RATING: N/A
N/A = good but not on the scale
1 star = perspective supplementing
2 stars = perspective influencing
3 stars = perspective altering
Short summary: (272 words or less)
There’s a reason why Van Buren is mostly forgotten. As President, he did not establish any lasting or transformative doctrine. Nevertheless, he did leave a meaningful legacy in his life’s first and third acts, especially on party politics.
MVB grew up poor, the son of a tavernkeeper in NY. He was a self-educated lawyer and political star before becoming a Senator, Governor, Jackson’s Secretary of State and VP. In his pre-Presidency, through political compromise he recalibrated the Democratic Party away from the Jeffersonian view of leadership by educated elites towards a Jacksonian view of populism unified across a North-South geographic alliance. MVB’s Presidency, however, was doomed to fail primarily because he took office during the Panic of 1837, an economic calamity driven by loose credit, speculation and heavily leveraged trade with Great Britain. His ineffective Presidency unified the Whig opposition party and fractured Jacksonian Democrats, primarily along divides of geography, expansionism and slavery. Like Jackson, MVB supported the institution of slavery.
MVB was defeated in 1840 and attempted a comeback in 1844. As he campaigned, MVB traveled and accidentally met a young Abraham Lincoln. His once rigid stance on slavery softened. He did not win the Democratic nomination, but was nominated by the upstart Free Soil Party, an anti-slavery group splintered from the Democrats. This party played spoiler in the 1844 election, handing it to the Whigs. Ultimately the party was subsumed by and gave legitimacy to the platform of Lincoln’s Republican Party.
But, do you want to know the best part of MVB’s legacy? OK. Literally, the word “OK.” MVB’s use of this phrase made it part of the mainstream lexicon.
Expanded summary:
Look, it never was going to be easy to read a book about Martin Van Buren. So it’s probably not going to be easy to read this summary. I’m surprised you made it this far. If you did, you must have interests approximately as boring as mine.
Here’s what I am learning. In order to judge a President’s efficacy, you have to look at the time in which he or she serves the Office. There are some Presidents who are elected and serve at a time when their personality, their leadership traits, and their vision synchronize directly with the needs and challenges of the country. “Right person at the right time.” These are the stars that we remember, the ones that we build monuments for. From the early days–Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and I’d hazard a guess–Lincoln, Roosevelts, Kennedy, etc. in times beyond.
Sometimes, there’s a DC offset (electrical engineering joke, no pun intended) where a President’s qualities are just miscalibrated, that they served too early or too late relative to our history. “Right person at the wrong time.” And then there are other Presidents who work in the gaps to push along the democratic experience with a lower case “d.” “Right or wrong person, who knows.” In my opinion, Van Buren fits somewhere between these last two categories. He wasn’t a dud, because he did contribute significantly to the political artifice of the time, but he wasn’t a star either. I suspect that this will remain for several more Presidents up until Lincoln.
However, even with a less than seismic Presidency, Van Buren did indeed push the country forward, with his most notable contributions coming before and after MVB served in the Oval Office. If I were to distill it to a couple of sentences: Martin Van Buren’s lasting contributions were the party structures that he created. Before his Presidency, he used his political maneuvering to establish the Jacksonian Democratic Party. After his Presidency, he used his experience, political capital and maybe a personal moral change on slavery to exploit the factions in the Democratic Party. This ultimately lead to the founding of an anti-slavery expansion Free Soil Party, which in turn lead to the establishment of the party platform of Lincoln Republicanism, from which the Civil War was won and slavery abolished.
Without the former contribution, America may have descended into a country entirely ruled by elites without a thread of populism. Without the latter, in a quite real way, the party of Lincoln may have been neutered and impotent to act strongly during the Civil War. Lincoln may have still been elected, but perhaps as a Whig instead, whose party platform confines may have limited his ambition to answer the moral question of slavery once and for all. This is all speculation, something that cannot be proven at all. But history is the result of a long sequence of events with codependent and intertwined peaks and valleys. Removing Van Buren from the equation may have changed where these peaks were seen years and decades after his time. Chaos Theory at its best–something about a butterfly flapping its wings in China.
