Democrat from new York, Vice-President to Andrew Jackson, beats Ohio Whig William Henry Harrison in the election of 1836.
Opposed Adding Texas to the United States
When the Mexican government declared slavery to be illegal in 1829, many American immigrants in the Mexican state of Coahulia y Tejas were unahppy. They wanted slavery to be legal in Mexico as it was in the southern half of the United States, where many of them came from. In 1836, these American immigrants started a rebellion. Their leader was Andrew Jackson's friend, Sam Houston. When Houston's rebels captured the Mexican general and President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Santa Anna signed a document that said Mexico would let Texas became an independent country that would control the land north of the Rio Grande. Not long after that, the leaders of the new country of Texas declared that slavery was legal. President Jackson and many other slavers were eager for Texas to become a part of the United States, but in August 1837, Van Buren said he was against it.
Forced Cherokees to Walk the "Trail of Tears"
In the winter of 1838, Van Buren ordered the U.S. Army to kick all the 16,000 Cherokee men, women, and children out of their homelands in Georgia and make them walk over one-thousand miles to Oklahoma in winter. Many of them did not have warm clothing or shoes, and about 4,000 Cherokee men, women, and children died on the way.
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