Martin Van Buren Says, "Ouch!"

I'm not sure I agree with this, but the first sentence of the quote is too wonderful to pass up:

The one thing missing from the Bucktails' program was a consistent and principled set of state policies. Emphasizing patronage and party discipline, they concentrated on the dead issue of Federalist elitism and evaded the substantive questions of their own times. As good Republicans, for example, the Bucktails were ostensibly opposed to the overwhelming power of banking institutions, but bankers who endorsed the Bucktail faction had no trouble getting what they needed from the legislature. . . . Under Van Buren's leadership, the strength of the Republican Party became synonymous with republicanism itself, and party loyalty alone became the test of the common good.

Harry L. Watson's Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America is just wonderful.

About the illustration:

A satire condemning the duplicity and conspiracy of the "Bucktail" faction of New York Democrats in their April 1824 ouster of New York's ex-governor DeWitt Clinton from his post as canal commissioner. The Library's impression of the print has the missing letters in the names of the figures filled in by hand. Twelve men stand in a room, with a platform, table, and lamp on the right. On the left G[ardiner] is about to exit saying, "I will run home and ask the people how they will like it before I give my vote." To the left of the platform P[ierson] says to B[ourne], "I hope we shall give you a united vote for the removal of Mr. Clinton I have long wished an opportunity to have revenge on him for blowing up the old Burr Conspiracy." B[ourne]: "I am delighted with the prospect! Clinton has always been my devil--it will be impossible to pull him down to our level if we do not dishonor him. I recommend secrecy as success depends upon our taking the members by surprise at the moment of adjournment." Others in the room speak (counterclockwise, from the far left): S[eama]n: "I beg of you to pause ere you adopt any more lobby measures--we were sent here for public good--yet all our measures have for their object individual benefit. This base deed will produce a reaction and may make him Governor. The republican party so justly famed for justice and liberality will in their haste to free themselves from this odium forget and forgive everything." M[ors]e: "The North river squad think the Canal a benefit to ourside [sic] of the City and they will therefore disapprove our dishonoring its founder." D[rake]: "I wish I could be excused from voting, my conscience tells me it is wrong my judgment tells me it will dishonor the State--but the lobby requires it and it must be done." H[yatt]: "I vote here against the measure but if a majority of this meeting decide in its favor I will vote for it in the house tomorrow as my creed is the majority must rule." B[enedict]: "It is inconsistant with a Soldiers honor to build up or pull down any man to gratify angry or sordid passions --besides this lobby influence must be check'd or it will ruin the State." [Henry] W[heaton]: "I will support the measure to punish him for the injury he did our profession by recommending the fee bill and extending the jurisdiction of the judges." [Clarkson] C[rolius]: "I will support the measure in hopes of appeasing the wrath of the Bucktails altho' I fear they are too hard baked to be gull'd in this way. Besides My Insurance Co. & the lobby." W[ar]d: "My vote shall be given for this removal because he is the author of all our troubles about the electoral law. When Govr. he recommended to the Legislature the restoration of the peoples rights." T[own]: "It is true he has been my Benefactor and I ought to shudder at the deed but three months tuition in the hands of the lobby does away these squeamish feelings." Above, in a cloud, is Columbia with an American flag and an eagle, saying, "I renounce them and their ways."

The Origin of the Bucktails

The hothouse of politics in New York during the first half of the Nineteenth Century gave birth to a plethora of odd party factions with equally odd names: the Barnburners and Hunkers, Hardshells, Softshells and Silver Grays. And that’s not even counting arguably separate parties or movements like the Anti-Masons. So how about one more?

The Bucktails had their origin in opposition with the Democratic-Republican party to DeWitt Clinton. Martin Van Buren and a number of other Democratic-Republican political leaders in New York had broken with Clinton in 1813, convinced that Clinton had covertly assisted Rufus King in his election to the United States Senate that year.

Five years later Clinton was ascendant, having been elected governor in 1817. As John Niven tells it in his Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics, a Clinton partisan tried to smear the governor’s opponents with the term Bucktails. As the Whigs did later with log cabins and hard cider, the targets turned the tables (and how’s that for alliteration?):

In one of those impulsive comments meant to be derogatory, a Clintonian lumped all party opposition to the Governor under the rubric “Bucktails,” a bit of Tammany regalia displayed on the hats of its members at certain celebrations. New York’s elite had long sneered at the emblem and its rustic appearance, a slight well-known to the Martling men, the Tammany faction bitterly opposed to Clinton. As so often happens with an epithet, it was adopted as a badge of honor, not merely by Tammany but by all who opposed Clinton. While Van Buren never identified himself publicly as a “Bucktail,” a term he considered rather vulgar, he saw the benefit to be gained and did not discourage its use. Henceforth, the combination of factions he headed, at first united only in its opposition to Clinton, would be known in New York politics as the Bucktails.

About the illustration, which was one of the earliest I could find involving Martin Van Buren:

A simpler and less animated composition on the same general idea as Edward W. Clay's ".00001" (no. 1831-1). Again Jackson is seated in a collapsing chair, with the "Altar of Reform" toppling next to him, and rats scurrying at his feet. The rats are (left to right): Secretary of War John H. Eaton, Secretary of the Navy John Branch, Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, and Treasury Secretary Samuel D. Ingham. Jackson's spectacles are pushed up over his forehead, and his foot is planted firmly on the tail of the Van Buren rat. "Resignations" fill the air behind him, and a pillar marked "Public confidence in the stability of this admistration [sic]" falls to the left. There seem to be at least two versions of the print, not counting Clay's ".00001." The present version seems to be a close but inferior copy of the print by the same title attributed to Edward W. Clay by both Murrell and Davison. The latter has the legend "Washington 1831" printed in the lower margin. Davison quotes from an April 25 entry in John Quincy Adams'diary saying that "Two thousand copies of this print have been sold in Philadelphia this day. Ten thousand copies have been struck off, and will all be disposed of within a fortnight." It is unclear, however, whether Adams was referring to a version of "The Rats leaving a Falling House" or to Clay's ".00001" which was produced and published in Philadelphia and deposited for copyright on May 5.