CHAPTER 10
1. HC to Francis T. Brooke, July 4, 1841, in PHC, 9:557. “Loco focos” was the pejorative nickname probank Conservative Democrats gave to so-called radical Democrats, who were stridently opposed to banks. The radicals wore the epithet proudly.
2. John Rutherfoord to JT, June 21, 1841, in LTT, 2:48–49.
3. JCC to Thomas G. Clemson, June 13, 1841, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, vol. 2, Calhoun Correspondence (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), 478.
4. Link, Roots of Secession, 15, 259n7; LTT, 2:55–56.
5. CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 260.
6. Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 120; Richard Milford Blatchford to William H. Seward, August 9, 1841, Papers of William H. Seward, Department of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, microfilm; Peter B. Porter to HC, August 9, 1841, in PHC, 9:581; HC to Benjamin O. Tayloe, August 11, 1841, ibid., 583.
7. APU to NBT, August 7, 1841, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM.
8. French, Witness to the Young Republic, 121.
9. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Henry Clay: The Essential American (New York: Random House, 2010), 348; MPP, 4:63.
10. Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 590.
11. MPP, 4:63–68; Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 33; Sharon Ann Murphy, Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 47–49.
12. Peter B. Porter to HC, August 20, 1841, in PHC, 9:592.
13. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 71.
14. “Stuart’s Statement,” in LTT, 2:78–79.
15. Seager, And Tyler Too, 156.
16. DW, “Memorandum on the Banking Bills and the Vetoes, 1841,” in PDW-C, 5:177.
17. Ewing, “Diary of Thomas Ewing,” 100–101.
18. JT to NBT, July 28, 1841, in LTT, 2:54; HW to NBT, July 11, 1841, ibid., 52.
19. LTT, 2:81.
20. Ewing, “Diary,” 101.
21. DW to Caroline Le Roy Webster, August 16, 1841, in PDW-C, 5:141.
22. Ewing, “Diary,” 102–3.
23. HC, “Speech in the Senate,” August 19, 1841, in PHC, 9:587–91; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 78–79.
24. Remini, Henry Clay, 593; Garrett Davis to Gen. John Payne, August 30, 1841, John Payne Papers, LC.
25. HC’s “Speech in Senate,” August 19, 1841, in PHC, 9:587–91.
26. LTT, 2:65, 112; DM, August 21, 1841.
27. DW, “Memorandum,” 176.
28. Ewing, “Diary,” 103; DW to JT, August 20, 1841, in LTT, 2:86.
29. DW, “Memorandum,” 178; Nathans, Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy, 176–77; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 80.
30. DW, “Memorandum,” 178–79; DW to Isaac Chapman Bates and Rufus Choate, August 25, 1841, in PDW-C, 5:147.
31. Ewing, “Diary,” 104.
32. DW to Bates and Choate, August 25, 1841, in PDW-C, 5:147.
33. Ewing, “Diary,” 104–5.
34. Garrett Davis to Gen. John Payne, August 30, 1841, John Payne Papers, LC.
35. WPM to Charity A. Mangum, August 24, 1841, in PWPM, 3:220; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 82–83.
36. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 83.
37. APU to NBT, August 28, 1841, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM.
38. William A. Graham to Susan Washington Graham, August 29, 1841, in PWAG, 2:236. Clay’s most recent biographers, David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, write that Tyler asked for champagne. See Henry Clay, 350. Robert V. Remini, in his Henry Clay, also asserts that the president drank a glass of champagne. Both books rely on the memoir of John Quincy Adams for their information. I have relied on William A. Graham’s account and maintain that, given the political situation and the state of Tyler’s mind in late August 1841, he probably felt the stronger drink was more appropriate.
39. HW to NBT, August 29, 1841, in LTT, 2:90–91.
40. CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 380; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 80; Ewing, “Diary,” 107.
41. James Lyons to JT, August 28, 1841, in LTT, 2:118; Ewing, “Diary,” 109.
42. Ewing, “Diary,” 109–10.
43. Ewing, “Diary,” 110–11; LTT, 2:117.
44. APU quoted in Hall, Abel Parker Upshur, 116; TR to unknown, August 30, 1841, in “Unpublished Letters of Thomas Ritchie,” John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College 3 (June 1911): 246.
45. LTT, 2:92.
46. Quotes taken from Frank Thomas, “Our Public Men: Personal Traits of President Tyler and His Family,” Knickerbocker 22 (July 1843): 56.
47. Seale, President’s House, 1:235–36.
48. CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 444.
49. Poage, Henry Clay and the Whig Party, 101.
50. MPP, 4:68–72.
51. Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 135–36; CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 449.
52. HC to the Whig Caucus, September 13, 1841, in PHC, 9:608; HC, “Remark in Senate,” September 11, 1841, ibid., 607.
53. Chitwood, John Tyler, apps. B and C, 471–77.
54. Waddy Thompson to NBT, September 13, 1841, Tyler Scrapbook, Tyler Family Papers, WM; Maj. Washington Seawell to Maria H. Seawell, September 18, 1841, in “Removal of the Florida Indians: Letter of Major Washington Seawell,” TQ 2 (October 1929): 112; CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 446; APU to NBT, September 10, 1841, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM; JT to NBT, n.d., [1841], JT Papers, LC.
55. CG, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 446.
56. Oliver P. Chitwood argues that there was evidence to suggest that, at one point, Tyler wanted the entire cabinet—Webster included—to resign, citing APU to NBT, September 10, 1841, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM. In this letter Upshur informed Tucker that the solution for getting Webster out of the cabinet was to appoint him minister to Britain. My reading of this letter, however, differs from Chitwood’s. In keeping with the give and take between Tyler and his Virginia advisors that occurred throughout the special session, I think the evidence points even more strongly to the possibility that Upshur and Tucker (and Wise) made the suggestion to Tyler to appoint Webster to the London mission. Tyler probably at some point agreed with them that this would be a beneficial course of action—if he decided that Webster had to go. I contend that Webster was too important to Tyler, both domestically and as the nation’s chief diplomat, for the president to seek his removal and that this was another case of Tyler attempting to placate his friends while intending to ignore their advice. See Chitwood, John Tyler, 279–80.
57. Chitwood, John Tyler, 279–80.
58. Dingledine, “Political Career of William Cabell Rives,” 402.
59. JT to LWT, October 11, 1841, JT Papers, LC; Weed quoted in Nathans, Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy, 183; NI, September 16, 1841.
60. David Lambert to WPM, October 14, 1841, in PWPM, 3:245.
61. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 88; DW to John McLean, September 11, 1841, in PDW-C, 5:151; Leo Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 59.
62. Michael O’Brien, A Character of Hugh Legare (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985); Marvin R. Cain, “Return of Republicanism: A Reappraisal of Hugh Swinton Legare and the Tyler Presidency,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 79 (October 1978): 266–67; JT, “The Dead of the Cabinet,” in LTT, 2:384–85.
63. APU to NBT, September 7, 1841, in LTT, 2:122.
64. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 89.
65. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 89–90; DM, September 16, 1841. On Kennedy, see Andrew R. Black, John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, & Ardent Nationalist (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2016).
CHAPTER 11
1. “Passages from a Politician’s Note-Book,” United States Democratic Review 11 (October 1842): 428.
2. Chitwood, John Tyler, 318; extracts of the diary of Henry Jarvis Raymond, Scribner’s, November 1879, Tyler Family Papers, VHS.
3. JT to LWT, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:127–28. For a sympathetic view of Clay’s fight with Tyler, see Thomas Brown, Politics and Statesmanship: Essays on the American Whig Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), chap. 5. For another, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 142–44.
4. “Political Portraits with Pen and Pencil, No. XXXIV: John Tyler,” United States Democratic Review 11 (November 1842): 503–4; Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 183.
5. APU to NBT, September 29, 1841, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM; APU to NBT, September 16, 1841, in “Correspondence of Judge N. B. Tucker,” WMQ, 1st ser., 12 (January 1904): 148. For Upshur’s tenure as navy secretary and an explanation of how this staunch states’ righter advocated for enlarged federal powers to advance his proslavery ideological agenda, see Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), chap. 2.
6. JT to Thomas A. Cooper, October 8, 1841, in LTT, 2:125; Charles Dickens, American Notes: A Journey (1842; repr., New York: Fromm, 1985), 124; JT to William H. Seward, July 5, 1841, Papers of William H. Seward, University of Rochester, microfilm; JT to NBT, July 28, 1841, in LTT, 2:53.
7. JT to DW, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:126.
8. JT to DW, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:126.
9. JT to DW, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:126; Boston Semi-Weekly Atlas, October 2, 1841, quoted in PDW-C, 5:164.
10. The Schenectady Cabinet; or Freedom’s Sentinel, October 19, 1841; JT to DW, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:126–27; Millard Fillmore to Thurlow Weed, September 23, 1841, in Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, vol. 11, Millard Fillmore Papers, vol. 2, ed. Frank H. Severance (1907; repr., New York: Kraus, 1970), 225–26.
11. J. Milton Emerson Journal, 1841–42, October 9, 1841, DU, 35; JT to HW, November 2, 1841, in Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, Sale 1032, March 27, 2002.
