Читать книгу Calling on the Presidents: Tales Their Houses Tell - Clark Beim-Esche - Страница 9

Martin Van Buren was not the first President to face the problem. Nor would he be the last. John Adams had already experienced it. Andrew Johnson, later in the 19th century, would come to understand as completely as anyone ever could the full weight of its challenge. In the 20th century, the careers of Presidents William Howard Taft and the first George Bush would illustrate that the problem had lost none of its daunting difficulty over the years. Why, all these men would come to question, was it virtually impossible to successfully follow in the footsteps of a charismatic leader who had become a political icon?

George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan. As uniquely individual as these men were, and as diverse as were the challenges they faced, each one of them had assumed a larger-than-life persona that had helped him guide the ship of state in the direction he believed would yield the greatest benefit to the nation. But these Presidents would have to be followed in office. There is a compelling logic in the assumption that the men whom such dynamic Presidents had specifically chosen to be their successors would be excellent candidates for the office of Chief Executive. Why, then, had it turned out to be so hard for these successors to govern well? Not one of them, from John Adams to the first George Bush, would be re-elected to a second term of presidential service. History would conclude that, in some way, all of them failed to provide the leadership necessary to effectively solve the problems which had arisen during their administrations.

In the case of Martin Van Buren, such a conclusion appears unduly harsh, both as an assessment of his historical significance and as a measure of his personal success. His home, Lindenwald, which he had acquired during his years as President, tells a much more positive story. Still it is a different tale than the one Van Buren must have envisioned for himself as a young lawyer looking for ways to get ahead in the world of state and, eventually, national politics.

One lesson he had learned early on, as he had served customers in his father's tavern and listened to the political banter that had attracted his interest from the start: in politics, everything came down to winning. A winner was revered; a loser was forgotten. It was a truth that he took to heart—a truth that ultimately would explain his own place in history.

Lindenwald, now run by the National Park Service, is a beautiful country estate surrounded by over two hundred acres of cultivated farmland. Ray, the park guide to whom I first spoke upon entering the Visitor's Center, made special note of that: “I love the fact that, after his Presidency, Mr. Van Buren returned here and became a simple farmer. It's like what Thomas Jefferson did, and it's particularly appropriate because Mr. Jefferson was the first presidential candidate that Mr. Van Buren had supported as a young man."

Well, yes and no. While still a teenager Van Buren had enthusiastically campaigned for Thomas Jefferson. And, like Jefferson, after leaving the Presidency, Van Buren had returned to this pastoral estate in the Hudson River Valley. But Martin Van Buren had never intended to remain here. After losing his bid for re-election in 1840, the ex-President had lobbied energetically to recapture his party's nomination for the Presidency in 1844. Failing that, he had gone so far as to team up with Charles Francis Adams, the son of his old adversary John Quincy Adams, and aligned himself with a new political entity, the Free Soil Party, to make a then unprecedented fourth run for the Presidency in 1848. But the political tide had turned against him. Van Buren was unable to win a single vote in the Electoral College that year. The only real impact of his Free Soil Party candidacy was to split the Democratic votes in such a way as to insure the election of the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. It was a bitter defeat, and Van Buren would never again run for political office.

The Lindenwald estate stands as a kind of memorial to all this: to Van Buren's aspirations and successes as well as to his final losses. As Carol and I have often found, the house illustrated the President's story most compellingly.

Our site guide was a pleasant young college student named Rachel. We had arrived early and were the only guests for the 11:00 tour. We began toward the front of the house where Rachel recounted the tale of a youthful Martin Van Buren wending his way up to the porch where Peter Van Ness, the family patriarch who had built Lindenwald in the closing years of the 18th century, was reading.

“Mr. Van Ness," Rachel informed us, “was a Federalist, and he knew Martin Van Buren was a Democratic-Republican. As the young man approached, Mr. Van Ness refused even to acknowledge his presence and continued to read." Rachel paused a moment. “But as Martin Van Buren strode up to the door and knocked, Mr. Van Ness couldn't help but smile at the persistence and resolve of this young visitor."