Another thing to note. With each passing biography, it becomes increasingly important to note that as the political climate grows in complexity, the institution of slavery was still holding strong. Debates over slavery were muted and limited to its role in expansion and party politics more so than moral imperative. Van Buren was the first President to mention slavery in his inauguration, but he did so with an assurance that the institution would remain, to appease his forged political alliance between North and South. And through all the analysis, this viewpoint of slavery can not be forgotten. It is always lurking in the background, with every analysis and every nuance. Van Buren supported slavery through most of his life. The contributions he made at the end to join the Free Soil faction of the Democratic Party certainly laid a foundation for Lincoln and ultimate emancipation, but it must not be forgotten that Van Buren himself owned slaves and supported its permanency for a long time, including the terrible Congressional Gag Rule.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s fair to even assign any positive value during the time of slavery–how can any President be viewed as “good” so long as the institution was allowed under his watch? From the lens of the enslaved, every time of enslavement is a time nightmare. And no amount of historical nuance can immunize that from our country’s narrative. I don’t know how you answer this question. I think we all still face remnants of that contradiction to this day.
I’ve mentioned this before, that the way I think about this contradiction is by placing faith in the future. That although we are still not where we need to be, if we have hope that future days will be better, for all people, and then in service of that ideal, we can kind of look back and evaluate the progressive steps taken to get there.
Overall, there isn’t much more to say about Van Buren. He rose from poor means and achieved the Office of the Presidency. He did not leave any defining policy as President, except that he avoided some potential conflicts with Great Britain. Perhaps he was never given a chance. The Panic of 1837 was unlike any economic crisis the nation had ever seen. But as I said above, maybe he did not have the vision and leadership to meet that conflict.
Even with all of that, I still think that the coolest part of Van Buren’s legacy is that everyone on the face of the planet who utters the phrase “OK” (and I am sure there are billions who do so) is paying a subtextual homage to Martin Van Buren. Martin F’ing Van Buren.
Favorite passages:
9/15/2016 comments:
-As state senator in NY, Van Buren was able to give eloquent speeches in defense of American foreign policy during the war of 1812. He tied the interests of New York to that of America and democracy. It gave him an edge over distant upstarts like Calhoun and Clay.
-Van Buren had a hard year in 1819. His wife died shortly after both of his parents. Later that year, he was removed from his attorney general position. It still amazes me how many early US presidents experienced tragedy like this. Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, all had spouses die before or during office. Only two of Jefferson’s six children would live to be adults. Monroe’s son died before he took office. JQA’s son killed himself during Adams’ last year in office.
-Saying from the time– “government should not be guided by temporary excitement but rather by the sober second thought of the people”. Particularly relevant these days in this current Clinton-Trump election cycle.
-In the Senate, MVB worked hard to build a Republican unified party. He felt that though Monroe was a Republican, he was surrounded by too many Federalists. MVB wanted to creat a party ideology that would unite sectional differences of north and south.
The author here makes a point that I’m still grappling with. Not sure if I agree or don’t, but the author says that the two-party system is something that though in modern time we take for granted and we see only the negative side, is essential to democracy. And that two-party democracy is entirely credited to Van Buren and his moves towards molding Jacksonian party politics. The argument by the author is that the two-party system has, for the most part, endured from 1828 to the present and that this very system of brute competition is largely what has allowed our democracy to prevail. And that MVB gets the credit for it, unsung in history.
I’ll have to think about that. It’s something for sure to keep in mind as I traverse these biographies. But my initial reaction is to say that the notion of political/ideological competition, yes, is essential to democracy–the fight in the marketplace of ideas–but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a byproduct of or conditioned upon a two-party (or generally a party system) as we experience it. If the author means that a binary, either/or competition in the body politic, then I would argue that the two-party system has survived due to the ability for it to change. The Republican Party of Lincoln sure doesn’t look the same today as it did in 1865, and the Democratic Party today is significantly different than the pre-1964 days. So is it the nature of having a choice that makes democracy essential or is it rather to have those choices evolve with the times? Can this be accomplished by an ever evolving one party system with multiple perspectives under one common governing philosophy? It’s an interesting question, I think.
