Martin Van Buren

• Vice President to:       General Andrew Jackson - Democrat from North Carolina.
  
  
• Dates Served: Van Buren served as Vice President from 1833 - 1837, then as President till 1841.
  
• Political Party: Van Buren was a Democrat, from New York.
  
• Born: 1782.
  
• Died: 1862, at the age of 80.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1832 campaign was:
  
  
  • Henry Clay - National Republican - Kentucky Senator
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1832:
  
  
  • The main issue this year was the effect of Jackson's war on the banks. Clay tried to portray Jackson as a ruthless despot who was out of control, nicknaming him "King Andrew the First". But the Democrats portrayed Clay as a morally bankrupt gambler and also enjoyed a wide base of support from people who supported Jackson's anti-bank policies as a battle of the common man against the priveleges of the elite. Jackson won handsomly.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Martin Van Buren:
  
  
  • Martin Van Buren had the biggest side-burns of any Vice President.
    
    
  • Van Buren was a third-cousin, twice-removed, of Teddy Roosevelt.
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: Van Buren was not particularly religious, though he regularly attended an Episcopal church in Washington. He rarely quoted the Bible in any of his speeches.
    
    
  • Martin was the first Vice President born under the United States flag. Previous Vice Presidents were born prior to independence.
    
    
  • A lawyer, he began his political career by serving in the New York State Senate from 1812 - 1820.
    
    
  • He served in the US Senate, representing New York from 1821 - 1828.
    
    
  • He ran for Governor of New York in 1828 and served in the post for 2 months, from January to March of 1829, then resigned to serve as Secretary of State under President Jackson. He ran for Governor solely as a stunt to increase support for Jackson in his state, not in order to actually serve as Governor.
    
    
  • He was chosen by President Jackson to serve as Vice President under his second term, after John C. Calhoun had resigned his seat. Jackson viewed Van Buren as his heir successor. Jackson had even considered resigning his seat as President in order to allow Van Buren to assume the presidency without the rigors of a presidential campaign. Van Buren convinced him to change his mind, arguing that doing so would only hurt his ambitions.
    
    
  • Van Buren was uneasy about Jackson's War on Banks, but publically supported all of his decisions. Few people under Jackson dared to contradict him.
    
    
  • Van Buren often carried loaded pistols while presiding over the Senate. Never trust a Senator.
    
    
  • John Quincy Adams didn't like Van Buren. He once said, "Van Buren is a demagogue with a tincture of aristocracy - an amalgamated metal of lead and copper". Ouch.
    
    
  • During his term as Vice President under Jackson, a new party was formed, the Whigs. Their main objective at first was adamant opposition to Jackson, whom they called "King Andrew the First". They adopted the name "Whig" after a party of the same name in England who had fought against illegitimate royalist rule during the 18th century. (Even though the word "Whig" originally referred to horse thieves in Scotland).
    
    
  • Marty ran for president in 1836 and won, becoming the first Vice President until George Bush to move directly from the little chair to the big chair as a result of an election. (John Adams and Jefferson don't count since back then VPs got the job as a result of loosing the race for President, and Nixon doesn't count because his terms as VP and President was separated by two different presidents). While other Vice Presidents were later to assume the Presidency as a result of assassination, none would serve as a result of any campaign while still serving as VP. Van Buren, however, was not a popular president.
    
    
  • The phrase "OK" most likely was born during Marty's campaign for re-election as President in 1840. That same year a Democratic organization was formed in New York that called itself the "O.K Club", which was named for Marty's home town of Kinderhook, New York, which was commonly referred to as Old Kinderhook. The letters "OK" began appearing as slogans, written on posters and appearing in newspapers, with no one explaining what it stood for. Some claimed it stood for the old English words "Ole Kurrek", meaning "all correct", while opposition supporters made up meanings for it, like "Out of Kash". The campaign was effective enough that one newspaper preferred reversing the letters to "KO", since the campaign was said to be like a knock-out punch. Van Buren lost the election but the campaign slogan lived on and is now used in countless languages around the world.
    
    
  • Van Buren ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination again in 1844, but lost the nomination to Polk. After Polk won the presidency, he turned down Polk's offer to serve as US Minister to Britain.
    
    
  • Van Buren didn't get payed during his term as President. After he finished his 4 years he took his salary for each year in one combined payment, of $100,000.
    
    
  • He again ran for president in 1848, on the Free Soil Party, given his recent conversion to anti-Slavery politics. He lost, but he gained enough support to draw votes away from the Democratic nominee, Lewis Cass, giving the victory to the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor.
    
    
  • Van Buren later served as a member of the Electoral College for New York, casting Electoral votes for Franklin Pierce in 1852, and later again for James Buchanan in 1856.
    
    
  • Van Buren wrote his autobiography towards the end of his life but, for some reason, didn't mention his wife in the book at all.
    

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• Sandpaper is invented, on June 14th, 1834 by Isaac Fischer Jr. in Springfield, Vermont.
  
  
• Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Empire, on August 1, 1834. This was 30 years prior to the United States getting around to the same thing. The British "Emancipation Bill "stated that all slaves in their colonies (most of them being in their Caribbean colonies) over the age of 6 were to be converted to "apprentice" status for 6 years, before being fully freed. All those under the age of 6 were freed immediately. Far from involving a full-scale war, as would be the case in the US, the British government payed out 20 million pounds to slave-owners as compensation for their lost free labor.
  
  Many former slave-owners discovered a new source of cheap labor in Britain's other major colony at the time, India. Many laborers were transported from India to the Caribbean, where they were payed very low wages to work on plantations, which is why some Caribbean islands, such as Trinidad, have such a large number of Indian communities today. (Historical fact for the day)
  
  
• The Trail of Tears, in 1838 - 1839. Jackson didn't have much respect for any Native American Indians and considered them a nuisance. In Georgia there were efforts underway to try and evict the entire Cherokee Nation from the whole state and force them to settle on land west of the Mississippi river, now the state of Oklahoma. Under the authority of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Jackson sent troops to Georgia to assist in the effort to remove every Cherokee from the state. In 1832 the Supreme Court decided that the Cherokee Nation was a distinct political entity within the borders of Georgia and was immune from that state's laws, but neither Georgia nor the president heeded the decision and blatantly disregarded it, continuing the evict every Cherokee man, woman, and child from the state. This process took almost 2 years and involved around 15,000 Cherokees, resulting in the death of one out of every four Indians involved. The Cherokees have referred to this forced march ever since as the Trail of Tears.
  
  
• Attempted assassination of President Jackson, on January 30, 1835. While leaving the Capitol building, Jackson was approached by a man named Richard Lawrence, age 32. Standing only a few feet in front of the President he fired a gun at him at point-blank range, only to have the gun fail. Jackson lunged at him and tried to hit him with his cane, but Lawrence dodged him and pulled out a second gun from his coat and fired again, only to have that gun fail as well. He was subdued before he could try a third time. At his trial, police inspected his guns and found them to be in perfect working order, finding that both guns had fired properly but that the gunpowder in both guns had failed to ignite for unknown reasons. They figured that the odds of two properly loaded derringer pistols failing simultaneously was about 1 in 125,000. Jackson was one lucky president. Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was confined to a mental institution until his death 26 years later.
  
  
• Arkansas was admitted to the Union in 1836, and Michigan in 1837.