How John Tyler Became President
John Tyler, like his future running mate William Henry Harrison, was born in Charles City County, Virginia. Both men descended from families with political experience. Tyler's father, John Tyler, Sr., was commonly known as Judge Tyler. He was a friend and college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and he had served in the House of Delegates, the lower house of the Virginia General Assembly, with Benjamin Harrison V, father of William Henry Harrison.
In 1811,21 year old John Tyler Jr. was elected by his fellow Charles City County residents to the House of Delegates. He served five successive one-year terms, and sat on the Courts and Justice committee. He established himself as a strong supporter of states' rights and as someone opposed to a national bank. The next year, when the War of 1812 broke out, Tyler supported military action against the British. When the British captured Hampton, Virginia in the summer of 1813, Tyler organized a small militia company of county residents for the defense of Richmond, but the British never attacked. The company was dissolved two months later.
Also in 1813, Tyler's father died, and Tyler inherited thirteen slaves along with his father's plantation. In 1816, he resigned his legislative seat to serve on the Governor's Council of State, a group of eight advisers elected by the General Assembly. In the fall of 1816, Virginia U.S. Representative John Clopton died, leaving a vacancy in the 23rd district. Tyler won the election for the seat by a slim margin. He was sworn in on December 17, 1816, to serve as a Democratic-Republican in the Fourteenth Congress.
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, many members urged a stronger central government. A majority in Congress also wanted to see the Federal government help to fund internal improvements such as ports and roadways. But Tyler stuck to his strict beliefs, and opposed these proposals on both constitutional and personal grounds. He believed each state should construct necessary projects within its borders using locally generated funds. He said in Congress, "Virginia was not in so poor a condition as to require a charitable donation from Congress." He also argued for the revocation of the bank charter, because of corruption within the bank that was discovered by a congressional committee that Tyler was a member of.
Tyler was re-elected for a full term without opposition in early 1819. That term Congress wrestled with the issue of whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union, and whether slavery would be permitted in the new state. Tyler was of the opinion that Congress did not have the power to regulate slavery. He voted against the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free one. Despite Tyler's opposition, the Compromise passed. Throughout his time in Congress, he voted against all bills which attempted to restrict slavery in the territories.
Tyler chose not to seek renomination in 1820. He left office on March 3, 1821 and returned to private law practice. But two years later in 1823 Tyler sought election to the House of Delegates in 1823. He was elected easily that April. In the presidential election of 1824 he supported William H. Crawford as the Democratic-Republican candidate.
In December 1825, Tyler was nominated for Governor of Virginia, a position which was then appointed by the legislature. Tyler was elected 131–81 over John Floyd. The governor had little power under the Virginia Constitution, he didn't even have veto authority. His most visible act as governor was delivering the funeral address for Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, who died on July 4, 1826.
As governor, Tyler continued to promote states' rights and opposed any concentration of federal power. Tyler was re-elected unanimously to a second one-year term in December 1826. In January 1827, the General Assembly considered whether to elect U.S. Senator John Randolph for a full six-year term. Randolph was a contentious political figure who had made enemies by fiercely opposing President John Quincy Adams and Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. The nationalists of the Democratic-Republican Party, who supported Adams and Clay, were a sizable minority in the Virginia legislature. They approached Tyler to run for the senate seat, but he declined the offer, endorsing Randolph as the best candidate. He later changed his mind on further urging from his colleagues, and the legislature selected Tyler in a vote of 115–110. He resigned his governorship on March 4, 1827, as his Senate term began.
Although he was elected to the Senate as a Democratic-Republican, Tyler disliked President Adams because he disagreed with Adams' policy of seeking to increase the power of the federal government. Tyler was increasingly drawn to Jackson, believing that Jackson would not spend as much federal money on internal improvements. Throughout his Senate service, Tyler opposed all bills which provided for national infrastructure projects, feeling these were matters for individual states to decide. He and his Southern colleagues especially opposed the protectionist Tariff of 1828, known to its opponents as the "Tariff of Abominations".
