was inaugurated as vice-president on the 4th of March, 1833, and presided over the senate for four years, when in session; during which he had the good fortune to escape the censure of all parties. In 1833 he accompanied General Jackson in his tour to the eastern states.

To secure the support of the democratic party as a candidate for the presidency, as successor to General Jackson, whose favor and good wishes he already possessed, Mr. Van Buren seems to have relied upon an avowal of hostility to a national bank, and on a national convention for the nomination of president and vice-president. Accordingly, we find him giving as a sentiment, at a public entertainment, "Uncompromising hostility to the United States bank; the honor and interest of the country require it;" which toast was adopted as a motto, by the democratic party. We also find the most strenuous efforts made to reconcile Pennsylvania to a national nominating convention, which efforts were finally successful.

On the 20th of May, 1835, the Jackson democratic convention met at Baltimore, for the nomination of a candidate to succeed General Jackson as president, also a vice-president of the United States. About 600 delegates were in attendance; and as all were selected as friends of Mr. Van Buren, he received the unanimous vote of the convention, for president. Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was nominated for vice-president. These nominations, it was well understood, received the express approbation of General Jackson, and the influence of the administration was, of course, exercised in favor of the election of these candidates.

The result of the vote by the electoral colleges was 170 for Mr. Van Buren, including Michigan (3), which was informal, and 124 for all other candidates. There was no choice of vice-president by the people, in consequence of the state of Virginia refusing to vote for Colonel Johnson. He received 147 electoral votes, including Michigan, and there were 147 for all other candidates. Colonel Johnson was, thereupon, elected by the senate, agreeably to the constitution.

Mr. Van Buren was inaugurated as president, on the fourth of March, 1837. The history of the four years of his administration is given in another place in this volume, to which we refer for this part of his life. In May, 1840, he was nominated for re-election, by a convention of his political friends, but such was the unpopularity of his measures as chief magistrate of the nation, that the election of 1840 resulted in the total defeat of Mr. Van Buren and the party with which he was connected, and the triumphant success of the whig candidates, General Harrison and Mr. Tyler, to the presidency and vice-presidency. The electoral votes for Harrison were 234-for Van Buren 60.

General Harrison succeeded Mr. Van Buren, as president, on the 4th of March, 1841; soon after which the ex-president left Washington for his seat at Kinderhook, Columbia county, New York, near the Hudson river, to which retreat he gave the name of "Lindenwold." He attended on the

occasion of the funeral honors which were paid to General Harrison in the city of New York, in 1841.

Having acquired, during an active professional and political life, a large fortune, Mr. Van Buren retired to his estate before mentioned, to enjoy the possession of his wealth, and retaining the confidence of the large and powerful party of his countrymen which had sustained him. His friends, however, were not willing that he should rest under the political sentence which had been pronounced against him, as they deemed, under fortuitous circumstances. It was argued that, as an act of justice to him, he should be elected for another term to the presidency, to place him in history along side of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, who were considered as the four democratic presidents, each of whom had been honored with a second term in the presidential chair. The most strenuous efforts, therefore, were made to effect the nomination of Mr. Van Buren for the presidency, in 1844; and when the democratic national convention met to nominate a president, in May of that year, there was an apparent majority of his friends in that body. But a new element was introduced into the political canvass for the presidency, by the democratic party, namely, the annexation of Texas to the United States. To that measure Mr. Van Buren had expressed himself adverse, in some particulars, in a letter to a southern gentleman, which was published previous to the meeting of the convention. Some of his friends regretted that he had not inserted a clause in his letter which, looking to the certain extension of the limits of the republic, would have been satisfactory to the democrats of the south. After protracted ballottings, it was found that Mr. Van Buren could not obtain the vote of two thirds of the delegates to the convention, as required by their rules. His name was therefore withdrawn, and James K. Polk, of Tennessee, received the nomination for president.

In the nomination of Mr. Polk, Mr. Van Buren cordially acquiesced, and urged upon his political friends the propriety and importance of sustaining the same in good faith. By the efforts of the democrats of New York, the election of Mr. Polk was effected, the popular majority in that important state, which turned the scale in favor of the democratic candidates, being but about one per cent. on the whole number of votes.

his

We conclude this brief memoir of Mr. Van Buren with the following notice of his personal appearance and character, from his life, by Professor Holland, written, of course, with all the partiality of friendship:"In personal appearance, Mr. Van Buren is about the middle size; form is erect (and formerly slender, but now inclining to corpulence), and is said to be capable of great endurance. His hair and eyes are light, his features animated and expressive, especially the eye, which is indicative of quick apprehension and close observation; his forehead exhibits in its depth and expansion, the marks of great intellectual power. The physiognomist would accord to him penetration, quickness of apprehension, and

benevolence of disposition. The phrenologist would add unusual reflective faculties, firmness, and caution.

"The private character of Mr. Van Buren is above all censure or suspicion. In the relations of father and son, of husband, brother, and friend, he has always displayed those excellencies of character and feeling which adorn human nature. Extending our view to the larger circle of his personal friends, rarely has any man won a stronger hold upon the confidence and affection of those with whom he has been connected. The purity of his motives, his integrity of character, and the steadiness of his attachments, have always retained for him the warm affection of many, even among the ranks of his political opponents.

