Martin Van Buren

The first president born after the Declaration of Independence and thus as an American citizen, Martin Van Buren is a fascinating character. Perhaps, he is one of the most puzzling and intriguing figures in all of US history. Van Buren spent his earliest years assisting at his father's tavern, an establishment frequented attended by Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Despite the Van Buren family's connections to Hamilton, their son Martin would embody the polar opposite values of the Caribbean clerk who founded the Federalist Party. Following his work as a lawyer (which began when he won his first case at 15), Van Buren worked with Andrew Jackson to establish the Democratic Party in 1828. While Hamilton was a right-wing elitist who supported national banks, hierarchy, and industrialization, Van Buren and Jackson created the Democratic Party as a left-wing, populist refuge for the opponents of national banks, proponents of economic equality, and the country's farmers.

When Jackson won the presidency in 1828, he called Van Buren out of his post as governor of New York (which he had only held for a couple weeks) in order to be secretary of state. Van Buren's work as secretary of state was sustained for longer than his work as governor of New York but was still abruptly and prematurely ended. Van Buren routinely defended the wife of Secretary of War John Eaton against allegations about her sexuality, promiscuity, and fidelity (or lack thereof). To protect the Jackson Administration's reputation, Van Buren relegated himself to the office of ambassador to Britain, where he worked until becoming vice president during Jackson's second term. Despite Whig efforts to split the vote by nominating 3 candidates and thus send the election to the anti-Jackson House of Representatives, Van Buren was able to win the presidency in his own right in 1836.

Jackson left the presidency on March 4, 1837, when Van Buren took the oath of office. Unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, the economy was about to collapse into anarchy and disorder, stirring the financial damage that would fuel a 6-year-long recession known as the Panic of 1837. To help stabilize the economy after the War of 1812, James Madison founded the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. Like the original Bank of the United States, the SBUS was only intended to last 20 years, automatically dissolving right after. However, in 1832, Jackson was presented with a bill that would have postponed the bank's termination from 1836 to 1851. Jackson not only vetoed the bill but also, at the end of 1832, abolished the SBUS entirely. Afterward, Jackson took the bank's money and distributed it across a collection of state and private banks.

Since these banks now had a much larger sum of money, they could give out more loans. That created an enormous demand for loans that state banks started literally printing money to keep up with. The influx of new bank notes and coins made individual bits of currency less valuable. As a result, corporations demanded more money in exchange for products, creating an inflation crisis that hurt the economy. In 1836, as his presidency was drawing to a close, Jackson issued the Specie Circular. This was an executive order that required all land to be paid for in gold and silver. Because of the Specie Circular, people in possession of cheap, readily-available land were now required to give up precious metals to maintain that ownership. They either would not or could not do that and so they rescinded their purchases en masse. The Specie Circular also basically killed the land speculation market.

The combination of horrible inflation and the fall of the land speculation market left the economy in a very precarious situation. Any single factor could upset the delicate stability Americans enjoyed at the time of Van Buren's inauguration, and that single factor arrived after only a few weeks: 800 banks, facing crippling debt, shut their doors. Their depositors were now unable to access their own money and those working at the banks were left without a job. From there, the economy entered the Panic of 1837, one of the worst financial crises in US history. And Van Buren did very little to actually address its worst implications or to help the economy recover. This fact stemmed from Van Buren's Jacksonian background: It was apparent to everyone, even in 1837, that the Panic of 1837 was rooted in Jackson's economic policies. So, if Van Buren wanted to help, he would have to repeal the Specie Circular and other such laws. But being a staunch Jacksonian, he refused to do such a thing.

Van Buren wasn't hesitant to intervene in the Panic of 1837 because he was a heartless demagogue with no concern for the American people or their pain. Instead, he believed that the recession was merely a short-term consequence of Jacksonian policies that would help Americans in the long term. In the era of modern medicine, Van Buren may compare the Panic of 1837 to the tiny pinch people feel when getting a vaccine. It may hurt right now but will be good for us in the future. Van Buren's lack of action during the Panic of 1837 was what he felt was right. He was not being immoral. But that's irrelevant. Herbert Hoover never predicted a trade war when signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, yet still deserves criticism for what he did. With that in mind, not everything about Van Buren's response to the Panic of 1837 was bad or damaging.

In September of 1837, Van Buren requested that Congress set up something he called the independent treasury. As Van Buren described it, the independent treasury would be a collection of private organizations meant to manage deposits made by the federal government. Congress became obscenely obstructionist, not approving the bill until the summer of 1840, with Van Buren signing the legislation on July 4 of that same year. Although Van Buren failed to enact the idea as quickly as he should have, I still consider the independent treasury a plus. When a government agency (like the SBUS) is abolished, its funds would ideally be dedicated to education, infrastructure, defense, research, and other government projects. But that isn't always going to happen. Not every president will want to do that. So, having a system like the independent treasury to store federal deposits is important, as it prevents that money from going to state banks and causing a repeat of the inflation crisis that contributed to the Panic of 1837.