12. JT to DW, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:126.
13. JT to LWT, October 11, 1841, in LTT, 2:128.
14. JT to LWT, November 2, 1841, in LTT, 2:129–31; JT, “Inaugural Address,” in MPP, 4:37.
15. NBT to TR, July 12, 1845, Tyler Scrapbook, Tyler Family Papers, WM; NBT to HC, December 25, 1844, in PHC, 10:183.
16. MPP, 4:79.
17. MPP, 4:84–87; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 96.
18. MPP, 4:84.
19. MPP, 4:84–87.
20. MPP, 4:86.
21. MPP, 4:84.
22. Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 118.
23. APU to NBT, December 23, 1841, in LTT, 2:153–54.
24. APU to NBT, December 23, 1841, in LTT, 2:153–54; APU to NBT, December 12, 1841, ibid.; APU to NBT, January 12, 1842, ibid.
25. APU to NBT, December 23, 1841, in LTT, 2:154; William A. Graham to James W. Bryan, February 10, 1842, in PWAG, 2:256.
26. APU to NBT, January 12, 1842, in LTT, 2:154–55.
27. DW to Edward Curtis, December 4, 1841, in PDW-C, 5:174–75n3; Charles Augustus Davis to DW, December 8, 1841, ibid.; Thurlow Weed to DW, December 18, 1841, ibid.; APU to NBT, December 12, 1841, in LTT, 2:153; DM, December 15, 16, 1841.
28. Gantz, “Clay and the Harvest of Bitter Fruit,” 269–70.
29. HC to HC Jr., December 26, 1841, in PHC, 9:625.
30. Remini, Henry Clay, 600–601; Gantz, “Clay and the Harvest of Bitter Fruit,” 273–74; William A. Graham to James W. Bryan, February 10, 1842, in PWAG, 2:255–56.
31. JCC to Wilson Lumpkin, December 26, 1841, in PJCC, 16:20.
32. Gantz, “Clay and the Harvest of Bitter Fruit,” 274.
33. JCC to John R. Mathew[e]s, January 2, 1842, in PJCC, 16:31; JCC to V[irgil] Maxcy, December 26, 1841, ibid., 21.
34. Remini, Daniel Webster, 572.
35. JT to LWT, October 24, 1842, in LTT, 2:249; JT to RT, n.d., Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, pt. 4, 2006.
36. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 97–98; William B. Campbell to David Campbell, July 10, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
CHAPTER 12
1. Roberts, America’s First Great Depression, 104.
2. Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 127.
3. MPP, 4:82; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 99; LTT, 2:145–46, 149–50.
4. MPP, 4:81–82; Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 117–19.
5. Heidler and Heidler, Henry Clay, 360–62; Remini, Henry Clay, 602; HC, “Speech in Senate,” March 1, 1842, in PHC, 9:665; Peterson, Olive Branch and Sword, 117.
6. MPP, 4:102.
7. APU to NBT, March 6, 1842, in LTT, 157–58.
8. MPP, 4:107–11; APU to NBT, March 28, 1842, in LTT, 2:165.
9. HC, “Speech in Senate,” March 23, 1842, in PHC, 9:683.
10. HC, “Remark in Senate,” March 30, 1842, in PHC, 9:689–90; Heidler and Heidler, Henry Clay, 362–65; HC to Richard Hines et al., March 21, 1842, in PHC, 9:681.
11. APU to NBT, March 13, 1842; APU to NBT, March 6, 1842, in LTT, 2:157–58.
12. S. Johnston to Abraham Robinson Johnston, January 2, 1842, Abraham Robinson Johnston Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society.
13. William A. Graham to David L. Swain, January 6, 1842, in PWAG, 2:249; Ellet, Court Circles of the Republic, 334. For the construction of this “unofficial” space at White House parties, see Allgor, Parlor Politics. For Priscilla Cooper Tyler’s role, see Christopher J. Leahy, “Playing Her Greatest Role: Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the Politics of the White House Social Scene, 1841–1844,” VMHB 120 (September 2012): 236–69.
14. Ellet, Court Circles of the Republic, 297–98; New York Herald, March 8, 1842, in The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2004), http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/dmde/DPM5124, subscription required, accessed 30 January 2013; Frank Thomas, “Personal Traits of President Tyler and His Family,” Knickerbocker 22 (July 1843): 49–50.
15. JT to Colonel Ware, March 15, 1842, Sang Autograph Collection, Seymour Library, Knox College, Galesburg, IL.
16. Lexington (VA) Gazette, January 13, 1904. On Royall, see Elizabeth J. Clapp, A Notorious Woman: Anne Royall in Jacksonian America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016).
17. The Experiment (Norwalk, OH), March 8, 1842; PCT journal, n.d., Elizabeth Tyler Coleman Papers, UA.
18. Coleman, Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the American Scene, 99.
19. DM, March 17, 1842; Nevins, Diary of Philip Hone, 2:591; JT to MTJ, July 6, 1842, in LTT, 2:172.
20. JT Jr. to George W. Southall, April 21, May 22, 1842, George Washington Southall Papers, WM.
21. JT Jr. to George W. Southall, May 22, 1842, George Washington Southall Papers, WM.
22. JT to Mrs. Martha Rochelle, September 4, 1841, James H. Rochelle Papers, DU; George B. Cary to James H. Rochelle, January 5, 1842, ibid.; JT to Mrs. Martha Rochelle, October 22, 1843, ibid.
23. JT to Elizabeth Waller, May 27, 1842, JT Papers, LC.
24. JT to MTJ, July 6, 1842, in LTT, 2:172.
25. Holloway, Ladies of the White House, 388.
26. Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 146.
27. HC to Richard Hines et al., March 21, 1842, in PHC, 9:681; HC to John J. Crittenden, June 3, 1842, ibid, 706.
28. Garrett Davis to John Payne, February 2, 1842, John Payne Papers, LC; Priestley H. Mangum to William A. Graham, May 12, 1842, in PWAG, 2:308–11; DM, July 6, 1842.
29. William B. Campbell to Gov. David Campbell, June 22, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU; HC to Leverett Saltonstall, June 7, 1842, in PHC, 9:708; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 101.
30. James Irvin to James M. Bell, June 18, 1842, James M. Bell Papers, DU.
31. WPM to HC, June 15, 1842, in PWPM, 3:358–59; HC to WPM, June 7, 1842, in PHC, 9:707.
32. APU to NBT, n.d., in LTT, 2:167.
33. C[aleb] Cushing to HW, September 24, 1842, in LTT, 3:105; Cain, “Return of Republicanism,” 272–73.
34. MPP, 4:180–83.
35. JT to Messrs. Harris, Graves, Mears, Connell, English, and Taylor, Committee, etc., July 2, 1842, in LTT, 2:171; William B. Campbell to Gov. David Campbell, June 30, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
36. Johanna Nicol Shields, “Whigs Reform the ‘Bear Garden’: Representation and the Apportionment Act of 1842,” JER 5 (Fall 1985): 367; JT, “Special Message,” June 25, 1842, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-4212, accessed 24 July 2014; Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000), 102.
37. John J. Crittenden to HC, July 2, 1842, in PHC, 9:722.
38. William B. Campbell to Gov. David Campbell, June 30, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 102–3.
39. CG, 27th Cong., 2nd sess., 742–43; HC to John J. Crittenden, July 16, 1842, in LTT, 2:185–86.
40. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 103.
41. JT to Robert McCandlish, July 10, 1842, in LTT, 2:173.
42. JT to Robert McCandlish, July 10, 1842, in LTT, 2:173.
43. William B. Campbell to David Campbell, July 10, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
44. DW to JT, August 8, 1842, in PDW-C 5:235–36; French, Witness to the Young Republic, 141; JCC quoted in Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 147.
45. John Quincy Adams diary 43, “1 January 1842–8 July 1843,” August 10, 12, 15, 1842, pp. 232, 234, 237 (electronic edition), The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005), http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries, accessed July 12, 2019.
46. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 104–5; French, Witness to the Young Republic, 142; United States Democratic Review 11 (October 1842): 425.
47. Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 105.
48. MPP, 4:190–93; United States Democratic Review 11 (October 1842): 427.
49. A pocket veto occurs when a president refuses to either sign a bill into law or send a veto message to Congress within the Constitution’s mandated timeframe of ten days and Congress adjourns before the ten-day period expires. Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 166–67.
50. French, Witness to the Young Republic, 142–43.
51. Michael Brian Schiffer, Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the Creation of Practical Electricity before Edison (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 124–27.
52. Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 148–49; Jesse Turner to William A. Graham, June 15, 1842, in PWAG, 2:343.
53. William B. Campbell to David Campbell, July 10, 24, 1842, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
54. Robert J. Spitzer, The Presidential Veto: Touchstone of the American Presidency (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 72. Tyler was the first president to have a veto overridden by Congress.
55. Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 106; Marc Landy and Sidney M. Milkis, Presidential Greatness (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 98–99; MPP, 4:68.
CHAPTER 13
1. Erik J. Chaput, The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013), 2–3; Ronald P. Formisano, “The Role of Women in the Dorr Rebellion,” Rhode Island History 61 (1993): 91.