9/24/16 comments:
-Interesting fact: in 1790, Virginia was the most populous state with 692k people ( how many were enslaved, though, and whether they were counted I don’t know) and New York had half that. By 1820, Nee York was the most populous state, topping over 1M. Indicative of the influential shift from Virginia to New York.
-MVB saw JQAs administration as a Federalist revival that was working to undermine the ideal of Jeffersonian Republicanism. So he worked both overtly and subversively to build a coalition against Adams, including rounding up Crawford and Calhoun to support Jackson and his promise of a reset or revitalization.
-The author believes that one of MVBs greatest accomplishment is in his pre-presidency when he basically invented the Democratic Party. He orchestrated a national party organization with harmonized goals and geographic alliances. For example, he was able to align Virginia interests with New York interests under the national party banner with each side acting in faith of the party goals and also gaining security through the party. Safety in the herd. The author says that in doing so MVB did not just defeat the JQA administration but also “he destroyed an entire system that had ossified and installed in its place something far more modern.” As the author states, this new party system would dominate American government through the Civil War and would remain one of the two major parties of the 20th (and early 21st) century. For this, the author believes that MVBs organizational tactics are worthy of study of we could figure out what he did.
-MVB quote: “Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeed by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.”
-The author makes another bold claim that is very interesting to think about. That between 1828 and the Civil War, every issue related to secession was directly reactionary to the incident prior. The Petticoat Scandal marganilized Calhoun in Jacksons eyes because of Calhoun’s wife. And that marganilization may have lead Calhoun to take an even more aggressive stance on nullification and may have fed a runaway paranoia about Northern power. So in a very parade of horribles sort of way, could you argue that the Civil War has a line back to the realignment resulting from the scandal? Maybe, maybe not. But it is interesting how personalities influence policy and events. See Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, FDR, etc. I recently read a book about Partition in India and it came out clearly how the personality conflicts between Nehru and Jinnah sewed the seeds for what is now nationalistic anger between literally billions of people. And so while its too easy to say that the Petticoat scandal had a direct consequence on the Civil War, it can be said that the scandal may have influenced personalities quite significantly, those personalities having significant influence over regional constituents.
11/3/2016 comments:
-What caused the Panic of 1837. Many things but it seems like a large speculative bubble driven by the railroad industry was a big contributing factor. Real estate speculation in particular as it related to Western land.
-Author makes a point to say that it was driven by too much loose credit together with inflation, greed, speculation, and an unfavorable balance of trade with England (heavily leveraged there). When England and Ireland fell on hard times, debts to American banks could not be paid. Additionally, according to the author, the price of cotton fell as did the price for other crops which reduced credit available on Wall Street. Confidence took a nosedive and the bubble crashed precipitously. This resulted in massive bankruptcies and unemployment across the country. All in MVB’s first year.
1/18/17 comments:
-MVB was the first President to mention slavery in his inaugural address, saying that he would never tamper with it. MVB was a former slave owner. He effectively worked to suppress abolitionist anti-slavery pamphlets and publications and in Congress, he supported the Gag Rule implemented to table any abolitionist legislation. The author suggests that this may be due to his Southern sympathies for political capital. Even with these tendencies, MVB was often thought of as a closet abolitionist. One interesting fact, Lincoln used the rumor of MVB as a closet abolitionist in a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1850, saying that Van Buren had gone too far to empower Black Americans. I hold on to this thought as I progress through the bios. Moral relativism, good and bad, should apply even to Lincoln and I am curious to read more about the other side of the moral coin for his life.
-The author discusses how MVB’s presidency occurred during a tipping point in American history. Not just the Panic of 1837, but also at a time when the North-South alliance for the Jacksonian Democrats was starting to fray and regional differences were taking stronger hold through the main vehicle of slavery. The generations of agreed silence on the issue was starting to end, and the divides were breaking along geographic lines. In these types of times, strong leadership is needed and MVB tried too hard to straddle the two sides of slavery ambivalence and abolition.
-In 1836, Texas declared independence from Mexico. MVB’s delayed acknowledgement of the independence for fear of later annexation and inclusion as a slave state. Southerners were upset at the timidity, Northerners (particularly JQA) upset that MVB would even continue Jackson’s expansionist tendencies.
