The Book of Bastards (8 page)

Religion has been the basis for some of the greatest of humanity's achievements. Scripture such as the Bible, the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, and the great Hindu epics all contain invocations for people to treat their neighbors well and live good, meaningful lives. But through the millennia, religion has also served as a haven for scoundrels. America as well has a history of supposedly “holy men” making mischief.

Some of them come across as out-and-out whackjobs, others as nothing but malevolent spirits bent on acquiring power. And yet when it comes to sheer bastardry none of the Haggards, Falwells, or Swaggarts could hold a candle to a largely forgotten religious four-flusher who called himself “Matthias the Prophet.”

Born Robert Matthews in 1778 on a farm in rural New York, Matthias grew up doing farm work and learning carpentry. At some point he married and fathered children.

But by the mid-1820s Matthews had snapped. Experiencing a “religious vision,” he claimed to be the reincarnation of the apostle Matthias, referred to himself as a reborn Jew, and began wandering about the Northeast. He preached a gospel that emphasized the place of the father as the head of any household, the notion of eternal life through passing one's soul along to one's children, and a host of other beliefs based on a loose reading of the King James Bible.

By this time he had quit shaving or cutting his hair, quite a rarity at the time as most men went clean-shaven. This of course made him look every bit the part of the Old Testament prophet.

Matthias eventually made his way to New York City and was able to convince a group of upper-middle-class evangelicals that he was in fact a resurrected apostle. It was only a matter of time before he had bilked them out of thousands of dollars, two houses, and one of the men's wives! For a time Matthias had it all: money he hadn't earned, women drunk on his power, and followers from all walks of life who showed up just to hear him speak. It couldn't last.

By 1835 one of the men whom Matthias cheated had gone bankrupt and had Matthias thrown in jail for fraud. Later that year Matthias and his housekeeper Isabella Van Wagener wound up in more hot water. They were tried for the murder of one of Matthias's wealthiest followers, Elijah Pierson, and for stealing his estate. Matthias was eventually acquitted, but had become a
persona non grata
after being thrown in jail yet again on an unrelated charge of savagely beating his own daughter. Disgraced, he quit New York, and headed west.

In 1836 Matthias turned up at the Ohio settlement of Joseph Smith's nascent sect of Mormons. Smith welcomed this man who called himself “Jeremiah the Jew” for a few days, even encouraging him to preach a sermon before his own congregation. But the interlude ended with both latter-day prophets denouncing the other as “satanic.” Smith went on to be revered as the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, while Matthias went on perish in obscure poverty.

In this case the bastard in question spent time in jail, didn't die rich, and didn't escape judgment. Perhaps this was because Matthias's greatest sin was to have been born poor?

The first American president born after the signing of the Declaration of Independence was also the first career politician to become chief executive. Born into a well-to-do New York family, Van Buren came to be known as the “Fox of Kinderhook” and the “Little Magician” in part because of his ability to make political deals happen.

In other words he was a fixer.

Van Buren was also (as many fixers are) an opportunist of the first order. He rode the populist coattails of Andrew Jackson into the presidency, supporting such scurrilous Jacksonian policies as Indian Removal and the destruction of the nation's fledgling banking system. “Martin Van Ruin” got his comeuppance seven weeks into his administration. On May 10, 1837, the nation faced its first stock market crash.

Picture it if you will: the U.S. government relaxed certain banking regulations. Fewer restrictions allowed for the rise of undercapitalized banks that in turn lent more money than they actually had. Speculation in currency and other areas ran rampant as a result of this loosening of banking rules.

The resulting crash was inevitable: banks that over-lent their resources had trouble collecting some of the money that was owed to them. This resulted in a domino effect that eventually left bank after bank insolvent. Within weeks the entire American financial system was in danger of total collapse.

Sound familiar? It ought to.

But this collapse was not like the stock market crashes of 1929 and 2008. The Panic of 1837 was the first far-reaching, major economic crisis in American history. In 1837 there was no Work Projects administration to employ the destitute masses. No one took drastic measures (rightly or wrongly) to bail out the financial sector in order to avert a total economic catastrophe. President Van Buren refused to involve the government in the private sector's economic woes. It was bad government and would set a terrible precedent, he said. But because he supported and continued Jackson's ridiculous economic policies, Van Buren was partly at fault for allowing it to happen in the first place.

Jackson hated the Bank of the United States, a federally chartered bank that helped set the value of American currency. In one of the most shortsighted moves in American history, Jackson shut the bank down. He moved the contents of the treasury's balance books to a number of what he called “pet banks.” These state and privately chartered banks were allowed to make loans with the federal specie they received. In addition, Jackson loosened federal regulations on who could lend money and who couldn't, making it possible for anyone with a can of paint, a brush, and a board plank big enough to hang out a sign and go into business as a “bank.”

The result should have been predictable, especially for a sharp political customer like Van Buren. By mid-1837, the economy was so badly crippled and trade so nearly completely cut off that in many places people gave up the use of currency altogether and reverted to a barter system. It took well into the 1840s for the economy to begin to recover.

