaries had proclaimed him not so much a public officer as a self-seeking candidate. It was a rare and true stroke of political genius to admit his aspiration to the presidency; to deny his present candidacy and his self-seeking; but, lest the clamor of his enemies should, if he longer held his office, throw doubt upon his sincerity, to withdraw from that station, and to prevent the continued pretense that he was using official opportunities, however legitimately, to increase his public reputation or his political power. Thus would the candidacy be thrust on him by his enemies. In his letter he announced that Jackson hadconsented to stand for reëlection; and that, "without a total disregard of the lights of experience," he could not shut his eyes to the unfavorable influence which his continuance in the cabinet might have upon Jackson's own canvass in 1832.
In accepting the resignation Jackson declared the reasons which the letter had presented too strong to be disregarded, thus practically assenting to Van Buren's candidacy to succeed him. Jackson looked with sorrow, he said, upon the state of things Van Buren had described. But it was "but an instance of one of the evils to which free governments must ever be liable," an evil whose remedy lay "in the intelligence and public spirit of" their "common constituents," who would correct it; and in that belief he found "abundant consolation." He added that, with the best opportunities for observing and judging, he had seen in Van Buren no other desire than "to move quietly on in the path of" his duties, and "to promote the harmonious conduct of public affairs." "If on this point," he apostrophized the departing premier, "you have had to encounter detraction, it is but another proof of the utter insufficiency of innocence and worth to shield from such assaults."
Never was a presidential candidate more adroitly or less dishonorably presented to his party and to the country. For the adroitness lay in the frank avowal of a willingness or desire to be president and a resolution to be a candidate,—for which,so far as their conduct went, his adversaries were really responsible,—and in seizing an undoubted opportunity to serve the public. Quite apart from the sound reason that the secretary of state should not, if possible, be exposed in dealing with public questions to aspersions upon his motives, as Van Buren was quite right in saying that he would be, it was also clear that the cabinet was inharmonious; and that its lack of harmony, whatever the facts or wherever the fault, seriously interfered with the public business. The administration and the country, it was obvious, were now approaching the question of nullification, and upon that question it was but patriotic to desire that its members should firmly share the union principles of their chief. Within a few weeks after the dissolution of the cabinet, Jackson seized the opportunity afforded him by an invitation from the city of Charleston to visit it on the 4th of July, to sound in the ears of nullification a ringing blast for the Union. If he could go, he said, he trusted to find in South Carolina "all the men of talent, exalted patriotism, and private worth," however divided they might have been before, "united before the altar of their country on the day set apart for the solemn celebration of its independence,—independence which cannot exist without union, and with it is eternal." The disunion sentiments ascribed to distinguished citizens of the State were, he hoped, if indeed they were accurately reported, "the effect of momentary excitement, not deliberate design." For all thework then performed in defense of the Union, Jackson and his advisers of the time must share with Webster and Clay the gratitude of our own and all later generations. The burst of loyalty in April, 1861, had no less of its genesis in the intrepid front and the political success of the national administration from 1831 to 1833, than in the pathetic and glorious appeals and aspirations of the great orators.
Jackson now called to the work Edward Livingston, privileged to perform in it that service of his which deserves a splendid immortality. He became secretary of state on May 24, 1831. Eaton, the secretary of war, voluntarily resigned to become governor of Florida; and Barry, the postmaster-general, who was friendly to the reorganization, was soon appointed minister to Spain, in which post Eaton later succeeded him. Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, the Calhoun members, were required to resign. The new cabinet, apart from the state department, was on the whole far abler than the old; indeed, it was one of the ablest of American cabinets. Below Livingston at the council table sat McLane of Delaware, recalled from the British mission to take the treasury, Governor Cass of Michigan, and Senator Woodbury of New Hampshire, secretaries of war and navy. Amos Kendall brought to the post-office his extraordinary astuteness and diligence in administration; and Taney, later the chief justice, was attorney-general. The executive talents of this body of men, loyal asthey were to the plans of Jackson and Van Buren, promised, and they afterwards brought, success in the struggle for the principles now adopted by the party, as well as for the control of the government. Van Buren stood as truly for a policy of state as ever stood any candidate before the American people. One finds it agreeable now to escape for a moment from the Washington atmosphere of personal controversy and ambition. It is not to be forgotten, however, that a like atmosphere has surrounded even those political struggles in America, only three or four in number, which have been greater and deeper than that in which Jackson and Van Buren were the chief figures. From this temper of personal controversy and ambition the greatest political benefactors of history have not been free, so inevitable is the mingling with large affairs of the varied personal motives, conscious and unconscious, of those who transact them.
When Van Buren left the first place in Jackson's cabinet, the latter, too, at last stood for the definite policy which he had but imperfectly adopted when he was elected, and which, as a practical and immediate political plan, it is reasonably safe to assert, was most largely the creation of the sagacious mind of his chief associate. Before Van Buren left Albany he had written to Hamilton on February 21, 1829, with reference to Jackson's inaugural: "I hope the general will not find it necessary to avow any opinion upon constitutional questions at war with the doctrines of the Jeffersonschool. Whatever his views may be, there can be no necessity of doing so in an inaugural address." This shows the doubt, which had been caused by some of Jackson's utterances and votes, of his intelligent and systematic adherence to the political creed preached by Van Buren. Jackson's inaugural was colorless and safe enough. Upon strict construction he said that he should "keep steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of the executive power;" that he would be "animated by a proper respect for those sovereign members of our Union, taking care not to confound the powers they have reserved to themselves with those they have granted to the confederacy." The bank he did not mention. And upon the living and really great question, to which Van Buren had given so much study, Jackson said, himself probably having a grim sense of humor at the absurd emptiness of the sentence: "Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the federal government, are of high importance."
