Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States Part 1

Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States.

by Martin Van Buren.

INTRODUCTION.

The following pages originally formed part of a much larger work, from the general course and design of which they const.i.tuted a digression. It seems therefore proper to preface them by a few words of explanation, relating chiefly to the work from which they are now separated.

Mr. Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, on the expiration of his term of office, in the year 1841, retired to a country residence near Kinderhook, (the place of his birth,) in the State of New York, which he had then recently purchased, and to which he gave the name of Lindenwald. Here, with infrequent and brief interruptions, he continued to reside for some twenty years, or until his death, which occurred in July, 1862. Although numbering nearly sixty years of age,--two-thirds of which had been years of almost incessant activity and excitement, professional, political, and social,--at the period of his withdrawal to the tranquil scenes and occupations of rural life, he embraced the latter with an ardor and a relish that surprised not a little the friends who had known him only as prominent in, and apparently engrossed by, the public service, but which were happy results of early predilections, an even and cheerful temper, fitting him for and constantly inclining him to the enjoyment of domestic intercourse, a hearty love of Nature, and a sound const.i.tution of mind and body. After twelve years of the period of his retirement had pa.s.sed, happily and contentedly, he began to apply a portion of his "large leisure" to a written review of his previous life, and to recording his recollections of his contemporaries and of his times. To this work, as he intimates in its opening paragraphs, he was mainly induced by the solicitations of life-long friends, who, (it may be here added,) knowing the importance and interest of the scenes and incidents of his extended public career, and the extraordinary influence he had exerted upon public men and questions of his time, and perceiving the tenaciousness of his memory and the charm of his conversation unimpaired by the lapse of seventy years, confidently antic.i.p.ated a work of much interest in such a record as they urged upon him to make.

But although Mr. Van Buren so far complied with these suggestions as to set about writing his memoirs, he was not inclined to pursue the employment as a task, or to devote more of his time to it than could be easily spared from other occupations in which he was interested, and in order to keep himself from every temptation to exceed this limitation, he resolved, at the start, that no part of what he might write should be published in his lifetime. The work which he had commenced, was thus exposed to frequent interruption, even by unimportant accidents, and at length was altogether arrested by the serious illness of a member of his family, and by the failure of his own health, which rapidly supervened.

It resulted that the recorded memoirs of his life and times closed abruptly when he had brought them down to the date of 1833-34, and that he never revised for publication what he had written. There is evidence that he contemplated such a revision when he should reach a convenient stage of his progress, but from the circ.u.mstances under which he wrote (which have been alluded to) as well as from his comparatively small interest in the mere graces of composition, the _labor limae_ was continually postponed, and the "flighty purpose" was never o'ertaken.

When, after his death, the subject of the disposition of these memoirs was presented to his sons, to whom his papers had been intrusted, they were embarra.s.sed by questions as to the manner and form in which it was their duty to give them the publicity intended by their author. Should they, notwithstanding unaffected distrust of their qualifications, and a deep sense of special unfitness arising from natural partiality, undertake to continue the history of their father's life from the point at which his own account had ceased, to supply, as far as they could, the gaps in the previous narrative which had been left by him for further examination or after-construction, and to give to the work the extensive revision which, in the state in which it came to their hands, it seemed to require? Or should they publish the unfinished and unrevised memoirs, as they were left, _as a fragment_ and a contribution, so far as they might go, to the history of the country?

Would one or the other of these be such a history of the life of a statesman who had filled a large s.p.a.ce in the observation of his countrymen, and who had exerted a controlling influence in the Government during interesting and critical periods, as would answer a natural and just public expectation, or satisfy the many warm friends who survived him? While occupied with the consideration of these questions, they received a note from Charles H. Hunt, Esq., informing them that he felt strongly inclined to write a Biography of Mr. Van Buren, and requesting the use for that purpose of any materials within their power to furnish. An additional paragraph of Mr. Hunt's note, referring to the rumor of writings left by Mr. Van Buren, showed that he had been entirely misinformed as to the nature and extent of those writings; he, in effect, supposing them to consist solely of disquisitions on various political questions.

