by Ted Widmer
Sometimes the echoes were more audible, and sometimes they were less. Certainly there were similitudes joining Van Buren and some of his more prominent successors. He was distantly related to the only other Dutch-American presidents, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and shared a bit of common experience with them as well. Like Theodore Roosevelt, he was willing to run against the party he embodied as a third-party candidate when principles required it. And like Franklin Roosevelt, he assembled a vast national alliance of local interests, rooted especially in the Northeast and South, that restrained Wall Street, defended the disenfranchised, and infuriated his wealthy neighbors along the Hudson. It is worth remembering that for all his greatness, FDR also compromised heavily with the South to get his program through, and both of these careful Dutchmen frustrated friends as well as enemies with their mixture of amiability and emotional distance. True, the New Deal was built on a scale that was inconceivable to Van Buren, and FDR was a star of an entirely different magnitude, but there is something to be said for the comparison.
Once you start these ahistorical presidential comparisons, it is of course difficult to stop. Different similitudes join Van Buren to Kennedy (his fellow ethnic), to Lyndon Johnson (who wanted to build a vast Democratic Party “from the courthouse to the White House”), and to Clinton, who excited great vicissitudes of loyalty and animosity, but held together a diverse party as the economy changed dramatically. All of these democratic champions, like Van Buren, excited irrational hostility in radical fringes of the business community and much of this dislike translated into sensational gossip, like the rumors of Parisian elegance that had once hung like perfume over Van Buren. Cynically, this gossip often celebrated the luxury in which these friends of the people lived—a political lie that never fails to succeed, no matter how obvious the exaggeration, but which degrades democracy all the same. The 1840 anti–Van Buren campaign was so successful in its bombast and distortion that we have never entirely recovered.
But if our culture is amnesiac, forgetting crucial dates and places as soon as they are taught, it also spits people up when we least expect them. America continues to regurgitate Van Buren in the most unlikely places. In the debates over the League of Nations, an arch-Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, quoted Van Buren when he argued that we should go to war only after a “sober second thought.” When Pauline Esther Friedman wanted to write an advice column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956, she adopted the name “Abigail Van Buren” because she thought it sounded prestigious, and soon “Dear Abby” was a national institution. How Van Buren would have loved the irony that his poor name—so maligned by the grandees of the Hudson Valley—suggested the whiff of grandeur to a young social climber! In the 1988 campaign, Garry Trudeau drew a series of Doonesbury cartoons ridiculing George H. W. Bush (seeking to become the first vice president elected since 1836) and Yale’s Skull and Bones Society as would-be grave robbers of Van Buren’s tomb. Rumors persist that Van Buren’s skull is, in fact, incarcerated there, along with those of Geronimo and Pancho Villa. If so, he is in good company, for to men of a certain privileged class, the architect of Democracy was as fearsome an opponent as any warrior on the battlefield.
Despite these blips on the radar screen, Van Buren will remain one of our lesser-known presidents, for reasons that he would understand. His presidency produced no lasting monument of social legislation, sustained several disastrous reverses, and ended with ignominious defeat after one short term. There will never be an animatronic Van Buren entertaining children at Disneyland alongside Abraham Lincoln. But still, he lives wherever people find gated communities shut to them. He lives particularly in the places far from the presidential stage where democracy does its best work—in the back rooms of union halls, fire stations, immigrant social clubs, granges, and taverns like the one he grew up in. Or even far from American shores, where courageous men and women are risking their lives every day to form opposition parties against the wishes of their governments.
He does not need fame, or pity, but Martin Van Buren is worthy of a sober second thought. Quite simply, it’s antidemocratic to expect all of our leaders to be great, or to pretend that they are once they are in office and using the trappings of the presidency for theatrical effect. It goes without saying that we need our Lincolns and Washingtons—the United States would not exist without them. But we need our Van Burens, too—the schemers and sharps working to defend people from all backgrounds against their natural predators. For democracy to stay realistic, we need to remain realistic about our leaders and what they can and cannot do. In other words, we need books about the not-quite-heroic. Van Buren is history, and this book has reached its terminus, but, as Kafka tells us, the work is never done.
