Kitabı oku: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)», sayfa 102

CHAPTER CXXXVI.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION FOR THE NOMINATION OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

The Convention met – a motley assemblage, called democratic – many self-appointed, or appointed upon management or solicitation – many alternative substitutes – many members of Congress, in violation of the principle which condemned the Congress presidential caucuses in 1824 – some nullifiers; and an immense outside concourse. Texas land and scrip speculators were largely in it, and more largely on the outside. A considerable number were in favor of no particular candidate, but in pursuit of office for themselves – inflexible against any one from whom they thought they would not get it, and ready to go for any one from whom they thought they could. Almost all were under instructions for Mr. Van Buren, and could not have been appointed where such instructions were given, except in the belief that they would be obeyed. The business of undoing instructions had been attended with but poor success – in no instance having been done by the instructing body, or its equivalent. Two hundred and sixty-six delegates were present – South Carolina absent; and it was immediately seen that after all the packing and intriguing, the majority was still for Mr. Van Buren. It was seen that he would be nominated on the first ballot, if the majority was to govern. To prevent that, a movement was necessary, and was made. In the morning of the first day, before the verification of the authority of the delegates – before organization – before prayers – and with only a temporary chairman – a motion was made to adopt the two-thirds rule, that is to say, the rule which required a concurrence of two-thirds to effect a nomination. That rule had been used in the two previous nominating conventions – not to thwart a majority, but to strengthen it; the argument being that the result would be the same, the convention being nearly unanimous; that the two-thirds would be cumulative, and give more weight to the nomination. The precedent was claimed, though the reason had failed; and the effect might now be to defeat the majority instead of adding to its voice.

Men of reflection and foresight objected to this rule when previously used, as being in violation of a fundamental principle – opening the door for the minority to rule – encouraging intrigue and combination – and leading to corrupt practices whenever there should be a design to defeat the popular will. These objections were urged in 1832 and in 1836, and answered by the reply that the rule was only adopted by each convention for itself, and made no odds in the result: and now they were answered with "precedents." A strenuous contest took place over the adoption of this rule – all seeing that the fate of the nomination depended upon it. Mr. Romulus M. Saunders of North Carolina, was its mover. Messrs. Robert J. Walker, and Hopkins of Virginia, its most active supporters: and precedent the stress of their argument. Messrs. Morton of Massachusetts, Clifford of Maine, Dickinson and Butler of New York, Medary of Ohio, and Alexander Kayser of Missouri, were its principal opponents: their arguments were those of principle, and the inapplicability of precedents founded on cases where the two-thirds vote did not defeat, but strengthened the majority. Mr. Morton of Massachusetts, spoke the democratic sentiment when he said:

"He was in the habit of advancing his opinions in strong and plain language, and he hoped that no exception would be taken to any thing that he might say. He thought the majority principle was the true one of the democratic party. The views which had been advanced on the other side of the question were mainly based upon precedent. He did not think that they properly applied here. We were in danger of relying too much upon precedent – let us go upon principle. He had endeavored, when at school, to understand the true principles of republicanism. He well recollected the nominations of Jefferson and others, and the majority principle had always ruled. In fact it was recognized in all the different ramifications of society. The State, county and township conventions were all governed by this rule."

Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, enforced the majority principle as the one which lay at the foundation of our government – which prevailed at the adoption of every clause in the Declaration of Independence – every clause in the constitution – all the legislation, and all the elections, both State and federal; and he totally denied the applicability of the precedents cited. He then went on to expose the tricks of a caucus within a caucus – a sub and secret caucus – plotting and combining to betray their instructions through the instrumentality and under the cover of the two-thirds rule. Thus:

"He made allusion to certain caucusing and contriving, by which it was hoped to avert the well-ascertained disposition of the majority of the democracy. He had been appointed a delegate to the convention, and accepted his credentials, as did his colleagues, with instructions to support and do all in their power to secure the nomination of a certain person (V.B.). By consenting to the adoption of the two-thirds rule, he, with them, would prove unfaithful to their trust and their honor. He knew well that in voting by simple majority, the friend he was pledged to support would receive ten to fifteen majority, and, consequently, the nomination. If two-thirds should be required to make a choice, that friend must inevitably be defeated, and that defeat caused by the action of States which could not be claimed as democratic."

