The modern balaam and his ass, an 1837 caricature placing the blame for the Panic of 1837 and the perilous state of the banking system on outgoing President Andrew Jackson, shown riding a donkey, while President Martin Van Buren comments approvingly When Van Buren entered office, the nation's economic health had taken a turn for the worse and the prosperity of the early 1830s was over. Two months into his presidency, on May 10, 1837, some important state banks in New York, running out of hard currency reserves, refused to convert paper money into gold or silver, and other financial institutions throughout the nation quickly followed suit. This financial crisis would become known as the Panic of 1837.[153] The Panic was followed by a five-year depression in which banks failed and unemployment reached record highs.[154] Van Buren blamed the economic collapse on greedy American and foreign business and financial institutions, as well as the over-extension of credit by U.S. banks. Whig leaders in Congress blamed the Democrats, along with Andrew Jackson's economic policies,[153] specifically his 1836 Specie Circular. Cries of "rescind the circular!" went up and former president Jackson sent word to Van Buren asking him not to rescind the order, believing that it had to be given enough time to work. Others, like Nicholas Biddle, believed that Jackson's dismantling of the Bank of the United States was directly responsible for the irresponsible creation of paper money by the state banks which had precipitated this panic.[155] The Panic of 1837 loomed large over the 1838 election cycle, as the carryover effects of the economic downturn led to Whig gains in both the U.S. House and Senate. The state elections in 1837 and 1838 were also disastrous for the Democrats,[156] and the partial economic recovery in 1838 was offset by a second commercial crisis later that year.[157] To address the crisis, the Whigs proposed rechartering the national bank. The president countered by proposing the establishment of an independent U.S. treasury, which he contended would take the politics out of the nation's money supply. Under the plan, the government would hold its money in gold or silver, and would be restricted from printing paper money at will; both measures were designed to prevent inflation.[158] The plan would permanently separate the government from private banks by storing government funds in government vaults rather than in private banks.[159] Van Buren announced his proposal in September 1837,[153] but an alliance of conservative Democrats and Whigs prevented it from becoming law until 1840.[160] As the debate continued, conservative Democrats like Rives defected to the Whig Party, which itself grew more unified in its opposition to Van Buren.[161] The Whigs would abolish the Independent Treasury system in 1841, but it was revived in 1846, and remained in place until the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.[162] More important for Van Buren's immediate future, the depression would be a major issue in his upcoming re-election campaign.[153] Indian removal Federal policy under Jackson had sought to move Indian tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the federal government negotiated 19 treaties with Indian tribes during Van Buren's presidency.[163] The 1835 Treaty of New Echota signed by government officials and representatives of the Cherokee tribe had established terms under which the Cherokees ceded their territory in the southeast and agreed to move west to Oklahoma. In 1838, Van Buren directed General Winfield Scott to forcibly move all those who had not yet complied with the treaty.[164] The Cherokees were herded violently into internment camps where they were kept for the summer of 1838. The actual transportation west was delayed by intense heat and drought, but in the fall, the Cherokee reluctantly agreed to transport themselves west.[165][166] Some 20,000 people were relocated against their will during the Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears.[167] Notably, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who would go on to become America's foremost man of letters, wrote Van Buren a letter protesting his treatment of the Cherokee.[168] A United States Marine Corps boat expedition searching the Everglades during the Second Seminole War The administration also contended with the Seminole Indians, who engaged the army in a prolonged conflict known as the Second Seminole War.[163] Before he left office, Jackson put General Thomas Jesup in command of all military troops in Florida to force Seminole emigration to the West.[169] Forts were established throughout the Indian territory, and mobile columns of soldiers scoured the countryside, and many Seminoles offered to surrender, including Chief Micanopy. The Seminoles slowly gathered for emigration near Tampa, but in June they fled the detention camps, driven off by disease and the presence of slave catchers hoping to capture Black Seminoles.[170][171] In December 1837, Jesup began a massive offensive, culminating in the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, and the war entered a new phase of attrition.[170] During this time, the government realized that it would be almost impossible to drive the remaining Seminoles from Florida, so Van Buren sent General Alexander Macomb to negotiate peace with them. It was the only time that an Indian tribe had forced the government to sue for peace. An agreement was reached allowing the Seminoles to remain in southwest Florida, but the peace was shattered in July 1839 and was not restored until 1842, after Van Buren had left office.[170][172] Texas Just before leaving office in March 1837, Andrew Jackson extended diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, which had won independence from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. By suggesting the prospect of quick annexation, Jackson raised the danger of war with Mexico and heightened sectional tensions at home. New England abolitionists charged that there was a "slaveholding conspiracy to acquire Texas", and Daniel Webster eloquently denounced annexation.[173] Many Southern leaders, meanwhile, strongly desired the expansion of slave-holding territory in the United States.[174] Boldly reversing Jackson's policies, Van Buren sought peace abroad and harmony at home. He proposed a diplomatic solution to a long-standing financial dispute between American citizens and the Mexican government, rejecting Jackson's threat to settle it by force.