U.S. Presidents & Presidency: Van Buren

This article is part of the Slavery in the President’s Neighborhood initiative and covers the enslaved household of President Martin Van Buren.

Martin Van Buren said that the two happiest days of his life were his entrance into the office of President and his surrender of the office. While his political opponents were glad to see him go—they nicknamed him “Martin Van Ruin”—many Americans were not. Even though he lost the 1840 presidential election, Van Buren received 40,000 more votes than he had in his 1836 victory. In subsequent years, historians have come to regard Van Buren as integral to the development of the American political system.

Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States (1837-1841), after serving as the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, both under President Andrew Jackson. While the country was prosperous when the “Little Magician” was elected, less than three months later the financial panic of 1837 punctured the prosperity.

A Credo Reference landing page on Martin Van Buren. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.

The Martin Van Buren Papers, one of twenty-three presidential collections in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, contains more than 6,000 items dating from 1787 to circa 1910. The bulk of the material dates from the 1820s, when Van Buren (1782-1862) was a U.S. senator from New York, through his service as secretary of state and vice president in the Andrew Jackson administrations (1829-1837), to his own presidency (1837-1841) and through the decade thereafter when he made unsuccessful bids to return to the presidency with the Democratic and Free Soil parties. Included are correspondence, autobiographical materials, notes and other writings, drafts of messages to Congress in 1837 and 1838, and other speeches, legal and estate records, miscellany, and family items.

A selective edition of the papers of Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), eighth President of the United States (1837–1841). A founder of the Democratic Party, he served as Governor of New York, Secretary of State, and Vice President. Van Buren won the 1836 presidential election and served one term. He lost his 1840 reelection bid to Whig Party nominee William Henry Harrison due in part to the poor economic conditions of the Panic of 1837. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an important anti-slavery leader and led the Free Soil ticket in the 1848 presidential election. His papers include general correspondence and miscellaneous documents that shed useful light on the evolution of the American political system and the operation of government at various levels during the antebellum period.