Martin Van Buren Part 8

Van Buren's bearing in the crisis was admirable. Even those who have treated him with animosity or contempt do not here refuse him high praise. "In this one question," says Von Holst, "he really evinced courage, firmness, and statesmanlike insight.... Van Buren bore the storm bravely. He repelled all reproaches with decision, but with no bitterness.... Van Buren unquestionably merited well of the country, because he refused his cooperation, in accordance with the guardians.h.i.+p principle of the old absolutisms, to accustom the people of the Republic also to see the government enter as a saving _deus ex machina_ in every calamity brought about by their own fault and folly.... Van Buren had won a brilliant victory and placed his countrymen under lasting obligations to him."[13]

Van Buren met the extra session with a message which marks the zenith of his political wisdom. It is one of the greatest of American state papers. With clear, unflinching, and unanswerable logic he faced the crisis. There was no effort to evade the questions put to him, or to divert public attention from the true issue. The government could not, he showed, help people earn their living; but it could refuse to aid the deception that paper was gold, and the delusion that value could arise without labor. The masterly argument seems long to a sauntering reader; but it treated a difficult question which had to be answered by the mult.i.tudes of a democracy many of whom were pinched and excited by personal distresses and anxiety and who were sure to read it. Few episodes in our political history give one more exalted appreciation of the good sense of the American ma.s.ses, than that, in this stress of national suffering, a skillful politician should have appealed to them, not even sweetening the truth, but resisting with direct and painful sobriety their angry and natural impulses; this, too, when most of the talented and popular leaders were promoting, rather than reducing or diverting the heated folly of the time.

Van Buren quietly began by saying that the law required the secretary of the treasury to deposit public moneys only in banks that paid their notes in specie. All the banks had stopped such payment. It was obvious therefore that some other custody of public moneys must be provided, and it was for this that he had summoned Congress. He then began what was really an address to the people. He pointed out that the government had not caused, and that it could not cure, the profound commercial distemper. Antecedent causes had been stimulated by the enormous inflations of bank currency and other credits, and among them the many millions of foreign loans, and the lavish accommodations extended "by foreign dealers to our merchants." Thence had come the spirit of reckless speculation, and from that a foreign debt of more than thirty millions; the extension to traders in the interior of credits for supplies greatly beyond the wants of the people; the investment of thirty-nine and a half millions in unproductive public lands; the creation of debts to an almost countless amount for real estate in existing or antic.i.p.ated cities and villages; the expenditure of immense sums in improvements ruinously improvident; the diversion to other pursuits of labor that should have gone to agriculture, so that this first of agricultural countries had imported two millions of dollars worth of grain in the first six months of 1837; and the rapid growth of luxurious habits founded too often on merely fancied wealth. These evils had been aggravated by the great loss of capital in the famous fire at New York in December, 1835, a loss whose effects, though real, were not at once apparent because of the s.h.i.+fting and postponement of the burdens through facilities of credit, by the disturbance which the transfers of public moneys in the distribution among the States caused, and by necessities of foreign creditors which made them seek to withdraw specie from the United States. He pointed out the unprecedented expansion of credit in Great Britain at the same time, and, with the redundancy of paper currency[14] there, the rise of adventurous and unwholesome speculation.

To the demand for a reestablishment of a national bank, he replied that quite a contrary thing must be done; that the fiscal concerns of the government must be separated from those of individuals or corporations; that to create such a bank would be to disregard the popular will twice solemnly and unequivocally expressed; that the same motives would operate on the administrators of a national as on those of state banks; that the Bank of the United States had not prevented former and similar embarra.s.sments, and that the Bank of England had but lately failed in its own land to prevent serious abuses of credit. He knew indeed of loud and serious complaint because the government did not now aid commercial exchange. But this was no part of its duty. It was not the province of government to aid individuals in the transfer of their funds otherwise than through the facilities of the post-office. As justly might the government be asked to transport merchandise. These were operations of trade to be conducted by those who were interested in them. Throughout Europe domestic as well as foreign exchanges were carried on by private houses, and often, if not generally, without the a.s.sistance of banks.

Our own exchanges ought to be carried on by private enterprise and compet.i.tion, without legislative a.s.sistance, free from the influence of political agitation, and from the neglect, partiality, injustice, and oppression unavoidably attending the interference of government with the proper concerns of individuals. His own views, Van Buren declared, were unchanged. Before his election he had distinctly apprised the people that he would not aid in the reestablishment of a national bank. His conviction had been strengthened that such a bank meant a concentrated money power hostile to the spirit and permanency of our republican inst.i.tutions.

