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Van Buren on His Ancestors

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Van Buren wrote about his forbears in his memoirs—and he got his facts all wrong. He wrote that Cornelis Maessen came to America in 1633 when it was 1631, but this is a miniscule faux pas compared to his other mistakes. He also wrote that Maessen came from the province of Utrecht, when it was Gelderland, and thought that his grandfather was Cornelis’s son, when in fact he was his great-grandfather. Cornelis’s son was Pieter Martense, who seems to have escaped Van Buren’s notice altogether. I know Van Buren didn’t have genealogical records the way we do today, but simple math would have shown that his version was off.  “A generation appears to have been omitted in this account,” wrote the autobiography’s editor, John C. Fitzpatrick (best known today for editing George Washington’s Papers), in the footnotes. Fitzpatrick rarely chimes in in the book, but here he had to correct the record.

Then again, Fitzpatrick flubbed the facts too. He wrote that Maessen sailed on the vessel Rensselaerwyck in 1631 with his wife and son, when in fact that was the second voyage, in 1636. Maessen came solo on the ship Endracht in 1631.

Genealogy is a tricky endeavor.

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Cornelis Maessen, Part Two

Friday, May 11, 2012

Fort Orange, near Albany, by LE Tantillo

The Dutch government had much riding on the success of Van Rensselaer’s venture. Previous efforts at colonization had gone poorly: the Dutch had shown a considerable lack of enthusiasm to the idea of abandoning their homes and crossing the Atlantic and settling in a strange, unknown land. So the patroonship was set up as a way to foster emigration. Under what was called the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, an investor could purchase land from the Indians and would then possess manorial rights. Patroons were required to colonize their acquired territory with at least 50 adults within four years. They could then pass the land on to future generations—in other words, it was a form a feudalism. The south saw something similar in the 19th and 20th century with the sharecropper system.

Van Rensselaer was one of five patroons in New Netherland, and he’s the only one whose business ventures achieved any success. In 1629 Van Rensselaer purchased from the Iroquois a tract of land near Fort Orange, the town that later became Albany, 48 miles long by 24 miles wide: in all, 1,000 square miles. The rent would be paid in the form of a tenth of the produce of the farm. Maessen’s contract with Van Rensselaer was standard: a salary of 60 pounds for the first year with a yearly increase of 10 pounds for the next two years, with an advance of 12 pounds. After his three-year contract expired, Maesen returned home, where he married Catalyntje Martense and began a family before returning to New Netherland in 1636, this time on the ship Rensselaerswick (the ship’s name is a good indication of the patroon’s success).

In 1644, it was recorded, Cornelis paid the patroon 100 bushels of wheat, oats and rye, beside a few peas. By this time he had two men working for him and had saved enough money to buy valuable property in Manhattan: a house and plantation at the North River on Manhattan, between the present Christopher and 14th streets. It was sold in 1646 for $600.

Cornelis and his wife died suddenly in 1648. They were both only 36 years of age. We don’t know what caused their death, but we know they were both buried on the same day at their farm in a town called Papsknee. Cornelius evidently died intestate, as two guardians  were appointed sole trustees for the estate. They had five young children, ranging in age from 11 to 1.

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Cornelis Maessen, Part One

Thursday, May 10, 2012

The first Van Buren to come to the New World didn’t have the name Van Buren. His name was Cornelis Maessen van Buyrmalsen— “Cornelis, son of Maes, from the town of Buyrmalsen”—the great-great-great-grandfather of the future eighth President of the United States. He hailed from a small village near Buren, in the Gelderland province, just a few miles from the mouth of the Rhine. In 1631, he was one of 35 people who boarded the ship Endracht (“unity”) for New Netherland—what New York was called then—as part of Kilaen van Rensselaer’s patroonship. By all accounts, he was one of Van Rensselaer’s prized tenants—and the stern patroon was forever vexed by his wayward tenants in New Netherland: “extravagance,” “licentiousness,” “covetousness,” and “unfaithfulness” were just a few of the misdeeds they were accused of in a series of pamphlets he published in 1643. But about Cornelis he was full of praise. In a letter to his agent, he wrote that Maessen had “been very helpful” to him and was “to be given a fair choice of the men” who were being shipped to further colonize the area. Van Rennselaer also instructed his representative to give Maessen “as many animals as can be supplied” and to “make every effort” to help him purchase a particular parcel of land, a farm where he and his family could settle.

