by Ted Widmer
And so ensued the next great political crisis for the Jacksonians, a crisis that ultimately ended with Jackson’s veto of the bill to renew the bank charter but stoked more fires within the Democracy, increasingly torn between its Northern and Southern wings. Van Buren’s political barometer was a little less reliable than usual during the bank crisis. As a New Yorker, Van Buren felt more sympathy with the central bank than did the clique of Westerners who surrounded Jackson and had gained influence during his tenure abroad—but in the long run, he was powerless to stop a policy that had grown into an obsession for Jackson. He was particularly slow to embrace the second phase of the plan—the removal of federal deposits—though ultimately he came aboard. He wrote Jackson, with all the enthusiasm of a recent convert, “The ground, that this is in truth a question between Aristocracy and Democracy, cannot be too often or too forcibly impressed upon the minds of the people.”
The Jacksonians also had to deal with a resurgent Calhoun, now operating with all of the avenging fury of an angel cast out of heaven. His nullification doctrine had advanced beyond the Jefferson Day dinner, and in 1832 he and Jackson circled each other, each threatening to push the argument to its conclusion—in Calhoun’s case, secession, and in Jackson’s case, martial law. The president was on the verge of asking for volunteers to put down Calhoun’s “treason” and crush “this wicked faction in its bud.” He compared nullification to “a bag of sand with both ends opened,” adding that “the moment the least pressure” was applied, the sand would flow out at each end. Again, Van Buren found himself uncomfortably in the middle, disliking Calhoun’s stance but wanting to avoid an excess display of federal strength for many reasons. This time he was helpful, calming Jackson and working to bring down the tariff rates that Calhoun found so objectionable. The crisis passed without a great loss of face for either Jackson or Calhoun, but the lingering stench of nullification would remain in the air until 1860, when there was a lot more to nullify than a simple tax. The year 1832 was merely the dress rehearsal for a much larger production.
As difficult as the Bank and nullification crises were together, they offered one great advantage in their simultaneity. Van Buren and his allies could honestly claim to be occupying the vital center of public opinion in 1832, rejecting the extremes of both North and South to find a reasonable middle ground. In a sense, it was not so different from the role Van Buren had played throughout the 1820s, when he worked so hard to form the Democratic Party. But there were dangers all around—and as Jackson sounded more and more nationalistic during the nullification business, Northerners and Westerners extended feelers, wondering if the time was ripe for a “Union” party that would stop taking orders from the stagnant South. Van Buren did all he could to quell such initiatives—they were damaging to his chances and to his unwavering idea of a national party on Jeffersonian principles.
As these disuniting tendencies were gathering steam, Van Buren’s idea of a two-party system received support from an unlikely source—a new party that sprang into existence for the express purpose of defeating Jackson and Van Buren. The Whigs, as they were ultimately known (for opposing Jackson as the revolutionary Whigs had opposed George III), were an unlikely batch of Northern quasi-Federalists and Southern states’ rightists, allied more through alienation than shared principles. They had great luminaries, including Webster, Clay, and, for a while, Calhoun, now officially a nonperson in the Jacksonian universe, removed with all the surgical cleanliness of a Soviet apparatchik arranging dignitaries on the May Day reviewing stand.
The election of 1832 posed no difficulties for the Democratic slate, and Jackson easily outdistanced his principal challenger, Henry Clay. As vice president, Van Buren was a reliable helpmeet, generally sustaining Jackson in the policies he had embarked upon, occasionally reining him in, and rarely objecting outright, even when the president pursued policies that reflect poorly on his complex legacy (Cherokee removal, slavery). Without quite revolutionizing the office, it is safe to say that Van Buren sharpened it and gave it more relevance than it would have again for some time. Jackson and Van Buren were clearly part of a team in a way that Calhoun never was—and their triumphant tour of New York and New England in the summer of 1833 was a brilliant bit of grandstanding that did much to build the party. It must have been gratifying to preside over the Senate that had recently rejected him, and he performed his duties with his trademark combination of shrewdness and levity. One day in 1834, after a tirade by Henry Clay against Jackson’s economic policy, allegedly ruinous to Clay’s backers, Van Buren walked to Clay, then loudly asked him if he could borrow a pinch of “fine maccaboy snuff.” Even his enemies laughed at this well-acted political theater.