"The ease and frankness of his manners, his felicitous powers of conversation, and the general amiableness of his feelings, render him the ornament of the social circle. Uniting in his character, firmness and forbearance; habitual self-respect and a delicate regard for the feelings of others; neither the perplexities of legal practice, nor the cares of public life, nor the annoyance of party strife, have ever been able to disturb the serenity of his temper, or to derange for a moment the equanimity of his deportment. He has with equal propriety mingled in the free intercourse of private life, and sustained the dignity of official station."

VAN BUREN'S

ADDRESSES AND MESSAGES.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Fellow-Citizens :—

MARCH 4, 1837.

THE practice of all my predecessors imposes on me an obligation I cheerfully fulfil, to accompany the first and solemn act of my public trust with an avowal of the principles that will guide me in performing it, and an expression of my feelings on assuming a charge so responsible and vast. In imitating their example, I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country. Among them we recognise the earliest and firmest pillars of the republic; those by whom our national independence was first declared; him who, above all others, contributed to establish it on the field of battle; and those whose expanded intellect and patriotism constructed, improved, and perfected, the inestimable institutions under which we live. If such men, in the position I now occupy, felt themselves overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for this, the highest of all marks of their country's confidence, and by a consciousness of their inability adequately to discharge the duties of an office so difficult and exalted, how much more must these considerations affect one who can rely on no such claims for favor or forbearance! Unlike all who have preceded me, the revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the period of my birth; and while I contemplate with grateful reverence that memorable event, I feel that I belong to a later age, and that I may not expect my countrymen to weigh my actions with the same kind and partial hand.

So sensibly, fellow-citizens, do these circumstances press themselves upon me, that I should not dare to enter upon my path of duty, did I not look for the generous aid of those who will be associated with me in the various and co-ordinate branches of the government; did I not repose with unwavering reliance on the patriotism, the intelligence, and the kindness of a people who never yet deserted a public servant honestly laboring in their cause; and, above all, did I not permit myself humbly to hope for the sustaining support of an ever-watchful and beneficent Providence.

To the confidence and consolation derived from these sources, it would be ungrateful not to add those which spring from our present fortunate

condition. Though not altogether exempt from embarrassments that disturb our tranquillity at home and threaten it abroad, yet, in all the attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people, we stand without a parallel in the world. Abroad, we enjoy the respect, and, with scarcely an exception, the friendship of every nation; at home, while our government quietly but efficiently performs the sole legitimate end of political institutions, in doing the greatest good to the greatest number, we present an aggregate of human prosperity surely not elsewhere to be found.

How imperious, then, is the obligation imposed upon every citizen, in his own sphere of action, whether limited or extended, to exert himself in perpetuating a condition of things so singularly happy! All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us, if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess. Position and climate, and the bounteous resources that nature has scattered with so liberal a hand-even the diffused intelligence and elevated character of our people-will avail us nothing if we fail sacredly to uphold those political institutions that were wisely and deliberately formed, with reference to every circumstance that could preserve, or might endanger, the blessings we enjoy. The thoughtful framers of our constitution legislated for our country as they found it. Looking upon it with the eyes of statesmen and of patriots, they saw all the sources of rapid and wonderful prosperity; but they saw also that various habits, opinions, and institutions, peculiar to the various portions of so vast a region, were deeply fixed. Distinct sovereignties were in actual existence, whose cordial union was essential to the welfare and happiness of all. Between many of them there was, at least to some extent, a real diversity of interests, liable to be exaggerated through sinister designs; they differed in size, in population, in wealth, and in actual and prospective resources and power; they varied in the character of their industry and staple productions; and in some existed domestic institutions which, unwisely disturbed, might endanger the harmony of the whole. Most carefully were all these circumstances weighed, and the foundations of the new government laid upon principles of reciprocal concession and equitable compromise. The jealousies which the smaller states might entertain of the power of the rest were allayed by a rule of representation confessedly unequal at the time, and designed for ever to remain so. A natural fear that the broad scope of general legislation might bear upon and unwisely control particular interests, was counteracted by limits strictly drawn around the action of the federal authority; and to the people and the states was left unimpaired their sovereign power over the innumerable subjects embraced in the internal government of a just republic, excepting such only as necessarily appertain to the concerns of the whole confederacy, or its intercourse, as a united community, with the other nations of the world.

This provident forecast has been verified by time. Half a century, teeming with extraordinary events, and elsewhere producing astonishing results, has passed along; but on our institutions it has left no injurious mark. From a small community, we have risen to a people powerful in numbers and in strength; but, with our increase, has gone hand in hand the progress of just principles; the privileges, civil and religious, of the humblest individual are sacredly protected at home; and while the valor and fortitude of our people have removed far from us the slightest apprehension of foreign power, they have not yet induced us, in a single instance, to forget what is right. Our commerce has been extended to the remotest