We know little about Maessen’s life in Holland, but this didn’t stop later Van Burens from speculating that he descended from the Count de Buren, whose daughter Anna married William of Orange and Nassau. While acknowledging it was speculation, Martin Van Buren himself nevertheless thought this was worth mentioning in his memoirs. (The irony of a proud republican boasting of possible royal lineage was lost on him.) Others were convinced that the Spanish crown robbed Maessen of his property and left him penniless, forcing him to seek new riches in America. “[I]t requires not an unusual amount of imagination nor is it at all unreasonable to suppose that Cornelius Maessen was one of the descendants of a once opulent family,” Harriet C. Van Buren Peckham wrote in a 1913 book on her family’s genealogy, “but whose fortunes had dwindled to the proportions of a ‘small farmer,’ and who had decided to try what the New World had in store.”

It’s a most unlikely theory, but there is no doubt that Maessen was a man of some abilities, or else he would not have been chosen for the mission. And this was a mission of the greatest magnitude—for Van Rensselaer’s finances and for the Dutch government’s colonial plans.

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I Wish Gordon Wood Would Stop Picking On Van Buren

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Gordon Wood is probably America’s finest historian, and he’s certainly one of my favorites, so when I criticize him, I do it with great trepidation. But on numerous occasions, both in print (his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution) and in talks (I’ve seen two of them on C-SPAN), he has misrepresented Martin Van Buren, in my view, setting him up as the polar opposite of the Founders, his favorite go-to example of how far (or low) politics had changed during the first few decades of the republic. Take this bit from his Radicalism book (which, needless to say, I highly recommend). He deemed Van Buren “a new breed” of politician, “at ease in the chaos of the early republic and confident of the future.” He then added that Van Buren “believed in political parties and in running for office. He was the first modern professional politician to win the presidency.” Nothing at all controversial in those words. But then he gets to the crux of his point, and here is where we part:

Before his elevation to the highest office in the land, Van Buren had no fame, no fortune, and no reputation for great achievement. He had won no battles, had written no great treatises, had made no memorable speeches. He had no great public charisma and was barely known throughout the United States. But what this ‘little magician’ did do was build the best and most organized political party the country had ever seen.”

Let’s examine Wood’s charges one by one. First, that Van Buren “had no fame.” This is not an easy thing to measure, and it is undeniable that Van Buren was not a household name like the previous presidents (though I’m not sure how he compares to Monroe). Nevertheless, he was legendary in Washington and in many state capitals. He was widely known, albeit sometimes notoriously, as one of America’s most formidable politicians. By no means was Martin Van Buren an obscure figure, which is what Wood is suggesting here.

“No fortune”: Not true. Van Buren built a considerable fortune in his years as an attorney. He did not have money on Washington’s scale, if this is what Wood was getting at, but it is incorrect to assert that he was not a man of wealth.

“No reputation for great achievement”: Here Wood is cheating a bit. The creation of the American republic was an epochal event, and it’s unfair to compare Van Buren’s accomplishments with those of his predecessors. He can’t possibly meaure up to them. But this does not mean that Van Buren’s many years in politics did not amount to a fine record of public service, from his involvement in the War of 1812 (more on this later), reforming the New York constitution, leading the way in abolishing debtors’ prisons and resolving vexing and long-standing international disputes with England and France. What’s more, I don’t see why building a political party should not be considered an impressive achievement, especially when we take into account that the party Van Buren built is still with us today.

“He had won no battles.” True, Van Buren never served in the military, but he played an important part in the War of 1812 in spearheading legislation to aid the war effort and in mobilizing resources for the militia. Most important, Van Buren’s fervent pro-war stance made it  clear to the New England secessionists that New York would never join their cause, ensuring that their plan to break away from the country would never work.

“Written no great treatises.” Certainly not—and I’ve noted many times how much Van Buren was not a writer. But he had strong views on political matters that he put into practice rather than on paper, and that is nothing to dismiss.

“Made no memorable speeches.” Unquestionably, Van Buren was no orator, especially when compared to his contemporaries Clay, Webster and Calhoun. He preferred to work behind the scenes, but I still submit that Wood is being harsh here. Van Buren’s speeches at the New York constitutional convention in 1821 were quite well-received (he “delivered the most crushing reply to the neo-Federalist arguments of Chancellor Kent,” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote) and was an “above-average speaker,” according to Robert V. Remini.

“He had no great public charisma.” No, but this doesn’t mean he was without charisma. He couldn’t have built a great political machine otherwise. Remini wrote that Van Buren was “probably one of the most charming men of his age. Without that charm, that ingratiating, refined and affable manner, he could not have succeeded as well as he did.” And both Adamses, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe didn’t possess great public charisma either.

