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Van Buren was born in 1782, in the same place that he died, Kinderhook, New York, the son of a tavernkeeper and farmer of Dutch ancestry. He became a lawyer and as a young man he became involved in New York politics and in 1821 he was elected to the United States Senate. By 1827 he had emerged as the principal northern leader for Andrew Jackson and Jackson rewarded him, first by appointing him Secretary of State. In 1832 Van Buren was elected as Jackson's Vice-President after Jackson and his first Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, split over the issue of nullification (a state's ability to refuse to follow a federal law.)
Van Buren, nicknamed "the Little Magician" because of his political wizardry and small stature (he was 5'6" tall and of slight build) was elected President in 1836. In his inaugural address, Van Buren gave a discourse on "the American experiment as an example to the rest of the world." His term in office was crippled by hard times. The panic of 1837 which was part of the 19th-century economic cycle of "boom and bust," but which was mainly the result of Jackson's destruction of the Second Bank of the United States which had removed restrictions on the inflationary practices of some state banks. Wild speculation in lands, based on easy bank credit, had swept the West. To end this speculation, Jackson in 1836 had issued a Specie Circular requiring that lands be purchased with hard money--gold or silver. In 1837 the panic began. Hundreds of banks and businesses failed. Thousands lost their lands. For about five years the United States was wracked by the worst depression thus far in its history.Van Buren's remedy which was to continue Jackson's deflationary policies, only made things worse and prolonged the depression.
Continuing another one of Jackson's policies, Van Buren oversaw the Indian Removal Act ( known as the "Trail of Tears"), in which the government supervised the expulsion of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole first nations from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina to the Oklahoma territory.
Unlike Jackson, Van Buren opposed the expansion of slavery. He blocked the annexation of Texas because he believed it would add to slave territory. He was defeated by the Whigs in 1840 for reelection. When he left the White House, Van Buren returned to his estate, Lindenwald in Kinderhook. He wanted to run for President again and for a time was the front runner for the Democratic nomination in 1844. But his letter of April 27, 1844, in which he frankly opposed the immediate annexation of Texas hurt him within his party and at the Democratic convention, although he had a majority of the votes, he did not have the two-thirds which the convention required, and after eight ballots his name was withdrawn. James K. Polk received the nomination instead.
In 1848, he tried to run for President again. He was nominated by two minor parties, first by the "Barnburner" faction of the Democrats, then by the Free Soilers, an anti-slavery party. He won no electoral votes, but took enough votes in New York to give the state—and perhaps the election—to Zachary Taylor. In the election of 1860, he voted for the fusion ticket in New York which was opposed to Abraham Lincoln, but he could not approve of President James Buchanan's course in dealing with secession and eventually supported Lincoln.
After being bedridden with a case of pneumonia during the fall of 1861, Van Buren died of bronchial asthma and heart failure at his Lindenwald estate in Kinderhook at 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862. He was 79 years old. He is buried in the Kinderhook Cemetery along with his wife Hannah. An interesting fact about Van Buren: when he wrote his autobiography, two volumes and over 1000 pages, he never mentioned his wife Hannah once.