CHAPTER XXIV MARTIN VAN BUREN'S ADMINISTRATION DEMOCRAT-1837-1841 438. Van Buren and Johnson Are Elected. In the election of 1836, Martin Van Buren, the Democratic nominee, was made President by a majority of forty-six electoral votes. The Whig vote was divided among several candidates, of whom the leading one was General Harrison, of Tippecanoe fame. As the electoral college failed to choose a Vice-president, Richard M. Johnson was elected by the Senate. Van Buren (1782-1862) was born of Dutch ancestry at Kinderhook, New York. He had been in succession United States Senator, Governor of New York, Secretary of State, and Vicepresident. From the very first, popular feeling began to go against him; people thought him a small, selfish politician, responsible for many of the evil proceedings of Jackson's reign. Nor was this to be wondered at, since he had secured the votes of Jackson's adherents by pledging himself to follow closely in the footsteps of his former chief. Van Buren, nevertheless, showed himself to be an able political manager, strong enough to withstand the distrust of his fellow-men, and his tact and geniality in dealing with his opponents won for him the title of "Little Magician." 439. The Panic of 1837. Van Buren had scarcely taken the oath of office before the country was in the midst of the worst financial panic it had ever experienced. People who had gone in debt were ruined. Bank after bank-pet banks and wild-cat banks-failed. Business houses went bankrupt. Factories closed their doors, and thousands of laborers were thrown out of work. Poor crops in the middle and western states added to the general distress. High prices and high rents weighed heavily on the poor. Flour rose to eleven dollars a barrel and corn to one dollar and fifteen cents per bushel. Strikes and bread riots occurred in cities, and the people called loudly for help from the government. But the national government had not even the money to pay its officials. Adams truthfully declared, "Without a dollar of national debt, we are in the midst of national bankruptcy." Individual states had borrowed millions of dollars from European nations and now found it impossible to raise money to pay the principal or to meet the interest. For many years afterwards Europeans looked with disfavor on American securities. The causes for the panic may be traced to reckless banking and to wild speculation. The danger of the banking system arose from the fact that the banks issued notes (promises of money), though they had no money or capital to redeem their promise. The notes of a Michigan bank bore on them a picture of a wild-cat; when this bank failed, its notes became known as wild-cat notes and afterwards all banks that could not redeem their bills (pay for them in gold or silver) were called "wild-cat banks," and their notes "wild-cat money." 440. The Independent Treasury. The experience which the government had passed through twice (1814, 1837) proved that it was not safe to deposit the nation's money in state banks. Van Buren, showing real strength at this critical time, called a special session of Congress to devise some plan for protecting the funds of the United States. This session passed (1840) the Independent Treasury Act, which provided that the government should maintain a safe place in which to keep its money in order that the nation's funds might not be exposed to a risk of loss in state banks, as was the case in the disastrous failure of the "pet banks. Congress furthermore provided that the officials of the government should give security for the proper discharge of their duties, and that all payments to or by the United States should be exclusively in gold or silver. The Independent Treasury plan was repealed soon after, but was later reenacted (1846) and is in existence today. By this excellent system, which we owe mainly to President Van Buren, the public money is deposited in vaults and safes in the Treasury building at Washington, and in the Sub-Treasuries of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Baltimore. 441. The Canadian Rebellion. In 1837 Canada rebelled against England. Many Americans living on the border sympathized with the Canadians and, with the hope of annexing Canada to the United States, a party of seven hundred crossed the boundary and took possession of Navy Island, in the Niagara River. Van Buren promptly forbade interference in the affairs of Canada and sent thither General Scott with an armed force. Harmony was restored, and trouble with England averted. 442. The Mormons. A new religious sect, the Mormons, or "Latter-Day Saints," sprang up about 1830, at Manchester, New York. Its leader, Joseph Smith, the son of a Vermont farmer, claimed to have received from heaven, revelations written in mystic characters on plates of brass. The new sect from the beginning met with great opposition because of its strange teachings. Smith and his followers emigrated to Ohio (1831), but they were soon driven out of the state by the citizens (1838). They later met the same fate in Missouri. In Illinois, where they were kindly received, they built their "Holy City," Nauvoo, and gathered in that vicinity to the number of twenty thousand Later, however, Smith aroused popular indignation by causing the destruction of a press which had denounced his doctrine of polygamy. In 1844 the Mormon leader and his brother were imprisoned and later shot in a Carthage jail by a mob. Shortly after, the Mormons, under their new leader, Brigham Young, moved westward (February, 1846), across the frozen Mississippi and the prairies of Iowa, to the Missouri River (June). From here, a company of one hundred and forty-three men, led by Young, made a difficult journey of over one thousand miles across the mountains to the great Salt Lake (April, 1847). Other parties soon followed and the Mormons thus became the founders of Salt Lake City, Utah. The main reason for the persistent hostility throughout America to the Mormons was their practice of polygamy. 443. Foreign Immigration-Progress of Catholicity. A regular line of steamships had been established between Liverpool and Boston (1830), and later between Liverpool and New York, and immigration poured into the United States. In ten years (1830-1840) more than one hundred thousand Europeans landed in New York alone. This decade of immigration marks a period of great development in Catholicity throughout the United States. New bishoprics were erected in the West; cathedrals were built; convents, seminaries, colleges, schools, and orphan asylums founded; and a number of Catholic newspapers established. Unfortunately many of the immigrants were loud in expressing their old world national prejudices. The formation of the Holy Alliance; enthusiastic lectures given in Europe for the purpose of encouraging missionary work in the United States; the founding of the Leopoldina Society in Vienna, Austria, for the same purpose-all these activities were persistently misinterpreted as so many attempts of the Catholic powers to destroy the free institutions of America. Bigots of the worst type incited the imagination of Protestants against the Church, and assailed her from pulpit and platform. Conscience obliged the American Catholics to maintain their own parochial schools, but at the same time they were taxed for the support of the public schools. Accordingly, they demanded a share in the public educational funds. Moreover, they demanded that in the public schools the Protestant Bible should not be forced on Catholic children. The latter demand was granted them in course of time, but they have never been relieved from double taxation. 444. Political Parties. The country was now divided into three parties: (a) the Whig (National-Republican), which had gained greatly in strength, as it had been re-enforced by adherents. from the South who opposed Jackson's views on the question of nullification; (b) the Democratic party; (c) the Anti-slavery, or Liberty party, an outgrowth of the abolition movement. The principles of its platform were that each state should have the right to regulate slavery within its boundary, and that Congress should abolish slavery in the territories and in the District of Columbia, and admit no more slave states into the Union. The Democrats and the Whigs in their party platforms endorsed the cause of the immigrants. The Nativists and bigots (1841) formed a new party called the Native Americans. They demanded that (a) twenty-one years' residence be made a condition of citizen ship; (b) no one could become an official of the government except a native American; (c) there be no union of Church and State; (d) no Bible be taught in the schools; and This party sorely afflicted the Church, but its collapse was as rapid as its rise. 445. Van Buren Becomes Unpopular. The people laid all the blame for the hard times on Van Buren and his party, and the president became more and more unpopular. The numerous cases of mismanagement and fraud which now came to light, the effects of arbitrary removals and partisan appointments, the financial panic, all of which were really the result of the Jackson administration, were ascribed to the policy of |