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Martin Van Buren, Letter to Thomas Ritchie (1827)1

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Martin Van Buren, Letter to Thomas Ritchie (1827)1 AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT Keith E. Whittington Supplementary Material Chapter 4: The Early National Period – Citizenship and Community Martin Van Buren, Letter to Thomas Ritchie (1827)1 Martin Van Buren, the “Little Magician,” grew up near Albany New York in a Dutch farming community in the years after the American Revolution. He had limited formal education but apprenticed to be an attorney. He was soon drawn into politics and became an advocate for Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency in 1800. He quickly emerged as an ambitious and cunning political strategist. He was instrumental in organizing a New York faction of the Republican Party (the “Bucktails”) who were hostile to the faction led by Governor De Witt Clinton. The Bucktails sent Van Buren to the U.S. Senate in 1821. He returned to New York to briefly serve as governor in 1829, before resigning to become U.S. Secretary of State under President Andrew Jackson. He succeeded Jackson in the presidency in the 1836 elections, serving one ill-fated term of office. Although he wanted to return to the White House, he was not able to regain the Democratic nomination after his electoral defeat in 1840. In his later years, he became an increasingly vocal antislavery Democrat, receiving the Free Soil Party presidential nomination in 1848. Van Buren was instrumental in forming the Democratic Party around the candidacy of Andrew Jackson in the late 1820s. The party division between the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists had been washed away during the “Era of Good Feelings” under President James Monroe. In 1824, the electorate had fractured among various regional “favorite son” candidates. Van Buren’s own favored candidate, William Crawford, polled third in the Electoral College vote. With no candidate winning a majority in the Electoral College, the election was decided in the House of Representatives in favor of John Quincy Adams, a result that was denounced as a “corrupt bargain” by the losing Andrew Jackson. In 1827, Van Buren wrote to Virginia newspaper editor Thomas Ritchie, a longtime leader of the “Richmond Junto” that controlled Jeffersonian politics in Virginia. Van Buren floated South Carolinian John C. Calhoun’s idea of a national nominating convention to choose a presidential candidate before the 1828 elections. The convention idea became a key step toward the formation of a new political party. The Jeffersonians had long settled on a presidential candidate through a meeting of the party’s congressional caucus, but that mechanism for organizing support behind a single candidate had broken down in the 1820s. Van Buren thought a party convention would solve four different political problems facing the nation. It would organize the opposition to the incumbent President Adams and increase the chances of defeating him at the polls in 1828. It would organize politics around a coherent set of competing political principles rather than personal factions and local interests. It would bridge the incipient divide between the northern and southern states by creating a national political coalition connected by ties of partisan loyalty. It would help rein in Andrew Jackson, who Van Buren feared might be able to win the election on the basis of his personal popularity but who might be inclined to govern as an unprincipled populist unless tied down by a party organization. 1 Excerpt taken from Martin Van Buren, “Letter to Thomas Ritchie, January 13, 1827,” in Democracy: An American Novel, by Clarence King, Henry Adams, and John Hay (London: Macmillan and Co., 1882). 1 . For myself, I am not tenacious whether we have a congressional caucus or a general convention, so that we have either; the latter would remove the embarrassment of those who have or profess to have scruples as to the former, would be fresher & perhaps more in unison with the spirit of the times. The following may, I think, justly be ranked among its probable advantages. First, It is the best and probably the only practicable mode of concentrating the entire vote of the opposition & of effecting what is of still greater importance, the substantial reorganization of the Old Republican Party. 2nd. Its first result cannot be doubtful. Mr. Adams occupying the seat and being determined not to surrender it except in extremis will not submit his pretension to the convention. I have long been satisfied that we can only get rid of the present, and & restore a better state of things, by combining General Jackson’s personal popularity with the portion of old party feeling yet remaining. The sentiment is spreading, and would of itself be sufficient to nominate him at the Convention. 3rd. The call of such a convention, its exclusive Republican character, & the refusal of Mr. Adams and his friends to become parties to it, would draw anew the old Party lines & the subsequent contest would reestablish them; state nomination alone would fall far short of that object. 4th. It would greatly improve the condition of the Republicans of the North & Middle States by substituting party principle for personal preference as one of the leading points in the contest. The location of the candidate would in a great degree, be merged in its consideration. Instead of the question being between a northern and Southern man, it would be whether or not the ties, which have heretofore bound together a great party should be severed. The difference between the two questions would be found to be immense in the elective field. Although this is a mere party consideration, it is not on that less likely to be effectual, considerations of this character not infrequently operate as efficiently as those which bear upon the most important questions of constitutional doctrine. Indeed General Jackson has been so little in public life, that it is still not a little difficult to contrast his opinions on great questions with those of Mr. Adams. 5thly. It would place our Republican friends in New England on new and strong grounds. They would have to decide between an indulgence in sectional & personal feelings with an entire separation from their old political friends on the one hand or acquiescence in the fairly expressed will of the party, on the other. In all the states the divisions between Republicans and Federalists is still kept up & cannot be laid aside whatever the leader of the two parties may desire. 6th. Its effects would be highly salutary on your section of the union by the revival of the old party distinctions. We must always have party distinctions and the old ones are the best of which the nature of the case admits. Political combinations between the inhabitants of the different states are unavoidable & the most natural & beneficial to the country is that between the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the north. The country has once flourished under a party thus constituted & may again. It would take longer than our lives (even if it were practicable) to create new party feelings to keep those masses together. If the one ones are suppressed, Geographical divisions founded on local interests or, what is worse prejudices between free & slave holding states will inevitably take their place. Party attachment in former times furnished a complete antidote for sectional prejudices by producing counteracting feelings. It was not until that defense had been broken down that the clamor against Southern Influence and African Slavery could be made effectual in the North. Those in the South who assisted in producing the change are, I am satisfied, now deeply sensible to their error. Every honest Federalist of the South therefore should (and would if he duly reflected upon the subject) prefer the revival of old party feelings to any other state of things he has a right to expect. Formerly, attacks upon Southern Republicans were regarded by those of the north as assaults upon their political brethren & resented accordingly. This all powerful sympathy has been much weakened, if not, destroyed by the amalgamating policy of Mr. Monroe. It can & ought to be revived and the proposed convention would be eminently serviceable in effecting that object. 2 Lastly, the effect of such a nomination on General Jackson could not fail to be considerable. His election, as the result of his military services without reference to party & so far as he alone is concerned, scarcely to principle, would be one thing. His election as the result of a combined and concerted efforts of a political party, holding in the man, to certain tenets & opposed to certain prevailing principles, might be another and a far different thing. 3 .
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