geeky
Van Buren completed his term and attended the inauguration of his successor William Henry Harrison, before returned home to his estate called Lindenwald in Kinderhook, New York. But as far as Van Buren was concerned, Washington hadn't seen the last of him. He immediately began to plan his return to the White House, hoping to accomplish what Grover Cleveland later did, win two non-consecutive terms as president. Van Buren had once been an able political operative for Jackson, and he immediately began planning his run for president in 1844. He seemed to be the front runner for the Democratic Party nominated for President in 1844, but then the political genius known as the Little Magician made a rare political blunder.
Van Buren had been the party's presumptive nominee. He was popular among Democrats in the north, where his New York roots ran deep, and in the south, where Jackson was expected to remain loyal to the man who had been loyal to him. It was a rare political attribute for someone to have strong support in both regions. When southerner and Jackson's old for John C. Calhoun withdrew his bid for the presidency in January 1844, everything was looking good for Van Buren. Then John Tyler messed that up. Tyler was trying to save his own political neck by working hard for the annexation of Texas. He had even negotiated a treaty to do so, but the treaty failed to pass in the senate. Van Buren regarded the Tyler annexation measure as an attempt to sabotage his bid for the White House by stirring up a hornet's next within the already strained North-South Democratic alliance. The issue was one which divided Democrats along sectional lines. Northerners saw it as an effort by the south to spread slavery, while southerners saw northern opposition as an infringement of their rights.
in April of that year a letter that Van Buren had sent to Congressman William H. Hammett of Mississippi was made public. In the letter, Van Buren wrote that he opposed the immediate annexation of Texas, but said that he would support annexation once the state of war between Texas and Mexico was resolved. Van Buren's opposition to immediate annexation of Texas cost him the support of pro-slavery Democrats. Most importantly, it weakened the support he had from Andrew Jackson. Van Buren realized that accommodating slavery expansionists in the South would open the Northern Democrats to charges of appeasement to the Slave power from the strongly anti-annexation Northern Whigs and some Democrats. In the letter he had tried to ride the fence, laying out a conditional scenario that delayed Texas annexation indefinitely. He had hoped to please northerners by being against immediate annexation, but also win the votes of southerners because the presumptive Whig candidate Henry Clay had come out against annexation without Mexico's consent.
With Tyler adopting a position most attractive to the southern pro-annexationist, this torpedoed Van Buren's changes of winning any southern support at the convention. Van Buren began the Democratic National Convention with a majority of the delegates, but without any southern support he could not reach the two-thirds threshold required for nomination. His name was withdrawn after eight ballots, and a dark horse, James K. Polk, received the nomination and went on to win the presidency. Polk did so with Jackson's full support. After winning the presidency, Polk offered Van Buren the ambassadorship to London, but Van Buren declined.
Although he had once been Andrew Jackson's Vice-President, Van Buren had a track record of being personally opposed to slavery. As a State Senator he had once voted for a resolution instructing New York's members of Congress to vote against the admission of Missouri as a slave state. He considered slavery to be immoral, but believed that since it was sanctioned by the Constitution, he was opposed to any attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery. He had opposed a measure to doso in the District of Columbia. In retirement after leaving the White House however, Van Buren grew increasingly opposed to slavery. He abandoned his earlier views about its constitutional standing preventing him from opposing it. He supported anti-slavery positions including those opposed to slavery's expansion into newly organized western states.
In 1848, Whig support was eroding over the issue of slavery. Many northern Whigs were looking for other places to park their votes with parties opposed to slavery. One such party was the Free Soil Party. This party was organized for the 1848 election to oppose further expansion of slavery into the western territories. Most of its support was made up of a coalition of disaffected anti-slavery Democrats known as "Barnburners", and ex-Whigs known as "Conscience Whigs". Van Buren fell into the latter category. The party was led by Ohio Senatorial candidate Salmon P. Chase and New Hampshire Senator John Parker Hale. It held its 1848 convention in Utica and Buffalo, New York. On June 22, at the party's nomination convention, Van Buren won the party's nomination for president, defeating Hale by a 154-129 delegate count. Charles Francis Adams, whose father (John Quincy Adams) and grandfather (John Adams) had both served as president, was chosen as the vice-presidential nominee.
Van Buren knew that the Free Soilers would not win the election. He also knew that his candidacy would split the Democratic vote and throw the election to the Whigs. Bitter and aging, Van Buren did not care despite the fact his life had been built upon the rock of party solidarity and party regularity. He disliked Democratic Party candidate Lewis Cass, who was seen as friendly to slavery. Van Buren had been denied the 1844 nomination by Cass supporters. The election turned out as expected. Van Buren did not win any electoral votes, but finished second to Whig nominee Zachary Taylor in New York, taking enough votes from Cass to give the state to Taylor.
Van Buren returned to the Democratic Party fold, supporting Franklin Pierce for President in 1852, and James Buchanan in 1856. But he opposed the Buchanan administration's efforts to accommodate the southern states when they threatened secession. In 1853 Van Buren left for a two year trip to Europe. He had hoped to find a physician who could cure his son Martin Jr., who was very ill with tuberculosis. Martin Jr. died in Paris in March of 1855 and soon after Van Buren returned home. In the intervening time, he had visited England, France, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. He had been in London at the same time as another former President, Millard Fillmore, who was about to embark on his own run for President as a third party candidate. Van Buren also had an audience with Pope Pius IX while in Rome.
In the election of 1860, Martin Van Buren supported Stephen A. Douglas, the candidate of northern Democrats. Abraham Lincoln carried New York and every northern state except New Jersey. Once the Civil War began, Van Buren was public about his support for the Union. He supported Lincoln's efforts to prevent the southern states from seceding. In April, 1861 former President Franklin Pierce wrote to the other living former Presidents and asked them to consider meeting in order to use their stature and influence to propose a negotiated end to the war. Pierce asked Van Buren to use his role as the senior living ex-President to issue a formal call. Van Buren's replied, suggesting that Buchanan should be the one to call the meeting, since he was the former President who had served most recently, or that Pierce should issue the call himself. Neither Buchanan or Pierce was willing to make Pierce's proposal public, and nothing more came of it.
Van Buren's health began to fail later in 1861, and he was bedridden with pneumonia during the fall and winter of 1861–62. He did not recover his illness. Van Buren died of bronchial asthma and heart failure at his Lindenwald estate in Kinderhook at 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862, at the age of 79. He is buried in the Kinderhook Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, as are his wife Hannah, his parents, and his son Martin Van Buren, Jr.