Details
VAN BUREN, Martin. Autograph letter signed ("M. Van Buren"), as President, to Benjamin F. Butler (1795-1858), 7 July 1838. 3 pages, 4to.
"THE DOMINION OF THE BANK, IT SEEMS, IS NOT YET OBSOLETE"
A fine Presidential ALS from Van Buren, discussing the after-shocks of Andrew Jackson's war with the Bank of the United States. "The bill to suppress the old notes of the Bank of the U. States," he tells Butler, who was his and Jackson's Attorney General, "passed about 11 o'clock last night after a most stormy debate, by a majority of about eight. The dominion of the Bank is not yet, it seems, obsolete..." Jackson, outraged at the undemocratic power of the Bank and its haughty director, Nicholas Biddle, refused to renew its charter and let it expire in 1836. This, coupled with Jackson's determination to privilege gold and silver transactions over paper money exchanges (a policy expressed in his Specie Circular), helped contract the nation's currency and bring on a severe economic depression. Van Buren was left to deal with the mess, while still trying to preserve the General's hard money policies. It was a tightrope that even the Little Magician could not pull off, and a nation of angry businessmen and unemployed or ruined workers and farmers turned him out of office in 1840.
The letter also contains some humorous reflections on appointments, including Butler's successor as Attorney General, Felix Grundy (as Butler prepared to return to private practice in New York City): "You cannot be more anxious to gratify Mr. Bleecker than I am myself but a burnt child dreads the fire. I have heretofore suffered so much from raising expectations before certainly knowing that I can gratify them as to prevent me from doing so in future. If the place was vacant I would give it to him without a moment's hesitation. But the incumbent is not likely to die...Mr. Grundy's nomination has been confirmed to take effect on the first of September..." In a postscript he jests that "Mr. Grundy is the happiest man you have seen for a long time."
"THE DOMINION OF THE BANK, IT SEEMS, IS NOT YET OBSOLETE"
A fine Presidential ALS from Van Buren, discussing the after-shocks of Andrew Jackson's war with the Bank of the United States. "The bill to suppress the old notes of the Bank of the U. States," he tells Butler, who was his and Jackson's Attorney General, "passed about 11 o'clock last night after a most stormy debate, by a majority of about eight. The dominion of the Bank is not yet, it seems, obsolete..." Jackson, outraged at the undemocratic power of the Bank and its haughty director, Nicholas Biddle, refused to renew its charter and let it expire in 1836. This, coupled with Jackson's determination to privilege gold and silver transactions over paper money exchanges (a policy expressed in his Specie Circular), helped contract the nation's currency and bring on a severe economic depression. Van Buren was left to deal with the mess, while still trying to preserve the General's hard money policies. It was a tightrope that even the Little Magician could not pull off, and a nation of angry businessmen and unemployed or ruined workers and farmers turned him out of office in 1840.
The letter also contains some humorous reflections on appointments, including Butler's successor as Attorney General, Felix Grundy (as Butler prepared to return to private practice in New York City): "You cannot be more anxious to gratify Mr. Bleecker than I am myself but a burnt child dreads the fire. I have heretofore suffered so much from raising expectations before certainly knowing that I can gratify them as to prevent me from doing so in future. If the place was vacant I would give it to him without a moment's hesitation. But the incumbent is not likely to die...Mr. Grundy's nomination has been confirmed to take effect on the first of September..." In a postscript he jests that "Mr. Grundy is the happiest man you have seen for a long time."