Vice-Presidency
In August 1831 Jackson gave Van Buren a recess appointment as the ambassador to Britain, and Van Buren arrived in London in September. He was cordially received, but in February 1832 he learned his nomination had been rejected by the Senate.[109] The rejection of Van Buren was essentially the work of Calhoun. When the vote on Van Buren's nomination was taken, enough pro-Calhoun Jacksonians refrained from voting to produce a tie, thus giving Calhoun, in his role as presiding officer, the ability to cast the deciding vote against Van Buren. Calhoun was elated, convinced that he had ended Van Buren's career. "It will kill him dead, sir, kill him dead. He will never kick, sir, never kick", Calhoun exclaimed to a friend. Calhoun's move backfired; by making Van Buren appear the victim of petty politics, Calhoun raised Van Buren in both Jackson's regard and the esteem of others in the Democratic Party. Far from ending Van Buren's career, Calhoun's action gave greater impetus to Van Buren's candidacy for vice president.
Seeking to ensure that Van Buren would replace Calhoun as his running mate, Jackson had arranged for a national convention of his supporters. The May 1832 Democratic National Convention subsequently nominated Van Buren to serve as the party's vice presidential nominee. Van Buren won the nomination over Philip Pendleton Barbour (Calhoun's favored candidate) and Richard Mentor Johnson due to the support of Jackson and the strength of the Albany Regency. Upon Van Buren's return from Europe in July 1832, he became involved in the Bank War, a struggle over the re-charter of the Second Bank of the United States. Van Buren had long been distrustful of banks, and he viewed the Bank as an extension of the Hamiltonian economic program, so he supported Jackson's veto of the Bank's re-charter. Henry Clay, the presidential nominee of the National Republicans, made the struggle over the Bank the key issue of the presidential election of 1832. The Jackson-Van Buren ticket won the 1832 election by a landslide, and Van Buren took office as Vice President in March 1833. During the Nullification Crisis, Van Buren counseled Jackson to pursue a policy of conciliation with South Carolina leaders. He played little direct role in the passage of the Tariff of 1833, but he quietly hoped that the tariff would help bring an end to the Nullification Crisis, which it did.
During his time in office Van Buren continued to be one of Jackson's primary advisors and confidants, and accompanied Jackson on his tour of the northeastern United States in 1833. Jackson's struggle with the Second Bank of the United States continued, as the president sought to remove federal funds from the Bank. Though at first apprehensive of the removal due to congressional support for the Bank, Van Buren eventually came to support Jackson's policy. He also helped undermine a fledgling alliance between Jackson and Daniel Webster, a senator from Massachusetts who could have potentially threatened Van Buren's project to create two parties separated by policy differences rather than personalities. During Jackson's second term, the president's supporters began to refer to themselves as members of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, those opposed to Jackson, including Clay's National Republicans, followers of Calhoun, and many members of the Anti-Masonic Party, coalesced into the Whig Party.
Presidential election of 1836
President Andrew Jackson declined to seek another term in the 1836 presidential election, but he remained influential within the Democratic Party as his second term came to an end. Jackson was determined to help elect Van Buren in 1836 so that the latter could continue the Jackson administration's policies. With Jackson's support, Van Buren won the presidential nomination of the 1835 Democratic National Convention without opposition. Two names were put forward for the vice-presidential nomination: Representative Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, and former senator William Cabell Rives of Virginia. Southern Democrats, and Van Buren himself, strongly preferred Rives. Jackson, on the other hand, strongly preferred Johnson. Again, Jackson's considerable influence prevailed, and Johnson received the required two-thirds vote after New York Senator Silas Wright prevailed upon non-delegate Edward Rucker to cast the 15 votes of the absent Tennessee delegation in Johnson's favor.
Van Buren's competitors in the election of 1836 were three members of the Whig Party, which remained a loose coalition bound by mutual opposition to Jackson's anti-bank policies. Lacking the party unity or organizational strength to field a single ticket or define a single platform, the Whigs ran several regional candidates in hopes of sending the election to the House of Representatives. The three candidates were: Hugh Lawson Whiteof Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and William Henry Harrison of Indiana. Besides endorsing internal improvements and a national bank, the Whigs tried to tie Democrats to abolitionism and sectional tension, and attacked Jackson for "acts of aggression and usurpation of power".