Very different was the situation when two years later Van Buren left the cabinet. In several state papers of great dignity and ability and yet popular and interesting in style, Jackson had formulated a political creed closely consistent with that advocated by Van Buren in the Senate. Upon internal improvements, Jackson, on May 27, 1830, sent to the House his famous Maysville Road veto. That road was exclusively within the State of Ohio,and not connected with any existing system of improvements. Jackson very well said that if it could be considered national, no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the general and state governments need be attempted. He pointed out the tendency of such appropriations, little by little, to distort the meaning of the Constitution; and found in former legislation "an admonitory proof of the force of implication, and that necessity of guarding the Constitution with sleepless vigilance against the authority of precedents which have not the sanction of its most plainly defined powers." In his annual message of December, 1830, he referred to the system of federal subscriptions to private corporate enterprises, saying: "The power which the general government would acquire within the several States by becoming the principal stockholder in corporations, controlling every canal and each sixty or hundred miles of every important road, and giving a proportionate vote to all their elections, is almost inconceivable, and in my view dangerous to the liberties of the people." With these utterances ended the very critical struggle to give the federal government a power which even in those days would have been great, and which, as has already been said, had it continued with the growth of railways, would have enormously and radically changed our system of government.
Before he left the Senate Van Buren had pronounced against the Bank of the United States; but Jackson did not mention it in his inaugural. Inhis first annual message, however, Jackson warned Congress that the charter of the bank would expire in 1836, and that deliberation upon its renewal ought to commence at once. "Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank," he said, "are well questioned ...; and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." This was plain enough for a first utterance. A year later he told Congress that nothing had occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which many citizens apprehended from that institution as then organized, though he outlined an institution which should be not a corporation, but a branch of the Treasury Department, and not, as he thought, obnoxious to constitutional objections.
The removal of the Cherokee Indians from within the State of Georgia he defended by considerations which were practically unanswerable. It was dangerously inconsistent with our political system to maintain within the limits of a State Indian tribes, free from the obligations of state laws, having a tribal independence, and bound only by treaty relations with the United States. It was harsh to remove the Indians; but it would have been harsher to them and to the white people of the State to have supported by federal arms an Indian sovereignty within its limits. Jackson, with true Democratic jealousy, refused in his political and executive policy to defer to the merely moralweight of the opinion of the Supreme Court. For in that tribunal political and social exigencies could have but limited force in answering a question which, as the court itself decided, called for a political remedy, which the President and not the court could apply.
The tariff might, Jackson declared, be constitutionally used for protective purposes; but the deliberate policy of his party was now plainly intimated. In his first message he "regretted that the complicated restrictions which now embarrass the intercourse of nations could not by common consent be abolished." In the Maysville veto he said that, "as long as the encouragement of domestic manufactures" was "directed to national ends," ... it should receive from him "a temperate but steady support." But this is to be read with the expression in the same paper that the people had a right to demand "the reduction of every tax to as low a point as the wise observance of the necessity to protect that portion of our manufactures and labor, whose prosperity is essential to our national safety and independence, will allow." This encouragement was, he said in his inaugural, to be given to those products which might be found "essential to our national independence." In his second message he declared "the obligations upon all the trustees of political power to exempt those for whom they act from all unnecessary burdens;" that "the resources of the nation beyond those required for the immediate and necessary purposes of government can nowhere be so well deposited as in the pockets of the people;" that "objects of national importance alone ought to be protected;" and that "of those the productions of our soil, our mines, and our workshops, essential to national defense, occupy the first rank." Other domestic industries, having a national importance, and which might, after temporary protection, compete with foreign labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same attention in a subordinate degree. The economic light here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps as strong as it often is in a political paper. Jackson's conclusion was that the tariff then existing taxed some of the comforts of life too highly; protected interests too local and minute to justify a general exaction; and forced some manufactures for which the country was not ripe.
All this practical and striking growth in political science had taken place during the two years of Jackson's and Van Buren's almost daily intercourse at Washington. It is impossible from materials yet made public to point out with precision the latter's handiwork in each of these papers. James A. Hamilton describes his own long nights at the White House on the messages of 1829 and 1830; and his were not the only nights of the kind spent by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other strong men, and like some whose opportunities of education had been far ampler than his, freely used literary assistance, although, with all his inaccuracies, he himself wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interesting style. But with little doubt the political positions taken in these papers, and which made a definite and lasting creed, were more immediately the work of the secretary of state. The consultations with Van Buren, of which Hamilton tells, are only glimpses of what must continually have gone on. At the time of Jackson's inauguration Hamilton wrote that the latter's confidence was reposed in men in no way equal to him in natural parts, but who had been useful to him in covering "his very lamentable defects of education," and whom, through his reluctance to expose these defects to others, he was compelled to keep about him. He added that Van Buren could never reach the same relation which Lewis held with the general, because the latter would "not yield himself so readily to superior as to inferior minds." This was a mistake. Van Buren's personal loyalty to Jackson, his remarkable tact and delicacy, had promptly aroused in Jackson that extraordinary liking for him which lasted until Jackson died. With this advantage, Van Buren's clear-cut theories of political conduct were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally wise mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they were agreeable, and received there the deference due to the practical sagacity in which Van Buren's obvious political success had proved him to be a master. Van Buren was doubtless greatly aided by the kitchen cabinet. He was careful to keep on good terms with those who had so familiar an access to Jackson. Kendall's singular and usefulability he soon discovered. It was at the latter's instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at the White House, where Van Buren paid him special attention. The influence of the members of the kitchen cabinet with their master has been much exaggerated. Soon after Lewis was appointed, and in spite of his personal intimacy and of his rumored influence with the President, he was, as he wrote to Hamilton, in some anxiety whether he might not be removed; the President had at least, he said, entertained a proposition to remove him, and was therefore, in view of Jackson's great debt to him, no longer entitled to his "friendship or future support."