Early on in his presidency, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Indian Removal Act allowed the president to broker treaties that forced Native American tribes to abandon their resource-rich lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for newly-acquired, uninhabited lands west of the Mississippi River. I personally like Jackson but am also appalled by this law. It facilitated the mass deaths of indigenous Americans in events like the Trail of Tears and rarely considered what actual Native Americans wanted beyond some tribal leaders who feared that they may face brute force if they don't agree to the treaty at hand. Van Buren regularly used the Indian Removal Act as president, a disgusting fact that certainly harms his score. Van Buren's attempts to evict the Seminoles from Florida also sparked the Second Seminole War, one of the bloodiest conflicts between Native Americans and the federal government in US history.

Van Buren's policies may have initiated one war, but they also prevented two others. Prior to and during Van Buren's presidency, northern Maine was a territory disputed between British Canada and the United States. Because of this fact, both Britons and Americans settled in the region. Soon, many of these Americans were arrested by British law enforcement officials on charges of "illegally crossing the border". When news of this event reached the US population, they were outraged and demanded war with Britain. Van Buren was determined to prevent such a scenario, however, and possessed the wisdom, skill, and intelligence to organize a peace conference between officials from London and Washington DC. There, an agreement that would be signed under John Tyler as the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed, resolving the dispute.

On December 7, 1837, residents of Canada (then a British colony) launched a pro-independence revolt known as the Revolution of 1837. A little under a year later, on December 4, 1838, the revolt was crushed, causing many of its participants to flee to the US. There, several Americans joined the ranks of these Canadian independence activists. As a result, when a British warship called the Caroline shot at some of these revolutionaries, an American was killed. The American people were so outraged by this information that, like with the Maine incident, they started calling on Van Buren to go to war with Britain. Yet again, Van Buren knew he had to prevent this. So, he passed a law prohibiting Americans from aiding violent groups calling for Canadian independence. Britain was appeased by this and the risk of war mostly subsided. Another fact that helps Van Buren's score is that, toward the end of his presidency, he issued an executive order lowering the workday of government employees to 10 hours. That's above the modern 8-hour standard but was progressive for the time.

In February 1839, about 50 Africans were kidnapped by Spanish sailors and taken to Cuba (then a Spanish colony), where they were held as slaves. On June 28, 1839, the slaves were taken to what is now known as the Dominican Republic on a ship called the Amistad, beginning an international dispute known as the Amistad Affair. Two days later, on July 1, 1839, one of the slaves freed themselves and then emancipated all the other slaves on the ship. From there, they forcibly took control of the Amistad and required the crew to return them to Africa. Ostensibly, the crew agreed. In reality, however, the crew took the slaves (known as the Amistad Men) to the US, where the Amistad Men were arrested on August 26, 1839, in Connecticut.

A large group of abolitionists known as the Amistad Committee soon realized that the slaves were acting within their legal rights and so shouldn't have been arrested. Spain had banned slavery, as had Connecticut and New York (where the slaves were held as prisoners), so the slaves were acting in self-defense. Citing this fact, the Amistad Committee sued the government, demanding the slaves' release. The Connecticut Supreme Court soon ruled in favor of the abolitionists. Van Buren, wanting to shore up support in southern states, betrayed his personal dislike of slavery and appealed the case to the United States Second Court of Circuits, which also ruled in favor of the abolitionists. But this didn't stop Van Buren! Van Buren then appealed to the Supreme Court. After hearing arguments from former-President John Quincy Adams on February 22, 1841, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' rulings. While the Amistad Affair still had a happy ending - with the release of the Amistad Men - Van Buren certainly sat on the wrong side of the tale. Ironically, Van Buren was a prominent anti-slavery activist following the presidency. But since this didn't take place during his stay in the White House, it sadly can't raise his score.

Like Ulysses S. Grant, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and others, Van Buren's tenure was one of mountainous highs and cavernous lows. He let his philosophical and political biases block the way to a speedy, efficient recovery from the Panic of 1837, abused indigenous tribes, and neglected his own morals when he decided to side with the south in the Amistad Affair all so that he could receive additional southern support. In that last department, he was very similar to Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, 3 names that no president should ever want to be connected to. However, Van Buren also saved hundreds of thousands of lives by preventing wars with Britain, reduced inflation in the long term, and improved the lives of working Americans. These facts mix together to produce a Van Buren Administration as fascinating as Van Buren the person. He was both awful and brilliant, rendering him average, hence his placement.