Chapter 6

ABSENCE AS A WAY OF LIFE

 

 

In May 1831 Senator Tyler returned to Virginia from Washington and found an invitation to a political dinner in Richmond waiting for him. After barely setting his bags down, he informed Letitia that he planned to attend the event and told her that he would be leaving shortly. He would likely be gone at least two days.

The very next morning Tyler cancelled his plans. Letitia “was so very ill upon my receiving the invitation,” he wrote to Senator Tazewell, who was to meet him in Richmond, “that I was left but one course to pursue, and that was to decline its acceptance.”1

Letitia spent most of her marriage to John in what he often referred to as her “delicate” health. She was prone to excruciating migraine headaches and, as she got older, debilitating illnesses that frequently confined her to bed. Nine pregnancies and the demands of a large family also took their toll. Women with repeated pregnancies often suffer from chronic hypertension, so it is possible that high blood pressure explains Letitia’s headaches. Without access to the modern medicines that can effectively regulate a person’s blood pressure and maintain it at an acceptable level, she would have had very little recourse as her condition worsened with age. In fact, she would have had little concrete understanding of the connection between her many pregnancies and her illnesses. Letitia would suffer a stroke in 1839 at the age of forty-nine and another one that took her life at age fifty-one while her husband was president. Her strokes are the best evidence that she did indeed suffer from hypertension.2

The trauma of childbirth itself put Letitia’s health in peril, as it did all women in the antebellum South. She also may have been subjected to the remedies nineteenth-century physicians employed to mitigate the harmful effects of giving birth. For example, doctors often “bled” a patient, which entailed opening an artery in the temple to reduce blood pressure on the brain. The use of chloroform as an anesthetic did not become common until the late 1840s—after Letitia had given birth to all of her children—so she was likely forced to suffer the ordeals without anything to alleviate her pain. Unfortunately, we do not know any of the details of her pregnancies other than oblique allusions to her lengthy recovery times in her husband’s correspondence with Henry Curtis. There can be no doubt, however, that her many pregnancies and deliveries compromised her health. In fact, it is little short of a miracle that she was able to bring eight children to term.3

Letitia’s problems went beyond her physical health, however. One brief account of her life, composed with the help of her children and daughter-in-law years after she died, mentions her “acute nervous organization” and “sensitive temperament.” These are descriptions of her emotional make up, and when read in conjunction with her husband’s letter to Tazewell, it becomes apparent that his use of the word “ill” is a code employed to describe something other than a run-of-the-mill physical ailment. Tyler did not reveal his wife’s exact symptoms, but his friend no doubt understood what had happened; there was no need for further explanation. John knew why Letitia had become “ill” and knew his behavior was the cause. She could not bear the prospect of yet another of his absences, especially one so soon after he had returned from Washington. That Tyler felt he should not press his luck and leave for Richmond anyway indicates how serious the situation must have been.4

Letitia evidently suffered from what physicians of her time called “hysteria,” the scientifically imprecise term used to describe the physical symptoms of a woman’s poor health that defied a purely medical explanation. These physical symptoms had psychological—as opposed to organic—causes. The term “hysteria” also described what modern healthcare professionals would characterize as depression. Generally uncomfortable discussing the very private, often embarrassing details of their physical health, nineteenth-century Americans—more modest than their counterparts in a later time—were even more circumspect when it came to emotional health. In part, this reflected the lack of a framework for explaining matters pertaining to one’s mental state; psychiatry and psychological analysis did not yet exist. People of John Tyler’s lifetime did not have the language to explain what they experienced or what they saw in their loved ones.5

Men often used code words when alluding to their wives’ hysteria, particularly if they were talking or writing to other men about it. They rarely used the term “hysteria” themselves. Men like Tyler instead used the word “illness” to describe what their wives were going through, usually providing enough context to allow the reader of a letter or a visitor in the parlor to infer what they meant. In Tyler’s case he may have even discussed Letitia’s “illness” with his friend Tazewell in person, perhaps in Washington, sometime before the incident over the political meeting in Richmond. Tazewell would therefore have needed no further context to allow him to understand what had happened.