Southern voters represented the biggest potential impediment in Van Buren's quest for the presidency, as many were suspicious of a Northern president. Van Buren moved to obtain the support of southerners by assuring them that he opposed abolitionism and supported the maintaining of slavery in states where it had already existed. To demonstrate consistency regarding his opinions on slavery, Van Buren cast the tie-breaking Senate vote in favor of a bill to subject abolitionist mail to state laws, thus ensuring that its circulation would be prohibited in the South. Van Buren personally considered slavery to be immoral, but sanctioned by the Constitution.
Van Buren won the election with 764,198 popular votes, 50.9 percent of the total, and 170 electoral votes. Harrison led the Whigs with 73 electoral votes, White receiving 26, and Webster 14. Willie Person Mangumreceived South Carolina's 11 electoral votes, which were awarded by the state legislature. Van Buren's victory resulted from a combination of his own attractive political and personal qualities, Jackson's popularity and endorsement, the organizational power of the Democratic party, and the inability of the Whig Party to muster an effective candidate and campaign. Virginia's presidential electors voted for Van Buren for president but William Smith for vice president, leaving Johnson one electoral vote short of election. In accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, the Senate elected Johnson vice president in a contingent vote.
The election of 1836 marked an important turning point in American political history because of the part it played in establishing the Second Party System. In the early 1830s the political party structure was still changing, rapidly, and factional and personal leaders continued to play a major role in politics. By the end of the campaign of 1836, the new party system was almost complete, as nearly every faction had been absorbed by either the Democrats or the Whigs.
Presidency 1837–1841
Van Buren 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 F. Butler and Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson hailed from mid-Atlantic states, Secretary of State John Forsyth 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 own power. But 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 advisers 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" of his counselors. Such detachment allowed the president to reserve judgment and protect his own prerogative for making final decisions. These open discussions gave cabinet members a sense of participation and made them feel part of a functioning entity, rather than isolated executive agents. Van Buren was closely involved in foreign affairs and matters pertaining to the Treasury Department, but the Post Office, War Department, and Navy Department all had possessed high levels of autonomy under their respective cabinet secretaries.
Panic of 1837
When Van Buren entered office, the nation's economic health had taken a turn for the worse and the prosperity of the early 1830s was over. Two months into his presidency, on May 10, 1837, some important state banks in New York, running out of hard currency reserves, refused to convert paper money into gold or silver, and other financial institutions throughout the nation quickly followed suit. This financial crisis would become known as the Panic of 1837. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression in which banks failed and unemployment reached record highs.
Van Buren blamed the economic collapse on greedy American and foreign business and financial institutions, as well as the over-extension of credit by U.S. banks. Whig leaders in Congress blamed the Democrats, along with Andrew Jackson's economic policies, specifically his 1836 Specie Circular. Cries of "rescind the circular!" went up and former President Jackson sent word to Van Buren asking him not to rescind the order, believing that it had to be given enough time to work. Others, like Nicholas Biddle, believed that Jackson's dismantling of the Bank of the United States was directly responsible for the irresponsible creation of paper money by the state banks which had precipitated this panic. The Panic of 1837 loomed large over the 1838 election cycle, as the carryover effects of the economic downturn led to Whig gains in both the U.S. House and Senate. The state elections in 1837 and 1838 were also disastrous for the Democrats, and the partial economic recovery in 1838 was offset by a second commercial crisis later that year.
To deal with the crisis, the Whigs proposed rechartering the national bank. The president countered by proposing the establishment of an independent U.S. treasury, which he contended would take the politics out of the nation's money supply. Under the plan, the government would hold all of its money balances in the form of gold or silver, and would be restricted from printing paper money at will; both measures were designed to prevent inflation. The plan would permanently separate the government from private banks by storing government funds in government vaults rather than in private banks. Van Buren announced his proposal in September 1837, but an alliance of conservative Democrats and Whigs prevented it from becoming law until 1840. As the debate continued, conservative Democrats like Rives defected to the Whig Party, which itself grew more unified in its opposition to Van Buren. The Whigs would abolish the Independent Treasury system in 1841, but it was revived in 1846 and remained in place until the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. More important for Van Buren's immediate future, the depression would be a major issue in his upcoming re-election campaign.
