{"id":353,"date":"2015-05-28T09:09:37","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T09:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservativehistorian.com\/?p=353"},"modified":"2019-09-19T21:41:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T21:41:45","slug":"historical-figure-of-the-month-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativehistorian.com\/historical-figure-of-the-month-5\/","title":{"rendered":"From Martin Van Buren and the Crash of 1837"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many historical portrayals of Van Buren have painted a picture of a do-nothing President who was either disinclined or incapable of getting involved in the economy.[1]<\/a> It is claimed by one school of historians that the lack of action led to a worsening of the crisis.\u00a0 The reality was that Van Buren\u2019s hands off approach was not only intentional, but was the correct approach to get out of the depression that enveloped the Republic after the Panic of 1837.\u00a0 From these two different views there are two questions raised by Van Buren and the Panic; was the portrait of Van Buren as a non-activist President accurate and if it was not, then why did nearly two generations of historians, writing from the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, believe that Van Buren was a non-activist president when the example of his Independent Treasury was clearly a bold and even radical move.\u00a0 To learn more about this episode in American History, please look out for Conservative Historian, the book, coming in 2020.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Joel H. Sibley, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics<\/em>, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002) p. 142