FIRST POLITICIAN-PRESIDENT

A review of Joel Silbey’s Martin Van Buren: And the Emergence of Popular Politics (2002)

(Rating 4 of 5)
 

Martin Van Buren is the first President of the United States to be born an American citizen.  As a natural born American he had a different view of his country than many of his predecessors.  This was a view of America from the ground up.  He saw the country as it was not what the makers wanted to be.  Van Buren was not afraid of the concept of popular democratic participation and, in fact, embraced it.  He was our first president who was a natural politician.

“To the Van Burnenites, on the other hand, political parties were not threatening to the American nation.  They did not corrupt society or its politics.  Contrary to established belief, they were necessary, proper, and, in fact, a positive good in the existing political environment.” (p.26) 

Van Buren on the road to power

Silbey’s book shows Van Buren coming to power at a time when the parties were in complete flux.  The Federalists had been vanquished, although Van Buren always felt they were on the way back, the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson was only game in town.  However with the divisive election of 1824, America would see a change in party alignment.

President Jackson's Van Buren's strongest ally

Van Buren emerges as the political mastermind of the Jacksonian movement, leading a relentless campaign against John Quincy Adams. Jackson would emerge as the winner in the election of 1828.  Van Buren was persuaded to resign his recently elected position as Governor of New York in order to become the U.S. Secretary of State.  Rising up through the Jackson Administration he displaces Calhoun as Vice President at the first ever Democratic National Convention in 1832.  In 1836, he is elected to replace Jackson. 

President Martin Van Buren

From there everything goes downhill. The economics policies of the Jackson Administration helped usher in an economic depression that severely hurt Van Buren’s reelection chances.  In fact it could be argued that President Van Buren was the first president ever to be denied re-election due to economic circumstances.
Van Buren was an architect of Democratic Party populism.  The same methods Van Buren used to get Jackson and himself elected President were also used to undermine his presidency.  The tactics that the Democrats used to dislodge John Quincy Adams from the White House were turned on him.  The Whigs had their own popular military hero from the War of 1812, William Henry Harrison, and were able to portray Van Buren as an out of touch elitist.  That was the same strategy the Democrats used against Adams in favor of Jackson, but this time Martin Van Buren was the target.

William Henry Harrison, Van Buren's opponent in both 1836 and 1840

The election of 1840 was not the last time Van Buren’s own ideas came back to haunt him.  In 1832 the first Democratic National Convention issued a two-thirds rule requiring that a candidate to be nominated only if he had two-thirds of the delegates[1].  This was great for Van Buren in 1832, 1836, and 1840 where the President enjoyed clear support all over the party.  In 1844 however the former President could only muster a majority of the delegates.  In addition, his agreement with Henry Clay to keep Texas out of the national political conversation opened up Van Buren and Henry Clay to being part of a corrupt bargain, the second of Clay’s career.  Van Buren had been one of the people to accuse Clay and Adams of the first one in 1824, now Van Buren was on the other side of the coin.  That made it impossible to win any more support and worse it cost him Andrew Jackson’s.  With only a majority of the delegates and too many hardliners against him, the nomination went to James K. Polk of Tennessee.  As the first former president to attempt to regain the office, his efforts ended in failure[2].

Van Buren ran again in 1848 shocking everyone when the preacher of party discipline bolted from his party to the free-soil party.  He would be the first of three presidents to attempt a comeback in this manner.  It stood no chance but Van Buren got his revenge at the Democrats, who in his mind betrayed him, by throwing the election to the Whigs, electing Zachary Taylor over Lewis Cass.

Joel Silbey’s book is small and easy to read.  It is a good starting point for anyone who would like to know something about our eighth president. Van Buren was quite a trailblazer but every new political weapon he could find was then used against him.  He in many ways was his own worst enemy.       

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[1] This would not be overturned until 1936.                    

[2] Only Grover Cleveland, in 1892, was ever able to successfully regain the office.


(Video from the PBS American Presidents series)

TWO STATESMEN AND A JACKASS

A review of Merrile D Peterson’s The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (1987)

(Rating 4 of 5)

In my earlier review of the Last Crusade I discussed how often unsuccessful presidents are in many respects successful statesmen.  This also holds true for even those great statesmen (and stateswomen) that fall short of the presidential honor.  My home state of Maine’s Ed Muskie would clearly qualify as a great statesman in the eyes of most Mainers.  Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun were three of the most prominent men of their era.  Each had a mass following in their respective region: Webster the Northeast, Clay the West, and Calhoun the South. 

