III. History

1. Marxism and Charles Beard

April 1954

An evaluation of the extent of Marxist ideas in the work of Charles A. Beard is an extraordinarily difficult task. Due to his remarkably prolific output over the years, and the changes that took place in his ideas, I can do no more here than indicate some of the points that would be significant in any full-scale attempt to evaluate Beard’s writings and influence as a whole.

In the first place, it cannot be denied that Beard was an out-and-out socialist. His socialism was of the nationalist variety, garbed in the trappings of complete central planning. Beard was one of the major and more extreme prophets of the New Deal, at least in its “domestic” sphere. A glance, for example, at chapter 13 of his Open Door at Home (New York, 1935) indicates clearly and definitely his collectivist proposals. Probably his chief difference from other rabid New Dealers was his consistency in advocating tariffs and exchange control.

Beard’s political views are not at issue here, however, but rather his view of history as related to the Marxian view. Perhaps the best way of approaching his views of history is to consider his famous An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and his new introduction to the revised edition of 1935. Beard states in these pages that when he approached American history in 1913 there were three dominant interpretative schools in American history. One, which he rather sneeringly referred to as the belief in divine guidance peculiarly granted to America, was, he asserted, typified by George Bancroft; the second was the “Teutonic” belief in the peculiar genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, typified by the Englishman [William] Stubbs; and the third were those pure fact-grubbers who merely presented a series of facts, without explanation.

He was particularly disgusted with the consequently prevailing view of the Constitution among historians as a quasi-divine instrument. Beard claims that his famous economic interpretation was inspired not by Marx, as many historians had charged, but by James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10. Beard quotes a passage from Madison which more or less sums up his new orientation:

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that... the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation....

This concept of clashes of economic interest was applied to the struggle over the Constitution by Beard, and later to other problems, including the whole sweep of American history in the Rise of American Civilization (1927). In his works, his use of economic interest was on a class basis, as has been indicated, and stressing the distinction between the propertied and the nonpropertied, although like Marx before him, he was forced to use various subdivisions, such as the “capitalist” (money and securities) interest as opposed to the “landed” interest, and, particularly, the creditors as against the debtors.

In defending himself against the charge of Marxism, he agreed that his position was similar to Marx in the matter of class conflict and history, but asserted that Marx, in this case, was also following in the Madison tradition. In particular, Beard cited as in this “economic interpretation” tradition the seventeenth-century English political philosopher [James] Harrington; Madison; the Federalists, including Chief Justice Marshall; and the historian Richard Hildreth. All of these antedated Marx.

In this claim to be the inheritor of the Federalist Party interpretation of American history, Beard was correct. The Federalist view of the struggle over the Constitution was that it represented a class conflict between wealthy commercial capitalist creditors on the one hand and poor agrarian debtors on the other. This Federalist interpretation was carried on and applied throughout early-nineteenth-century American politics to the agitation over paper money, over stay laws for debts, over land policies, over the tariff, etc. It was carried on by Whig historians (National Republicans) such as Hildreth.

The difference between the attitude taken by the Federalists and Whigs to these struggles, as against later twentieth-century socialists, was that the former favored the allegedly “capitalist” side, while the latter favored the allegedly “agrarian” or “anticapitalist” side. But despite the vast political differences, the economic and class interpretations of history were the same by both camps. Both the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Federalists and Whigs, and the latter-day socialists believed that the poor debtor farmers were anti-tariff, pro-paper money, anti-Central Bank, anti-Constitution, etc.; while the rich capitalist creditors were pro-tariff, anti-paper money, pro-Central Bank, pro-Constitution.

Beard could not bring himself to believe that any of the contenders actually believed in such vague abstractions as states’ rights, national unity, general welfare, etc. He believed it much more likely that they were really motivated by their immediate economic class interest. Thus, manufacturers would tend to be pro-tariff, farmers opposed, creditors for hard money, debtors for paper money, etc.