2. A debate occurred in the convention over whether to allow black suffrage. Dorr himself favored it and pushed for it strongly. But the delegates ultimately voted 46 to 18 against it. See Chaput, People’s Martyr, 57–59.
3. Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 539–40.
4. George M. Dennison, The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), chaps. 1–3.
5. JT quoted in Dennison, Dorr War, 72; JT to “his Excellency the Governor of Rhode Island,” April 11, 1842, in LTT, 2:194–96; Morgan, A Whig Embattled, 99.
6. Chaput, People’s Martyr, 9; Dennison, Dorr War, 72–74; Levi Woodbury to Thomas Dorr, April 15, 1842, in John B. Rae, “Democrats and the Dorr Rebellion,” New England Quarterly 9 (September 1936): 477; Brown quoted in David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 215.
7. Dennison, Dorr War, 75–76.
8. Niles’ National Register, April 23, 1842; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), 75; JCC quoted in PJCC, 16:239; Joseph Story to DW, April 26, 1842, in PDW-C, 5:202–3.
9. Dennison, Dorr War, 115–16.
10. Chaput, People’s Martyr, 22–23.
11. Erik J. Chaput, “Proslavery and Antislavery Politics in Rhode Island’s 1842 Dorr Rebellion,” New England Quarterly 85 (December 2012): 683.
12. Chaput, People’s Martyr, 129–30; Arthur May Mowry, “Tammany Hall and the Dorr Rebellion,” American Historical Review 3 (January 1898): 294; Chaput, “Proslavery and Antislavery Politics,” 659–61; John Ashworth, Commerce and Compromise, 1820–1850, vol. 1 of Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 207; Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 545.
13. APU to NBT, April 20, 1842, in LTT, 2:198.
14. Ashworth, Commerce and Compromise, 207; William A. Graham to Paul C. Cameron, May 20, 1842, in PWAG, 2:313; Chaput, People’s Martyr, 42–43.
15. Dennison, Dorr War, 79–80; Dorr quoted in Chaput, People’s Martyr, 88.
16. JT to the Governor of the State of Rhode Island, May 7, 9, 1842; and Samuel W. King to JT, May 12, 1842, both in MPP, 4:293–95.
17. Rae, “Democrats and the Dorr Rebellion,” 481n11.
18. Dennison, Dorr War, 85–87; Samuel W. King to JT, May 25, 1842, in MPP, 4:298.
19. JT to DW, May 27, 1842, in PDW-C, 5:213–14; JT to Elisha R. Porter, May 20, 1842, in MPP, 4:296.
20. Chaput, “Proslavery and Antislavery Politics,” 683–84.
21. William A. Graham to Paul C. Cameron, May 20, 1842, in PWAG, 2:313.
22. J. C. Spencer to Brigadier General Eustis, May 29, 1842, in MPP, 4:300.
23. JT to DW, May 27, 1842, in PDW-C, 5:214; “Secret Contingent Fund Account,” July 19, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:637.
24. Unknown to DW, June 3, 1842, in MPP, 4:300–301.
25. Dennison, Dorr War, 95–96; JT to Secretary of War, June 29, 1842, MPP, 4:307.
26. Dennison, Dorr War, 103, 195–96.
27. Dennison, Dorr War, 128–36; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 111–12. JT’s statement in his own defense is in MPP, 4:283–86. Luther v. Borden held that whether a state government is a legitimate “republican” form of government (as guaranteed by Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution) is a political question to be decided by the president and Congress. DW argued the case before the Taney court.
28. Ambrose Dudley Mann to DW, May 25, 1842, in PDW-C, 5:213; APU to NBT, April 20, 1842, in LTT, 2:198; DW to JT, April 18, 1844, ibid., 199.
CHAPTER 14
1. Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2006), 156–58.
2. Phillip Troutman, “Grapevine in the Slave Market: African American Geopolitical Literacy and the 1841 Creole Revolt,” in The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, ed. Walter Johnson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 209–10; Howard Jones and Donald A. Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840s (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997), 86–90.
3. DW to Edward Everett, January 29, 1842, in PDW-D,1:179–80; Matthew Mason, Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 140–44.
4. Jones and Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny, 96.
5. Emancipator, December 10, 1841, quoted in The Liberator (Boston), December 17, 1841.
6. DM, December 28, 30, 1841.
7. Howard Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 3–6, 10–16; Jones and Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny, 7; LTT, 3:205–6.
8. Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 96.
9. Ralph W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 28–52; Edward Everett to DW, January 3, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:488.
10. Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 95–96; Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 124; Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837–1873 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 28–29.
11. Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy, 35–36.
12. Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith to DW, [June 7, 1841], in PDW-D, 1:94–96.
13. House of Representatives, “Official Misconduct of the Late Secretary of State,” House Documents, 29th Cong., 1st sess., no. 684, 1846.
14. Frederick Merk, Fruits of Propaganda in the Tyler Administration, with the collaboration of Lois Bannister Merk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 62–64.
15. Ashburton quoted in Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 118; Lord Ashburton to Lord Aberdeen, April 26, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:544–45, 145n2; Ashburton to Aberdeen, May 29, 1842, ibid., 571.
16. Remini, Daniel Webster, 544.
17. Remini, Daniel Webster, 550.
18. Lord Ashburton to Lord Aberdeen, April 26, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:545–46; DW to John Fairfield and John Davis, April 11, 1842, ibid., 534–37; Jared Sparks to DW, February 15, 1842, ibid., 513–16; DW to Jared Sparks, May 14, 1842, ibid., 556–57; Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 120–21; Remini, Daniel Webster, 550.
19. Merk, Fruits of Propaganda, 68–69.
20. Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 93–94.
21. JT to DW, May 8, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:550; JT to DW, August 7, 1842, ibid., 671.
22. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 14, 1846, GTFP; JGT to MG, April 16, 1846, ibid.; DW to JT, August 24, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:695.
23. Lord Ashburton to DW, July 1, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:604.
24. Lord Ashburton to DW, July 1, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:604; Webster quoted in LTT, 2:217.
25. LTT, 2:217–18.
26. DW to William Pitt Preble, Edward Kavanagh, Edward Kent, and John Otis, July 15, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:622; William Pitt Preble, Edward Kavanagh, Edward Kent, and John Otis to DW, June 29, 1842, ibid., 592–603; DW to Lord Ashburton, July 8, 1842, ibid., 605–13.
27. Lord Ashburton to Lord Aberdeen, August 9, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:680–81.
28. Thomas LeDuc, “The Webster-Ashburton Treaty and the Minnesota Iron Ranges,” Journal of American History 51 (December 1964): 476–81.
29. Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 134–37.
30. At one point in the negotiations, Webster and Ashburton believed separating the components into different treaties would ensure passage of the boundary settlement and eliminate the chance that southerners in the US Senate would vote it down because they objected to the provisions dealing with slavery. Tyler understood and to some extent shared the concerns of the two men but ultimately persuaded Webster to abandon the idea and link each component into one document. See JT to DW, August 8, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:679–80.
31. JT to DW, May 8, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:550; JT to DW, August 1, 1842, Tyler Family Papers, WM; Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 141.
32. Steven Heath Mitton, “The Free World Confronted: The Problem of Slavery and Progress in American Foreign Relations, 1833–1844” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 2005), 60.
33. JT to DW, n.d., [1842], in LTT, 2:233.
34. Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” 57–62.
35. Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” xi.
36. Duff Green to JCC, January 24, 1842, in PJCC, 16:84; Green to JT, January 24, 1842, Duff Green Papers, SHC.
37. Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” 90–95.
38. Ashburton quoted in Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” 95.
39. MPP, 4:166–68.
40. Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 148–49; JT to DW, August 7, 1842, in LTT, 2:221–22; DW to Lord Ashburton, August 1, 1842, in PDW-D 1:658; Lord Ashburton to Lord Aberdeen, August 9, 1842, ibid., 680.
41. DW to WCR, August 10, 1842, WCR Papers, LC; JT to WCR, August 12, 1842, ibid.
42. APU to NBT, August 11, 1842, in LTT, 2:179; Benton, Thirty Years’ View, 2:430–32, 449; JT to DW, n.d., [1842], in LTT, 2:235; DW to Edward Everett, December 29, 1842, in PDW-D, 1:871–72.
43. Lewis Cass to DW, September 17, 1842, copy, WCR Papers, LC; MPP, 4:196; JT to RT, August 29, 1858, in LTT, 2:240–41; “Ex-President Tyler’s Letter, Of Mr. Barbee’s Sheaf,” TQ 32 (October 1950): 103–9; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery, completed and edited by Ward M. McAfee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 169–70.
44. The entire text of the treaty is found in Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, app., 181–87.
45. LTT, 3:205–6.
46. Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 120.
47. Stephen W. Stathis, “Former Presidents as Congressional Witnesses,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13 (Summer 1983): 458–59.
48. JT to DW, November 6, 1851, in The History of America in Documents: Original Autograph Letters, Manuscripts, and Source Materials, pt. 3 (New York: Rosenbach, 1951), 3; JT to DW, March 12, 1846, in PDW-C, 6:130; JT, “Second Annual Message,” in MPP, 4:194–95; JT to LWT, October 24, 1842, JT Papers, LC; Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy, 38–39.
