Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York, to Abraham Van Buren and Maria Hoes Van Alen.⁠[1]

He was of Dutch descent, and his father was a tavernkeeper and farmer. Born six years after the colonies declared independence, he was the first president born in the United States.⁠[2][3]

Van Buren attended village schools, became a law clerk at 14, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1803.⁠[4]

In 1807 Van Buren married his cousin Hannah Hoes.⁠[1]

Van Buren was surrogate of Columbia County from 1808 to 1813, a member of the New York State Senate from 1813 to 1820 and New York attorney general from 1816 to 1819.⁠[4]

He led the Albany Regency, a New York political organization that dispensed offices and favors to win votes; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry regards it as an early prototype of the modern political machine.⁠[2][1]

Van Buren was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821 and served until 1828; by 1827 he had emerged as the principal northern leader for Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson (1767–1845) was an American soldier and politician who served as President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, after leading U.S. forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.Open the full entry.⁠[2][4]

He was the main organizer of the Democratic Party coalition that helped elect Jackson.⁠[3]

In 1829 Van Buren served as governor of New York, resigning to join Jackson’s cabinet.⁠[4]

Van Buren was appointed secretary of state on March 6, 1829, entered duty on March 28 and served until March 23, 1831; he became President Jackson’s most trusted adviser.⁠[4][2]

Van Buren was commissioned envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom during a Senate recess on August 1, 1831, and presented his credentials on September 21; the Senate later rejected his nomination, with Vice President John C. Calhoun casting the deciding vote. He had his farewell audience on March 19, 1832.⁠[4][2]

In 1832 Van Buren was elected vice president as Andrew Jackson’s running mate, the ticket receiving 219 electoral votes; he served as vice president from 1833 to 1837.⁠[5][6]

During the 1836 campaign Van Buren promised to oppose congressional efforts to end slavery in the nation’s capital and to leave it alone where it existed.⁠[7]

Van Buren won 170 electoral votes and 764,176 popular votes (50.8 percent); among the Whigs, William Henry HarrisonWilliam Henry HarrisonWilliam Henry Harrison (1773–1841) was an American military officer and politician who served as governor of Indiana Territory, U.S. representative and U.S. senator before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841. He died on his 32nd day in office, the first president to die in office.Open the full entry received 73 electoral votes, Hugh Lawson White 26, Daniel Webster 14 and Willie Person Mangum the 11 votes of South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry’s legislature-chosen electors. A majority required 148 of 294 electoral votes.⁠[8][9]

Because no vice-presidential candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the Senate elected Richard M. Johnson vice president by 33 votes to 16 for Francis Granger.⁠[9]

Van Buren served as the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Less than three months after his inauguration the Panic of 1837 began, setting off the worst depression the country had seen to that time, a series of crises that lasted into the early 1840s.⁠[2][3][7]

Critics blamed the Bank War, but other causes included British banks limiting the money flowing into the United States and American banks calling in loans. Banks closed and depositors lost their money, and farmers who had bought land on credit lost their farms.⁠[7]

Van Buren declined to act on TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry’s request to join the United States; he was focused on the depression and worried that annexation would turn debate toward the westward expansion of slavery and might bring war with Mexico.⁠[7][2]

Van Buren called Congress into a special session that convened in September 1837. He proposed an independent treasury system that would hold federal funds outside both a national bank and the state banks; members of both parties opposed it, and Congress did not pass an Independent Treasury Act on his model until 1840.⁠[7][3]

Van Buren carried out the removal of the Cherokees, directed by General Winfield Scott, in which roughly 4,000 Cherokees died. In his December 1838 message to Congress he said the removal had had “the happiest effects” and had been carried out with “commendable energy and humanity.”⁠[7]

Most of the fighting in the Seminole War in FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, which began in 1835 and lasted until 1842, took place during Van Buren’s presidency.⁠[7]

In 1839 Van Buren bought a farm in Kinderhook that was in very poor condition, hired John Harder to live there and oversee it, and renamed it Lindenwald.⁠[10]