Despite their large followings none of these men would ever reach the highest point in American politics, to be President.  Like Muskie, each one these statesmen would become Secretary of State and Webster would be hold that post twice.  At the start of the Republic good service in that office almost guaranteed the presidency[1].  Calhoun would become the Vice President, and Clay, among the three, would have the best chance of winning the coveted office, but all would fail. 

John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster

 

This book, covering political careers of all three, does a fairly good job of its task.  Although it can get convoluted at times, reading a duel biography is hard enough a trio-biography is very difficult.  However, the author does a good job staying on task.  There are moments where Peterson’s clear worship of these three gets a bit nauseating.

            “In 1832, when they came together in the Senate for the first time and coalesced in opposition to the president, Andrew Jackson, the idea of ‘The Great Triumvirate’ was born.  It was the offspring of the feverish Jacksonian imagination, for the prospect was very small of these master spirits—Webster, Clay, Calhoun—uniting in power like the famed Roman triumvirs who ruled after Caesar’s death.  Yet had they become a triumvirate in fact, what worlds they might have conquered!” (p.5)   

Clay and Webster, in my eyes, have very positive legacies.  There were things that they did and positions that they took that I strongly disagree with—the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850, for example—but over all I believe the two were positive forces in our nation’s history.  However, if one would take a more position, that person could argue all Clay and Webster really did was delay important issues repeatedly to the next generation instead of dealing with it themselves.  I think that Clay and Webster did the best they could with the situation that they were given.  

Compromise of 1850

 

The third member however is a different story.  Generally speaking I tend to judge historical figures by the standards of their own time not ours.  If I did the later, and was honest with myself, I would have to say everyone who ever made major decisions in the world was evil until I enter High School then it was just most of them.  However, in American history, there are four historical figures that I completely despise and John C. Calhoun is one of them[2]. 

I find absolutely no redeemable traits in Calhoun.  The only nice thing I can say about the man was if I had died in 1823 his death would have gone down as a tragic loss of a young great statesman.  Unfortunately, he lived into the 1850s and became the champion of all that was wrong with America at that time: slavery, nullification, and secession. An American villain if there ever was one.

“And so Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, the legitimate successors of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, never attained the presidency.  When the last of this ‘second race of giants’ passed away in 1852 nothing was left to challenge the sway of Lilliputians.  The republic lost its glory—the regalia of great statesmen.” (p.6)

I totally disagree with the above statement.  I am sorry but there were plenty of great statesmen to follow them.  I really do not feel these three were Founders’ natural successors.  Do not get me wrong they had their accomplishments.  Their end, however, was not the end of great statesmen.  In fact if you read Team of Rivals you can see the next generation of leaders was, in many ways, superior to this group. 

  

This book can be a very tough read so I would only recommended if you really love history and the time period.  In closing I am a little reminded of King William III of England and Holland who led coalitions against King Louis XIV of France.   King William might have been the thorn in King Louis’ side, but William III lived in the age of King Louis XIV.  Clay, Webster, and Calhoun may have liked to be known as the Triumvirate, but they were just players in the Age of Jackson.

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[1] Or in John Marshall’s case the Chief Justice post.

[2] The others are Rodger Taney, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and George Wallace.

 

AMERICA’S LION

A review of Jon Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008)

(Rating 4 of 5) 

John Meachham’s book American Lion covers the years when Andrew Jackson was the President of the United States.  In some ways it tries to mimic the traditional biography with a few chapters into his background.  This sort of reminds me of the last book I read on John Quincy Adams’ post-presidency.  Include a small mini-biography in the beginning before getting into the substance of your book.  In that view the earlier chapters are a waste of space.  Meacham could have just explained Jackson’s back-story in a single page in the beginning.  Nevertheless this book is good look at Jackson’s years in the White House.

From the start it is clear that Jackson is a different sort of president than his six predecessors.  Even though all of the previous presidents defended their right to use their constitutionally defended powers, Jackson declared himself to be the sole representative of the people and started using his presidential powers rather creatively.  He was the first president to veto bills that he did not like rather than veto on the grounds that a bill was unconstitutional.  His administration was one of the keys to the development of presidency as an institution.    

“Jackson took the Jeffersonian vision of the centrality of the people further, and he took Jefferson’s view of the role of the president further still.  To Jackson, the idea of the sovereignty of the many was compatible with a powerful executive.  He saw that liberty required security, that freedom required order, that the well-being of the parts of the Union required that the whole remain intact.  If he felt a temporary resort to autocracy was necessary to preserve democracy, Jackson would not hesitate.  He would do what had to be done.   In this he set an example on which other presidents would draw in times of struggle.  There were moments, Abraham Lincoln argued during the Civil War, when ‘measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation.’  It was a Jacksonian way of looking at the world.” (p.48-9)

            As I said in my review of Remini’s book on Jackson: there is a dark side to populism.  And the victims of that dark side were the Native American populations of the South.  Forced from their homes and made to relocate to far and distant place.  These actions will always be a stain on Jackson’s legacy.       

