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Martin Van Buren |
Van Buren, Martin (1782-1862)8th President of the United States (1837-1841). Born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1782, Van Buren studied law and became active in Democratic Party politics in New York. He served in the New York Senate (1812-1816), as Attorney General (1816-1819), as U.S. Senator (1821-1828), and as governor of New York (1828-1829), from which office he resigned in to become Secretary of State (1829-1831) under President Andrew Jackson. He subsequently served as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain before being elected Vice President in 1832. In 1836, he was elected President of the United States. He was defeated for reelection by William Henry Harrison in 1840 but remained active in politics and was the Free Soil candidate for President in 1848.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Martin Van Buren |
Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), eighth president of the United States, has been called the first national politician. He built an alliance between the "plain Republicans of the North" and the planters of the South and then launched the first truly national party.
Martin Van Buren executed with distinction the duties of many of the highest offices of the nation, including that of president, but he was always regarded more as a politician than a statesman. Considered a shrewd manipulator, he was consistent in advocating the principles of Jeffersonian Republicanism as defined in the Jacksonian democracy.
Born on Dec. 5, 1782, in the village of Kinderhook, N.Y., Van Buren was the son of a farmer and tavern keeper who was active in Antifederalist politics. Martin worked on the farm and attended local schools. At the age of 14 he became a clerk in a law office in Kinderhook and then in an office in New York City. Beginning in 1803, he prospered in law practice in Kinderhook with his half brother. In 1807 he married Hannah Hoes, and they had four sons. His wife died in 1819, and he never remarried.
Political Career
Van Buren was elected to the New York Senate in 1813 and 2 years later became attorney general. By the early 1820s he was leader of the organization that controlled government in New York for many years. He advocated moderate reforms in extending democracy. In 1821 he supported the virtual elimination of the property qualification for white manhood suffrage, but also the provision by which only black Americans who possessed freeholds of the clear value of $150 could vote.
In 1821 Van Buren was elected to the U.S. Senate and became a leader there. He supported Andrew Jackson in 1828 and resigned the governorship of New York to become Jackson's secretary of state. In that office Van Buren reached agreement with Great Britain, opening up its West Indian possessions to American trade, and secured payment from France for commercial injuries during the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1831 Van Buren resigned his office to allow the President to reconstitute the Cabinet. He was named minister to Great Britain, but this was not confirmed by the Senate. In 1832 he was elected vice president, and during the following 4 years he supported Jackson in all of his battles. In 1836 he received his party's nomination for president and was elected easily.
The President
In his inaugural address Van Buren observed that he was the first president who had not lived through the revolutionary struggle that created the nation and that he could not "expect his countrymen to weigh my actions with the same kind and partial hand." They did not. He condemned abolitionist propaganda and spoke against the "slightest interference" with slavery "in the states where it exists." In rhetoric common during those years, he said that Americans were without parallel throughout the world "in all the attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people." Two months after his inauguration, however, a serious economic depression destroyed his popularity. He continued Jacksonian policies, trying to "mitigate the evils" which the banks produced and advocating an independent treasury for public funds, a measure enacted near the end of his term. In foreign affairs he had difficulty maintaining good relations with Great Britain because of the efforts of some Americans on the New York border to support the rebellion in Canada in 1837. He made no effort to annex Texas.
Van Buren was badly beaten in 1840 by the aging William Henry Harrison and retired to his farm at Kinderhook. Van Buren would undoubtedly have been the Democratic nominee in 1844 had not Texas become the dominant issue by that year. In the atmosphere of "manifest destiny" his views were not sufficiently expansionist, and although he had a majority of the votes at the party convention, he lacked the two-thirds required. The dark horse, James K. Polk, was nominated and elected, and he led the nation into aggressive war and territorial expansion.
Free Soil Party
Increasing Southern domination of the Democratic party drove Van Buren and his faction into opposition in 1848. In that year's election he was the candidate of the Free Soil party, opposing expansion of slavery. In New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire he received more votes than the Democratic candidate, but he carried no states and Zachary Taylor won the election for the Whigs.
Van Buren lost the support of the antislavery movement when he returned to the Democratic party in the 1850s. Without much enthusiasm he supported Franklin Pierce (1852), James Buchanan (1856), and Stephen A. Douglas (1860). But when the Civil War came, he supported Abraham Lincoln's government. Van Buren died on July 24, 1862.
Van Buren's remarkable political success was due to a combination of talents. He habitually thought in terms of political forces and was fertile in conceiving, and able in executing, plans to weaken the opposition and advance his own party. He wrote persuasively and was a good speaker. He was charming, cheerful, and always courteous and affable. Although an earnest advocate of his party's principles, he was essentially a moderate in government. On all the important issues of his time except the one which was most crucial, Van Buren played an important role; he vacillated on issues related to slavery and made no contribution toward resolving that problem.
Further Reading
Van Buren's Autobiography, edited by his sons, was republished in 1969. George Bancroft, historian and contemporary Democratic politician, wrote a laudatory life of Van Buren in the early 1840s that was published half a century later: Martin Van Buren to the End of His Public Career (1889). The best life is Edward M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren (1888; rev. ed. 1900), although written without some materials now available and occasionally dogmatic in its interpretations. There is no satisfactory modern biography.
An excellent scholarly monograph that critically assesses Van Buren's overall performance as president is James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841 (1970). Robert V. Remini, who wrote a good study of Van Buren's career during the 1820s - Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (1959) - is at work on a comprehensive biography. Van Buren's election to the presidency is detailed in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971).