The communication of Mr. Hunt not only superseded the necessity of deciding between the alternative propositions mentioned, but afforded them in all respects great satisfaction. His ripe and graceful scholars.h.i.+p, sound judgment, and pure taste were widely known, and especially to all who, like themselves, enjoyed familiar acquaintance with him. He had, moreover, recently advanced by a single step to the first rank among American biographers--a position readily accorded by recognized authority in the republic of letters, at home and abroad, to the author of the "Life of Edward Livingston." To such hands they could not hesitate to commit the work proposed, so far as they were able to control it, feeling a.s.sured that, while Mr. Hunt would bring to its performance the disinterestedness and impartiality indispensable to give it value as a history, and which are with difficulty maintained in family memorials, his inclination to undertake it was evidence of a general sympathy with, or at least respect for, Mr. Van Buren's character and public career sufficient to authorize the relinquishment to him of the materials in their possession. Accordingly the fragmentary memoirs, with all the correspondence and other ma.n.u.scripts applicable to his purpose, and within their reach, were committed to Mr. Hunt, by Mr.

Van Buren's representatives, with entire satisfaction and confidence that they will be used with fidelity and skill in the construction of the work he has undertaken,--a confidence that will be shared by Mr. Van Buren's surviving friends and by the public.

The main body of ma.n.u.scripts left by Mr. Van Buren having been thus applied, some question remained in regard to that portion now published.

Begun as an episode, the subject grew on the author's hands (as he explains in a note) to such proportions as to seem to stand more properly as a distinct production, and although, like the princ.i.p.al work, incomplete, it had been nevertheless carried forward to the point, chronologically speaking, that had been proposed, and that was in fact its natural termination. For this reason, and because it had no such connection with the memoirs as required that they should be printed together, it has been thought best to publish it without further delay in the form in which it was left by the writer. The subject is of peculiar interest at this time when our country, having suffered the rude shock and disorder of civil war, and our free and popular inst.i.tutions having sustained with admirable firmness and substantial triumph a more fearful trial than any to which they had before been subjected, the sacred and momentous duty is devolved on patriots and good citizens throughout our borders to reconstruct whatever valuable parts have been thrown down, to restore what may have been injured or defaced in our political system and in the principles on which it rests; and the occasion seems auspicious for recalling the attention of our people to the study of the lives and doctrines--the grounds and motives of action--of the great men by whom the foundations of their government were laid.

The work of editing this volume has been inconsiderable, the sum of it having been to correct a few manifest inadvertencies, to divide it into chapters, with indexical heads, to furnish the whole with a t.i.tle, and to add one or two foot-notes that appeared to be proper. Otherwise the aim has been to preserve the form and substance of the original. The citation from Cicero on the t.i.tle-page was found on Mr. Van Buren's table, in his library, extracted in his own handwriting; whether only as a terse declaration of the law by the spirit of which his pen was guided, or as a possible motto for his complete work, is not known. The letter from Mr. Jefferson, forming an Appendix, was intended by Mr. Van Buren to be printed with whatever of his own might reach publication, and is spoken of in the present volume as "accompanying this work." It is now printed for the first time from the original ma.n.u.script letter, and a few errors in the edition published (probably from the draft) by the Library Committees of Congress are corrected.

The portrait fronting this book is engraved from Brady's imperial photograph, by Ritchie, and must be p.r.o.nounced a very favorable specimen of his art. It represents Mr. Van Buren in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

EDGEHILL, FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, N. Y., _February, 1867_.

POLITICAL PARTIES

IN THE

UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.