In answering the charges of Marxism leveled by Professor T.C. Smith, who dealt with clashes of ideas in political history, Beard objects that Smith “does not say how those (ideas)... got into American heads” and does not show that they may [not] have been “conditioned if not determined by economic interests and activities.” Beard told historians that when we see people advocating or resisting political changes in terms of abstract theories such as states’ rights or national power, we should ask the question, what interests are behind them—to whose advantage will changes, or maintenance of status quo, accrue?

Accepting the Federalist-Whig tradition, Beard termed the Constitution the instrument of the propertied class to protect itself from the nonpropertied. In general, government itself is based on the making of rules and the defense of property relations. Beard also cited [Rudolf von] Jhering and [Ferdinand] Lassalle as predecessors in this type of analysis. In sum, he declared that party doctrines and so-called political principles “originate in the sentiments and views which the possession of various kinds of property creates in the minds of the possessors.”

Baldly, his class-interest doctrine is sheer nonsense, both methodologically and for American history. There are no homogeneous classes on the market, only individual interests. Indeed, the alleged “classes” on the market are usually the ones in strongest competition with each other. There is no basic conflict of interest between the propertied and the nonpropertied; in the first place, they are not rigid “classes” on the free market; secondly, it is one of the great truths of economics that the nonpropertied as well as, if not even more than, the propertied benefit from the free market economy based on the defense of the rights of private property. On the free market, therefore, there are no clashing class interests.

As Professor Mises has pointed out, the basic difference almost never explained is between “class” and “caste.” The class-conflict theorists, from Madison to Beard through Marx, use analysis appropriate only to the latter applied to the former. Where certain groups are specially privileged or specially disabled through the coercive power of the state, they become castes, and these castes are definitely in conflict. While on the free market, one man’s gain is another man’s gain, wherever government intervenes and establishes favored and unfavored castes, one man’s or one caste’s gain is another caste’s loss. Where government intervenes, there is inevitable “caste conflict.” Thus, if wool manufacturers ask for a tariff on wool and fail to get it from the State, they remain diverse individuals competing on the market; but if they do get it from the State, they become a privileged caste with a common interest against other castes.

Here it should be pointed out that Professor Richard Hofstadter, a Beard disciple, has applied the class-struggle theories to Calhoun, making Calhoun to appear an ancestor of Marx. On the contrary, Calhoun in essence had the caste theory, although he used the term class. Calhoun defined the ruling caste as being the caste that receives more in government subsidy than it pays in taxes, while the ruled caste are the people who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government.

Furthermore, it is nonsense to assert that men will always follow their immediate monetary interest, that all other ideals are pure sham. This is flagrant error. Rather than being motivated by objective monetary interest, in fact, man is motivated by all sorts of ideas, including ideas about his monetary advancement. But even there, the latter are not necessarily controlling. This notion of so-called purely “economic” motivation is not specifically Marxism, which concentrates more on the productive forces, but Marx himself made much use of this technique, which verges closely on polylogism. When abstract ideas are written off and reduced to their alleged “economic” motives, this is a Marxist polylogism, and something I am sure the Federalists never committed. A particularly flagrant use of polylogism by Beard is his dismissal of Bancroft’s religious view by calling it “his deference to the susceptibilities of the social class from which he sprung.”

Beard’s specific class analysis was completely erroneous as well. Thus, as [Joseph] Dorfman and others have shown, in all of the early American controversies cited above, there were capitalists, merchants, manufacturers, farmers, etc. on both sides of each issue. It is obvious theoretically, and illustrated historically, that various “capitalists” will favor, as well as oppose, paper money in any given period. It is absurd to consider debtors as confined to poor, or to farmers. There were, even in those days, a great many wealthy debtors. Furthermore, it is impossible without minute investigation of a man’s financial record to say whether or not any given merchant was a “debtor” or “creditor” at any given time. The so-called “class lines” of this favorite class of the historians were almost ludicrously fluid.

Despite these overwhelming defects, Beard did make an important contribution to historiography. If material motives are not the whole story, they are certainly part of it, and in the time that Beard began his work, this area was almost completely neglected by American historians. Furthermore, it is precisely these pecuniary motives that the various figures on the historical stage will be most inclined to conceal. If people hold certain political views from a mixture of motives, they will almost always proclaim their “idealistic” motives and hide their “personal interest” in the matter. Beard performed a great service in impelling historians to devote their attention to uncovering the latter factors.

