Martin Van Buren

by Jerome Mushkat

In 1828, Martin Van Buren discontinued his profession as a lawyer to become a full-time politician, yet his formative years as an attorney provided the critical ideological basis for his presidency. Mushkat and Rayback offer the first historical investigation of the nature, scope, and significance of Van Buren's legal practice as they trace the development of his republican ideology. Rather than a static set of immutable values and imperatives, Van Buren's ideology was a malleable body of thought. Dynamic and evolving, it exemplified the complexities of republicanism itself. As a teenager, Van Buren absorbed Jefferson and Madison's eighteenth-century classical republicanism. Later, the principles of classical republicanism provided guides during his first year as a practicing lawyer. As his legal and political careers developed, Van Buren adapted his ideas to new conditions, accepting key components of liberal republicanism. Van Buren's rise to prominence mirrors the relevance of law t