Imagine a political office so naturally corrupt that crook after crook used it to cash in illegally. Take the Collectorship of the Port of New York, for example. Samuel Swartwout and Jesse Hoyt certainly did.

Swartwout was a Democratic political fixer with a power base in New York and a history of dabbling in political intrigue. One of Aaron Burr's lieutenants in his failed “Western Conspiracy,” Swartwout served as a runner between Burr and James Wilkinson in their talks for putting Burr's plot into action. Wilkinson eventually arrested Swartwout and held him without trial on a U.S. warship for his trouble. Eventually cleared, Swartwout even shared Burr's European exile for a while.

By the time Andrew Jackson ran for the presidency in 1828 he needed fixers like Swartwout. Swartwout helped get out the New York vote, and Jackson rewarded him with the plum political post of customs collector for the Port of New York.

Swartwout embezzled just over $2 million (worth close to ten times that in today's currency) during his eight years in office. But Swartwout was really only the tip of the bastardberg. Corrupt officials riddled the Customs Office; everyone seemed to be shaving a bit off the top of duties owed to the U.S. government.

When Swartwout's political enemy Martin Van Buren succeeded Jackson as president in 1837, he did not renew Swartwout's appointment. Van Buren was also a New Yorker and had heard the rumors about corruption in the state Customs Office. Swartwout immediately sailed for England, ostensibly to inspect some property he owned there. But he forgot to close out his Customs Office expense account before he did so, and investigators found evidence of impropriety while he was gone.

Swartwout stayed in England, no doubt buoyed by the $2 million he'd actually taken with him. When the story broke in the papers, Swartwout became known as the “Prince of Thieves.” But that's only part of the story.

Jesse Hoyt, a New York lawyer and Van Buren's political ally, was appointed in order to oversee cleanup of the whole business, but he didn't bother to sack everyone working in the office and start over. (Sound familiar? Think about it: how many people at Goldman Sachs lost their jobs after the bailout last year?) So when Hoyt's term came to an end in 1841, a Congressional committee appointed by President John Tyler scrutinized Hoyt and his employees for “financial improprieties.” They quickly found that Hoyt's (and Swartwout's before him) head cashier, a fellow named Ogden, had been skimming for the better part of a decade.

In one of history's rich (read “sickening”) political ironies, Congress was miffed that Tyler had neglected to get their approval for the committee investigating graft in Hoyt's office. More pissed off than logical, Congressional leaders tabled any resolutions intended to come out of the committee's findings, keeping Hoyt from being punished. Upon hearing this, Swartwout managed to convince federal prosecutors that the money he had supposedly stolen was actually taken by Ogden. Swartwout forfeited some of his New York property (for tax purposes) in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be prosecuted for any wrongdoing; he returned to New York later that same year. Swartwout died in New York City in 1856, never having spent a day in jail or paid back any of the money he actually stole. As for Hoyt, aside from being removed from office by Van Buren before the end of his term, he suffered no further reprimand, was not even charged with a crime, and died wealthy in New York City in 1885.

Bastards.

In 1836 presidential candidate Martin Van Buren of New York needed a military hero to help balance the party ticket in the national elections. Richard Johnson was just the man for the job. The celebrated veteran of the War of 1812 had represented Kentucky in both the House and the Senate and was rumored to have killed the great Shawnee Indian chief Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813.

He also kept a slave as his common-law wife.

Johnson even brought his own ready-made slogan with him to the Van Buren campaign: “Rumsey Dumsey, Rumsey Dumsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.” Outgoing President Andrew Jackson supported Van Buren's pick mostly because Johnson wasn't William C. Rives, Van Buren's preferred choice for a running mate whom Jackson loathed.

But Johnson had his own baggage. He openly carried on a relationship with a slave woman named Julia Chinn, whom he had inherited from his father. Chinn was an
octoroon
(a person with one grandparent who had been black) and could easily pass for white, but she remained Johnson's property until her death during a cholera outbreak in 1833. In all respects (save granting her freedom) Johnson treated Chinn as his common-law wife, and they had two daughters together.

While Johnson's constituents didn't seem to mind his relationship with Chinn at first, his Senate career lasted only a single term largely as a result of it. And when he was elected vice president by the Senate in 1836, it was by an incredibly narrow, partisan margin. When prodded about Chinn, Johnson alluded to other politicians' alleged (or in Jefferson's case, recently proven) relationships with one or more of their slaves: “Unlike Jefferson, Clay, Poindexter and others, I married my wife under the eyes of God, and apparently He has found no objections.”

Such high-sounding words notwithstanding, Johnson never stopped being and thinking like a Kentucky slave-owner.

After Chinn died Johnson took up with another of his slaves. When that woman left him because she had fallen in love with another man, Johnson had her tracked down and returned to him. After he sold the woman at auction, he pursued a relationship with her sister!

Now
that
is a bastard.

After his election as vice president Johnson's mental and physical health began to suffer, and he became the laughing stock of the nation's capitol. In time he became such a liability that Van Buren passed him over when choosing his running mate in 1840.

Johnson was in and out of the Kentucky State House for the next decade, returning to office one last time in November 1850. By this time he was literally a dead man walking. Johnson's state attracted the notice of the
Louisville Daily Journal
: