No man in our history has been more cried down and written down than Van Buren. Belated justice to him was made possible by examination of more than 8,000 original documents, including revealing letters of Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Washington Irving, and their contemporaries, which remained with Van Buren's descendants for half a century, and research in other collections. A new light is also shed on Peggy O'Neale, Webster, Calhoun, Astor, Clay, Rensselaers, the Randolphs and their associates in the Virginia Dynasty on whose ruins Van Buren erected his Albany Regency. This volume upsets the accepted Jackson tradition. We see Van Buren fashioning the national political machine. The model in which he rode to the White House has been used since his day, without change, by all political parties. -- Jacket.