The President that History Forgot
It’s easy for good people to be forgotten. We quickly name several ignoble ones for every noble person we can think of. However, what if someone was so horrible that absolutely no one wanted to remember them? Enter John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States. Tyler became president through a mix of shrewdness and luck. However, he alienated his own political party by sticking to his principles. Tyler then spent his post-presidency seeing the consequences of his actions and defending them—even his support of Southern Succession following Abraham Lincoln’s election—to the end. If we’re to understand how Tyler entered obscurity, we must examine his life.
John Tyler Jr. was born on March 29, 1790. His father, Judge John Tyler, instilled in his son two things: putting public service ahead of his personal life and opposition to any concentrated national power. The young Tyler pushed himself academically, culminating in his graduation from the College of William and Mary at age seventeen. Tyler spent the next few years developing his law skills until he entered the Virginia House of Delegates in 1811; he quickly earned a reputation for challenging national power. Two things changed Tyler’s personal life in 1813: his father’s death and his marriage to Letitia Christian. The two would have eight children together, but like his father, Tyler prioritized politics over his family. In 1816, Tyler was elected to the House of Representatives. He spent his tenure in much the same way as he did in the Virginia legislature, but with no results. Tyler left the House in 1821 and returned to Virginia politics (Leahy, 2006, 324-329; Freehling, 2007). However, a political force would soon bring Tyler back to the national stage.
Andrew Jackson represented everything Tyler hated: a populist commoner who only rose to political prominence through his military victories. Tyler initially supported John Quincy Adams during the 1824 election but backed away due to his protectionist economic policies. In early 1827, the Virginia legislature made Tyler a senator. Tyler then reluctantly backed Jackson during the 1828 election but quickly discovered after the election they had nothing in common. Tyler’s breaking point came after Jackson withdrew the deposits of the Second Bank of the United States in early 1833. Tyler opposed the bank but felt Jackson overreached his executive power. That same year, Tyler joined the newly-created Whig Party, led by Henry Clay, only because they hated Jackson as much as he did. Tyler resigned from the Senate in 1836 to protest Pro-Jackson Democrats taking over the Virginia legislature (Freehling). Two years later, Tyler reentered the Virginia legislature. Meanwhile, Whig leaders hoped the economic downturn would make the upcoming presidential election theirs for the taking (Seager II, 1963, 119-122, 127-130). However, the party had to figure out who would be their presidential candidate and, more importantly, his running mate.
The 19th-century vice presidency (VP) was a political dead end for its occupant; the VP’s only job was presiding over and casting tie-breaking votes in the Senate. However, the VP slot was important in balancing a party’s factions. The Whigs nominated former Ohio senator and general William Harry Harrison as their presidential candidate during the 1839 party convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The party soon began looking for a Southern candidate to balance the ticket. Tyler made it known during the convention he wanted the job. The convention, with little thought, made Tyler the VP. The Whigs won the presidency and Congress in the 1840 election (Seager II, 132-140). Harrison was sworn into office on March 4, 1841. However, on April 4th, Harrison died from pneumonia. Harrison’s death soon raised a Constitutional question: what would happen to Tyler? The Constitution, prior to the passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967, was vague on succession; did the VP become president outright, or did they serve as acting president until the next election? Tyler, on his own initiative, claimed he was now the president. He then quickly sought the support of Whig and Democratic leadership. Congress officially ratified Tyler’s actions on June 1st, resolving the succession question (Callahan, 2021, 123-124, 126-134, 138-149). Within a few weeks, the Whigs’ support of Tyler became the worst decision they ever made.
The Whigs never asked Tyler if he agreed with their policies during his VP nomination because nobody thought he would be president. However, Tyler—now as president—showed his true colors. In September 1841, the Whigs tried to implement their economic policies, but Tyler shot them down. The Whigs responded by throwing Tyler from the party the following month and resigning their cabinet positions; they even considered impeaching Tyler for his opposition. The following year, Tyler’s wife died of a stroke while he battled Congress; to top it off, the Whigs blamed Tyler’s stubbornness for losing the House in the midterms. All this misfortune is not to say that Tyler’s presidency was characterized only by hardship; he settled a long-running border dispute between Maine and New Brunswick in 1843 (Peterson, 1989, 57-71, 77-86, 129-34). His greatest victory, however, would almost fail to materialize: the annexation of Texas.
America had desired Texas since the early 19th century. In 1836, Texas became an independent republic. Tyler wanted to annex Texas but knew it was politically risky. In July 1843, Tyler sent his new Secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur, to begin negotiations with Mexico. However, on February 28, 1844, Upshur was killed in an accident aboard the USS Princeton. His death ended any chance to annex Texas peacefully. Tyler knew no one would run him in the 1844 presidential election, so he announced he would run as a third-party candidate, promising to annex Texas. The Democrats, fearing a Whig victory from Tyler’s gambit, ran pro-annexation candidate James K. Polk in exchange for Tyler leaving the race. Polk’s victory that November solidified Texas annexation. Tyler finally annexed Texas by signing a joint resolution Congress had just passed on his last day in office; he also escaped responsibility for the subsequent Mexican-American War (Crapol, 2006, 176-222). While Tyler escaped blame for the war, his historic anonymity would come from his own hand.
Tyler spent his post-presidency living on a plantation with his new wife Julia Gardiner. Gardiner met Tyler in early 1842; the two got married in the waning days of Tyler’s presidency (Seager II, 172-175, 200-208). Tyler mostly avoided politics during his retirement, barring some comments on the day’s events. The aftermath of the 1860 election drew Tyler back into politics. Tyler negotiated a fruitless peace compromise before siding with the South based on his states' rights principles. Tyler cheered when Virginia left the Union on April 17th, 1861; several weeks later, he was elected to the Confederate Congress. However, the war devastated the Tylers: many of Tyler’s relatives sided with the Union over Virginia, the Confederate government took half of Tyler’s slaves for military use, and Union soldiers ransacked his summer home. Tyler died on January 18th, 1862, before he took his seat in the rebel Congress. Northern media ignored or barely mentioned Tyler’s passing, while Southern media mourned him and then ultimately forgot him after the war. Tyler was forgotten because he was a Southern Whig who stuck to his Southern principles no matter the price (Crapol, 225-230, 257-65, 269-73, 275-83). This odd circumstance made it difficult for either North or South to put Tyler in the other’s camp. History might have remembered Tyler more fondly had he compromised with the Whigs and not turned against his country.
Works Cited
Callahan, D. P. (2021). “The Constitutional Crisis that Wasn’t: The Politics of John Tyler’s Presidential Succession.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 129(2), 122–155. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27014474
Crapol, E. P. (2006). John Tyler: The Accidental President. The University of North Carolina Press. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/lib/asulib-ebooks/detail.action?docID=427120
Freehling, W. (2017, June 26). “John Tyler: Life Before the Presidency | Miller Center.” Miller Center. https://millercenter.org/president/tyler/life-before-the-presidency
Leahy, C. (2006). “Torn between Family and Politics: John Tyler’s Struggle for Balance.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 114(3), 322–355. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4250328
Peterson, N.L. (1989) The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison & John Tyler. University Press of Kansas. https://archive.org/details/presidenciesofwi0000pete
Seager II, R. (1963) And Tyler Too: A Biography Of John And Julia Gardiner Tyler. Mcgrow-Hill Book Company, Inc. https://archive.org/details/andtylertooabiog013722mbp/mode/2up
