Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren (born Maarten Van Buren, December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. Van Buren co-founded the Democratic Party with Andrew Jackson and became Jackson's vice president from 1833 to 1837. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York, where most residents were of Dutch descent and spoke Dutch as their primary language. He is the only president to have spoken English as a second language. Van Buren entered politics as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, won a seat in the New York State Senate in 1813, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1821. As the leader of the Bucktails faction of the party, he established the political machine known as the Albany Regency. Van Buren ran successfully for governor of New York to support Andrew Jackson's candidacy in the 1828 presidential election but resigned shortly after Jackson was inaugurated so he could accept appointment as Jackson's secretary of state. In the cabinet, Van Buren was a key Jackson advisor and built the organizational structure for the coalescing Democratic Party. He ultimately resigned to help resolve the Petticoat affair and briefly served as ambassador to the United Kingdom. At Jackson's behest, the 1832 Democratic National Convention nominated Van Buren for vice president, and he took office after the Democratic ticket won the 1832 presidential election. With Jackson's strong support and the organizational strength of the Democratic Party, Van Buren successfully ran for president in the 1836 presidential election. However, his popularity soon eroded because of his response to the Panic of 1837, which centered on his Independent Treasury system, a plan under which the federal government of the United States would store its funds in vaults rather than in banks. More conservative Democrats and Whigs in Congress ultimately delayed Van Buren's plan from being implemented until 1840. His presidency was further marred by the costly Second Seminole War and his refusal to admit Texas to the Union as a slave state. In 1840, he lost his re-election bid to William Henry Harrison. While Van Buren is praised for anti-slavery stances, in historical rankings, historians and political scientists often rank him as an average or below-average U.S. president, due to his handling of the Panic of 1837. He was initially the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination again in 1844, but his continued opposition to the annexation of Texas angered Southern Democrats, leading to the nomination of James K. Polk. Van Buren grew increasingly opposed to slavery, and was the presidential nominee of the newly formed Free Soil Party in the 1848 United States presidential election, and his candidacy helped Whig nominee Zachary Taylor defeat Democrat Lewis Cass. Worried about sectional tensions, Van Buren returned to the Democratic Party after 1848 but was disappointed with the pro-southern presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. During the American Civil War, Van Buren was a War Democrat who supported the policies of President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. Van Buren died of asthma at his home in Kinderhook in 1862, aged 79. ### Early life Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York, His father, Abraham Van Buren, was a descendant of Cornelis Maessen, a native of Buurmalsen, Netherlands, who had emigrated to New Netherland in 1631 and purchased a plot of land on Manhattan Island. Van Buren was the first President born after the Declaration of Independence and the last born prior to British ratification of the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War. As a result, he was the last President to be born, (but not last to serve) a 'jus soli' British Subject by birth in one of the Thirteen Colonies. Abraham Van Buren had been a Patriot during the American Revolution, and he later joined the Democratic-Republican Party. Abraham owned an inn and tavern in Kinderhook and served as Kinderhook's town clerk for several years. In 1776, he married Maria Hoes (or Goes) Van Alen (1746–1818) in the town of Kinderhook, also of Dutch extraction and the widow of Johannes Van Alen (1744–c. 1773). She had three children from her first marriage, including future U.S. Representative James I. Van Alen. Her second marriage produced five children, of which Martin was the third. Van Buren received a basic education at the village schoolhouse, and briefly studied Latin at the Kinderhook Academy and at Washington Seminary in Claverack. He had entirely Dutch ancestry and was raised speaking primarily Dutch, but he learned English while attending school and is the only president of the United States whose first language was not English. Also during his childhood, Van Buren learned at his father's inn how to interact with people from varied ethnic, income, and societal groups, which he used to his advantage as a political organizer. Van Buren's formal education ended in 1796, when he began reading law at the office of Peter Silvester and his son Francis. Van Buren, at 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) tall, was small in stature, and affectionately nicknamed "Little Van". He was also called the "Red Fox" due to his "bushy reddish sideburns, striking forehead and prominent nose". When Van Buren began his legal studies he wore rough, homespun clothing, causing the Silvesters to admonish him to pay greater heed to his clothing and personal appearance as an aspiring lawyer. He accepted their advice, and subsequently emulated the Silvesters' clothing, appearance, bearing, and conduct. The lessons Van Buren learned from the Silvesters were reflected in his career as a lawyer and politician, in which Van Buren was known for his amiability and fastidious appearance. Despite Kinderhook's strong affiliation with the Federalist Party, of which the Silvesters were also strong supporters, Van Buren adopted his father's Democratic-Republican leanings. The Silvesters and Democratic-Republican political figure John Peter Van Ness suggested that Van Buren's political leanings constrained him to complete his education with a Democratic-Republican attorney, so Van Buren spent a final year of apprenticeship in the New York City office of John Van Ness's brother William P. Van Ness, a political lieutenant of Aaron Burr. Van Ness introduced Van Buren to the intricacies of New York state politics, and Van Buren observed Burr's battles for control of the state Democratic-Republican party against George Clinton and Robert R. Livingston. He returned to Kinderhook in 1803, after his admission to the New York bar. Van Buren married Hannah Hoes in Catskill, New York, on February 21, 1807, when he was 24 years old and she was 23. She was his childhood sweetheart and a daughter of his maternal first cousin, Johannes Dircksen Hoes. She grew up in Valatie, and like Van Buren, her home life was primarily Dutch as she spoke Dutch as her first language, and spoke English with a marked accent. The couple had six children, four of whom lived to adulthood: Abraham (1807–1873), unnamed daughter (stillborn around 1809), John (1810–1866), Martin Jr. (1812–1855), Winfield Scott (born and died in 1814), and Smith Thompson (1817–1876). Hannah contracted tuberculosis, and died in Kinderhook on February 5, 1819. Martin Van Buren never remarried. ### Presidency === Cabinet === Martin Van Buren was sworn in as the eighth President of the United States on March 4, 1837. He retained much of Jackson's cabinet and lower-level appointees, as he hoped that the retention of Jackson's appointees would stop Whig momentum in the South and restore confidence in the Democrats as a party of sectional unity. The cabinet holdovers represented the different regions of the country: Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury came from New England, Attorney General Benjamin Franklin Butler and Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson hailed from New York and New Jersey, respectively, Secretary of State John Forsyth of Georgia represented the South, and Postmaster General Amos Kendall of Kentucky represented the West. For the lone open position of Secretary of War, Van Buren first approached William Cabell Rives, who had sought the vice presidency in 1836. After Rives declined to join the cabinet, Van Buren appointed Joel Roberts Poinsett, a South Carolinian who had opposed secession during the Nullification Crisis. Van Buren's cabinet choices were criticized by Pennsylvanians such as James Buchanan, who argued that their state deserved a cabinet position as well as some Democrats who argued that Van Buren should have used his patronage powers to augment his power. However, Van Buren saw value in avoiding contentious patronage battles, and his decision to retain Jackson's cabinet made it clear that he intended to continue the policies of his predecessor. Additionally, Van Buren had helped select Jackson's cabinet appointees and enjoyed strong working relationships with them. Van Buren held regular formal cabinet meetings and discontinued the informal gatherings of advisors that had attracted so much attention during Jackson's presidency. He solicited advice from department heads, tolerated open and even frank exchanges between cabinet members, perceiving himself as "a mediator, and to some extent an umpire between the conflicting opinions"…