“But the answer was, tragically, yes.  Indian removal was possible because enough white Americans had a stake in it, or sympathized with it, and thus the institutions of the country allowed it to go forward.  Frelinghuysen and Evarts were not outliers; there was a significant anti-removal campaign across the country.  And the few groups of Indians—the Iroquois in New York and Cherokees in North Carolina—who managed to carve out small spheres east of the Mississippi after removal showed that coexistence was possible.  But to many, the idea that the tribes might be left alone on enclaves within states did not appear politically feasible once Georgia moved against the Cherokees.  There is nothing redemptive about Jackson’s Indian policy, no moment, as with Lincoln and slavery, where the moderate on a morally urgent question did the right and brave thing.  Not all great presidents were always good, and neither individuals nor nations are without evil.” (p.96-7)

            The area where President Jackson was great was when he stood up to the nullifiers in 1832.  Jackson’s and Clay’s (although neither would acknowledge the other one’s role) actions saved the Union from what could have been a civil war.  Had Jackson backed down to South Carolina's demand it would have been the death of the Constitution of the United States.

“A different, less emotionally nationalistic president in these middle years of the Republic might not have been able to balance the forces of respect for the essential rights of the states with a devotion to the causes of the Union.  Jackson was perfectly able to do this, for he believed in both, and he knew that both would be forever in tension and sometimes in conflict.  It could be no other way in a democratic republic formed from the elements that had formed America.  He wanted the power to act as freely as he could because he believed his judgment would serve the country well, for he made no distinction between himself and a broad idea of ‘the people.’  Egotistical, yes; arrogant, probably.  But to some degree politics and statecraft always involved the character of the leader, and the character of Andrew Jackson was, in the end, well suited for the demands of the White House.  He was strong and shrewd, patriotic and manipulative, clear-eyed and determined.” (p.250)

            The Jacksonian Era ushered in popular politics.  Gone would be the days of statesmen acting above the idea of party.  Now parties were going be far more organized and true vehicles to getting people elected.  Constituent based politics were here to stay.   

“If Jackson had been a president of consistent principle, the issue would have been clear.  He was the defender of the Union, the conqueror of the nullification, the hero of democracy.  An American organization was exercising its constitutional right to free speech and was using public mails—mails that were to be open to all—to do so.  But Jackson was not a president of consistent principle.  He was a politician, subject to his own passions and predilections, and those passions and predilections pressed him to cast his lot with those whit whom he agreed on the question at hand—slavery—which meant suppressing freedom of speech.  He had done the same in the case of the Cherokees and the state of Georgia, allowing a particular issue to trump his more general vision of government, a vision of government, a vision in which people who obeyed the laws were entitled to the protection of the president.” (p.304)

American Lion is a good look into a transformative presidency.  From the politics of the petticoat, to the bank war, to infamous Indian removal, and the heroic stand against the nullifiers of South Carolina.  This book is worth a read. 
 

(Video is from the History Channel Documentary on Andrew Jackson's life.)

THIS CHANGING WORLD

A review of Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007)

Part of the Oxford History of the United States Series

(Rating 5 of 5)

What Hath God Wrought is the third book in Oxford History of the United States series. The author, David Walker Howe, covers the remarkable transformation of nation not only in a political sense but in an entire physical and technological sense. The work begins with the story of the first official telegraph being sent by Samuel Morse in the chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States in an attempt to let his prestigious audience see the wonders of this new technology and learn of the the result of the Democratic National Convention.

As the historical narrative begins we see a nation coming to terms with the end of War of 1812, the founding generation is still the generation in charge but soon history turns and the Republic comes to the hands of statesmen of the second American generation. Men such as John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun will play the dominant leadership roles in the shaping of the nation's destiny.


(Andrew Jackson, the most famous general and statesman of the era)

As in the two previous volumes in the Oxford history series, the focus often shifts from top to the bottom. Howe focuses on not just the statesmen but the world and society that they operate in. Also there is a strong focus not only on the major players but on the minor actors and activists who perform smaller deeds but help bring about the changing of the world.

As the Madison Administration comes to an end, the Monroe Administration, the last with a president from the Founding generation, comes to power with a cabinet dominated by second generation American leaders. The shape of the cabinet sets the stage for the 'corrupt bargain' of Henry Clay giving John Quincy Adams the presidency over Andrew Jackson. As Howe points out, there was probably no actual 'deal' but the appearance of it hurt the second Adams Administration.


