Martin Van Buren. Edward Morse Shepard
to recover political mastery. He now came to the aid of Governor Tompkins, who during the war with England had borrowed money for public use upon his personal responsibility, and in the disbursement of several millions of dollars for war purposes had, through carelessness in bookkeeping or clerical detail, apparently become a debtor of the State. The comptroller, in spite of a law passed in 1819 to indemnify Tompkins for his patriotic services, took a hostile attitude which threatened the latter with pecuniary destruction. In March, 1820, Van Buren threw himself into the contest with a skill and generous fervor which saved the ex-governor. Van Buren's speech of two days for the old chief of the Bucktails, is described by Hammond, a political historian of New York not unduly friendly to Van Buren, to have been "ingenious, able, and eloquent."
It was also in 1820 that Van Buren promoted the reëlection of Rufus King, the distinguished Federalist, to the United States Senate. His motives in doing this were long bitterly assailed; but as the choice was intrinsically admirable, Van Buren was probably glad to gratify a patriotic impulse which was not very inconsistent with party advantage. In 1819 the Republican caucus, the last at which the Bucktails and Clintonians both attended, was broken up amid mutual recriminations. John C. Spencer, the son of Ambrose Spencer, and afterwards a distinguished Whig, was the Clintonian candidate, and had the greater number of Republican votes. In the legislature there was no choice, Rufus King having fewer votes than either of the Republicans. When the legislature of 1820 met, there appeared a pamphlet skillfully written in a tone of exalted patriotism. This decided the election for King. Van Buren was its author, and was said to have been aided by William L. Marcy. Both had suffered at the hands of Clinton. However much they may have been so influenced in secret, they gave in public perfectly sound and weighty reasons for returning this old and distinguished statesman to the place he had honored for many years. In 1813 King had received the votes of a few Republicans, without whom he would have been defeated by a Republican competitor. The Clintonians and their adversaries had since disputed which of them had then been guilty of party disloyalty. But it can hardly be doubted that King's high character and great ability, with the revolutionary glamour about him, made his choice seem patriotic and popular, and therefore politically prudent.
Van Buren's pamphlet of 1820 was addressed to the Republican members of the legislature by a "fellow-member" who told them that he knew and was personally known to most of them, and that he had, "from his infancy, taken a deep interest in the honor and prosperity of the party." This anonymous "fellow-member" pronounced the support of King by Republicans to "be an act honorable to themselves, advantageous to the country, and just to him." He declared that the only reluctance Republicans had to a public avowal of their sentiments arose from a "commendable apprehension that their determination to support him under existing circumstances might subject them to the suspicion of having become a party to a political bargain, to one of those sinister commutations of principle for power, which they think common with their adversaries, and against which they have remonstrated with becoming spirit." He showed that there were degrees even among Federalists; that some in the war had been influenced by "most envenomed malignity against the administration of their own government;" that a second and "very numerous and respectable portion" had been those "who, inured to opposition and heated by collision, were poorly qualified to judge dispassionately of the measures of government," who thought the war impolitic at the time, but who were ignorantly but honestly mistaken; but that a third class of them had risen "superior to the prejudices and passions of those with whom they once acted." In the last class had been Rufus King; at home and in the Senate he had supported the administration; he had helped procure loans to the State for war purposes. The address skillfully recalled his Revolutionary services, his membership in the convention which framed the Federal Constitution, his appointment by Washington as minister to the English court, and his continuance there under Jefferson. He was declared to be opposed to Clinton. The address concluded by reciting that there had been in New York "exceptionable and unprincipled political bargains and coalitions," which with darker offenses ought to be proved, to vindicate the great body of citizens "from the charge of participating in the profligacy of the few, and to give rest to that perturbed spirit which now haunts the scenes of former moral and political debaucheries;" but added that the nature of a vote for King precluded such suspicions.
The last statement was just. King's return was free from other suspicion than that he probably preferred the Van Buren to the Clinton Republicans. Van Buren, seeing that the Federalist party was at an end, was glad both to do a public service and to ally with his party, in the divisions of the future, some part of the element so finely represented by Rufus King. In private Van Buren urged the support of King even more emphatically. "We are committed," he wrote, "to his support. It is both wise and honest, and we must have no fluttering in our course. Mr. King's views towards us are honorable and correct. … Let us not, then, have any halting. I will put my head on its propriety." 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. In sending King to the Senate he doubtless experienced the lofty pleasure which a politician of public spirit feels in his occasional ability to use his power to reach a beneficent end, which without the power he could not have reached—a stroke which to a petty politician would seem dangerous, but which the greater man accomplishes without injury to his party standing. A year or two after King's election, when Van Buren joined him at Washington, there were established the most agreeable relations between them. The refinement and natural decorum of the younger man easily fell in with the polished and courtly manner of the old Federalist. Benton, who had then just entered the Senate, said it was delightful to behold the deferential regard which Van Buren paid to his venerable colleague, a regard always returned by King with marked kindness and respect.
In this year the era of good feeling was at its height. Monroe was reëlected president by an almost unanimous vote, with Tompkins again as vice-president. The good feeling, however, was among the people, and not among the politicians. The Republican party was about to divide by reason of the very completeness of its supremacy. The Federalist party was extinguished and its members scattered. The greater number of them in New York went with the Clintonian Republicans, with whom they afterwards formed the chief body of the Whig party. A smaller number of them, among whom were James A. Hamilton and John C. Hamilton, the sons of the great founder of the Federalist party, William A. Duer, John A. King (the son of the reëlected senator), and many others of wealth and high social position, ranged themselves for a time in the Bucktail ranks under Van Buren's leadership. In the slang of the day, they were the "high-minded Federalists," because they had declared that Clinton's supporters practiced a personal subserviency "disgusting to high-minded and honorable men." With this addition, the Bucktails became the Democratic party in New York. In April, 1820, the gubernatorial election was between the Clintonians supporting Clinton, and the Bucktails supporting Tompkins, the Vice-President. Clinton's recent and really magnificent public service made him successful at the polls, but his party was beaten at other points.
Rufus King's reëlection to the Senate was believed to have some relation to the Missouri question, then agitating the nation. In one of his letters urging his Republican associates to support King, Van Buren declared that the Missouri question concealed no plot so far as King was concerned, but that he, Van Buren, and his friends, would "give it a true direction." King's strong opposition to the admission of Missouri as a slave State was, however, perfectly open. If he returned to the Senate, it was certain he would steadily vote against any extension of slavery. Van Buren knew all this, and doubtless meant that King was bargaining away none of his convictions for the senatorship. But what the "true direction" was which was to be given the Missouri question, is not clear. About the time of King's reëlection Van Buren joined in calling a public meeting at Albany to protest against extending slavery beyond the Mississippi. He was absent at the time of the meeting, and refused the use of his name upon the committee to send the anti-slavery resolutions to Washington. Nor is it clear whether his absence and refusal were significant. He certainly did not condemn the resolutions; and in January, 1820, he voted in the state Senate for an instruction to the senators and representatives in Congress "to oppose the admission, as a State in the Union, of any territory not comprised within the original boundary of the United States, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission." This resolution undoubtedly expressed the clear convictions of the Republicans in New York,