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Anecdotes of the Vice Presidents

ANECDOTES OF THE VICE PRESIDENTS. and His Adventures Henry Clay's Address to Martin Van Buren The Attacks on Richard M. Johnson. Col. Forney in the Philadephia Press. Some of vice presidents have had strange, eventful histories. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Buren were subsequently elected president. Vice presidents John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson subsequently became, presidents by the death of William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Abraham Lincoln. Vice President William R. King never took possession of his station, but died o on his plantation at Cahawba, Ala., April, 1853, a little more than six weeks after the inauguration of President Franklin Pierce. At the time of his election vice prsident his Cuba, where the constitutional oath was health was so feeble. that he left for administered to him by the American consul. He was in his 68th year when breathed his last. Vice Presidents George Clinton, of New York, and Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts. both in office. Vice President John C. Calhoun, who was chosen with President John Quincy Adams, in 1825, and under Jackson in 1820. resigned Dec. 28, 1832, in order to assume the position of United States senator from South Carolina. The career of the third vice president, Aaron Burr, is of the romances of history. A brave soldier in the revolution; a splendid lawyer in New York, of which state he was attorney general from 1791, to 1797; a United States senator; the competitor of Jefferson for president the United States, and then vice president; the duelist who killed Alexander Hamilton on the 12th of July, 1804, and the head of a great conspiracy, which led to trial for treason at Richmond, Va.. in 1807, of which, however, he was a acquitted, and his life was brightened by the deep devotion of his daughter, Theodosia, afterward Mrs. Allston, of South Carolina. Daniel D. Thompkins. of New York, served but two years, and resigned in consequence of unfortunate habits. lie died in New York June 11, 1825, at age of 49. Vice President Martin Van Buren might be called the fortunate stateman. He died near Kinderhook, N. July 24, 1862, in the 80th year of his age, having filled the entire round of political oflices-state senator, attorney general of New York, secretary state under Gen. Jackson-who appointed him minister to England, but the senate | | | refused confirm him; vice president from 1831 to 1836. while Jackson was president, and then president from 1827 to 1841. One of the most graphic scenes in congressional history occurwhile Mr. Van Buren was vice president, and while Henry Clay was United States senator from Kentucky, in the winter of 1833. The whole counwas excited because President Jackson had removed the government deposits from the banks of the United States, in Philadelphia, and great distress existed among the working people. Jackson charged that the bank was unsound, and for that reason insisted upon taking it the custody the government money. The friends of the bank, led by Henry Clay, insisted that ail the suffering of the people was the direct result of this act of Old Hickory. Petitions, signed by thousands of people, were sent to congress from the great eities, demanding the restoration of the deposits to the United States bank, and othered, petitions, almost as numerously took the side of the president. When found together they made a volume of nearly two thousand pages. "Philadelphia," says James Parton, "sent following: One from the citizens generally, with ten thousand names; one from each of the banks; one from each of the trades; one from six hundred strangers in Philadelphia; one from the young men; and one from women of Philadelphia; one from five thousand Philadelphia democrats; one from the city council; one chamber of commerce, and from the Philadelphia alms-house." But General Jackson was not to be changed. He stood like a rock against all appeals. Vice President Van Buren sat in his place in the United States senate, equally calm and unmoved. At last, on a winter day in 1831, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, performed the remarkably feat of addressing Van Buren in the terms: Now that there is much discussion as to the causes of the present discontent in business circles, the picture drawn by the Kentucky orator will be read by some as a photograph of the present popular sufferings. I was a boy in the printing office when this outburst of the whig leader reach my native town, and F remember the excitement and anger it produced among the democrats: "To you, sir," exclaimed Henry Clay, addressing the vice president. "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. By your official and personal relations with the president you maintain with him an intercourse which I neither enjoy or covet. 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 his experiment is operating on the nation like the philosopher's experiment upon a convulsed animal in an exhausted receiver, and that it must expire in agony if he does not pause, give it free and sound circulation, and suffer the energies of the people to be revived and restored. Tell him that in a single city that more than sixty bankruptcies, involving a loss of upward of $15,000,000, have occurred. Tell him the alarming decline in the value of all property, of the depreciation of all the products of inof the stagnation of every branch of business, and of the close of numerous manufacturing establishments which a few short months ago were in active and flourishing o operation. Depict to him, if you can find language to portray, the heart-rending wretchedness of thousands of thousands of the working classes cast out of employment. Tell him of the fears of helpless widows, no longer to earn their bread. and of unelad and unfed orphans who have been driven by his policy out of the busy pursuit in which but yesterday they were gaining an honest livelihood. Tell him that. in his bosom alone, under actual circumstances, does the power abide to relieve the country: and that unless he opens it to conviction, and corrects the errors of his administration, no human imagination can conceive and no human tongue can express the awful consequences which may follow. Entreat him to pause and to reflect that there is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go,and him not drive this brave, gencrous, and patriotic people to madness and despair." During this audacious speech Vice President Van Buren listened in smiling equanimity, and when the whig orator finished, Van Buren called a senator to the chair and quickly walked up to Clay and asked him for a pinch of his fine maccaboy snuff (which he often did), and having received it, coolly bowed away. Meanthe president was receiving delegation after delegation at the white house. Some time calm and cheerful, he often broke out in the tempestuous replies to the persistent petitioners. One day, after he had been beset by a great crowd, he said: "We shall whip them yet. 