The proximate cause of Letitia’s “illness” that day in 1831, and the source of her hysteria generally, was her husband’s absence from home. He spent six months of every year in Washington when he served as a US senator, and when he was home he acted as if he could not wait to get back to the capital. His return to politics after his retirement in 1821 made clear to Letitia that he put ambition before her. “These were the circumstances,” John Tyler Jr. said, “that tested my mother’s nature and qualities.”6

Letitia experienced what one historian calls a “marriage trauma” as she realized that her husband neither valued the ideal of the companionate marriage nor shared her expectations for their relationship. In fact, the trauma repeated itself every December as he left for Washington. She may have thought there was a chance to get what she wanted when Tyler retired in 1821 but soon realized she had been waging a losing battle. Ultimately, it was this realization that ravaged Letitia’s emotional health and prompted her hysteria. Her husband’s political career, not emotional intimacy, became the dominant feature of their marriage.7

There can be no doubt Letitia found this deeply disturbing. She loved her husband—almost desperately. John Jr. could sense just how much, even as a small boy. “I can see my mother now,” he related many years later, “as she would be seated either sewing, or knitting, or reading, when the voice of my father would be heard either approaching or entering the house, instantly a blush would mantle her cheek, a beam of joy would irradiate her countenance, the book or work would fall from her hands, and she would bound forward to meet him.” She would instantly catch herself, however. In John Jr.’s words, “such quick, impelling affection, such untutored manifestation of joy,” was not what his father wanted to see from his wife because it was “not altogether consistent with proper self-respect” and was unbecoming “the wife of a grave, noble, and lofty Virginia Senator.” Letitia “would recover herself” and hurry back to her chair. “Then as he [Tyler] entered the room, she would rise and receive him tenderly yet decorously.”8

The way Letitia was raised no doubt dictated her behavior when it came to her husband. She had been brought up to keep her emotions in check as much as possible. “Immediately following the first impulsive movement,” her son reported, “these reflections would flash through her mind.” But there was more to it than that. Recall that when Tyler served in the House of Representatives, particularly in the last two years, he often missed the beginning of the session, sometimes arriving two weeks after the proceedings had started. He may have been forced to remain at home longer than he wished because of his wife’s illnesses. At times Tyler could only break away if she was not “unusually unwell,” a phrase that clearly indicates the prevalence of the problem. Perhaps she made a scene every time he prepared to leave for Washington. Letitia therefore made a concession by greeting him when he returned home without an abundance of emotion, not wishing to remind him that she often got carried away. Her submission thus became a way for her to compensate for the behavior she exhibited when Tyler prepared to travel back to Washington.9

Making the trip with him was not usually an option. Letitia’s poor health, her unwillingness to participate in the social life of the capital, and the young children she needed to care for at home precluded her travel to Washington. On one occasion, however, she agreed to go, spending the lame-duck session between December 1828 and March 1829 with her husband. Tyler’s only comment on the time they spent together was confined to a brief mention of her presence in a letter to his Norfolk friend Conway Whittle. The fact that Tyler brought his wife to a short session of Congress is suggestive. Perhaps she had only agreed to go because of the relatively limited time she would have to spend in Washington. Perhaps he did not want her there for a longer regular session—for whatever reason—and agreed to bring her on this occasion because they could return to Virginia more quickly than normal. Whatever the case, she never traveled with her husband again.10

Complicating an analysis of the separation dynamic of the Tyler marriage is the complete absence of correspondence from Letitia. Apparently, her letters have not survived. It is obvious she wrote to her husband while he was in Washington; the content of his letters makes this clear, and he often responded to concerns she raised in her letters to him. But Letitia lacks her own voice in the sources. We do not get her side of the story and must piece together what little we can from Tyler’s responses. What happened to the letters Letitia Tyler wrote to her husband? Perhaps he destroyed them, not wanting to risk anyone finding out about the intimate details of their marriage. If so, did he destroy the letters solely to protect his privacy, or was he embarrassed by their content because they cast him in a negative light as a husband and father?

The fervor of courtship seems to have subsided quickly for Tyler—no doubt more quickly than it had for Letitia. Politics, not his wife, became his consuming passion. Still, the couple had eight children together. Despite their many health problems, the Tylers were an extraordinarily fertile couple. John was a man with a healthy libido, if we can judge by the number of his offspring, and it seems clear that he, not Letitia, set the parameters of their sex life. She seems to have been unable to negotiate with him and win any periods of sustained abstinence while she was in her twenties and thirties, even as her health grew more precarious and the pregnancies more potentially dangerous. The months Tyler spent away from home attending to political matters did not provide Letitia with the true relief her body desperately needed because she was often pregnant during these times. The “rest,” therefore, was often not real respite in any meaningful sense of the word.