[173] Likewise, when the Texas minister at Washington, D.C., proposed annexation to the administration in August 1837, he was told that the proposition could not be entertained. Constitutional scruples and fear of war with Mexico were the reasons given for the rejection,[175] but concern that it would precipitate a clash over the extension of slavery undoubtedly influenced Van Buren and continued to be the chief obstacle to annexation.[176] Northern and Southern Democrats followed an unspoken rule: Northerners helped quash anti-slavery proposals and Southerners refrained from agitating for the annexation of Texas.[174] Texas withdrew the annexation offer in 1838.[175] Great Britain "Destruction of the Caroline", illustration by John Charles Dent (1881) British subjects in Lower Canada (now Quebec) and Upper Canada (now Ontario) rose in rebellion in 1837 and 1838, protesting their lack of responsible government. While the initial insurrection in Upper Canada ended quickly (following the December 1837 Battle of Montgomery's Tavern), many of the rebels fled across the Niagara River into New York, and Upper Canadian rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie began recruiting volunteers in Buffalo.[177] Mackenzie declared the establishment of the Republic of Canada and put into motion a plan whereby volunteers would invade Upper Canada from Navy Island on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Several hundred volunteers traveled to Navy Island in the weeks that followed. They procured the steamboat Caroline to deliver supplies to Navy Island from Fort Schlosser.[177] Seeking to deter an imminent invasion, British forces crossed to the American bank of the river in late December 1837, and they burned and sank the Caroline. In the melee, one American was killed and others were wounded.[178] Considerable sentiment arose within the United States to declare war, and a British ship was burned in revenge.[179] Van Buren, looking to avoid a war with Great Britain, sent General Winfield Scott to the Canada–United States border with large discretionary powers for its protection and its peace.[180] Scott impressed upon American citizens the need for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, and made it clear that the U.S. government would not support adventuresome Americans attacking the British. Also, in early January 1838, the president proclaimed U.S. neutrality in the Canadian independence issue,[181] a declaration which Congress endorsed by passing a neutrality law designed to discourage the participation of American citizens in foreign conflicts.[179] Van Buren was unwilling to go to war over the disputed territory, though he assured Maine that he would respond to any attacks by the British.[189] To settle the crisis, Van Buren met with the British minister to the United States, and Van Buren and the minister agreed to resolve the border issue diplomatically.[186] Van Buren also sent General Scott to the northern border area, both to show military resolve, and more importantly, to lower the tensions. Scott successfully convinced all sides to submit the border issue to arbitration. The border dispute was put to rest a few years later, with the signing of the 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty.[179][181] Amistad case The Amistad case was a freedom suit that involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law, resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839.[190] Van Buren viewed abolitionism as the greatest threat to the nation's unity, and he resisted the slightest interference with slavery in the states where it existed.[191] His administration supported the Spanish government's demand that the ship and its cargo (including the Africans) be turned over to them.[192] A federal district court judge ruled that the Africans were legally free and should be transported home, but Van Buren's administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court. In February 1840, former president John Quincy Adams argued passionately for the Africans' right to freedom, and Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin presented the government's case. In March 1841, the Supreme Court issued its final verdict: the Amistad Africans were free people and should be allowed to return home.[193] The unique nature of the case heightened public interest in the saga, including the participation of former president Adams, Africans testifying in federal court, and their representation by prominent lawyers. The Amistad case drew attention to the personal tragedies of slavery and attracted new support for the growing abolition movement in the North. It also transformed the courts into the principal forum for a national debate on the legal foundations of slavery.[194] Judicial appointments Main article: Martin Van Buren judicial appointments Van Buren appointed two Associate Justices to the Supreme Court:[195] John McKinley, confirmed September 25, 1837, and Peter Vivian Daniel, confirmed March 2, 1841. He also appointed eight other federal judges, all to United States district courts.[196] White House hostess For the first half of his presidency, Van Buren, who had been a widower for many years, did not have a specific person to act as White House hostess at administration social events, but tried to assume such duties himself. When his eldest son Abraham Van Buren married Angelica Singleton in 1838, he quickly acted to install his daughter-in-law as his hostess. She solicited the advice of her distant relative, Dolley Madison,[197] who had moved back to Washington after her husband's death,[198] and soon the president's parties livened up. After the 1839 New Year's Eve reception, The Boston Post raved: "[Angelica Van Buren is a] lady of rare accomplishments, very modest yet perfectly easy and graceful in her manners and free and vivacious in her conversation ... universally admired."[197] As the nation endured a deep economic depression, Angelica Van Buren's receiving style at receptions was influenced by her heavy reading about European court life (and her naive delight in being received as the Queen of the United States when she visited the royal courts of England and France after her marriage). Newspaper coverage of this, and the claim that she intended to re-landscape the White House grounds to resemble the royal gardens of Europe, was used in a political attack on her father-in-law by a Pennsylvania Whig Congressman Charles Ogle. He referred obliquely to her as part of the presidential "household" in his famous Gold Spoon Oration. The attack was delivered in Congress and the depiction of the president as living a royal lifestyle was a primary factor in his defeat for re-election.[199] |
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