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LIFE AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE, PART II

© John S. Cooper

After attending the inauguration of his handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson retired to his plantation home, The Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee. Ill with tuberculosis and dropsy, he still rode horseback every morning and supervised his cotton fields. Economic hard times and his adopted son’s gambling debts reduced his finances and kept him busy. He still maintained his interest in politics, and campaigned in Tennessee for Van Buren’s unsuccessful 1840 re-election bid. He then worked to further the career of James K. Polk, and got Polk the Democratic nomination for President in 1844. He died in June of the following year.

After Martin Van Buren was defeated in his race for re-election by William Henry Harrison in 1840, he retired to his estate, Lindenwald, in New York. He remained active in politics for the next twenty years. He was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1844, controlling a majority of the delegates. He had again stated his opposition to the annexation of Texas, a stand that cost him many southern votes. The result was that he was unable to muster the two-thirds of the delegates needed to win the nomination. Although he led on the first four ballots, he eventually lost the nomination to James K. Polk who went on to win the election.

Van Buren declined President Polk’s offer to be minister to Great Britain, preferring to remain in New York as patronage chief for the state. Polk looked to others in the state for patronage advice, and the two soon fell out. Van Buren abandoned his compromise position on slavery and took a strong stand for abolition and favored the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in the territories, in 1846. In 1848, the Free Soil Party, made up of abolitionist Democrats and “Conscience” Whigs, nominated Van Buren for President. Van Buren carried no states, but took enough votes away from the regular Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, in New York to give the state and the election to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. (See the earlier article "The Free Soil Campaign of 1848" published on February 9, 2001.)

After his loss in 1848, Van Buren retired from elective politics, although he continued to be active in Democratic circles. Unlike other Free Soilers who supported the Republican Party, Van Buren continued to support the Democratic Party. He supported Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, and although he opposed Lincoln at first, supported him after the election and during the war. He died in 1862, before the war was resolved.

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