Oxford Guide to the US Government:
Martin Van Buren, 8th President |
• Born: Dec. 5, 1782, Kinderhook, N.Y.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: elementary school; read law, 1796–1803
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: judge, Columbia County, N.Y., 1811–12; New York Senate, 1813–17; attorney general of New York, 1816–17; U.S. Senate, 1821–28; governor of New York, 1829; U.S. secretary of state, 1829–31; Vice President, 1833–37
• Elected President, 1836; served, 1837–41
• Died: July 24, 1862, Kinderhook, N.Y.
Born six years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Martin Van Buren was the first President who was born a citizen of the United States. (All prior Presidents had been born British subjects.) With Andrew Jackson, he founded the Democratic party and developed the ideas that led to the two-party system in the United States. His Presidency was a failure, in large measure because of monetary policies begun by his predecessor and continued in his own administration.
Van Buren was the son of a tavern keeper whose forebears had come from Holland 150 years before, and Dutch was still spoken in his home. He received no formal education after his local elementary school but read law for seven years in a lawyer's office and began practicing in 1803. Van Buren's wife died in 1819 after bearing four children; he never remarried. He was a successful lawyer, served as attorney general of New York State, and in 1821 he organized a convention to write a new constitution for New York. By the 1820s he was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court. But Van Buren was by instinct a politician whose canny maneuvers gave him the nickname Little Magician, and he was more interested in a political career than serving as a judge.
Van Buren's chief contribution to U.S. politics was the development of the two-party system. In his book Inquiry into the Origins and Development of Political Parties in the United States (1867), he argued that the public interest would be best served with two parties (rather than one or many): one would govern and the other would offer the voters an alternative. Prior to Van Buren's time, the Federalists did not believe there should be a Democratic-Republican party, and the Democratic-Republicans did all they could to bury the Federalists. The result was one-party government in the so-called Era of Good Feeling during James Monroe's Presidency. But Van Buren recognized that this was actually an “era of bad feelings” in which sectional animosities had replaced party competition. His goal was the re-creation of the old struggle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, with each party containing followers from all across the Union—and each acknowledging the legitimacy of the other.
Van Buren came to his understanding of two-party politics through his experience in New York. There he led a faction of the Democratic-Republicans who instituted the spoils system—giving government appointments to political allies—by removing a large number of opposition officeholders. After winning election to the U.S. Senate, Van Buren used his patronage powers to create and dominate the Albany Regency—a small group of politicians who organized a political machine and ran the state through the post—Civil War period.
As a U.S. senator, Van Buren renewed the alliance between Southern and New York Democratic-Republicans. He opposed the election of John Quincy Adams and the policies of his administration, especially any federal funding of internal improvements such as the Cumberland Road. He also opposed the extension of slavery into Florida. In 1828, while running for governor of New York, he strongly supported Andrew Jackson's second campaign for the White House. After Jackson won, Van Buren became his secretary of state in 1829, resigning the governorship of New York. He was successful in difficult diplomatic negotiations with France, Great Britain, and Turkey. Later, he was denied Senate confirmation to be minister to Great Britain by a single vote.
Between 1828 and 1832 Van Buren and Jackson created the Democratic party. Instead of trying for a single, all-embracing party, with no principles or program, they put together a party that was not all-inclusive. They opposed the national banking system and favored state banks, and they opposed national funding of internal improvements. Moreover, Van Buren pushed Jackson to institute New York's spoils system in the national government, which froze out many politicians. Jackson's opponents united in the 1830s to form the opposition Whig party. Through Van Buren's efforts, the first stable two-party system had been created.
In 1832 the first Democratic party convention nominated Van Buren to be Jackson's running mate. As Vice President, he served Jackson well as a political adviser and supported him loyally in the “bank wars.” In May 1835, with Jackson's endorsement, Van Buren won the Democratic nomination for the Presidency by a unanimous vote of the convention. In his Presidential campaign Van Buren pledged “to tread generally in the footsteps of President Jackson.” He reaffirmed Jackson's opposition to the Second Bank of the United States and pledged to uphold the rights of slave owners where slavery already existed. He won the election against four Whig regional candidates.
In one of his last major decisions Andrew Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which ordered that paper money not be accepted for payment in the sale of government lands. There was a run on specie (metal currency), and it flowed from the Eastern banks to the Western banks that needed it. Then the Treasury withdrew its surplus funds from state banks for distribution to state governments, which further reduced deposits of specie in the state banks, particularly large commercial banks in the Northeast. Soon these banks cut back on loans and extensions of credit needed for businesses all along the Eastern seaboard. In May 1837, two months after Van Buren's inauguration, the New York banks suspended payments of specie on demand to their depositors. Within a week banks across the nation followed suit.
Unfortunately for Van Buren, the Panic of 1837, the first serious economic setback the United States had experienced since 1789, destroyed whatever confidence the nation had in his leadership. Of 788 banks, 618 failed when depositors removed their funds. No one could obtain loans or credit, factories closed, and farms were foreclosed, leading to an economic depression. Van Buren refused to endorse a policy of easy money, and he opposed any expansion of credit by the national government. In his inaugural address, he said that “the less Government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity.” The government did intervene minimally to repair the immediate damage: it ended further distribution of surplus revenue from the Treasury and issued $10 million in new Treasury notes to be used to pay government bills and put new funds in circulation. Van Buren refused to spend money on public works to relieve the depression, claiming these expenditures were unconstitutional. His Treasury ran surpluses, which further deflated the currency and weakened the economy.
