Martin van buren vice president

Van Buren won the presidency in against divided Whig opponents.

When was martin van buren born

Van Buren lost re-election in , and failed to win the Democratic nomination in Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the presidential election. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York , where most residents were of Dutch descent and spoke Dutch as their primary language; he is the only president to have spoken English as a second language.

As the leader of the Bucktails faction of the party, Van Buren established the political machine known as the Albany Regency. He ran successfully for governor of New York to support Andrew Jackson's candidacy in the presidential election but resigned shortly after Jackson was inaugurated so he could accept appointment as Jackson's secretary of state.

In the cabinet, Van Buren was a key Jackson advisor and built the organizational structure for the coalescing Democratic Party.

9th president

He ultimately resigned to help resolve the Petticoat affair and briefly served as ambassador to Great Britain. At Jackson's behest, the Democratic National Convention nominated Van Buren for vice president, and he took office after the Democratic ticket won the presidential election. With Jackson's strong support and the organizational strength of the Democratic Party, Van Buren successfully ran for president in the presidential election.

However, his popularity soon eroded because of his response to the Panic of , which centered on his Independent Treasury system, a plan under which the federal government of the United States would store its funds in vaults rather than in banks; more conservative Democrats and Whigs in Congress ultimately delayed his plan from being implemented until His presidency was further marred by the costly Second Seminole War and his refusal to admit Texas to the Union as a slave state.

While Van Buren is praised for anti-slavery stances, in historical rankings, historians and political scientists often rank Van Buren as an average or below-average U. Van Buren was initially the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination again in , but his continued opposition to the annexation of Texas angered Southern Democrats, leading to the nomination of James K.

Worried about sectional tensions, Van Buren returned to the Democratic Party after but was disappointed with the pro-southern presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.