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John Tyler—America’s First Accidental President
By Frank Jackson
Nobody ever expected John Tyler (March 29, 1790 to January 18, 1862) to become a U.S. president, including Tyler. But when the opportunity arose, this Constitutionalist who refused to be a tool of the bankers moved decisively to take the reins of power. His term in office was an exceptionally difficult one. His enemies tried to impeach him, for no reason other than politics. And court historians have given Tyler little credit—in part, no doubt, due to his subsequent opposition to the violent destruction of the nation’s traditional federal system of government that came with the American holocaust of 1861-65.
In the history of the United States, impeachment of federal officials has been rare. Only 16 officeholders, mostly federal judges, have been impeached.1 The casual student of American history may be aware that Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were the only presidents to be impeached—but they were not the only presidents in danger of impeachment. Richard Nixon immediately comes to mind. But a more obscure president, namely John Tyler, was closer to being called on the carpet. Articles of impeachment were prepared against him in the House but did not pass.2
While Tyler appears near the bottom of the list in those presidential rankings the court historians love to concoct, he bears a closer look. As a states’ rights advocate and owner of slaves (though by all accounts he was an unusually beneficent taskmaster), Tyler is not likely to receive the stamp of approval from any modern historian. Whatever his faults or virtues, Tyler arguably had less to work with than any other man who has ever assumed the office of president.
Born in Charles City County, Virginia, in 1790, John Tyler was yet another scion of the Virginia aristocracy who was responsible for the Old Dominion being dubbed the Mother of Presidents.3 As did many of the privileged sons of Virginia, Tyler graduated from the College of William and Mary, embarking on a legal career at the age of 21. His résumé eventually included stints in the Virginia House and Senate, as well as the U.S. House and Senate (he unseated states’ rights advocate John Randolph). He also served as governor of Virginia. On the basis of his career as a public servant, he seemed as well qualified as anyone to serve as president. Yet it was an office he never sought.
Throughout his career Tyler had been a Democrat, but he had his differences with Andrew Jackson. As an “aristocrat,” Tyler was generally unhappy with the rough-hewn Jackson’s means, if not always with his ends. Though he agreed with Jackson on a number of issues, notably the annexation of Texas and the unconstitutionality of a national bank, Tyler, who had never served in the military other than one month in the state militia, was uncomfortable with the “man on horseback” image Jackson represented. The former was more of a states’ rights advocate, the latter an ardent unionist. In 1819, Rep. Tyler expressed his displeasure with Gen. Andrew Jackson’s questionable foray into Florida (then Spanish territory) during the Seminole wars. In 1834, Sen. Tyler delivered a stinging criticism of “King Andrew I” and his heavy-handed approach to the presidency. In 1836, af ter the Virginia legislature ordered Tyler to vote to rescind a resolution of censure directed toward Jackson (in those days a U.S. senator was elected by the state legislature, not by direct election), he refused to do so and resigned.
Says Chitwood:
In taking this aggressive stand against the country’s idol, Tyler was exhibiting a courage and disinterestedness that have been only too rare in the history of American statesmanship. Nor can we explain his action on any other ground than that of patriotism and loyalty to principle. It is hardly believable that he was prompted by partisanship in his opposition to Jackson. This young doctrinaire, who was trying to carry the ideals of youth into politics, was too guileless to be motivated by anything less noble than loyalty to conviction.4
Tyler’s political career was stalled but not stopped. The Whig Party, a loose coalition of anti-Jackson politicians cobbled together out of a diversity of National Republicans, Antimasons, advocates of a so-called National Bank of the United States and Jackson’s personal enemies, admired Tyler’s anti-Jackson posture, and he attracted some votes as a vice presidential candidate in 1836. In 1838, Tyler was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for the last of his three tours of duty in that legislative body.
The presidential election of 1840 pitted Democrat Martin Van Buren,5 the Democratic incumbent, against Whig candidate William Henry Harri son. Van Buren, who served as vice president under Andrew Jackson from 1833 to 1837, was “Old Hickory’s” hand-picked successor. Van Buren won the presidency handily in 1836 but had the misfortune to run for reelection during the hard economic times of 1840. (In 1837 there was a panic, leading to a five-year, nationwide depression.)