Van Buren proposed to sever all financial relationships between state banks and the Treasury. He proposed the establishment of an independent treasury system with “subtreasuries” in large cities into which national government funds would be deposited. This would replace Jackson's system in which “pet” banks, owned by state Democratic politicians, controlled federal funds and used them in speculative schemes that had undermined the banking system. The measure, however, would reduce the amount of money available for loans by banks and therefore would further contract the credit system. Whigs argued that the subtreasuries would only make the depression worse. After three years of trying, Van Buren finally won congressional passage of his measure with the argument that the government's funds would be safe only in the government's own bank vaults. Van Buren signed the bill on July 4, 1840, hailing it as the “Second Declaration of Independence.” Whigs vowed to make it a campaign issue in the next election.
Van Buren was controversial in handling sectional crises and foreign affairs. He vowed to veto any law changing the status of slavery in the nation's capital (which at that time was legal), leading John Quincy Adams to call him a “northern man with southern feelings.” He won over Northern Democrats to oppose the abolitionist cause. He got Southerners to delay their attempts to annex Texas after Texas requested it in 1837. Like the attempts of other Presidents to keep sectional peace, these efforts only delayed the inevitable conflict between North and South and lost him support in both regions.
In foreign affairs Van Buren kept the nation at peace and its borders secure. He prevented two crises with Great Britain from becoming wars. One involved aid by U.S. citizens to Canadians in rebellion against British rule; British forces sank the Caroline, a U.S. boat supplying the rebels. Van Buren issued a proclamation warning Americans not to violate neutrality laws.
The second issue involved the disputed boundary between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Timber poachers from New Brunswick crossed over into the disputed territory. The governor of Maine ordered troops to the area. Then British forces went on alert. Van Buren managed to work out a truce between the governors of Maine and New Brunswick, won a withdrawal of the militias, and laid the groundwork for a territorial compromise.
Van Buren continued Jackson's policy of removing Southern Indians to Oklahoma, supervising the transfer of 20,000 Cherokee in 1838. In Florida, he fought a long and bloody war against the Seminole Indians, leading to the removal of 3,500 of the 4,000 Indians and the capture of many runaway slaves who had taken refuge with them—all at the cost of 1,500 casualties to U.S. forces.
The hard economic times led to “Martin Van Ruin's” defeat in 1840 at the hands of the popular Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. After leaving the White House, Van Buren devoted his efforts to regaining the Presidency. He was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 1844, receiving more than half of the ballots cast but not the necessary two-thirds. He lost the nomination because his stand against the annexation of Texas eroded his support: he correctly foresaw that it would lead to war with Mexico. In 1848 he was nominated by the Free-Soil party, a coalition of New York abolitionists, “conscience” Whigs, and others opposed to the extension of slavery. Van Buren received no electoral college votes but won 10 percent of the popular vote, enough to defeat the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, and pave the way for Whig candidate Zachary Taylor to win. Thereafter Van Buren played no role in national politics.
See also Harrison, William Henry; Jackson, Andrew
Sources
Houghton Mifflin Companion to US History:
Van Buren, Martin |
(1782-1862), eighth president of the United States, vice president, U.S. senator, governor of New York. Hardworking, quick at collecting and absorbing facts, and a good judge of character, Martin Van Buren was in his early career an exceptionally able trial lawyer who gained a reputation for his political skills.
Van Buren at first supported Aaron Burr in his efforts to break the influence of the great families that had ruled New York for several generations. But soon discovering that Burr was doomed to defeat, he changed sides and allied himself with DeWitt Clinton, then the rising star in New York politics. Constantly on the move attending sessions of the various courts, Van Buren widened his acquaintances among lawyers and officials throughout the state and utilized this network to build a political organization. For many years known as the "Albany Regency," it dominated the politics of the state. Van
Buren's novel tactics, his patronage policies, and his understanding of communication and discipline anticipated modern political practices. As such, he was the principal architect of the second American party system.
Van Buren's rise in the political affairs of New York soon brought him into conflict with his erstwhile patron, DeWitt Clinton. Between 1812 and Clinton's death in 1828, the rivalry between the two was a major force in New York and national politics. After Van Buren consolidated his hold on the state's Republican party, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821 and reelected in 1827.
He supported William H. Crawford, James Monroe's secretary of the treasury, for president in the election of 1824. After Crawford was defeated in the House election of John Quincy Adams to the presidency, Van Buren switched to Andrew Jackson and helped secure his election in 1828. In an effort to improve his political image, Van Buren ran for and won election to the governorship of New York, but he served only four months in that post before resigning to become secretary of state. Through various maneuvers that included a cabinet reorganization, Van Buren resigned as secretary of state to become minister to Great Britain. When the Senate refused to confirm his appointment, he was nominated with Jackson's backing for the vice presidency and was elected in 1832.
After his election to the presidency four years later, he was faced almost immediately with a financial panic and depression. Van Buren did what he could within the limits of his laissez-faire philosophy to cope with the economic distress. His major remedy was the creation of an independent treasury system that divorced the federal government from the banking system. But this measure split what was now the Democratic party. Even in a political sense, he found it much easier to be elected president than to retain public confidence in his policies. Further depression, the political divisions, and a theatrical campaign put on by the newly created Whig party brought about his defeat in 1840.