Despite his initial optimism, Tyler soon came to disagree politically with Jackson. He disliked Jackson's spoils system and voted against many of the President's nominations when they appeared to be based on patronage. But he defended Jackson for vetoing the Maysville Road funding project, and voted to confirm several of Jackson's appointments, including Jackson's future running mate Martin Van Buren as United States Minister to Britain. The leading issue in the 1832 presidential election was the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, which both Tyler and Jackson both opposed. Congress voted to recharter the bank in July 1832, and Jackson vetoed the bill for a mixture of constitutional and practical reasons. Tyler voted to sustain the veto and endorsed Jackson in his successful bid for re-election.
During what was known as the Nullification Crisis of 1832–33, South Carolina, threatened to secede from the Union, and went so far as to pass "the Ordinance of Nullification" in November 1832, in which it declared the "Tariff of Abominations" null and void within its borders. This raised the constitutional question of whether states could nullify federal laws. President Jackson denied the existence of such a right and threatened to use military force to enforce the tariff. Tyler was sympathetic to South Carolina and disagreed with Jackson's proposed use of military force against a state. He supported Henry Clay's Compromise Tariff, enacted that year, to gradually reduce the tariff over ten years, alleviating tensions between the states and the federal government. But in voting against the Force Bill, Tyler alienated the pro-Jackson faction of the Virginia legislature. He faced a difficult re-election bid in February 1833, but was re-elected by a margin of 12 votes, thanks in part to support from Henry Clay.
In September 1833, Jackson issued an executive order directing Treasury Secretary Roger B. Taney to transfer federal funds from the national bank to state-chartered banks. Tyler correctly saw this as threat to the economy. He decided to join with Jackson's opponents on this issue. Sitting on the Senate Finance Committee, he voted for two censure resolutions against President Jackson in March 1834. Tyler joined Henry Clay's newly formed Whig Party, which held control of the Senate.
In 1835, the Democrats took control of the Virginia House of Delegates. They offered Tyler a judgeship in exchange for resigning his seat, but he declined. When Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri introduced a bill expunging the censure of Jackson, the Democratic-controlled Virginia legislature instructed Tyler to vote for the bill. He decided to resign from the senate on February 29, 1836.
In the presidential election of 1836, Whig Party nominated different candidates in various regions:the Massachusetts Whigs nominated Daniel Webster, the Northern and border state Whigs backed William Henry Harrison and the South nominated Hugh Lawson White. The Whigs hoped to deny Van Buren a majority in the Electoral College, throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Tyler received 47 electoral votes for Vice-President in the 1836 election. Harrison was the leading Whig candidate for president, but he lost to Van Buren. The presidential election was settled by the Electoral College, but the vice presidential election was decided by the Senate. It selected Democrat Richard Mentor Johnson on the first ballot.
After the 1836 election, Tyler thought his political career was at an end, and planned to return to private law practice. But in 1837 he successfully sought election to the House of Delegates. He took his seat in 1838 and was unanimously elected him Speaker.
When the 1839 Whig National Convention was held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the United States was in the third year of a serious recession, named the Panic of 1837. President Van Buren had lost the support of his party and the Democratic Party was torn into factions. Harrison, Clay, and General Winfield Scott all sought the Whig nomination for President. Tyler attended the convention as part of the Virginia delegation. He was supporting Henry Clay for president. The convention deadlocked among the three main candidates, with Virginia's votes going to Clay. Many Northern Whigs opposed Clay, and Winfield Scott had hurt his changes because of a letter he had written in which he displayed abolitionist sentiments. The Virginia delegation made Harrison its second choice. Harrison ultimately won the nomination.
The vice presidential nomination was not considered of much importance because up to then, no president had failed to complete his term. Tyler was selected to the second spot on the ticket because as a Southern slaveowner, he balanced the ticket.
The Whigs ran on their opposition to Van Buren, and blamed him and his Democrats for the recession. When the Democratic press portrayed Harrison as an old soldier, who drank hard cider in his log cabin, the Whigs eagerly seized on the image, and the log cabin campaign was born. The facts that Harrison lived in a grand house along the Ohio River was not publicized. Whigs claimed that Harrison was a common man. Democrats complained that the Harrison campaign's liberal provision of hard cider at rallies was encouraging drunkenness. Harrison and Tyler won by an electoral vote of 234–60 and with 53 percent of the popular vote. The Whigs gained control of both houses of Congress.