Then as now, people tended to vote their pocketbooks. Harrison had been a candidate in 1836 and had finished surprisingly strong. Although he had won fame as an Indian fighter in the (Old) Northwest Territory, he had languished in political obscurity for years. The last office he held before running for president was that of county recorder in Ohio.
When Harrison was nominated in 1840, he chose the Southerner John Tyler as his running mate to provide a balanced ticket.6 The vice presidency was an office Tyler had not sought, either in 1836 or 1840. During the latter campaign, he stated: “I do declare, in the presence of my Heavenly Judge, that the nomination given to me was neither solicited nor expected.”7 It was the hope of the Whigs that Tyler, an erstwhile Democrat, would woo Democratic voters away from Van Buren.
Ironically, the roistering Whig campaign of 1840 (characterized by Carl Schurz as displaying “more enthusiasm and less thought” than any previous election) was largely inspired by the political hoopla made popular by Jacksonian Democracy in previous campaigns.8 “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” was the theme, as a cabin and barrel of cider were usually put to good use at political rallies.9 Better remembered today is the slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” with the former referring to Harrison’s 1811 victory at Tippecanoe, seven miles north of today’s city of Lafayette, Indiana, in the Indian wars. The slogan actually came from a song popularized during the campaign:
What has caused this great commotion, motion, our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on,10
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too.11
And with them we’ll beat little Van, Van, Van; Van is a used-up man.
And with them we’ll beat little Van.
Like the rushing of mighty wa ters, waters, waters, on it will go,
And its course will clear the way.
The Whig spin doctors painted Harrison (who took to wearing a coonskin cap) and Tyler as common men, though both had patrician roots.12 Van Buren, the Democratic incumbent, was portrayed as a snob, even though his origins were more humble than those of his rivals. Van Buren was the product of a middle-class upstate New York family only a few generations removed from indentured servitude.
When the results were in, Harrison had handily defeated the incumbent Van Buren, 234 to 60 electoral votes, though he out-polled his rival by only 150,000 in the popular vote. Harrison promised to run for just one term of office and fate decreed he would have no second thoughts. He was inaugurated on March 4, 1841, came down with pneumonia on March 2713 and died on April 4. His one-month tenure remains the shortest by a U.S. president.14
So Harrison, the oldest of the first 10 presidents (he was 68 when he was inaugurated), was dead; Tyler, the youngest ofthe 10 (he had turned 51 six days before Harrison died), was the next president. He was also the first vice president to ascend to the office upon the death of a president. The new head of state was engaged in a game of marbles with his sons when he learned he had been elevated to the highest office in the land. The two days it took Tyler to journey from his home in Williamsburg to Washington represents the longest period in history that the nation was without a chief executive.
As soon as he reached Washington, Tyler took over. Today this would be expected of a vice president after the death of a president, but in 1841, the line of succession wasn’t so clear-cut. The Constitution was vague as to whether the vice president would merely act as president until an election could be called or whether he should be elevated to the office himself. In periodicals and speeches in 1841 Tyler was referred to as vice president, acting president and president. Tyler had no such doubts. He insisted on taking an oath of office (a controversial act in itself) as president and moved into the White House. After initially balking at this presumptuousness on his part, Congress passed a resolution proclaiming him president.
Perhaps there were enough holdovers who remembered their bruising battles with Andy Jackson; perhaps Congress was loath to undertake another election campaign so soon after the overwrought 1840 campaign.15 For whatever reason, they accepted Tyler as head of state. However, this didn’t prevent him from being caustically referred to as “His Accidency.” An especially harsh critic was former President John Quincy Adams, who had returned to the House of Representatives in 1830, where he remained until his death in 1843. Nevertheless, Tyler’s boldness set the presidential precedent, so, when the situation arose again in 1850, after the death of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore’s ascension from vice president to president was uncontested. The question, however, was not officially settled until 1967, when the 25th Amendment to the Constitution clearly stated that the vice president would become president following the death or resignation of his predecessor, and would only be an acting president if the president was temporarily incapacitated. The amendment also authorized the new president to nominate a new vice president, with the approval of Congress. In Tyler’s time, the office was simply left vacant. The three years and 11 months of Tyler’s administration represents the longest time the republic was lacking a vice president. In the years to come, 15 more chief executives finished their terms of office without a formally elected VP.
