Saturday, March 12, 2022

Martin Van Buren Takes a Dump

I should point out that when Martin Van Buren (above) was dumped into an Indiana hog wallow, ruining a very expensive pair of pearl gray trousers and coating his elegant frock coat with everything a happy swine leaves behind in a porcine sauna, he deserved it.  
Of course “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” was far too crafty a politician to admit he had been humiliated. That would just draw more attention to his humiliation. As the venomous Virginia politician John Randolph observed, Martin Van Buren always “rowed with muffled oars.” But everybody knew this traffic accident had been staged as payback for Van Buren's insult to Hoosiers. What goes around comes around. And it was useless to point out that the insult to Hoosiers had mostly come from Van Buren's predecessor, the still popular Andrew Jackson.
Even the frail shadow of federal authority which existed in 1828 was too much for President Andrew Jackson. Over his two terms, he did his very best to weaken the Federal government, in all its endeavors except the ones he approved of. Jackson vetoed a new charter for the National Bank - precursor of the Federal Reserve - which left the entire banking system unregulated. He streamlined the sale of public lands, which energized the speculators who were overcharging the yeoman farmers. He cut entire programs out of the Federal budget, and insisted the states take over many others. And at the same time he backed the Seminole Indian nation into a war.
But it was not until three months after Van Buren's inauguration in March of 1837 that these pigeons came home to roost. The massive real estate bubble Jackson had inflated, suddenly popped. Over half of the nation's unregulated banks suddenly failed. And by January of 1838 half a million Americans were unemployed. Or to put it more simply, suddenly it was prom night and Martin Van Buren was Carrie. 
And like Carrie, Van Buren then made things worse by slashing out at everything in sight. Oh, he continued the unending and expensive Seminole war. But he insisted on killing Federal funding for the National Road, which had reduced mail time between Washington, D.C.  and Indianapolis from several months to less than a week. Van Buren was so doctrinaire he even sold off the road builders'  picks and shovels. And for frontier farmers trying to get their produce to market, that made any economic recovery that much harder. In fact, the whole economy was falling into a hole.
See, once the National Road crossed the Ohio border, the $7,000 per mile construction costs were  supposed to be paid for by land sales along the route. But when the real estate bubble popped in 1837, that funding evaporated. Maintenance for the 600 mile road was paid for by the tolls of four to twelve cents (the equivalent of $2.50 today) for each ten mile long section, paid by the 200 wagons, horseback riders, farmers and herds of livestock that used each section of the road every day. But after 1837 that $36,000 a year (almost a million dollars today) had to do double duty, finishing the road and providing maintenance for the road already finished.  And it was not enough money.
In Indiana there were long sections beyond the two urban centers, ((Indianapolis and Richmond, Indiana) where farmers using the road to drive their livestock to market faced forests of 14 inch high tree stumps. These provided clearance for the farmers' and emigrants' high riding Conestoga wagons, but between the stumps, the road bed was in such bad shape that constant repairs to their equipment bankrupted many of the 200 stagecoach lines trying to survive in Indiana. 
And every frontier farmer and businessman knew exactly who was to blame for all of this –“President Martin Van Ruin”.  As a result, in the election of 1840, in Hendricks County, (just southwest of Indianapolis), and along the now almost abandoned National Road, Van Buren received 651 votes, while successful Whig candidate William Henry Harrison received 1,189 votes. Nationwide, Van Buren carried just 7 of the 26 states.  That was how the Wigs won the White House in 1840. 
Normally this Hoosier hostility would not have mattered much, but just six months after taking office, the new President Harrison died of a pneumonia, and all previous assumptions had to be rethought . The Whigs had picked John Tyler as Vice President, mostly to get rid of him. Now, disastrously, he was the head of their party. The overjoyed Democrats began referring to Tyler as “His Accidency.” The dapper Martin Van Buren began thinking he could avenge his defeat and take the road back to the White House in 1844. All he needed was a cunning plan, which he just happened to have.
In February of 1842, Van Buren (above) journeyed to Nashville, Tennessee, for an extended visit with his mentor, Andrew Jackson, hoping some of Old Hickory’s popularity would rub off on him. It did not. Heading north wit the spring, Van Buren then set off for a tour of the frontier states. He was well received in Kentucky, and the pro-slavery areas around Cincinnati, Ohio, but the closer he got to Indiana and the decaying national road, the more reserved the crowds became.
