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Rh but his more important speeches show careful preparation and his opinions carried weight; and the oft-repeated charge that he refrained from declaring himself on crucial questions is hardly borne out by an examination of his senatorial career. In February 1827 he was re-elected to the Senate by a large majority. He was now one of the recognized managers of the Jackson campaign, and a tour of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia in the spring of 1827 won support for Jackson from Crawford.

In 1828 Van Buren was elected governor of New York for the term beginning on the ist of January 1829, and resigned his seat in the Senate. But on the 5th of March he was appointed by President Jackson secretary of state, an office which probably had been assured to him before the election, and he resigned the governorship. As secretary of state he took care to keep on good terms with the &ldquo;kitchen cabinet,&rdquo; the group of politicians who acted as Jackson's advisers, and won the lasting regard of Jackson by his courtesies to Mrs John H. Eaton, wife of the secretary of war, with whom the wives of the cabinet officers had refused to associate. He did not oppose Jackson in the matter of removals from office, but was not himself an active &ldquo;spoilsman,&rdquo; and protested strongly against the appointment of Samuel Swartwout (1783-1856), who was later a defaulter to a large amount as collector of the port of New York. He skilfully avoided entanglement in the Jackson-Calhoun imbroglio. No diplomatic questions of the first magnitude arose during his service as secretary of state, but the settlement of long-standing claims against France was prepared for, and trade with the British West India colonies was opened. In the controversy with the Bank of the United States he sided with Jackson. After the breach between Jackson and Calhoun, Van Buren was clearly the most prominent candidate for the vice-presidency. Jackson in December 1829 had already made known his own wish that Van Buren should receive the nomination. In April 1831 Van Buren resigned, though he did not leave office until June. In August he was appointed minister to England, and arrived in London in September. He was cordially received, but in February learned that his nomination had been rejected by the Senate on the 25th of January. The rejection, ostensibly attributed in large part to Van Buren's instructions to Louis McLane, the American minister to England, regarding the opening of the West India trade, in which reference had been made to the results of the election of 1828, was in fact the work of Calhoun, the vice-president; and when the vote was taken enough of the majority refrained from voting to produce a tie and give Calhoun his longed-for &ldquo;vengeance.&rdquo; No greater impetus than this could have been given to Van Buren's candidacy for the vice-presidency. After a brief tour on the Continent he reached New York on the 5th of July. In May the Democratic convention, the first held by that party, had nominated him for vice-president on the Jackson ticket, notwithstanding the strong opposition to him which existed in many states. No platform was adopted, the widespread popularity of Jackson being relied upon to win success at the polls. His declarations during the campaign were vague regarding the tariff and unfavourable to the United States Bank and to nullification, but he had already somewhat placated the South by denying the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the slave states. In the election he received 189 electoral votes, while Jackson received 219 for President. Jackson now determined to make Van Buren president in 1836, and bent all his energies to that end. In May 1835 Van Buren was unanimously nominated by the Democratic convention at Baltimore. He expressed himself plainly during the canvass on the questions of slavery and the bank, at the same time voting, perhaps with a touch of bravado, for a bill offered in 1836 to subject abolition literature in the mails to the laws of the several states. Calhoun, bitterly hostile to the last, objected to the usual vote of thanks to the retiring vice-president, but withdrew his objection. In the election Van Buren received 170 electoral votes against 73 for William Henry Harrison, his principal opponent; but

the popular vote showed a plurality of less than 25,000 in a total vote of about 1,500,000. The election was in fact a victory for Jackson rather than for Van Buren.

The details of Van Buren's administration belong to the history of the United States (see ). He announced his intention &ldquo;to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor,&rdquo; took over all but one of Jackson's cabinet, and met with statesmanlike firmness the commercial crisis of 1837, already prepared for before he took office. No exhibition of ability or courage, however, nor yet the most skilful manipulation of the political machinery of the party, could prevent continued hostility to him and to the methods for which he was widely believed to stand. The state elections of 1837 and 1838 were disastrous for the Democrats, and the partial recovery in 1839 was offset by a second commercial crisis in that year. Nevertheless, Van Buren was unanimously renominated by the Democrats in 1840. Charged with being &ldquo;a Northern man with Southern principles,&rdquo; he was frequently interrogated during the campaign, and his nomination obviously failed to arouse enthusiasm or even inspire confidence. The revolt against Democratic rule was undoubtedly serious, but a study of the popular vote shows that the election of Harrison, the Whig candidate, was less of a revolution than many affected to think. On the expiration of his term Van Buren retired to his estate at Kinderhook, but he did not withdraw from politics or cease to be a figure of national importance. It was even proposed to make him a member of the Federal Supreme Court in order to get him out of political life. He confidently expected to be nominated for president in 1844, and his famous letter of the 27th of April, in which he frankly opposed the immediate annexation of Texas, though doubtless contributing greatly to his defeat, was not made public until he felt practically sure of the nomination. In the Democratic convention, though he had a majority of the votes, he did not have the two-thirds which the rule of the convention required, and after eight ballots his name was withdrawn. In 1848 he was again nominated, first by the &ldquo;Barnburner&rdquo; faction of the Democrats, then by the Free Soilers, with whom the &ldquo;Barnburners&rdquo; coalesced, but no electoral vote was won by the party. In the election of 1860 he voted for the fusion ticket in New York which was opposed to Abraham Lincoln, but he could not approve of President Buchanan's course in dealing with secession, and later supported Lincoln. He died in Kinderhook on the 24th of July 1862. His memoirs, to 1834, remain unpublished, but an Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States was compiled from it by his sons and published in 1867. Van Buren married in 1807 Hannah Hoes (1782-1819), by whom he had four sons.

Van Buren's son (1807-1873) graduated at West Point in 1827, served under General Winfield Scott against the Seminole Indians in 1836, and was made captain of the First Dragoons. In 1837 he resigned from the army to become his father's private secretary, but in 1846, at the outbreak of the war with Mexico, he was reappointed with the rank of major and paymaster. In August 1847 he was breveted lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meritorious conduct at Contreras and Churubusco. In 1854 he retired to private life. Another son, (1810-1866), graduated at Yale in 1828, was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1830 and was attorney-general of New York in 1845-1846. He was popularly known as &ldquo;Prince John&rdquo; because of his manners and appearance.

(*)

VANCE, ZEBULON BAIRD (1830-1894), American political leader, was born in Buncombe county, North Carolina, on the 13th of May 1830. He was educated at Washington College, at Salem, Tennessee, and the university of North Carolina (1851-52). Entering politics as a Whig, he was elected solicitor