He then turned to those state banks which had held government deposits.

At all times they had held some of the federal moneys, and since 1833 they had held the whole. Since that year the utmost security had been required from them for such moneys; but when lately called upon to pay the surplus to the States, they had, while curtailing their discounts and increasing the general distress, been with the other banks fatally involved in the revulsion. Under these circ.u.mstances it was a solemn duty to inquire whether the evils inherent in any connection between the government and banks of issue were not such as to require a divorce.

Ought the moneys taken from the people for public uses longer to be deposited in banks and thence to be loaned for the profit of private persons? Ought not the collection, safe-keeping, transfer, and disburs.e.m.e.nt of public moneys to be managed by public officers? The public revenues must be limited to public expenses so that there should be no great surplus. The care of the moneys inevitably acc.u.mulated from time to time would involve expense; but this was a trifling consideration in so important a matter. Personally it would be agreeable to him to be free from concern in the custody and disburs.e.m.e.nt of the public revenue. Not indeed that he would shrink from a proper official responsibility, but because he firmly believed the capacity of the executive for usefulness was in no degree promoted by the possession of patronage not actually necessary. But he was clear that the connection of the executive with powerful moneyed inst.i.tutions, capable of ministering to the interests of men in points where they were most accessible to corruption, was more liable to abuse than his const.i.tutional agency in the appointment and control of the few public officers required by the proposed plan.

Thus was announced the independent treasury scheme, the divorce of bank and state, the famous achievement of Van Buren's presidency. He argued besides elaborately in favor of the specie circular. An individual could, if he pleased, accept payment in a paper promise or in any other way as he saw fit. But a public servant should in exchange for public domain take only what was universally deemed valuable. He ought not to have a discretion to measure the value of mere promises. The $9,367,200 in the treasury for deposit with the States in October, or rather for a permanent distribution to them, he desired to retain for federal necessities. This would doubtless inconvenience States which had relied on the federal donation; but as the United States needed the money to meet its own obligations, there was neither justice nor expediency in generously giving it away. Van Buren here left the defensive with a menace to the banks that a bankruptcy law for corporations suspending specie payment might impose a salutary check on the issues of paper money.

The President finally spoke in words which seem golden to all who share his view of the ends of government. "Those who look to the action of this government," he said, "for specific aid to the citizen to relieve embarra.s.sments arising from losses by revulsions in commerce and credit, lose sight of the ends for which it was created, and the powers with which it is clothed. It was established to give security to us all, in our lawful and honorable pursuits, under the lasting safeguard of republican inst.i.tutions. It was not intended to confer special favors on individuals, or on any cla.s.ses of them; to create systems of agriculture, manufactures, or trade; or to engage in them, either separately or in connection with individual citizens or organizations.... All communities are apt to look to government for too much.... We are p.r.o.ne to do so especially at periods of sudden embarra.s.sment and distress.... The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for the general prosperity. It is not its legitimate object to make men rich, or to repair by direct grants of money or legislation in favor of particular pursuits, losses not incurred in the public service." To avoid unnecessary interference with such pursuits would be far more beneficial than efforts to a.s.sist limited interests, efforts eagerly, but perhaps naturally, sought for under temporary pressure. Congress and himself, Van Buren closed by saying, acted for a people to whom the truth, however unpromising, could always be spoken with safety, and who, in the phrase of which he was fond, were sure never to desert a public functionary honestly laboring for the public good.

An angry and almost terrible outburst received this plain, honest, and wise declaration that the people must repair their own disasters without paternal help of government; and that, rather than to promote the extension of credit with public moneys, the crisis ought to afford means of departing forever from that policy. Most of the able men who to this generation have seemed the larger statesmen of the day, joined with pa.s.sionate declamation in the furious gust of folly. It was a favorite delusion that government was a separate ent.i.ty which could help the people, and not a mere agency, simply using wealth and power which the people must themselves create. Webster, in a speech at Madison, Indiana, on June 1, 1837, professed his conscientious convictions that all the disasters had proceeded from "the measures of the general government in relation to the currency." He ridiculed the idea that the people had helped cause them. The people, he thought, had no lesson to learn.