Very soon after Van Buren's withdrawal from the cabinet, he was accused of primarily and chiefly causing the official proscription of men for political opinions which began in the federal service under Jackson. From that time to the present the accusation has been carelessly repeated from one writer to another, with little original examination of the facts. It is clear that Van Buren neither began nor caused this demoralizing and disastrous abuse. When he reached Washington in 1829, the removals were in full and lamentable progress. In the very first days of the administration, McLean was removed from the office of postmaster-general to a seat in the Supreme Court, because, so Adams after an interview with him wrote in his diary on March 14,1829, "he refused to be made the instrument of the sweeping proscription of postmasterswhich is to be one of the samples of the promised reform." This was a week or two before Van Buren reached Washington. On the same day Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from Washington: "No damned rascal who made use of his office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in, and General Jackson out of power, is entitled to the least lenity or mercy, save that of hanging.... Whether or not I shall get anything in the general scramble for plunder remains to be proven; but I rather guess I shall.... I know Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend you to push like a devil, if you expect anything from that quarter.... If I can only keep my own legs, I shall do well; but I'm darned if I can carry any weight with me." This man, against Van Buren's earnest protest and to his great disturbance, had some of the devil's luck in pushing. He was appointed collector of customs at New York,—one of the principal financial officers in the country. It is not altogether unsatisfactory to read of the scandalous defalcation of which he was afterwards guilty, and of the serious injury it dealt his party. The temper which he exposed so ingenuously, filled Washington at the time. Nor did it come only or chiefly from one quarter of the country. Kendall, then fresh from Kentucky, who had been appointed fourth auditor, wrote to his wife, with interestingly mingled sentiments: "I turned out six clerks on Saturday. Several of them have families and are poor. It was the most painful thing I ever did;but I could not well get along without it. Among them is a poor old man with a young wife and several children. I shall help to raise a contribution to get him back to Ohio.... I shall have a private carriage to go out with me and bring my whole brood of little ones. Bless their sweet faces."
Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton from Albany in March, 1829: "If the general makes one removal at this moment he must go on. Would it not be better to get the streets of Washington clear of office-seekers first in the way I proposed?... As to the publication in the newspapers I have more to say. So far as depends on me, my course will be to restore by a single order every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay for political reasons, unless circumstances of a personal character have since arisen which would make the reappointment in any case improper. To ascertain that will take a little time. There I would pause." Among the Mackenzie letters is one from Lorenzo Hoyt, describing an interview with Van Buren while governor, and then complaining that the latter would "not lend the utmost weight of his influence to displace from office such men as John Duer," Adams's appointee as United States attorney at New York. If they had been struggling for political success for the benefit of their opponents, he angrily wrote, he wished to know it. He added, however, that, from the behavior of the President thus far, he thought Jacksonwould "go the whole hog." This was before Van Buren reached Washington. In answer to an insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging a removal, and telling the secretary of state that there was a "charm attending bold measures extremely fascinating" which had given Jackson all his glory, Van Buren wrote back: "Here I am engaged in the most intricate and important affairs, which are new to me, and upon the successful conduct of which my reputation as well as the interests of the country depend, and which keep me occupied from early in the morning until late at night. And can you think it kind or just to harass me under such circumstances with letters which no man of common sensibility can read without pain?... I must be plain with you.... The terms upon which you have seen fit to place our intercourse are inadmissible." Ingham, Jackson's secretary of the treasury, the next day wrote to this typical office-seeker that the rage for office in New York was such that an enemy menacing the city with desolation would not cause more excitement. He added, speaking of his own legitimate work: "These duties cannot be postponed; and I do assure you that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of recommendations, etc., without reading them, although I work 18 hours out of the 24 with all diligence. The appointments can be postponed; other matters cannot; and it was one of the prominent errors of the late administration that they suffered many important public interests to beneglected, while they were cruising about to secure or buy up partisans. This we must not do."
Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, condemned the system of removals; and his fairness may well be trusted. He said that in Jackson's first year (in which De Tocqueville, whom he was answering, said that Jackson had removed every removable functionary) there were removed but 690 officers through the whole United States for all causes, of whom 491 were postmasters: the entire number of postmasters being at the time nearly 8000. Kendall, reviewing the first three years of Jackson's administration near their expiration, said that in the city of Washington there had been removed but one officer out of seven, and "most of them for bad conduct and character," a statement some of the significance of which doubtless depends upon what was "bad character," but which still fairly limits the epithet "wholesale" customarily applied to these removals. In the Post-Office Department, he said, the removals had been only one out of sixteen, and in the whole government but one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party purposes; but he was cautious and precise; and his statements, made near the time, show how far behind the sudden "clean sweep" of 1861 was this earlier essay in "spoils," and how much exaggeration there has been on the subject. Benton says that in the departments at Washington a majority of the employees were opposed to Jackson throughout his administration. Of the officershaving a judicial function, such as land and claims commissioners, territorial judges, justices in the District of Columbia, none were removed. The readiness to remove was stimulated by the discovery of the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after his removal from the fourth auditor's place, to which Kendall was appointed. Watkins had been Adams's warm personal friend, so the latter states in his diary, and "an over active partisan against Jackson at the last presidential election." Unreasonable as was a general inference from one of the instances of dishonesty which occur under the best administrations, and a flagrant instance of which was soon to occur under his own administration, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for many really shameful removals. There had doubtless been among office-holders under Adams a good deal of the "offensive partisanship" of our day, many expressions of horror by subordinate officers at the picture of Jackson as president. All this had angered Jackson, whose imperial temper readily classed his subordinates as servants of Andrew Jackson, rather than as ministers of the public service. Moreover, his accession, as Benton not unfairly pointed out, was the first great party change since Jefferson had succeeded the elder Adams. Offices had greatly increased in number. In the profound democratic change that had been actively operating for a quarter of a century, the force of old traditions had been broken in many useful as in many useless things. Great numbersof inferior offices had now become political, not only in New York, but in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other States. Adams's administration, except in the change of policy upon large questions, had been a continuation of Monroe's. He went from the first place in Monroe's cabinet to the presidency. His secretaries of the treasury and the navy and his postmaster-general and attorney-general had held office under Monroe, the latter three in the very same places. But Jackson thrust out of the presidency his rival, who had naturally enough been earnestly sustained by large numbers of his subordinates; and Adams's appointees were doubtless in general followers of himself and of Clay.