The business of presidential succession usually gets serious about two years before the actual election. Van Buren was nothing if not punctual, and around 1834 the rumor mills began ginning up arguments and counterarguments over his suitability for the White House. It was a particularly difficult succession for a number of reasons. There were a number of hurt feelings to soothe—not only had Jackson trampled on delicate sensibilities North and South (and the Whigs censured him in 1834), but Van Buren had outmaneuvered a huge number of politicians who considered themselves his social betters and could not quite understand what he was doing on the pedestal. As we might expect, Calhoun was at the front of that list, and he denounced Van Buren with withering sarcasm on the floor of the Senate: “He is not of the race of the lion or the tiger; he belongs to a lower order—the fox.”
There were many different insecurities that united the Van Buren haters. Some faulted him for being too generous to Catholics (he had written a sympathetic letter to the Vatican in 1829) and wondered if he was at the center of a “popish plot.” Some were alienated that a party system existed at all and wished for a return to a mythical cloud-cuckoo land where all Americans worked together in harmony. Some loathed him for the perceived attack on the Bank—and others for not doing enough to destroy banking systems in general (a disturbing number of radical factions in the New York Democracy were spinning out of control). Many were angry that Van Buren seemed too Southern, and appeared to cosset slavery every chance he got. Many others were upset that he seemed too Northern, had opposed slavery’s expansion at key moments, and was insufficiently attuned to Southern needs. The South was especially exasperating since he had spent the better part of a decade cultivating allies there. With uncharacteristic emotion, he poured out his feelings to a Southern friend (a woman, of course): “God knows I have suffered enough for my Southern partialities. Since I was a boy I have been stigmatized as the apologist of Southern institutions, & now forsooth you good people will have it … that I am an abolitionist.” For a time he carried a pair of loaded pistols to work in the Senate.
What was revolutionary about Van Buren—that he was a professional politician—rubbed many people the wrong way as he stood on the penultimate step of his long political journey. It did not help, either, that Jackson had found so many enemies (and generally defeated them) during his second term. Whenever a strong president prepares to leave the scene, there is always a price to pay, and it was hardly surprising that Van Buren, who had aroused wrath throughout his career, would be expected to pay it. William H. Seward, the young Whig from Van Buren’s backyard, called him “a crawling reptile, whose only claim was that he had inveigled the confidence of a credulous, blind, dotard old man.” Nicholas Biddle, seething with rage after the Bank’s defeat, predicted, “These banditti will be scourged back to their caverns.”
Something about Van Buren’s size and shape also appealed greatly to the rising number of humorists writing about politics, some of whom were merely funny, and others downright scabrous. It was both a curse and a blessing that a print revolution was rocking the political world—for sympathetic biographies were quickly disseminated, but more than a few hilarious burlesques of the Little Magician as well. Davy Crockett was especially brutal, calling him “Aunt Matty,” “the perlitest cretur amongs
t the wimmen,” imagining him “laced up in corsets,” and suggesting that “it would be difficult to say, from his personal appearance, whether he was man or woman, but for his large red and gray whiskers.” The writer Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, with support from Calhoun, published a thinly disguised novel, The Partisan Leader, in 1836, depicting Van Buren as “daintily dressed,” wearing “delicate” slippers, and showing off hands that were “fair, delicate, small and richly jeweled.” It would have been less damaging to call him a serial killer (as, in fact, people did call Jackson).
But Van Buren had one great weapon in his arsenal that no other candidate possessed: Andrew Jackson’s blessing. Through party newspapers, through private meetings with his chieftains, and through any other means he could think of, Old Hickory sent the word out to the faithful that he wanted Martin Van Buren to be the next president of the United States. It had a tremendous impact. The infighting died down, and Van Buren easily won nomination at the Baltimore convention held in May 1835, far ahead of the election. The vice presidential candidate was Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, a hero of the War of 1812.
