JOHN TYLER
10th President, 1841–1845
Overall Rank: 39
Total Score: 372
In 2017, historians ranked Tyler one spot below William Henry Harrison, the man he succeeded as president. In earlier surveys, their relative positions were reversed. Tyler’s decline in overall rank was due in part to a fall in economic management from 31st to 39th. Historians rank him third from last in relations with Congress, above only Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.
Party: Whig
b. March 29, 1790, Charles City County, Virginia
d. January 18, 1862, Richmond, Virginia
First Ladies: Letitia Christian Tyler (1841–1842) and Julia Gardiner Tyler (1844–1845)
Age entering office: 51
Historian: Edward P. Crapol
Edward Crapol is a professor emeritus of American history at the College of William and Mary. On May 17, 1999, he joined C-SPAN during our yearlong television series, American Presidents, to discuss his book, John Tyler, the Accidental President.
John Tyler was forewarned about President William Henry Harrison’s serious illness [in the spring of 1841]. He had received letters from friends, and I think he knew that he might face the possibility of being a vice president who would succeed to the presidency. So, I think he planned ahead, and he planned ahead very decisively and successfully.
People did not expect the vice president to become the president, and at the time that Harrison died, the assumption was that Tyler would serve as acting president. Tyler went to Washington, once being notified of Harrison’s death, with the intent of being president, not acting president. He took an oath of office to make sure that his legitimacy as president would be recognized. He gave a speech—some called it an inaugural address. Then he moved to have Congress—there was a special session of Congress that Harrison had called in late May, early June—successfully pass resolutions, and both houses recognized him as president. So, one of the big accomplishments of John Tyler is setting this precedent that the vice president will, in fact, become the president in all regards. He will occupy the office, and he will have all the duties and privileges that go with the presidency.
William Henry Harrison and John Tyler were both natives of Charles City County [Virginia]. They were both born within five miles of each other.… William Henry Harrison and John Tyler served in the Congress together. I wouldn’t say they had a close relationship, but nonetheless they were friends. When they were placed on the ticket for the 1840 election, it was a political decision rather than a personal decision. John Tyler was placed on the ticket to secure the Southern vote and to make sure that the ticket was successful.
Tyler started out as a Jeffersonian Republican, and he always considered himself as a follower of Jefferson and Madison. He did support the Democrats, [but] he became disillusioned with Andrew Jackson. He felt Andrew Jackson was becoming much too strong an executive. He essentially broke with the Democrats and identified with the Whigs, but his relationship with the Whigs was always tenuous. He was placed on the Whig ticket in 1840 with William Henry Harrison, but I think from John Tyler’s viewpoint, he never made any commitments about a Whig program or any commitment to Henry Clay’s American System. And so, consequently, when Tyler does take over as president, he feels that he is independent of the Whigs and that he is a president without a party.
He was notified of Harrison’s death when he was living in Williamsburg and before he left [for Washington]. He spoke to one of his friends, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, about his predicament of not having a party. Tucker said, “Well, you should build a party or find a party.” Tyler said, “I have no opportunity to do that.”
It’s instructive in Tyler’s case, being a president without a party. He is never really able to mount a legislative program, and that’s the reason he turns to foreign policy as an area in which he can at least have some accomplishments. I think he hoped, as a Madisonian, to use foreign policy to overcome sectionalism, to overcome domestic issues that stood in his way.… He had a very contentious relationship with Congress,… and so, his areas of accomplishment are not in terms of legislation but rather in the realm of setting a precedent, becoming the first vice president to become president, and also his foreign policy accomplishments that would include Hawaii, Texas, and the treaty with China.
During his presidency, he and his secretary of state, Daniel Webster, were very interested in expanding American influence in the Pacific. They were, as a number of historians have noted, Pacific-minded. They were interested in gaining access to [territory] on the western coast of North America and California for the United States. In 1842, Tyler and Webster issued what’s known as the Tyler Doctrine, which extended American influence into the Pacific and guaranteed the independence of Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands, as they were known. As part of that, Tyler—this is Tyler the nationalist rather than simply a champion of the Old South—sought to appeal to Northern commercial interests. Webster was very influential as well. They sought the United States’ first treaty with China. Caleb Cushing, a New Englander, was sent as the US representative to get the United States its first China treaty, which they did in 1844. Webster, by that time, had resigned as secretary of state, but he was instrumental in setting it up. In that particular treaty,… the United States gained access to ports in China, received the privileges of extraterritoriality, and established the principle of most- favored nation.
… Texas had established its independence, and the previous administration, Van Buren’s, had not sought the annexation of Texas. Texans wanted to be annexed to the United States. The reason that it was controversial was because it would add a slave state to the Union. John Tyler, early on, was interested in annexing Texas to make his mark as a president. His first secretary of state, Daniel Webster, a Northerner and not a supporter of slavery, was not keen on annexing Texas. So, Tyler essentially waited on his move to annex Texas. After Webster resigned—they split over the Texas issue—his next secretary of state, Abel Upshur, secured a treaty of annexation. In January of 1844, it appeared that there was sufficient support in the Senate for the approval of this treaty. However, Upshur was killed in the explosion of the USS Princeton in late February 1844, and his replacement as secretary of state was John C. Calhoun. John C. Calhoun also wanted the annexation of Texas, but he made it an issue of slavery and about the expansion of slavery [which he strongly favored]. Consequently, that treaty was then defeated in the Senate because it became identified with the expansion of slavery.