Gratifying Period in our History embraced by Administrations of Jefferson and Madison--The Caucus System and its Abandonment--The System useful to the Republican or Democratic Party, but not so to the Federalists--Questions proposed--Difficulties of the Subject--Two great Parties, under changing Names, have always divided the Country--Few and imperfect Attempts heretofore made to trace the Origin and Principles of those Parties--This the first Attempt with that object on the Republican or Democratic Side--The Sources of Differences in Opinion and Feeling which gave rise to our Political Divisions, and _punctum temporis_ of their Rise--Principles established by the English Revolution of 1688--Application of those Principles to the Colonies--Grounds of the American Revolution--Abstract Opinions regain their Influence after the Settlement of the practical Questions involved in the Revolution--Diverse Character and Feelings of Emigrants to the different Colonies--Effect of that Diversity on Principles of Government and Administration in the New Governments--Repugnance of the People to any Revival of the System overthrown by the Revolution--Popular Reluctance to create an Executive Branch of the Government--Confederacy of the United Colonies of New England in 1643--Dr. Franklin's Plan of Union in 1755--The Sentiments of the Colonists those of the Whigs of the Revolution--Exceptions--Discordant Materials, in certain Respects, of which the Revolutionary Brotherhood was composed--Effects of that Discordance upon the subsequent Organization of Political Parties--The Confederation, and Parties for and against it--Perversion of Party Names--Conflicts and Questions in Controversy between Federalists and Anti-Federalists--The Const.i.tutional Convention of 1787--Different Plans proposed before it--Motives and Views of the Authors of those Plans--The Views which determined Congress and the People to acquiesce in the Results of the Convention--Adoption of the Const.i.tution and Extinction of the Anti-Federal Party as such.

There has been no period in our history, since the establishment of our Independence, to which the sincere friend of free inst.i.tutions can turn with more unalloyed satisfaction, than to that embraced by the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, moved as they were by a common impulse. Mr. Jefferson commenced the discharge of his official duties by an act which, though one of form, involved matter of the highest moment.

I allude to the decision and facility with which, in his intercourse with the other branches of the Government, he suppressed the observance of empty ceremonies which had been borrowed from foreign courts by officers who took an interest in such matters, and were reluctantly tolerated by Was.h.i.+ngton, who was himself above them. Instead of proceeding in state to the capitol to deliver a speech to the legislature, according to the custom of monarchs, he performed his const.i.tutional duty by means of a message in writing, sent to each House by the hands of his private secretary, and they performed theirs by a reference of its contents to appropriate committees. The Executive procession, instead of marking the intercourse between the different branches of the Government, was reserved for the Inauguration, when the President appeared before the people themselves, and in their presence took the oath of office.

A step so appropriate and so much in harmony with our inst.i.tutions, was naturally followed by efforts for the abolition of offices and official establishments not necessary to the public service, the reduction of the public expenses, and the repeal of odious internal taxes. To these he added the influence of his individual example to keep the organization and action of the Federal Government upon that simple and economical footing which is consistent with the Republican system. In this branch of his official conduct he established precedents of great value, from some of which his successors have not ventured to depart.

With the single exception of his approval of the Bank of the United States, the administration of Mr. Madison was one of great merit, and was made especially ill.u.s.trious by conducting the country through a war imperishably honorable for its military achievements and the consequent elevation of our national character.

Jefferson and Madison were brought forward by caucus nominations; they, throughout, recognized and adhered to the political party that elected them; and they left it united and powerful, when, at the close of public life, they carried into their retirement, and always enjoyed, the respect, esteem, and confidence of all their countrymen.

Mr. Monroe's administration did not introduce any very disturbing public questions. The protective policy was, toward its close, generally acquiesced in at the North and West, and no part of the South as yet even contemplated the resistance which was subsequently attempted. The agitation in regard to internal improvements was yet for the most part speculative and too far in advance of any contemplated action to stir the public mind. The Bank of the United States was having its own way without question on the part of the Government, and with but little if any suspicion on the part of the people. No very embarra.s.sing questions had arisen in our foreign relations; yet the first year of Mr. Monroe's second term had scarcely pa.s.sed away before the political atmosphere became inflamed to an unprecedented extent. The Republican party, so long in the ascendant, and apparently so omnipotent, was literally shattered into fragments, and we had no fewer than five Republican Presidential candidates in the field.