Letitia may never have broached the subject of abstinence. She may have actually enjoyed sex rather than dreaded it like many wives of her time, though this is difficult to imagine in light of her family’s portrayal of her as a prim and excessively shy woman. Regardless of how she viewed intercourse itself, it is entirely possible that Letitia wanted as large a family as Tyler could give her. In light of her poor health, though, this too seems improbable. Many nineteenth-century women positively (and rightfully) dreaded bearing children and were further hampered in any effort to manage their own reproduction by the unavailability and unreliability of birth control. Making matters worse, southern women were even more likely than their northern counterparts to die in childbirth. They knew the risks, often discussing the dangers at length to female friends and relatives who could relate to the fear. It is therefore hard to imagine Letitia reacting to each pregnancy with unbounded joy. But as a southern woman, she grew up with the deeply embedded message that motherhood was expected of her. She had very little room to maneuver when it came to controlling her own destiny. Therefore, she likely resigned herself to her husband’s high sex drive and his desire for a large family, bearing her trials like most women of her time did—as best as she could. She endured eight (possibly nine) pregnancies; in total, she was pregnant for at least six full years of the seventeen years between the time she and Tyler married in 1813 until their last child was born in 1830.11

Should John Tyler be condemned for risking his wife’s life through repeated pregnancies? From the perspective of the twenty-first century, yes. Men of Tyler’s time, however, were expected to have robust sexual appetites and father children. In fact, fathering many children served as proof in the antebellum South that a man had a healthy sex drive—that he was a normal sexual being. Fathering many children also served as evidence that a man directed his sexual impulses toward his marriage and was not seeking pleasure elsewhere; he was exercising self-control and cultivating a public appearance of mastery—over his household, his wife, and his sexual urges. For Tyler, as for any member of the Tidewater elite, how society judged a man was vitally important. His behavior conformed to the accepted—and acceptable—norms of behavior of the Old South. Tyler may also have found having a large family valuable as a way to compensate for his own chronically poor health. His many children allowed him to demonstrate and confirm his masculinity, both to himself and to others. This was important for his standing as a planter as well as his stature as a politician.12

Letitia no doubt felt that seven children were more than enough. While her husband was in Washington, she faced the burden of maintaining the household and managing the children herself. She relied on one or two house slaves, and at times female relatives assisted her, but it was she who oversaw the day-to-day activities of her large brood. The children also had to adapt to their father’s absences. While he was away, Tyler worked hard to cultivate relationships with his offspring, despite the distance between them. He sought to develop a role as their father that he—if not they—found acceptable. He wrote them often, and their letters in reply made him very happy. Tyler especially appreciated those written by Mary. Perhaps because she was the oldest child, he enjoyed a rapport with her not evident in his relationships with the other children, especially the boys. Twelve years old when her father returned to Washington in December 1827, the precocious and always inquisitive Mary pressed Tyler for details about his life away from home. He delighted in his daughter’s questions about the capital and explained his responsibilities and told her about the many interesting people he met on a daily basis. He also paid special attention to what she said about her lessons.

Like his own father, Tyler believed an education essential for both boys and girls and wanted Mary to write him as much as possible so he could judge her progress and “bear witness to the expansion of [her] mind.” He suggested reading Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, and Samuel Johnson as well as the newspapers. He advised her to approach her studies with a seriousness of purpose and to take special care not to overly indulge in foolishness and frivolous pursuits—in short, to limit the amount of fun she had. “The highest enjoyments of life pale upon the apetite [sic] when indulg’d in for too long a time,” he warned. Echoing his own father from years before, Tyler even chided his daughter for poor penmanship, almost to the point of obsession. “A young lady should take particular pains to write well and neatly,” he instructed her, “since a female cannot be excused for slovenliness in any respect.” The ink blots Mary sometimes left on the page became particularly annoying to her father.13

