Martin VAN BUREN, Congress, NY (1782-1862)

VAN BUREN, Martin, (half brother of James Isaac Van Alen), a Senator from New York, a Vice President and 8th President of the United States; born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, N.Y., December 5, 1782; attended the village schools; studied law; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Kinderhook, N.Y., in 1803; moved to Hudson, N.Y., in 1809; surrogate of Columbia County 1808-1813; member, State senate 1813-1820; attorney general of New York 1816-1819; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1821; elected as a Democratic Republican (later Crawford Republican and then Jacksonian) to the United States Senate; reelected in 1827, and served from March 4, 1821, until December 20, 1828, when he resigned, having been elected Governor; chairman, Committee on the Judiciary (Eighteenth through Twentieth Congresses); Governor of New York from January to March 1829, when he resigned to enter the Cabinet; appointed Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Andrew Jackson and served from March 1829, until his resignation, effective May 1831, when he was commissioned Minister to Great Britain; the Senate rejected his nomination in January 1832, and he returned to the United States; elected, as a Democrat, Vice President of the United States on the ticket with Andrew Jackson and served from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1837; elected, as a Democrat, President of the United States and served from March 4, 1837, to March 3, 1841; unsuccessful candidate for reelection as President on the Democratic ticket in 1840 and on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848; withdrew from political life and retired to his country home, ‘Lindenwald,’ in Kinderhook, N.Y., where he died July 24, 1862; interment in Kinderhook Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Cole, Donald. Martin Van Buren and the American Political System. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984; Remini, Robert. Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present