president john tyler 
tenth president of the united states
interesting facts
John Tyler was the first president to be married in office. He married on June 26, 1844.
biography
John Tyler, tenth President of the United States, was born in 1790 on a plantation on the James River in Virginia. He was the second son of Judge John Tyler and Mary Armistead Tyler. He attended a local school and at age 12, he went to College of William and Mary at Williamsburg. After school, he came back home to Charles City County and studied law with his cousin and father.
In 1809, Tyler's father became governor of Virginia. Tyler went with him to Richmond and entered the law office of Edmund Randolph, who had retired from a lengthy career in both state and national politics. With Randolph's help, Tyler quickly entered politics and in 1811 was elected to the house of delegates of Virginia's General Assembly, or state legislature. In 1813 Tyler married Letitia Christian, daughter of a wealthy Virginia merchant. At that time the United States was fighting Great Britain in the War of 1812, and Tyler joined the Virginia militia. However, he saw no action, and within a few months he returned to the General Assembly. In 1816 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Richmond, and he took his seat in the Congress of the United States at the start of the next year.
Tyler's political views were, at the time highly unpopular. He believed that the government should be in the hands of the rich upper-class rule. However, during the time, nationalism was at the height after the Second War of Independence (War of 1812). This was also a period when government by aristocracy was gradually being ended in the United States. Tyler was out of step with the times, as his early career in Congress proved. He fought losing battles against measures that he believed strengthened the federal government and violated states' rights. Tyler opposed the establishment of the second Bank of the United States, the protective tariff, and the Missouri Compromise, which regulated the extension of slavery. Discouraged by continuous defeat, Tyler resigned his seat in 1821 and returned to Virginia. In 1823 he began to serve again in the state legislature, which in 1825 elected him governor of Virginia and late in 1826 elected him to the U.S. Senate.
During the election of 1824, Tyler greatly supported John Quincy Adams. However, soon after the election, he was outraged at the nationalistic program Adams proposed. Therefore, he lead the Senate in opposing Adam's internal improvements, a national army, and national laws to regulate commerce and agriculture. In 1828, Tyler switched his support to Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Jackson, since Jackson shared his opposition to a national bank. Once in office, Jackson waged war on the bank, and Tyler was in the forefront of the fight against it in the Senate. In 1832, when the bank became the central campaign issue, Tyler easily won reelection to the Senate from the pro-Jackson Virginia Assembly.
When Jackson passed the Force Bill in 1832, he greatly enhanced the executive power by allowing himself to call troops against a state. Tyler viewed this as a contradiction to state powers and was the only Senator to oppose the bill. His support of Jackson disintegrated completely when Jackson removed U.S. government funds from the Bank of the United States. Tyler hated the bank, but he regarded Jackson's act as unconstitutional. Tyler's stand confused his friends and enemies alike, but was consistent with his principles. Throughout his career Tyler almost always held true to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Tyler soon left the Democratic Party to join to Jackson-hating Whig Party.
During the election of 1840, Tyler was elected as Vice President under the Presidency of Harrison. Harrison died in office soon thereafter and Tyler became president under a very unpopular public image. Tyler had been included in the election because he still had Democratic ideals which would pacify the Democrats. Until then, the "Tyler too" in the slogan had been there, if effect - for decoration.
Tyler was summoned to Washington, D.C., as acting president. The Constitution seemed unclear as to whether Tyler should now merely assume the duties of the president until new elections were held, or whether he should in fact assume the office of president. Tyler chose the latter view and on April 6 had himself sworn in as president. This procedure, later taken for granted, exposed Tyler to much censure and abuse. Throughout his term, Whigs and Democrats alike denounced his action. He received mail addressed to "Ex-Vice President Tyler" and "Vice President-Acting President Tyler," but he returned all such mail unopened. Congress and the press referred to him as "His Accidency," and the Cabinet was bitterly hostile. Tyler began his administration without advisers or friends. In addition, he was soon to become known as "a president without a party."
Under Tyler, foreign affairs was greatly pacified. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, signed in 1842 by the secretary of state and the British envoy Lord Ashburton, settled the Northeast Boundary Dispute, a long and bitter conflict with Great Britain over the border between Maine and Canada. Under the treaty signed by Caleb Cushing, trade with China and the United States was started.
In the fall of 1843, Tyler attempted to form a third party drawn from moderate Whigs and Democrats. The issue around which he hoped to rally the party was the annexation of the Republic of Texas, which had seceded from Mexico in 1836. Although France, Great Britain, and the United States all recognized the independence of Texas, Mexico still regarded it as a Mexican province. Annexation was opposed by some Americans as risking war with Mexico. Many others opposed annexation because it meant the addition of a huge new slave state to the Union. This consideration caused Webster to resign from the Cabinet. A Southerner, John C. Calhoun, was secretary of state in April 1844, when Tyler signed the annexation treaty with Sam Houston, the president of Texas, and sent it to the Senate for ratification. Slavery was the key issue in the debate. When the Senate defeated the treaty, the annexation of Texas became the chief issue in the 1844 campaign.
The administration of this states'-righter strengthened the Presidency. But it also increased sectional cleavage that led toward civil war. By the end of his term, Tyler had replaced the original Whig Cabinet with southern conservatives. In 1844 Calhoun became Secretary of State. Later these men returned to the Democratic Party, committed to the preservation of states' rights, planter interests, and the institution of slavery. Whigs became more representative of northern business and farming interests. When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
| events during tyler's administrations 1841-1845 |
cabinet and supreme court of tyler |
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Vice-President. none. |