In the place of two great parties arrayed against each other in a fair and open contest for the establishment of principles in the administration of Government which they respectively believed most conducive to the public interest, the country was overrun with personal factions. These having few higher motives for the selection of their candidates or stronger incentives to action than individual preferences or antipathies, moved the bitter waters of political agitation to their lowest depths.

The occurrence of scenes discreditable to all had for a long time been prevented by a steady adherence on the part of the Republican party to the caucus system; and if Mr. Monroe's views and feelings upon the subject had been the same as were those of Jefferson and Madison, the results to which I have alluded, and which were soon sincerely deprecated, might have been prevented by the same means. There was no difference in the political condition of the country between 1816--when Mr. Monroe received a caucus nomination, on a close vote between Mr.

Crawford and himself, and was elected--and 1824, when the caucus system was appealed to by the supporters of Mr. Crawford, which called for its abandonment. The Federal party were on both occasions incapable of successfully resisting a candidate in whose favor the Republicans were united, and they were on each sufficiently strong to control the election when the support of their opponents was divided amongst several. Mr. Monroe and a majority of his cabinet were unfortunately influenced by different views, and pursued a course well designed to weaken the influence of the caucus system, and to cause its abandonment.

Mr. Crawford was the only candidate who, it was believed, could be benefited by adhering to it, and the friends of all the others sustained the policy of the administration. Those of Jackson, Adams, Clay, and Calhoun, united in an address to the people condemning the practice of caucus nominations, and announcing their determination to disregard them. Already weakened through the adverse influence of the administration, the agency which had so long preserved the unity of the Republican party did not retain sufficient strength to resist the combined a.s.sault that was made upon it, and was overthrown. Mr. Crawford and his friends adhered to it to the last, and fell with it.

It is a striking fact in our political history that the sagacious leaders of the Federal party, as well under that name as under others by which it has at different times been known, have always been desirous to bring every usage or plan designed to secure party unity into disrepute with the people, and in proportion to their success in that has been their success in the elections. When they have found such usage too strong to be overthrown for the time being, they have adopted it themselves, but only to return to their denunciations of it after every defeat. It would, on first impression, seem that a practice which is good for one political party must be good for another; but when the matter is more closely looked into, it will be discovered that the policy of the Federal leaders referred to, like most of the acts of those far-seeing men, rested upon substantial foundations. It originated, beyond doubt, in the conviction, on the part of the early Federalists, that a political organization in support of the particular principles which they advocated, and to which they intended to adhere, did not stand as much in need of extraneous means to secure harmony in its ranks as did that of their opponents.

The results of general elections for more than half a century have served to confirm this opinion. With the exception of a single instance, susceptible of easy explanation, the Republican, now Democratic party, whenever it has been wise enough to employ the caucus or convention system, and to use in good faith the influence it is capable of imparting to the popular cause, has been successful, and it has been defeated whenever that system has been laid aside or employed unfairly.

With the Federal party and its successors the results have been widely different; with or without the caucus system they have generally found no difficulty in uniting whenever union promised success.

Why is it that a system or practice open to both parties, occasionally used by both, and apparently equally useful to both, is in fact so much less necessary to one than to the other? If this consequence springs from a corresponding difference in the principles for the defense and spread of which they have respectively been formed, what are those principles, whence are they derived, and what is their history?

These are grave questions, which have often presented themselves to the minds of our public men, and to answer which satisfactorily is neither an easy nor a short task.

Histories of struggles for power between individual men or families, long involved in obscurity, are becoming more frequent than they were, and far more satisfactory. Aided by a comparatively free access to public and private papers,--a privilege formerly st.u.r.dily refused, but which the liberal spirit of the age has now made common,--the literary men of most countries, with improved capacities to weigh conflicting statements as well as to narrate the results of their researches with simplicity and perspicuity, are probing the most hidden recesses of the past, and describing with reliable accuracy transactions of great interest, the causes and particular circ.u.mstances of which have been hitherto little or not at all understood. But to define the origin and trace the history of national parties is an undertaking of extraordinary difficulty; one from which, in view of the embarra.s.sments that surround it in the case of our own political divisions, I have more than once retired in despair, and on which I now enter with only slight hopes of success. Yet it is due as well to the memories of the past as to actual interests, that a subject which has exerted so great an influence and which may be made so instructive, should be made plain, if that be practicable, to the understandings of the present and succeeding generations; and if my imperfect effort shall have a tendency to turn stronger minds and abler pens in that direction it will not have been made in vain.