On 9 June, 1842 Van Buren was met at the Indiana border by 200 loyal Democrats. He gave them a speech to a cheerful crowd at  Sloan's Brick Stage House, on the north side of Main Street (the National Road), between 6th and 7th streets,  in Richmond.  But the vast majority of the local Quakers remained skeptical. And while Van Buren was speaking, noted the Richmond Palladium newspaper, “...a mysterious chap partially sawed the underside of the double tree crossbar of the stage(coach)...so that it would snap on the first hard pull…”
The next morning the stagecoach and its distinguished passenger headed toward "The Capital in the Woods" -  Indianapolis.  But just two miles outside of Richmond, while bouncing over ruts and stumps, the carriage splashed into a great deep mud hole. And when the horses were whipped to yank the carriage out, the weakened cross brace snapped. Dressed in his silk finery, Martin Van Buren was forced to disembark into the foul waters and wade to shore.
There was no indication of any further sabotage on Van Buren's 74 mile ride across the mostly open prairie, which took the better part of three days because of the road's condition. And the ex-President and candidate made it to the Hoosier capital in time to keep his appointments and make his speeches over the weekend of June 9-10. He took two more days to make solidify political contacts, shaking hands and trading confidences, before, on Wednesday, 13 June, he boarded yet another mail coach for the 75 mile journey to the Illinois border. But just six miles down the road, Van Buren had to pass through another Quaker bastion, this one called Plainfield, Indiana.
The town earned its name from the “plain folk” who had laid out the grid ten years earlier on the east bank of White Lick Creek (above). This Henricks county town was straddled by the National Road, which provided Plainfield's livelihood. 
Less than a quarter mile east, up Main Street from the ford over the "crick", amidst a stand of Elms, the Quakers had cleared a camp ground and built a meeting house. And here, that Wednesday morning, were gathered several hundred Democrats and Wigs (mostly Quakers in their “Sunday, go to meeting clothes”), to see the once and maybe future President ride past. 
The crowd may have even been increased because the driver of this particular leg of the ex-President's journey was a local boy, twenty-something Mason Wright. Soon, the crowd heard the blast of Mason's  coach horn,  warning of the VIP's bouncing approach down the gentle half mile slope toward White Lick Creek.
The disaster occurred abruptly. The coach rushed into view, with Van Buren's arm waving out of the coach's open window, while Teamster Wright whipped the horses to move faster. Faster? Shouldn't he be slowing down to let people get a view of the President?  And then, just as the carriage came abreast of the center of the campground, the coach was forced to veer to the right to avoid a large "hog waller" mud hole in the very center of the dilapidated National Road. 
And then, as if  it had been planned, the right front wheel bounced over the hard knuckle of an exposed bare elm root. The carriage teetered for an instant until the rear wheel clipped the same root. The teetering coach then careened past the point of no return.  Mason Wright leaped free while the coach crashed heavily onto its side into the very center of the smelly, sticky, hot black hog waller.  Martin Van Buren had been dumped upon. Again.
A Springfield Illinois newspaper would note a few days later, “He was always opposed to that road, but we were not aware that the road held a grudge against him!” Wrote a more bitter Wig newspaper, “the only free soil of which Van Buren had knowledge (of) was the dirt he scraped from his person at Plainfield.”  
The driver and witnesses blamed the elm (above), which could not defend itself. Van Buren was uninjured, but once again had to extricate himself from his injured coach. After pouring the mud and other unidentified muck from his boots, Van Buren made his way on foot further west along the National Road to Fisher’s Tavern, at what is now 106 E. Main Street. There, Mrs. Fisher helped the President clean up his pants and coat, and wash the mud from his expensive wide brimmed hat.
Back at the campground. the honest Quakers helped right the stage, re-attach the horses, and carefully and respectfully delivered the coach to Fishers to collect the President. But it is hard to believe that, as Mr. Van Buren splashed across White Lick "crick" many of those Quakers were not smiling with the sly satisfaction of a job well done.
 A few days later Teamster Mason Wright was awarded a $5 silk hat, although it was never explicitly stated it was for his skill in staging the crash - call it political slapstick. But the tree who's root had provided the fulcrum for the prank would forever more be known as the Van Buren Elm.  In 1916 (above) the Daughters of the American Revolution even gave the tree a wooden plaque of its own. Which, unfortunately,  they nailed to the tree.
Maybe it was the unfortunate nail, but during the hard winter of 1926 cold winds brought the Van Buren Elm down. A local doctor lamented, “The many friends of the old historic tree are loath to have it removed from their midst.”
