John Tyler
| Term of office | April 4, 1841 – March 3, 1845 |
| Preceded by | William Henry Harrison |
| Succeeded by | James K. Polk |
| Date of birth | March 29, 1790 |
| Place of birth | Charles City County, Virginia |
| Date of death | January 18, 1862 |
| Place of death | Richmond, Virginia |
| Spouse | Letitia Christian Tyler (1st wife) Julia Gardiner Tyler (2nd wife) |
| Political party | Whig and none |
John Tyler (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862) was the tenth (1841-1845) President of the United States. A long-time Democrat, he was elected Vice President on the Whig ticket and on becoming president in 1841 he broke with that party. His most famous achievement was the annexation of the Republic of Texas in 1845. He was the first president born after the adoption of the United States Constitution and the first to assume the office of President upon the death of his predecessor.
Early Life
John Tyler was the seventh of eight children born to John Tyler, Sr. and Mary Armistead. He was educated at the College of William and Mary and went on to study law with his father, who became Governor of Virginia, and followed his father as governor after a stint in the United States House of Representatives. During his time as United States Senate, Tyler, who had begun as a strict state-rights Democrat, grew increasingly alienated from the Jacksonian Democrats, especially by Jackson's aggressive handling of the South Carolina nullification issue.
Drawn into the newly-organized Whig Party, Tyler was elected vice president in 1840 as running mate to William Henry Harrison. Their campaign slogans of "Log Cabins and Hard Cider" and "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" are among the most famous in American politics. He assumed the presidency upon Harrison's death a month into his term.
Tyler was the first Vice President to assume the Presidency in this manner. He acceded to the Presidency upon the death of President Harrison on April 4, 1841, and took the Presidential oath of office as specified by the Constitution on April 6. The Cabinet and Congress of the United States agreed with Tyler that he was President and not merely Acting President of the United States, and as the Constitution was not explicit on that aspect of succession until the 1967 ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, both the House and Senate passed resolutions recognizing Tyler as President.
Tyler married twice, firstly to Letitia Christian Tyler on March 29, 1813. They had eight children.
Letitia served as First Lady of the United States but died on September 10, 1842. Tyler spent two years as a widower. His daughter-in-law Elizabeth Priscilla Cooper served as First Lady for this period. He then married Julia Gardiner Tyler on June 26, 1844. Tyler's children were reluctant to accept his new wife because she was about five years younger than his eldest daughter, Mary. At the time, Tyler was 54 and Gardiner was 24. He was the first President to marry while in office. They had seven children.
Presidency 1841-1845
Policies
His presidency was rarely taken seriously in his time; he was usually referred to as the "Acting President" or "His Accidency" by opponents. Further, Tyler quickly found himself at odds with his former political supporters. Harrison had been expected to adhere closely to Whig Party policies and work closely with Whig leaders, particularly Henry Clay. Tyler shocked Congressional Whigs by vetoing virtually the entire Whig agenda, twice vetoing Clay's legislation for a national banking act following the Panic of 1837 and leaving the government deadlocked. Tyler was officially expelled from the Whig Party in 1841, a few months after taking office, and became known as "the man without a party". The entire cabinet he had inherited from Harrison resigned in September, aside from Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, who remained to finalize the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, demonstrating his independence from Clay.
For two years, Tyler struggled with the Whigs, but when he nominated John C. Calhoun as Secretary of State, to 'reform' the Democrats, the gravitational swing of the Whigs to identify with "the North" and the Democrats as the party of "the South," led the way to the sectional party politics of the next decade. The last year of Tyler's presidency was marred by a freak accident that killed two of his Cabinet members. During a ceremonial cruise down the Potomac River on February 28, 1844, the main gun of the USS Princeton blew up during a demonstration firing, instantly killing Thomas Gilmer, the Secretary of the Navy, and Abel P. Upshur, the Secretary of State. Tyler met his second wife, Julia Gardiner, during the ceremony. Her father was also killed during the explosion. Tyler and Gardiner were married not long afterwards in New York City, on June 26, 1844.
Tyler advocated annexation of Texas to the Union. Whigs opposed this expansion because it would upset the balance between North and South and risked war with Mexico. When the Senate blocked a treaty (which needed a 2/3 vote), Tyler annexed Texas through a joint resolution that passed the House 132-76 and the Senate 27-25 in the last days of his term.
Rhode Island's Dorr Rebellion
In May 1842, when the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island came to a head, Tyler declined to use Federal troops to suppress the rioting adherents of a new state constitution, which extended Rhode Island's restricted franchise. Tyler was of the opinion that the 'lawless assemblages' were dispersing, and expressed his confidence in a 'temper of conciliation as well as of energy and decision:'
"I freely confess that I should experience great reluctance in employing the military power of Government against any portion of the people; but however painful the duty I have to assure your Excellency, that if resistance is made to the execution of the laws of Rhode-Island, by such force as the civil peace shall be unable to overcome, it will be the duty of this Government to enforce the Constitutional guarantee— a guarantee given and adopted mutually by all the original States, of which Rhode-Island was one."