This is particularly true in the historiography of the Constitution, where an almost ludicrous myth had been created about the Founding Fathers. Beard pointed out that there were excellent caste reasons why holders of government securities, for example, were anxious to create a strong central government with tax powers to greatly increase the value of their bonds, which had been heavily in arrears of interest; why speculators in western lands wished to create a strong government to crush the Indian tribes in the West so that their lands would rise in value; why the politically powerful society of army officers agitated for a central-taxing government both for increase in the value of their old bonds and to spur the creation of a larger army, etc. Certainly it is no more than common sense for the historian to take such motives into account when evaluating the historical role of people, provided of course that this is not taken as eliminating the need for examining the validity of their ideas on their own grounds.

It is probable that Beard deliberately overstated his Marxian position because of the general neglect of the monetary motives. In later works he toned down his position considerably until in the Open Door at Home he declared that ideas and interests were equally determining and mutually interacting.

2. Review of Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists

April 23, 1962

Mr. Kenneth S. Templeton, Jr.

William Volker Fund

Burlingame, California

Dear Ken:

Jackson Turner Main’s The Antifederalists is a desperate, chaotic rearguard action on behalf of the Beard-Jensen “class struggle” interpretation of the adoption of the Constitution.10 The “orthodox” [Charles A.] Beard-[Carl L.] Becker-[Merrill M.] Jensen view has been riddled from all sides in recent years, for the revolutionary and later periods. Main attempts to restate the old shibboleths while still defending them from the “revisionist” attacks.

The result is a tangle of confusion and chaos. Time and time again, Main stubbornly affirms the essentials of the class-struggle view: that the Constitution was an imposition of the “well born” and the “few” against the small farmers and the “many”; of the “creditor class” against the “debtors”; of the urban against the rural, etc. And yet, in each case he is continually forced to admit grave exceptions and concessions, until the “class struggle” viewpoint becomes a desperate shibboleth rather than a conclusion from the facts. The whole book impresses me as a struggle by Main to maintain his fallacious a priori categories in the face of the recalcitrant historical facts.

All the old absurdities are yet revived: e.g., that the anti-Federalists were in favor of paper money (the “debtor classes”) even though many of the leaders were against it, etc. And so, if Main grudgingly admits that the anti-Federalist leaders were wealthy, well, then, their followers were poor, small farmerish, etc. If he admits that the urban masses—the mechanics, artisans, etc.—were pro-Federalist as well as the merchants, well, then, the “class struggle” is modified, so that while the whole struggle is one of poor vs. rich, it turns out that the urban poor were enlisted in the “rich” group, etc. Many states simply do not fit at all.

It is remarkable that Main is able to drag in all of these class-struggle interpretations even though he also admits that they are mutually contradictory: the urban poor among the rich, the rich debtors who favored paper money, etc. In his desperate attempt to salvage the class-struggle thesis, Main adds yet another “class” and class struggle to this chaotic mélange: the “mercantile community.”

The “mercantile community,” led by the wicked merchants, includes all the urban people (although somehow at least the physicians were anti-Federalist) plus the farmers, big and small (although he tries to maintain that in essence they were big), who live in the trade-centered river valleys vs. the “self-sufficient” community of subsistence farmers. Why the entire “mercantile community” is supposed to form one “class” or economic interest group, is never really explained, nor is it explained why they should all be pro-Constitution. Nor is the “self-sufficient” interest in proposing the Constitution, explained—the shibboleths about “democracy,” “aristocracy,” etc., which Main tosses around continually, explain nothing here.

Forrest McDonald has shown in his We the People that the self-sufficient farmers could be said to have economic interest both for and against the Constitution, depending on the state involved, and that the merchants, much less the catch-all “mercantile community,” must be split up into numerous different interest groups if one wants to talk of mercantile interests intelligibly.