-Van Buren did continue, however, the practice of Federal removal of Native Americans, particularly the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma. Also, MVB hunted down and killed Seminoles in Florida. Interesting and sad fact–Chief Osceola (which is now a “mascot” in Florida State University football games) was captured when federal troops waived a false truce flag to him.
-In the 1840 presidential election, the Whigs ran military hero William Henry Harrison. The image they created for Harrison was that he was born from modest means–starting a rumor that he was born in a log cabin when in fact he was born with much more means. Good quote: “When in doubt, print the legend–and the image of an impoverished boy running around a log cabin entered the popular folklore, well before Lincoln ever figured out that modesty was a path to power.”
-One of MVB’s lasting legacies. The word “OK” to the world. In the spring of 1839, people in Boston were using the phrase “OK” as shorthand for “oll korrect.” This was a slangy way of saying “all correct.” In the 1840s, MVB supporters caught on this trend and usurped it to refer to “Old Kinderhook”–MVB’s nickname. MVB wrote OK next to his signatures, and the phrase took off from there.
-Here’s a quote from the book about “OK”: It spread like wildfire, and to this day is a universal symbol of something elemental in the American character–informality, optimism, efficiency, call it what you will. It is spoken seven times a day by the average citizen, two billion utterances overall. And, of course, it goes well beyond our borders; if there is a single sound America has contributed to the esperanto of global communication, this is it. It is audible everywhere–in a taxicab in Paris, in a cafe in Istanbul, in the languid early seconds of the Beatles’ “Revolution,” when John Lennon steps up to the microphone and arrestingly calls the meeting to order. There are worse legacies that a defeated presidential candidate could claim.”
-With the 1844 election approaching, MVB considered running for office again. He left his retirement and traveled across the country–NY -> Philly -> Baltimore -> Charleston -> across to New Orleans -> up the Mississippi to Jackson’s Hermitage in Tenn -> through Kentucky to visit Henry Clay -> to the growing city of Chicago. On the way to this last stop, bad road conditions caused him to stop in Rochester, Illinois, where local officials wanted desperately to impress the former President that the introduced him to a young, unknown politician who leaned more towards the Whigs than the Democratic Party. That politician was Abraham Lincoln. And so, MVB met Lincoln by chance in Rochester, Illinois. A mythical journey.
-Ultimately, MVB’s return was challenged by Calhoun. The issue was primarily on the annexation of Texas. Calhoun believed that Texas should be annexed by the South and the Union (in that order). There were treaties in place, though, that recognized Mexican sovereignty over Texas. Also, the annexation of Texas would introduce slavery in an area where that institution did not currently exist. Calhoun was insistent that Texas be annexed as a slave state, which put fears in Northern states for upsetting the North-South balance. The annexation debate was running in the background of the fervor of “Manifest Destiny”–the belief in the inevitable expansion of the United States westward (the phrase was coined by John Louis O’Sullivan, a Van Buren protégé.
-MVB’s son urged his father to run as a third party in the 1848 election. MVB hesitated at first. Then the national Democratic convention accepted the New York’s Hunker position. MVB wrote a long letter saying that he would not run for the presidency, but also indicated some interest. The author points out that in this letter, Van Buren details Congressional history to restrain slavery and how that was in direct contradiction to the ideals of the Revolution. MVB in essence was saying that Congress had the power to act and to limit the spread of slavery. A long way he came from his inaugural speech. The Barnburner faction of the Democratic Party met in Utica, New York and endorsed Van Buren as their candidate for the office of the presidency. Of course, the remainder of the Democratic Party did not like this, but on August 9, 1848, a pathwork crew of former Whigs and Northern Democrats held a gather (an informal “convention”) and nominated for the vice presidency Charles Francis Adams, who was the grandson of John Qunicy Adams, Van Buren’s old rival. The group nominated Van Buren for the presidency. The group’s platform was a bit of everything–economic opportunity and cheap land for Jacksonians and tarrifs and improvements Whigs. Once again, MVB was crafting a political party by building alliances of different persuasions. The celebration cry of the group was: “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men!” Thus the Free Soil Party.
Book Summaries. Less than 272 words. 