He sought the nomination again in 1844, but was unable to overcome southern and expansionist opposition because of his stand against the immediate annexation of Texas. Van Buren once more entered the political arena briefly in 1848 as the candidate of the Free-Soil party. His willingness to head that ticket furthered the antislavery cause because of his national visibility and his political following in the key northern states.
Bibliography:
John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (1983); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1946).
Author:
John Niven
See also Albany Regency; Depressions; Elections: 1832 , 1836 , 1840; Free-Soil Party; Independent Treasury; Texas Revolution and Annexation.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Martin Van Buren |
Early Career
He was reared on his father's farm, was educated at local schools, and after reading law was admitted (1803) to the bar. He practiced law successfully and soon became active in politics. After he was (1808-13) surrogate of Columbia co., he served (1813-20) in the state senate and became prominent in the state Democratic party. While still a senator Van Buren was made state attorney general in 1815, but because of his mounting rivalry with De Witt Clinton, the governor of New York, he was removed from this post in 1819. Meanwhile he had helped to secure the election (1816) of Daniel D. Tompkins as Vice President.
Van Buren served (1821-28) in the U.S. Senate, where he firmly backed the tariffs of 1824 and 1828. His record there was inconsistent as to states' rights, slavery, and internal improvements; this wavering was later brought up against him by his political enemies. Van Buren was far more important as a political leader than as a legislator. He organized the closely knit political group known as the Albany Regency and was a leading supporter of William H. Crawford, who ran for President in 1824. After the election of John Quincy Adams, Van Buren gradually swung his power to the support of Andrew Jackson.
A Jacksonian Democrat
Elected (1828) governor of New York state, Van Buren resigned in 1829, after Jackson had become President, to become his Secretary of State. Probably the most influential of Jackson's advisers, Van Buren, although essentially opposed to the doctrine of nullification, did not at first take a conspicuous part in the rising hostilities between Vice President John C. Calhoun and the President. Van Buren further strengthened his position with Jackson by being courteous to Peggy Eaton (see O'Neill, Margaret). His resignation (1831) as Secretary of State brought about that of the other cabinet officers and enabled Jackson to eliminate the supporters of Calhoun from the cabinet. Jackson immediately appointed Van Buren minister to Great Britain, but the deciding vote of Calhoun in the Senate prevented him from being confirmed in the post.
Thoroughly in accord with Jackson's policies, Van Buren was nominated for Vice President by the Democratic party in 1832 and was elected to office along with President Jackson. It was largely through Jackson's influence that Van Buren was chosen as Democratic candidate for President in 1836. The Whig party was still in the formative stage, and there was no well-organized opposition; Van Buren, therefore, was easily swept into office.
Presidency
As President, Van Buren announced his intention of following Jackson's policies, but the Panic of 1837 and the hard times that followed brought Van Buren a great deal of unpopularity. To meet the economic crisis, Van Buren, wary of the existing banking system, backed after 1837 the Independent Treasury System. Not until 1840, however, did Congress pass measures establishing it. In foreign affairs, Van Buren attempted to conciliate differences with Great Britain arising out of the Caroline Affair and the Aroostook War.
Later Years
He was again the presidential candidate of the Democratic party in 1840, but he was defeated in the "log cabin and hard cider" campaign by William Henry Harrison. The Whigs unfairly painted Van Buren as a man of great wealth who was ignorant of, and disdainful toward, the common people. In 1844, Van Buren was the leading possibility as Democratic candidate for the presidency, but he flatly opposed the annexation of Texas because he felt it would provoke war with Mexico and because he opposed the extension of slavery. Although he held a majority in the nominating convention, he was unable (largely as a result of the efforts of Robert J. Walker) to obtain the two-thirds majority necessary to win the nomination. Van Buren, bitterly disappointed, saw James K. Polk elected President.
He remained prominent in Democratic party politics, and helped lead the Barnburners in their violent struggle with the Hunkers. In 1848 he was the presidential candidate of the newly organized Free-Soil party and managed to take enough New York votes away from the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, to aid Zachary Taylor, the Whig party candidate, in winning the election. He voted for the Democratic candidate in the elections of 1852, 1856, and 1860, but supported Abraham Lincoln during the secession crisis. An Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties of the United States (1867) was written by Van Buren, edited by one of his sons, and published posthumously.
Bibliography
See his autobiography (1920, repr. 1973); biography by T. Widmer (2005); R. V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (1959, repr. 1970); J. C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay (1970).
West's Encyclopedia of American Law:
Van Buren, Martin |
Prominent political leader, U.S. senator, secretary of state, vice president, and eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren led the nation during its first major economic crisis. The New York native built a career based on machine politics—the control of local political power by a well-disciplined organization. Van Buren held top positions in his home state before entering national politics, where his instinct for party building helped create the Democratic party in the 1820s. Elected vice president in 1832 and president in 1836, he sought to protect federal monetary reserves during the depression that began shortly after he took office.
Born in Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782, Van Buren was the third of five children born to Dutch working-class parents. He began to study law at the early age of fourteen and gained admission to the New York bar four years later in 1803. He was elected to the New York legislature in 1812 and continued to be reelected until 1820. From 1816 until 1819, he also served as the state attorney general.
