ExclusiveAngelica Van Buren: Queen of the United States

Welcome to American Legends. I'm Tiffany Brannan. Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories, but here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous and some are obscure, but each person deserves to be discovered because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans In Europe, throughout centuries, there were kings, queens, and royals who were very important, even if only the spouse of the ruling monarch. Here in the United States, our system has always been different. After all, we elect the presidents, but we don't necessarily elect their wives. Despite that, the wife of the president has always had a very important role in how he's viewed by the public, how he's viewed by the other politicians, and even in his policy, as each wife has had her own impact on the president. But what of the presidents who were widowers? In the early 19th century, even leading up to the middle of that century, several presidents in a row were widowers who relied on other female relatives to be their hostesses. Today, we're going to talk about the first lady who was the hostess for the eighth president, Martin Van Buren. As his daughter-in-law, Angelica Singleton Van Buren played a very important role in the re-election, which Van Buren would end up losing in 1840. Martin Van Buren was taking office in 1837. However, his beloved wife, Hannah, also known as Johanna, another descendant of Dutch immigrants like himself, had died many years earlier. They had had six children together, four of whom lived to adulthood. After his beloved wife died, Van Buren never remarried. As a result, when he took office, he had no hostess. Unlike many other presidents, he didn't immediately select a hostess from his friends or relatives. In fact, he acted as host himself for the first year and a half, almost two years of his presidency. Thankfully, his oldest son, Abraham, got married in November of 1838, and thus Van Buren appointed his new daughter-in-law, Angelica, to be his hostess. Now, Van Buren came from New York, so he was definitely a northerner, but his daughter-in-law, Angelica, came from the Old South. She came from a family which lived in South Carolina. This alliance between Van Buren's son and the daughter of a South Carolina family was an excellent political move because it aligned Van Buren more closely with the Old South in a time when they were becoming increasingly suspicious of him because he wouldn't make strong statements for allowing more slave states into the union. In fact, there were a lot of Democrats in the South, and Van Buren was a Democrat, but they began to be less and less favorable toward him because of his stance on different slavery issues. Now, when Angelica was a young girl, she went to a girls' boarding school in her home state. Then, she ended up going to Philadelphia to study in a French ladies' school. While there, she became fascinated with all aspects of French culture, as the headmistress there was of French descent. She learned to speak French and became very involved in that lovely culture, and she even started going by the name Angelique. When she was only 19, she and her sister went to Washington, D.C. While there, they visited their cousin, Dolly Madison. Dolly Madison, at this point, was the widow of a former president, James Madison, and a former first lady herself. She decided to play matchmaker for the young ladies by introducing them to the eligible bachelor sons of the current president, Martin Van Buren. Angelica gained the interest of Van Buren's oldest son, Abraham, who was named after Martin's father. Before long, he asked her to marry him. After their wedding, they went on a honeymoon to Europe. While they were there, they visited her uncle, who lived in England at the time. Angelica was very influenced by the European culture she saw, the beauty of the courts and the royals there. She also was fascinated by being received as the queen of America. She was the youngest first lady ever to hold the position, since she was only 20 when she took this role. Now, Frances Cleveland is often cited as being the youngest first lady, and if we're only considering first ladies who were wives of presidents, Mrs. Cleveland does have the record as being 21. But if we're including acting first ladies, meaning the ladies who had that role but weren't married to presidents, Angelica holds the record. When she returned to the United States and took a president in the White House with her new husband, Angelica brought a lot of the culture of Europe back to America. She started making plans for redesigning the gardens of the White House to be more like the European palaces, and the parties which she gave also were similar to that European style. Her first official job in the role of the first lady was giving a party on New Year's Eve, with the new year going into 1839. At this point, she was introduced to the press and to Washington society. She was viewed very favorably at this point, as a member of the Boston press in particular gushed about how charming she was. She was a very beautiful young lady, and she dressed with great style and taste. In fact, the official portrait of her looks very much like the portrait of Queen Victoria at her wedding, which is no surprise because Van Buren took office the same year that Queen Victoria became queen, 1837. Although it wouldn't be quite accurate to say that America ever was part of the Victorian era, that style did influence the whole world. At all her gatherings, rather than mingling more freely as past first ladies had done, Angelica chose to arrange herself with other young ladies in a tableau and have people come and greet her. As the years wore on, with the panic of 1837 creating increasing financial difficulty in the United States, this formal opulence of European style began to be rather unpopular. Living in this mansion and having the privilege of the presidency, it was very easy for the commander-in-chief and his family to fall under a lot of scrutiny for how they were living while a good deal of the country was unemployed, impoverished, homeless, and struggling. While Martin Van Buren was being criticized for his handling of this economic disaster, his daughter-in-law was also coming under public scrutiny for it. All of these things came to a head in 1840. This was the year that he was running for re-election, and in April of 1840, one of his main Whig opponents, the Whigs being the other political party of the time, made a bold speech against him. This opponent's name was Charles Ogle, and he made a speech to