Chapter VII: Minister to England.--Vice-President.--Election to the Presidency (2)

It was the second national convention of the party. The members assembled at the "place of worship of the Fourth Presbyterian Church." Instead of the firm and now long-recognized opening by the chairman of the national committee provided by the well-geared machinery of our later politics, George Kremer of Pennsylvania first "stated the objects of the meeting." Andrew Stevenson of Virginia, the president, felt it necessary in his opening speech to defend the still novel party institution. Efforts, he said, would be made at the approaching election to divide the Republican party and possibly to defeat an election by the people in their primary colleges. Their venerable president had advised, but in vain, constitutional amendments securing this election to the people, and preventing its falling to the House of Representatives. A national convention was the best means of concentrating the popular will, the only defense against a minority party. It was recommended by prudence, sanctioned by the precedent of 1832, and had proved effectual by experience. They must guard against local jealousies. "What, gentlemen," he said, "would you think of the sagacity and prudence of that individual who would propose the expedient of cutting up the noble ship that each man might seize his own plank and steer for himself?" The inquiries must be: Who can best preserve the unity of the Democratic party? Who best understands the principles and motives of our government? Who will carry out the principles of the Jeffersonian era and General Jackson's administration? These demands clearly enough pointed out Van Buren. Prayers were then offered up "in a fervent, feeling manner." The rule requiring two thirds of the whole number of votes for a nomination was again adopted, because "it would have a more imposing effect," though nearly half the convention, 210 to 231, thought a majority was more "according to Democratic principles." Niles records that the formal motion to proceed to the nomination caused a smile among the members, so well settled was it that Van Buren was to be the nominee. He received the unanimous vote of the convention. A strong fight was made for the vice-presidency between the friends of Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky and William C. Rives of Virginia. The former received barely the two-thirds vote. The Virginia delegation upon the defeat of the latter did what would now be a sacrilegious laying of violent hands on the ark. Party regularity was not yet so chief a deity in the political temple. The Virginians had, they said, an unpleasant duty to perform; but they would not shrink from it. They would not support Johnson for the vice-presidency; they had no confidence in his principles or his character; they had come to the convention to support principles, not men; they had already gone as far as possible in supporting Mr. Van Buren, and they would not go further. Not long afterwards Rives left the party. No platform was adopted; but a committee was appointed to prepare an address to the people.

The Whigs nominated General William Henry Harrison for the presidency and Francis Granger for the vice-presidency. They had but a forlorn hope of direct success. But the secession from the Democratic party of the nullifiers, and the more serious secession in the Southwest headed by White, made it seem possible to throw the election into the House. John Tyler of Virginia was the nominee of the bolting Democrats, for vice-president upon the ticket with White. The Whigs of Massachusetts preferred their unequaled orator; for they then and afterwards failed to see, as the admirers of some other famous Americans have failed to see, that other qualities make a truer equipment for the first office of the land than this noble art of oratory. South Carolina would vote against Calhoun's victorious adversary; but she would not, in the first instance at least, vote with the Whig heretics.

It was a disorderly campaign, lasting a year and a half, and never reaching the supreme excitement of 1840 or 1844. The opposition did not deserve success. It had neither political principle nor discipline. Calhoun described the Van Buren men as "a powerful faction (party it cannot be called) held together by the hopes of public plunder and marching under a banner whereon is written 'to the victors belong the spoils.'" There was in the rhetorical exaggeration enough truth perhaps to make an issue. But the political removals under Jackson were only incidentally touched in the canvass. Amos Kendall, then postmaster-general, towards the close of the canvass wrote a letter which, coming from perhaps the worst of Jackson's "spoils-men," shows how far public sentiment was even then from justifying the political interference of federal officers in elections. Samuel McKean, senator from Pennsylvania, had written to Kendall complaining that three employees of the post-office had used the time and influence of their official stations to affect elections, by written communications and personal importunities. This, he said, was "a loathsome public nuisance," though admitting that since Kendall became postmaster-general he had given no cause of complaint. Kendall replied on September 27, 1836, that though it was difficult to draw the line between the rights of the citizen and the assumptions of the officeholder, he thought it dangerous to our institutions that government employees should "assume to direct public opinion and control the results of elections in the general or state government." His advice to members of his department was to keep as clear from political strife as possible, "to shun mere political meetings, or, if present, to avoid taking any part in their proceedings, to decline acting as members of political committees or conventions." In making appointments he would prefer political friends; but he "would not remove a good postmaster and honest man for a mere difference of political opinion." The complaints were for offenses committed under his predecessor; one of the three offenders had left the service; the other two had been free from criticism for seventeen months. There can be little doubt that the standard thus set up in public was higher than the general practice of Kendall or his subordinates; but the letter showed that public sentiment had not yet grown callous to this odious abuse.