Jackson's first message contained a serious defense of the removals. Men long in office, he said, acquired the "habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests," and office became considered "a species of property." "The duties of all public officers," he declared, with an ignorance then very common among Americans, could be "made so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance." Further, he pointed out that no one man had "any more intrinsic right" to office than another; and therefore "no individual wrong" was done by removal. The officer removed, he concluded, with almost a demagogic touch, had the same means of earning a living as "the millions who never held office." In spite of individual distress he wished "rotation in office" to become "a leading principle in the Republican creed." Unfounded as most of this is now clearly seen to be, it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to a very large part of the American people.
In his own department Van Buren practiced little of the proscription which was active elsewhere. Of seventeen foreign representatives, but four were removed in the first year. Doubtless he was fortunate in having an office without the amount of patronage of the Post-Office or the Treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed a personal liking for removals. The distribution of offices was not distasteful to him; but his temper was neither prescriptive nor unfriendly. At times even his partisan loyalty was doubted for his reluctance in this, which was soon deemed an appropriate and even necessary party work.
But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and demoralizing system. Powerful as he was with Jackson, wise and far-seeing as he was, he must receive for his acquiescence, or even for his silence, a part of the condemnation which the American people, as time goes on, will more and more visit upon one of the great political offenses committed against their political integrity and welfare. But it must in justice be remembered, not only that Van Buren did not begin or actively conduct the distribution of spoils; not only that his acquiescence was in a practice which in his own State he had found well established; but that the practicein which he thus joined was one which it is probable he could not have fully resisted without his own political destruction, and perhaps the temporary prostration of the political causes to which he was devoted. Though these be palliations and not defenses, the biographer ought not to apply to human nature a rule of unprecedented austerity. In Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if any, more timidity or time-serving than in the like yielding by every man holding great office in the United States since Jackson's inauguration; and the worst, the most corrupting, and the most demoralizing official proscription in America took place thirty-two years afterwards, and under a president who, in wise and exalted patriotism, was one of the greatest statesmen, as he has been perhaps the best loved, of Americans, and to whom blame ought to be assigned all the larger by reason of the extraordinary power and prestige he enjoyed, and the moral fervor of the nation behind him, which rendered less necessary this unworthy aid of inferior patronage.
So crowded and interesting were the two years of Van Buren's life in the cabinet with matters apart from the special duties of his office, that it is only at the last, and briefly, that an account can be given of his career as secretary of state. His conduct of foreign affairs was firm, adroit, dignified, and highly successful. It utterly broke the ideal of turbulent and menacing incompetence which the Whigs set up for Jackson's presidency.He had to solve no difficulty of the very first order; for the United States were in profound peace with the whole world. He performed, however, with skill and success two diplomatic services of real importance, services which brought deserved and most valuable strength to Jackson's administration. The American claims for French spoliations upon American ships during the operation of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees had been under discussion for many years. They were now resolutely pressed. In his message of December, 1829, Jackson, doubtless under Van Buren's advice, paid some compliments to "France, our ancient ally;" but then said very plainly that these claims, unless satisfied, would continue "a subject of unpleasant discussion and possible collision between the two governments." He politely referred to "the known integrity of the French monarch," Charles X., as an assurance that the claims would be paid. A few months afterwards this Bourbon was tumbled off the French throne; and in December, 1830, Jackson with increased courtliness, and with a flattering allusion to Lafayette, conspicuous in this milder revolution as he had been in 1789, rejoiced in "the high voucher we possess for the enlarged views and pure integrity" of Louis Philippe. The new American vigor, doubtless aided by the liberal change in France, brought a treaty on July 4, 1831, under which $5,000,000 was to be paid by France, a result which Jackson, with pardonable boasting,said in his message of December, 1831, was an encouragement "for perseverance in the demands of justice," and would admonish other powers, if any, inclined to evade those demands, that they would never be abandoned. The French treaty came so soon after Van Buren's retirement from the state department, and followed so naturally upon the methods of his negotiation, and his instructions to William C. Rives, our minister at Paris, that much of its credit belonged to him. In March, 1830, a treaty was made with Denmark requiring the payment of $650,000 for Danish spoliations on American commerce. The effective pressing of these claims was justly one of the most popular performances of the administration. Commercial treaties were concluded with Austria in August, 1829; with Turkey in May, 1830; and with Mexico in April, 1831.