Indian removal
Federal policy under Jackson had sought to move Indian tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the federal government negotiated 19 treaties with Indian tribes in the course of Van Buren's presidency. The 1835 Treaty of New Echota signed by government officials and representatives of the Cherokee tribe had established terms under which the Cherokees ceded their territory in the southeast and agreed to move west to Oklahoma. In 1838, Van Buren directed General Winfield Scott to forcibly move all those who had not yet complied with the treaty. The Cherokees were herded violently into internment camps where they were kept for the summer of 1838. The actual transportation west was delayed by intense heat and drought, but they were forcibly marched west in the fall. Under the treaty, the government was supposed to provide wagons, rations, and even medical doctors, but it did not. Some 20,000 people were relocated against their will during the Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears.
The administration also contended with the Seminole Indians, who engaged the army in a prolonged conflict known as the Second Seminole War. Prior to leaving office, Jackson put General Thomas Jesup in command of all military troops in Florida to force Seminole emigration to the West. Forts were established throughout the Indian territory, and mobile columns of soldiers scoured the countryside, and many Seminoles offered to surrender, including Chief Micanopy. The Seminoles slowly gathered for emigration near Tampa, but in June they fled the detention camps, driven off by disease and the presence of slave catchers who were hoping to capture Black Seminoles. In December 1837, Jesup began a massive offensive, culminating in the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, and the war entered a new phase of attrition. During this time, the government realized that it would be almost impossible to drive the remaining Seminoles from Florida, so Van Buren sent General Alexander Macomb to negotiate peace with them. It was the only time that an Indian tribe had forced the government to sue for peace. An agreement was reached allowing the Seminoles to remain in southwest Florida, but the peace was shattered in July 1839 and was not restored until 1842, after Van Buren had left office.
White House hostess
For the first half of his presidency, Van Buren, who had been a widower for many years, did not have a specific person fill the role of White House hostess at administration social events, but tried to assume such duties himself. When his eldest son Abraham Van Burenmarried Angelica Singleton in 1838, he quickly acted to install his daughter-in-law as his hostess. She solicited the advice of her distant relative, Dolley Madison, who had moved back to Washington after her husband's death, and soon the president's parties livened up. After the 1839 New Year's Eve reception, the Boston Post raved: "[Angelica Van Buren is a] lady of rare accomplishments, very modest yet perfectly easy and graceful in her manners and free and vivacious in her conversation ... universally admired."
As the nation endured a deep economic depression, Angelica Van Buren's receiving style at receptions was influenced by her heavy reading on European court life (and her naive delight in being received as the Queen of the United States when she visited the royal courts of England and France after her marriage). Newspaper coverage of this, in addition to the claim that she intended to re-landscape the White House grounds to resemble the royal gardens of Europe, was used in a political attack on her father-in-law by a Pennsylvania Whig Congressman Charles Ogle. He referred obliquely to her as part of the presidential "household" in his famous Gold Spoon Oration. The attack was delivered in Congress and the depiction of the President as living a royal lifestyle was a primary factor in his defeat for re-election.
Presidential election of 1840
Van Buren easily won renomination for a second term at the 1840 Democratic National Convention, but he and his party faced a difficult election in 1840. Van Buren's presidency had been a difficult affair, with the U.S. economy mired in a severe downturn, and other divisive issues, such as slavery, western expansion, and tensions with Great Britain, providing opportunities for Van Buren's political opponents—including some of his fellow Democrats—to criticize his actions. Although Van Buren's renomination was never in doubt, Democratic strategists began to question the wisdom of keeping Johnson on the ticket. Even former president Jackson conceded that Johnson was a liability and insisted on former House Speaker James K. Polk of Tennessee as Van Buren's new running mate. Van Buren was reluctant to drop Johnson, who was popular with workers and radicals in the North and added military experience to the ticket, which might prove important against likely Whig nominee William Henry Harrison. Rather than re-nominating Johnson, the Democratic convention decided to allow state Democratic Party leaders to select the vice-presidential candidates for their states.
Van Buren hoped that the Whigs would nominate Clay for president, which would allow Van Buren to cast the 1840 campaign as a clash between Van Buren's Independent Treasury system and Clay's support for a national bank. However, rather than nominating longtime party spokesmen like Clay and Daniel Webster, the 1839 Whig National Convention nominated Harrison, who had served in various governmental positions during his career and had earned notoriety for his military leadership in the Battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812. Whig leaders like William Seward and Thaddeus Stevens believed that Harrison's war record would effectively counter the popular appeals of the Democratic Party. For vice president, the Whigs nominated former Senator John Tyler of Virginia. Clay was deeply disappointed by his defeat at the convention, but he nonetheless threw his support behind Harrison.