the House of Representatives for the better part of three days. This speech is called the Goldspoon speech, and in it he referred to how the president lived in European palatial opulence. He never specifically referred to Angelica by name, but he did refer to his household. He talked about how the American beauty wasn't enough for the president. He had to redesign all the gardens to be overflowing with the beauty of Europe, and bringing in new plants, and how he had spent thousands of dollars redesigning and redecorating the White House to suit his whims. Even other Whigs were critical of this bold and very personal defamatory statement made by Mr. Ogle. They questioned some of the figures he'd mentioned, as he mentioned that $88,000 had been requisitioned from Congress for buying furniture for the White House. But these figures were corrected, that he'd only ordered 11,000 of that, and the rest was from past presidents. And that, in fact, most of the furniture which he had bought for the White House, he'd bought with his own money. Van Buren was noted for dressing very well. From his earliest days, he loved to look nice, and he had his very jaunty style with the sideburns and his well-tailored clothes. As a matter of fact, this was one of the things that Andrew Jackson liked about him. But it became less and less charming as people were struggling to have decent clothes at all during these economic difficulties. The whole issue of the Gold Spoon speech is considered one of the first times, if not the first time, that such a personal attack was made on a president or any political candidate of that importance in the United States. After the speech was made, Ogle had it printed and circulated throughout the United States, and it played a big role in resulting in his not being re-elected. Now, throughout her time in the White House, Angelica didn't always serve as the hostess, because before long, she was expecting a first child. Sadly, this daughter died not long after her birth, but shortly after that, she was expecting another child, a son, so she remained rather drawn back from the duties of being a hostess. After Father-in-law did not win the presidency, she and her husband moved with him back to Kinderhook and the former president's old home. They stayed there with him, raising their children and being very close with him, and a supporter of him as he continued his political career, unsuccessfully running for president several more times. Later in her life, Angelica and her husband went to Europe again, and this time she saw a lot of struggles and hardship that Europeans were facing. This impacted her very deeply, and she became very moved by the hard times which people were facing abroad and in America, so when she returned to the United States, she became active in charitable organizations and remained so for the rest of her life. Angelica also was very involved in fighting for the rights of her sister. You see, her sister had been involved in a very difficult marriage. After her first husband died, according to the laws of the time, that property was transferred to her second husband, yet her second husband proved to be very cruel and abusive, so she sought refuge with her sister, who happily took her in, and then the sister was trying to fight for the rights to that property, and Angelica helped her financially and morally in this fight and considered it a great injustice. She even called upon her Democratic Party allies politically to fight against this injustice, yet because of the division in the Democratic Party at the time, they weren't too eager to get involved with Van Buren's family, which she found to be a great shame. Throughout her life, Angelica was an example of a lady who was very public-spirited, who cared about others, who contributed to charities, who loved her family above all, whether it was being devoted to her father-in-law, caring for her husband, being a good mother to her children, and supporting her sister and niece during difficult times. Even as she faced criticism, Angelica remained true to herself and to her ideas. She saw nothing wrong in being a beautiful, refined lady and enjoying some of the culture of Europe, even if we didn't agree with everything that they did politically. She saw no reason why that charm shouldn't be extended. After all, if you're a hostess, why not be a good one? There aren't a lot of quotes from Angelica herself, but after that first public reception that she gave in 1839, a member of the Boston press wrote about her that she was a lady of rare accomplishments, free and vivacious in her conversation. We may look at the political situation today and see the different candidates and their political parties maligning each other, investigating each other's families, and think of it as a sad example of the modern world. But it's just an example of human nature. Way back in 1840, we had political candidates going so far as to even make up facts to attack a political opponent. An interesting point, considering that Charles Ogle never was really interested in the presidency himself. But he did stoop rather low in attacking the president, his daughter-in-law, and calling his time in office palatial. It's difficult to be the leader of a free country like this, with the mansion, yet to not be a tyrant, to not be a king, to be a common man of the people. Even when it seems that some first ladies have perhaps acted inadvisably, each one was playing a vital role. Even if her actions led to her husband, father-in-law, or other male relative not being re-elected, it was an important step in the history of the United States that Martin Van Buren would serve only one term, leading to the next president, William Henry Harrison. Angelica Singleton Van Buren holds the record as the youngest first lady, and a first lady who, although she may not have been widely popular in some of her later days as the hostess, brought some much-needed culture to the White House and to the United States. And at first, she was very beloved for her charming receptions. It just goes to show that as we face difficult times, it's easy to criticize people who are in public power or in a position of great notoriety, even if it isn't their fault. Angelica's legacy reminds us that we should be slow to judge those who are in these unenviable positions of being in the public eye. She was a charming young lady who simply wanted to help her family and who, in her own way, brought a lot of the Victorian charm of style and dress to the United States in the 1830s. Thank you for spending this time with me. I'll see you next time on American Legends.