At the center of my quarrel with Wood is a prejudice he apparently harbors, one shared by many historians of the Revolutionary era, that Van Buren was just “a politician” (as if the other presidents were not). Contrast these sentiments with those of Richard Hofstadter, who memorably praised Van Buren in The Idea of a Party System for establishing “a rationale for parties which made it unnecessary for politicians to apologize for doing what the necessities of their trade plainly required them to do, and which now made it possible for them to say why forming and managing parties were acts of service to the liberal state.”

Let’s put it another way, since this is an election year. Imagine someone today running for office who had been a state senator, state attorney general, U.S. senator, governor, Secretary of State, minister to England, and vice president of the United States. Imagine someone with considerable experience as an attorney, a businessman, a legislator, an executive and a diplomat. Imagine someone who had been involved in federal elections since he was a teenager, who played an important role in a war effort, who was a close confidante of a president and who was intimately involved in the nation’s leading issues on a local, state, federal and international level for decades. Would we say such a candidate was “just a politician”? I can’t imagine any of the Founders would be aghast at Martin Van Buren’s rise to power. He was not Boss Tweed. He was as qualified as any man to ever run for President, and I wish historians like Gordon Wood would acknowledge that. Franklin Pierce is a better example of the point he is trying to make.

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Van Buren and Calhoun

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Van Buren was one of the most detested politicians of his era (but surely not the most detestable), and the public figure who despised him the most was John C. Calhoun. Their long history of enmity arose from the intense clashing of their political ambitions, but also because they differed so greatly on matters of principle, style and strategy: Calhoun went through several political metamorphoses in his brilliant career, while Van Buren remained a dogged Jeffersonian; Calhoun was hot-tempered and abrasive, while Van Buren was taciturn and cautious; Calhoun had strong nationalistic impulses, while Van Buren was circumspect of such designs; Calhoun was a serious political thinker, while Van Buren was more the master strategist. Most important, they both wanted to be president, and they both knew that winning Andrew Jackson’s respect and friendship was the best way to achieve that goal. But only one of them got there, as we know. Over the course of their 25-year feud, Van Buren usually got the better of Calhoun, something the South Carolina firebrand quite understandably never forgot.

At first, however, the two were friends and got along rather well. It began when Van Buren was sent to Washington City in 1821 as U.S. Senator from New York. He messed at Strother’s Hotel, at Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street, with several other prominent politicians. On his first day in Washington, still unpacking his bags, he received word that he had a visitor in the lobby—the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun. They exchanged pleasantries, and Van Buren found the South Carolinian affable. Calhoun’s intentions were clear: He was planning to run for president in 1824, and he wanted Van Buren’s support before any of the other presidential hopefuls could enlist his help. In those early days, Van Buren spent many nights at Calhoun’s residence, discussing politics and playing whist. Although Van Buren enjoyed his company, he soon discovered that Calhoun held some positions that he found distasteful. “His views in regard to the construction of the Federal Constitution were latitudinarian in the extreme,” he would later write. What Van Buren particularly found “alarming” was Calhoun’s support for internal improvements from the federal government, something he promoted in a report to the Congress. “I could not therefore go for him or with him,” Van Buren wrote. “The rest is known.”

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Cicero

Monday, April 2, 2012

This bust of Van Buren at Lindenwald is meant to evoke a classical figure like Cicero

Van Buren’s Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States, published five years after his death in 1867, was his clumsy and forgotten attempt at political theory. The book’s titles page features a quote from his favorite classical politician, Cicero: “Nam quis nescit primam esse historiae legem ne quid falsi dicere audeat? deinde, ne quid veri non audeat? Ne qua suspicio gratie sit in scribendo? Ne qua simulatis?”

The quote, from De Oratore (II, 15), roughly translates to:

“For who does not know history’s first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of pretense?”

Not a terribly profound sentiment. After all, who, in theory, could be opposed to telling the truth? Well, politicians have been known to have a casual relationship with veracity, and Van Buren was notorious for intrigue and evasiveness. And yet here he is, opening his book with one of Cicero’s less memorable quotes, affirming his commitment to not only the whole truth but his opposition to pretense and—this is a bit rich—partiality. Strange. But Van Buren’s writings in his post-political career were defensive in tone, always with an eye toward establishing his place in history, so he was probably trying to look a bit grand. Then again, maybe not. In the introduction to the book, written by “his sons” (no specific author is credited), it was observed, “The citation from Cicero on the title 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.”