Whigs presented Harrison as the antithesis of the president, whom they derided as ineffective, corrupt, and effete. Whigs also depicted Van Buren as an aristocrat living in high style in the White House, while they used images of Harrison in a log cabin sipping cider to convince voters that he was a man of the people. They threw such jabs as "Van, Van, is a used-up man" and "Martin Van Ruin" and ridiculed him in newspapers and cartoons. Issues of policy were not absent from the campaign; the Whigs derided the alleged executive overreaches of Jackson and Van Buren, while also calling for a national bank and higher tariffs. Democrats attempted to campaign on the Independent Treasury system, but the onset of deflation undercut these arguments. The enthusiasm for "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", coupled with the country's severe economic crisis, made it impossible for Van Buren to win a second term. Harrison won by a popular vote of 1,275,612 to 1,130,033, and an electoral vote margin of 234 to 60. An astonishing 80 percent of eligible voters went to the polls on election day. Van Buren actually won more votes than he had in 1836, but the Whig success in attracting new voters more than canceled out Democratic gains. Additionally, Whigs won majorities for the first time in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Later life
Election of 1844
On the expiration of his term, Van Buren returned to his estate of Lindenwald in Kinderhook. He continued to closely watch political developments, including the battle between Clay and President Tyler, who took office after Harrison's death in April 1841. Though undecided on another presidential run, Van Buren made several moves calculated to maintain his support, including a trip to the South and West during which he met with Jackson, former Speaker of the House James K. Polk, and others. President Tyler, James Buchanan, Levi Woodbury, and others loomed as potential challengers for the 1844 Democratic nomination, but it was Calhoun who posed the most formidable obstacle. Van Buren remained silent on major public issues like the debate over the Tariff of 1842, hoping to arrange for the appearance of a draft movement for his presidential candidacy. President John Tyler made annexation of Texas his chief foreign policy goal, and many Democrats, particularly in the South, were anxious to quickly complete the annexation of Texas. After an explosion on the USS Princeton killed Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur in February 1844, Tyler brought Calhoun into his cabinet to direct foreign affairs. Like Tyler, Calhoun pursued the annexation of Texas to upend the presidential race and to extend slavery into new territories. Shortly after taking office, Secretary of State Calhoun negotiated an annexation treaty between the United States and Texas. Van Buren had hoped he would not have to take a public stand on annexation, but as the Texas question came to dominate U.S. politics, he decided to make his views on the issue public. Though he believed that his public acceptance of annexation would likely help him win the 1844 Democratic nomination, Van Buren thought that annexation would inevitably lead to an unjust war with Mexico. In a public letter published shortly after Henry Clay also announced his opposition to the annexation treaty, Van Buren articulated his views on the Texas question.
Van Buren's opposition to immediate annexation cost him the support of many pro-slavery Democrats. In the weeks before the 1844 Democratic National Convention, Van Buren's supporters anticipated that he would win a majority of the delegates on the first presidential ballot, but would not be able to win the support of the required two-thirds of delegates. Van Buren's supporters attempted to prevent the adoption of the two-thirds rule, but several Northern delegates joined with Southern delegates in implementing the two-thirds rule for the 1844 convention. Van Buren won 146 of the 266 votes on the first presidential ballot, with only 12 of his votes coming from Southern states. Senator Lewis Cass won much of the remaining vote, and he gradually picked on support on subsequent ballots until the convention adjourned for the day. When the convention reconvened and held another ballot, James K. Polk, who shared many of Van Buren's views but favored immediate annexation, won 44 votes. On the ninth and final ballot of the convention, Van Buren's supporters withdrew the former president's name from consideration, and Polk won the Democratic presidential nomination. Though angered at the way in which his opponents had denied him in the Democratic nomination, Van Buren endorsed Polk in the interest of party unity. He also convinced Silas Wright to run for Governor of New York so that the popular Wright could help boost Polk in the state. Wright narrowly defeated Whig nominee Millard Fillmore in the 1844 gubernatorial election, and Wright's victory in the state helped Polk narrowly defeat Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election.
After taking office, Polk used George Bancroft as an intermediary to offer Van Buren the ambassadorship to London. Van Buren declined, partly because he was upset with Polk over the treatment the Van Buren delegates had received at the 1844 convention, and partly because he was content in his retirement. Polk also consulted Van Buren in the formation of his cabinet, but offended Van Buren by offering to appoint a New Yorker only to the lesser post of Secretary of War, rather than as Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury. Other patronage decisions also angered Van Buren and Wright, and they became permanently alienated from the Polk administration.
