Driven West by A. J. Langguth

Author:A. J. Langguth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Martin Van Buren

12 · Martin Van Buren

(1836–37)

Martin Van Buren had been positioning himself for the 1836 presidential election for the past two years. He had seen Andrew Jackson through to success in the debate over the Bank of the United States and the brief economic panic that followed its shutting down. On tariffs and other issues, Van Buren had steered his own course between Jacksonian ideology and the growing clamor from South Carolina for states’ rights. He could never match Jackson’s stature, but his moderation on explosive issues seemed to suit the country’s mood.

With America rapidly expanding, Van Buren’s policies reflected the westward tilt. The populations of Michigan and Ohio had soared, and the first railroad had opened in 1827. Federal land sales rose in the West during Jackson’s administration from about two million acres to twelve and a half million. After the dismembering of the Bank of the United States, Washington had turned over money-lending to state banks—derided by the Whigs as “pet banks”—and in Mississippi, capital funds in banks favored by Jackson had jumped from $3 million to more than $50 million as he prepared to leave office.

If the nation’s look had changed, so had Van Buren’s. He was dressing less colorfully and, with his scant white hair and expanding waistline, looked the solid statesman. His makeover did not protect him, however, from gibes about his former preening. An 1835 biography attributed to David Crockett described Van Buren as he presided over the Senate—“laced up in corsets, such as women in a town wear, and, if possible, tighter than the best of them.” The book added that whether Van Buren was a man or a woman would be hard to tell except “for his large red and grey whiskers.”

Crockett’s break with Jackson over the Cherokee Removal had been a factor in his defeat for reelection to Congress, and his bitterness extended to Van Buren. But the vice president did not need to fear further mockery from him. Running again for Congress, Crockett had issued a defiant message to his constituents. If they did not vote for him this time, he said, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”

Crockett lost the election and made good on his threat. He rode off to join a band of settlers and soldiers of fortune that succeeded in driving Mexican troops from an area called Mexican Texas. When Mexico’s president Antonio López de Santa Anna brought soldiers to regain control, Crockett holed up with some 250 Texans inside the Alamo, a former mission converted to a fort.

General Santa Anna’s men scaled the Alamo’s walls on March 6, 1836. Crockett was among those killed, five months short of his fiftieth birthday.

The fate of those Texans generated a cry for revenge from a contingent of soldiers led by Sam Houston. In the years since his censure by the House of Representatives, Houston had found his destiny in Texas. The Stanbery scandal had given a boost to his national reputation, and Houston acknowledged that if the House had simply fined him ten dollars, “It would have killed me.

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