CHAPTER ONE: chides voters for not following him – describes his family and background with minimal detail – bemoans lack of education – discusses early experiences in politics – meets Aaron Burr – fallout with Van Nesses – sees Peter Van Schaack on his deathbed
The book opens with a date and place: Villa Falangola, Sorrento, Italy, June 21, 1854. “At the age of seventy one, and in a foreign land, I commence a sketch of the principal events of my life.” Not a bad opening sentence. The next two sentences are terrible, and I will quote them in full to give you a taste of Van Buren’s ponderous and impossible writing style.
I enter upon this work in the hope of being yet able to redeem promises exacted from me by friends on whose judgments and sagacity I have been accustomed to rely. I need not now speak of the extent to which an earlier compliance with their wishes has been prevented by an unaffected diffidence to assume that the scenes, of which they desire to perpetuate the memory, will be found to possess sufficient interest to justify such a notice.”
Right away we get a glimpse of the book’s defensive tone, which continues for nearly one thousand pages. Van Buren was hoping that he didn’t have to write this book. He was hoping his sagacious “friends” would undertake the task, but he was tired of waiting, so decided to settle the record straight himself. This was a very modern idea on Van Buren’s part. All ex-presidents today take to their memoirs the moment they leave office, but Van Buren was the first—John Adams and Jefferson never got far with theirs—to give his account of his times, and, like today’s politicians, he was out to prove that he has been mischaracterized and misunderstood.
Van Buren didn’t open the book with his birth, his family or his boyhood in Kinderhook. Instead he launched into a strange and petulant account of how he lost his two post-presidency bids for the White House, in 1840 and 1844. Clearly the resentment was still there. His loss in 1844 “was the result of intrigue … made successful by the co-operation of slave power, subsequently & adroitly brought to the assistance of designs already matured.” He then went on to note how “the People” (meaning the electorate, with whom he’s had “interesting relations”) did not deal with him “unjustly,” but they nevertheless erred in turning him down for office. “Errors were doubtless committed on all sides,” he writes, “delusions set on foot which there was not time to dissipate and means, designed for good ends, perverted to bad purposes.” In other words, the People fell for the propaganda from his unprincipled opponents. (Van Buren never explains what his errors were, by the way.) He assures us that his book was not born of a “wounded spirit, seeking self-vindication,” but this is exactly what the book is all about.
We then finally get some family history. “My family was from Holland,” he writes, “without a single intermarriage with one of different extraction from the time of the arrival of the first emigrant to that of the marriage of my eldest son, embracing a period of over two centuries and six generations.” He repeats the canard, long perpetuated in Van Buren family circles, that he descended from the royal Count Buren family. Good republicans that he is, however, Van Buren assures us that he doesn’t care if the rumor is true or not. He mentions his first ancestors coming to America in the 1630s, and even though he flubs his facts, he was operating with what he had in the 1850s, and he was not terribly far off. His mother “was regarded by all who knew her as liberally endowed with the qualities & virtues that adorn the female character,” while his father “was an unassuming amiable man who was never known to have an enemy.” Abraham Van Buren—he’s never named—was “utterly devoid of the spirit of accumulation” and his property, “originally moderate, was gradually reduced until he could illy afford to bestow the necessary means upon the education of his children.” (Yes, he used the word “illy.”) That’s all he has to say about any of his ancestors.
We then turn to the subject of education, and it’s obviously a sore subject for Van Buren, though he’s not abashed to be candid about his shortcomings. It’s worthwhile to quote him in full:
It has thro’ life been to me a source of regret that I had not pursed the course so often successfully adopted by our New England young men under like circumstances,—that is to spend a portion of their time in teaching the lower branches of learning, and, with the means thus obtained, to acquire access for themselves to the highest. My mind might have lost a portion of its vivacity, in the plodding habits formed by such a course, but it could not have failed to acquire in the elements of strength supplied by a good education much more than it lost.”
We learn a lot about the man in this passage. You can see the genuine sorrow he has that his mind lacked the training of a thorough education rooted in philosophy, history, science and math, but he understands one thing: his success as a politician stemmed from his training in the law, and that “vivacity,” as he generously deems it, provided the gateway to his career. Now in his 70s, Van Buren wistfully looks back on how his narrow education in legal training drowned out other pursuits that might have made him a more well-rounded man, like those unnamed “New England young men” (he’s referring, of course, to Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and probably John C. Calhoun who, though a southerner, was educated at Yale).