The lack of a sitting vice president was the least of Tyler’s problems, since he inherited the economic mess (the federal government was officially bankrupt) that had chased Van Buren out of office. Tyler approved of high tariffs in order to refill the coffers of the treasury—a position that put him at odds with other Whigs, who favored free trade.
Tyler’s mistake was retaining the entire cabinet that Harrison had selected. The cabinet was comprised of Daniel Webster, secretary of state; Thomas Ewing, secretary of the treasury; John Bell, secretary of war; John J. Crittenden, attorney general; Francis Granger, postmaster general; and George E. Badger, secretary of the Navy. What made the cabinet particularly unusual was that during its one-month existence, they had voted on policy with President Harrison’s vote counting for no more than any other man’s. Tyler quickly let it be known that he would have no part of that. If he was going to be president, he was going to take charge, not merely preside as chairman of a committee.
The cabinet’s loyalty was primarily to the Whig faction led by Henry Clay, who was something of a sorehead in those days because he had been unable to attain the presidency, an office he coveted.16 Clay’s ringing endorsement of a national bank was thwarted by Tyler, who vetoed two bills (the first was written by Treasury Secretary Ewing) establishing such an institution. Tyler based his opposition on his strict constructionist philosophy:
There is not in the Constitution any express grant of such power for such purpose, and it could never be constitutional to exercise the pow er, save in the event the power granted to Congress could not be carried into effect without resorting to such an institution.17
Tyler’s antipathy to a national bank was hardly a knee-jerk reaction, as he had spent a large portion of his political career studying the national bank question and banking in general. His studies produced some definitive ideas on the role of money in the republic:
Without them [laws regulating interest rates] a nation becomes a nation of moneylenders . . . The Mosaic regulation which permitted usance to be taken of strangers, aided by the oppressions under which they labored, converted the Jews into a nation of moneylenders. I mention this not to their discredit. They are like all the rest of the human family—no better and no worse—devoting themselves to the acquisition of money, and seeking for their money such investment as yields the greatest return. Into the same condition may the people of any country be changed. Only make the profits on loans high enough: If 6 percent will not do, take 10; if 10 does not, take 20; in other words, make it more profitable for the capitalists to loan out their money than to invest it in lands, ships, or machinery, and the work is accomplished. Government will have converted the community into a nation of usurers.18
The members of Tyler’s cabinet were in favor of a national bank, so on September 11, 1841, all of them, save Webster, resigned in protest at the behest of Clay. Though Tyler held the highest office in the land, Clay was the most powerful man in the Whig Party. Whig newspapers roasted Tyler. He received hundreds of letters threatening assassination and was burned in effigy thousands of times. Tyler’s followers in Congress were so few and lacking in influence that they were referred to as “the corporal’s guard.”
He had been attacked more fiercely than any other public man of his day. Indeed, he holds a unique place in the history of misrepresentation. The faults attributed to prominent men by malice and partisanship are generally based on some quality in their personality. Usually slander has some slight foundation in fact on which to rest. But this was not the case with John Tyler.19
On September 13, 1841, the Whigs drummed Tyler out of the party. Thus for the remaining three and a half years of his term, he was a president without a party. This virtually assured that he would be the first president who would fail to be nominated for a second term. This also served Clay’s agenda, as the oft-frustrated presidential candidate would not have been nominated by the Whigs in 1844 if Tyler had still been a party member in good standing.
Even after Clay’s followers resigned, Tyler’s cabinet troubles continued. The four years of his administration witnessed five secretaries of war, three attorneys general, four secretaries of the treasury, four secretaries of state, two postmasters general and five secretaries of the Navy—a record that still stands.20
On July 10, 1842, John M. Botts, one of Tyler’s arch-enemies in the House, began the official impeachment resolution. Tyler’s troubles were compounded by the death of his first wife (she had been ill for many years, after suffering a stroke) on September 10, 1842. In the 1842 mid-term elections, however, Botts was not re-elected, and the Whigs lost control of the House. Nevertheless, Botts used his lame-duck status to continue to lead the charge against Tyler. His resolution, which contained nine charges of impeachment, was brought to the floor on January 10, 1843, and soundly de feated the next day by a vote of 127-83, thanks to Tyler’s support from Dem ocrats, “Tylerites” and neutral Whigs.