This is obviously an apocryphal tale, though Van Buren had become friends with two of the Van Ness sons, Peter and William (both of whom were also Democratic-Republicans). Rachel's point, however, wasn't concerned with his friendships. She was more interested in portraying Van Buren, even at this early moment, as a man not easily flustered or intimidated.

That point, history reveals, is undeniably true. The story of Martin Van Buren's steady rise to political prominence reads like a Horatio Alger tale. While still a young lawyer, he successfully defended his friend William Van Ness from the charge of “having willfully and with malice aforethought murdered [Alexander] Hamilton" as a result of acting as Aaron Burr's second in the infamous duel that had cost the life of the great Federalist (Fleming 351). Building on the reputation this victory afforded him, Van Buren thereafter became known as the “Little Magician" who so professionally engineered the dominance of the Democratic Party in New York, the so-called “Albany Regency," that he managed to get himself elected to the U.S. Senate and, after that, to the governorship of the state. Later, both as Secretary of State to the first elected Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, and as Jackson's Vice President in 1832, this small-framed tavern keeper's son, this “Red Fox of Kinderhook," had arrived at a pinnacle of power and prestige that few of his townsfolk would ever have imagined possible. In the national election of 1836, he would win the Presidency itself, carrying the election by a comfortable margin in both popular and electoral votes.

Then, in 1839, the second year of his term of office, and almost like an award acknowledging his ascendency, the old Van Ness estate, Lindenwald, had come up for sale. The President wasted no time in purchasing it, even though, over the years, the house had deteriorated into a state of serious disrepair. One can only imagine what its acquisition must have meant to Martin Van Buren. That forbidding porch, once presided over by the patrician Peter Van Ness, had now become Van Buren property. The front parlor with its elegant Ogee arch leading into the breakfast area, the spacious front hallway with its spiral staircase leading to the upstairs bedrooms, all were now his to reconfigure and to redecorate as he pleased. After a two year restoration, Martin Van Buren took up residence here in 1841, just as his own political roof was about to cave in upon him.

Not that that had come as a complete surprise. Almost from the moment he had entered the Presidency, Van Buren had seen the nation plummet into the worst economic downturn of its young history. Despite his belief that his proposed Independent Treasury Act would do much to ameliorate the nation's financial problems, he knew that there would be formidable political battles ahead if he attempted to retain his office. But Martin Van Buren had never been a man to avoid a good fight. In fact, as Rachel led us into the large ground floor central hall of Lindenwald, one of the alterations he had insisted upon in the renovation spoke very clearly of his political ambitions.

“The original structure had featured an impressively elegant winding staircase leading to the second floor," Rachel informed us. “Mr. Van Buren had that feature taken out so that the room could be extended to accommodate large political gatherings."

And in fact it had been here that the President had invited his friends and operatives to help him design each of the three re-election bids that would occupy him for the next twelve years.

Looking around the capacious interior of the room, complete with a banquet table that could easily accommodate over thirty people, it was hard not to notice, as well, the expansive wallpaper scene that illustrated various stages of an aristocratic fox hunt.

“It reminds me of the front hall of Jackson's Hermitage," I whispered to Carol. But I also saw an important difference. Jackson's wallpaper depicted an ideal and mythological vision of pastoral beauty. Here at Lindenwald, the hunt, while set in a verdant and bucolic setting, was much more realistically rendered.

“And look at this," Carol gestured to me and pointed toward one of the scenes on the wallpaper just to the left of the entrance to the home's main parlor. There, astonishingly, was pictured a group of hunters enjoying a festive beverage as the pelt of a red fox hung from the limb of a nearby tree! Was this a piece of self-deprecating humor that Van Buren may have enjoyed to set a tone of convivial humility? Or, more seriously, had Martin Van Buren already guessed that his day had passed, that the “Red Fox of Kinderhook" had already run his last meaningful race?

The use to which he had put this large room would certainly suggest that, at least at the time he moved in, Martin Van Buren had missed the irony pictured on the walls of his political headquarters.

As Rachel continued to lead us through the back rooms of the house, it became increasingly apparent that much of what we were seeing had been the result of additions commissioned by Smith Van Buren, the son whose family had moved in with the ex-President in his later years.