This last remark of Mr. Butler should sink deep into the mind of every friend to the elective system. These conventions admitted delegations from anti-democratic States – States which could not give a democratic vote in the election, and yet could control the nomination. This is one of the most unfair features in the convention system.

The rule was adopted, and by the help of delegates instructed to vote for Mr. Van Buren, and who took that method of betraying their trust while affecting to fulfil it. The body then organized and the balloting commenced, all the States present except South Carolina, who stood off, although she had come into it at the preceding convention, and cast her vote for Mr. Van Buren. Two hundred and sixty-six electoral votes were represented, of which 134 would be the majority, and 177 the two-thirds. Mr. Van Buren received 151 on the first ballot, gradually decreasing at each successive vote until the seventh, when it stood at 99; probably about the true number that remained faithful to their constituents and their pledges. Of those who fell off it was seen that they chiefly consisted of those professing friends who had supported the two-thirds rule, and who now got an excuse for their intended desertion and premeditated violation of instructions in being able to allege the impossibility of electing the man to whom they were pledged.

At this stage of the voting, a member from Ohio (Mr. Miller) moved a resolve, that Mr. Van Buren, having received a majority of the votes on the first ballot, was duly nominated, and should be so declared. This motion was an unexpected step, and put delegates under the necessity of voting direct on the majority principle, which lies at the foundation of all popular elections, and at the foundation of the presidential election itself, as prescribed by the constitution. That instrument only requires a majority of the electoral votes to make an election of President; this intriguing rule requires him to get two-thirds before he is competent to receive that majority. The motion raised a storm. It gave rise to a violent, disorderly, furious and tumultuary discussion – a faint idea of which may be formed from some brief extracts from the speeches:

Mr. Brewster, of Pennsylvania. – "They (the delegation from this State) had then been solemnly instructed to vote for Martin Van Buren first, and to remain firm to that vote as long as there was any hope of his success. He had been asked by gentlemen of the convention why the delegation of Pennsylvania were so divided in their vote. He would answer that it was because some gentlemen of the delegation did not think proper to abide by the solemn instructions given them, but rather chose to violate those instructions. Pennsylvania had come there to vote for Martin Van Buren, and she would not desert him until New York had abandoned him. The delegation had entered into a solemn pledge to do so; and he warned gentlemen that if they persisted in violating that pledge, they would be held to a strict account by their constituency, before whom, on their return home, they would have to hang their heads with shame. Sorry would he be to see them return, after having violated their pledge."

Mr. Hickman, of Pennsylvania. – "He charged that the delegation from the 'Keystone State' had violated the solemn pledge taken before they were entitled to seats on the floor. He asserted on the floor of this convention, and would assert it every where, that the delegation from Pennsylvania came to the convention instructed to vote for, and to use every means to obtain the nomination of Martin Van Buren for President, and Richard M. Johnson for Vice President; and yet a portion of the delegation, among whom was his colleague who had just preceded him, had voted against the very proposition upon which the fate of Martin Van Buren hung. He continued his remarks in favor of the inviolability of instructions and in rebuke of those of the Pennsylvania delegation, who had voted for the two-thirds rule, knowing, as they did, that it would defeat Mr. Van Buren's nomination."

Mr. Bredon, of Pennsylvania. – "He had voted against the two-thirds rule. He had been instructed, he said, and he believed had fulfilled those instructions, although he differed from some of his colleagues. His opinion was, that they were bound by instructions only so long as they were likely to be available, and then every member was at liberty to consult his own judgment. He had stood by Mr. Van Buren, and would continue to do so until the New York and Ohio delegates flew the track."