Jackson did not permit the presidential office to restrain him from most vigorous and direct advocacy of Van Buren's claims. He begged Tennessee not to throw herself "into the embraces of the Federalists, the Nullifiers, or the new-born Whigs." They were living, he said, in evil times, when political apostasy had become frequent, when public men (referring to White, John Tyler, and others who had gone with them) were abandoning principle and their party attachment for selfish ends. To this it was replied that the president's memory was treacherous; that he had forgotten his early friends, and listened only "to the voice of flattery and the siren voice of sycophancy." The dissenting Republicans affected to support administration measures, but protested against Jackson's dictating the succession. They were then, they said, "what they were in 1828,--Jacksonians following the creed of that apostle of liberty, Thomas Jefferson."

Without principle as was this formidable secession, it is impossible to feel much more respect for the declaration of principles made for the Whig candidates. Clay, the chief spokesman, complained that Jackson had killed with the pocket veto the land bill, which proposed to distribute the proceeds of the sales of public lands among the States according to their federal population (which in the South included three fifths of the slaves), to be used for internal improvements, education, or other purposes. He pointed out, with "mixed feelings of pity and ridicule," that the few votes in the Senate against the "deposit bill," which was to distribute the surplus among the States, had been cast by administration senators, since deserted by their numerous followers who demanded distribution. He rejoiced that Kentucky was to get a million and a half from the federal treasury. He denounced Jackson's "tampering with the currency" by the treasury order requiring public lands to be paid for in specie and not in bank-notes. Jackson's treatment of the Cherokees seemed the only point of attack apart from his financial policy.

The real party platforms this year were curiously found in letters of the candidates to Sherrod Williams, an individual by no means distinguished. On April 7, 1836, he addressed a circular letter to Harrison, Van Buren, and White, asking each of them his opinions on five points: Did he approve a distribution of the surplus revenue among the States according to their federal population, for such uses as they might appoint? Did he approve a like distribution of the proceeds of the sales of public lands? Did he approve federal appropriations to improve navigable streams above ports of entry? Did he approve another bank charter, if it should become necessary to preserve the revenue and finances of the nation? Did he believe it constitutional to expunge from the records of a house of Congress any of its proceedings? The last question referred to Benton's agitation for a resolution expunging from the records of the Senate the resolution of 1834, condemning Jackson's removal of the deposits as a violation of the Constitution. Harrison, for whose benefit the questions were put, returned what was supposed to be the popular affirmative to the first three inquiries. The fourth he answered in the affirmative, and the fifth in the negative. Van Buren promptly pointed out to Williams that he doubted the right of an elector, who had already determined to oppose him, to put inquiries "with the sole view of exposing, at his own time and the mode he may select, the opinions of the candidate to unfriendly criticism," but nevertheless promised a reply after Congress had risen. This delay he deemed proper, because during the session he might, as president of the Senate, have to vote upon some of the questions. Williams replied that the excuse for delay was "wholly and entirely unsatisfactory." Van Buren curtly said that he should wait as he had stated. On August 8, not far from the time nowadays selected by presidential candidates for their letters of acceptance, Van Buren addressed a letter to Williams, the prolixity of which seems a fault, but which, when newspapers were fewer and shorter, and reading was less multifarious, secured perhaps, from its length, a more ample and deliberate study from the masses of the people.

For clearness and explicitness, and for cogency of argument, this letter has few equals among those written by presidential candidates. This most conspicuous of Van Buren's preëlection utterances has been curiously ignored by those who have accused him of "non-committalism." Congress, he said, does not possess the power under the Constitution to raise money for distribution among the States. If a distinction were justifiable, and of this he was not satisfied, between raising money for such a purpose and the distribution of an unexpected surplus, then the distribution ought not to be attempted without previous amendment of the Constitution. Any system of distribution must introduce vices into both the state and federal governments. It would be a great misfortune if the distribution bill already passed should be deemed a pledge of like legislation in the future. So much of the letter has since largely had the approval of American sentiment, and was only too soon emphasized by the miserable results of the bill thus condemned. The utterance was clear and wise; and it was far more. It was a singularly bold attitude to assume, not only against the views of the opposition, but against a measure passed by Van Buren's own party friends and signed by Jackson, a measure having a vast and cheap popularity throughout the States which were supposed, and with too much truth, not to see that for what they took out of the federal treasury they would simply have to put so much more in. "I hope and believe," said Van Buren, "that the public voice will demand that this species of legislation shall terminate with the emergency that produced it." To the inquiry whether he would approve a distribution among the States of the proceeds of selling the public lands, Van Buren plainly said that if he were elected he would not favor the policy. These moneys, he declared, should be applied "to the general wants of the treasury." To the inquiry whether he would approve appropriations to improve rivers above ports of entry, he quoted with approval Jackson's declaration in the negative. He would not go beyond expenditures for lighthouses, buoys, beacons, piers, and the removal of obstructions in rivers and harbors below such ports.