And he’s not done. He cites John Randolph, the Virginia politician who once asked Andrew Jackson why he would anoint Van Buren his successor, since the New York politician “could not speak, or write, the English language correctly.” Taylor also wrote that in all his experiences he never encountered a man of Van Buren’s stature “less informed.” Van Buren writes that there was “justice” to Randolph’s description of him, even though Jackson—no champion speller himself—obviously didn’t care. (What’s more, Randolph was being quite harsh.) Nevertheless, the sting is clearly still there for the sensitive Van Buren, who concludes the section with a strange cautionary tale. He advises young, ambitious men, “whose start in life may resemble my own,” that they should pursue a sound eduction before they consider a path of wealth and fame. This is the only time in the book when Van Buren gives advice to the reader.
The book continues with some early and important incidents in Van Buren’s political career. In these years, beginning in 1803, Van Buren’s political career commenced. Kinderhook was a politically divided town in his youth; the rifts from the American Revolution were still very much alive. The Van Ness family were the Republican leaders, the Van Schaack and Silvesters were the Federalist sympathizers. Van Buren clerked for Francis Silvester, and the family’s efforts to recruit him to the Federalist cause are noteworthy. (“Efforts to divert me from my determined course were not wanting.”) In describing the Federalist victory in one election, Van Buren describes the jubilation of drinking, singing and guns firing, but he, a Republican, wanted none of it. He returned to his law office and slept in his room. After midnight, Cornelis Silvester, his employer’s brother, knocked on the door and sat at Van Buren’s bedside. For one hour he laid out his case for why this promising young student should join the Federalist cause. Van Buren told him that he appreciated “the kindness of his feelings” but that “my course had been settled … and could not be changed.” Silvester took his hand and said he would never trouble him again and would always remain his friend. This is how Van Buren conducted himself with all his political foes throughout his life.
Van Buren then describes how he went to New York City to work for the attorney William Van Ness, whose brother John was recently elected to Congress. John P. Van Ness promised Van Buren some money, but only delivered what Van Buren called a “trifling” forty dollars. Van Buren’s half brother, John Van Alen, a prominent New York attorney, stepped forward to lend him the money he needed. Now we get into Van Buren’s introduction to Aaron Burr. William Van Ness is one of Burr’s closest associates, and he takes Van Buren to the colonel’s house at Richmond Hill in Manhattan. “He treated me with much attention,” Van Buren says of Burr, but—frustratingly, maddeningly—provides no details. Things take a sour turn for Van Buren and Van Ness when the New York gubernatorial election of 1804 comes. Van Buren does not support Burr but Morgan Lewis. The Van Nesses are furious at their protege’s apostasy. John P. Van Ness comes up from Washington and confronts Van Buren on the street. When Van Buren told him he was not changing his mind, Van Ness, “with a very grave look and tone, turned on his heel and walked off.” They didn’t talk again for 20 years. When election day came, Van Buren’s two foes actually tried to stop him from voting on technical grounds but were unsuccessful. Still, Van Buren was forced to take an oath, an “indignity” he didn’t soon forget. The Van Nesses never truly forgave Van Buren. Even when they called upon his legal services—William Van Ness got into trouble with the law when he was Aaron Burr’s second during the fatal duel with Alexander Hamilton—père Van Ness refused to acknowledge Van Buren in his home.
The chapter concludes with Van Buren meeting Peter Van Schaack on his deathbed in 1832. I discussed this in an earlier post, so there’s little point in going over the material again. Again, Van Buren is showing that he never let politics get in the way of friendship, even though he visited a man “whose prejudices against me were of the rankest kind.”
The first chapter of AMVB is most notable for what its author left out. He tells us nothing about his parents but the few sentences quoted here. No other family is mentioned. He’s silent on the family slaves. We don’t learn a thing about his childhood in Kinderhook, or even what took place in his father’s tavern, which doubled as a polling place and where, rumor had it, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr once stayed. These omissions will forever vex scholars of Van Buren and the Jacksonian era of American politics.
Fifty pages into the autobiography Van Buren writes about an important chapter in his life—his involvement in the War of 1812, an episode that has been largely glossed over by his biographers, in my view. Van Buren aims to clarify his record. He and his fellow Republicans were selflessly devoted to the war and their country. The Federalists were in every way the opposite—with the lone exception of Rufus King, who remained a lifelong friend and sometimes ally of Van Buren as a result. Van Buren brags that he and other Republicans supported the war, for which they were rewarded by capturing many seats in 1814, a development that “gladdened the heart of every patriot in the land.” He praises governor Daniel Tompkins and quotes in full a speech that Van Buren delivered before the state legislature. It’s one of the peculiarities of the book that Van Buren quotes official speeches in total, since these papers were in the public record. Then again, this is a peculiar book.
