Images and More: Passed Presidents - # 8

I have a bad attitude about writing this one. We just finished the Grant story and he was a war hero with the biggest boot-strap ascension in presidential history. Martin Van Buren died 152 years ago today...and I’m not feeling it.

We’re not talking Mount Rushmore material here. Other factors that contribute to this lack of enthusiasm include:

· He was a one-termer...one of ten who ran for re-election and lost.

· He was a dapper dandy. A sharply-dressed man who lost his re-election, in part, because his opponent made the public believe he was too upper crusty, dare I say, ‘effete’, for us regular folks.

· After John Quincy Adams (# 6), all the presidents up to the Civil War and Lincoln were slave owners or chicken-bleep northerners who did little to oppose our ‘Original Sin’. President Van Buren was soft on slavery and wanted to return the Amistad and the mutinous slaves to Spain. Fortunately, the case was decided in the courts, again with J.Q. Adams successfully arguing for the slaves’ freedom.

· His one term was unremarkable and marked by financial crises and economic depression.

· Finally, the only images I have are mediocre scans of old slides taken on a gray day.

At least I could have thrown out the neat little trivia that our modern English use of the term, ‘okay’ or ‘OK’ came from the eighth president, whose nickname was ‘Old Kinderhook’. However, that’s not actually true.

Entrance to Kinderhook Cemetery (14 June 2003)

However, I hope we have learned that every president, no matter how dull and uninspiring, has something worth appreciating about him.

Martin Van Buren came from a home and community where Dutch was the primary language. He was the first president born after we gained independence...the first American-born Chief Executive and the only one who could claim English as his second language. He rose through New York politics, serving as senator, attorney general and governor. He was a U.S. senator and Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of State during Jackson’s first term and Vice President in his second.

Long before Van Buren entered the national scene, he lost his wife. Hannah died after only twelve years of marriage. She never recovered after the birth of their fifth child and our 8th president lived his last 43 years as a bachelor/widower.

He was Andrew Jackson’s staunch ally and protégé. He was a Democrat when he won and lost the presidency. He ran again in 1848 as the standard bearer of the Free Soil Party and garnered only ten percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. At least he took a stand against slavery AFTER he left office, given the new and short-lived party was about that single issue, the opposition to expanding slavery into the new territories and states.

Martin van Buren’s Grave, Kinderhook, NY (14 June 2003)

The Little Magician is one of only eight presidents who are buried where they were born. He earned that nickname because of his stature (5’6”) and his political agility. I got to Kinderhook, New York on a whirlwind baseball weekend with Frank and Don. We went from Cooperstown, New York and the Baseball Hall of Fame to Boston for a game at Fenway Park. On the way east out of Albany toward Massachusetts, we made a quick stop to photograph the most prominent resident of Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery...a real drive-by affair. The next day, we saw a game at Yankee Stadium and then dragged our tired butts back home. I had to be back on the job Monday.

Maybe that final memory of work contributes to this lackluster feeling for the guy and writing about him.

Anyway, Happy Anniversary, Marty.