Van Buren's political views came directly from Jeffersonian Republicanism. Like Thomas Jefferson, he believed in states' rights and opposed a strong federal government. During the early years of his career in New York, Van Buren controlled the so-called Albany Regency, a political machine that was very influential in state politics. Later, in the 1820s, he joined forces with Andrew Jackson and helped to forge the political alliances that would lead to the formation of the Democratic party.
As in state politics, Van Buren enjoyed steady success at the national level. He won election to the U.S. Senate in 1821 and retained his senatorial seat until 1828 when he became governor of New York. He resigned the office a mere twelve weeks later, however, to become secretary of state under President Jackson. His support of Jackson through the president's turbulent first administration paid off: in 1832 Jackson chose Van Buren as his vice presidential running mate over the incumbent John C. Calhoun, and the two were elected.
Van Buren's own election as president in 1836 was precipitated by crisis. Under the Jackson administration, land speculation had run rampant nationwide. When Congress failed to intervene, banks issued great numbers of loans without backing them up with security. The speculation continued until Jackson ordered the government to accept only gold or silver as payment on land. The result was the so-called Panic of 1837, a devastating financial crash that led to the first large-scale economic depression in U.S. history. By 1840 Van Buren had convinced Congress to pass the Independent Treasury Bill. It provided for federally controlled vaults to store all federal monies; transactions were to be conducted in hard currency. The independent treasury protected federal deposits until 1841, when it was abolished. President James K. Polk brought it back in 1846.
Van Buren sought reelection in 1840, running as the only presidential candidate without a vice presidential candidate in history. Defeated by William Henry Harrison, he attempted to gain the Democratic nomination again in 1844 but was unsuccessful. His popularity had deteriorated both because of the depression and because of his positions on other domestic issues. He opposed the annexation of Texas, which he feared would precipitate a war with Mexico, and an expensive war against Seminole Indians in Florida. He tried once more to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1848 but was defeated again. He died on July 24, 1862, in Kinderhook, New York.
Quotes By:
Martin Van Buren |
Quotes:
"It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't."
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Martin Van Buren |
| Martin Van Buren | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 8th President of the United States | |
| In office March 4, 1837 – March 4, 1841 |
|
| Vice President | Richard Johnson |
| Preceded by | Andrew Jackson |
| Succeeded by | William Henry Harrison |
| 8th Vice President of the United States | |
| In office March 4, 1833 – March 4, 1837 |
|
| President | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | John Calhoun |
| Succeeded by | Richard Johnson |
| United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom | |
| In office August 8, 1831 – April 4, 1832 |
|
| Nominated by | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | Louis McLane |
| Succeeded by | Aaron Vail (Acting) |
| 10th United States Secretary of State | |
| In office March 28, 1829 – May 23, 1831 |
|
| President | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | Henry Clay |
| Succeeded by | Edward Livingston |
| 9th Governor of New York | |
| In office January 1, 1829 – March 12, 1829 |
|
| Lieutenant | Enos T. Throop |
| Preceded by | Nathaniel Pitcher |
| Succeeded by | Enos T. Throop |
| United States Senator from New York |
|
| In office March 4, 1821 – December 20, 1828 |
|
| Preceded by | Nathan Sanford |
| Succeeded by | Charles E. Dudley |
| 14th Attorney General of New York | |
| In office February 17, 1815 – July 8, 1819 |
|
| Governor | Daniel D. Tompkins John Tayler DeWitt Clinton |
| Preceded by | Abraham Van Vechten |
| Succeeded by | Thomas Jackson Oakley |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 5, 1782 Kinderhook, New York, U.S. |
| Died | July 24, 1862 (aged 79) Kinderhook, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Free Soil (1848–1854) |
| Other political affiliations |
Democratic-Republican (Before 1825) Democratic (1828–1848) |
| Spouse(s) | Hannah Hoes (1807–1819) |
| Children | Abraham John Martin Smith |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Religion | Dutch Reformed[1] |
| Signature |  |
Martin Van Buren (Dutch: Maarten van Buren; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States (1837–1841). Before his presidency, he was the seventh Vice President (1833–1837) and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson (1829–1831).
Van Buren was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the first president not of British or Irish descent—his family was Dutch. He was the first president to be born an American citizen,[2] his predecessors having been born British subjects before the American Revolution[3]. He is also the only president not to have spoken English as his first language, having grown up speaking Dutch,[4] and the first president from New York.
As Andrew Jackson's Secretary of State and then Vice President, Van Buren was a key figure in building the organizational structure for Jacksonian democracy, particularly in New York State. As president, he did not want the United States to annex Texas, an act which John Tyler would achieve eight years after Van Buren's initial rejection. Between the bloodless Aroostook War and the Caroline Affair, relations with Britain and its colonies in Canada also proved to be strained.
His administration was largely characterized by the economic hardship of his time, the Panic of 1837. He was scapegoated for the depression and called "Martin Van Ruin" by his political opponents. Van Buren was voted out of office after four years, losing to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.
In 1848 Van Buren ran unsuccessfully for president on a third-party ticket, the Free Soil Party.
