#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.

#10 John Tyler 1790-1862

Don’t you wish sometimes that we could have sound effects for use in real-life? Like when you throw something out of sight, wouldn’t it be nice to hear a cat yelp in indignation? Or a muted scream?

Right now, I would love to hear the sound of a record screeching to stop mid-song, complete with awkward silence afterwards. The reason that I could totally use this sound effect is due to my rather abrupt change of tactics when dealing with John Tyler. Here’s what happened…I was excited to discover a genuine, grown-up-sized John Tyler bio at my local library. It was called John Tyler: The Accidental President written by Edward Crapol and seemed a perfect fit for my exacting tastes. But I didn’t get one chapter into the book when I realized that this would never do—this book was only about John Tyler’s presidency and nothing else. Now you know how much I hate that. I want to read books about the lives of the presidents, not strictly their presidential years. (Not to mention, The Accidental President was written like a PhD dissertation so it wasn’t exactly light reading material. Besides you could just tell that Crapol really liked John Tyler, which sent me into a horrible flashback of James Monroe’s biographer.)

Well this demanded action. I wasn’t about to read this book since it didn’t fit the criteria anyway so I got online and found a John Tyler book that was part of the American Presidents Series. Now I have to be honest here—The American Presidents Series, bless its heart—is slowly becoming My Best Friend Ever. I’ve noticed a trend with these books—as succinctly as possible, they write about the presidents’ lives, including all the pertinent information and leaving out everything else. I have to say that I’m loving the stuff that they put out. For some obscure reason though my library doesn’t have their John Tyler book, which means (grrrr!) that I have to head to Amazon once more (sigh) and by it.

So let me introduce you to John Tyler by Gary May (New York: Times Books, 2008).

John Tyler was born to a prominent Virginian family on March 29, 1790 and was one of eight children. He grew up with his sisters and brothers on Greenway Plantation in the midst of the Virginia dynasty of the Presidents of the United States. “For the Tylers, Virginia was paramount. Not only was it the wealthiest, most populous, and most influential colony and then state, its sons led the fight for independence, wrote its most sacred documents, then dominated the new federal government. John Tyler grew up with a collection of heroes unsurpassed in America’s history—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe; George Wythe, who taught Jefferson the law and signed the Declaration of Independence; Patrick Henry, the revolutionary firebrand, governor of Virginia, and Tyler family friend; Edmund Randolph, George Washington’s attorney general and secretary of state. Four of the nation’s first five presidents and Chief Justice John Marshall were Virginians” (p. 12).

At the ambitious age of 12, John went to William and Mary, where he was noted for being sickly and silent. He excelled in “ancient history, poetry, and the works of William Shakespeare” (p. 13) and eventually graduated in 1807. He proceeded to study law under the famed Edmund Randolph but he was never really excited about that line of work. He felt called to be a politician, like his father, and so in 1811, John ran and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

The War of 1812 soon intervened in John’s life and a number of things happened to him around this time. First of all, his beloved father died of pneumonia. Then on John’s 23rd birthday, he married the girl next door, Letitia Christian of the Cedar Grove plantation. Finally, with the advent of the British in the area, he joined the Charles County Rifles as a captain but never actually saw any action. Through all this he continued to win election after election back into the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1815, though, he was finally elected onto a bigger stage when he became a Virginia congressman to the House of Representatives.

He became known as a fervent states rights man, voting against the Bank of the United States and Henry Clay’s American System. He also was fervidly pro-slavery. “Despite his efforts to mitigate its brutality Tyler, like other slave masters, could not prosper let alone survive without slavery” (p. 23). John ended up resigning from Congress due to a number of reasons: financial (he was broke), familial (he already had 3 small children at home), physical (he was always sickly), and futility (he felt like he wasn’t contributing to the government).

To enhance his economic status, Tyler went back to practicing law but it again did not thrill him. He even got into a fistfight in court with a witness for the other side (p. 27)! And sooner rather than later, he allowed himself to be pulled back into politics by being elected to the Virginia legislature in 1823. By 1825, he was elected governor of Virginia and by 1827, he was back in Washington as a senator. (To finance his way to Washington, Tyler sold an old family slave, “which would mean that Tyler began his Senate career with monies generated by the sale of a human being” (p. 30).)