Election of 1848
Though he had previously helped maintain a balance between the Barnburners and Hunkers, the two factions of the New York Democratic Party, Van Buren moved closer to the Barnburners after the 1844 Democratic National Convention. The split in the state party worsened during the Polk's presidency, as his administration lavished patronage on the Hunkers. In his retirement, Van Buren also grew increasingly opposed to slavery.[230] As the Mexican–American War brought the debate over slavery in the territories to the forefront of American politics, Van Buren published an anti-slavery manifesto. In it, he refuted the notion that Congress did not have the power to regulate slavery in the territories, and argued the Founding Fathers had favored the eventual abolition of the slavery. The document, which became known as the "Barnburner Manifesto", was edited at Van Buren's request by John Van Buren and Samuel Tilden, both of whom were leaders of the Barnburner faction. After the publication of the Barnburner Manifesto, many Barnburners urged the former president to seek his old office in the 1848 presidential election. The 1848 Democratic National Convention seated competing Barnburner and Hunker delegations from New York, but the Barnburners walked out of the convention when Lewis Cass, who opposed congressional regulation of slavery in the territories, was nominated on the fourth ballot.
In response to the nomination of Cass, the Barnburners began to organize as a third party. At a convention held in June 1848 in Utica, New York, the Barnburners nominated Van Buren for president. Though reluctant to bolt from the Democratic Party, Van Buren accepted the nomination to show the power of the anti-slavery movement, help defeat Cass, and weaken the Hunkers. At a convention held in Buffalo, New York in August 1848, a group of anti-slavery Democrats, Whigs, and members of the abolitionist Liberty Party met in the first national convention of what became known as the Free Soil Party. The convention unanimously nominated Van Buren, and chose Charles Francis Adams as Van Buren's running mate. In a public message accepting the nomination, Van Buren gave his full support for the Wilmot Proviso, a proposed law that would ban slavery in all territories acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. Van Buren won no electoral votes, but finished second to Whig nominee Zachary Taylor in New York, taking enough votes from Cass to give the state—and perhaps the election—to Taylor.[238] Nationwide, Van Buren won 10.1% of the popular vote, the strongest showing by a third party presidential nominee up to that point in U.S. history.
Retirement
Van Buren never sought public office again after the 1848 election, but he continued to closely follow national politics. He was deeply troubled by the stirrings of secessionism in the South and welcomed the Compromise of 1850 as a necessary conciliatory measure despite his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Van Buren also worked on a history of American political parties and embarked on a tour of Europe, becoming the first former American head of state to visit Britain. Though still concerned about slavery, Van Buren and his followers returned to the Democratic fold, partly out of the fear that a continuing Democratic split would help the Whig Party. He also attempted to reconcile the Barnburners and the Hunkers, with mixed results. Van Buren supported Franklin Pierce for president in 1852, and James Buchanan in 1856, and Stephen A. Douglas in 1860. Van Buren viewed the fledgling Know Nothing movement with contempt and felt that the anti-slavery Republican Party exacerbated sectional tensions. He considered Chief Justice Roger Taney's decision in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford to be a "grievous mistake" since it overturned the Missouri Compromise. He believed that the Buchanan administration handled the issue of Bleeding Kansas poorly, and saw the Lecompton Constitution as a sop to Southern extremists.
After the election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of several Southern states in 1860, Van Buren unsuccessfully sought to call a constitutional convention. In April 1861, former President Pierce wrote to the other living former Presidents and asked them to consider meeting to use their stature and influence to propose a negotiated end to the war. Pierce asked Van Buren to use his role as the senior living ex-president to issue a formal call. Van Buren's reply suggested that Buchanan should be the one to call the meeting, since he was the former president who had served most recently, or that Pierce should issue the call himself if he strongly believed in the merit of his proposal. Neither Buchanan nor Pierce was willing to make Pierce's proposal public, and nothing more resulted from it. Once the American Civil War began, Van Buren made public his support for the Union.[250]
Van Buren's health began to fail later in 1861, and he was bedridden with pneumonia during the fall and winter of 1861–62. He died of bronchial asthma and heart failure at his Lindenwald estate at 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862, at the age of 79. He is buried in the Kinderhook Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, as are his wife Hannah, his parents, and his son Martin Van Buren Jr.
