Only 43 men have held the title of President of the United
Sates at the time of this writing, so naturally there are firsts in every
presidency. Martin Van Buren, I would argue, was the first pure politician to
rise to the presidency. Before assuming the presidency Van Buren served in the
Senate, as Governor of New York, Secretary of State, minister to the United
Kingdom, and Vice President. It isn’t the long list of offices that makes Van
Buren the first ‘pure politician’; Jefferson, Monroe, and Quincy Adams had
similar resumes; it was Van Buren’s work forming modern Democratic Party that
gives him that title.
Born about 100 miles north of New York City in the Hudson
River town of Kinderhook, Van Buren grew up in an isolated, Dutch village. Much
of Washington Irving’s writings are set in Van Buren’s New York. Like his
future mentor, Andrew Jackson, Van Buren’s life was marred by tragedy. Van
Buren’s mother, father, and wife all died over a three-year span leaving him
with four sons, aged two to eleven, to raise on his own.
Van Buren helped to build the Albany Regency, one of the
first political machines in the young republic. At a time when communication over
long distances was difficult the Regency crafted a system to maintain party
discipline wherein the governor and senators sent policy to the caucus in the
state legislature that informed the partisan press. Circuit judges also played
a roll in spreading the party line as they rode the circuit around New York.
The Regency began to give Americans a more positive image of political parties,
which were beginning to be seen as a force for good that facilitated political
engagement and curbed corruption.
As a luminary of the Regency, Van Buren worked to intertwine
the powerful northern and southern states of New York and Virginia. This
required a flexibility that would stay with him throughout his political life.
Van Buren’s flexibility is most notable in his support for slavery at a time
when New York’s abolitionist movement was swelling. Van Buren was of a class of
politicians who believed that maintaining the union justified the status quo on
slavery, a position he later abandoned when it suited him.
Van Buren’s presidency was unspectacular. He spent the
majority of his single term attempting to deal with the Panic of 1837, a
consequence of both European financial pressures and Andrew Jackson’s
heavy-handed economic intervention. Van Buren’s main objective was to secure an
independent treasury bill, reversing the policy of depositing federal funds
into state banks. Van Buren’s quest for an independent treasury served to split
the Democratic Party that he had worked so hard to build. When the bill passed,
three years into Van Buren’s term, it had little practical effect as it merely
legislated a practice that had been in effect for a year.
In his reelection campaign William Henry Harrison handily
defeated Van Buren. That Harrison excited the electorate with his log cabin
imagery and Tippecanoe slogans was evidenced by an increase in the popular vote
from 1836 to 1840 from 1.5 million to 2.4 million. Van Buren would again seek
the Democratic nomination in 1844 but lost to James Polk. In 1848, he ran as a
member of the Free Soil Party which opposed slavery, he failed to carry a
single state.
The career politician was often regarded as a shrewd
manipulator, nicknamed The Little Magician, Van Buren flip-flopped on a number
of issues including the Erie Canal (originally opposed), Jackson’s bank
modifications, and slavery. It was Van Buren’s work to form the Democratic
Party, and modern party structure in general, which is Van Buren’s lasting
legacy.