As a senator, perhaps his greatest achievement was being the only one to vote against Andrew Jackson’s Force Bill. But in this, John Tyler was happy to do it—he couldn’t stand Andrew Jackson. In fact, when Jackson was censured by Congress and then made to expunge the record, Tyler resigned in lofty indignation. “In his formal letter of resignation, Tyler explained that he could not subscribe to such an unconstitutional resolution” (p. 46).

His retirement was again short-lived. In the 1836 election, he was nominated as a vice presidential candidate by the Whig party but lost to Richard Johnson of Kentucky who joined Van Buren on the presidential ticket. By the 1840 election, though, he was back in the game but this time paired with William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe. With an Indianan running for president, it made sense to the Whigs to have a Virginian run with him. The campaign for Old Tippecanoe and Tyler Too was an amazing achievement for the fledgling Whig party and William Henry Harrison won by a pretty large amount.

No one could really have foreseen what happened next—one month after the inauguration, William Henry Harrison died; thus creating a political black hole for the United States. At this time in our history, no other president had died and since the Constitution was remarkably mum about the matter, no one really knew what would happen to the vice president. Tyler merely took over all the presidential duties, including the oath of office, and decided that he was, indeed, president of the United States. “By explicitly stating that he had inherited the office, Tyler undercut those who believed that he was only the ‘acting’ president. Although a few legislators raised questions about Tyler’s legitimacy, both the House and the Senate later formerly recognized his lawful right to the office” (p. 63).

So now we have John Tyler inadvertenly becoming the 10th President of the United States by default, while things soon began to spiral downward and out of his control. He had been added to the Whig ticket because of his hatred of Andrew Jackson but at heart he was really a Democrat. Thus, after his accession to the presidency, this partiality soon surfaced and it had the entire Whig party in an uproar. For instance, the Whigs (& previously John Tyler) had bemoaned the fact that Jackson took an almost monarchical pleasure as he vetoed bill after bill. As a reaction, the Whigs proposed a president who was more laissez-faire about the matter, which Tyler had agreed with also. However, as president, Tyler began to veto bills left and right, regardless of whether they were Whig or Democrat. “So frequent and regular were Tyler’s vetoes that this one was called ‘his veto of the month’” (p. 79). The Whigs formally disowned him and hatred for Tyler grew around the country. Threats were made against the President and his family until Tyler begged Congress for some sort of bodyguard.

His problems had only begun though. Soon, Tyler’s wife, Letitia, died, leaving him a single father over 8 children. In 1843, Tyler’s attorney general died suddenly. Then, on board the Princeton, for a celebratory event, one of the canons exploded, killing several members of the President’s coterie, including his secretary of state, Abel Upshur and the father of his future wife.

Not everything was terrible for John Tyler however. He spent most of his energy on foreign policy and was able to conclude a remarkable treaty with England, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that cleared up some boundary disputes in New England (and kept them from going to war.) Also John met and fell in love with a 22-year old socialite named Julia Gardiner. On June 24, 1844, they wed, even though there was a considerable span of years between them.

Tyler toyed with the idea of running for president in the 1844 election but nobody really liked him. Thus, he threw all his support behind James K Polk, which allowed that gentleman to become the next president. Before Polk was inaugurated, though, Tyler decided to act on behalf of Texas and on March 1st, 3 days before he left office, he signed the annexation of Texas into law. Most people decided that Polk should have had the recognition for annexing Texas (it was through his support that Congress agreed to it) but even as he began his presidency, Tyler would leave on a controversial note.

He and Julia retired to their Virginian estate to farm and to raise the seven children that they would have. John kept abreast of all that happened in the political world and even tried to get back into politics a time or two. He couldn’t have known that the next time he would be elected to anything it would be to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Initially, Tyler did everything in his power as a former president to avert the civil war that seemed to be looming on the horizon. However, when it was made clear to him that it was war or abolition, he threw his support behind Virginia’s secession from the Union, earning himself the hatred of many thereafter. He died of a “bilious attack, united with bronchitis” (p. 144) on January 18, 1862 while he was in Richmond as a congressman. In the North, he was not mourned.