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Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics

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Martin van Buren invented the American Democratic Party.

More broadly, he was responsible as much as any other single man for the overall political party structure which exists in the United States to this day.

Yet, to most of his latter-day countrymen, he is merely one of those forgettable nobodies who inhabited the White House between Andy Jackson and Honest Abe.

Joel Silbey's readable and engaging book tries to correct that historical neglect.

Silbey ably tells the story of van Buren's rise from modest beginnings to dominance of the New York political scene, van Buren's movement to the national stage and his restructuring of the national political party system, his ascendance to the Presidency, and his ultimate failure to attain his long-term political goals.

As fascinating as is the story of van Buren's successes, it is his failures which hold the greatest lessons for posterity.

As a young, loyal Jeffersonain, van Buren early in his career supported "Mr. Madison's War" (the War of 1812). But the increase in federal power and enhancement of federal legitimacy which came from that war led the country in the direction of expanded federal activity and authority relative to the states.

This offended van Buren's laissez-faire/states-rights Jeffersonian sensibilities. To combat what he denounced as resurgent Federalism, van Buren created a new political structure around a new political party based on states rights, limited government, and laissez-faire economic policy.

That party was the Jacksonian Democratic Party and, until the end of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party largely adhered to the principles which van Buren imprinted upon it at its birth.

(It may seem strange to hear that the Democratic Party was, through most of its history, the limited-government/states-rights party in the United States. Yet, as late as 1928, Frank Kent, in his lengthy "The Democratic Party: A History" defined states rights as the central unifying principle of the Democratic Party. It was only in the depression of the 1930s that party positions were reversed and the Democrats abandoned the founding principles upon which van Buren had built the party.)

Although the Democrats did generally adhere to van Burenite principles through the nineteenth century, in the course of the nineteenth century the Democratic Party slowly lost its ability to control the nation's destiny. By the middle of the twentieth century, the party had abandoned all of its founding principles: van Buren would have been appalled by the militarism, welfare-statism, corporate favoritism, and outright imperialism which now characterize the Republic he so loved.

What went wrong?

Van Buren himself was brought low by two intractable problems of nineteenth-century America: imperial expansion and slavery. As Silbey narrates in detail, van Buren lost the Democratic nomination in 1844 due to his refusal to countenance imperial expansion (the annexation of Texas, which led, ultimately, to the U.S. seizure of half of Mexico). Van Buren vacillated wildly in his attitudes toward the slave states: as President he was an outspoken enemy of the abolitionists and ally of the slave power, but in 1848 he became the Presidential candidate of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.

In his final years, van Buren endorsed Abraham Lincoln's military crusade against the slave states, a crusade that decisively destroyed the states-rights position which had been the guiding star of van Buren's political life.

But perhaps the ultimate problem, which van Buren failed to perceive, was the inner logic of the Constitutional structure established in 1787. The Constitution, unlike the preceding Articles of Confederation, created a strong federal Executive and granted the power of taxation to the central government: the Constitutional system was, in its intrinsic logic, despite the Founders' intentions, not a confederation of sovereign states but a centralized, national government.

Of course, neither the actual text of the Constitution nor the intentions of its authors mandated the huge, interventionist, imperialist federal government which we possess today. But to believe, as the Framers and van Buren did believe, that the Constitutional government could be prevented from turning into an all-encompassing leviathan was politically naive.

So great was van Buren's political genius (he was known in his time as the "Little Magician") that he almost succeeded in his grand historical aims. For over three decades, until the catastrophe of the War Between the States, the poltical structures created by van Buren succeeded in defying the logic of history and keeping America as a decentralized federation rather than a centralized nation-state.

But van Buren's grand design for a strictly limited federal government was ultimately wrecked by the War Between the States and by the economic and geopolitical disasters of the twentieth century.

In our own day, both American citizens and all the nations of the world must confront the results of van Buren's historically tragic failure. Can the federal government of the United States of America somehow be restrained in either its domestic powers or its international adventurism? Silbey's brief but fascinating book is a cautionary warning to all who now grapple with this central problem facing the human race.

This book focuses on Van Buren's role in the development of modern political parties in America, but Silbey also ably narrates the life of Van Buren. This is a broad brush biography--Silbey does paint the whole canvas, and he paints it well, but you won't find the exquisite (and sometimes excruciating) detail that most biographers give.

Silbey is very good at relating Van Buren's life to the times he lived in. By far the strong point of the book is the cogent analysis of Van Buren's life, why he took certain actions, and fitting it all into his life purpose of party formation.

One question I had about the biography was whether Van Buren really did do nothing as president (which would have fit his political philosophy) or whether Silbey just narrated the events that had to do with party formation during his administration and that there just weren't many of them. I suspect the former.

The book is well-written, although there aren't many of those memorable turns of phrases; but it certainly won't put you to sleep either. A bit pricey, especially for the length. Overall, a good book.

To be fair, if all you care to rate a history book by is the extent to which it is well-researched and informative, I suppose I would have to grant this book four stars; my only real complaints on that score are, first, that it pays too little attention to the private life of Van Buren; his marriage is hardly mentioned at all, and his relationships with his sons are almost always relegated to his professional relationships with them as grown men; and, second, the fact that it's a touch more complimentary than I feel he deserves. But the latter problem is simply a matter of opinion, and the author is entitled to have a better opinion of the founder of the political machine than I do, and the former is simply a matter of my preference; I prefer full-life biographies to professional biographies.