Tyler entertained the idea of sending Mary to school for formal instruction and thought Washington presented a wonderful opportunity for her. “I walked on Saturday last to Georgetown, distant a mile and a half from my residence, on a visit to the monastery and college,” he wrote her one winter day, “and was much delighted.” Tyler took a tour of both Roman Catholic institutions and came away duly impressed. “The monastery is under the government of young ladies who have devoted their lives to the instruction of young ladies and children,” he wrote. “They are nuns, and are entirely secluded from the world. It is an excellent school, and if I bring you on here next winter I think I shall place you there at school.” The evidence does not tell us definitively whether these nuns ever taught Mary Tyler. Again, we do know that Letitia traveled to Washington with her husband in December 1828—during the “next winter” that Tyler wrote about. It is entirely plausible that Mary and some of her siblings accompanied their parents to the nation’s capital at that time. If they had, Mary may have enrolled in the monastery. There are no extant letters from Tyler to her for this period, perhaps indicating that she was indeed in Washington with her father and the rest of the family. It is also worth pointing out that Tyler’s willingness to enroll his daughter in a Catholic school would have horrified many Protestants. At the time he considered the school, the United States was on the cusp of a period of often unrestrained bigotry toward Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church. Tyler, however, exhibited none of the antipopery that characterized the period. His Protestant faith evidently served as no barrier to providing Mary with a fine education.14

Even as he articulated to Mary the importance of her education, Tyler did so within the conservative framework of elite southern society. He clearly did not intend that his daughter entertain unrealistic notions of what her education would ultimately mean. He took an active interest in her schooling and sought to direct her studies because he wanted her to seize the opportunity to ensure her own future happiness as a wife and mother. He played a vital role in her character development. “We should rather rely upon ourselves,” he told her, “and howsoever the world may deal with us, we shall by having secured our own innocence and virtue, learn to be happy and contented even in poverty and obscurity.”

Tyler made it clear that his daughter should look to Letitia for moral guidance. “I could not hold up to you a better pattern for your imitation than is constantly presented you by your dear mother,” he said. “You never see her course marked by precipitation, but on the contrary everything is brought before the tribunal of her judgment, and her actions are all founded in prudence.” Letting Mary know what he ultimately expected of her, and praising her behavior so far, Tyler proudly stated, “Follow her example my dear daughter, and you will be as you always have been—a great source of comfort to me.”15

Tyler came to regard Mary as a source of comfort because she dutifully played what was perhaps the most significant role in the household while he was gone. As the oldest child, she often served as messenger to Tyler’s other children when he found himself burdened by a busy schedule and unable to write each of them individually. In one letter he told her to inform Robert that he was a “bad fellow for not having written to me.” In another he requested that she see to it that her brothers and sisters “sit down and send me messages.” Tyler also expressed his hope that his younger girls would emulate their older sister. He teased Letty and Lizzy that if they did not “learn [their] books and be obedient and good girls, I shall not love you.” Clearly, Tyler missed his children while he was away. His letters to Mary reveal a marked attempt to keep up with their activities as they grew up without him. Though he joked with them when they did not write, it obviously bothered him when he failed to receive a timely note. Tyler’s letters also show an affectionate side to him, even if it was up to Mary to convey that affection to her siblings.16

As time passed, Mary also became caretaker of her mother. Tyler relied on her to look after Letitia when she suffered from headaches and to keep him informed of her condition. At one point he purchased a large bathtub for his ailing wife and converted their farm’s dairy to a room where she could soak in saltwater for some relief. The family had previously enjoyed two restorative trips to the seashore, and Tyler hoped simulating that environment might help Letitia. Letters dispatched from Washington encouraged Mary to persuade her mother to follow a regimen from which he insisted she would “derive great benefit.” Mary was to enjoin a slave to fill the tub with saltwater once or twice per week, whenever her mother appeared to need treatment. Besides illustrating concern for his wife, Tyler’s directives also demonstrate that trust in his daughter became a crucial component of the relationship they shared as he directed domestic matters from afar. Tyler trained Mary to act as the primary caregiver—a surrogate for himself—in the household. She attended to the needs of her mother, who could not play that role, as well as to those of her younger siblings. Such an arrangement allowed Tyler to pursue his political career. Indeed, without Mary, his career in the US Senate would have been out of the question.17