'The people will take it up after a while." another occasion he said to a New York politician, Mr. James G. King. who was pleading for the restoration of the deposits, ••You are the son of Rufus King. I believe." *I am, sir," was the reply. Whereupon Gen. Jackson broke out into the following harangue, which astonished the great and reverend seigniors to whom it was addressed: •Well, sir," said the president, "Rufus King always was a federalist, and I suppose you take after him. Insolvent, did you say? What do you come to me for, then? Go to Nicholas Biddle. We have not money here. gentlemen. Biddle has all the money. He has millions of specie in his vault at this moment, lying idle, and yet you come me to save you from breaking.' And then, after scolding them at this rate, he said to a gentleman who found president exulting over the interview, "Didn't I manage well?" Parton relates another incident in this connection. A member of the house, in a moment of exasperation, drew up a resolution proposing the impeachment of President Jackson, and, on the same paper, made some notes of the speech with which he intended to preface his resolution, one of which notes expressed the opinion that the story of Jackson having shed his youthful blood in the r volutionary war was destitute of the truth. The paper, on which the resolution and notes were inscribed, was lost by the intending orator, and fell into the hands of the editor Globe, who described it to the president. *On this occasion," says Parton, "the general was betrayed, by his ungovernable wrath, into the use of language that had seldom fallen from his lips since the death of his wife. "The d-d infernal scoundrel!' roared the president. •Put your finger here, Mr. Blair,' he said, pointing to the long dent in his head left by the sword of the British officer whose boots he had refused to clean fifty years before. Mr. Blair found that the wound had been far more serious than supposed. He could lay a whole finger in the scar." Martin Van Buren was elected president, along with Richard M. Johnson as vice president in 1836. Of him many strange stories were told. We talk in these days of political abuse and personscandal, but the attacks upon RichJohnson were as bad as anything ever said in after years against our prominent politicians. Among other accusations was the one that he was father of several negro children, and I remember well hearing the great speech of John Holt, of Kentucky, at the democratic national convention in Baltimore, in 1836, allusion to this allegation-an effort so electric and consummate that Horace Greeley, in his splendid weekly paper of that day, The New Yorker, printed it as one of the most beautiful and classical pieces of finished oratory he had ever read. I can still see the Kentucky vice president, with his white hair and red face, and blue coat and red vest. John Tyler, George M. Dallas, Millard Filmore, and William R. King, all or whom I knew well, I have spoken of elsewhere. I was elected secretary of the United States senate on the 18th of July, 1861, and resigned on the 4th of June, 1868, in these seven years I had a good opportunity to meet the exvice president, John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, who sat as United States senator from that State for a few months only, when he left to take a part in rebellion. He was vice president, or president, of the senate, while James Buchanan was president, from March 4th, 1857," to March 4th, 1861, and a splendid presiding officer he was. Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was vice president from 1861 to 1865-a quiet, level-headed, resolute politician. But he had to give way to Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, whom Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln both insisted should be rewarded, because he had been so patriotic in resisting secession. I was one of those who assited in the nomination of Andrew Johnson at the republican national convention in Baltimore in 1864, and I did SO from the best motives. It is needless, now to speak of the tragedy of April, 14, 1865 which, after his election as vice president with Abraham Lincoln, made him president, by the assassination the latter. It is needless, also, to revive the painful scene, while I was secretary of the senate, when Andrew Johnson was inaugurated as president on the previous 4th of March. He was vain and impetuous, but at heart he was patriotic, and he was undoubtedly an honest man. After him came V. President Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, and after him, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. They were both excellent presiding officers. Mr. Colfax fell before the investigation of the Credit Mobiler, and is enjoying his compelled retirement from politics by devoting himself to the profitable profession of a lecturer. He served as vice president the first four years of President Grant, and Wilson, his successor, passed away on the 22d of November 1875, nearly two years before the expiration of the second four years of President Grant. Like Johnson in his stern personal integrity; he was unlike him in the moderation of his habits. There is one thought, almost logically apparent, in this list of vice presidents. With two exceptions there was not a rich man among the nineteen. They entered office poor and left poor. All were men of uniforn. simplicity of character, with the possible exception of Aaron Burr, and he had a host of admirers, down to his trial for treason at Richmond, after which he became almost an outcast and fugitive. There was but one very dissipated man in the list, and leaving out single name, no one abused his official opportunities to make money. 'The great majority were SO immersed in politics. so absorbed by their public duties, that they had no time to look after their personal affairs. Thomas Jeff'erson, John Calhoun, John Tyler, George M. Dallas, John C. Breckinridge, Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson, and Henry Wilson could have made a great deal more money had they applied as much industry and time to any of the professions or trades as they gave to party, to office-seekers, to party speeches, and to the eternal round of party intrigues and ambitions. Only a Railroad Man. An engineer named Edward Osmond was recently, running a passenger express through from Philadelphia to Jersey City. It was one of the swiftest and heaviest trains, which are only intrusted to the most experienced engineers. The train was making sixty miles an hour, when a heavy connecting rod of the driving wheel on the right of the engine broke, and one end of it, swinging upward with terrible, force, struck the cab beneath him and shattered it into a thousand pieces. Osmond fell senseless the engine. He was both burned and scalded, and the pain quickly restored consciousness. The engine, with its open throttle, was rushing forward with frightful velocity to certain destruction. Inside the long train of cars men were talking, smoking, laughing; women playing with their babies. The fireman let himself down from the tender and escaped. Osmond might have done the same. Instead, he crept along the side of the engine, carefully let himself into his hands place, and with his badly-burned he reversed the engine and plied the air brake. The train stopped. apPeople inside the car went on with their reading and gossip, and the children played with their mothers, who wondered, indifferently perhaps, why the train was stopping They never
Article from 07 Dec 1878The Saturday Evening Review(Burlington, VT)
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