Martin Van Buren

Edward M. Shepard

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Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528760423
• Langue: English

Extrait

American Statesmen

MARTIN VAN BUREN
BY
EDWARD M. SHEPARD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY EDWARD M. SHEPARD
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY EDWARD M. SHEPARD
AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES S. SHEPARD, AGNES S. HEWITT,
EDWARD S. HEWITT, AND RUSSELL C. LEFFINGWELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
S INCE 1888, when this Life was originally published, the history of American Politics has been greatly enriched. The painstaking and candid labors of Mr. Fiske, Mr. Adams, Mr. Rhodes, and others have gone far to render unnecessary the caveat I then entered against the unfairness, or at least the narrowness, of the temper with which Van Buren, or the school to which he belonged, had thus far been treated in American literature, and which had prejudicially misled me before I began my work. Such a caveat is no longer necessary. Even now, when the political creed of which Jefferson, Van Buren, and Tilden have been chief apostles in our land, seems to suffer some degree of eclipse, - only temporary, it may well be believed, but nevertheless real, - those who, like myself, have undertaken to present the careers of great Americans who held this faith need not fear injustice or prejudice in the field of American literature.
In this revised edition I have made a few corrections and added a few notes; but the generous treatment which has been given to the book has confirmed my belief that historic truth requires no material change.
A passage from the diary of Charles Jared Ingersoll (Life by William M. Meigs, 1897) tempts me, in this most conspicuous place of the book, to emphasize my observation upon one injustice often done to Van Buren. Referring, on May 6, 1844, to his letter, then just published, against the annexation of Texas, Mr. Ingersoll declared that, in view of the fact that nearly all of Van Buren s admirers and most of the Democratic press were committed to the annexation, Van Buren had committed a great blunder and become felo de se. The assumption here is that Van Buren was a politician of the type so painfully familiar to us, whose sole and conscienceless effort is to find out what is to be popular for the time, in order, for their own profit, to take that side. That Van Buren was politic there can be no doubt. But he was politic after the fashion of a statesman and not of a demagogue. He disliked to commit himself upon issues which had not been fully discussed, which were not ripe for practical solution by popular vote, and which did not yet need to be decided. Mr. Ingersoll should have known that the direct and simple explanation was the true one, - that Van Buren knew the risk and meant to take it. His letter against the annexation of Texas, written when he knew that it would probably defeat him for the presidency, was but one of several acts performed by him at critical periods, wherein he deliberately took what seemed the unpopular side in order to be true to his sense of political and patriotic duty. The crucial tests of this kind through which he successfully passed must, beyond any doubt, put him in the very first rank of those American statesmen who have had the rare union of political foresight and moral courage.
EDWARD M. SHEPARD.
January, 1899.
CONTENTS
I.
A MERICAN P OLITICS WHEN V AN B UREN S C AREER BEGAN .-J EFFERSON S I NFLUENCE
II.
E ARLY Y EARS .-P ROFESSIONAL L IFE
III.
S TATE S ENATOR : A TTORNEY -G ENERAL : M EMBER OF THE C ONSTITUTIONAL C ONVENTION
IV.
U NITED S TATES S ENATOR .-R E STABLISHMENT OF P ARTIES .-P ARTY L EADERSHIP
V.
D EMOCRATIC V ICTORY IN 1828.-G OVERNOR
VI.
S ECRETARY OF S TATE .-D EFINITE F ORMATION OF THE D EMOCRATIC C REED
VII.
M INISTER TO E NGLAND .-V ICE -P RESIDENT .-E LECTION TO THE P RESIDENCY
VIII.
C RISIS OF 1837
IX.
P RESIDENT .-S UB -T REASURY B ILL
X.
P RESIDENT .-C ANADIAN I NSURRECTION .-T EXAS . -S EMINOLE W AR .-D EFEAT FOR R E LECTION
XI.
E X -P RESIDENT .-S LAVERY .-T EXAS A NNEXATION .-D EFEAT BY THE S OUTH .-F REE S OIL C AMPAIGN . -L AST Y EARS
XII.
V AN B UREN S C HARACTER AND P LACE IN H ISTORY
I NDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
M ARTIN V AN B UREN
From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at Washington.
Autograph from a MS. in the Library of the Boston Athen um.
The vignette of Lindenwald, Mr. Van Buren s home, near Kinderhook, N. Y., is from a photograph.
D E W ITT C LINTON
From a painting by Inman in the New York State Library, Albany, N. Y.
Autograph from a MS. in the Library of the Boston Athen um.
E DWALD L IVINGSTON
From a bust by Ball Hughes in the possession of Miss Julia Barton Hunt, Barrytown on Hudson, N. Y.
Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston Public Library.
S ILAS W RIGHT
From a portrait painted by Whitehorne, 1844-1846, in the New York City Hall.
Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston Public Library.
MARTIN VAN BUREN

