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Though not altogether exempt from embarrassments that disturb our tranquillity at home and threaten it abroad, yet in all the attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people we stand without a parallel in the world. Inaugural Address

Inaugural Address

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Legacy

Van Buren was a firm believer in the benefits of a two-party system in American politics and is credited with establishing the Democratic Party. Insistent that political parties served a valuable purpose by enabling Americans to voice political differences, Van Buren noted that parties could “rouse the public to exertion, excite a salutary vigilance over our public functionaries, and prevent that apathy which has proved the ruin of Republics.”

When Van Buren entered office, the country was prosperous, but less than two weeks after his inauguration a financial panic struck when banks began to restrict credit and demand that loans be repaid as an attempt to curb increasingly riskier land speculation. This economic crisis later became known as the Panic of 1837. The Panic swept the U.S. into the worst depression it had ever experienced. As a result, hundreds of banks and businesses failed, and thousands of people lost their land. The country’s cyclical “boom and bust” economy was partially to blame for the panic, as well as Jackson’s destruction of the national bank. Rather than institute a new national bank, Van Buren proposed that an independent Treasury be created and he succeeded in uniting even his critics in this plan. His long-term vision for the Treasury was sound; however, it was not an adequate short-term solution, and for the next several years, the economy sank even deeper into a depression.