Chapter XI: The Dutch Reign of Martin Van Buren

1837–1841.

A New-Yorker reaches the White House, and has Hard Fare there.—The
Disadvantages of Competition.—A Financial Earthquake breaks large
Amounts of Crockery.—How much made a Pile in 1837.—The
Sub-Treasury.—The Connection between long Messages and Anarchy in
Finance.—Defalcations in Office.—Why an Old Man’s House is easily
robbed.—The Phantom of Slavery.—_Extraits de l’Afrique._—Principles
and Goods sold at a Profit.—A Political Trader loses his Capital, and
gives up Business.

At last New York saw one of her citizens reach the White House. Several other gentlemen, General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Judge Hugh L. White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Willie P. Mangum of North Carolina, were each desirous of getting to this favorite inn before the others, and of securing exclusive possession of it. For four years the Dutch guest had a very hard time of it. All of his disappointed competitors watched him, as hounds the fox in his hole, ready for hot pursuit as soon as the brush showed from cover.

A financial earthquake broke through the commercial crust the first year of Mr. Van Buren’s term, shattering most of the crockery in the great cities, and sputtering red menaces of ruin through almost every village and country store. In New York alone merchants toppled down amid heaps of indebtedness piled up to $100,000,000,—a respectable pile then, now scarcely worth failing for. To help up the departing credit, the President recommended the sub-treasury scheme, or separate chests for guarding the public moneys. Of course this expedient, like all financial measures, was Dutch to the people generally, who became more hopelessly anarchical by the interminably long messages, which aggravated their want of ideas, and somehow fretfully tangled their losing tempers and accounts.

A few defalcations among public officers chafed the popular mind to an illogical but natural irritation. They looked upon the guard-houses of the national moneys, like an old man’s residence, insecure from his broken gait and few locks. The dark phantom of slavery again flitted over the land, its dusky shadow disturbing the vision of commercial and political traders. The President had, in his boresome in-augur-al, promised to his Southern supporters, in advance of Congressional action, to veto any bill forbidding slavery in the District of Columbia. Petitions against slavery were laid under the table, while speeches in its favor were extremely fashionable. Mails at the South were opened for the discovery of antislavery papers. Politicians perfumed their handkerchiefs with _extraits de l’Afrique_, and Northern merchants on the seaboard sold to the South their principles and goods at a profit. Still the great trader in the White House kept losing his capital. The new war with the Seminoles created bad debts. A proposition for a standing army mined his credit. The sub-treasury scheme drained specie from the people into Federal pools. To Lindenwald he retired, enriched by experience, but with his political ballot-paper at a heavy discount.