49. MPP, 4:211–13.
50. MPP, 4:213–14; John M. Belohlavek, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005), chap. 6.
51. Kenneth E. Shewmaker, “Forging the ‘Great Chain’: Daniel Webster and the Origins of American Foreign Policy toward East Asia and the Pacific, 1841–1852,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 129 (1985): 236; JT, “Fourth Annual Message,” in MPP, 4:336; Edward P. Crapol, “John Tyler and the Pursuit of National Destiny,” JER 17 (Fall 1997): 486.
CHAPTER 15
1. French, Witness to the Young Republic, 143.
2. The Press (Philadelphia), April 2, 1877.
3. Seager, And Tyler Too, 179.
4. Septimus Tustin to JT, September 1842, JT Papers, ser. 4, LC.
5. JT to RT, July 19, 1849, in Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, pt. 5, Sale 1720, November 2, 2006.
6. RT to WCR, September 20, 1842, WCR Papers, LC; HW to JT, September 15, 1842, JT Papers, LC; Hampton Roads (VA) Daily Press, April 8, 1990.
7. JT to Andrew Jackson, September 20, 1842, in Lyon G. Tyler, ed., “Some Letters of Tyler, Calhoun, Polk, Murphy, Houston and Donelson,” TQ 6 (April 1925): 225.
8. Monroe, Republican Vision of John Tyler, 153–54.
9. This is the theme of a book on more recent presidents. See Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).
10. JT to LWT, October 24, 1842, in LTT, 2:248–49.
11. Washington Globe quoted in LTT, 2:304.
12. JT to LWT, October 24, 1842, in LTT, 2:248–49.
13. C. W. Hunton to C. W. Gooch, June 19, 1842, Gooch Family Papers, UVA.
14. C. Campbell to Richard B. Gooch, May 30, 1842, Gooch Family Papers, UVA; Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 151–55.
15. JT to Alexander Gardiner, July 11, 1846, in LTT, 2:341–42; W. W. Irwin to Caleb Cushing, March 24, 1843; and DW to Caleb Cushing, March 29, 1843, ibid., 3:108–10.
16. JT to Alexander Gardiner, July 11, 1846, in LTT, 2:341–42.
17. Seager, And Tyler Too, 170–71, 224–25.
18. JT to Alexander Gardiner, July 11, 1846, in LTT, 2:341–42.
19. DW to Nicholas Biddle, March 11, 1843, in The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle Dealing with National Affairs, 1807–1844, ed. Reginald C. McGrane (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 345–46; DW to Edward Everett, April 23, 1843, in PDW-D, 1:916.
20. Garrett Davis to John Payne, February 2, 1842, John Payne Papers, LC.
21. MPP, 4:37–39; Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 150.
22. MPP, 4:37–39.
23. JT to HW, September 13, 1843, JT Papers, LC; William Hogan to Caleb Cushing, February 18, 1843; W. H. Fortin to B. H. Cheever, February 17, 1843; William Brigham to Caleb Cushing, February 17, 1843; George Story to Caleb Cushing, February 18, 1843; Linus Child to Caleb Cushing, February 18, 1843; Charles Paine to Caleb Cushing, April 19, 1843; N. F. Williams to Caleb Cushing, April 19, 1843; William H. Montague to Caleb Cushing, April 21, 1843; Samuel Bridge to Caleb Cushing, June 1, 1843; and Samuel Bridge to Caleb Cushing, June 3, 1843, Caleb Cushing Papers, LC; Silas Reed to D[avid] L. Ogden, February 25, 1843, Ogden Family Papers, DU; Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 150; New York Tribune, November 14, 1842; Seager, And Tyler Too, 232–33.
24. JT to John C. Spencer, May 12, 1843, JT Papers, LC; JT to George Roberts, June 1, 1843, ibid.; Silas Reed to JT, October 1, 1842, ibid.; JT to Spencer, December 18, 1843, ibid.; JT to Spencer, May 15, 1843, in Steven S. Raab Autographs, Catalog No. 45 (September 2003); JT to Spencer, April12, 1843, in The History of America in Documents: Original Autograph Letters, Manuscripts, and Source Materials, pt. 2 (New York: Rosenbach, 1950), 122; Cain, “Return of Republicanism,” 277–78.
25. JT to John C. Spencer, September 2, 1843, JT Papers, LC; William C. Preston to JT, October 26, 1843, ibid.; Bailie Peyton to JT, December 17, 1843, ibid.; JT to Dolley Madison, September 26, 1844, in Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, pt. 2, Sale 1139, Christie’s, October 9, 2002; CG, 27th Cong., 3rd sess., 134, 144–45.
26. Alexander Hamilton Jr. to JT, April 23, 1842, JT Papers, LC; Seager, And Tyler Too, 220.
27. Seager, And Tyler Too, 221–22; Jonathan D. Sarna, Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), 146.
28. Chitwood, John Tyler, 373.
29. Seager, And Tyler Too, 223–24.
30. Walter Jones to Gales and Seaton, [Washington National Intelligencer office], June 18, 1843, Loose Letter, VHS; C. V. Woodbury to JT, January 13, 1843, Caleb Cushing Papers, LC.
31. Seager, And Tyler Too, 222–23; Sarna, Jacksonian Jew, 147.
32. New York Evening Post, March 16, 1843.
33. JT to unknown, June 14, 1842, JT Papers, LC; Peterson, Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, 182–83.
34. Kermit Hall, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 884–85.
35. Mitchel A. Sollenberger, The President Shall Nominate: How Congress Trumps Executive Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 66.
36. DW to JT, May 8, 1843, in “Webster-Tyler Letters,” TQ 8 (1927): 23; JT to DW, May 8, 1843, ibid.
37. DW to JT, August 29, 1843, in “Webster-Tyler Letters,” 24–26.
38. JT to John C. Spencer, September 2, 1843, JT Papers, LC.
39. JT to George Roberts, September 28, 1843, in “Letter of President Tyler,” WMQ, 1st ser., 19 (January 1911): 216.
CHAPTER 16
1. PCT to her sister, October 1842, Priscilla Cooper Tyler’s Journal, Elizabeth Tyler Coleman Papers, UA.
2. JT to LWT, October 24, 1842, in LTT, 2:248.
3. JT to Elizabeth Waller, January 16, 1843, JT Papers, DU; JT to MTJ, December 20, 1843, JT Papers, LC.
4. The salary of $25,000 in 1842 would be worth $757,575 in 2019 dollars. See the inflation calculator at davemanuel.com.
5. JT to Alfred Benson, November 5, 1842, JT Papers, LC.
6. JT to Elizabeth Waller, January 16, 1843, JT Papers, DU.
7. Seager, And Tyler Too, 179–80; JT to MTJ, May 2, 1842, Elizabeth Tyler Coleman Papers, UA; JT to MTJ, December 20, 1843, JT Papers, LC.
8. “Expenses of House from the 26th of February up to March 4, 1844,” Bills and List of Tyler’s Expenses, 1844, Correspondence of JT, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
9. Seager, And Tyler Too, 177.
10. “Reminiscences of Mrs. Julia G. Tyler,” app. B, in LTT, 3:195.
11. “Reminiscences of Mrs. Julia G. Tyler,” app. B, in LTT, 3:196–97.
12. MG to Alexander Gardiner, January 21, 1842, GTFP.
13. Baltimore Sun, July 3, 1844.
14. JT to RT, December 23, 1859, JT Papers, LC.
15. JG to Alexander and David Lyon Gardiner, January 6, 1843, quoted in “Julia Gardiner Tyler: A Nineteenth-Century Woman,” by Theodore Delaney (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1995), 59.
16. Marie Gardiner to JG, January 4, 1843, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (July 1936): 13.
17. Juliana Gardiner to Alexander Gardiner, January 27, 1843, GTFP.
18. Seager, And Tyler Too, 194–95.
19. “Mrs. John Tyler,” Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, July 14, 1889.
20. Seager, And Tyler Too, 196–97.
21. Seager, And Tyler Too, 198–99.
22. J. J. Bailey to JG, May 13, 1843, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (July 1936): 17–18.
CHAPTER 17
1. Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 1; John H. Schroeder, “Annexation or Independence: The Texas Issue in American Politics, 1836–1845,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 90 (1985), 137–47; Frederick Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 192–204.
2. Isaac Van Zandt to Anson Jones, March 15, 1842 [sic, 1843], in Anson Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence Relating to the Republic of Texas, Its History and Annexation (New York: D. Appleton, 1859), 213; Van Zandt to Jones, March 16, 1843, ibid., 218.
3. Van Zandt to Jones et al., April 5, 1843; and Van Zandt to Jones, April 19, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 221–22.
4. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 234–35; Freehling, Road to Disunion, vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 369–71; Leila M. Roeckell, “Bonds over Bondage: British Opposition to the Annexation of Texas,” JER 19 (Summer 1999): 265–66; Charles Elliott to Anson Jones, July 7, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 226; Sam Houston to Anson Jones, July 30, 1843, ibid., 233; Jesse S. Reeves, American Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk (1907; repr., Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967), 122–23.