Throughout the campaign, Van Buren conducted himself as candidates were expected to: by doing absolutely nothing. True to his nature, he gave rather bland indications of his middling position on the issues to the movers and shakers who needed confirmation that he would not stir the pot too much. The Whigs threw three different regional candidates at him (Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Hugh Lawson White), hoping that they could force the election into Congress, but Van Buren outpolled them, winning 170 electoral votes to their combined 124 and 762,978 popular votes to their 736,250.
At the age of fifty-three, Martin Van Buren was in the ascendant. He was the youngest president elected to date. At long last, the pilgrimage that had begun in Kinderhook had brought him to his life’s destination. As a child, he had fallen asleep at night listening to political arguments in his father’s tavern. Now, he had achieved what no one from New York ever had—what no one whose ancestors were not English ever had—and what no one from his gifted cohort of senators ever would. There are no records of his innermost thoughts in this moment of supreme triumph, but looking back at his extraordinary career—his childhood humiliations at the hands of the gentry, his genius for using party structures to defeat Clinton and Calhoun, his rejection for the England post, his stunning comeback—was it not obvious that an unseen hand was guiding his career forward? He could not be blamed too much if he expected the same sort of good fortune to accompany him into the Executive Mansion, where he would presumably rule for at least two terms, and perhaps more, given his youth and the limitless growth of the state whose strength he rode like a Saratoga jockey.
Far away from these reveries, a few financial analysts noted with concern some early tremors in an economy that was growing by leaps and bounds but was utterly unregulated. In his farewell speech, the most important since Washington’s, Jackson had warned of unchecked speculation by “the money power.” South and west of Washington, Texans were preparing to launch their independent republic, having successfully wrested the province away from Mexico, to the great interest of slave owners looking for room to expand. But these were mere wisps of clouds, hardly noticeable as Van Buren surveyed the blue skies stretching before him.
5
Panic
After years of scraping, Martin Van Buren finally stood atop the Matterhorn of American politics. Like a mountain goat, he had leapt upward from one craggy promontory to the next. Now, there was nowhere higher to go—and he may have experienced the mountain goat’s momentary confusion of wondering where to go when he reached the summit. But all in all, it was a happy time, filled with the things he liked best—parties, gossip, and cabinet appointments. He aimed for stability, keeping many of Jackson’s appointees and leaning South with new choices. Balance always.
The year 1837 opened with the future looking very bright indeed. Van Buren was poised to become one of the great presidents. Everything in his career had tended to this moment. Surely he must have reflected that winter on his remarkable journey from an overcrowded tavern in Kinderhook to the White House. What a pleasure it must have been to remember all of the enemies who had tried to impede his progress; the social betters who sought to keep him down; the political rivals who underestimated him; the endless insults hurled his way. Now he would helm both the Democracy and the great republic itself. At last, a New York president! What a pity that Aaron Burr had died in September 1836—he would have enjoyed Van Buren’s triumph. One can imagine that Van Buren envisioned a long and prosperous reign, followed by the chance to handpick a successor. He would be lionized forever and, centuries later, if an elegant series of presidential biographies was ever contemplated, historians would surely clamor to write his extraordinary life story.
All presidents-elect, presumably, have felt similar thoughts during their transition. But like the mortals they preside over, they, too, are controlled by the fates. All expect, on reaching the pinnacle, to succeed—but none finds unambiguous success. All expect to shape events, but find themselves shaped by them. All discover that no individual or government is entirely impervious to the external shocks that rain down on us from the heavens. That is why, for all our secularism, insurance policies still refer to “acts of God” as eventualities that cannot be prevented, no matter how much weather-proofing we build into our homes. Sometimes a disaster can elevate a president to immortality—the Second World War, for example, or the secession of the South. But most of the time, disasters are just depressing. The depression that struck the Van Buren presidency more than qualified. The Panic of 1837 was simply the worst financial catastrophe in American history until the Crash of 1929.