"Over-trading, over-buying, over-selling, over-speculation, over-production,"--these, he said, were terms he "could not very well understand." In his speech of December, 1836, on the specie circular, he had given a leonine laugh at the idea of there being inflation. If he were asked, he said, what kept up the value of money "in this vast and sudden expansion and increase of it," he should answer that it was kept up "by an equally vast and sudden increase in the property of the country." That this amazing utterance upon the dynamics of national economy might be clear, he added that the vast and sudden increase was "in the value of that property intrinsic as well as marketable." No speculator of the day said a more foolish thing than did this towering statesman. There were, he admitted, "other minor causes," but they were "not worth enumerating." "The great and immediate origin of the evil"

was "disturbances in the exchange ... caused by the agency of the government itself." At the extra session Webster described the shock caused him by the President's "disregard for the public distress," by his "exclusive concern for the interest of government and revenue, by his refusal to prescribe for the sickness and disease of society," by the separation he would draw "between the interests of the government and the interests of the people." For his part he would be warm and generous in his statesmans.h.i.+p. He resisted the bill to suspend the "deposit" with the States; he would in the coming October pay out the last installment, stricken though the treasury was. He would again sweeten the popular palate with government manna, bitter as it had proved itself to the belly. It was the duty of the government, he said, to aid in exchanges by establis.h.i.+ng a paper currency; he and those with him preferred the long-tried, well-approved practice of the government to letting Benton, as he said, "embrace us in his gold and silver arms and hug us to his hard money breast." As if this were not a time for soberness over its shameful abuses, credit, and the banks and bank-notes which aided it were almost apotheosized. At St. Louis in the summer, Webster, in a speech which he did not include in his collected works, said that help must come "from the government of the United States, from thence alone;" adding, "Upon this I risk my political reputation, my honor, my all.... He who expects to live to see all these twenty-six States resuming specie payments in regular succession once more, may expect to see the restoration of the Jews. Never! He will die without the sight."

John Quincy Adams had told his friends at home that the distribution of the public moneys among the state banks was the most pernicious cause of the disaster, although, differing from Webster, he admitted that "the abuse of credit, especially by the agency of banks," and the unrestrained pursuit of individual wealth, were the proximate causes of the disaster, for history had testified

"Peace to corrupt, no less than war to waste."

He would punish suspension of specie payments by a bank with a forfeiture of its charter and the imprisonment of its president and officers. A national bank, he said, was "the only practicable expedient for restoring and maintaining specie payments." In the extra session he showed that the deposit banks of the South already held more money of the government than their States would receive, if the last installment of distribution should be paid, while the Northern banks held far less of that money than the Northern States were to receive. He denounced as a Southern measure the proposition to postpone this piece of recklessness. Should the Northern States hail with shouts of Hosanna "this evanescence of their funds from their treasuries," or be "humbugged out of their vested rights by a howl of frenzy against Nicholas Biddle," or be mystified out of their money and out of their senses by a Hark follow! against all banks, or by a summons to Doctors'

Commons for a divorce of bank and state?

That skillful political weatherc.o.c.k, Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng, told his const.i.tuents at Lowell that private banking was the "s.h.i.+nplaster system;" and asked whether we wished to have men who, like the Rothschilds, make "peace or war as they choose, and wield at will the destiny of empires." The plan of the administration was like that of "a cowardly master of a sinking s.h.i.+p, to take possession of the long boat and provisions, cut off, and leave the s.h.i.+p's company and pa.s.sengers to their fate." To the plausible cry of separating bank and state he would answer, "Why not separate court and state ... or law and state ... or custom-house and state." It was "the new nostrum of political quackery."

Clay delivered a famous speech in the Senate on September 25, 1837. He was appalled at the heartlessness of the administration. "The people, the States, and their banks," he said in the favorite cant of the time, "are left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves," as if that were not the very thing for them to do. We were all, he said,--"people, States, Union, banks, ... all ent.i.tled to the protecting care of a parental government." He cried out against "a selfish solicitude for the government itself, but a cold and heartless insensibility to the sufferings of a bleeding people." The subst.i.tution of an exclusive metallic currency was "forbidden by the principles of eternal justice."

For his part he saw no adequate remedy which did "not comprehend a national bank as an essential part of it." In banking corporations, indeed, "the interests of the rich and poor are happily blended;" nor should we encourage here private bankers, Hopes and Barings and Rothschilds and Hottinguers, "whose vast overgrown capitals, possessed by the rich exclusively of the poor, control the destiny of nations."