Tyler, nonetheless, remained interested in the annexation of Texas. After the election of Polk in 1844 and before he left office, one of the last things Tyler did was to secure the approval of an annexation treaty by [using the legislative tactic of] a joint resolution of Congress. That’s another one of his precedents—essentially finessing the Senate’s role in approving such a treaty by getting a joint resolution. That approach cast a long shadow over American expansion in the nineteenth century. Following presidents looked back at Tyler—for example, Grant, when he faced resistance to his efforts to annex Santo Domingo, brought up whether he should follow John Tyler’s precedent. He did not. The other example is William McKinley, who as president in 1898 could not get a treaty of annexation through the Senate either, so he emulated Tyler and [successfully pursued a] joint resolution for the annexation of Hawaii.
Tyler, while president, settled an ongoing war with the Seminole Indians in Florida in 1842.… John Tyler was proud of that, that he had achieved a peace. In terms of the way he viewed Native Americans, he wanted them treated with justice, [but] he also had a very paternalistic viewpoint. He looked upon them as people that had to be guided and educated.
[John Tyler had two wives and fathered fifteen children. First lady Letitia Tyler died in the White House in September 1842. John Tyler soon married the vivacious and thirty-years-younger Julia Gardiner. The new first couple entertained at the White House regularly.] John Tyler, as a president and as a host, apparently, in the White House was very gracious and had very elegant manners. He was able to charm most people. There’s an account of Charles Dickens visiting the White House in 1842.… Dickens thought Tyler was a very fitting head of state for the United States and is recorded as having said that it was a nice contrast to the members of the House of Representatives, many of whom were “tobacco-spitters.” John Tyler would never have stooped to such ill manners as that.
Musicians and historians can dispute this, but [during] the various levies and celebrations that he hosted in the White House, he began the tradition of playing Hail to the Chief late in his presidency. This tradition was then taken over by Mrs. Polk. She, I think, gets most credit for it, but it began in Tyler’s presidency.
… During his presidency, Tyler… is ostracized, certainly, by the Whigs. They are very angry with him,… openly hostile. John Tyler suffered great abuse; he was burned in effigy; he was censured once for his veto of a tariff. There were calls for his impeachment. So, he suffered mightily for not having a party. I think his standing in history is influenced by that. Most people look at it from the viewpoint of the Whigs rather than the viewpoint of Tyler.
Tyler, by 1843–1844, was trying to mount a third-party candidacy so that he could seek re-election in 1844. He was unsuccessful, and he really framed the campaign for [Democrat] James K. Polk and Polk’s platform of expansionism. Tyler then became identified once again as a Democrat [and retreated from public life].
[In 1860] when Lincoln was elected, Tyler was quite upset. He saw Lincoln as someone who would stop the expansion of slavery, and for John Tyler, that was crucial—the ability for the slave states to continue to expand. He was part of a Washington, DC, peace conference in February of 1861; he attempted to forge a compromise that would prevent civil war, but he was unsuccessful [and ultimately opposed the resulting peace treaty]. Tyler then left the peace conference, came to Virginia, and participated in the state’s convention that debated secession. He was appalled at the suggestion of some western Virginians, those that ultimately formed the state of West Virginia, when they spoke out against expansion and found no difficulty in accepting the limitations on the expansion of slavery. That angered John Tyler a great deal, and then he voted for secession.
As the secession movement grew, he was elected a member of the Confederate Congress, but he died [in a Richmond, Virginia, hotel] before the session began. As… a member of the Confederate Congress, he was technically a traitor. [John Tyler was buried in Richmond in a casket draped in the Confederate flag.]
Tyler’s citizenship [was later posthumously] restored in a general amnesty. His wife’s, Julia’s, citizenship was never challenged. She became an active American citizen after the defeat of the Confederacy.
In terms of slavery, John Tyler was opposed to the slave trade. He also spoke out against auctions of slaves in DC; he wanted to outlaw that. However, he never manumitted any of his own slaves, and he never sought any amelioration of slavery. And in the secession crisis, he ended up being a supporter of the “peculiar institution” of slavery.
In doing the research for my book, I’d become fascinated with this notion that this man, who was identified principally as a states-righter and a champion of the Old South, was in fact someone who had also enhanced the role of the presidency and played an important role in making the executive position what it is today.… Certainly, when he left office in 1845, he felt that he had improved the state of the nation, he felt that he enhanced the office of the presidency. He left the office feeling that he had helped restore prosperity from a depression, he had helped expand trade into Asia. He also felt that there had been growth in commerce and manufacturing, and he believed that he had helped in terms of urban growth. Historians are very critical of John Tyler, yet I, for one, would… say that his accomplishments were also fairly significant.