Upon the bank question, too, he left his interrogator in no doubt. If the people wished a national bank as a permanent branch of their institutions, or if they desired a chief magistrate who as to that would consider it his duty to watch the course of events and give or withhold his assent according to the supposed necessity, then another than himself must be chosen. And he added: "If, on the other hand, with this seasonable, explicit, and published avowal before them, a majority of the people of the United States shall nevertheless bestow upon me their suffrages for the office of president, skepticism itself must cease to doubt, and admit their will to be that there shall not be any Bank of the United States until the people, in the exercise of their sovereign authority, see fit to give to Congress the right to establish one." It was high time "that the federal government confine itself to the creation of coin, and that the States afford it a fair chance for circulation." With the power of either house of Congress to expunge from its records, he pointed out that the President could have no concern. But rather than avoid an answer, he said that he regarded the passage of Colonel Benton's resolution as "an act of justice to a faithful and greatly injured public servant, not only constitutional in itself, but imperiously demanded by a proper respect for the well-known will of the people."

This justly famous letter made up for the rather jejune and conventional letter of acceptance written a year before. Not concealing his sensitiveness to the charge of intrigue and management, Van Buren had then appealed to the members of the Democratic convention, to the "editors and politicians throughout the Union" who had preferred him, to his "private correspondents and intimate friends," and to those, once his "friends and associates, whom the fluctuations of political life" had "converted into opponents." No man, he declared, could truly say that he had solicited political support, or entered or sought to enter into any arrangement to procure him the nomination he had now received, or to elevate him to the chief magistracy. There was no public question of interest upon which his opinions had not been made known by his official acts, his own public avowals, and the authorized explanations of his friends. The last was a touch of the frankness which Van Buren used in vain to stop his enemies' accusations of indirectness. Instead of shielding himself, as public men usually and naturally do, behind Butler, the attorney-general, and others who had spoken for him, he directly assumed responsibility for their "explanations." He considered himself selected to carry out the principles and policy of Jackson's administration, "happy," he said, "if I shall be able to perfect the work which he has so gloriously begun." He closed with the theoretical declaration which consistently ran through his chief utterances, that, though he would "exercise the powers which of right belong to the general government in a spirit of moderation and brotherly love," he would on the other hand "religiously abstain from the assumption of such as have not been delegated by the Constitution."

Upon still another question Van Buren explicitly declared himself before the election. In 1835, the year of his nomination, appeared the cloud like a man's hand which was not to leave the sky until out of it had come a terrific, complete, and beneficent convulsion. Then openly and seriously began the work of the extreme anti-slavery men. Clay pointed out in his speech on colonization in 1836 that "this fanatical class" of abolitionists "were none of your old-fashioned gradual emancipationists, such as Franklin, Rush, and the other wise and benevolent Pennsylvanians who framed the scheme for the gradual removal of slavery." He was right. Many of the new abolitionists were on the verge, or beyond it, of quiet respectability. Educated, intelligent, and even wealthy as some of them were, the abolitionists did not belong to the always popular class of well-to-do folks content with the institutions of society. Most virtuous and religious people saw in them only wicked disturbers of the peace. All the comfortable, philosophical opponents of slavery believed that such wild and reckless agitators would, if encouraged, prostrate the pillars of civilization, and bring on anarchy, bloodshed, and servile wars worse even to the slaves than the wrongs of their slavery. But to the members of the abolition societies which now rose, this was no abstract or economical question. They were undaunted by the examples of Washington and Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who, whatever they said or hoped against slavery, nevertheless held human beings in bondage; or of Adams and other Northern adherents of the Constitution, who for a season at least had joined in a pact to protect the infamous slave traffic. To them, talk of the sacred Union, or of the great advance which negroes had made in slavery and would not have made in freedom, was idle. With unquenched vision they saw the horrid picture of the individual slave life, not the general features of slavery; they saw the chain, the lash, the brutalizing and contrived ignorance; they saw the tearing apart of families, with their love and hope, precisely like those of white men and women, crushed out by detestable cruelty; they saw the beastly dissoluteness inevitable to the plantation system. Nor would they be still, whatever the calm preaching of political wisdom, whatever the sincere and weighty insolence of men of wisdom and uprightness and property. Northern men of 1888 must look with a real shame upon the behavior of their fathers and grandfathers towards the narrow, fiery, sometimes almost hateful, apostles of human rights; and with even greater shame upon the talk of the sacred right of white men to make brutes of black men, a right to be treated, as the best of Americans were so fond of saying, with a tender and affectionate regard for the feelings of the white slave-masters. About the same time began the continual presentation to Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery, and the foolish but Heaven-ordained attack of slaveholders on the right of petition. The agitation rapidly flaming up was far different from the practical and truly political discussion over the Missouri Compromise fifteen years before.

