#10 John Tyler Part 2

“The mild-mannered gentleman from Virginia, scorned by his contemporaries, neglected by today’s historians, and forgotten by his countrymen, deserves to be remembered and reexamined. There is much to be learned from his tumultuous presidency” (p. 151).

Really Cool Stuff about John Tyler
1. I have already mentioned that Tyler deserves recognition due to the fact that he was the very first vice president to assume the presidency after the death of the incumbent. Because the Constitution was purposefully ambiguous about the chain of power should something happen to the President, no one was really sure if the vice president became President in fact or only was ‘acting’ president until another election could be held. John Tyler believed that the Constitution gave him the right to assume the full powers of the presidency and this allowed him to take over as president in an as easy and as painless a manner as possible. In the future, this became known as the Tyler Precedent and was voted into the Constitution as the 25th Amendment. “By boldly assuming the full powers and prerogatives of the presidency upon Harrison’s death, he established what came to be known as the ‘Tyler Precedent,’ not only ensuring the orderly transfer of power in his time but, by making the office ‘independent of death,’ guaranteeing that future accidental presidents could govern with authority” (p. 149).
2. Another precedent was Harrison’s funeral. “And so another precedent was established—the presidential funeral, whose features were generally followed for the next 160 years” (p. 62).
3. With Tyler vetoeing everything in sight, it was to be expected that the Whigs, his erstwhile political party, would be unhappy with this manic behavior. Thus, in 1841, a truly remarkable event occurred. “What happened next was also expected, but it was still shocking because it had never before happened in American history: the president’s entire cabinet, save Daniel Webster resigned” (p. 74). The cabinet, composed of prominent Whigs, could not tolerate any longer John Tyler’s obvious un-Whigishness.
4. And from there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to the next rational step taken by the Whigs. They disowned John Tyler. “At the conclusion of their ceremony, the Whigs formally expelled Tyler from their party. Never in American history had a president been ejected from the party that had brought him to power” (p. 76). This emancipation was huge because as Henry Clay put it, John Tyler was now a “President without a party” and this would inevitably hurt his chances for reelection.
5. The Whigs (and many others) hated John Tyler so much that they actually began impeachment proceedings against him (for the first time ever against a sitting president). “On July 10, following the veto of the latest tariff bill, Congressman John Minor Botts…introduced a resolution that would create a special committee to investigate whether the president should be impeached, the first time such an inquiry had been called” (p. 79). Nothing came of it since Congress preferred to have Tyler go out the natural way, allowing him to lose the popular vote in the next election.
6. When Letitia, John’s wife, died, she was actually the first sitting First Lady to do so. “She was the first First Lady to die, and the White House was draped in mourning and the East Room service on September 12 was large and appropriately dignified” (p. 81).
7. The president had, under his command, a ‘secret service contingency fund.’ This had originally been requested by Washington as a means for the president to have extra cash in national emergencies, primarily foreign policy ones. John Tyler, though, dipped into the fund pretty heavily for extremely sketchy projects in which he had covert agents working for him throughout the US. In one such case, his agents worked in Maine undercover to get the citizens there to uphold the new boundary line. May states that this was the first time “Americans were targets of their own government” and that “for a president who had morally opposed Jackson’s imperial presidency, Tyler was skating on the edge of legality” (p. 86).
8. Under John Tyler’s presidency, the United States would sign its first trade treaty with China. “The president also had ‘his eye fixed upon China’ and sent the first official envoy, Caleb Cushing, to open the Celestial Kingdom to US trade” (p. 91).
9. John Tyler purchased a new estate in Virginia and he aptly named it Sherwood Forest in honor of another outlaw. “A few days later, they set out for Charles City County, Virginia, where they honeymooned at Tyler’s new plantation, which he had named Sherwood Forest in honor of Robin Hood, a fellow political outlaw” (p. 116). Looks like Old Tyler had a sense of humor!
10. When John married Julia Gardiner, it was the first marriage of a current president. “The marriage of a sitting president was another first in American history, and the Tyler wedding drew a great deal of attention” (p. 116).
11. With the 1844 election on the horizon, John Tyler, sans political party, realized that his stock was too low for him to be reelected to the presidency. Thus he canceled any plans to run in the next election, throwing his support behind Democrat James K Polk. “And so Tyler became the first incumbent president to decline to seek a second term” (p. 120).
12. After Polk was inaugurated, Tyler and his new wife left the White House forever. At that same moment, another significant moment was occurring in the Congress. “The day was historic in another way: as he left office, Congress overrode Tyler’s last presidential veto. It was on a minor bill authorizing the construction of two vessels for the Revenue Cutter Service, but Congress had never before been able to amass enough votes to do it. Tyler’s unprecedented presidency ended as it began” (p. 126).
13. Tyler would have the most children than any other president in history. “All told, Tyler and his two wives produced fifteen children, a presidential record. Tyler, born the year after George Washington was inaugurated, produced a family that survived until 1947, when Harry Truman was president” (p. 129).
14. With the advent of the civil war, Tyler took his place alongside his home state and voted for secession from the Union. “On the afternoon of April 17 [1861], John Tyler joined eighty-seven other delegates to the Virginia state convention to approve an ordinance of secession and, in so doing, became the first president to betray the country he spent his life serving” (p. 142).

