Van Buren’s term as President witnessed nothing more momentous than the great panic of 1837, which he faced with a calmness and clear-sightedness surprising even to his friends, but which nevertheless assisted a collection of malcontents, under the leadership of Henry Clay, calling themselves National Republicans or Whigs, to defeat him for re-election.  There was really no valid reason why he should have been re-elected; he had little claim, upon the country, but was for the most part, merely a clever politician, the first to attain the presidency.  His life had been marked by an orderly advance from local to state, and then to national offices—­an advance obtained not because he stood for any great principle, but because he knew how to make friends and build his political fences.

His nomination and election to the presidency was in no sense an accident, as was Taylor’s, Pierce’s, Hayes’s and Garfield’s, but was carefully prearranged and thoroughly understood.  Yet let us do him the justice to add that his public services were, in some respects, of a high order, and that he was not wholly unworthy of the last great honor paid him.  He was a candidate for the nomination in 1844, but was defeated by James K. Polk; and four years later, secured the nomination, but was defeated at the polls by Zachary Taylor.  That ended his political career.

In the campaign against him of 1840, the Whigs were fortunate in having for their candidate William Henry Harrison, a man of immense personal popularity, resembling Jackson in that his reputation had been made as an Indian fighter in the West, where he had defeated Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe, and by a successful campaign in the war of 1812.  Since then, he had been living quietly on his farm in Ohio, with no expectation of anything but passing his remaining years in quiet, for he was nearly seventy years of age.  But Clay, with a sort of prophetic insight, picked him out as the Whig leader, and “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” became the rallying cry of a remarkable campaign, which swept the country from end to end and effectually swamped Van Buren.  It was too strenuous for a man as old as Harrison, and he died at the White House within a month of taking the oath of office.

The “Tyler Too” was John Tyler, who had been elected Vice-President, and who assumed the office of President upon Harrison’s death.  His accession was little less than a bomb-shell to the party which had nominated him and secured his election.  For he was a Virginian, a follower of Calhoun and an ardent pro-slavery man, while the Whigs were first, last and all the time anti-slavery.  He had been placed on the ticket with Harrison, who was strongly anti-slavery, in the hope of securing the votes of some disaffected Democrats, but to see him President was the last thing the Whigs desired.  The result was that he soon became involved in a bitter quarrel with Clay and the other leaders of the party, which effectually; killed any chance of renomination he may have had.  He became the mark for perhaps the most unrestrained abuse ever aimed at a holder of the presidency.