As yet, indeed, the matter was not politically important, except in the attack upon Van Buren made by the Southern members of his party. Sixteen years before, he had voted against admitting more slave States. He had aided the reëlection of Rufus King, a determined enemy of slavery. He had strongly opposed Calhoun and the Southern nullifiers. In the "Evening Post" and the "Plain-dealer" of New York appeared from 1835 to 1837 the really noble series of editorials by William Leggett, strongly proclaiming the right of free discussion and the essential wrong of slavery; although sometimes he condemned the fanaticism now aroused as "a species of insanity." The "Post" strongly supported Van Buren, and was declared at the South to be his chosen organ for addressing the public. It denied, however, that Van Buren had any "connection in any way or shape with the doctrines or movements of the abolitionists." But such denials were widely disbelieved by the slaveholders. It was declared that he had a deep agency in the Missouri question which fixed upon him a support of abolition; his denials were answered by the anti-slavery petitions from twenty thousand memorialists in his own State of New York, and by the support brought him by the enemies of slavery. To all this the Whig "dough-faces" listened with entire satisfaction. They must succeed, if at all, through Southern distrust or dislike of Van Buren. In July, 1834, he had publicly written to Samuel Gwin of Mississippi that his opinions upon the power of Congress over slave property in the Southern States were so well understood by his friends that he was surprised that an attempt should be made to deceive the public about them; that slavery was in his judgment "exclusively under the control of the state governments;" that no "contrary opinion to an extent deserving consideration" was entertained in any part of the United States; and that, without a change of the Constitution, no interference with it in a State could be had "even at the instance of either or of all the slaveholding States." But, it was said, "Tappan, Garrison, and every other fanatic and abolitionist in the United States not entirely run mad, will grant that." And, indeed, Abraham Lincoln was nominated twenty-four years later upon a like declaration of "the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively."

The District of Columbia, however, was one bit of territory in which Congress doubtless had the power to abolish slavery. In our better days it would seem to have been a natural enough impulse to seek to make free soil at least of the capital of the land of freedom. But the District lay between and was completely surrounded by two slave States. Washington had derived its laws and customs from Maryland. If the District were free while Virginia and Maryland were slave, it was feared with much reason that there would arise most dangerous collisions. Its perpetual slavery was an unforeseen part of the price Alexander Hamilton had paid to procure the federal assumption of the war debts of the States. In Van Buren's time there was almost complete acquiescence in the proposition that, though slavery had in the District no constitutional protection, it must still be deemed there a part of the institution in Virginia and Maryland. How clear was the understanding may be seen from language of undoubted authority. John Quincy Adams had hitherto labored for causes which have but cold and formal interest to posterity. But now, leaving the field of statesmanship, where his glory had been meagre, and, fortunately for his reputation, with the shackles of its responsibility no longer upon him, the generous and exalted love of humanity began to touch his later years with the abiding splendor of heroic and far-seeing courage. He became the first of the great anti-slavery leaders. He entered for all time the group of men, Garrison, Lovejoy, Giddings, Phillips, Sumner, and Beecher, to whom so largely we owe the second and nobler salvation of our land. But Adams was emphatically opposed to the abolition of slavery in the District. In December, 1831, the first month of his service in the House, on presenting a petition for such abolition, he declared that he should not support it. In February, 1837, a few days before Van Buren's inauguration, there occurred the scene when Adams, with grim and dauntless irony, brought to the House the petition of some slaves against abolition. In his speech then he said: "From the day I entered this House down to the present moment, I have invariably here, and invariably elsewhere, declared my opinions to be adverse to the prayer of petitions which call for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia."