But the chief transaction of Van Buren's foreign administration was the opening of trade in American vessels between the United States and the British West Indian colonies. This commerce was then relatively much more important to the United States than in later times; and it was chiefly by American shipping that American commerce was carried on with foreign countries. The absurd and odious restrictions upon intercourse so highly natural and advantageous to the people of our seaboard and of the British West Indian islands had led to smuggling on a large scale, and were fruitful of international irritations. Retaliatory acts of Congress and Parliament, prohibitive proclamations of our presidents, and British orders in council, had at different times, since the close of the second British war in 1815, oppressed or prevented honest and profitable trade between neighbors who ought to have been friendly traders. Van Buren found the immediate position to be as follows. In July, 1825, an act of Parliament had allowed foreign vessels to trade to the British colonies upon conditions. To secure for American vessels the benefit of this act, it was necessary that within one year American ports should be open to British vessels bringing the same kind of British or colonial produce as could be imported in American vessels; that British and American vessels in the trade should pay the same government charges; that alien duties on British vessels and cargoes, that is, duties not imposed on the like vessels and cargoes owned by Americans, should be suspended; and that the provision of an American law of 1823 limiting the privileges of the colonial trade to British vessels carrying colonial produce to American ports directly from the colonies exporting it, and without stopping at intermediate ports, should be repealed. John Quincy Adams's administration had failed within the year to comply with the conditions imposed by the British law of 1825. In 1826, therefore, Great Britain forbade this trade and intercourse in American vessels. Adams retorted with a counter prohibition in March, 1827. And in this unfortunate position Van Buren foundour commercial relations with the West Indian, Bahama, and South American colonies of England. The situation was aggravated by a claim made by the American government in 1823 that American goods should pay in the colonial ports no higher duties than British goods, a protest against British protection to British industry in the British colonies coming with little grace from a country itself maintaining the protective system. Adams had sent Gallatin to England to remedy the difficulty, but without success.
Van Buren adopted a different method of negotiation. A more conciliatory bearing was assumed towards our traditional adversary. Jackson, in language sounding strangely from his imperious mouth, was made to say in his first message that "with Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace and war, we may look forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated competition; that it is their policy to preserve the most cordial relations." These, he said, were his own views; and such were "the prevailing sentiments of our constituents." In his instructions to McLane, the minister at London, Van Buren, departing widely from conventional diplomacy, expressly conceded that the American government had been wrong in its claim that England should admit to its colonies American goods on as favorable terms as British goods; that it had been wrong in requiring British ships bringing colonial produce to come and go directly from and to the producing colonies; and that it hadbeen wrong in refusing the privileges offered by the British law of 1825. This frank surrender of untenable positions showed the highest skill in negotiation, a business for which Van Buren was perhaps better equipped than any American of his time. In these points we were "assailable;" we had "too long and too tenaciously" resisted British rights. After these admissions, it would, he said, be improper for Great Britain to suffer "any feelings that find their origin in the past pretensions of this government to have an adverse influence upon the present conduct of Great Britain." McLane was to tell the Earl of Aberdeen that "to set up the act of the late administration as the cause of forfeiture of privileges which would otherwise be extended to the people of the United States would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility." McLane was also to allude to the parts taken by the members of Jackson's administration in the former treatment of the question under discussion. And here Van Buren used the objectionable sentence which led to his subsequent rejection by the Senate as minister to England, and which through that, such are the curious caprices of politics, led, or at least helped to lead, him to the presidency. He said, "Their views upon that point have been submitted to the people of the United States; and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunalto which the late administration was amenable for its acts."
In Van Buren's sagacious desire to emphasize the abandonment of claims preventing the negotiation, he here introduced to a foreign nation the American people as a judge that had condemned the assertion of such claims by Jackson's predecessor. The statement was at least an exaggeration. There was little reason to suppose that Adams's failure in the negotiation over colonial trade had much, if at all, influenced the election of 1828. Nor was it dignified to officially expose our party contests to foreign eyes. But Van Buren was intent upon success in the negotiation. He could succeed where others had failed, only by a strong assertion of a change in American policy. His fault was at most one of taste in the manner of an assertion right enough and wise enough in itself. Nor were these celebrated instructions lacking in firmness or dignity. Great Britain was clearly warned that she must then decide for all time whether the hardships from which her West Indian planters suffered should continue; and that the United States would not "in expiation of supposed past encroachments" repeal their laws, leaving themselves "wholly dependent upon the indulgence of Great Britain," and not knowing in advance what course she would follow. In his speech in the Senate in February, 1827, Van Buren had clearly stated the general positions which he took in this famous dispatch. It is rather curious, however, that he found occasion then to say upon this very subject what he seemed afterwards to forget, that "in the collisions which may arise between the United States and a foreign power, it is our duty to present an unbroken front; domestic differences, if they tend to give encouragement to unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or deferred; and the cause of our government must be considered as the cause of our country." So easy it is to advise other men to be bold and firm.
McLane's long and very able letter to the British foreign secretary closely followed his instructions. Lord Aberdeen was frankly told that the United States had committed "mistakes" in the past; and that the "American pretensions" which had prevented a former arrangement would not be revived. The negotiation was entirely successful. In October, 1830, the President, with the authorization of Congress, declared American ports open to British vessels and their cargoes coming from the colonies, and that they should be subject to the same charges as American vessels coming from the same colonies. In November a British order in council gave to American vessels corresponding privileges. On January 3, 1831, Jackson sent to the Senate the papers, including Van Buren's letter of instructions. No criticism was made upon their tenor; and the public, heedless of the phrases used in reaching the end, rejoiced in a most beneficent opening of commerce.
