MARTIN VAN BUREN . 1837-1841

Only about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, but trim and erect, Martin Van Buren’s impeccable appearance belied his humble background. Of Dutch descent, he was born on December 5, 1782, the son of a tavern keeper and farmer, in Kinderhook, New York.

As a young lawyer he led the "Albany Regency," a New York political organization. He shrewdly dispensed public offices and bounty in a fashion calculated to bring votes. Yet he faithfully fulfilled official duties, and in 1821 was elected to the United States Senate.

By 1827 he had emerged as the principal northern leader for Andrew Jackson. President Jackson appointed Van Buren secretary of state. He became the president's most trusted adviser. Jackson referred to him as "a true man with no guile."

A rift developed in the cabinet because of Jackson's differences with Vice President John C. Calhoun. Martin Van Buren compelled the resignation of the old cabinet. To reward him, Jackson appointed Van Buren as minister to Great Britain. Calhoun, president of the Senate, cast the deciding vote against the appointment.

The "Little Magician" was elected vice president on the Jacksonian ticket in 1832, and won the presidency in 1836. Van Buren devoted his inaugural address to a discourse upon the American experiment as an example to the rest of the world. The country was prosperous, but less than three months later the panic of 1837 punctured the prosperity.

To end wild speculation on lands that had swept the West, President Jackson had, in 1836, issued a Specie Circular requiring that lands be purchased with gold or silver. In 1837 the panic began. Hundreds of banks and businesses failed. For about five years the United States suffered the worst depression thus far in its history. Van Buren's remedy - continuing Jackson's deflationary policies - only deepened and prolonged the depression.

Van Buren opposed a new Bank of the United States and the placing of federal funds in state banks. He fought to establish an independent treasury system to handle government transactions. He cut off expenditures so completely that the government even sold the tools it had used on public works.

Inclined more and more to oppose the expansion of slavery, Van Buren blocked the annexation of Texas because it assuredly would add to slave territory - and it might bring war with Mexico. Defeated by the Whigs in 1840 for reelection, he was an unsuccessful candidate for president on the Free Soil ticket in 1848. He died in 1862.

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON . 1841

In 1840 the Whigs presented their candidate, William Henry Harrison, as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren.

Harrison was in fact a scion of the Virginia aristocracy. Born at Berkeley on February 9, 1773, he studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began studying medicine in Richmond in 1791. That same year, Harrison switched interests. He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the regular army, and headed Northwest.

Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened Ohio to settlement. After resigning from the army in 1798, he became secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the Territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In 1801 he became governor of the Indiana Territory. His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness. When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements. In 1809, an eloquent and energetic chieftain, Tecumseh, with his religious brother, the Prophet, began to strengthen an Indian confederation to prevent further encroachment. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack the confederacy.

While Tecumseh was away seeking allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet's town. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded. The Battle of Tippecanoe disrupted Tecumseh's confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier.

In the War of 1812 Harrison was given the command of the army in the Northwest. At the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, Tecumseh was killed. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest.

Harrison returned to civilian life. The Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for president in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60. While Harrison was nationalistic in his outlook, he emphasized in his inaugural that he would be obedient to the will of the people as expressed through Congress. But before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died - the first President to die in office - and with him died the Whig program.

JOHN TYLER . 1841-1845

Dubbed "His Accidency" by his detractors, John Tyler was the first vice president to be elevated to the office of president by the death of his predecessor.

Born in Virginia on March 29,1790, he was raised believing that the Constitution must be strictly construed. He never wavered from this conviction. He attended the College of William and Mary and studied law.

Serving in the House of Representatives from 1816 to 1821, Tyler voted against most nationalist legislation and opposed the Missouri Compromise. After leaving the House he served twice as governor of Virginia. Tyler soon joined the states' rights southerners in Congress who banded with the newly formed Whig party opposing President Jackson.

The Whigs nominated Tyler for vice president in 1840, hoping for support from southern states'-righters who could not stomach Jacksonian Democracy. The slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" implied flag-waving nationalism plus a dash of southern sectionalism. But suddenly President Harrison was dead, and "Tyler too" was in the White House. The Whigs were not too disturbed, as Tyler’s inaugural address seemed full of good Whig doctrine. Optimistic that Tyler would accept their program, they were soon disillusioned.

