Martin Van Buren was the first U.S. president born a U.S. citizen. He was born in 1782 at Kinderhook, NY. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821, he previously had been a New York state senator and attorney general of the state. While in the U.S. Senate, he continued to dominate New York politics and was elected governor in 1828. Van Buren resigned as governor after only a few months to accept the position secretary of state in the Jackson administration.

Because of an internal power struggle with John Calhoun, Jackson's vice president, Van Buren resigned from the cabinet and was not confirmed by the senate as minister to Great Britain. Then he was picked by Jackson to run for the vice presidency and as his successor. Van Buren easily won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1836 and the election over William Henry Harrison and Daniel Webster, both of whom ran as Whigs.

As president, Van Buren opposed abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia and favored guarantees that the federal government would not interfere with slavery in the states. At the same time, he opposed the expansion of slavery. His greatest problems as president came from the nation's first major depression, the Panic of 1837. Because of his belief in the Jeffersonian principle of limited government, Van Buren refused to yield to pressure for federal intervention to relieve economic distress.

He believed that restoration of full employment had to come from the efforts of private business. He also called for an independent treasury system, where the government would place all public monies in federally owned depositories. Congress adopted the system in 1840. After defeat in his attempt for re-election, he came back in 1848 to run under the banner of a faction of northern Democrats opposed to the extension of slavery. He finished a poor third.