Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics (review)

Few historians of the early republic would question Martin Van Buren's seminal role in restructuring the institutional framework of American popular politics. As Joel H. Silbey makes clear, the Sly Fox of Kinderhook "took the lead among his contemporaries in remolding the political order" from the civil culture of deference that existed before the American Revolution to the participatory democracy that emerged after 1815 (xiii). Yet despite his significance and the outstanding work of scholars such as Donald B. Cole, John Niven, and Major L. Wilson, Van Buren has remained somewhat elusive. Silbey aims to correct this omission by providing a "concise, synthetic, and pointed profile that distills the essence of Van Buren's important role in the nation's political history" (xiv). He succeeds fully in this endeavor.

According to Silbey, Van Buren's success in politics stems from an ability to transcend the boundaries imposed on him by humble beginnings. Born in 1782 to a tavern keeper of modest means in New York's Hudson River valley, the future party leader and president received little formal schooling. Moreover, his Dutch ancestry placed him at odds with the economic elites of English extraction who had come to dominate New York. Ambitious, persistent, and just a little lucky, Van Buren advanced his station by taking advantage of changes in political culture brought about by the Revolution. He thrived as an attorney, impressing colleagues with both his attention to detail and a genial courtroom demeanor. Physically attractive and at ease with a wide range of people, including influential power brokers in New York, he honed the social skills vital for a man seeking to make his mark in the political arena.

Following his father's example, Van Buren nurtured a distrust of the Federalist party and the Hamiltonian vision of a strong national government. This was not the popular course to take, for the area where Van Buren lived became a stronghold of Federalism. While no single defining event explains Van Buren's choice to cast his lot with the Republicans, the fact that he became an adherent to the party of Jefferson explains much of his career. The doctrine of states' rights, government restraint and a belief in participatory democracy, however limited, guided Van Buren throughout his political career, first as head of the "Bucktails," then later of the "Albany Regency," and eventually as the crucial figure in the Jacksonian Democratic party.

To be sure, the portrait Silbey paints is one of a consummate politician but, he argues, Van Buren was no mere opportunist. The "basic impulse underlying what he was trying to accomplish in policy terms always remained steady in his mind and in what followed when he entered the Senate and served as president" (219). While scholars may disagree with Silbey over this assessment, this book makes an undeniably important contribution. By placing Van Buren squarely within the context of the second party system, the explicit causal relationship between the man and the institutional framework he helped shape is made clear.