Mr. Frazer, of Pennsylvania, "replied to the remarks of his colleagues, and amidst much and constantly increasing confusion, explained his motives for having deserted Mr. Van Buren. On the last ballot he had voted for James K. Polk, and would do so on the next, despite the threat that had been thrown out, that those who had not voted for Mr. Van Buren would be ashamed to show their faces before their constituents. He threw back the imputation with indignation. He denied that he had violated his pledge; that he had voted for Mr. Van Buren on three ballots, but finding that Mr. Van Buren was not the choice of the convention, he had voted for Mr. Buchanan. Finding that Mr. Buchanan could not succeed, he had cast his vote for James K. Polk, the bosom friend of General Jackson, and a pure, whole-hogged democrat, the known enemy of banks, distribution, &c. He had carried out his instructions as he understood them, and others would do the same."

Mr. Young, of New York, "said it had been intimated that New York desired pertinaciously to force a candidate upon the convention. This he denied. Mr. Van Buren had been recommended by sixteen States to this convention for their suffrages before New York had spoken on the subject, and when she did speak it was with a unanimous voice, and, if an expression of opinion on the part of these people could now be had, it would be found that they had not changed. (As Mr. Y proceeded the noise and confusion increased.) It was true, he said, that a firebrand had been thrown into their camp by the 'Mongrel administration at Washington,' and this was the motive seized upon as a pretext for a change on the part of some gentlemen. That firebrand was the abominable Texas question, but that question, like a fever, would wear itself out or kill the patient. It was one that should have no effect; and some of those who were now laboring to get up an excitement on a subject foreign to the political contest before them, would be surprised, six months hence, that they had permitted their equanimity to be disturbed by it. Nero had fiddled while Rome was burning, and he believed that this question had been put in agitation for the especial purpose of advancing the aspiring ambition of a man, who, he doubted not, like Nero, 'was probably fiddling while Rome was falling.'"

The crimination and recrimination in the Pennsylvania delegation, arose from division among the delegates: in some other delegations the disregard of instructions was unanimous, and there was no one to censure another, as in Mississippi. The Pennsylvania delegation, may be said to have decided the nomination. They were instructed to vote for Mr. Van Buren, and did so, but they divided on the two-thirds rule, and gave a majority of their votes for it, that is to say, 13 votes; but as 13 was not a majority of 26, one delegate was got to stand aside: and then the vote stood 13 to 12. The Virginia delegation, headed by the most respectable William H. Roane (with a few exceptions), remained faithful – disregarding the attempt to release them at Shockoe Hill, and voting steadily for Mr. Van Buren, as well on all the ballotings as on the two-thirds question – which was the real one. Some members of the Capitol nocturnal committee were in the convention, and among its most active managers – and the most zealous against Mr. Van Buren. In that profusion of letters with which they covered the country to undermine him, they placed the objection on the ground of the impossibility of electing him: now it was seen that the impossibility was on the other side – that it was impossible to defeat him, except by betraying trusts, violating instructions, combining the odds and ends of all factions; and then getting a rule adopted by which a minority was to govern.