5. JT to Waddy Thompson, August 28, 1843, in “Correspondence of President Tyler,” WMQ, 1st ser., 12 (January 1904): 140–41.
6. Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” 115–16, 122; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chaps. 8–12.
7. JT to Edward Everett, April 27, 1843, in Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, 211–12; Duff Green to JT, May 31, 1843, ibid., 217–21; Duff Green to JT, July 3, 1843, ibid., 221–24; Ashbel Smith to Anson Jones, August 2, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 236–37; W. Stephen Belko, The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 359–67; Freehling, Road to Disunion, vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 385.
8. To replace Upshur as navy secretary, Tyler wanted his friend Capt. Robert Stockton, a naval officer of distinction. Stockton turned him down, so Tyler named Massachusetts Democrat David Henshaw to the post.
9. APU to William S. Murphy, August 8, 1843, in Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860, ed. William R. Manning, 12 vols. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1939), 12:45–46; Mitton, “Free World Confronted,” 120–23; Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2008), 212–13.
10. JT to Waddy Thompson, August 28, 1843, in “Correspondence of President Tyler,” 140–41.
11. Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 82.
12. Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011), 90–91; Mason, Apostle of Union, 144–47; Karp, This Vast Southern Empire, chap. 3. Matthew Karp presents impressive evidence to support his argument that southern foreign-policy elites like Upshur and, later, Calhoun, egged on by Green, framed their response to the British threat to slavery in Cuba and Brazil as a hemispheric contest that required a strong US response. But I think he conflates the zeal of Green, Upshur, and Calhoun, who were largely outliers, with the attitude of Tyler, who, in my reading of the evidence, was much less ideologically committed to saving slavery in Cuba and Brazil. This is not to say that Tyler wished to see slavery end there. He chose to show American strength when it was necessary. But he did not hold the staunch “proslavery” views shared by Upshur and Calhoun, which Karp argues sustained their course of action on the matter. See also Joseph A. Fry, Dixie Looks Abroad: The South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789–1973 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2002), 54–57.
13. LTT, 1:568; APU to JCC, August 14, 1843, in PJCC, 17:355.
14. William S. Murphy to Hugh S. Legaré, July 8, 1843, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:295; Isaac Van Zandt to Anson Jones, August 12, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 243–44.
15. JT to Edward Everett, April 27, 1843, in Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, 212.
16. APU to NBT, October 10, 1843, Tucker-Coleman Papers, WM (also partially reprinted in Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, 234); APU to William S. Murphy, September 22, 1843, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:51–52.
17. DM, October 30, 31, November 15, 16, 27, 1843, reprinted in Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, 245–57.
18. APU to Isaac Van Zandt, October 16, 1843, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:53–54.
19. Com. John G. Tod to Anson Jones, October 25, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 262; LTT, 2:281.
20. MPP, 4:262.
21. Gen. J. P. Henderson to Anson Jones, December 20, 1843, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 279; APU to William S. Murphy, January 16, 1844, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:61.
22. APU to William S. Murphy, January 16, 1844, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:64.
23. William S. Murphy to APU, February 15, 1844 (two letters); Anson Jones to William S. Murphy, February 15, 1844; and William S. Murphy to APU, February 19, 1844, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 12:329–32; Sam Houston to Andrew Jackson, February 16, 1844, in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, ed. John Spencer Bassett, 7 vols. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1927–1928), 4:262; Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 202–3.
24. Letter of Mr. Walker, of Mississippi, Relative to the Annexation of Texas (Washington, DC: Printed at the Globe Office, 1844), reprinted in Merk, Fruits of Propaganda, 221–52. See also ibid., 95–128.
25. Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 26–35; Stephen John Hartnett, Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 107; JT in Niles’ Register, September 11, 1847, quoted in Merk, Fruits of Propaganda, 27; C. H. Raymond to Anson Jones, February 17, 1844, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 314–15.
26. Mary Ann Galt and Eliza Fisk Harwood to Tristrim Lowther Skinner, August 4, 1843, Skinner Family Papers, SHC; JT to Mrs. Benson, November 23, 1843, Sale 7881, Christie’s, New York City, 12 June 1996. I am grateful to Mary Maillard, editor of the Skinner Family Papers and publisher of four e-books on the collection, who allowed me to see her transcription of the Galt and Harwood letter before publication.
27. Seager, And Tyler Too, 203.
28. A. H. Miles, “The ‘Princeton’ Explosion,” Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute 52 (November 1926): 2225–45.
29. John M. McCalla to Maria McCalla, March 2, 1844, John Moore McCalla Papers, DU; French, Witness to the Young Republic, 159–61; Baltimore Sun, March 4, 1844.
30. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 4, 1844; Gettysburg Compiler, March 11, 1844; French, Witness to the Young Republic, 161.
31. JT to MTJ, March 4, 1844, in LTT, 2:289; JT to David Henshaw, March 5, 1844, Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, pt. 3, Sale 1685, Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, November 15, 2005.
32. E. Brooks to JT, March 12, 1844, GTFP.
33. JT to Mrs. [Anne] Gilmer, March 4, 1844, JT Papers, LC.
34. Utica (NY) Daily Gazette, March 13, 1844; New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 17, 1844.
35. JT to John Young Mason, March 5, 1844, Mason Family Papers, VHS.
36. Theophilus Fisk to James K. Polk, March 9, 1844; Aaron V. Brown to Polk, March 10, 1844; Cave Johnson to Polk, March 10, 1844; and Theophilus Fisk to Polk, March 13, 1844, in Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Wayne Cutler, 9 vols. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969–96), 7:82–89; James K. Polk to Theophilus Fisk, March 20, 1844, in LTT, 3:133–34; JT to John Young Mason, March 14, 1844, Mason Family Papers, VHS.
37. Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Sectionalist, 1840–1850 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), 161–63; John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1988), 272–73; JCC to Thomas Walker Gilmer, December 25, 1843, in LTT, 2:296. In a letter to Duff Green, Calhoun wrote what may be interpreted as a refutation of the claim made in Wiltse’s book: “There was no foundation for the rumor of my going into Mr. [John] Tyler’s Cabinet. I have given him a fair support, whenever I could, but without the least understanding between us.” See JCC to Green, August 31, 1842, in PJCC, 16:437.
38. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 222–25.
39. Chitwood, John Tyler, 286–87; Seager, And Tyler Too, 217; Simpson, Good Southerner 57–58, 332–33n42.
40. JT to JCC, March 6, 1844 (two letters), in PJCC, 17:828.
41. Freehling, Road to Disunion, vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 407–8. The treaty is reprinted in PJCC, 18:215–19.
42. Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–1846 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 57–58.
43. Edward Everett to JCC, April 17, 1844, in PJCC, 18:263.
44. JCC to Richard Pakenham, April 18, 1844, in PJCC, 18:273–78.
45. William J. Cooper Jr., The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1978), 191–92, app. A, 375–76; Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 243–44.
46. JT to RT, April 17, 1850, in LTT, 2:483; JT to DW, April 17, 1850, JT Papers, LC. For the economic effects of the “monopoly of the cotton plant” around which Tyler explained his pursuit of Texas, see Brian Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 183–95. For the global importance of cotton and America’s role in the international market, see Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage, 2014).
47. JT to Andrew Jackson, April 18, 1844, in Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 6:279.
48. Silas Wright quoted in Silbey, Storm over Texas, 45; James McDowell to members of Central Democratic Committee [of Richmond], May 6, 1844, Ritchie-Harrison Papers, WM.
49. Michael A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), chap. 1; Rachel A. Shelden, “Not So Strange Bedfellows: Northern and Southern Whigs and the Texas Annexation Controversy, 1844–1845,” in A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History, ed. Gary W. Gallagher and Rachel A. Shelden (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 11–35.
50. C. H. Raymond to Anson Jones, April 24, 1844, in Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence, 344; Arthur Campbell to Gov. David Campbell, February 23, 1845, Campbell Family Papers, DU.
51. JT to HW, [n.d.], in LTT, 2:317; “President Tyler’s Letter of Acceptance,” May 30, 1844, ibid., 320–21.
52. JT to HW, [n.d.], in LTT, 2:317; JT to RT, June 3, 1858, JT Papers, LC.
53. William King quoted in Hietala, Manifest Design, 40; MPP, 4:323–27.
54. MTJ to JT, [n.d.; 1844?], GTFP; JT to MTJ, June 18, 1844, Presidential Autograph Collection, Collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art Library, Albany, NY.
55. JT to MTJ, April 21, 1844, Heritage Auctions, February 2006, Dallas Books, Autographs and Manuscripts Auction, New York City, Lot 26128.
56. JT to Juliana Gardiner, April 20, 1844, GTFP.
57. Seager, And Tyler Too, 207.
58. Juliana Gardiner to JT, April 22, 1844, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
59. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 27, 1844; Juliana Gardiner to JGT, July 9, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (January 1937): 142.
60. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, June 30, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (July 1936): 29; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 11, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (January 1937): 143–46; JT to MTJ, June 18, 1844, Presidential Autograph Collection, Collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art Library, Albany, NY.