The modernization of the kitchen areas, the elaborate Italianate tower that dominates the rear of the house, even the bright yellow paint of the building's façade, all were Smith's alterations of the original Van Ness structure that Martin Van Buren had purchased in 1839.

It was hard not to find in all these modifications a poignant parallel to Van Buren's political life. The party structure he had labored so intently to establish was now developing in new directions and backing new candidates. Commenting on his son Smith's many architectural improvements to Lindenwald, Martin Van Buren observed that “the idea of seeing in life the changes which my heir would be sure to make after I am gone, amuses me." Apparently it was more difficult to be amused by the changes wrought by his political heirs.

The final, and perhaps the most telling, insight into the life of Martin Van Buren that we were to encounter at Lindenwald came as Rachel welcomed Carol and me into the President's bed chamber. There, lying diagonally on the white bedspread, was a silver headed walking stick.

“This is one of my favorite pieces in the house,” Rachel began. “It was a gift to Mr. Van Buren from Andrew Jackson. It’s made of old hickory, echoing Mr. Jackson’s famous nickname, and look at what the silver cap reads.” She held up the cane so that we could make out its inscription: “Mr. Van Buren For the Next President.”

“Isn’t that great?” Rachel continued. “Right there Andrew Jackson was passing the baton of power to his chosen successor. And look down the shaft of the walking stick. There are thirteen silver discs placed around the stick, each carrying one visible letter: A-N-D-R-E-W-J-A-C-K-S-O-N. This gift must have made Mr. Van Buren very proud.”

Well, again, yes and no. Certainly the stick was a clear indication of Jackson’s approbation and support. But did it not also suggest that Van Buren would forever be leaning on the reputation and career of his illustrious predecessor? The verdict of most historians would appear to confirm both of these conclusions.

One of the most prominent of these historians, Joel H. Silbey, who wrote an acclaimed study of the significance of the Presidency of Martin Van Buren, identified four categories into which he believed the Presidents of the United States could be accurately grouped. The first was “the leader-statesmen” group, towering figures of national resolve; the second, Silbey labeled “prophets,” men, often unappreciated in their own time, who foresaw problems the nation would have to face in later years; third in Silbey’s categories were the “run-of-the-mill officeholders,” essentially ciphers in political history; and fourth and lastly were “the organizers/managers of American political life,” of whom, Silbey concluded, Van Buren was “a major example, perhaps the leading one…” (xi-xii).

Most other historians have accepted this vision of our eighth President: Martin Van Buren, the “Little Magician,” the sly “Red Fox of Kinderhook.” He is widely seen as the father of the political party machine, the organizing process of attaining and retaining power which has held national sway right up to the present day. This, historians have tended to agree, was his great legacy to his country. Yet this legacy may also be largely responsible for the negative light so often thrown on his achievements as a leader and as a President.

Why? Because it is an enigmatic truth that although Americans find politics a source of almost endless fascination and debate, they also tend to distrust and dislike politicians. Unless, of course, they win. Then, all is forgiven.

Martin Van Buren, as Silbey suggests, had played an essential role in creating the modern political party machine. He had ridden its influence all the way to the White House. But when he had lost his bid for a second term, the very machine he had been so instrumental in founding had cast him off for other more potentially attractive candidates. He would live long enough to find even at his beloved Lindenwald that his heirs and successors would amend and alter the estate to suit their own needs and tastes. He had lost the power to dictate the direction of his world.

The home here in Kinderhook, New York, then, stands as a somewhat curious combination of attained prominence and accepted defeat. As his country plunged into Civil War, the aging Martin Van Buren would persistently question both his family members and any visitors to Lindenwald about news from the front. Would the Union be saved? Were the Northern armies achieving victories? Had Southern forces threatened Washington? His family and friends repeatedly attempted to reassure the ex-President that the nation would withstand any adversity.

For Martin Van Buren, however, only absolute certainty could relieve him of his anxieties, and, during the first two years of the war, any such certainty was impossible to provide. He died here at his beautiful New York estate in July of 1862. Ironically it was a moment of history when nobody, not even one of the most astute politicians of his age, could be sure of just which side it was that was winning.