Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he served as New York's attorney general and U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York before joining Andrew Jackson's administration as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to Great Britain, and ultimately the eighth vice president from 1833 to 1837, after being elected on Jackson's ticket in 1832. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836 against divided Whig opponents. Van Buren lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election.
Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York, where most residents were of Dutch descent and spoke Dutch as their primary language; he is the only president to have spoken English as a second language. Trained as a lawyer, he entered politics as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, won a seat in the New York State Senate, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1821.