61. AG to JGT, June 28, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (July 1936): 2; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 27, 1844; Jane Tayloe (Lomax) to Eleanor Worthington, July 7, 1844, Lomax Family Papers, VHS; Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong: Young Man in New York, 1835–1849 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 238.
62. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (October 1936): 93.
63. Juliana Gardiner to JGT, July 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (October 1936): 94–95; MG to JGT, July 8, 1844, ibid., 141.
64. MG to JGT, July 8, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (October 1936): 141; AG to JGT, October 11, 1844, GTFP; MG to JGT, October 23, 1844, ibid.; JT to AG, October 18, 1844, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
65. DM, August 21, 1844; Calvin Blythe to JT, August 27, 1844, Correspondence of John Tyler, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA; JT to AG, July 11, 1846, in LTT, 2:341–42; Andrew Jackson to J. B. Sutherland, September 2, 1844, ibid., 341.
66. Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 198–99; Cooper, South and the Politics of Slavery, 224.
67. MPP, 4:342–45.
68. F. W. Thomas to JGT, February [12], 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; Seager, And Tyler Too, 262–65.
69. AG, “Mrs. Tyler’s Final Ball,” GTFP.
70. Seager, And Tyler Too, 263; MG to Juliana Gardiner, July 2, 1844, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; AG, “Mrs. Tyler’s Final Ball.”
71. MG quoted in Seager, And Tyler Too, 263.
72. “Reminiscences of Julia G. Tyler,” in LTT, 3:200.
73. CG, 28th Cong., 2nd sess., 359–63.
74. Silbey, Storm over Texas, 1–5; LTT, 2:364–65. Julia made a necklace out of the pen and wore it from time to time until it was misplaced sometime after her husband’s death. See “Reminiscences of Mrs. Julia G. Tyler,” ibid., 3:200.
75. LTT, 2:364–65; JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, November 20, 1848, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript; Charles A. Wickliffe to JT, December 20, 1848, ibid.
76. JT to HW, April 20, 1852, in LTT, 3:170. Texas became part of the United States on December 29, 1845.
77. John Quincy Adams diary 45, “1 January 1845–10 August 1846,” February 28, 1845, p. 59 (electronic edition), The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005), http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries, accessed July 13, 2019.
78. Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion & American Legal History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 92–93.
CHAPTER 18
1. JGT to Mrs. [Juliana] Gardiner, March 6, 1845; and AG to MG, March 4, 1845, in LTT, 2:367–70; “Retirement of Ex-President Tyler and Family,” Journal of Commerce, March 3, 1845, ibid., 366–68.
2. JT to N. P. Tallmadge, November 7, 1844, in “Letters of Tyler, Calhoun, Polk, Murphy, Houston and Donelson,” TQ 7 (July 1925): 9.
3. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 11, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (January 1937): 145; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 22, 1844, ibid., 159; JT to MTJ, April 21, 1844, Heritage Auctions, February 2006, Dallas Books, Autographs and Manuscripts Auction, New York City, Lot 26128.
4. Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour, 48.
5. JGT to AG, April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
6. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 11, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (January 1937): 145; JT to Philip R. Fendall, April 9, 1845, Philip Fendall Papers, DU.
7. On paternalism, see Kolchin, American Slavery, 111–32; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll; and Oakes, The Ruling Race. See also chapter 5, note 6 above.
8. Eben Horsford to Charity [Norton] Horsford, February 14, 1852, Eben Norton Horsford Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
9. JT to DG, April 10, 1848, Tyler Family Papers, WM; Ralph V. Anderson and Robert E. Gallman, “Slaves as Fixed Capital: Slave Labor and Southern Economic Development,” Journal of American History 64 (June 1977): 28; Gavin Wright, “Slavery and American Agricultural History,” Agricultural History 77 (Fall 2003): 543.
10. Oakes, Ruling Race, 156; Kolchin, American Slavery, 109; Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–5.
11. JGT to MG, May 29, 1845, GTFP; JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, August 24, 1845, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript; JT to John Young Mason, August 23, 1845, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to Dr. William Collins, September 17, 1845, “Some Letters of Tyler, Calhoun, Polk, Murphy, Houston and Donelson,” TQ 7 (July 1925): 11. In the summer of 1845, President Polk sent 3,500 US troops, under the command of Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor, to the Nueces River, citing a possible Mexican invasion.
12. JT to Dr. William Collins, September 17, 1845, “Some Letters of Tyler, Calhoun, Polk, Murphy, Houston and Donelson,” 10; Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–1846, 268–69.
13. JT to MTJ, June 18, 1844, Presidential Autograph Collection, Albany Institute of History and Art Library, Albany, NY.
14. Lizzy [Elizabeth] T. Waller to JGT, September 11, 1844, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, December 28, 1846, ibid.; JT to Elizabeth Waller, March 1, 1845, JT Papers, DU.
15. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 3, 1845, May 21, 1855, GTFP; JGT to MG, April 16, 1845, May 18, 1855, ibid.; Alice Tyler to JGT, November 6, 1844, May 29, 1845, ibid. For Julia’s attitude toward Alice, see JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 18, April 2, 30, 1851, ibid.
16. JGT to MG, April 16, 1845, GTFP.
17. Coleman, Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the American Scene, 109–21; JT to RT, November 20, 1845, in LTT, 2:447; JGT to My dear Brother [AG], July 22, 1845, GTFP; JT to RT, July 16, 1849, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
18. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, October 21, 1845, GTFP; JGT to My dear Brother [AG], July 22, 1845, ibid.
19. Baltimore Sun, July 6, 1844; New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 16, 1844; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 11, 1844, “Letters from Tyler Trunks,” TQ 18 (January 1937): 144.
20. New York Herald, April 30, 1845.
21. JGT to MG, April 10, 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; JGT to MG, March 18, 1845, ibid., typescript; JGT to MG, April 16, 1845, GTFP.
22. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 3, 1845, GTFP; JGT to AG, April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, September 1845, ibid., typescript.
23. JGT to My dear Brother [likely AG], June 17, 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; JGT to MG, June 29, 1845, GTFP; Juliana Gardiner to MG, July 7, 1845, ibid.
24. JGT to My dear Brother [likely AG], June 17, 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790–1860 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 18–20.
25. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, August 10, 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
26. John C. Rutherfoord to TR, September 1, 1845, John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College 4 (June 1916): 385–86.
27. JT to John Young Mason, August 23, 1845, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, August 24, 1845, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript.
28. John C. Rutherfoord to TR, September 1, 1845, John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College 4 (June 1916): 386.
29. J. Holbrook to JT, November 9, 1844, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
30. JT to RT, November 20, 1845, in LTT, 2:446–47.
31. JGT to My dear Brother [AG], July 22, 1845, GTFP; JT to RT, July 16, 1849, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; JT to RT, November 20, 1845, in LTT, 2:447.
32. JGT to My dear Brother [likely AG], June 17, 1845, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
33. JGT to MG, October 9, 1845, GTFP. T.H.Breen and Timothy Hall, Colonial America in an Atlantic World (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004), 157, briefly discuss the effects of beriberi on enslaved Africans during the so-called “seasoning” process in the Caribbean.
34. JT to RT, November 20, 1845, in LTT, 2:447; JT to Elizabeth Waller, April 21, 1846, JT Papers, DU.
35. JGT to MG, October 9, 1845, GTFP; JT to Elizabeth Waller, October 18, 1845, JT Papers, DU.
36. DLG to JGT, November 10, 1845, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, December 28, 1846, ibid.
37. William Boulware to JT, October 30, 1844, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; DLG to JGT, November 10, 1845, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 10, 1846, ibid.
38. JT to RT, January 1, 1846, in LTT, 2:450.
39. DLG to JGT, February 22, 1846, GTFP.
40. JT to RT, June 1, 1846, in LTT, 2:457; James K. Polk to JT, March 8, 1847, in Correspondence of James K. Polk, ed. Tom Chaffin and Michael David Cohen, 12 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013), 12:117; JT Jr. to James K. Polk, March 16, 1847, ibid., 128.
41. Seager, And Tyler Too, 362.
42. JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, August 24, 1845, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript; AG to JGT, November 28, 1846, GTFP; AG to JGT, November 29, 1845, ibid.
43. JT to AG, November 9, 1846, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to Messrs. Tilford and Samuel, March 2, 1847, ibid.; JT to AG, February 14, 21, March 16, April 16, May 21, 1848, March 27, April 24, 1849, January 7, 24, May 30, June 15, 1850, ibid.; AG to JGT, December 5, 1846, GTFP; JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, August 12, 1850, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript; AG to JT, November 15, 1849, Correspondence of JT, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
44. JT to AG, March 20, 1850, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
45. For example, see JT to DLG, May 4, 1847, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to AG, April 4, October 21, November 7, 1848, March 6, 15, 1850, ibid. See also AG to DLG, September 15, 1846, GTFP; and DLG’s Account Book, 1851–52, ibid.
