Martin Van Buren: The American Presidents Series: The 8th President 1837-1841

Martin Van Buren: The American Presidents Series: The 8th President 1837-1841 – by Ted Widmar

Recently I added to my bucket list the task of reading at least one biography of every U.S. President. Finding such works on the older, more obscure presidents is not an easy task. Van Buren was the nation’s 8^th president, and probably the first who has somewhat faded into insignificance. By the time he took office, the nation really was no longer ‘new’ anymore, so the excitement of reading about the birth of the colonies had somewhat faded.  He wasn’t even born until the 1780s.

Fortunately, ‘The American Presidents’ series has set out to ensure that all of the minor players receive their due diligence in history. This book isn’t a cookie cutter hack job, but neither is it a series lengthy retrospective that would take a scholar years to research and write.  In fact, author Ted Widmar is very honest about this in the book’s introduction. He confesses that such an epic would probably be an insurmountable task since we don’t really have too many records about the man. So the book is less than 200 pages.

This isn’t a criticism. In fact, I felt the length was appropriate. Sure, there’s an awful lot about the man and his life that we don’t learn about, but being rather insignificant compared to his peers, such detail seems inconsequential. We’re told, for example, that there are basically no memorabilia nor records of his first wife (who died before he ever took office), so we learn her name and when and how she died. That’s about it.

We learn that Van Buren was heavily involved in local politics in his home state of New York. He comes across as someone who is quiet, but very smart. He’s not necessarily a great orator, but he knows how to pull strings, form alliances, and advance his career.  In other words, he’s an excellent politician. As he becomes more of a player on the national field, he’s widely regarded as the man responsible for the two-party system in politics. It’s easy to now look at this and think that this is something that our country shouldn’t want, but history shows us otherwise. It’s too lengthy to describe why this is the case in a book review, but careful study shows us that such a system does much more good than harm, and makes the ongoing character attacks and back stabbing not quite as abrasive. If you can somehow believe that.

As Van Buren moves up the political ladder, he forms a friendship and alliance with Andrew Jackson, his immediate predecessor. He becomes Jackson’s Vice President.  We’re led to believe that the main reason Van Buren is coddling up to him is that he wants Jackson’s job, and is skillfully playing his cards. He’s successful and becomes the nation’s 8^th Commander in Chief in 1837.

Two events then immediately occur that damage his tenure. The first is the nation’s first tumultuous financial depression – referred to as The Panic of 1937. The second is that the issue of slavery is finally brought up to the forefront of people’s minds and consciousness. It seems this barbaric institution can no longer be ignored and hidden in the basement. The financial crisis was the first the young country had ever experienced, so needless to say, there was a big learning curve in how to deal with such a travesty. Starving people are generally not patient. So it shouldn’t surprise us that Van Buren gets the blunt of the blame even though the crisis begins a mere six weeks into his term.

The slavery issue was much more complex. Sadly, we mostly see politicians during this time sitting on the fence. If any take a strong view, pro or con, they essentially alienate the other half of the country and its voting population. So Van Buren’s views are common for the day. He doesn’t like the institution (good) but chooses to not take any action since the problem will eventually ‘fix itself’ (bad).  Not surprisingly, he’s only a one term president.

Overall, the author Ted Widmer does a very good job trying to make a somewhat boring subject interesting. He had a lot of colorful quotes, observations, and anecdotes throughout the book, and for such a small tome, I found that I littered the pages with highlights from a yellow marker. Sometimes, though, the author goes a bit too far with his exorbitant details. I remember one instance where he described a person in this biography as ‘a character from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel’.  I seriously doubt that most readers of this bio have ever read anything by Marquez, and I would also bet more than half of them don’t even know who the man was. Another instance: he describes a particular scene in the book as something that ‘Aaron Spelling’ would be proud of.

Who??

I had to Wikipedia the guy. It turns out that Aaron Spelling is a Hollywood Producer or something. Couldn’t the author have just said ‘Hollywood Producer’?   Maybe I’m just not up on my pop culture, but it seems like these tidbits such as this would show up frequently.  Again, though, such padding was probably necessary.

I really enjoyed this book. If you’re like me and want to read about all of the famous figures in American History, I certainly can’t find any fault with what is presented here.  Although the books in this series on the lesser known presidents are written by many different authors, I’m looking forward to the next time I ‘have to’ pick one of these up due to limited options.