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Martin Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Albany, New York. His father Abraham Van Buren (1737–1817) was a farmer, the owner of six slaves[5], and a tavern-keeper in Kinderhook. Abraham Van Buren supported the American Revolution and later the Jeffersonian Republicans. Martin Van Buren's mother was Maria Van Alen (née Hoes) Van Buren (1747–1818).[6]
Van Buren was the first president born a citizen of the United States, as all previous presidents were born before the American Revolution. His great-great-great-grandfather Cornelis Maessen van Buren had come to the New World in 1631 from the small city of Buren, Dutch Republic, in present day Netherlands. Van Buren grew up in a Dutch-speaking community. His native language was Dutch, and he was the only President who spoke English as a second language.[7]
Van Buren received a basic education at a poorly lit schoolhouse in his native village and later studied Latin briefly at the Kinderhook Academy and at Washington Seminary in Claverack.[8] He excelled in composition and speaking. His formal education ended before he reached 14, when he began studying Law at the office of Francis Sylvester, a prominent Federalist attorney in Kinderhook. After six years under Sylvester, he spent a final year of apprenticeship in the New York City office of William P. Van Ness, a political lieutenant of Aaron Burr. Van Buren was admitted to the bar in 1803.
Van Buren married Hannah Hoes, his childhood sweetheart and first cousin once removed, on February 21, 1807, in Catskill, New York. Like Van Buren, she was raised in a Dutch home and never lost her distinct Dutch accent. The couple had five sons and one daughter: Abraham (1807–1873) a graduate of West Point and career military officer; John (1810–1866), graduate of Yale and Attorney General of New York; Martin, Jr. (1812–1855), secretary to his father and editor of his father's papers until a premature death from tuberculosis; Winfield Scott (born and died in 1814); and Smith Thompson (1817–1876), an editor and special assistant to his father while president. Their daughter was stillborn. After 12 years of marriage, Hannah Van Buren contracted tuberculosis and died on February 5, 1819, at the age of 35.[9] Martin Van Buren never remarried.
Van Buren had been active in politics from at least the age of 17 when he attended a party convention in Troy, New York where he worked to secure the Congressional nomination for John Van Ness. However, once established in his practice, he became wealthy enough to increase his focus on politics. He was an early supporter of Aaron Burr. He allied himself with the Clintonian faction of the Democratic-Republican Party, and was surrogate of Columbia County, New York from 1808 until 1813, when he was removed.
Van Buren joined the opposition party in 1813, and was a member of the New York State Senate from 1812 to 1820, and New York Attorney General from 1815 to 1819. He was a presidential elector in 1820, voting for James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins.
At first he opposed Clinton's plan for the Erie Canal, but later supported it when the Bucktails were able to gain a majority in the Erie Canal Commission, and supported a bill that raised money for the canal through state bonds.
In 1817 Van Buren's connection with so-called "machine politics" started. He created the first political machine encompassing all of New York, the Bucktails, whose leaders later became known as the Albany Regency. The Bucktails became a successful movement that emphasized party loyalty; they captured and controlled many patronage posts throughout New York. Van Buren did not originate the system, but gained the nickname of "Little Magician" for the skill with which he exploited it. He also served as a member of the state constitutional convention, where he opposed the grant of universal suffrage and tried to maintain property requirements for voting.
He was the leading figure in the Albany Regency, a group of politicians who for more than a generation dominated much of the politics of New York and powerfully influenced the politics of the nation. The group, together with the political clubs such as Tammany Hall that were developing at the same time, played a major role in the development of the "spoils system", a recognized procedure in national, state and local affairs. He was the prime architect of the first nationwide political party: the Jacksonian Democrats. In Van Buren's own words, "Without strong national political organizations, there would be nothing to moderate the prejudices between free and slaveholding states."[10]
In February 1821, Martin Van Buren was elected a U.S. Senator from New York, defeating the incumbent Nathan Sanford who ran as the Clintonian candidate. Van Buren at first favored internal improvements, such as road repairs and canal creation, therefore proposing a constitutional amendment in 1824 to authorize such undertakings. The next year, however, he took ground against them. He voted for the tariff of 1824 then gradually abandoned the protectionist position, coming out for "tariffs for revenue only."
In the presidential election of 1824, Van Buren supported William H. Crawford and received the electoral vote of Georgia for vice-president, but he shrewdly kept out of the acrimonious controversy which followed the choice of John Quincy Adams as President. Van Buren had originally hoped to block Adams' victory by denying him the state of New York (the state was divided between Van Buren supporters who would vote for William H. Crawford and Adams men). However, Representative Stephen Van Rensselaer swung New York to Adams and thereby the 1824 Presidency. After the lost election, Van Buren dropped Crawford, and instead supported Andrew Jackson to be the next presidential candidate.
Always notably courteous in his treatment of opponents, he showed no bitterness toward either John Quincy Adams or Henry Clay, and he voted for Clay's confirmation as Secretary of State, notwithstanding Jackson's "corrupt bargain" charge. At the same time, he opposed the Adams-Clay plans for internal improvements and declined to support the proposal for a Panama Congress. As chair of the Judiciary Committee, he brought forward a number of measures for the improvement of judicial procedure and, in May 1826, joined with Senator Thomas Hart Benton in reporting on executive patronage. In the debate on the "tariff of abominations" in 1828, he took no part but voted for the measure in obedience to instructions from the New York legislature, an action which was cited against him as late as during the presidential campaign of 1844.
