49 Fun Facts About Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was which number president of the United States?

Eighth: he took office in March 1837 after four years as Jackson's vice president, and within weeks a financial panic struck that shadowed his whole single term.

Van Buren was a principal founder of which political party?

The Democratic Party: after the disputed 1824 election he stitched rival factions into a new coalition behind Andrew Jackson, which won the White House in 1828.

Which language did Van Buren grow up speaking at home in his Hudson Valley village?

Dutch: the village had kept the language for generations after English rule began, and he was baptised Maarten.

Van Buren was the first president born after which document?

The Declaration of Independence: he was born in December 1782, six years after it was adopted, while all seven presidents before him had been born subjects of the British crown.

Which nickname did the 5-foot-6 Van Buren earn in New York politics?

The Little Magician: the name stuck because of the skill with which he worked New York's party machinery, a knack that admirers and critics alike remarked on.

Whom did Van Buren marry in 1807?

Hannah Hoes: his childhood sweetheart and distant cousin died of tuberculosis in 1819, and he never remarried, leaving even her name out of his autobiography.

Van Buren named his fourth son after which general of the War of 1812?

Winfield Scott: the infant named for him died soon after his birth in 1814, and as president Van Buren twice sent the general to calm crises on the Canadian border.

Van Buren led which anti-Clintonian faction in New York politics?

The Bucktails: they made party loyalty their creed, and Van Buren used their discipline as the model for the statewide machine he built in the 1820s.

What name was given to the political machine Van Buren built in New York?

The Albany Regency: it ran New York for years through patronage and a loyal newspaper, the Argus, and later party machines copied its methods.

Despite leading the anti-Clinton faction, Van Buren supported which Clinton project?

The Erie Canal: allies urged him to block his rival's bill in 1817, but he judged the canal good for New York and helped it through the legislature.

In 1821 the legislature elected Van Buren to which body?

The United States Senate: legislatures, not voters, chose senators until 1913, and his New York political machine delivered him the seat.

Before he allied with Andrew Jackson, whom did Van Buren back for president in 1824?

William H. Crawford: the Georgian shared his Jeffersonian, small-government creed, but a stroke left him paralysed and nearly blind, and he finished a distant third.

What did opponents call the 1828 import duties Van Buren helped pass?

The Tariff of Abominations: meant to shield northern and western farm goods, it enraged the South and fed South Carolina's nullification crisis four years later.

Van Buren quit as Governor of New York within weeks in 1829 to take which post?

Secretary of State: he was already expecting a cabinet offer when he took the oath as governor, and resigned as soon as President Jackson made it.

Van Buren's 1829 Safety Fund, which made New York banks jointly cover failed banks' debts, foreshadowed which New Deal agency?

The FDIC: the 1829 fund was the first such scheme in any state, and its designer borrowed the idea from Canton's Hong merchants, who answered for one another's debts.

Van Buren helped persuade Jackson to veto federal funding for which 1830 project?

The Maysville Road: the route lay entirely inside Kentucky, so Jackson vetoed it as a purely local project that federal money should not build.

The Petticoat Affair, which helped Van Buren win Jackson's trust, began when Washington society shunned which woman?

Peggy Eaton: cabinet wives refused to receive the War Secretary's bride, but Van Buren, a widower with no wife to object, paid her every courtesy and won Jackson's lasting regard.

Who cast the deciding Senate vote rejecting Van Buren as ambassador to Britain in 1832?

John C. Calhoun: the vice president broke a tie to sink his rival and believed it would end his career, but the snub won Van Buren sympathy and, by year's end, election to Calhoun's own office.

Which Van Buren running mate did the Senate elect?

Richard Johnson: Virginia's electors refused to vote for him, leaving him one short of a majority, so the Senate chose him over the Whig Francis Granger, the only time it has picked a vice president.

Who was the next sitting vice president after Van Buren to win the presidency?

Bush: the elder George Bush won in 1988 as Reagan's vice president, ending a 152-year run in which sitting vice presidents such as Nixon in 1960 and Humphrey in 1968 ran and lost.

What kind of business did Van Buren's father run, where the boy grew up listening to passing politicians?

A tavern: it doubled as the local polling place and sat on the road to the state capital, so travelling lawmakers gave him an early schooling in politics.

Whigs blamed the Panic of 1837 on which 1836 Jackson order?

The Specie Circular: by demanding gold or silver for public land it choked off paper credit, and Congress finally repealed it in May 1838.

Van Buren's answer to the Panic was a plan to store federal funds where?

In government vaults: his Independent Treasury would cut public money loose from the banks altogether, but conservatives in his own party helped stall it until 1840.

Which 1913 law created the system that replaced the Independent Treasury?

The Federal Reserve Act: it created the central banking system that replaced the scheme, which the Whigs had scrapped in 1841 and Congress revived in 1846.

The forced Cherokee removal Van Buren ordered in 1838 is called what?

The Trail of Tears: troops rounded up Cherokee who had not moved west under an 1835 treaty, and thousands died in the camps and on the march.

Which writer sent Van Buren a letter protesting his treatment of the Cherokee?

Ralph Waldo Emerson: his April 1838 letter from Concord called the removal a crime of confounding magnitude and said New Englanders had read the Cherokee's own newspapers with respect.

