By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
WHEN COLUMBIA COUNTY resident James Bradley penned the book “Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician” his goal was to write the “most definitive work” about the nation’s eighth president, and by doing so possibly elevate Van Buren’s standing among the pantheon of U.S. presidents. In tracing Van Buren’s rise from humble beginnings in Kinderhook to the nation’s highest office, Bradley also reveals the intricacies and shenanigans of New York State politics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The 600-page book is divided into five parts and each has four chapters save the third, which has six. Before delving into the Van Buren story there are some differences in electoral politics then from now that readers should know.
Before Van Buren, politics and holding elected office was regarded as a hobby. Van Buren thought it should be a profession.
Although the office of president and vice-president were viewed as a “ticket” or “team,” the candidates ran for office independently. Because of this independence, the vice-president was not obliged to support the president’s agenda and indeed some vice-presidents acted in opposition to their presidents.
Also it was regarded as unseemly for candidates to actively campaign for nominations or elections. Aspirants would let their interest be known by issuing a general statement saying in effect that if offered the nomination by a political party they would accept. Likewise candidates did not campaign in-person, rather surrogates spoke on their behalf and newspapers often were founded for the purpose of extolling the virtues of a candidate and his policies.
Politicians could serve in multiple offices at the same time. Van Buren served for five months as New York’s governor at the beginning of his presidential term and he also served as attorney general of NY while serving in the state senate.
The electorate did not vote directly for candidates. Instead they voted for electors, who in turn vote for a candidate. (This process prevails today in national elections via the Electoral College.)
Voting was limited to men who owned property. Gradually the state lowered then eliminated the property ownership requirement for white men. The changes resulted in a 45% increase in white, male voters in 1820. However Van Buren opposed universal suffrage. Free Blacks were still bound to property ownership valued at $250. In 1820 only 100 free Blacks were eligible to vote.
The Van Burens were of Dutch descent and settled in Kinderhook. They farmed but made the bulk of their income from operating an inn and tavern. Martin Van Buren was a Jeffersonian Republican in the Federalist stronghold of Columbia County. Van Buren began his professional life, in 1803, as a country lawyer representing tenant farmers’ interests against the “Lords of the Manor,” who owned vast tracks of land, and manipulated contracts that in effect kept tenant farmers in long-term servitude.
Also Van Buren burnished his reputation as a master political tactician who “thought strategically and in the long term.” He made his choices about whom to back unsentimentally, based only on the ability to win. (He opposed Aaron Burr’s run for governor of New York in 1804, despite the former vice-president being an early benefactor to him.)
Van Buren’s backers were dubbed “The Regency.” Possessing a bland personality, Van Buren eschewed elective office until a NY Senate run in 1812, where he served three terms. His most notable proposal was to form Black militias, with the promise of manumission, to fight against the British in the War of 1812.
Simultaneously Van Buren served as state attorney general (1815-20). This office allowed him to wield enormous power; he was viewed as the leader of the Republican Party.
Van Buren and Governor DeWitt Clinton were virulent political foes. He hoped to bog down Clinton’s proposed Erie Canal in endless viability studies to force its cancellation. But the 361-miles, $4.5 million project to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via western New York was extremely popular. Van Buren was compelled to abandon Jeffersonian principles against large government projects and embrace Clinton’s plan.
He reasoned that the canal would boost land values, spur economic activity and boost New York’s standing on the national stage – even if it handed victory to a political foe. Van Buren retaliated against Clinton by trying to thwart his re-election bid. He enticed President Monroe’s vice-president, Daniel Tompkins, to challenge Clinton.
Van Buren realized too late that he was backing a flawed candidate. Tompkins was a drunk and had been ensnared in a financial scandal with Congress, which charged Tompkins of doubling his reimbursement claims for expenses incurred during the Revolutionary War. Clinton was a member of the Manumission Society and opposed Missouri’s admission to the U.S. as a slave-holding state. He also proposed the Gradual Abolition Law in 1819.
Although Clinton won re-election by nearly 1,500 votes, Van Buren suffered no loss of power or influence. He remained a behind-the-scenes force and controlled patronage appointments. Van Buren set his eyes on the U.S. Senate hoping to replicate his success in state politics on the national stage. Van Buren served two terms in the Senate and followed that stint as Governor of New York in 1829.
Van Buren aligned with southern states’ senators, who were alarmed by the population growth in northern states and feared that manufacturing would eclipse agriculture as the nation’s chief economic engine.
Van Buren partnered with John C. Calhoun of South Carolina to deflate President John Quincy Adam’s efforts to expand U.S. trade and military ties with newly liberated countries in South America. Though Van Buren argued the proposed alliance was “unconstitutional,” southern senators charged it “would antagonize slave states, divide the country and foment uprisings both at home and abroad.”
When Van Buren was re-elected to the U.S. Senate he decided to tie his political future to Andrew Jackson, despite the Tennessean’s unpopularity in New York. Jackson favored high tariffs and opposed federally chartered banks. To avoid conflict with Jackson, Van Buren skipped tariff votes and obscured his position on banks.