In the summer of 1831 Van Buren knew very well the strong hold he had upon his party, the entire and almost affectionate confidence which he enjoyed from Jackson, and the prestige which his political and official success had brought him. But to the country, as he was well aware, he seemed also to be, as he was, a politician, obviously skilled in the art, and an avowed candidate for the presidency. His conciliatory bearing, his abstinence from personal abuse, his freedom from personal animosities, all were widely declared to be the mere incidents of constant duplicity and intrigue. The absence of proof, and his own explicit denial and appeal to those who knew the facts, did not protect him from the belief of his adversaries—a belief which, without examination, has since been widely adopted—that to prostrate a dangerous rival he had promoted the quarrel between Jackson and Calhoun. McLane, the minister at London, wished to come home, and was to be the new secretary of the treasury. Van Buren gladly seized the opportunity. He would leave the field of politicalmanagement. Three thousand miles in distance and a month in time away from Washington or New York, there could, he thought, be little pretense of personal manœuvres on his part. He would thus plainly submit his candidacy to popular judgment upon his public career, without interference from himself. He would escape the many embarrassments of every politician upon whom demands are continually made,—demands whose rejection or allowance alike brings offense. The English mission was prominently in the public service, but out of its difficulties; and it was made particularly grateful to him by his success in the recent negotiation over colonial trade. He therefore accepted the post, for which in almost every respect he had extraordinary equipment. He finally left the State Department in June, 1831; and on his departure from Washington Jackson conspicuously rode with him out of the city. On August 1, he was formally appointed minister to Great Britain; and in September he arrived in London, accompanied by his son John.
Van Buren found Washington Irving presiding over the London legation in McLane's absence aschargé d'affaires. Irving's appointment to be secretary of legation under McLane had been one of Van Buren's early acts,—a proof, Irving wrote, "of the odd way in which this mad world is governed, when a secretary of state of a stern republic gives away offices of the kind at the recommendation of a jovial little man of the seas like JackNicholson." But this was jocose. When the appointment was suggested, it was particularly pleasant to Van Buren that this graceful and gentle bit of patronage should be given by so grim a figure as Jackson. Irving had come on from Spain, his "Columbus" just finished, and his "Alhambra Tales" ready for writing. His extraordinary popularity in England and his old familiarity with its life made him highly useful to the American minister, as Van Buren himself soon found. It was not the last time that Englishmen respected the republic of the west the more because the respect carried with it an homage to the republic of letters. Irving's was an early one of the appointments which established the agreeable tradition of the American diplomatic and consular service, that literary men should always hold some of its places of honor and profit. When Van Buren arrived, Irving was already weary of his post and had resigned. He remained, however, with the new minister until he too surrendered his office. The two men became warm and lifelong friends. The day after Van Buren's arrival Irving wrote: "I have just seen Mr. Van Buren, and do not wonder you should all be so fond of him. His manners are most amiable and ingratiating; and I have no doubt he will become a favorite at this court." After an intimacy of several months he wrote: "The more I see of Mr. Van Buren, the more I feel confirmed in a strong personal regard for him. He is one of the gentlest and most amiable men Ihave ever met with; with an affectionate disposition that attaches itself to those around him, and wins their kindness in return."
After a few months of the charming life which an American of distinction finds open to him in London, a life for whose duties and whose pleasures Van Buren was happily fitted,[10]there came to him an extraordinary and enviable delight. He posted through England in an open carriage with the author of the "Sketch Book" and "Bracebridge Hall." From those daintiest sources he had years before got an idea of English country life, and of the festivities of an old-fashioned English Christmas; and now in an exquisite companionship the idea became more nearly clothed with reality than happens with most literary enchantments. After Oxford and Blenheim; after quartering in Stratford at the little inn of the Red Horse, where they "found the same obliging little landlady that kept it at the time of the visit recorded in the 'Sketch Book';" after Warwick Castle and Kenilworth and Lichfield and Newstead Abbey and Hardwick Castle; after a fortnight at Christmas in Barlborough Hall,—"a complete scene of old English hospitality," with many of the ancient games and customs then obsolete in other parts of England;after seeing there the "mummers and morris dancers and glee singers;" after "great feasting with the boar's-head crowned with holly, the wassail bowl, the yule-log, snapdragon, etc.;"—after all these delights, inimitably told by his companion, Van Buren returned to London, but not for long. He there enjoyed the halcyon days which the brilliant society of London knew, when George IV. had just left the throne to his undignified but good-hearted and jovial brother; when Louis Philippe had found a bourgeois crown in France and the condescending approval of England; when Wellington was the first of Englishmen; when Prince Talleyrand, his early republicanism and sacrileges not at all forgotten, but forgiven to the prestige of his abilities and the splendid fascinations of his society, was the chief person in diplomatic life; when the Wizard of the North, though broken, and on his last and vain trip to the Mediterranean for health, still lingered in London, one of its grand figures, and sadly recalled to Irving the times when they "went over the Eildon hills together;" when Rogers was playing Mæcenas and Catullus at breakfast-tables of poets and bankers and noblemen. It was amid this serene, shining, and magical translation from the politics at home that Van Buren received the rude and humiliating news of his rejection by the Senate; for his appointment had been made in recess, and he had left without a confirmation.
One evening in February, 1832, before attendinga party at Talleyrand's, Van Buren learned of the rejection, as had all London which knew there was an American minister. He was half ill when the news came; but he seemed imperturbable. Without shrinking he mixed in the splendid throng, gracious and easy, as if he did not know that his official heart would soon cease to beat. Lord Auckland, then president of the board of trade and afterwards governor-general of India, said to him very truly, and more prophetically than he fancied: "It is an advantage to a public man to be the subject of an outrage." Levees and drawing-rooms and state dinners were being held in honor of the queen's birthday. After a doubt as to the more decorous course, he kept the tenor of diplomatic life until he ceased to be a minister; and Irving said that, "to the credit of John Bull," he "was universally received with the most marked attention," and "treated with more respect and attention than before by the royal family, by the members of the present and the old cabinet, and the different persons of the diplomatic corps." On March 22, 1832, he had his audience of leave; two days later he dined with the king at Windsor; and about April 1 left for Holland and a continental trip, this being, so he wrote a committee appointed at an indignation meeting in Tammany Hall, "the only opportunity" he should probably ever have for the visit.