It is a curious but inevitable impeachment of the impartiality of history that for a declaration precisely the same as that made by a great and recognized apostle of anti-slavery, and made by that apostle in a later year, Van Buren has been denounced as a truckler to the South, a "Northern man with Southern principles." Van Buren's declaration was made, not like Adams's in the easy freedom of an independent member of Congress from an anti-slavery district, but under the constraint of a presidential nomination partially coming from the South. In the canvass before his election, Van Buren gave perfectly fair notice of his intention. "I must go," he said, "into the presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States." This was the attitude, not only of Van Buren and Adams, but of every statesman North and South, and of the entire North itself with insignificant exceptions. The former's explicit declaration was doubtless aimed at the pro-slavery jealousy stirred up against himself in the South; it was intended to have political effect. But it was none the less the unambiguous expression of an opinion sincerely shared with the practically unanimous sense of the country.

A skillful effort was made to embarrass Van Buren with his Southern supporters over a more difficult question. The anti-slavery societies at the North sought to circulate their literature at the South. So strong an enemy of slavery as William Leggett condemned this as "fanatical obstinacy," obviously tending to stir up at the South insurrections, whose end no one could foresee, and as the fruit of desperation and extravagance. The Southern States by severe laws forbade the circulation of the literature. Its receipts from Southern post-offices led to great excitement and even violence. In August, 1835, Kendall, the postmaster-general, was appealed to by the postmaster at Charleston, South Carolina, for advice whether he should distribute papers "inflammatory, and incendiary, and insurrectionary in the highest degree," papers whose very custody endangered the mail. Kendall, in an extraordinary letter, said that he had no legal authority to prohibit the delivery of papers on account of their character, but that he was not prepared to direct the delivery at Charleston of papers such as were described. Gouverneur, the postmaster at New York, being then appealed to by his Charleston brother, declined to forward papers mailed by the American Anti-Slavery Society. This dangerous usurpation was defended upon the principle of _salus populi suprema lex_.

In December, 1835, Jackson called the attention of Congress to the circulation of "inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves" (as they used to call the desire of black men to be free), "calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war." A bill was introduced making it unlawful for any postmaster knowingly to deliver any printed or pictorial paper touching the subject of slavery in States by whose laws their circulation was prohibited. Webster condemned the bill as a federal violation of the freedom of the press. Clay thought it unconstitutional, vague, indefinite, and unnecessary, as the States could lay hold of citizens taking such publications from post-offices within their borders. Benton and other senators, several of them Democrats, and seven from slaveholding States, voted against the bill, because they were, so Benton said, "tired of the eternal cry of dissolving the Union, did not believe in it, and would not give a repugnant vote to avoid the trial." The debate did not reach a very exalted height. The question was by no means free from doubt. Anti-slavery papers probably were, as the Southerners said, "incendiary" to their States. Slavery depended upon ignorance and fear. The federal post-office no doubt was intended, as Kendall argued, to be a convenience to the various States, and not an offense against their codes of morality. There has been little opposition to the present prohibition of the use of the post-office for obscene literature, or, to take a better illustration, for the circulars of lotteries which are lawful in some States but not in others.

When the bill came to a vote in the Senate, although there was really a substantial majority against it, a tie was skillfully arranged to compel Van Buren, as Vice-President, to give the casting vote. White, the Southern Democratic candidate so seriously menacing him, was in the Senate, and voted for the bill. Van Buren must, it was supposed, offend the pro-slavery men by voting against the bill, or offend the North and perhaps bruise his conscience by voting for it. When the roll was being called, Van Buren, so Benton tells us, was out of the chair, walking behind the colonnade at the rear of the vice-president's seat. Calhoun, fearful lest he might escape the ordeal, eagerly asked where he was, and told the sergeant-at-arms to look for him. But Van Buren was ready, and at once stepped to his chair and voted for the bill. His close friend, Silas Wright of New York, also voted for it. Benton says he deemed both the votes to be political and given from policy. So they probably were. To Van Buren all the fire-eating measures of Calhoun and the pro-slavery men were most distasteful. He probably thought the bill would do more to increase than allay agitation at the North. Walter Scott, when the prince regent toasted him as the author of "Waverley," feeling that even royal highness had no right in a numerous company to tear away the long kept and valuable secrecy of "the great Unknown," rose and gravely said to his host: "Sire, I am not the author of 'Waverley.'" There were, he thought, questions which did not entitle the questioner to be told the truth. So Van Buren may have thought there were political interrogations which, being made for sheer party purposes, might rightfully be answered for like purposes. Since the necessity for his vote was contrived to injure him and not to help or hurt the bill, he probably felt justified so to vote as best to frustrate the design against him. This persuasive casuistry usually overcomes a candidate for great office in the stress of conflict. But lenient as may be the judgment of party supporters, and distressing as may seem the necessity, the untruth pretty surely returns to plague the statesman. Van Buren never deserved to be called a "Northern man with Southern principles." But this vote came nearer to an excuse for the epithet than did any other act of his career.

