Martin Van Buren"Old Kinderhook"

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) was the 8th President of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. He was the first president born after American independence (making him the first president who was a U.S. citizen from birth rather than a British subject) and the first whose native language was not English — he grew up speaking Dutch. A skilled political organizer, he helped build the modern Democratic Party and served as Andrew Jackson's Secretary of State and then Vice President before winning the presidency himself. His single term was dominated by the Panic of 1837, a severe economic depression that devastated his popularity and largely doomed his re-election chances. He lost his 1840 re-election bid to William Henry Harrison, and later ran again unsuccessfully in 1848 as a third-party candidate for the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.