Van Buren made it safely to Illinois without further accidents. He was  met a few miles outside of the state capital of Springfield by a small delegation of legislators, including the young Abraham Lincoln. But Mr. Van Buren was never elected to public office again. The judgement of Hoosiers stood firm.
The Quakers' Meeting House (above) still stands among the Elms at 256 East Main Street (corner of Vine) in Plainfield, although rebuilt a few times. 
After the original Van Buren Elm fell in 1926, a replacement was planted, and in memorial, the old tree received a bronze plaque (above) embedded this time in a stone.  
The Elm also enabled a local grade school (above) to be named for the dapper Democrat who had stumbled in their town, and a street was named after him as well. 
In Plainfield the National Road (now U.S. Route 40), still slips down the slope toward White Lick Crick (above), and is still called Main Street. That is true of many towns bisected by the old National Road. They truly were America's first Main Street. Both Martin Van Buren and Andrew Jackson were wrong about that. But it was Van Buren who took the fall.

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Friday, March 11, 2022

NEVER SAY DIE - SAY DAMN

  

There are two versions of how James "Farmer Jim" Ferguson passed the Texas state bar exam in 1897.  In the first story, the chairman of bar exam committee was an old family friend. In the second version Jim bought a bottle of whiskey for the man who actually administered the test.  One or both could have been true, since Ferguson told both versions for the rest of his life. 
Two years after becoming a lawyer, the 28 year old married Miriam Wallace (above). Considering the couple's subsequent behavior, the New Year's Eve nuptials were obviously timed for tax purposes.
How he became Governor of Texas in 1914 is another disputed tale. In what I call the “Virgin Mary” version, “Farmer Jim” (above) rejected nomination by the anti-prohibition party, but all the other candidates withdrew, thrusting greatness upon him. The only problem is that Ferguson had been a political manager for ten years, and had even directed the election campaign of the previous Governor. All things considered, I don't think he was entitled to wear white to this wedding.
In his day job he was a successful banker, even though it was the farmers who elected him. “Farmer Jim” had “considerable native ability and...a captivating personality. As a political speaker he had few equals.” And his election, well funded by the liquor industry, was just part of the 1914 anti-prohibition backlash. 
The laws he introduced to limit farm land rents were declared unconstitutional, but in politics its usually the thought that counts. Not unexpectedly, he did not achieve much in his first two year term. Being Governor of Texas is a little like being a “fluffer” in a porn movie. In 1916 James was elected to a second term by a comfortable 60,000 vote margin. But then rumors began to emerge he had been using state funds to buy personal groceries. Suddenly Jim was in trouble.
His instincts were to attack. So he began to boast that he was no "city slicker" nor a "college dude", and had not "suffered the damages" of a college education,  And since the professors at the University of Texas were close at hand, and easy targets, he described them as taking three years to learn "You couldn't grow wool on an armadillo." He described graduates as returning from 3 years of in Austin  with just "a mandolin and liver damage".  
Jim Ferguson demanded that the University fire the "lazy and corrupt history Professor Eugene Campbell Barker (above).  Barker had just written a biography of Texas patriot Stephan Austin, and Jim found a number of the books revelations insulting. When UT President Robert Vinson asked for evidence of Barker's frauds, Governor Jim” feigned outrage. “I don't have to give any reasons, I am governor of the State of Texas!” When that response was met with laughter, Ferguson vetoed the Universities next budget.  
At the same time Farmer Jim announced a five member search committee, which he chaired, had chosen to build a new campus for the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical college in Abilene, instead of in Austin.. However, Speaker of the Texas House, Franklin Oliver Fuller, who was a prohibitionist  and also a committee member, then signed an affidavit that he had not voted to move the new school to Abilene.
And when Lt. Governor William Pettus Hobby (above) submitted a similar affidavit, Fuller charged the governor was moving the school to Abilene in exchange for a bribe from the east Texas businessmen. 
Ferguson then submitted his own affidavit insisting he had not voted for Abilene either - meaning that Abilene had won the new campus despite no one who was willing to admit having voted for it. 
On 23 July, 1917, Speaker Fuller (above) called for a special session of the Texas legislature, to consider impeaching the Governor for trying to fix the election to choose the universities' new campus,
Now, only the Governor could call a special session in the state house in Austin (above), and Fuller's move would have come to nothing had Governor Ferguson not been indicted shortly thereafter by a Travis County grand jury for embezzlement of pubic funds. Jim Ferguson had no trouble making the $13,000 bail, but he was now desperate to change the subject. 
