Martin Van Buren 1782-1862

He was the first president who was not born a British subject, and the first of Dutch ancestry. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York, a little village on the east bank of the Hudson. At fourteen he left school to study law and two years later astonished the people of his home town by winning his first lawsuit. He was small, and elegant in his manners and dress. His complexion was a bright blond, and he dressed accordingly. A capable politician he filled the roles of State senator, attorney general of New York, United States senator, governor of New York and under Jackson, secretary of state, minister to England and vice-president. Van Buren had been a widower for eighteen years when he moved into the White House in 1837 with his four sons.

The new Administration was unfortunate in its beginnings. A financial disaster, such as had not until then been known in the United States, swept over the country in 1837. A general suspension of specie payments occurred; many banks suspended altogether, and innumerable corporations and individuals were ruined. Congress authorized the issue of $10,000,000 in treasury notes, and Jackson's Specie Circular was revoked. Van Buren's administration was marked by the establishment of the independent treasury system (reestablished in 1846), by a renewal of hostilities against the Seminole Indians, and by the establishment of regular steamship communication with Europe. The Democrats with difficulty retained control of the House of Representatives, and through such methods as to decrease public confidence in the party leaders. This, together with the prevalent depression in business, weakened the dominant party in the country at large, so that in the campaign of 1840 the candidacy of the Whig nominee, General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, was supported with an enthusiasm such as no subsequent political campaign has ever witnessed. The Democrats renominated Van Buren.

Millard Fillmore 1800-1874 President 1850-1853

He was born of New England Parents in a log cabin at Locke, Cayuga County, in the Finger Lakes region of New York, on January 7, 1800. At fifteen he was bound out by his parents to serve an apprenticeship to a wool carder (clothmaker) at an annual salary of fifty-five dollars. A bright lad, young Millard spent his spare moments when he was not working on the carding machine, in reading. While serving his apprenticeship he attended a one-room country school and fell in love the the schoolma'am, Abigail Powers. Abigail helped him with hsi learning to the extent that he was soon able to teach school himself and earn enough money to read law. Four years later Abigail and Millard were married. His political career was under way: New York assemblyman, member of Congress, state controller of New York, and vice-president.

He sought without success the Presidential nomination in 1844 and in the same year he ran for Governor of the State on the Whig ticket, but was defeated by Silas Wright. He became Comptroller of New York State in 1847. In the following year he was elected by the Whig Party Vice-President on the ticket with Zachary Taylor. Upon the death of the President, in July, 1850, Fillmore succeeded him, and the change in administration was marked by the early passage of the Compromise Measures. Fillmore's support of those measures, and especially his signing of the Fugitive Slave Law, alienated many of the extreme Northern members of his party. Aside from the developments of the slavery problem, his administration was marked by one conspicuous event, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Japan. In 1852 he was a prominent Presidential candidate before the National Convention of the Whig Party. In 1856 he was a candidate for the Presidency on the ticket of the Know-Nothing or American Party, and although supported by many conservative Whigs, such as Edward Everett, he received the electoral votes of only one State, Maryland. He took no active part in the Civil War, and spent the remaining years of his life at Buffalo, where he died March 8, 1874.

Theodore Roosevelt 1858-1919 President 1901-1909

Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest man to become president, the wealthiest, the most popular since Andrew Jackson, and by far the most athletic, dynamic, colorful and adventurous. A true extrovert, yet of great intellectual power, he wrote some 150,000 letters while he was in the White House and over thirty books during his lifetime. No other president ever led such a strenuous or diversified life. He was a New York police commissioner, colonel in the Spanish-American War, governor of New York, and president. Although of the old Knickerbocker stock, his manner and carriage is awkward, and not at all impressive." A few months after his graduation from Harvard in 1880, Roosevelt married Alice Lee. When the war with Spain came, Roosevelt quit his job as assistant secretary of the Navy and helped organize the Rough Riders, a picturesque cavalry regiment composed of cowboys, Indians and eastern college football players. The colorful Rough Riders captured the imagination of the country, and when Roosevelt returned from Cuba he found himself a popular hero. Roosevelt's many-sidedness appealed to all manner of men. He was of gentle birth and breeding, yet a man of the people...with the training of a scholar and the breezy accessibility of a ranchman; a man of the library and a man of the world; an athlete and a thinker; a soldier and a statesman.. with the sensibility of a poet and the steel nerve of a rough rider." The mass of Americans agreed.

 In 1906, Congress passed the Hepburn Act, regarded at the time as the greatest achievement of the Roosevelt Administration because it gave renewed vigor to the Interstate Commerce Commission. It gave that body the power to compel uniform bookkeeping practices by all railroads, and the power to establish maximum rates after complaints and investigations had been made; but it was not a general grant of rate-making authority.

Businessmen always insisted that Roosevelt lacked an understanding of economic processes and problems. Conservative statesmen said he lacked respect for the authority of the legislative and judicial branches of the government in our system of checks and balances. Actually, the industrial revolution was remaking society. Liberals were seeking controls for a gigantic industrial and financial system in which free enterprise had run riot. Roosevelt was a liberal; and liberals, because they believe in progress, in experimentation, in slow but continuous reform, are anathema to conservatives and radicals alike. He became steadily more liberal throughout his entire public career..

Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882-1945 President 1933-1945

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first President to serve more than two terms and the first to be inaugurated January 20, had much in common with his fifth cousin, Theodore. Both were born to considerable wealth, both went to Harvard, both began their political careers in the New York legislature, both served as assistant secretaries of the Navy, as governors of New York, and both were nominated vice-president. Both became president. Roosevelt was president during the greatest depression and the greatest war in the history of the world.

Just before paralysis struck him in August, 1921, the thirty-nine year old Roosevelt stood six feet, two inches, weighed about 175 pounds and was in vibrant health. One evening at Campobello after a day of vigorous exertion, followed by a swim in the icy waters of the Bay of Fundy, Roosevelt went to bed with a chill. The next morning he had a high temperature and complained of acute pain in the legs. In a few days they were paralyzed. He never again stood unaided.

The inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, initiated the most sweeping social and economic revolution in the history of the United States. Broad powers were delegated to the President by Congress, and by him to administrative officers.  The federal government assumed the burden of relief. It embarked upon a program of social planning. It dealt vigorously with long standing problems like child labor, collective bargaining, and labor standards. It established a comprehensive social security program. It drastically altered the banking, currency, and credit systems. It modernized the tariff system. The country got action, and was bewildered by its suddenness, but within three months the morale of the people was restored and recovery began. The most difficult problem with which the Roosevelt Administration had to deal was that of unemployment relief. The purpose of the Administration was to relieve distress among the unemployables until the financially embarrassed local governments could resume the burden, and to avoid the dole by giving men work wherever possible on socially useful projects with sufficient pay to provide the necessities of life and to restore purchasing power until the increased demand for consumers' goods reabsorbed them into private industry. To accomplish these two things Congress created (1) the Civilian Conservation Corps on March 31, 1933; (2) the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, provided by act of May 12, 1933.