Tyler's later career may be seen in the light of his actions at this turn of events. His letter declined to offer an opinion on the internal affairs of Rhode Island: "They are questions of municipal regulation, the adjustment of which belongs exclusively to the people of Rhode Island." It was the first occasion in U.S. history where the question had arisen, according to Tyler, who was overlooking Shays' Rebellion. He ended his published letter:
"The people of the State of Rhode Island have been too long distinguished for their love of order and of regular government, to rush into revolution, in order to obtain a redress of grievances, real or supposed, which a government under which their fathers lived in peace, would not in due season redress. No portion of her people will be willing to drench her fair fields with the blood of their own brethren, in order to obtain a redress of grievances which their constituted authorities cannot, for any length of time, resist, if properly appealed to by the popular voice. None of them will be willing to set an example, in the bosom of this Union, of such frightful disorder, such needless convulsions of society, such danger to life, liberty and property, and likely to bring so much discredit on the character of popular governments. My reliance on the virtue, intelligence and patriotism of her citizens, is great and abiding, and I will not doubt but that a spirit of conciliation will prevail over rash counsels, that all actual grievances will be promptly redressed by the existing Government, and that another bright example will be added to the many already prevailing among the North American Republics, of change without revolution and a redress of grievances without force or violence."
Administration and Cabinet
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | John Tyler | 1841–1845 |
| Vice President | None | |
| Secretary of State | Daniel Webster | 1841–1843 |
| Abel P. Upshur | 1843–1844 | |
| John C. Calhoun | 1844–1845 | |
| Secretary of the Treasury | Thomas Ewing | 1841 |
| Walter Forward | 1841–1843 | |
| John C. Spencer | 1843–1844 | |
| George Bibb | 1844–1845 | |
| Secretary of War | John Bell | 1841 |
| John C. Spencer | 1841–1843 | |
| James Porter | 1843–1844 | |
| William Wilkins | 1844–1845 | |
| Attorney General | John J. Crittenden | 1841 |
| Hugh S. Legaré | 1841–1843 | |
| John Nelson | 1843–1845 | |
| Postmaster General | Francis Granger | 1841 |
| Charles Wickliffe | 1841–1845 | |
| Secretary of the Navy | George E. Badger | 1841 |
| Abel P. Upshur | 1841–1843 | |
| David Henshaw | 1843–1844 | |
| Thomas Gilmer | 1844 | |
| John Y. Mason | 1844–1845 | |
Supreme Court appointments
Tyler appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Samuel Nelson - 1845
States admitted to the Union
- Florida – 1845
Post-Presidency
Tyler retired to a plantation named "Walnut Grove" he had bought in Virginia, renaming it "Sherwood Forest" to signify that he had been "outlawed" by the Whig party and withdrew from electoral politics, though his advice continued to be sought by states-rights Democrats.
Confederate allegiances
Tyler had long been an advocate of states' rights, believing that the question of a state's "free" or "slave" status ought to be decided at the state level, with no input from the federal government. He was a slaveholder his entire life. In February 1861, Tyler re-entered public life to sponsor and chair the Washington Peace Convention. The convention sought a compromise to avoid civil war, while the Confederate Constitution was being drawn up at the Montgomery Convention. When the Senate rejected his plan, Tyler urged Virginia's immediate secession.
Having served in the provisional Confederate Congress in 1861, he was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives but died of bronchitis and bilious fever before he could take office, which could mean he is the only American president to die on foreign soil, depending on if the Confederacy is considered foreign or not (see Texas v. White). He was 71 years and 295 days old. His final words were "Perhaps it is best". Tyler is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. The city of Tyler, Texas is named for him.
See also
- Second Party System
- Dorr Rebellion
- U.S. presidential election, 1840
- Sherwood Forest Plantation
Further Reading
- Schouler, James. History of the United States of America: Under the Constitution vol. 4. 1831-1847. Democrats and Whigs. (1917) online edition
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
External links
- Official Whitehouse biography
- U.S. Senate Historian's Office: Vice Presidents of the United States—John Tyler
- Tyler's letters refusing government intervention, April and May, 1842
- Works by John Tyler. Project Gutenberg
- List of Descendants
- First State of the Union Address
- Second State of the Union Address
- Third State of the Union Address
- Fourth State of the Union Address
John Tyler's Health and Medical History
| Preceded by: John Clopton |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 23rd congressional district 1817-1821 |
Succeeded by: Andrew Stevenson |
| Preceded by: James Pleasants |
Governor of Virginia 1825-1827 |
Succeeded by: William Branch Giles |
| Preceded by: John Randolph |
President pro tempore of the United States Senate 1827-1836 |
Succeeded by: William C. Rives |
| Preceded by: George Poindexter |
President pro tempore of the United States Senate March 3,1835–December 6,1835 |
Succeeded by: William R. King |
| Preceded by: (none) |
Whig Party vice presidential nominee 1836(a) (lost), 1840 (won) |
Succeeded by: Theodore Frelinghuysen |
| Preceded by: Richard M. Johnson |
Vice President of the United States March 4, 1841–April 4, 1841 |
Succeeded by: George M. Dallas |
| Preceded by: William Henry Harrison |
President of the United States April 4, 1841–March 3, 1845 |
Succeeded by: James K. Polk |
| Preceded by: (none) |
Delegate to the Confederate Provisional Congress from Virginia Representative-elect to the First Confederate Congress from Virginia 1861-1862 |
Succeeded by: (none) |
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