The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  In 1807 at only thirty-three, Daniel Tompkins won the governorship with the backing of New York mayor DeWitt Clinton, unseating Morgan Lewis, the establishment candidate. Soon he distanced himself from Clinton and aligned more with the foreign policies of Jefferson, supporting his secretary of state, Madison, in the presidential run in 1808. Tompkins was reelected governor in 1810 and became a staunch backer of the War of 1812, throwing himself enthusiastically into helping the recruitment of New York militia and armaments. In the process he contributed considerable sums of his own money and endorsed local bank loans that put him personally in debt, with major consequences long afterward.

  As the wartime governor of New York, Tompkins became the chief disbursing officer of military expenses for both the state and the United States, authorized to spend a million dollars in behalf of New York and three million for the federal government. Much of it was done at his own responsibility at a time when the credit of the United States was in dire straits. The commingling of funds would eventually lead to a huge burden on him and questions of his handling of all the money.

  In 1814, Madison offered Tompkins a cabinet post, but he turned it down on the grounds that he could be more helpful to the administration as governor of New York. He later explained one of the real reasons for doing so: “[It] was the inadequacy of my circumstances to remove to Washington & support so large and expensive family as mine is, on the salary of that office.”2

  Financial matters seemed always to be occupying Tompkins, busy mobilizing resources for the late war while lacking discipline in handling his private funds. When the war ended, he continued to concern himself with military fortifications and other preparedness out of a belief that the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, with the British, would bring only a hiatus. In a debate in the legislature over the construction of a great canal linking Lake Erie and New York waterways to the east, Tompkins opposed it on grounds that military works had to take precedence. “England will never forgive us for our victories on the land, and on the ocean and the lakes,” he declared, “and take my word for it we shall have another war with her within two years.”3

  His early coolness to the canal system, embraced by DeWitt Clinton to his everlasting credit in the state, later was regarded by some as Tompkins’s greatest mistake as governor and central to his quarrels with Clinton. Nevertheless, Tompkins’s popularity remained very high in the New York legislature, which in 1816 nominated him for president. But in a Republican congressional caucus in Washington, Monroe prevailed over Crawford and was nominated. Then, restoring the Virginia–New York alliance, the caucus chose Tompkins for the vice presidential nomination.4

  The New Yorker agreed to take the second spot, to the surprise of some colleagues who regarded the governorship of the increasingly important Empire State as much more influential. But at the same time, Tompkins acceded to local party leaders to seek simultaneously another term as governor, and he won handily. The Federalists, increasingly in eclipse, didn’t bother to run a full presidential ticket, and Monroe and Tompkins were elected easily.5 The rising leader of the New York Republicans, Martin Van Buren, was said to have wanted Tompkins to serve as both governor and vice president to block the gubernatorial ambitions of DeWitt Clinton, but Tompkins declined.6 The very notion of such dual service was a commentary on the continuing low regard of the second national office and on its demands on the time and energies of its occupants.

  In his first months as vice president, Tompkins conscientiously presided over the Senate, but his heart was never in Washington. He spent much of the summer and fall of his first year in office back home on Staten Island. Although Tompkins was only forty-three years old at the time, he was unwell. In early September 1817, he wrote a letter to his friend Smith Thompson in a despondent vein: “You will be less surprised at my delay in attending to the contents of your letters, when I inform you that the injuries I received by the fall from my horse at Fort Greene during the War have increased upon me for several years till finally, for the last six weeks, they have confined me to my house and a few rods around it and sometimes to my bed. I am thereby deprived of the power of visiting the City or riding or walking abroad or attending to my extensive outdoor concerns.” Accordingly, he wrote, “I shall probably resign the office of Vice President at the next session, if not sooner, as there is very little hope of my ever being able to perform its duties thereafter.”7