Similarly, Main’s hobbyhorse “democracy” is another vague, catchall, ill-defined concept (in fact, never defined by Main) that he sees as the key to the anti-Federalist position, in a struggle against the “few” and “aristocracy.” These concepts are peculiarly ill fitting to the times and irrelevant to the main struggle over the Constitution—which is over centralized power vs. states’ rights, and not over “democracy” vs. the “few”—as well as slippery and undefined.

Main, typical of his continuing war with the facts, admits that the word “democracy” was used but seldom by the anti-Federalists, but explains it away as a tactic to disarm the opposition. Again, the leaders—or some leaders—are conceded not to be concerned with democracy, but the followers are supposed to be. But the leaders were the ones who articulated the position, which leaves Main’s position a rather mystical one. Indeed, if both groups were led by wealthy and eminent men—as is true of every broad-based movement in politics—and the followers are poor, what happens to the struggle for “democracy” vs. “aristocracy” or the quasi-Marxian struggle of rich vs. poor?

Main also links egalitarianism in with “democracy,” even though there is almost no evidence of egalitarian views either. For “proof” of his contentions, Main is reduced to isolated quotations by one writer or another, denouncing the opposition as being a “rabble” or by someone talking of the “middling interest” or the “well-born.”

Naturally, in every country and every age, there are well-born, poor, and people in between. And if one wants to separate them into “classes,” one can spend one’s time doing so, though fruitlessly. But so are there an infinite number of other “classes” in society: occupational groups, religious groups, chess players and non-chess players, etc. The reason why Jack Main insists on proliferating and imposing his “class” schema on the events is that he insists that these classes are inherently in conflict: that the “class interests” of the various groups are innately at loggerheads; that the small property owners are innately in conflict of interest with the large property owners, that the merchants and farmers are inherently at odds, that creditors and debtors form distinct antagonistic “classes,” etc.

This is the a priori mistake, the methodological fallacy, that sets Jackson Main in quasi-Marxistical and perpetual war with the facts, trying desperately to fit recalcitrant reality into his supposedly conflicting class categories. All of this would be swept away if he realized that these classes—and all other classes, for that matter—are not inherently conflicting, that if they have anything to do with each other at all, it is, objectively, a peaceful harmony, a peaceful, productive, voluntary network of trade and exchanges, linking all individuals—and individuals are the primary reality, not the constructed “classes”—into the mutually advantageous free market.

Also, in Marxist manner, Main, while dealing slightly with the libertarian, anti-central power aspect of anti-Federalism, tends to dismiss it brusquely as a “rationalization” of class interest, and subordinate also to “democracy” and egalitarianism.

Actually, there is a small nub of truth in the class-struggle thesis, and its attempted application to the Revolution-Constitution period by Beard. The nub of truth has been twisted by the Marxists and neo-Marxist historians, indeed by Marx himself. Marx postulated that there are inherently conflicting classes within society, within the market, as well as outside it, and that their evolution through conflict was determined by “laws of history.” (Beard, the Populist historians, etc. use the class and class-conflict analysis of history without necessarily accepting the “laws of history” prophesying.) But Marx acquired his class theory from Saint-Simon, who, in turn, garbled and twisted it from its original thesis, which was, in contrast, highly libertarian.

This thesis—which Mises would call a caste-conflict theory—and which anticipated its modern formulation by Albert Jay Nock, was developed by Charles Dunoyer and Charles Comte in the immediate Restoration period in France. This postulated two essential “classes” or castes: the State, and its subsidized favorites; and the public, who are exploited by the State.

This was the original “class” analysis and exploitation analysis; the State, and its subsidizees, exploited the producing public. The producers included everyone on the free market, from manufacturers to laborers. Saint-Simon, Marx, etc. twisted this around to add the “capitalists” to the list of exploiters and to dub the “producers” as only the proletariat. The only remnant of Beardian hypothesis that has interest, therefore, is when he concentrated, e.g., on the class (caste) interest of veteran army officers in federal government pensions or on the interests of government security holders. (Here the empirical importance of security holders has turned out to be negligible for the Constitution but at least the hypothesis was cogent. However, there appears to be much more foundation for government security-holder interest behind the Hamiltonian debt-assumption program—a much more direct causation, of course, than in considering the Constitution as a whole.)

