Notes

Martin Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Albany, New York. His father, Abraham Van Buren (1737–1817), was a farmer working with slaves, was the owner of six slaves, and was a tavern-keeper in Kinderhook. Abraham Van Buren supported the American Revolution and later the Jeffersonian Republicans. Martin Van Buren's mother was Maria Hoes Van Alen Van Buren (1747–1818).[5][citation needed]

Van Buren was the first president born a citizen of the United States, as all previous presidents were born before the American Revolution. His great-great-great-grandfather Cornelis Maessen van Buren had come to the Americas in 1631 from Buurmalsen, today a village in the municipality of Geldermalsen. Buurmalsen is localized nearby the small city of Buren, Dutch Republic, in present day Netherlands. Van Buren grew up in a Dutch-speaking community. His native language was Dutch, and to date, he is the only U.S. President who has spoken English as a second language.[6]

Van Buren received a basic education at a poorly lit schoolhouse in his native village and later studied Latin briefly at the Kinderhook Academy and at Washington Seminary in Claverack.[7] He excelled in composition and speaking. His formal education ended before he reached 14, when he began studying Law at the office of Peter Silvester and his son Francis, prominent Federalist attorneys in Kinderhook. After six years under the Silvesters, he spent a final year of apprenticeship in the New York City office of William P. Van Ness, a political lieutenant of Aaron Burr. Van Buren was admitted to the bar in 1803.

Van Buren married Hannah Hoes, his childhood sweetheart and first cousin once removed, on February 21, 1807, in Catskill, New York. Like Van Buren, she was raised in a Dutch home and never lost her distinct Dutch accent. The couple had five sons and one daughter: Abraham (1807–1873) a graduate of West Point and career military officer; John (1810–1866), graduate of Yale and Attorney General of New York; Martin, Jr. (1812–1855), secretary to his father and editor of his father's papers until a premature death from tuberculosis; Winfield Scott (born and died in 1814); and Smith Thompson (1817–1876), an editor and special assistant to his father while president. Their daughter was stillborn. After 12 years of marriage, Hannah Van Buren contracted tuberculosis and died on February 5, 1819, at the age of 35.[8] Martin Van Buren never remarried.Van Buren had been active in politics from at least the age of 17 when he attended a party convention in Troy, New York where he worked to secure the Congressional nomination for John Van Ness. However, once established in his practice, he became wealthy enough to increase his focus on politics. He was an early supporter of Aaron Burr. He allied himself with the Clintonian faction of the Democratic-Republican Party, and was surrogate of Columbia County, New York from 1808 until 1813, when he was removed.

Van Buren joined the opposition party in 1813, and was a member of the New York State Senate from 1812 to 1820, and New York Attorney General from 1815 to 1819. He was a presidential elector in 1820, voting for James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins.

At first he opposed Clinton's plan for the Erie Canal, but later supported it when the Bucktails were able to gain a majority in the Erie Canal Commission, and supported a bill that raised money for the canal through state bonds.

In 1817, Van Buren's connection with so-called "machine politics" started. He created the first political machine encompassing all of New York, the Bucktails, whose leaders later became known as the Albany Regency.[9] The Bucktails became a successful movement that emphasized party loyalty; they captured and controlled many patronage posts throughout New York. Van Buren did not originate the system, but gained the nickname of "Little Magician" for the skill with which he exploited it. He also served as a member of the state constitutional convention, where he opposed the grant of universal suffrage and tried to maintain property requirements for voting.

He was the leading figure in the Albany Regency, a group of politicians who for more than a generation dominated much of the politics of New York and powerfully influenced the politics of the nation. The group, together with the political clubs such as Tammany Hall that were developing at the same time, played a major role in the development of the "spoils system", a recognized procedure in national, state and local affairs. He was the prime architect of the first nationwide political party: the Jacksonian Democrats. In Van Buren's own words, "Without strong national political organizations, there would be nothing to moderate the prejudices between free and slaveholding states."[10] Like Madison in the 1790s, Van Buren was struggling to find an institutional solution to the original Constitution's failure to resist the centralizing ambitions of those like Hamilton who hoped to transform a regime of checks and balances into an administrative republic.