Читать книгу Martin Van Buren - Edward Morse Shepard - Страница 7

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The politics of New York State were never more bitter, never more personal, than when Van Buren entered the field in 1803. The Federalists were sheltered by the unique and noble prestige of Washington's name; and were conscious that in wealth, education, refinement, they far excelled the Republicans. They were contemptuously suspicious of the unlettered ignorance, the intense and exuberant vanity, of the masses of American men. It was by that contempt and suspicion that they invited the defeat which, protected though they were by the property qualifications required of voters in New York, they met in 1800 at the hands of a people in whom the instincts of democracy were strong and unsubmissive. This was in our history the one complete and final defeat of a great national party while in power. The Federalists themselves made it final—by their silly and unworthy anger at a political reverse; by their profoundly immoral efforts to thwart the popular will and make Burr president; by their fatal and ingrained disbelief in common men, who, they thought, foolishly and impiously refused to accept wisdom and guidance from the possessors of learning and great estates; and finally by their unpatriotic opposition to Jefferson and Madison in the assertion of American rights on the seas during the Napoleonic wars. All these drove the party, in spite of its large services in the past and its eminent capacity for service in the future, forever from the confidence of the American people. The Federalists maintained, it is true, a party organization in New York until after the second war with England; but their efforts were rather directed to the division and embarrassment of their adversaries than to victories of their own strength or upon their own policy. They carried the lower house of the legislature in 1809, 1812, and 1813. There were among them men of the first rank, who retained a strong hold on popular respect, among whom John Jay and Rufus King were deservedly shining figures. But never after 1799 did the Federalists elect in New York a governor, or control both legislative houses, or secure any solid power, except by coalition with one branch or another of the Republicans.

Van Buren's fondness for politics was soon developed. His father was firmly attached to the Jeffersonians or Republicans—a rather discredited minority among the Federalists of Columbia county and the estates of the Hudson River aristocracy. Inheriting his political preferences, Van Buren, with a great body of other young Americans, caught the half-doctrinaire enthusiasm which Jefferson then inspired, an enthusiasm which in Van Buren was to be so enduring a force, and to which sixty years later he was still as loyal as he had been in the hot disputes on the sanded floors of the village store or tavern. During these boyish years he wrote and spoke for his party; and before he was eighteen he was formally appointed a delegate to a Republican convention for Columbia and Rensselaer counties.

Van Buren returned from New York to Columbia county late in 1803, just twenty-one years old. At once he became active in politics. The Republican party, though not strong in his county, was dominant in the State; and the game of politics was played between its different factions, the Federalists aiding one or the other as they saw their advantage. The Republicans were Clintonians, Livingstonians, or Burrites. George Clinton, in whose career lay the great origin of party politics of New York, was the Republican leader. The son of an Irish immigrant, he had, without the aid of wealth or influential connections, made himself the most popular man in the State. He was the first governor after colonial days were over, and was repeatedly reëlected. It was his opposition which most seriously endangered New York's adoption of the Federal Constitution. But in spite of the wide enthusiasm which the completed Union promptly aroused, this opposition did not prevent his reëlection in 1789 and 1792. The majorities were small, however, it being even doubtful whether in the latter year the majority were fairly given him. In 1795 he declined to be a candidate, and Robert R. Livingston, the Republican in his place, was defeated. In 1801 Clinton was again elected. Later he was vice-president in Jefferson's second term and Madison's first term; and his aspiration to the presidency in 1808 was by no means unreasonable. He was a strong party leader and a sincerely patriotic man. The Livingston family interest in New York was very great. The chancellor, Robert R. Livingston, who nowadays is popularly associated with the ceremony of Washington's inauguration, had been secretary for foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, and had left the Federalists in 1790. After his sixty years had under the law disqualified him for judicial office, he became Jefferson's minister to France and negotiated with Bonaparte the Louisiana treaty. Brockholst Livingston was a judge of the Supreme Court of New York in 1801. In 1807 Jefferson promoted him to the federal Supreme Court. Edward Livingston, younger than his brother, the chancellor, by seventeen years, was long after to be one of the finest characters in our politics. Early in Washington's administration he had become a strong pro-French Republican, and had opposed Jay's treaty with Great Britain; though forty years later, when Jackson brought him from Louisiana to be secretary of state, he was sometimes reminded of his still earlier Federalism. Morgan Lewis, judge of the Supreme Court and afterwards chief justice, and still later governor, was a brother-in-law of the chancellor. Smith Thompson, also a judge and chief justice, and later secretary of the navy under Monroe and a judge of the federal Supreme Court, and Van Buren's competitor for governor in 1828, was a connection of the family. There were sneers at the Livingston conversion to Democracy as there always are at political conversions. But whether or not Chancellor Livingston's Democracy came from jealousy of Hamilton in 1790, it is at least certain that he and his family connections rendered political services of the first importance during a half century. The drafting of Jackson's nullification proclamation in 1833 by Edward Livingston was one of the noblest and most signal services which Americans have had the fortune to render to their country.