CHAPTER I
AMERICAN POLITICS WHEN VAN BUREN S CAREER BEGAN.-JEFEERSON S INFLUENCE
I T sometimes happened during the anxious years when the terrors of civil war, though still smouldering, were nearly aflame, that on Wall Street or Nassau Street, busy men of New York saw Martin Van Buren and his son walking arm in arm. Prince John, tall, striking in appearance, his hair divided at the middle in a fashion then novel for Americans, was in the prime of life, resolute and aggressive in bearing. His father was a white-haired, bright-eyed old man, erect but short in figure, of precise though easy and kindly politeness, and with a touch of deference in his manner. His presence did not peremptorily command the attention of strangers; but to those who looked attentively there was plain distinction in the refined and venerable face. Passers-by might well turn back to see more of the two men thus affectionately and picturesquely together. For they were famous characters, - the one in the newer, the other in the older politics of America. John Van Buren, fresh from his Free Soil battle and the tussles of the Hards and Softs, was striving, as a Democrat, to serve the cause of the Union, though conscious that he rested under the suspicion of the party to whose service, its divisions in New York now seemingly ended, he had reluctantly returned. But he still faced the slave power with an independence only partially abated before the exigencies of party loyalty. The ex-President, definitely withdrawn from the same Free Soil battle, a struggle into which he had entered when the years were already heavy upon him, had survived to be once more a worthy in the Democratic party, again to receive its formal veneration, but never again its old affection. In their timid man uvres with slavery it was perhaps with the least possible awkwardness that the northern Democrats sought to treat him as a great Democratic leader; but they did not let it be forgotten that the leader was forever retired from leadership. While the younger man was in the thick of political encounters which the party carried on in blind futility, the older man was hardly more than an historical personage. He was no longer, his friends strove to think, the schismatic candidate of 1848, but rather the ally and friend of Jackson, or, better still and further away, the disciple of Jefferson.
For, more than any other American, Martin Van Buren had succeeded to the preaching of Jefferson s political doctrines, and to his political power as well, that curious and potent mingling of philosophy, statesmanship, and electioneering. The Whigs distrust towards Van Buren was still bitter; the hot anger of his own party over the blow he had dealt in 1848 was still far from subsided; the gratitude of most Free Soil men had completely disappeared with his apparent acquiescence in the politics of Pierce and Buchanan. Save in a narrow circle of anti-slavery Democrats, Van Buren, in these last days of his, was judged at best with coldness, and most commonly with dislike or even contempt. Not much of any other temper has yet gone into political history; its writers have frequently been content to accept the harshness of partisan opinion, or even the scurrility and mendacity visited upon him during his many political campaigns, and to ignore the positive records of his career and public service. The present writer confesses to have begun this Life, not indeed sharing any of the hatred or contempt so commonly felt towards Van Buren, but still given to many serious depreciations of him, which a better examination has shown to have had their ultimate source in the mere dislike of personal or political enemies, - a dislike to whose expression, often powerful and vivid, many writers have extended a welcome seriously inconsistent with the fairness of history.
When Abraham Lincoln was chosen president in 1860, this predecessor of his by a quarter century was a true historical figure. The bright, genial old man connected, visibly and really, those stirring and dangerous modern days with the first political struggles under the American Constitution, struggles then long passed into the quiet of history, to leave him almost their only living reminiscence. Martin Van Buren was a man fully grown and already a politician when in 1801 the triumph of Thomas Jefferson completed the political foundation of the United States. Its profound inspiration still remained with him on this eve of Lincoln s election. Under its influence his political career had begun and had ended.
At Jefferson s election the aspiration and fervor which attended the first, the new-born s