Although contemporary experience with presidents might lead us to believe any president considered for impeachment must be corrupt, this was not the case with Tyler. His troubles were purely political:
Tyler’s integrity in public affairs was so deeply ingrained that he was apparently beyond the reach of temptation. Although he was in Congress at a time when so great a man as Daniel Webster could stoop to receive a retainer from a corporation whose interests he promoted in the Senate, Tyler seems never to have so much as thought of getting money in this way. The fact that during his political career he was often in financial straits [he fathered 15 children] is eloquent testimony of his unimpeachable honesty.21
Tyler was a lot tougher than he appeared: “Whether I sink or swim on the tide of popular favor, is a matter to me of inferior consideration.”22 Clearly, only a man with such an attitude could have withstood such a firestorm of opposition.
“Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” He would listen to no “mere buzz or popular clamor” from the voters of his district, only the “voice of a majority of the people, distinctly ascertained and plainly ex pressed.” And, unlike modern politicians, he would close his ears to the majority voice if his constituents ever demanded that he violate the Constitution, as he understood it. He stated that: “If instructions go to violate the Constitution, they are not binding.”23
Though Tyler had his differences with Andrew Jackson, he continued the evolution of executive leadership that Jackson had begun. He refused to allow the Whigs to shrink the office of the presidency to little more than that of a prime minister. He was a forceful chief executive who did not believe in a forceful federal government.24 While he was renowned as a state house orator, as his speeches make plain even today, he never took to the stump, as he lacked a feeling for the concerns of the common man—the defining theme of Jackson’s presidency. As a result, Tyler delivered no public speeches during his presidency.
Despite the turmoil that characterized his administration, Tyler did manage some noteworthy achievements, such as reorganizing the Navy, establishing the Weather Bureau, and ending the Seminole wars. His foreign policy achievements included a treaty with China that opened trade with that nation for the first time and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which settled America’s northeast frontier with Britain’s Canadian territory. The annexation of Texas, after almost a decade of political wrangling, was accomplished just days before Tyler vacated the White House. By way of gratitude, the city of Tyler in northeast Texas and Tyler County in southeast Texas were named in his honor.
Tyler, however, was not entirely through with statecraft after handing over the White House to James Knox Polk in 1845. After living the life of a Virginia gentleman at his Sherwood Forest estate for 16 years, in 1861 he took part in a conference in Washington to explore ways of avoiding civil war. When these efforts proved futile, he played a key role in the founding of the Confederate States of America and was elected to the CSA’s newly established House of Representatives. But he died on January 18, 1862, before he actually served in that body—and before he could see the damage wrought by the war to the South in general and his property in particular. Villa Margaret, a piece of land Tyler owned in Hampton, Virginia, was among the first pieces of Confederate private property to be seized by the federal government. In the spring of 1864, Sherwood Forest was overrun by black Northern troops, who took what they could carry off before turning the plantation over to local blacks, who continued the plunder.25
As the only ex-president of the United States who played a part in the founding of the Southern Confederacy, Tyler was considered a “rebel traitor” by the 1860s version of the “inside-the-beltway” crowd in Washington. This would also preclude him from getting a fair shake from the court historians. His death passed unrecognized by the federal government, but his funeral in Richmond was a major event. He was laid to rest next to James Monroe. The U.S. government did not forgive and forget until 1915, when a monument to Tyler was finally erected.
Though Tyler did not have to contend with a major crisis (usually a war) that is customarily used to define “great” presidents, he may have accomplished more, with less, than any president before or since. Said John Tebbel and Sarah Miles Watts in The Press and the Presidency: From George Washington to Ronald Reagan, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1985:
Tyler did well with the short rope given him. But his shortcomings were exaggerated into damning faults, and his weaknesses into imbecilities, while his virtues were depicted as vices. Unlike other presidents, he did not rail against the injustices and sink into malice or bitterness. He was able to forgive his enemies most of the time, and that was his salvation.26
Considering that Tyler never sought to be president, it is tempting to assert that this is precisely the type of man the American people should seek out for the office. Better the likes of Tyler than those who are anointed by the king makers or who frantically scramble for power and grovel for funding.
