By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5 marked the 242nd birthday of President Martin Van Buren, a Kinderhook native and lifetime resident. The Friends of Lindenwald, the estate purchased by Van Buren at the end of his one-term presidency in 1841, and the Columbia County Historical Society marked the occasion with a “Party For Marty” and sponsored a lecture by Van Buren biographer, James Bradley, a historian and Columbia County resident.
The lecture was held at Van Buren Hall Sunday, December 8. Bradley spoke before a sold out crowd of almost 100. NYS Historian Devin Landers interviewed Bradley. His first question was, “What drew you to Martin Van Buren?” The 8th president is generally considered a “forgotten” man in American history.
Bradley joked that he was “looking for a hobby,” which started as writing a blog about Van Buren. Bradley called his near 600-page tome “Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician” the “most definitive work” about him. He called Van Buren “pivotal” in American History.
The talk began with Van Buren’s early life. Martin was one of five boys born to Abraham Van Buren and Maria Hoes. Van Buren’s family was of Dutch descent. The family farmed and ran a tavern, which was their main source of income. Taverns in the 18th century were more than places offering lodging and food to travelers. They were civic centers too where militias convened and trials and elections were held.
The family was not wealthy but “prosperous enough.” They were landowners thus eligible to vote. Bradley called the post-Revolutionary War period a “highly charged political environment.” The Van Burens were Jeffersonian Republicans in a Federalist dominated Columbia County.
Though Van Buren’s formal education was limited he did catch the attention of the Van Ness brothers, John and Billy. He helped John secure the nomination for an open seat in Congress, which he won. Van Buren was rewarded with an apprenticeship with Billy, an outgoing lawyer and acolyte of Vice President Aaron Burr in New York City. There Van Buren flourished; though he did not care much for city life. He returned to Kinderhook to prepare for the bar exams.
Van Buren was a skilled and much sought after lawyer. He was also valued as a politician or “kingmaker.” Van Buren was organized, affable and took the long view. Bradley explained that politics was “something that gentlemen do in their spare time. Martin Van Buren believed it should be a profession.”
Over the course of his career, Van Buren was elected to the NYS Senate, as state Attorney General, U.S. Senator and NY governor. (State and federal positions could overlap.) He also was appointed Secretary of State and ambassador to Great Britain by President Andrew Jackson.
Van Buren is credited as founder of the current American electoral process – a strong two-party system, public campaigning “where the people are,” state conventions, coalition building and policy promotion via pamphlets and newspapers. Hence Van Buren’s reputation as the “first politician.”
Van Buren knew that the surest way to insure a network of supporters was to give patronage jobs to them. New York State had 14,000 such federal jobs. When Van Buren forces ousted DeWitt Clinton, a personally unpopular politician, he replaced all of Clinton’s Federalist appointees with his own Republican backers.
Landers asked Bradley what were Van Buren’s most significant achievements. Bradley cited the Erie Canal, the brainchild of Clinton. Van Buren was in a position to kill the project but recognized its popularity in western New York. In 1825 the Erie Canal was the nation’s largest public works project spanning 361 miles with the intention of connecting the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes.
Bradley also noted Van Buren’s expansion of voter eligibility in the state to all white men regardless of property ownership or lack thereof.
Landers asked Bradley what issues tarnish Van Buren’s legacy. He cited Van Buren’s attitude toward enslavement and his support of President Andrew Jackson’s policy of Native American removal from the southeastern states.
Van Buren was instrumental in securing Andrew Jackson’s election as president by securing the electors from New York and Pennsylvania for Jackson. Despite opposite dispositions Van Buren and Jackson were friends with Jackson proclaiming that Van Buren was his only cabinet member whom he trusted. Van Buren endeavored to keep the North-South alliance that elected Jackson in power. Bradley said that Van Buren “learned to play the race card” in D.C. He also longed to succeed Jackson as president.
Van Buren opposed President John Quincy Adams’ bid for American participation at the Panama Conference, a gathering of nations that self-liberated from Spain and Haiti, which successfully overthrew its enslavement supporting government. While Van Buren tactfully couched his opposition to U.S. participation as “unconstitutional,” southern senators expressed their opposition argument in strong racist language.
In New York, Van Buren opposed extending voting reform to free Blacks, who numbered 30,000, mostly concentrated in New York City. Only 100 African Americans were eligible to vote due to the $250 land ownership requirement.
Jackson made Indian Removal of the “Five Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) to the Oklahoma Territory official U.S. policy. Efforts to promote the policy as humanitarian toward Natives was rejected by religious sects like the Quakers but could not thwart the inevitability of the “Natives had to go” fever gripping white Americans. Bradley said that the Seminole War against the 5,000 to 6,000 Natives living “deep in the Everglades, was pointless” and charged that the U.S. Military committed “war crimes.”
In concluding his talk, Bradley said that Van Buren was the first president rejected by the electorate due to economic woes, namely the Panic of 1837 and a subsequent series of economic upheavals during Van Buren’s presidency.
Bradley said that he hopes his book, “Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician” will raise the 8th president’s reputation among American presidents. The lecture was followed by a book signing.