Van Buren's dispatches from England, now preserved in the archives of the State Department,are not numerous. They were evidently written by a minister who was not very busy in official duties apart from the social and ceremonial life of a diplomat. Some of them are in his own handwriting, whose straggling carelessness is quite out of keeping with the obvious pains which he bestowed upon every subject he touched, even those of seemingly slight consequence. Interspersed with allusions to the northeastern boundary question, and with accounts of his protests against abuses practiced upon American ships in British ports, and of the spread of the cholera, he gave English political news and even gossip. He discussed the chances of the reform bill, rumors of what the ministry would do, and whether the Duke of Wellington would yield. Van Buren participated in no important dispute, although before surrendering his post he presented one of the hateful claims which American administrations of both parties had to make in those days. This was the demand for slaves who escaped from the American brig "Comet," wrecked in the Bahamas, on her way from the Potomac to New Orleans, and who were declared free by the colonial authorities.
It is safe to believe that Secretary Livingston read the more interesting of these letters at the White House. Van Buren discreetly lightened up some of the diplomatic pages with passages very agreeable to Jackson. In describing his presentation to William IV., he told Livingston that the king had formed the highest estimate of Jackson'scharacter, and repeated the royal remark "that detraction and misrepresentation were the common lot of all public men." Of the President's message of December, 1831, he wrote that few in England refused to recognize its ability or the "distinguished talents of the executive by whose advice and labors" the affairs "of our highly favored country" had been "conducted to such happy results."
On July 5, 1832, Van Buren arrived at New York, having several weeks before been nominated for the vice-presidency. He declined a public reception, he said, because, afflicted as New York was with the cholera, festivities would be discordant with the feelings of his friends; and a few days later he was in Washington. Congress was in session, debating the tariff bill; and he quickly enough found it true, as he had already believed, that his rejection had been a capital blunder of his enemies. The rejection occurred on January 25, 1832. Jackson's nomination had gone to the Senate early in December, but the opposition had hesitated at the responsibility for the affront. The debate took place in secret session, but the speeches were promptly made public for their effect on the country. Clay and Webster, the great leaders of the Whigs, and Hayne, the eloquent representative of the Calhoun Democracy, and others, spoke against Van Buren. Clay and Webster based their rejection upon his language in the dispatch to McLane, already quoted. Webster said that hewould pardon almost anything where he saw true patriotism and sound American feeling; but he could not forgive the sacrifice of these to party. Van Buren, with sensible and skillful foresight, had frankly admitted that we had been wrong in some of our claims; and Gallatin, it was afterwards shown from his original dispatch to Clay, had expressly said the same thing. But in a bit of buncombe Webster insisted that no American minister must ever admit that his country had been wrong. "In the presence of foreign courts," he solemnly said, "amidst the monarchies of Europe, he is to stand up for his country and his whole country; that no jot nor tittle of her honor is to suffer in his hands; that he is not to allow others to reproach either his government or his country, and far less is he himself to reproach either; that he is to have no objects in his eye but American objects, and no heart in his bosom but an American heart." To say all this, Webster declared, was a duty whose performance he wished might be heard "by every independent freeman in the United States, by the British minister and the British king, and every minister and every crowned head in Europe." Van Buren's language, Clay said, had been that of an humble vassal to a proud and haughty lord, prostrating and degrading the American eagle before the British lion. These cheap appeals fell perfectly flat. If Van Buren had been open to criticism for the manner in which he pointed out a party change in American administration, the errorwas, at the worst, committed to preclude a British refusal from finding justification in the offensive attitude previously taken by Adams. In admitting our mistaken "pretensions," Van Buren had been entirely right, barring a slight fault in the word, which did not, however, then seem to import the consciousness of wrong which it carries to later ears. Webster and Clay ought to have known that Van Buren's success where all before had failed would make the American people loath to find fault with his phrases. Nor were they at all ready to believe that Jackson's administration toadied to foreign courts. They knew better; they were convinced that no American president had been more resolute towards other nations.
It was also said that Van Buren had introduced the system of driving men from office for political opinions; that he was a New York politician who had brought his art to Washington. Marcy, one of the New York senators, defended his State with these words, which afterwards he must have wished to recall: "It may be, sir, that the politicians of New York are not so fastidious as some gentlemen are as to disclosing the principles on which they act. They boldly preach what they practice. When they are contending for victory they avow their intention of enjoying the fruits of it. If they are defeated, they expect to retire from office; if they are successful, they claim, as a matter of right, the advantages of success. They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong thespoils of the enemy." To this celebrated and execrable defense Van Buren owes much of the later and unjust belief that he was an inveterate "spoilsman." It has already been shown how little foundation there is for the charge that he introduced the system of official proscription. Benton truly said that Van Buren's temper and judgment were both against it, and that he gave ample proofs of his forbearance. Webster did not touch upon this objection. Clay made it very subordinate to the secretary's abasement before the British lion.
The attack of the Calhoun men was based upon Van Buren's supposed intrigue against their chief, and his breaking up of the cabinet. But people saw then, better indeed than some historians have since seen, that between Calhoun and Van Buren there had been great and radical political divergence far deeper than personal jealousy. To surrender the highest cabinet office, to leave Washington and all the places of political management, in order to take a lower office in remote exile from the sources of political power,—these were not believed to be acts of mere trickery, but rather to be parts of a courageous and self-respecting appeal for justice. It seemed a piece of political animosity wantonly to punish a rival with such exquisite humiliation in the eyes of foreigners.
There was a clear majority against confirming Van Buren. But to make his destruction the more signal, and as Calhoun had no opportunity to speak, enough of the majority refrained from voting to enable the Democratic vice-president to give the casting vote for the rejection of this Democratic nominee. Calhoun's motive was obvious enough from his boast in Benton's hearing: "It will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He will never kick, sir, never kick." This bit of unaffected nature was refreshing after all the solemnly insincere declarations of grief which had fallen from the opposition senators in performing their duty.