Even though this was a nice short book, I still probably would not recommend it as thrilling reading material. The reason I say this is that I can’t help but compare this book to the Martin Van Buren one and really there is no comparison. Gary May has none of the wit and charm that Ted Widmer relates in his biography. This book on John Tyler is really a pretty dry recitation of the facts on the 11th president’s life and times.

The book might have been a little dull but I’ll tell you who isn’t—John Quincy Adams. He might have been an abysmal president but that guy writes the funniest stuff in his diary! Because of his longevity in the world of politics and his voracious practice of keeping current in his journal, JQA is quoted in absolutely every single biography I’ve read since like the John Adams bio. He is misanthropic, crass, and derogatory to most people and I love it! Just in this book alone, JQA outshines even John Tyler in...Tyler’s own biography! Here’s a sample of John Quincy’s acerbic horror at the thought of John Tyler being called to Boston to dedicate the Bunker Hill memorial. “What a name in the annals of mankind is Bunker Hill! What a day was the 17th of June, 1775! And what a burlesque upon them by Daniel Webster, and a pilgrimage by John Tyler and his cabinet of slave drivers, to desecrate the solemnity by their presence!...Daniel Webster was spouting, and John Tyler’s nose, with a shadow outstretching that of the monumental column [ouch!]—how could I have witnessed all this at once, without an unbecoming burst of indignation, or of laughter. Daniel Webster is a heartless traitor to the cause of human freedom; John Tyler is a slavemonger…What have these to do with a dinner in Faneuil Hall, but to swill like swine, and grunt about the rights of man” (p. 104)? Oh man! Isn’t that classic? For a gentleman raised like a Puritan, John Quincy’s pen is really harsh. Here’s another example for all you JQA-philes, when John Quincy writes about Tyler after his marriage to Julia Gardiner. “Captain Tyler and his bride are the laughingstock of the city. It seems as if he was racing for a prize-banner to the nuptials of the mock—heroic—the sublime and the ridiculous. He has assumed the war power as a prerogative, the veto power as caprice, the appointing and dismissing power as a fund for bribery; and now, under circumstances of revolting indecency; is performing with a young girl from New York the old fable of January and May” (p. 117). I have to give you one more. When John Tyler signed the annexation of Texas before Polk was inaugurated, JQA was outraged. “John Quincy Adams growled that the Constitution had been made ‘a menstrous rag’” (p. 124). I’m sorry…I had to include a little more JQA because he made the book especially fascinating to me.


That being said, of course, I was pleasantly shocked by what Tyler accomplished in his limited time as president. For a guy in office for just under the normal 4 years, he produced a truly magnificent stream of “firsts” that literally beat the pants off other presidents. Interesting.

Plus, you gotta feel a little sorry for the guy. He’s sandwiched in there between Jackson’s forceful personality and the Civil War and either way, he’s overlooked. I can understand why historians don’t jump on the John Tyler bandwagon, not only because he burned his bridges with the Whig party but because he also betrayed his country at the last and voted for secession. Unfortunately, history will be very, very slow to forgive him that last one. If the South had indeed won, Tyler might well have been our greatest hero; it is unfortunate that this is not the case and Tyler’s legacy is, perhaps, gone forever.