The two great parties of this country, with occasional changes in their names only, have, for the princ.i.p.al part of a century, occupied antagonistic positions upon all important political questions. They have maintained an unbroken succession, and have, throughout, been composed respectively of men agreeing in their party pa.s.sions and preferences, and entertaining, with rare exceptions, similar general views on the subjects of government and its administration. Sons have generally followed in the footsteps of their fathers, and families originally differing have in regular succession received, maintained, and transmitted this opposition. Neither the influences of marriage connections, nor of sectarian prejudices, nor any of the strong motives which often determine the ordinary actions of men, have, with limited exceptions, been sufficient to override the bias of party organization and sympathy, devotion to which has, on both sides, as a rule, been a master-pa.s.sion of their members.

The names of these parties, like those of their predecessors in older countries, have from time to time been changed, from suggestions of policy or from accidental causes. Men of similar and substantially unchanged views and principles have, at different periods of English history, been distinguished as Cavaliers or Roundheads, as Jacobites or Puritans and Presbyterians, as Whigs or Tories. Here, with corresponding consistency in principle, the same men have at different periods been known as Federalists, Federal Republicans, and Whigs, or as Anti-Federalists, Republicans, and Democrats. But no changes of name have indicated--certainly not until very recently, and the depth and duration of the exception remain to be seen--a change or material modification of the true character and principles of the parties themselves. The difference between the old Republican and the Anti-Federal parties, arising out of the questions in regard to the new Const.i.tution, was by far the greatest variation that has occurred.

Several hasty and but slightly considered attempts have been made to define the origin, and to mark the progress, of our national parties.

But, with a single exception,--namely, that made by ex-President John Quincy Adams, in his Jubilee Discourse before the New York Historical Society, on the 30th of April, 1839, being the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Inauguration of George Was.h.i.+ngton as President of the United States,--they have not professed, so far as they have fallen under my notice, to do more than glance at the subject.

To say that this discourse of one hundred and twenty pages was written with Mr. Adams's accustomed ability, would be a commendation short of its merits. It was more. The political condition of the country, and the near approach of the memorable struggle of 1840, superadded to the stirring considerations connected with the occasion, seem to have persuaded that distinguished man that he was called upon to make an extraordinary effort. A severe philippic against his and his father's political enemies, this discourse, judged in the sense in which such performances are naturally estimated by contemporaries imbued with similar feelings, could not fail to be regarded as an eloquent and able production; but I deceive myself if it can be deemed by a single ingenuous mind either a dispa.s.sionate or an impartial review of the origin and course of parties in the United States. Such minds will be more likely to receive a paper, written so long after the transactions of which it speaks, with feelings of regret at the strong evidence it affords that the rage of party spirit, upon the a.s.sumed extinguishment of which its author had, years before, exultingly congratulated the people from the Presidential chair, was yet so active in his own breast.

I say this more in sorrow than in anger. Other portions of this work[1]

will, I am sure, exonerate me from the suspicion of cheris.h.i.+ng the slightest sentiment of unkindness toward the memory of John Quincy Adams. When my personal acquaintance with him was but slight, and when our political relations were unfavorable to the cultivation of friendly feelings, my dispositions toward him were to an unusual extent free from the prejudices commonly engendered by party differences. In the later periods of our acquaintance, continuing to the end of his life, I regarded him with entire personal respect and kindness; and notwithstanding the occasional fierceness of our political collisions, I have never heard of any unfriendly expression by him in respect to myself personally.

[1] This refers to the Memoirs of the writer, to which the present essay was intended to be an episode. See Introduction to this volume. Eds.