In January 1840 Van Buren issued an executive order returning the Africans of the Amistad to their enslavers; the survivors later won their freedom at the Supreme Court of the United States, after Van Buren had left office.⁠[7]

In the 1840 election William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren by 234 electoral votes to 60. By 1841 the Whigs held more than 40 more House seats and seven more Senate seats than the Democrats.⁠[1][7]

Before leaving office he ordered a 10-hour workday on federal public works.⁠[1]

After his defeat Van Buren returned to Kinderhook and farmed; within four years he had enlarged the farm to 220 acres, planting orchards, keeping a garden with a greenhouse, growing mainly grains and potatoes, raising some livestock and keeping 15 acres as a woodlot, and he relied mostly on hired labor and tenant farmers.⁠[10]

He employed a household staff of six, a chef, a coachman, a butler, a valet and two maids, paid monthly wages of $6 to $12 plus room and board.⁠[10]

In 1842 Van Buren began planning a campaign from Lindenwald, but his bid for the presidency in 1844 failed; his earlier decision on Texas hurt him in the 1844 campaign.⁠[10][7]

The Free Soil Party, formed by disaffected Democrats, antislavery Whigs and a splinter of the Liberty Party to oppose the extension of slavery, nominated Van Buren for president at its convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1848, with Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy AdamsJohn Quincy AdamsJohn Quincy Adams (1767–1848) was an American diplomat and politician who served as secretary of state from 1817 to 1825 and as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829, and afterwards sat in the House of Representatives until his death.Open the full entry, as its vice-presidential nominee.⁠[11]

In the election Zachary TaylorZachary TaylorZachary Taylor (1784–1850) was an American army general and politician who rose to fame through his victories in the Mexican-American War. He became the 12th president of the United States in March 1849 and died in office in July 1850, after about sixteen months.Open the full entry received 163 electoral votes and 1,360,099 popular votes and Lewis Cass 127 electoral votes and 1,220,544 popular votes; Van Buren won no electoral votes but received 291,501 popular votes, more than 10 percent, and finished second in three Northern states.⁠[11]

Van Buren was ill for long periods from 1860, and his condition worsened on July 15, 1862. He died at Lindenwald at about 2 a.m. on July 24, aged 79, with his three surviving sons, Abraham, John and Smith Thompson, at his side.⁠[12]

On learning of his death, President Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry placed all federal departments except the War and Navy Departments in mourning, with flags at half-mast; at Van Buren’s request there were no military honors and no tolling of bells.⁠[12]

Funeral services were held in the front hall of Lindenwald at noon on July 28, 1862, followed by services at the Dutch Reformed Church in Kinderhook, attended by New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan; at 3 p.m. the procession set out for the cemetery.⁠[12]

He is buried in the Kinderhook Reformed Church Cemetery in the same plot as his wife, Hannah, and his son Martin Van Buren Jr., beneath a granite obelisk about 15 feet tall.⁠[13]

Some 110 years after John Van Buren sold Lindenwald, the National Park Service acquired the estate, and it has managed the site since 1974.⁠[10]

Hannah Van Buren died in 1819, and Van Buren never remarried; the couple had four children.⁠[1]

His four sons worked for him in Washington and later lived with him or nearby in Kinderhook: Abraham and his wife, Angelica, lived in a cottage in Stuyvesant; John married Elizabeth Vanderpoel in June 1841; Smith married Ellen James in 1842; and Martin Jr. lived permanently at Lindenwald.⁠[10]

Friends called Van Buren the “Little Magician” and enemies the “Sly Fox”; critics also called him “The Fox of Kinderhook” for his backstage political skill. Andrew Jackson called him “a true man with no guile.”⁠[1][3]

The National Park Service’s National Register page judges that his continuation of Jackson’s deflationary policies deepened the depression and that his opposition to annexing Texas cost him support in the West and South.⁠[3]

Van Buren lived at Lindenwald for 21 years and called them “the last and happiest years of my life, a farmer in my native town.” A ceremony celebrating his life is held at his grave every December 5.⁠[3][13]

Martin Van Buren National Historic Site: Official website: https://home.nps.gov/mava/index.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[14]