Van Buren was not an orator, but his more important speeches show careful preparation and his opinions carried weight; the oft-repeated charge that he refrained from declaring himself on crucial questions is hardly borne out by an examination of his senatorial career. In February 1827, he was re-elected to the Senate by a large majority. He became one of the recognized managers of the Jackson campaign, and his tour of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia in the spring of 1827 won support for Jackson from Crawford. Martin Van Buren sought to reorganize and unify "the old Republican party" behind Jackson.[11] Van Buren helped create a popular style of politicking that is often seen today. At the state level, Jackson's committee chairs would split up the responsibilities around the state and organize volunteers at the local level. "Hurra Boys" would plant hickory trees (in honor of Jackson's nickname, "Old Hickory") or hand out hickory sticks at rallies. Van Buren even had a New York journalist write a campaign piece portraying Jackson as a humble, pious man. "Organization is the secret of victory," an editor in the Adams camp wrote. He once said to a group of lobbyists the famous quote and "By the want of it we have been overthrown." In November 1828, Van Buren was elected Governor of New York for the term beginning on January 1, 1829, and resigned his seat in the Senate.
Martin Van Buren's tenure as New York governor is the second shortest on record. While his term was short, he did manage to pass the Bank Safety Fund Law (an early form of deposit insurance) through the Legislature.
On March 5, 1829, President Jackson appointed Van Buren Secretary of State, an office which probably had been assured to him before the election, and he resigned the governorship on March 12.[12] He was succeeded in the governorship by his Lieutenant Governor, Enos T. Throop, a member of the regency. As Secretary of State, Van Buren took care to keep on good terms with the Kitchen Cabinet, the group of politicians who acted as Jackson's advisers, and did not oppose Jackson in the matter of removals from office but was not himself an active "spoilsman."
He won the lasting regard of Jackson by his courtesies to Peggy Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John H. Eaton, with whom the wives of the cabinet officers led by Vice President Calhoun's wife, Floride Calhoun had refused to associate in the Petticoat Affair. Aside from the Petticoat Affair, he skillfully avoided entanglement in the Jackson-Calhoun imbroglio.
No diplomatic questions of the first magnitude arose during Van Buren's service as secretary, but the settlement of long-standing claims against France was prepared and trade with the British West Indies colonies was opened. In the controversy with the Bank of the United States, he sided with Jackson. After the breach between Jackson and Calhoun, Van Buren was clearly the most prominent candidate for the vice-presidency.
In December 1829, Jackson had already made known his wish that Van Buren receive the nomination.[13] In April 1831, Van Buren resigned as Secretary of State as a result of the Petticoat affair—though he did not leave office until June. Van Buren still played a part in the Kitchen Cabinet.[14] In August 1831 Van Buren was appointed Minister to the Court of St. James's (ambassador to Great Britain), and he arrived in London in September. He was cordially received, but in February, he learned that his nomination had been rejected by the Senate on January 25, 1832. The rejection, ostensibly attributed in large part to Van Buren's instructions to Louis McLane, the American minister to Britain, regarding the opening of the West Indies trade, in which reference had been made to the results of the election of 1828, was the work of Calhoun, the vice-president. When the vote was taken, enough of the majority refrained from voting to produce a tie and give Calhoun his longed-for "vengeance." No greater impetus than this could have been given to Van Buren's candidacy for the vice-presidency.
After a brief tour through Europe, Van Buren reached New York on July 5, 1832. The 1832 Democratic National Convention, the party's first and held in May, had nominated him for vice-president on the Jackson ticket, despite the strong opposition to him which existed in many states. Van Buren's platform included supporting the expansion of the naval system. His declarations during the campaign were vague regarding the tariff and unfavorable to the United States Bank and to nullification, but he had already somewhat placated the South by denying the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the slave states.
It took Van Buren and his partisan friends a decade and a half to form the Democratic Party; many elements, such as the national convention, were borrowed from other parties.[15]
In the election of 1832, the Jackson-Van Buren ticket won by a landslide (heavily due to the fact that Andrew Jackson was a popular war hero). When the election of 1836 came up, Jackson was determined to make Van Buren, his personal choice, President to continue his legacy. Martin Van Buren's only competitors in the 1836 election were the Whigs, who ran several regional candidates in hopes of sending the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would have one vote. William Henry Harrison hoped to receive the support of the Western voters, Daniel Webster had strength in New England, and Hugh Lawson White had support in the South. Van Buren was unanimously nominated by the 1835 Democratic National Convention at Baltimore. He expressed himself plainly on the questions of slavery and the bank at the same time voting, perhaps with a touch of bravado, for a bill offered in 1836 to subject abolition literature in the mails to the laws of the several states. Van Buren's presidential victory represented a broader victory for Jackson and the party. Van Buren entered the White House as a fifty-four year old widower with four sons. Martin Van Buren was the first real American politician and was also the first to use grassroots campaigning in his presidential campaign. He wanted to make a political party that united the plain republicans of the north and the planters of the south.
Twentieth Century etymologist Alan Walker Read has published research asserting the wide usage of the phrase "O.K." (okay) started during the presidential campaign and subsequent presidency of Martin Van Buren. The phrase, which had previously been limited to regional usage with various possible references, was co-opted and popularized to mean "Old Kinderhook", a reference to Van Buren based on the name of his home village in New York. [16]
Martin Van Buren announced his intention "to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor", and retained all but one of Jackson's cabinet. Van Buren had few economic tools to deal with the Panic of 1837. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and then-record-high unemployment levels. It was one of the worst economic crises in the nation's history. As a result Van Buren became very unpopular.[17]
Van Buren advocated lower tariffs and free trade, and by doing so maintained support of the South for the Democratic Party. He succeeded in setting up a system of bonds for the national debt. His party was so split that his 1837 proposal for an "Independent Treasury" system did not pass until 1840. It gave the Treasury control of all federal funds and had a legal tender clause that required (by 1843) all payments to be made in specie, but it further inflamed public opinion on both sides.