All presidents, accidental or otherwise, swear to uphold the Constitution; and, by all accounts, John Tyler took that oath very seriously. This, of course, would only count against him in the reckoning of most modern historians.
Bibliography
A Whig Embattled: The Presidency Under John Tyler, Robert J. Morgan, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1954.
The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, Norma Lois Peterson, Uni versity Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1989.
FOOTNOTES
1Among the notables are Sen. William Blount of Tennessee (1799, charges dismissed for want of jurisdiction), Samuel Chase, associate justice of the Supreme Court (1805, acquitted), and Andrew W. Belknap, secretary of war (1876, acquitted).
2Article 1, Section 2, paragraph 5 of the Constitution grants power of impeachment to the House of Representatives; Article 1, Section, 3, paragraph 6 grants the Senate the power of trying impeached officials. A two-thirds majority is necessary for conviction.
3Seven of the first 12 presidents were born in the Old Dominion. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, William Henry Harrison, Tyler and Zachary Taylor were all Virginians. The eighth Virginia-born president was Woodrow Wilson. For good measure, Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, was also born in Virginia.
4Chitwood, Oliver Perry, John Tyler: Champion of the Old South, Russell & Russell, Inc., New York, 1964, pp. 39-40.
5To impress upon the reader the relative youth of the American nation at this point in time, it is worth pausing to point out that Van Buren was the first president who was not born a British subject.
6Though his fame was won in Northern Indian battles, Harrison, like Tyler, was born in Charles City County, Virginia. Berkeley Plantation, Harrison’s ancestral home, was located on the James River less than 12 miles from Greenway Plantation, Tyler’s birthplace.
7The National Intelligencer, Aug. 27, 1844, quoted in Chitwood, p. 73.
8Chitwood, p. 183.
9The rude log cabin that became the symbol of the campaign was designed by Richard Smith Elliott, who gained some renown when he served as a war correspondent during the Mexican War of 1846-1848.
10The Whigs literally rolled a giant ball from rally to rally, supposedly to represent the momentum of the Whig ticket.
11Reportedly, “Ty” and “Tip” were popular names for animals, boats and babies during that era.
12Harrison and Tyler both had fathers who served as governors of Virginia. In addition, Harrison’s father was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Tyler’s father, a former compatriot of Patrick Henry, roomed with Thomas Jefferson during their law school days at William and Mary and went on to a distinguished career in the judiciary.
13Legend has it that Harrison’s inaugural address given, without a hat, in wintry Washington precipitated his illness.
14His grandson, Benjamin Harrison, did manage to serve one full term (1889-1893). This occurred between Grover Cleveland’s two terms.
15Anyone who thinks today’s elections are unparalleled in terms of dirty tricks and mudslinging needs to take a closer look at the elections of 150 years ago.
16Clay did secure the nomination in 1844 but lost the election to Democrat James Knox Polk.
17Chitwood, page 190.
18Abell, A.G., Life of John Tyler, New York, 1844, p. 132.
19Chitwood, pp. 256-257.
20A particularly dark day in the Tyler administration was February 28, 1844, when an experimental cannon dubbed the Peacemaker exploded on board the USS Princeton during a demonstration. Killed were Thomas Gilmer, secretary of the Navy, and Abel Upshur, secretary of state, as well as other dignitaries, including David Gardiner, the wealthy New York senator and father of Tyler’s second wife. A dozen others, including the famous Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, were wounded. Tyler himself narrowly escaped serious injury or death, as he happened to be below deck at the time of the explosion. His death would have created a power vacuum—and hence a power struggle—as Article II, Section I, paragraph 5 of the Constitution would have allowed Congress to choose any governmental officer to serve as president.
21Chitwood, pp. 257-258.
22Robert Seager, And Tyler Too: A Biography of John and Julia Gardiner Tyler (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963), p. 65.
23Seager, p. 61.
24Robert Alotta, A Look at the Vice Presidency (Julian Messner, New York, 1981), p. 52.
25When Tyler’s widow eventually resumed control of the property, she declined to hire free Negroes to work the property. Instead, she worked the land with Swedish immigrant sharecroppers.
26Tebbel and Watts, p. 104.
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