dorky
Tyler wanted to run for re-election in 1844, but he was at war with his own party because, though elected to the Vice-Presidency as a Whig, when he became President on the death of William Henry Harrison, he acted more like a Democrat. After being convinced not to run in the 1844 election as an independent (by Andrew Jackson among others), Tyler retired to his Virginia plantation in Charles City County, Virginia which he renamed it "Sherwood Forest" to signify that he had been "outlawed" by the Whig party. He withdrew from electoral politics, though his advice continued to be sought by states-rights Democrats.
On the eve of the Civil War, Tyler re-entered public life to sponsor and chair the Virginia Peace Convention, held in Washington, D.C. in February 1861. It was his effort to try to prevent the coming war. 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 federal government. The convention sought a compromise to avoid civil war. Meanwhile the Confederate Constitution was being drawn up at a convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
When war broke out, Tyler unhesitatingly sided with the Confederacy, and became a delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress in 1861. He was then elected to the House of Representatives of the Confederate Congress, but died of a stroke on January 18, 1862 in Richmond, Virginia before he could assume office.
Tyler's death was the only one in presidential history not to be officially mourned in Washington, because of his allegiance to the Confederacy.