At times Tyler had to maintain discipline from Washington, which was no easy task. As teenage boys often do, both Robert and John exhibited a penchant for horseplay. They tormented their older sister with pranks and found it amusing to barge in on her in the morning as she was dressing for the day. Letitia’s efforts to end this little game failed, and Tyler had to lay down the law through a note dashed off from Washington. “I have been much mortified by your mother’s last letter in which she complains of both yourself and John,” he wrote to Robert. “She says that neither of you treat her with becoming respect, or obey her wishes after being informed of them.” Using admonition and guilt that would have made the most devout Catholic proud, Tyler asked his boys to “carry back your thoughts to the period of your helpless infancy.” He wanted them to think about “who nursed you, and watched over you by night and by day?” Making it clear he expected his sons to always mind their mother, he warned, “I hope . . . that I shall never hear of your disobeying her slightest wish, much less her commands.” Moreover, he said, “you must teach yourself to regard your sister as a young lady, near and dear to you, and therefore requiring a respectful deportment from you.” Above all, he “wish[ed] my children to love each other, and by their conduct to show that love and affection.”18

Tyler seemed aware that his absences had detrimental effects on his family. After reentering public life, he missed a great deal in his children’s lives as they passed from childhood into young adulthood. Despite the time he spent away from them, Tyler hoped to instill the proper values in his children that his father had passed to him. Like his interest in Mary’s education, a concern for the scholastic development of his sons is especially evident. He felt “great pleasure” when Robert, following his father and grandfather to William and Mary, performed well in his studies, and he proudly told Dr. Curtis that “Philosophy, Metaphysics, chemistry, Mathematics, all are alike embraced by him and the professors advise me that he has never appeared at lecture unprepared.” To his diligent son he wrote, “To witness your advance in knowledge and that of your sisters and brothers will constitute the charm of my future life, and so far I have much reason to be satisfied.”19

Unlike the recommendations he gave Mary, which reflected a fatherly wish that she prepare herself for marriage, the advice Tyler gave his sons was geared more to making sure they acquired the education necessary for worldly success. In this way he pointedly followed the example of his own father. “Be in haste to prepare yourself for the bar,” he instructed Robert while his son was at William and Mary. Though less emphatic than the Judge had been, Tyler passed on the values of noblesse oblige and subtly instilled a sense of honor in both Robert and John as they prepared for adulthood. Perhaps trying to plant the seed and lay the foundation for the political careers he hoped his sons would pursue, he also encouraged Robert to “learn to make yourself popular by accommodating yourself to the feelings nay whims of others.” These “others,” after all, might someday vote.20

For their part, the Tyler boys wrote to their father when he was away about matters they knew concerned him and always made sure to highlight their academic triumphs. Robert found this easy; a consistently high level of achievement marked his teenage years. As a result, he enjoyed the hearty esteem of his father, and the two shared a good—though not especially close—relationship, despite the fact that they saw each other only for brief periods while Tyler served in the Senate. John Jr. was not so lucky. Though he followed his brother at William and Mary and did fairly well, he struggled to measure up to Robert’s level of success. Perhaps because of that, there was an emotional distance between him and his father. John shared more of a bond with Letitia, writing most of his letters while at college to her. Curiously, he also referred to his father as “the Old Man.” Whether this was a term of affection or, more likely, reflected resentment toward his father, is not exactly clear. What is clear is that John did not enjoy the same relationship with his father that Robert did. More to the point, he did not go out of his way to cultivate a healthy relationship—neither did Tyler.21

 

 

Prolonged absences also meant Tyler had to manage Greenway from Washington, which he found increasingly more difficult as he pursued his senatorial career. Like most Tidewater planters in the 1830s, Tyler grew wheat and corn on his 1,200-acre farm, choosing to forego tobacco production, which had largely shifted to Virginia’s Piedmont. While wheat planters worried about the dangerous Hessian fly that might ravage their crops or despaired over the devastating blight of rust, they found cereal production less troublesome than tobacco. For one thing, it was easier on the soil. Tobacco depleted nutrients very quickly, and cultivation left a field useless after a few growing seasons. Wheat and corn, in contrast, deprived the land of relatively little. Moreover, the production of these staples was not as labor intensive. In cultivating tobacco, an enslaved laborer could only tend two or three acres with any reasonable degree of care. That same slave could easily cultivate twenty acres of wheat, however, and an almost equal acreage of corn. The result was that a planter who grew wheat or other cereals could run an efficient farm and enjoy modest financial success with significantly fewer slaves than his counterparts who chose tobacco as their cash crop. Tyler offers a case in point.22

