Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren (December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States (1837–1841). Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President (1833–1837) and the tenth secretary of state (1829–1831), both under Andrew Jackson.

Van Buren was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the first president not of British or Irish descent—his family was Dutch. He was the first president to have been born a United States citizen, since all of his predecessors were born British subjects before the American Revolution. He is the first president not to have spoken English as a first language, having spoken only Dutch growing up.

As Andrew Jackson's Secretary of State and then Vice President, Van Buren was a key figure in building the organizational structure for Jacksonian democracy, particularly in New York. As president, he did not want the United States to annex Texas, an act which John Tyler would achieve eight years after Van Buren's initial rejection. Between the bloodless Aroostook War and the Caroline Affair, relations with Britain and its colonies in Canada also proved to be strained.

His administration was largely characterized by the economic hardship of his time, the Panic of 1837. He was scapegoated for the depression and called "Martin Van Ruin" by political opponents. Van Buren was voted out of office after four years, losing to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. In the 1848 election Van Buren ran unsuccessfully for president on a third-party ticket, the Free Soil Party. Van Buren died fourteen years later at the age of seventy-nine.

Van Buren was the last Vice President to be elected directly to the presidency until George H. W. Bush in 1988.

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