The motion of Mr. Miller was not voted upon. It was summarily disposed of, without the responsibility of a direct vote. The enemies of Mr. Van Buren having secured the presiding officer at the start, all motions were decided against them; and after a long session of storm and rage, intermitted during the night for sleep and intrigue, and resumed in the morning, an eighth ballot was taken: and without hope for Mr. Van Buren. As his vote went down, that for Messrs. Cass, Buchanan, and R. M. Johnson rose; but without ever carrying either of them to a majority, much less two-thirds. Seeing the combination against him, the friends of Mr. Van Buren withdrew his name, and the party was then without a candidate known to the people. Having killed off the one chosen by the people, the convention remained masters of the field, and ready to supply one of its own. The intrigue, commenced in 1842, in the Gilmer letter, had succeeded one-half. It had put down one man, but another was to be put up; and there were enough of Mr. Van Buren's friends to defeat that part of the scheme. They determined to render their country that service, and therefore withdrew Mr. Van Buren, that they might go in a body for a new man. Among the candidates for the vice-presidency was Mr. James K. Polk, of Tennessee. His interest as a vice-presidential candidate lay with Mr. Van Buren, and they had been much associated in the minds of each other's friends. It was an easy step for them to support for the first office, on the loss of their first choice, the citizen whom they intended for the second. Without public announcements, he was slightly developed as a presidential candidate on the eighth ballot; on the ninth he was unanimously nominated, all the president-makers who had been voting for others – for Cass, Buchanan, Johnson – taking the current the instant they saw which way it was going, in order that they might claim the merit of conducting it. "You bring but seven captives to my tent, but thousands of you took them," was the sarcastic remark of a king of antiquity at seeing the multitude that came to claim honors and rewards for taking a few prisoners. Mr. Polk might have made the same exclamation in relation to the multitude that assumed to have nominated him. Their name was legion: for, besides the unanimous convention, there was a host of outside operators, each of whom claimed the merit of having governed the vote of some delegate. Never was such a multitude seen claiming the merit, and demanding the reward, for having done what had been done before they heard of it.

The nomination was a surprise and a marvel to the country. No voice in favor of it had been heard; no visible sign in the political horizon had announced it. Two small symptoms – small in themselves and equivocal in their import, and which would never have been remembered except for the event – doubtfully foreshadowed it. One was a paragraph in a Nashville newspaper, hypothetically suggesting that Mr. Polk should be taken up if Mr. Van Buren should be abandoned; the other, the ominous circumstance that the Tennessee State nominating convention made a recommendation (Mr. Polk) for the second office, and none for the first; and Tennessee being considered a Van Buren State, this omission was significant, seeming to leave open the door for his ejection, and for the admission of some other person. And so the delegates from that State seemed to understand it, voting steadily against him, until he was withdrawn.

The ostensible objection to the last against Mr. Van Buren, was his opposition to immediate annexation. The shallowness of that objection was immediately shown in the unanimous nomination of his bosom friend, Mr. Silas Wright, identified with him in all that related to the Texas negotiation, for Vice-President. He was nominated upon the proposition of Mr. Robert J. Walker – a main-spring in all the movements against Mr. Van Buren, whose most indefatigable opponents sympathized with the Texas scrip and land speculators. Mr. Wright instantly declined the nomination; and Mr. George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was taken in his place.

The Calhoun New York convention expired in the conception. It never met. The Tyler Baltimore convention was carried the length of an actual meeting, and went through the forms of a nomination, without the distraction of a rival candidate. It met the same day and place with the democratic convention, as if to officiate with it, and to be ready to offer a pis aller, but to no purpose. It made its own nomination – received an elaborate letter of thanks and acceptance from Mr. Tyler, who took it quite seriously; and two months afterwards joined the democracy for Polk and Dallas, against Clay and Frelinghuysen – his old whig friends. He had co-operated in all the schemes against Mr. Van Buren, in the hope of being taken up in his place; and there was an interest, calling itself democratic, which was willing to oblige him. But all the sound heart of the democracy recoiled from the idea of touching a man who, after having been raised high by the democracy, had gone over to the whigs, to be raised still higher, and now came back to the democracy to obtain the highest office they could give.