Which costly war against a Native nation lasted Van Buren's whole presidency?

The Second Seminole War: fought in Florida's swamps from 1835 to 1842, it outlasted his term, and its length and cost eroded his popularity.

Van Buren helped prosecute a general court-martialed for surrendering which city without a fight in 1812?

Detroit: General William Hull gave it up despite having the larger force, and the court sentenced him to death before President Madison spared him.

Which American steamboat did British forces burn and sink on the Niagara River in December 1837?

The Caroline: it had been carrying supplies to Canadian rebels, and the raid killed an American crewman, bringing the two countries close to war before Van Buren proclaimed neutrality.

Van Buren finished his legal training under William Van Ness, who soon acted as whose second in a famous 1804 duel?

Aaron Burr: Van Ness was his political lieutenant and stood beside him at the duel with Hamilton, not long after his clerk Van Buren went home to open a law practice.

The bloodless 1838–39 'war' over the Maine–New Brunswick border is named for which river?

The Aroostook: Maine called out its militia against New Brunswick lumberjacks cutting timber in the valley, but Van Buren sent a general to arrange a truce, and an 1842 treaty drew the line.

Which former president argued for the Amistad Africans before the Supreme Court in 1841?

John Quincy Adams: then a 73-year-old congressman, he helped win the captives' freedom against Van Buren's administration, which had backed Spain's claim to the ship and the people aboard.

Who played Van Buren in the 1997 film Amistad?

Nigel Hawthorne: the English actor had been Oscar-nominated as George III in The Madness of King George, so Spielberg's film took him from a king to a president mocked for living like one.

Who acted as Van Buren's White House hostess from 1838?

The widower had tried to host himself; Angelica took advice from her relative Dolley Madison.

Whig congressman Charles Ogle attacked Van Buren in which famous 1840 speech?

The Gold Spoon Oration: formally 'The Regal Splendor of the President's Palace', it ran over three days in April 1840 and pictured Van Buren spending public money on palace luxuries while ordinary Americans struggled.

Which Whig war hero defeated Van Buren in the 'log cabin and hard cider' campaign of 1840?

William Henry Harrison: he won the electoral vote 234 to 60 on a turnout of about 80 percent, though Van Buren actually polled more votes than in his 1836 victory.

What was Van Buren's Hudson Valley estate, a National Historic Site since 1974, called?

Lindenwald: he retired to the estate in 1841 and ran two more presidential campaigns from it, in 1844 and 1848, before dying there.

Van Buren's 1844 nomination bid foundered on his public opposition to what?

Annexing Texas: he still had a majority of delegates, but the convention's two-thirds rule blocked him, and on the ninth ballot it turned to the pro-annexation James K. Polk.

Van Buren was the 1848 presidential nominee of which new party?

Free Soil: the party opposed slavery's spread into the western territories, and a man who had long accommodated the South took a tenth of the vote without winning a single elector.

Who was Van Buren's running mate on the 1848 third-party ticket?

Charles Francis Adams: the son and grandson of presidents joined the ticket of his father's old adversary, and later spent the 1860s as US minister in London, working to keep Britain neutral.

Van Buren's 1848 run championed which proposal barring slavery from land won from Mexico?

The Wilmot Proviso: it never passed Congress, but the fight over it produced the new antislavery party, and Van Buren gave the ban his full support when he accepted its nomination.

Critics mocked Van Buren's son John as 'Prince John' after he attended which monarch's coronation in 1838?

Queen Victoria: he also danced with the young queen at a ball, and opponents used the nickname to paint his father's household as aristocratic.

Van Buren, born during the Revolution, died during which war?

The Civil War: he died in July 1862, having outlived four of the presidents who followed him, and spent his last months backing the Union war effort.

Which 1990s sitcom built an episode around the Van Buren Boys, a street gang devoted to the president?

Seinfeld: in the 1997 episode Kramer, clutching a garlic shaker at a pizzeria, escapes the gang by accidentally flashing its secret hand sign.

Which religious leader asked Van Buren in 1839 for redress after his followers were driven from Missouri?

Joseph Smith: the Mormon founder met the president briefly but won no reparations, and in the church's telling Van Buren said he could not help without losing Missouri's vote.

Ivan Eland's book ranking Van Buren the third-greatest president takes its title from which monument?

Mount Rushmore: Recarving Rushmore scores presidents on peace, prosperity and liberty rather than charisma, and placed only John Tyler and Grover Cleveland above him.

Van Buren rode to his 1837 inauguration in a carriage built from the timbers of which ship?

USS Constitution: Jackson sat beside him in the carriage made from the old frigate's wood, the first time an outgoing president and his successor rode to the Capitol together.

The 1840 slogan 'OK' was tied to Van Buren through which nickname?

Old Kinderhook: OK began as a newspaper joke for 'oll korrect', and his supporters' O.K. Clubs, said to allude to his home village, helped the word stick in the 1840 campaign.

Which Chief Justice swore Van Buren in as president in March 1837?

Roger B. Taney: Jackson had named him to succeed John Marshall, and he won Senate confirmation over Whig opposition just a year before administering this oath.