Van Buren’s ability to forge alliances served him well personally during Jackson’s presidency, as illustrated by the improbably-named “Petticoat Affair.” When many of the Cabinet wives shunned Peggy Eaton, the young and supposedly “loose” bride of Jackson’s Secretary of War, Van Buren shrewdly aligned himself with the much-maligned Eaton. Jackson was disturbed by the ostracism of Eaton, which reminded him of the slanders his late wife Rachel had endured over a previous marriage. Shortly thereafter, Jackson replaced Vice President John C. Calhoun—with whom Jackson maintained a fraught relationship and whose wife was the leader of the Petticoat clique—and made Van Buren his running mate for Jackson’s triumphant reelection in 1832.
After four years as Vice President, Van Buren was elected President. Having reached the joyful apex of his decades-long quest for political supremacy, however, Van Buren’s encountered structural crises that even his vaunted coalition-building could not overcome.
His presidency quickly turned disastrous, in large part due to the actions and decisions of Jackson’s administration. When Jackson—with Van Buren’s support—effectively destroyed the Bank of the United States with a presidential veto, he severely compromised the economic underpinnings of the nation. That helped contribute to the Panic of 1837, beginning shortly after Van Buren’s inauguration, which led to a five-year depression and destroyed the financial wellbeing of thousands of Americans. Aggressive federal intervention may have mitigated the crisis, but Van Buren remained stubbornly committed to Jacksonian orthodoxy—managing to alienate working-class supporters and elites alike.
Other Jacksonian policies undermined Van Buren’s tenure as well. Much of the implementation of Jackson’s Indian Removal policy was left to Van Buren. Thousands of members of the Cherokees and Seminole nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands, including 4,000 Cherokee who would die along the westward “Trail of Tears.”
Meanwhile, Van Buren’s opposition to admitting Texas into the Union as a slave state cost him much needed political support in the south. Ridiculed as “Martin Van Ruin” and “Van, Van, the used-up man,” he was defeated in 1840 by the Whig candidate and war hero, William Henry Harrison.