Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States

The following pages originally formed part of a much larger work, from the general course and design of which they constituted a digression. It seems therefore proper to preface them by a few words of explanation, relating chiefly to the work from which they are now separated. Mr. Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, on the expiration of his term of office, in the year 1841, retired to a country residence near Kinderhook, (the place of his birth, ) in the State of New York, which he had then recently purchased, and to which he gave the name of Lindenwald. Here, with infrequent and brief interruptions, he continued to reside for some twenty years, or until his death, which occurred in July, 1862. Although numbering nearly sixty years of age, --two-thirds of which had been years of almost incessant activity and excitement, professional, political, and social, --at the period of his withdrawal to the tranquil scenes and occupations of rural life, he embraced the latter with an ardor and a relish that surprised not a little the friends who had known him only as prominent in, and apparently engrossed by, the public service, but which were happy results of early predilections, an even and cheerful temper, fitting him for and constantly inclining him to the enjoyment of domestic intercourse, a hearty love of Nature, and a sound constitution of mind and body. After twelve years of the period of his retirement had passed, happily and contentedly, he began to apply a portion of his "large leisure" to a written review of his previous life, and to recording his recollections of his contemporaries and of his times. To this work, as he intimates in its opening paragraphs, he was mainly induced by the solicitations of life-long friends, who, (it may be here added, ) knowing the importance and interest of the scenes and incidents of his extended public career, and the extraordinary influence he had exerted upon public men.