Van Buren

“ In politics Van Buren enjoyed as much strong and constant friendship as he encountered strong and constant hatred. Nothing points more surely to the essential soundness of life and the generosity of a public man than the near and long-continued friendship of other able, upright, and honorably ambitious men. It was an extraordinary measure in which Van Buren enjoyed friendship of this quality. With all the light upon his character, Jackson was too shrewd to suffer long from imposition. His intimacy with Van Buren for twenty years and more was really affectionate ”

“ The profoundly thrilling and hidden delight which comes with the first taste of supreme power, even to the experienced and battered man of affairs, had been enjoyed by Van Buren only a few days, when the air grew heavy about him, and then perturbed, and then violently agitated, until in two months broke fiercely and beyond all restraint the most terrific of commercial convulsions in the United States. ”

“ But in the persistent and fruitful adherence to a political creed fitted to the time and to the genius of the American people, in that noble art which gathers and binds to one another and to a creed the elements of a political party, the art which disciplines and guides the party, when formed, to clear and definite purposes, without wavering and without weakness or demagogy, Van Buren was a greater master than either of those men, in many things more interesting as they were. ”

“ Van Buren does with snares what others do by blows; traps while others hunt. And yet, in a feline way, he likes trouble. Set out a bowl of milk and a bowl of blood, and turn your back. If sure of unobservation, he will lap the blood. But if you stare at him, he dissembles with the milk, purring with fervor sedulous. Ever secret, Van Buren knows of no harder fate than mere discovery. His points of power are his egotism, his skill for sly effort, his talent as a trader of politics. Marcy is of another sort. Marcy is vigorous where Van Buren is fine. ”

“ Van Buren's skill in dealing with men was indeed extraordinary. It doubtless came from this temper of amity, and from an inborn genius for society; but it had been wonderfully sharpened in the unrivaled school of New York's early politics. When he was minister at London, he wrote that he was making it his business to be cordial with prominent men on both sides; a branch of duty, he said, in which he was not at home, because he had all his life been "wholly on one side." But he was jocosely unjust to himself. He was, for the politics of his day, abundantly fair to his adversaries. ”

“ Jackson and Butler, Wright and Flagg and Dix, sturdy, upright, skillful, experienced men of affairs, were not held in true and lifelong friendship and admiration by the insinuating manners, the clever management, the selfish and timid aims, which make the Machiavellian caricature of Van Buren so often drawn. No American in public life has shown firmer and longer devotion to his friends. ”

“ Van Buren began to smile.
"I see what you mean. It's an idea. You do hand me some good advice! Is it what you would do yourself, Harry?"
"It's what I'm always doing."
"But then I don't like the idea of being rude. One always wants to give the impression of being well-bred, no matter what the facts maybe." ”

“ No vague, no thoughtless rush of popular sentiment touched or shook this faith of Van Buren. Had there been indeed a readier emphasis about him, a heartier and quicker sympathy with the temper of the day, he would perhaps have aroused a popular enthusiasm, he might perhaps have been the hero which in fact he never was. But his [Pg 460] intellectual perceptions did not permit the subtle self-deceit, the enthusiastic surrender to current sentiment, to which the striking figures that delight the masses of men are so apt to yield. ”

“ Still the wakening rush of moral sentiment was so strong, the bitterness of Van Buren's Ohio and New York supporters had been so great at his defeat in 1844, that it seemed not utterly absurd that those two States might vote for him. If they did, that dream of every third party in America might come true,—the failure of either of the two great parties to obtain a majority in the electoral college, and the consequent choice of president in the House, where each of them might prefer the third party to its greater rival. ”

“ III. LUCY'S CUP OF TEA.
Mr. Van Buren's home was on Milton Hill. It overlooked Boston and the harbor. The upper windows commanded a glorious view in the morning. Before it glittered the sea with its white sails, and behind it rose the Blue Hills with their green orchards and woods. The house was colonial, with gables and cupola, and was surrounded by hour-glass elms, arbors, and evergreen trees. It had been built by Mr. Van Buren's father in the days of the China trade and of the primitive mandarin merchant, Hoqua. ”

“ Cabineteer Van Buren is short, round, fat, smooth, adroit, ambitious, and so much the mental tree-toad that, now when he is in contact with the positive General, his every opinion takes its color from that warrior. ”

“ Van Buren made his acquaintance, and was treated with the distinguished and flattering attention which the wisest of public men often show to young men of promise. Van Buren's enemies were absurdly fond of the fancy that in this [Pg 18] slight intercourse he had acquired the skill and grace of his manner, and the easy principles and love of intrigue which they ascribe to him. ”

“ All this a young man might endure, when he saw the clear fact that the Republican convention, ignoring for the time all former differences, had pronounced not a word inconsistent with the Democratic platform of 1840, and had made only the one declaration essential to American freedom and right, that slavery should not go into the Territories. Van Buren was not, however, a young man, or one of the few old men in whom a fiery sense of morality, and an eager and buoyant resolution, are unchilled by thinner and slower blood, and indomitably overcome the conservative influences of age. ”

“ Perhaps the most striking proof of this strength was the canvass of 1848, when in New York he was able to take fully half of his party with him into irregular opposition, a feat with hardly a precedent in our political history. And there was complete reciprocity. Van Buren was profoundly democratic in his convictions. He thoroughly, honestly, and without demagogy believed in the common people and in their competence to deal wisely with political difficulties. ”

“ Van Buren's partisanship always had a mellow character. He practiced the golden rule of successful politics, to foresee future benefits rather than remember past injuries. Indeed, it is just to say more. ”