By 1830, twenty-nine enslaved people lived and worked at Greenway. Six were males between the ages of ten and thirty-five and were expected to perform the most arduous tasks. More than half of Tyler’s slaves—fifteen, in fact—were children under the age of ten; another was an elderly woman. Tyler’s labor force appears relatively modest when compared with those of wealthier Tidewater planters, who, along with significantly more acreage or more than one farm, might own more than one hundred slaves. Tyler’s slave ownership made him comparable to many of his neighbors in Charles City and the surrounding counties. He was a “typical” Tidewater planter of the 1830s.23

Tyler was an atypical planter in one important respect, however. Most slaveholders of the nineteenth-century South—and Tidewater Virginia was no exception—exhibited a resident mentality that tied them to their land and slaves. Slaveowners typically felt strong attachments to their home and preferred to stay there if possible. Wealthy Virginia planters from the east sometimes owned land and slaves in the Piedmont or mountain region but ventured to what were essentially secondary holdings only once or twice per year. They usually left their primary residences for specific reasons: either to inspect the operations at other locations or to seek relief from the hot, often malarial summers of the Tidewater. Politicians like Tyler followed a different pattern. Duties either in Washington or their state capitals required these planters to spend several months of every year away from their farms.24

Like most slaveholders, Tyler relied on an overseer to manage his labor force and keep his farm running efficiently. Overseers were generally entrusted with the care of slaves, the land, livestock, and farm implements. Absentee planters especially depended upon them for a successful harvest. Unfortunately, the man Tyler had hired for Greenway, an individual named Branton, proved inadequate for his job, and plantation management suffered as a result. In one instance a field at the farm sustained what Tyler’s brother-in-law Robert Christian reported to him as an “injury.” Though he did not elaborate, it is possible he meant that Branton had directed the slaves to plow the field too soon. Perhaps it had been sown before sufficient time had passed to allow the soil to recover from a previous harvest. Whatever the case, Christian strongly implied that Branton deserved the blame. Tyler had asked his brother-in-law to look in on Greenway periodically and serve as de facto master in his absence but worried that Branton resented the intrusion. “When I was at home I directed him to take as much care of everything as if no change had taken place,” Tyler replied, upon hearing this bad news. Upset at what he had been told, the senator declared that he would be “deeply wounded” if his overseer had indeed let him down.25

Branton’s apparent shortcomings illustrate a general problem that planters often faced when leaving their farms in the care of overseers. Many southerners regarded overseeing as a degrading occupation. Inexplicably, slaveholders themselves often looked with contempt upon the profession. Consequently, as one South Carolina planter put it, only a “limited number” of men, often characterized by “want of education generally,” took the job. While some overseers were the sons or close relatives of planters, most were yeomen, who often knew very little about proper agricultural practices. Many were unschooled in the benefits of crop diversification and other aspects of scientific farming that became increasingly popular during the 1830s. In their zeal to generate profits and perhaps increase their own pay, many tried to maximize the size of the crop no matter what it cost in abuse of the land. The planter inevitably paid the price. Making matters worse, overseers often proved temperamentally unsuited to maintaining control over enslaved people. Some also undoubtedly came to resent the authority of the master, which was especially ominous for an absentee planter like Tyler. One contemporary editor summed up the problem: “In the master’s absence, the overseer is viceregent; his powers for good or evil are unlimited.” That thought could not have made Tyler happy as he left his home for the nation’s capital every December.26

Why did planters entrust their livelihoods and the care of their enslaved labor to men often intellectually or temperamentally ill equipped to handle the job? Put simply, they had no choice. Men like Tyler needed individuals like Branton. Tyler’s political career made it necessary that an overseer assume the day-to-day operations at Greenway. There was no viable alternative. Only under certain circumstances—after the death of a husband, for example—would the woman of the farm exercise authority over a slave force, though few had the necessary training or inclination to attend to business matters. Letitia nominally oversaw Greenway while her husband was away and likely kept the farm’s records. Her chronic ill health, however, meant she needed competent help. Tyler relied on Christian to check on Greenway. Asking him to provide oversight allowed the senator to maintain some control over his farm while he was away. The request was not unusual, either. Indeed, it was a practice common in the antebellum South, one born out of both necessity and convention. By imposing upon Christian, Tyler at least implicitly acknowledged the potential danger in placing complete trust in Branton. Accordingly, he dealt with the problem the way most other absentee planters did.27