On March 4, there was no sense of what was looming, and so Van Buren’s inaugural came off without a hitch. A “balmy vernal sun” shone on the proceedings, and a huge crowd of twenty thousand arrived for the coronation ritual. A local newspaper wrote, “Perhaps the city was never on any previous occasion so full of strangers.” Jackson and Van Buren arrived at the Capitol in a coach made from the timbers of the USS Constitution, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and a band blaring patriotic music. Jackson still held sway; a popular writer of the day, N. P. Willis, recorded that “a murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below, and the infirm old man … bowed to the people.” At the end of the ceremony, the crowd wildly saluted Old Hickory, and Thomas Hart Benton wrote, “The rising sun was eclipsed by the setting sun.” Upon leaving town, Jackson was said to have remarked that his only regrets were that he did not shoot Clay or hang Calhoun.
Van Buren acquitted himself gracefully. He spoke clearly, and his inaugural address, while not exactly scintillating, stands out from the tedium of nineteenth-century presidential rhetoric. He called attention to the anomaly of his relative youth and announced that a new generation was ready to lead America—a theme that would be used on many other occasions, particularly by Presidents Kennedy and Clinton. He used the fiftieth anniversary of the Constitution to give an unusually sweeping history of “the great experiment,” arguing that the people had never let themselves down, and that the democratic idea would flourish so long as they retained the spirit of compromise. Toward that end, he spoke daringly about slavery, the first time the word had been mentioned in an inaugural (though Van Buren promised not to interfere with it). He ended the address with warm personal remarks for Jackson, wishing “a brilliant evening” to his “well-spent life.”
For all of Van Buren’s loyalty to Jackson, there was a sense of a new beginning—and nothing symbolized the new age more vividly than the snorting railroad that whisked Old Hickory back toward Tennessee—as close to Tennessee as the tracks ran (not very). Everywhere, change was in the air. The New York merchant Philip Hone wrote in his diary, “Hurrah for Martin the First!” In England, Victoria also assumed the throne in 1837—her reign would outlast Van Buren’s by six decades.
Amid all the pomp and circumstance, there
were ominous signs that all was not right with the republic, but few paid heed. A careful listener might have heard rumblings in the economy—hints of digestive distress that foretold far greater ills to come. In February, mobs in New York destroyed stores and warehouses to protest the high price of flour. Rising class tensions were equally visible in the way wealthy people described these protests. George Templeton Strong saw a New York demonstration and described it as “a convention of loafers from all quarters of the world.”
Soon these rumblings turned into a roar. The diaries from that spring reveal a quick change from mundane entries about quotidian events to the chaos of an economic free fall. The word panic accurately conveys the emotional intensity of an event that was unprecedented in American history for its suddenness and severity. Van Buren may have had the briefest presidential honeymoon in history.
The first temblors were felt a mere thirteen days after he assumed office. On March 17, Hone wrote, “The great crisis is near at hand, if it has not already arrived.” Over the next month, prices rose and financial houses fell like stacks of cards. In early May, the crisis peaked with the closing of major banks in New York. Hone wondered on May 8, “Where will it all end?—In ruin, revolution, perhaps civil war.” On May 10, “The volcano has burst and overwhelmed New York.” May 11: All is still as death.” May 12: “The commercial distress and financial embarrassment pervade the whole nation. Posterity may get out of it, but the sun of the present generation will never again shine out. Things will grow better gradually, from the curtailment of business, but the glory has departed. Jackson, Van Buren and Benton form a triumvirate more fatal to the prosperity of America than Caesar, Pompey and Crassus were to the liberties of Rome.” Even more terrified, George Templeton Strong wrote, “God only knows what the consequences will be. Ruin here, and on the other side of the Atlantic, and not only private ruin but political convulsion and revolution, I think, would follow such an event.… Where in the name of wonder is this all to end?”