To do a completely thorough evaluation of the book would require detailed checking of the sources, detailed comparison and contrast of Main and McDonald, more reading on the Main-McDonald controversy, etc. But the whoppers are plentiful enough to say that this book is hopeless as any sort of significant grappling with the problem.

Contrast to this tangle the brilliant and incisive article of Professor Cecilia Kenyon, “Men of Little Faith.”11 Kenyon, not shackled by Marxist categories, sees clearly and demonstrates incisively that the anti-Federalists were essentially not “democrats” or egalitarians or wild-eyed rebels, but basically libertarian types, who feared and disliked the increased centralization of State power (via control of commerce, new federal taxes, “general welfare,” etc.) manifesting itself in the new Constitution. Here, in the ideological realm, and in the problem of liberty vs. more central power, is the nub of the conflict. And while Kenyon of course defends the central power and chides the anti-Federalists as being “men of little faith” in the new opportunities of bigger government, the reputation of the anti-Federalists is in better hands with their opponent, Kenyon, than with their ardent supporter, Professor Main.

3. Review of R.W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire

March 18, 1962

Mr. Kenneth S. Templeton

William Volker Fund

Burlingame, California

Dear Ken:

R.W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (Oxford University Press, 1960) is a lively work that forms an extreme example, perhaps, of recent “revisionism” in the historiography of American foreign policy—which maintains that the imperialism of 1898 did not constitute a new, unusual break in an isolationist American past. The stress on this theme is always used as an argument against the Beard thesis that imperialism and the later internationalism and foreign interventionism were breaking with American traditions. Van Alstyne, indeed, claims that America began its plunge into “empire” even before the American Revolution, and continued surging onward from then on, 1898 only constituting its climactic end. This “completed” the “structure of the American Empire,” and since then American empire building has been “more of a problem of consolidation and rendering secure what has been gained.”

Now this guiding thesis I believe to be nonsense; certainly British expansionism before the American Revolution can hardly be attributed to America, despite occasional American support. Nor can the sensible and hardly imperialist attempt of the Revolutionary country to solicit aid from France be called significant. While it is true that America and American agents did many aggressive and imperialistic things throughout the nineteenth century, they can hardly be comparable in extent with the brazen acquisitions of the Spanish-American War.

Further, Van Alstyne is able to make his case by the inadmissible method of lumping expansionist actions into virtually uninhabited territory—or even such purchases as Louisiana—with aggressive actions against lands populated by other peoples, and also by lumping economic expansion (such as increased trade in the Pacific) with governmental expansion—though, admittedly, the American Navy tended to follow—and sometimes precede—the trade. American expansion throughout the world since 1898 can also hardly be called mere consolidation of previously won empire; it is the real shift from republic to empire. Thus, Van Alstyne can only make his point through distortion of quantitative judgment and confusion of categories.

Keeping this in mind, however, there is a great deal of fascinating and useful material in Van Alstyne, especially of neglected and little-known instances of American governmental intervention overseas, in Mexico, etc. There is useful material on the machinations of President Polk, of agitation to invade and acquire Canada and Mexico, of the aggressive designs of Theodore Roosevelt, etc.

It is also good to see Van Alstyne not falling for the lure of recent “revisionism” whitewashing Polk, Madison in the War of 1812, etc., and also to see the Monroe Doctrine considered an anti-British, rather than pro-British, policy. There is no “Britain the naval bulwark and partner” myth making in Van Alstyne; indeed, there is a refreshing cynicism toward much cant, such as the Open Door, U.S. missionary activities in China and Hawaii, etc. There is a great deal of interesting material on imperialist drives toward the Caribbean, on New England connivance at the atrocity in Acadia, etc.