But as someone who identifies with the Roman guard in "Monty Python's Life Of Brian", (the one who forces Brian to correct the grammar of his anti-Roman graffiti), more than I do with Brian himself, I am appalled that someone who is as poor a writer as this author can get a scholarly book published. Reading portions of this book, I am reminded of the "Peanuts" cartoon in which Charlie Brown is writing his pen pal and writes, "Today, we, learned, how, to use, commas." Granted, Silbey is never THAT bad, but he's bad enough. If it were just the frequent insertion of unnecessary commas that I would prefer to see excised, it wouldn't be so bad; I'd notice it, wince, and mostly ignore it. But he goes beyond that to frequent use of commas where they are simply WRONG ("Nevertheless, Van Buren supported his fellow New Yorker as a mark of his solidarity with his state's Republicans and, undoubtedly, because, to do otherwise, would seriously affect his standing (and future prospects) among New York's Republican leaders."; "But Clinton's promarket, economic expansionary, ideas clashed with Van Buren's quite different vision of Republicanism, which stressed commitment to those who were less commercially minded: small landholders, village artisans, and urban workers, who did not need, nor benefit from, the expansionary goverment projects that an aggressive market orientation demanded.": These two quotes come from a single page, and there are many more like them throughout the book, as well as far too many other typos and sloppy mistakes in language and punctuation for me to consider the book professional) and this isn't simply a matter of stylistic differences between me and the author; this is a matter of the author being a poor enough writer that he has no business earning money by writing. If his grasp of his subject matter and his ability to convey it were not as solid as they are, I'd have felt no qualms about rating this as a one-star effort on the basis of the writing. Competence in his field earned him a second star; I won't grant higher than that to something that was frequently painful to read.

Martin Van Buren, as Silbey points out, is the Founding Father of the political system we have today. Although political parties existed in America while Van Buren was still a child, those parties were nothing like what Van Buren created and certainly nothing like what we have today.

Van Buren always favored Jeffersonian Republicanism (note that this is not the same party as the modern day Republican party) with an ideology of strict interpretation of the Constitution, states' rights, and limited government wherever possible. He favored farmers and artisans over big industry and banks. However, he felt there must always be a contest between the big government Federalists (regardless of the name they used in various eras, such as Whigs) and limited government Republicans (which, in Van Buren's time, came to be known as the Democrats). He despised efforts by the likes of James Monroe to eliminate party competition.

Van Buren was a skilled manager of politics from his early days in New York, ultimately winning a seat in the New York State Senate. He believed in a top down format where factions would put aside their differences and simply march in lock step with the party's views. This discipline went from the state level down to the lowest elected official at the local level. He managed to perfect this model in New York and then tried to implement it on the national stage after becoming a U.S. Senator from New York.

Van Buren unfortunately was committed to the past. As the author explains, he focused on the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson (Republican) won against John Adams (Federalist). On the national stage, his first attempt to promote a candidate for president involved using the party caucus, which had fallen out of favor. When it came to the surge of populism that was sweeping the nation in the 1820s, Van Buren coped with it rather than embracing it.

Despite Van Buren's great skills as a political strategist, he seemed to lack the skills to govern as a chief executive. His very brief tenure as New York's governor did not give him the opportunity to realize this. He was an astute presidential advisor and managed to secure Jackson's favor within the cabinet, ultimately being named Jackson's heir. There is a difference between governing a state or country and being an excellent political strategist. His political enemies capitalized on this. As a review on Amazon points out, we can learn a lot from Van Buren's mistakes.

When it came to his own presidency, Van Buren's inability to govern showed through. Due to lack of charisma, he failed to make use of the bully pulpit and rally the people behind his views. His ideology also was a stumbling block. Being committed to limited government is fine. But there are many ways to apply that kind of ideology. As the country faced economic collapse, he commented that people should not depend on the government to solve their problems. However, there are creative ways he could have used to try to ease the pain without going against that ideology and getting into tinkering with the economy. Being aloof while people suffered, he gave a great opening to the Whigs, leading to his defeat in 1840.

One of Van Buren's problems throughout his career on the national stage was pushing aside issues of the day if said issues could not very neatly fit into the framework of conflict over limited government and states' rights vs. increasing power for the Federal government. This happened with the slavery issue and later over the question of annexing Texas. Ultimately, the latter cost him the Democrat nomination in 1844.

The book takes the reader through Van Buren's life, both personal and political. Of course, as the title suggests, there is a greater focus on his political life. We do not learn much about his life with his wife Hannah as there simply is not that much information available about her in primary source documents.

Silbey's volume is a good read for someone who is interested in learning about Van Buren's life without reading a 500+ page book. However, it seems "flat" compared to other works on Van Buren. Some important details are missing, such as Van Buren's visit with his political idol, Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Of lesser importance is an indication of the depth of Van Buren's scheming, such as his elaborate plan to influence the vote in the House of Representatives to decide who would be the sixth president.

While pointing out Van Buren's failures, Silbey is generally sympathetic to his subject.

As one who has studied Martin Van Buren and other historical figures from the antebellum period, I enjoyed the book overall. However, I do wish it had been footnoted and there was a section of chapter notes to identify sources. Silbey does list a number of volumes for further readings, but it would have been nice to know the sources he used to develop his work.

Silbey's biography of Martin Van Buren was very educational - and a short, easy read.
The parallels with today's economic crisis and political fighting were remarkable. This arch politician was not a likeable character, but one felt a bit sorry for this man who couldn't seem to quit pushing his failed policies. The book has a remarkable and unacceptable number of typos, dropped words, and inexplicable changes in font size

I could not agree more with Yanni's feelings on this book. Silbey, a Professor of History at Cornell, would greatly benefit from taking the freshman English courses there. His jilted writing style is nearly unreadable. I enjoy reading about the U.S. Presidents quite a bit and have found some biographies to be masterful works. Silbey's book, while informative, is such a tiring read. I feel like I'm battling just to get through a page. I know that there are not many books written about Van Buren in general, but seriously, do not buy this book. It is rubbish. Sorry sellers - this product is 100% bunk.