As Vice President-elect, Tyler remained quietly at his home in Williamsburg. He did not participate in selecting the Cabinet, and did not recommend anyone for federal office in the new Whig administration. Harrison and Tyler met briefly in Richmond in February, and reviewed a parade together, but they did not discuss politics.
Tyler was sworn in on March 4, 1841, in the Senate chamber, and delivered a three-minute speech about states' rights before swearing in the new senators and attending President Harrison's inauguration. Following Harrison's two-hour speech on that freezing March 4, Tyler returned to preside over the confirmations of Harrison's appointments. He then left Washington, quietly returning to his home in Williamsburg.
The first few weeks of the presidency took a toll on Harrison's health, and in late March he came down with pneumonia and pleurisy. Secretary of State Daniel Webster sent word to Tyler of Harrison's illness on April 1. Tyler decided not to travel to Washington. He did not want to appear unseemly in anticipating the President's death. At dawn on April 5, Webster's son Fletcher, Chief Clerk of the State Department, arrived at Tyler's plantation with a letter from Webster, informing the new President of Harrison's death the morning before.
Harrison's death made Tyler the first vice president to succeed to the presidency without being elected to the office. Tyler immediately moved into the White House, took the oath of office, and assumed full presidential powers, a precedent that would govern future successions and eventually become codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Tyler found much of the Whig platform unconstitutional, and vetoed several of his party's bills. Believing that the president should set policy instead of deferring to Congress, he attempted to bypass the Whig establishment. Most of Tyler's Cabinet resigned soon into his term, and the Whigs expelled him from the party. Although he faced a stalemate on domestic policy, he had several foreign-policy achievements, including the Webster–Ashburton Treaty with Britain and the Treaty of Wanghia with Qing China.
President Tyler dedicated his last two years in office to the annexation of Texas. He initially sought election to a full term, but had lost the support of both Whigs and Democrats, and he withdrew. In the last days of his term, Congress passed the resolution authorizing the Texas annexation, which was carried out by Tyler's successor, James K. Polk.
In 1811,21 year old John Tyler Jr. was elected by his fellow Charles City County residents to the House of Delegates. He served five successive one-year terms, and sat on the Courts and Justice committee. He established himself as a strong supporter of states' rights and as someone opposed to a national bank. The next year, when the War of 1812 broke out, Tyler supported military action against the British. When the British captured Hampton, Virginia in the summer of 1813, Tyler organized a small militia company of county residents for the defense of Richmond, but the British never attacked. The company was dissolved two months later.
Also in 1813, Tyler's father died, and Tyler inherited thirteen slaves along with his father's plantation. In 1816, he resigned his legislative seat to serve on the Governor's Council of State, a group of eight advisers elected by the General Assembly. In the fall of 1816, Virginia U.S. Representative John Clopton died, leaving a vacancy in the 23rd district. Tyler won the election for the seat by a slim margin. He was sworn in on December 17, 1816, to serve as a Democratic-Republican in the Fourteenth Congress.
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, many members urged a stronger central government. A majority in Congress also wanted to see the Federal government help to fund internal improvements such as ports and roadways. But Tyler stuck to his strict beliefs, and opposed these proposals on both constitutional and personal grounds. He believed each state should construct necessary projects within its borders using locally generated funds. He said in Congress, "Virginia was not in so poor a condition as to require a charitable donation from Congress." He also argued for the revocation of the bank charter, because of corruption within the bank that was discovered by a congressional committee that Tyler was a member of.
Tyler was re-elected for a full term without opposition in early 1819. That term Congress wrestled with the issue of whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union, and whether slavery would be permitted in the new state. Tyler was of the opinion that Congress did not have the power to regulate slavery. He voted against the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free one. Despite Tyler's opposition, the Compromise passed. Throughout his time in Congress, he voted against all bills which attempted to restrict slavery in the territories.