In a bold step, Van Buren reversed Andrew Jackson's policies and sought peace at home, as well as abroad. Instead of settling a financial dispute between American citizens and the Mexican government by force, Van Buren wanted to seek a diplomatic solution. In August 1837, Van Buren denied Texas' formal request to join the United States, again prioritizing sectional harmony over territorial expansion.
In the case of the ship Amistad, Van Buren sided with the Spanish Government to return the kidnapped slaves. Also, he oversaw the "Trail of Tears", which involved the expulsion of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina to the Oklahoma territory. To help secure Florida, Van Buren also pursued the Second Seminole War, which had begun while Jackson was in office. The war, which would prove the costliest of the Indian Wars, was highly unpopular in the free states, where it was seen as an attempt to expand slave territory. Fighting was not resolved until 1842, after Van Buren had left office.
In 1839, Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement visited Van Buren to plead for the U.S. to help roughly 20,000 Mormon settlers of Independence, Missouri, who were forced from the state during the 1838 Mormon War there. The Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs, had issued an executive order on October 27, 1838, known as the "Extermination Order". It authorized troops to use force against Mormons to "exterminate or drive [them] from the state."[18][19] In 1839, after moving to Illinois, Smith and his party appealed to members of Congress and to President Van Buren to intercede for the Mormons. According to Smith's grandnephew, Van Buren said to Smith, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri."[20][21]
Van Buren took the blame for hard times, as Whigs ridiculed him as Martin Van Ruin. Van Buren's rather elegant personal style was also an easy target for Whig attacks, such as the Gold Spoon Oration. State elections of 1837 and 1838 were disastrous for the Democrats, and the partial economic recovery in 1838 was offset by a second commercial crisis in that year. Nevertheless, Van Buren controlled his party and was unanimously renominated by the Democrats in 1840. The revolt against Democratic rule led to the election of William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate. He quoted, "As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it."
| The Van Buren Cabinet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Office | Name | Term |
| President | Martin Van Buren | 1837–1841 |
| Vice President | Richard Mentor Johnson | 1837–1841 |
| Secretary of State | John Forsyth | 1837–1841 |
| Secretary of Treasury | Levi Woodbury | 1837–1841 |
| Secretary of War | Joel R. Poinsett | 1837–1841 |
| Attorney General | Benjamin F. Butler | 1837–1838 |
| Felix Grundy | 1838–1840 | |
| Henry D. Gilpin | 1840–1841 | |
| Postmaster General | Amos Kendall | 1837–1840 |
| John M. Niles | 1840–1841 | |
| Secretary of the Navy | Mahlon Dickerson | 1837–1838 |
| James K. Paulding | 1838–1841 | |
Van Buren appointed two Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
Van Buren appointed eight other federal judges, all to United States district courts.
Though he did vote against the admission of Missouri as a slave state, and though he would be the nominated presidential candidate of the Free Soil Party, an anti-slavery political party, in 1848,[22] there was no ambiguity in his position on the abolition of slavery during his term of office.[23] Van Buren considered slavery morally wrong but sanctioned by the Constitution.[24] When it came to the issue of slavery in DC and slavery in the United States, he was against its abolition, and said so in his Inaugural Address in 1837: "I believed it a solemn duty fully to make known my sentiments in regard to it [slavery], and now, when every motive for misrepresentation has passed away, I trust that they will be candidly weighed and understood.
"I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists."[25] Slavery would be abolished in the District of Columbia on April 18, 1862.
On the expiration of his term, Van Buren returned to his estate, Lindenwald in Kinderhook, where he planned out his return to the White House. He seemed to have the advantage for the nomination in 1844; his famous letter of April 27, 1844, in which he frankly opposed the immediate annexation of Texas, though doubtlessly contributing greatly to his defeat, was not made public until he felt practically sure of the nomination. In the Democratic convention, though he had a majority of the votes, he did not have the two-thirds which the convention required, and after eight ballots his name was withdrawn. James K. Polk received the nomination instead.
In 1848, he was nominated by two minor parties, first by the "Barnburner" faction of the Democrats, then by the Free Soilers, with whom the "Barnburners" coalesced. He won no electoral votes, but took enough votes in New York to give the state—and perhaps the election—to Zachary Taylor. In the election of 1860, he voted for the fusion ticket in New York which was opposed to Abraham Lincoln, but he could not approve of President Buchanan's course in dealing with secession and eventually supported Lincoln.
Martin Van Buren then retired to his home in Kinderhook. After being bedridden with a case of pneumonia during the fall of 1861, Martin Van Buren died of bronchial asthma and heart failure at his Lindenwald estate in Kinderhook at 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862. He was 79 years old. He is buried in the Kinderhook Cemetery along with his wife Hannah, his parents, and his son Martin Van Buren, Jr.[26] A cenotaph to him is located near the parking lot of the Kinderhook Reformed Dutch Church. Van Buren outlived his four immediate successors as President (William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor).
Van Buren County, Michigan is named after him. It was so named in 1829 while Van Buren was Secretary of State. This was done in hopes of winning support in the Jackson administration for Michigan's bid to become a state. Van Buren County is one of several counties named after Jackson or members of his cabinet for this reason.
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