The bill for the independent treasury was firmly pressed by the administration. It did not deceive the people with any pretense that banks and paper money would stand in lieu of industry, economy, and good sense. The summer elections, then far more numerous than now, had, as Clay warningly pointed out, gone heavily against Van Buren. The bill pa.s.sed the Senate, 26 to 20. In the House it was defeated. Upon the election of speaker, the administration candidate, James K. Polk, had had 116 votes to 103 for John Bell. But this very moderate majority was insecure. A break in the administration ranks was promptly shown by the defeat, for printers to the House, of Francis P. Blair and his partner, who in their paper, the "Was.h.i.+ngton Globe," had firmly supported the hard money and anti-bank policy. They received only 107 votes, about fifteen Democrats uniting with the Whigs to defeat them. Van Buren was unable to educate all his party to his own firm, clear-sighted views.

There was formed a small party of "conservatives," Democrats who took what seemed, and what for the time was, the popular course. The independent treasury bill was defeated in the House by 120 to 106.

Van Buren's proposal was carried, however, to postpone the "deposite,"

as it was called, the gift as it was, of the fourth installment of the surplus. On October 1, Webster and Clay led the seventeen senators who insisted upon the folly of the national treasury in its dest.i.tution playing the magnificent donor, and further debauching the States with streams of pretended wealth. Twenty-eight senators voted for the bill; and in the House it was carried by 118 to 105, John Quincy Adams heading the negative vote.

The administration further proposed the issue of $10,000,000 in treasury notes. It was a measure strictly of temporary relief. Gold and silver had disappeared; bank-notes were discredited. The government, whose gold and silver the banks would not pay out, was disabled from meeting its current obligations; and the treasury notes were proposed to meet the necessity. They were not to be legal tender, but interest-bearing obligations in denominations not less than $50, to be merely receivable for all public dues, and thus to gain a credit which would secure their circulation. This natural and moderate measure was a.s.sailed by those who were lauding a paper currency to the skies. The radical difference was ignored between a general currency of small as well as large bills, without intrinsic value, adopted for all time, and a limited and perfectly secure government loan, to be freely taken or rejected by the people, in bills of large amounts, to meet a serious but brief embarra.s.sment. "Who expected," said Webster in the Senate, "that in the fifth year of the experiment for reforming the currency, and bringing it to an absolute gold and silver circulation, the Treasury Department would be found recommending to us a regular emission of paper money?" He voted, however, for the bill, the only negative votes in the Senate being given by Clay and four others. In the House it was carried by 127 to 98.

Such was the substantial work of the extra session. To the experience of that crisis and the wisdom with which it was met may not improbably be ascribed the hard-money leaven which, thirty or forty years later, prevented the great disaster of further paper inflation, and brought the country to a currency which, if not the best, is a currency of coin and of redeemable paper, whose value, apart from the legal-tender notes left us by the war and the decision of the Supreme Court, depends upon the best of securities, coin or government bonds, deposited in the treasury, and a currency whose amount may therefore safely be left to the natural operations of trade.

Clay's appeal for a great banking inst.i.tution, which should accomplish by magic the results of popular labor and saving, was met by a vote of the House, 123 to 91, that it was inexpedient to charter a national bank, many voting against a bank who had already voted against an independent treasury. The Senate also resolved against a national bank by 31 to 14, six senators who had voted against an independent treasury voting also against a bank. The temporary expedient adopted by the treasury on the suspension of the banks was therefore continued, and public moneys were kept in the hands of public officers.

Calhoun now rejoined the Democratic party. It was only the year before he had denounced it as "a powerful faction held together by the hopes of public plunder;" and early in this very year he had referred to the removal of the deposits as an act fit for "the days of Pompey or Caesar,"

and had declared that even a Roman Senate would not have pa.s.sed the expunging resolution "until the times of Caligula and Nero." But Van Buren, Calhoun now said, had been driven to his position; nor would he leave the position for that reason. He referred to the strict construction of the powers of the government involved in the divorce of bank and state. There was no suggestion that Van Buren had become a convert to nullification. But Calhoun could with consistency support Van Buren. The independent treasury scheme was plainly far different from the removal of the deposits from one great bank to many lesser ones. The reasons for political exasperation had besides disappeared. Van Buren was chief among the _beati possidentes_, and could not for years be disturbed. His tact and skill left open no personal feud; he had not yet conferred the t.i.tle of Caesar; no successor to himself was yet named by any clear designation. Calhoun joined Silas Wright and the other administration senators; but he still maintained a grim and independent front.

The extra session ended on October 16. Besides the issuance of $10,000,000 in treasury notes and the postponement of the distribution among the States, the only measure adopted for relief was a law permitting indulgence of payment to importers upon custom-house bonds.

As those payments were to be made in specie, and as specie had left circulation, it was proper that the United States as a creditor should exhibit the same leniency which was wise and necessary on the part of other creditors.

Commercial distress had now materially abated, although many of its wounds were still deep and unhealed. Before the regular session began in December, substantial progress was made towards specie payments. The price of gold in New York, which had ruled at a premium of eight and seven eighths per cent., had fallen to five. On October 20 the banks of New York, after waiting until Congress rose, to meet the wishes of the United States Bank and its a.s.sociates in Philadelphia, now invited representatives from all the banks to meet in New York on November 27 to prepare for specie payment. At this meeting the New York banks proposed resumption on March 1, 1838, but they were defeated; and a resolution to resume on July 1 was defeated by the votes of Pennsylvania and all the New England States except Maine (which was divided), together with New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and Indiana. Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia, with New York, made the minority. An adjournment was taken to the second Wednesday in April, the banks being urged meanwhile to prepare for specie payments.

The fall as well as the summer elections had been most disastrous for the Democrats. New York, which the year before had given Van Buren nearly 30,000 plurality, was now overwhelmingly Whig. The Van Buren party began to be called the Loco-focos, in derision of the fancied extravagance of their financial doctrines. The Loco-foco or Equal Rights party proper was originally a division of the Democrats, strongly anti-monopolist in their opinions, and especially hostile to banks,--not only government banks but all banks,--which enjoyed the privileges then long confirmed by special and exclusive charters. In the fall of 1835 some of the Democratic candidates in New York were especially obnoxious to the anti-monopolists of the party. When the meeting to regularly confirm the nominations made in committee was called at Tammany Hall, the anti-monopolist Democrats sought to capture the meeting by a rush up the main stairs. The regulars, however, showed themselves worthy of their regularity by reaching the room up the back stairs. In a general scrimmage the gas was put out. The anti-monopolists, perhaps used to the devices to prevent meetings which might be hostile, were ready with candles and loco-foco matches. The hall was quickly illuminated; and the anti-monopolists claimed that they had defeated the nominations. The regulars were successful, however, at the election; and they and the Whigs dubbed the anti-monopolists the Loco-foco men. The latter in 1836 organized the Equal Rights party, and declared it an imperative duty of the people "to recur to first principles." Their "declaration of rights" might well have been drawn a few years later by a student of Spencer's "Social Statics." The law, they said, ought to do no more than restrain each man from committing aggressions on the equal rights of other men; they declared "unqualified hostility to bank-notes and paper money as a circulating medium," and to all special grants by the legislature. A great cry was raised against them as dangerous and incendiary fanatics. The Democratic press, except the "Evening Post," edited by William Cullen Bryant, turned violently upon the seceders. There was the same horror of them as the English at almost the very time had of the Chartists, and which in our time is roused by the political movements of Henry George. But with time and familiarity Chartism and Loco-focoism alike lost their horrid aspect.

Several of the cardinal propositions of the former have been adopted in acts of Parliament without a shudder. To the animosity of the Loco-focos against special legislation and special privileges Americans probably owe to-day some part of the beneficent movement in many of the States for const.i.tutional requirements that legislatures shall act by general laws.

The Equal Rights party, though casting but a few votes, managed to give the city of New York to the Whigs, a result which convinced the Democrats that, dangerous as they were, they were less dangerous within than without the party. The hatred which Van Buren after his message of September, 1837, received from the banks commended him to the Loco-focos; and in October, 1837, Tammany Hall witnessed their reconciliation with the regular Democrats upon the moderate declaration for equal rights. The Whigs had, indeed, been glad enough to have Loco-foco aid and even open alliance at the polls. But none the less they thought the Democratic welcome back of the seceders an enormity.

From this time the Democrats were, it was clear, no better than Loco-focos, and ought to bear the name of those dangerous iconoclasts.

Van Buren met Congress in December, 1837, with still undaunted front.

His first general review of the operations of the government was but little longer than his message to the extra session on the single topic of finance. He refused to consider the result of the elections as a popular disapproval of the divorce of bank and state. In only one State, he pointed out, had a federal election been held; and in the other elections, which had been local, he intimated that the fear of a forfeiture of the state-bank charters for their suspension of specie payments had determined the result. He still emphatically opposed the connection between the government and the banks which could offer such strong inducements for political agitation. He blew another blast against the United States Bank, now a Pennsylvania corporation, for continuing to reissue its notes originally made before its federal charter had expired and since returned. He recommended a preemption law for the benefit of actual settlers on public lands, and a cla.s.sification of lands under different rates, to encourage the settlement of the poorer lands near the older settlements. There was a conciliatory but firm reference to the dispute with England over the northeastern boundary. He announced his failure to adjust the dispute with Mexico over the claims which had been pressed by Jackson. The Texan cloud which six years later brought Van Buren's defeat was already threatening.

At this session the independent or sub-treasury bill was again introduced, and again a t.i.tanic battle was waged in the Senate. In this encounter Clay taunted Calhoun for going over to the enemy; and Calhoun, referring to the Adams-Clay coalition, retorted that Clay had on a memorable occasion gone over, and had not left it to time to disclose his motives. Here it was that, in the decorous fury of the times, both senators stamped accusations with scorn in the dust, and hurled back darts fallen harmless at their feet. The bill pa.s.sed the Senate by 27 to 25; but Calhoun finally voted against it because there had been stricken out the provision that government dues should be paid in specie. The bill was again defeated in the House by 125 to 111. The latter vote was late in June, 1838. But while Congress refused a law for it, the independent treasury in fact existed. Under the circular issued upon the bank suspension, the collection, keeping, and payment of federal moneys continued to be done by federal officers. The absurdity of the declamation about one's blood curdling at Van Buren's recommendations, about this being the system in vogue where people were ground "to the very dust by the awful despotism of their rulers," was becoming apparent in the easy, natural operation of the system, dictated though it was by necessity rather than law. The Whigs, in the sounding jeremiades of Webster and the perfervid eloquence of Clay, were joined by the Conservatives, former Democrats, with Tallmadge of New York and Rives of Virginia at their head. They had retired into the cave of superior wisdom, of which many men are fond when a popular storm seems rising against their party; they affected oppressive grief at Van Buren's reckless hatred of the popular welfare, and accused him of designing entire destruction of credit in the ordinary transactions of business.

This silly charge was continually made, and gained color from the extreme doctrines of the Equal Rights movement and the fixing of the Loco-foco name upon the Democratic party.

The sub-treasury bill was again taken up at the long session of 1839-40 by the Congress elected in 1838. Again the wisdom of separating bank and state, again the wrong of using public moneys to aid private business and speculation, were stated with perfectly clear but uninspiring logic.

Again came the antiphonal cry, warm and positive, against the cruelty of withdrawing the government from an affectionate care for the people, and from its duty generously to help every one to earn his living. In and out of Congress it was the debate of the time, and rightly; for it involved a profound and critical issue, which since the foundation of the government has been second in importance only to the questions of slavery and national existence and reconstruction. In 1840 the bill pa.s.sed the Senate by 24 to 18 and the House by 124 to 107. This chief monument of Van Buren's administration seemed quickly demolished by the triumphant Whigs in 1841, but was finally set up again in 1846 without the aid of its architect. From that time to our own, in war and in peace, the independence of the federal treasury has been a cardinal feature of American finance. Nor was its theory lost even in the system of national banks and public depositories created for the tremendous necessities of the civil war.[15]

By the spring of 1838 business had revived during the year of enforced industry and economy among the people. In January, 1838, the premium on gold at New York sank to three per cent.; and when the bank convention met on the adjourned day in April, the premium was less than one per cent. The United States Bank resisted resumption with great affectation of public spirit, but for selfish reasons soon to be disclosed. The New York banks, with an apology to their a.s.sociates, resolved to resume by May 10, five days before the date to which the State had legalized the suspension. The convention adopted a resolution for general resumption on January 1, 1839, without precluding earlier resumption by any banks which deemed it proper. In April it was learned that the Bank of England was s.h.i.+pping a million sterling to aid resumption by the banks.

On July 10, Governor Ritner of Pennsylvania by proclamation required the banks of his State to resume by August 1. On the 13th of that month the banks of Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois yielded to the moral coercion of the New York banks, and to the resumption now enforced on the Bank of the United States. By the fall of 1838 resumption was general, although the banks at the Southwest did not follow until midwinter. Confidence was so much restored that "runs" on the banks did not occur. The crisis seemed at an end; and Van Buren not unreasonably fancied that he saw before the country two years of steady and sound return to prosperity. Two such years would, in November, 1840, bring the reward of his sagacity and endurance. But a far deeper draft upon the vitality of the patient had been made than was supposed; and in its last agony, eighteen months later, Biddle's bank helped to blast Van Buren's political ambition.