First the Governor (above) announced his re-election campaign for a third term, and then he called for a special session of the state legislature to reconsider a budget for the University of Texas. The legislature did meet that August, but they spent all their time removing Governor Ferguson from office.
Ferguson went down insisting his impeachment by this “kangaroo Court” was unconstitutional because he had not called the legislature for that purpose. Nobody in Austin (above) seemed to care. 
Seeking to avoid the worst, “Farmer Jim” resigned from office the day before the final vote. Again, nobody seemed to care. The State Senate voted 25 to 3 to toss him out of office, and added the proviso that James Ferguson was henceforth bared from holding any elective office in the state of Texas. In 1918 he tried again for the governorship, but was defeated in the primary by Acting Governor Hobby. And in 1922, when the state Supreme Court affirmed the lifetime bans, it seemed his criminal career....ah, political career, had been cut short.
But “Farmer Jim” (above)  followed a motto from a 1922 newspaper poem. “Never say “die”—say “damn.” In short, anybody who thought that James Ferguson was finished, did not truly know James “Farmer Jim” Ferguson. Or his wife, Miriam
On the 1924 campaign trail she became “Ma”, and she hated that name. But it worked so well as in the slogan - “Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa” - that it stuck. She began every stump speech by assuring voters that with her they would get “two governors for the price of one”, and then she would introduce her husband, one time Governor but now James “Pa” Ferguson.  
Ma and Pa won the election with 57% of the vote. When they pulled up in front of the Governor's mansion in Austin, Miriam crowed, “We departed in disgrace; we now return in glory.”
The one thing Miriam did not say, during her tenure was “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.” Although this was  often attributed to Miriam, the quote goes back to at least 1881. 
But in her January 1925 state-of-the-state address to the legislature, “Ma” Ferguson did point out Texas' prisons were so overcrowded, she had to decided to “adopt a most liberal policy in the matter of pardons.” She then proceeded to hand out, on average, 100 pardons a month. 
Some were granted even before the convicted prisoner had reached the prison. The joke around Austin was that a visitor met Governor Ferguson at the Capital's front door. As he stepped aside to let the lady enter first, he said, “Pardon me.” To which Miriam replied, “Sure. Come on in. It'll only take a minute or two to do the paperwork.”
But it wasn't only the number that bothered people, it was the methodology. Most of “Ma's”  (above center) pardons were granted on the sole recommendation of “Pa” (above, to her right).
In one interview, it was alleged, a father, begging for a pardon for his son, was exasperated because the ex-governor kept trying to sell him a horse for $5,000. Finally the father demanded, “What on earth would I want with a $5,000 horse.” “Farmer Jim” replied, “Well, I figure your son might ride him home from the penitentiary if you bought him.” Said an insider, “Jim's the governor; Ma signs the papers."
In 1926, Attorney General Dan Moody (above right) decided to run against the corrupt “Ferguson-ism”, and Miriam and James (above left) lost by 150,00 votes in the Democratic primary, which was tantamount to general defeat in the one-party state of Texas. In 1928, for the first time in 12 years, there were no Ferguson on the ballot in Texas. 
In 1930, the couple tried again, but again failed in the primary. Then, in 1932, with the depression ravaging the nation, Texans were desperate enough to give Ferguson-ism another try, and Ma was elected to a another two year term. 
This time there were immediate rumors of kickbacks in the highway department, but nothing could be proven, and in any case, even Texas was not big enough to overcome the world-wide depression. Miriam lost her re-election bid in 1934, and a year later, just to be sure, the voters passed an amendment to the state Constitution which took the power to pardon out of the governor's hands..
James and Miriam (above, center) tried one more time in 1940, for old time's sake. But “Farmer Jim” was getting frail, forgetful as to who he was angry with. His stump speeches were few and not as powerful as they once were. And “Ma” had never been that interested in politics. The dynamic duo went down to ignominious defeat. 
In September of 1944, “One of the most colorful and divisive...figures ever in Texas politics”, James “Farmer Jim” “Pa” Ferguson died of a stroke. Miriam, the second woman governor in United States history, lived for another 17 years, and never said another political thing in her life. She died of heart failure, at the age of 86, in 1961. And other than a modicum of entertainment, it is hard to find any thing  either of them did which made the lives of the average residents any easier. 
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