General Information:
Major "Events" of his Presidency:
- Martin Van Buren had been the eighth President of the nation with Richard Johnson as his Vice President for his only term.
- Term as President lasted from 1837 to 1841.
- Key organizer of the Democratic Party.
- Dominant figure in the Second Party System.
Major "Events" of his Presidency:
- The Panic of 1837; a Van Buren, not long before leaving office, issue a presidential order: “the specie circular.” It stated that in payment for public lands the government would only accept gold or silver coins or currency securely backed by gold and silver. With this, hundreds of banks and businesses failed and unemployment grew—creating a five-year-long economic depression.
- Buren announces his opposition to the annexation of Texas, primarily to make possible the ensuing peace with Mexico but also to alleviate abolitionist concerns at home.
- In the Caroline Incident, Britain orders the Canadian militia to seize the American steamship Caroline, which had been supplying Canadian rebels, on the Niagara River. One American is killed, and several are wounded.
- A treaty ending the Aroostook War, a confrontation between the United states and Britain over the international boundary between the British colony of New Brunswick and the US State of Maine, is signed.
- The U.S.S. Washington seizes the Amistad, a mutinous slave ship, and brings the captives to a jail in New Haven, Connecticut.
- Buren signs the Independent Treasury Act which worked to fulfill the goal of a complete separation of government from banking..