1836.— The issues of this year were the carrying on of Jackson's policy, though its great objects had been •accomplished,— the deposits had been placed in State pet banks" instead of the United States Bank,— and his dictation of his own successor. To oppose this dictation, one party sprung up with the ardent Jacksonian Hugh L. White as nominee, another as a Georgia State Rights faction,— though Jackson had championed the Georgia rights in the mat ter at issue (see CHEROKEE CASE) ; Jackson's influence, however, was powerful enough to nominate Van Buren as the °regular" candi date and he was elected by a much reduced vote from Jackson's.
1840.— Few men have had a worse legacy than Van Buren received in the Presidency; and few have made a better use of it. Almost his entire term was occupied by the panic of 1837 and the three years of hard times which succeeded it; caused entirely by Jackson's °monkeying" with the currency of which he knew nothing. The State banks which replaced the United States Bank as depositaries and were used as Democratic political machinery, instead of managing the funds with discretion as the old bank had done, issued masses of notes till a tremendous inflation of the cur rency had created a vast land speculation; then he suddenly withdrew recognition of the paper currency and brought the whole structure down with a crash. Van Buren was a politician, but he was a sound statesman and financier and an honorable public man; he would have no more meddling by the government with the banking business for which he was unfit, even to extri cate his own administration from a scrape; and after three years' struggle he established the Sub-Treasury system, to the lasting benefit of the country. But with the customary popu lar perspicacity, he was made the scapegoat for calamities which he had not caused and whose renewal he had prevented. Furthermore, the Whigs outbid the Democrats in avowed sub mission to the °popular mandate," their candi date Harrison promiiing to disuse the veto; they outdid them in the °popular hero" line by turning a useful but not very brilliant Indian battle into a second Marathon, or rather repeat ing the name without discussing the details; capped their swarms of mythical anecdotes of Jackson's homespun habits and unpretentious heroism by an equal number about Harrison, models of his hypothetical clog cabin" and bibulous reproduction of his °hard cider" days; they made bargains and absorbed both the Southern free-lance opposition parties; and by all this and their campaign °noise, numbers and nonsense," carried all but three old States and four small new ones, 234 to 60—a majority which suggests that possibly the noise and non sense were not needed nor efficacious, and a quieter campaign of sensible argument might equally have won, with a real leader like Clay and no ruinous bargains.
1844.— Harrison had barely survived his in auguration; and the usual of "placating" the strongest part of the opposition by giving them the Vice-Presidency (Tyler) had pro duced its usual and deserved fruit of turning the administration over for the whole four years to the Nullification party, except so far as the Whigs tied its hands. This under Clay's leadership they did, consolidating the party by steady war on Tyler, and heartening themselves at last to do what they had not before and did but once again — put forth a platform. It was a very compact and well-expressed one, excel lent from the Whig or present Republican standpoint; but it was displaced as an issue by far more exigent and pungent practical ones. The tariff of 1842, which was almost weeded of protectionist features by the joint efforts of Tyler and the Democrats, was made one of the arguments; but the decisive one was Texas. For years the great object of the Calhoun wing of the Democrats had been to annex Texas; partly to increase slave territory and balance Northern growth, partly with the immediate aim of disrupting the Whig party by forcing it to take a position which would drive away either the Northern or the Southern wing. Tyler, deprived of Whig support, again drew near to the Calhoun party to which he had formerly belonged; in 1844 Calhoun was made Secretary of State; and with this administration backing, the Calhoun party obtained control of the Dem ocratic national convention, committed it to Texas annexation and gave the nomination to the Southerner Polk instead of the Northerner Van Buren. Clay was asked to declare himself on this point; he wrote an evasive letter which cost him the support of the political abolition ists (see LIBERTY PARTY), who nominated a ticket of their own with disastrous results to both. The three tickets were those of Polk, Clay and Birney; the first on the issues of protection, distribution of land sales, cutting down Presidential power and dodging all phases of the slavery question; the second on the °reoccupation of Oregon and the re annexation of Texas"; the third on immediate abolition of slavery. The last-named cast only 62,300 votes; but enough of those were in New York and Michigan to turn the former's 35 and the latter's 6 electoral votes from Clay to Polk, electing the latter, bringing in Texas and bring ing on the Mexican War.