Representative John Van Buren

John Van Buren (February 18, 1810 – October 13, 1866) was an American lawyer, public official, and Democratic politician who served as Attorney General of New York from 1845 to 1847 and was a key advisor to his father, President Martin Van Buren. Known for his sharp wit, powerful oratory, and strong anti-slavery views within the Democratic Party, he became a prominent figure in New York politics and a leader of the Barnburner and Free Soil movements in the late 1840s. He was widely known in his own day by the nickname “Prince John,” reflecting both his social prominence and his status as the son of a president.

Van Buren was born on February 18, 1810, in Hudson, Columbia County, New York, the second son of Martin Van Buren and Hannah (Hoes) Van Buren; some sources list his birth date as February 10. He grew up in a politically active household as his father rose from New York state politics to national office. He attended Yale College and graduated in 1828. After Yale, he read law in the offices of two leading New York Democrats, Benjamin F. Butler and Aaron Vanderpoel, and was admitted to the bar in 1830. His early legal training under these influential figures helped place him at the center of the state’s Democratic legal and political networks.

In 1831, when Martin Van Buren was appointed United States Minister to Great Britain by President Andrew Jackson, John Van Buren accompanied him to London and served as secretary of the American legation. Both returned to the United States in 1832 after the Senate refused to confirm Martin Van Buren’s diplomatic appointment. John Van Buren then established a law practice in Albany in partnership with James McKown. Contemporaries remarked on his remarkable memory and courtroom presence, noting that “his success at the bar was great, but his fame as a lawyer has been dimmed by his wit and his wonderful ability as a politician.” From 1838 to 1839 he returned to England on his own. During this visit he attended the Coronation of Queen Victoria, had seats at the ceremony, witnessed the Queen’s prorogation of Parliament, and, according to contemporary accounts, danced with her at an 1838 ball—an episode that helped earn him the sobriquet “Prince John” in the press.

On June 22, 1841, Van Buren married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Vanderpoel (born May 22, 1810), the niece of his former legal mentor Aaron Vanderpoel. The couple had one daughter, Anna Van Buren (1842–1923). Elizabeth Vanderpoel Van Buren died on November 19, 1844, and John Van Buren never remarried. During these years he continued to build his legal and political reputation in Albany, closely associated with the dominant Democratic organization in New York and increasingly visible as a public speaker and party strategist.

From 1845 to 1847, Van Buren served as Attorney General of New York, the last person to hold that office under the state Constitution of 1821 as elected by joint ballot of the Assembly and Senate. In this capacity he became the chief prosecutor in some of the most contentious legal and political cases of the era. In 1845 he conducted the prosecution of several leaders of the Anti-Rent War, a long-running conflict between tenant farmers and the heirs of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon of vast landed estates in upstate New York. The tenants, bound by lifetime leases that required them to pay a year’s rent or a quarter of the sale price upon transfer, had been left deeply in arrears after the Panic of 1837. Following Van Rensselaer’s death in 1839, many tenants withheld rent and “quarter-sale” payments and organized to obstruct sheriff’s auctions of their property. Van Buren prosecuted these anti-renters on charges including riot, conspiracy, and robbery. Ambrose L. Jordan led the defense. At the first trial the jury deadlocked; at the retrial in September 1845, a heated courtroom altercation occurred when Jordan insulted Van Buren, prompting Van Buren to strike the fifty-six-year-old defense counsel. Jordan swung back, and one of the defendants, Smith A. Boughton, ducked to avoid the blows. Presiding Judge John W. Edmonds sentenced both attorneys to twenty-four hours of solitary confinement in the county jail. Governor Silas Wright refused to accept Van Buren’s resignation, and both lawyers resumed their roles after release. Boughton was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the subsequent state election, Wright was defeated by John Young, who had the support of the Anti-Renters; Governor Young later pardoned Boughton.

As Attorney General, Van Buren also played a central role in legislative reform related to the Anti-Rent controversy. In December 1845 Governor Wright directed him to draft an act to limit the tenure of the manor lords. The resulting bill, considered the most radical reform of the Anti-Rent period, provided that upon the death of a manor landlord, a renter’s lease would be extinguished. This measure led many landlords to subdivide their large estates and sell them to individual farmers, homeowners, or commercial developers, significantly reshaping landholding patterns in parts of New York. Van Buren also gained national attention for his prosecution of William Freeman, an African American man who murdered four members of the Van Nest family in Cayuga County on March 12, 1846. The defense, led by former Governor William H. Seward, sought to establish Freeman’s insanity and his inability to stand trial. A jury empaneled solely to determine Freeman’s sanity sided with Van Buren and found him competent. A second jury then tried the murder charges, and on July 23, 1846, Freeman was found guilty; the next day he was sentenced to hang on September 18. The execution was stayed on appeal, and in January 1847 a higher court granted a new trial. Freeman died of tuberculosis in his jail cell on August 21, 1847, before the retrial could begin.