Tyler chose not to seek renomination in 1820. He left office on March 3, 1821 and returned to private law practice. But two years later in 1823 Tyler sought election to the House of Delegates in 1823. He was elected easily that April. In the presidential election of 1824 he supported William H. Crawford as the Democratic-Republican candidate.
In December 1825, Tyler was nominated for Governor of Virginia, a position which was then appointed by the legislature. Tyler was elected 131–81 over John Floyd. The governor had little power under the Virginia Constitution, he didn't even have veto authority. His most visible act as governor was delivering the funeral address for Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, who died on July 4, 1826.
As governor, Tyler continued to promote states' rights and opposed any concentration of federal power. Tyler was re-elected unanimously to a second one-year term in December 1826. In January 1827, the General Assembly considered whether to elect U.S. Senator John Randolph for a full six-year term. Randolph was a contentious political figure who had made enemies by fiercely opposing President John Quincy Adams and Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. The nationalists of the Democratic-Republican Party, who supported Adams and Clay, were a sizable minority in the Virginia legislature. They approached Tyler to run for the senate seat, but he declined the offer, endorsing Randolph as the best candidate. He later changed his mind on further urging from his colleagues, and the legislature selected Tyler in a vote of 115–110. He resigned his governorship on March 4, 1827, as his Senate term began.
Although he was elected to the Senate as a Democratic-Republican, Tyler disliked President Adams because he disagreed with Adams' policy of seeking to increase the power of the federal government. Tyler was increasingly drawn to Jackson, believing that Jackson would not spend as much federal money on internal improvements. Throughout his Senate service, Tyler opposed all bills which provided for national infrastructure projects, feeling these were matters for individual states to decide. He and his Southern colleagues especially opposed the protectionist Tariff of 1828, known to its opponents as the "Tariff of Abominations".
Despite his initial optimism, Tyler soon came to disagree politically with Jackson. He disliked Jackson's spoils system and voted against many of the President's nominations when they appeared to be based on patronage. But he defended Jackson for vetoing the Maysville Road funding project, and voted to confirm several of Jackson's appointments, including Jackson's future running mate Martin Van Buren as United States Minister to Britain. The leading issue in the 1832 presidential election was the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, which both Tyler and Jackson both opposed. Congress voted to recharter the bank in July 1832, and Jackson vetoed the bill for a mixture of constitutional and practical reasons. Tyler voted to sustain the veto and endorsed Jackson in his successful bid for re-election.
During what was known as the Nullification Crisis of 1832–33, South Carolina, threatened to secede from the Union, and went so far as to pass "the Ordinance of Nullification" in November 1832, in which it declared the "Tariff of Abominations" null and void within its borders. This raised the constitutional question of whether states could nullify federal laws. President Jackson denied the existence of such a right and threatened to use military force to enforce the tariff. Tyler was sympathetic to South Carolina and disagreed with Jackson's proposed use of military force against a state. He supported Henry Clay's Compromise Tariff, enacted that year, to gradually reduce the tariff over ten years, alleviating tensions between the states and the federal government. But in voting against the Force Bill, Tyler alienated the pro-Jackson faction of the Virginia legislature. He faced a difficult re-election bid in February 1833, but was re-elected by a margin of 12 votes, thanks in part to support from Henry Clay.
In September 1833, Jackson issued an executive order directing Treasury Secretary Roger B. Taney to transfer federal funds from the national bank to state-chartered banks. Tyler correctly saw this as threat to the economy. He decided to join with Jackson's opponents on this issue. Sitting on the Senate Finance Committee, he voted for two censure resolutions against President Jackson in March 1834. Tyler joined Henry Clay's newly formed Whig Party, which held control of the Senate.
In 1835, the Democrats took control of the Virginia House of Delegates. They offered Tyler a judgeship in exchange for resigning his seat, but he declined. When Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri introduced a bill expunging the censure of Jackson, the Democratic-controlled Virginia legislature instructed Tyler to vote for the bill. He decided to resign from the senate on February 29, 1836.
