Martin+Van+Buren

MARTIN VAN BUREN 8th President of the U.S 1837 - 1841  Martin Van Buren was the 8th president of the United States, succeeding Andrew Jackson after serving as his vice president. Before that, he was Jackson's secretary of state, and before that was the governor of New York.

__**Political Party:**__ Democrat

__**Details About Van Buren:**__
 * Van Buren was born December 5th, 1782. He died on July 24th, 1862
 * He was involved in politics since the age of 17, when he attended a party convention; he soon aligned himself with the Democratic-Republican Party
 * was heavily involved with "machine politics"; was a leading figure of the Albany Regency, which was highly influential in NY politics, as well as national politics
 * was an Architect of the Jacksonian-Democratic Party

__**Martin Van Buren's presidency:**__ Martin Van Buren associated himself in many political circles, and this is how Jackson chose him to succeed him in the presidency. He was elected president in the election of 1836 and was inaugurated in 1837, with Richard Johnson as his vice president
 * many contribute Van Buren's success to his associating himself with many political parties; after his run as president he would run as a third party candidiate, for the Free Soil party
 * was endorsed by Jackson to continue his policies; Van Buren kept almost all of Jackson's cabinet members and shared his "suspicion" for paper currency, continuing his policies supporting "hard" money (which ultimately resulted in the Panic of 1837)
 * Texas: Van Buren rejected the annexation of Texas, saying that the priorities of the states' harmony is more important than expansion
 * Distribution Act: following the large economic boom, support grew for handing out the surplus in the Treasury to the states. In 1836, the Distribution Act was passed, which required the federal government to distribute its surplus funds to the states each year for various endeavors to further stimulate the economy.

__**THE PANIC OF 1837**__


 * The Panic of 1837 effectively started when, following Van Buren's entering of office, several banks in Van Buren's home state of New York refused to convert paper money to gold or silver, due to a shortage of hard currency. When several other banks followed suit, the economy basically collapsed a little bit!
 * Van Buren blamed the collapse on greedy American businesses and institutions, but opposing parties (specfically the Whigs) took this opportunity to blame it all on the Democrats
 * "independent treasury": a financial system made to replace the Bank of the United States. In the "subtreasury" system, the government would place its funds in an independent treasury at Washington and in subtreasuries across the nation, thus ensuring no private banks would have any of the government's money

__**Thesis:**__

Martin Van Buren's presidency was the most important presidency because not only is it where previous president Andrew Jackson's economic policies regarding banks and paper currency began to fail, but also showed the very beginnings of legislations being created to stem bank failures, which would continually resume in the following two centuries.

//a Van Buren fan waving a hand-gesture of support//