 

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“The Eternal I”

Friday, March 30, 2012

It’s a mighty chore, but a careful reading of The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren—something few historians have the stomach to do—reveals the wonderful paradoxes of Van Buren’s character. Take this line (p. 177): “It seems unavoidable in writings of this kind to make oneself to a great extent the hero of the narrative, although the offensive intrusion of ‘the eternal I’ is as disagreeable to me as it can be to the reader.” This is funny. Scholars over the years have pulled their hair out in frustration that Van Buren chose to reveal so little about himself in the book, and yet here he is, imagining that his egotism was somehow offending the reader! But I’m grateful for this sentence. “The eternal I” is priceless.

No one should fall for Van Buren’s fake humility. Like many politicians in retirement, he was aiming to make himself look good for posterity. Early in the book he talked about his relationship with “the People” (yes, he capitalizes the word). “Errors were doubtless committed on both sides,” he wrote, meaning they were wrong to not elect him president in 1840 and 1844 and he was wrong … well, he doesn’t elaborate. But he assured readers that his book was not born of a “wounded spirit, seeking self-vindication” but part of his effort to be “at peace with all the world.” He didn’t want to solicit anyone’s approbation, he added, hoping the history would come around to appreciating his great career, but since it hadn’t come yet, he decided, while vacationing in the “salubrious climate” of Sorrento, Italy, to put his life on paper.

At times he regretted his decision, a frustration he expressed in the book itself. Just like Thomas Jefferson (oh, how he loved to compare himself to Jefferson), who also attempted to write his life’s story, Van Buren felt “tired of speaking of himself” and was “continually tempted by the same inducement to bring my story to an abrupt close.” Which he eventually did (the book does not go beyond 1834), jettisoning his autobiography to write the equally rambling and sketchy Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States.

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Van Buren and George Washington, Part Two

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Van Buren was so struck by Bushrod Washington’s story that he felt compelled to write about it decades later in his autobiography. I don’t believe for one moment that his lengthy verbatim account of their conversation is accurate (if so, Washington sure did speak the way Van Buren wrote), but he trusted his memory enough to quote him in full, and that is telling enough. “I listened to the Judge’s narrative with interest,” he wrote, “but with a painful sense of the danger to which it showed that Gen. Washington had been exposed to becoming involved in the conflicts of party.” Van Buren said no man “possessed a sounder sense of what belonged to his position … or could be more ready to to sacrifice personal feelings to the public good than Gen. Washington,” but he was still “yet a man, and as such subject to some extent to the passions and infirmities of his nature.” These are strange words to be coming from Martin Van Buren, a longtime champion of the party system, but here he refers to the “fiery ordeal” of party politics as something dangerous and indeed violent, worse than religion or family quarrels, and as a pursuit unworthy of George Washington. Luckily for the nation, Van Buren continued, Washington died, thanks to “the inscrutable providence of God … for his own and his Country’s welfare.” God took Washington from us so he couldn’t soil his good name with partisan politics! (One of these days I’m going to get around to writing about Van Buren and religion. In many ways he was irreligious, but he sure did cite the Almighty at strange times.)

A few things could be behind these uncustomary expressions of anti-party sentiments. Van Buren may be suggesting that Federalism was so discredited that if Washington had campaigned openly on its behalf, history would have judged him harshly, costing him “the warm affections and the respect of the whole country,” indeed his very status as “Father of his Country.” More likely, though, we were seeing Van Buren’s legendary self-depreciation, stemming from his many insecurities, here expressed in full-blown patriotic form. It’s fine for mere politicians like him to engage in party activities, but an icon like Washington belongs to a different category altogether. Had someone of Washington’s stature entered the fray more openly, “not only our History but Human Nature itself” would have been robbed “of one of the brightest glories of both.” As we all now know, though, Washington was indeed highly partisan, and his reputation seems to have survived.

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Van Buren and George Washington, Part One

Monday, March 26, 2012

Bushrod Washington

One of the many pleasures of writing this blog is that I get to explore areas of Van Buren’s life that even his biographers (sometimes wisely) have ignored. Van Buren is not the kind of figure to warrant a six-volume biography, so naturally there are many holes in the historical record. For example, what did Van Buren think of George Washington? Donald Cole and John Niven make no mention of this, but Van Buren, quite understandably, had a thought or two about the first president. One of the odder passages from his autobiography is his account of a Christmas visit to Mount Vernon, probably in 1823 (he doesn’t give a year). Bushrod Washington, then a Supreme Court judge and the president’s nephew, had inherited the famed estate and invited the New York Senator to join him and other friends and family members for the holiday. Van Buren portrayed a charming scene of caroling and children playing. The judge’s bed-ridden wife was so caught up in the gaiety, he recalled, that she even made it to the head of the staircase!

