Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Moore History: Martin Van Buren, 8th U.S. President

Transcript

Moore History: Martin Van Buren, 8th U.S. President · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Here we go, third hour of the Thursday edition of
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: I'm Preston.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: He is Jose and this is our resident historian. He
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: used to be, you know, he used to be the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: president of the independent Colleges the Universities of Florida, and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: he's written books and all that. But really, what is
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: at the top of the resume now is resident historian?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Is fine?
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Radio part I thought it was African big game hunter.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: But whatever.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I was joking with Ed. He's got his faces on
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: wanted posters, been the animal Kingdom in Africa. When they
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: see him, they run.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Guy, he's back.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I have teased the fact that we're going to talk
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: about the guy who actually started the co founded at
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: least the Democrat Party, Martin van Buren. Other than that,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and have having magnificent sideburns. What do we need to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: know about Martin van Buren?
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: They called him the red Fox because he had red
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: hair before it all went white. Yeah, and those big
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: bushy side My goodness, he's fascinating.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I really encourage to put him in some context. But
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: who was before him? Who was after him?
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Well, Andrew Jackson and it was his ally and Andrew
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Jackson actually picked him in eighteen twenty eight to run
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: with him as vice president. He contrary to where we
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: are now with where the Democrat Party is, back then
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: they were the Conservative Party. Okay, they really were, and
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: go figure, well, it's an evolutionary period if you think
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: about that. The Constitution United States in seventeen eighty nine,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: so you're not talking about that much after. They were
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: still crafting and creating what government was going to be
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: and how it was going to be. During Martin Van
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Buren's time, he was a single term guy. He only
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: served one term. William Henry Harrison was after him, Andrew
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Jackson was before him, and it was a huge transitional
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: period in American history of what kind of government were
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: we really going to have? What was the federal government doing?
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: And you think about this being said around eighteen thirty
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: or so, Civil War began in eighteen sixty, Regional differences,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of stuff was still being states rights and
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: states would decide. States were still pretty much electing who
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: went to the US Senate. I mean, you didn't run
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: statewide to be a US Senator. Your legislature. So these
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: kind of guys, if you read about Martin van Buren
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: shrewd political sense and a very good back room manipulator.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: He decided with this guy when it was his advantage,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: and this guy he knew how to play that game.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: He got himself behind major issues. I mean, back in
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: those days, the construction of the Erie Canal was a
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: big deal. The governor of New York de Wick Clinton.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: That was a big project for him. Martin van Buren
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: was opposing do it Clinton all the time on stuff,
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: but on that project he really helped him out and
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: made it happen. He was a guy that you went
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: to if you wanted to get something done. He was
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: a good example of how manipulative he was. He ran
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: for governor of New York in eighteen well, eighteen twenty eight,
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: ran for twenty seven, ran for governor of New York
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: and served as governor for less than three months because
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: when Jackson came in, he wanted him to be the
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Secretary of State, and he knew that when he was
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: running for governor that if that happened, he would probably
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: go there. But he ran for governor so he maintained
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: a position of power. The more I read about this guy,
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: more fascinated I was by his political acumen. Sharp sharp
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: guy figured out how to get things done and played
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: both sides very well. We don't have anybody like that.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Now, before we get a break here, how much based
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: on your study, was he impacted or influenced his actions
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: as president by being the first natural born American to
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: become a.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Joe Sale. I think it's called by birth. I mean
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: we argue now about birthright citizenship, and technically he was
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: the last. He was the last one to have birthright
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: citizenship for Great Britain because when he was born, Great
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Britain still control the colonies, so he could have just
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: gone over to England have been a citizen over there.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: That we talk about all the time, how well Europe
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: doesn't have nobody has birthright citizenship. Did you watch the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: World Cup? Did you see who played for who? And
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: we're I mean, you got all these people whose families
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: are from all over the world. Yeah, and because they
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: ended up in France, their kids are playing for France,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: but they're from some an African country or one of
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: the islands.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: We trained the world's athlete here in America anyway, so
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Well, they trained better athletes for soccer over there than
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: we do. But uh, it's he's he's the unique kind
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: of guy who was the last one that could have
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: been a British citizen easily been a British citizen. Uh
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: he I.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Well, but being naturally but being naturally born in America,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: did that impact him as a president that he was
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: an American?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, he was. He is the beginning.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson sort of laid the seeds for presidents that
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: identified themselves strongly as Americans. Can we give the founders
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: a lot of credit for that, for crafting and creating
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: and rebelling and all of that, But then there's a
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: series of guys that, you know, the foundation was laid,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: but they were putting the walls in, you know, they're