And here ends the history of this long intrigue – one of the most elaborate, complex and daring, ever practised in an intelligent country; and with too much success in putting down some, and just disappointment in putting up others: for no one of those who engaged in this intrigue ever reached the office for which they strived. My opinion of it was expressed, warmly but sincerely, from the first moment it was broached to me on the steps of the Capitol, when accosted by Mr. Brown, down to the rejection of the treaty in the Senate, and the defeat of Mr. Van Buren in the convention. Of this latter event, the author of this View thus wrote in a public letter to Missouri:

"Neither Mr. Polk nor Mr. Dallas has any thing to do with the intrigue which has nullified the choice of the people, and the rights of the people, and the principles of our government, in the person of Mr. Van Buren; and neither of them should be injured or prejudiced by it. Those who hatched that intrigue, have become its victims. They who dug a pit for the innocent have fallen into it; and there let them lie, for the present, while all hands attend to the election, and give us our full majority of ten thousand in Missouri. For the rest, the time will come; and people now, as twenty years ago (when their choice was nullified in the person of General Jackson), will teach the Congress intriguers to attend to law-making and let President-making and un-making alone in future. The Texas treaty, which consummated this intrigue, was nothing but the final act in a long conspiracy, in which the sacrifice of Mr. Van Buren had been previously agreed upon; and the nomination of Mr. Wright for Vice-President proves it; for his opinions and those of Mr. Van Buren, on the Texas question, were identical, and if fatal to one should have been fatal to the other. Besides, Mr. Van Buren was right, and whenever Texas is admitted, it will have to be done in the way pointed out by him. Having mentioned Mr. Wright, I will say that recent events have made him known to the public, as he has long been to his friends, the Cato of America, and a star of the first magnitude in our political firmament."

And now, why tell these things which may be quoted to the prejudice of democratic institutions? I answer: To prevent that prejudice! and to prevent the repetition of such practices. Democracy is not to be prejudiced by it, for it was the work of politicians; and as far as depended upon the people, they rebuked it. The intrigue did not succeed in elevating any of its authors to the presidency; and the annexation treaty, the fruit of so much machination, was rejected by the Senate; and the annexation afterwards effected by the legislative concurrence of the two powers. From the first inception, with the Gilmer letter, down to the Baltimore conclusion in the convention, the intrigue was carried on; and was only successful in the convention by the help of the rule which made the minority its master. That convention is an era in our political history, to be looked back upon as the starting point in a course of usurpation which has taken the choice of President out of the hands of the people, and vested it in the hands of a self-constituted and irresponsible assemblage. The wrong to Mr. Van Buren was personal and temporary, and died with the occasion, and constitutes no part of the object in writing this chapter: the wrong to the people, and the injury to republican institutions, and to our frame of government, was deep and abiding, and calls for the grave and correctional judgment of history. It was the first instance in which a body of men, unknown to the laws and the constitution, and many of them (as being members of Congress, or holding offices of honor or profit) constitutionally disqualified to serve even as electors, assumed to treat the American presidency as their private property, to be disposed at their own will and pleasure; and, it may be added, for their own profit: for many of them demanded, and received reward. It was the first instance of such a disposal of the presidency – for these nominations are the election, so far as the party is concerned; but not the last. It has become the rule since, and has been improved upon. These assemblages now perpetuate themselves, through a committee of their own, ramified into each State, sitting permanently from four years to four years; and working incessantly to govern the election that is to come, after having governed the one that is past. The man they choose must always be a character of no force, that they may rule him: and they rule always for their own advantage – "constituting a power behind the throne greater than the throne." The reader of English history is familiar with the term, "cabal," and its origin – taking its spelling from the initial letters of the names of the five combined intriguing ministers of Charles II. – and taking its meaning from the conduct and characters of these five ministers. What that meaning was, one of the five wrote to another for his better instruction, not suspecting that the indefatigable curiosity of a subsequent generation would ever ferret out the little missive. Thus: "The principal spring of our actions was to have the government in our own hands; that our principal views were the conservation of this power – great employments to ourselves – and great opportunities of rewarding those who have helped to raise us, and of harming those who stood in opposition to us." Such was the government which the "cabal" gave England; and such is the one which the convention system gives us: and until this system is abolished, and the people resume their rights, the elective principle of our government is suppressed: and the people have no more control over the selection of the man who is to be their President, than the subjects of kings have over the birth of the child who is to be their ruler.