46. JT to DLG, May 4, 1847, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
47. AG to JGT, November 28, 1846, GTFP; David Hedges to Juliana Gardiner, February 22, 1851, ibid.; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 1, 8, March 7, 15, 24, 1851, ibid.; JGT to MGB, April 21, 1851, ibid.; JT to DLG, June 23, 1854, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
48. JT to John Young Mason, November 24, 1850, October 30, 1851, July 2, 1852, March 5, 1853, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to CW, October 25, 1852, March 2, 1854, CW Papers, WM.
49. JT to Mr. Wheaton, June 9, 1856, Tyler Family Papers, WM; MGB to Juliana Gardiner, March 20, 1855, Gardiner Papers, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
50. JT to John Young Mason, July 2, 1852, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to George Frederick Holmes, February 23, 1847 (copy), George Frederick Holmes Letterbook, George Frederick Holmes Papers, DU; Harvey Wish, “George Frederick Holmes and Southern Periodical Literature of the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” JSH 7 (August 1941): 347; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 11, 1848, April 12, 1858, GTFP; John Rutherfoord to JT, November 18, 1848, Letter 99, Tucker-Ewell Papers, LVA; George M. Dallas to JT, June 29, 1855, JT Papers, LC; HW to JT, August 7, 1855, ibid.; Lucian Minor to JT, August 30, 1855, ibid.; John C. Rutherfoord to JT, September 15, 1855, ibid.; Benjamin Stoddart Ewell to JT, September 6, 1855, GTFP; JT to Hugh Blair Grigsby, November 23, 1859, JT Papers, ser. 4, LC, typescript; JT to Dr. Sprague, October 22, 1860, in LTT, 2:382–83; O’Brien, Conjectures of Order, 1:144–45, 316, 327.
51. JT to J. M. Porter, February 19, 1850, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
52. JCC, “Speech in Reply to Thomas H. Benton on the Mexican War,” February 24, 1847, in PJCC, 24:196.
53. JT to AG, March 11, 1847, in LTT, 2:420.
54. JT to AG, March 11, 1847, in LTT, 2:420.
55. JT to RT, May 9, 1856, Personal Papers Collection, LVA; JT to RT, March 11, 1847, in LTT, 2:421; JT to John S. Cunningham, May 8, 1856, ibid., 415; JT to AG, June 17, 1847, ibid., 426.
56. JT, “To the Editors of the ‘Enquirer,’” September 1, 1847, in LTT, 2:428–31; JT, “To the Editors of the Richmond Enquirer,” in LTT, 2:425.
57. John Young Mason to JT, September 18, 1848, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to Mason, September 22, 1848, ibid.; Mason to JT, November 1, 1848, ibid.; JT to Mason, November 13, 27, December 11, 1848, ibid.; JT to AG, November 24, 1848, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
58. JT to AG, August 7, 1848, Tyler Family Papers, WM; Paul H. Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 55–56.
59. JT, “To the Editors of the ‘Enquirer,’” September 1, 1847, in LTT, 2:428.
CHAPTER 19
1. JT to DLG, April 10, 1848, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
2. PCT to Frederic Raoul, July 14, 1847, Elizabeth Tyler Coleman Papers, UA; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, June 21, 1847, GTFP.
3. JGT to AG, January 20, 1847, GTFP; JT to MGB, April 3, 1849, in “Letters of John Tyler, 1849,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 61 (June 1928): 220; JGT to MGB, May 1851, GTFP.
4. JT to AG, January 7, 1850, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
5. JT to J. M. Porter, February 19, 1850, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
6. JT to AG, June 15, 1850, Tyler Family Papers, WM; John H. Beeckman to MGB, September 23, 1849, GTFP; Henry Beeckman Livingston Freemont to Gilbert Beeckman, April 27, 1850, Gardiner Papers, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript.
7. JT to Dear Sister [Martha Waggaman], June 8, 1853, Tyler Family Papers, VHS.
8. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, June 1, July 6, 1847, GTFP.
9. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 6, October 18, 1847, GTFP.
10. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 13, 1849, GTFP.
11. JT to JT Jr., January 5, 1857, JT Papers, LC; JT to RT, June 3, 1858, ibid.
12. JT to RT, April 17, 1850, in LTT, 2:483; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 18, April 2, 23, 1851, GTFP.
13. JT to Dear Sister [Martha Waggaman], June 8, 1853, Tyler Family Papers, VHS.
14. LTT, 2:465; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, March 28, 1851, GTFP.
15. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 4, 1851, March 31, 1855, GTFP; JGT to MGB, May 12, 1855, ibid.
16. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, December 1848, GTFP; MGB to Juliana Gardiner, November 22, 1854, March 2, 1855, Gardiner Papers, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; Glover, Southern Sons, 103.
17. MGB to Juliana Gardiner, March 2, 1855, Gardiner Papers, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; MGB to Juliana Gardiner, February 23, 1853, ibid., typescript.
18. JT to MGB, December 25, [n.d.], JT Papers, ser. 4, LC; JT to MGB, December 25, 1855, in LTT, 2:523.
19. Juliana Gardiner to AG, January 22, 1851, GTFP; MGB to Juliana Gardiner, March 2, 1855, Gardiner Papers, Tyler Family Papers, WM, typescript; Eben Horsford to Charity [Norton] Horsford, February 14, 1852, Eben Norton Horsford Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
20. JGT to MGB, June 4, 1851, [n.d.], 1855, GTFP; William Kauffman Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3 vols. (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1972–89), 1:124. There is a bit of irony in Ruffin’s views on marriages between old men and young women. In 1923 his great-granddaughter, Sue Ruffin, married Tyler’s son Lyon. Thirty-six years in age separated the two.
21. JT to Dear Sister [Martha Waggaman], June 8, 1853, Tyler Family Papers, VHS; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, November 28, 1859, GTFP.
22. JGT to MGB, May 3, 4, 1853, GTFP; John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 58–60.
23. JGT to MGB, May 3, 4, 1853, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 29, 1856, November 10, 1859, ibid.; JT to MGB, June 23, 1855, February 17, 1856, JT Papers, LC; JT to RT, December 23, 1845, in LTT, 2:449; JT to RT, November 24, 1854, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to RT, January 6, 1855, JT Papers, ser. 4, LC; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, March 24, 1851, GTFP; JT to John Young Mason, July 2, 1852, Mason Family Papers, VHS; JT to Col. J. S. Cunningham, April 20, 1852, Alfred W. Van Sinderen Collection, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
24. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, March 22, 1855, GTFP; JT to CW, [n.d.], 1857, CW Papers, WM; JT to DLG, April 6, 1857, JT Papers, LC; JT to LTS, October 29, 1856, ibid.; JT to Mr. [Benjamin] Ewell, February 11, 1859, ibid.; JT to NBT, April 13, 1859, ibid.; JT to Mr. Wheaton, June 9, 1856, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to RT, October 22, 1856, in LTT, 2:534; JT to unknown, May 20, 1857, in LTT, 2:538; Mrs. Cynthia B. T. Washington to Lawrence Washington, February 9, 1859, in “Miscellaneous Letters,” WMQ, 1st ser., 23 (April 1915): 286–88; Ralph Hardee Rives, “The Jamestown Celebration of 1857,” VMHB 66 (July 1958): 259–71.
25. LTT, 2:505.
26. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 30, 1849, February 21, 1850, GTFP; JT to Dr. Henry Curtis, January 25, 1844, December 1858, JT Papers, LC.
27. JGT to MGB, February 5, 1846, March 19, 1851, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, April 4, 30, 1851, ibid.; JGT to MGB, April 10, 1854, ibid.
28. JGT to MGB, May 15, 1851, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 3, 1846, November 10, 1859, ibid.; JGT to MGB, April 10, 1854, ibid.
29. JGT to AG, December 13, 1850, GTFP.
30. Norbert Hirschhorn, Robert G. Feldman, and Ian A. Greaves, “Abraham Lincoln’s Blue Pills,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44 (Summer 2001): 315–32.
31. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, March 7, 1851, GTFP; JT to LTS, December 8, 1857, JT Papers, LC; JT to RT, July 14, 1858, Tyler Family Papers, WM.
32. JGT to MGB, June 15, 1854, GTFP; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, December 11, 1854, ibid.
33. JGT to MGB, May 12, 1855, GTFP.
34. James Semple to JT, June 24, 1855, JT Papers, LC; JT to LTS, October 29, 1856, ibid.
35. JT to LTS, October 29, 1856, JT Papers, LC; JT to MGB, October 21, 1856, ibid.; JT to RT, October 22, 1856, in LTT, 2:534.
36. JT to HW, March 17, 1856, JT Papers, LC.
37. JT to JT Jr., May 7, 1854, Tyler Family Papers, VHS; JT to Mr. [Benjamin] Ewell, February 11, 1859, JT Papers, LC.
38. JT to Samuel S. Gardiner, June 26, 1857, Sylvester Manor Archive, Record Group 3, Fales Library and Special Collections, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University; JT to unknown, n.d., [June 1857?], CW Papers, WM.