 

 

During the spring of 1831, after the second session of the Twenty-First Congress had adjourned, Tyler moved his family to another farm. The new home was a 630-acre expanse of land on the north side of the York River in Gloucester County. He evidently did not think long and hard about a name for his new home, calling the residence Gloucester Place. He had acquired the property from an acquaintance as settlement for a debt, possibly as payment for legal services. Soon after taking control of the farm, he sold Greenway.28

Tyler’s reasons for abandoning Greenway and moving to Gloucester County are not clear. He easily could have sold the property in Gloucester after acquiring its title and spared his family the aggravation of a move. Surely, selling his boyhood home could not have been easy. He had been overjoyed at the opportunity to purchase the property in 1821, happy it belonged to the Tyler family once again. Letting it again pass to someone outside the family must have been difficult. Perhaps the land no longer yielded a sufficient harvest, or maybe Tyler believed his enslaved labor would be even more efficient on a smaller farm. Whatever the reason, the move proved beneficial from the start. After seeing that Letitia and the children had settled in, Tyler organized the operations of the farm and prepared for the first summer wheat harvest at the new residence. The family enjoyed a banner crop that year. Writing in mid-June to his friend Governor Floyd, Tyler proclaimed proudly that “the sickle is about to go into the best crop of wheat that I have seen in lower Virg[ini]a.” The good fortune pleased him immensely and affirmed his decision to move. Understandably, he wanted to show off his new home to Floyd. Inviting him to visit, the senator told the governor, “I will make you an unqualified promise to shew [sic] to you the most beautiful country in Virginia.”29

The friendship with Floyd grew as Tyler’s relationship with Dr. Curtis waned. The tension between Tyler and his brother-in-law first appeared soon after Tyler retired from Congress in 1821. The two men grew irritated with each other over the Dixon estate: Curtis seemed displeased with the way Tyler approached the financial mess of the estate, and Tyler, spurred on by how much he hated dealing with the matter, had gotten angry with Curtis. Harsh words passed between them. The real issue had become Tyler’s management of money—or rather, it had become his mismanagement of money. The letters between Tyler and Curtis for the late 1820s provide evidence of several bewildering financial arrangements between the two men and, often, arrangements between them and third parties. Curtis endorsed numerous notes, one instance of which prompted Tyler to thank him for his “willingness to oblige me in regard to my unfortunate bank transactions.” Tyler always seemed to owe money to someone. If his annual wheat crop failed to live up to expectations, he saw even more red ink. Because Curtis had endorsed many of Tyler’s notes, it meant that he faced losses too. Understandably, he grew tired of putting himself on the hook for his brother-in-law’s notes, and the rift between the two men had widened considerably by 1830.30

Tyler had better luck dealing with his overseer at Gloucester Place. Before leaving for Washington and the beginning of the Twenty-Second Congress in December 1831, he hired a man named Gregory for the position. Gregory proved more reliable than Branton and appeared more adept at carrying out his duties. Tyler could also rest easier knowing that another brother-in-law, John Seawell, lived just a few miles from Gloucester Place. Much like Christian did at Greenway, Seawell looked in on the farm while Tyler was in Washington. By this time, too, fifteen-year-old Robert had assumed a prominent role in making sure the family’s farm ran smoothly. In fact, Tyler often wrote to his oldest son with instructions for Gregory and messages for his Uncle John.31

This system, however, was no substitute for seeing to matters himself, and Tyler often expressed frustration at being absent for such long periods of time. If he did not aspire to the life of a farmer, he often acted as if he would have preferred remaining at home so that he could know exactly what occurred at Gloucester Place firsthand. Tyler’s attitude toward his farm reflects an ambivalence that characterized him for virtually his entire political career. When he was home in Virginia during recesses of Congress, he longed for the hurly-burly of the nation’s capital; he could not wait to return. When he was in Washington, however, he often acted as if he wanted to take the first stage back to Virginia and assume control of his farm. His letters betray a man who felt he was being pulled in two different directions. In short, no matter where he was, Tyler always thought about being someplace else. He was a man burdened by his many responsibilities. Yet national politics remained his chief focus—he was addicted to the political life.