After the conclusion of the Freeman case and his term as Attorney General, Van Buren moved to New York City, where he formed a law partnership with Hamilton W. Robinson. In the city he developed a wide practice and a reputation as an especially effective trial attorney. His powerful memory for details and his oratorical skills made him a formidable courtroom advocate. Among his most publicized cases was his role as counsel for the celebrated actor Edwin Forrest in Forrest’s highly public divorce proceedings, which again brought Van Buren to national notice. At the same time he remained deeply engaged in politics. He was known as an especially effective campaign speaker, particularly with urban working-class audiences, and in his speeches he frequently denounced slavery as a degrading influence on free labor.

In 1848 Van Buren emerged as a leading figure in the Barnburner faction of the New York Democratic Party. The Barnburners repudiated the Democratic National Convention’s nomination of Lewis Cass for president, regarding Cass as too accommodating to slaveholding interests. At a state convention in Utica, New York, on June 22, 1848, the Barnburners nominated Martin Van Buren as their presidential candidate. On August 9, 1848, the National Convention of the Free Soil Party, meeting in Buffalo, New York, endorsed this nomination, making Martin Van Buren the Free Soil candidate for president. John Van Buren was instrumental in persuading his father to accept the candidacy, both because of Martin Van Buren’s increasingly anti-slavery views and because the elder Van Buren sought a measure of revenge against Cass, who had helped block his nomination at the Democratic convention in 1844. Although Martin Van Buren did not carry a single state in the 1848 election, he drew enough votes in New York to deprive Cass of the state’s electoral votes and thereby contributed to the victory of Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. Many Free Soilers, including future Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, later joined the new Republican Party in the mid-1850s. However, John Van Buren and his father eventually returned to the Democratic Party, reflecting the complex realignments over slavery and sectional politics in the decade before the Civil War.

Van Buren continued to practice law and participate in Democratic politics through the 1850s and into the 1860s. In 1865 he again sought the office of New York State Attorney General as the Democratic nominee but was defeated by Republican candidate John H. Martindale. Following this electoral setback, he undertook an extended tour of Europe with his daughter Anna and a niece. They traveled widely in England, Sweden, Norway, and Russia, reflecting both his continuing interest in European affairs and his personal inclination toward travel in his later years.

On October 13, 1866, while returning from Liverpool to New York City aboard the steamship Scotia, Van Buren died of kidney disease at sea near Cape Race, Newfoundland. After his death a storm arose, and superstitious sailors, regarding the weather as an omen, attempted to have his body consigned to the sea, but the ship’s captain refused and preserved the remains for burial ashore. Upon the Scotia’s arrival in Manhattan, funeral services were held at Grace Church. Pallbearers included prominent New Yorkers such as Samuel J. Tilden, Gouverneur Kemble, Alonzo C. Paige, Edwin W. Stoughton, Samuel L. M. Barlow, and James T. Brady, and mourners included industrialist Peter Cooper and scholar and politician Gulian C. Verplanck. A second service was conducted at St. Peter’s Church in Albany, after which Van Buren was interred at Albany Rural Cemetery, Section 62, Lot 28. In his lifetime and afterward he was sometimes confused with another New York Democrat, Judge and U.S. Representative John Van Buren of Kingston, Ulster County, who was born in 1799 and died in 1855; unlike that John Van Buren, President Van Buren’s son never lived in Kingston, never served as a judge, and was never elected to Congress.

Van Buren’s colorful public persona gave rise to a number of legends and anecdotes. One persistent upstate New York story, almost certainly apocryphal, claimed that he lost $5,000, his father’s Kinderhook estate Lindenwald, and a mistress—identified as Elena “America” Vespucci, said to be a descendant of explorer Amerigo Vespucci—to George Parish of Ogdensburg in a card game at the LeRay Hotel in Evans Mills, New York. Another oft-repeated attribution, also of doubtful authenticity, credits him with coining the semi-humorous political exhortation related to ballot-stuffing, “Vote early and vote often.” These tales, whether true or not, contributed to the enduring image of John Van Buren as a brilliant, flamboyant, and controversial figure in nineteenth-century American law and politics.