39. JT to MGB, February 25, 1856, JT Papers, LC.
40. JT to Hugh Blair Grigsby, February 29, 1856 (copy), Hugh Blair Grigsby Letterbook, Hugh Blair Grigsby Papers, VHS; JT to JT Jr., January 5, 1857, JT Papers, LC.
41. JT to Samuel S. Gardiner, July 3, 1851, Sylvester Manor Archive, Record Group 3, Fales Library and Special Collections, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University; JT to Hugh Blair Grigsby, February 29, 1856 (copy), Hugh Blair Grigsby Letterbook, Hugh Blair Grigsby Papers, VHS; JT to JT Jr., January 5, 1857, JT Papers, LC.
42. JT to John S. Cunningham, July 15, 1852, in LTT, 2:499.
43. JT to RT, June 3, 1858, JT Papers, LC.
44. JT to CW, April 26, 1858, CW Papers, WM; JT to DLG, March 29, 1858, JT Papers, LC.
45. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, July 29, 1856, GTFP; JT to RT, May 7, 1855, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to RT, December 23, 1859, JT Papers, LC.
46. Will of John Tyler, October 29, 1860, Oversize Papers Collection, 22546, LVA.
47. William L. Day, receipt from John Tyler for slave sale, February 28, 1857, Personal Papers Collection, LVA.
48. Syracuse Evening Chronicle, August 21, 1854; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, January 23, 1856, GTFP; JT to JGT, June 27, 1860, JT Papers, ser. 4, LC.
49. JT to RT, September 6, 1857, JT Papers, LC; JT to RT, September 21, 1849, Tyler Family Papers, WM; JT to John Hartwell Cocke, June 21, 1848, JT Papers, DU; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, August 1, 1856, GTFP; William M. Mathew, Edmund Ruffin and the Crisis of Slavery in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), chaps. 2, 4.
50. JT to CW, October 6, 1860, CW Papers, WM.
51. The sources conflict on Pearl’s birthdate. Some state she was born on June 13, 1860, while others indicate she was born on June 20.
52. Juliana Gardiner to Mrs. Joseph Manzanedo, June 25, 1860, Julia (Gardiner) Tyler Papers, VHS.
53. JT to Hugh Blair Grigsby, October 8, 1860 (copy), Hugh Blair Grigsby Letterbook, 1834–61, VHS, 12–18.
54. JT to RT, August 14, 1860, in LTT, 2:560.
CHAPTER 20
1. JT to Charles A. Wickliffe, August 12, 1850, Preston Davie Papers, VHS, typescript. For the territorial issue in American politics after Tyler’s presidency, see Morrison, Slavery and the American West, chaps. 2–8; Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004); and Cooper, South and the Politics of Slavery, chap. 7.
2. JT to Rev. William Tyler, March 29, 1853, in LTT, 2:507.
3. JT to RT, March 17, 1851, in LTT, 2:494; JT to “Gentlemen,” June 9, 1855, JT Papers, LC. JT’s statement about the “purification” of the Democratic Party fails to take into account that free-soilers (including members of the Free-Soil Party of 1848) like Van Buren abandoned the Democracy on their own accord and forced political realignments in several northern states. On this point, see Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Tyler’s view comports with the argument in Joshua A. Lynn, Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019), which asserts that men like JT found in the Democracy a way to ensure the equality of all white men, making their party the “conservative” alternative to the Free-Soil and Republican Parties.
4. JT to John S. Cunningham, June 10, 1852, in LTT, 2:498; JT to Rev. William Tyler, March 29, 1853, ibid., 506; Yonatan Eyal, The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 11–12. For the “old” Democratic Party Tyler favored, see Wallace Hettle, The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), chaps. 1–2. On doughfaces, see Michael Todd Landis, Northern Men with Southern Loyalties: The Democratic Party and the Sectional Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 71–72.
5. JT to Rev. William Tyler, May 22, 1854, in LTT, 2:510. On popular sovereignty at this time, see Childers, Failure of Popular Sovereignty, chap. 8.
6. Landis, Northern Men with Southern Loyalties, 138–42.
7. Holt, Fate of Their Country, 109–16; William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), chap. 2.
8. JT to RT, July 17, 1854, in LTT, 2:513; Holt, Fate of Their Country, 118. On the Know Nothings, see Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
9. JT to John S. Cunningham, July 14, 1856, in LTT, 2:530; JT to RT, November 19, 1855, ibid., 522; JT to DLG, July 21, 1856, ibid., 532.
10. JT to RT, March 17, 1851, in LTT, 2:494; JT to RT, June 10, 1856, ibid., 526–27.
11. JT to Robert Tyler, July 16, 1859, in LTT, 2:551; Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), chaps. 11–12.
12. JT to RT, May 26, 1859, JT Papers, LC.
13. JT to HW, November 2, 9, 1859, quoted in Robert G. McGlone, “John Brown, Henry Wise, and the Politics of Insanity,” in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, ed. Paul Finkelman (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 225–26.
14. JT to RT, August 1, 1859, in LTT, 2:552; JT to RT, December 23, 1859, JT Papers, LC.
15. Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), chap. 2. On the fire-eaters, including JT’s friend Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, see Eric H. Walther, The Fire-Eaters (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1992).
16. JT to RT, September 6, 1857, JT Papers, LC; William H. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 2, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), chap. 12.
17. JT to RT, October 22, 1856, in LTT, 2:534.
18. JT to RT, August 14, 1860, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 61 (June 1928): 220.
19. JT to RT, July 22, 1860, in LTT, 2:559; JT to William Waller, November 5, 1860, JT Papers, LC.
20. JT to RT, November 10, 1860, in LTT, 2:563; JT to Silas Reed, November 16, 1860, JT Papers, LC. JT’s ambivalence on the breakup of the Union was typical of the mixed feelings many of his contemporaries shared, and his response indicated that he exhibited contradictory emotions. On this process writ large in the South, see Michael E. Woods, Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chap. 7. For the importance of the threat of “disunion” during the antebellum period, see Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).
21. JT to Caleb Cushing, December 14, 1860, in LTT, 2:577.
22. JT to DLG, January 1, 1861, in LTT, 2:578; William J. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 158–61.
23. JT to RT, January 18, 1861, in LTT, 2:578–79.
24. RE, January 18, 1861.
25. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 102–3.
26. LTT, 2:587–89.
27. James Buchanan, “Memorandum,” January 25, 1861, in The Works of James Buchanan: Comprising His Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, ed. John Bassett Moore, 11 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1910), 11:114; JT to Wyndham Robertson, January 26, 1861, JT Papers, LC; JT to Pres. James Buchanan, January 28, 1861, in LTT, 2:592.
28. JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 3, 1861, in LTT, 596; JGT to Juliana Gardiner, February 4, 1861, ibid., 597; Seager, And Tyler Too, 454.
29. Robert Gray Gunderson, Old Gentlemen’s Convention: The Washington Peace Conference of 1861 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), vii. Cooper details the convention in We Have the War upon Us, 175–83.
30. JT to Talbot Sweeney, November 30, 1861, in LTT, 3:174; JT, Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1861, March 13, 1861, in Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, ed. George H. Reese, 4 vols. (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1965), 1:639.
31. CG, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., 1404–5.
32. Seager, And Tyler Too, 458–59; Maury Klein, Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 276.
33. JT, Speech in Virginia State Convention, March 13, 1861, quoted in LTT, 2:607.
34. JT, Speech in the Virginia State Convention, in Reese, Proceedings, 1:639.
35. JT to Tazewell Taylor, March 24, 1861, Hugh Blair Grigsby Papers, VHS; RE, March 30, 1861; Seager, And Tyler Too, 460.
36. JT to JGT, April 16, 1861, in LTT, 2:640; John Gilmer to Isaac Carrington, March 15, 1861, Isaac Howell Carrington Papers, DU; JT to RT, April 18, 1861, Elizabeth Tyler Coleman Papers, UA, typescript; Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 277–82, 308–23; Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847–1861 (Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1934), chap. 11. See also Link, Roots of Secession. For a lively account of the secession crisis that effectively captures the personalities of its key figures as well as stresses the contingent nature of events that characterized the time period between Lincoln’s inauguration and the formation of the full Confederacy, see Nelson D. Lankford, Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 (New York: Penguin Books, 2007).
37. John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1866), 1:22–23, viewed online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31087/31087-h/31087-h.htm, accessed 22 August 2015.
38. JT to JGT, April 16, 1861, in LTT, 2:640; JT to Capt. [Samuel] Barron, May 2, 1861, Samuel Barron Papers, UVA.
39. JT to JGT, April 17 [sic], 18, 1861, in LTT, 2:641.
40. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, DC, 1880–1901), 4:636.
41. JT to CW, June 12, 1861, CW Papers, WM.
42. Jeremiah Morton to Angus Blakey, October 23, 1861, Angus R. Blakey Papers, DU; JT to John Rutherfoord, November 1, 1861, in LTT, 2:665.
43. JGT, account of JT’s last hours, in LTT, 2:671–72.
44. Thomas Bragg Diary, January 20, 21, 1862, 117–18, SHC; LTT, 2:684.
EPILOGUE
1. LTT, 2:675.
2. Thomas Bragg Diary, January 20, 21, 1862, 117–18, SHC.