“ At the close of the American Revolution, Abraham Van Buren was a farmer on the east bank of the Hudson River, New York. He was of Dutch descent, as was his wife, whose maiden name Hoes, corrupted from Goes, is said to have had distinction in Holland. But it would be mere fancy to find in the statesman particular traits brought from the dyked swamp lands whence some of his ancestors came. Those who farmed the rich fields of Columbia county were pretty thorough Americans ”

“ Van Buren, who was a business man, was an idealist; while Harry de Freyne, the artist—was, emphatically, not.
Van Buren had been brought up on Thackeray and Dickens, above all on old pictures from Punch; Du Maurier's drawings enjoyed at an early age had made him romantic about everything connected with London. As soon as he was able to leave his bank in New York—in fact, the moment he had retired from business—he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. ”

“ Van Buren turned to her, "I will tell you later."
"Hoqua, madam," said Sky-High, bowing to his mistress, "was the great merchant mandarin of Canton in the time of the opening of that port to all countries."
How did a Chinese servant know anything of Hoqua? This was the question that puzzled Mr. Van Buren. "Sky-High, how many people have you in your country?" he asked. ”

“ It was all so dream-like to Miss Van Buren that she declared incredulity in Holland's real existence. "There is no such country," she said, "and worse than all, I have no motor-boat."
Nevertheless, a shape which closely resembled "Lorelei" was floating like a white water-lily on a green calyx of canal, in the place where I had, or dreamed that I had, left her an hour ago. And having assembled on board that white apparition, we started, or dreamed that we started for Leiden—a place where I hoped to score a point or two with my lady. ”

“ No one could ever, whether in New York or in London, have been in life less modern than poor Van Buren, though he was eminently contemporary and perhaps even in advance in matters connected with business. ”

“ Farming and tavern-keeping then were fairly interchangeable; and the gracious manner, the tact with men, which the younger Van Buren developed to a marked degree, it is easy to believe came rather from the social and varied life of an inn than from the harsher isolation of a farm. The statesman's boyish days were at any rate spent among poor neighbors. He was born at Kinderhook, an old village of New York, on the 5th of December, 1782. ”

“ The Whigs' distrust towards Van Buren was still bitter; the hot anger of his own party over the blow he had dealt in 1848 was still far from subsided; the gratitude of most Free Soil men had completely disappeared with his apparent acquiescence in the politics of Pierce and Buchanan. Save in a narrow circle of anti-slavery Democrats, Van Buren, in these last days of his, was judged at best with coldness, and most commonly with dislike or even contempt. Not much of any other temper has yet gone into political history ”

“ During the same years there began an extension into federal politics of the "spoils system," which has been an evil second only to slavery, and from which we are only now recovering. To Van Buren more than to any man of his time must be awarded the credit of forming the creed of the Jacksonian Democracy. And in the shame of the abuse, which has so greatly tended to neutralize the soundest articles of political faith, Van Buren must participate with other and inferior men of his own time, and with the very greatest of the men who followed him. ”

“ I knew this when Rob van Buren spoke of the two girls who were with him at the Prinzenhof on July tenth as his "American cousin and an English friend."
I can never fall in love with a Dutch girl now, for I have done the thing I did not mean to do, and it can't be undone in this world. Once and for all, that is settled, however it may go with me where the girl is concerned. But it will go hard if I do not have her in the end, and I shall if she is to be got; for the men of my blood soon make up their minds when they want a thing, and they do not rest much until it's theirs. ”

“ Van Buren gladly seized the opportunity. He would leave the field of political [Pg 224] management. Three thousand miles in distance and a month in time away from Washington or New York, there could, he thought, be little pretense of personal manœuvres on his part. He would thus plainly submit his candidacy to popular judgment upon his public career, without interference from himself. He would escape the many embarrassments of every politician upon whom demands are continually made,—demands whose rejection or allowance alike brings offense. ”

“ It is not to be forgotten, however, that a like atmosphere has surrounded even those political struggles in America, only three or four in number, which have been greater and deeper than that in which Jackson and Van Buren were the chief figures. From this temper of personal controversy and ambition the greatest political benefactors of history have not been free, so inevitable is the mingling with large affairs of the varied personal motives, conscious and unconscious, of those who transact them. ”

“ In these years Van Buren was one of the chief men in American public life. He and his political associates had been profoundly affected by the Jeffersonian philosophy of government. They robustly held its tenets until the flame and vengeance of the slavery conflict drove them from political power. In our own day we have, in the able speeches with which Samuel J. Tilden fatigued respectful though often unsympathetic hearers at Democratic meetings, heard something of the same robust political philosophy, brought directly from intercourse with his famous neighbor and political master. ”

“ Van Buren very clearly does not belong among the mediocrities or accidents of the White House,—among Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, and Pierce, not to meddle with the years since the civil war whose party disputes are still part of contemporary politics. Van Buren reached the presidency by political abilities and public services of the first order, as the most distinguished active member of his party, and with a universal popular recognition for years before his promotion that he was among the three or four Americans from whom a president would be naturally chosen. ”

“ Van Buren was not, however, an unpopular man, except as toward the last his politics were unpopular as politics out of sympathy with those of either of the great parties, and except also at the South, where he was soon suspected and afterwards hated as an anti-slavery man. He was on the whole a strong candidate at the polls. In his own State and at the Northeast his strength with the people grew more and more until his defeat by the slaveholders in 1844. ”

“ Van Buren visited Europe. Her uncle, Mr. Stevenson, was then Minister to England, and she and her husband were the recipients of much attention, as London was unusually gay on account of the recent coronation of Queen Victoria. Returning, they resided throughout his retirement with ex-President Van Buren at Lindenwald, and subsequently removed to New York City, where Mrs. Van Buren remained for the rest of her life. Pier home was the resort of people of refinement and education. She was most unselfish and self-denying in the distribution of her wealth and influence for the benefit of others. ”