  Beyond his physical state, Tompkins was plagued now by various financial obligations over real estate dealings on Staten Island and Manhattan, forcing him to absent himself from presiding over the Senate and return to New York for the remainder of the session. New York historian Jabez Hammond wrote later of Tompkins: “He was irregular and unmethodical in business; not systematical in keeping his accounts; employed too many agents; mingled his own private funds with those of the public; was naturally careless about money, and sometimes profuse in his expenses.” Even so, Hammond noted, “No candid man charged him with intentional dishonesty in his pecuniary transactions.”8

  As the wartime governor of New York, Tompkins’s handling of public money had produced an official allegation that he had spent $120,000 of unaccounted-for funds. A very public, and to Tompkins painful, feud ensued that left him distraught. Fortunately during this period, demands on Tompkins in Washington were light. Seldom was he called upon to break a tie vote in the Senate. Van Buren visited him and wrote, “I found him, in comparison with what he had been, exceedingly helpless … his resolution [not] strong enough to enable him to bear up against the injustice and the calumny of which he was now made the victim.” Tompkins’s son-in-law Gilbert Thompson told Van Buren that the man was drinking too much, attributing the malaise to the financial pressures on him.9

  Even so, while continuing as vice president Tompkins was nominated in New York for another term as governor but lost a close race against DeWitt Clinton. He won some solace when the state legislature authorized a final settlement to his advantage in the money dispute. Returning to Washington after the gubernatorial election, Tompkins was called upon to preside over the critical Senate debate on the Missouri Compromise. Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, and Maine as free, maintaining a balance of eleven states in each category.

  As the presider for the debate, Tompkins’s conduct was widely criticized as disorderly. He eventually returned to New York, and the Missouri Compromise eventually went forward without him. His absence angered many anti-slavery northern senators, who felt, in the event of a tie vote on the compromise, he might have been able to break it in favor of their side. Although no tie ensued, the Federalist Rufus King for one criticized Tompkins for having “fled the field on the day of battle.”10 For all his bad feelings about being rejected by the voters of New York and his obvious dissatisfaction with serving in the Senate, Tompkins nevertheless clung to the vice presidency. His defeat in New York seemed to matter little in the Era of Good Feelings, of the Monroe presidency, nor did his deep financial difficulties deny his renomination, in such low significance was the office held.

  The Monroe-Tompkins team was easily reelected in 1820, as the Federalist Party continued to disintegrate. A Republican caucus call to nominate the party’s ticket drew so few participants that no nominations were made, and the state electors simply voted for the incumbents. Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire declined to vote for Tompkins because, he said, the vice president was absent from the Senate “nearly three fourths of the time,” adding, “He has not that weight of character which his office requires—the fact is he is grossly intemperate.”11

  Tompkins began his second vice presidential term by skipping his and Monroe’s inaugurations in Washington and taking his oath of office in New York. Though he wanted the vice presidency as a badge, his continued interest in New York politics kept his focus and his presence there. In 1821 a third state constitutional convention was held in Albany, and Tompkins was elected its president, which one delegate described as the result of “the madness of p
arty” and Tompkins as “degenerated into a degraded sot.”12 For seventy-five days from August into November, he remained there, debating with the Clinton faction over such issues as voter qualifications, the appointment of judges, and the pace of racial emancipation in the state.

  Upon adjournment of the convention, the vice president retreated to his home on Staten Island in an effort to regain his failing health. In January 1822 he returned to Washington to preside over the Senate but soon absented himself again. A Washington observer wrote to Andrew Jackson, “The Vice President left this city yesterday. I don’t think he was perfectly sober during his stay here. He was several times so drunk in the chair that he could with difficulty put the question. I understand he will never return here.”13