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: they're organizing the house. And Martin van Buren was really
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: the first one you talked about creating a two party system.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: He was the one really that made that happen.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Doctor Ed Moore with me this morning here and we
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: are talking about the presidency and the person known as
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Martin van Buren, and we were talking about the fact
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: that he was the first president that was American born.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: But but it's so interesting to me that even though
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: he was.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: It was English was not his first language.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: No, No, his family were from the Netherlands. I think
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: it was grandparents had emigrated over and settled. If you
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: look on a map where the Hudson River goes up,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: it's about the third county north of Manhattan, Okay, and Kinderhook.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Henry Hudson had named this area Kinderhook because when he
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: sailed up and that's about as far as he sailed
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: up that river, and they named the river after him.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Not too bad. Nope, now you got to start. I
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: gotta start going in rivers more River, more River. But
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Indian kids would go on the bluffs and watch his
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: ship sailing up because they had never seen it. You
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: had to put you himself in that mindset. They had
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: never seen anything like that before. And here's this giant ship.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: To them. Yeah, and so keender in the Dutchess kids
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: or children hook was it was like the kid's bluff
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: or in their translation.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a bad golf shot at that point.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: No. No, I would have put it in the river myself.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: But uh so his families if his dad was an innkeeper,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: uh and the tavern, I mean, so you think people
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: think now political divide New York. They must have all
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: been liberals and they're you know, citified people. And he
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: was more akin to Andrew Jackson in terms of his
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: upbringing other than humble. Uh well, just regular kind of party.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Grew up in a tavern.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: But doesn't that speak to what made America, even at
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that stage, so unique. Yeah, it wasn't a caste system.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It wasn't where you were born. There was opportunity.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have the intelligence, the ambition and the ability
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: to put some sweat in. You could do anything you want.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: We're we're still there. Even though if you watch the
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: news they think, no, we're not. We're still there. You
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: can still do that. This is one of those kind
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: of people who did that. He just emerged out of
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: this area, got involved in politics, and learned early on
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: how to play the game. There was a Sylvester family
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: where prominent lawyers in the New York area during that time. Well,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: he studied for the law. They didn't go to law
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: school in those days. He studied for the law with
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: the Sylvesters. Well, the Sylvesters were big federalists. Martin van
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: Buren wasn't a federalist. He was more of a states
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: rights guy out of New York. I mean, nowadays you
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: look at that and go, nobody's going to be like that.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: At coming from New York. He was because his upbringing.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: They wanted to be have opportunity for other people. During
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: his time frame, they was the first universal suffrage for
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: white males. Prior to that, you had to be a
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: landowner in order to vote. I mean, you know, they
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: were pushing to democratize America. Seas were being planted every
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: day during that time frame in our country. I'm here
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: in music that we're almost souf here. But I got
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: to tell you that there are a lot of controversial
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: stuff happened in that one four year term when this
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: guy was president.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You talked about some of the controversies of his four years.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Well, even prior to his four years, we were talking
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: off air about this guy. He was a governor of
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: a state, He was a senator from the state. He
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: was a legislator, he was secretary of state. He got
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: appointed by Andy Jackson to be Secretary of State in
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: the first term. I got nominated to be ambassador to
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Great Britain and had his rival John John C. Calhoun
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: torpedo of that. In the Senate and Calhoun was vice
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: president for Jackson at the time. Jackson looked at that
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: and oddly, a guy from Tennessee decided a guy from
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: South Carolina was troublesome and a real pain in his
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: rear end, and we'll get rid of this guy. I know,
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: I'll pick this guy from New York. So Jackson made
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: him his vice president during Andy Jackson's second term, and
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: he elevated up. He engineered all kinds of new things.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: That is to how government structured Andy Jackson. Everybody's heard
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: about the kitchen cabinet. He had a kitchen cabinet that
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: were informal advisors. Martin van Buren came in and said, no,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: we're going to have formal cabinet meetings with the heads
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: of the departments are going to come. He was the
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: first one to do that. He saw all the parties
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: that were going on. There was the Anti Masonic Party,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: there were all these fringe groups going on. That's he
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: found that to be discomforting and troublesome, and he pushed
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: real hard to create the Democratic Republican Party and the Federals.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Oh the irony, yeah yeah.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: And as Federalists became the Whigs and for about thirty
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: thirty years their time frame, you had to went to
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: a two party system with other parties trying to break out,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: and Van Buren later in life actually tried to form
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: this other party because he liked what these guys were.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: He was a meddlesome and interesting. When you've start reading
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of the details, some of the weird things
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: that happened during that time frame up until while he
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: was president of me. You think about the Trail of
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Tears that occurred in eighteen thirty the Congress passed to