The election proved how large was the Southern defection. Georgia and Tennessee, which had been almost unanimous for Jackson in 1836, now voted for White. Mississippi, where in that year there had been no opposition, and Louisiana, where Jackson had eight votes to Clay's five, now gave Van Buren majorities of but three hundred each. In North Carolina Jackson had had 24,862 votes, and Clay only 4563; White got 23,626 to 26,910 for Van Buren. In Virginia Jackson had three times the vote of Clay; Van Buren had but one fourth more votes than White. In Benton's own State, so nearly unanimous for Jackson, White had over 7000 to Van Buren's 11,000. But in the Northeast Van Buren was very strong. Jackson's majority in Maine of 6087 became a majority of 7751 for Van Buren. New Hampshire, the home of Hill and Woodbury, had given Jackson a majority of 6376; it gave Van Buren over 12,000. The Democratic majority in New York rose from less than 14,000 to more than 28,000, and this majority was rural and not urban. The majority in New York city was but about 1000. Of the fifty-six counties, Van Buren carried forty-two, while nowadays his political successors rarely carry more than twenty. Connecticut had given a majority of 6000 for Clay; it gave Van Buren over 500. Rhode Island had voted for Clay; it now voted for Van Buren. Massachusetts was carried for Webster by 42,247 against 34,474 for Van Buren; Clay had had 33,003 to only 14,545 for Jackson. But New Jersey shifted from Jackson to Harrison, although a very close State at both elections; and in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, Van Buren fell far behind Jackson. The popular vote, omitting South Carolina, where the legislature chose the electors, was as follows:--

New Middle
England. States. South. West. Total.
Van Buren 112,480 310,203 141,942 198,053 762,678
Harrison, White,
and Webster 106,169 282,376 138,059 209,046 735,650

The electoral votes were thus divided:

New Middle
England States. South. West. Total.
Van Buren 29 72 57 12 170
Harrison 7 21 -- 45 73
Webster 14 -- -- -- 14
White -- -- 26 -- 26

Van Buren thus came to the presidency supported by the great Middle States and New England against the West, with the South divided. Omitting the uncontested reëlection of Monroe in 1820, and the almost uncontested reëlection of Jefferson in 1804, Van Buren was the first Democratic candidate for president who carried New England. He had there a clear majority in both the electoral and the popular vote. Nor has any Democrat since Van Buren obtained a majority of the popular vote in that strongly thinking and strongly prejudiced community. Pierce, against the feeble Whig candidacy of Scott, carried its electoral vote in 1852, but by a minority of its popular vote, and only because of the large Free Soil vote for Hale. No other Democrat since 1852 has had any electoral vote from New England outside of Connecticut. Virginia refused its vote to Johnson, who, in the failure of either candidate to receive a majority of the electoral vote, was chosen vice-president by the Senate.

When the electoral votes were formally counted before the houses of Congress, the result, so contemporary record informs us, was "received with perfect decorum by the House and galleries." Enthusiasm was going out with Jackson, to come back again with Harrison. Van Buren's election was the success of intellectual convictions, and not the triumph of sentiment. He had come to power, as "the House and galleries" well knew, in "perfect decorum." Not a single one of the generous but sometimes cheap and fruitless rushes of feeling occasionally so potent in politics had helped him to the White House. Not that he was ungenerous or lacking in feeling. Very far from it; few men have inspired so steady and deep a political attachment among men of strong character and patriotic aspirations. But neither in his person nor in his speech or conduct was there anything of the strong picturesqueness which impresses masses of men, who must be touched, if at all, by momentary glimpses of great men or by vivid phrases which become current about them. His election was no more than a triumph of disciplined good sense and political wisdom.