CHAPTER X

PRESIDENT.--CANADIAN INSURRECTION.--TEXAS.--SEMINOLE WAR.--DEFEAT FOR REeLECTION

Another unpopular duty fell to Van Buren during his presidency, a duty but for which New York might have been saved to him in 1840. In the Lower and Upper Canadas popular discontent and political tumult resulted late in 1837 in violence, so often the only means by which English dependencies have brought their imperial mistress to a respect for their complaints.[16] The liberality of the Whigs, then lately triumphant in England, was not broad enough to include these distant colonists. The provincial legislature in each of the Canadas consisted of a Lower House or a.s.sembly chosen by popular vote, and an Upper House or council appointed by the governor, who himself was appointed by and represented the crown. Reforms after reforms, proposed by the popular houses, were rejected by the council. In Lower Canada the popular opposition was among the French, who had never been embittered towards the United States. In Upper Canada its strength was among settlers who had come since the war closed in 1815. Lower Canada demanded in vain that the council be made elective. Its a.s.sembly, weary of the effectual opposition of the council to popular measures, began in 1832 to refuse votes of supplies unless their grievances were redressed; and by 1837 government charges had accrued to the amount of 142,100. On April 14, 1837, Lord John Russell, still wearing the laurel of a victor for popular rights, procured from the imperial parliament permission, without the a.s.sent of the colonial parliament, to apply to these charges the money in the hands of the receiver-general of Lower Canada. This extraordinary grant pa.s.sed the House of Commons by 269 to 46. A far less flagitious case of taxation without representation had begun the American Revolution. The money had been raised under laws which provided for its expenditure by vote of a local representative body. It was expended by the vote of a body at Westminster, three thousand miles away, but few of whose members knew or cared anything for the bleak stretch of seventeenth-century France on the lower St. Lawrence, and none of whom had contributed a penny of it. To even Gladstone, lately the under-secretary for the colonies and then a "rising hope of unbending Tories," there seemed nothing involved but the embarra.s.sment of faithful servants of the crown. This thoroughly British disregard of sentiment among other people roused a deep opposition which was headed by Papineau, eloquent and a hero among the French. An insurrection broke out in November, 1837, and blood was shed in engagements at St. Denis and St. Charles, not far from Montreal. But the insurgents were quickly defeated, and within three weeks the insurrection in Lower Canada was ended.

In Upper Canada there was considerable Republican sentiment, and the party of popular rights had among its leaders men of a high order of ability. One of them, Marshall S. Bidwell, through the magnanimity or procurement of the governor, escaped from Canada to become one of the most honored and stately figures at the bar of New York. Early in 1836, Sir Francis B. Head, a clever and not ill-natured man, arrived as governor. He himself wrote the unconscious Anglicism that "the great danger" he "had to avoid was the slightest attempt to conciliate any party." It was a.s.sumed with the usual insufferable affectation of omniscience that these hardy Western settlers were merely children who did not know what was best for them. Even the suggestions of concession sent him from England were not respected. In an election for the a.s.sembly he had the issue announced as one of separation from England; and by the use, it was said, of his power and patronage, the colonial Tories carried a majority of the House. Hopeless of any redress, and fired by the rumors of the revolt in Lower Canada, an insurrection took place early in December near Toronto. It was speedily suppressed. One of the leaders, Mackenzie, escaped to Buffalo. Others were captured and punished, some of them capitally.

The ma.s.s of the Canadians were doubtless opposed to the insurrection.

But there was among them a widespread and reasonable discontent, with which the Americans, and especially the people of northern and western New York, warmly sympathized. It was natural and traditional to believe England an oppressor; and there was every reason in this case to believe the Canadians right in their ill-feeling. The refugees who had fled to New York met with an enthusiastic reception, and, in the security of a foreign land, prepared to advance their rebellion. On the long frontier of river, lake, and wilderness, it was difficult, with the meagre force regularly at the disposal of the United States, to prevent depredations.

This difficulty became enhanced by a culpable though not unnatural invasion of American territory by British troops. On December 12, 1837, Mackenzie, who had the day before arrived with a price of $4000 set upon his head, addressed a large audience at Buffalo. Volunteers were called for; and the next day, with twenty-five men, commanded by Van Rensselaer, an American, he seized Navy Island in the Niagara River, but a short distance above the cataract, and belonging to Canada. He there established a provisional government, with a flag and a great seal; and that the new State might be complete, paper money was issued. By January, 1838, there were several hundred men on the island, largely Americans, with arms and provisions chiefly obtained from the American side.