After dinner, Van Buren and Washington went for a walk in the mild December weather. Perhaps Van Buren’s presence stirred up in him some unpleasant political passions, because the judge went on to tell Van Buren about the time “the General”—as he always referred to the first president—summoned him and John Marshall to Mount Vernon in 1798 to urge the two of them to run for Congress to stop the growing menace of Republicanism and its Francophilic ways. Strangely and rather implausibly, Van Buren gave a verbatim account of his conversation with Bushrod for paragraphs. “We had of course the strongest possible desire to conform to the General’s wishes,” Washington said, “but could not bring our minds to any other conclusion than that to do so in this instance would be destructive of our prospects in the pursuit we preferred, and injurious to our families.” He told his uncle of his “unfitness for political life,” but Washington would not relent. “Bushrod, it must be done!” he told his intimidated nephew and then reminded him of the sacrifices he had made for his country. The two of them capitulated, but the matter greatly disturbed Bushrod, who did not want to join the fray of partisan politics (although Marshall very much did). He left Mount Vernon “with feelings of great anxiety.” Washington began taking the necessary steps to establish his candidacy when fate intervened. President John Adams appointed him to the Supreme Court and was instructed to head to Georgia for circuit duty at once. Marshall was elected to Congress but soon would head to the Supreme Court himself for one of the institution’s most brilliant careers.

The next post will discuss Van Buren’s reaction to the exchange with Bushrod Washington.

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More on Adams

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Van Buren had little to say in his autobiography about his visit to Quincy, but he had a great deal to say about John Adams, good and bad. Van Buren was too much a patriot to disparage John Adams, whose historical stock was not as high then as it is today but who was nevertheless still considered a Founding Father. “The Adamses … were an extraordinary race,” he wrote (Van Buren loved to refer to people as “races”), “and made an indelible impression on the times in which they lived.” But he quickly added that Adams’s “greatness was not without alloy, but happily for his country the defects of his character did not affect his usefulness until after her independence had been established.” His flaws were the result of an “overweening self esteem and consequent impatience.” This is just a long-winded way of saying Adams was a proud, irascible hothead, but we know Van Buren was never one for bluntness (or lucid writing). He then went on to ramble for several pages about Adams’s handling of Washington and Hamilton in the provisional army imbroglio in the late 1790s (bad), the Alien and Sedition laws (also bad, but the “legitimate fruits of principles,” and besides, it was all Hamilton’s doing), and the election of 1796, in which he wrote that Jefferson would have conceded the presidency to Adams if there were a tie—a point he makes for no apparent reason other than to make Jefferson look good.

Van Buren summarized Adams’s political downfall as a consequence of obstinacy and inability to appreciate the nation’s growing republican spirit. “Public services have their stipulated rewards, and all beyond, the People proudly regard as reserved for free-will offerings,” he wrote. “Nothing is so likely to offend and repel their confidence as appeals for their support which wear the appearance of claims of right on the part of the applicant.” He is referring to the Alien and Sedition acts, but Andrew Jackson was no slouch when it came to executive overreach, so he’s being quite selective in his application of principles, but his point that Adams was tone deaf to the public’s perception of his policies is quite correct. His conclusion that Adams brought his party “imperishable odium” seems quite harsh, even for the 1850s, especially given how Jefferson ended his years in office.

Van Buren’s section on Adams ends with some words about his acrimonious relationship with Franklin. He began by noting that Franklin wrote that Adams “was always honest,” which is part of a famous quote in which Franklin says many other things about Adams, none too flattering (Van Buren alludes to this). A few pages later, Van Buren quotes Franklin’s famous letter in full, in which he declares that Adams is on occasion “completely out of his senses.” Van Buren lifted a funny line from John Adams’s diary in 1806, in which he declared that Franklin was “a great genius, a great wit, a great humorist, a great satirist, and a great politician,” but whether he was “a great philosopher, a great moralist, and a great statesman is more questionable.” Van Buren wrote that the resemblance of Adams’s remarks to “an excusable retort courteous is certainly not a little striking.” Van Buren loved to sprinkle his writing with a little Latin, a language he didn’t understand—unlike many of the Founders.

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