  Tompkins now was only forty-eight years old. Hounded by creditors who had obtained state supreme court judgments against him of more than forty-two thousand dollars, he desperately attempted to realize some money from his home and land on Staten Island. He was forced to move to a cheap boardinghouse in lower Manhattan while he continued to struggle with the federal government’s claims against him and with his counterclaims. To make matters even worse, an appropriations bill now came before the Senate calling for withholding the salaries of government officials who had outstanding accounts owed the U.S. Treasury. Had he been presiding, he would have heard his friend Van Buren making a plea in behalf of “gallant and heroic men, who had sustained the honor of their country in the hour of danger,” and whether they “should be kept out of their just dues.”14

  The appropriations provision passed, making Tompkins destitute and leading him to invite a federal suit against him so that he could publicly defend himself. He called witnesses who testified to his tireless efforts to pay troops and arm them in the War of 1812. In closing, this broken man urged the jury to let neither partisanship nor pity govern their judgment. “Could I believe that your verdict on this occasion was to be guided by your sympathy, I should despise both it and you. I demand of you justice only.”15 After several hours of deliberating, the jury ruled in his favor, saying the government owed him nearly $137,000, but further disputes continued. Finally Monroe stepped in, informing Congress that the Treasury Department had concluded it owed Tompkins about thirty-five thousand dollars and, at Monroe’s recommendation, had authorized that the vice president be paid as “an essential accommodation.”16

  On January 21, 1824, Tompkins came to the Senate a final time, leaving on May 20 with a low-key farewell. A week later the Senate agreed to a last Monroe request to approve another sixty thousand dollars to Tompkins to settle all claims. He continued, however, to drink heavily and, without a will, died as a private citizen on June 11, 1825. His estate on Staten Island was sold off to satisfy unsettled debts left to his wife, Hannah, who outlived him by nearly four years. In 1847, Congress finally voted to give fifty thousand dollars to his heirs.

  The first postrevolutionary figure to aspire to the presidency, Daniel D. Tompkins reached a sorrowful early end at age fifty, which belied his great promise as a young governor and vice president. Like the holders of the second office before him, his marginal involvement in the administration in which he served denied him much opportunity to make his mark on the national stage. It might have been too much to say upon his death, as the former New York mayor and diarist Philip Hone did later, that “there was a time when no man in the state dared to compete with him for any office in the gift of the people; and his habits of intemperance alone prevented him from being President of the United States.”17 But Tompkins’s life story was certainly one of leadership potential derailed, by either personal weakness or misfortune or both.

  JOHN C. CALHOUN

  OF SOUTH CAROLINA

  For the first time in the young Republic, a vice president was elected on one party ticket in 1824 and four years later was reelected on the ticket of another. Politics, personal animosities, and the quirks of the electoral system contrived to make John C. Calhoun of South Carolina the running mate of the National Republican nominee, John Quincy Adams, in the first election, and in 1828 Calhoun was elected again, this time with the Democratic president Andrew Jackson.

  At the core of this unusual phenomenon was the manner of the second Adams’s victory in the 1824 election, in which Jackson surpassed the son of the former president in both the popular vote and the electoral college but failed to achieve the required electoral majority. The election thus was thrown into the House of Representatives, and Adams finally prevailed when one of the losing candidates, House Speaker Henry Clay, was said to have steered to Adams the electors he had won in three states. Calhoun meanwhile was easily elected vice president on his own.

  When Adams subsequently named Clay to be his secretary of state, Jackson supporters loudly accused them of a “corrupt bargain,” and Calhoun shared the view. Nearly halfway through his term, Calhoun struck up an alliance with Jackson and joined him as his running mate in 1828, when they defeated Adams and his new running mate, Richard Rush of Pennsylvania.

  Another twist of fate had placed Calhoun on the path to the vice presidency in the first place. In 1824, the South Carolina General Assembly chose William Lowndes as its nominee for president, but he died at sea. The assembly filled the vacancy with Calhoun, another native son, who was then President James Monroe’s secretary of war.1

  Another presidential hopeful, the former senator William H. Crawford of Georgia, attacked Calhoun’s stewardship of the armed forces, citing allegations of waste and fraud in the War Department. But Calhoun’s stout defense of his role in mobilizing the military in the War of 1812 propelled him to national prominence and to the vice presidential nomination as Adams’s running mate. In the end, however, it was Calhoun’s fervent advocacy of the states’ right to nullify federal law and secede from the Union that led to the Civil War and his contentious place in American history.

