Product Description: The slick and dandyish professional politician Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Yet he too had an iron temperament, and he would build a lasting legacy as the architect of the modern Democratic Party...read more

A portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century president considers his roles as the first president born after American independence, the first ethnic president, and the first New Yorker to hold the office, describing his failed efforts to control such issues as slavery and the great banking panic of 1837. 20,000 first printing.

Amazon.com Review: Most people have probably never heard of John O'Sullivan, who launched a magazine called Democratic Review in 1837 with money provided by the Democratic Party, or of the "Young America" movement the magazine spearheaded. But one of the phrases that emerged from Sullivan's writing--"Manifest Destiny"--has entered the American lexicon, although in a much more limited form than its author intended...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)