there had been sporadic outbreaks of abolition sentiment, but these had failed to influence any section of the people whose adherence would have given abolition national importance.

The elevation of Van Buren to the presidency was the crowning victory of Andrew Jackson. Van Buren being committed irrevocably to the policy of his predecessor, a fact of public knowledge, his election was a signal vote of confidence in the administrative policies of Andrew Jackson, notwithstanding the fact that the decreased vote carried with it a warning for the party. The centre of popular enthusiasm on the occasion of the inauguration of Van Buren was not the new president but the old. It was not the man who read an address pledging him to nothing and proposing no measures, who called forth the cheers and plaudits of the assembled throng, but the man at his side, who had held the reins of government more tautly than any other executive in the nation's history.

But not even Jackson realized the portentousness of some of the administrative measures that he was passing on to his successor. The presidential legatee found himself face to face with an issue, which, while it was a bequest from the conditions of the former administration, he was called upon to meet with such powers of statesmanship as he himself possessed. Van Buren had been president but a short time when there occurred a financial crash that precipitated a panic greater than any other yet experienced in the country's history. He faced the situation with a calm selfness and evinced administrative qualities; worthy of praise. The combination of causes which led' to the panic may readily be summarized. The liquidation of the public debt, the expansion of commerce, bringing with it return cargoes from the ports of China and South America, were indices to prosperity of a high order; manufactures also were greatly stimulated. The spirit of speculation, always promoted by a period of prosperity, swept everyone before it. It was the time of vast undertakings

and hazardous ventures, and the public funds, as well as those of private persons, were at the easy command of any engaging enterprise. The tenet of State sovereignty in the matter of finance reached its utmost limits. The States spent money for internal improvements with recklessness; speculative enterprises abounded; the West began to be dotted by "boom" towns, many of which never got further than the plans of their promoters. As an index to the extent of such enterprises may be instanced the great increase in the sale of public lands in 1835. At that time the sum netted was twenty-four million dollars, while in previous years the sum realized had frequently dropped below two million. It was the period of canal projects and of railroads. But this overplus of prosperity bore with it the elements of a sure contraction. Jackson's specie circular, requiring payment for public lands to be made in coin, aided in depleting the specie in circulation, and the division of the treasury surplus among the States were the forces unseen under the mass of confident ventures. A contributing cause of the panic was the overpurchasing of European commodities, which drained the banks of their specie, as the sales of the merchants were not active enough to provide them, from the money in circulation, with the coin they needed for foreign payments.

Sudden as seemed the onset of the panic, its symptoms were cumulating throughout the previous winter; gatherings of unemployed men were to be found in the large cities, bitterly declaiming against existing conditions. "No rag money; give us gold or silver; down with the chartered monopolies," thus ran the fiery posters on the walls of New York. Van Buren had had his equanimity tested by the industrial situation while still occupying the vice-presidential chair, for, on March 7, 1836, Henry Clay, presented in the Senate a petition from the workingmen of Philadelphia, and addressing the vice-president directly, said: "Those who in this chamber support the administration could not render a better service than to repair to the executive mansion and,

placing before the chief magistrate the naked truth and undisguised truth, prevail upon him to retrace his steps and abandon his fatal experiment. No one, sir, can perform that duty with more propriety than yourself. You can, if you will, induce him to change his course. To you, then, sir, in no unfriendly spirit, but with feelings softened and subdued by the deep distress which pervades every class of our countrymen, I make the appeal. Go to him and tell

him, without exaggeration, but in the language of truth and sincerity, the actual condition of his bleeding country. Tell him it is nearly ruined and undone by the measures which he has been induced to put in operation. Tell him that in a single city more than sixty bankruptcies, involving a loss of upward of fifteen millions of dollars, have occurred. Tell him of the alarming decline of all property, of the depreciation of all the products of industry, of the stagnation in every branch of business, and of the close of numerous manufacturing establishments which, a few short months ago, were in active and flourishing operation. Depict to him, if you can find language to portray, the heartrending wretchedness of thousands of the working classes cast out of employment. Tell him of the tears of helpless widows, no longer able to earn their bread; and of unclad and unfed orphans who have been driven by his policy out of an honest livelihood." After paying the closest heed to this apostrophic appeal, Van Buren called some one to take the chair and walked down to Clay's seat and quietly asked him for a pinch of his "fine maccaboy snuff," after receiving which he calmly walked away.

By April, 1837, the strained credit of the country snapped in New York, and in one after another of the other eastern centres. The people were loud in their clamor against the government, to whose account they charged up the sudden calamity which had befallen them. Committees representing mass meetings, and bearing with them resolutions of censure and petitions for the adoption by the government of measures to relieve the situation, besieged the

administration. The president promised governmental relief in some tangible form. Nor were the assurances of Van Buren without foundation, for he was evolving his Independent Treasury scheme. The chief products of America, cotton, tobacco, and breadstuffs, felt severely the shock of the industrial unsettlement. The chief banking establishments of New York and Philadelphia tried to steady the situation and to impart confidence, but their efforts were entirely unavailing. The situation became more desperate when it was learned that the Bank of England denied foreign credit to American banking houses. These institutions were driven to concerted action in order to protect themselves from the wild run of depositors, and on May 10th, the New York banks suspended specie payment. Their action was quickly followed by those of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Biddle's Bank, of Philadelphia, the institution which was, in a way, the successor of the Bank of the United States, failed. After renewal of the charter of the latter had been denied by Congress, Biddle, its president, applied for and received from Pennsylvania the charter of a bank. With its suspension was broken a link in the financial traditions of the country. By the irony of events, the very security which Jackson sought to obtain for the national deposits by his system of State banks was swept away by the tide of financial disaster. The banks patronized by the government held their own no better than the State institutions.

The collapse of the government's depositories involved nine millions or more of funds, which were divided among the banks of twenty-six States. The government had no specie available to meet its payments and the Treasury was so depleted of bullion that there was scarcely a million dollars' worth remaining. Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, was forced to pay the public creditors, whether contractors, pensioners, soldiers, sailors, or persons in the civil service, with the paper of the very banks which had suspended specie payment. The general irritation at

this state of affairs was accentuated by the fact that the highest grades of public servants were paid in specie. The president, high officials of the nation, and the members of Congress were thus favored.

The tide of protest, represented by a great mass meeting of the merchants of New York, held in May, broke itself against the rock of Van Buren's loyalty to Jackson, and a new circular issued from the Post Office Department extended the requirement of specie payments to all transactions in connection with the mail service of the government. Exasperation reached almost the last point of endurance and public meetings in succession took up the note of criticism of the government's blind adherence to the financial policy of Jackson. They denounced as despotism a system which paid out paper and required return payments in coin. But the government itself became affected by the collapse of the banks which were the custodians of the public funds. On May 15, 1837, Van Buren called an extra session of Congress, to be held on the first Monday of the following September. Then was made the first positive announcement of Van Buren upon the subject of the national exigency through which the independent treasury was called into being.

Upon the assembling of the Twenty-fifth Congress on September 4, 1837, the House of Representatives organized by reëlecting James K. Polk as Speaker, with a slight majority of eight votes over his Whig rival, John Bell, of Tennessee. The following day the president's message was received. It recited the portentous events of the previous six months, dwelt upon the suspension of the deposit banks and the retardation of public operations which had followed. The Act of 1836 had struck from the list of preferred banks those that had failed to pay in specie and to meet their obligations to the government. But it had not been found easy to secure others to take their place. The delinquency of the banks had so involved the government that a treasury deficit of considerable proportions had arisen. If the