The folly of the rejection was quickly apparent. Benton very well said to Moore, a senator from Alabama who had voted against Van Buren, "You have broken a minister and elected a vice-president. The people will see nothing in it but a combination of rivals against a competitor." The popular verdict was promptly given. Van Buren had already become a candidate to succeed Jackson five years later; he was only a possible candidate for vice-president at the next election. When the rejection was widely known, it was known almost equally well and soon that Van Buren would be the Jacksonian candidate for vice-president. Meetings were held; addresses were voted; the issue was eagerly seized. The Democratic members of the New York legislature early in February, 1832, under an inspiration from Washington, addressed to Jackson an expression of their indignation in the stately words which our fathers loved, even when they went dangerously near to bathos. They had freely, they said, surrendered to his call their most distinguished fellow-citizen; when Van Buren had withdrawn from the cabinet they had beheld in Jackson's continual confidence in him irrefragable proof that no combination could close Jackson's eyes to the cause of his country; New York would indeed avenge the indignity thus offered to her favorite son; but they would be unmindful of their duty if they failed to console Jackson with their sympathy in this degradation of the country he loved so well. On February 28, Jackson replied with no less dignity and with skill and force. He was, he said,—and the whole country believed him,—incapable of tarnishing the pride or dignity of that country whose glory it had been his object to elevate; Van Buren's instructions to McLane had been his instructions; American pretensions which Adams's administration had admitted to be untenable had been resigned; if just American claims were resisted upon the ground of the unjust position taken by his predecessor, then and then only was McLane to point out that there had been a change in the policy and counsels of the government with the change of its officers. Jackson said that he owed it to the late secretary of state and to the American people to declare that Van Buren had no participation whatever in the occurrences between Calhoun and himself; and that there was no ground for imputing to Van Buren advice to make the removals from office. He had called Van Buren to the state department not more for his acknowledged talents and public services than to meet the general wish and expectation of the Republican party; his signal ability and success in office had fully justified the selection; his own respect for Van Buren's great public and private worth, and his full confidence in his integrity were undiminished. This blast from the unquestioned head of the party prodigiously helped the general movement. The only question was how best to avenge the wrong.
It was suggested that Van Buren should return directly and take a seat in the Senate, which Dudley would willingly surrender to him, and should there meet his slanderers face to face. Some thought that he should have a triumphal entry into New York, without an idea of going into the "senatorial cock-pit" unless he were not to receive the vice-presidency. Others thought that he should be made governor of New York, an idea shadowed forth in the Albany address to Jackson. As a candidate for that place, he would escape the jealousies of Pennsylvania and perhaps Virginia, and augment the local strength of the party in New York. To this it was replied from Washington that they might better cut his throat at once; that if the Republican party could not, under existing circumstances, make Van Buren vice-president, they need never look to the presidency for him. This was declared to be the unanimous opinion of the cabinet. New York Republicans were begged not to "lose so glorious an opportunity of strengthening and consolidating the party." The people at Albany, it was said, were "mad, ...as if New York can make amends for an insult offered by fourteen States of the Union."
In this temper the Republican or Democratic convention met at Baltimore on May 21, 1832. It was the first national gathering of the party; and was summoned simply to nominate a vice-president. Jackson's renomination was already made by the sovereign people, which might be justly affronted by the assembling of a body in apparent doubt whether to obey the popular decree. National conventions were inevitable upon the failure of the congressional caucus in 1824. The system of separate nominations in different States at irregular times was too inconvenient, too inconsistent with unity of action and a central survey of the whole situation. In 1824 its inconvenience had been obvious enough. In 1828 circumstances had designated both the candidates with perfect certainty; and isolated nominations in different parts of the country were then in no danger of clashing. It has been recently said that the convention of 1832 was assembled to force Van Buren's nomination for vice-president. But it is evident from the letter which Parton prints, written by Lewis to Kendall on May 25, 1831, when the latter was visiting Isaac Hill, the Jacksonian leader in New Hampshire, that the convention was even then proposed by "the most judicious" friends of the administration. It was suggested as a plan "of putting a stop to partial nominations" and of "harmonizing" the party. Barbour, Dickinson, and McLanewere the candidates discussed in this letter; Van Buren was not named. He was about sailing for England; and although an open candidate for the presidential succession after Jackson, he was not then a candidate for the second office. The ascription of the convention to management in his behalf seems purely gratuitous. Upon this early invitation, the New Hampshire Democrats called the convention. One of them opened its session by a brief speech alluding to the favor with which the idea of the convention had met, "although opposed by the enemies of the Democratic party," as the Republican party headed by Jackson was now perhaps first definitely called. He said that "the coming together of representatives of the people from the extremity of the Union would have a tendency to soothe, if not to unite, the jarring interests;" and that the people, after seeing its good effects in conciliating the different and distant sections of the country, would continue the mode of nomination. This natural and sensible motive to strengthen and solidify the party is ample explanation of the convention, without resorting to the rather worn charge brought against so many political movements of the time, that they arose from Jackson's dictatorial desire to throttle the sentiment of his party. In making nominations the convention resolved that each State should have as many votes as it would be entitled to in the electoral college. To assure what was deemed a reasonable approach to unanimity, two thirds of thewhole number of votes was required for a choice,—a precedent sad enough to Van Buren twelve years later. On the first ballot Van Buren had 208 of the 283 votes. Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky, with a few votes from North Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, were for Philip P. Barbour of Virginia or Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. The motion, nowadays immediately made, that the nomination be unanimous was not offered; but after an adjournment a resolution was adopted that inasmuch as Van Buren had received the votes of two thirds of the delegates, the convention unanimously concur "in recommending him to the people of the United States for their support."