Martin Van Buren "If Genl Jackson should offer me the seat in the Cabinet " 7 Page ALS Superb

The Treasury Department "has been the political grave of every public man who has remained in it long enough.... No man has ever got beyond it."

MARTIN VAN BUREN, Autograph Letter Signed, to [Gulian C. Verplanck], December 11, 1828, Albany, New York. 7 pp., 8" x 9.75". Expected folds, general toning; small fold tear on the margin of last pages.

On December 6, 1828, Congressman Gulian C. Verplanck wrote from Washington to U.S. Senator Martin Van Buren in Albany, New York, regarding rumors about President-elect Andrew Jackson's new cabinet. Verplanck informed Van Buren that "Judge White and the sound men of the West look to you being in the cabinet, most of them I think as Secretary of State. Tho. P. Moore, however, has different views which are worth considering. He says that the election in the West has so much put upon the ground of breaking the succession, that no one should take the office of Sec. of State who has any higher prospects however future contingent. In the west says he, ‘four years hence with V.B. & McLean of Ohio we can beat the devil'—but not with V.B. as Sec of State. He is wanted in the cabinet & must be there. The Treasury has been filled by Hamilton, Gallatin & Crawford, has as much dignity more public interest in its measures & far more patronage than the other.'" Verplanck went on to provide the candidates whom members of Congress were discussing for the War and Navy departments as well as the Attorney General's office. In late September, Verplanck had been a member of a committee to inform Martin Van Buren that a recent convention had selected him as their candidate for governor of New York.

This letter is Van Buren's response to Verplanck's letter, giving his opinion that the Secretary of State position in the cabinet would not prevent his seeking higher office. Verplanck's letter mentions Van Buren's supporters Kentucky Congressman Thomas P. Moore (1797-1853), New York Congressman Silas Wright Jr. (1795-1847; future governor and U.S. Senator), and an unidentified Earle, and Van Buren refers to them as "such discreet friends as you four" in this reply.

Complete Transcript
Private
My dear Sir
The relation of warm personal friendship & mutual confidence existing between Mr Moore & myself renders it proper that he should be fully possessed of my views in relation to the subject of your conversation with him. Say to him therefore in positive & honorable confidence that it shall go no further than to himself & my friends Wright & Earle, that notwithstanding my great confidence in his judgment I differ with him upon the point proposed. If Genl Jackson should offer me the seat in the Cabinet he now thinks it would be inexpedient for me to accept & he the rest of my friends should upon more full reflection advise me to take it I could not but enter upon the discharge of its duties with the most painful distrust of my capacities. For either of the other places I am peculiarly unfit & nothing would be mortifying than to place myself in a situation in which I was entirely conscious that I could not render any real service to the public. To remain where I am would in such a state of things be a determination which I would not for a moment hesitate to make.
In reference to the future I have the strongest repugnance to say any thing. Having solemnly determined that no act of mine shall have a tendency or be at least designed to bring prematurely before the public a question yet remote & which must be very disturbing when it comes I do not allow myself to talk upon the subject. To such discreet friends as you four I will say a word in regard to it. My respect for Mr Moores opinions will not admit of my doing less. I differ with him as to eligibility of the Treasury Department for a man whose friends entertain for him hopes of farther promotion. It has been the political grave of every public man who has remained in it long enough & will continue to be so unless the people of this Country change their character or the incumbent is blessed with a rare stroke of good fortune. Hamilton & Crawford finished in & Gallatin fled from it. No man has ever got beyond it. The facility of inciting jealousies agt the Keeper of the public purse is so great that no man can stand it, &c. It is true that there are at this time strong prejudices agt. the kind of Cabinet succession Mr Moore speaks of but that has grown out of & was founded upon particular facts & may not exist when the circumstances are changed. Mr. Monroes administration was not acceptable to the nation. his election was plainly attributable to his selection as Secretary of State & the public mind in consequence of the result began to grow dissatisfied with a course they had before cordially approved. Mr Clays selection as Secty was not only palpably made with a view to his future elevation to the Presidency but he had the unparalleled indiscretion to avow it himself. The circumstances aggravated the prejudice already existing & no doubt produced strong results in some portion of the Union although you & I know it did not weigh a feather here. But the people of this Country are very intelligent & adhere to substance rather than form in all their important conclusions. Would there be ground for the imputation as matters stand that Genl Jackson had his successor in view in his nomination. I think not, pretty certainly not. The nation entertaining the opinion it has of him & his views would not suspect him of such a design. If not would they proscribe integrity & capacity (whoever may be the possessor of it) because it was found in one branch of the public service for which it was better qualified than another. I incline to think not. I have not time to add more. Remember me kindly to Mr Moore & to my friends White & Woodbury not forgetting Mrs W.
Your truly
M. V. Buren
[Albany?] Decr 11 1828
P.S. [? ? ? ?] put off the selection of the commissioners &c until Decr or Jany 1830, so that we shall all have a resting spell. Burn this.

Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) was born in Kinderhook, New York, on the Hudson River south of Albany. He read law in Kinderhook and New York City and was admitted to the bar in 1803. He returned to Kinderhook and began a law practice with his half-brother. In 1807, he married Hannah Hoes, with whom he had five children by 1817. She died in 1819, and Van Buren never remarried. A Democratic-Republican in politics, Van Buren became an ally of DeWitt Clinton and Daniel D. Tompkins in New York politics. He won a seat in the New York Senate and served there from 1813 to 1820. When Clinton became governor of New York in 1817, Van Buren largely opposed him (except on the Erie Canal), becoming the leader of the "Bucktail" faction and establishing the "Albany Regency" political machine in New York. He served in the 1820 state constitutional convention and then in the U.S. Senate from 1821 to 1828. Short in stature, Van Buren became known as the "Little Magician" for his superior political skills. Although he supported William H. Crawford in the 1824 presidential election, he supported Andrew Jackson's bid for re-election in 1828. Elected governor of New York in 1828, Van Buren resigned after ten weeks to become Jackson's Secretary of State (1829-1831) and Minister to the United Kingdom (1831-1832). He also served as a member of Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," a circle of informal advisers, and became Jackson's running mate in 1832. He served as Jackson's vice president during his second term and continued to be a close adviser. In the 1836 presidential election, Van Buren won an outright majority of popular votes against three Whig candidates. Unfortunately for Van Buren, Jackson's Bank War and other factors contributed to the Panic of 1837, which led to a five-year depression. Enthusiasm for Whig war hero William Henry Harrison and the bleak economy thwarted Van Buren's bid for re-election in 1840. He retired to Kinderhook in 1841 but continued to watch political developments closely and grew more opposed to slavery. He narrowly lost the 1844 Democratic nomination to James K. Polk, and in 1848, he was the nominee of the Free Soil Party for president, winning 10 percent of the popular vote.

Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786-1870) was born in New York City to a descendant of Dutch colonists and graduated from Columbia College in 1801. He read law with Edward Livingston and was admitted to the bar in 1807. Verplanck served in the New York State Assembly from 1820 to 1823, and then won election as a Jacksonian Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1825 to 1833. In his last Congress, he served as the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. He parted with President Jackson over Jackson's war with the Second Bank of the United States, and in 1834, Verplanck was the nominee of the emerging Whig Party for mayor of New York City. He lost by a few hundred votes to Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence. Verplanck served in the New York Senate from 1838 to 1841. He supported Whig and Democratic candidates for the presidency over the next twenty years, then returned to the Democratic Party in the 1850s. From 1846 until his death, he served as President of the Board of Commissioners of Immigration, and also participated in the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1867-1868.

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