Perhaps it is best to give the last word to Harry Truman, another tough pol who followed a greater man as president, but who did a great deal behind the scenes to deepen the democracy that he loved—democracy with both a small and a big D. In the dark days of 1947, with the Cold War threatening to undo everything that all of his predecessors had worked toward, Truman saw the ghost of Martin Van Buren and drew some comfort from the fact that he was not alone. That night (January 6), he wrote a note in his diary, only recently discovered, remembering the little presidents as well as the greats, and urging all of us to treat those who hold the world’s hardest office with the forbearance they deserve:
The floors pop and crack all night long. Anyone with imagination can see old Jim Buchanan walking up and down and worrying about conditions not of his making. Then there’s Van Buren who inherited a terrible mess from his predecessor as did poor old James Madison. Of course Andrew Johnson was the worst mistreated of any of them. But they all walk up and down the halls of this place and moan about what they should have done and didn’t. So—you see. I’ve only named a few. The ones who had Boswells and New England historians are too busy trying to control heaven and hell to come back here. So the tortured souls who were and are misrepresented in history are the ones who come back. It’s a hell of a place.
Notes
1. Kinderhook
1. Surprisingly, he also described with rapt attention his chance presence at a “great speech” given by Hamilton against Burr, thrilling with the recollection that “my seat was so near to Hamilton that I could hear distinctly every word he said.”
5. Panic
1. Another effect of the Panic is that it allowed Cornelius V. S. Roosevelt to assemble great wealth through the purchase of newly cheap lots in Manhattan. This boon would help launch the career of his grandson Theodore half a century later.
6. Shadows
1. A typically malicious song:
The wave that heaves by Congo’s shore,
Heaves not so high nor darkly wide
As Sukey in her midnight snore,
Close by Tecumseh Johnson’s side.
7. Chicanery
1. Nor did his legacy end there. In 1841, a new secretary of state, Daniel Webster, reviewing the events of the Caroline affair, proposed an exacting definition of preemptive war to counter Britain’s cavalier sense that it could arbitrarily invade the United States whenever it felt vaguely threatened. Webster insisted that a preemptive attack was only legitimate if the aggressor would prove “a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Amazingly, the Bush administration cited this as a rationale for its 2003 invasion of Iraq, though it would take a creative historian to argue that Iraq posed that kind of a danger, or, in fact, even as great a danger as disorganized American hotheads posed to Canada in 1837.
9. Oblivion
1. She was likely Margaret Silvester, the spinster daughter of his first employer.
Milestones
December 5, 1782
Martin Van Buren born in his father’s tavern in Kinderhook, New York
1796
Van Buren begins apprenticeship with Francis Silvester
1798
Silvester family pressure
s Van Buren to join Federalist Party, but he refuses
1801
Van Buren moves to New York and into Aaron Burr’s circle
1803
Van Buren gains admission to bar
1804
Van Buren refuses to vote for Burr for governor, but helps defend William Van Ness, Burr’s second, after the Hamilton duel
1807
Van Buren marries Hannah Hoes in Catskill, New York
1808
Van Buren receives first political appointment as surrogate of Columbia County
Van Buren moves to Hudson, New York, and opens law practice
1812
Van Buren narrowly wins election as state senator
1813
Van Buren helps to found the Albany Argus
1814
Van Buren’s Classification bill proposes that New York draft 12,000 men to aid in the war effort
1815
Van Buren becomes attorney general of New York
1817–21
Van Buren organizes “the Bucktails,” later known as the Regency, a group of allies opposed to De Witt Clinton and sympathetic to Jeffersonian democracy
1819
Death of Hannah Van Buren
Van Buren removed as attorney general by Clintonians
Proposed admission of Missouri opens debate over future of slavery in which many friends of Van Buren play an active role
1821
New York Constitutional Convention expands suffrage and reforms patronage and judiciary
Van Buren elected to U.S. Senate and moves to Washington, D.C.