It is not a little remarkable, though in harmony with other striking features in the relations of our parties, that no serious attempt has ever been made to trace their origin except by members of the same political school with Mr. Adams. If I am right in this, mine will at least have the weight, whatever that may be, due to the narration of one who, from the beginning to the end of an extended political career, has been an invariable and ardent member of the opposite school.

The author of the life of Hamilton confidently p.r.o.nounces what occurred on the appointment of Was.h.i.+ngton as Commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary army, to be the true source of the party divisions that have so long and so extensively prevailed in this country. President John Quincy Adams, in his Inaugural Address, attributes them to the conflicting prejudices and preferences of the people for and against Great Britain and France at the commencement of the present government, and the discontinuance of them to the effects produced by the excesses of the French Revolution. Matthew L. Davis,--a man of much note and cleverness, who commenced his career an active member of the old Republican party, became the especial champion of Colonel Burr, and, soon seceding from the party to which he was at first attached, spent the remainder of his life in opposition to it,--in his life of Aaron Burr, attributes the origin of our two great political parties to the proceedings of the Federal Const.i.tutional Convention and of the State Conventions which pa.s.sed upon the question of ratification.

These various versions of the matter I shall hereafter notice, contenting myself, for the present, with the remark that party divisions which have extended to every corner of a country as large as our own, and have endured so long, could not spring from slight or even limited causes. No differences in the views of men on isolated questions temporary in their nature, could, it seems to me, have produced such results. Questions of such a character are either finally settled, with more or less satisfaction, or in time lose their interest, notwithstanding momentary excitement, and the temporary organizations springing from them give place in turn to others equally short-lived.

But when men are brought under one government who differ radically in opinion as to its proper form, as to the uses for which governments should be established, as to the spirit in which they should be administered, as to the best way in which the happiness of those who are subject to them can be promoted, no less than in regard to the capacity of the people for self-government, we may well look for party divisions and political organizations of a deeper foundation and a more enduring existence.

Ours arose at the close of the Revolution, and the leading parties to them were the Whigs, through whose instrumentality, under favor of Providence, our Independence had been established. They and the Tories const.i.tuted our entire population, and the latter had at first, for obvious reasons, but little to do in the formation of parties, save to throw themselves in a body into the ranks of one of them. It became at once evident that great differences of opinion existed among the Whigs in respect to the character of the government that should be subst.i.tuted for that which had been overthrown, and also in respect to the spirit and principles which should control the administration of that which might be established. These spread through the country with great rapidity, and were respectively maintained with a zeal and determination which proved that they were not produced by the feelings or impulses of the moment. To ascertain the origin of those differences, and to trace their effects, we can adopt no safer course than to look to the antecedents of the actors in the stirring political scenes that followed the close of the war, to the characters and opinions of their ancestors, from whom they had naturally imbibed their first ideas of government either directly or traditionally, and to the incidents of the memorable struggle from which the country had just emerged.

The great principle first formally avowed by Rousseau, "that the right to exercise sovereignty belongs inalienably to the people," sprung up spontaneously in the hearts of the colonists, and silently influenced all their acts from the beginning. The condition of the country in which they settled,--a wilderness occupied besides themselves only by savage tribes,--to which many of them were driven by the fiercest persecutions ever known to the civilized world, and the stern self-reliance and independent spirit which most of them had acquired in contests with iron fortune that preceded their exile, combined to induce the cultivation and to secure the permanent growth of such a sentiment.

Not being, however, for several generations, in a suitable condition, and from counteracting inducements not even disposed to dispute the pretensions of the Crown to their allegiance, they were content to look princ.i.p.ally to its patents and other concessions for the measure of their rights. But their views were greatly changed, and their advance on the road to freedom materially accelerated, by the English Revolution of 1688. The final overthrow of James II., from whose tyrannical acts, as well in the character of Duke of York as in that of King, they had severely suffered, was not the greatest advantage the colonists derived from that Revolution. The principles upon which that most important of European movements was founded, and the doctrines it consecrated, paved the way to a result which, though not upon their tongues, or perhaps to any great extent the subject of their meditations as immediately practicable, was, doubtless, from that time, within their contemplation.