  The son of a Scots-Irish farmer who had emigrated from Virginia to the backcountry of South Carolina and become a fighter of Indians and lawless frontiersmen, John Caldwell Calhoun was raised with a strong sense of independence coupled with community responsibility, emulating his parents in local church and colonial politics. He had three brothers and one sister, and the family owned a dozen or more slaves, whose children became his playmates in youth, while also being deferential to him in keeping with the social imperatives of the time. Patrick Calhoun, the father, served a term in the House of Representatives, then in the South Carolina General Assembly, and later the state Senate. He led the way in the development of the back country and, not incidentally, in the expansion of slavery in the region.2

  John Calhoun was only thirteen years old when his father died. Young Calhoun and his older brothers were required to work the farm diligently, often alongside the slave children. He also became an avid reader, and upon his father’s death and his brothers’ departure he assumed management of the twelve-hundred-acre plantation and its thirty slaves. When he was eighteen, his brothers urged him to go back to school, taking over the plantation and financing his education for the betterment of the whole family.

  After studying at Yale and Litchfield Law School, in Connecticut, Calhoun was admitted to the South Carolina bar in late 1807. That year, the British frigate Leopard attacked the American warship Chesapeake after being refused permission to board and search for deserters. He wrote a resolution of protest that won him local praise and notoriety, leading to his election to the South Carolina House of Representatives.3

  As chairman of the Committee on Claims, Calhoun encountered obligations dealing with the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery that later would dominate his time, energies, and reputation in the history books. More than half a century earlier the General Assembly had stipulated that to make sure owners of slaves would “not be tempted to conceal the crimes of their slaves to the prejudice of the public,” owners of executed slaves could be compensated up to two hundred dollars each. Calhoun recommended that the owners of eight such slaves be pa
id $120.40 each. The situation was handled as a simple case of restitution for the destruction of private property.4

  In 1810, Calhoun was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at age twenty-nine. Now married with an infant son, he declared himself a nationalist, involved with the concerns of the whole country. He joined in confronting Great Britain over its intrusions into American shipping and the impressment of American seamen on English vessels, which led to the War of 1812. The new House Speaker, Henry Clay of Kentucky, invited Calhoun to join what was known as the “War Mess” of westerners of nationalist bent dining at a boardinghouse near the Capitol. In 1812 Calhoun was among those who accompanied Clay in urging Madison to call for a declaration of war.

  The War of 1812, ill-conceived and for much of the time ill-conducted by the Madison administration, came perilously close to an American defeat. In 1814 it suffered the humiliation of the burning of the capital city, including the White House and both chambers of Congress. But Calhoun’s stolid support of the war effort earned him the reputation as the nation’s “young Hercules who carried the war on his shoulders,” as proclaimed by a Philadelphia lawyer.5 When the peace treaty was signed in 1815, Calhoun declared, “I feel pleasure and pride in being able to say that I am of a party which drew the sword … and succeeded in the contest.”6

  His determined focus on maintaining the defense of the nation recommended Calhoun as war secretary in the new Madison administration. Resigning from the House in 1817 after seven years and accepting the post, Calhoun soon found himself on a collision course with the hero of the War of 1812, General Jackson. In 1816, while Calhoun was still in Congress, Jackson, as commander of the army’s Southern Division, had sent a military surveyor into Indian country along the Mississippi River to examine lands where uprisings might occur. Without Jackson’s knowledge, President Madison’s war department ordered the surveyor to New York, where he finished and published his report on the Mississippi area survey. Jackson was livid at the intrusion and complained to Calhoun’s deputy, who curtly told Jackson that department orders superseded those of commanders in the field.