1823
Van Buren forms alliance with Thomas Ritchie, leader of the Richmond Junto
1824
Van Buren meets Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
Van Buren supports presidential aspirations of William H. Crawford of Georgia; John Quincy Adams elected president of House of Representatives
1825
Erie Canal completed
1826–28
Van Buren organizes what will be known as the Democracy, or Democratic Party, through travel, correspondence, and the creation of a national organization of coordinated regional alliances behind the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson
1827
Van Buren reelected to the U.S. Senate
1828
Tariff of Abominations raises tensions between North and South; Calhoun explores doctrine of nullification
Jackson elected president and Van Buren elected governor of New York
January 1829
Van Buren inaugurated as governor
March 1829
Jackson inaugurated as president; Van Buren joins Jackson as secretary of state
1829
Eaton affair exposes factions in the cabinet; Van Buren sides with Eaton against Calhoun
December 1829
Jackson privately designates Van Buren his successor
1829–31
Van Buren serves as secretary of state; secures reciprocal trade agreement from Great Britain in Caribbean, indemnity payment from France, treaty with Ottoman Empire
1830
Van Buren offers conciliatory toast at Jefferson Day dinner following hostile exchange between Jackson and Calhoun
Van Buren helps Jackson prepare Maysville Road veto, delineating limits to federal support for internal improvements
1831
Van Buren nominated as minister to England and sails for London Nat Turner Rebellion and founding of The Liberator in Boston raise tensions over slavery
1832
Calhoun kills Van Buren’s nomination in the Senate
Struggle to renew charter of the Bank of the United States
Van Buren nominated at first Democratic Convention and elected as vice president for Jackson’s second term
1833
Jackson and Van Buren tour northeastern states
1835
Van Buren nominated as presidential candidate at Democratic Party’s Baltimore convention; Richard M. Johnson nominated as vice president
1836
Specie Circular
Pinckney Gag Rule passes House
Texas declares independence from Mexico
Van Buren elected president
1837
Jackson recognizes the Texas Republic on the last day of his presidency
March 4, 1837
Van Buren inaugurated as eighth president
May 1837
The Panic of 1837 reaches peak intensity as New York banks close
May 15, 1837
Van Buren calls special session of Congress to address Panic
1837
First issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review Abolitionist printer Elisha P. Lovejoy murdered in Alton, Illinois British burn an American vessel, the Caroline, they suspect of running supplies to Canadian rebels
1838
John Quincy Adams presents 350 anti-slavery petitions to Congress U.S. Exploring Expedition, commanded by Lt. Charles Wilkes, departs Norfolk, Virginia (returns 1842)
Abraham Van Buren marries Angelica Singleton of South Carolina, who becomes the official hostess of the White House
1839
Border tensions between Americans and Canadians in Maine and New Brunswick
“OK” circulates in Boston newspapers for “oil korrect,” soon appropriated by Van Buren reelection campaign
Amistad captured off Long Island
Whig convention at Harrisburg nominates William Henry Harrison and John Tyler
1840
Van Buren issues executive order creating ten-hour workday for federal employees
Pennsylvania Rep. Charles Ogle denounces Van Buren in scathing speech to Congress about White House renovations
Democratic convention meets at Baltimore, renominates Van Buren
Van Buren signs Independent Treasury bill
William Henry Harrison defeats Van Buren
March 1841
William Henry Harrison inaugurated as ninth president
1841
John Quincy Adams wins acquittal of Amistad mutineers
Van Buren welcomed in New York City and Kinderhook in tumultuous receptions
1842
Van Buren embarks on extensive tour of southern and western United States; covers 7,000 miles
1844
Van Buren’s letter to Mississippi Rep. William Hammet opposes annexation of Texas and immediately jeopardizes his standing in South
Baltimore Democratic convention deadlocks as Southern and Western Democrats reject Van Buren and prevent him from reaching necessary two-thirds support; eventually the dark horse candidate James K. Polk is nominated. Silas Wright rejects the vice presidential nomination, and Northern Democrats are deeply disaffected.
1846–48
Mexican War
1848
Van Buren writes “Barnburner Manifesto” in New York
Democratic convention refuses to seat Barnburner delegation from New York; Barnburners walk out and call for own convention, which nominates Van Buren for presidency on the Free Soil platform; Van Buren receives 291,804 votes (10 percent), enough to swing election to Whig candidate General Zachary Taylor
1853–55
Van Buren travels in Europe
1861
Civil War breaks out and Van Buren supports President Lincoln
July 24, 1862
Martin Van Buren dies at Kinderhook
Selected Bibliography
Adams, John Quincy. The Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877).
Alexander, Holmes. The American Talleyrand: The Career and Contemporaries of Martin Van Buren (New York: Harper, 1935).
Bancroft, George. Martin Van Buren to the End of His Public Career (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1889).
Benton, Thomas Hart. Thirty Years’ View (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1854–56).
Binkley, Wilfred E. American Po
litical Parties: Their Natural History (New York: Knopf, 1943).
Blue, Frederick J. The Free Soilers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973).
Bruegel, Martin. Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002).
Buckingham, James Silk. America: Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive (London: Fisher, Son and Co., 1841).
Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Butler, William Allen. Martin Van Buren: Lawyer, Statesman and Man (New York: D. Appleton, 1862).
______. A Retrospect of Forty Years (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911).
Byrdsall, F. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party (New York: Clement and Packard, 1842).
Cole, Donald B. Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).