Only about
5 feet, 6 inches tall, but trim and erect, Martin
Van Buren dressed fastidiously. His impeccable
appearance belied his amiability--and his humble
background. Of Dutch descent, he was born in 1782,
the son of a tavernkeeper and farmer, in Kinderhook,
New York.
As a young
lawyer he became involved in New York politics. As
leader of the "Albany Regency," an
effective New York political organization, he
shrewdly dispensed public offices and bounty in a
fashion calculated to bring votes. Yet he faithfully
fulfilled official duties, and in 1821 was elected
to the United States Senate.
By 1827 he
had emerged as the principal northern leader for
Andrew Jackson. President Jackson rewarded Van Buren
by appointing him Secretary of State. As the Cabinet
Members appointed at John C. Calhoun's
recommendation began to demonstrate only secondary
loyalty to Jackson, Van Buren emerged as the
President's most trusted adviser. Jackson referred
to him as, "a true man with no guile."
The rift in
the Cabinet became serious because of Jackson's
differences with Calhoun, a Presidential aspirant.
Van Buren suggested a way out of an eventual
impasse: he and Secretary of War Eaton resigned, so
that Calhoun men would also resign. Jackson
appointed a new Cabinet, and sought again to reward
Van Buren by appointing him Minister to Great
Britain. Vice President Calhoun, as President of the
Senate, cast the deciding vote against the
appointment--and made a martyr of Van Buren.
The
"Little Magician" was elected Vice
President on the Jacksonian ticket in 1832, and won
the Presidency in 1836.
Van Buren
devoted his Inaugural Address to a discourse upon
the American experiment as an example to the rest of
the world. The country was prosperous, but less than
three months later the panic of 1837 punctured the
prosperity.
Basically
the trouble was the 19th-century cyclical economy of
"boom and bust," which was following its
regular pattern, but Jackson's financial measures
contributed to the crash. His destruction of the
Second Bank of the United States had removed
restrictions upon the inflationary practices of some
state banks; wild speculation in lands, based on
easy bank credit, had swept the West. To end this
speculation, Jackson in 1836 had issued a Specie
Circular requiring that lands be purchased with hard
money--gold or silver.
In 1837 the
panic began. Hundreds of banks and businesses
failed. Thousands lost their lands. For about five
years the United States was wracked by the worst
depression thus far in its history.
Programs
applied decades later to alleviate economic crisis
eluded both Van Buren and his opponents. Van Buren's
remedy--continuing Jackson's deflationary
policies--only deepened and prolonged the
depression.
Declaring
that the panic was due to recklessness in business
and overexpansion of credit, Van Buren devoted
himself to maintaining the solvency of the national
Government. He opposed not only the creation of a
new Bank of the United States but also the placing
of Government funds in state banks. He fought for
the establishment of an independent treasury system
to handle Government transactions. As for Federal
aid to internal improvements, he cut off
expenditures so completely that the Government even
sold the tools it had used on public works.
Inclined
more and more to oppose the expansion of slavery,
Van Buren blocked the annexation of Texas because it
assuredly would add to slave territory--and it might
bring war with Mexico.
Defeated by
the Whigs in 1840 for reelection, he was an
unsuccessful candidate for President on the Free
Soil ticket in 1848. He died in 1862.
Martin
Van Buren