Van Alstyne’s guiding principle is hostility to moral principle or moral crusading in foreign policy; as a result, the material that he presents would ordinarily be taken as damaging to American imperialism. But Van Alstyne, divorcing himself from morality and concerned only and rather cynically with realpolitik, is evidently enamored of American imperialism, of Theodore Roosevelt, etc. Not isolationism, not the crusading of Wilson or FDR, but the blunt imperialism of T.R. (“[t]he American Bismarck, without the arrogance and the aloofness”) seems to be Van Alstyne’s foreign policy ideal.

4. Review of Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party

March 8, 1961

Mr. Kenneth S. Templeton

William Volker Fund

Dear Ken:

Martin Van Buren, one of the best presidents the United States ever had, is also one of the most underrated by historians, who generally have dismissed Van as being weak and wily, a mere trickster. Robert V. Remini, in his Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (Columbia University Press, 1959) sets out to right the historiographic balance for a critical period in Van’s life and does a good job of it.

Remini’s book deals not with Van Buren the president but Van Buren the chief architect of the Democratic Party, which emerged out of the era of the 1820s. In this well-written and well-researched book, Remini revises the usual view of historians of Van Buren as a mere political trickster and organizer, who brought about Jackson’s victory in 1823 for purely personal reasons of party intrigue.

Not only does Remini correct the errors of these and other historians in refuting various allegations of trickery (such as the accepted myth that Van Buren introduced the Tariff of Abominations in 1828 intending to defeat it); Remini also shows, in excellent fashion, that Van Buren’s main aim, at which he succeeded brilliantly, was ideological—that he was out to forge an ideologically-based party, and chose General Jackson as the proper vehicle, not vice versa. In this book, Remini shows us some of the true stature of Martin Van Buren.

Historians have generally misleadingly called the era of Monroe the “Era of Good Feelings,” as if everything were quiet and content politically. Remini knows that this was very far from the case. Actually, President Monroe had strong leanings in the direction of the old Federalist cause, and, with the disappearance of the Federalist Party during the War of 1812, Federalists began drifting into the Republican ranks. Monroe began to use the one-party result to bring about “unity,” i.e., to make more and more appointments that were quasi-Federalist and to move, though very cautiously, in Federalist-étatist directions at home and abroad. Though a Virginian, Monroe was never trusted by the great Virginia libertarians, and the problem grew as he began to maneuver to deny the nomination to his “natural” heir, the “Old Republican” William H. Crawford.

The principles of the “Old Republican” cause, the famous “principles of ‘98,” were the principles of American liberty: individual liberty, minimal government, rigid economy, states’ rights, strict construction, opposition to “internal improvements” or to government intervention, “isolationism” and “neutralism” in foreign affairs. What had happened to the great principles of ‘98? After four excellent years under the Jefferson administration, Jefferson and Madison began to desert their old cause in a drive toward war with England, and in that war came the Bank of the United States, internal taxation, high tariffs, larger government, etc. Through these war years, only such patriots as John Randolph of Roanoke and the Quaker George Logan stood fast to the old principles.

Martin Van Buren was never a great theoretician—certainly not in these years. But he sensed the important problem of the early 1820s—the slow, steady withering away of Old Republican principles, what with affairs being conducted by Monroe and Chief Justice Marshall, and Federalists drifting into office. A man who thought brilliantly in terms of parties and politics rather than in theoretical issues, Van Buren saw (1) that the Old Republican principles were dissolving, and (2)—and here was his great contribution—that it was necessary to reconstitute the Republican Party to make it, once again, an ideological vehicle for what were essentially libertarian views.

In the critical 1824 struggle, he therefore joined with his fellow “radicals,” such as the great leader of the Richmond Junto, Thomas Ritchie, to support Crawford, and he was loyal to Crawford to the very end. Particularly important—and Remini captures the drama of this moment very well—was Van Buren’s personal meeting with his idol, Jefferson; this meeting sharpened Van Buren’s Jeffersonian ideology, especially when he realized that Jefferson’s view of the Monroe administration was essentially the same as his own.

After the election, as John Quincy Adams began to unfold the essence of his Federalist plan to aggrandize the national government at home and abroad, Van Buren’s views sharpened as he lashed out at Adams for infringing on individual and states’ rights at home and abroad. Finally, Van Buren set himself the task of building a new party out of this now-dead Republican Party, a party, as he put it, composed of “Old Republican” loyalties carried forward by the magic of the hero, Andrew Jackson.

