Beschreibung:

VAN BUREN, Martin (1782-1862), President . Autograph letter signed ("M. Van Buren") to James S. Wadsworth, Lindenwald [near Kinderhook, New York], 30 June 1848. 3 pages, 4to, verso neatly silked, framed. VAN BUREN, THE BARNBURNERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FREE SOIL PARTY. A fine, lengthy political letter of former President Van Buren, the undisputed leader of the northern Democrats. In April he had issued a strong policy paper opposing the extension of slavery. It was adopted as the platform of a New York Democratic faction called the "Barnburners" (from a Dutch folk-tale about a Dutchman who set fire to his barn to get rid of rats). The Barnburners, in a convention held at Utica in June, nominated Van Buren for President, a call which he accepted with some reluctance. Here the aging politician confesses that the nomination was a surprise: "...The nomination was a severe blow to my cherished wishes and entirely unexpected. In the whole course of my life I have never been so wholly taken by surprise in political movements. I however saw at a glance that there was but one course to pursue [to accept the nomination]. To consult only my own feelings... when they came in collision with the feelings and supposed interests of friends, who had through life and through evil and good report stood by me...was not to be thought of...." A month after this letter, Van Buren's New York Barnburners joined with other dissident Democratic splinter groups and anti-slavery Whigs to form the Free Soil Party. Their convention also nominated Van Buren for President, on a slogan of "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." The Free Soil party drew enough votes from the Democratic presidential contender, Lewis Cass, in New York to throw the election to Zachary Taylor. The 1848 campaign, though, was Van Buren's last hurrah.