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: removed the Natives.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: From displaced in the Indians from.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: The four thousand Cherokee died, and the Trail of Tears
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: not a proud part of our history, right, And guys
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: like Van Buren saw that, and we have to be
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: better than that. I think I'm more I read about him,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: the more impressed I am with his motivation. He had
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: a good, clear motivation. We almost show you how little
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: power the United States had in the world affairs. The
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: annexation of Texas. We wanted Texas. Texas at this point
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: was the Republic of Texas. It had broken away from Mexico,
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: and people in tech just wanted to become part of
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: the United States, and some of them didn't. It was
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: highly controversial, but we didn't move on it, and Van
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Buren and Jackson didn't. They never moved on it because
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: they didn't want to go to war with Mexico. Now
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: think about in modern and time too, we didn't want
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: to go to war with Mexico. Oh my. In the north,
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: there were boundary battles in Upper New York State. Across
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: the border. There was really a civil war going on
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: in Canada. The Quebecians and the Ontario people. They didn't
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: get along French and the English, and there was a
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: civil war going on. And we had people from Buffalo
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: that formed a militia that wanted to go across and
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: help and get involved in The Vambura put a stop
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: to that. On the New Brunswick Maine border, there was
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: battling and fighting going on and arguing about where the
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: border should be set. Laggers were going in and cutting
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: the Canadian Laggers would come into Maine and cut down trees,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: and then that those guys would go into Canada and
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: cut down him. I mean you think of the logging wars, huh,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: it was logging wars. They had names that that was
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: a roofstock war, and I mean they all had little
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: names for it, but nothing was set, nothing was fixed
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: in place. Guys like Van Buren came in and just
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: calm things down and established mechanism. Every state used to
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: print not every state, but a lot of states used
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: to print their own money, okay during this time frame.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: So we moved to unified treasury and that was a
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: huge battle. Andy Jackson started that, you know, with the
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Second Bank of America fighting and that holy shit we
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: talked about before. But imagine converting gold and silver which
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: people carried into paper money. Well, I'm going to get
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Ohio paper money now, but it's not any good in
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: New York? What am I going to do? They created
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: a unified treasury system during Martin vaan Buur's time.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Would it be fair to describe him as an opportunistic pragmatic.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, opportunistic in the pejorative probably not in the
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: creative That's what I mean. Yeah, in the creative sense,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: just seeing.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: An opportunity and being practical about and pragmatic about how
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to attack it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Not being there and knowing him personally, but you sure, Yeah,
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I'm feeling sorry to feel that way. But my sense
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: of him was he would see a problem and want
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: to fix it. Yeah, he was that kind of person.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: He was inquisitive and like, why are we arguing about this?
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: And when he was in Congress, when he was in
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: the Senate, he was the guy that moved around and
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: created coalitions on issues around issues, things like building the
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Erie canal or not to build you those kind of things.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: He would find a solution and then get it done.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: Unique kind of person.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Did he do that as president?
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh yeah. You couldn't cast him as he's a
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: hard line this or hard line that. He was more
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: a problem solver the way I would describe him. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: you know, I always look at this and go where
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: are we today and using today's values, try to evaluate
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: what they're doing. Then we don't have people like that now,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: and if we do, we cast them aside because their problem.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: You know, they're not with they're not with Trump one
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: hundred percent of the time, you know, or they're not
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: the other side and the other side's so messed up
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: right now, who knows. But then people are still trying
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: to figure out who they were and what they're doing.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: But you think this guy, a guy from New York
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: partnered with Andy Jackson from Tennessee. And the image that
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: we have of Andy Jackson, and we ignore Martin van Buren.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: He was the worker bee. He got stuff done, and
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Andy Jackson saw that. He was sharp enough to see
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: that and bring that guy into be as vice president
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: and basically annoyed him to be the next president. I mean,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: that's how that all happened. And when you look at
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: how the how regionalized the US was at that point
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: in time, this guy pair small feet. He got Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: and New York, the bigger states to coalesce and support him.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And who does that? Now? You know, we need more
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: people like that and not condemn somebody that's trying to
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: be a problem solver unless they're reaching in your pocket
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: to solve the problem. He didn't seem to be that
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: kind of guy. Wasn't let's raise a whole bunch of
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: money and raise a lot of taxes. It was let's
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: find a way to get this done. Kept us out
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: of war. And back in those days, Great Britain still
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: was the big guy on the block. We didn't go
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: to war with him. We had enough breathing time after
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: the War of eighteen twelve, to grow and be who
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: we could be.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Nice, good stuff, Thank you.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Thanks great to be here.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Always doctor edmore Martin van Buren. Our topic here on
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the Morning Show with Preston Scott