With brilliant organization, allying himself with “Old Republican” forces, such as Ritchie, in other states, Van Buren succeeded in forging the new party, converting the purely personal Jacksonian movement of 1824 into a libertarian-ideological Jackson party of 1828. In short, realizing that Jackson’s ideological views were barely formed, Van Buren pushed Jackson into the Old Republican camp by presenting him with a fully structured Jacksonian party along those ideological lines.

Thus was the great Democratic Party born, and so well was it forged that it was to continue along a similar ideological path for the rest of the century. (It was one of the ironic quirks of history that Van Buren’s tragic shift into the anti-Southern camp, causing him to oppose the admission of Texas in 1844, broke up the Democratic Party on the slavery issue, an issue that was to cripple the party for generations.)

This, of course, is not to imply that Van Buren was a pure, or notable, libertarian theorist; he always trimmed, for example, on the tariff question, undoubtedly due to pro-tariff sentiment in New York and the North. But his services as a political organizer were first-rate, and, in Remini’s account, he at last receives his due.

Remini’s work, as I’ve said, is well written and well researched—and worth reading for any student of American political history. There are numerous indications of unfortunate bias on the part of Professor Remini, however, which should be noted:

How properly Remini understands the “Old Republican” principles is open to question, especially as, at the conclusion, he speaks in terms of the Democratic “people,” the “many” versus the Federalist “few,” the Democrats as the party of the “common man,” etc. This is mainly rubbish and reflects orthodox historiography. Actually, as Remini himself shows, Van Buren did yeoman work for the caucus system of nominations, in loyalty to Jeffersonian principles, and also, for quite a while—and in face of fierce local opposition—opposed democratizing the electoral laws in New York. Also, Remini, in presenting the usual view about extensions of suffrage in this era, ignores the recent research of Robert Brown, Chilton Williamson (which, to be sure, was published after Remini’s book), and others, which indicate that the extent of democratizing voting in this period was very small. (A recent study has shown that a significant increase of votes, in proportion to total adult males, only came in the election of 1840, which confirms what I have long suspected: that the real outpouring of “democracy” and mass voting came as a result of demagogic campaigning by the desperate Whigs in 1840, led by the conniver Thurlow Weed.)
Remini, several times, attacks Van Buren’s loyal adhesion to states’ rights and strict construction, deprecating various constitutional amendments that Van Buren proposed to limit government power still further (e.g., the power to spend on internal improvements). (Van Buren, by the way, wanted to limit state, as well as federal, internal improvements.)
Remini attacks Van Buren for his loyal adhesion to the cause of William Crawford in 1824.
Remini several times levels unwarranted and deprecatory personal attacks on various eminent statesmen. Most flagrant is his dismissal of the great Randolph as “lunatic” and “half-crazed.” (It was during this very period, by the way, that Randolph was influential in forming the subsequently libertarian social philosophy of Thomas H. Benton.) Remini further dismisses Rep. George Kremer of Pennsylvania as a “ridiculous” figure, without telling us why. Kremer distinguished himself as being one of the purest libertarian politicians in the history of the United States, voting against almost every appropriation bill, every extension of government, etc. (Once, he voted against the “extravagance” of paving Washington’s streets!)
Remini calls the doctrine of nullification “pernicious.”
Van Buren’s idea of curbing executive appointment and other power, Remini dismisses brusquely as flagrantly partisan.
Remini makes too much of a concession of “greatness” to the designs of John Quincy Adams.

It seems indicated that Remini, while certainly approving of Van Buren, and doing a service by concentrating on Van and rehabilitating his reputation, is himself far from a believer in the Old Republican principles for which Van Buren fought. He seems to be more of a current-type historian, favoring the supposed “democracy” and common-man aspects of Democratic-Republican doctrine. However, I am looking forward to the biography of Van Buren—who has virtually no biographies—on which Remini is apparently working—with great interest.

Strictly Confidential