Martin Van Buren (1782 - 1862) was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. [1] A founder of the Democratic Party and one of the first American politicians to treat party organisation as a craft, he served as a senator, governor of New York, secretary of state and vice president before reaching the presidency. His term was consumed by a severe economic depression, and he was defeated after one term. [2]
Early life and education
Van Buren was born on 5 December 1782 in Kinderhook, New York, to a family of Dutch descent who kept a tavern and a small farm. Dutch was spoken at home, and he remains the only president for whom English was a second language. [1] Born after the Declaration of Independence, he was also the first president to be a citizen of the United States from birth rather than a British subject.
He received a limited formal education at a village school and, from the age of fourteen, read law in a local office rather than attending college. Admitted to the bar in 1803, he built a successful legal practice and entered New York politics, serving as a state senator and as state attorney general.
Rise in national politics
Van Buren assembled the political network known as the Albany Regency, which dominated New York state politics and demonstrated the power of disciplined party organisation. [3] Elected to the United States Senate in 1821, he worked to rebuild a national coalition on Jeffersonian lines and became the leading strategist behind Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns.
He was elected governor of New York in 1828 but resigned within months to become Jackson's secretary of state. He resigned from that post in 1831 to help the president resolve a cabinet crisis, and his nomination as minister to Britain was blocked by the Senate. Jackson responded by making him his running mate, and Van Buren served as vice president from 1833 to 1837, then won the presidency in his own right in 1836. [2]
Presidency
Within weeks of Van Buren's inauguration the Panic of 1837 struck, beginning a depression that lasted for most of his term. He blamed excessive credit and speculation, and rather than reverse Jackson's hard-money policies he proposed an Independent Treasury to hold federal funds separately from private banks. Congress finally approved the scheme in 1840. [3]
He continued the forced removal of Native American nations begun under Jackson, including the deportation of the Cherokee along the route known as the Trail of Tears, and prosecuted the costly Second Seminole War in Florida. [1] Seeking to avoid a sectional crisis over slavery, he opposed the annexation of the Republic of Texas. He also worked to defuse border tensions with Britain over Canada and Maine. In 1840 he was decisively defeated by the Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.
Later life
Van Buren sought the Democratic nomination again in 1844 but lost it after opposing Texas annexation. In 1848 he ran for president as the candidate of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories; he won no electoral votes but drew enough support in New York to affect the outcome. [2] He retired to his estate, Lindenwald, at Kinderhook, wrote on party politics, supported the Union at the outbreak of the Civil War, and died there on 24 July 1862.
Legacy
Van Buren's most durable contribution was organisational: he argued that permanent, disciplined political parties were a legitimate and necessary feature of a republic, an idea that shaped American politics far beyond his own career. [3] His presidency itself is generally judged by historians as unsuccessful, hampered by economic collapse and by his continuation of removal policies against Native American nations.
