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• Born: 5 December 1782
• Birthplace: Kinderhook, New York
• Died: 24 June 1862
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1837-1841

Martin Van Buren was a U.S. Senator and governor of New York, and one of the founders of the Democratic Party. Under Andrew Jackson, Van Buren served as Secretary of State, Minister to England and Vice President. Shortly after Van Buren took office a financial panic in 1837 forced several bank closures. Van Buren ran for re-election in 1840, but was defeated by the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison.

The eighth president of the U.S., Van Buren was nicknamed "The Little Magician" for his political skills (and small frame)... He was a widower with four sons when he moved into the White House... He was also called "Old Kinderhook" after his hometown, and that nickname is supposed to have given rise to the term "OK"... Washington Irving wrote most of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" while staying at Van Buren's home Lindenwald in Kinderhook.

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.

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).

For more information on Martin Van Buren, visit Britannica.com.

• 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

• Donald B. Cole, “Martin Van Buren and the American Political System” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
• John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
• Major Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984)

(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.

1782–1862, 8th President of the United States (1837–41), b. Kinderhook, Columbia co., N.Y.

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).

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:

"It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't."