On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of Canadian militia crossed the Niagara to seize the Caroline, a steamer in the service of the rebels. It happened, however, that the steamer, instead of being at Navy Island, was at Schlosser, on the American sh.o.r.e. The Canadians seized the vessel, killing several men in the affray, and after setting her on fire, loosened her from the sh.o.r.e, to go blazing down the river and over the falls. This invasion of American territory caused indignant excitement through the United States. Van Buren had promptly sought to prevent hostility from our territory. On January 5, 1838, he had issued a proclamation reciting the seizure of Navy Island by a force, partly Americans, under the command of an American, with arms and supplies procured in the United States, and declared that the neutrality laws would be rigidly enforced and the offenders punished. Nor would they receive aid or countenance from the United States, into whatever difficulties they might be thrown by their violation of friendly territory. On the same day Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott to the frontier, and by special message asked from Congress power to prevent such offenses in advance, as well as afterwards to punish them,--a request to which Congress, in spite of the excitement over the invasion at Schlosser, soon acceded. The militia of New York were, on this invasion, called out by Governor Marcy, and placed under General Scott's command. But there was little danger. On January 13 the insurgents abandoned Navy Island. The war, for the time, was over, although excitement and disorder continued on the border and the lakes as far as Detroit; and in the fall of 1838 other incursions were made from American territory. But they were fruitless and short-lived. Nearly nine hundred arrests were made by the Canadian authorities. Many death sentences were imposed and several executed, and many more offenders were sentenced to transportation.

England, in her then usual fas.h.i.+on, was duly waked to duty by actual bloodshed. Sir Francis B. Head left Canada, and the Melbourne ministry sent over the Earl of Durham, one of the finest characters in English public life, to be governor-general over the five colonies; to redress their wrongs; to conciliate, and perhaps yield to demands for self-government: all which might far better have been done five years before. Lord Durham used a wise mercy towards the rebels. He made rapid progress in the reforms, and, best and first of all, he won the confidence and affection of the people. But England used to distrust an English statesman who practiced this kind of rule towards a dependency.

A malevolent attack of Lord Brougham was successful, and Lord Durham returned to ministerial disgrace, though to a wiser popular applause, soon to die in what ought to have been but an early year in his generous and splendid career. Although punis.h.i.+ng her benefactor, England was shrewd enough to accept the benefit. The concessions which Lord Durham had begun were continued, and Canada became and has remained loyal.

Before leaving Canada, Lord Durham was invited by a very complimentary letter of Van Buren to visit Was.h.i.+ngton, but the invitation was courteously declined.

Mackenzie was arrested at Buffalo and indicted. After his indictment he addressed many public meetings through the United States in behalf of his cause, one at Was.h.i.+ngton itself. In 1839, however, he was tried and convicted. Van Buren, justly refusing to pardon him until he had served in prison two thirds of his sentence, thus made for himself a persistent and vindictive enemy.

Upon renewed raids late in 1838, the President, by a proclamation, called upon misguided or deluded Americans to abandon projects dangerous to their own country and fatal to those whom they professed a desire to relieve; and, after various appeals to good sense and patriotism, warned them that, if taken in Canada, they would be left to the policy and justice of the government whose dominions they had, "without the shadow of justification or excuse, nefariously invaded." This had no uncertain sound. Van Buren was promptly declared to be a British tool. The plain facts were ignored that the great majority of the Canadians, however much displeased with their rulers, were hostile to Republican inst.i.tutions and to a separation from England, and that the majority in Canada had the same right to be governed in their own fas.h.i.+on as the majority here. There was seen, however, in this firm performance of international obligations, only additional proof of Van Buren's coldness towards popular rights, and of his sycophancy to power.

The system of allowing to actual settlers, at the minimum price, a preemption of public lands already occupied by them, was adopted at the long session of 1837-38. Webster joined the Democrats in favoring the bill, against the hot opposition of Clay, who declared it "a grant of the property of the whole people to a small part of the people." The dominant party was now wisely committed to the policy of using the public domain for settlers, and not as mere property to be turned into money. But a year or two before, the latter system had in practice wasted the national estate and corrupted the public with a debauchery of speculation.