In the presidential election of 1836, Whig Party nominated different candidates in various regions:the Massachusetts Whigs nominated Daniel Webster, the Northern and border state Whigs backed William Henry Harrison and the South nominated Hugh Lawson White. The Whigs hoped to deny Van Buren a majority in the Electoral College, throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Tyler received 47 electoral votes for Vice-President in the 1836 election. Harrison was the leading Whig candidate for president, but he lost to Van Buren. The presidential election was settled by the Electoral College, but the vice presidential election was decided by the Senate. It selected Democrat Richard Mentor Johnson on the first ballot.
After the 1836 election, Tyler thought his political career was at an end, and planned to return to private law practice. But in 1837 he successfully sought election to the House of Delegates. He took his seat in 1838 and was unanimously elected him Speaker.
When the 1839 Whig National Convention was held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the United States was in the third year of a serious recession, named the Panic of 1837. President Van Buren had lost the support of his party and the Democratic Party was torn into factions. Harrison, Clay, and General Winfield Scott all sought the Whig nomination for President. Tyler attended the convention as part of the Virginia delegation. He was supporting Henry Clay for president. The convention deadlocked among the three main candidates, with Virginia's votes going to Clay. Many Northern Whigs opposed Clay, and Winfield Scott had hurt his changes because of a letter he had written in which he displayed abolitionist sentiments. The Virginia delegation made Harrison its second choice. Harrison ultimately won the nomination.
The vice presidential nomination was not considered of much importance because up to then, no president had failed to complete his term. Tyler was selected to the second spot on the ticket because as a Southern slaveowner, he balanced the ticket.
The Whigs ran on their opposition to Van Buren, and blamed him and his Democrats for the recession. When the Democratic press portrayed Harrison as an old soldier, who drank hard cider in his log cabin, the Whigs eagerly seized on the image, and the log cabin campaign was born. The facts that Harrison lived in a grand house along the Ohio River was not publicized. Whigs claimed that Harrison was a common man. Democrats complained that the Harrison campaign's liberal provision of hard cider at rallies was encouraging drunkenness. Harrison and Tyler won by an electoral vote of 234–60 and with 53 percent of the popular vote. The Whigs gained control of both houses of Congress.
As Vice President-elect, Tyler remained quietly at his home in Williamsburg. He did not participate in selecting the Cabinet, and did not recommend anyone for federal office in the new Whig administration. Harrison and Tyler met briefly in Richmond in February, and reviewed a parade together, but they did not discuss politics.
Tyler was sworn in on March 4, 1841, in the Senate chamber, and delivered a three-minute speech about states' rights before swearing in the new senators and attending President Harrison's inauguration. Following Harrison's two-hour speech on that freezing March 4, Tyler returned to preside over the confirmations of Harrison's appointments. He then left Washington, quietly returning to his home in Williamsburg.
The first few weeks of the presidency took a toll on Harrison's health, and in late March he came down with pneumonia and pleurisy. Secretary of State Daniel Webster sent word to Tyler of Harrison's illness on April 1. Tyler decided not to travel to Washington. He did not want to appear unseemly in anticipating the President's death. At dawn on April 5, Webster's son Fletcher, Chief Clerk of the State Department, arrived at Tyler's plantation with a letter from Webster, informing the new President of Harrison's death the morning before.
Harrison's death made Tyler the first vice president to succeed to the presidency without being elected to the office. Tyler immediately moved into the White House, took the oath of office, and assumed full presidential powers, a precedent that would govern future successions and eventually become codified in the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Tyler found much of the Whig platform unconstitutional, and vetoed several of his party's bills. Believing that the president should set policy instead of deferring to Congress, he attempted to bypass the Whig establishment. Most of Tyler's Cabinet resigned soon into his term, and the Whigs expelled him from the party. Although he faced a stalemate on domestic policy, he had several foreign-policy achievements, including the Webster–Ashburton Treaty with Britain and the Treaty of Wanghia with Qing China.
President Tyler dedicated his last two years in office to the annexation of Texas. He initially sought election to a full term, but had lost the support of both Whigs and Democrats, and he withdrew. In the last days of his term, Congress passed the resolution authorizing the Texas annexation, which was carried out by Tyler's successor, James K. Polk.