Buren, Martin Van (1782-1862)

Martin Van Buren (1782-1862)

Sources

Eighth president of the united states

Youth. Martin Van Buren was born at Kinderhook in upstate New York on 5 December 1782. His parents were farmers and had inherited a tavern, and apparently were modest slaveholders as well. Van Buren attended local village schools and became a law clerk at fourteen. By 1800 he had acquired a reputation as an advocate. He was licensed to practice law in 1803 and became a partner of his half brother. In 1807 he married Hannah Hoes, who gave birth to four sons before she died in 1819.

“Little Magician.” Standing five feet six inches, not really short for that era, Van Buren always dressed immaculately, and his cheerful disposition and wit won him many jurors and voters. In 1813 he was elected state senator, defeating Edward Livingston on an antibank platform. In 1815 he became a regent for the State University of New York, was reelected in 1816, and became state attorney general in the same year. He and Governor DeWitt Clinton parted over canal policy, and Clinton removed Van Buren from the attorney generalship. Angered by Clinton’s “federalism,” Van Buren led a movement for a new state constitution, especially seeking to lessen the arbitrary power of state judges. In an age when most Americans rejected political parties, or factions, as corrupt sources of influence, Van Buren believed that parties could actually serve the people by organizing them to resist infringements on their liberty. Called the “Little Magician” for his ability to organize and motivate, Van Buren challenged established politicians on a variety of issues and sought to expand democracy by creating a party that would protect the people’s interests. His faction, known as the “Bucktails,” or the “Albany Regency,” helped to elect him to the United States Senate in 1821. In Washington, Van Buren became a staunch supporter of William Crawford. In the Senate Van Buren voted for the tariffs of 1824 and 1828 and against internal improvements.

Loyal Jacksonian. Van Buren became New York’s governor in 1828 but immediately resigned to become Andrew Jackson’s secretary of state. He wisely avoided Vice President John C. Calhoun’s intrigue against Peggy Eaton, and as secretary of state he resolved issues involving West Indies trade with Britain and French compensation to Americans for Napoleonic-era commercial injuries. At Jackson’s request he resigned so that Jackson could form a new cabinet without Calhoun’s influence. Nominated as minister to Great Britain, he was defeated by Calhoun’s tie-breaking vote. He avoided politics during the remainder of Jackson’s first term and traveled with his son, john, in Europe, returning home as the Democrats considered their vice-presidential choice in 1832. Van Buren was elected and became Jackson’s likely successor in 1836.

“Van Ruin.” In 1836 Van Buren faced a divided Whig opposition that ran sectional candidates Hugh Lawson White, Daniel Webster, and the Anti-Masonic nominee, William Henry Harrison. The split allowed Van Buren to win by a large margin. Almost immediately Van Buren faced a severe economic depression, the Panic of 1837. Opposed to banks and paper money, Van Buren had little to offer in the way of policies to alleviate the panic. Blaming banks for the depression, he sought an independent treasury that would allow the government to control monetary policy. Whigs and probank Democrats, however, blocked his efforts, and the public increasingly blamed Jackson and “Van Ruin” for the lasting crisis. In the 1840 election the Whig Party avoided the issues and promoted their candidate, Harrison, as a man of the people born in a log cabin and raised on hard cider, while calling Van Buren a “used up man” and an extravagant spender. Van Buren lost in a landslide.

Free-Soil. In 1844 the Democrats rallied again to Van Buren, but his opposition to the annexation of Texas (which he feared would lead to a war with Mexico) hurt his popularity. When the Democratic convention met in Baltimore, proannexation forces secured a two-thirds rule that made it possible for committed Van Buren delegates to vote for him on the first ballot, then desert him when it became obvious he could not win. James Polk was eventually nominated, and Van Buren, believing that southerners had sabotaged him, went on to lead the free-soil Democrats, or “Barnburners,” out of the party in 1846. It was ironic that in 1848 Van Buren became the presidential candidate of the sectional Free Soil Party, considering that in the 1820s he had helped re-create the old Jeffersonian alliance between New York and Virginia to quell sectionalism. Van Buren accepted the Compromise of 1850 and returned to the Democratic, fold by 1852, but he was disappointed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and by James Buchanan’s prosouthern policies. He died on 24 July 1862, after suffering for months with severe asthma.

Sources

James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970);

John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York. Oxford University Press, 1983).