Tyler vetoed Henry Clay's bill to establish a National Bank with branches in several states. A similar bank bill was passed by Congress. But again, on states' rights grounds, Tyler vetoed it. In retaliation, the Whigs expelled Tyler from their party. All the cabinet resigned but Secretary of State Daniel Webster.

When Tyler vetoed a tariff bill, the first impeachment resolution against a president was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committee headed by John Quincy Adams reported that the president had misused the veto power, but the resolution failed. In 1842 Tyler did sign a tariff bill protecting northern manufacturers. In 1845 Texas was annexed.

The administration of a states'-righter strengthened the presidency. But it also increased sectional cleavage that led to civil war. Tyler returned to the Democratic Party, which was committed to the preservation of states' rights, planter interests, and the institution of slavery. Whigs became more representative of northern business and farming interests.

When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement. Failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.

JAMES K. POLK . 1845-1849

Often called the first "dark horse" president, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong president until the Civil War.

Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on November 2, 1795, Polk graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson. In the House of Representatives, he was a chief lieutenant of Jackson in his Bank war. Polk served as speaker between 1835 and 1839, leaving to become governor of Tennessee.

Until circumstances raised his ambitions, he was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for vice president in 1844. Martin Van Buren, who had been expected to win the Democratic nomination for president, and Henry Clay, who was to be the Whig nominee, both declared themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk, however, publicly asserted that Texas should be "re-annexed." The aged Jackson, correctly sensing that the people favored expansionism, urged the choice of a candidate committed to the nation's "Manifest Destiny." So the Democrats nominated Polk instead of Van Buren.

Polk linked the Texas issue, popular in the South, with the Oregon issue attractive to the North. He also favored acquiring California. Even before he could take office, Congress passed a joint resolution offering annexation to Texas, thus bequeathing Polk the possibility of war with Mexico. In his stand on Oregon, the President was risking war with Great Britain also. He offered to settle by extending the Canadian boundary along the 49th parallel, from the Rockies to the Pacific. When the British declined, Polk reasserted the American claim to the entire area up to Russian Alaska. The British settled for the 49th parallel, except for Vancouver Island, and the treaty was signed in 1846.

Acquisition of California proved far more difficult. Polk sent an envoy to offer Mexico up to $20,000,000, plus settlement of damage claims owed to Americans, in return for California and the New Mexico country. Polk's envoy was not received. Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to the disputed area. Mexican troops attacked Taylor's forces. Congress declared war. American forces won repeated victories and occupied Mexico City. In 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California in return for $15,000,000 and American assumption of the damage claims.

President Polk added a vast area to the United States, but its acquisition precipitated a bitter quarrel between the North and the South over expansion of slavery. Polk, leaving office with his health undermined from hard work, died in June 1849.

ZACHARY TAYLOR . 1849-1850

Northerners and southerners disputed whether territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some southerners threatened secession. Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise.

Born in Barboursville, Virginia on November 24, 1784, he was raised on a Kentucky plantation. A career officer in the army, he made his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and owned a plantation in Mississippi. But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism. 40 years in the army made him a firm nationalist. He had policed frontiers against Indians and had won major victories in the Mexican War.

"Old Rough and Ready's" homespun ways were political assets. His long military record would appeal to northerners; his ownership of 100 slaves would lure southern votes. He had not committed himself on troublesome issues. The Whigs nominated him to run against the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, who favored letting the residents of territories decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery. In protest against Taylor and Cass, northerners who opposed extension of slavery into territories formed a Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren. In a close election, the Free Soilers pulled enough votes away from Cass to elect Taylor to the presidency.

Traditionally, people could decide whether they wanted slavery when they drew up new state constitutions. Therefore, to end the dispute over slavery in new areas, President Taylor urged New Mexico and California to draft constitutions and apply for statehood, bypassing the territorial stage. Southerners were furious, since neither state constitution was likely to permit slavery; Members of Congress were dismayed, since they felt the president was usurping their policy-making prerogatives. In addition, Taylor's solution ignored several acute side issues: the northern dislike of the slave market operating in the District of Columbia; and the southern demands for a more stringent fugitive slave law.

In early 1850 Taylor held a conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that those "taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang...with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." He never wavered.

Then events took an unexpected turn. After participating in July 4 ceremonies at the Washington Monument, Taylor fell ill. Within five days he was dead. After his death, the forces of compromise triumphed, but the war Taylor had been willing to face came 11 years later. In it, his only son Richard served as a general in the Confederate Army.