The best offices were largely held by the Clinton and Livingston families and their connections, an arrangement very aristocratic indeed, but which did not then seem inconsistent with efficient and decorous performance of the public business. Burr naturally gathered around him those restless, speculative men who are as immoral in their aspirations as in their conduct, and whose adherence has disgraced and weakened almost every democratic movement known to history. Burr had been attorney-general; he had refused a seat in the Supreme Court; he had been United States senator; and now in the second office of the nation he presided with distinguished grace over the Federal Senate. His hands were not yet red with Hamilton's blood when Van Buren met him at New York in 1803; but Democratic faces were averted from the man who, loaded with its honors and enjoying its confidence, had intrigued with its enemies to cheat his exultant party out of their choice for president. In tribute to the Republicans of New York, George Clinton had already been selected in his place to be the next vice-president. While Van Buren was near the close of his law studies at New York, Burr was preparing to restore his fortunes by a popular election, for which he had some Republican support, and to which the fatuity of the defeated party, again rejecting Hamilton's advice, added a considerable Federalist support. William P. Van Ness, as "Aristides," one of the classical names under which our ancestors were fond of addressing the public, had in the Burr interest written a bitter attack on the Clintons and Livingstons, accusing them, and with reason, of dividing the offices between themselves.

Van Buren was easily proof against the allurements of Burr, and even the natural influence of so distinguished a man as Van Ness, with whom he had been studying a year. Sylvester, his first preceptor, was a Federalist. So was Van Alen, his half-brother, soon to be his partner, who in May, 1806, was elected to Congress. But Van Buren was firm and resolute in party allegiance. In the election for governor in April, 1804, Burr was badly beaten by Morgan Lewis, the Clinton-Livingston candidate, whom Van Buren warmly supported, and Burr's political career was closed. The successful majority of the Republicans was soon resolved into the Clintonians, led by Clinton and Judge Ambrose Spencer, and the Livingstonians, led by Governor Lewis. The active participation of judges in the bitter politics of the time illustrates the universal intensity of political feeling, and goes very far to justify Jefferson's and Van Buren's distrust of judicial opinions on political questions. Brockholst Livingston, Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, Daniel D. Tompkins—all judges of the State Supreme Court—did not cease when they donned the ermine to be party politicians; neither did the chancellors Robert R. Livingston and Lansing. Even Kent, it is pretty obvious, was a man of far stronger and more openly partisan feelings than we should to-day think fitting so great a judicial station as he held. The quarrels over offices were strenuous and increasing from the very top to the bottom of the community.

The Federalists in 1807 generally joined the Lewisites, or "Quids." Governor Lewis, finding that the jealousy of the Livingston interests would defeat his renomination by the usual caucus of Republican members of the legislature, became the candidate of a public meeting at New York, and of a minority caucus, and asked help from the Federalists. Such an alliance always seemed monstrous only to the Republican faction that felt strong enough without it. The regular legislative caucus, controlled by the Clintonians, nominated Daniel D. Tompkins, then a judge of the Supreme Court, and for years after the Republican "war-horse." Van Buren adhered to the purer, older, and less patrician Democracy of the Clintonians. Tompkins was elected, with a Clintonian legislature; and the result secured Van Buren's first appointment to public office. A Clintonian council of appointment was chosen. The council, a complex monument of the distrust of executive power with which George III. had filled his revolted subjects, was composed of five members, being the governor and one member from each of the four senatorial districts, who were chosen by the Assembly from among the six senators of the district. The four senatorial members of the council were always, therefore, of the political faith of the Assembly, except in cases where all the senators from a district belonged to the minority party in the Assembly. To this council belonged nearly every appointment in the State, even of local officers. Prior to 1801 the governor appointed, with the advice and consent of the council. After the constitutional amendment of that year, either member of the council could nominate, the appointment being made by the majority. Van Buren became surrogate of Columbia county on February 20, 1808. There was no prescribed term of office, the commission really running until the opposition party secured the council of appointment. Van Buren held the office about five years and until his removal on March 19, 1813, when his adversaries had secured control of the council.