(Henry Clay, was one of the Triumvirate with Webster and Calhoun, was alleged to have committed the 'corrupt bargain' in order to deprive Jackson of the presidency)

Entering the 'Age of Jackson'—a term the author despises —the country goes though many changes. Among these changes are: the infamous Indian removal, the bank veto—which can disputed as good or bad—, and, the most positive change, President Jackson's handling of the Nullification crisis.

Economic factors such as the Crisis of 1819 and 1837 seriously affected the outcome of the nation’s history in many ways. The former helped turn the public against banks and made President Jackson's bank war much easier. The later hurt President Van Buren's reelection chances, against William Henry Harrison and the Whig Party.

“Under the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, the American administrative system had served as an example of honesty and efficiency to would-be administrative reformers in Britain. However, in the years after 1829, the quality of British administration gradually improved while that of the U.S. Federal government declined, until by the 1880s, American civil service reformers opposing the spoils system took Britain as their model.”p.334

(The Trail of Tears, one of the most wicked acts in American history)

This book also looks at how modern politics started to form with the wide acceptance of political parties as becoming part of the nation's governing reality. One of the major changes that comes along with the nation's first politician president, Martin Van Buren, is the establishment of national nominating conventions to choose a parties presidential and vice presidential nominees as opposed to the strongly rejected congressional caucus method.

The end of the book focuses on the Mexican-American War that takes place under the most expansionist president we had, James K. Polk. Polk sends Generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, both of whom would turn out to support Polk's political opponents, down to conquer Mexico and come out with a good chunk of it.


(U.S. gains in the Mexican-American War)



Howe also discusses how the Revolutions of 1848 affected this country, the nation was encouraged by the what went on in Europe but were almost blind to the nation's own faults. Howe ends the book looking at the infant feminist movement that was just getting organized at the Seneca Falls Convention.

Some of the reviews of this book that I have read have criticized it for being overly critical of Andrew Jackson, accusing the author of being revisionist—in the negative sense. I do admit this book does have some clear bias but it is different than most people think. Howe clearly has strong preference for the Whig Party, for example, while most authors dedicate their books to the spouses, parents, or children, Howe dedicates this book to the memory of John Quincy Adams.

“It may seem fitting that Adam's last word in Congress should have been 'No!' The former president had resisted the tide in many ways: against the popular Jackson, against mass political parties, against the extension of slavery across space and time, and most recently against waging an aggressive war. Yet Adam's vision was predominantly positive, not negative. He had stood in favor of public education, freedom of expression, government support for science, industry, and transportation, nonpartisanship in federal employment, justice to the Native Americans, legal rights for women and blacks, cordial relations with the Latin American Republics, and, undoubtedly, a firm foreign policy that protected the national interest.”p.812

(John Quincy Adams, the man to whom this entire book is dedicated)

Howe's conclusion that the Whigs were the party America's future while the Democrats were the party of the nation's white supremacist present—despite the fact the Democrats are still here and there are no Whigs—is a conclusion I have to disagree with.

In the previous volume Empire of Liberty, the reader is informed of the founding generation and the early battles between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the author, Gordon Wood, clearly is a fan of Jefferson. However, I have always found that it is not that Jefferson was right and Hamilton was wrong or vice verse, but that they were both right and both wrong about different things. Hamilton was right about the need for a strong government and assumption, while Jefferson was right to have a healthy criticism of central government and that government giving bankers too much power over the average people is not a good thing. I take the same stand with this second generation struggle, it is not so much Jackson and the Democrats were wrong and Clay and the Whigs were right but that they were both right and wrong about different things. The Jacksonians were right about getting the 'common people' involved in government and their distrust of powerful corporate banking interests. The Whigs were right about internal improvements and right to oppose Indian Removal.

Howe, while hailing the Whigs of the party of tomorrow, forgets that they existed just to oppose Andrew Jackson—just as the Democrats existed to support him. In this sense the term Jacksonian Era really does fit. While some of the Whigs, like Henry Clay, had principled positions, most of the Whigs were just to there to oppose Jackson and his followers. But Howe sees the various anti-Jackson people as the party being 'open' to various opinions despite in the Whigs' victorious elections they did not even have a party platform.

Nevertheless, this book is a very detailed look into the one of more amazing eras in the history of nation. When Andrew Jackson went to take the oath of office he went by horse and buggy, and when he left office he went home on a train.

{Video taken from the History Channel Documentary The Mexican American War.}