Martin Van Buren, by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

Martin Van Buren, Eighth President of the United States, (1837-1841) Born Kinderhook, N.Y., December 8, 1782, died Kinderhook, N.Y., July 24, 1862. The following is excerpted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"It is perhaps an interesting, it is at least a harmless speculation to look for Van Buren's place of honor in the varied succession of men who have reached the first office, though not always the first place, in American life."***

"Van Buren reached the presidency by political abilities and public services of the first order, as the most distinguished active member of his party, and with a universal popular recognition for years before his promotion that he was among the three or four Americans from whom a president would be naturally chosen."***

"Van Buren did not have the massive and forcible eloquence of Webster, or the more captivating though fleeting speech of Clay, or the delightful warmth of the latter's leadership, or the strength and glory which their very persons and careers gave to American nationality. But in the persistent and fruitful adherence to a political creed fitted to the time and to the genius of the American people, in that noble art which gathers and binds to one another and to a creed the elements of a political party, the art which disciplines and guides the party, when formed, to clear and definite purposes, without wavering and without weakness or demagogy, Van Buren was a greater master than either of those men, in many things more interesting then they were. In this exalted art of the politician, this consummate art of the statesman, Van Buren was close to the greatest of American party leaders close to Jefferson and Hamilton."

"In his very last years the stir and rumbling of war left Van Buren in quiet recollection and anxious loyalty at Lindenwald. As his growing illness now and then spared him moments of ease, his mind must sometimes have turned back to the steps of his career,--envoy, vice-president, and president.***To his eyes there was clear and undimmed, from the beginning to the close of his career, the idea of government as an instrument of useful public service, rather than an object of superstitious veneration, the idea but two years after his death clothed with memorable words by a master in brief speech, the democratic idea of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."--EDWARD M. SHEPARD (born 1854), in American Statesmen Series, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.(1880-1908), Effective published copyright, ©Mickey Cox 2002. All rights reserved.