Van Buren and Jackson’s pairing was an oddity. Jackson was a military hero and frontiersman; Van Buren was a career politician and considered a “dandy.” Jackson was combative and ruled by fiat while Van Buren embraced debate and compromise. Jackson was tall (6’1”) and charismatic; Van Buren short (5’6”) and an uninspiring speaker. Admirers dubbed Jackson “Old Hickory,” detractors disparaged Van Buren as “The Little Imp.”
Van Buren, Calhoun and other Jackson admirers formed a new political party, the Democrats, and pledged to get Jackson elected president in 1828.
Van Buren calculated that Jackson needed to add New York, Georgia and Virginia — states he didn’t carry in 1824 — in order to win in ’28. He counseled Jackson’s strategists “to reveal as little as possible. He also crafted ways to spread disinformation.”
Bradley writes, “The 1828 race for the White House featured all the characteristics of the presidential election that we’ve come to know: mudslinging; misrepresentation of candidates’ positions and history; usage of evocative imagery and symbols;…evasive discussion of policy. Put less delicately: deception, propaganda, manipulation.”
Van Buren delivered New York’s 42 electoral votes for Jackson and the soon-to-be-president rewarded him with a cabinet post as Secretary of State. Bradley writes, “Jackson’s [other] cabinet choices drew widespread scorn…Where are the great men whom the General was to assemble around him,…the powerful minds that were to make up for his deficiencies?”
Jackson quarreled with his cabinet and under the banner of reform. Van Buren persuaded the president to have all cabinet members resign so they could be rotated out with new appointees. This backroom dealing infuriated Calhoun and Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. They joined forces to block Van Buren’s permanent appointment as minister to Great Britain thus compelling his return to the U.S.
Van Buren was in trouble in the state and nationally. He was accused of favoring upstate over New York City. The western part of the state opposed Jackson’s policy to remove the Cherokees from the southeast, which Van Buren supported. Despite his assiduous courting of southern senators, they lambasted him as a stealth Abolitionist and blamed him for Jackson’s high tariffs.
Despite the carping against Van Buren, Jackson wanted him as vice-president for his re-election bid in 1832. The pair prevailed. Van Buren must have felt that he was in the catbird seat.
The constitution-mandated job to preside over the Senate allowed Van Buren to be present for debates, hearings and secret sessions while avoiding controversial votes. Also, the long periods when Congress was not in session freed Van Buren to plot his own run for president.
Tariffs and a 2nd U.S. Bank continued to be thorny issues. South Carolina claimed the right to nullify the tariffs of 1824 and ’28 and barred federal agents from collecting the revenue. Jackson responded by issuing a proclamation calling “Nullification…incompatible with the existence of the Union. The Union shall be preserved.” Ultimately South Carolina was pacified when Congress passed a resolution allowing it to pay a lower tariff set in 1816.
Van Buren tried to have it both ways by supporting Jackson’s proclamation and states’ rights. But Jackson’s closing of the 2nd U.S. Bank in New York by withdrawing $10 million from it and transferring the money to state banks greatly impacted the state and the nation.
Canal construction stopped. $15 million in public debt had to be repaid. Credit contracted and loans were called in. Interest rates soared to 18%. Unemployment went up while the Stock Market went down. The economy was thrown into a recession.
The Senate voted to censure Jackson, the first against a U.S. president, for abuse of power. (Congress’ approval was needed to transfer bank funds.) Sensing opportunity Senator Clay formed the Whig Party. Van Buren did not think its coalition with the Nullifiers would last. But the Whigs made a strong showing in the next election cycle. They secured a six-vote majority in the Senate and lost the New York City mayoral race by 180 votes.
Van Buren had three advantages to succeed Jackson — a popular president’s support, the Democratic convention would be held in New York City and the Whigs nominated two candidates (Senator Daniel Webster and General William Harrison).
Van Buren’s strength was in the mid-Atlantic states and Virginia, though half the electors there believed that he would free the enslaved within five years. Van Buren grumbled, “Since I was a boy…I have been stigmatized as the Apologist of Southern Institutions.”
New York was home to 200 Abolitionist societies. Van Buren ordered his Regency backers to clamp down on their activities. Anti-abolitionist protests were held in Utica, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark and Portland. Anti-abolitionist editorials published in northern newspapers were also published in southern newspapers to prove Van Buren’s goodwill. New York’s Postmaster said he no longer would mail Abolitionist literature to southern states.
Van Buren was tethered to Jackson and allowed the outgoing president to select fellow military hero and frontiersman Richard Johnson of Kentucky as Van Buren’s running mate, despite scandals of Johnson’s liaisons with enslaved women. Van Buren won the popular vote by 25,000 compared to Jackson’s 157,000 victory margin in 1832.
Van Buren’s inaugural address was summarized as “a charter for inaction, a call to do nothing more than run the shop.” He expressed belief that the Republic was strong enough to prosper without help from Washington.
The beginning of Van Buren’s term was an inopportune time to renovate and refurbish the White House no matter how severe its structural problems. It was described as “cold and drafty in winter, oppressively hot in summer.” The building was prone to frequent “flooding in the kitchens and cellars leading to mold and dampness.” The White House was deemed “neither a comfortable nor sanitary abode.”
Continued next week in “The presidency and more of Van Buren” column.