By Sorrows River

By Sorrow's River – by Larry McMurtry

Book three of four of the Berrybender Narratives. The ongoing tale of this misplaced aristocratic English family making a journey through the old west of the United States around the 1830s.  So far, this book has been my favorite of the first three.

The formula is pretty much the same -love, lust, adventure, Indians, disease, trappers, wild animals, - and a hot air balloon.   So that last one is a new inclusion here.  I won’t go into details of how that famous newfound contraption finds its way into this story, but I will say that this book seemed a bit more focused than the first two. It didn’t seem to be sprawled with so many characters going in so many different directions. You could almost read this one without having to flip to the front of the book where it contains the cast of characters. Maybe it’s because, after three novels, I’m finally starting to become familiar with everyone in this large ensemble.

The main portion of this story revolves around young Tasmin and her womanly desires.  She’s still married to Jim (the ‘Sin Killer’) yet their relationship remains very odd. They’re definitely a mismatched pair. She finds herself falling in love with traveling companion Pomp Charbeneau.  Does Pomp have mutual feelings? We’re never sure.  It seems he does to some extent. Then again, Tasmin seems to be quite the catch as most of the men tend to oogle her much of the time. With Pomp, though, his actions never seem to gel with what Tasmin wants. Forget the fact that she’s now a married woman, she just can’t seem to figure men out. Of course, we know that in real life men can’t figure out women either, but in a tale about the old west in the nineteenth century, male characters never dwell much on their feelings.

Lots of craziness and catastrophe ensures as we now expect it to. I won’t go into detail about who gets killed by whom, nor who gets married, pregnant, etc. but I will tell you that the journey in this book is to make it Santa Fe. As the book closes, they’re at least somewhat close to their destination. I’m guessing this is where the fourth (and final) book will pick up.  

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these books, yet reading Amazon reviews tell me that many have not. This is understandable. This is the same author that gave us the legendary Lonesome Dove tetralogy, and other then being a western, the similarities are rare. Fortunately, the books in this series are very similar, so if you’re unsure about whether or not to read the series, you really only need to read the first one as a litmus test.  If you enjoy that one, you should enjoy the rest. If you find that it’s not to your liking, you can move on to something else.

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness by Harlow Giles Unger

This author is a bit of an unknown for me. Looking at his other works on Amazon, it’s obvious that his tastes and subjects seem to be around key figures in American History from the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries.  This book was very easy to read – perhaps one of easiest of any biography I’ve ever read. Some may see that as a detriment, or even an insult, but I certainly don’t mean it to be. If I was approached by a 17-year-old high school student who “had” to read an American biography, I might just recommend this one due to its easy-to-understand prose.  It also features illustrations throughout as opposed the “middle sections” which never translate well when reading an e-book.

Branding Monroe as ‘The Last Founding Father’ is a quite accurate statement. He was the nation’s fifth president and actually served in the Revolutionary War as a teenager. Because of this, the author provides many glimpses into the factors that formed the new nation in the 1770s and 1780s. If you’ve read a lot of history like I have, you shouldn’t expect many revelations, but it’s nice to see a different figure in the center spotlight. Critics have stated that the author fawns a bit too much on his subject matter.  I didn’t really see this is the case, although it was biased in some areas. Strangely, he gives Monroe most of the credit for The Louisiana Purchase (although most attribute it to Thomas Jefferson), and, despite its name, The Monroe Doctrine is usually credited to John Quincy Adams – but not here. 

So, yes, some skepticism should be in order, but the author seems o.k. with attributing some of the diplomacy failures with France and England to Monroe, as well as point out his rather quirky introverted family. Monroe adored his wife Elizabeth, but she was definitely not the socialite that the young nation expected from a First Lady – especially following such a character as Dolley Madison. So parties in the White House were kept to a minimum and were quite unembellished.

What I did find peculiar is that this author hated – I mean REALLY hated Monroe’s predecessor James Madison.  I’ve never heard such vitriolic diatribes pointing to the fourth president as I have here. If you were to believe this author, you would believe that Madison was a little, sniveling, sickly incompetent boob. I found this rather strange and somewhat unfair. I would recommend Lynne Cheney’s bio of Madison for a different, more balanced viewpoint.

Once you get past the most popular presidents in U.S. history, there aren’t a lot of choices if you want a well-researched bio.  James Monroe is probably a name that (sadly) many Americans aren’t familiar with, but I would definitely rate this book highly.  The book is not very detailed yet paints a very good, overall picture of the man.  Just expect some biases – good and bad – of some of the key players.